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On Fri, Oct 31, 2014 at 5:39 AM, Eoghan Glynn <eglynn at redhat.com> wrote:

>
>
> > The low (and dropping) level of turnout is worrying, particularly in
> > light of that analysis showing the proportion of drive-by contributors
> > is relatively static, but it is always going to be hard to discern the
> > motives of people who didn't vote from the single bit of data we have on
> > them.
> >
> > There is, however, another metric that we can pull from the actual
> > voting data: the number of candidates actually ranked by each voter:
> >
> > Candidates
> >    ranked    Frequency
> >
> >       0        8   2%
> >       1       17   3%
> >       2       24   5%
> >       3       20   4%
> >       4       31   6%
> >       5       36   7%
> >       6       68  13%
> >       7       39   8%
> >       8       17   3%
> >       9        9   2%
> >      10       21   4%
> >      11        -   -
> >      12      216  43%
> >
> > (Note that it isn't possible to rank exactly n-1 candidates.)
> >
> > So even amongst the group of people who were engaged enough to vote,
> > fewer than half ranked all of the candidates. A couple of hypotheses
> > spring to mind:
> >
> > 1) People don't understand the voting system.
> >
> > Under Condorcet, there is no such thing as tactical voting by an
> > individual. So to the extent that these figures might reflect deliberate
> > 'tactical' voting, it means people don't understand Condorcet. The size
> > of the spike at 6 (the number of positions available - the same spike
> > appeared at 7 in the previous election) strongly suggests that lack of
> > understanding of the voting system is at least part of the story. The
> > good news is that this problem is eminently addressable.
>
> Addressable by educating the voters on the subtleties of Condorcet, or
> by switching to another model such as the single-transferable vote?
>
> I can see the attractions of Condorcet, in particular it tends to favor
> consensus over factional candidates. Which could be seen as A Good Thing.
>
> But in our case, seems to me, we're doubling down on consensus.
>
> By combining Condorcet with staggered terms and no term limits, seems
> we're favoring both consensus in general and the tendency to return the
> *same* consensus candidates. (No criticism of the individual candidates
> intended, just the sameness)
>
> STV on the other hand combined with simultaneous terms, is actually
> used in the real world[1] and has the advantage of ensuring factions
> get some proportional representation and hence don't feel excluded
> or disenfranchised.
>
>
+1 to this, with a term limit.

-Angus


> Just a thought ... given that we're in the mood, as a community, to
> consider radical structural reforms.
>
> Cheers,
> Eoghan
>
> [1] so at least would be familiar to the large block of Irish and
>     Australian voters ... though some centenarian citizens of
>     Marquette, Michigan, may be a tad more comfortable with Condorcet ;)
>
>
> > 2) People aren't familiar with the candidates
> >
> > This is the one that worries me - it looks a lot like most voters are
> > choosing not to rank many of the candidates because they don't feel they
> > know enough about them to have an opinion. It seems to me that the TC
> > has failed to engage the community enough on the issues of the day to
> > move beyond elections as a simple name-recognition contest. (Kind of
> > like how I imagine it is when you have to vote for your local
> > dog-catcher here in the US. I have to imagine because they don't let me
> > vote.) It gets worse, because the less the TC tries to engage the
> > community on the issues and the less it attempts to actually lead (as
> > opposed to just considering checklists and voting to ask for more time
> > to consider checklists), the more entrenched the current revolving-door
> > membership becomes. So every election serves to reinforce the TC
> > members' perception that everything is going great, and also to
> > reinforce the perception of those whose views are not represented that
> > the TC is an echo chamber from which their views are more or less
> > structurally excluded. That's a much harder problem to address.
> >
> > cheers,
> > Zane.
> >
> > >
> > > Cheers,
> > > Eoghan
> > >
> > >> So the proportion of single-patch committers is creeping up slowly,
> but
> > >> not at a rate that would account for the decline in voter turnout.
> > >>
> > >> And since we've no way of knowing if voting patterns among the
> > >> single-patch
> > >> committers differs in any way from the norm, these data don't tell us
> > >> much.
> > >>
> > >> If we're serious about improving participation rates, then I think we
> > >> should consider factors what would tend to drive interest levels and
> > >> excitement around election time. My own suspicion is that open races
> > >> where the outcome is in doubt are more likely to garner attention from
> > >> voters, than contests that feel like a foregone conclusion. That would
> > >> suggest un-staggering the terms as a first step.
> > >>
> > >> Cheers,
> > >> Eoghan
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > OpenStack-dev at lists.openstack.org
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> > >
> >
> >
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> >
>
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