Re: Ties in Elections

While casting my vote for the 3 new board members, I noticed that the
current voting procedure does not allow to explicitly express ties
between candidates. I was told that Debian's Concordet voting system
does allow that, and I consider it a valuable option for voting. So
maybe for the next election/vote this could be added?

Lukas

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 12:47:14AM -0500, Lukas Geyer wrote:
> While casting my vote for the 3 new board members, I noticed that the
> current voting procedure does not allow to explicitly express ties
> between candidates. I was told that Debian's Condorcet voting system
> does allow that, and I consider it a valuable option for voting. So
> maybe for the next election/vote this could be added?

I'm assuming that by "ties" you mean that you'd like to express equal
preference for two candidates. So something like, "I prefer X to Y and
Z (who I prefer equally) who I prefer to W." If so, this came up in
IRC at the beginning or immediately before the election began so
you're no the first person to request it.

Additionally, I would also appreciate seeing a "none of the above"
option in the next election.

Criticism aside, I've got a lot of faith in Condorcet and am glad to
see us electing board members in the way we do.

Regards,
Mako

--
Benj. Mako Hill
mako(at)bork(dot)hampshire(dot)edu
http://yukidoke.org/~mako/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 01:15:19AM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 12:47:14AM -0500, Lukas Geyer wrote:
> > While casting my vote for the 3 new board members, I noticed that the
> > current voting procedure does not allow to explicitly express ties
> > between candidates. I was told that Debian's Condorcet voting system
> > does allow that, and I consider it a valuable option for voting. So
> > maybe for the next election/vote this could be added?
>
> I'm assuming that by "ties" you mean that you'd like to express equal
> preference for two candidates. So something like, "I prefer X to Y and
> Z (who I prefer equally) who I prefer to W." If so, this came up in
> IRC at the beginning or immediately before the election began so
> you're no the first person to request it.
>
> Additionally, I would also appreciate seeing a "none of the above"
> option in the next election.

I suppose not voting for all 8 candidate (that is providing a string
with less than 8 characters) will result in "none of the above" to rank
higher than the candidates not figuring in the string, right ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 07:25:17AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> I suppose not voting for all 8 candidate (that is providing a string
> with less than 8 characters) will result in "none of the above" to rank
> higher than the candidates not figuring in the string, right ?

It certainly should, or the vote tabulating software is horrendously
buggy and should not be trusted to return valid results.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org
http://www.spi-inc.org/

On Thu, 06 Feb 2003, Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 07:25:17AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > I suppose not voting for all 8 candidate (that is providing a string
> > with less than 8 characters) will result in "none of the above" to rank
> > higher than the candidates not figuring in the string, right ?
>
> It certainly should, or the vote tabulating software is horrendously
> buggy and should not be trusted to return valid results.

"none of the above" is no option in this elections. Is there any reason
it should have been?

As I understand this scheme if you don't rank an option you make no
statement about your preference for or against it at all.

Peter
--
PGP signed and encrypted | .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux **
messages preferred. | : :' : The universal
| `. `' Operating System
http://www.palfrader.org/ | `- http://www.debian.org/

On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 09:23:02PM +0100, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> On Thu, 06 Feb 2003, Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer wrote:
>
> > On Thu, Feb 06, 2003 at 07:25:17AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > I suppose not voting for all 8 candidate (that is providing a string
> > > with less than 8 characters) will result in "none of the above" to rank
> > > higher than the candidates not figuring in the string, right ?
> >
> > It certainly should, or the vote tabulating software is horrendously
> > buggy and should not be trusted to return valid results.
>
> "none of the above" is no option in this elections. Is there any reason
> it should have been?

Well, I would say so, yes. It gives people a way to explicitly protest
the entire ballot, or mark the entire slate of candidates as
unacceptable.

Though I think it's not very likely that a person would actually vote
that way in this particular election, I don't know how important that
is.

> As I understand this scheme if you don't rank an option you make no
> statement about your preference for or against it at all.

Hmm. I may be misunderstanding Condorcet, having been polluted by
months of chatter on debian-vote about properties that Condorcet does
not possess, like "quorum"[1], "supermajority", and "default option".

I retract my statement about the software being buggy if it doesn't
support this. I'm in favor of seeing plain-jane Condorcet with
Cloneproof/SSD in operation.

If this method turns out to have undesirable properties, then at least
we and the Debian Project will have real experiential data to work with,
which may help supplement the rampant speculation that has been taking
place on debian-vote.

Thanks for the correction.

[1] Yes, I am aware that there is a quorum requirement for this
election. However, it's not the same as the per-option quorum
requirement advocated by Anthony Towns et al. on debian-vote, and since
our ballot has no "default option" I'm pretty sure our quorum
requirement behaves even more differently. Since our By-laws require
that we seat at least one new Board member to get up to our required
minimum of 8, a ballot marking everyone below "none of the above" isn't
particularly helpful. If the election mechanism were to fail the Board
would try it again until it succeeded, or go back to internally
selecting (a) new member(s), as it's done in the past.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org
http://www.spi-inc.org/

> > "none of the above" is no option in this elections. Is there any reason
> > it should have been?
>
> Well, I would say so, yes. It gives people a way to explicitly protest
> the entire ballot, or mark the entire slate of candidates as
> unacceptable.
>
> Though I think it's not very likely that a person would actually vote
> that way in this particular election, I don't know how important that
> is.

I think of it in terms of "I like these three people, and I prefer 'none of
the above' to the other two". As long as that's what not filling out the
entire ballot means I think we're OK. A corner case of this would be
turning in a blank ballot (or one where 'none of the above' was the only
choice.)

I don't want to start another huge discussion about voting mechanisms, but
I wanted to point out why "none of the above" could be a valid choice in
such an election.

Take care,
Dale
--
Dale E. Martin, Clifton Labs, Inc.
Senior Computer Engineer
dmartin(at)cliftonlabs(dot)com
http://www.cliftonlabs.com
pgp key available

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 07:23:42AM -0500, Dale E Martin wrote:
> I think of it in terms of "I like these three people, and I prefer 'none of
> the above' to the other two". As long as that's what not filling out the
> entire ballot means I think we're OK. A corner case of this would be
> turning in a blank ballot (or one where 'none of the above' was the only
> choice.)
>
> I don't want to start another huge discussion about voting mechanisms, but
> I wanted to point out why "none of the above" could be a valid choice in
> such an election.

Oh, certainly. I agree that such an option permits an added degree of
expressiveness, which is a valuable thing. My point was simply that I'm
not sure if this is a characteristic of the Condorcet Method per se.
And any twiddle to the Condorcet method *might* vitiate some of its
desirable properties (one has to do some formal analysis to find out).

I probably need to go refresh my memory at electionmethods.org.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org
http://www.spi-inc.org/

>>"Branden" == Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer <branden+spi-treasurer(at)deadbeast(dot)net> writes:

> Oh, certainly. I agree that such an option permits an added degree of
> expressiveness, which is a valuable thing. My point was simply that I'm
> not sure if this is a characteristic of the Condorcet Method per
> se.

Eh? Why wouldn't the "None of the above" option be yet another
option as far as condorcet is concerned?

> And any twiddle to the Condorcet method *might* vitiate some of its
> desirable properties (one has to do some formal analysis to find out).

I see. I suggest you check out debian-vote over the last few
months, where this has been debated at length; Debian's current
voting methods draft states that a default option ("further
discussion" , nominally) exists unless otherwise stated -- and that
means most votes shall indeed have a default option.

manoj
--
If some day we are defeated, well, war has its fortunes, good and
bad. Commander Kor, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta(at)acm(dot)org> <http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 10:21:06AM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >>"Branden" == Branden Robinson / SPI Treasurer <branden+spi-treasurer(at)deadbeast(dot)net> writes:
>
> > Oh, certainly. I agree that such an option permits an added degree of
> > expressiveness, which is a valuable thing. My point was simply that I'm
> > not sure if this is a characteristic of the Condorcet Method per
> > se.
>
> Eh? Why wouldn't the "None of the above" option be yet another
> option as far as condorcet is concerned?

Because it generally affects the outcome in a way the other options
don't. At the very least, the ballot instructions need to make it clear
to the voter what this effect would be.

> I see. I suggest you check out debian-vote over the last few
> months, where this has been debated at length; Debian's current
> voting methods draft states that a default option ("further
> discussion" , nominally) exists unless otherwise stated -- and that
> means most votes shall indeed have a default option.

You appear to have overlooked some words of mine in this thread:

Message-ID: <20030207050432(dot)GD17341(at)deadbeast(dot)net>
Hmm. I may be misunderstanding Condorcet, having been polluted by
months of chatter on debian-vote about properties that Condorcet does
not possess, like "quorum"[1], "supermajority", and "default option".

You also appear to have forgotten my partipation in debian-vote over the
last few months on the very subject upon which you charge I am ignorant:

Message-ID: <20021113175459(dot)GK16954(at)apocalypse(dot)deadbeast(dot)net>
Message-ID: <20021113232201(dot)GF21010(at)apocalypse(dot)deadbeast(dot)net>
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(Alternatively, one can simply browse
<URL:http://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2002/debian-vote-200211/threads.html>
and search the page for the string "Branden Robinson".)

Therefore, I suggest you refresh your own memory. I find it a little
disappointing that you would encourage people to draw inferences that
you know to be false.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
treasurer(at)spi-inc(dot)org
http://www.spi-inc.org/