Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I was disappointed to see the results of the CSM elections this year. Not because of who won, but because of how wasted players' opinions were by the awful First Past The Post voting system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

I feel it would be most respectful and the most interesting if, instead, the next CSM elections employed The Alternative Vote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y3jE3B8HsE

To explain why I feel this method is "wasteful", first let's look at the results of the last election...

10,058 The Mittani
4,150 Two Step
3,714 Elise Randolph
3,329 Greene Lee
3,184 Trebor Daehdoow
3,163 Kelduum Revaan
2,845 Seleene
2,465 UAxDEATH
2,439 Hans Jagerblitzen
2,289 Meissa Anunthiel
2,284 Dovinian
1,561 Issler Dainze
1,533 Alekseyev Karrde
1,282 Darius III

Now there's two problems here...

One is The Mittani was voted more than 100% over the second place. This would be a different issue if were were voting for a single winner, but we were selecting 14 winners. Essentially, 5907 (nearly 10% of total votes cast) were wasted on giving the Mittani a lead he didn't need in order to win. What this means is that those 5907 votes could have been potentially used for Goonsw... for those voters to distribute their opinions over the other candidates.

The other problem is kind of the opposite to this, in how close the rest were to each other. This isn't exactly a bad thing, but what this shows is that the rest of these people may have been evenly valued and while the exact order they won in isn't very important, it's the people who were passed Darius III who may have been much more popular who were forcibly underappreciated by the horrible FPtP system.

While The Mittani would have almost definitely been 1st in any case, the rest of the candidates are probably mostly non-representative of their actual popularity.

By using The Alternative Vote, I'm confident that the opinions of all these voters would have been better represented. If we're going to have a popularity contest, it might as well be accurate, damnit.

A nice side effect is that in the case where votes are bought to favor one candidate, those bought Goo.. voters will still have the opportunity to vote for the other people they like as well.

A runoff vote significantly increases the time involved for the election. However, using instant runoff voting (possibly what Aphoxema G means by "The Alternative Vote", although multiple alternative voting systems exist) only requires that voters rank their preferred candidates (e.g. 1 Hans Jagerblitzen, 2 Seleene, etc.). Darius III, as the lowest-ranked candidate in the list below, would be removed, and the voters who chose Darius III as their first candidate would then have their votes applied to their #2 choices. The process would repeat with the next-lower-ranked candidate (possibly but not necessarily Alekseyev Karrde) removed, and the voters' next choices would receive those vote.

See How Instant Runoff Voting Works for more details, but I agree that this would be a useful way to proceed.

Instant Runoff is the same as Alternative Vote, it kind of depends on the region which term is used and in the US it's hardly been considered. To summarize:

Instead of having 1 vote that goes entirely towards the person you intend to vote for, you are distributing your vote(s) across multiple candidates. When you cast a vote, instead of saying "This guy has to win!" you're saying "I prefer this guy to win, but if that doesn't happen, I'll still take this other guy over everyone else.". Watch those videos I linked by CGP Gray for a better explanation, but in every way this is a fairer system where your opinion has more power and voting for the underdog doesn't screw a vote out of the alternatives you like.




Under this system he still probably would have won. The benefit for you is that you could have helped to dictate the other choices, as well.

I've always thought in run off votes that there should be a real sporting aspect. Like all candidates need to complete an obstacle course course to be eligible for the next round of voting. More entertaining.

Also, Aphoxia is a derp.

As The Mittani only had less than 15% of the total votes, this level of influence would not dictate 14 positions. Even if every member of Goonswarm voted for every position in perfect order (though people would probably only be given, maybe, 5 selections, not that it makes a difference), the strength of those cascaded votes wouldn't have much significance.

To explain this, what we need to look at is not A vs B vs C but simply Goonswarm's Favorites VS Everyone else. The danger would then be having too many candidates and having their popularity spread too far between them, but ethically Goonswarm would still be deserving of their favoritism because their unity would stand out in the sea of uncertainty.

I do not hate Goonswarm for voting for Mittani, I think this is as valuable a measure as any ("Because my friends said to do it"), but I am sympathetic for them. In the demand to vote for Mittani, your opinions were squandered and the favor of the other candidates wasn't really reflected by Goonswarm itself. In this way, unless Goonswarm tried to have 14 candidates (which it wouldn't for the sake of public interest) the individuals would have been free to both act as commanded and to then extend their own (perfectly valuable) opinions onto the rest of the candidacy.

If that had gone on with this election after The Mittani's accident, then instead of wasting those 10,000 votes on *no one* they could have been redistributed to the rest of the candidates. This would have benefited everyone, even The Mittani himself.

I have no problem with the secret, one vote per person system.. this way goonswarm can blob a win for their guy but the rest of the universe have the chance to get someone that more represents their interested into the CSM.