[Foundation-l] Notice of the results of the WMF Board of Trustees election

[Ray Saintonge]

Andre Engels wrote:

>2007/7/13, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>:
>  
>
>>    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.  If
>>possible it would be interesting to see how the ballots were distributed
>>on a number of votes per ballot basis.
>>    
>>
>It depends - what do you call the 'deficiencies' of strategic voting?
>
It was Erik's term.  I'm not sure what he meant by it.  But I do 
apologize for not putting the term in quotation marks.

>In my opinion, if (and that's a big if) this vote number is caused by
>people making what they consider to be strategically the best choice,
>then having few votes per ballot means that the voters apparently
>trust each other quite well. It means voters find it more likely that
>there's a close call between their favorites and the ones they like
>well, but not the best than one between people they like well and
>those they like not so well. Alternatively speaking, voters (IF their
>vote was strategic) trusted that their votes would not be needed to
>keep the bad candidates out of the board, and instead used them to try
>to get the best ones in rather than the good ones.
>
It's hard to generalize about the thought process that people wen 
through when they were voting.  Your last point seems to be the closest 
to reality though.  If I find only three candidates that meet my 
personal criteria, why should I vote for more?  Any votes cast for a 
fourth candidate could endanger one of my favorites.  Given the 
closeness between our 3rd and 6th places that segment could have been 
very different in a first-past-the-post system.

Ec