At 09:55 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote:
Abd, you are a great wriggler.
Thanks. I'm not a butterfly to be pinned to your specimen board.
My comments were not in the context of "small direct democratic
situations". The discussion was
about major public elections - city mayor, state governor, perhaps
even the ultimate goal of direct election of the President of the
USA. Nowhere was there any suggestion there would be or could a
"runoff", nor was there any suggestion of a "write-in".
Small democratic situations are the model for democracy. We know how
to do it, it works, it's effective, and it produces healthy
communities that are united. In such situations, unopposed
candidacies are often more common than opposed ones. People know the
candidates. When there are contests, it's almost always just two
candidates, so Plurality works fine.
Small communities are also aware of preference strength. They see
each other and know each other, and they talk. This, again, shifts
results toward Range results, even if a method appears to be Plurality.
Now, take this and compare large public elections? In my view, the
best voting systems imitate the process used in small communities, to
the extent practical. No small community which understands the system
will use IRV. (There have been trials, for sure, but they appear to
mostly be motivated to make some political statement, they are not a
natural choice when repeated ballot is possible, and they are
strongly discouraged by parliamentary rulebooks when repeated ballot
is possible.
"Write-ins" are a U.S. practice, if I'm correct, we are quite
attached to them. And they are known to improve results on occasion.
They fix problems with the ballot process and they can fix problems
with the voting system used in the primary, if allowed in a runoff.
Don't want to discuss that, go away, don't read it. It will just
irritate you, and you may end up looking like an idiot, which is
certainly not my preferred outcome.
Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision
for "write-ins" at all in public elections.
Yes. You are English. Surprise! You are here, though, talking about
American elections. Almost everywhere here it is required by law that
write-ins must be allowed, we respect the sovereignty of the voter.
There was a recent decision in California allowing San Francisco to
prohibit write-ins in runoffs, based on the theory that it was part
of the same election. Bad decision! Contradicts a lot of thinking and
writing and parliamentary practice on successive election process.
Fixing stuff like this is what a sane Center for Voting and Democracy
could have done. Too bad. So we need a new organization that *will*
protect democracy.
If I am not
prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same
way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why
anyone should take me seriously.
You are thinking about yourself. What about the voters? What are
their rights? Here, you are intending to deprive *voters* of their
right to free choice. You and many others, by the way, dislike of
free democracy is common among some voting systems theorists and activists.
If my "friends" think I would be the best person to do the job,
they should come and tell me and
persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to
get me elected.
However, what if you were all supporting a candidate, and after the
deadline for registration, that candidate dies. Or there is some huge
scandal and he becomes unelectable. Why shouldn't you and your
friends be able to mount a last-minute write-in campaign.
Write-ins have been used to preserve the power of the voters against
the power of legislatures or city councils to decide how voters should vote.
It's a shame to lose it.
> How would this be "disastrous?"
Leaving your alterative scenario aside as irrelevant to the actual
discussion, I cannot imagine the election of a President of the
USA as the genuine Condorcet winner with zero (or very few) first
preferences as being anything other than disastrous.
The failure of your imagination isn't a reason to believe anything.
The possibility of that is so preposterous that to then imagine that
*everything else would be the same* is also preposterous. Under what
conditions could such a victory happen? Look at those conditions, and
you might see something different.
Asset Voting, in fact, can *easily* award a victory -- a seat or an
office -- to someone who got *no* votes at all in the election. All
that has to happen is that a quota of electors decide to vote, in
their subsequent process, for that person. I would absolutely not
prohibit this, to prohibit it would be to, again, impair the right of
voters to assign their vote to someone they trust with it, and then
for that person to make the best decision as they see it.
What would be wrong with this outcome? In the election that counts,
the assignment of votes by the electors, a quota has been obtained (a
majority if it's single-winner). Why would this be a disaster? It
sounds to me like the electors, or a majority of them at least,
decided that none of the candidates on the ballot (them!) were as
good a winner as someone else.
Now, it's possible that winners would be limited to those who were
registered as candidates. But the way I see Asset, most electors,
eventually, would receive only a tiny fraction of a quota. These are
their "direct constituents," people who can actually sit down and
talk with them. So, again, we'd have a winner with a small vote in
the Asset election, 5% (10% of the necessary vote) would actually be *large*.
James, open your mind.
If you
cannot immediately see that, your experience of practical politics
must be very different from mine. Although we live on different
sides of "the pond", nothing I read about US politics makes me think
it would be significantly different on your side from how it is
on mine.
James
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