Re: voting simple illustration

‎> 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”).

* Motion of no confidence 
* AGM (annual general meeting) votes where a certain portion of the vote must be in favor 
‎
> ‎ Do we have any elections where I can state on my ballot “or I want the election to be invalid”?

I recently almost lived through one under Roberts Rules of Order. We were at an annual general meeting (AGM), and the electorate was asked to pass a budget (by a certain majority). Failure to pass it would have resulted in a new meeting with a new vote for a new (but possibly identical) budget. Realistically, if the board came back with the same budget, there would have been a move forward replace the board at the third meeting (potentially the budget then at a fourth, unless someone could propose something at the second to be accepted at the third by a candidate slate of board members). But the electorate wasn't willing to attend a second meeting, and thus was convinced to pass the budget. 

You could claim that it wasn't really a case of declaring for election invalid, but it was close. 

I also have been called to vote for a mutual fund because their (AGM) quorum requirement failed for their slate vote and so they were having a second vote and hoping to reach quorum. 

> 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]”.

There's also the recall election, which is becoming more common in the states. It's done roughly by initiative -- you're in California, so you're probably quite familiar with it ;-)

> 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”.

I'm pretty sure that it didn't occur to me that quorum requirements could fail this way -- perhaps it's worth outlining and explaining in the ballot instructions. 

For the AGM I described initially, our Constitutional scholar explained which votes had which values for numerator / denominators (it varied by election class).

Received on Monday, 25 August 2014 20:24:30 UTC