Vote for Pope!
“This Website has been designed by French and Canadians scientists who seek to understand the effect of various electoral systems on electoral results. Does the way votes are counted have an influence on who is ultimately elected? Are these systems really different? Is one better than others? To answer these questions, it matters to know how voters use them. That is the reason why we invite you to vote four times in asking you each time the following question: “For this election, how would you personally vote with this electoral system?”
Given that there’s (usually) only one Pope, the range of electoral systems on offer is necessarily limited: first past the post plurality, approval vote, two round majority vote, and the alternative vote. The purpose of the enterprise is both to spread awareness of electoral systems alternative to that used in one’s own jurisdiction, and research. I’m quite curious about their research questions and hypotheses, which I’m sure will result in conference paper in the not too distant future.
The project does have a couple limitations from a social science perspective. Pope-voting is a seriously low information election for the general population. Hypothetically, the advantages of an above-average eduction and a geeky, technically lapsed, curiosity in theology does not overcome the paucity of information about the candidates. An experimental design regarding electoral systems should enjoy either some degree of an informed electorate, or at least available cues; in this field the only cue available is ethnicity. While I recognize that the field of candidates had to be narrowed somewhat from the total population of potential candidates, the 115 or so eligible for the conclave, to render a papabile shortlist, the six chosen are somewhat arbitrary. I reviewed four sources (three mainstream and one specialized) discussing the “leading” candidates, including The Guardian, The New York Times, the BBC, and The Tablet. Of the six selected for the poll, three cardinals appear in all four (Ouellet, Scola, Turkson), Sandri appears in three, Erdo one, and Bertone not once. Yet several candidates not included did appear in three if not four of the sources I reviewed.
Nevertheless, it’s a very cool idea, and fun for the whole family. And you get to vote more than once, as I was informed at the end:
Every Monday at 9.00 AM (Roma time), a new online vote will start.
You will thus be able to vote again and to follow the evolution of the votes.
The online vote will continue until the election of the new Pope.
h/t David Farrell
Somewhat related, and certainly cool.
Can I write in “Lizard People”?
I thought they all were.
Only for Space Pope.
VOTE MORBO FOR POPE, PUNY HUMANS!
Damn, now I’m seriously conflicted…
Should I vote for Cardinal Sin, or Hank, the Angry, Drunken Dwarf?
Sorry–Cardinal Sin died in ’05.
Some people call me the Space Pontiff..
We can only hope that the next Pope will be willing to speak of the pompatus of love.
I know someone who did a more theoretical comparison on different voting types and what results they produce, so I’m curious how this turns out.
If I recall, he found that while one of the instant run-off vote systems gave the highest correlation of result to actual expressed desire from people, it only barely nudged out approval voting, which was far easier to explain. I am rather fond of approval voting, although it makes more sense from a “consent of the governed” rather than a “what the people want” point of view.
I’m currently doing research much like this, using human subjects and micropayments to set up a specific, interesting scenario with 3 virtual candidates (factions of 8-4-6 along a spectrum, where the utility-maximizer and Condorcet winner is the smallest group in the center, with an “ideal” result of 8<4+6). My preliminary results have Approval clearly better than IRV.
Hah! I’d like to test 8 systems: Plurality, IRV (aka Alternative Vote), Approval, Graduated Majority Judgment, Score Voting, Condorcet (Schulze), Range Voting, and SODA (Simple Optionally-Delegate Approval) voting. I suspect my budget will only stretch to 6 of those, though, so I think that Condorcet and Range will have to fall by the wayside. But that 8 still leaves out the entire promising branch of “Improved Condorcet”/”least opposition” systems, the unpromising Borda and Antiplurality, and at least a dozen more minor variant systems that I could name.
In fact, though there’s certainly more possible variants of multiwinner systems than single winner, I’d say that once you get past the basics of multiwinner (open or closed list, form of the ballot) the variations of the formal system matter a good deal less than in the single winner case. For instance, nonmonotonicity (center squeeze, see Burlington 2009) is a serious problem for IRV, but really not an issue for STV, which is the multiwinner equivalent of IRV.
(Sorry, I can drop into jargon on this issue very easily. But I think this is very important and would love to respond to any questions.)
Ooops. I guess in my excitement I didn’t take good care to maintain my Leiter-scoffing anonymity. Mary Aduren is me. If Leiter wants to write to the Stanford and BU admissions departments and make sure they reject me, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, because I already got in at Harvard.
Hmm… looking at the researchers involved in this effort, I must say I should have considered applying to Montreal. I looked at London, Bilbao, and Auckland; and France was out of the question (French academics… not for me); but I must admit Canada was a blind spot.
it’s called a whiteout
Anyone who wants my study results when I have them ready can write me at my (real) firstname dot lastname at gmail dot com.
I’ll drop you a line. I’ve published some on electoral systems, and I’ve met Andre Blaise several times (one of the PIs on the thing I linked), and I think he was on some APSA awards committee I somehow ended up on several years ago. I’ve certainly cited him enough.
And given the number of times I’ve cited him, one might think I could spell Blais correctly.
Disappointed to find David Bowie is not on the list of candidates.
Excluded due to known sex acts with adult males and supermodels
Algorithm:
IF picture .NOT. white THEN CHECK.
IF name .NOT. Italian THEN CHECK.
Religion News had a bracket up they called “The Sweet Sistine” with sixteen candidates paired by region, and their picks for the sixteen made some sense. You could vote online for the first round. I chuckled. I think the online voting might be at the “Elite Eight Eminences.”
No electoral college? Or is that what the College of Cardinals is, essentially?
Latest polls show 60 Cardinals for Mitt Romney.
Cardinal Obama will win handily.
This is excellent news for McCain!
You people are skewing the numbers. Bishop Romney in a landslide, 423 to 112 in the Elecardinal College.
Too much work, especially for someone as low-information as me. There is only one name I recognize even, and that’s just because he’s the sole African.
The main problem with plurality voting is not in one-off, nonpartisan elections like this one, but in repeated elections, where it leads to a complacent two-party duopoly. So this isn’t the example I’d choose for promoting the value of better voting systems; but I’ll take what I can get.
If you think voting systems that are democratically multiparty could help with the problems in US politics, then there’s currently a fundraiser on Indiegogo to make a video about approval voting. They’re ahead of schedule in reaching their goal:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/approval-voting-video
(I am not affiliated with this fundraiser except as a supporter).
And in a surprising upset, Kemal Ataturk wins the first round with 6.38 trillion votes.