The Commission on Electoral Reform would like to invite you to take this short Electoral Reform Survey. 

It's just a single question asking respondents what their priorities are for a new voting system. Bearing in mind, different voting systems are good for certain things and weaker in other areas - so as the Commission considers proposals for electoral reform, it will be helpful to know the general priorities of The South Pacific to help ascertain which voting systems will meet our expectations better than others.

We'll run the survey for a week, concluding on January 04, 2015. 

Yours Sincerely,
Unibot,
Chair of the Assembly.

It's a bit of a strange one that survey. Would it not just be easier to ask people what type of voting system they would like to see?

Not everyone is an expert on voting systems. Unibot has explained in his post why the Commission is running that survey.

Well nether I'm I, but I know a few and could explain others.

What I mean is the survey being used is very vague. Many voting systems are similar in how people describe them. For example both AV and STV work the same and I would describe them the same way but they are different. So the way this survey explains things and what's picked could be completely different then how people intended it to be.

I...don't understand your point.

The survey simply asks people what they look for in a voting system. What is wrong about that?

(12-29-2014, 05:39 PM)Punchwood Wrote: Well nether I'm I, but I know a few and could explain others.

What I mean is the survey being used is very vague. Many voting systems are similar in how people describe them. For example both AV and STV work the same and I would describe them the same way but they are different. So the way this survey explains things and what's picked could be completely different then how people intended it to be.

I have to agree with Punchwood. That survey is confusing, at best, and open to wide interpretation at worst.

Requiring someone to sort of 13 different options is ... a lot. Not to mention loaded terms like "honest voting" and "accurate representation" are extremely biased.

I call on the "Commission on Electoral Reform" to seriously rethink their strategy here.

(12-29-2014, 06:06 PM)Kris Kringle Wrote: I...don't understand your point.

I do. He's saying that there is no way to understand how the commission is going to interpret the results of the survey. You and I might agree that one voting method is "fair" while Unibot thinks a completely different method is fair.

When you look at the poll options, who gets to decide what constitutes "fairness"?

It's a simple values survey. We are looking for what aspects of an electoral system people really prefer. Yes, it's hard to rank these things, especially because they all sound like characteristics we want in our system. However, not all of these things are possible. Instead of explaining Arrow's impossibility theorem, it's smarter to take the temperature of the region, and see what they value the most out of everything.

This is the very beginning of the process. Just answer the survey honestly. Don't worry about whether what you see as "fair" is different from what we see. Those things will be ironed out later, though is easy to guess what you see as "fair" based on how you rank other things.

(12-29-2014, 06:13 PM)Sandaoguo Wrote: It's a simple values survey. We are looking for what aspects of an electoral system people really prefer. Yes, it's hard to rank these things, especially because they all sound like characteristics we want in our system. However, not all of these things are possible. Instead of explaining Arrow's impossibility theorem, it's smarter to take the temperature of the region, and see what they value the most out of everything.

Again -- 13 "values" is far to many to practically order.

Second, you speak as though these "values" and manner to achieve them aren't open to interpretation -- which they are.

It's not really a lot to order. You're thinking about it too much. Don't try to quantify your desire for fairness over majority rule. Just rank things naturally. Put things that you want near the top, things that you don't want or don't want as much at the bottom. The specific order doesn't matter. Surveys like these aren't done so that we can quantitatively discern what people specifically want.

It's a starting point to figure out what's at the top of people's preferences. Yeah, you might put fairness at the top, and that can be interpreted many different ways. But if you put majority rule near the top, we can get a sense that you think majority rule is fair. It's not like we can't glean anything at all from this survey.