A First Approach to Risk-Limiting Audits for Single Transferable Vote Elections
This work solves the problem of ensuring election integrity for STV systems, which are complex and previously unauditable, though it is incremental as it is limited to 2-seat elections.
The paper tackles the problem of verifying election outcomes by developing the first risk-limiting audit method for single transferable vote (STV) elections, specifically for 2-seat cases, addressing a gap where no such methods existed previously.
Risk-limiting audits (RLAs) are an increasingly important method for checking that the reported outcome of an election is, in fact, correct. Indeed, their use is increasingly being legislated. While effective methods for RLAs have been developed for many forms of election -- for example: first-past-the-post, instant-runoff voting, and D'Hondt elections -- auditing methods for single transferable vote (STV) elections have yet to be developed. STV elections are notoriously hard to reason about since there is a complex interaction of votes that change their value throughout the process. In this paper we present the first approach to risk-limiting audits for STV elections, restricted to the case of 2-seat STV elections.