RE: [election-services] Referendum items - 410 / 510 handling of these

["David RR Webber \(XML\)" <david@drrw.info>]

John,

 

I don't want to alarm anyone - but I just noticed that while the ballotchoices in the 410/340 et al has the referendum item identifier element - unfortunately it does not appear this is defined anywhere - such as in the 210 candidates or 630 proposals...

 

Ooops.

 

Hopefully I'm missing something obvious here - but if we do not define the referendum item Id outside of the 410 - then we need a referendum item description, etc, inside of the 410...  Perhaps the answer is a 215 for defining referendum items exactly - because I'm seeing they can occur across ballots depending on the precinct location and so on.   Also - we will want localization support by language for the questions as well?

 

DW

"The way to be is to do" - Confucius (551-472 B.C.)

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [election-services] Referendum items - 410 / 510 handling
of these
From: John Borras <johnaborras@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue, May 08, 2007 11:00 am
To: "David RR Webber (XML)" <david@drrw.info>,  Paul Spencer
<paul.spencer@boynings.co.uk>
Cc: election-services@lists.oasis-open.org

David - The referendum handling we have is based very much on the Swiss requirements which is by far and away the most complex that we came across.  So I'd be reluctant to change anything without a serious examination.

 

Paul - how's your memory?   Why did we do it the way we have?  I know we got the full documentation etc from Swiss folks and our analysis of that lead us to the current method.
 

Regards
John
M. +44 (0)7976 157745

----- Original Message ----
From: David RR Webber (XML) <david@drrw.info>
To: election-services@lists.oasis-open.org
Sent: Tuesday, 8 May, 2007 3:29:44 PM
Subject: [election-services] Referendum items - 410 / 510 handling of these

I'm just reviewing our V5 schemas - and want to make sure we can handle referendum items and yes/no approval choices on the ballot.

 

I assume we can - but the mechanics of this are not totally clear.

 

In the 410 we have the ReferendumOptionIdentifier, and the ChoiceType - so these can be used to setup a referendum item and denote the ChoiceType of Yes/No.

 

Next in the 510 we need to total the "yes" vis the "no" votes vis the invalid votes.  This is less clear. 

 

Looks like you have to put the ReferendumOptionIdentifier in twice (or more if not just yes/no) once for each option - e.g. Yes/No/Abstain etc.

 

This seems less than ideal.  Would be better to be able to denote on the ValidVotes an attribute of the choiceValue and have that as a repeatable item - so I can do:

 

<Selection>

 <ReferendumOptionIdentifier Id="0001">Make chocolate tax exempt</ReferendumOptionIdentifier>

 <ValidVotes choiceValue="Yes">10731</ValidVotes>

 <ValidVotes choiceValue="No">3670</ValidVotes>

</Selection>

 

Otherwise the handling and reporting in 520 of related items is non-trivial.

 

What have people done in v3/v4 for referendum items?

 

Thanks, DW

"The way to be is to do" - Confucius (551-472 B.C.)

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