Re: preferential voting, take N
Hi, Luis Villa wrote: Unfortunately, I'd hoped that selectricity would be ready for our use by this time; I see no indication on their blog that new source or feature releases have been made, unfortunately, which may make it inappropriate. Mako? :) If we wanted to do STV, I will be integrating STV into the maemo voting system (which is the same as the GNOME one) most likely in the coming months, and would be happy to share info. The basics stay the same: a slightly modified database schema to allow for preferential votes, a slightly modified web app to constrain the user to casting a valid ballot, and a slightly modified version of openstv counting the votes. Automatically generating the results and the token verification code probably needs some changing, but it shouldn't be anything too complicated I hope... We're currently in a debate phase, with some people insisting that RRV is a better system to use, but I think we're probably going to end up using STV when all is said and done. Interestingly for a Debian based project, for the moment no-one has suggested using Condorcet, thank God. So I think if the board wants to change this, we can do it, but obviously we'd (1) want to get feedback and (2) we'd want to ensure that there is bandwidth to ensure that the new process works. I'm all for avoiding unnecessary elections - as far as I'm concerned the voting method is an implementation detail, the important thing is that the will of the membership be expressed in the election. Preferential voting does a better job of this than multi-vote first past the post. Cheers, Dave. -- Dave Neary GNOME Foundation member dne...@gnome.org ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
preferential voting, take N
So, elections are coming around again and so it is time for me to raise preferential voting as an option again (and for the last time- if it doesn't get picked up now, it has to become someone else's hobbyhorse ;) Previous discussion here: http://mail.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2008-February/msg7.html Unfortunately, I'd hoped that selectricity would be ready for our use by this time; I see no indication on their blog that new source or feature releases have been made, unfortunately, which may make it inappropriate. Mako? :) Note that the process of changing voting methods is ill-defined. :) The bylaws (which are binding and require a vote to change) refer to a webpage (which can probably be edited by anyone with CVS access) which refers to the charter (which says 'you must cast the same number of votes as seats', but is not a binding document and has no formal process for amendment.) So I think if the board wants to change this, we can do it, but obviously we'd (1) want to get feedback and (2) we'd want to ensure that there is bandwidth to ensure that the new process works. Luis -- Forwarded message -- From: Luis Villa l...@tieguy.org Date: Sat, Feb 16, 2008 at 10:53 AM Subject: time to (re)consider preferential voting? To: Foundation-List foundation-list@gnome.org [Speaking purely as a Foundation member and not as a member of the Board; I've not discussed this with the Board at all.] Some years ago the Foundation considered the use of preferential voting to select the board. At the time I opposed it, for reasons I don't fully recall but which in retrospect probably boiled down to 'I'm unfamiliar with it.' I believe that at the time we'd also have had to write the software, which would not have been fun. But I've come around to believing that this is a better way to run elections. It appears that by the time of our next election, we'll have a third-party, free software solution available for the problem, used recently and successfully by FreeCulture.org. http://blog.selectricity.org/?p=4 I'm still trying to puzzle through the bylaws (which are a bit of a mess wrt voting) as to what it would take to actually enact this change (bottom line is probably that the board can just say 'it should be this way'), but in the meantime I thought it might be good to have a bit of discussion here around whether or not this is a good idea. Luis ___ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list
