On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:02:09 -0000 James Gilmour wrote:
Dave Ketchum > Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:23 AM
Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be
objectionable.
Ok, I did not say it clearly.
Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are salable.
Take the one about a Condorcet winner with no first preferences. Ugly
thought, but how do you get there? Perhaps with three incompatible
positions that share equally all the first preferences, while a neutral
candidate gets all the second preferences.
Assume it will never happen, so do not provide for such? As I suggested
before, somehow, if you assume such fate will, somehow, prove you wrong.
Provide a fence, forbidding getting too close to such? Where do you put
the fence without doing more harm than good?
Leave it legal, while assuring electors they should not worry about it ever
occurring? I see this as proper - it is unlikely, yet not a true disaster
if it does manage to occur.
The primary battle between Clinton and Obama here presents a strong
argument for getting rid of Plurality elections - better for them both to
go to the general election fighting against their shared foe, McCain.
Actually, the Electoral College complicates this discussion for
presidential elections but it does apply to others.
DWK
Dave, I never said that I would find that result objectionable. What I did say
was that I thought such a result would be
POLITICALLY unacceptable to the ELECTORS - certainly in the UK, and perhaps
also in the USA as there are SOME similarities in the
political culture. It goes almost without saying that such a result would be
politically unacceptable to the two main parties I had
in mind.
Political acceptability is extremely important if you want to achieve practical
reform of the voting system. The Electoral Reform
Society has been campaigning for such reform for more that 100 years (since
1884), but it has still not achieved it main objective
- to reform the FPTP voting system used to elected MPs to the UK House of
Commons. The obstacles to that reform are not to do with
theoretical or technical aspects of the voting systems - they are simply
political. It was for political reasons that the Hansard
Society's Commission on Electoral Reform came up with its dreadful version of
MMP in 1976 and for political reasons that the Jenkins
Commission proposed the equally dreadful AV+ in 1998. Jenkins' AV+ was a
(slight) move towards PR, but it was deliberately designed
so that the two main parties would be over-represented in relation to their
shares of the votes and that one or other of two main
parties would have a manufactured majority of the seats so that it could form a
single-party majority government even though it had
only a minority of the votes.
It is sometimes possible to marginalise the politicians and the political
parties in a campaign if you can mobilise enough of the
ordinary electors to express a view, but our experience in the UK is that
constitutional reform and reform of the voting system are
very rarely issues on which ordinary electors will "take up arms"
(metaphorically, of course).
In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any
business objecting?
52 of 100 prefer M over D
53 of 100 prefer M over R
Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes.
Leaving aside the debate about the meaning of "majority", it is clear to me
that M is the Condorcet winner - no question. But, as
explained above, it is MY view that such an outcome would not be acceptable to
our electors. I base my view of UK electors' likely
reaction on nearly five decades of campaigning for practical reform of the
voting systems we use in our public elections.
As to my "no first preferences" example, surest way to cause
such is to be unable to respond to them.
I'm not sure what this statement is really mean to say..
I understand that a Condorcet winner could, indeed, have no first preferences
at all. But in political terms, such a possibility is
not just unacceptable, it's a complete non-starter.
James
--
da...@clarityconnect.com people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
If you want peace, work for justice.
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