[Elections] A simple SqF board elections solution using SqP

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Cees De Groot wrote:
> On 1/14/06, Daniel Vainsencher <daniel.vainsencher at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>2. The only objection to using SqP as a basis for the voters list was
>>Lex, and at least Ken, Peter and I think this is a reasonable basis. I
>>think it is close enough to consensus.
> Note that Peter rightly remarked that Ken and I are just "opiniative"
> here, we're candidates so have nothing to decide here.
If we're too eager to dismiss people, we'll get left with nothing. 
Peter's not on the team, so why should his opinion count? That leaves 
just me and Lex, so go away and let us debate for all eternity ;-)

> Is Condorcet the way to go? I looked a bit on Wikipedia, Condorcet
> seems to be for electing a single person as far as I could tell...
Many of the choices we will need to make fall under the category of 
social choice - individuals decide what they prefer, the voting system 
decides which (one) option will happen. At a first glance it seems that 
the Condorcet system is quite easily usable for choosing multiple people 
by taking the winner (assuming one exists), removing it, then taking the 
next winner and so forth. Of course some more reading and thinking is 
probably in order.

> I have setup a project called Agora (gosh what an original name)
> that's basically waiting for the definitive decision on the voting
> system to use. It'll be hardcoded for this election, to make
> everything easier :)
Can't say I understood that paragraph... Agora is code that does what? 
in what ways is it hardcoded?

BTW, I believe this election should not be the first use of the voting 
system. We should debug it and let people get used to it before we use 
it for something important.

I also do not feel urgency in choosing the new board - there has been no 
elected for a long time. We need to get an elected board, but doing it 
right is more important than doing it on a certain date.

> BTW - there's another little task for this team - the candidate list
> still has two vacancies. And in order to let the voting system make
> any sense, it'd be good to have more candidates than seats, of
> course...
Like I said, I don't consider this election as urgent as you seem to. 
However, coming up with a proposal on what the board means, how 
candidates present themselves, how many there are and so forth is 
probably the next thing we should talk about after implementation of the 
voting system is underway.

Daniel