[Foundation-l] Voting

Sun Jun 1 20:54:52 UTC 2008

It wasn't for me, and I was voting. That page just says "You can do X  
to rank your candidates. We'll pick em with the Schulze method" But  
never actually says WHAT the schulze method is. It just says go view  
the Wikipedia page, which for me was completely incomprehensible.   
Actually you know where I found the best description, was on the  
Condorcet voting article. It explains it in pretty basic terms, but I  
think they could be generalized even farther:
-----
Rank candidates in terms of preference. First choice is 1, second is  
2, etc. Unranked candidates have a rank of 100, which is the lowest  
possible rank. You may give multiple candidates the same rank if you  
choose.

When you submit your ballot, each candidate's preference will be  
compared with each other candidate's preference, to see which one  
would win in a "one on one" race. The candidate that would win the  
most "one on one races" is the winner. For example, If you ranked  
candidates A,B,C,D in the order 1, 2, 3, 4, then A would be the  
winner, because A beat out three other candidates (B,C,D). B would  
beat 2 other candidates, C would beat 1, and D would not beat any.

In the event of a tie, where the system is unable to determine a  
winner, the system will then drop the candidates who won by the  
narrowest margins until there is a winner.
------

Is that about correct?

-Dan

On Jun 1, 2008, at 4:32 PM, Casey Brown wrote:

> On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 4:23 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> As an aside (disclosure: I too am a candidate), there is terrible
>> explanation of the voting procedure on the voting page. It just says
>> "use the schulze method" and links to the Wikipedia article on the
>> topic, which is incomprehensibly technical, and describes all sorts  
>> of
>> code features and matrices and stuff, and never once really explains
>> what kind of voting system it is. I realize that's more of a  
>> criticism
>> of the Wikipedia article than of the voting system, but the voting
>> page doesn't really explain the operation of the system. I think it
>> ought to do so.
>>
>> -Dan
>
> It's a bit clearer when you are actually voting.
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Boardvote_intro>
>
> -- 
> Casey Brown
> Cbrown1023
>
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