[liberationtech] EveryVote Prototype / Advice for Knight Foundation Prototype Grant Applicant?

Thu Jan 30 19:44:31 PST 2014

Mitch,

Echoing Peter, there's a lot of ink spilled about various preferential
voting systems, including rank, multi-stage, etc.  Benjamin Mako Hill, who
may well be on this list and many of you probably know, did a project in my
research group at MIT to develop both a preferential voting library and an
example app called selectricity (currently unmaintained).
http://rubyvote.rubyforge.org/
https://gitorious.org/selectricity

What was great about Selectricity was that one could choose from about half
a dozen election methods, including plurality, Condorcet, Schultze, etc.,
but also see what the election would have resulted in if another method had
been used.  Selectricity was used by a variety of unions, student groups,
etc. to do board votes, etc.  One election for the board of Students for
Free Culture was a great example, in that the Schultze method (also used by
Debian) was chosen, and resulted in a completely different set of board
members being elected than plurality had been used.

The shorthand we used to describe its difference from plurality:  10 people
want to go to lunch.  Half really prefer Szechuan food, and hate Northern
Italian cuisine.  Half crave Italian the most but hate Szechuan.  But all
of them would choose Thai food for their second choice, and really like it
a lot.  In plurality voting, _no one would ever eat Thai_.

Anyway, feel free to look at the code bases -- I think riseup used rubyvote
in one of their projects? -- and note: it was developed in part with Knight
Foundation funding!

Chris.

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 7:14 PM, Peter Lindener <lindener.peter at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi
>     Mitch-
>
>     I went to your sight's URL and git hub repository....
>
>    I did not dive into your web sight's code....  But I'm wondering if
> there is any consideration by way of the algebraic dependencys of Von
> Neumann and Morgenstern expected utility theorem,<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem> it can be proven that a well formed Cardinal Ranked Choice voting system
> is nessisary for all voter's to be consistently represented over the full
> space of potential Social Decsion outcomes.
>
>    Does your web sight utilize this kind of Ranked Choice voter
> prioritized preference ballot?....   If not, how might your system in any
> real sense take into account every voters secondary preferences if they
> happen not to win there first?
>
>    There is more to the Social Decision Systems problem, but lets start
> with the basics....   without a Social Choice Function's having access to
> the entire Cardianl ranked choice preference priorities of each and every
> voter, it would be impossible for a voting function to consistently
> represent each voter by attempting to maximize the expected personal
> utility of each and every voter over the probability space of all possible
> outcomes...
>
>    What does it mean when you use the phrase "EveryVote" ?
>
>     -Peter
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Mitch Downey <mitch at everyvote.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi liberationtech,
>>
>> I'm applying for the Knight Prototype Fund, and I'm new to this stuff. Is
>> there anyone here with grant experience who can offer some advice? The
>> application is due tomorrow, January 31 before midnight. Even if you send
>> advice for the project after the deadline, we'd appreciate the input.
>>
>> We're requesting funding to finish building the MVP of the open source
>> (AGPLv3) EveryVote election and townhall meeting platform. Click the link
>> below to check out how EveryVote could help increase voter turnout, connect
>> constituents to representatives and candidates, and facilitate debate
>> online.
>>
>> EveryVote Prototype: everyvote.org/prototype
>>
>> Our intended audience for the Spring 2014 MVP is university student
>> organization elections, such as Student Governments, Campus Activities
>> Boards, Fraternity Councils, Homecoming King and Queen, and any other
>> organization with elections. EveryVote group pages have to be easy enough
>> that the Election Commissioners of the student organizations can
>> comfortably manage the pages themselves.
>>
>> Also, EveryVote is dedicated to using international open government data
>> standards, and building its software with federation to maximize the
>> freedom and convenience of users, and also so EveryVote itself cannot form
>> a monopoly over access to public data or public data tools. We'd also like
>> to help educate university students about the value and challenges of open
>> data standards and network federation.
>>
>> Please let us know if you have any questions, and thank you for your
>> consideration.
>>
>> Mitch Downey
>> contactus {at} everyvote [dot] org
>>
>> --
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>
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-- 
Christopher Csikszentmihályi
Director, Rootio Project
robotic at gmail.com
edgyproduct.tumblr.com
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