Just a couple notes. A) To repeat my earlier assertion, we need to form some kind of organization to do anything. Galen knows what this involves in Georgia, so I suggest that we ask for the community’s approval to do organize as a GA association. We will need bylaws, but we can start with some cribbed working bylaws until we have an organization. B) We can incorporate in several different ways, including 501(c)(3), C corp, etc., or we can organize in some other form such as LLC, partnership, association, etc. Thanks, Cary > On Jul 20, 2017, at 2:14 PM, Coral Sheldon-Hess <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > I agree with all of this, except for the idea of using ranked choice voting > (aka "instant runoff voting" aka "IRV") option. For reasons that are > mathematically > interesting <https://electology.org/approval-voting-versus-irv>, ranked > choice voting is not the best tool to help us determine the will of the > community--short version: it's easy, under ranked choice/IRV to > accidentally betray your favorite and help an option you don't like as well > to win. Like in plurality voting (what we use for US elections, generally: > choose a single option from the list), you have to vote strategically, > rather than being able to vote honestly, or else you might risk your > least-favorite option winning; and, unlike in plurality, it's sometimes > hard to calculate the best strategic vote for you to make. Also, properly > tallying the votes is annoying, for whoever has to do that. > > As someone on the committee that might have to tally votes, I am not even a > little bit interested in trying to implement IRV/ranked choice; it's awful. > As a member of the community who wants my vote to matter and who wants the > community to have a fair say about this, I *definitely do not* want to use > IRV/ranked choice. > > *When there are more than two options on a ballot, the better approaches, > to find out what a community wants, are approval voting > <https://electology.org/approval-voting> and its slightly more nuanced > cousin, score voting <https://electology.org/score-voting>*. We already do > score voting when choosing conference programs, so we know what that looks > like and can easily put that into the Diebold-o-tron. Approval voting is > just "check everything that you're happy with"; so, for reasons that are > probably obvious, it's very easy to calculate and very good at finding the > option that the most people will be happy with. ("Minimizing Bayesian > regret," in the lingo.) I imagine getting the Diebold-o-tron to do that > will not be a problem, either. > > Just as another suggestion, because I've been thinking about this for a > while: we could also treat these questions as independent. I'm giving an > approval voting-based example, below, but it could be rephrased to work > with score voting ("give a numeric score to each of the options below") or > even simple plurality ("choose your favorite option from this list"). > > 1) Choose all of the options that you find acceptable: > * Do nothing > * Find a fiscal sponsor > * Incorporate as a nonprofit entity > > 2) *Assuming the community as a whole wants to go with fiscal sponsorship*, > choose the options you find acceptable: > * ALA/LITA > * DLF/CLIR > * OLF > * Other > > 3) *Assuming the community as a whole wants to go with incorporating*, > choose the options you find acceptable: > * 501c3 > * LLC > * ??? > > There's a possibility that we lose some nuance by separating the questions > out like I have, above. This is worth discussing. I'm just suggesting this > possibility, in case it's helpful to us, in designing our voting mechanism. > > I'm happy to discuss the nuances of voting math in more detail, if anyone > cares to do so, but, um, no worries if nobody's into that. :) > > Best, > Coral