[Noisebridge-discuss] approval voting

[rachel lyra hospodar]

IIRC last year we talked about switching to a different method and just
didn't get it together in time.

This sounds great to me, though I doocratically support the
voting-stuff-makers doing it however they want.

If it was up to me we'd do it with a hacking skills triathalon ;) but I
refuse to make a scoreboard because psychologists say scoring promotes
competition...

R.

mediumreality.com
On Jan 14, 2012 12:15 AM, "Ben Kochie" <superq at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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> >
> >
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