User:Jdtendo/Settling a proposal

Follow these steps to know whether a proposal should be settled or extended:

1. If all options have less than four votes, then the proposal must be extended (or listed as "NO QUORUM" if the proposal has already been extended three times before).
2. If the proposal ends up in a tie (i.e., two or more options share the highest vote count), then the proposal must be extended.
3. If the proposal has only two options and has more than ten votes: if the difference in vote count between the two options is less than three, then the proposal must be extended.
4. If the proposal has more than two options: if the proposal fails to reach majority (see below), then the proposal must be extended.
5. In all other cases, the option with the highest vote count wins.

Proposals can only be extended up to three times. If a consensus has not been reached by the fourth deadline, the proposal must be listed as "failed to reach consensus" (unless it meets the criteria for "NO QUORUM").

Majority support

Proposals with more than two options can only be settled if one of the options has a majority support, i.e. more than half of the total number of voters must appear in this voting option. Please note that this is about the number of voters, not the number of votes. Keep in mind that any voter can vote for several options and must be counted only once.

Follow these steps to know whether an option has reached majority:

1. Find the most voted option.
   • As for every proposal, the most voted option must have at least four votes and must not tie with another option.
2. List all voters (make sure to not count a voter more than once) to determine the number of voters.
3. Calculate the "majority threshold" as half the number of voters.
4. If the vote count of the most voted option is greater than the majority threshold, then the most voted option wins. Otherwise, the proposal must be extended.

First example

Let's say these are the votes by the deadline of a proposal.

• Option 1: Alice, Bob, Claude, Dominic
• Option 2: Eugene, Felicia, Gaetan
• Option 3: Alice, Hortense, Irma

Option 1 is the most voted option (4 votes). There are 9 voters in total (there are 10 votes, but Alice voted twice), so the majority threshold is 9÷2 = 4.5. Option 1 has 4 votes, which is less or equal to 4.5, which means that the proposal does not pass even though one option has more votes than the others.

Second example

Let's say these are the votes by the deadline of another proposal.

• Option 1: Alice, Bob, Claude, Dominic
• Option 2: Bob, Eugene, Felicia
• Option 3: Alice, Felicia, Gaetan

Option 1 is the most voted option (4 votes). There are 7 voters in total (there are 10 votes, but Alice, Bob, and Felicia voted twice), so the majority threshold is 7÷2 = 3.5. Option 1 has 4 votes, which is greater than 3.5, which means that the proposal passes and Option 1 wins.

What is the point of majority support?

The point of this rule is to ensure that most voters agree with the winning option. While we could use a plurality system in which the most voted option is automatically the winning option, it would not be fair because the most voted option is not necessarily the option that would be accepted by vost voters.

For example, let's say that a proposal about giving an object a conjectural name is conducted with 41 voters and all of them choose to vote for only one option each. These are the vote counts of each proposed name by the deadline of the proposal:

• "Magazine (Paper Mario)": 13 votes
• "Magazine (object)": 12 votes
• "Pee-pee-poo-poo": 16 votes

The most voted option is "Pee-pee-poo-poo", which gathered only 39% of voters (16 voters out of 41) and does not have majority support.

If we considered that the most voted option is automatically the winning option, then the object would be named "Pee-pee-poo-poo", even though 61% of voters wanted to name the object "Magazine" with an identifier. Because the "Magazine" vote was split over two options, it lost to the unpopular but unified "Pee-pee-poo-poo" vote, which is not fair.

But since we mandate majority support, then the "Pee-pee-poo-poo" option would not win and the proposal would have to be extended.