I'd said: >>I checked out the website you referred to, but are you >>sure that , when electing an executive who has the power >>to veto the decisions of a legislature, it's more >>important to elect someone who has a large 1st-choice base >>than to elect someone who doesn't have majorities against >>him? Anthony Simmons replied: Are you sure I said any of that? I don't remember saying it. Perhaps you confused me with someone else. I reply: You didn't say any of that. The website owner did, and I accept that you are not he. Did I say that you said any of that? What I meant was, since this website makes the silly & misleading statements that it makes, and since it just recycles old garbage, then why would you want to recommend it? I realize that I didn't make that meaning clear in my previous letter. Anthony continues: I see you have some disputes about various claims made by the author of the site. So do I, though I am not inclined to make a pointless issue of them. I reply: No, you're just inclined to make a genuinely pointless issue about your belief that it's pointless for me to reply to statements on the comparative merits of voting systems. I make only the replies that I don't consider pointless, but I, not you, decide that. There are many statements on EM that I haven't replied to. But the silly misunderstandings in the website that you recommended seemed to call for a few comments, after you'd, for some reason, posted a link to the website, and recommended it. Is your proof of the pointlessness of issues about voting system merit similar to your proof of interestingness of websites? Maybe pointlessness is a subjective matter. Maybe it would be pointless to write to the website owner. That's confirmed by the fact that I'm not going to write to him. But you recommended a garbage website, and I mentioned some of the misunderstandings that it propagates. If some people look at the website that you recommended, they'll encounter some of the silly statements, and so I identified some of them. Comparison of the merits of voting systems doesn't seem to me to be a pointless issue. Let me carefully explain why that is: Voting systems play a crucial role in translating public preferences into public policy. Some of us, and I'm not saying that includes you, feel that our currently-used voting systems don't do a good job of that, or that they cause voters to seriously misrepresent their preferences. If that doesn't matter to you, then I won't pointlessly argue its importance. Similarly, some of us believe that some proposed reforms would remedy those faults better than others would. Improvements in voting systems, such as replacing them with methods that wouldn't cause voters to misrepresent their preferences so badly, could, some believe, result in improvements in society, when voters are more accurately expressing their preferences and the voting system is responding more accurately. If you check the EM charter, you'll notice that it has to do with discussion of the relative merits of voting systems. If that seems to you a pointless issue, well certainly each person has a right to their own notion of what's important. But a posting, to a voting system mailing list, claiming that the issue of the comparative merit of voting systems is a pointless issue, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. As I said, I answered a few statements in the website that you so pointedly recommended, because it's likely that some members of EM might have looked at the website and encountered those statements there. You recommended the website, and it's understandable if you're defensive about it. But when you post to EM a link to material, and recommend it, surely a reply to statements in that material isn't more pointless than your posting of the link and your recommendation of the material. In fact, now that you've brought up "pointless", one could question if there was any point in recommending that website. But wasn't the alleged pointlessness of my reply to the website-owner's statements a pointless issue for you to post about? And yes, of course it's pointless for me to spend this much time replying to your statements. But I sometimes reply to Demorep, and I so I was afraid that it would seem discriminatory if I didn't reply to you also. Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com