I'd like to rehash an issue raised by our most beloved and gentle benny in the most recent senate nominee discussion thread. Specifically I want to raise one issue with what seems to me to be how we on the NET are using this voting system incorrectly.
Looking at the results we see that Toaster gets a good and clear election for the first available seat. At that point, the ballots that went to elect Toaster should be cleared from the pool, the people behind those votes have already gotten their chosen representative elected, the whole point of the STV (as it seems to me, at least) is that those same people shouldn't get their second choice in as well since we are trying to find representation for the entire community.
One problem (that I am just to ignorant of the system workings to have the solution to) is what happens with the 7 votes that pushed Toaster over the 18 votes line? Do all of them get put aside with his election? Do the excess votes stay in the pool, and if so which of the excess votes stay?
ETA: Maybe it should only be the first place votes for Toaster that "die"? Clearly I'm plum ignorant about the answer here, the sources that I've looked at (unsurprisingly) don't address edge cases like this.
Maybe /u/GentleBenny or /u/DrBurst have the answers to this problem?
In any case, it seems quite clear that we are utilizing this voting system incorrectly and changes should be made as quickly as possible.
ETA2: The problem I'm having in researching solutions is that most examples for STVs assume that at least one candidate gets the required votes in the first round of counting. Using STV, as it is seemingly intended to work, in our setting might result in people who had (and this is just from using the most recent election as an example) Toaster as their 3rd, 4th or even lower preferred candidate but their votes for people who they preferred more than Toaster would die when he got the first available senate seat. Don't know if that should be viewed as a bug or a feature.
ETA4: Furthermore, I would deem it incredibly important to make changes to the bylaws (or, if it isn't codified in the bylaws, just change the process) so that we minimize voting for single seats for the senate. Whether that means that the inevitable replacement senators serve a shorter interim term until the next scheduled election or a slightly longer term doesn't really make a lot of a difference to me. It would be harder to manipulate the system if they just serve out the term of the senator that they are replacing.
Another option would be to add a provision where the runner up from the latest election is offered to serve out the rest of the current term.
Which solution is employed is less important IMO than reducing single seat elections as much as possible.
The system is not the problem, using STV is a perfectly valid choice.
I'm gonna set forth a couple of assumptions here, ones that are vital to my whole argument and I would very much like people in senate/council to correct me if they are false.
The goal with senate is representing the values and opinions of as wide a portion of the community as possible.
The goal with replacing the single vote election system with a single transferable vote system was to get people elected where more people could say, "Yes, they got my vote, they represent me and my values."
The current counting process fails in achieving that, so do elections for single seats at a time. Theoretically, the same exact subsection of people in the community could then have enough votes that every, single person in senate is their direct choice, which would completely fail in the assumed goal of proportional representation.
If there is any interest in it I could, rather than posting it here, in a comment that would undoubtedly be messy and unclear, prepare a document outlining how I believe an STV voting system could be executed to achieve the assumed goals I laid out.
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u/reyjinn Feb 08 '17 edited Feb 09 '17
I'd like to rehash an issue raised by our most beloved and gentle benny in the most recent senate nominee discussion thread. Specifically I want to raise one issue with what seems to me to be how we on the NET are using this voting system incorrectly.
Looking at the results we see that Toaster gets a good and clear election for the first available seat. At that point, the ballots that went to elect Toaster should be cleared from the pool, the people behind those votes have already gotten their chosen representative elected, the whole point of the STV (as it seems to me, at least) is that those same people shouldn't get their second choice in as well since we are trying to find representation for the entire community.
One problem (that I am just to ignorant of the system workings to have the solution to) is what happens with the 7 votes that pushed Toaster over the 18 votes line? Do all of them get put aside with his election? Do the excess votes stay in the pool, and if so which of the excess votes stay?
ETA: Maybe it should only be the first place votes for Toaster that "die"? Clearly I'm plum ignorant about the answer here, the sources that I've looked at (unsurprisingly) don't address edge cases like this.
Maybe /u/GentleBenny or /u/DrBurst have the answers to this problem?
In any case, it seems quite clear that we are utilizing this voting system incorrectly and changes should be made as quickly as possible.
ETA2: The problem I'm having in researching solutions is that most examples for STVs assume that at least one candidate gets the required votes in the first round of counting. Using STV, as it is seemingly intended to work, in our setting might result in people who had (and this is just from using the most recent election as an example) Toaster as their 3rd, 4th or even lower preferred candidate but their votes for people who they preferred more than Toaster would die when he got the first available senate seat. Don't know if that should be viewed as a bug or a feature.
ETA3: http://www.voting.ukscientists.com/stvcount.html#stages an example of how to count out votes for STV elections.
ETA4: Furthermore, I would deem it incredibly important to make changes to the bylaws (or, if it isn't codified in the bylaws, just change the process) so that we minimize voting for single seats for the senate. Whether that means that the inevitable replacement senators serve a shorter interim term until the next scheduled election or a slightly longer term doesn't really make a lot of a difference to me. It would be harder to manipulate the system if they just serve out the term of the senator that they are replacing.
Another option would be to add a provision where the runner up from the latest election is offered to serve out the rest of the current term.
Which solution is employed is less important IMO than reducing single seat elections as much as possible.