Recap of 2011

The primary goal of the OpenSTV project has always been to promote the use of ranked-choice voting by providing tools to make it as easy as possible for organizations to use it in their own elections.

Since 2003, I have been providing the OpenSTV software to allow people to count ranked ballots using methods such as instant runoff voting and the single transferable vote. As of this year, I am now also providing OpaVote which allows you to conduct a complete election from start to finish.

Since first releasing OpaVote in May, I have been working to add new features. Features currently in progress include

• Allowing multiple contests per election (e.g., electing a president, vice-president, and secretary)
• Displaying election results using bar charts (example)

You can try the development version at http://opavote.appspot.com/, but please do not use it for any real elections before contacting me as this is under active development.

Please send me feedback so I can keep improving OpaVote and OpenSTV to make them as useful as possible.

Happy new year,

Jeff