MPs were left running round in little circles last night trying to figure a way out of the logical loop they’d inadvertently got sucked into by deciding to have a vote on the voting system. One MP was so distracted by the conundrum as to how you decide which system you use to vote on the voting system that he drove fourteen times round the M25 ring road.
The various options for the voting method include: First Passed the Post, Alternative Vote, Best of Three, Consult the I Ching, A Throw of the Dice, and WGAF. These may be put to the people in six separate referenda for a simple yes / no vote for each method, indicating preference by a tick / cross in the relevant box. A preliminary vote will be held to decide whether a tick or a cross or both should be used. For the preliminary vote, voters will be asked to clarify whether a cross in the No box means Yes, I’m voting No or No, I don’t want No as the answer, so Yes. Two ticks cancel each other out and two crosses mean ‘what was the question again?’
Then the questions will be run in pairs, with voters entering a 1 or a 2 in one set of Yes / No boxes and ticks and crosses in the other pair, until all permutations have been exhausted or the nation runs out of pens, whichever comes first.
Stephen Hawking has kindly supplied a formula to work out how to interpret all the votes to get the desired result for the Yes camp and an alternative formula which will work equally well on the same data in favour of the No camp.
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