How to do a run-off without repeating the elections

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

27 August 2006

James Wang’ombe is puzzled: he says, “In just concluded Athletics Junior World Championships, Kenya took 15 medals and China got 17. Yet we were ranked first, ahead of the Chinese. What kind of counting does the IAAF use?”

Well, James, the ranking in sports gives first priority to those who win gold. That is, the country with the highest number of gold medals wins, regardless of the total medal tally. If country ‘A’ wins just one gold medal and country ‘B’ takes 10 silver medals, ‘A’ will be ranked above ‘B’. The reasoning is that you can’t win (the championship) without winning (a discipline)!

In the athletics championships, Kenya took home 6 gold medals while China got 5, thus we were ranked above the host nation. Indeed, Argentina, Croatia, Moldova, Netherlands, South Africa and Uzbekistan took only one medal each (gold), but they were ranked above Ukraine with six medals (one silver, five bronze).

This type of ranking is close to the Instant Run-off Voting (or Alternative Voting, or Preferential Voting) used in elections in some countries. This system eliminates the need for a second (Run-off) election if the winner doesn’t get 50 percent of the votes cast. It works as follows:

Instead of identifying only one preferred candidate, voters are asked to rank the contestants in order of preference. At the beginning of counting, the candidates are ranked in the order of first choice votes received. If no one gets an absolute majority, the person with the fewest votes is eliminated and his/her votes are transferred to the remaining candidates.

In the transfer, each of the remaining candidates gets their corresponding second choice votes. If there is still no clear winner, the person with the fewest votes is again eliminated and his/her votes are transferred to the remaining contestants – this time according to third choice votes.

This process is repeated until a winner with more than 50 percent of votes is found. It may sound complicated at first, but when one considers that elections cost more than Sh5 billion to organise, it is worth a try. And with the talk of “minimum constitutional reforms” going on, there is a good opportunity to change the law accordingly.

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The email claiming that planet Mars will appear as large as the moon has resurfaced. I got a copy from Jack Kiche. Apparently, the phenomenon is supposed to happen tonight (August 27, 2006), but don’t bother going out to see the spectacle. As my Math teacher would put it, this email is “complete, utter, absolute, diabolical nonsense”!

The truth is that Mars will actually not be visible tonight! Furthermore, there is absolutely no way the planet can appear the same size as the moon when viewed with the naked eye from Earth! The email further claims that tonight, Mars and Earth will be at their closest distance ever. This is not true – the closest approach was reached on August 27 2003 when the two planets were about 56 million kilometres apart. But Mars was still a bright reddish-orange STAR – nothing near the size of the moon!