It means we have to discuss how to obtain a true majority on polls that contain more than a yes/no decision or more than two choices. Preferential voting is one of the options for doing so.

Yep. Two others I believe I recall being mentioned were that if no candidate receives over 50% of the primary vote, then we keep the status quo (no candidate wins); and that we only ever put up proposals in a form containing two choices.

It means we have to discuss how to obtain a true majority on polls that contain more than a yes/no decision or more than two choices. Preferential voting is one of the options for doing so.

I'll also again mention the option that with no majority, the vote could be considered to be a Vote of No Confidence for making any change at all. I'm not wed to that notion, but I do think No Majority could be considered an instrument of closing discussion on issues and putting them aside for six months/year.

But yes, now we have to consider preferential voting or runoffs or crafting the polls into yes/no questions by consensus.

My gut at this point is to do as was asked upthread and try the preferential voting and see how people respond to it. I'm a little more open to the notion now of trying things out and seeing how they work. Tinkering and seeing response might be better than trying to sort it all out in our heads first.

How about if we wait until the situation happens rather than having to cover all what-ifs now? Sorry, just a little tired. Perhaps after more coffee.

I like that, Laura. My gut says it will come up soon though, because one of the next things we need to determine is a quorum (from the original ballot) and there will either be percent ranges or number ranges to choose from.

I don't mind proceeding with the process of making decisions on the things on "the list" like the quorum. I just get head explody when we get into trying to anticipate every possible what-if that might occur in the future.

I just get head explody when we get into trying to anticipate every possible what-if that might occur in the future.

Concur. I'm amenable to trying a preferential ballot on the quorum question. Again, that's just my opinion, but that's how I'm leaning.

I don't intend to rush anything, if people prefer to wait, but just in order to keep things in order, the last former proposal for a ballot was in Sophia Brooks "Bureaucracy 1: Like Kafka, Only Funnier" Mar 3, 2003 2:25:48 pm EST (there were some corrections made after this post, but they were part of what created the second ballot, so we'll probably need to correct over them anyway).

Thank you Nilly!

I knew that existed somewhere. Yay Nilly once again!

Nilly - the problem is two of the questions in Sophias proposal require decision between multiple options:

number or percent of minimum turnout required

and number of seconds (One choice being zero because we have not decided on seconds.)

So if we can't reach on consensus on how to handle that (at least this one time) then we have to vote on that before we can vote on Sophias propolsal.

If we really can informally agree to use preferential voting, just this one time, without prejudice to the future, then a nice possiblity arises. As long as the ballot will include multiple questions anyway, are there any other questions that need to be decided we can add? Because maybe we can we make this the last vote on process by including all other process questions that need to be decided?(iI can't remember any offhand.)

Because if we can then this becomes the last voting on voting ballot, the last discussing about discussing discussion for a while, hopefully for a long while.