So I have been debating on who to vote for in the new mods vote over here and it got me thinking about how I would prefer if I could vote for a few different accounts.

It reminded me of the video series by CPG Grey on voting, a good watch for more information (youtube link), and it got me wondering if for similar votes in the future if we should use something more similar to Single Transferable Vote?

As a quick example; if there are 5 candidates and 3 eventual winners, you rank your votes, but you also don’t have to list everyone. You could vote for 1, 3, or all 5, you just rank them in order of preference. Then when the vote tally comes, you just take any leftover votes from the person with the least votes and apply them to the voters second choice, etc…, until you have your winners.

I think it would really help in votes similar to the mod one, because that would let me vote for the 2-4 accounts I would be interested in seeing become a mod, without my one vote getting lost just because only 4 other people voted the same, or in cases where the vote is very close, if that makes sense.

It could be a little over complicated, but was curious if anyone else had similar feelings about the vote, or any future ones that are not just yay / nay.

  • @goatEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    I’m biased, but I think preferential voting is the best system. It’s the system Australia uses, and it’s great.

    The big flaw of most democracies is that you risk wasting your vote. You can vote for a small party that has your values, but the chances of them beating the big parties are slim to none. So you vote for the big parties and they don’t represent you despite you voting for them.

    Preferential Voting takes your small party vote, and puts it to the next person you voted for. Your ballot sheet ends up completely filled.

    I think the same should apply here.

    • babelspace
      1•1 year ago

      Yeah, for a ballot with multiple candidates, I would prefer this approach. Ranked Choice Voting is the name that I’ve most often heard it referred to by advocates who want to adopt it in the US.

      Seems like the only difference between this and what the OP is describing is whether every candidate has to be ranked, or just as many as you want to.