Re: Nov 17 draft of voting mechanics

[Raul Miller <moth@debian.org>]

On Sun, Nov 17, 2002 at 07:13:51PM +0100, Jochen Voss wrote:
> first of all: the longer I think about all this election stuff,
> the less I like the ideas of quorum and supermajority.
> Condorcet voting with Schwartz Sequential Dropping has
> some good properties, as is explained on the electionmethods.org site.

In other words, if we hold a vote with one voter participating, we should
be able to replace condorcet voting with a random number generator?

We're trying to minimize complexity, but we're not trying to eliminate
it entirely.

> More substantial: this is a change with respect to the current
> constitution.

Sure -- this whole thing is a proposed change to the constitution.

> (A.6.8. states "If a quorum is required, there must be
> at least that many votes which prefer the winning option to the
> default option.", so there the number of supporters, not the margin,
> is important).  Is this change intentional?  I like the old version
> better.

Hmm... I need to think about this.  Thanks.

> >            Definition: A proposition (N,K) is weaker than a
> >            proposition (L,M) if the preference (N,K) is less than
> >            the preference (L,M).
> Careful here: "preference (N,K) is less than the preference (L,M)"
> is ambiguous, isn't it?  We need to make clear here, that what
> counts is not the width of the margin, but the maximum of the two
> numbers of votes.

I don't think this ambiguity exists if you look at the definition of
preference (X,Y).  Did I miss something?  [Then again, this is a moot
point, since I'm planning on tossing this entire draft.]

Thanks,

-- 
Raul