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
