ICANN Voting Deemed Confusing

Brian Reid warns us about a potential confusion while casting an ICANN vote. His complaint in a nutshell: "I was tricked into voting for people that I did not want to vote for." I haven't cast my vote yet (two days left!) so I'm glad someone else found this out first. If accurate, outrageous; I'm surprised nobody else has complained.

michael: Reid doesn't understand the voting system. A brief explanation:

Your first-place vote counts as long as that candidate is in the running. Then your second-place vote counts, if that candidate is in the running, etc. Thus your seventh-place vote is exactly the same as a blank vote - it can never, ever, count (since the system will be resolved in no more than six rounds). Your sixth-place vote says, "In the event the election comes down to only these two candidates (the one I'm about to rank sixth and one other, who isn't any of my first five choices), I prefer the one I'm ranking sixth over the one I'm ranking seventh or leaving blank." Only if your first five candidates have been ELIMINATED from the voting pool does your sixth-place vote count for anything at all.

Once more: as long as your first-place candidate is in the running, none of your other six rankings count for anything at all. If number 1 gets eliminated, your number 2 vote counts and none of the other five count for anything at all. Etc.

There is only an advantage to you for ranking all the candidates, no disadvantage. Reid was annoyed that he ranked the "bad" candidates at all. But all he was saying was that "In the event that ALL of my "good" candidates have been eliminated and only these "bad" candidates remain as possible winners, I prefer this one over that one." Nothing wrong with that.

Let's go through a brief example. We have seven candidates for the North American seat. We compare all of the 1 votes. No one candidate has a majority (though one may have a plurality...). The candidate with the lowest number of 1 votes (let's say it's Miller) gets eliminated. Now, all of the people who voted for Miller as their number one choice (say, 2%) don't have a candidate anymore. So their number 2 votes get promoted, and that's their new candidate. Most likely, this doesn't create a majority, because it's only 2% of the votes being redistributed among the other six candidates. So we eliminate another candidate. (Maybe this candidate had 5%.) So now anyone who had those two candidates as their top two picks (in either order) is on their third place choice, and we have only five candidates remaining. If one of those five was your top choice, it still is; no one has even looked at any of your other choices, nor will they until your top choice is eliminated.

This sort of run-off voting is much, much fairer than single-choice, and much, much more likely to get "good" candidates chosen. Reid just doesn't understand it.

Comments

STV

[ponxx]

Single Transferable Vote (STV)is a system that is basically equivalent to having several rounds of voting in which the weakest candidate gets eliminated. It has the advantage that "all votes count" as the guy from election.com said. What this means is NOT that all candidates you rank get a vote, but that all voters have a say in the final outcome between the two most popular voters. The advantage over having lots of election rounds of eliminating the weakest is simply that you do not need so many rounds which would be unpractical and very time-consuming.

"Most votes win systems" such as the US presidency election (not really, cause of some bizarre rules from two centuries ago which makes it one of the strangest systems to vote a single person i have ever heard of) have one HUGE disadvantage:
If two people share a similar platform they hurt their cause by both standing! Say two democrats and one republican stood, chances are both democrats would gain about 30% while the republican gets 40%. Thus the republican guy wins despite 60% rather having one of the two democrats. In STV systems they would have rated the respective other democrat second and one of the two would have won.

anyway, what was i trying to say? yeah, good system, lacking some explanation, but as one other poster commented a simple google search would have brought it to light. Don't tell me you can construct a situation where this system also produces weird results, cause i know that, and I am sure you will find a friendly mathematician somewhere to prove to you that there is no "fair" voting system, and this is the best one i have seen for choosing individual people for a post. And anyone who followed the description will have achieved the results he desired...

Suggested disclaimer for ICANN:

The voting system is STV (some link). By giving lower preferences you do not affect the chances of your first preference candidate.