[EM] The AMS has switched from Ranked Pairs to Instant-Runoff Voting

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 3/5/23 11:28, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> There might also be something buried in the minutes here, although I 
> really don't fancy trawling through all the documents:
> 
> https://www.ams.ubc.ca/about-us/student-council/agendas-presentations-minutes/

An update on this: I downloaded all the pdfs (I think I got them all) 
from ams.ubc.ca and made a quick and dirty pdftotext|grep thing to 
search for runoff. The results I could find were mainly about water 
runoff and projects related to it, but I found some information about 
the IRV change.

The proposal seems to be due to the Elections Committee, but the 
documents don't say just what happened in committee. The first mention I 
can see of the IRV change is the Elections' Committee proposal, 
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CODE-CHANGES-2023-Miscellaneous-Election-Changes.pdf, 
which clearly deletes the Condorcet language and adds IRV language 
instead. This was passed on February 1 with a 2/3 majority: 
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Feb-1-Agenda-from-OnBoard.pdf 
as part of a package of "miscellaneous election changes", 
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/309-23-CODE-CHANGES-2023-Miscellaneous-Election-Changes.docx.pdf.

Then there is a record of a change to the IRV language: 
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/AMS-Council-Submission-Code-Change-Instant-Run-Off-Voting.pdf, 
but by this point the Condorcet language is already gone and it's just 
fixing a definition of "majority" under optional IRV.

This fixup shows up in the council minutes of February 13, and is again 
passed. 
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Agenda_2023-02-13.pdf

So the story seems to be that tht elections committee replaced the 
Condorcet language with IRV language, made various other changes, and 
the whole thing got passed in one go. But this just pushes the question 
back to: why did the Elections Committee remove Ranked Pairs? The 
documents don't seem to answer this question.

-km