Scripsit Pierre Habouzit <pierre.habouzit@m4x.org>
> If I can take the last french elections for the “Président de la
> République” as an example, you'll see that the parties that had not a
> sound understanding, presented a *lot* of candidates (that clearly led
> to our catastrophical second turn).
That was because the French election system is vastly suboptimal to
Debian's when it comes to handling fine-grained voter priorities. Our
system practically eliminates the incentive (and possibility) to vote
tactically, and we never get into a separate run-off election.
(Of course there are reasons why French presidental elections do not
use Concordet voting, not least of which is that many voters would be
confused beyond their capabilities if asked to cast a preferential
ballot. Debian does not have this problem to the same degree, because
our electorate consists of prople who have already proved themselves
able and willing to study and understand complex systems and
procedures).
> and thus, the number of candidates is clearly a growing function of
> the number of the DDs. the more debian grows, the more DPL
> candidates we will have, and sadly the less DDs will feel
> represented by the DPL
That does not follow. If there are three candidates that I would be
comfortable to have represent me, I simply rank all of those three
above the other four, and then I can be happy if just one of my
favourites get elected. I can still prioritize _between_ my favoured
candidates on my ballot; that does not mean that I will only feel
represented if my #1 choice wins.
Do you think I would be happier if the guy I'd actually wanted was
eliminated in a primary election such that the one I vote for in the
main election is simply the best of those left? I don't think so.
In fact, the Concordet system allows each voter to define his own
party ticket as he votes - we get the functions of a primary election,
actual election and run-offs in a single unified ballot, and without
the manoeuvering in between that often makes real-world elections so
unsatisfactory.
We'll only get a problem if the candidates get so many that the
developers don't have time to get a proper impression of each of them
and decide how to rank them. But I don't think that will happen until
we reach something like 15-20 candiates.
--
Henning Makholm "We cannot time-travel in this dimension. Everything
is arranged differently, and they use different plugs."