I'm once again glad that most people seem satisfied with the resolution for the 2016 election.

But I also thank Enrique and Ron for beginning to more carefully examine the properties of our relatively hasty, ad-hoc "NOTA" candidate scheme (below).

I asked on another mail list about the idea of applying NOTA to multi-winner elections, and based on the responses I think it is very unusual and not the best approach for us.  I can't find any other users of a NOTA threshold system for a multi-winner election like we are now using.  I'm not sure Enrique's example is particularly likely, but I suspect some of his objections are valid.

One thing I think we really should strive for is some form of Proportional Representation, which helps ensure that viewpoints of the electorate are represented proportionately in the elected slate.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation

I.e. if we have 3 seats available, and a third or more of the electorate really wants candidate D, they should be represented by candidate D.  That is true even if nearly 2/3 of the electorate strongly support candidates A B and C.  I see it as an issue that the current NCSG scheme would probably elect a slate of A B C and leave a big set of voters unrepresented.

Proportional Representation is used by most democracies.  E.g. Wikipedia notes that "Some form of proportional representation is used for national lower house elections in 94 countries"

It also tends to increase turnout because people are more likely to have their vote make a difference.

The current NCSG charter takes one approach to diversity of representation, e.g. instituting these limits:

 3.1 NCSG Allocation.
  "no more than two (2) NCSG GNSO Council Representatives can be declared resident of the same geographic region as defined by ICANN, and there should be at least two of each gender."

I certainly think that encouraging diversity of genders and geographical region is helpful. But I wonder if those characteristics best capture the sorts of differences of opinion that matter most for NCSG.

There are at least two reasonable options I see for getting proportional representation for NCSG:

 One widely used method is the Single Transferrable Vote (STV).  It would require voters to rank the candidates on the ballot, and then uses an elimination and reapportioning procedure to try to ensure that the voter is represented by their top picks.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

As a ranked choice method, it suffers from some 

A more recent alternative method that I've seen is Reweighted Range Voting, which was used in some of the awards in the OSCARs, and was used in Sweden in 1910:

  http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html

Instead of ranking the candidates, the voter scores them, e.g. from 1 to 10. But like STV it uses quotas and ballot reweighting.  This page argues that it has several advantages over STV:

  http://rangevoting.org/PRcond.html

I'm not sure yet what I'd recommend, but I wanted to keep the ball rolling towards improving our electoral procedures, and see what others are thinking.

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 12:48:09PM -0700, Ron Wickersham wrote:
> hi Enrique,
> 
> thank you for that analysis.  it fit my gut feeling that the compromise
> annnouncement would produce that sort of problem, and as a result
> makes me sad, if the outcome does produce a rejection of one or more
> of the nominated candidates.
> 
> thank you for doing the homework and setting the examples that demonstrate
> the issue with this compromise (with the second message correcting).
> 
> -ron
> 
> On Wed, 24 Aug 2016, Enrique Chaparro wrote:
> 
> >Milton,
> >Please excuse me, but as I see it (YMMV) your math is wrong.
> >I'm afraid my example is somewhat complicated, because I
> >pulled the numbers from the thin air and feel sometimes crippled
> >without a blackboard :)
> >[BTW: your guess of the minimal set is pretty close, but see section
> >B below for a smaller set of voters)
> >
> >::A::
> >The election rules say that each voter may cast any number 'n'
> >of votes 0<=n<=3 (the ballot form reads "select at most three").
> >To further complicate the things, NotA (N) has ambiguous value
> >i.e. one mark in the N box may count as 1, 2 or 3 votes.
> >Therefore, there are 15 possible combinations for ticking the
> >four boxes.
> >ABC
> >ABN
> >ACN
> >BCN
> >AB
> >AC
> >BC
> >AN
> >BN
> >CN
> >A
> >B
> >C
> >N
> >0 (no box is ticked)
> >
> >The number of Ns counts as a threshold against any candidate. And the
> >problem stems from here! ABN means an 'explicit' rejection of C, AN
> >means an explicit rejection of B and C, while AB and A don't mean explicit
> >rejections. Please notice also a somewhat contradictory effect: a voter
> >considers A the optimal choice, and B, C not fit for the position. Then
> >s/he votes AN... but that vote will rise A's threshold.
> >
> >:B:
> >By "the most consensual" I tried to mean the candidate with the largest
> >nonnegative opinions ('for'+'neutral'). In the following example, C has
> >the lowest number of explicit rejections (all non-listed combinations have
> >zero votes):
> >ACN 104
> >BCN 104
> >AB 20
> >A 111
> >B 97
> >N 2
> >Tally:
> >436 voters.
> >Threshold: 104+104+2 = 210
> >A: 235 > 220 → pass (with 106 explicit rejections)
> >B: 221 > 210 → pass (with 106 explicit rejections)
> >C: 208 < 210 → fail (with 2 explicit rejections)
> >
> >:C:
> >As a conclusion: this curious voting method may take us out of the
> >impasse now, but has a lot of undersirable properties: is prone to tactical
> >voting, has no monotonicity, does not satisfy the Condorcet ciriterion, etc.
> >Once we get through the current election process, discussing an acceptable
> >voting system seems to be a wise move.
> >
> >Regards from the Far South,
> >
> >Enrique
> >