Talk:Borda count/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

As a consensual method

Since other editors are actively looking at this page I took the bull by the horns and deleted the section on ‘Borda as a consensual method’. Really it was no more than Chinese whispers. It said that ‘The Borda count tends to favor candidates supported by a broad consensus’ but justified this by a reference which said that ‘Borda count is sometimes described as a consensus-based voting system’ without endorsing the claim or suggesting that the people who made it were in any way authoritative.

In fact the claim is certainly made, eg. by the Electoral Reform Society, but the ERS is comparing Borda with less sophisticated systems such as FPTP. Wikipedia puts all sorts of systems into the mix such as Schulze’s, and the statement on Wikipedia that Borda is particularly consensual will be understood as implying that it is consensual in comparison with them rather than in comparison with the ERS alternatives.

In any case the example was unconvincing and gave rise to a lot of editorial hand-wringing on my part. Colin.champion (talk) 07:54, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

@Colin.champion I'm here because I've found multiple references of consensus voting on consensus decision-making, which all seem to be referring to MBC! It seems that Designing an All-Inclusive Democracy: Consensual Voting Procedures for Use in Parliaments, Councils and Committees Emerson 2007 is guilty for coining the term, and I see it is reused in framework called 'CrowdWise' https://rhizomenetwork.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/near-consensus-alternatives-crowd-wise/ DougInAMugtalk 23:15, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh guess what, a certain Mr Emerson is responsible for those appearances of "consensus voting" https://xtools.wmflabs.org/topedits/en.wikipedia.org/Peter_Emerson/0/Consensus_decision-making DougInAMugtalk 23:50, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I think it’s best to treat statements that a voting method is consensual with a pinch of salt. The debate between voting theorists is not over whether systems should be consensual, but over which systems have this property. Someone who calls the MBC consensual is either comparing it with procedures which are not conventional voting methods (eg. shouting down), or – if he’s comparing it (eg.) with Condorcet methods – using pseudo-objective language to say that he thinks it’s better. Colin.champion (talk) 07:42, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Article is Incorrect

This article claims the Borda Count Method applies 1 point to the most preferred candidate, 2 points to the second most preferred candidate, and so on. This is not correct. The Borda Count Method applies 1 point to the voter's least preferred candidate, 2 points to the second least preferred candidate, and so on. If you did it the way this article suggests, you would be wrong every time. It stands to reason that more points should go to the most preferred candidate, not the least. Considering the most points wins, allowing the least preferred candidate to win makes no sense. 47.232.60.12 (talk) 00:55, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

Which section states this? I couldn't find what you were describing anywhere. DougInAMugtalk 15:32, 17 September 2022 (UTC)