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Debian decides to allow secret votes

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Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#211

Post by [deleted] »

treeman79 wrote: post #187
dagw wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or that people would making a different vote if it was counted differently? Two changes would happen. A lot of people who don't vote today because their state either heavily favours the 'wrong' candidate or the 'right' candidate will already win by a massive margin, would start voting, since all of sudden their vote matters a lot more. Secondly, and more importantly, candidates would campaign very differently. In tod…

This also makes many states cease to matter. Already a big issue that big cities vote one way while rural voters go another way.

[deleted]

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#212

Post by hutzlibu »

goodpoint wrote: post #200
hutzlibu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do not most free democratic countries practice 'secret ballot' voting specifically because not doing so caused all kinds of problems like voter intimidation?" I would argue a software project and a nation state is not the same kind of organisation. I am not involved in debian, so I would not judge what is the best system for them, but for example a group of friends making a decision on where to party, make sports, v…

> would secret voting here make sense? I don't think so. When people are not afraid to speak their mind - then a real consensus can be faster found. You are swapping cause and effect and are implying that making voting secret creates fear. This is plain wrong.

Maybe you misread something there? I merely stated, that there is no need for complex secret voting mechanisms - when the group is small and trusting.

Or do you practice secret voting in decision making among your friends?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#213

Post by simiones »

treeman79 wrote: post #187
dagw wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or that people would making a different vote if it was counted differently? Two changes would happen. A lot of people who don't vote today because their state either heavily favours the 'wrong' candidate or the 'right' candidate will already win by a massive margin, would start voting, since all of sudden their vote matters a lot more. Secondly, and more importantly, candidates would campaign very differently. In tod…

This also makes many states cease to matter. Already a big issue that big cities vote one way while rural voters go another way.

Isn't this already the case, except right now it's states like California or Texas that don't matter, since they always vote the same way anyway?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#214

Post by winkeltripel »

couchand wrote: post #153
contravariant wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you assume people aren't suddenly going to prefer A to B when C is there and prefer B to A when C isn't then you can safely recalculate the result. Of course people might not necessarily act rationally but you've got to draw a line somewhere, otherwise elections are simply undefined behaviour and talking about properties of elections becomes meaningless.

The behavior you describe isn't at all irrational: in a nutshell that's the effect that propelled Biden to the White House.

I don't understand your point. In ranking presidential candidates, most left-or-center-leaning voters would rank any and every Democrat above any and every Republican, with Trump as their very last choice. So the presence or not of any specific candidate doesn't change the outcome. They would have voted in whomever the Democrat Nominee was.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#215

Post by winkeltripel »

sjmm1989 wrote: post #125
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what GP meant that if you have two identical option A and B, we could remove A after voting and it would have the same result as not having option in the first place.

I think you got their intent in sharing their belief correct; but their belief is wrong. If you remove A as a choice, or B, people might go with their next preferred option instead of just not voting at all, etc. This means you can't know for sure that results would equal the same with or without that option, because you cannot actually assume all actors will vote the same every time. To even begin to think such a th…

But its a ranked ballot. The sort should be stable.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#216

Post by asiachick »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #193
treeman79 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also makes many states cease to matter. Already a big issue that big cities vote one way while rural voters go another way.

Stated differently, this makes states matter and rural voters matter in direct proportion to the number of people living there, because all people are equal. It's not right that a voter in Maine or New Hampshire, which have 1.3 million people and are roughly even between the two major parties, has a high probability of changing the outcome with their vote, while a voter in California or Texas - which have 30 times as…

This isn't so different in the EU is it? Smaller countries don't want their needs ignored by the bigger countries so they get more seats relative to their population than big countries.

Maybe it's hard to imagine the United States of American to become 50 independent countries but isn't the way you keep them united is by promising the smaller ones that they won't be trampled on by the big ones?

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#217

Post by pavon »

svnpenn wrote: post #138
blueflow wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand behind Debian to do votes in secrecy. During the RMS issue, I've seen many people who did not have their ferocity under control. This went as far as people wanting to have the "others" removed from the Debian project. People not being able to cast their vote without having to fear repercussions is justification enough for secret votes.

If you can't justify your vote, then maybe you shouldn't be voting. Anonymous voting should be enjoyed by the masses, never the ones representing them.

Debian developers are not representatives. They were not elected, and they are not representing anyone's opinion other than their own. The elected positions in Debian are mostly administrative and any decision requiring voting goes to the developers as a whole, not just the elected officials.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#218

Post by logicchains »

asiachick wrote: post #216
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stated differently, this makes states matter and rural voters matter in direct proportion to the number of people living there, because all people are equal. It's not right that a voter in Maine or New Hampshire, which have 1.3 million people and are roughly even between the two major parties, has a high probability of changing the outcome with their vote, while a voter in California or Texas - which have 30 times as…

This isn't so different in the EU is it? Smaller countries don't want their needs ignored by the bigger countries so they get more seats relative to their population than big countries. Maybe it's hard to imagine the United States of American to become 50 independent countries but isn't the way you keep them united is by promising the smaller ones that they won't be trampled on by the big ones?

Nobody wants full democracy. Full democracy is what allowed Hitler to get away with gassing six million Jews, just because the majority of the population agreed it was a good idea at the time. Now Germany has very strict constitutional protections of certain rights to make it very hard for the majority to violate the minority like that again. State rights act similarly, protecting the populations of individual states to some degree from the arbitrary whims of the majority.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#219

Post by layer8 »

charcircuit wrote: post #24
spondyl wrote: post #9

A brief summary because I had to re-read this a few times to figure out what was going on. Debian had a vote with 4 options: Option 1 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote" Option 2 "Hide identities of Developers casting a particular vote and allow verification" Option 3 "Reaffirm public voting" Option 4 "None of the above" (NOTA) The objection raised here is that Option 3 and Option 4 can be consi…

By definition "none of the above" can't be the same as any of the above options.

Option 1 is also a superset of option 2, strictly speaking. The whole set of options doesn’t really seem well-defined.

Re: Debian decides to allow secret votes

#220

Post by jimbob45 »

djrogers wrote: post #191
gregmac wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> see also counting of the 'popular vote' for US president, a ballot which has never been tried, and whose results are unknowable. I don't follow this point. I'm not an American, but my understanding is counting via simple popular vote vs "electoral college" doesn't change the ballot itself, you still vote for the president directly; it just changes the way the ballots are counted. Are you suggesting either something…

> Are you suggesting either something on the ballot is different, or that people would making a different vote if it was counted differently? That's clearly true, in addition to the obvious fact that campaigning would change dramatically. The OP's point however was that we don't know the extent to which it's true. An obvious example of people making a different vote would be in California - I know more than one Repub…

I have done and will continue to do this too. It probably seems like a risk to people in other countries but there are generally very few surprises in the marquee races (I would never do this on down ballot candidates).
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