John - in the example I gave, there is no preference.

But still, even with preferential, if I only vote my number one choice, aren't I doing it more of a favor than if ...

(this is too mathy for me, let me try again)

Okay say the choices are: Kafka, Whedon and Monkey.

I like Whedon best. I like Kafka second best.

I HATE monkey.

If I rank Whedon as preference number 1, he gets what? Like 3 points. If I rank Kafka second he gets 2 points. If I rank monkey third, he gets a point.

Wouldn't it be smarter for me to give my 3 points only to Whedon, since Whedon is actually running against Kafka and monkey and I don't want them to get any points? Or at least, to only rank Whedon and Kafka, so that monkey gets no points?

And what if it's 15% Cheeseheads and 10% Monkeymeat?

We're splitting up the second choices of those whose first choice was Cheese, so 15% wouldn't still be Cheese.

Maybe you meant 15% Kafka and 10% Monkey?

Then it's a tie and we have co-mascots. It's the same as if there were a runoff and there was a tie. The preferential ballot just saves us the time required to set-up, vote on, and tabulate a whole other ballot.

I know this intellectually. but I am wondering if people were sure of this when they voted for simple majority? Anyone else?

It's the same way the thread-naming used to work, when we did polls for that.

I know this intellectually. but I am wondering if people were sure of this when they voted for simple majority? Anyone else?

Me. I would have worded it more simply in the proposal as "most votes" and not 50%+1.

There are no "points" Cindy. Your second choice doesn't even get looked at unless your first choice is eliminated. Was my example unclear? (not snarky; I'm really trying to explain so everyone understands and buys into it)

And this seems in conflict with the spirit (although it may fall within the letter) of chosing simple majority. But maybe that's me. Doesn't it, though?

Can we talk about this for a second? I'm against preferential voting. Even though there are obvious advantages to doing it.

There is, however, a large disadvantage and I'm just going to keep pointing this out. It's more complicated. Buffistas are not going to be comfortable with complicated, mathy, bureaucratic solutions to what are - in essence - basic administrative details. There are a number of unlikely scenarios where simple majority will be insufficient. There are fine issues of fairness intrinsic to the way the vote is structured.

But simple majority is Good Enough. I am a big proponent of Good Enough. It's a whole philosophy of parenting that involves not stressing about whether little Willow is on the Harvard waiting list before third grade. You keep the kid alive, love them and give them some boundaries. Everything else is gravy.

I want to push for people keeping Good Enough in mind. At any point where we can make it simpler - that is a huge positive value for this community. To misapply Occam's Razor, the simplest solution is the one that is most likely going to be the right one for us.

I think we need to establish a few more basic procedural elements: (a) minimum voter turnout(b) separate board for vote discussions (c) if we do the separate board, what process opens that board (Seconding) (d) closing discussions, time limits.

I am very mindful that people want a few things settled to make the board run better. We are going to have problems if this gets too complicated. I think there will be serious issues of resistance and some feeling to scrap it all. I am arguing for those few things that we need settled to be simple and somewhat intuitive. That I am willing to sacrifice a sophisticated processes that guarantee greater fairness, or expressing the true will of the voter, as long as the process is mostly fair, and will be Good Enough.

If we don't keep it simple, we're going to wind up with nothing at all.

To be honest, I did vote for a simple majority. Sure, we have to work out a tiebreaker, but I was voting AGAINST stuff like this.

Yikes.

Uh-huh. Yes. I agree. Word. Hell yeah. Wrod. Listen to the man. Preach it, brother. Amen! Yep. Boy howdy. True dat. And, to sum up, what Hec said.

!!!

If I rank Whedon as preference number 1, he gets what? Like 3 points. If I rank Kafka second he gets 2 points. If I rank monkey third, he gets a point.

There are no points in this system.

There are only votes.

Whedon as preference number one means "a vote for Whedon in the first, and hopefully only, round of counting, where that math is still within John H's grasp".

A vote for Kafka as two means "oh really? Whedon might not win? What's wrong with you people? But if it comes to that, I vote for Monkey in the second round of counting".

Jon, I think your example was probably clear. I don't have a head for this stuff, so although the first time I read it, I got it, by the time I got to this point in the thread, I was confused again. Also, I'm really resisting the idea, so I'm probably accidentally filtering out the sense in the explanation. I get it now though.

Preference comes in when there's not a 50%+1 majority. This makes me want to cry though, because I never would have worded the proposal that way if I knew it was going to open up all of this. That's not your fault. It's mine. Thank you for your patience. In another couple of hours, I'll probably ask you to explain it again. ;)