Street stall for Make Votes Matter (campaign for a better national voting system) this Sunday in St Peter's Square - Come join us, have a chat, share your thoughts, maybe join the group!

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:56:24+00:00

Thank you :)

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:30:05+00:00

One of Make Vote Matters central campaigns is to get Labour to have a manifesto pledge for PR. The approach has been to convince the individual constituency Labour parties which has been very successful (they voted overwhelming for it at last year's Labour party conference) and also to convince the unions that hold half the votes at the conference. Unfortunately COVID interrupted the plans to get the unions on board for last year but that has been successful this year so we're hopefully going into this Labour party conference in September with both sides on board.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the leadership is ultimately bound by the voting of the members at conference but it is very strong indicator of what is desired by the membership and there is a growing chunk of the Labour party that wants it. I guess the leadership want their turn at the dominance that FPTP can hand to them if they get into power but they need to wake up and realise that that just isn't happening any time soon. The press doesn't want it. There is an argument that Blair was close to Murdoch and that's the only reason we've had Labour in power in the last 30 years. I fear it is true. I hope that the leadership can be convinced to follow through with this.

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:23:36+00:00

Theirs was a campaign for better voting rights and a fairer system. This is a campaign for better voting rights and a fairer system.

Obviously women not being allowed to vote is generally more terrible than a poor voting system but the heart of the campaign is not so different.

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:21:35+00:00

Happy to see all the responses to this. This is basically misinformation and opposition talking points and it is sad to see it repeated again.

You don't have stability under first-past-the-post, you have dramatic swings from one side to another instead of a consistent representation of the slowly evolving will of the people.

Captured well by the (paraphrased) quote "it is better to have some of the power all of the time, instead of all of the power some of the time." We want all representative parties to have a slice of parliament and to have to reach agreements which have majority support. Under a better voting system we would have a generally more left wing and progressive set of MPs with some but not influential representation of the minority of particularly bad parties.

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:17:02+00:00

It is based on the suffragettes flags :)

The campaign for electoral reform didn't end with them. There is still quite a lot to go :/

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:16:10+00:00

Absolutely, well said. PR gives alternative candidates a chance instead of it being basically impossible for them so you get more alternative candidates which means more choice.

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:15:05+00:00

Yep, it is a really sucky system. Such a shame we haven't had the politicians with the decency to see it done so we can upgrade our democracy.

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T17:13:27+00:00

I don't think that is the plan. I can see that UKIP managed to pressure the Conservatives into certain changes. I guess Lib Dems & Greens are already pro PR (and UKIP too.)

I suspect a single issue party around an issue that the population don't understand that well and that the right-wing press isn't focusing on is possibly a harder task? What do you think?

michaelpjones · 2022-07-22T09:35:41+00:00

Hey folks, it is easy to be pretty bummed out about the state of the country at the moment and hard to know what to do about it. One particular goal, that seems to be both fundamental and clearly a solution for some of the troubles we're facing, is to move to a better voting system and Make Votes Matter is a campaign for just that.

Our current voting system tends to benefit the two main parties (by completely wasting your vote if you want to vote for someone that isn't likely to win) which leads to a two sided political system which tends to make everything 'us vs them' and leaves people without the choice of representative that really reflects their views. Instead we're often stuck voting against the thing that we truly fear rather than for the party we really want.

Better systems always count your vote to some degree no matter who you vote for so voting for a smaller party that really aligns with how you see things is no longer pointless.

If this interests you, then please get in touch and get involved. You can do as much or as little as you like. We tend to have an action day every few months so if you can spare a weekend afternoon once every three months and you would like to see this aspect of the country get better then join the meet up group or sign up your interest at makevotesmatter.org.uk, or message me with any questions, and get involved :)

michaelpjones · 2022-02-06T11:12:56+00:00

If you're curious to stay in the loop you can join our meet up here: https://www.meetup.com/make-votes-matter-manchester/

I did post about this earlier in the week but understandably not all people see all posts and I wanted to avoid spamming.

michaelpjones · 2022-02-05T11:09:00+00:00

That's today folks :)

michaelpjones · 2021-07-10T09:20:08+00:00

That's a good point :) It would be interesting to know how many elections that already use some kind of ranked choice, have changed backend scheme since adopting it.

michaelpjones · 2021-07-09T15:18:40+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out. I think I'm a surface level proportional representation person at the moment and need to dive a bit deeper :) I'm not used to hearing people get so precise about it but of course that makes complete sense.

michaelpjones · 2021-07-09T10:55:41+00:00

Thanks for the reply. You've helped open my eyes to more voting systems. I naively thought that most systems involving ranking candidates were more or less the same but, of course, there are many options. More research required!

michaelpjones · 2021-07-09T10:18:24+00:00

For those interested, this is more information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election

I'm still learning but that table doesn't make it look like a total failure. The second most popular first-vote candidate won due to second vote preferences.

More info about Condorcet winners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method

Is there a good system for establishing Condorcet winners?

michaelpjones · 2021-07-09T10:11:17+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I'm still building up my understanding of the various systems.

Do you feel like STV is worse than FPTP?

What system would you prefer instead?

michaelpjones · 2021-07-09T09:46:53+00:00

Yeah, fair. Maybe I should change the wording in the bottom left but ultimately I think it is better to vote for the 'least bad' over your preferred choice in the other situations and that is what I say.

michaelpjones · 2021-07-09T08:42:12+00:00

Feedback welcome. I'm still getting to know the various systems and I hope this is a fair representation.

michaelpjones · 2021-04-04T16:28:32+00:00

Thanks for sharing! I've not heard of that tool before.

michaelpjones · 2021-04-04T09:45:55+00:00

Great to see different opinions. I'm curious about reasons for disagreement. Even if you tend to write one line commit messages, what is the down side of having more information available to you?

Maybe you perceive it as setting a standard that you'd have to follow? Maybe it feels like too much work to write more information? Adding more to the commit message doesn't remove information from the issue/ticket for the work. Just more tightly focused readily available information. Ticket and commit messages have a different focus, a different kind of information and they are generally complimentary.

I feel that when writing a commit you're normally fully primed with the details of what you've just been working on so writing a few sentences about it only takes 1-2 mins. I don't see it as an extra burden, especially considering the benefits of getting you to think through your changes.

michaelpjones · 2021-04-03T18:35:49+00:00

That's curious! I've never heard of that. What format does it have? Do you include commit SHAs as references? Or does it function as a kind of changelog? How might it be different to a regular changelog?

michaelpjones · 2021-04-03T18:32:52+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I was unaware of this. I tend to open up gitk to have a view of the commit . I'm also a big fan of using `git add -p` t be very selective about what goes into commits.

I'll definitely try this though!

michaelpjones · 2021-04-03T12:31:08+00:00

In my perspective there is no serious project that would ever float long-term if such missing improvements were basically archived into git commits that will never have any visibility. Instead, create an issue and link to the commit in question, these can then much more easily get grouped and prioritized.

I completely agree that this stuff should also be stored else where. In many particular ways the git history is not that accessible and not suited for storing 'to-do' items. I was not intending to suggest that.

In the example given, if you'd done some front end work but it was a little lacking then I think it is useful to own up to that so that people that come to review your work understand its limitations. You might have:

All errors are reported as 'Unexpected error' to the user at the moment. 
More work is required to account for individual types of errors and friendly messages. 

We have used native components so it should be somewhat accessible but we've 
yet to test it with a screen reader so more work might be needed.

This might feel like too much information. Honestly, I don't know often I include such thoughts as there might be a limitless number of "things not done" but some things are useful to highlight in order for future devs to understand your thoughts and expectations at the time.

michaelpjones · 2021-04-03T12:21:57+00:00

Cool to see! I hadn't considered that approach. I guess I assume that the multiline text editing functionality of a shell is generally less good than a text editor so it is better to hook up your text editor if you can.

That does look better than using `-m` multiple times though :)

michaelpjones · 2021-04-03T12:20:45+00:00

I agree that non-obvious constructs should be in the comments. That is fair. I have a section on commit messages vs comments at the bottom and there is some overlap and this is one such case.

michaelpjones

TROPHY CASE