[Elections] Add a "none of the above" option?

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at tx.technion.ac.il
Fri Feb 16 17:29:48 UTC 2007


This is not how the Condorcet voting method works. Every voter always 
votes for every option, the information he provides is a (possibly 
partial) order of preferences. Therefore A B C N means that I prefer 
anyone over N, and gives no advantage to N at all.

For an example, see http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_001 which 
describes Debian's 2004 election, where "none of the above" won over one 
candidate "Gergely". This only occured because 258 voters preferred NOTA 
over Gergely, and 144 prefered Gergely over NOTA. Not an impressive 
victory for NOTA, since Gergely ran as a sort of joke 
(http://www.debian.org/vote/2004/vote_001).

I should probably explain this on the mailing list.

Daniel

Ron Teitelbaum wrote:
> I'm not sure this works.  If like last year we vote for our favorite 7
> candidates in the order that we want to see them elected and we only like 3
> candidates then we vote for none of the above in place 4.  Does this really
> have the effect of voting against people or does none of the above have an
> unfair advantage given that it represents voting against multiple
> candidates?  How do we know which candidate none of above represents a vote
> against?  For example if you vote for A B C N and I vote For A B D N, N gets
> two votes!  If everyone votes N then it always wins!  I wonder if we should
> have a yes or no vote on candidates instead.  Like a confirmation.  
>
> Ron
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: elections-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:elections-
>> bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Vainsencher
>> Sent: Friday, February 16, 2007 6:55 AM
>> To: elections at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>> Subject: [Elections] Add a "none of the above" option?
>>
>> Hi everyone, I think that regardless of the number of candidates we get,
>> we should add a "none of the above" option to the vote.
>>
>> Cons: Someone might lose to this option and feel rejected.
>>
>> Pros: Everyone that beats it will feel more actively endorsed by the
>> community. A truly terrible candidate cannot be elected by default.
>> Voters have an explicit way to say they want other candidates.
>>
>> What does everyone else think?
>>
>> Daniel
>> _______________________________________________
>> Elections mailing list
>> Elections at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/elections
>>     
>
>
>   



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