"carcass" has two lovely esses.

And Betsy, are we only going to use this for matters of no import whatsoever?

That's not been my impression.

These explanations in the thread are choir preaching because we are talking about the people who don't read Bureaucracy. IJS.

Cheese voters switched 20-5 to Kafka.

There's no switching, if by that you mean they saw the result of the first round and then got to vote again.

To speak precisely, if you discard the Cheese votes for Cheese, and it turns out the Cheese voters all preferred Kafka, then the root emotional reaction is "Wait! Monkey was winning, and then Kafka got a majority! How can this be? This isn't what I meant at all!"

I was a math major. I can understand this stuff. But I think it's an unreasonably high barrier to entry, and had I known I was opening the door to this with my pro-vote pro-"simple majority" vote, I'd have voted differently.

(Technically, no majors, but I did do a year of advanced stats, and, believe it or not, logic)

ITA w/ita.

But if there were a runoff, Kafka would have won anyway. We're just saving time by having an "instant runoff". t /peeking in

I do understand the preferential system. I don't think it's *that* complicated, but I do think that it's too complicated for the kind of decisions that are going to be taken here. Plus, with the preferential system, there's always the risk that the final winner would be a counterintuitive one, and each votation will be followed by days of explanation of "31% of the people who chose A chose B as second option, but only 17% of people who chose D picked B...".

The way I see it, if Monkey wins by 34% and the other thread names get only 33'9% each... then tough. People should just be aware of that posibility when voting in a multiple-choice election, so that they don't get too upset when something like that happens.

But if there were a runoff, Kafka would have won anyway. We're just saving time by having an "instant runoff".

That's how I've always understood the Aiuistriailiaianiiii system. Anyway, I suspect that all this dreaded mathiness isn't actually necessary for the (possibly mythical) People Who Don't Read Bureaucracy. If we go this way, and we put up a ballot that says "rank your preferences, with '1' being your first choice and '2' being your second choice...." people can and will understand it. I don't think it's at all complex, in terms of what we're asking people to vote on. (Obviously, it's considerably more complex for those of us who have chosen to play in this discussion, but that's part of making that choice.)

I'm changing my post.

You rank in terms of what you like.

If you like Monkey, Cheese, Kafka you rank it like that.

If Monkey looks like it might win and it's a tie and then Cheese pulls ahead that means more people who ranked Kafka first ranked Cheese second. So Monkey wasn't their first OR second choice.

(Did I get that right again?)

So it really is the majority winning because it's based on preference. First, second, third.