I am a US citizen who is getting sick of our oficial election
process. Unfortunately, the bickering after this poll is beginning to
remind me of how we choose presidents.
With this in mind, I'd like to propose a few minor changes, to
accomodate everyone. Every election should include the following options:
----------------------------------
Choose _one_ from the following list of _five_ choices:
1. Choice A (or, in this IETF case, Option C)
[I believe that Option C is clearly the best option open to us.]
2. Choice B (or, in this IETF case, Option O)
[I believe that Option O is clearly the best option open to us.]
(followed, in the general case, by any other choices)
3. Either (or any) of the above
[I believe that both options are clearly better than all others, and
I don't care which we choose. Count my vote as 1/2 for each one.]
4. Neither (or none) of the above
[I believe that both options are clearly worse than at least one
other that is not listed above. Count my vote as 1/2 _against_ each one.]
5. N/A - I don't care
[I really couldn't care less about this particular poll, but I feel
obligated to vote simply to re-affirm my right to vote in other upcoming
elections. Count this vote as an intentional blank, good only for
tracking the total number of people voting. Do _not_ count this in the
base for determining consensus.]
-----------------------
Check the following if you agree:
6. This is a negative-based vote
[I don't really like the candidate I voted for above. However, I
feel forced to vote for it/him because I have strong negative feelings
about the major alternative. Rather than a vote "for" my choice, it
should be counted as a vote "against" the other major choice.]
[end of proposed ballot]
It seems to me that, if we are looking for consensus, the winning option
should have at least a simple majority of all votes cast, after all
votes are counted as above. If no option can garner 51% of the vote,
then you don't have consensus.
Example: If 100 people vote, and 27 want and vote for A, and 27 vote
for B, while another 28 vote for A only because they believe that B is
bad, then A will get 55% of the vote in a traditional American election.
On the other hand, counting as suggested above would show A with 27%
while B ends up with -1% -which tells us that there is a serious problem
with the two choices.
--
: Unable to locate coffee. Operator halted.
: Reply to sandy(_at_)weijax(_dot_)com
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf