In this week’s devlog, the team talks about perk fulfillment and a change to the voting system.
You can find the full issue of the development log here.
I applaud the effort to improve voting. Question about approval voting - if the electorate continues to be complacent wouldn’t this system actually make it easier for bad actors to get their crew voted in? Last time, the Euu crew needed 50 puppet accounts to get three people voted into parliament (actually, they probably would have succeeded with about 30 puppets). If not enough people pick a slate of candidates in the next election then Euu might be able to accomplish the same thing with just the 12 people in their corporation.
In term 66, there were 52 votes for (Schaitr, Filefolders, PrupleOrange, Andy97).
However, those votes were split across multiple candidates.
In term 67, there were 55 votes for (Schaitr, Filefolders, Andy97).
It would make it easier for a block of similar, high approval candidates to get elected rather than having the vote split and trying to either coordinate the vote (easier to do if less scrupulous) or vote for Andy97 because you think that your prefered candidates of Schaitr and Filefolders will get elected.
With approval voting, Euu’s crew will need more puppet accounts because the vote won’t be split.
Verdant is the most recent large election that I’m aware of. With that one, Schaitr got 58 votes; and Vallen27, realbandit, Cyrup, and HanAti got between 38 and 24 votes. There was very clearly a block of votes that were cast.
No voting system is able to handle election or vote fraud.
Block approval voting meets more of the criteria for a fair election than single non-transferable vote does. There are better systems (for different other criteria - Comparison of electoral systems - Wikipedia)… but they too would suffer just as badly if there were fraudulent votes cast.
Right, I understand that is the idea. My question was pointing out the possibility that if enough voters don’t bother to select every candidate that they approve of and instead just continue to vote for one person then the vote will still be split and it will be even easier than before for Euu’s crew to win 3 seats.
Every voting system is going to have some flaw/weakness/loophole.
That is a criticism of every multiple vote system be it block approval or one of the ranked choice approaches.
The previous system with a single non-transferable vote made it easier for a group with coordination to accomplish tactical voting by distributing their votes. If they had coordinated on term 65 for Promintor, they could have done (assuming that there wasn’t ballot stuffing in that election) by having as few as 20 people that voted for Euu to tactically vote to beat Andy and PurpleOrange.
Block approval removes the coordination advantage and instead has a voter education situation. Maybe it needs a faction contract with the first election… or for that matter, give a faction rep for voting for everyone (with constraints established players don’t get rep from voting at a rate faster than a player with a single base).