Sequence for rigged voting machine

[David Wilson]

More a math-fun question than a seqfan question, but...

Kerry can never win.  Votes for either Bush or Nader increases the
Bush lead over Kerry, and while a vote for Kerry can decrease the
lead by 1, then next vote for Kerry will wipe out that gain.

Nader could conceivably win.  For every 7 consecutive votes for
Nader, 6 go to Nader and 1 to Bush.  This reduces the Bush lead
over Nader by 5 votes.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alonso Del Arte" <alonso.delarte at gmail.com>
To: <ham>; <seqfan at ext.jussieu.fr>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 7:13 PM
Subject: Sequence for rigged voting machine


> Dear SeqFans,
> 
> If I may, I'd like to present a little sequence puzzle. Given a voting
> machine rigged so that a vote for Kerry is counted as a vote for Bush
> when the total vote count is divisible by 2, and a vote for Nader is
> counted as a vote for Bush when the total vote count is divisible by
> 7, and Bush starts with 660 votes, Kerry with 347 and Nader with 2, it
> is possible to sequence the votes so that either Kerry or Nader could
> beat Bush? Also, is it possible to rig a machine in order to make sure
> to a mathematical certainty that Bush wins by a very close margin?
> 
> This website has a mock-up of a voting machine rigged as described above:
> 
> http://bobspoetry.com/eVoteDemo.html
> 
> Of course, the big difference between this mock-up and the real things
> is that anyone can look at the source code of the mock-up.
> 
> Alonso del Arte