Electoral Reform Amendment/Statute

[minionofmidas]

One problem with both Gabu's bill and WMS' change, and also the reason we got the first preference rule:
What to do with a tie in the earlier rounds?
For example, we had an election where
Keystone Phil received 5 first pref. votes
Umengus received 3 first pref. votes
Migrendel received 3 first pref. votes

Migrendel beat Umengus on second pref.s*, and went on to beat Phil 6-5.
In this kind of situation (which Gabu's bill doesn't address), a tie-breaker is needed, while in a tie in the final tally, you can have a revote instead.


*in a fashion I thoroughly abhor: Republicans boycotted preferential voting, absurdly claiming not to see any difference between Migrendel and Umengus. All Umengus voters had put Migrendel at second, but only two Migrendel voters had put Umengus at second as the third one, HockeyDude, hadn't understood the election law and cast a vote that looked like DemoHawk's original one. In essence, Umengus got punished for having the most informed and sensible voters of the lot. The current rules place a premium on ignorance. Of course, the only way to fix this would be to require voters to list all candidates, in which case Umengus would probably have won with Rep. 2nd prefs, or to switch to Condorcet in which case there would have been an unbreakable tie, and a revote, between Umengus and Migrendel.

[minionofmidas]

Well, in your 9-3-3 or 3-1-1 scenarios, there is no need to break the tie since candidate A already has a majority of the vote.
Getting back to the 5-3-3 scenario that really happened, therefore (it was Bono btw, not Keystone - mea culpa) and amending it this way...
Hockeydude had a second preference.
One Bono voter did not exist.
Of the other four, two sec.pref Umengus, two Migrendel.
Leaves us with
ABC
ABC
ACB
ACB
BCA
BCA
BCA
CBA
CBA
CBA
and an unbreakable tie for last place, except by tossing a coin.
So it certainly still could happen.
Under Condorcet, you cast a ballot as under IRV. You're not required to list all candidates.
You then draw up a matrix in which all candidates are compared to each other.
in this case:
   A   B   C
A x   4   4
B 6   x   5
C 6   5   x
6 voters prefer B to A, 4 voters prefer A to B
6 voters prefer C to A, 4 voters prefer A to C
5 voters prefer B to C, 5 voters prefer C to B

There are three different possible results really:
1 (by far the most common, would have happened in our presidential elections): One candidate beats all other candidates in one-on-one matchups and is the winner.
2 : There is a circular chain, A beats B, B beats C, C beats A. In that case, the margin of these defeats is used as a chain-breaker.
3: Two (or more) candidates beat everybody else, and tie among themselves. That's what happens in the above example, and frankly I don't have a clue what's supposed to happen.
Here's what would have happened in the original example (B being Umengus):
   A   B   C
A x   5   5
B 5   x   3
C 6   3   x
A and B tie, B and C tie, C beats A. I honestly don't know what happens in this case actually. At first glance I guess it would also count as a Migrendel victory. (Hey, don't blame me. I'm writing this from memory.)

[minionofmidas]

The 25 post rule is fine as part of the statute as it simply defines what the word active in the constitution means and is subject to further revision by the Senate at a later date.

No, Pete. The constitution clearly defines as active "anybody who has participated in other threads and has not joined for the purposes of trolling." The 25 post rule would require a change of the constitution.
And I agree that 25 posts is much too high. Make that ten.

[minionofmidas]

The importance of party support needs to be strengthened somehow.  Given the natiure of early Atlasian votes such as those quoted by Nym90 below:

It's interesting that in the first election last February, these were all considered valid votes:

I vote for the GOP ticket!

I vote for the GOP ticket.

Is this how one votes? Just post? Obviously I vote GOP.

Perhaps we could add something to allow for a party-line ticket and instead of having being just a single P/VP slate, it would be a complete list of preferences.  Of course people could still come up with individualized ballots, but it would give a discernable advantage to being an orgaized party, if it was simpler to vote a party list of preferences than an individual ballot.

These ballots were unproblematic back then because there only was a Democratic ticket and a Republican ticket, and no Senate.

[minionofmidas]

Nah, it's fine.  I'll probably be putting together another draft of this before not too long anyway, once we (ahem, ahem, people) work out the few details left.

Here, I'll start: do we definitively know that we're going with the random number game idea to resolve unbreakable ties?  Do we have any other options available to us?

I really would like to see this enacted, ahem, before the next election.   Unless our intent is to just wait until the new Constitution...

Which I myself would like to see in force before the next election.