[Foundation-l] First Past the Post

Wed May 12 05:22:38 UTC 2004

>Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
>out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
>because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
>the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
>matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

We will need to compromise on a system to achieve consensus.
The effects of the voting system (which make people hate FPTP) are important,
but so are the need of the administrators (Danny and Imran in this case)
for a simple system.  I'm highly suspicious of any argument that Wikipedians,
who have learned how to use apostrophes and brackets to mark up text,
can't learn to rank candidates in order as IRV and Condorcet methods require.
However, I'm sympathetic to the greater work that Danny and Imran would have.

>On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
>posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
>like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
>also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

I believe that approval voting ([[en:Approval voting]] has good coverage)
is very easy to implement and, while not an ideal system in my opinion,
is far and away better than FPTP while being quite nearly as easy to do.
It's the sort of thing that one might expect as a compromise between
fans of IRV (my fave), fans of Condorcet (often strongly principled),
and the people who have to run the vote (who hate this complicated stuff).
So while I'd prefer either IRV ''or'' Condorcet if Danny and Imran will do it,
starting with Approval may yield a quick resolution to the issue.
(We shall see if somebody objects to it!)

>This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
>options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
>where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

I hope that people will discuss things on the mailing list,
where a call for opinions has been given out (just now by Danny).
Shunting discussion to an unidentified meta page will spread it out,
and mails to the AOL address above won't be any good for discussion.
(Of course if somebody feels the need for confidentiality,
then that's another matter.)

-- Toby