WSDCC Delegate Selection Plan - public comment #1 - simplifying the mathI've decided I may as well post these here; they are public, after all. And yes, I know a goodly number of you just want to cut to the chase and switch to having a primary that the party will actually pay attention to. But, much as I'd like otherwise, that's not going to happen, at least not any time soon. Meanwhile the caucuses have their uses. Fact is, I wouldn't be involved if it weren't for the caucuses. And I think it can be reasonably argued that a caucus that's done right, that provides truly proportional representation of the folks who attend (which will actually be addresed more in comment #2 than here), that makes it easy/painless to attend and participate, can be almost as good as a primary. Start small, with stuff that everybody can agree on; work up from there. First order of business is to reduce the bureaucracy. Some of it may be necessary but many things aren't. This first comment is about simplifying the math. It may seem like a small, technical thing to replace 5th-grade math with 4th-grade math, and the rule change leads to essentially the same outcomes as before, but it can make a big difference. The basic admonition is, do not write rules that require long division, forcing people to calculate things out to n decimals, putting it solidly outside the realm of stuff people can do in their heads. When things are at the point where you need spreadsheets and calculators to be able to know what's going on and what the consequences of your votes are going to be, something is wrong with this picture. This turns people off to the process. And it does not have to be this way. And now, herewith the 1st comment:
First, just for reference, before I launch into the actual comment, here's the existing language in the rules
and even though the replacement text below is longer, keep in mind that underneath "tabulate" is hidden a multitude of sins. Subject: WSDCC Delegate Selection Plan public comment (III.F.6 algorithm) I will strongly suggest a re-arrangement of the math in the delegate computation in section III.F.6 as follows: On page 16 of the Delegate Selection Plan, replace lines 11-25 with
In short, we change step 1 to use a vote count threshold rather than calculating individual percentages, we change Step 3 to do the multiplication first and use integer division rather than long division, and we have Step 5 rank integer remainders rather than decimal fractions. Purpose These changes address several issues:
The revised rule otherwise follows the same principles as the original rule in enforcing the viability threshold and awarding delegates proportionately to the extent possible. The original and the revised rules only differ in outcome where the former has roundoff errors in its application. Specifically, if the original Step 5 were to be modified so that decimal fractional remainders be taken as equal whenever they are sufficiently close together (i.e., absolute difference less than 0.001 times the number of delegates to allocate), then the resulting method would be equivalent to that of the revised rule. (I don't actually advocate that particular change to the rules because the revised rule above is so much simpler) Example Here is where rounding causes trouble in the original rule:
Equivalent Methods for 1-3 Delegate Caucuses The following simplified methods can be proven equivalent to the revised rule in the case of caucuses with 1 to 3 delegates. Note that the caucus envelope can include a worksheet tailored to the specific number of delegates for that caucus, at which point the precinct chair and participants need not concern themselves with what the general rule actually is. With the right worksheets, everything can be done with subtraction and table-lookup, and the process goes that much faster. See http://41dems.org/2008/rfc/pcaucus_proposal/wksht.pdf for examples. Again, this will simplify life for over 40% of the precinct caucuses. These methods all replace steps 3-5. As per Step 1, we treat preferences under 15% as having zero votes, and "total votes" refers to the Step 2 total. 1 Delegate Caucus Award the delegate to the preference with the most votes. Resolve ties by lot. 2 Delegate Caucus Find the two highest preferences (resolve ties by lot) and take the difference of their vote counts.
3 Delegate Caucus Find the three highest preferences (resolve ties by lot). If either of the following two comparisons comes out equal, flip a coin to decide whether it holds.
If neither comparsion holds, Further Tweaks Note that under the revised rule, the multiplication in the new Step 1 can be replaced with a simple table lookup:
WSDCC Delegate Selection Plan - public comment #1 - simplifying the math | 31 comments (31 topical)
WSDCC Delegate Selection Plan - public comment #1 - simplifying the math | 31 comments (31 topical)
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