(RP) Lord Protector - Flawed voting system?.

[Bobar]

Looking at the proposed method of choosing a winner it occurs to me that there should perhaps be changes before the voting is finalised.

I offer for consideration.

Under the current system the winner will be whoever gets the most votes from 6 contestants. This will mean that the winner will receive most votes but will NOT have an overall majority. For instance say he gets 30% of the vote that would mean that 70% preferred someone else as Protector.

Ideally, the final choice should be between 2, this
means whoever gets most votes wins a majority overall.

The current system can be manipulated by block voting, which by my observation is exactly what is happening. If the method is changed so that the candidates are slowly eliminated who can tell where an eliminated candidates votes would go. What it could mean is that the voting picture might change dramatically each time.

I personally think that if the final choice is made with an overall majority this would be a more satifactory result than that which we may be getting now.

I offer this for the judgement of others.

 

[Adol]

As one of the candidates myself, this issue has occurred to me too; my own vote and all those who supported me is going to be irrelevant because they will not then get the chance to say which, out of any remaining candidates they'd prefer, because there won't be another vote after I'm eliminated.

And so far voting seems to have been restricted to the candidates and their friends, because once it was obvious there was no instant rare reward for taking part in the democratic process, most of those who attend events have dropped out.

I will do my part today to try and drum up wider engagement by trying to interest general chat, but I cannot see that the balancing effect of the community judging between a range of people they don't know will shake out...

If I counted the ballots correctly at the end of Saturday (It's hard to be sure, as the EM was removing balls at different times, the boxes are all currently empty as of this Sunday morning) the results seemed to be that Alaster The Mad was winning, with Heimlich and Escaflowne close behind. This is unsurprising as they all have very wide social networks. Flynn got no votes at all, and Nathan just a few, so the EMs will go out...

But it's hard to know who has used every character on their account to vote 7 times; I guess the most committed to winning or their candidate winning will have done. But the general public probably won't bother. So at best you're getting a general indication of the strength of people's awareness of a candidate.

Yet whilst eye catching and memorable, I fear the constant joke of "Pants!" will wear very thin after a few weeks of it being official roleplay; however it may also be that people see it as safe to vote Alaster now, but will change in the final six....

Alot of worries and questions, not sure there are any easier answers, but yes I'd agree a further round of voting for a final 2 would be preferable.

 

[Kayne]

Hail Adol,

I fear that perhaps you under-estimate Alaster, yes the man is slightly mad but I think you miss the underlying character, the one that may make for a good and interesting Lord Protector.

As for the social network size of Heimlich, Escaflowne or Alaster - yes they do have a number of followers but you yourself aren't exactly a loner in the corner. At one point when I was in the voting booth, Kou, Escaflowne, Flynn, Nathan and Alaster were all within very few votes of each other.

Also looking at the schedule next weekend will have a second round of voting for the final 6 candidates.

 

[Heimi]

Maybe my votes had been removed then, as the two times I visited the polling booth (both late at night admittedly) I had only 3 votes, and seemed in danger of being kicked out along with Fynn who has had 0 both times. I'm not sure I can make it to the voting period tonight either, so I have no idea whats going on

(Unless by 'Heimlich' Adol meant to say 'Irvyn' or even 'myself' as you two have had much higher numbers of votes or so it would seem)

 

[Kayne]

I was there during the 5-6 voting yesterday and fynn had about 13 votes I think

 

[Alaster The Insane]

Hello there !

Well, where to start omg.

I'd like to begin by the "Pants!" madness. Well, yes, it was easy for me to slip some pants during my speech for example, as, somewhere, i think it was expected in some ways.
Oh, yeah, i could have been totally serious and lay properly well thoughts plans and so. But as i said the speech's night, there needs to be a balance.

There is a time for everything, fun, important thing, and, if that may answer a bit that question, (sorry my lack of english makes me say it strangely maybe) the pants madness will not be perpetual.
There's things going on, like "what about Republic of Vesper and Kingdom Relations", one example among a lot of serious things to manage, or also, if tomorow a magincia thing occurs, or invasion, or so, well, ok there'll be fun with pants maybe at the beginning, but we'll not stop any invasion while stealing pants. A moment for each things.

(i'll add here, as my speech was totally improvised, but i thought about it few days before, i was hitting my head on walls after having forgotten the "SRC job during Magincia event" as an awesome example of the magic community UO is).
Because that's a big part of my motivation, in some ways. The UO community is awesome, even the big bad PKs rock, i've done lot of virtual worlds and i never found such awesome people anywhere else.
And, giving from myself to lead, give advice on large scale things, help it, would be awesome. Yes, that makes a lot of awesome. But UO is awesome. Awesome.

I'm sorry i didn't checked recently stratics, so i didn't see the questions which where asked in threads past week. I'll try to answer them today, and will maybe bring few pants. A few only, i promise!

*steals assistance's undies then flees*

 

[Adol]

No personal offence was meant by referencing Alaster, simply to point out that it was an example where people could be voting for all kinds of different reasons, none of which will be able to be filtered out with almost every candidate making it to the finals.

As for the vote totals, it may be possible to put other items into the mailbox, and as far as I can see, the EMs have been periodically emptying the boxes... we find out tonight I guess what the legitimate totals were.

 

[Alaster The Insane]

Yeah sorry, i focalised on this hehe.

But you right. And i find good the fact the a round / turn is finally added.

 

[Bobar]

Glad to see we will now have a final round of 'head to head' which will mean with only 2 to choose between the winner will have an overall majority.

I have given the whole system some thought and whilst realistically it is too late for this election a system of all 'head to head' contests could produce an outright winner effectively if a further election is required in the future..

We had 8 candidates and if we held 4 separate 'head to head' contests the field would be halved. The pairings are immaterial each election would produce the most popular choice of 2.

There would then be 2 further contests which would produce the 2 finalists. Once again the most popular choices would triumph.

The final would see the most popular choice from all 3 rounds elected with a majority.

In effect this method would allow all voters to choose their preferred candidate each time from ALL the contestants. Each round of voting always producing a majority decision. The winner would be the one who was the preferred candidate each time over 3 rounds and would be the undisputed winner overall.

This system might also overcome somewhat group voting, where the candidate with the greatest following will succeed in reaching prominence by weight of numbers. Although their following would still maybe give an advantage it might not necessarily be sufficient in one on one situations.

Once again this is offered for evaluation by others.