All granted, Milton.  Yet the EC decision has been made for this 
particular election, yes?  I'd absolutely concur that there is a 
(nonzero) chance that NotA could matter this time, but I am happy to 
offer that it would not be because of my vote, personally.  I also don't 
know how big that chance is, I hope it is not particularly likely.  
There may still be a pretty good chance that it might not matter!

All that does not invalidate the need to correct it for any future 
elections (if it does not turn out to matter this election, then we will 
have dodged a bullet and it guarantees nothing in the future), and so 
why not do it now while the issue is salient before us.

I fully support for making such a correction for future elections, as 
soon as it can be done.  (And for some reason you included my name 
twice, so if that means I have two votes, you can count them both in 
support... ;-) )

Dan



On 8/25/16 6:01 PM, Mueller, Milton L wrote:
> Dan, Neal, Enrique, Dan:
>
> Seems there is an emerging agreement that to do NoTA properly the ballot should have been redesigned. I just want you to know (see the minutes) that that is exactly what the backers of the appeal argued for strenuously, but for some reason Tapani would not accept it and since we were operating on a full consensus basis the appellants had to accept the current, flawed NoTA voting rules as part of the compromise.
>
> To that I have to add that those who contend this all doesn't matter because "we have 4 sterling candidates" who are all going to be elected anyway - that to me is bollocks. We insisted on a NOTA option because we didn't want anyone to win simply because they were the only ones on the ballot. We wanted to empower voters to express their lack of support in a consequential way.
>
> Further, when NOTA votes are summed and count against all 3 Council candidates there is actually a chance that NOTA will matter in this election.
>
> Milton L Mueller
> Professor, School of Public Policy
> Georgia Institute of Technology
>
>> On Aug 25, 2016, at 14:16, Dan Krimm <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Have not weighed-in here except signing on to the appeal (and now I have cast my ballot).
>>
>> Let me just say this:
>>
>> (1) EC made its decision: we will continue the current election under the process given by the EC announcement: NotA is counted as a "candidate" and can beat out other candidates to prevent them from winning.
>>
>> (2) The logic of NotA in a multi-seat race is clearly potentially problematic in principle.  However my guess is that this will not in fact come into play this election.  (NotA typically does not receive a lot of votes in our past experience, and it is not likely that any of the three candidates will be prevented from taking office by NotA this time around.)
>>
>> (3) I would support formal procedures to correct the logic problems with NotA moving forward, and I hope we can get this fixed very quickly so it doesn't get forgotten.  Having NotA for each candidate in multi-seat races makes good sense to me, though a few other options could work as well.  But my instinct is to go for the most minimal change in procedure compared to status quo that is sufficient to make the logic work without unintended outcomes.  NotA for each candidate in multi-seat races seems the most similar option, to me.
>>
>> Do we need to discuss much more here?  Let's try to simplify.  :-)
>>
>> Dan