"Removed statement there is one vote per available seat" - was Re: W3C Process 2018

I’d like to bring to the AC’s attention one proposed change that I’m uncomfortable with,  to see what others think.  Process 2017 made official the voting system that we had experimented with for a couple of years, in which AC reps rank candidates for TAG and AB elections and then a Single Transferrable Vote algorithm computes a winner for each available seat. But Process 2017 left in this language in Section  7.3: 'In the case of Advisory Board and TAG elections <https://www.w3.org/2017/Process-20170301/#AB-TAG-elections>, "one vote" means "one vote per available seat”.' I for one thought it was a feature, since it clarified that there was still one vote per available seat, and the ranking system encouraged people to vote for their preferred candidate knowing that each vote would still count even if their first choice didn’t get much support.   Others consider that a bug that needs to be fixed in Process 2018 by removing that sentence, since STV implies that each AC member has a single vote that gets transferred.  The team actually implemented the “one vote per election” rather than “one vote per available seat” method, since this is apparently how STV is used in practice around the world in cases where there are multiple open seats.  

To the best of my recollection this was never discussed while we were deliberating moving to the STV system. There is no mechanical reason the procedure as written in Process 2017 couldn’t be used:  The team would run the STV algorithm for each available seat, removing the winners of previous open seats (and reallocating their votes).  This how I thought the STV elections worked — AC members still had one vote per available seat, but ranked candidates rather than making binary choice for each.  

Since only the Team has access to the raw vote data, this discrepancy wasn’t noticed until recently.  Does it matter?  Definitely, the results can be different.   There is a GitHub discussion of this issue in which I go through a hypothetical example  https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/60#issuecomment-323474691 <https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues/60#issuecomment-323474691> to illustrate how the different approaches work.  The  currently implemented STV system would make it easier to elect TAG and AB members ranked #1 by a substantial minority of the AC, the one-vote-per-available-seat STV system would tend to elect people broadly ranked in the top few spots.

To me, the question for the AC is: “When you voted to adopt the STV system, did you think we were making a fundamental change and giving you only one vote that actually counts in AB and TAG elections, or did you think we were keeping the one vote per available seat system but allowing you to rank candidates rather saying Yes or No to each? " 

I can live with whatever a majority of the AC thinks on this, but I didn’t want to support the proposed change until hearing what others on the AC thought. 



> On Sep 27, 2017, at 5:36 PM, Jeff Jaffe <jeff@w3.org> wrote:
> 
> Dear AC representative, WG Chair, or member of the public,
> 
> The W3C Advisory Board is forwarding a proposed Process 2018 draft [1] to the Advisory Committee for consideration and comment. The plan is that, based on the received comments, a revised draft will be sent to the Advisory Committee for formal Review prior to the November TPAC meeting and that there will be time for questions and comments on the proposed Review document at the TPAC meeting.
> 
> [1] https://w3c.github.io/w3process/ <https://w3c.github.io/w3process/>
> 
> The major changes in this document and their rationale, with links to the current process and a diff from it, are provided in a backgrounder [2].
> [2] https://www.w3.org/wiki/Process2018 <https://www.w3.org/wiki/Process2018>
> 
> We call special attention to issue #5 - designed to increase agility for errata management moving us closer to a living standard model and issue #52 which updates participation and election rules for the TAG.
> 
> Please send comments as soon as possible (to facilitate response preparation) and prior to October 26th (a 4 week comment period).  Specific comments on the text are best filed as Github issues or even pull requests at the Process CG github site <https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues> <https://github.com/w3c/w3process/issues>. 
> 
> More general discussion and comments should be sent to public-w3process@w3.org <mailto:public-w3process@w3.org> (Mailing list archive, publicly available) or to process-issues@w3.org <mailto:process-issues@w3.org> (Member-only archive).  You may discuss your comments on any other list, such as w3c-ac-forum@w3.org <mailto:w3c-ac-forum@w3.org>, as long as you send the comments to one of the W3process lists above and copy that list in the discussion.
> 
> Jeff Jaffe, Chair, W3C Advisory Board
> Charles McCathie Nevile, Editor, W3C Process Document
> David Singer, Chair, W3C Process Document Task Force