If you want to really do some good, something that will have an important and potentially vast global beneficial influence, adopt Condorcet or Approval (or maybe Bucklin) in your country instead of just PR.


Single-winner reform in other countries would be precedent for its adoption in the U.S.

There are arleady many countries using PR, including the best PR methods. But PR isn't a feasible proposal in the U.S. People here are suspicious of change, and PR would be a big change in the concept of representation. But single-winner reform would merely be an obviously better way of doing what we already do--electing candidates to 1-seat offices. People are rightly suspicious of and disgusted with their "representatives". Any change in the concept of representation woudl be perceived by many as giving more power to representatives, or to some disliked group. For instance, we ofen hear that PR would give power to the "special interests". Never mind what that means--my point is that PR won't be adopted here.

So what can you do for the world? Adopt Condorcet, Approval, CR, or maybe Bucklin. Give us a precedent for genuine single-winner rerform. If you do that, you would be helping to democratize the U.S. And if you do that, you could make a big difference in the qualitly of life in the world.

Condorcet has the advantage of being the best. Approval has the advantage of having the easiest implementation,and being a small, obvious modification of Plurality. CR has the advantage of being familiar to people, and is strategically equivalent to Approval, and therefore is just as good as Approval. Bucklin has the advantage of having an easier hand-count than Condorcet, if elections must be hand-counted. Compared to other methods as easily hand-counted, Bucklin has by far the best properties.

Mike Ossipoff

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