People's choice voting

Discussions on race planning, preparations and how to run a "fair" and fun race.
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Zebracar
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People's choice voting

Post by Zebracar »

In years past, we have placed solo cups in front of each car so that all of the scouts can drop their one issued ticket into so as to vote for their favorite car.

Recently, as in this years pinewood derby, I built a rack for staging all of the cars in a smaller area. As a result, it's complicated the solo cup system. Before next year I plan to build a hutch with casters to sit under the upper rack. I was thinking of incorporating it into the hutch somehow.

My question is this. Does anyone have any ideas how to stream line the voting process.

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Darin McGrew
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Re: People's choice voting

Post by Darin McGrew »

Zebracar wrote: Tue Feb 19, 2019 3:01 pmMy question is this. Does anyone have any ideas how to stream line the voting process.
We've always had independent judges choose the award recipients sometime between registration and the race itself.
Zebracar
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Re: People's choice voting

Post by Zebracar »

Thanks for your reply. We have judges for several categories. However, one of the categories we like to include, is the kids vote on best design. Each scout is given a ticket at sign in, and it gives them each one vote to place in the cup of their favorite car.

Need to come up with a practical way to replace or modify the cup system. I was looking tonight at digital tally counters. That might be an option, if an adult did all of the button pushing for each car. Prob is at a $1 or more each, it'd be expensive to have one on each of the ninty car slots.
dkoudijs
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Re: People's choice voting

Post by dkoudijs »

We do a mix voting system. Works well, but takes some setup on your part. We have about 6 catagories to vote on.
Mixed voting system uses judges and popular vote to determine a winner.

Benifits
- Takes out biased of a judge (may not be intentional, ie: judge likes orange, so the orange car wins)
- Kids get a say in the vote
- Ballot stuffing does not work, as its a mix of popular and Judge decsion
- Two judges, again to create a more fair vote

Negatives
- Need a quick voting counting system, or may have to wait for counting to be completed
- Only able to pick a winner, no second place since the way the counting is done.
- No ties possible, since system uses a three way voting

1) Have 2 Judges (Can have more if wanted, but breaks the odd number of judges that is needed to break tie breakers)
2) Have the cars in a staging/pit area with numbers clearly visable
3) Have a voting method for the cars (We have a computer program that allows people to vote, with a touch screen)
4) Out voting states you have to vote in each catagory, and if you vote for the same car in all the catagories the vote is thrown out. This makes it so we don't have one unpopular catagory get dominated by one or two entries.

How we judge
- The judges find a first place and runner up for each catagory. Each judge submites there own judgeing sheet
- The popular vote is counted (our computer does the counting for us, with a full logging system to verify if we want)
- An offical takes the judges votes, and the popular votes.
The winner is which ever kar has a match with at least ONE judge and the popular vote.
IE: Judge 1: Kar 50 winner, and Kar 30 is the runner up.
Jusge 2: Kar 35 winner, Kar 25 is the runner up.
Popular vote: Kar 30 winner with car 40 second place.
So car 30 wins, as it has both a Judge and a popular vote.

Yes you may have a scenerio that none of the votes line up, so the offical has to decide who wins.
We have been doing this system for about 3 years, and only once did the offical have to decide. There has always sometype of match between one of the judges and at least the top three of the popular vote.


So its not a perfect system, but something to contemplate trying next time.
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