Re: Condorcet Voting and Supermajorities (Re: [CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT] Disambiguation of 4.1.5)
On 21-Nov-00, 03:42 (CST), Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2000 at 12:30:28AM -0800, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Buddha Buck wrote:
> > Here's how it would work. Voters rank all candidates or options, but also
> > put in a "cut line" above which all candidates/options are approved, and
> > below which, no candidates/options are approved. One could create a dummy
> > candidate to achieve this if the ballot isn't conducive to the "cut line"
> > idea.
>
> Presumably the "further discussion" option that's on all ballots would
> work for this?
No, not at all. Consider the recent small discussion about removing
non-free (I'm sure you can find it in the archives if you missed it). I
personally would have ranked in the order Against, Favor, Further
Discussion (i.e. I'd rather the damn thing pass than see any more
discussion about it), but my "approval line" would be between the first
two options.
> c) A tie for first place where all the winners beat further
> discussion, but the winner selected by whichever tie breaker's
> used requires a supermajority that it doesn't have, and one of
> the other winners has all the majority it needs (because it only
> requires a smaller one, say)
I'm not sure it really makes any sense to have alternatives with
different majority requirements[1]. The recent case of an ammendment
that had an (arguably) different requirement than the original GR came
from two issues:
1. Confusion about whether the constitution even allowed modification of the
document in question.
2. An "ammendment" that was basically a refutation of the original GR.
Manoj and Branden are trying to resolve #1, and a little more care in
the GRs and ammendments we propose and second will solve #2.
Or perhaps the best answer is to require seperate votes on such issues
(modifications of the Constitution and other issues that require
super-majorities:
1. First vote to determine what combination of GR+ammendment(s) will be
considered (using a simple Condorcet winner).
2. Vote on whether to accept the final proposal. Since this is a simple
yes/no, determining a super-majority is trivial.
Steve
[1] Well, except in the sense of if there is a 2:1 requirment for "yes"
to pass, then there is only a 1:2 requirement for "no" to succeed.
--
Steve Greenland <stevegr@debian.org>
(Please do not CC me on mail sent to this list; I subscribe to and read
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