Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!ukc!stl!dww From: dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: A proposal for a new voting scheme Summary: Time for STV Keywords: Vote, Alien, STV, MAUVE, 100 NOs Message-ID: <2419@stl.stc.co.uk> Date: 18 Nov 89 10:54:01 GMT References: <21699@gryphon.COM> <2784@cpoint.UUCP> <2785@cpoint.UUCP> <1989Nov8.014837.21854@alembic.acs.com> <2812@cpoint.UUCP> Sender: news@stl.stc.co.uk Reply-To: "David Wright" Organization: STC Technology Limited, London Road, Harlow, Essex, UK Lines: 33 In article <2812@cpoint.UUCP> alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells) writes: # ... Perhaps there should be an entry for simply YES or NO ... # #>This permits one of the obvious STV pathologies unless the changes from #>the previous paragraph are incorporated: it is possible to have a vote #>in which several hundred people vote YES, no one casts a NO vote, #>yet no newsgroup is created because no name received more than 100 #>YES votes. # #I think that this is actually a place where this proposal is significantly #better than STV. If people are actually voting properly (ie: everything that #they would find acceptable is voted YES), the only way that you could have #all proposals fail is if each vote taken independantly would fail. This shows a misunderstanding of how the STV process works. Assuming that a NO vote was one of the options (and with the addition of a special ">100" rule to match our present system), a proper STV ballot would achieve exactly what you want. Assuming the voters were putting ALL their preferences in order (including the NO if that was their view), then ballots for unpopular first preferences would be transferred to the voter's second preference, and so on, until one preference had over 50% of the (remaining) votes. And that's it. Maximum voter choice - e.g. no need to not vote for your real preference in case that was so unpopular that your vote was wasted (the fault of the traditional voting system), nor the problem of MAUVE, that if I vote YES to all three names (say) to ensure the group is created, I loose the ability to influence WHICH name is chosen. OK, OK, I'll write that 25 line proposal..... -- Regards, "None shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity" David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK dww@stl.stc.co.uk ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww PSI%234237100122::DWW