[ARIN-consult] Consultation on Implementing Single Transferrable Voting for ARIN Elections

[Richard Laager]

On 1/6/22 1:55 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 6, 2022 at 8:38 AM ARIN <info at arin.net> wrote:
>> One recommendation that has arisen from this governance review is to replace the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system with single transferrable voting (STV), also known as ranked-choice voting.

Yes, please. FPTP is the worst.

> or needlessly cast for run-away winners;

Does this imply an STV variant where surplus votes are transferred, as 
discussed below?

> In the third pass, one has 30%, three has 35.5% and four has 34.5%.
> Now the peculiarity of STV versus ordinary ranked choice voting comes
> into play. Candidate 3 has exceeded the election threshold

Wikipedia says that once someone reaches the quota (which I think is 
Bill's "election threshold"), they are declared elected. In a two-seat 
election, I think that threshold would be 33.3% (plus one vote), so 
candidates three and four have crossed it. They are both elected, and 
since both seats are filled, the process stops. (Your example arrived at 
the same result, though.)

It should only be necessary to distribute excess/surplus votes if only 
one candidate had passed the threshold and there were still more 
candidates than seats.

> so his
> "excess" votes are distributed to the other candidates.

According to Wikipedia, only some definitions of STV transfer 
excess/surplus votes. And there are different ways to transfer the 
surplus votes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote#Transfers_of_surplus_votes

I don't have strong feelings about those details. But whatever ARIN is 
adopting does need to be clearly specified somewhere.

-- 
Richard