Electoral System Reform Bill

[The Duke]

Colin,

I think the reason people like me are looking seriousl at a new voting system is not that the current voting system can't be administered or that its too hard to count votes.  Its really more that there's strategic voting going on, and it distorting elections.

Under the proposed system, you'd have to vote for a candidate.  Just one.  No voting for someone you don't support to hurt the stronger opponent.

If we had a secret ballot, this would be mott since no one would know how to go about strategic voting.  People reejected that idea, so we're onto what's probably our second best concept.

[Jake]

§15. Deleting votes.
Any voter who deletes his vote shall be barred from voting in the next federal election.

Nay

[Colin]

Colin,

I think the reason people like me are looking seriousl at a new voting system is not that the current voting system can't be administered or that its too hard to count votes.  Its really more that there's strategic voting going on, and it distorting elections.

Under the proposed system, you'd have to vote for a candidate.  Just one.  No voting for someone you don't support to hurt the stronger opponent.

If we had a secret ballot, this would be mott since no one would know how to go about strategic voting.  People reejected that idea, so we're onto what's probably our second best concept.

Strategic voting will still occur with FPTP the only difference is we wouldn't call it strategic voting we would call it coalitioning. What will happen if we allow Atlasia to be put on any sort of FPTP system is that we will be destroying the multiparty system as we know it. Why don't we just mandate that everyone has to join the Republican and Democratic Parties while we're at it because that's exactly what we're going to be doing. At least with IRV we are giving more candidates a chance and we are allowing more than two parties to be a factor in Atlasia.

As I have said before and I will say again and again people who want to vote tactically will always find a way, some times its just different techniques are used.

[MasterJedi]

This amendment has enough to fail.

[Colin]

I would suggest that all Senators also review these pages from Wikipedia as well as they are probably the most thorough yet brief and succinct overviews of major voting systems on the internet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_Voting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_different_voting_systems_under_similar_circumstances
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_systems

Another wonderful thing about all these articles is that they give the positives and negatives for all systems of voting including Preferential and FPTP they also prove my earlier point that all voting systems are equally susceptable to tactical voting and so changing from one voting system to another for this reason is akin to buying two indentical televisions and then expecting one to work better.

[Emsworth]

Another wonderful thing about all these articles is that they give the positives and negatives for all systems of voting including Preferential and FPTP they also prove my earlier point that all voting systems are equally susceptable to tactical voting and so changing from one voting system to another for this reason is akin to buying two indentical televisions and then expecting one to work better.

I absolutely agree.

In fact, according to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem, every non-random electoral system is susceptible to tactical voting if more than two candidates are involved. In other words, it has been proven that it is impossible to create a system free from tactical manipulation, unless we resort to randomly choosing the winner.

[Gabu]

Another wonderful thing about all these articles is that they give the positives and negatives for all systems of voting including Preferential and FPTP they also prove my earlier point that all voting systems are equally susceptable to tactical voting and so changing from one voting system to another for this reason is akin to buying two indentical televisions and then expecting one to work better.

I absolutely agree.

In fact, according to the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem, every non-random electoral system is susceptible to tactical voting if more than two candidates are involved. In other words, it has been proven that it is impossible to create a system free from tactical manipulation, unless we resort to randomly choosing the winner.

That doesn't mean that there don't exist systems in which tactical voting is easier or more powerful than in others.

[Emsworth]

That doesn't mean that there don't exist systems in which tactical voting is easier or more powerful than in others.

No doubt. However, tactical voting is much simpler in FPTP than in IRV.

[Gabu]

That doesn't mean that there don't exist systems in which tactical voting is easier or more powerful than in others.

No doubt. However, tactical voting is much simpler in FPTP than in IRV.

In IRV, you could have a situation where, in the last round, the leading candidate is 10+ votes ahead of the second-place candidate, but where a single tactical vote completely flips that around and gives the second-place candidate a commanding lead over the original leading candidate.  In FPTP, a single vote is just that: a single vote.

Of course, most tactical voting could be done away with through the implementation of a secret ballot, but we've already been through that, and the people don't want that option.

[Emsworth]

In IRV, you could have a situation where, in the last round, the leading candidate is 10+ votes ahead of the second-place candidate, but where a single tactical vote completely flips that around and gives the second-place candidate a commanding lead over the original leading candidate.  In FPTP, a single vote is just that: a single vote.

In FPTP, tactical voting takes a slightly different form: "forming coalitions." It may not be as blatant, but it still exists.

[Colin]

In IRV, you could have a situation where, in the last round, the leading candidate is 10+ votes ahead of the second-place candidate, but where a single tactical vote completely flips that around and gives the second-place candidate a commanding lead over the original leading candidate.  In FPTP, a single vote is just that: a single vote.

In FPTP, tactical voting takes a slightly different form: "forming coalitions." It may not be as blatant, but it still exists.

As well as the idea of push-overs where all you do is ask maybe 10 or so of your supporters to support a weaker candidate in the first round in order to win easily in the second round. That, in and of itself, is quite easy to do and probably allows more certainty in whether or not your candidate will win then trying to find the exact preferential ballot that will cause your ballot to win and that exact ballot may be useless in the end because of other last minute votes.

[Brandon H]

This immediate election is looking like there will only be three or four people running which is not much more than what we typically have in a Southeastern Election. (But we have had Presidential Elections with 6 or more people already.)

Approval voting should work just the same whether you have 3 or 30 candidates. The more votes and more candidates, the more prone it is to human error just as any other system is, but I believe it is a simpler system to tabulate than IRV or Condorcet or anything else other than FPTP while it still gives voters several choices.

[minionofmidas]

I still don't see people's problems with tabulating IRV or Condorcet (the workload for these is the same) ... what a bunch of lazies you are ...

[Brandon H]

Can I suggest whoever wins the Presidential Election nominate Lewis for SoFA?

[minionofmidas]

Can I suggest whoever wins the Presidential Election nominate Lewis for SoFA?

Only if I lose my Senate race. It is a job I would probably take if offered (as everybody who's been around long enough knows...)

No seriously, there are a number of reasons why SoFA is, alongside GM, the hardest job in Atlasia (Mmm...maybe we should make these jobs elected in the future. Just a thought ... ah, no, forget it. Probably contraproductive.) but the actual counting of the ballots is not one of them. I do have an access problem at 6 in the morning though (=midnight forum time), which makes me a somewhat less than perfect fit for the position.

[Colin]

We also must look at other versions of IRV that may be easier for our electoral system to handle.

One of my favourites is supplementary voting. In this type of voting as it would probably be implemented in Atlasia each person is allowed to preference half of the official candidates, or in the case of this election two preferences, instead of having four or more preferences. This allows for the voting to not only take on some of the characteristics of approval voting, since you would need to approve of someone to preference them, but it would also make tactical voting harder because there would only be two or three preferences to work with instead of the unlimited number we have now.

[The Duke]

Can I suggest whoever wins the Presidential Election nominate Lewis for SoFA?

Only if I lose my Senate race. It is a job I would probably take if offered (as everybody who's been around long enough knows...)

No seriously, there are a number of reasons why SoFA is, alongside GM, the hardest job in Atlasia (Mmm...maybe we should make these jobs elected in the future. Just a thought ... ah, no, forget it. Probably contraproductive.) but the actual counting of the ballots is not one of them. I do have an access problem at 6 in the morning though (=midnight forum time), which makes me a somewhat less than perfect fit for the position.

DSoFA then?

[Peter]

The state of play as I understand it is the following:

1. The Texasgurl amendment failed.
2. Nothing else has happened.

My hope presently is to work to build an Electoral Reform Bill that will embody the FPTP-with-runoff electoral system. Whether I will actually vote for it, I do not know, but if we are to have it, I am determined that it be done as best as is possible. Therefore, for the moment I will not proceed to debate the underlying merits and demerits of a change to FPTP-with-runoff.

Instead, I will move to debate the other changes that this bill brings with it. For starters, I will list what has not changed: Sections 10 through 12 appear to be effective carryovers from the UEC, as is Section 5 Clause 2. Section 6 is largely a carryover, though I am slightly concerned that Section 1 has sufficient changes to cause unforeseen consequences. The rest of it is pretty much new stuff.

The biggest change other than the move to FPTP is the introduction of a dichotomy for invalid ballots - it creates two classes:

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The particulars for handling and classifying the different types of ballots is then outlined in Sections 7 and 8.

I must state my opposition to this proposal. Not only will there be an inevitable amount of confusion as to what constitutes a Class A or B invalid ballot, but I fear circumstances may be further complicated by whatever "clarifications" are rendered by voters.

A discussion beginning here vaguely outlines my feelings on allowing clarifications. If somebody gives a ridiculous "clarification" that blantently changes voting intent, then it should not be allowed, but under Gabu's dichotomy scheme, such a change/"clarification" of vote would be allowed.

All in all, I am opposed to this dichotomy scheme, and will vote to remove it from the bill. Ideally, there should be nothing that qualifies as a Class A Invalid Vote, and I will certainly work towards that goal in this bill. In the last Presidential election there were three invalid votes:

1. Activity requirements - this would be permenantly disqualifed under present and Gabu's arrangments.
2&3. VP-less ballots - Other arrangements in this bill would require the administrator to recognise a certain intent for these votes, thus negating any need to classify them as Class A invalid.

Other types of disqualification cannot be changed in this legislation, specifically "editted" votes. The Constitution's prohibition on editting (and by extension deleting) votes is contained in Article V, Section 2, Clause 9:

Persons who edit the post in which their vote(s) are contained at the place of voting shall have their vote counted as void.

If an attempt to amend that is desired, this bill is not the venue.

I'll leave this open for a debate for a little while. Then I will call for an informal vote of the Senate to gauge opinion. Then I'll probably move on to try to stoke debate on something else.

Ultimately I suppose much of this debate will be me temperature testing the Senate to gauge its opinion, and then probably writing a massive formal amendment to the bill that I will work on with all interested parties that will encompass the opinions that the Senate gives us.

[Peter]

Is anybody going to comment or shall I just write a big amendment doing whatever I want to do, and then introduce that?

[MasterJedi]

Is anybody going to comment or shall I just write a big amendment doing whatever I want to do, and then introduce that?

I think you should do the second, I don't think anybody (including me) knows how to write it and it'll creat some discussion about what could actually work.

[Ebowed]

Let's get back to work on this.

[MasterJedi]

Let's get back to work on this.

I know Peter is working on a giant amendment to re-write the whole thing. He'll probaly have the best stuff so I'm waiting for that.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

As per Article 4 Section 1 Clause 4 of the OPSR, I bring a motion to end debate on this, since I don't see any changes being proposed for debate in the time remaining in the session and moving this off the calendar will open up time for some uncontroversial bills.

[MasterJedi]

I won't go with your motion.

[Gabu]

What's the status of Peter's thing?  Is he still working on it?