maemo.org - Talk - Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

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Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

Quote:

Originally Posted by dneary (Post 246595)

Here's software for counting STV: http://stv.sourceforge.net/

This should be pretty straightforward to use with Maemo, we simply need to dump the voting DB in a format that can be used as input for this - which is straightforward.

Dave.

Thanks for the link.

The software supports these platforms: MS Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. A Linux/ARM(el) or Maemo port would be nice, but I'm sure community council & others have a machine which runs one of those 3 platforms on x86-32 or AMD64/x86-64. So in that regard this software passes the requirement.

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

With various deadlines approaching, it's time to put this to a public vote (i.e. a referendum).

Despite some voices calling for "range voting" (see RRV on the wiki page), some calm heads are calling for a voting mechanism which meets three critieria:

Make it easy for people to vote
Make the results of the election easily verifiable.
Ensure the result well reflects the will of the electorate.

RRV may well be optimal for the third, but the (relatively) complex maths makes it fail on the first two.

"Preferential/preference" voting as described by Quim seems to be - basically - a single transferable vote system (see STV on the wiki page):

Quote:

Originally Posted by qgil (Post 239466)

My opinions as community member: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting

"Preferential voting (or preference voting) is a type of ballot structure used in several electoral systems in which voters rank a list or group of candidates in order of preference."

All the rest is just theory and implementation details you can skip. :)

In practice, instead of voting one best candidate (like last time) or choosing 5 candidates at the same level (like the GNOME Foundation does), each voter ranks the candidates by preference and maths do the rest.

Out of any option, this meets all 3 requirements best of all (IMHO), even if it's sub-optimal in one or more categories.

So, for the referendum, I'm imagining there being the following options (language and wording TBD):

No change. The current process is fine.
A single transferrable vote. Bullets 4 and 5 ("Each community member gets one vote" and "The 5 nominees with the most votes are elected.") will be changed to XXX (TBD, something like "Each community member ranks ranks one or more candidates in order of preference" and "Council members will be selected according to this single-transferrable vote system)
None of these options is acceptable.

The Council would decide what to do in the event of the third option getting a majority of votes.

Discussion on this topic should occur on the maemo-community mailing list. Discussion
in this thread and on ITT may be read, but comments on maemo-community will be read. An appropriate thread would be this one - "Election process referendum".

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

I think we should first vote on the voting system used in the referendum for selecting a voting system.

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matan (Post 259530)

I think we should first vote on the voting system used in the referendum for selecting a voting system.

I assume you're being facetious/humourous, but - for the record - the referendum is a simple one-member, one-vote, majority wins affair.

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa (Post 259520)

Discussion on this topic should occur on the maemo-community mailing list. Discussion
in this thread and on ITT may be read, but comments on maemo-community will be read. An appropriate thread would be this one - "Election process referendum".

Given the timescales, it looks like having a week of debate on the voting process and referendum wording is realistic.

Therefore, if you want to have a say on this (even if it's "yes, this is exactly what we want"), please do so as soon as possible: by 1st February 2009, it may be too late.

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa (Post 259668)

Anyone still care about this? Now would be a great time to read through this thread, and speak up if you've got thoughts on it...

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

Recent discussion on the maemo-community list has explained that, along with the proposed change in voting, the council is also planning on returning to the original rules for eligibility: you have to have 100 karma points to stand, and 25 karma points to vote. Last time, the 25-point limit was dropped because it excluded too many active community members. It is being re-instated because it is believed that karma is now a more accurate reflection of contribution to the community and it is a fair criterion.

I had not realised this was happening until now. Maybe everyone else did realise it but if you did not, and have any concern about it, you had better raise it immediately on the maemo-community list.

Graham

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

It seems that very few people care enough to weigh into the thread (which, in some ways, is a Good Thing).

Other exciting things: people weren't necessarily aware that the next election will re-instate the 25 karma points or higher required for voting rule.

Re: Defining the Maemo Community Council voting procedure

After the last election, I made sure that my maemo.org karma was "fixed"*; I want to be able to fully participate in the community. At the time of the first election, I had something like 9 karma... :(

* as in "repaired" (fixed the car) not "tampered with" (fixed the race)