Breaking a Tie

[Eluvatar]

In this Delegacy election we got mighty close to a perfect tie between the two top candidates.

How should such a tie be resolved?

In desperation, I'm thinking about stuff like endorsement count. Are there better ideas?

[Gulliver]

Well, if we also formalize the security of succession laws to require that candidates start tarting during elections to ease  the transition, then I can get behind Delegate endorsements as a tiebreaker. Mind you though, that doesn't resolves Speaker elections, though that is technically a Senate vote for which the Delegate already has tie breaking power.

[Eluvatar]

If the Delegate is administering that vote I don't think he should have tiebreaking capacity. It is worrysome.

[Gulliver]

Well, is there anyone who could potentially administer it instead?

[Eluvatar]

No-one. Only the Delegate can really administer that vote. I guess the only solution is for the Delegate to break that tie, at least that way their not being able to vote normally is less unpleasant.

[Sovereign Dixie]

Majority vote of the court perhaps? Or, simply a run off election?

[Gulliver]

A run off can tie as well, and would be unnecessary as we already have ranked ballots already. And with this last near tie, when Dixie and PoD were tied they also tied in IRV, plurality, Run Off and Borda Count.

[Sovereign Dixie]

Well, perhaps look to RL for inspiration? What would happen in the US if two candidates tied? Or the UK?

[Gulliver]

Well, as the UK is just a parliamentary system they'd just find another candidate and hold another vote, and in the U.S. it is thrown into the House. Either way, we have to hold a whole other vote, which I would want to avoid.

[Eluvatar]

I really don't want it to go to the Court to decide-- that's really equivalent to making no rule 

[Sovereign Dixie]

 I have one suggestion, get rid of the damned condorcet voting, its just stupid. Pick your candidate and that's that, also, it seems much easier to get a tie with that system. Lets just go back to simple easy to read voting and results, ties will be less likely.

 Another thought, we could make the speaker ineligible to vote, then, in the event of a tie, he/she could cast the deciding vote.

[Gulliver]

No, ties would not be less likely with another system. I already told you, had this last election been by a Plurality vote or a Run off vote there would have been a tie when there was a tie by the Condorcet vote as well. I for one will strongly oppose any attempt to remove Condorcet voting. Plurality voting can elect a candidate who is absolute hated by the majority of voters, and certainly does not elect the most genuinely over all preferred candidate. Run off requires two votes and again does not necessarily elect the truly overall preferred candidate. Further more, the Condorcet system also proved itself in the last Delegate election when candidates dropped out. Because the ballots are preferential it was not necessary to have people vote again.

[Eluvatar]

One thing that I should do to further let people become familiar and comfortable with Condorcet Voting is to perfect my automated counting system to the point that it is user-friendly and can perhaps be used to play around with different scenarios.

A Question: Could anyone in our Party who is not too technically inclined take a look at the .yaml file in the zip I posted in the Information on Condorcet voting and tell me how intuitive it felt to them? (It can be opened in notepad or any text editor)

[Sovereign Dixie]

 I tried Elu, not sure if the problem is on my end with this out of date obsolete piece of crap computer, or on the forum's end, as it would not allow me to download the file.


 I'm not saying condorcet voting does not have it's upside, I just don't think people should need a program to help them understand how to vote, or the results of their voting, we've always wanted democracy that appealed to the masses, the regular joe players, for lack of a better term. The condorcet system is just overly complicated. I'm sure i'm not the only person that feels that way, probably just the only one that gives enough of a damn so say so lol. But, whatever, *shrug* Any other party members that agree with me though, please feel free to speak up.

[Gulliver]

Well, the principle is quite simple: find the single candidate who beats every other candidate one on one by a simple majority of votes and declare them the winner. Likewise, voting is simple: rank the candidates in your order of preference. My guess is that you are confused about how the final vote is tallied and the Condorcet winner is found. That though I think can be explained quite readily. You have a matrix, one axis representing every candidate as "Runner", the other every candidate as "Opponent". For every ballot cast in which Candidate X is ranked higher than Candidate Y, you add 1 to Runner X-Opponent Y. To then check the winner in any pairwise contest between a candidate X and a candidate Y, compare the value of Runner X-Opponent Y to Runner Y-Opponent X. If Runner X-Opponent Y's value is higher than Runner Y-Opponent X,   X beats Y one on one X as more people ranked X over Y in their ballots than people ranked Y over X, and vice versa. In short, the matrix is simply a convenient way to find the winner of each pairwise contest and subsequently find the single Condorcet winner.