Re: Don't disclose election results

On Fri, 06 Jun 2014 19:33:41 +0200, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> Sorry, I don’t deny that some of the voting was strategic.  I just  
> caution against interpreting all non-5 votes as strategic.

Certainly - there are people who legitimately only have 1 person they want  
to vote for, and don't care about the rest of the result. And there are  
people like me who almost always vote strategically (even when I don't  
vote for just 1 candidate, as was the case this time).

> Of course, we would have to define ‘strategic’.  Is voting only for
> myself strategic, for example, or prudent?

That depends. If you want yourself elected, and have no further preference  
for any possible outcome, it is "rational".

If you are doing it because that maximises the chance of you being  
elected, but you would like to express further preferences about the  
outcome if possible, it is "strategic". (Or "tactical" - either way, it is  
reacting to the properties of the system rather than expressing to the  
fullest extent your desires for outcomes).

cheers

> On Jun 6, 2014, at 0:38 , Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org> wrote:
>
>> On 05/06/2014 22:24 , David Singer wrote:
>>> On Jun 4, 2014, at 12:48 , Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org> wrote:
>>>> As for strategic voting, only about half of AC reps vote for all
>>>> slots. 20-25% vote for just one. (The rest distributes in between.)
>>>> So there is no doubt that it is going on.
>>>
>>> Really?  I can quite easily imagine there are AC Reps who only knew
>>> some of the candidates, and by the time they excluded ones they knew
>>> and didn’t like, found they had to accept a few so as to vote.  At
>>> least, that’s how I imagine I got elected.  It might not be
>>> strategic, merely caution.
>>
>> What makes me think it's strategic is the shape of the curve. Strategic  
>> voting is characterised by voting for just one candidate. Voting only  
>> for people you know, out of caution, should spread relatively evenly  
>> across knowing 1, 2, 3, etc. people. But things look more like:
>>
>> 1: 25
>> 2: 4
>> 3: 4
>> 4: 15
>> 5: 50
>>
>> We have two AC reps on the record stating they vote strategically (at  
>> least in elections in which they run): Chaals and Henry Thompson. It's  
>> something that was already discussed when I was an AC rep (and that's  
>> starting to be a while ago…). In a previous election we also know for a  
>> fact (because his email blast went to a few people it shouldn't have  
>> gone to) that at least one candidate asked his voters to vote  
>> strategically (and many did, though that wasn't enough).
>>
>> I think that strategic voting by at least 10-20% of the electorate is a  
>> fact; what I *don't* know is whether it really makes a difference: if  
>> voters spread it out evenly and the numbers are low, it can quite  
>> possibly cancel itself out.
>>
>> --
>> Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon
>
> David Singer
> Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
>
>


-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Friday, 6 June 2014 18:54:20 UTC