Re: Comments on the text for STV voting in the draft Process 2016 doc dated 18 July 2016

On Mon, 25 Jul 2016 04:40:38 +0200, L. David Baron <dbaron@dbaron.org>  
wrote:

> On Sunday 2016-07-24 11:17 -0700, Stephen Zilles wrote:
>> The fifth paragraph of 2.5.2 begins,
>>
>> "The shortest term is assigned to the elected candidate who received the
>> least support,"
>>
>> In this, the term "least support" is undefined and, as far as I can  
>> tell, it
>> is not a term used in describing STV tabulation. If there is a  
>> referenceable
>> source for the term, then that should be linked to. The approved text  
>> began,
>> "If the tabulation system ranks candidates according to their level of
>> support, the shortest term .". Thus, tying "level of support" to the
>> ranking. Without this, I do not think the term, "least support" has much
>> meaning.

I suggest going with "lowest-ranked".

...
> Generally these systems maintain the invariant that if you run the
> algorithm with a set of votes and the constraint that there are 3
> seats available, and then run the algorithm with the same votes and
> the constraint that there are 4 seats available, the 3 people
> elected are a subset of the 4 people elected.  This allows assigning
> the short term to the person in the second set but not in the first
> set.  I think this is generally how short-term assignment works with
> such systems.  (I think it's how it's done in Australian Senate
> elections in a double-dissolution election like the one that just
> happened.)
>
> It's worth double-checking that this is true of the system that
> we're using.

The W3C Team are left to determine the precise choice of system, which  
provides operational flexibility within the constraint that it's an STV  
system and not something else.

There are in fact systems that don't match the constraint you mention - I  
think the standard d'Hont method is one.

> It might be worth skewing the wording a little bit towards that
> concept, although it may well also be fine as-is.

I'd rather leave it as-is. I don't think systems which fail to enforce the  
constraint are as good as systems that do, but I do think they are still  
way better than what we have now. So I'm happy to leave the content to  
match the original decision which is that W3C Team should choose the  
operational aspects, and just tell us.

cheers

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

Received on Monday, 25 July 2016 08:23:12 UTC