Business Prospects

Money for democratic reformers.
Can knowledge of voting rules create income?

Organizations open to real democracy
Voting tasks for experts
Annual meeting schedules

Organizations open to change?

Student Governments

Survey student governments to find which are most likely to want good voting rules; start with historically liberal schools which have competitive campaigns for single-seat and multi-seat elections.

Voting Tasks for Experts

Experts may provide software, computers, ballot scanners or data entry clerks and audit certification to customers.
They may introduce the type of ballot used; explain why setting budgets needs to take more than one poll,
Here are five voting tasks with the most profitable first.

Selecting Projects

Willingness:
* Many groups already strive for fair allocations. These include foundations, religious congregations, service clubs and student governments.

Many of these same groups only pretend to have elections. They forcefully avoid competition because too often the losers leave and sometimes the organization is split or seriously weakened.

Ease:
In most organizations it occurs only once a year.
Proposals can be written and read well before voting.
Voters lobby each other but little debate occurs.

* No parliamentary skills are needed. (Selecting projects through sequential agenda voting requires considerable parliamentary skill by the chair and strategy by the contestants. These skills are a great time cost for a once-a-year decision.)

Voting requires practically no investment.
It uses cheap paper ballots
Voters have days to vote and turn in ballots.

Why hasn't it happened?
Software
The software to tally Movable Money Votes is demanding. It will take considerable time and skill to write and test.
It should be open source to assure voters that the process is unbiased. So it will not be a profit-making tool for a private company.
It should be well written and documented for easy "walk throughs" by programmers.
It should be certified by accredited auditors.

It is almost too easy: most groups can do it on their own. But they will want experts the first year to teach voters how to consider the options and how their votes will be processed, to act as neutral auditors for data entry and system checks while perhaps teaching others to do these next year.

Setting Budgets

The first four points are the same as above.
In most organizations it occurs only once a year.
Proposals can be written and read well before voting.
Voters lobby each other but little debate occurs.
* No parliamentary skills are needed.

But the next three are opposite:
- Voting requires a large investment for expensive computer-screen ballots.
Voters have hours to vote on the ballots.

Software
The software is relatively simple. The voters do all the real work as they try to move budgets and counter moves by other voters.

Why hasn't it happened?
The investment in computers equipment is not justified for a once-a-year meeting.
* It is worthwhile if it is shared by many organizations renting the equipment and expertise from a ballot services company.

Electing Reps

Groups are not seeking help on this; they are content with old methods. It takes a significant campaign to change the tradition.

In most organizations it occurs only once a year.
No parliamentary skills are needed.

Voting requires practically no investment.
It uses cheap paper ballots
Voters may have days to vote and turn in ballots.

Electing a Chairperson

Groups are not seeking help on this; they are content with old methods.
The better methods are too easy; they don't need experts. Most groups have the skill to print ballots for ranked choices, fill them out, enter the data and tally their result using free software.

Setting Complex Policies

Some may be delayed until an annual meeting.
Debates are often long and contentious.
And proposals may be added shortly before voting.
- So superb parliamentary skills are needed. This is a very different job from auditing the voting and tallies for elections, projects and budgets.

Voting is confusing
Computer-based ballots can assist voters but
Computer-based ballots are expensive.]

Annual Meeting

Schedule

Pre meeting: Meeting information packets handed out as participants arrive may include the 3 initial ballots for agency budgets, project proposals and election candidates. (Ballots can be mailed in advance if voters are not required to attend presentations and if there is little concern about coercion of voters, sales of ballots or other frauds.)

Saturday Morning: Agency budget presentations.
Lunch: Speaker
First ballot on agency budgets, worth say [160] influence points, due before lunch;
Results and second agency ballots, worth [80] influence points, available after lunch.

Saturday Afternoon: Project proposal presentations.
Dinner: Speaker
Project proposal ballots due at the beginning or end of dinner;
Second agency ballots also due at the beginning or end of dinner.

Sunday Morning: Speeches by election candidates;
Agency results and final agency ballots, worth [40] influence points, available during and after breakfast;
Project winners OR second projects ballot with 5 alternative sets of winners available during and after breakfast.
Lunch: Speaker
Election ballots due before lunch;
[Projects second ballot, if used, is also due before lunch.]

Post meeting: Full results mailed to all members.

Ballot

This bubble-form ballot has 7 grades, A through f, (Blank is the worst.) with 5 levels of plus or minus for a total of 35 grade categories. That will be enough for electing reps, adjusting budgets and selecting projects from long lists of options. It is easiest for voters to use this same kind of ballot for all voting tasks.

[Note: Some Condorcet-completion rules count a blank as "unknown". This vote is more explicit if the ballot includes a separate column "U". Either way, the unknown candidate does not add nor take away a vote from a graded candidate in their pairwise comparison.]

Candidate A B C d e f ⁺+ + - ^--

Alex
Bev
Catie O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

Don
Emilie
Fey O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

Gigi
Hu
Julie O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

Kathy
Li
Mimi O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O O
O
O

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