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: | James Henstridge (jam...@jamesh.id.au) | |
| Date: | Feb 24, 2008 7:14:30 pm | |
| List: | org.gnome.foundation-list | |
On 25/02/2008, Shaun McCance <sha...@gnome.org> wrote:
[snip plenty of good discussion]
On Sun, 2008-02-24 at 10:33 +0900, James Henstridge wrote:
On 17/02/2008, Shaun McCance <sha...@gnome.org> wrote:
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?
Is it really that much more difficult to order a list of ten candidates as opposed to selecting 7 out of the 10?
I don't want to drag this argument out, and I'm not going to fight against preferential voting if that's what people want.
But yes, I really do think it's hard to order a list of ten candidates. I don't usually even select seven out of ten. In the last election, I selected maybe four or five. Why? Because I just don't have a strong enough opinion on the others, and I think a random vote is worse than no vote.
This is certainly a problem with STV (the need to order candidates that you consider irrelevant), but I don't think it is worse than the problems with our current system.
Perhaps there are other systems that don't have the problem worth considering?
Even if you aren't sure of a total ordering, you can probably pick a few candidates that you definitely want elected (put them at the top) and some candidates you definitely don't want elected (put them at the bottom). You might decide to order the remainder randomly if you don't care about them.
If, as your argument above indicates, this ordering can have drastic impacts on the outcome of the vote, I would not want to order them randomly. Would the system still allow me to order my top five, and abstain of everybody else? A voting system that doesn't allow abstaining has problems.
Most STV vote counting systems specify how to handle incomplete ballots (often they are extinguished once the preferences run out, and maybe the quota gets adjusted).
Of course, an incomplete ballot is probably not what you want if there are candidates that you absolutely don't want elected (i.e. someone you would consider being worse than an unknown).
That said, I don't really see assigning preferences much of a problem given the number of candidates in the last few elections. It isn't like the senate ballots in Australia :)
James.