A voting experiment

Hi,

this is a copy of an email I wrote to the W3Process CG.

I have an outstanding action item from the AB to propose a voting  
experiment that could be considered for running as part of elections (eg.  
TAG/AB elections).

My strawman proposal:

The purpose of the experiment is to enable W3C Team to gather data on  
whether a different voting system to our current "Multiple  
Non-Transferable Vote" system would change the outcome of elections, and  
in particular, in ways that might make elected groups more broadly  
representative of the voters.

In elections for the AB and TAG, we provide a ballot that offers two ways  
to vote.

1. The current system - you select up to the number of seats available,  
 from the candidates running.
This would be the binding vote - unless we change the process we can't  
change that anyway.

2. You can rank as few or as many candidates, plus the option "no (other)  
candidate". as you want, in preference order.

1 indicates your most preferred candidate. Giving two or more candidates  
an equal rank is a rational statement, and results should be calculated  
accordingly.

A completed ballot for 3 seats with 6 candidates could be like:

check         Candidate name        Preference
up to 3                             order
[ ]            Alice                   [1]
[X]            Byron                   [2]
[ ]            Charlie                 [ ]
[ ]            Daniels                 [3]
[X]            Elliott                 [4]
[ ]            Franklin                [ ]
                No (other) Candidate    [5]

(In a real vote, the order of names should be randomised. Not that we do  
that now).

A vote for "No (other) candidate" [0] would be considered a vote for a  
hypothetical alternative instead of a vote being "exhausted" (as happens  
if all the candidates voted for by a single voter have been determined as  
elected or not before the completion of counting). A candidate beaten by  
the hypothetical alternative would not be considered elected.

The results of this ranking can be used to asses the results we would get  
by using simple "Single Transferable Vote" [1], "Schulze STV" [2]. There  
are several ways to use votes as indicative of likely results from  
"Approval Voting" [3], although they are less reliable than the other  
information we would get from the survey.

In addition we can use the first preference to approximate the results we  
would get using "single non-transferable voting" [4] (where each voter can  
only vote for one candidate).

I note that if we used preference ranking for other votes, we would also  
be able to look at the effect of systems explicitly designed to rank  
outcomes, such as STV or Schulze STV. However this proposal neither  
requires nor prohibits doing do.

[0] This is related to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_of_the_above
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Non-Transferable_Vote

cheers

Chaals

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

Received on Wednesday, 9 July 2014 20:04:29 UTC