Re: GNOME Foundation Board Elections Spring 2012 - Preliminary Results

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi Bastien,

On 06/11/2012 02:56 PM, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> Reading the results[1], I saw in round 3:
> "Candidate Bastien Nocera was chosen by breaking the tie randomly."
>
> How was this done randomly? What would the results have been if
> Emmanuele was selected as the tie-breaker instead?

In this particular situation, yourself and Emmanuele both got 29 "number 
one" votes, and none of Joanie's 43 voters had either of you as their 
second choice - so you're strictly equal with 29.0000 votes after the 
second round.

If your pile is chosen first, you need 24 to get elected, so 5 ballots 
are being distributed, and each ballot of yours is allocated avalue of 
5/29 votes. Votes where you are #1 and Emmanuele is #2 would add some 
extra votes to his pile which would be distributed afterwards - if there 
were any, we would have to think a little more to see if that might 
change the result. In the circumstances, no votes transferred from you 
to Emmanuele, so the order doesn't actually matter. The #2 (or #3 or #4 
if, say, Joanie and you were #s 2 and 3) of each of his 29 ballots gets 
a value of 5/29.

If there had been some votes that transferred from you to Emmanuele 
(let's say 3 of 29) then each of those votes would then transfer with a 
value of 3*5/29 votes from you to Emmanuele (for argument's sake, let's 
call that 0.5), and then he'd have 5.5 votes to transfer, and each of 
those ballots would transfer with a weight of 5.5/29 (the three 
transfers would have a value of 5/29*5.5/29, in other words not very much).

Long story short, it doesn't matter because any votes which would have 
transferred from Emmanuele to you would have been transferred on with 
the same value when your surplus was distributed.

Cheers,
Dave.


--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org
Jabber: nearyd gmail com