I assume in the renormalization step there will still be exhausted ballots (e.g., they voted for three orgs and none of the orgs made it). I assume then the plan would be that those ballots just won’t continue to matter in the election? I know this sounds bad the way I’m writing it, but this is how ranked choice voting works and seems totally fine + normal to me, just wanted to make sure you’ve thought about it because I didn’t see it mentioned.
I also assume that the way the renormalization step works is that if everyone gets 10pts and someone voted A − 6pts, B − 2pts, C − 2pts and then A is eliminated, their ballot is then changed to “B − 5pts, C − 5pts”? And if B is also eliminated, their ballot becomes “C − 10pts”?
Also do you allow for undervoting (e.g., a ballot that doesn’t allocate points to three options but is just “A − 10pts” full stop)?
Most of the info on exhausted ballots was in footnotes, unfortunately:
If all of a voter’s points were assigned to candidates which are now eliminated, we’ll pretend that the voter spread their points out equally across the remaining candidates.
[Footnote:
Why this might make sense, intuitively:
We could treat votes from people whose voted-on candidates have all been eliminated (or whose remaining votes are 0′s) as non-votes (i.e. the fact that they voted doesn’t affect the vote at all at this point), or we could pretend that the 0’s they put were actually minuscule positive point values, distributed evenly on all the non-voted candidates.
Now suppose lots of people assign all their points to a few unpopular candidates which are eliminated before we get to the top three (note that this is a somewhat unlikely scenario). This would mean that our top three winning projects are something that lots of voters didn’t think much about (or thought were less cost-effective than other projects). It seems better to treat the projects as if they’re a bit more similar to a normal base rate of charities and in particular to equalize votes between them a bit.
]
Renormalization: you’ve got it right!
Under-voting: yeah, we’re allowing it.
[Edit: looks like harfe and I answered at basically the same time. :) ]
I assume then the plan would be that those ballots just won’t continue to matter in the election?
No, it sounds like they will count as equally weighted votes. From the article: “If all of a voter’s points were assigned to candidates which are now eliminated, we’ll pretend that the voter spread their points out equally across the remaining candidates.”
I think both would be ok choices
I also assume that the way the renormalization step works is that if everyone gets 10pts and someone voted A − 6pts, B − 2pts, C − 2pts and then A is eliminated, their ballot is then changed to “B − 5pts, C − 5pts”? And if B is also eliminated, their ballot becomes “C − 10pts”?
Basically, yes, according to my understanding. Except that there is no fixed point limit, but every voters points get normalized so that voters have equal weights.
Also do you allow for undervoting (e.g., a ballot that doesn’t allocate points to three options but is just “A − 10pts” full stop)?
I assume in the renormalization step there will still be exhausted ballots (e.g., they voted for three orgs and none of the orgs made it). I assume then the plan would be that those ballots just won’t continue to matter in the election? I know this sounds bad the way I’m writing it, but this is how ranked choice voting works and seems totally fine + normal to me, just wanted to make sure you’ve thought about it because I didn’t see it mentioned.
I also assume that the way the renormalization step works is that if everyone gets 10pts and someone voted A − 6pts, B − 2pts, C − 2pts and then A is eliminated, their ballot is then changed to “B − 5pts, C − 5pts”? And if B is also eliminated, their ballot becomes “C − 10pts”?
Also do you allow for undervoting (e.g., a ballot that doesn’t allocate points to three options but is just “A − 10pts” full stop)?
Most of the info on exhausted ballots was in footnotes, unfortunately:
Renormalization: you’ve got it right!
Under-voting: yeah, we’re allowing it.
[Edit: looks like harfe and I answered at basically the same time. :) ]
Sorry I missed that. I think that’s a sensible way to handle ballot exhaustion.
No, it sounds like they will count as equally weighted votes. From the article: “If all of a voter’s points were assigned to candidates which are now eliminated, we’ll pretend that the voter spread their points out equally across the remaining candidates.” I think both would be ok choices
Basically, yes, according to my understanding. Except that there is no fixed point limit, but every voters points get normalized so that voters have equal weights.
I would guess yes, based on the description.