Vote early -- and often

(Quote source.)

So the voting has begun for the LiveJournal Advisory Board election. Three quick observations:

1) The rules of the election have changed at the last minute with no notice. For the better, admittedly, and changing only the wording of the counting process, not the spirit of what was intended. (Have they been reading Iain? I hope so, but based on Iain's sequel post, I fear not.)

2) You can look at who's winning in real time, before and after you cast your vote.

3) Aaaaaand you can even change your vote should you want to. You can probably even change it after the poll closes, come to think of it. (ETA: apparently not. Thanks, imc. There are also rumours that they may remove the ability to change your vote mid-election, which - while it would make sense - would make this kooky election even more irregular still. Introducing new rule, and all that.)

What a strange way to run an election.

I have to say that property 3 above has an interesting side-effect which I consider beneficial, if possibly unintended; should no candidate reach 51% of votes after the Instant Runoff process - which is something I don't think we'll be able to tally from the real-time results - then it'll be down to whoever gets the most first preferences. It occurs to me that should a candidate conclude that they are unlikely to win, then by posting in their journal, they probably have a good chance of convincing those who voted for them as first preference to change their vote in favour of some other candidate of their choice.

One might expect that a candidate with, say, 4% of first preferences might be able to convince many of the people who voted for them to change their first preference in some other direction and thus add, say, another 3% of first preferences in favour of some other candidate, should it look like the "who has most first preferences" metric might be pointing in an undesirable direction.

If - if - you happened to be standing on a platform emphasising some sense of fun, it would appear a desirable property to me that your sense of fun were not abhorrent and malicious.

Non-Friends' comments screened. No, I'm making no pretence at impartiality.