What Sir Glüc is pointing out is exactly what I meant with my comment on the proposal thread - after poring over provincial statutes while I was building the database, I noticed our constitution exactly mandates three preferences rather than "up to" three.
Sadly my comment was very rushed and unspecific and I also completely forgot to follow up on the changes you made. I am not entirely sure how to proceed except that:
- The points based voting system clearly would hinder other candidates if one could only give three points to their top choice - many editions of TMT20 are a helpful reminder - and so if the system is to stay, casting exactly three choices would be fairest;
- Conversely, strict rules lead to potential disenfranchisment. The database could help ensuring voters do rank three choices via software checks and hint texts, ALTHOUGH in the last election it did allow leaving choices blank; voting publicly on Witt could be a more serious disenfranchisment risk should someone undervote due to missing or misunderstanding the rules for the provincial vote.
I vaguely think the first concern is most important because undervoting would unfairly distort our current voting system. On the other hand, I'm not sure if our elections are going to be so hotly contested that we're going to fight over every ballot and throw out all undervotes. In my mind, we can:
- Allow undervotes but lower the points given to each vote, so your lead choice can only get three points if you fill out your ballot (something like: 1 choice = 1 point; 2 choices, 2 and 1; three choices, 3 and 2 and 1);
- Allow undervotes but switch to a different voting system altogether;
- Not allow undervotes: proclaim the BUS and immediately amend E.2, potentially switching it to instead allowing for curing undervotes in a certain time limit.
Sadly my comment was very rushed and unspecific and I also completely forgot to follow up on the changes you made. I am not entirely sure how to proceed except that:
- The points based voting system clearly would hinder other candidates if one could only give three points to their top choice - many editions of TMT20 are a helpful reminder - and so if the system is to stay, casting exactly three choices would be fairest;
- Conversely, strict rules lead to potential disenfranchisment. The database could help ensuring voters do rank three choices via software checks and hint texts, ALTHOUGH in the last election it did allow leaving choices blank; voting publicly on Witt could be a more serious disenfranchisment risk should someone undervote due to missing or misunderstanding the rules for the provincial vote.
I vaguely think the first concern is most important because undervoting would unfairly distort our current voting system. On the other hand, I'm not sure if our elections are going to be so hotly contested that we're going to fight over every ballot and throw out all undervotes. In my mind, we can:
- Allow undervotes but lower the points given to each vote, so your lead choice can only get three points if you fill out your ballot (something like: 1 choice = 1 point; 2 choices, 2 and 1; three choices, 3 and 2 and 1);
- Allow undervotes but switch to a different voting system altogether;
- Not allow undervotes: proclaim the BUS and immediately amend E.2, potentially switching it to instead allowing for curing undervotes in a certain time limit.
