Comments on the text for STV voting in the draft Process 2016 doc dated 18 July 2016

In section 2.5.2 of the 18 July Process Doc draft there is,

"The Advisory Board and a portion of the Technical Architecture Group are
elected by the Advisory Committee, using a single transferable vote. [.] Any
Call for Nominations specifies the number of available seats, the deadline
for nominations, details about the vote tabulation system selected by the
Team for the election," [.]

 

This text does not follow the text agreed to in discussion in the Process
Document TF, and, as a consequence, has a possible ambiguity. The first
sentence says, "using a single transferable vote" and the second sentence
above says "details about the vote tabulation system". In the agreed text,
the second sentence said the "single transferable vote tabulation system",
making it clear that the first sentence and the second sentence were talking
about the same thing. I would be OK with dropping, "single transferable",
from the second sentence as long as the first sentence ended with, "using a
single transferable vote tabulation system." Then it would be clear what
vote tabulation system is being referred to.

 

The fourth paragraph of 2.5.2 has as its third sentence,

"In case of a tie the verifiable random selection procedure
<https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/AB/raw-file/default/cover.html#random>  described
below will be used to fill the available seats." 

This appears to be an unapproved change to the voting procedures. The
verifiable random selection procedure (VRSP) was only invoked when the tie
would give more "elected" candidates than there were seats available to
fill. For example, if 5 seats were to be filled, a tie for 2nd and 3rd in
the ordering would not cause a problem and would not require use of the
VRSP. Only a tie for 5th and 6th in the ordering of candidates would require
the use of the VRSP. The existing text from Process 2015 said, "In case of a
tie where there are more apparent winners than available seats (e.g., three
candidates receive 10 votes each for two seats), the  verifiable random
selection procedure". Clearly the "e.g." is not an STV example, which is, I
believe, why Ian eliminated it in his approved text.

 

The fifth paragraph of 2.5.2 begins,

"The shortest term is assigned to the elected candidate who received the
least support,"

In this, the term "least support" is undefined and, as far as I can tell, it
is not a term used in describing STV tabulation. If there is a referenceable
source for the term, then that should be linked to. The approved text began,
"If the tabulation system ranks candidates according to their level of
support, the shortest term .". Thus, tying "level of support" to the
ranking. Without this, I do not think the term, "least support" has much
meaning. 

 

I am not at all sure how to fix this issue without making presumptions about
the STV tabulation system.

 

One possible way to fix this is to say that the details of the "vote
tabulation system" must specify how the "level of support for a candidate"
is computed. Then the fifth paragraph would be just fine as is.  For
example, using a Droop Quota and a fractional vote distribution system, the
level of support is computed as, "the number of candidates minus the round
in which the candidate is selected, and, within a given round, the number of
votes (before distribution of the surplus votes) each candidate selected in
that round received." This two part number ranks support first on the round
in which the candidate was selected and then on the number of votes
received. This, of course could still produce a tie.

 

This suggestion can be put into the proposed text by changing,

"details about the vote tabulation system selected by the Team for the
election"

TO

"details about the vote tabulation system selected by the Team for the
election, including a specification of how the level of support for each
candidate is computed,"

 

Steve Z