[19532] in APO-L
Re: Voting Delegates
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Ham)
Wed Oct 28 07:51:18 1998
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 23:42:00 +1100
Reply-To: David Ham <david.a.ham@STUDENT.ANU.EDU.AU>
From: David Ham <david.a.ham@STUDENT.ANU.EDU.AU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Randy Finder wrote:
>
> On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, David Ham wrote:
>
> > jennifer ann o'leary wrote:
> > > Alpha Alpha elects both delegates from the active body. nominations are
> > > held at one meeting and at the next the people that are nominated give
> > > speeches then everyone votes - it's fairly simple
> > Just as a matter of interest how do APO groups elect people for such
> > functions. Do you operate by first past the post, optional or compulsory
> > preferential, multiple vote or some other system? Do you use PR in
> > elections for multiple positions (like the one above) and if so which
> > form, D'Hont, Hare-Clark or another?
> Most of these questions are moot when your elections for multiple
> positions are not party based. (PR for example)
>
> Other than for example not wanting to elect a boyfriend/girlfriend
> combination to president and Treasurer for security on the money, I
> haven't seen many cases when the election to one position effected others.
>
> What I've seen at most chapters is the following: For single person
> positions (president, secretary, etc.) a majority is needed. This is done
> by multiple balots dropping the person or persons with the fewest votes
> off at the end of each round. For two person positions like
> delegates they either go with one or two votes per person and the two
> highest vote getters get the positions regardless of whether they have a
> majority.
>
> I'll accept arguments that dropping the lowest vote getter and running
> another round has its problems but when you've got two or three brothers
> out in the hall trying to figure out who gets elected having them figure
> out the election by one of the other method gets very messy.
>
> >
> > I suspect this is probably not an issue for most chapters - paranoia
> > about voting systems seem to be an Australian perculiarity (this is,
> > after all, the country that invented the secret ballot, preferential
> > voting and compulsory voting for federal and state elections).
> So how do they do it in Rovers? :)
>
Standard procedure here is to use optional preferential voting for
single positions and Hare-Clark (a form of PR) for multiple positions
(by which I mean positions occupied by more than one person such as this
case - you need to elect two of the same). Elections should _ALWAYS_ be
by secret ballot.
Optional preferential is logically equivalent to the method you've
explained but requires only one round of voting. Each voter writes on
their ballot paper the names of all the candidates in the order of their
preference. Ie you write the name of the person you most want to win
first and the one you least want last. In OP you don't have to write
every candidate's name on the paper but it is usually to your advantage
to do so (in compulsory preferential - which is used for federal
elections - you must number every box).
The ballot papers are sorted by first preference. If any candidate has a
majority they are elected. If not then you eliminate the candidate with
the least votes and allocate those votes to the second placed candidate
on each paper. Any votes which don't have a next candidate listed are
discarded. You keep eliminating candidates until one has a majority of
the remaining votes (you don't count any votes discarded).
This may sound complicated but it is really quite fast. If the count is
done by someone who knows what they are doing then it is much faster
than holding lots of rounds of voting (particulalrly if you are going to
do each one by secret ballot).
Hare-Clark is the same system modified for mulitple elections. Voters
cast their ballots in exectly the same way. Counting and distributing
preferences is done in the same way with two exceptions:
1. To be elected a candidate needs 1/(N+1) of the votes plus one. So in
the case of the delegates you need 1/3 of the votes +1 to get elected.
This is because if two people get that many votes then no third person
can overtake them. If you are only electing one person, this reduces to
the case above. This number of votes is called a quota.
2. If a candidate gets over the quota then their votes are distributed
to the next preference but at a reduced value. I am not going to give
the formula explicitly here but I will demonstrate how this works.
Suppose candidate A gets half the vote in her own right. If you just
declare her elected and throw away her papers then those votes are
under-valued as they really only count for 1/3 of the vote (what she
needed to get elected). Instead what you do is distribute her ballot
papers as if she had been eliminated but each ballot paper is now only
worth 1/3 of a vote. This is because 2/3 of each vote is needed to get A
elected - the other 1/3 of each vote goes to elect other people
according to the preference of each voter.
Obviously you keep going until you have elected enough people.
If anyone is interested enough (which I doubt :-)) to want to know
more, I can recommend the following web sites:
http://bohm.anu.edu.au/association/Info/Regs/ElectRegs.html
This gives the elcetoral regulations of the ANU Students' Assocation. We
use their voting system (but not the rest of the rules which are not
really applicable in a club election).
For more general information:
http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/main.htm
This is part of the web site of the Australian Electoral Commission and
it has information on LOTS of voting systems.
YiS
David
--
David Ham
Student of Maths and Law, 31 Bambridge Street
The Australian National University Weetangera
Canberra, Australia ACT 2614
Australia
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
- Albert Einstein
