[conlang_learners] voting system

[Jim Henry]

2009/8/16 Olivier Simon <cafaristeir at yahoo.com>:

> 1°) First of all, each vote should be reduced to, let's say, 10 conlangs or
> less (Imagine that everyone of us proposes a whole list of all the conlangs
> of the Frath list in order of preference...).

If Philip or the other vote counter agree with you, I don't see a
reason not to put a limit of 10 or so conlangs on the ballot just to
make things easier for the vote-counters.  But if the vote counters
don't mind handling some ballots with as many as 25 conlangs on them,
then let's not limit people arbitrarily.   In fact, I don't think with
instant-runoff voting that having no limit on the ballot will make the
vote counting significantly more work.  It seems to me likely that the
instant-runoff process will produce a consensus winner in less than
ten rounds of counting, in which case limiting the ballots to 10
conlangs would not have saved the vote-counters much if any work.


> 2°) But the biggest problem may be about the computation of preferences, as
> already put forward by the Marquis de Condorcet:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_paradox

> Thus, the solution may be to limit the number of conlangs in each vote (ex:

I'm aware of the Condorcet paradox.  But, though I'm not an expert on
voting systems, and there may be some important aspect I'm
overlooking, I don't see why limiting the number of conlangs on each
person's ballot prevents the paradox from occurring or even makes it
significantly less likely.  The Wikipedia page you link gives an
example of the paradox when there are only three candidates on the
ballot.

> 10); then  my choice n°1 will get 10 points,  my choice n°2 will get 9
> points, etc...
> A voter is not obliged to propose 10 conlangs; if he only proposes 1
> conlang, then this only choice will get 10 points and that's all.

This variant of range voting doesn't prevent the paradox either, as I
pointed out in an earlier message.  It might make it less likely; I'm
not mathematician enough to be sure.

However, as you and perhaps others feel strongly that range voting
would be better than instant-runoff voting, we'd better vote on it...
but voting on what procedure to use for voting can lead to an
infininte regress.  And at least two, maybe three variants of range
voting have been proposed, so we have three or four candidates and all
the problems that having more than two candidates causes.  For the
list moderator to say by fiat that we'll use a particular voting
system to decide between IRV and the various kinds of range voting
seems fundamentally wrong.

Would those who prefer range voting to instant-runoff voting please
post saying which variant of it they prefer and why?   If those
wanting range voting can come to a consensus among themselves about
which variant to support, we can have a simple majority vote between
instant-runoff and range voting, which would be much simpler and
unambiguously fairer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/