Re: Don't disclose election results

On 04/06/2014 19:20 , "Jean-Charles (JC) Verdié" wrote:
> Two points:
>
> How much a slate is being promoted by the AC Reps and also, as you know,
> a few of us claim that the system is prone to be played by strategic
> voting. Clear results would invalidate this paranoid assertion. Or not...

So, it would be pretty hard to let you carry out such an analysis 
without giving you access not just to the results but also to the 
details of who voted what exactly. Note that the more details, the 
harder they are to anonymise (e.g. if I give you for each member whether 
they voted for A, B, C, etc. then you can add those up and start 
guessing who's who).

I can give you this information, admitting that none of this is grounded 
in solid statistical maths (I don't think that we have enough data 
anyway) but rather rough notions teased out from the noise.

Being on a slate does appear to provide a boost. Well-known candidates 
on slates tend to outperform similarly well-known candidates not on a 
slate; and likewise (relatively) unknown candidates. It does not, 
however, seem to be more important than being a "recognised name" with 
good relationships across the AC.

I hasten to point out that the only slates we've had have been the 
Kardell Reform Slates, so this says nothing about slates in general, 
just that one which seems to be popular with the AC these days — people 
want change! And even then, the effect might not come from the grouping 
or even the tenor of the message but rather from the fact that those 
candidates have a campaign manager pushing them, serving as sounding 
board, etc.

As for strategic voting, only about half of AC reps vote for all slots. 
20-25% vote for just one. (The rest distributes in between.) So there is 
no doubt that it is going on. The question is about whether it is going 
on at such a scale that you would get different results with a different 
voting method. On instinct I suspect not, but that's not information you 
can get from the data.

-- 
Robin Berjon - http://berjon.com/ - @robinberjon

Received on Wednesday, 4 June 2014 19:48:59 UTC