[Foundation-l] The average voter and voting systems (was Re: Notice of the results of the WMF Board of Trustees election)

[Michael Snow]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> There were 15540 votes on 4170 ballots; that's an average of 3.73 
> votes per ballot.  This suggests to me that contrary to what Erik has 
> suggested this still retains the deficiencies of strategic voting.
I'd look at it a little differently, but I agree that it's a serious 
concern and that we should look at ways to improve the election system. 
(Lest anybody look at this as sour grapes, I'm not suggesting that the 
issues I want to raise would have altered the results.)

Considering that the election was for three seats on the board, using 
approval voting, the fact that the average voter voted for barely more 
than three candidates is quite disappointing. There are three 
possibilities to explain this:

1) Many voters simply voted for the incumbents and didn't bother to 
consider other candidates
2) Many voters didn't understand the voting system and focused on 
choosing *exactly* three candidates for the three positions
3) Many voters did not feel there were more than three qualified 
candidates, or possibly even less than that

Explanation #1 is a common phenomenon in nonprofit and corporate 
elections. Often these have little campaigning, voters are not 
knowledgeable about board activity, and they don't have the information 
to really make a choice. In such cases, they typically just vote for 
incumbents unless there's reason to be dramatically dissatisfied with 
the current state of affairs. I would largely rule this possibility out 
here, partly because in fact, one of the incumbents did not win. 
Undoubtedly some people did vote that way, but not to this degree.

Explanation #3 is a little harder to evaluate. I'm sure some people felt 
there was a shortage of candidates they felt comfortable voting for, and 
we could always wish for even better options to choose. However, even if 
this was a widespread sentiment, there's hardly any indication that 
voters agreed on which candidates. The vote differences between 
candidates are not terribly large at most positions. I would say the 
results don't reflect people seeing a clear gap between "qualified" and 
"unqualified".

Explanation #2 is a very real possibility. Anecdotally, we definitely 
have people who did not understand this point, either because they 
didn't understand how approval voting works or because they were 
confused by the voting instructions. Even the wub (whose vote I don't 
mean to suggest was actually confused) commented in the aftermath about 
the difficulty of "deciding between the candidates", which is precisely 
the kind of approach to voting this method is supposed to discourage. 
Old habits are hard to break, established thought processes hard to unlearn.

Introducing unfamiliar voting systems, and expecting voters to mentally 
weigh candidates in ways that aren't self-evident from the ballot, is a 
tricky exercise. Those who want to advocate even more "ideal" voting 
systems, hoping voters will use more complex weighing to let us 
interpret their thought processes, need to make a compelling case. This 
is especially true if we want to encourage broader participation at the 
same time that we're placing these demands on voters. Otherwise, we 
might as well hand the task over to a select committee to pick board 
members for us.

Instead, I would suggest keeping our present voting system in some form, 
but also making the decision faced by the voter more explicit. This can 
be done by presenting the voter with two choices for each candidate - 
Yes and No, or Approve and Disapprove if you prefer. This makes clear 
what you want the voter to tell you, and that the voter is answering 
this question independently for each candidate. In addition, there 
should be another option, as the default until the voter actually votes, 
to not vote on that particular candidate. That way people aren't forced 
to make a decision on all candidates when they know enough that they 
want to vote on some of them. In the final result, "non-votes" as to a 
candidate would be discarded, and the candidate(s) with the highest 
percentage of Yes-over-No votes would be the winner(s).

(If it's thought necessary, you could require a minimum threshold of 
total votes, so you don't get a largely unknown candidate sneaking in 
with very little overall support. I doubt that would be needed, though. 
A lot of people would likely vote explicitly to disapprove someone who 
was completely unknown to them, and use "non-votes" when feeling 
ambivalent about a candidate. This and related sentiments are 
illustrated by the frequent requests for some way to vote "against" and 
not just "for" candidates, by voters who think that's missing from our 
system.)

This keeps things relatively simple, and is not a dramatic departure 
from our present system. It should be straightforward to rewrite ballots 
and software along these lines. Best of all, voters will have to wonder 
less about what it is they're being asked to do.

--Michael Snow