[ALAC] Explanation of RoP Director voting alternatives

Alan Greenberg alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
Fri Jun 10 21:29:32 UTC 2016


My personal preference is option 1 for the following reasons:

- I prefer verifiable processes and thus eliminate option 4.

- I prefer to give the electorate a second chance before resorting to 
a random selection and so eliminate option 3.

- I believe that voters should always be encouraged to vote for the 
candidate they actually would like to win (in the eventuality that 
their best preference does not win) and thus I eliminate option 2.

I am sure there are other opinions, and I look forward to hearing the 
reasoning behind them.

Alan



At 10/06/2016 05:22 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
>In the Rules of Procedure revision that I sent a few days ago, there 
>are several options to one of the voting stages in the selection of 
>the At-Large Director. The RoP revision group did not reach 
>unanimity on which option to pick (largely because of the deadline 
>required to sent the revision to the ALAC to allow us to approve the 
>revisions in Helsinki).
>
>The options have to do with the reduction of three candidates to 
>two. In the optimal case, one of the three candidates will have 
>fewer votes (or first preference votes) and will be dropped, 
>resulting in two candidates being left. The difficulty arises if the 
>two candidates tie for last place, but with the leading candidate 
>not receiving an absolute majority of votes needed to be declared 
>the final winner.
>
>Option 1: Re-run the entire three-way election, with the hope that 
>some positions may have changed. This would be done just once. If 
>the second vote results in a tie for the last position (even if it 
>is not the same pair as the first time), one of those tied is 
>eliminated based on a verifiable random selection. The down side of 
>this method is that no one may alter their vote and we would have to 
>use a random selection.
>
>Option 2: Have a run-off vote between the two tied candidates. If 
>the results between the two is tied, a verifiable random selection 
>would be used to eliminate one of them. The down side of this option 
>is something called "strategic voting". Those electors who 
>originally voted for the leading candidate (the one not in this 
>runoff) may not vote for the  person they prefer, but could vote for 
>the one they perceive as the weakest opponent to their preferred candidate.
>
>Option 3: There will be no 2nd vote. One of the two tied candidates 
>will be dropped based on a verifiable random selection.
>
>Option 4: Use the same STV voting as would be used in the first 
>round (to narrow the slate down to three). The BigPulse STV system 
>will always eliminate one candidate, but if it must resort to a 
>random selection, it would be internal to the voting system and 
>would not be verifiable (ie it would have to be trusted to have used 
>a truly random selection.
>
>Since the ALAC will have to decide on a which option to use, it 
>would be good to begin the discussion now and not wait for Helsinki.
>
>Alan
>
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