Re: Don't disclose election results

On 05/06/2014 22:24 , David Singer wrote:
> On Jun 4, 2014, at 12:48 , Robin Berjon <robin@w3.org> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Really?  I can quite easily imagine there are AC Reps who only knew
> some of the candidates, and by the time they excluded ones they knew
> and didn’t like, found they had to accept a few so as to vote.  At
> least, that’s how I imagine I got elected.  It might not be
> strategic, merely caution.

What makes me think it's strategic is the shape of the curve. Strategic 
voting is characterised by voting for just one candidate. Voting only 
for people you know, out of caution, should spread relatively evenly 
across knowing 1, 2, 3, etc. people. But things look more like:

1: 25
2: 4
3: 4
4: 15
5: 50

We have two AC reps on the record stating they vote strategically (at 
least in elections in which they run): Chaals and Henry Thompson. It's 
something that was already discussed when I was an AC rep (and that's 
starting to be a while ago…). In a previous election we also know for a 
fact (because his email blast went to a few people it shouldn't have 
gone to) that at least one candidate asked his voters to vote 
strategically (and many did, though that wasn't enough).

I think that strategic voting by at least 10-20% of the electorate is a 
fact; what I *don't* know is whether it really makes a difference: if 
voters spread it out evenly and the numbers are low, it can quite 
possibly cancel itself out.

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

Received on Friday, 6 June 2014 07:38:43 UTC