I'm OK with the range voting and. like Clint, getting the hang of it takes a little bit of attention. It's difficult to rank someone that you don't know or don't quite agree with it (although giving them "0" is a little extreme -- unless I completely disagree with him/her and don't want him/her anywhere near an elected body). However, assuming that the candidate prepares a statement and participates in town halls -- something that would add to, moreso than subtract from, their voting "score" in my book -- I think we can get a better feel for who's on the ballot.

Neville brings up a good point, though, about the order of nomination: I think nominees should be listed in order of nomination during the nomination period rather than by letting the nominee choose the order.

One of the things we should look into, too, is getting voting numbers up. Apparently only 100 or so ballots were cast in FAmSCo. At the risk of sounding like an electoral fundamentalist (or an Australian, where they are required by law to vote), perhaps we should require Ambassadors to vote in at least once every two years, or less (?), to keep their standing. Just a thought.

Larry Cafiero


On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Clint Savage <herlo1@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Neville A. Cross <nacross@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 9:13 PM, inode0 <inode0@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm not sure about the election history of FAmSCo, maybe someone who
>> has been around a while can explain how it used to work, but I'm
>> guessing range voting has been used in the past two FAmSCo elections.
>> Are ambassadors happy with this method of electing the ambassador
>> leadership?
>>
>> Aside from the voting method, are there other things related to the
>> election or composition of FAmSCo that ambassadors think would improve
>> either the process or the constitution of the steering committee?
>>
>> John
>>
>
> John,
>
> I am not used to range voting, but I have nothing against that method.
>
> I do have some suggestion regarding the election process. I was
> commented about during the election process but I dropped the issue
> because I felt that I was disrupting the process. I did wanted "to
> change rules at the middle of the game." Now that elections are over I
> suggest to amend rules before next run.
>
> I suggest that the candidate statements should be closed on the same
> date of volunteering for the seat. If some one does not want to write
> a statement is okey to leave it blank.
>
> Other suggestion is to stablish an order for the list of candidates. I
> don't care if it is ordered by time of volunteering or if it is
> alphabetically. But I find a bit rude that some one added himself at
> the top, when every body was adding themselves at the bottom. I know
> that there was not rule for that.
>
> Those are just suggestion on my part.
>
> Best regards
>
> --
> Neville

Hey all,

I'm a big fan of voting and it's definitely seemed to improve over the
past few elections especially with better awareness and such, but I am
a bit confused by range voting.  It seems to me that range voting is
nice, but it somehow makes it hard to decide how to vote.  I tend to
vote high for those I know and believe are good choices for FAmSCo or
other committees, but I'm not sure if I should vote zero for those I
know nothing about, or if I should vote some other value.

In my opinion, a variant of range voting should limit how many votes
are available.  For instance, if six (6) candidates were available, I
should be able to only use the 1-6 values once, or not at all, but I
could use zero (0) as many times as I like.

To me, it seems that it would be cool if I could vote for or against
(more like digg style voting), but that could cause others heartache.

my $.02

Cheers,

Clint