This is probably a good question also, because we’re not sure what the level of participation level will be, how many ballots will actually be cast out of the ones that were sent out.
As stated here:
It should be decided before the elections on how will the rules be. It is impossible to be so smart and decide the rules for the eternity right now.
With that said, I am quite convinced first elections will have one candidate. That is why I am presuming that 66% is good threshold as it allows for figuring out if this one candidate is even supported by the community.
I also believe that is rather likely that all future elections will have just one candidate.
In crypto world it’s easier to start a new shitcoin than to fight to change the old one. Testament to this is 1000 Peercoin forks and clones and yet nobody tried to take the project from Sunny.
I’m much more comfortable with 25% quorum plurality. Contingency is foundation chooses the leader if quorum isn’t reached.
My fear is that we don’t know the level of participation there will be in an election. Many people don’t follow things very closely, so by the time they find out about it the election may be over. That may cause a situation where out of the total amount of ballots that are sent out, only a small percentage of them are cast for a candidate, which means the 66% target is not reached. It would be even more difficult to reach that number if there is more than one candidate. Here is my suggestion…
Abstaining from Voting
Ballots sent out to eligible voters, but are not received back by the deadline are considered abstentions and not included in the final calculations. It is similar to a national election where eligible voters refuse to participate because they don’t like the candidates. They are simply not included in the final tally, since they chose not to vote.
Single Candidate Elections
If we accept that abstentions are not included in the final tally, then we need to decide how to handle an election in which there is only one candidate running. I believe we can solve this simply by having two options…
- Yea (a vote for the candidate)
- Nay (a vote against the candidate, keeping the existing leader)
For example, let’s say we hold an election for one candidate. 50% abstain from voting either because they didn’t care enough or weren’t aware of the election. 45% vote in favor of the candidate and the remaining 5% vote against the candidate. These percentages represent the total number of ballots that were sent out. Only half of the ballots sent out were cast.
Once we eliminate the 50% of abstentions from the calculation, we now only calculate the remaining ballots that were actually cast by voters. So in the end, it ends up being a 90% vote in favor of the candidate with a 10% vote against the candidate.
The candidate wins election. If a tie were to occur, it should probably be broken by the Peercoin Foundation.
Multiple Candidate Elections
In an election with multiple candidates, it is no longer necessary to vote yea or nay. We would simply vote for the candidate we favor.
- Candidate A (vote in favor of candidate A)
- Candidate B (vote in favor of candidate B)
Once again, non-votes or abstentions are left out of the calculation. The candidate with the most votes wins. So for example, 50% abstain, 26% vote for Candidate A and 24% vote for Candidate B.
After removing abstentions, Candidate A receives 52% of the vote, while Candidate B receives 48%. Candidate A wins the election. Again, in the event of a tie, the Peercoin Foundation will decide.
Preventing a Splitting of the Vote by Similar Candidates
Nagalim brought up a concern above about if there were 3 candidates running, two of them were very similar and one was very different. Let’s say the two similar candidates were Peerchemist and somebody with similar thinking, but with a different plan of action. The 3rd candidate however wanted to take Peercoin in a radically different direction, making even changing the fundamentals of the network. There is a worry that the two similar candidates may split their vote, allowing the 3rd candidate with wildly different ideas to win. The only question I have is whether a losing candidate should be able to pledge their votes to another similar candidate to prevent the 3rd candidate from winning, or should votes remain permanently fixed to the candidate with no ability to pledge them to another?
Peerchemist would likely be running with no other competitor, so if you vote yea he wins. But also if you vote nay he also wins, since he is already the existing project leader. So that is a problem I guess. At most, the single candidate election is a poll showing how stakeholders think he is doing as project leader. If the vote is overwhelmingly in his favor, then most active stakeholders agree with him and the direction he is taking the project in. If it is close, then it shows some level of dissatisfaction and that he and the team need to do better.
The voting only really matters once you have multiple candidates involved.
It can also be used to see whether active stakeholders agree with a significant change, by voting yea or nay.
The issue is that according to the current proposal, keeping the current leader is not a sustainable option. The current proposal involves voting on both a candidate and a roadmap with a certain timeline. Once that timeline has finished, keeping the current leader with a nay vote essentially means they no longer have a roadmap or any responsibility to do anything anymore.
This ‘voting as a formality’ idea, that the vote has no real consequence, is likely to lead to low voter participation.
Instead of having a null option, which is really just begging for failure because we do not have the option of doing nothing when picking the leader, we could really use the concept of candidate+roadmap. A candidate could propose two different roadmaps and use the ranked choice concept to total the two options when considering the candidate, but allowing voters to choose a roadmap within that choice. So if 30% vote roadmap a) and 25% vote roadmap b) and 45% vote for the other candidate, roadmap a) wins [55% ranked choice vote and a) beat out b)]. This also allows candidates to propose for example risky and safe options, without having to worry as much about resting their candidacy on the risky version. It also helps prevent the need for additional votes to make explicit choices, as choices can now be made under the heading of the candidate who will carry them out all in the same vote.
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Any further thoughts?
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The technical details are all fine, im more interested in the rules that the foundation puts forward.
This is a really difficult requirement, given we don’t know how much things cost until they are paid, the best we have are estimates. Is the idea that the Foundation matches 1 dollar for every 3 dollars down? Then we have to establish verification processes for the funds expended. A fixed budget would be easier, or some alternative. If a candidate proposes a cheaper plan that is more within the budget, that should be considered a viable course of action as opposed to those that will bankrupt the foundation in the first 6 months. I get what you’re going for, but we need to think out the specifics.
I want to highlight that this is a good bit more complex than standard electoral processes and it may be non-intuitive for some. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it, I just want us to be aware that this is somewhat above and beyond the standard democratic elections around the world.
How long between vote being finalized and term beginning? Why the time period, is it just for funding? Is the old leader in a lame-duck session during this period?
I mean, you can always ask, but is anyone obligated to respond? The Foundation?
A lot of these points seem to be about how the funding works for the Leadership. I think it would be a lot better to have a comprehensive concept of how that works from start to finish, rather than patchwork.
Update on these matters.
Negotiations with the potential investor (and his company) have broken down, and we’re done with that. I still think we should do this, for us.
Negotiation have broken down as investor demanded the following:
- That 100 B (one hundred billions) Peercoins is created (somehow) and placed into a multisig account.
- Elected delegates can withdraw coins from this multisig to cover the expenses and such.
Needless to say this was the end of conversation automatically.
What I’ve learned is that these new people, no matter how wealthy and successful they are in their respective businesses - they absolutely do not understand cryptocurrency.
The investor asked for 100B coins reserve as he saw something about Ripple on CNN (or something) and thought to himself hey this model is great - we should replicate it. In his mind having control over the supply can only be a good thing, and that investors will accept dilution of supply on such as scale because the project will get funding and somehow magically that will annihilate all the bad things.
We all know how Ripple story came to an end just a few days ago.
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At least some good came out of it and we now have a good idea how to gauge opinions from stakeholders on issues by conducting polls on the chain.
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