[2429.AB] IRV Amendment, Redux

[Welly]

I am re-upping the same proposal I made after the last Delegate election.

In light of the discussion here, I have drafted the below proposal to replace Approval Voting in Delegate elections with Instant-Runoff Voting, which would unify all of our forum-based elections to a single, IRV ballot. The primary goal is to reduce voter confusion. I present this as a draft for discussion, not a finally baked proposal.

Amendments to the Elections Act

2. Electoral Basics

(1) For forum-based voting, voters shall vote by secret ballot.

1. The method of casting secret ballots will be selected by the Election Commissioner. The chosen method must utilize an unaffiliated account, group, or server, with the method and all votes remaining available for audit.
2. Voters may not alter their votes once cast via the method selected by the Election Commissioner.
3. Named ballots shall not be released by the Election Commissioner under any circumstances.

(2) In each election, voters can, subject to limitations set for the specific voting method, vote for the Re-Open Nominations option, which shall function like a normal candidate in the election. If, under the voting method used, the option to Re-Open Nominations is athe first or only winner, the election process for the exact position won by it shall restart.

(3) To be eligible to be included on a ballot, a candidate must post a campaign in an area designated by the Election Commissioner. The campaign must prominently include a truthful declaration of all potential conflicts of interest the candidate may have within and outside of the South Pacific.

(4) To be eligible to vote in, or stand for, a forum-based election, a citizen must have been accepted by the Citizenship Committee before the period for nominations began for that particular election.

(5) If the voting method used in an election ties candidates, whether for elimination or winning, the Election Commissioner will select a method of arbitration, unless the tie can be resolved by special provisions set for the election in law. If the method chosen involves chance, an unaffiliated Discord bot will be used to generate a result in a public channel randomly using a coin toss or some similar set of pre-defined outcomes.

(6) Under Instant-Runoff Voting, the sole winner iswinners - as many as specified for the respective position - are determined as follows;

1. As their ballot, a voter lists any candidates they wish in descending order of preference.
2. Until a candidate has received an absolute majority of first-place preferences and thus becomes thea winner, the candidate with the fewest first-place preferences is eliminated and the ballots get retallied, ignoring any eliminated candidates and discounting ballots solely listing eliminated candidates.
3. If candidates tie for elimination, all those receiving the fewest second-place preferences among them are eliminated.

d. If the position specifies more than one winner, then the last candidate eliminated shall also become a winner until the requisite number of winners have been chosen, provided, however, that no candidate shall become a winner if named on less than half of all ballots cast.

(7) Under Approval Voting, winners ‒ as many as specified for the respective position ‒ are determined as follows;

1. As their ballot, a voter either indicates all candidates they approve of, or the option to Re-Open Nominations.
2. Until enough winners have been found, the most-approved candidate among the non-winners becomes a winner.
3. The option to Re-Open Nominations wins in place of the winners who have been approved on less than half of all ballots.

(87) Under Majority Voting, the sole winner is determined as follows;

1. As their ballot, a voter indicates the candidate their vote shall go towards.
2. If a candidate has received an absolute majority of votes, they are the winner; otherwise, the two candidates who have received the most votes advance to a runoff, held under the same rules as this round of voting. Should this runoff result in a tie, then the tie shall be broken according to the general tie-breaking procedure.

3. Office of the Delegate

(1) The Delegate will be elected in a two-round process constituting a single election, with the citizens voting on a slate of nominees on the forums, and candidates advancing from that process being voted on by regional poll on-site.

(2) On the 15th of January and July, the citizens will convene for the first round of Delegate Elections.

1. Any eligible citizen wishing to run for Delegate may declare their candidacy, and the citizens will debate the merits of their platform. Any player who has been banned from World Assembly membership will be considered ineligible and any candidate who is later discovered to be banned from World Assembly membership will be immediately disqualified. Citizens wishing to run for Delegate must hold a number of endorsements equal to at least 80% of the existing general endorsement cap at the commencement of the election period.
2. The campaign and debate period will last four days, after which the citizens will vote for four days.
3. This round of voting for Delegate will use Approval Voting Instant-Runoff Voting to determine two winners as candidates in the second round. If candidates tie for being a winner, all of those tied candidates shall be considered winners.

(3) After the winners of the first round have been determined, the second round will commence with those winners as candidates.

1. The Election Commissioner will create a six-day-long regional poll through which eligible members may cast their ballots. The poll must provide instructions for them on how to do so, and may only allow Native World Assembly members to participate.
2. A Dispatch containing the campaigns of all candidates will be created to aid voters in their choice.
3. Members of the South Pacific Special Forces who are on deployment at the conclusion of the regional poll are eligible to cast a ballot. The Prime Minister shall provide a list of deployed personnel to the Election Commissioner. Members on the list can cast their ballot through a public post on the Regional Message Board which tags the Election Commissioner.
4. The winner of this round, as decided using Majority Voting, will be declared the Delegate-elect.

(4) The Delegate-elect will be considered formally inaugurated upon achieving the most endorsements. Prior to inauguration, the sole responsibility of the Delegate-elect is to gather endorsements, in coordination with the incumbent Delegate and in cooperation with the Council on Regional Security. The incumbent will continue to hold the office of the Delegate and will remain responsible for all responsibilities of that office, serving out the remainder of their term, until the inauguration of the Delegate-elect.

[lordnwahs]

Once again, I’m not sold on this proposal, for the exact same reasons I laid out in the old thread (see here and here).

I had a silly idea though (and feel free to tell me why it’s a terrible idea because I’m also not sold on it) — if the timing of the elections is the issue leading to confusion, why not stagger the delegate and PM elections such that they don’t occur on the same date?

[UnitedDisneyStates]

I think this amendment is needed, here are my reasons why

1. It will cause less confusion on voters, in the elections, which will in turn decrease the rejected ballots, from the high 23%, too almost nothing
2. It will also not cause us to have the same argument over and over, at every single election, like this past election and the election before that
3. We need unification, or it will just cause more confusion, and in the elections to continue to have 23%, or even higher percentages of rejected ballots, cause of the confusion
   These are my three main reasons why I support this amendment.

[Of_the_Ages]

Rather than shifting the delegate election to IRV, we should simply lay out rules for invalid ballots to be interpreted. The primary (and possibly only) situation where we would likely interpret invalid ballots would be ranked IRV type ballots in an approval election. The exceptionally straightforward way of interpreting those would be to assume the voter intends to approve their first choice and no others. It solves the main problem we’re having with invalid votes.

[KrisKringle]

@Of_the_Ages

The exceptionally straightforward way of interpreting those would be to assume the voter intends to approve their first choice and no others.

That’s unreasonable, why would we assume that the voter does not intend to approve other candidates?

This is exactly the problem with letting officials interpret voter intent: we introduce subjectivity that strips away voter agency and potentially changes the result of an election. We have clear laws; while steps can certainly be taken to ensure the voting booth is accessible and understandable to voters, voters also have a responsibility (which keeps being dropped) to know what the process looks like.

[Welly]

@KrisKringle

@Of_the_Ages

The exceptionally straightforward way of interpreting those would be to assume the voter intends to approve their first choice and no others.

That’s unreasonable, why would we assume that the voter does not intend to approve other candidates?

I agree with Kris here. In fact I would take the opposite presumption. In an IRV election, if a voter ranks Candidate A first and Candidate B second, they are expressing approval of Candidate B, just less than Candidate A. The way to express disapproval in an IRV election is to not rank a candidate at all, which will result in their not receiving your vote if the election were to go to a second round.

[anjo]

Still a hard no from me on switching to IRV.

@Of_the_Ages

Rather than shifting the delegate election to IRV, we should simply lay out rules for invalid ballots to be interpreted. The primary (and possibly only) situation where we would likely interpret invalid ballots would be ranked IRV type ballots in an approval election. The exceptionally straightforward way of interpreting those would be to assume the voter intends to approve their first choice and no others. It solves the main problem we’re having with invalid votes.

I agree with the idea of just codifying a rule for mistakenly ranked ballots. It’s a way easier fix than completely switching voting systems (especially when there’s good reasons for why we use AV for Delegate, but I won’t bore everyone here with that again ). However, as Welly already wrote, I think it would make more sense to consider all candidates ranked above RON to be approved, instead of only the first choice:

On their AV ballot, the voter tells us all candidates they would support over RON. In case they mistakenly rank the candidates, the resulting list also declares which candidates they support over RON. So in both cases, the voter themselves, without any subjective re-interpretation necessary, provides us the exact same information. Plus, this would always produce the same list of approvals, whether a voter properly used an AV ballot or mistakenly ranked the candidates (assuming honest voting), so I also don’t believe that voter agency would be subverted with this.

[Legend]

I’ve made my arguements back on the other topic, still strongly against this. It is by no means unreasonable to expect our citizens to read the instructions if they want to vote. The fact not all of them do is not a failing on the system’s part, it’s a mistake on their part, hopefully one that they learn from.

[ProfessorHenn]

I’m supportive of whatever system will unify the ballots into one. IRV, EAV, either or.

[Of_the_Ages]

@anjo

However, as Welly already wrote, I think it would make more sense to consider all candidates ranked above RON to be approved, instead of only the first choice:

On their AV ballot, the voter tells us all candidates they would support over RON. In case they mistakenly rank the candidates, the resulting list also declares which candidates they support over RON. So in both cases, the voter themselves, without any subjective re-interpretation necessary, provides us the exact same information. Plus, this would always produce the same list of approvals, whether a voter properly used an AV ballot or mistakenly ranked the candidates (assuming honest voting), so I also don’t believe that voter agency would be subverted with this.

The reason I said to assume they only approve their first rank is because we know that’s who they want to be delegate the most, hence why we assume they approve them, and ignore the rest because we wouldn’t have any solid information on those. What you suggested of approving everyone ranked higher than RON just wasn’t something that crossed my mind, but I do see how that’s better than what I suggested and I agree that it’s the better option.

@Legend

I’ve made my arguements back on the other topic, still strongly against this. It is by no means unreasonable to expect our citizens to read the instructions if they want to vote. The fact not all of them do is not a failing on the system’s part, it’s a mistake on their part, hopefully one that they learn from.

I think it is a failing on the systems part. We know that most people are reading the instructions for the PM election, we don’t have near as many invalid ballots there, people only aren’t reading the one for the delegate election. This is most likely because the two sets of instructions look like they’re the same at a glance, so people don’t think they need to read them. If we changed the template of the ballot (so new people need to go back and read the instructions to figure out how to fill it out because they can’t just copy the PM one) or if we changed the fact that the instructions look the same at a glance then I think a lot of these invalid ballots would go away.

[KrisKringle]

@Of_the_Ages

The reason I said to assume they only approve their first rank is because we know that’s who they want to be delegate the most, hence why we assume they approve them, and ignore the rest because we wouldn’t have any solid information on those. What you suggested of approving everyone ranked higher than RON just wasn’t something that crossed my mind, but I do see how that’s better than what I suggested and I agree that it’s the better option.

This is precisely why elections officials should not be guessing what voters intended to convey. You can have multiple competing interpretations and it should be a complete disservice to substitute the voter’s intent for the commissioner’s guesswork.

@Of_the_Ages

We know that most people are reading the instructions for the PM election

We don’t actually know that. For all we know people just assume that it’s IRV and happen to guess right with PM elections. I would argue that it’s more likely that people never read any instructions.

[Belschaft]

I dislike Approval Voting and prefer IRV, but the issue here is not that Approval voting is being used - it is that Kris has established his own standard contrary to IRL norms for Election Commissions, and is voiding ballots which should be counted.

As Kris has indicated that he is not willing to adopt the practices used IRL, our options are to amend the Elections Act to require him to do so or replace him as Commissioner. My preference is for the first and I will introduce legislation to that effect.

[KrisKringle]

@Belschaft

it is that Kris has established his own standard contrary to IRL norms for Election Commissions

No, I am disagreeing with standards from your country. I am acting fully within the standards as they apply in my country, where officials don’t do much in the way of “interpreting voter intent”, and that is just as valid.

To act as though elections officials in all RL countries interpret votes the way the UK does is misleading and ignores cases such as Peru where officials check ballots against clearly established rules, and deem invalid those ballots that do not comply with those clear rules.

[Pronoun]

@Of_the_Ages

The primary (and possibly only) situation where we would likely interpret invalid ballots would be ranked IRV type ballots in an approval election.

Actually, last time we had people voting under approval voting in an IRV election. The Prime Minister declarations period ended without any campaigns, so nominations were automatically-reopened, and Prime Minister voting ended up after Delegate voting on the forums.

@lordnwahs

I had a silly idea though (and feel free to tell me why it’s a terrible idea because I’m also not sold on it) — if the timing of the elections is the issue leading to confusion, why not stagger the delegate and PM elections such that they don’t occur on the same date?

Because it just feels messy — but also, I think the above example is a decent one of how even when we had Prime Minister voting after Delegate voting, it didn’t seem to alleviate the issue. I don’t know if it’s worth the trade-off of having a more complex schedule of elections.^[1]

@Belschaft

I dislike Approval Voting and prefer IRV, but the issue here is not that Approval voting is being used - it is that Kris has established his own standard contrary to IRL norms for Election Commissions, and is voiding ballots which should be counted.

Sure, but when we had people voting approval in an IRV election, that wouldn’t have been a solution. (If you really want to go down the route of real-life parallels, Example 22 from the UK elections pamphlet you linked seems illustrative.) In any case, I’m glad you intend to introduce legislation because I think you are bringing your familiarity with real-world UK election rules and even in this topic there are at least two people not named Kris with conflicting views on how ballots should be counted.

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I’ll make two brief thoughts, though I’m not sure how much they’d actually help.

The simpler thought: perhaps we could put simple instructions on the ballots, like the example approval ballot and preferential ballot on Wikipedia.

The broader thought: perhaps we could choose a different voting system.

That can certainly be a chase-your-own-tail kind of discussion. I think it’s worth prefacing this thought with something Glen said in 2019:

Can we just pick one without getting philosophical about it? We are a community of less than 40-50 people at max population. As someone who was forced to study this stuff to get my degree, it doesn’t really matter what method we use with such a small population. [source]

There are a lot of options for our voting system. None of them are (mathematically) perfect. I get that.

But I think intent matters. Even if our voting population is small, the voting system we choose can set the tone.

Before we had approval voting for the delegacy, we had IRV, with the specific intent to have two more distinct candidates going into the second round. For instance, Nwahs, your second link to the previous discussion seems like a center squeeze — which, arguably, could be a ‘feature not a bug’ if the goal is to identify two candidates with more distinct political positions.

Similarly, we adopted approval voting with the specific intent to identify candidates with broad support and less opposition, with the view that the Delegate should be someone who is a consensus candidate and who is, in Tsu’s words at the time, “well-known and trusted” to have access to all the regional power that the Delegate has.

If we’re fine with somewhere in between, a Condorcet method or expanding approvals could also be options. It also depends on what we actually value from our system; for example, later-no-harm is a property of IRV but I don’t know if I really care for it in Delegate elections because I think consensus-building is valuable for a Delegate and endorsement requirements already provide some level of incumbency advantage.

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1. A digression: I actually think this complexity does matter more than one might think. Even quite politically involved and experienced figures aren’t always mentally keeping track of when the next election cycle is. (Like that one time literally all of us forgot about a Chair election. For like an entire month or something.) And that makes it especially hard for a newcomer who has ambitions for higher office to hit the ground running, because they might not start writing their campaign until they see nominations have opened, and their opponent might already have their campaign drafted because they’re more experienced with a more complicated electoral calendar. ↩︎

[UnitedDisneyStates]

I was not expecting this big of an argument over the ballots, to even having another topic also that has the Elections Act being amended, to now having two choices either to amend the elections act or to kick off Kris as Commissioner, this is starting to get insane.

@Legend

The fact not all of them do is not a failing on the system’s part, it’s a mistake on their part, hopefully one that they learn from.

Yes, it is a mistake on our part, however it is part the system’s fault, as nobody gets rejected on the PM elections, or barely anybody does. Nobody is reading the instructions for delegate because people think it’s identical, that is the system’s fault for not being different between the PM, and Delegate elections.

@Belschaft

As Kris has indicated that he is not willing to adopt the practices used IRL, our options are to amend the Elections Act to require him to do so or replace him as Commissioner. My preference is for the first and I will introduce legislation to that effect.

Yes, I have to agree amending the elections act, is definitely my preference, as I feel replacing him may or may not cause some problems. However, I still feel amending @Welly’s proposal may be the best approach, because it will unify to the IRV ballot for every forum based election, and I think it will be the best solution to the issue, as this will still make invalid ballots go significantly down, from the 23% this election itself.

[Legend]

@UnitedDisneyStates

Yes, it is a mistake on our part, however it is part the system’s fault, as nobody gets rejected on the PM elections, or barely anybody does. Nobody is reading the instructions for delegate because people think it’s identical, that is the system’s fault for not being different between the PM, and Delegate elections.

It’s not though. You’re arguing that the people aren’t at fault because they read one set of instructions and not the other. I’m feeling pretty silly today, so let me give you a silly example. If I task you with making two things, a pie and a cake, and you try to make the pie the same way as the cake, it’s not going to come out right now, is it? it’s not the instructions’ fault that you only chose to read one set of steps.

[UnitedDisneyStates]

People are not the fault because they think it’s the same for both Delegate and PM, they think it’s the same way, so it’s not their fault when the system doesn’t have a difference! The system is the fault because their isn’t a clear enough difference for people, and that’s why we have 23% of invalid ballots.

[Of_the_Ages]

@Legend

It’s not though. You’re arguing that the people aren’t at fault because they read one set of instructions and not the other. I’m feeling pretty silly today, so let me give you a silly example. If I task you with making two things, a pie and a cake, and you try to make the pie the same way as the cake, it’s not going to come out right now, is it? it’s not the instructions’ fault that you only chose to read one set of steps.

That is a poor analogy. People voting like this most likely don’t know that there are different voting systems, they’d have to read both instructions to realize that. The instructions also look quite similar at a glance, and so it is entirely within reason that someone who only read one might assume the other is the same, and then act on that assumption.

[Legend]

@UnitedDisneyStates

People are not the fault because they think it’s the same for both Delegate and PM, they think it’s the same way, so it’s not their fault when the system doesn’t have a difference! The system is the fault because their isn’t a clear enough difference for people, and that’s why we have 23% of invalid ballots.

Yes, the people are at fault. There’s this very niche thing called reading, but I think only the most exceptional among us (the ones who make it to kindergarten) know how to do it. I’m also going to presume you meant “does have a difference,” and it is their fault when they don’t read the instructions. It’s really not that hard, it’s not like they have a bomb attached to their neck that’ll go off unless they get their votes done in a single minute.
Also, why are we assuming people are voting in/reading the instructions for the Prime Minister election first? Is it solely based on the statistics? Was the one extra vote cast in the Delegate Election than the Prime Minister election because the IRV system scared voters off?

[UnitedDisneyStates]

@Of_the_Ages, completely agree with you, It looks at glance very similar, and they think, it’s like a default same thing for every ballot.
I also agree, I thought the example was really bad, made no sense and I personally think it made it worse that the example was used because it made even less sense.