Abstract

A new algorithm is presented for determining which, if any, of an arbitrary number of candidates has received a majority of the votes cast in an election. The number of comparisons required is at most twice the number of votes. Furthermore, the algorithm uses storage in a way that permits an efficient use of magnetic tape. A Fortran version of the algorithm is exhibited. The Fortran code has been proved correct by a mechanical verification system for Fortran. The system and the proof are discussed. 1 The work described here was conducted in the Computer Science Laboratory of SRI International and suported in part by NASA Contract NAS1-15528, NSF Grant MCS7904081, and ONR Contract N00014-75-C-0816 1981. A brief history of this work is given in the concluding section. 106 Robert S. Boyer and J Strother Moore 5.1 Introduction Reliability may be obtained by redundant computation and voting in critical hardware systems. What is the best way to determine the majority, if any, of a mult...

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