Re: Understanding where we are with TAG/AB voting

TL;DR: Rank all candidates for the best value in your vote. If you prefer  
two or more equally, you might as well use a random method to choose  
between them...

On Fri, 01 Dec 2017 22:25:49 +0100, Brian Kardell <bkardell@gmail.com>  
wrote:

> As someone interested in keeping the TAG and AB doing what I believe are  
> good things, I have to >admit that despite the flurry of conversations  
> and concerns and even a few TPAC conversations, I'm >still not entirely  
> clear where this leaves things right now.  So, can someone help me clear  
> things >up?
>
> There are 4 nominees for 2 seats.  Let's say, hypothetically, that my  
> ideal outcome is that two of >them get reelected.  On a scale of 1 to  
> 10, I'm putting them both at 10.   I very much desire >this.  But there  
> are two other people too and, in the old system, I couldn't express  
> anything about >that, despite the fact that I do, actually, have a  
> strong preference of which I'd like should one >of my ideals not work  
> out.

This is pretty simple.

Sadly we don't yet have "equal ranking" implemented, so you have to choose  
which of your 2 desired candidates you put as "1", and which as "2".  
Hopefully that will change in the near future, but not for this election.

You should continue, ranking the others 3 and 4 according to which you  
prefer. If your preferred 2 candidates win, the rest is irrelevant, of  
course. But if they don't, then the preferences you expressed as 3 and 4  
will be counted in deciding which of the other candidates gets elected.

In more detail than you probably want...

*How much* your further preferences count depends: If your successful  
top-2 candidate won with barely enough votes then most of your vote went  
to them, and the "leftover fraction" to determine the other place is  
small. If the candidate got many more votes than needed, a large fraction  
of your vote will be counted in working out who of the others gets in.

In all cases your preferences are counted along with everyone else's  
votes, of course.

So rank all candidates in the order you prefer - and where you prefer two  
equally you might as well flip a coin or otherwise randomly choose which  
goes first and which goes second.

Where you don't have a preference between 2 candidates, it doesn't matter  
much which one you rank first. Effectively you can only make it more  
probable that *both* will be elected except by others to vote for them,  
and however you rank them makes no difference to the chance that at least  
one of them will be elected.

If you care about an outcome that is not "your preferred candidates all  
winning", you should rank your preferences. Unless you get everything you  
want, those votes *will* be counted and influence the end result.

Note also: it is truly said that tossing a coin high in the air is a good  
way to decide between two things you value equally. By the time it lands,  
you may have realised that you *do* care which way it comes out - and if  
not you have applied a sufficiently good decision-making algorithm.

cheers

chaals

-- 
Chaals is Charles McCathie Nevile
find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Friday, 1 December 2017 23:29:28 UTC