Maemo Community Council Elections
 

To help promote a wider spread of interest in the community council elections I have reproduced Dave Neary's email from the community list below.

So there you have it.

If you feel you can contribute to the future of the Maemo platform then go email your candidature now. Alternatively you can voice your opinion come election day by voting for the candidates you feel could make the most positive difference to the project.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

A list of nominations, including Baloo and myself, can be seen here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Community...e_declarations

Nominations are open until the election, which runs from 3nd September to 10th September.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Good list of candidates there!

Gadsby, take a break from bug evangelism and get your name in there, pronto!

maemo.org Community Council Elections - voting open
 

As eligible voters should now be aware, the voting is now open! It will remain so for another 6 days or so.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

There's something i don't seem to understand: why everyone has only one vote? What happens if all the voters vote only for lets say 3 people?

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I'm sure everyone will atleast get one vote.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

You hope... :D

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I would think people would vote for them self.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Okay, lets say 3 people get all the votes and the others one...? ;)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Voting thread is here: http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=23388

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I don't know how this would be handled. In fact we had some discussion on -community about how many votes, voting methods, etc. It's probably fixed for this time though, but is certainly open to changes for the next run. Please throw in your 2p'worth on the list if you know anything about voting theory/practice.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Because someone wasn't bright enough to implement something like Approval or Condorcet.

PS: not everyone is allowed to vote.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorc...ndorcet_voting

On bottom is also software. Debian used Condorcet + SSD for ages.

Heres more uses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze...Schulze_method

But heck, even something like Approval would have made it a lot more democratic already.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Depends on your definition, the more complex the voting system the more "interesting" the effects for the not-first-place candidates become (though one-person one-vote is by no means the optimum! :) )

Some sort of discussion will have to be held to arrange what to use for next time, as well as what software to use to run the vote.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

IMO there isn't much discussion necessary. All the information is already outlined on Wikipedia articles.

Democracy is the system where a number of people (in this case the eligeble people are outlined by Nokia) elect from a list of candidates (in this case selected by a rule as outlined by Nokia); the winners will represent the people who are under their reign (NOT only those who voted for you; seems to be a missconception...). Between these 2 groups of voters and candidates we want the procedure to be as democratic as possible so that the people who choose are the best represented. That is the goal of democracy which current governments are by far not able to reach because of insincere and strategic voting. Democracy is not a 1 or a 0 despite what some might want you to believe.

On the Internet we have the opportunity to implement a better system than Pluratity. Lets make use of this.

If you want to touch on the subject of complexity, by all means, quote me on Condorcet. Its the only reasonable argument against Condorcet I can think of. Approval is not complex at all compared to Plurarity.

Example:
lardman: YES
Karel Jansens: YES
Reggie: YES
allnameswereout: ABSTAIN

Means lardman, Karel Jansens, Reggie get +1 and allnameswereout gets +0. Count 'em all up, highest score wins. I'm pretty sure the entire world is able to say yes or no when asked. With Approval, in the US, the Democrats and Republicans might actually gain some competition during the elections. Competition is good...

Condorcet is much more democratic. Its used by communities such as Debian for long time now. Open source tools to calculate the outcome are available. You can find all kind of examples on Condorcet, preferably with SSD as underlying ruleset to solve the maths. They're using a CLI utility which outputs the mathematics which are then posted on mailing list but IIRC theres even GUIs available.

Heres some Condorcet insights and compares http://rangevoting.org/EMorg/indx.html

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

What, exactly, did Nokia have to do with any of this? :\

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Instead of such a snarky remark and such a negative smiley you can just say its a community project with a link. I thought it was officially endorsed by Nokia because I thought Qgil gave responsibility out of his hands and because I saw it on maemo.org announcement.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I sensed sarcasm and hostility in your post, what can I say.

This has nothing at all to do with Nokia. It was Jaffa's idea and lardman and myself assisted him a bit with the inception. :)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

In addition, this conversation is over a month old and has always been open. Read maemo-community for more of my grief about this (i.e., where has everyone been until now?).

-T.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Now when I looked at the Wikipedia article most relevant, I came up with:Quality of representation, or who gets what degree of representation, are not criteria for that definition, or any other I've seen, for democracy. Indeed, your description explicitly rejects certain types of democracy, e.g. direct democracy.
(Also, if you want the winners to effectively represent the whole rather than the majority, I'd expect you to support Borda or similar; it may be said that Borda is to Condorcet as median is to mean.)
Agreed, though I believe you meant plurality, which isn't even quite what we have. But the definition of 'better' for an electoral system is not inherent in the word democracy, nor is it even well agreed-on.

It's simple enough, to be sure; but while the alleged complexity of other voting systems is an obstacle in changing government elections, I think it's no problem for us.
I don't see that it's much more democratic, or that the differences boil down to "more democratic"; I think what we should be after are fair (which all systems under consideration are), transparent, and safe to game*, and appropriate to the type of election.
Myself, I prefer range voting; but I don't see that any of these is appropriate for a group of at-large seats like this. (Actually, if we had one less candidate, it would be a single-seat elimination! ;)) For my part, though, I haven't done as much reading on the multi-seat election styles; I've a strong revulsion for the party-based systems, but am undecided between cumulative and single-transferable-vote. Still, the single-nontransferable-vote scheme used here isn't that bad, IMHO; it's better than the plurality-at-large system used for local elections in my state. (At this point, it really doesn't matter, because there are no obvious parties, but it's better to avoid that in principle.)

Not impressive; their claims regarding the states' rights argument for the electoral college are weak, they promote government intervention in primaries, and they make no discussion (that I saw) of the strongest other contender, range voting.

You see, there's plenty of room for argument here, and claiming that one solution is the best on such virtues as "most democratic" aren't particularly persuasive; a discussion on this would be better served by discussing concrete advantages and disadvantages.


*By safe, I mean that since we cannot eliminate tactical voting and strategic nomination, AKA gaming the system (Gibbard-Satterthwaite), we should assume it, and not choose a system like IRV which is 'twitchy' to changes, and hard to game effectively. It should be robust so that voters using a reasonably good estimate of candidates' chances will give a nearly 'fair' winner, rather than a grossly distorted one.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I'm following -community, and I'm not into voting theory or anything. It just seems logical that when you choose a board of 5 people, everyone will be allowed to choose his 5 preferred candidates.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

It's so logical that no-one thought to raise it in any of the opportunities they had to do so before now. Including yourself?

Complaining about a system when it's in play is the wrong time: instead, if people care so much, they should've got involved earlier. You can't change a system the day the election starts: software's been put in place, the rules have been thought out to be consistent (even if sub-optimal).

Obviously, whoever sits on the council once elected will look at the process, and put alternatives up for a referendum (as per the council rules)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Even if not completely logical it is reality and happens all the time (somehow it reminded me this post I've seen in my inbox recently). People are lazy and do not think in advantage about every little detail. Even if I had time (~= was not lazy) I'm not sure I would spot it in advance. For me voting system was little detail I did not care about until I saw the names and started to think about how to give my vote.

it is not end of the world. Better late than never. Now is the best time to collect those 'complains of 25 hour hysterics' a.k.a. useful input ;-) and discuss it to make it better next time.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Oh, indeed. Completely human; and I've been guilty of it myself. Did I mention I hate computers and people? ;-)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Exactly the same for me.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Yes, including myself - maybe i misread, but until i received the invitation i wasn't aware of this little detail.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

The first round was always going to be more bumpy. I can't imagine the council ignoring this feedback (no matter which of the 5 candidates are in it) for the next election in 6 months' time.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

If you are having an at large election (many winners as opposed to just 1) Score Voting (aka Range Voting) is actually still excellent, per massive Bayesian regret calculations.
=> http://rangevoting.org/UniqBest.html

If you would like results which more closely model the diversity of opinion among your community, however, you could use a proportional method like Proportional Score Voting (aka Reweighted Range Voting), or Asset Voting. Both of these systems are far superior to and simpler than methods like STV, MMP, etc.

http://rangevoting.org/RRVj.html
http://rangevoting.org/Asset.html

Asset Voting is really fascinating in how simple it is. It was originally invented by Lewis Carroll, who was an Oxford mathematician.

Please let us at Electopia know if you should decide to adopt one of these more modern voting methods.

clay@electopia.org

Regards,
Clay Shentrup
San Francisco, CA

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Well, the sum of all advantages and disadvantages is a scaler utility efficiency value, that you can compare. The best voting method is the one with the lowest Bayesian regret.

It's analogous to arguing about race cars. You may talk about the superior horsepower of car X, and I may talk about the superior aerodynamics of car Y, and some other guy may talk about the lightness of car Z. But talking about these advantages and disadvantages doesn't address the issue. What we should instead do, if we are rational economists, is put the cars through a zillion random trials, with random drivers and road conditions (modeling real life frequencies) and see which car gets the best average time.

That's what Bayesian regret does for voting methods.

You could argue that complexity of the voting method is also an issue, but it just so happens that Score Voting (aka Range Voting) is the second simplest alternative voting method, right after Approval Voting (which itself is actually just a limited form of Score Voting, with a 0-1 "score").

I would like to point out that the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem only applies to rank-order method, and does not apply to Score Voting or Approval Voting.
http://rangevoting.org/GibbSat.html

Not to say that Score Voting is immune from tactical voting of course. (Just reacts mildly to it.)

An excellent point. It's nice that Score Voting has this "pleasant surprise" theory, that if all voters give a maximum score to every candidate they like better than their expected outcome, the average voter will be happier than the expected outcome on which he based that vote.
http://rangevoting.org/PleasantSurprise.html

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I, like others, had not "thought in advance" about how the voting would actually work, and made do with the offered option (just like In real Life :-).

However, I'm actually glad it didn't turn out perfect at first try, because of this very interesting discussion it generated, in which I learned a lot... I love this "Bayesian regret" concept :-)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Like myself.

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/mae...er/000761.html

I won't rehash this here, just wanted to point out the discussion on the list.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

That page doesn't say anything for multi-seat elections, as expected from the title, "Why range voting is "uniquely best" among all common proposals for single winner voting systems". Following the link to Warren Smith's site didn't reveal anything particularly relevant to multi-seat races at a glance. (I did notice that Smith was factually wrong re: the electoral college, but then, I've got a thing about that.) From the abstract, it appears to have been aimed entirely at single-seat races.

Actually, I believe it was invented by Charles Dodgson, who was not only an Oxford mathematician, but also Lewis Carroll. ;)

I'd never heard of Asset before, and it's very interesting and effective. It resembles old-style party conventions (back when multiple candidates surviving to the convention, and deals being cut to select a nominee, was normal); of course, with the reaction to the suggestion of a ''brokered convention'', it's hard to see it having a chance for application to primaries. (Of course, Pres and Veep nominations aren't a simple multi-seat, so maybe it's not the most suitable.)

RRV seems to effectively combine the benefits I was seeing for STV and cumulative. It's a clean system, but I really like Asset, now that I've seen it.

Yes, but there's two issues which keep that from being an unequivocal, objective result:

First, a difference is that we can't measure utility, so we're stuck with models; I'm an engineer and live on models, so I'm not saying that's wrong, but I'm loath to raise it as an argument that I've got an objective solution. Especially when there's no possible way to validate the model by measurements. (Like I said, I'm an engineer.)

And there's always the meta-modeling question; to borrow your racecar analogy, different people will establish different figures-of-merit; some will say time for one lap starting at speed, others will want a 1/4 mile speed, and still others 1/4 ET. Is total utility the right measure? Would some sort of average or median utility be a better measure? While I favor Bayesian regret, I can't claim it's objectively better than all other possible figures of merit.

True, but as I said, I see complexity only as a political obstacle, and perhaps a hurdle to good analysis. We've got decent analysis already, though, for all election methods under consideration.

Agreed; I was linking on Gibbard-Satterthwaite for those who might instinctively expect that tactical voting is an artifact unique to plurality. While it's not proven for cardinal systems, it is my best guess that (sane) cardinal systems are all subject to tactics and strategy, so trying to eliminate it is pointless. (And a system that reacts "mildly" to it is exactly what I want!)

That's very interesting; while my support for range voting was already fairly solid, that's excellent ammo.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

The Bayesian regret figures show that Score Voting elects candidates who are very satisfying to the average voter. This is still more or less true when it's used to elect multiple winners, with the caveat that you don't get proportionality. Although the Fedora steering committee uses this system precisely because they don't want proportionality. They presume that having a bunch of candidates who are relatively average is more expedient and leads to less infighting than having a group that, while it may average out to the same average-ness, is composed of semi-ideologues. That's basically true, since countries which use P.R. have historically demonstrated more quarreling between factions. There are clearly pros and cons to each system. My point is that a group of good representatives should reasonably be a good representative as a whole - though I acknowledge that this is a simplification.

http://rangevoting.org/PropRep.html

Please describe what you believe he's wrong about. He's not wrong very often, and when he is he likes to correct the site immediately.

Yes, models are imperfect. But Smith used 720 different combinations of the 5 fundamental parameters in his simulations, and then got the average utility efficiency for hundreds of thousands of elections in each of those combinations. Score Voting won in all of them. And by a pretty good measure. It his hard to conceive of any obvious flaws in his simulations, whose correction could possibly make up the difference. Therefore I see those figures as being extremely reliable.

Sure. Some people will think your simulation should model a society of 10% strategic voters and the rest expressive. Other people will believe that at least 60% of voters are strategic. So you just do simulations covering all of those values. If Score Voting wins under some models, but fails in other models, then you have the very tricky task of figuring out which of those models were closest to reality.

Luckily for Smith, Score Voting won in every model. So the people who want a 1/4 mile, and 1/2 mile, and whatever else, all find that the same race car wins, no matter which set of circumstances they try.

Yes. You can more or less prove that.
http://rangevoting.org/UtilFoundns.html

The most compelling "proof" of it (aside from the fact that most every other social utility function can be disproved via reductio ad absurdum) is Harsanyi's observation that a rational voter should want the system that maximizes his expected utility (do not confuse that with expected value, since utility and money are not linearly related).

Not to a rational voter. If a benevolent god wants to give society a voting method which all rational voters will want, he'll give them the one with the lowest Bayesian regret.

You can if you allow for some very sensible assumptions. There are some alternative social utility functions that violate sensible notions, such as "maximin". That is, the best state is the one in which the minimum utility for any voter is the highest. That is, if outcome X causes 99% of voters to be extremely happy, and 1% of voters to be unhappy, and outcome Y causes every voter to be totally neutral (no increase in happiness, nor a decrease), then outcome Y is "better" for society.

The problem here is that a single voter is effectively a dictator, able to make all of society much worse off so that he can be a little better off. Now we can wax philosophical about whether that's a sensible way to handle things, but there's no need. We know that this "dictator" voter, were he to have the choice of any social utility function prior to knowing the outcome, would want an additive social utility function - if he was rational.

The fact that the greatest utility sum is what all rational voters want, any arguments about additive social utility are "academic" in my mind.

It is proven that all deterministic voting methods that do not employ revealed preference are susceptible to gaming.

Here's a voting method that employs revealed preference:
http://rangevoting.org/CTT.html

So let's find a city that will adopt it already, and save the world.
http://rangevoting.org/LivesSaved.html

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/electoral.txt
The number of electors allocated to a state is not the same as the number of representatives in the House; from the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1:I'm actually receptive to the notion of abolishing the electoral college, because the states as entities (i.e. governments) no longer play a role in the selection of the Senators or Electors; giving the additional representation of the state to the people of that state, regardless of their number, seems useless and unfair. (The discretization effects are ugly, too; if it is to be preserved, doubling or tripling the number of electors and using proportional allocation would be much better.) But arguing that it does not give less populous states more influence (Smith), or that this influence never served a purpose (electionmethods.org, referenced earlier), rubs me the wrong way.
I agree it seems reliable, but the impossibility of experimental validation leaves me short on dogmatism, in a discussion; that's all.
That's not the sort of difference I meant; I'm thinking more of those who would argue that:

• Certain people "count less" than others.
• Certain political trends are intrinsically bad (/good) and to be avoided (/mandated), even though they cause no harm (/benefit) to anyone.
• and a number of similar bases for choosing an inherently harmful result.

Essentially, upon coming up with specifics, I'm realizing I was wrong; these do represent deviations from something that may reasonably be termed democracy -- i.e., Bayesian regret can be claimed as a uniquely democratic figure-of-merit.

(Which leaves the question of whether this "democracy" is the best principle, but there's always an axiom somewhere, and always someone who will dispute it. ;))

Close, indeed; but isn't that only valid as long as the rational voter doesn't know where the result falls, or equivalently, where he falls? (i.e., a non-pre-established or a highly dynamic political environment.) Still, I'll go with your label 'academic'; even if only rational and ignorant voters are guaranteed to prefer it, that's a strong argument for it as the best system if anything close to democratic ideals are accepted.

I like that one, too, though it does scale... interestingly. I'm with fpp; I do learn fascinating stuff every time I get in an election discussion.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

It's interesting how many of you are concerned with the voting system.... My only concern is: Who should I vote for? Some candidates I don't know. There's one on the list I definitely do not want to see in the council. The others are like "Yes, I know his name, but who is he?"

What do they stand for? Which social skills do they have? Do they have any strong opinion about which direction Maemo should take in the future? (I know they're not about to decide, but it will have some influence in whatever they do.)

So... I have 2 possibilities: Not to vote at all (just because by accident I could choose a person I wouldnt trust in real life) or vote for the cutest, best looking (as usual). ATM, I think it's better not to vote.

No change of the voting system could help me with that.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Pay attention? Most of the discussion is taking place on maemo-community.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

This is a slight worry about deciding on the electorate. I had assumed that people would know of our "social skills" from our previous conversations on IRC, the mailing lists and here on ITT. In terms of our personal interests, there is some info in the blurb we all wrote for our nominations, and likewise what we all normally talk about on IRC/ITT/ml.

It might be that these should be made more explicit for the next run through.

Even if people were to delivery manifestos, there's no easy way to evaluate the nominee without doing some digging through the ml/ITT/IRC logs to see what they have been talking about and what they have achieved.

The other suggestion that nominees should state what they can bring to the community council sound like a nasty interview question. Will it get any useful responses? ;) Perhaps asking for a CV of previous experience, etc., might be worth while?

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I should qualify this just in case people think I've used the wrong word. I do actually mean deciding who should vote. This is to be a community council, therefore the people who vote should be part of the community - but what makes us part of the community? Not just having a Nokia Internet Tablet, it also requires contribution to the community. If people are contributing, it's expected that they will be aware of others who are contributing, and therefore should have an idea of what the candidates stand for and are interested in.

Obviously there may be some troubles where some community members only contribute to ITT and others only on the ml and never the twain shall meet, etc. Something to be worked out, as ever :)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

These might be two of the very, very few documented cases in the history of democracy where candidates tell an eligible voter he's not worth voting. (Don't worry, as I said before, I won't.)

Still, to make my point clearer:
I follow ITT, the dev and the community mailing lists, read the planet regularly, ...

But that's not what it's about. I'd feel more comfortable knowing who these people really are rather than what they do. (We're not hiring somebody for a technical helpdesk, nor are we looking for a good developer.)

I wonder how other people make up their minds.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Even if true, IMO a leader shouldn't lower him- or herself to the same level as its friends or foes for one because a leader is an example for its followers. Social skills are very important for a leader, and being sarcastic is not appropriate behaviour of a leader.

A much better response, but it is still related to Nokia because the 5 winners will be the contact persons for Nokia.

Me neither (therefore I didn't look much into the process; I was apparently too late already) while hunderds of inactive people with a profile (can be created easily) are eligable to vote.

The problems I see are

* Consensus process didn't work well.
* Eligable base of voters is inaccurate.
* Votes can be sold or bought.
* Election method archaic.
* Unclear about anonimity.
* Goals of the candidates are not outlined well (far too brief for a serious election).
* Relationships between candidates are unclear; who will do what? I haven't found any discussion between the candidates either. I'd like to know who agrees and/or disagrees with whom.
* Elected persons decide on next voting process?
* Minimum number of votes required to pass election is not defined.

Thanks for your interesting posts.

The underlying methods have different severity regarding strategic voting. Just because a method does have the side effect of strategic voting doesn't say anything about the severity of this side effect.

Hmm, I never heard of Borda. Care to enlighten me about this person?

You're right regarding the definition but IMO the definition of democracy is flawed. You need to remember it is a a combination of 2 greek words, and that in any ((other) language) it has an artificial meaning already when applied. The current definition of democracy you'd find in a dictionary is based on the current democratic systems whereas in practice the current democracies lead to a chosen dictatorship of max 4 years. Democracy isn't an abstract word anymore. Like liberty.

There is no effective feedback system (ie. "who moderates the moderators?"). In direct democracy this problem is mitigated, but it isn't efficient for fast decision making, and another problem is lack of time and/or involvement. Good book about this is "From the director's democtacy to direct democracy".

Interestingly, in Europe in general one does not vote for their sheriff. Although referendum is implemented in some European countries, it sometimes doesn't work because not enough people vote. The meaning of 'liberal' is also very different in the US compared to Europe.

Consensus, according to my experience, often leads to the person with the biggest mouth becoming the leader while such so-called "leadership" is in many situations not desired.

Agreed, and if more people get in contact with such methods they might see how our current democratic models are out of date. Unfortunately, it seems IRV is a popular alternative, while it is severely flawed. Earlier mentioned site contains some mathematical examples.