Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Borda Count

[Deborah Mensch (deborahmensch]

Hi Sharon,

I don't live at Pleasant Hill Cohousing anymore, so I don't want to speak
publicly for them, but here are some answers to your questions: (I see Tim
has been writing at the same time as me, so you'll get some answers twice.)
I'd appreciate not being quoted to C-L. No subterfuge here; I just prefer to
let current members speak for themselves.

Nominations for the Executive Committee (a coordinating committee that
includes the legally required officers of the HOA plus a few other positions
-- not the board as my husband Tim implied -- all homeowners at PHCH are on
the board) are open for a week or two. People can nominate themselves or
others. The Elections Committee contacts nominees to find out whether
they're willing to serve. Sometimes they have to do some convincing, or
bring the job description back to the community for modification, to get
even one candidate for a given position. Then the ballot is printed with all
those nominees willing to serve, listed by position they're running for.
Often one or more positions are uncontested, especially if the previous year
has been a rough one for the Exec Comm.

The Borda count is used for contested positions, separately for each
position.

Hope this helps. By the way, in the idea you propose, where the selection
takes place before people have indicated whether they're willing to serve,
what happens if the person(s) selected are NOT willing? I'm interested in
sociocratic elections, but this part baffles me.

Thanks, and good luck,
Deborah Mensch

On Feb 13, 2008 4:04 PM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> wrote:

>
>
> 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
>
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