Raul Miller wrote: > Branden Robinson wrote: > > > Supermajority requirements don't retard mistakes, just change. > > On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 11:04:10PM -0800, John H. Robinson, IV wrote: > > i tend to agree with the philosophy that you need to convince at least > > half of the voting populous. > > [1] Who is the voting populous?
depends upon where you count, you have all elgible voters, then you have those voters that actually vote, then you have the minimum number of voters to vote for a vote to be binding. the last one refers to quorum. i specifically meant half of those that are interested enough to actually vote. if that number fails to meet quorom, then there is not enough interest in the issue to perform any action on it. > [2] Why are they the voting populous? depends upon context. in the US, it is citizens over 18 that have not had their right to vote (ie: convicted of a felony) revoked. in this context, it is each Debian Developer as listed in the Constitution. in other contexts, by virute of being in the set defined as The Set of Eligble Voters,or however you want to phrase it > [3] Is competence an issue? Why or why not? yes it is. in the US system, it is assumed that you are competent at age > 18, until proven otherwise (ie: convicted of a felony) in this context, each DD has been vetted by the NM procress, in whatever form that was at the time of induction. in this context, we also demand competence by forcing voters to follow directions on filling out and returning the ballot. > [4] Is involvement an issue? Why or why not? yes. you have to have at least ONE person vote. if NO ONE participates, then you have no results. you can increase the demands of participation via quorum requirements. i can see requiring a higher quorom for certain actions (Constitutional Ammendment) than for other things (Official Debian Mascot) to ensure that there is enough interest in the issue. i beleive that the more interest you have, the more likely you are to see a greater reflection of the groups desire. you get a perfect picture at 100% participation. if every eligble DD voted, and the Smith set had only 415:414 would that indicate that the Debian Project should move in the direction indicated? > [Hint: for most things in Debian, you need to convince at least one > person who happens to be the package maintainer.] yep. in the case of GR's, you need to convince six (sponsor and five seconds) > > Condorecet seems pretty resilient to insincere voting. for each method > > of counting Supermajorities, it has been shown to where it possible, in > > some cases almost trivial, for an insincere vote to change the result of > > an election. that appears to defeat the whole purpose of using Condorcet > > to begin with. > > For some methods, this is true. > > You seem to be assuming this is true for all methods, but you offer > no proof. that is correct. i do not have the math to do that. however, those with the math (here i refer to electionmethods.org) do not address the issue of Supermahorities at all. > > just out of idle curiosity, has anyone asked the electionmethods people > > about Condorcet+Supermajority? > > Yes. > > Unfortunately, most of them seemed to lose interest in the discussion > before we had much discussed the underlying issues. :( so we are floundering on our own on this one? > That said: Debian 3:1 supermajority is LESS OF A CONSTRAINT than a > requirement that a majority of the voting population agree. depending upon quorum requirements, and how you defice ``voting population.'' most methods define it as those that are eliglble to vote _and_ actually vote. this is where quorum comes in: that there is sufficient interest to use as a statistical model that the subset reflects the entire set. > Are you suggesting that we prefer majority rule because it's more of a > constraint ["more tyranical"] than supermajority? i will agree with branden that the use of the word tyrannical in this case is bad. however, i will still answer the question. i am suggesting that we prefer majority rule because with our election method (Condorcet) it has been shown that at least some methods of counting Supermajorities can lead to insincere voting for strategic purposes being effective. this is one of the things we wish to _avoid_. > Or are you saying something else that I've completely misunderstood? something else (see above). -john
