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@jan This sounds like it could get complicated. However, it doesn't need to be. If everyone is bringing 10 games each, I don't think there needs to be a vote on that at all. People just bring the games that they want to. Essentially everyone gets 10 nominations into the pool that you vote on.

It might be the case that one person's favourite game is owned by someone else, but they can easily ask to borrow it for their own 10.

As for what to play, if you are playing a lot of games, I would prefer some sort of proportional system rather than a simple single-winner type vote each time. E.g. If 3 out of 5 players generally prefer one type of game and 2 prefer another type, it makes sense for there to be a 3:2 split rather than the 3 choosing every time.

You could simply take it in turns to choose. Alternatively I would recommend a lottery method, so that you would get proportional representation over the long haul without having to keep track of what has already happened. I think simple random ballot, where you randomly pick who chooses each game, would be inferior to taking turns. Some people would get to choose more, just by luck.

But one alternative, which has a balance between randomness and consensus is COWPEA Lottery. Each person approves as many games as they want. Then you pick a ballot at random and if that ballot lists more than one game, you just pick other ballots at random as a tie-break. So if the next ballot approves all or none of the remaining games in contention, you ignore it. Otherwise you eliminate games not approved. Continue until one game is left. If there is still a tie after all ballots have been picked, just pick at random among the remaining games.

@robla The feedback I've heard from various stakeholders and reformers across the landscape is that many people oppose narrowing the field too much, which can prevent minor parties from having a meaningful voice in the general or being seen as viable. Being on the general ballot is an important part of the path to becoming viable for a third party.

For that reason, I think there's more consensus around advancing a set number of candidates to the general (instead of setting an approval threshold). Given that the voting method does fine with multiple viable candidates, I think advancing the top 4, 5 or 6 is totally reasonable. The upper limit is set by voter fatigue.

I think two stage Approval is generally the way to go for Approval elections. Approval Top-Two makes a lot of sense for jurisdictions that already have Top-Two, but all other things being equal I'd recommend Approval Top-5 or Top-4. I'm not sure if an even number is better or not, but that's something that should be studied and modeled for each system.

For STAR I generally recommend having a conditional primary, where the top 5 (or 4) advance. And, if less candidates than that register you just skip the primary all together, which saves a bunch of money.

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If your comments on a post changes topics substantively from the original post, please create your own post so we can stay on topic.

Clarifying questions about terminology are on topic, but this thread is about the Maine Supreme Court ruling so advocacy to change voting system's names is off topic here.

@wolftune Individual people going off and creating their own terms is not going to result in a larger movement wide change.

If that's a quest you care about then you'd need to get consensus from CES, CA Approves, Fargo Approves, Utah Approves, SL Approves, etc. -- which is not going to happen, imo.

I also don't think it should happen. Approval voting already has a solid one word self explanatory name that people know, and that's used in both academic and voter level contexts. That's a huge advantage!

Changing that is not worth it for questionable gains at best. I think it would do a lot of damage to try, and I think the failed efforts to market "pick all that you like" voting illustrate that.

@cfrank Yes, but "choose-any" was selected on the basis of being clear (it rolls off the tongue less well than "approval" I'd say), so it really needs to do that job perfectly before we get on to how well it rolls off the tongue.

Edit - I'd say "choose any number" is a little bit less clunky than "choose however many", but neither are great in that respect.

@wolftune There is this thread from 2024. I think it might have passed me by at the time. I see your point about it being clearer about what it does, but on the other hand, it's not something I've really thought about, so I don't think I will suddenly change my language immediately based on this. It's quite a big thing to do, and I think I would need to see that there is a larger consensus in the general voting community that this is the best name, rather than just individuals deciding one at a time.

Edit - Thinking about it, "Choose-any" comes across as ambiguous to me. It could come across as "choose any one".

I think it's fine to have it here, but being a US-specific thing, I probably don't have much to say on it!

@jack-waugh

I list both names because Clay said he was involved with defining the balance condition.

I don't think so, but Clay was involved with the invention of STAR Voting. Maybe that's what you were thinking of or what he meant? I could be wrong. In any case we generally are trying to move away from naming things after people which is why this was named the Equality Criterion and then codified as such in the halls of peer review. Something we all worked very hard to do.

Clay and Mark both deserve quite a lot of credit for their many contributions, but let's help these terms and criteria catch on by being consistent with using their formal names.

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On the technical properties there are no issues here.

On the practical considerations there are a number.

1. It requires explaining the Smith Set
2. It requires explaining Condorcet winners
3. It requires explaining Approval voting.
4. It requires introducing two new voting methods , with two different ballot types, each with different instructions, at the same time.

I recommend having one voting method only. If you want to have a primary and general then use the same good method for both and don't narrow it down too much before the general. That's actually simpler and will get much broader support from stakeholder factions and minor parties who want real choices on the general election ballot.

Condorcet is accurate enough to just skip the primary all together unless there are too many candidates. If you want Condorcet with a simple tiebreaker why not just make the tiebreaker between the finalists (tied candidates) automatic in the event that it's even needed? In the tiebreaker, each voters ballot counts as a vote for their favorite(s) still in the running. If a voter ranked two candidates equally that would count as a vote for both. The finalist with the most votes wins.

The tiebreaker never even has to be explained. It's literally just a built in tiebreaker like a Plurality provision might call for a drawing of lots or a coin toss, but the ballots already have the tiebreaker info they need so it can be done instantly.

@toby-pereira Anything can be argued and counter-argued in court, but my assessment above is based on what a fair and likely ruling would be, in my professional opinion.

I'm not a lawyer, but have been studying these things for years and we did win the case in the Oregon Supreme Court against the Oregon Legislative Council which found that RCV's ballot title in Oregon was misleading and inaccurate as it pertains to RCV's majority winner claims, though there is apparently no mechanism anymore to enforce such a ruling.

Two confounding data points:

1. RCV has spent years making the argument that RCV guarantees majority winners. That's directly at odds with an argument that it guarantees plurality winners. Ironically, there's a solid case to be made that due to exhausted ballots it guarantees neither.
2. The Constitution of Maine Article IV, Section 5 requires that winners be elected "by a plurality of ALL votes returned.” In cases like these where the wording is explicit that it's "all" votes "returned" or all votes "cast" RCV is eliminated from compliance by the existence of exhausted ballots alone.