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A tie-break is the most contestable moment in an election, and 'the computer shuffled them' is not an answer that survives a challenge. This is the deep companion to the ties page: what BetterVoting publishes about a tie-break, how to check it independently, and -- as importantly -- what checking it does not prove. Written for the person who LOST the tie, and for anyone who has to certify a result to people who were not in the room. Calm and precise rather than reassuring; this reader may be upset and will not be helped by breeziness. What it documents: - The full tie-breaking ORDER is published, not just the winner -- on the results page and in the download, with each candidate's position, the tied set, and the kind of tie-break applied. There is nothing to request; it is already there. - The shuffle is deterministic, so re-running the count cannot produce a different answer. An administrator cannot re-roll it. - The ordering could not have been known in advance, because the ballot count feeds it and only settles when voting ends. - The algorithm was chosen to be language-agnostic precisely so an outsider can reimplement it and compare. - A warning callout for the trap that will otherwise sink a hand-check: the shuffle uses the RAW ballot count from the download, while the results page shows a TALLY count that excludes uncountable ballots. Checking with the wrong number produces the wrong order and looks like evidence of fraud. The limits section is the reason the page is worth publishing. It states that verification proves the published order follows from the published inputs, and does NOT establish that the ballot set is complete or correct -- that is a separate question -- and does not make the outcome fair in any wider sense. A verification page that overclaims is worse than no page, because it invites someone to believe they have checked more than they have. Also includes step 5, the step people skip: confirm the tie-break was needed at all. A correct shuffle applied to a tie that should not have existed is still a wrong result. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Description
Adds
docs/help/verifying_a_tie_break.md— the deep companion to the ties page.A tie-break is the most contestable moment in an election, and "the computer shuffled them" is not an answer that survives a challenge. This page is for the person who lost the tie, and for anyone who has to certify a result to people who weren't in the room.
What it documents:
A warning callout for the trap that will otherwise sink a hand-check: the shuffle uses the raw ballot count from the download, while the results page shows a tally count excluding uncountable ballots. Checking with the wrong number yields the wrong order and looks like evidence of fraud. This is the single most likely cause of a false alarm.
The limits section is why the page is worth publishing. It states plainly that verification proves the published order follows from the published inputs — and does not establish that the ballot set is complete or correct (a separate question), and does not make the outcome fair in any wider sense. A verification page that overclaims is worse than none, because it invites a reader to believe they've checked more than they have.
It also includes the step people skip: confirm the tie-break was needed at all. A correct shuffle applied to a tie that shouldn't have existed is still a wrong result.
Verification. Local build (
github-pages, Jekyll 3.9): renders, sits under theBetterVoting Documentationparent, no unrewritten.mdhrefs. Links only to pages onmain.Screenshots / Videos (frontend only)
n/a — documentation.
Related Issues
Completes the ties cluster with #1553 (ties rewrite) and #1554 (choosing a rule). All three independent; any merge order works.