Open Stack

On Oct 3, 2016 14:15, "Edward Leafe" <ed at leafe.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 3, 2016, at 12:18 PM, Clay Gerrard <clay.gerrard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> After the nominations close, the election officials will assign each
candidate a non-identifying label, such as a random number, and those
officials will be the only ones who know which candidate is associated with
which number.
> >>
> > I'm really uneasy about this suggestion.  Especially when it comes to
re-election, for the purposes of accountability I think it's really
important that voters be able to identify the candidates.  For some people
there's a difference in what they say and what they end up doing when left
calling shots from the bubble for too long.
>
> This was a concern of mine, too, but IMO there haven't been too many
cases where a TC member has said they would support X and then fail to do
so. They might not prevail, being one of 13, but when that issue came up
they were almost always consistent with what they said.
>
> > As far as the other stuff... idk if familiarity == bias.  I'm sure lots
of occasions people vote for people they know because they *trust* them;
but I don't think that's bias?  I think a more common problem is when
people vote for a *name* they recognize without really knowing that person
or what they're about.  Or perhaps just as bad - *not* voting because they
realize they have on context to consider these candidates beyond name
familiarity and an (optional) email.
>
> I think that with so many candidates for so few seats, most people simply
don't have the time or the interest to look very deeply into things. I know
that that shows up in the voting. Take the election from a year ago: there
were 619 votes cast for 19 candidates. Out of these:
> - 35 ballots only voted for one candidate
> - 102 ballots voted for three or fewer
> - 175 didn't even bother to vote for 6
> - only 159 bothered to rank all the candidates
>

I want to point out that the last statistic is not super useful. The very
nature of CIVS allows for duplicated ranks. I rank folks where I would like
them and explicitly stack the bottom for those not in the top X, as I see
them all as equally viable but lower on my priority. So I am lumped into
that last statistic without it meaning I didn't actively and consciously
choose to do so for ease of voting. The web form on mobile (usually where I
vote) is not as responsive and sometimes might mis-rank folks).

So in short. Don't use the "failed to rank everyone" as a real metric. It
isn't representative  of what you're implying.

> So I think that there is evidence that unless you are already well-known,
most people aren't going to take the time to dig deeper. Maybe anonymous
campaigns aren't the answer, but they certainly would help in this regard.
>
> > I think a campaign period, and especially some effort [1] to have
candidates verbalize their viewpoints on topics that matter to the
constituency could go a long way towards giving people some more context
beyond "i think this name looks familiar; I don't really recognize this
name"
>
> Agreed 100%! It was made worse this year because the nominations closed
on a Saturday, and with the late rush of people declaring their candidacy,
gave no time at all for any sort of campaign discussions before voting
began. There really needs to be a decent period of time allowed for people
to get answers to whatever questions they may have.
>
>
> -- Ed Leafe
>
>
>
>
>
>
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