Milton, it sounds like you are envisioning some sort of circumstance in which, after the tally of the ballots for this election, someone would somehow intuit what people 'really' intended and "reprocess" the results to produce a different outcome. I can't read that as anything other than a suggestion to make a very significant change in the election procedures and the meaning of the ballot. It is critical for people to understand how their ballot will be interpreted and tallied, otherwise they don't know how to vote it. If you really really want to see the results of this election tallied in some whole new way, now is the time to put a concrete proposal together, not after we've all voted. But please don't.
Using phrases like "each of the 3 candidates generates a 30% NOTA vote" is the wrong way to characterize how people should approach this ballot as it is. And it also seems highly unlikely under the current circumstances, and not worthy of concern.
To voters: pay attention to the way your vote will be interpreted, as Tapani laid out quite well, and choose how to vote it on that basis.
I hope we can all just accept the recently agreed-on election procedure, and that we just leave the ballots and the tally procedures as they have been clearly stated a number of times now. If you're still troubled, further exploration of realistic scenarios is the way to figure out if a problem with this new system really does remain.
But I think doing so after the votes are in and tallied according to the EC decision would be a really bad and divissive thing, and distract us further from our important work.
Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/
On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 03:55:32PM +0000, Mueller, Milton L wrote:
> Neal,
> What's relevant now is the current election. We can fix this flawed method in future elections.
>
> Administratively, we need to realize that the current problem results from the compromise enacted by the NCSG EC. The compromise wanted to make NOTA meaningful, but the EC apparently did not to change the ballot in the middle of the election. The correct way to make NOTA meaningful is to have a NOTA option for each candidate slot (see the model ballot I sent Monday below). That would require changing the ballot, however. People didn't want to do that so we got this cumulative NOTA voting. We are all happy that the EC reached a compromise, so no one wants to change it now, but when it reached the compromise it wasn't' aware of the flaws in this method.
>
> I don't see a great need for "exploration" at this stage. It's pretty easy, now that we understand the principle, to identify the types of anomalies that might result. E.g., suppose each of the 3 candidates generates a 30% NOTA vote. In a properly structured ballot, all 3 of them would defeat NOTA; in this ballot the 30%s will be summed to 90% and it's possible that none of them will. If that happens, we need to process the results in a way that assigns NOTA votes to particular candidates. What we need to do now is be prepared to reprocess the results if we get some of these anomalies. By "reprocess" of course I do not mean alter the results or re do the ballot, I mean simply correctly attributing a NOTA vote to a specific candidate and not to all candidates.
>
> --MM
>
>
>
> Model NCSG Council ballot
>
> (3 slots open)
>
> Slot A
>
> Ed Morris /_/
> None of the Above /_/
>
> Slot B
>
> Stephanie Perrin /_/
> None of the Above /_/
>
> Slot C
>
> Rafik Dammak /_/
> None of the Above /_/
>
> To have "none of the above" as a choice that applies to all 3 positions is a confusing and often meaningless approach.
> If we use the model above, someone who dislikes all 3 candidates can express a preference for none of them by clicking NOTA 3 times.
> But if we use the poorly designed ballot we were given, someone who supports two candidates but not one, has to vote against EVERYONE.
> Doesn't make sense.
>
> --MM
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: NCSG-Discuss [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> > Of Neal McBurnett
> > Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 11:22 AM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: Re: Voting rules & NotA significance
> >
> > I think I'm tending more and more to agree, Enrique, that NOTA as used here
> > is confusing and problematic.
> >
> > I think the best way for us to continue exploring this is to follow your lead
> > (and the lead of those who study this stuff professionally), and present some
> > good examples and scenarios.
> >
> > While it can be helpful to find extreme examples of how an electorate might
> > vote, as we've seen recently, to explore the possibilty of obscure flaws in a
> > voting method, I think it is more helpful to start with a realistic scenario of a
> > group of candidates and how an electorate views them, then craft ballots to
> > represent segments of the electorate, and then see how the method would
> > tally the ballots.
> >
> > Here is one scenario I just threw together along those lines.
> >
> > Candidates: left to right scale (or dog-to-cat lovers, or pick your own)
> > A is moderately left
> > B is middle-of-the-road
> > C is strongly right
> >
> > Consider an electorate with 100 voters
> >
> > Here are the number of ballots cast by each population
> >
> > Population 1: like A and B, don't really have clear opinion about C
> > 30 A, B
> > Population 2: like A and B, oppose C, would prefer leaving seat open or
> > finding new candidate
> > 30 A, B, NOTA
> > Population 3: like C, B, lukewarm about A
> > 30 C, B
> > Population 4: love C, oppose A, lukewarm about B [no clear way to express
> > this with current system, decide not to vote for B]
> > 10 C, NOTA
> >
> > Totals:
> > 100 ballots
> >
> > 60 A
> > 90 B
> > 40 C
> > 40 NOTA
> >
> > A B and C are all elected (C due to a tie with NOTA: "if None of the Above
> > option gets more votes than the candidate, the candidate will be considered
> > not elected."
> >
> > In a proportional system, C would probably be elected, to represent the
> > views of a significant population of voters. I think that makes sense for this
> > scenario.
> >
> > If you add just a few more NOTA voters to the previous scenario, C would
> > not be elected. You might view that as the tyrrany of the majority.
> >
> > So I think that last point is an argument for proportional representation, and
> > a system like RRV or STV.
> >
> > On the other hand, I fear that introducing rankings or ratings might make
> > some candidates uncomfortable, and we don't exactly seem to have an
> > abundance of volunteers trying to get elected here.
> >
> > If folks have other realistic sets of candidate views, electorate views, and
> > scenarios to offer, we can see how they would work also.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 09:43:09AM -0300, Enrique Chaparro wrote:
> > > The 'big issue' with the system here is that 'supercandidate'
> > > NotA behaves strangely. We can live with that for this election, but I
> > > strongly advise against keeping it for the future.
> > >
> > > "For/against/neutral" systems are used in real life is some cases,[1]
> > > but always when there is just one subject to be decided upon. This is
> > > not the case: NotA has an interference effect so weird that when the
> > > voter expresses lack of trust in one candidate, that negative vote is
> > > being transferrec to all other subjects to be voted. I guess that the
> > > original attempt was to express something like 1. X | NotX 2. Y | NotY
> > > 3. Z | NotZ but the result of the tally will be:
> > > 1. X | NotX+NotY+NotZ
> > > 2. Y | NotX+NotY+NotZ
> > > 3. Z | NotX+NotY+NotZ
> > > If we take it with a little humour, we could congratulate ourselves
> > > for having designed a non-monotonic election system![2]
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > Enrique
> > >
> > > [1] E.g., many decisions in the Wikipedia comunity are taken by this
> > > procedure.
> > >
> > > [2] A system where increasing (resp. decreasing) the number of votes
> > > for a candidate *does*not* increase the chances for that candidate to
> > > become a winner.
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