<div dir="ltr"> <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Neal McBurnett <<a href="mailto:neal@bcn.boulder.co.us" target="_blank">neal@bcn.boulder.co.us</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div>On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 08:20:36AM -0300, Cody A.W. Somerville wrote: >  * Normal elections will start at an agreed date relative to a development > milestone and polls will remain open until a second agreed date that is also > relative to a development milestone. Once polls close, results will become > available and a short period to allow for grievances and/or disputes to occur > takes place. Finally, a third agreed date, which will also be relative to a > development milestone, will mark the normal conclusion with the MOTU council > officially announcing results and updating team memberships. If a grievance of > dispute arises, the MOTU council will resolve the issue in 15 days of the third > date or escalate the issue to the technical board. > >  Although a voting system has not been agreed upon yet, two systems which have > received a lot of discussion include Single Transferable Vote (used by some > governments) and the Schulze method (used by Debian and Wikipedia among > others). It is generally agreed that a preferential voting system, where voters > would rank their preference of the candidates instead of voting for or against, > is best. </div>I've been active in voting method discussions for a few decades now. If we go with elections, my advice is to go with either Approval Voting or Range Voting.  One benefit of them is the focus on "supporting" folks (rather than a competition among folks), which can contribute to a feeling of consensus.  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting</a>  <a href="http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html" target="_blank">http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html</a>  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting</a> </blockquote><div> I don't know if I agree with that. The reason why I feel a preferential system, in particular STV, is a good fit for us is because you never vote against someone like you would in approval voting (by not voting) - you simply express your preference of one candidate over another. I feel this is mandatory because it should be a requirement to becoming a MOTU that you *could* be able to fill these roles. As for range voting, that is a plausible idea but both range voting and approval voting are classed as single seat (ie. used to elect single individual) system whereas STV is a multi-member system.  </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">I'm not sure why STV is on the list since it is for party voting - do we have parties in MOTU now?  I mean besides the great festive gatherings that Daniel organizes?  ;-)</blockquote><div> Single Transferable Vote is *not* for party voting. Infact, it *explicitly* ensures votes are for candidates and not parties. STV is on the list because is a preferential voting system designed to minimize wasted votes and provide proportional representation.  </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> The ranked methods like IRV (and STV) and Schulze suffer from increased complexity and confusion, and the risk of counter-intuitive results.  E.g. with IRV it is possible that raising the rank of a winning candidate on some ballots, which originally had ranked that candidate last, could counter-intuitively result in the winning candidate becoming a loser.  See  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting</a>  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method</a>  <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote</a></blockquote><div> Yes, this is called the monotonicity criterion. IRV and STV both fail this criterion but Schulze method does not. However, I don't think we need to get caught up in weird corner cases due to the scale and nature of the elections we'll be holding.  </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div> >  An alternative proposal by Emmet Hickory would have members be attached to a > "release" and favors replacing team members through a process more > closely related to apprenticeship than any sort of election. The team would > define goals for a release, handle freeze exceptions for the release, and then > follow the release as the SRU team until the release is no longer supported > (all together, roughly terms of 2 years). His full e-mail can be found here: > <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2008-July/004169" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2008-July/004169</a>. </div>Make that  <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2008-July/004169.html" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-motu/2008-July/004169.html</a> Neal McBurnett                 <a href="http://mcburnett.org/neal/" target="_blank">http://mcburnett.org/neal/</a> -- Ubuntu-motu mailing list <a href="mailto:Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com" target="_blank">Ubuntu-motu@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-motu</a> </blockquote></div> -- Cody A.W. Somerville Software Engineer Red Cow Marketing & Technologies, Inc. Office: 506-458-1290 Toll Free: 1-877-733-2699 Fax: 506-453-9112 Cell: 506-449-5899 Email: <a href="mailto:cody@redcow.ca" target="_blank">cody@redcow.ca</a> <a href="http://www.redcow.ca" target="_blank">http://www.redcow.ca</a> </div>