“Owen Dalby” <[email protected]>:
> I apologize if I am asking a dumb question, but would appreciate any
> honest and practical advice from this list. I am conducting an election among
> a group of colleagues who are all graduates of a fellowship program. 45
> people will vote on perhaps 30 candidates for roughly 15 seats.
If these people are not paid, thus it costs group nothing for their
services, just let everyone wanting to have a seat. If money is an issue, one
should think about the ideal size of the legislature:
If the legislature has 1 tier, then the size of it should be the
squareroot of the electorate. The squreroot of 45 is:
7
Really it is almost seven, but we need integers.
If multiple tiers exist, each should be the cuberoot of the electorate
at each level with the total numbers of legislators being greater thyan the
squareroot of the electorate.
Now, as to how to elect them. I recommend assetvoting:
The way assetvoting works is that everyone gets a certain number of
assetunits. Let us suppose that each voter gets 99 assetunits:
A voter decides what is personally important. The voter finds
candidates agreeing mostly with the voter on these important things. The voter
divides the assetunits between the candidates as the voter feels appropriate.
Then the voter makes certain that the assetunites add up right:
0 ¿Is the total number of assetunits a double-digit-digit number
in decimal notation?
1 ¿Is that number 99 in decimal notation?
After the candidates get their assetunits, they trade
policy-concessions for assetunits until a legislature emerges.
You will probably want a leader. I recommend scorevoting:
Have the voters rate the candidates on scale of negative -99 to
positive +99. The best candidate gets positive +99. The worst candidate gets
negative -99 all intermediate candidates gets scores relative to the best and
the worst candidates.
One adds the scores and the highest the candidate with the greatest
total wins.
Some prefer that the one use average score, but if one writes one’s
name on the ballot and scores one a positive +99, then that person has an
average score of +99 and wins when only 1 person voted for that one. One can
get out of this problem with quorum-rules requiring a certain number of voters
to vote for a candidate, but highest sum is simpler.
Under score-voting with highest sums winning, abstains become 00.
Many people hate runoffs with a passion, but whatever else one says
about runoffs, they are great for vetting candidates. For electing your
leader, you might consider this scheme:
Have a scorevote with a range of negative -99 to positive +99 with
abstains becoming 00. Candidates with sums greater than > 00 make the runoff.
For filtering out no-hope writeins, a writein must appear on the squareroot of
the number of ballots to make the runoff.
A week later, have a scorevote runoff with the candidates who got
positive sums.
Finally, a week later have a plurality top-2-runoff.
0 Scorevote LeaderElection
1 Scorevote Runoff of those who got positive sums and writeins
who appear on more than the squareroot of the ballots.
2 Plurality-Type top-2-runoff.
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