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Voting Procedures – Spring 2006 – Executive Board
Ranked VotesThe officers of the Park Alumni Society have decided that PAS Officers should be elected with a ranked vote. This will be new to many people and we feel that information about this method should be as available and open as possible. Ranked voting is a method of voting that allows each voter to cast a more nuanced vote than simply voting for their ”top ranked” candidate, as is the case in most elections. With a ranked vote, each voter is placing the running candidates in an explicit order by preference for that office. Condorcet’s MethodThe ranked voting method is an old idea. It was made famous by the French philosopher, mathematician and political scientist Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century. His work has been studied very thoroughly and is at the heart of determining winners when ranked votes are being tabulated. For the vast majority of races, pairwise defeats (counting wins/losses among each possible individual race for all candidates) will determine without question the winner of a ranked vote election, the Condorcet candidate. This candidate wins their ”head-to-head” race against each of the other candidates. Sometimes, rarely, a circular preference is tabulated whereby a majority of voters prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. This circular preference can also be written as A > B > C > A. In this case, there is no Condorcet candidate and a method must be chosen for determining the winner among the candidates in the cycle. The method the PAS has chosen to determine the winner of a possible cycle is the Schulze Method (equivalent to Beatpath and CSSD). This method is the most agreed-upon algorithm among experts for determining the winner of an ambiguous vote. Feel free to read more about the relative merits of some other methods at the reference links on the right. ExamplesAn example of a ranked vote might be expressed as ”B>C>E>A>D”. Candidate B is this voter’s first choice. Candidate C is this voter’s second choice. This continues down the ”ranked vote”. Another example, showing that the voter has no preference among the ”bottom” three candidates could be expressed as ”B>C>E=D=A”. Again, Candidate B is this voter’s first choice for this office. Candidate C is the second choice. The other three candidates are not ranked against one another since this voter either 1) does not know the candidates and feels that they cannot be distinguished amongst one another, or 2) feels that they would all do an equally good job in that office. A third example shows where a voter could have an opinion about the best qualified candidates and the least qualified candididate. An example vote of ”B=C>A=E>D” expresses this opinion. Candidate B and Candidate C are ranked equally at the top of this vote. Candidate A and Candidate E are given equal footing in the middle, but below both B and C. Candidate D is given the last place rank since this voter feels they are the least qualified for this office. Voting Procedures – Spring 2006 – Voting Board
Bloc VotesThe officers of the Park Alumni Society have decided the PAS Voting Board should be elected with a multi-winner bloc vote race. This will be new to many people and we feel that information about this method should be as available and open as possible. Bloc voting is a method of voting that allows each voter to vote for up to X number of candidates. Each vote is counted towards a total for each candidate. The top X number of votegetters will win the race and seats on the Voting Board. In case of a tie, the tie will be broken via witnessed fair coin toss(es). ExampleAn example of a bloc vote race could consist of 7 candidates vying for 4 positions. Each voter can vote for up to 4 candidates. Voter 1 casts their bloc vote for Candidate A, Candidate C, Candidate D, and Candidate G (A,C,D,G). Voter 2 casts their bloc vote for only Candidates A, B, and E (A,B,E). Voter 3 casts a vote of (A,C,D,E). If the race were to end with only these votes having been cast, the final vote totals would look like this: Candidate A – 3 votes – winner |
For more information about PAS Elections, visit these pages: Election Details Reference LinksWikipedia – Beatpath (Single-Winner PAS Format) Wikipedia – Bloc Voting (Multi-Winner PAS Format) Wikipedia – Different Types of Voting Systems |
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