[Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election

[Paul Kislanko]

>>Let me throw this one out there.  Let's say it is a vote for a number,
for instance we have a club, and we want to have vote on how much our
monthly dues will be.  We decide to have everyone write down their
preferred number, and then select the median value.  (you could do the
interpolated median or smoothed median [
http://karmatics.com/voting/median2.gif ] if you wish to reduce the
"aliasing" artifacts of conventional median)

Would that be "democratic"?  To me it is as close to perfectly fair
and democratic as you are going to get, since each person's vote
changes the result by the same amount as everyone else's vote (for all
reasonable intents and purposes).  Again, there is no conflict between
strategy and sincerity, and knowing how others will vote will not give
a voter an advantage. <<

How do you handle the more important question "how should dues be spent?"
There's a large faction in the club who believe that dues should go to feed
the hungry, and another large faction who believe the club should repave the
parking lot, and a different faction who believe land should be purchased
for a new clubhouse.

How do you decide "democratically" how to disperse the funds you've
collected from that simplistic method of defining the amount of dues?