Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Borda Count

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Feb 13, 2008, at 12:15 PM, Tim Mensch wrote:

> I know that Pleasant Hill Cohousing in California uses it. It's really
> the best voting system to use, in that it's good at finding  
> "consensus"
> candidates as well as being easy to implement.

Where do you start? Borda allows you to use a weighted voting system  
to select the candidates who are most acceptable to all community  
members -- not to the majority. But which people do you vote on to  
begin with?

Do you include everyone on the first list? Or only the people wiling  
to serve?

We are thinking of proposing that you start with everyone (65 people)  
and use 10 as the number of votes (10 on the first choice, 9 on the  
second, 8 on the third) then narrow it down and vote again. And to use  
the sociocratic practice of not asking people if they will serve until  
they have been chosen.

Do you vote on everyone at once if there are 4 or 5 positions open or  
on each position separately?

One of our team has suggested using Instant Runoff Voting in which  
each candidate is rated 1, 2, 3. The number of people with the least  
number of 1 votes, is eliminated. Everyone votes again. The process if  
followed until only one person is left.

Personally, this would be good for the situation in which he used it  
-- selecting the winner of an award when the contestants were not in  
the room -- but too competitive and repetitious when all the  
candidates are participating in the process.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing,Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org