Re: steering committee vs foundation

[John Harper <john dcs warwick ac uk>]

James Henstridge writes:
|On 11 Jul 2000, Havoc Pennington wrote:
|> One nitpick: there's a potential problem with splitting up votes, for
|> example say you have two slates that are the same except for one
|> person, and another entirely different slate, and each gets 1/3 of the
|> vote; probably 66% of the voters would prefer one of the first two
|> slates, instead of the totally different slate, but their vote was split.
|
|That sort of situation can be handled by preferential voting like what is
|used in Australia (and I think UK).  It basically selects the least hated
|candidate rather than the most popular, which doesn't disadvantage similar
|slates.  In the case you mentioned, if one of the first two slates had the
|least votes, those people's preferences would go to the other slate
|(provided that was their second preference).

I don't think the UK has this (iirc, we have first past the post).
Australia seems to use different voting methods for different
elections? Here are some details I found:

single transferable vote:
http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/es/esf04/default.htm

alternative vote:
http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/es/esd03/default.htm

	John