[Noisebridge-discuss] approval voting

[Ben Kochie]

Yes, Approval voting seems reasonable for the offices and number of
candidates we have.

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 08:28, jim <jim at systemateka.com> wrote:
>
> +1
>
> On Thu, 2012-01-12 at 23:54 -0800, Leif Ryge wrote:
>> For our upcoming Board of Directors election, I propose that we use
>> approval voting[1] instead of the Schulze[2] condorcet[3] method which
>> we used previously.
>>
>> Condorcet methods are designed to select the candidate most preferred
>> by a majority of voters. Approval voting selects the candidate who is
>> acceptable to the largest number of voters. I think the latter is more
>> appropriate for Noisebridge.
>>
>> Paraphrasing wikipedia:
>> > The Schulze method is a voting system that selects a single winner
>> > using votes that express preferences. The method can also be used to
>> > create a sorted list of winners. It is a Condorcet method, which
>> > means the following: if there is a candidate who is preferred over
>> > every other candidate in pairwise comparisons, then this candidate
>> > will be the winner when the Schulze method is applied.
>>
>> > Approval voting is a single-winner voting system. The method can
>> > also be used to create a sorted list of winners. Each voter may vote
>> > for (or 'approve' of) as many of the candidates as the voter wishes.
>> > The winner is the candidate receiving the most votes. Each voter may
>> > vote for any combination of candidates and may give each candidate at
>> > most one vote.
>>
>> It is worth noting that neither method is really meant for electing
>> multiple winners, but either can be modified for that purpose. With
>> approval voting, the multi-winner method is fairly obvious since the
>> candidates can simply be ranked by how many votes they received. With
>> condorcet methods such as Schulze, after a single winner is selected,
>> to select each additional winner the counting process must be repeated
>> ignoring votes for the previous winner(s).
>>
>> What are the downsides to approval voting? As far as I can tell (please
>> correct me if I'm missing something!), they boil down to these two:
>> 1) Sincere voters (those who honestly vote for every candidate who is
>> acceptable to them) can help their more-preferred candidate lose to a
>> less-preferred-but-acceptable candidate. (I think, in our case at least,
>> that this is actually a feature.)
>> 2) When strategic (insincere) voters' predictions of the outcome are
>> incorrect, their strategy can fail. For example, imagine the USA were
>> using approval voting in the 2004 presidential election. A voter who
>> would prefer Dennis Kucinich over John Kerry (but would prefer either
>> of them over George W. Bush) would logically cast votes of approval for
>> both Kucinich and Kerry if they expected that only Bush and Kerry were
>> "viable" candidates. However, if they mistakenly believed that Kerry
>> and Kucinich were both viable and Bush was not, they might
>> strategically withhold their vote for Kerry.
>>
>> What is the downside to condorcet voting? Simply put, using a condorcet
>> method, a candidate who is unacceptable to 49% of voters yet preferred
>> by 51% will beat a candidate who is acceptable to 100% of the voters.
>>
>> I hope that using approval voting (and encouraging sincere voting) we
>> will have enough candidates with 100% approval to fill the board, and
>> then we will have effectively consensed on an acceptable set of board
>> members! If we have more than enough winning candidates, in lieu of a
>> runoff election I suggest we could use a lottery and/or expand the size
>> of the board.
>>
>> I'll be bringing this up for discussion at this week's meeting, and
>> hopefully we can get consensus about it at the following meeting.
>>
>> ~leif
>>
>> 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
>> 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method
>> 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
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