Just to make it clear, I am not suggesting 50 or 5 be the minimum vote number. I am not suggesting any number in particular. I am merely saying that if people really want to set up a democratic system, then we should put everything from 10 to 50%+1 on the ballot for that minimum vote we are talking about having. And then there should be a runoff until one of the numbers gets a majority of votes.

I understand what you mean, Wolf. If 90% of the Buffistas don't care, then why shouldn't 12 people be allowed to institute massive changes? And if a majority of people agree with you, then 10 will end up the minimum number. Not trying to argue against your ten so much as I am trying to argue for taking our time with making that decision.

I just would hate to see a vote where we say you can vote for 10, or you can vote for 50, but you can't vote for anything in between.

If people are serious about making a fair and balanced system, then setting a minimum number of votes needed to make changes to the system (whatever the number ends up being) is, I think, the most important decision to be made. And going to whatever number of successive runoffs is needed in order to make sure that whatever number picked receives at least 51% the vote is, I think, the best way to make sure that no one is disenfranchised.

then we should put everything from 10 to 50%+1 on the ballot for that minimum vote we are talking about having. And then there should be a runoff until one of the numbers gets a majority of votes.

I agree with this. It's elegent and fair. Although a runoff isn't necessary -- we could go with a preferential ballot.

Jon, I just was worried that we could end up with something like 20 votes for each choice, and then 21 votes for the winning choice. If there were, say, 5 choices, then 80 people would feel screwed, while only 21 would be happy. And that's not real good democracy.

So I do think that somehow we need to set it up so that the winnner of this issue gets 51% of the vote.

And I don't think it is probably necessary to take a week for each vote. It's a multiple choice vote, and there need not be a lot of discussion since every option is would go on the ballot. So a couple of days should be sufficient to give everyone time to vote. Then a couple of days for the runoff.

Is there no way to look at the tables and say "There are two hundred people who have posted more than 15 times in a month"? [...] Because John's Perl script on WX seemed to track that activity pretty well.

Just for the record, what that script did was record posts in a particular thread.

I don't know how hard it would be for ita to do some kind of count of posts overall, but I suspect not terribly. "There were 5,000 posts in the last week, contributed by 250 people" or something.

But then there are lurkers.

Just because you're not posting, doesn't mean you don't get a vote -- can someone imagine a member who only ever posted to vote? It's possible; they'd be voting on what they want to read, wouldn't they.

And minion, minyan, funyun, it's all very cute, but really -- what we're talking about is voter turnout. I propose we just use that from now on.

The Q-word means "people physically present" and has no meaning. None of us is physically present.

So we're requiring people to be intellectually present -- to come along and take an interest, read the debate.

If, having done that, they think "I don't care either way" they should please not just go away, they should register the fact that they attended to the discussion with some kind of a neutral vote.

We've been calling that an "abstention" but it doesn't have to be. In Australia it's called an "informal" vote.

People have been posting that we are obliged by law to vote in Australia. Not so. We're obliged to turn up at the polling place and stuff a ballot into a box. Nothing says we have to vote for any candidate.

So in order to reach a satisfactory level of voter turnout we may have to ask Buffistas who don't care, but did read the vote thread, to indicate that they did so.

Okay, my perspective from just counting the ballots. Absentions should be considered absences. You vanish for the sake of that vote. It's patently ridiculous to ask people to register their lack of interest.

Jon, I just was worried that we could end up with something like 20 votes for each choice, and then 21 votes for the winning choice.

Sorry, I should have explained what I meant by a "preferential ballot".

• Everyone ranks their choices
• Ballots are sorted by first choice
• If no choice receives 51% of the vote, the choice with the lowest number of votes gets resorted by those ballots' second choice
• If still no choice receives 51% of the vote, the choice with the now lowest number of votes gets resorted by those ballots' second and third choices (depending on which hasn't been eliminated yet)
• and so on.

This is how the People's Republic of Cambridge, MA (and other places, I'm sure) conducts much of its voting. There are variations of this system but I don't know their details.

Absentions should be considered absences.

I was under the impression that we only had abstain on this ballot because we had more than one item to vote on at once, and perhaps the form couldn't process a "blank" answer?

This is how the People's Republic of Cambridge, MA (and other places, I'm sure) conducts much of its voting. There are variations of this system but I don't know their details.

And if our current vote turns up a win for straight majority?

because we had more than one item to vote on at once, and perhaps the form couldn't process a "blank" answer?

Honestly, it was an arbitrary decision on my part. I figured better to include it than not. With "radio buttons" on html forms, once you select a choice, you can't change it to no choice; you can only pick a different one (unless you reload the page). I could see people complaning if I didn't include abstain, but I couldn't imagine anyone complaining if I did include it.