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

[SJ Klein]

Hello Michael,


On Thu, 12 Jul 2007, Michael Snow wrote:

> 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,

I really, really like this suggestion.

I'm not sure that Yes-over-No would be better; I like systems that simply 
count Yes votes.  I do however think that it would be useful to all to be 
able to see the proportion of non-Yes votes which were simple abstentions.


> 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.)

How frequent are the requests?  I'm not sure this is a reason to change 
the system; there are also downsides to allowing negative votes.  It is
a good subject for discussion.


Congratulations to the newly elected board members, and thanks to all 
(including the candidates) who helped the elections run smoothly

SJ