GOSH Community Call - Thursday February 25th 14:00-15:30 UTC

[solstag]

Ok, I’ll try to provide some clarification from what I know:

1. In modern terminology “Condorcet” is a criterion, not a method, and it can be asked of any kind of electoral system. As @hpy said, it means that if a candidate would win against every other candidate in a one-to-one election (this is called a Condorcet Winner), then he must win the overall election. Any electoral method that respect this criterion can be called a “Condorcet method”. I think everyone would agree this is an essential property for an election system. Therefore, modern methods that do not respect Condorcet are required to argue that the situations where they violate Condorcet are very unlikely to happen in practice.

2. When there is a candidate that would win a one-to-one election against all others, then all Condorcet methods agree on the result. It means it doesn’t matter what method you use in these situations. However, situations may arise where there is no candidate that would win a one-to-one election against all others. Each electoral method that wants to respect the Condorcet criterion must therefore provide a “tie-breaking” rule. That’s where you get the variety of “Condorcet methods”.

3. Ranked choice methods are methods where people rank candidates according to their preference, often with the possibility of saying placing candidates at the same rank. Among ranked choice methods, “instant run-off voting” does not respect the Condorcet criterion. This has always been known. People decided to use it anyway, because it’s simple. Turned out it was a bad idea.

4. Schulze, Minimax-PM and the other methods supported by CIVS all respect the Condorcet criterion. Therefore, they only differ when there is no Condorcet Winner. The way they differ will determine other properties of the election system, such as other criteria and how vulnerable they may be to different types of strategic voting.

5. Minmax-PM, the default method in CIVS, seems to do very well against strategic voting (from reading the paper CIVS refers to). Minmax simply means that in case there is no Condorcet Winner, then we pick the candidate who is closest to become a Condorcet Winner (i.e., whose biggest loss to another candidate is the smallest - in some precise mathematical sense). I think this is quite easy to grasp.

6. (here’s more opinion that knowledge) From what I’ve read, score systems may be more vulnerable to strategic voting than the best ranked systems. They also fail the Condorcet criterion, though their proponents argue this won’t happen in practice. I personally think score systems are needlessly complicated. Ranking is much easier: once we have considered the choices, we know what we prefer almost intuitively. Scores force you to put down to numbers something that has no actual numeric correspondence in your head (or in reality). They thus demand more investment from voters, may demotivate voters who have less time to vote, and may worsen the overall quality of votes.

7. In approval voting you can’t express preference of one choice over the other. So I feel its application is restricted to a few situations where this makes sense. And like for score voting, I feel these systems are less mature and not sufficiently understood.

8. I know it sounds great to say “oh, let’s leave it open and not fix on one method”, but I actually think picking a single method has very important advantages: People get used to it, they eventually come to familiarize themselves, understand it and trust it. This improves both their disposition to vote, the quality of their votes. It increases the proportion of people who actually understand and can check the results. And decreases the energy spent on discussions (see what is going on here) and mistrust from not understanding a method or not understanding why was it picked for a particular task. Picking one single method reduces the “black box” aspect of modern electoral methods. Honestly, they all do pretty much the same thing. I feel it is much wiser for an organization to choose one method and go with it. Again, see the case of Debian.

Well, hope this is useful =) cheers!

.~´

[marinappdf]

Thank you @solstag and @hpy for your comments. I won’t answer “thank you” and “agree” to all the comments because this will make this post unbearable. So here is my general Thank you.

First, I think is great we are having this debate on the forum. As you probably now, people like to question anything, so I can’t just make a decision based on trust on others. Since I’m a member of the working group, I’ll be asked questions, and if I don’t know how to answer, or if I say “I just picked one”, this will go bad. That’s why is good that you and others give your opinions publicly, and that we make this decision together.

Maybe this is easier for some people who are already used to those terms and etc. That’s my first time ever, and for many people too, so we have to take this into account.

Put this, we can continue the discussion.

From the reading, I prefer STAR method, however the CVIS platform seems better for now.
Even thou Ale says is easy to understand, I don’t agree. Is definitely harder than “sum all scores”, and the algorithms are much harder to follow. Also, I disagree that give scores is harder than preferences, mainly because the scores are the order of the preferences, with the advantage one can give the same score for more than one person.
But this decision is not only about the method, but also about the available platform. On this case, I prefer CVIS.

Summary

We have there options: CIVS, STAR and “approval voting” right?

CIVS

Platform: https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/

• Free and open source easy to set election platform;
• The same method have been used by a big and trustable community (Debian);
• Is known to be good;
• @solstag says the main issues, related to strategic voting, are not likely to be a problem to GOSH;
• The difficulty to an overall understanding is “medium” (my opinion);
• The difficulty to understand the algorithms is “hard” (my opinion).

STAR

Plataform: https://star.vote/

• Free and open source easy to set election platform;
  • HOWEVER, the option available control voting only by IP, not by e-mail (@hpy , can you check if they could implement this, please?)
• This method is new, there are less examples of usage than CIVS, but there haven’t been cases of unintended consequences, or “bad results”;
• Does not fill the Condorcet criterium, so it can’t guarantee that the winner will definitely win against every other candidate
• The difficulty to an overall understanding is “easy” (my opinion);
• The difficulty to understand the algorithms is “easy” (my opinion).

Approval voting

No platform

• Does not fill the Condorcet criterium, so it can’t guarantee that the winner will definitely win against every other candidate;
• The difficulty to an overall understanding is “easy” (my opinion);
• The difficulty to understand the algorithms is “easy” (my opinion).

You want to add something?

If you have to chose one, right now, which one would be?

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PS: I want to keep reading and organizing this sort of information, lets make this ethercalc either way @hpy !

[solstag]

Ni!

@marinappdf

I don’t agree. Is definitely harder than “sum all scores”, and the algorithms are much harder to follow. Also, I disagree that give scores is harder than preferences, mainly because the scores are the order of the preferences, with the advantage one can give the same score for more than one person.

A bit more clarification:

Ranked voting allows you to give the same ranking to multiple choices. It also allows you to not rank some choices and they’l be considered tied in last place.

Again, the algorithms are not important, all one needs to agree with is (1) The Condorcet criterion, which is very much common sense and (2) That in case there is no Condorcet winner, then picking the candidate closest to being one is reasonable.

Also, if you use STAR with scores that are simply the order of preference then you’re just using STAR as a ranking method. And in that case there are better ranking methods.Scores gain power the more they’re not like ranking and let you express nuanced preferences, and that’s when it gets cognitively complicated and heterogeneous from person to person.

Anyway, my opinion between these choices is not strong in the sense that in my view any decent method will work in a healthy community. But it is strong in that we should stick with a single method, for the reasons I outlined, and that we put it in the rules of the community - like Debian put it in their constitution - so nobody should mess with it or create a fuzz unless there is a concrete and serious problem.

.~´

[hpy]

Many thanks @solstag for the fantastic explanation of the Condorcet criterion! After several years it finally makes more sense to me and helped me appreciate Condorcet much more. From the explanation, it sounds like:

1. At least some of the Condorcet tie-breaking algorithms choose the winner that is closest to being the Condorcet winner. So technically this means the final winner chosen by the algorithm is actually not the Condorcet winner, because it is just the closest one, right? I’m not saying this is good or bad, but technically does that mean such a result would not meet the Condorcet criterion?
2. Thanks for defining Condorcet as a criterion rather than a “method” per se. That makes sense. From what I can tell, since the ballots still asks voters to rank choices, can we reasonably call implementations such as CIVS ranked choice voting (just not using the problematic instant runoff method)?
3. Condorcet-based methods sound better than ranked choice with instant run-off. Do you know if there are issues with instant run-off that might still happen under a Condorcet system? Or would Condorcet solve most/all of the problems with instant run-off?

Again, thanks for the great explanation, but that actually leads me to @marinappdf’s point. It took me a looong time to understand Condorcet-based ranked voting methods compared to STAR. I remember when I first read about STAR a few years ago, it literally took me ~10 minutes to understand the whole thing including its algorithm. However, I’ve been reading about Condorcet for at least as many years, and I am only starting to feel like I understand the mechanism better. Even now, I think I can only explain the tie-breaking algorithms on a high conceptual level, but still have no idea how the math actually works. In comparison, I feel comfortable explaining the actual detailed algorithm of STAR (or approval or ranked choice with instant runoff).

Yes, the detailed implementation is abstracted away by the web platforms we are considering , but in a democratic system I think it is very important for voters to be able to understand what’s happening “inside the box” or “under the hood” with relative ease. This would greatly help build trust in the system.

I also agree with @marinappdf that scores are not harder than rankings to work with. Of course, this is just my opinion.

More importantly than that is a problem I’ve seen in real-life cases:

Let’s say there are three candidates Krusty, Homer, and Marge. And assume that I as a voter my favorite is Marge with Homer being a close second. But I really don’t like Krusty. So…

On a ranked ballot, I will have to put (1) Marge, (2) Homer, and (3) Krusty.

On a score ballot (e.g. 0-5 with 5 being highest), I can put Marge=5, Homer=4, and Krusty=0.

In my opinion, this example demonstrates that a score-based system is far more expressive and can capture nuances in opinion where a ranked ballot does not. And I think a good goal is to find a way for democratic participants to most fully express their opinions on the ballot.

Another practical issue that might make scoring easier than ranking is if, for example, I feel about the same for two (or more) candidates. In a score-based system, I can give those candidates either the same or very close scores. But in a ranked system, I am forced to put one option ahead of another, and sometimes that’s super difficult because how do I decide???

Quick note about strategic voting: First of all like @marinappdf suggested, I don’t think strategic voting will be a major problem for this community. That said, I think the single run-off stage of STAR disincentivises strategic voting because your vote will only make a difference if you give candidates different scores. This prevents “bullet voting” where you give your favorite candidate the top score and everyone else 0.

@solstag: I know it sounds great to say “oh, let’s leave it open and not fix on one method”, but I actually think picking a single method has very important advantages: People get used to it, they eventually come to familiarize themselves, understand it and trust it. This improves both their disposition to vote, the quality of their votes.

Great point! However, after thinking about it a bit more I am still inclined to leave this more open to change. A lot of what we’ve been discussing reflects developments in voting reform over the past several years. In another year or two we might have new knowledge and experience that suggest another option is better. I think it is a worthwhile trade-off to re-visit this topic regularly and consider improvements including possibly adopting another system. If we must commit to something (and I’m not saying we must), I would only suggest committing to not using a simple majority vote whenever there are more than two choices.

@marinappdf: I also thought more about your great point about ensuring minority representation and ensuring there are at least 4 on the Community Council. Both the STAR and CIVS websites show you the ranked order of winners after the polls close. So maybe it is easier than we think: Just go down the final list of results, starting from the 1st place winner, and seat candidates as appropriate. Does this make sense?

@marinappdf: If you have to chose one, right now, which one would be?

Thanks to @solstag I now feel much better about Condorcet-ranked (is that gramatically correct?) as implemented by CIVS. However, I am still more inclined towards STAR for the reasons I listed above.

@marinappdf: (@hpy , can you check if they could implement this, please?)

I have sent them an email with the main question: Can “one email one vote” can be used? I also raised concern about STAR possibly not meeting the Condorcet criteria, and if we can ensure the reserved minority seats can be elected with STAR. I really hope they will respond soon.

@marinappdf: PS: I want to keep reading and organizing this sort of information, lets make this ethercalc either way @hpy!

I’ve created an Ethercalc sheet here. Let me know if it works for you. For now I’ve used your assessment of easy vs hard.

Tell me if I missed something!

[hpy]

@solstag I just saw your most recent post right after I made mine. Good food for thought.

I’ll have to log off for today, but will study/reflect on your comment a bit more later.

[solstag]

@hpy Condorcet methods do not need to be complicated, no more than score methods do.

They may get complicated because people want to obtain methods that satisfy some weird criteria and so they have to come up with something equally weird. Score methods (for now) may seem simple, but some are already quite complicated in order to have better properties than others (for example the ‘usual judgement’ score method).

If the first time you saw an explanation of a Condorcet method you were unlucky to pick a complicated one, then it will all become spaghetti in your mind until you see a simpler explanation eheh.

For example, all the Minmax method does for a given candidate A is to calculate, for each other candidate B, on how many ballots A wins over B, and B wins over A, and subtract those two numbers. Then score A with the maximum of these values. The winner is the candidate with the lowest score.

Minmax-PM needs another line of explanation, but that’s it.

Answering specific questions:

At least some of the Condorcet tie-breaking algorithms choose the winner that is closest to being the Condorcet winner. So technically this means the final winner chosen by the algorithm is actually not the Condorcet winner

Not really. I suspect one day you saw some really bad explanation and it stuck in your head . Let’s get back to the basics: not all elections have a Condorcet winner. When that happens, you can’t pick the Condorcet winner because it does not exist! If it exists, all Condorcet methods will choose it, unequivocally. That’s the definition of a Condorcet method: a method that picks the Condorcet winner if it exists. Now, when the Condorcet winner doesn’t exist, then some methods (such as Minmax and its variations) will implement a choice that can be interpreted as “picking the closest to a Condorcet winner”. (in Minmax, by picking the candidate whose worse one-to-one loss is the smallest in terms of difference in votes, i.e., the one where the smallest number of votes need to be changed to make him a Condorcet winner).

can we reasonably call implementations such as CIVS ranked choice voting (just not using the problematic instant runoff method)?

Not only we can, we should. Instant run-off is just one method in the family of ranked choice methods, which includes all methods in CISV and many others. Some people use the term “ranked choice” to refer to IRV, but that is misleading, not to say wrong. IRV is a method, RC is a family of methods.

Condorcet-based methods sound better than ranked choice with instant run-off. Do you know if there are issues with instant run-off that might still happen under a Condorcet system? Or would Condorcet solve most/all of the problems with instant run-off?

All methods have “issues”. There is actually a theorem proving that no ranked voting system can satisfy all properties we would intuitively consider “desirable”, because some properties are mutually exclusive (it may be valid for score system depending on how you reinterpret the properties). On top of that there are issues with strategic voting, and again each voting method covers some risks and exposes others (there’s another theorem for that, which includes both rank and score systems eheh). People who study such systems then analyse and simulate different reality-like scenarios to try to figure out what are the methods with more serious risks of bad behaviour (I guess we’re all aware of that from browsing around). For example, CIVS uses Minmax-PM exactly because one such study compared it to tens of other methods, including score methods, and concluded it behaved better (link on the CISV page).

About the expressiveness of score, it makes some analysis of actual properties of elections a bit harder and approximative, but in my view the main point is that this expressiveness is overestimated. If rejection for an option is actually relevant, based on public understanding and not the whims of a few individuals, it will have an impact on both score and ranked choice. Votes like you suggest (5, 4, 0) actually expose one of the vulnerabilities of score to manipulation, as you can push your votes to the extremes to harm a candidate in favour of another. Also, note that ranked choice does allow one to give the same rank to different candidates.

In any case, I don’t mind if we choose STAR or Minmax-PM. I’m happy with both.

More importantly, I don’t see any reason to believe that a new revolutionary method will appear anytime soon. Election systems have been an endless debate where “best” is the real enemy of “good”. If we don’t fix a single method as the way to do things, we will, without a shadow of a doubt, waste immense and recurring amounts of energy on endless discussions whenever someone new comes up and doesn’t like what we’ve been using lately, or someone secretly feels method A is better for their proposition than method B. I’d rather spend all that energy discussing the substance of issues and not voting procedures.

.~´

EDIT: I’ve fixed some mistakes in this post after publishing it, sorry. Among them, I previously wrote score methods don’t satisfy many criteria, that’s not actually true, though most don’t strictly satisfy Condorcet.

[julianstirling]

@hpy, I think I agree with @solstag that Condorcet is not confusing if it is explained well. It was a term I had not heard until this thread, but I think that the CIVS website does a very good explanation.

I think the Condorcet winner is conceptually very easy. I think the criterion for winning and the the method of voting are so much more important than keeping the algorithm simple. Otherwise first past the post starts looking viable again .

[marinappdf]

Thanks again!

@solstag

They may get complicated because people want to obtain methods that satisfy some weird criteria and so they have to come up with something equally weird. Score methods (for now) may seem simple, but some are already quite complicated in order to have better properties than others (for example the ‘usual judgement’ score method).

I think that’s what probably happened to me. I understand it better now, thank you

@hpy

@marinappdf: I also thought more about your great point about ensuring minority representation and ensuring there are at least 4 on the Community Council. Both the STAR and CIVS websites show you the ranked order of winners after the polls close. So maybe it is easier than we think: Just go down the final list of results, starting from the 1st place winner, and seat candidates as appropriate. Does this make sense?

That’s actually super obvious and will definitely solve the question!! haha

@hpy

I have sent them an email with the main question: Can “one email one vote” can be used? I also raised concern about STAR possibly not meeting the Condorcet criteria, and if we can ensure the reserved minority seats can be elected with STAR. I really hope they will respond soon.

Ok, let’s wait their response!!!

@hpy

I’ve created an Ethercalc sheet here. Let me know if it works for you. For now I’ve used your assessment of easy vs hard.

Yassss!
I’ll check it later!
Thank you!

@solstag

More importantly, I don’t see any reason to believe that a new revolutionary method will appear anytime soon.

I agree with you, even so we should make it possible do change. I’ll propose that changes on the election method can’t be made easily, so we won’t have the problem of one election method per election.

Conclusion

In my understandig we could either chose for the CIVS, or Star. To chose STAR we need to first check if “on email one vote” will be a possibility. If it’s not, than the viable option is CIVS.

Either way, we’ll have to make a simple explanation page/wiki about it. I think I could use most of what you wrote here, if @hpy and @solstag are ok with it

[solstag]

@marinappdf

I agree with you, even so we should make it possible do change. I’ll propose that changes on the election method can’t be made easily, so we won’t have the problem of one election method per election.

Everything in an organization can always be changed Even bylaws can be completely replaced. All it takes is getting people to agree. The only thing we can do is make things harder to change. If we don’t want the election system to change without thorough discussion and the agreement of everybody in the organization, the right way to do that is what Debian did: put the rules in the bylaws (or constitution, or charter of principles, or whatever). That ensures the system can only be changed after everyone has been notified and had a chance to ponder on the reasons and the proposal(s) to change it.

Do note that, in terms of the energy required, even that is not such a big barrier. You only need to publish a page with the proposals, convene the people in an extraordinary assembly (or equivalent), vote on the proposals, and it’s done. Even if it’s an incorporated organization, the only extra work is for the secretary to collect signatures on a paper and submit it to some bureaucracy. That’s all there is.

@marinappdf

Either way, we’ll have to make a simple explanation page/wiki about it. I think I could use most of what you wrote here, if @hpy and @solstag are ok with it

Isn’t the forum CC-BY!? eheheh (But, jokes apart, if it isn’t then that’s something we could discuss at some point).

[marinappdf]

@solstag

The only thing we can do is make things harder to change.

Yep, that’s it.

@solstag

Isn’t the forum CC-BY!?

hahahaha
Always better to ask!

[hpy]

Not really. I suspect one day you saw some really bad explanation and it stuck in your head … If the first time you saw an explanation of a Condorcet method you were unlucky to pick a complicated one, then it will all become spaghetti in your mind until you see a simpler explanation eheh.

Hehe, I think that is indeed what happened to me because when I read about it in the past it really confused me. But thank you @solstag your explanation makes a lot of sense including how Condorcet methods will always pick the Condorcet winnder if it exists.

Some people use the term “ranked choice” to refer to IRV, but that is misleading, not to say wrong. IRV is a method, RC is a family of methods.

OK, agreed. I think that’s the same concept as when I was referring to different “flavours” of ranked choice voting.

All methods have “issues”. There is actually a theorem proving that no ranked voting system can satisfy all properties we would intuitively consider “desirable”, because some properties are mutually exclusive (it may be valid for score system depending on how you reinterpret the properties).

Yeah I was trying to avoide the myriad of criterias and terms that people have come up with to evaluate voting methods. Just look at this page for an extensive comparison, I have no idea what the “polytime” or “reversable symmetry” criteria are. I fully agree there is no “perfect” method and we shouldn’t aim for a system that ticks every box on that page.

I’d rather spend all that energy discussing the substance of issues and not voting procedures.

Agreed. I think having a discussion like this thread is OK, but we don’t need to do a whole PhD on this topic.

[hpy]

Alright, I’ve been in touch with the STAR people over the past week with about a dozen back-and-forth emails. They have been very responsive and answered my various questions quickly and patiently. Short answer first:

YES, email-based “one email one vote” ballots can be achieved with https://star.vote

---

Here’s the longer answer regarding holding an election using STAR-voting on https://star.vote:

1. The election administrator can generate a list of unique “voter keys” (they look like this: 08d30d705a7258d7). Each key can then be sent to each registered voter’s email. Here’s an example screenshot:
   
   
2. The voter visits the election URL, enters their voter key, and cast their ballot by scoring as many candidates as they want. Once this is done, the voter key is deactivated and cannot be used again.
3. Once the ballot is cast, the voter will receive a “voter ID” that they can keep as a reference and verification that their vote has been successfully cast and counted. The administrator will not know the link between voter key and voter ID, so the votes are anonymous.

Bonus points:

5. The order of candidates on the ballot can optionally be randomised for each voter to reduce bias. I.e. the order of options that each voter sees is different.
6. Multi-winner elections are supported using the STAR Multi-winner Bloc method. Basically, the 1st place winner is elected, then the process is repeated for the remaining candidates until the desired number of winners are chosen. So for GOSH we can set the number of winners to 7. By the way, regardless of method the website will tell you the ordering of the winners from first to last place anyway, so we can use that list to ensure the 4 reserved seats are filled correctly.
7. If for some reason we really have trouble managing the unique voter keys and sending them to registered users, we can optionally just send a list of emails to them and they can help distribute the voter keys.

I asked about the sustainability and future plans for STAR and the https://star.vote platform. It is fully open source and:

8. They have received a surge in support and interest over the past year (presumably because of the US elections…) so I think this platform should be reliable for the forseeable future. They even invited me to their developer chat channel to see what the process looks like.
9. Easier email-based ballots is a “top priority” for the developers, and it is very likely that distributing unique voter IDs/links to registered voters via email will be even easier in the future.

With this information, I think using STAR (as implemented by https://star.vote/) is a fully viable option for the upcoming GOSH Community Council election. It is valuable that we now have a direct line of communication to the organisation and developers behind STAR who have been very responsive and expressed a desire to support us through the whole process. They are also keen to get our feedback if we choose to use STAR. (to be clear, maybe the developers behind CIVS will be responsive, too, but I admit I haven’t tried to contact them yet )

But just to sum up previous posts and what I’ve learned, a few possible downsides:

• STAR often selects the Condorcet winner (if it exists), but this is not guaranteed. Regardless, the voting results page will show a table of the pairwise comparisons. But as mentioned in previous posts, it is difficult to find an election method that perfectly ticks all the boxes.
• For now, we need an account on the STAR-voting website to create elections with unique voter keys. The people behind STAR has offered to create an account for us. Apparently this is another development priority that will be made easier in the future.
• The STAR voting platform is newer than CIVS. Normally I would be concerned, but given my communications with the team, their enthusiasm, and the huge growth of their organisation I think we should be OK.
• To my knowledge (correct me if I’m wrong!): STAR has been used in a few real-life elections on the local level but a Condorcet method with Minmax-PM has not. On the other hand, the Condorcet method with Minmax-PM as done by CIVS has been used for big open source communities like Debian but STAR has not (we will be the first one?). Either way, both has been used successfully without major controversy.

This is all I can remember and summarise for now. If I have to pick one I’m still inclined towards STAR especially with the support we can get from them, but of course I appreciate your feedback and respect the decision of the Governance Working Group. If you have more questions I’m happy to pass them to the developers, or I can give you their contact information. Thanks!

[marinappdf]

Hi!

I like STAR voting, I feel confident about. The website design is also better than CIVS.

@hpy

Multi-winner elections are supported using the STAR Multi-winner Bloc method.

They also have Proportional STAR: Star ballots are tallied for proportional representation. For multi-winner elections where the goal is to elect a diverse body. Proportional representation ensures that factions are represented proportionate to the number of voters supporting each.
This can be used on the future, on helping us to elect a diverse body. For now, I think we don’t have time/energy to dig on it, but can be done in the future.

Summary

CISV and STAR are the indicated options.

We should choose and and stick with it.

Update on the pros and cons of CIVS:

@marinappdf

Platform: https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/

• Free and open source easy to set election platform;
• The same method have been used by a big and trustable community (Debian);
• Is known to be good;
• @solstag says the main issues, related to strategic voting, are not likely to be a problem to GOSH;

Plus ++

• The difficulty to an overall understanding is “easy";
• The difficulty to understand the algorithms: depends the algorithm, it can be very hard, but it can also be very easy.

Update on the pros and con for STAR:

@marinappdf

Plataform: https://star.vote/

• Free and open source easy to set election platform;
• This method is new, there are less examples of usage than CIVS, but there haven’t been cases of unintended consequences, or “bad results”;
• Does not fill the Condorcet criterium, so it can’t guarantee that the winner will definitely win against every other candidate;
• The difficulty to an overall understanding is “easy”;

Plus ++

• The difficulty to understand the algorithms: depends the algorithm, it can be very hard, but it can also be very easy.
• Score + automatic runoff, this means every winner is the winner from two (not condorcet);
• one e-mail one vote option;
• multi-winner option;
• proportional election option.

Thank you! I’m sure now we can make a better decision.

[hpy]

Thanks @marinappdf, glad to help.

I’ll add another “plus” which is that the team behind https://star.vote/ is responsive and happy to help us. I think this level of support is valuable.

Oh and I forgot to mention that for https://star.vote/, you can create a custom URL for the election which will make it more convenient for voters. This is a nice and thoughtful feature.

And in case this helps with your evaluation, Jay from the development team helped me create a demo election here with an easy and short custom URL:

https://star.vote/goshdemo/

Here is a list of unused voter keys:

0938f18960d3d4fd  
0a05d8531ae48356
0af983aad8389866 
0bb259c0b7fd72ab 
0d0eac8e671c1537
0f2fc80798118e49
13f0575bb00839b0 
15c25276f9638cd6

On the voting page, enter one of these voter keys to cast a ballot. After that, the key cannot be used again. (so I hope there are enough keys for the demo, if not I can create a new demo election with more keys)

Again, if there are any questions or concerns please let me know and we can try to address them. Thanks!

[briannaljohns]

Hi all!

I spent some time this afternoon revisiting this forum post, and will say that I have enjoyed some of these brief lessons on voting theory . Certainly learned new things!

That being said, as community coordinator I will serve as the election secretary in this upcoming election, helping to administer the election process. This means I will need to be comfortable and well-versed in the voting platform that is being used. Thank you @hpy for getting in touch with STAR and sharing the demo election, your work has been very helpful. I am thinking it would be a good idea for me to meet with you, @marinappdf, and others on this forum interested in election platforms so that we can discuss some of the logistics surrounding https://star.vote/, which as of now seems like the preferred option. If you would like to meet, please send me a private message or email me at brianna@openhardware.science and we can work out a time that works for everyone.

Thanks so much!
Bri

[hpy]

Thank you @briannaljohns! If a meeting will be helpful I will be happy to pitch in. I will send you a private message.

By the way, the folks behind star.vote set me up with a test account to create test polls and elections (they can set one up for GOSH, too). So if there’s interest just tell me what to test with it!

[julianstirling]

Just to bring to people’s attention that a big open source initiative has just experienced an election security issue. The details are still vague.

Open Source Initiative board election results scrapped after security hole...

[hpy]

Good to know! At least it says:

OSI uses open source voting software Helios but insists the issue had to do with “an internal piece of our process, not Helios.”

So it doesn’t seem to be a problem with the Helios platform.

[julianstirling]

Yes, but it highlights the point that I am sure we are all aware of already. Namely that our internal process is as important or more important than choosing the right software.