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.