SODA voting (Simple Optionally-Delegated Approval): Difference between revisions

Optional rule 4.5 (between 4 and 5): If any candidate has less than 5% (of the total votes) as delegable votes, and is not one of the top two in total votes, then those votes are automatically delegated to the first candidate on their approval list who has more than 5% delegable votes or more than 20% total votes. They will be further delegated to the largest sequence from their original candidate's preference order which is contained in their receiving candidate's delegations. So if they originally went to A who preferred alphabetically, then and they're passed to D who delegates to BCEGH, they'll end up approving ABCDE. This rule prevents giving excessive kingmaker power to a tiny faction. Note that all delegation is still non-exclusive, approval-style.

 

 

I think that 5% is a good cutoff here; that's tens of millions of voters, and enough to deserve a voice. It shouldn't be too high, because this rule is effectively taking power away from voters; that's only justified if the faction is so small that the power is not legitimate, and so it's better to err a bit on the small side if anything. But under 5% - that is, under 10% of the winning coalition - doesn't deserve kingmaker power.