Electoral Reform Amendment/Statute

[WMS]

Based on the excellent second report from our SoFA, StevenNick, I would like to introduce the following Constitutional amendment in an attempt to rectify the problems he has laid out:

Election Procedure, Certification, and Challenges Amendment

[snip]

§ 5.

  Clause 1. Article II, Section 2, Clause 5 of the Constitution is hereby stricken.

  Clause 2. In the case that a tie arises in the last round of preferential voting, the candidate in the tie who has received the greatest number of first-preference votes shall be declared the winner.

  Clause 3. In the case that a tie arises in the last round of preferential voting and no candidate in the tie has received a greater number of first-preference votes, non-first-preference votes shall be included one level at a time (second-preference votes first, then third-preference votes, etc.) until one candidate has a greater number of votes than anyone else.

  Clause 4. In the case that no candidate with a greater number of votes than anyone else emerges once every level of preferencing is considered, this event shall be declared an "unbreakable tie".  Differing procedures shall be followed depending on the type of election that contains an unbreakable tie:

    a. If the election is for the presidency, the Senate shall vote on who shall be President.  No candidates may be voted upon except for those who are present in the tied vote.  A majority in the Senate shall be needed to elect a candidate as President.
    b. If the election is for the Senate, the President shall choose from the candidates in the tied vote one candidate who shall be Senator.
    c. If the election is for any other new office created in the future, no procedures shall be set in place upon passage of this amendment, but no new office shall be established without specifying the procedures of handling an unbreakable tie.

§ 6. Sections 3, 4, and 5 shall be applied to all federal elections.

[snip]
 

As I'm sure you all know by now, I strongly oppose the first preference rule. The point of having a preferential voting system is so that people can vote however they wish without being a spoiler. But the first preference rule (or any rule based on the number of preferences - what is this, "Survivor"?) violates the spirit of preferential voting by once again enabling people to act as spoilers if they choose to vote how they truly want to.

In addition to that, any and all rules based on using preferences as tiebreakers violate the standard of 'one person, one vote', since under preference rules some votes are worth more than others. Thus a tie is turned into a victory for one candidate by 'weighting' certain votes differently.

Instead of preference rules, a runoff should be held between the top two candidates in the event of a tie. If there is a continued tie, then Clause 4 can go into effect.
Senator WMS

Okay, I can see your point.  Can we bring debate into this topic, however?  There's a newer version based on Peter Bell's recommendations in that topic.

Done. My point remains.

[WMS]

I support WMS's changes wholeheartedly and urge my other senator to support it also, as well as the whole Senate. 

It is a much fairer way to decide elections in Atlasia and allows preferential voting to achieve its purpose, instead of making one vote more important than another.

Exactly!
Thanks for the support!

[WMS]

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.

Yes, that's a excellent point to bring up.  I hadn't thought about ties occurring before the final round... I'll have to think about that one.

EDIT: I thought that maybe we could require that people list every candidate, as you said, but then we'd still have to make higher preferences worth more, and that doesn't address WMS' concerns.  Hmmm...

Crap. Lewis has a point. I'll be thinking about tie-breaker procedures on rounds before the final one as well, although I am still opposed to using the preference rule. Would Condorcet being used on a tie before the final round work out?

[WMS]

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.

Yes, that's a excellent point to bring up.  I hadn't thought about ties occurring before the final round... I'll have to think about that one.

EDIT: I thought that maybe we could require that people list every candidate, as you said, but then we'd still have to make higher preferences worth more, and that doesn't address WMS' concerns.  Hmmm...

Crap. Lewis has a point. I'll be thinking about tie-breaker procedures on rounds before the final one as well, although I am still opposed to using the preference rule. Would Condorcet being used on a tie before the final round work out?

How would the Condorcet method work?  I can't think of anything that doesn't value higher preferences above lower preferences at this moment, so I'm open to suggestions.

I was hoping you knew. I'm having the same problem, unless we have multiple rounds of runoffs. Maybe Lewis has an idea, since he brought Condorcet up in the first place.

[WMS]

Seems kind of long-winded to have a whole new vote just to break a tie for second place, though.  Isn't there anything else?

Maybe not; I dunno.

Yes; that's why I didn't initially suggest it. I'm still thinking about that one.

[WMS]

Come to think of it, wouldn't having an entirely new vote just be basically the exact same as just considering the second preferences if we required everyone to give everyone a preference?  A vote between the second-place tying candidates would be asking, "Which of these two would you prefer to have as president?", which is basically the exact same as preferencing one higher than the other.

Hmm...maybe. But that would only work if everyone was required to preference every candidate, since there were votes cast with only one candidate preferenced - in part due to the preferencing rule. I mean, my Midwest Governor's vote had only one name on it because of the first preference rule, and I believe that motivated StatesRights' vote for me as well. Otherwise, we'd have the same problem.

[WMS]

Well, maybe we should make it so that everyone has to preference each candidate.  I don't think that it would be a lot to ask of the voters and it would certainly provide the simplest solution.

As long as there are no preferencing rules used in the final round, this might work. Of course, there are some voters who are extremely resistant to this, judging by past voting controversies, and we haven't heard from them yet...(looks at the Vice President)

[WMS]

Well, maybe we should make it so that everyone has to preference each candidate.  I don't think that it would be a lot to ask of the voters and it would certainly provide the simplest solution.

As long as there are no preferencing rules used in the final round, this might work. Of course, there are some voters who are extremely resistant to this, judging by past voting controversies, and we haven't heard from them yet...(looks at the Vice President)

Okay, so what we have is this:

1. If there is a tie in any round that has at least three or more candidates in it for last place, lower preferences are considered until a person with more votes than anyone else emerges.
2. If there is a tie in the last round, Clause 3 in Section 3 in the statute is applied.

There's one other issue, however: what happens when there's an unbreakable tie for last place?  I just thought of that.

1. At this point, yes...
2. Is this where the President chooses someone, or is this part undefined yet? In the last round, I support a tie leading to a runoff election.
(3.) Last place? Do you mean before we've reached two candidates?

[WMS]

2. Is this where the President chooses someone, or is this part undefined yet? In the last round, I support a tie leading to a runoff election.

Undefined, for the most part.  That was just an idea I threw out that is not in any way set in stone; we can resolve what to do about an unbreakable tie later.

Ah, OK, this is the part I've been focusing like a hawk on.

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Well, consider this possibility:

We have candidates A, B, and C.

First preferences look like this:

A: 9
B: 3
C: 3

But B and C both get 6 second preferences (say, 6 from A's voters for B and 3 from A's voters and 3 from B's voters for C) and 6 third preferences (say, 3 from A's voters and 3 from C's voters for B and 6 from A's voters for C).  That leads to an unbreakable tie for last place.
[/quote]

Understood. This would bring us back where we started on this one, huh?

[WMS]

Understood. This would bring us back where we started on this one, huh?

I suppose, though, let me check the logic of the situation that I gave; something about it doesn't seem quite right...

Well, tell me what you come up with.

Geez, the entire electoral system is going to be designed by three people... ;-P

[WMS]

Understood. This would bring us back where we started on this one, huh?

I suppose, though, let me check the logic of the situation that I gave; something about it doesn't seem quite right...

Well, tell me what you come up with.

Geez, the entire electoral system is going to be designed by three people... ;-P

Well, if anyone else wants to chime in, they're more than welcome to.

Okay, I've figured it out.  Suppose we have five votes for candidates A, B, and C, as follows:

Vote 1: A, B, C
Vote 2: A, B, C
Vote 3: A, C, B
Vote 4: B, C, A
Vote 5: C, A, B

This results in the following situation:

A: 3
B: 1
C: 1

with both B and C having 2 second- and third-preference votes, leading to an unbreakable tie.

Okay!  Good.  I just wanted to make sure that the situation I thought of actually can happen, and so it can.

Now we need to figure out what to do about it...

I think they're letting us figure it out.

Hmm. I don't know enough about Condorcet to know if that would solve the last-place unbreakable tie issue...

[WMS]

Actually, come to think of it, a new vote might work... if you look at the votes that I gave, 3 people preferenced B over C while only 2 people preferenced C over B, so even though counting every preference results in an unbreakable tie, it would appear to me that a new vote would make B win 3-2.

I need one more bit of information: is an unbreakable tie for last place possible with an even number of voters?  If it's not, then I think we have our solution.

Interesting! The SoFA had better be on top of his (or her, if we get a female SoFA) game to handle elections!

Not sure about that last part, although the number of voters in elections is so random it's hard to plan for.
Using your votes:
Vote 1: A, B, C
Vote 2: A, B, C
Vote 3: A, C, B
Vote 4: B, C, A
Vote 5: C, A, B
Vote 6: A, C, B

Err, is this an unbreakable tie?

Edited Part: If there's a mathematical way to determine this, I yield the floor to you.

[WMS]

Using your votes:
Vote 1: A, B, C
Vote 2: A, B, C
Vote 3: A, C, B
Vote 4: B, C, A
Vote 5: C, A, B
Vote 6: B, A, C
Vote 7: C, A, B

Err, is this an unbreakable tie?

No, it isn't; C has 3 second-place votes while B only has 2, so B would be eliminated.

For it to be an unbreakable tie, every candidate in the tie must have equal numbers of every level of preferencing.

Edited: Well, it can sure happen with an odd number of voters...

[WMS]

Link to a sort of explanation of the Condorcet method.  I don't understand it that well either, frankly.

http://electionmethods.org/CondorcetEx.htm

Thanks! I'll take a look at it.

[WMS]

Edited Part: If there's a mathematical way to determine this, I yield the floor to you.

There must be one, but I'm too tired at the moment to think mathematically.

Given that this isn't incredibly urgent, I think I'm gonna head to bed and see what I can come up with regarding this tomorrow.  If we can prove that it's impossible to have an unbreakable tie with a number of voters divisible by the number of candidates in the tie (for whatever reason, I feel like that assertion is true, but I don't know why), then we can go with a new vote to resolve an unbreakable tie.

This issue was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be when I started.

Sounds good. And yes, Lewis suuuuuuuuuure opened up Pandora's Box on this one.

[WMS]

Using your votes:
Vote 1: A, B, C
Vote 2: A, B, C
Vote 3: A, C, B
Vote 4: B, C, A
Vote 5: C, A, B
Vote 6: B, A, C
Vote 7: C, A, B

Err, is this an unbreakable tie?

No, it isn't; C has 3 second-place votes while B only has 2, so B would be eliminated.

For it to be an unbreakable tie, every candidate in the tie must have equal numbers of every level of preferencing.

Edited: Well, it can sure happen with an odd number of voters...

Yes, but with an odd number of voters in a 2-candidate vote, it's impossible to have a tie, so that wouldn't be a problem.

The only problem that would arise is when you have a number of voters divisible by the number of candidates in the unbreakable tie.

Ah! Recognition Dawns! That's what you meant! I feel smarter now. Good luck with this one...

[WMS]

Using your votes:
Vote 1: A, B, C
Vote 2: A, B, C
Vote 3: A, C, B
Vote 4: B, C, A
Vote 5: C, A, B
Vote 6: B, A, C
Vote 7: C, A, B

Err, is this an unbreakable tie?

No, it isn't; C has 3 second-place votes while B only has 2, so B would be eliminated.

For it to be an unbreakable tie, every candidate in the tie must have equal numbers of every level of preferencing.

Edited: Well, it can sure happen with an odd number of voters...

Yes, but with an odd number of voters in a 2-candidate vote, it's impossible to have a tie, so that wouldn't be a problem.

The only problem that would arise is when you have a number of voters divisible by the number of candidates in the unbreakable tie.

Ah! Recognition Dawns! That's what you meant! I feel smarter now. Good luck with this one...

Thanks; I'll probably need it.

Good night, I'll post here tomorrow with what I've got at that time.

You're welcome, fellow Senator.

And I'm sleeping on this one too.

[WMS]

Perhaps ties should be broken by a vote of the Senate?

Given the pace that the Senate has been known to move on things, I'm not sure if that would be a good idea.  Plus, I don't like the idea of the Senate voting on its own members.

If it's all we've got, though, we maybe could go with something like that.

Excellent work, Senator Gabu! And Lewis has been helpful from the peanut gallery, as it were.

Well, I think at least one runoff vote between candidates B and C in the unbreakable tie example ought to be held, just in case someone chooses not to vote or changes their mind. If they still tie, then maybe we go with Jake's idea.

IN ANY EVENT, *ahem*, Peter Bell has a point: this should be a Senate Bill, not a Constitutional Amendment. Furthermore, we should just say in the Constitution that the Senate will decide the manner in which elections are held. This way we can still work on figuring out a voting solution during the Constitutional Convention, and get in in place before the next election. I think we're getting pretty close to a definitive answer on this issue.

[WMS]

Well, I think at least one runoff vote between candidates B and C in the unbreakable tie example ought to be held, just in case someone chooses not to vote or changes their mind. If they still tie, then maybe we go with Jake's idea.

Yeah, we could do that.  I definitely want it to be as representative as possible of the citizens.

Excellent! Maybe we can nail down this point.

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Most of it already is.  Note the dividing line; the bulk of what I'm proposing (and the part we're currently debating) is part of a statute that would only need a majority in the Senate.

Some of it still needs to be stripped from the amendment; I'll do that in Electoral Reform Amendment/Statute v1.1, which will be coming after we address all of the issues with the current amendment.
[/quote]

Ah, yeah, I *clears throat* saw that right away. We'd better make sure it gets in the new Constitution correctly, then.

So what issues are outstanding? So far we seem to have...

Preferential Voting System
-every voter must mark every preference [note: what do we do with those who still fail to do so?]
--ties in the final round will be handled with a runoff between the top two candidates [note: how do we handle a tie in a runoff?]
---ties in previous rounds will be handled first by preferences, then if still tied with a runoff between the two tied candidates, then if still tied with a random number game [note: what if the candidates tie the random number game? do we just keep playing the random number game until someone wins?]

Yipe! I came up with outstanding issues on every point we agreed on! O_O

[WMS]

Yipe! I came up with outstanding issues on every point we agreed on! O_O

Hah.  Well, let's see what we can do about those things...

Let's roll.

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How about we allow them to delete their vote and vote again?  We really should make everyone preference every candidate, but it wouldn't be fair to disenfranchise everyone who screwed that up.[/quote]

Nice idea. And given the nifty Personal Message system, it shouldn't be too hard to contact them.

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I think that in those cases we can do something like having the Senate vote on it or something like that.  Any suggestions or preferences?[/quote]

Maybe a Senate vote combined with the approval of the President? I'm trying to avoid situations where the Senate chooses based on partisanship...*snicker* yea, right. See below for another idea...

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Uh, I think the random number game was a joke.  Or was it?  I thought it was.
[/quote]

Well, it takes the place of a coin toss, which HAS been used to determine elections (I remember reading about a mayor's race in Colorado some years back where a tie was settled this way), and seems fairer than anything else I've seen.

[WMS]

Maybe a Senate vote combined with the approval of the President? I'm trying to avoid situations where the Senate chooses based on partisanship...*snicker* yea, right. See below for another idea...

Well, it takes the place of a coin toss, which HAS been used to determine elections (I remember reading about a mayor's race in Colorado some years back where a tie was settled this way), and seems fairer than anything else I've seen.

I suppose in the absense of any other idea, we could go with this.  It just seems kinda, you know... unprofessional.

I really wish we could get some other people's opinions on this.  Given that this will need the support of a majority of the Senate, I'd hate to be concocting big things here and have it turn out that only we agree with them.

True, since in reality it would be really rare that we'd ever have ties in a preferential system. But given Atlasia's low voting population, it happens.

Agreed. Come on out people, it's time to comment!

[WMS]

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.

Someone else could come up with something like this if they wanted to.  I personally would like to see parties become less important.  We should be voting for a person, not a party.  The party isn't going to be the one holding the office.

On a diagonal from Gabu: I would prefer a strong multi-party system to a strong two-party system, although I do sympathize with his desire to have more voting by person than by party. On the other hand, I can just see all the "D" and "R" straight-party votes cast by newbies already...ugh (I dislike straight-party votes IRL).

[WMS]

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.

Someone else could come up with something like this if they wanted to.  I personally would like to see parties become less important.  We should be voting for a person, not a party.  The party isn't going to be the one holding the office.

On a diagonal from Gabu: I would prefer a strong multi-party system to a strong two-party system, although I do sympathize with his desire to have more voting by person than by party. On the other hand, I can just see all the "D" and "R" straight-party votes cast by newbies already...ugh (I dislike straight-party votes IRL).

I'm not advocating that we abolish parties or something.  It's just that I don't particularly the thought of having more stuff like this:

I'm here and I'm voting for the republicans...whoever they are.

Is it really healthy for our country to allow voters to vote when they don't even have a clue who the people are who they're even voting for?  I think that it should at least be a requirement that you should know who the candidates are.

This isn't a jab at StevenNick, I'm just using his post as an excellent example of what I'm talking about.

I agree with you, actually, and I would venture to say that the last election definitely showed that this is a problem...

[WMS]

I agree with you, actually, and I would venture to say that the last election definitely showed that this is a problem...

True, although less blatently. You had some people do the "right thing" such as Defarge and Julien, for example.

A few lights in the murky sea of the election...

It was a little bit harder to be partisan in D4, although I will say that every bloody red avatar in D4 voted for Harry. ;-P

[WMS]

I agree with you, actually, and I would venture to say that the last election definitely showed that this is a problem...

Yes, that is sort of what I was talking about, although it's not quite as bad as voting "GOP" without even having a clue who the candidate is.  I'm not sure how one would remedy the problem in the last election; most solutions I can think of would get into very dangerous "father knows best" territory.  You could do King's suggestion of not allowing candidates to run as a member of a party, but they'll still have the backing of their respective parties, so it wouldn't change much.

I think that now is not really the time to address this topic, as it's controversial and could threaten to torpedo this whole thing if people didn't like it.

True, in all regards. About the only thing that might get rid of it would be forcing the AFDNC and AFRNC to choose different names, and in addition to the firestorm that would bring, I'm not sure if it would work. But you're right, now is not the time...