Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Something tells me that all of this passion for the voting process may be due to the fact that people are (a) unhappy about the candidates, or (b) unhappy that they're not one of the candidates.

Honestly, I wish there were more candidates and that people took the time to actually make some nominations (of which there were none: all of the candidates in this election are the result of self-candidature).

Seriously, the voting method isn't really the issue here. Vote for your top pick and see what happens (sorry we're not all part of separate parties that you can blindly align with, but I'm not a big fan of that method either!). Come next election, I hope everyone involves themselves a lot more -- whether it be while determining the next voting method or while generating a list of candidates.

As for not knowing who any of us are, I find that odd. If you're an active member of this community, you should have run into one (or many) of us somewhere. Most of us have blogs. Most of us contribute in some way or another. And, there is this:

http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Community...e_declarations

While this may not tell you who we are, it does describe our motivations.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how this turns out. It's an important addition to our community and will surely aid in alleviating some of the frustrations that are being discussed here.

Tim

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

No, not really. In fact, there's a vocal minority in the US who argue for suffrage on the basis of, e.g., land ownership, rather than age. In essence, this is a rejection of the ideal of democracy (in the sense that I just conceded implies Bayesian regret as a figure-of-merit), but it still falls under the broader definition. For that matter, establishing a suffrage age seems to be a rejection of that ideal as well, though it's quite popular.

Additionally, I don't think either of them was telling you you're not worth voting. Lardman was responding to the issue you raised (lack of voter knowledge of candidates) in a broad sense, and General Antilles was suggesting a measure to increase knowledge of candidates.

Well, in a government election, I don't look for the best person, but for the person who will best represent my views; essentially they're scored as the dot-product of their closeness to me on issues, and on those issues' importance.

I think, while I may not know if it's "a person I wouldn't trust in real life", there's plenty of information to find out what their existing concerns and stances are on some issues. And they've had no motive to falsify these, since they haven't been running for office most of the time; it seems a good enough criterion to me.

As for what to do if your persuaded one candidate shouldn't be on, and another is OK, but the others you don't really know about: supposing you find yourself in that position on the deadline, vote for the one you think is best of the ones you know about; a vote for him is a vote against the one you despise, after all. And if this level of ignorance is fairly widespread, and is independent of which candidates are known/unknown, it'll all work out. With range voting, of course, you would ascribe some average value to the unknowns, but that doesn't work here.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

... which may be due to the fact that self-nomination is the only way described under the headline "Nomination Procedure" on the respective announcement at maemo.org.


Anyway, I believe all of this is quite a normal thing for the first round. It will be something to consider next time. After all, it's going fairly well: It could have been 2 candidates only, and a huge scandal building up around one of them.... (like: "recently was seen inside an apple store")

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Some of these are fairly general; e.g. votes may be bought/sold applies to any internet voting system I'm aware of; there's no polling place under government (or other) control to ensure privacy; from no privacy, it follows that one may prove who one voted for; compensation may then be rationally offered in exchange for that proof. In my understanding, the elected members will not be in control of the next voting process, but I'm not certain; I haven't followed some stuff as closely as I should.

The Borda method is the "obvious" preferential voting scheme we all developed when we 13, trying to find solutions to all the problems in the world, then later found had already been discovered, and had serious non-obvious repercussions. (Or at least my sister and I did!)
There's always Wikipedia, but in brief: each voter ranks candidates 1-5 in order of preference; top candidate gets 5 votes, second gets 4 votes, and so on. Candidate with highest sum wins. It turns out that this solution is big on compromise, with choices who were nobody's top pick. It is not a Condorcet method, of course, but it helps in those cases where you actually want someone with weaker but broader support. There are variations, of course, with different weights, and methods of dealing with incomplete ballots.


In my case, not really. Certainly not (b), I haven't the time in any case; and I don't really know of anyone really missing from the list. (Well, Darius Jack, maybe. ;))

I'm actually just that concerned about election methods.

It is an issue, though obviously those of us who care should have jumped in earlier. It may not be directly helpful to discuss it now, but hopefully this discussion will be widely enough participated in/read to help with the serious, timely discussion for the next election.

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I'm cool with that, as long as they had plastic explosives. :D

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Government elections (and most probably all future council elections) are different in that I know what the people I vote for are supposed to do. And they know the challenges they'll face, so they can offer answers. And, of course, there's interviews, online-chats etc. with the candidates. (We're right in the middle of a campaign here in Austria, government elections will be on Sept. 28th, so I know what they do :D )

It's different with the council, though: We still have only very vague ideas of what they will do, how/if they can influence the direction of the community, what could go wrong if they don't do a good job etc.
So it doesn't really make sense to ask a candidate: "Whats your opinion on X?" or "Do you have ideas on how to Y?" if you don't know if this council will ever be able to influence these issues. Council voting is more like: "I deeply trust you, I know you're a good guy and wouldn't do anything I wouldn't. Go now. Go out there and make mummy proud, will you?"
At least thats how I feel about it.
To make things even more complicated, I deeply care about all of this and I'm terribly afraid to do the wrong thing... :(

So your idea would be something like a "negative vote": Vote for somebody you're not sure about and risk he's not the right choice in order to make sure the other one (who you know is not the right person) has less chances?
Not that bad at all. I was so confused about trying to get things right (and so afraid I could fail doing so) that I completely forgot I could gamble a bit ... ;)

OK, candidates, let me see the pictures from your summer holidays. Sun, shorts, no shirts. I'll vote for the best looking one. :D

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Alas, I think there are no chicks on the ballot this time. (Nor are there likely to be, if topless photos become a campaign staple!)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

Bad for you, good for me. ;)

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

You've made my day. :D

Re: Maemo Community Council Elections
 

I simply don't think you can know who we are unless you either read up on what we've said and done, or come and stay with us each for a week and see what we're like. I'm not sure how else this could be done, except perhaps that we should issue manifestos/statements to illustrate what we're like (somehow), and those who know of us can comment on the accuracy of our statements?