Why We Need Alternative Voting Systems

English General Discussions
1

Hey All!

Title is a bit misleading, but I hope you’ll be glad you came.

Beauty of 1 coin 1 vote : It’s simple.

Ugliness of 1 coin 1 vote : It’s simplistic.

When you are dealing with complex psychological beings, as we often like to think of ourselves, simple systems give the advantage of flexibility. However, the same systems, (voting Y/N/A on a motion especially), are often too black and white to represent collective human decision making.
This post is not really about the 1 coin 1 vote thing (just getting people feisty), I’m speaking generally.

I’ll give some of the most basic examples of alternatives to voting on a motion, and would love to get opinions about these and others you bring :

  • Top N Ranking
    Instead of Y/N/A the voters submit a ranked list of some, or all of the candidates. A weight could be given to each ranking to determine a winner, or a “podium” that moves to the next round can be pre-decided.

  • Points system
    Every voter gets a set amount of points to distribute among candidates. Winner has most points.

  • Multiple choice (My favorite on this list)
    Each voter gets X votes and can vote for several candidates.

This post is not even about the voting part.
Take another important aspect for example - How voting rounds are organized? and How they transition?

Another aspect from real life where the classic system fails -
Motions sometimes fail due to only a small part of them not having achieved consensus. Perhaps we can allow a partial win for a motion in our system for some decision types. Why not?

My point here is not to make a comprehensive list, or name the options. There is plenty of research out there.

My point is to start a discussion about how our voting mechanisms, and meta-mechanisms, can reflect the variety and complexity of opinions they will need to mitigate, and inspire ultimate consensus and a positive vibe.

Ultimately, for it to work well, we should aspire to replicate the ways we see disagreement resolved in the real world, so we can embed that in our governance’s physics. IMHO those look nothing like Binary.

3

I’m not sure I understand where you are coming from @MartinMKD.
I’m talking about the treasury proposals in Cardano. Are you saying we should stick with simplistic motion voting because the generalized problem is too hard?

We have no option to abstain from choosing a voting system, and the one we picked is primitive.

The fact that it’s the default because of historic reasons is not a good enough reason to use it exclusively. I’m not even talking about touching the relative power of each voter, the problem space is somewhat reduced.

The resources of DARPA are laughable compared to the Commons’. I believe this is going to play out and become resolved either way empirically out in the world. Responsible projects like ours are there to make that process less painful imo.

5

Not so tangential as non-constructive mate :smiley: .
What’s your take on this (not that article’s)? We ain’t got a chance just doesn’t seem comprehensive or inclusive :wink: .