I'm writing to present an alternate interpretation--the one under which
I think our voting system is doing a good job of choosing among complex
ballots in the last couple elections.
I think we need voting reform around how the amendment process works and
managing discussion time, but I am very happy with how the actual voting
mechanism has worked.
That's true even though my preferred option didn't win in either the rms
election or the systemd election.
>>>>> "Barak" == Barak A Pearlmutter <bap@debian.org> writes:
Barak> If the winning option in an election is part of a preference
Barak> cycle, then it (by definition) has the property that there
Barak> exists some other option that a majority of the voters
Barak> preferred. In some elections that is unavoidable: we need to
Barak> pick one DPL, and if they're in a cycle so be it; if there's
Barak> a tie we can just toss a coin. But in others, like the RMS
Barak> GR, it seems like it would be a rather bad property and we'd
Barak> be better off treating it as FD and trying again later.
Barak
Preferences can be of different strengths.
Imagine we were using the Debian voting system to decide where to go to
dinner before a conference in six weeks.
It might well be that we had five or six options that were generally
acceptable to most people (and perhaps a couple options that were
unacceptable that got dropped).
We don't have to go to dinner, and we don't even have to use the voting
system to make our decision.
So, unlike the DPL election, a decision is not necessary.
And yet, I suspect many people might well prefer to be done with things
and to have a decision even if there is an option that a majority of
voters prefer to the selected option.
Which is to say that the gaps between preferences might be relatively
weak.
I think we've tried to encode that in our voting system with the
majority requirement.
We never select options that the voters consider unacceptable.
And among the options that the voters do consider acceptable (if any),
we'd prefer to make a decision than not to make a decision.
Consider for example if we had a cycle between options 2, 3 and 4.
That would be a clear desire to make some sort of statement, and the
debate would be over how strong of a statement to make.
I don't think we would be well served in such a situation to make no
statement at all.
It gets more complex when you add option 7 (the no statement option)
into the cycle.
For me though, even there, notice that we'd be choosing between options
that the voters considered acceptable.
Because of that, I am not bothered by the cycle.
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