Re: Voting experiment

On Thu, 10 Jul 2014 03:18:30 +0200, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:

>
> On 7/9/2014 7:16 PM, Charles McCathie Nevile wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Jul 2014 01:12:18 +0200, Nottingham, Mark  
>> <mnotting@akamai.com> wrote:
>>
>>> LGTM.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>> The most important thing will be to explain the context here in an  
>>> easy-to-digest, concise manner, so that people are motivated to do  
>>> both.
>>
>> Indeed.
>
> Before we take this to the AB for approval, it would be good to know who  
> will create this explanation.  It probably should be someone with a deep  
> understanding of these voting systems, who is also passionate about the  
> experiment.

I nominate Mark Nottingham.

But in case he has more important work, I will volunteer as a backup.

Cheers

Chaals

>> cheers
>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10 Jul 2014, at 6:04 am, Charles McCathie Nevile  
>>> <chaals@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi folks,
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>
> At the AB discussion, we also discussed how long we should run this  
> experiment for.  My recollection was 3 elections.  Is that your  
> recommendation?
>
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>
> Given that the Team needs to tabulate these results, it would be useful  
> if there were available open source software to use for each of these  
> schemes.  Do you know of any?  I assume that manual tabulation will be  
> quite tedious.
>
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>
>>> -- Mark Nottingham    mnot@akamai.com    https://www.mnot.net/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>


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

Received on Tuesday, 22 July 2014 06:24:42 UTC