Hec, are you in favour of runoffs where there's no Simple Maj?

I'm not sure I get your position.

Or are you saying not even Simple Maj, just "greatest number of votes"?

What Hec and ita said.

Preference comes in when there's not a 50%+1 majority.

See, I think the solution to this is always having yes/no votes. That is, I almost think we should hash out a consensus for, say a number needed to second HERE.

THEN we vote yes or no on it.

Also, i think we should post that we're discussing this in press, even though the actual vote isn't set yet. It is going to take us a long time to come up with something to vote on, and if we wait unti we have solidified it to post the discussion, we will then have to have 3 more days of discussion before we can vote.

I think we have a huge problem if we've got people who voted for the phrase "Simple Majority" and didn't understand that it meant "more than half".

If they thought it meant "greatest number of votes" then I don't know what to do with the results.

That is, I almost think we should hash out a consensus for, say a number needed to second HERE.

And if the vote fails, so we then try for a different number of "seconds"?

I know that I'm a math guy and lots of you aren't and that why preferential balloting seems so simple to me and not to others. But really. It's simple. It's just like having an instant runoff. really really.

And what John H. just said.

The author didn't mean to put in 50%+1 for ballot questions containing more than 2 choices. In other words, I was only thinking of ballots with a "yes I want that" or "no I don't" type issue, like adding new threads. So I can fully understand that's what other people might have been thinking when they voted.

See, I think the solution to this is always having yes/no votes. That is, I almost think we should hash out a consensus for, say a number needed to second HERE.

THEN we vote yes or no on it.

I think that's a good idea anyhow. It builds consensus rather than making everything a contest with 5 disparate groups and 4 of them unhappy with the results (or at best, 3 unhappy, one group with it's second choice and only one group with its first choice).

I was against using preferences, but I've come around.

The alternatives are

1. Reducing everying to two choices
2. Having lots and lots of runoffs

Lots.

Where we have a vote which involves more than two choices, I don't see any better way.

I was voting for "more votes". I can be spanked as a sloppy reader and a bad voter, but there it is.

I agree that going with the choice that gets the most votes (that is, a plurality) is Good Enough. I understand the concerns about something that actually got a minority of votes getting anointed because it got 1% more than its nearest rival, but to me that's mitigated by my fear that an over-complicated voting process will be too hard on voters and tallyers. Plus, ultimately, we're deciding on new threads and spoiler policies, not senators or presidents.

As a side note, we did last year's Foamies via the Australian ballot. Angus did a great job, but it still took a long time to vote and several months more to get the results back.

The author didn't mean to put in 50%+1 for ballot questions containing more than 2 choices. In other words, I was only thinking of ballots with a "yes I want that" or "no I don't" type issue, like adding new threads.

OK that's kind of a dampener.

We really think a large number of people were voting with the idea of simple yes and no ballots?