minguo.info

Referendums are simple polls where voters are asked to reply "Yes" and "No" to a simple question. In the United States, they are often called "Ballot Measure" or "Ballot Initiative".

I have just disabled proxy voting for new polls. Proxy voting only remains enabled on a very limited number of old polls still open today.

Proxy voting was a great feature of this web site. However, it suffered from important limitations, so much that I preferred disabling it for the time being.

Meanwhile, I'd like to start a dialogue with interested members as to which minimum features to have implemented before we can confidently re-enable this feature again. To that effect, I have just started a new poll.
See:

Just a couple of days ago, I committed an important usability fix, making it much more convenient for returning members to check upon their past polling activity. Below each poll, there used to be a plain ballot, with either some default values filled in or with the voter's previous vote filled in.

One great feature of this site is that polls are usually not fixed, and new polling options can be added by members at any time. Thus, if a member has a better idea than anything that is currently proposed , she can add it straight away, and let the other members vote accordingly.

Over the last few months, I have developed a Polling Station which I have improved a bit further recently. If you log in and view your polling station, you will find the list of all polls you have already voted in, those you haven't, new polls recently created, etc. The URL is the same for all members as well as for anonymous, first time visitors: http://en.minguo.info/polling_station.

Two important things happened recently.

The polls for the 2012 US presidency are ready. Vote and compare the results:

• [2012 Presidential Poll] Emocracy Voting
• [2012 Presidential Poll] Approval Voting
• [2012 Presidential Poll] Score Voting
• [2012 Presidential Poll] Plurality Voting

See the start of an uncommon citizen debate between a Libertarian and a Liberal, here.

See my review of Extended Runoff Voting, here.

Many criteria have been proposed to qualify the different properties of various election methods.

I would like to add one in light of fairly recent events: the Pencil and Paper Criterion.

The definition is simple: an election method satisfies this criterion if an election can easily be held (i.e. votes cast and tallied) without the use of any electronic device, beyond, possibly, a simple pocket calculator to make additions.

I just received in my mail a link to the following web site:
http://elections.cognitivesandbox.com/
It is a nicely designed comparison of Plurality and Condorcet voting methods using apparently trivial polls like choosing the where to go on vacation and what food to order.