My only proposal is that we call it anything but the Supreme Court thread, because of issues with making sense. That is all.

Imagine the election like a whole series of runoffs. Each round, the candidate with the lowest number of votes gets eliminated and everyone who voted for him votes for one of the remaining candidates. Eventually you're left with only two candidates, and one of them will beat the other with over 50% of the vote. Only, because all the voters provided a full ranking at the start, the counters can work through all the runoffs automatically without anyone having to vote more than once.

I'm with you. It's the same as proportional representaion, at least as I understand it.

I'm in favour of doing things that way for complicated questions, where there's more than two or three 'candidates'.

I normally know what I like and what I don't like, but I don't really differentiate between my 3rd and 4th favorites out of a field of 5. But I can see the argument that it makes the outcome more accurately reflect the vox populi.

I understand that, but in the case of determining the quorum size, I don't think it's too difficult. For instance, let's say there are five choices: 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50. You decide that your first choice is 50. In all likelyhood, your subsequent choices will be 40, 30, 20 and a last choice of 10, right? It's not that much harder if your first choice is 30. Your second and third choices would probably be 40 and 20 (or vice versa), and your fourth and fifth choices would be 50 and 10 (or vice versa).

I'm with you. It's the same as proportional representaion, at least as I understand it.

Proportional representation is something different. Where you have an electorate that elects more than one representative (for instance, in Australia each state elects six, occasionally twelve, senators in each election), proportional representation aims to have the number of candidates from that electorate in roughly the same proportions as they got votes. (So if you have six seats, and party A got 15,000 votes, party B got 10,000 and party C got 5,000, then they should get 3 seats, 2 seats and 1 seat respectively.)

Preferential voting as described above is still for single-member electorates, or IOW elections where there can be only one winner.

My only proposal is that we call it anything but the Supreme Court thread, because of issues with making sense. That is all.

How about "The Council of Watchers" thread, just to remind us that we only want to go there as a last resort.

Proportional representation is something different. Where you have an electorate that elects more than one representative (for instance, in Australia each state elects six, occasionally twelve, senators in each election), proportional representation aims to have the number of candidates from that electorate in roughly the same proportions as they got votes. (So if you have six seats, and party A got 15,000 votes, party B got 10,000 and party C got 5,000, then they should get 3, 2 and 1 seat respectively.)

Quoted because I needed to read it again.

So, same system, different applications because of the different results needed?

And this is rapidly turning into natter of sorts. Sorry.

So, same system, different applications because of the different results needed?

Different applications at least. Prop rep isn't 'winner takes all'. Obviously, the sorts of things we'll be putting up for voting will be 'winner takes all' - we're going to make a single decision.

(Australia's senatorial elections do have some features in common with preferential voting, but that would get very complicated to explain, and isn't really relevant to the question facing the Buffistas.)

Jen, can you edit your press posting so that it links to the questions? Off the top of my head I couldn't remember which was 2 and which was 3.

I took care of it, Betsy.

OK, so based on what Sophia posted, and kind of stealing from Cindy's format, here's the first draft of a new ballot. It's very drafty:

ITEM 1: FORMAL DISCUSSION THREAD

(note: I figure a cute thread title can come later?)

Do we want a separate thread for actual voting discussions?

A yes vote on this Item means you would like a new thread, that will be solely dedicated to formal discussion of future items put forward for voting. This thread will only be open during the designated days of formal discussion.

A no vote means you do not want a new thread. (Presumably in this case, all discussion will take place in Bureaucracy.)

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ITEM 2: CLOSE DISCUSSION

Do we want to close the talking about a subject when the voting starts?

A yes vote on this item means that you would like to end all discussion on a given item when voting starts.

A no vote means you would like to continue discussion through the voting period.

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ITEM 3: VOTER TURNOUT

How many Buffistas does it take to make a vote count? Do abstentions count toward this?

For the first part, I propose a set of choices: 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, other. Or some other set. And I don't know if we should do preferential voting or not. Sorry.

For the second part, it's a simple yes or no.

If you vote yes, you would allow people to register their vote as an abstention -- that is, with no preference for either choice -- and that vote would count toward the minimum number.

If you vote no, you want only votes that prefer one option to count toward the minimum.

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ITEM 4: SECONDS

Do we have some way of deciding what we vote on? Do we need "seconds"? Obviously not everything needs to be voted on!

(OK, so the actual question would be something like this: Before a proposal moves to formal discussion, is there a minimum number of people who have to agree? Or something. I'm kind of lost. Ideas on phrasing?)