[Foundation-l] Board vote, need a bit of help

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Well, I tried, I really did. I read the wikipedia entries. In English
> *and* in French. But I still don't understand the Schulze method. I
> mean, I kind of understand that it's good (TM)

No one asked me, but if they did I would have supported Schulze
because it has the cloning resistance property.   A clone is a
candidate whos platform is nearly indistinguishable from  some other
candidate.

Wikipedia says "In some (voting) systems, the introduction of a clone
will tend to divide support between the similar candidates, making it
less likely either will be elected. In some other systems, the
presence of a clone will tend to reduce support for dissimilar
candidates, making it more likely that one (or more) of the similar
candidates will be elected. In yet other systems, the introduction of
clones will not significantly affect the chances that one of the
similar candidates will be elected."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_of_clones_criterion)

I think cloning resistance is highly relevant

Otherwise, I generally don't like condorcet methods for these kinds of
elections. (the normal failure to meet later-no-harm and
invulnerability to burying being my primary concerns with most
condorcet methods)

Approval voting is generally claimed to meet the Independence of
clones criterion, but in most approval elections I've seen (Including
Wikimedia's), many people vote insincerely/strategically and approve
only a single person just like a plurality vote ... so ultimately
cloning results in spoilage.

> and that it probably
> will end up choosing the best person for the position.
> But I don't
> understand the implications of what I vote and how I vote for some
> things.

Hey! At least the pages now say WMF is using Schulze, rather than
still saying it hasn't been selected yet!

> #Question 1
> Does "you may give the same preference to more than one candidate"
> mean that I can rank three candidates with rank 1, three with rank 2 ,
> one with rank 3 and five with rank 4 (and so forth)?

Yes.  Exactly.

When you rank two candidates the same you are not expressing a
preference between them, but are expressing that both are strictly
preferred to all the less prefered (higher rank number) candidates.

> #Question 2
> Can I actually rank one candidate with rank 1, three candidates with
> rank 2 and 5 candidates with rank 15? That is, does the rank  (1, 2, 3
> etc.) actually matter in the overall results, or is rank always
> relative? (ie. If I rank 2 people with rank 1 and 10 with rank 15, the
> 10 will be counted as being my second choice, not as being "of rank
> 15")

The rank is relative. Your ballot is effectively converted into something like:
Jane > John, Bob, Tom >  Sue, Mark, Jose, Igor, Lynn

> #Question 3
> What's the best way to go about making sure that a candidate is ranked
> as low as possible? Rank them at the lowest possible rank (this will
> of course depend on answers to question 2)? Or not rank them at all?

If there are 15 candidates and you want to make sure that one is
ranked worse than all others you will have to provide a rank for AT
LEAST the 14 others.  You could leave Mr. Evil unranked, or you could
simply rank them all and give him a worse rank than anyone else.

This is because all the unranked are treated as ranked with a high
number which is equal for all unranked.