Hi Charlie, In terms of improving proportionality why not keep this system (which I feel is not a bad one for electing a smallish board) why not introduce specific seats reserved for specific groups, for instance you could say that a minimum of 50% of seats are reserved for women so for example if 8 candidates achieve more than 50%+1 but only 3 of the winning candidates are women, then only 6 seats can actually be filled. Of course this raises issues, but if your organisation has already accepted that proportionality is important enough to dictate the election system then I don't see the problem.
Paddy. ________________________________ From: Charlie DeTar <c...@media.mit.edu> To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Fri, 18 February, 2011 0:38:44 Subject: Re: [EM] electing a variable number of seats On 02/17/2011 07:21 PM, James Gilmour wrote: > Charlie > I see two problems here. > > 1. You do not give the conditions under which the constitution of this >organisation allows the number of board members to be > varied. > > 2. More importantly, someone needs to define the purpose of this election a >great deal better. Who would have the power to add one > extra winner with a view to "improving representation" and who would decide >what "improved representation" might be? And just who > exactly would have the power to reduce the number elected board members with > a >view to "eliminating polarizing candidates" and who > would decide that the last winner was a "polarizing candidate" who should be >excluded? Valid points. Currently, the bylaws allow between 5 and 9 board members. The current process is that each member is voted on individually by simple majority of the voting members of the organization. With this process, it's clear when the number changes: if only 5 candidates receive 50+% of the vote, there are only 5 board members; if 9, then there are 9. There is not currently any defined process for what happens when (a) fewer than 5 people receive 50% of the vote, or (b) more than 9 people do; in the history of the organization it hasn't happened. This is one aspect in which the current system is broken I share your concerns with allowing an individual to have the authority to define when to grow or shrink the board. However, if there were a voting system that could quantify questions like how well the electorate is represented, or whether a candidate is polarizing, the system could select the mix of candidates which would produce an optimal score according to those metrics. If my language here sounds more like it comes from a machine learning world, that's because that's closer to my experience. Thanks very much Markus and others for the sources and recommendations, I'll look into those. best, Charlie ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
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