[Vote] (7-89) Lower Supermajority Vote Threshold To 70%

[Recursive]

Hey all,

This vote is a followup to (7-88) New Supermajority Vote Threshold. Supermajority votes aren't compatible with approval voting, but the approval voting was instructive in understanding the community's preferences.

As a reminder, that vote was to determine the % of voters that need to vote Yea in order to pass a proposal that requires a supermajority vote, in addition to meeting the other requirements.

Based on those results, I propose that the voting threshold to pass supermajority votes be changed to 70%.

This will be a simple Yea/Nay vote. Abstentions will be disregarded. If 70% of voters vote Yea and it receives at least 50 Yea votes, the threshold to pass a proposal requiring a supermajority vote will be lowered. If it isn't passed, it will remain at 75% for now and we'll have to revisit this.

Bear in mind that proposals that require a supermajority vote are BIG changes: new civilizations, new eras, new policy trees, the integration of 4UC, or anything which has a similarly dramatic effect on game balance. This vote is important.

For clarity, the vote to disable events will still not be overridden as a result of this change - it will need to be proposed again.

I will give until the 10th of June at 12 AM CDT to vote on this, which is just under two weeks from now and should be plenty of time to get a community consensus.


Rationale:
Out of everyone who voted, we have 67 people who would be happy with a two-thirds majority threshold (66.67%), 42 with the current three-quarters majority threshold (75%), and 34 with a threshold of 70%. 71.43% (2.5 to 1) and 72%, the other two options, scored substantially lower.

As the two-thirds majority option did not pass by a two-thirds majority and nearly 40 people do not want it to go that low, I don't feel it would be fair to lower it to two-thirds. However, it would also be unfair to ignore the majority of the community that want it to be lower.

Considering that a large chunk of people would be happy with a 70% voting threshold, which is still substantial but significantly easier to achieve than 75% (notably, the vote to disable events would have passed, as it nearly got 75% but fell just short), and it's on the lower end but still fairly difficult to reach, 70% feels like a solid number. This is an option that 34 people would already be happy with, as well - more than the other two middle of the road options - so it feels like the most equitable solution.


Discuss and vote!

 

[Rustonreddit]

I believe In different democracies is more normal to have 2/3 or 3/5 as majority needed for big changes (bare in mind there are different methods and laws that surround those voting systems). So, I think is fare enough to lower the threshold. If not is too hard to make any change, and things get stale. Unless we want exactly that, that at some point the mod is done and there is no need of more changes. If that is not the goal, then is gonna be a never-ending updated game

 

[Zuizgond]

So the majority was for a 2:1 ratio but now you propose 70%, what??

 

[hokath]

Well if it passes you can propose to lower it to 66%

 

[Recursive]

So the majority was for a 2:1 ratio but now you propose 70%, what??

See OP for full rationale, but the 2:1 majority option did not beat the 3:1 majority option (current value) by a 2:1 ratio. There is a large chunk of the community, more than the 1 in a 2:1 ratio, who does not want it lowered that much (or at all). Thus I did not consider it fair to lower the threshold to that extent.

Approval voting as a method is not compatible with supermajority votes, and this was disclosed in the original thread.

EDIT: Your vote here matters, but I will be using my discretion based on everyone's preferences to decide the outcome, and a confirmatory revote is likely due to the importance of the decision. The option that gets the highest, unless it's by a decisive margin, might not be the one selected. For now, just vote for every option you're okay with.

Considering the current 64 to 7 Yea to Nay vote, it appears that the community is pretty happy with 70%, and I think it's the most equitable solution.

 

[CppMaster]

Well if it passes you can propose to lower it to 66%

We need to go deeper lower!

 

[Recursive]

We need to go deeper lower!

Considering how completely overwhelming the vote is in favor of lowering the threshold to 70% (currently 90% in favor), I may close this early and do a third vote on whether 2:1 is what people want most, and see if that gets 70% in favor.

I'm biased towards the status quo to the extent that I want to be certain the community does want to make it significantly easier to pass big changes, because some of them can't be easily undone once passed (though personally I am fine with big transformative changes, I do not want us losing a sizeable chunk of the player base). Hence why I'm proceeding with caution.

 

[CppMaster]

Yep, that makes sense. Cool!

 

[XSamatan]

Considering how completely overwhelming the vote is in favor of lowering the threshold to 70% (currently 90% in favor), I may close this early and do a third vote on whether 2:1 is what people want most, and see if that gets 70% in favor.

I'm biased towards the status quo to the extent that I want to be certain the community does want to make it significantly easier to pass big changes, because some of them can't be easily undone once passed (though personally I am fine with big transformative changes, I do not want us losing a sizeable chunk of the player base). Hence why I'm proceeding with caution.

Don't close it early.

Not everybody has the time to check to forum daily. In my case it is just luck that both wife and child are happily sleeping and I have the time to read three weeks of discussion about VP.

Regards
XSamatan

 

[FinMc]

Considering how completely overwhelming the vote is in favor of lowering the threshold to 70% (currently 90% in favor), I may close this early and do a third vote on whether 2:1 is what people want most, and see if that gets 70% in favor.

I'm biased towards the status quo to the extent that I want to be certain the community does want to make it significantly easier to pass big changes, because some of them can't be easily undone once passed (though personally I am fine with big transformative changes, I do not want us losing a sizeable chunk of the player base). Hence why I'm proceeding with caution.

While I didn't agree with your caution at first I've completely come around to it and I'm really appreciative of your sober and level headed leadership

 

[4CV]

Based on those results, I propose that the voting threshold to pass supermajority votes be changed to 70%.

This will be a simple Yea/Nay vote. Abstentions will be disregarded. If 70% of voters vote Yea and it receives at least 50 Yea votes, the threshold to pass a proposal requiring a supermajority vote will be lowered. If it isn't passed, it will remain at 75% for now and we'll have to revisit this.

Are you really sure you want to use the new percentage on the question wether it should be implemented or not? So this time 70% for lowering it to 70%, next time 66% for a 66% treshold?

 

[Recursive]

Are you really sure you want to use the new percentage on the question wether it should be implemented or not? So this time 70% for lowering it to 70%, next time 66% for a 66% treshold?

Yes to the first point based on the results of (7-88). I did say I would use discretion in interpreting the outcome. 75% was chosen arbitrarily by me, so I don't feel it's fair to require that threshold if a majority of the community wants a lower number.

No to the second point:

I may close this early and do a third vote on whether 2:1 is what people want most, and see if that gets 70% in favor.

As we're currently at 86.74% in favor, it's immaterial for this vote, unless that changes.

 

[4CV]

.... 75% was chosen arbitrarily by me, so I don't feel it's fair to require that threshold if a majority of the community wants a lower number.

Yes, you're right, could have thought of that myself... Btw, thank you for organizing all that stuff!

 

[pineappledan]

It is more accurate and sensible to consider the votes in pairwise groups, rather than simply tally their votes as a total of the 112 respondents. Because people voted for multiple options you have some votes that get double-counted if you don't filter out duplicate votes.

You're using the fact that 67 voted for a 66.7% threshold while 42 voted to keep it at 75% as a reason not to go all the way down to the lowest threshold despite the fact that 14 of those votes are by the same 7 people.
If you take the ratios as presented then lowering the threshold to 66.7% is 1.60x more popular than keeping it where it is (67/42)
However, If you eliminate the votes of users that voted for both options, and could be counted as abstaining, then lowering the threshold to 66.7% is 1.71x more popular than keeping it where it is (60/35)
If you consider lowering the threshold to 66.7 in isolation you have 60 yea, 35 nay, and 7 abstains for a total of 102 of your original 112 voters. 'Yea' won this pairwise poll by 63.1% of the vote, not 59.8%
This still does not meet your 2:1 threshold that you set, but it's a fair bit closer than you indicated.

This way of tallying votes gives too much power to people who voted for multiple options. 6 users voted for every option, meaning that he effectively abstained, but using this method they voted 4x more in favor of lowering the threshold than keeping it the same.

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah, IIRC I've voted for all options except status quo, because every option is better, but I prefer the lowest threshold the most. I might not be the only one.

 

[rkkn]

1 user voted for every option

6 users

 

[pineappledan]

Another way of looking at this is that there are a total of 10 unique voters out of 112 that voted for any 3rd option that wasn't either the 67% or 75% thresholds. 6 out of 112 voters are getting the threshold they wanted exclusively, and those are the votes that seem to be carrying the day.

"A compromise is when no one gets what they want"

 

[hokath]

What are you arguing for here? That this vote should be for 66%?

 

[pineappledan]

I'm saying the reasoning for a 70% threshold is badly flawed because it upweights the votes of people who voted multiple times and that is inappropriate. It counts abstentions as 80% of a vote for changing the threshold and 20% against, and has settled on a relatively unpopular choice as a compromise.

Also it was not clear from the beginning how votes were going to be counted. I was under the impression this vote worked like the congress votes, and were considered on a first-past-the-post basis. Had I known ahead of time I might have voted differently. Furthermore, the way votes are being counted only makes sense if people can't vote for multiple options.

I don't disagree with a 70% threshold - I voted for it after all - but I do disagree with the faulty logic that has been used to arrive at it for a singular re-vote.

 

[hokath]

Consider the following scenario.
This vote passes and it goes down to 70%
Then there is a second vote that asks if you want to lower it further to 66%

Is this acceptable to you?