Post #4302893

2026-08-01 04:31 UTC

The trouble with electing two board positions by STV when there are two factions is that ⅓ of the vote is enough to guarantee one of the seats - and thus a whopping ⅔ majority is needed to prevent that. This is why there wasn't really any avoiding the split of a board position to each side last year by better tactical voting, only getting more turnout. Unless one side gives up, or the other gets an overwhelming majority some other way, we will probably end up with roughly half the elected positions being FSU people in a few years It's also not a surprise that their guy was elected first. Like this time, there were two FSU guys (plus an obvious crank) vs a larger set of normal people, so they were inevitably going to get their third together on an earlier round of counting even if there were fewer voters on that side. The same will happen again if we don't get enough for two-thirds to vote against them in some way; the order is secondary so long as you rank everyone else above them

Replies (1)

@PetraOleum@cloudisland.nz 2026-08-01 04:37

Obviously, electing them via STV is much better than the alternative: I remember in primary school we elected two class representatives to the student council every year (I don't know why; unlike highschool I don't remember ever hearing from the council outside of this). It being the 2000s, all the boys* in the class voted for boys ('what are you, gay?' was the implication if not the explicit words, this not being a secret ballot), and all the girls voted for girls, so if there were two girls running and three or more boys, the girls got in, and vice versa. FSU have so far only ever put in two candidates at a time, while the opposition is not coordinated, so they would win via a more first-past-the-post system *gender not accurate, obviously; I wasn't bucking this trend for one

Open ##4303039