[maemo-community] Election process referendum

[From: Tim]

Thanks Andrew... That's the most succinct email I've read about this yet.

Tim



On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:29:50 +0000, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2009 at 2:40 PM, Dave Neary <dneary at maemo.org> wrote:
>>
>> We can run a referendum election for changes to theh voting procedure
>> pretty quickly, and as was pointed out already, we should probably get a
>> move-on.
> 
> Agreed. I'm posting a version of this message to ITT[1] to highlight
> what my conclusions are and pushing this forward to the referendum;
> and that further discussion should be held here.
> 
>> I would really like us to use single transferrable vote, which is easy
> to
>> understand as a voter, and easy to understand when checking the results.
> 
> Again, agreed. Despite some voices calling for "range voting"[2], some
> calm heads are calling for a voting mechanism which meets three
> critieria:
> 
>   1) Make it easy for people to vote
>   2) Make the results of the election easily verifiable (ideally for
>      a voter)
>   3) Ensure the result well reflects the will of the electorate.
> 
> RRV may well be optimal for the third, but the (relatively) complex
> maths makes it fail on the first two.
> 
> "Preferential/preference" voting as described by Quim seems to be -
> basically - a single transferable vote system[3]:
> 
>     "My opinions as community member:
> 
>          "Preferential voting (or preference voting) is a type of ballot
>          structure used in several electoral systems in which voters
>          rank a list or group of candidates in order of preference."
>          -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting
> 
>      All the rest is just theory and implementation details you can
>      skip. :)
> 
>      In practice, instead of voting one best candidate (like last time)
>      or  choosing 5 candidates at the same level (like the GNOME
>      Foundation does), each voter ranks the candidates by preference
>      and maths do[es] the rest."
> 
> Out of any option, this meets all 3 requirements best of all (IMHO),
> even if it's sub-optimal in one or more categories.
> 
>> Does anyone have a suggestion for language that should be used in a
>> referendum? Can we work this out & announce it ASAP, please?
> 
> So, for the referendum, I'm imagining there being the following
> options (language and wording TBD):
> 
>   * No change. The current process[4] is fine.
> 
>   * A single transferrable vote. Bullets 4 and 5 ("Each community member
>     gets one vote" and "The 5 nominees with the most votes are elected.")
>     will be changed to XXX (TBD, something like "Each community member
>     ranks ranks one or more candidates in order of preference" and
>     "Council members will be selected according to this single-
>     transferrable vote system[5]:
>      
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=265503753#Counting_the_votes
> 
>   * None of these options is acceptable.
> 
> The Council would decide what to do in the event of the third option
> getting a majority of votes.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Andrew
> 
> [1] http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=239466
> [2] http://tinyurl.com/council-vote-rrv
> [3] http://tinyurl.com/council-vote-stv
> [4] http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Community_Council#Elections
> [5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=265503753#Counting_the_votes
> 
> --
> Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
> Maemo Community Council member
> _______________________________________________
> maemo-community mailing list
> maemo-community at maemo.org
> https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-community
-- 
---
 http://tim.samoff.com