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

[Ray Saintonge]

Stephen Bain wrote:

>The downside is that it can result in wasted votes (eg, if I ranked 5
>out of a field of 10, but all the 5 that I ranked were eliminated, my
>vote has nowhere to go and is exhausted), but it's much more
>convenient.
>
That's the myth of the wasted vote.  Is it any less wasted if I'm forced 
to choose between nincompoops.

>Here in Australia we use STV for elections to the Australian Senate,
>and we deal with the problem of having to rank very large numbers of
>candidates by using group tickets, the idea being that a voter votes
>for a ticket, and is taken to have ranked the candidates in the order
>that the ticket has set out beforehand. That's probably far too
>complicated for our purposes though.
>
Introducing political parties would be an even worse idea.

Ec