Fair-Share Tools

Simulation and Tally: This software tallies Movable Money Votes, introduced in the workshop on movable votes.  The workshop is a physical analogy that helps voters understand the logic and welcome a computer's help with a large tally.  This simulation of fair-share spending also lets users see the result of fair-share spending and compare it with winner-take-all rules.  The two Excel files zipped together include a worksheet to tally 25 voters and 16 project proposals.  version 2.0, June 2006; 66K.

There is also an older simulation of fair-share spending based on the advanced ballot method.   version 1.2, August 2004; 133K.

This voting simulation maps the locations and color choices of voters and proposed projects.  Winning projects get circled; losers get X'ed.  Notice that the voters who chose low-cost yellow flowers had enough money to fund all of their proposals.  Any interest group can win its fair share; they don't have to be geographic neighbors.

Ballots for "advanced" Movable Money Voting show how it apportions funds among your top-ranked items.  An integral graph shows your offers to each favorite as: votes (shown by the height of a column.) times your cost per vote. (shown by the width of the column.)  Designed to teach the ballot calculations in MMV, the ballot shows more than a voter needs to see. For example, you can change a project's  keep value  or  weight . Setting it to zero  eliminates  or  suspends  that project and moves money and votes to lower choices. The ballot features unlimited undo and redo so you can play at changing choices.
      Project Ballot in spreadsheet      version 1.6, July 2006
      Project Ballot in macros      version 1.4, July 2003
[Programmers: The spreadsheet runs faster and may be easier to walk through each calculation step.  The modular program in Excel's macro language is more like common programming languages.]

Older Versions

FS Tally tallies fair-share spending on simple spreadsheets. The ballots use ranks only (grades or scores must be converted) and use linear utility functions only (not curves or self scored). The 30 ballot are relatively easy to understand and quick to tally. This "proof-of- concept" program is set up for 30 voters and 16 projects.
      Fair-Share Tally       P_30_S13.zip, November 2000; 861K.

PolyFund.zip is a more complex workbook to tally the Loring Allocation Rule for Condorcet winners and fair-share winners.  It uses macro versions of the ballot and tally so it can tally MMV (with delayed or immediate collection of contributions) for hundreds of voters and dozens of items. But because Excel is interpreted, it is very slow.
      PolyFund.zip, version 0.5, December 2000;  125K.

Programs that tally STV (Choice Voting) can tally a Fair-share Spending decision -- if each proposal has the same cost.  For example, any STV program can help a group choose 3 boxes of ice cream from a dozen flavors, or 3 pizzas, or...  The selection is fair if all choices have the same cost.  Meek's version of STV is best for this task, but it is not essential.

If the items vary in cost, the program must be adapt to charge supporters different costs (weights) for different projects (candidates) after they win.  The quota of supporters required to become a winner may be equal for all projects or may vary with their costs.

Fund.pdf explains advanced MMV in an Acrobat document.

Each of these Excel programs was compressed with WinZip, an excellent shareware program.

Picture of the ballot, narrowed for small screens.