STV voting system information

[Soro Dagostino]

When AA was in tandem with CDS, and a part of the administration, we had 12 members ((maybe more)) in the RA. Even though, in RL, I spent time on a 57 person board, and it worked, I agree with the group analytics that a 12 member board is a good number of directors to have for a full membership. A smaller Board ((RA)) is helpful, when the organizatioin is low on membership. So the ratable count is acceptable. When no one is here, 5 is plenty.

FWIW.

[Bromo Ivory]

I remember when STV was first floated as an alternative and I was sceptical at the time. But I must say it has turned out very well indeed! It is relatively difficult to game through a voting strategy and at the same time takes everyone's preferences into consideration through a process that simulates an instant runoff between candidates. Also, luckily, there is good STV software available to tally the votes so I did not have to program that part myself.

I found OpenSTV in my Linux distribution, and online for Windows and Mac in a desktop applicaiton and as a set of libraries!

Gotta love open source.

And I agree, the only way one could "game" the STV system is in narrow circumstances. If you were to convince the rivals of your favorite candidate who were also likely to score poorly to only rank THEIR candidate and nobody else's, they would have been tricked into supporting the top vote getters by lowering the Quota once their vote was taken out of the pool. And depending upon how you handle surplus votes in multiple candidate elections, you might skew things, too. I had heard rumors of exactly the "please don't rank anyone but your first choice" that during the by election, but I chalked it up to "election day rumors" (and I posted above because of that just in case) - and given Pat won with just first votes, it wouldn't have caused harm if true.