Codetown
Codetown ::: a software developer's community
Instant Runoff Voting - Contest #2
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is a fascinating way to run an election. The basic idea is that voters rank the candidates and the votes for the least popular candidate are automatically moved to the remaining candidates until one is selected winner.
Ready for the challenge? Code up a solution in your favorite language by midnight Sunday, February 14th, Eastern Standard Time. [ed. looks like we have a deadline error, so hold on to your hats, let us remedy this] Submit it to contest at codetown dot us. Also, post the link or code on this Discussion so the group can see it. We're allowing a little more time for this contest, so the results will be judged by...you! A poll will be posted in Contest Town so you can vote for your favorite app. Maybe we can use IRV to decide?
The winner will receive ... bear with us, as we're waiting to hear back from our sponsor, but this contest is going up now to give you the maximum possible amount of time to code. Good luck!
Ready for the challenge? Code up a solution in your favorite language by midnight Sunday, February 14th, Eastern Standard Time. [ed. looks like we have a deadline error, so hold on to your hats, let us remedy this] Submit it to contest at codetown dot us. Also, post the link or code on this Discussion so the group can see it. We're allowing a little more time for this contest, so the results will be judged by...you! A poll will be posted in Contest Town so you can vote for your favorite app. Maybe we can use IRV to decide?
The winner will receive ... bear with us, as we're waiting to hear back from our sponsor, but this contest is going up now to give you the maximum possible amount of time to code. Good luck!
Views: 1035
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Michael Newman on
-
features? well, ok. as of the (I swear) final revision (attached here; will also be on my ite space whenever I can access the server): instantrunoff.rar
--it reads ballots in from a file or from command line input. (file format is limited to txt, though.)
--you can vote for as many or as few people on a ballot as you care to. to put it another way, max. votes/ballot is up to you, not me, but you don't have to vote for the maximum.
--no vote is ignored. if your ballot reads MickeyMouse GoofyDog DonaldDuck it'll take that as readily as John Bill Jeff. depending on your point of view, this may not be a feature, but I think write-ins are as American as baseball and apple pie. (Goofy is supposed to be a dog, right?)
--it's verbose. for each round, you see who got the most votes, who was eliminated, and who's left in the runoff.
--it's 93 lines, including liberal commenting.
--it does what it's supposed to.
Michael Levin said:Update on contest winning entry: Michael, Kevin and Eric, we have not gotten a sponsor for Contest 2 yet, though since we haven't chosen a winner yet, the door is still open. Here's the plan. If we don't get a sponsor by the next GatorJUG meeting, I will choose a prize for the winning entry. I'll continue to search for a sponsor. And, stay tuned for Contest #3! Since all the entries are from GatorJUG members, we'll discuss the conclusion of this contest at the next GatorJUG meeting in March. Sound fair? Let me ask of you that you post the features each of your entries implements here as a comment. -
-
-
hm. attachment didn't work.
try this.
Michael Newman said:features? well, ok. as of the (I swear) final revision (attached here; will also be on my ite space whenever I can access the server): instantrunoff.rar
--it reads ballots in from a file or from command line input. (file format is limited to txt, though.)
--you can vote for as many or as few people on a ballot as you care to. to put it another way, max. votes/ballot is up to you, not me, but you don't have to vote for the maximum.
--no vote is ignored. if your ballot reads MickeyMouse GoofyDog DonaldDuck it'll take that as readily as John Bill Jeff. depending on your point of view, this may not be a feature, but I think write-ins are as American as baseball and apple pie. (Goofy is supposed to be a dog, right?)
--it's verbose. for each round, you see who got the most votes, who was eliminated, and who's left in the runoff.
--it's 93 lines, including liberal commenting.
--it does what it's supposed to.
Michael Levin said:Update on contest winning entry: Michael, Kevin and Eric, we have not gotten a sponsor for Contest 2 yet, though since we haven't chosen a winner yet, the door is still open. Here's the plan. If we don't get a sponsor by the next GatorJUG meeting, I will choose a prize for the winning entry. I'll continue to search for a sponsor. And, stay tuned for Contest #3! Since all the entries are from GatorJUG members, we'll discuss the conclusion of this contest at the next GatorJUG meeting in March. Sound fair? Let me ask of you that you post the features each of your entries implements here as a comment. -
-
Permalink Reply by Eric Lavigne on
-
I created an instant-runoff Clojure library, which would be useful for someone who is creating an election application (commandline/web/etc) in Java or any other JVM language. It is only 32 source lines of code, not including the "def candidates" and "def votes" statements which were only used for testing. The winner function takes a list of ballots and a set of candidates as input and returns the winner - a simple and orthogonal API.
http://github.com/ericlavigne/instant-runoff/blob/master/src/electi...
The code was written and thoroughly tested in front of a live audience. Unfortunately those tests were in a Clojure prompt and were lost when my laptop batteries died. I have started rebuilding the test suite, as shown in the following file.
http://github.com/ericlavigne/instant-runoff/blob/master/test/elect... -
-
Permalink Reply by Michael Levin on
-
Since I was out of town for the March meeting, let's get together at the April meeting (at the Civic Media Center) to determine a winner.
Michael Newman said:features? well, ok. as of the (I swear) final revision (attached here; will also be on my ite space whenever I can access the server): instantrunoff.rar
--it reads ballots in from a file or from command line input. (file format is limited to txt, though.)
--you can vote for as many or as few people on a ballot as you care to. to put it another way, max. votes/ballot is up to you, not me, but you don't have to vote for the maximum.
--no vote is ignored. if your ballot reads MickeyMouse GoofyDog DonaldDuck it'll take that as readily as John Bill Jeff. depending on your point of view, this may not be a feature, but I think write-ins are as American as baseball and apple pie. (Goofy is supposed to be a dog, right?)
--it's verbose. for each round, you see who got the most votes, who was eliminated, and who's left in the runoff.
--it's 93 lines, including liberal commenting.
--it does what it's supposed to.
Michael Levin said:Update on contest winning entry: Michael, Kevin and Eric, we have not gotten a sponsor for Contest 2 yet, though since we haven't chosen a winner yet, the door is still open. Here's the plan. If we don't get a sponsor by the next GatorJUG meeting, I will choose a prize for the winning entry. I'll continue to search for a sponsor. And, stay tuned for Contest #3! Since all the entries are from GatorJUG members, we'll discuss the conclusion of this contest at the next GatorJUG meeting in March. Sound fair? Let me ask of you that you post the features each of your entries implements here as a comment. -
-
Permalink Reply by Dan Lackey on
-
My project just ran for real. Some of the students are fussing. It is interesting to read some of thier posts.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Avant-Garde/277009322419?ref=ts
We had 4 parties.
two obviously lost and two where very, very close for winning. The party that had the most number one votes then lost because the party in second place had the most second and third place votes.
very interesting.
Michael Levin said:Since I was out of town for the March meeting, let's get together at the April meeting (at the Civic Media Center) to determine a winner.
Michael Newman said:features? well, ok. as of the (I swear) final revision (attached here; will also be on my ite space whenever I can access the server): instantrunoff.rar
--it reads ballots in from a file or from command line input. (file format is limited to txt, though.)
--you can vote for as many or as few people on a ballot as you care to. to put it another way, max. votes/ballot is up to you, not me, but you don't have to vote for the maximum.
--no vote is ignored. if your ballot reads MickeyMouse GoofyDog DonaldDuck it'll take that as readily as John Bill Jeff. depending on your point of view, this may not be a feature, but I think write-ins are as American as baseball and apple pie. (Goofy is supposed to be a dog, right?)
--it's verbose. for each round, you see who got the most votes, who was eliminated, and who's left in the runoff.
--it's 93 lines, including liberal commenting.
--it does what it's supposed to.
Michael Levin said:Update on contest winning entry: Michael, Kevin and Eric, we have not gotten a sponsor for Contest 2 yet, though since we haven't chosen a winner yet, the door is still open. Here's the plan. If we don't get a sponsor by the next GatorJUG meeting, I will choose a prize for the winning entry. I'll continue to search for a sponsor. And, stay tuned for Contest #3! Since all the entries are from GatorJUG members, we'll discuss the conclusion of this contest at the next GatorJUG meeting in March. Sound fair? Let me ask of you that you post the features each of your entries implements here as a comment. -
-
-
Dan Lackey said:My project just ran for real. Some of the students are fussing. It is interesting to read some of thier posts.
Congrats Dan!
Some people are upset about losing, and the new system is an easy scapegoat. Still, even in the losing party there are people saying to stop being so childish. Sounds like it went well. -
-
-
I have had projects blow up in my face for having mistakes in them before. I have never had one blow up because it was done properly.
Pretty funny really.
Eric Lavigne said:Dan Lackey said:My project just ran for real. Some of the students are fussing. It is interesting to read some of thier posts.
Congrats Dan!
Some people are upset about losing, and the new system is an easy scapegoat. Still, even in the losing party there are people saying to stop being so childish. Sounds like it went well. -
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- Next ›
Happy 10th year, JCertif!
Notes
Welcome to Codetown!
Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.
When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
ContinueCreated by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.
Looking for Jobs or Staff?
Check out the Codetown Jobs group.
InfoQ Reading List
Google Introduces Cloud Fraud Defense as Successor to reCAPTCHA
At the recent Next ‘26 conference, Google introduced Google Cloud Fraud Defense, the successor to reCAPTCHA. The platform goes beyond basic bot detection to address broader online fraud across login, account creation, and payment flows, helping organizations detect suspicious behavior and block abuse, including fake accounts, automated attacks, and transaction fraud.
By Renato LosioMicrosoft Releases Aspire 13.3 with Major Deployment and Frontend Updates
Microsoft has released Aspire 13.3, introducing a new aspire destroy command for tearing down deployments across Azure, Kubernetes, and Compose. The release adds native Kubernetes deployment in preview, first-class JavaScript publishing for Next.js and Vite, browser log capture, and a default-enabled container tunnel, alongside several breaking changes developers should review.
By Almir VukAnthropic Introduces Routines for Claude Code Automation
Anthropic has introduced a new feature called Routines for Claude Code, allowing developers to configure automated coding workflows that run on schedules, through API calls, or in response to external events.
By Daniel DominguezCloudflare Introduces Workflows V2 with Deterministic Execution and 50K Concurrent Workflows
Cloudflare introduces Workflows V2, a redesigned distributed workflow orchestration system with deterministic replayable execution, improved observability, and major scaling upgrades, including 50,000 concurrent instances and 2M queued workflows. It supports AI agents, data pipelines, and background processing with improved reliability across distributed systems.
By Leela KumiliPresentation: Using AI as a Thinking Partner for Large-Scale Engineering Systems
Julie Qiu explains how AI serves as a "thinking partner" for engineering leaders. She discusses five distinct roles - Archaeologist, Experimenter, Critic, Author, and Reviewer - to manage the cognitive load of 400+ repositories. She shares how AI provides the "RAM" needed to synthesize legacy context, pressure-test designs, and accelerate high-level architectural decisions.
By Julie Qiu
© 2026 Created by Michael Levin.
Powered by
