[Lnc-business] voting method for current elections

[Alicia Mattson]

Am I the only one who is confused about this?

As I am deciding how to vote on the two elections underway, I was looking
at the materials, and I've come to realize some details that I must point
out, and I need to raise a point of order.

I was looking at the election method in the motion adopted in December, my
brain was saying, "Did we really choose single transferable voting for
this?"  It doesn't require a majority for election.  That is a factor that
I definitely would have wanted to comment about specifically at the
meeting, but I thought we had approved just a generic ranked choice voting
which does actually require a majority for election, rather than an STV
variant which does not.

The minutes say that we voted on "ranked-choice voting (Scottish STV3)".
Well, it doesn't use the words "single transferable vote", though it
includes an acronym for single transferable vote in the variant type.  I
wondered how I didn't notice that detail.

I believe the first time we saw this motion was in the Secretary's report,
sent to us 6 days prior to the meeting, indicated an intent to move that
the LNC adopt the following:

"Move to appoint the members of the Convention Voting Process Committee and
the Membership Support Committee via ranked-choice voting (Scottish RCV)
using the Opa-Vote site with a voting period of seven (7) days or until all
votes are cast, whichever comes first. Alternates will note their choices
manually which will be input by the Secretary if the corresponding regional
representative does not vote or expressly abstain."

It says ranked-choice voting, then parenthetically "Scottish RCV".  Both of
those tell me we would be voting on a more generic ranked choice voting
system, not a single transferable vote variant.  RCV, not STV.  I did read
and ponder this motion in advance with that particular wording.  That's
what I was expecting at the meeting.

At the time of the meeting, when the motion was made, I was opening a copy
of the bylaws and did not aurally distinguish that the acronym which was
said by the mover was actually "STV" rather than the "RCV" we were given in
writing.  It's a subtle distinction to the ear, and after reviewing the
recording of the meeting to confirm, it was not pointed out to us that this
was something different than the written version of the motion we had been
sent.  We were only told that the Scottish STV element had to do with how
ties are broken.

I do think that this subtle change, which has huge implications, should
have been much more clearly pointed out to us at the time.  I definitely
would have added to my debate comments to speak more strongly against it.
But I didn't HEAR the difference, so I thought we were voting on a
different system, so I didn't say it.  All I commented on was that not
really knowing all the distinctions, I wasn't ready to choose a method yet.

The wording spoken at the time was "STV", but not "STV3" which is what the
minutes say.  I have not found on the OpaVote site what the distinction is
between those, though the draft minutes should be corrected to reflect the
motion that was actually made without the "3".

Then, when the notice of the email ballot was sent to us, we were told
that, "This is a ranked choice election using the Coombs Ranked Choice
Voting method."  The OpaVote site says the Coombs method is a variant of
IRV with a distinction about choosing which candidate is eliminated from
one round to the next, and that Scottish STV is something different.

So besides being aggravated that we were not clearly warned that the tiny
change in the motion was a very different method than what was sent to us
in advance, I must raise a point of order to ask whether the method being
used is even the same as what the LNC voted for.

Was I the only one who missed the change from RCV to STV?  What did we
think we were voting on, what did we actually agree to, and is this OpaVote
configuration the same thing as that?

Also, NOTA was not nominated by anyone, yet there it is on our ballot.
Though our bylaws allow for NOTA votes in elections at convention, and
spell out very clearly how it is handled, we have no existing rules for how
NOTA is handled in an election for an LNC committee, and I suspect that the
software has nothing particular to handle the NOTA concept and will just
treat it as the name of a human candidate.

-Alicia