Shane Rush [shane(_at_)red(_dot_)nymcity(_dot_)com] wrote:
The council can easily call for discussion in spf.discuss if it thinks
there is demand to change the voting system next time. I clearly hope
that this does not happen. I am disappointed that Julian posted to
spf-council when a post to spf.discuss as a list member would have been
appropriate if he wants to gain support for a change.
What are we (the council) supposed to do? Some of the community elected
us to set up ground rules like how future elections should be carried out,
and some of the community elected us to work on finalizing the SPFv1 draft
ASAP and more. So the best we can do is to do _both_. I am sorry if that
doesn't please everyone. I really am, but what else can we do?
John organised a very efficient transparent vote that can be used safely
again.
I do have commended John for his great work, maybe you overlooked that
message of mine. Still, there's no harm in improving the voting rules
_before_ we get into an unfortunate situation due to the flaws of the
current rules.
It should go without mention that the apportioned approval voting system
we used for the first council election, while it may have "worked", is
inferior to Condorcet voting in many aspects, of course with the exception
that it's tallying process is a bit simpler.
We haven't even noticed the effects that the flaws of the apportioned
approval voting system have had on our first council election. For
instance, depending on whether voters felt the need to vote strategically,
I might not even have made it into the council under Condorcet voting. ;-)
I fail to see any reason to move from a one member one vote system that
works well for vaste parts of the world.
The reason is that ranked voting in general, and the Condorcet method in
particular, is even better.
If we need a tie-break this can be done without fuss and an extra layer
of complexity.
If you think that Condorcet voting is just about breaking ties, you should
really go and read the articles I referred to.
Julian Mehnle,
SPF Council Member.