Forum OpenACS Q&A: Proposal for election process

2) Ballots
A ballot consists of an email to the election mail alias.  A ballot
template, consisting of a list of all candidate names, separated by
line breaks, in random order, will be provided on openacs.org.  A
voted ballot body is a list of up to nine names from the original
list, separated by line breaks.  A ballot with more than nine names is
a spoiled ballot.  A line which does not exactly match one of the
original names is null, but does not spoil the ballot.  A line which
repeats a name on the same ballot is null, but does not spoil the ballot.

3) Election period
The election will commence 24 hours after the close of the nomination
process, and last for 48 hours.  Ballots (ie, emails) recieved before
or after this period are not considered.  Ballots from email addresses
not on the voter pool list are void.  If more than one ballot is
received from a single email, the last one is counted.

4) Counting
Each time a candidate's name appears on a ballot, the candidate
recieves one vote.  The nine candidates with the most votes win.

5) Special terms
The four winning candidates with the least votes are elected to
six-month, rather than one-year, terms.  This is establish the
staggered election of the OCT; in the future, all terms are intended
to last for one year.

6) One winner per organization
If more than one person from one organization (company, foundation,
university) is elected, all votes for all such persons except the one
with the most votes within that set are nullified.

Sorry, here is a better way to do instant runoff voting: you rank your choices on the ballot. In each counting round, one candidate is eliminated. You stop when you get to nine remaining candidates. It shouldn't be too hard for a bunch of programmers to figure out how to do this.

Also the idea of splitting the vote in half every 6 months has the same effect of concentrating power into fewer hands. Essentially only the top four or five groups will be supported, after the first six months. If you really want nine voices, vote in nine equal seats. After all, they are all equal.

Joel, in the case of using IRV for multi-winner elections, you just stop eliminating when you get to the number of winners you want.

Anyway IRV seems way too complicated. My points are these:

• Staggered elections = dilution of minority votes, this is the same thing, but not quite as bad as voting via precinct instead of voting at large. There is also no justification for this. Why vote every six months?
• One person One vote also isn't completely fair. If forces you to vote for people you don't want to, or wastes at least part of your vote. For a nine seat race, each person gets nine votes, why can't they just vote for one person (they get nine) or two (each gets 4.5) etc.? (That is one way) The other way is to count each vote: 5 for her 4 for him. This allows, again minority voice, otherwise I can only vote for my candidate once for 9 seats, and my chances of helping him/her and getting a voice are diluted to 1/9.

I think if we are going to all this process, with all these rules, why not choose some more modern method, one more likely to get a variety of voices?

In a nine person race, fair means that a constituency which is composed of only a little more than 1/9th the voting population has a 'fair' chance of getting one seat. By dividing the election into a 5 person race and a 4 person race, the constituency has to be composed of at little more than 1/5 or 1/4 the voting population. Dividing the race into three would make matters worse.

You are always going to have continuity. What is the chance that everyone will be voted out? And if they are, maybe that is also a good thing? Continuity is something that can be decided by a vote, it doesn't have to be enforced by process.

Again, my points are not that we should go with the 'most provably fair' system possible. But the two details I have pointed out are provably unfair to minority voices. Note that one, that is 1/9, vote of 'no' on any TIP, forces 2/3 voting. That means the intent it to support minority voices down to this level, and the two voting issues I am pointing out work against that intent.

i think this idea will force an increase of harmony in policies, since everyone will have an overlap with half of the "old guard", and is also useful to help train up new members (in the unlikely event that no existing OCT members are returned).