Re:voting simple illustration

> OK, we are beginning to converge. I think.

I hope so :)

> On Aug 25, 2014, at 14:56 , chaals@yandex-team.ru wrote:

>>> ‎> In no elections we have do we give people anti-votes (votes against), or blocking votes (“I get my way or the whole election gets blown up”).
>>
>> (Which "we" do you mean? In W3C the only votes with a mandated process have rules that have landed you in the pickle you're now in).
> 
> I mean W3C elections. We don’t have either concept at the moment, is what I am saying.

OK.

>>> * Motion of no confidence
>>> * AGM (annual general meeting) votes where a certain portion of the vote must be in favor
>>
>> Monetary supply (i.e. refusing to allow money for a government to function) is a similar thing in practice. You live in the US, so you're probably more familiar with votes where it is seriously threatened. The last serious one in Australia was 1975 (and yes, the government was kicked out as a result).
>>
>> Votes with a quorum requirement are from time to time affected by walkouts, which is a "yes/no" version of "none of the rest" - more usually in smaller societies than the State of California, or even the Regional government of León.
>>
>> Presidential college votes in states where the candidate who gets 51% of the state gets all the votes for that state are not the same, but demonstrate that there are all sorts of strange voting systems possible, and that some seem a lot fairer than others. (See also "Gerrymander”).
> 
> Sure, I have been involved in elections with quorum requirements. Do we (w3c) have any now? Even if we did, then some of the cases are covered by a simple failure to list a preference for some candidates (r.g. the quorum requirement that, to be elected, one has to receive yes votes from >Y% of the voting pool).

I don't think there are any formal ones. On advice from the AB, W3C has decided that there should be an informal quorum requirement to charter a WG, although they retain the right to charter something anyway if they think it makes sense.

>>>> ‎ Do we have any elections where I can state on my ballot “or I want the election to be invalid”?
[snip]
> Right, I thought we were conducting a voting experiment; I didn’t conceptually include adding quorum requirements of either kind into that. Even with them, I think most cases are covered.

I hadn't included one anywhere.

> As I see it, the one case that isn’t is where people want to express “don’t elect anyone else”, which is kinda like an anti-vote for all other candidates; I think you’re saying that if a candidate gets more than a certain threshold of such anti-votes, they are not elected. That threshold might be
> a) > the number of positive votes cast for them
> b) > X% of the number of people voting
> c) > Y% of the entire electorate size
> 
> and so on

The proposal was that there is effectively a (hyptothetical) candidate. Let's call him or her (or them, as the new grammar has it) "not you guys".

In order to be elected, you have to beat that candidate.

But since this is in the context of an experiment, where W3C looks at whether our current rules produce outcomes that match what we want, but doesn't actually invalidate any result which will still be decided by our current rules, there would be no requirement to invalidate an election (indeed, that would be a violation of process) just because the AC declared an overwhelming preference not to elect whoever won under our current rules.

> I guess I still doubt we need that rule. All rules that say “but so and so is not elected unless this other condition is also met” suffer from the problem that one might not fill all available seats, whereas in today’s W3C elections, if there are enough candidates, we will fill the seats.

Right. The hypothetical is where the AC prefer to have a renomination period and encourage more people to run, than elect the people who nominated. My assumption is that this would be rare.

> Even if we were to go there, I would suggest quorum rules before anti-votes (for the election to be valid >X% of the electorate must vote, or the candidate must receive >Y% affirmative botes — possibly transferred — of the ballots cast).

Frankly, I'd just like to change the system to get one of the very many systems that are known to produce more representative results than the system we use now. Far more than I would like to spend another few years looking at options.

> The “and no other candidate” adds complexity and I want to be sure we both need it and can explain it.

It does. I think it is very important that we can explain it. I think it adds considerable value to the experiment. To be frank, I am not at all sure we should implement it in ordinary votes which is why I didn't suggest it until settling for the compromise that we would have the experiment and meanwhile keep the current system for a while longer.

cheers

Chaals

Received on Monday, 25 August 2014 23:07:15 UTC