[Discussion] Different Types Of Voting

So I have been debating on who to vote for in the new mods vote over here and it got me thinking about how I would prefer if I could vote for a few different accounts.

It reminded me of the video series by CPG Grey on voting, a good watch for more information (youtube link), and it got me wondering if for similar votes in the future if we should use something more similar to Single Transferable Vote?

As a quick example; if there are 5 candidates and 3 eventual winners, you rank your votes, but you also don't have to list everyone. You could vote for 1, 3, or all 5, you just rank them in order of preference. Then when the vote tally comes, you just take any leftover votes from the person with the least votes and apply them to the voters second choice, etc..., until you have your winners.

I think it would really help in votes similar to the mod one, because that would let me vote for the 2-4 accounts I would be interested in seeing become a mod, without my one vote getting lost just because only 4 other people voted the same, or in cases where the vote is very close, if that makes sense.

It could be a little over complicated, but was curious if anyone else had similar feelings about the vote, or any future ones that are not just yay / nay.

tcely,

CPG Grey has a lot of good videos, but ranked voting is not the way.

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem makes this very clear.

https://star.vote/ is a good site to keep handy if you're looking for a more expressive voting system.

By default, choosing approval voting is the simplest way with very good performance.

https://youtu.be/orybDrUj4vA

carbon_based, (edited )
@carbon_based@sh.itjust.works avatar

Fine idea.
Given it can get extracted by script, we could simply instruct each vote should contain a list of rankings in a specific format, like ... brainstorming:

  • Let's say, there are 5 options/candidates, a vote could look like
    4,5,2,1,3
    where candidate 4 would get 5 points, candidate 5 gets 4 points, and so on.
  • Separators could be made flexible, "4, 5, 2, 1,3"... to make it a bit syntax-tolerant.
  • The script/bot should be able to return two lists, each with username / home instance / points per candidate / original posted string; one list with positive recognition (and totals) and one for the erroneous. Could be put in spreadsheets or posted as tables.
  • It would work with only two options as well.

Edit ...
The more i think about it, the more i come to the pont that this method would be elegantly simplistic. [shoulderpat] ;-)

  • It's highly accessible, no fancy stuff or external tools required. All can be done with what is available in Lemmy anyway, and it's client-agnostic.
  • A bot could post like three .csv lists; the two detailed ones i suggested above, and a "tally" one, that could already contain some fancy statistics, like votes per instance, or double usernames.
  • All is openly accessible.

Cons:

  • Perhaps not as error-resistant as a custom interface would be ... but errors can happen anyhow.
  • Concealed voting is not possible.

Alerts:

  • If there is no way to rank options equally, then in an equal-preference situation, the option which is listed first on the ballot will likely have an advantage. People are more likely to enter numbers in order than to swap them.
    Fix: should have a way to assign equal rank to options, like
    (4, 5), 2
    In this example, 4 and 5 would get (5+4)/2=4.5 points each (not 5 because that would give slightly more total weight to the vote), 3 points for option 2, and (2+1)/2=1.5 points to each of the remaining options 1 and 3. (And no such things are not too complex for my mind, as someone elsewhere wanted to suggest to me.)
  • My suggestion here is counting all rankings, not having a winner determined by the sums of first choices, which would introduce some complexity and possible elimination of ballots: https://ballotpedia.org/Ranked-choice_voting_(RCV)
    So rather than giving the first choice an excessive gravity and counting second choices only if that didn't meet the threshold (thereby determining a majority from the rankings at the cost of ballots that didn't present a full ranking), this allows for determining even or "unconclusive" preferences. I also had the possibility of multiple selection in mind. Keep it simple.
Psephomancy,

My suggestion here is counting all rankings, not having a winner determined by the sums of first choices, which would introduce some complexity and possible elimination of ballots

Some ranked ballot systems that count all rankings:

Difficult_Bit_1339,
@Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works avatar

Preferential/Ranked Choice voting is great. It removes the bias away from the most extreme options and allows people more agency by not forcing strategic voting: i.e. "I like the 2nd choice best but I have to vote for the 1st choice because it is more popular and otherwise the 3rd or 4th choice will win)"

Seraph089,

I agree that some kind of ranked voting makes a lot of sense, and it's something we should be looking at going forward. The mod vote is the perfect example (and some folks are doing it there), but we'd probably need the mods in place to handle the extra work.

We have a lot of work to do to get The Agora running well. This is a big one, but even simple things like the structure of how discussions and voting are handled need to be addressed.

goat,

I'm biased, but I think preferential voting is the best system. It's the system Australia uses, and it's great.

The big flaw of most democracies is that you risk wasting your vote. You can vote for a small party that has your values, but the chances of them beating the big parties are slim to none. So you vote for the big parties and they don't represent you despite you voting for them.

Preferential Voting takes your small party vote, and puts it to the next person you voted for. Your ballot sheet ends up completely filled.

I think the same should apply here.

TendieMaster69, (edited )

It's referred to as "ranked choice voting" in the US, and yes I agree, it's the best way to do voting. Unfortunately it would put a lot of corrupt shitheads out of power over time, so congress simply won't vote on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting

babelspace,
babelspace avatar

Yeah, for a ballot with multiple candidates, I would prefer this approach. Ranked Choice Voting is the name that I’ve most often heard it referred to by advocates who want to adopt it in the US.

Seems like the only difference between this and what the OP is describing is whether every candidate has to be ranked, or just as many as you want to.

sneakyninjapants,

I did something along these lines Here. Idk if a second vote is even considered, but I thought it would be best err on the side of too much information instead of too little. I fully support this for a vote that has more than two options. Slightly more confusing, but we're all smart here (enough to sign up on lemmy at least), so I think we could figure it out.

Trekman10,
@Trekman10@sh.itjust.works avatar

Might be possible if we do voting on another platform? Something we can just click the boxes in order of preference? I had seen some discussion a couple days ago about using Decidum: https://sh.itjust.works/post/277452

aspseka,

As much as I would welcome a better voting system, taking it off platform brings all kinds of obstacles (technical, accessibility,...) and drawbacks (archived?, searchable?, discussion easy to find?)

And, by voting here, we may discuss our votes without any effort.

Trekman10,
@Trekman10@sh.itjust.works avatar

But, I think that with growth, the method of people commenting "aye" or "nay" is going to quickly run into issues. For one, how can we ever be sure a count is correct? Not saying out of nefariousness or anything, but even if you go "cmd/ctrl+f + aye/nay/other option" you still have the possibility of typos, the page not having loaded all the comments, and if we do restrict voting in the future or for specific decisions, that method would still need a manual review of potentially hundreds of comments and usernames.

Furthermore, others have suggested more open and democratic forms of voting such as ranking preferences, counting that by manually reviewing each comment is also not very feasible, but I do believe that system like these are necessary for the sort of democratic state the instance is trying to be.

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