If the ballot were different, the results would be too. You can't take the results of one ballot and mush them around to support a hypothetical result; see also counting of the 'popular vote' for US president, a ballot which has never been tried, and whose results are unknowable.
A vote for 4 says (to me, not a qualified voter) I don't like the current voting, and hiding identities is also undesirable; if this choice is selected, the status quo must be continued until a new alternative is voted upon, but there's clearly desire to do so. If option 3 were selected, the status quo had clearly won, and the issue should be considered settled for whatever timeframe Debian considers appropriate.
I don't follow this point. I'm not an American, but my understanding is counting via simple popular vote vs "electoral college" doesn't change the ballot itself, you still vote for the president directly; it just changes the way the ballots are counted.
Are you suggesting either something on the ballot is different, or that people would making a different vote if it was counted differently?
Two changes would happen. A lot of people who don't vote today because their state either heavily favours the 'wrong' candidate or the 'right' candidate will already win by a massive margin, would start voting, since all of sudden their vote matters a lot more.
Secondly, and more importantly, candidates would campaign very differently. In todays system gaining 1-2 percentage points in swing states like Arizona, Georgia or North Carolina is worth infinitely more than gaining 5 percentage point in California, New York or Massachusetts, and politicians on both sides campaign accordingly. In a popular vote scenario those extra 5 points in California could swing the election which would change the entire focus of not only the campaign, but possibly even the type of policy and even candidates that the parties put forwards.
Already a big issue that big cities vote one way while rural voters go another way.
It's not right that a voter in Maine or New Hampshire, which have 1.3 million people and are roughly even between the two major parties, has a high probability of changing the outcome with their vote, while a voter in California or Texas - which have 30 times as many people - is essentially irrelevant to the outcome.
Maybe it's hard to imagine the United States of American to become 50 independent countries but isn't the way you keep them united is by promising the smaller ones that they won't be trampled on by the big ones?
Yes, but in the US, at least, it's gotten to the absurd opposite where the minority is more or less assured a majority of votes. In order to avoid tyranny of the majority, we've more or less codified tyranny of the minority.
It would be more helpful to describe what a state of affairs looks like that doesn't result in large population states, who already maintain the gift/grift of cultural hegemony, running the country.
To take a step back, I've lived in both rural areas and major cities (I currently live in one). Rural folks being represented in government is not an issue and I find it kind of odd that people try to make it an issue like this. I'm fine having my agenda compete with theirs.
there were no metropolis like we have them today back then. City were considered gigantic with with only a few hundred thousand people -- which is maybe a largish town nowadays
Nobody said that rural people being represented is an issue, its nonetheless a fact that they're overrepresented, as they have disproportionate voting power. That term doesn't mean that they shouldn't be represented, it means that they have proportionally more voting power then a person living in a city does.
You spoke so certainly about the subject that that was not apparent. Maybe it should have been a question instead?
> there were no metropolis like we have them today back then
In the US there were, and the early development of the US is the reason for the electoral college. You had sprawling cities like NYC having to vote next to people who took months to get to the East coast for voting. Their problems were very different and the electoral college helped balance the concerns of cities that have easy access to imports and labor with areas that had no such things. On the larger scale it helped protect smaller states and territories from the policy and influence of larger states and territories. Again, their problems are very different, and in current day translate to what we end up referring to as urban, suburban, and rural.
> Nobody said that rural people being represented is an issue, its nonetheless a fact that they're overrepresented,
In the US they're not and you still haven't answered my original question, which is how are they overrepresented. You're just stating that's a fact, but it's really not.
Thats why I'm stating it as a fact,as it sounds like very simple logical connection. It could be a misunderstanding on my part, but it always sounded like a very straightforward situation to me.
There's lots of issues in the US to solve. Voting, imo, is just the pet issue of the losing party.
Every form of democracy is flawed, and it's important to be aware of them. Otherwise things tend to kinda spiral out of control, which they arguably already have in a lot of western nations with wanton corruption and completely insane people getting elected.
If you spread 49.9% of the population evenly in a system where states vote rather than individuals, you've insured that this minority gets no representation.
What election are you referring to where the Germans democratically gave Hitler power? His best "fair" election results saw his party get ~35% of the vote, and he only got the largely ceremonial chancellorship through backdoor deals. By the time he became president nobody could consider the elections fair.
[0] Which is also a problem. You know how everyone says the EU is undemocratic? It's for the same reason why we have an Electoral College - the whole "federal government represents states instead of people" thing.
The grass sure is greener on every other side.
States are abstract political entities; it's people who matter.
People are represented in the House by population (less so than they should be since we refuse to let the lower chamber grow in size) and in the Senate by state.
The President of the United States represents every United States citizen everywhere on the planet. The holder of that office should be elected by a majority, preferably with some form of expression of ranking preference, of those voters regardless of what political entity they are currently in or connected to.
Many people don’t vote at all because their preferred president has a 0% chance of winning their state and the vast majority of states are winner-take all with the electoral votes
The point is that you can't possibly know how all those interactions among voters would play out if you did in fact update the rules
That's clearly true, in addition to the obvious fact that campaigning would change dramatically. The OP's point however was that we don't know the extent to which it's true.
An obvious example of people making a different vote would be in California - I know more than one Republican who either didn't vote or voted for a 3rd party 'statement' candidate for president because they knew that all of the electoral votes in CA were going to the Democrat anyway.
Undoubtedly the same thing happens with Democrats in TX or TN or wherever Republicans hold a huge majority and Electors are winner-take-all.
The only way to properly poll that is either rank choice voting or a second vote after voting to change or not.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-politician-discovers-2-men-...
That's a difference without distinction, though. If option 4 were to win, then, what would they then do? The exact same thing as if option 3 were to win -- keep the status quo -- no? The idea that an option 4 win might also get people to consider other voting systems isn't really relevant; you don't vote to consider things that you will then put to vote. You just consider them, and then have a vote. So the "legal" outcome of this vote would be identical if either option 3 or 4 had won.
IMO the DPL is correct that this election was constructed poorly: they should have had either option 3 or 4 in there, not both. But I think that might just be a "too bad" situation: since there are no provisions in the constitution for a "do over", I think the only reasonable thing to do is to accept the results of the election, change the voting system, and then propose a new vote to potentially change it back, but this time more carefully consider the options on the ballot.
Unfortunately, because of the supermajority requirement, this probably won't work as intended. Just because options 3+4 on the current vote (had they been combined into a single option) may have been enough to cause the supermajority requirement to fail, it doesn't mean that there will be a supermajority (in a new vote) to switch back to public voting.
I think they screwed up, but in order to preserve confidence in their system, they'll have to suck it up and live with it.
It's about the 3:1 supermajority requirement that was needed for Option 1 and Option 2.
It turns out that their rules for dealing with this work by comparing those options against NOTA only; the problem is that it's plausible that many of the voters didn't realise this.
And that the super majority was achieved by 1 vote. So in some sense it was a cliff hanger.
But 3 to 1 is a large margin, which likely has a bit of fat. I'm not uncomfortable with it.
Yet Another case for approval voting over like, all other voting systems.
The issues arises from how the 3:1 ratio is calculated. Which is by comparing the number of “change it” votes to the number of the “None of the above (NOTA)” votes (this is my understanding of from the email thread).
As a result the number of NOTA directly impacts the number to approval votes needed to win, as a simple majority isn’t enough. Thus having a NOTA option, and an option that looks like a NOTA can create confusion which splits the NOTA vote, because voting “keep public vote” above NOTA, which reduces the number of counted NOTA votes, and increases the number of “change it” votes (as all non-NOTA votes are considered “change it” votes, regardless of practical impact, at least that my understanding from the thread). Thus reduces number of approval votes need to achieve the super majority.
As this vote was won by a single vote, voter confusion on how choice ordering regarding the NOTA option could have swung vote against the intentions of the voting members.
In normal elections we see this with people who don't like any choice, but don't want to spoil their ballot. So they pick their next best favorite.
This means that if A is removed, people might pick B or C instead just because A isn't there.
People are tricky. Hard to pin down what's exactly going to happen every time. There are distinguishable patterns and such; but ultimately you can't rely on them as if they are infallible.
Of course people might not necessarily act rationally but you've got to draw a line somewhere, otherwise elections are simply undefined behaviour and talking about properties of elections becomes meaningless.
But, no, you cannot safely recalculate that result, because by and large people are the representation of chaos. undefined behavior is the norm, not defined behavior. Defined behavior is only present in any of our societies because of 'social norms', which is the only reason I relent and say that some assumptions might be possible. But I will not agree that you can 'safely' recalculate that result just using whatever assumptions some person arbitrarily has deemed 'good enough to trust'.
That kind of thinking is why most polls are actually wrong, but taken as good enough. (Yes, I'm one of those people who nit picks the randomness of their selection biases.)
P.S.
All it takes to swing an election in favor of the underdog is a single new revelation. All it takes is for people to suddenly question their previous choices. A & B might be their norm; but people can be swayed to choose C or D if the situation is right.
This is why we can't really trust assumptions without some sort of evidence to back them. At which point they stop being assumptions...
Otherwise you're just arguing the vote is invalid because it would have ended differently in a rerun, and you have to stop somewhere.
If you remove A as a choice, or B, people might go with their next preferred option instead of just not voting at all, etc.
This means you can't know for sure that results would equal the same with or without that option, because you cannot actually assume all actors will vote the same every time. To even begin to think such a thing as true is just asinine when the world proves to us on a daily basis that people are willing to compromise on their beliefs all the time. (No offense.)
For those that are wondering (like I was);
Google & Wikipedia:
"The Schulze method selects a single winner using votes that express preferences. The method can also be used to create a sorted list of winners. Therefore, if several positions are available, the method can be used for this purpose without modification, by letting the k top-ranked candidates win the k available seats."
Looks like Option 1 and 2 were similar enough to "split the vote" too. What would have happened if 1 and 2 were combined and 3 and 4 were combined?
If you wanted voting secrecy but were unhappy with the proposed implementations of option 1 and 2, you'd vote 4 > 3, leaving room for future alternative proposals.
If you were against any form of voting secrecy, you'd vote 3 > 4, shutting the door on future proposals.
Assuming I understand this anyway. The way the votes are reflected is confusing to me
Also 3 and 4 were not similar. 3 would have changed the constitution to require public voting, 4 would simply do nothing and leave the issue an unanswered question.
This wasn't the general public. This was a few hundred people who carefully follow and care about the Debian project. I'm highly skeptical anyone who voted was "confused".
The discussion seems to be about ballots with 3 > 2 > 4, and when 3 was eliminated the votes went to 2, allowing it to pass. That's a bit strange because you'd expect a ballot to always have 3 next to 4 since they are so similar.
I do think ranked choice voting is dumb and adds low value and high complexity. This thread with hundreds of comments affirms that notion.
To me, Debian Developer feels more like a position of responsibility and representation than a member of the public. But I'm not one, and I don't know what the expectations are.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life
What kind of hairbrained nimrod came up with that idea!?
You can't have mixed voting methods and still call it fair in any respect. Any chance there could be tampering should be considered not just to be happening, but to be assured to happen. "Secret ballots" of any sort when everyone else is not partaking in said "Secret ballots" just creates a skew towards unfairness and improper results. Assuming those ballots truly are secret and not just pseudo-secret. If true secret, then there is no way to track properly for sure if there is tampering...
I doubt anyone with Debian is going to be listening to me on this; but perhaps they should.
Debian crew: No. Normal voting methods only dammit.
Like they are going to listen though. In the meantime, I'll be using a different version of Linux. Debian has been dead to me for a long time now.
People not being able to cast their vote without having to fear repercussions is justification enough for secret votes.
So far as I can tell, it's "RMS defended Marvin Minsky" and "RMS said something about sex with teenagers not being super terrible many years ago".
Also, was the Minsky thing related to Epstein? Because if so, it's hard to blame Minsky for falling victim to a international intelligence operation that also ensnared presidents, financiers, and movie moguls, all of whom are far more shrewd and worldly than any mathematician has a right to be. And the right thing would be to blame the foreign power that was doing the ensnaring, IMHO.
Sorry, wrong in every possible sense of the word. The only true way for an individual to be free from the consequence of placing their vote is for voting to be anonymous.
Any argument that a voter must face direct repercussions for their vote makes voting pointless.
> Anonymous voting should be enjoyed by the masses, never the ones representing them.
Well, since the debian voters are not, as far as a I know, elected by voters themselves, they are not representing anyone.
>I'll be using a different version of Linux.
I'm not disagreeing with the rest of your reply, but these are nonsensical statements in context. It's presenting an assumption that the governance systems in other versions are better. I've seen a lot of projects with BDFL leaders and no voting whatsoever. Linux itself is famous for permanently keeping a BDFL in charge and not really having voting, so in some sense we might be able to say they all suffer from a lack of voting methods in some areas.
It goes without saying that all the commercial distros are disqualified. Anything with a (B)DFL is obviously disqualified. Anything run by a small cabal that could easily communicate in an out of band way is disqualified. What do you have left?
Debian had a vote with 4 options:
Option 1 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote"
Option 2 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote and allow verification"
Option 3 "Reaffirm public voting"
Option 4 "None of the above" (NOTA)
The objection raised here is that Option 3 and Option 4 can be considered to be the same depending on how you interpret them (ie; "None of the above" vs "Keep public ballots" which can be said to implicitly suggest none of the above at the same time). If those two were represented as a single "NOTA" option, that option would have won the ballot in terms of votes.