Preferential voting: too much for lj?

[sqbr]

So I'm not that fussed about this lj election, but it seems to be becoming increasingly polarised between two candidates (leggomymalfoy and jameth) That's not neccesarily a bad thing, but I get the feeling people are going "Oh no! Candidate A is catching up, better change my first preference to Candidate B, since they're not my top choice but are stil better than Candidate A".

Which is unneccesary (I think :)): neither of them have anywhere near 50% of the vote, so a vote for them second (or even third, probably) is just as good as a vote for them first, and that way you still get to put whoever you really want to win in first position. (If that is leggomymalfoy or jameth then fine)

I'm inclined to put this down to most lj-ers not being from countries which use preferential voting. Unless I'm just missing something, which isn't that implausible. Anyway, I don't care that much, but I'm a fan of democracy and this is unneccesarily undemocratic.

*thinks about it some more*
*confuses self*

Comments

[alias_sqbr]

jameth seems a bit of a wanker to me, but there are serious conflict of interest questions with leggomymalfoy, I voted for rm.

Me too :)

I was thinking about it and confused myself, maybe you can help (with your smart politically minded brain)

Basically, at what point do they declare a winner?

Obviously it's not "whoever gets the most primary votes".

But it can't be "Whoever is first to over 50% of the votes" using the repeated distribution of preferences from the loweset voted candidate (as is described here), since it's quite likely that over 50% of voters didn't include any of the front runners in their vote.

If they keep going until there's two candidates left and then choose a winner that's ok, I guess. But there's ways of doing it that could screw people over if their top voted candidate almost but not quite wins.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Basically, they declare a winner when the votes of the front runner are more than all the other candidates left in the race put together.

If they keep going until there's two candidates left and then choose a winner that's ok, I guess. But there's ways of doing it that could screw people over if their top voted candidate almost but not quite wins.

Optional preferential definitely isn't a perfect system -- it's pretty easy to construct a situation where which candidate comes third determines who comes first, and things like that. But it does prevent the situation where voting for the candidate you like most is a effectively voting against the candidate who is your second choice.

[alias_sqbr]

Basically, they declare a winner when the votes of the front runner are more than all the other candidates left in the race put together.

Oh, ok, that's not too bad.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

In things like election coverage, you will often see them concede seats etc unofficially before the count has got to this point - but that is because those involved are making educated guesses about preference flow, guesses that are usually quite correct. Ie Nationals preferences usually go to the Libs and so forth, so people will often call a seat when all they have is first preferences.

[alias_sqbr]

Also don't a lot of people vote above the line? Then you know exactly where preferences flow (I think) I of course, enjoy numbering every box so I can personally put the parties I don't like at the bottom :)

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

That only applies to the Upper house (be it LC or Senate), not the Lower House. And the upper houses are generally multi-position elections, which are actually MUCH more complicated to predict, at least for the last position. There is no analogous mechanism for the Lower Houses.

[alias_sqbr]

*cough*

I knew that, I was just testing you

:)