User:Jdtendo/Settling a proposal
Follow these steps to know whether a proposal should be settled or extended:
- 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).
- 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.
- If the proposal fails to reach majority with some constraints (see below), then the proposal must be extended.
- 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 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.
Moreover, if the difference in vote count between the two most voted options is less than three, then the leading option must have 60% support of voters.
Follow these steps to know whether an option has reached majority:
- Find the leading option, i.e. the option with the highest number of votes.
- Don't forget that the leading option must have at least four votes and must not tie with another option.
- Calculate the vote margin as the difference in vote count between the lead option and the second most voted option.
- List all voters (make sure to not count a voter more than once) to determine the number of voters.
- Check whether the vote count of the leading option is:
- more than 0.5 × [number of voters], if the vote margin is at least three;
- at least 0.6 × [number of voters], if the vote margin is one or two.
- If this is the case, then the leading 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, Eugene
- Option 2: Felicia, Gaetan, Hortense
- Option 3: Alice, Irma
Option 1 is the leading option (5 votes). There are 9 voters in total (there are 10 votes, but Alice voted twice). The second most voted option has 3 votes, so the vote margin is 5 − 3 = 2; therefore, the leading option can only win if its vote count is at least 0.6 × 9 = 5.4, which is not the case (5 < 5.4). In conclusion, 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, Eugene
- Option 2: Bob, Felicia, Gaetan
- Option 3: Alice, Hortense
Option 1 is the leading option (5 votes). There are 8 voters in total (there are 10 votes, but Alice and Bob voted twice). The second most voted option has 3 votes, so the vote margin is 5 − 3 = 2; therefore, the leading option can only win if its vote count is at least 0.6 × 8 = 4.8, which is the case (5 ≥ 4.8). In conclusion, 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 leading option is automatically the winning option, it would not be fair because the leading 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 leading 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 leading 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.