Of the concerns (things we don't know) stated below, I am even a little worried only by the last. People might decide not to vote, that's true. However, even if few vote the first time, is that a reason to stop running the votes? no, just a reason to improve the system, and advertise more, and give it a few more shots. And improving the system is an option only if we have access to the code.

So I think there are still good reasons to develop a voting system, though anyone taking it on should be aware that we have an alternative.

About the other concerns - Condorcet is hardly experimental, its been a subject of research of many years. We can modify the voters set, candidates set, and nomination system regardless of the system (since we're not specing much work into any of those anyway...). We have a demonstration by Debian that electing a leader using a general decision mechanism is viable. CIVS demonstrates that multiple winners are certainly a possibility with Condorcet.

In short, I feel we're wasting time here. If people decide that holding a vote on a specific date is crucial, and there is not alternative ready by then, I won't object to the use of CIVS, it is not a bad alternative. Besides that - anyone minds if I ask for volunteers to implement the voting system as proposed on minnow?

If people actually support doing this, I'll make the request come from the elections team.

Daniel

Peter Crowther wrote:

...

From: [...] Masashi UMEZAWA I also think the proposed system is good in a short-term basis, but it would be harder to maintain the voters' list if votings occur many times.

I agree entirely. The reason I'm suggesting a system that is as easy as possible to develop (in the simplest case, we write no code) is that we're bootstrapping here:

• We don't know whether the voting system we have chosen (Condorcet) is

appropriate;

• We don't know whether the construction of our set of voters is

appropriate;

• We don't know whether the nomination system for our candidates is

appropriate;

• We don't know whether a system that is appropriate for electing guides

is also appropriate for making other community decisions;

• We don't know whether anyone will actually vote.

Until we have some indications on a few of these points, it seems to be a risk to spend scarce development time coding mechanisms that may be replaced after this election.

...

Ideally, voters' list should be automatically created, importing SqP, Squeak-Ja, and other community lists.

Assuming we continue with that mechanism for constructing our set of voters, I agree with you. However, I'm not yet sufficiently convinced we'll keep the mechanism to want to invest the time in doing this.

- Peter

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