Database of electoral results?

Hi all,


This is not so much a question specific to PostgreSQL, but rather a
general "application of theory" type of problem!

I did post this on comp.databases.theory but received no replies there.
If anyone here is interested and this is a suitable forum in the
PostgreSQL hierarchy, that would be great! If this is not a good group,
please point me in the right direction.

The actual election being discussed is neither here nor there, but I
mention it so that people might get a flavour for the issues - I often
find that this can help to get a discussion/flame-war/whatever going!


I am planning a database of the results for the NoI (North of Ireland)
assembly elections.

Background information can be found here
http://www.ark.ac.uk/elections/


For those not used to the STV (Single Transferrable Vote) PR
(Proportional Representation) method used in elections in Ireland or the
NoI (still part of the United Kingdom), all I can suggest is to search
for STV PR on your favourite search engine.


Basically constituencies are multi-seats and voters vote for their
choice in order of preference (1,2,3,4... &c.) and when a person is
elected, their surplus is transferred to still unelected candidates.


It's quite a complex system, and makes for great amateur psephology.


This will be a proper SQL database that will allow for sophisticated
queries about the results.


What I would like to know from this group is:

"Does anybody know of logical and/or data models that have been used in
the past to model election data?"  - i.e. Candidate, Constituency,
Party, Election &c. (Sample tables and fields would be nice!  8-);

And,

"Particularly in the case of STV PR elections?":


BTW, I did search in the library of free datamodels here
http://www.databaseanswers.com/data_models/index.htm
and found nothing.


Any URL's, references, discussions, texts, ideas &c. welcome.



Paul...


I did look at
http://bolson.org/voting/essay.html
and
http://www.logicaldatastructures.com/elections.htm

and I don't see much there that I can apply to my particular problem.


--

plinehan__AT__yahoo__DOT__com

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