I just want to be sure that out of 100 voters, if 25 want 2 Seconds, and 20 want 3 Seconds and 20 want 4 Seconds and 35 want 10 Seconds, the 35 don't win it. That's very disparate and unfair.

That's very disparate and unfair.

Wolfram - That's why I'm proposing a preferential ballot. Your problem goes away under that method.

Jon B - you know I prefer preference voting. Actually I deleted the post. I was starting to assume that preference voting was ruled out, and was suggesting a fair way to count the result if we used Wolframs post.

But it seems like consenus has shifted to preference voting , which is my preference, so no need to distract anyone with a way of making Wolfram's proposal practical.

No worries, Gar. I deleted mine too! :)

I don't think anyone was ever against preferance voting. Katie pointed out that people might think that it wasn't what they voted for. This still may happen.

We were just against talking about it ; )

But it seems like consenus has shifted to preference voting , which is my preference, so no need to distract anyone with a way of making Wolfram's proposal practical.

Yes, leave my proposals as I intended them. Impractical and incomprehensible.

Catching up to say, thanks so much to Jengod.

And I was really happy to see the phrase "voter turnout" used instead of "Quorum". I really want people to change over to this phrase because the Q-word really doesn't mean what we're using it to mean here.

And, because I'm insane, to point out (to, I think, Gandalfe?) that this:

Math is hard! </Barbie>

should have been attributed to Malibu Stacey.

Was it? I could have sworn it was that horrible Talkin' Barbie thing that came out in the early 90's.

Now I'm gonna have to look it up.

OK, here's a page which cites it.

Actually, Malibu Stacey was riffing on Barbie. Sad but true.

I've got a comment about preference voting for "seconds" (and quorums, for that matter). On a normal ballot -- say, with 10 different candidates for an office -- there's not an obvious order on the options, but that's not true here. Say I think 6 is the optimum quorum size. Then my opinions on 8 and 10 are unclear, but it's almost definite that I'll rank them 6, 4, 2, 0 (with 8 and 10 somewhere -- probably either high or low.)

I really can't imagine someone ranking the options, say, 6, 2, 0, 4. It doesn't make sense.

You'd get nearly the same results as preference voting if you simple had people vote for the largest number of seconders that they would support (so, by voting for "6", you're saying that you're ok with 6 or below.). Then start counting at 2. Would over half the people be happy with 2? If not, 0 wins. If so, check 4. Would over half the people be happy with 4? If not, 2 wins. And so on.

This is easy to vote on, but hard to explain. It also doesn't let someone say "I think 6 is best, but 8's almost as good," but you'll get results that are almost the same as preference voting, with much less confusion on the part of voters.

I expect no one followed my argument at all, but as the mathematician lurking in the corner, I felt I had to pipe up...