16 messages in org.gnome.foundation-listRe: time to (re)consider preferential...| From | Sent On | Attachments |
|---|---|---|
| Luis Villa | Feb 16, 2008 7:53 am | |
| Dave Neary | Feb 16, 2008 8:19 am | |
| Jonathon Jongsma | Feb 16, 2008 8:35 am | |
| Quim Gil | Feb 16, 2008 11:20 am | |
| Shaun McCance | Feb 16, 2008 3:47 pm | |
| Luis Villa | Feb 17, 2008 5:32 am | |
| Quim Gil | Feb 17, 2008 11:36 am | |
| James Henstridge | Feb 23, 2008 5:32 pm | |
| Elijah Newren | Feb 23, 2008 8:10 pm | |
| Telsa Gwynne | Feb 24, 2008 12:41 am | |
| Shaun McCance | Feb 24, 2008 9:44 am | |
| James Henstridge | Feb 24, 2008 7:14 pm | |
| James Henstridge | Feb 25, 2008 5:08 am | |
| Behdad Esfahbod | Feb 25, 2008 10:47 am | |
| Vincent Untz | Feb 27, 2008 3:44 am | |
| Bruno Boaventura | Feb 27, 2008 2:23 pm |
| Subject: | Re: time to (re)consider preferential voting? | |
|---|---|---|
| From: | Shaun McCance (sha...@gnome.org) | |
| Date: | Feb 16, 2008 3:47:24 pm | |
| List: | org.gnome.foundation-list | |
On Sat, 2008-02-16 at 10:53 -0500, Luis Villa wrote:
[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.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't really see the point. For the record, I strongly advocate preferential voting in situations where you are electing exactly one person. In these cases, non-preferential voting systems tend to lock out candidates.
For the board elections, we are electing seven people, and we each get to cast up to seven votes. I don't think we've ever seen the list of candidates unfairly cut due to non-preferential voting. And I'm sure I've never made a strategic vote for one person instead of another I like more, simply to block another person.
Any preferential voting systems is going to make the voting process more difficult. If I had had to order my votes in previous elections, I'm sure it would have been mostly arbitrary. If it's not solving any real problems, why bother?
-- Shaun