Your analogy is only true if your True Number has lost the majority vote. At least now you'll have some say in the final number. Or you can abstain.

If you vote for a second choice, you aren't cheating then, but you're Planning to Cheat (which is just as bad), because you don't think your True Number has the staying power required or something. There's that little niggling doubt, anyway. If you abstain, you're letting the matchmaker choose your True Number for you.

ftr, I really do think of numbers this way. I have been the despair of many math teachers.

Don't worry about the math. It's fair, and the choice that the actual majority favors will win.

This sounds like one of my math teachers telling me not to worry about 1's motivation and why it's such a loner. I'm not sure I like this side of you, Wolfie (snerk, wolfie, snerk).

Oh, and I do think you see it pretty well, but I'm not sure we haven't, or won't, come to a consensus. It's a long and talky process.

If I may make a suggestion: if we do open up a preferential voting discussion in the future, how about we start it off, not with discussing the merits thereof, but by trying to hammer out an explanation of how it works that people can agree does so clearly? So, y'know, we have a given passage, and we can discuss the wording thereof, what's too vague or too confusing, that sort of thing. It seems to work pretty well with other issues to get the focus onto exact wording, it might help with this issue too.

I'm having a little trouble believing that choosing between 3 and 4 as a ballot option has gotten this complicated, though.

The reason people can't decide is that there is, in fact, piss little difference between the two (okay, exactly one month difference in fact), and no one wants to admit that. Except the people who plan on voting for 6 months anyway.

At this point, the path of least resistance is to have 3 numbers on the ballot (3, 4, and 6) and have an immediate run-off in case there is no majority. Y'all can keep duking it out, but this seems like the simplest path to me.

If I may make a suggestion: if we do open up a preferential voting discussion in the future, how about we start it off, not with discussing the merits thereof, but by trying to hammer out an explanation of how it works that people can agree does so clearly?

I can only speak for myself, but I am not confused about how it works at this point & do not think a clear explanation is what is needed. I think some people want it and others don't.

This sounds like one of my math teachers telling me not to worry about 1's motivation and why it's such a loner.

If your teachers had to get this meta, I'm way out of my league.

....by trying to hammer out an explanation of how it works that people can agree does so clearly?

For me it's the Bush/Gore/Nader explanation. Hypothetical example:

Republicans - 49% Bush

Democrats - 48% Gore

Greens - 3% Nader

If one party needs over 50%, then nobody's won, and there would need to be a Bush/Gore runoff. A Preferential Vote takes the losing partys' ballots to see who their second choice would be. Then it adds their second choice to the appropriate winning party. Since all the Greens ranked Gore second, Gore gets put over the top with Greens' 3% and wins. (And the world, would be a better place...)

(Obviously we all know that Gore actually won the popular vote, but for hypothetical purposes this example is what does it for me.)

I can only speak for myself, but I am not confused about how it works at this point & do not think a clear explanation is what is needed. I think some people want it and others don't.

Burrell, I'm aware that there are people here who both understand it and don't want it. Agreeing on an explanation in no way forces anyone to vote in a particular direction. The intention is simply to avoid much of the previous unpleasantness, which to me was tied up in
a. the length of time it took to discuss just what it was, and
b. confusion between people saying 'it's too complicated' and 'I don't want it'.

Plus, if it ever comes to a vote, we're going to want to agree wording, right?

For me it's the Bush/Gore/Nader explanation.

I'd suggest right now that we not actually open such a discussion right now, especially since off-topicness is more of an issue in this thread and there's been nothing directly proposed about preferential voting. This is just a suggestion for when it does come up again.

I like Burrell's suggestion a lot. Put up 3, 4, and 6 and let them fight it out.

We all know 6 will win anyway.

Yeah, 6 is the sh*t.

Let's put up 6, 4 and 3, and if in the extremely unlikely event that 6 doesn't get 51% of the vote, then we fight out what to do.

Here's a thought:

Let 6, 4, and 3 duke it out. Include preferences on the ballot, but (for now) count only first choices. If there is no majority, hold an old-fashioned run-off, then compare the result with what preferential tallying on the first ballot would have resulted in.

I'm only half kidding.