SR - Re: Reqs, Duties, & Powers (long)

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

I had another reply to dentim at myriad.net (Tim Lozos) that I
forgot earlier.

    d. The Committee may reject suggestions on Naming,
    Heraldry, Mottoes, etc.  when the suggestion is
    unacceptable due to Non-Period form/style, Conflict, or
    other major problems which would prevent registration
    with the Laurel Sovereign at Arms. All other suggestions
    shall be accepted and voted on by the general populace.

I would generalize it to something like

    d. The committee may reject a proposal only if there is
    a consensus that the proposal violates real-world or
    Society laws or rules, and if the committee feels that
    lobbying for change is likely to be a waste of effort.

This catches not only heraldic stuph, but also laws that
violate Corpora, for example.

    e. The Committee may narrow down suggestions on Naming,
    Heraldry, Mottoes, etc. after sufficient time and voting
    has past to show a popular preference.  The Committee
    shall not choose a final idea, but may limit the final
    populace vote to the 2 or 3 most popular.

Pending opinions from other groups who have tried it
recently -- N.B.: anyone want to take the job of asking
Gleann Abhann in Meridies, Northshield, et cetera, how they
did things? -- I'd suggest more choices.


A nice thing about preference ballots is that there's no
"vote splitting": in a "first past the post" system, where
you vote only for your best choice, two close candidates can
knock each other out.  Suppose you have, say,
    Anna
    Bob
    Brewster
where Brewster and Bob are close on a lot of issues.  The
people so inclined are likely to split their votes between
them, leaving Anna to get a plurality even if Bob+Brewster
together get more votes.

In preference voting, people list Bob as #1 are likely to
list Brewster as #2 and vice versa.  A preference vote count
works by knocking out each least-popular choice in turn.  If
Bob is knocked out, Brewster mostly gets his votes, and vice
versa.  People don't fear voting for them.

The point of all this is that I believe preference voting
allows fewer rounds and more choices.  I'll try to post on
preference voting next week.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com; 
if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com is my work address.
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