Re: voting simple illustration

On Aug 25, 2014, at 12:13 , chaals@yandex-team.ru wrote:

>> In the voting scheme proposed, you would rank A,B,
>> <no other candidate>, as I understand it.
> 
> Only if you really think C and D are so bad they *shouldn't get elected at all*. Otherwise you just rank them, or leave the rest of your vote blank.

No, I personally don’t support their election.  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”).

> 
>> Then if others rate
>> B,A,<no other candidate>, your vote rolls over to B who gets elected,
>> but you don’t roll to C or D.
> 
> It's equally possible that you have a preference between C and D - and that you consider them qualified even though you have a ranking in preference (i.e. you would be happier to see them win than suggest there needed to be a new call for candidates).

If I am prepared to see them elected and have a preference, then rank them.

> 
>> As I said before, I think that having the <no other candidate> be implicit in the voting instructions (“rank the candidates you would be willing to see elected, in your preferred order”) is simpler on small-brain voters…
> 
> It means you can't distinguish between  "I don't really care after this set of preferences", and "I would prefer the election to be declared invalid than have these candidates win". Since that's hopefully a minority case, it makes a bad default.


I think you may be drawing a distinction that might not exist for us. Do we have any elections where I can state on my ballot “or I want the election to be invalid”?  I don’t think so;  the closest I know in any election is a quorum requirement;  “for the election to be valid, X% of the voting pool must file a vote” or “for an election to be valid, the winning candidates must receive support from at least Y% of the [votes cast | voting pool]”.

The first is clearly irrelevant to a discussion of the roll-over method, and the second is covered by a simple “don’t rank those candidates”

If I fail to vote for someone, then my vote does not roll to them; quorum requirements may now fail.  I still don’t see a benefit to “and no other candidate”.


David Singer
Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.

Received on Monday, 25 August 2014 19:57:59 UTC