[EM] Re: redistricting - objectively

On Jan 8, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Dr.Ernie Prabhakar wrote: However, I think Brian makes an excellent point: the most important question is what is the *goal* of redistricting. If we can come up with an objective criteria for measuring the 'goodness' of a map, then it really doesn't matter how it is d

[EM] Re: redistricting - objectively

Hi Andrew, On Jan 8, 2005, at 5:58 AM, Andrew Myers wrote: Brian Olson replies: This sounds like one of the parts of a classic set of problems in Computer Science that are like cryptography in that a solution is hard to find, but easy to verify. Actually, it sounds to me like a minimum graph cut

Re: [EM] Re: Deterministic Districting

On Jan 7, 2005, at 3:01 PM, Ted Stern wrote: The Iowa plan has worked well for 20-odd years: http://www.centrists.org/pages/2004/07/7_buck_trust.html There is a similar method in place in Washington State. Hey, *I* like it. But reading that article, it seems to require a certain level of

[EM] Deterministic Districting

Hi all, Our Man Arnold in his State of California address pushed for a whole bunch of reforms, including putting redistricting in the hands of a non-partisan judges panel. As you can imagine there's a huge hue and cry. Mostly from partisans who fear accountability, but some from thoughtful citi

Re: [EM] CIVS update

Hi Andrew, On Nov 1, 2004, at 1:27 PM, Andrew Myers wrote: I thought people might be interested to know about some recent improvements to the Condorcet Internet Voting Service at http://www5.cs.cornell.edu/~andru/civs. * It now implements three different completion rules, including MAM, Beatpath

Re: [EM] Approval vs. IRV

Hi James, To me, it comes down to this: a) In IRV, if everyone acts sincerely, bad things can happen b) In Approval, if someone acts insincerely and nobody notices, bad things can happen Ultimately, I'd rather reward sincerity and encourage people to watch out for insincerity. Rather than vice

Re: [EM] Reply to Paul Kislanko

Hi Paul, Perot is the clear Condorcet winner, but that cannot be the right result. If you replace those names with A, B, C the result looks ok. I suspect the issue with your example is that: 45% Bush > Perot 10% Perot 45% Clinton > Perot is interpreted as: 45% Bush > Perot > Clinton 10% Perot > Bu

Re: [EM] Australian voting process

Any thoughts about this article or, more generally, Australia's voting system? An interesting difference between it and the IRV method that has gained wide support in the U.S. is that voters have the option of voting for a single party and letting that party allocate their preferences. This was in

Re: [EM] Does MAM use the Copeland method?

Hi Paul, On Oct 6, 2004, at 2:58 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote: I guess y'all are missing my point. Finally, we're in agreement! :-) A wins in the example ONLY because the method discards the C>A votes because of the B>C>A set of ballots. I don't know if that's the only reason, and the more usual term

Re: [EM] Does MAM use the Copeland method?

I'm not sure where exactly this is going. Paul, I don't think anyone is saying you 'must' support MAM, or that everyone will like it. If so, I agree that's silly. I think the statement being made is that -- even given an unusual series of cyclic ties like this -- MAM gives an outcome least obj

Re: [EM] affects of IRR(V) and meaning of democracy

Hi Dave, On Sep 20, 2004, at 11:51 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: . Nominating more than one candidate would mean splitting the available campaign funding, plus it would make it more difficult for voters to become familiar with all the different candidates and decide which ones they prefer and in what ord

[EM] Re: meaning of democracy

Hi Ralph, I too was struck by Steve Eppley's quote, so I'm glad you commented on it: On Sep 20, 2004, at 9:19 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Democracy is not about being fair to each voter, as one member of this list recently asserted during our discussion of the electoral college; it's about align

Re: [EM] pairwise as best popular name for Condorcet voting

On Sep 20, 2004, at 9:29 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In a message dated 9/20/04, James Green-Armytage writes: For a salable Condorcet name, I think that "pairwise" or "pairwise voting" is pretty good. It's been used for a long time already, so it should not cause too much confusion. Also, I don'

Re: [EM] "Third Parties Presidential Debate"... and debates in general

Hi all, On Sep 13, 2004, at 10:26 PM, James Green-Armytage wrote: So I guess what I want to add as a comment is that it is really important for debates to feature direct exchanges between the candidates. They need to be able to ask each other questions. Also, I would prefer it if they were each ab

[EM] California Dreamin', Take 4

Hi all, So, I've been trying to figure out how to get people who don't particularly care about election reform to actually think through the issues involved. This is what I came up with; the goal is to try to express the basic ideas and motivation without getting bogged down in details. I welco

Re: [EM] Why bicameralism ?

Congratulations, on the Ph.D., Stephane! On Sep 1, 2004, at 9:01 AM, Brian Olson wrote: On Sep 1, 2004, at 6:18 AM, Stephane Rouillon wrote: Stop internal behind-the-scene deals and start an open and neutral decisional process that would encourage politicians to take decisions that benefit the mos

Re: [EM] California Dreamin', Take 3

Hi James et al, On Aug 25, 2004, at 8:17 PM, James Green-Armytage wrote: My personal opinion is that bicameralism is unnecessarily bulky for a state legislature. So rather than re-conceptualizing the relationship between the two chambers, I'd rather just condense it into a single chamber. I think

Re: [EM] California Dreamin', Take 2

Thanks to everyone, especially James. Enclosed is a shorter and hopefully wiser proposal; I think the PR bit is in pretty good shape. Anyone want to comment on my suggestion for write/edit bicameralism? -- Ernie P. Reengineering California: Towards A 21st Century Legislature Draft 2, 8/25/2004

Re: [EM] Re: STV-PR

Hi Adam, Thanks again for your very helpful comments... On Aug 25, 2004, at 12:54 PM, Adam Tarr wrote: Ah, okay, I think I'm getting it. So, how the heck does one define natural communities in any sort of objective manner? City boundaries? Commute flows? Geography? There was an excellent dis

[EM] Re: STV-PR

Hi James et al, Thanks for the input; I've never considered PR seriously before, so I'm just starting to get the "Zen" of it. On Aug 25, 2004, at 10:47 AM, James Gilmour wrote: Dr.Ernie Prabhakar > Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 4:30 PM Why have you got a district magnitude of 20? If you are

STV-PR Re: [EM] Using weights to compensate multiple votes (It's mostlyabout PR)

Hi James, On Aug 25, 2004, at 4:20 AM, James Gilmour wrote: One part of a "smaller" solution would be to make the list order irrelevant, but that would not please the party managers. Even if you did that and allowed voters to mark several candidates within a given party list, you would not achie

[EM] California Dreamin'

Dear Election Methods, Despite Arnold's best efforts (which, frankly, are better than anyone else has done here for decades) California appears to be in the grip of a perpetual governance crisis. The result is that at least one well-known columnist is calling for radical reforms, including pro

[EM] Re: preferential voting - rank-order voting?

Hi all, In response to a California columnist's call for proportional-representation , I wanted to suggest an overhaul of electoral policies based on Condorcet-style voting. However, this discussion se

Re: [EM] Condorcet in 12 words or less

On Aug 18, 2004, at 11:52 AM, Eric Gorr wrote: Anyone want to take a stab an giving an explanation of Condorcet Voting in 12 words or less...? I'm a sucker for terse phrasing: Rank all candidates. Pick one most preferred over each of the others. Twelve exactly! Of course, the whole notion is a li

Re: [EM] Re: Median Voter Theorem and the 50-50 Nation

Hi Rob, Thanks for your comments. Overall, I think our views are pretty parallel -- certainly we're working for the same thing. I think I just disagree with your interpretation of the situation on a couple of relatively minor points: Yeah, I agree. But maybe I would shade it a little differe

Re: [EM] Re: Median Voter Theorem and the 50-50 Nation

Hi Rob, On Aug 3, 2004, at 11:51 AM, Rob Brown wrote: Dr. Ernie Prabhakar radicalcentrism.org> writes: However, the root of the split is, at the end of the day, the polarized ideologies of conservatism and liberalism that anchor the "hard-core" base of each party, and drives po

Re: [EM] Median Voter Theorem and the 50-50 Nation

Hi Alex, Well, since you've opened the can of worms, I may as well go fishing... On Jul 30, 2004, at 3:07 PM, Alex Small wrote: I have no illusion that from now until the end of eternity political battles will always be battles over an ever-shrinking undecided percentage. No doubt there will be up

Re: [EM] Unreasonable question?

Hi Mike (and James), On Jul 27, 2004, at 11:36 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: It could be argued that I (and you of course too) shouldn't be posting this discussion to the list, because it's off-topic, and because it isn't of interest to others. But directly addressing the list, as you're doing when y

Re: [EM] Is this cyclic preference example not rational? (Was: SFC definition supports partial preference relations)

Hi Jobst, I'm impressed. I didn't think you could define a coherent B>A>C>B situation, but it looks like you did: On Jul 26, 2004, at 1:06 PM, Jobst Heitzig wrote: 1. Would I prefer the situation (i) "A and B tied on top, A elected" or (ii) "A and B tie

Re: [EM] ?groovy? new introduction for use by absolute beginners to voting methods

Hi James, On Jul 22, 2004, at 1:08 AM, James Green-Armytage wrote: For some crazy reason I spent the better part of the last two days writing yet another introduction to voting methods. I already had one on my web page, but I wasn't satisfied with it in terms of accessibility. So I wrote this o

Re: [EM] Nader could designate same electors as Kerry

Hi Mike, On Jun 30, 2004, at 8:20 AM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: He said that Nader could designate, as his electors, the same people who are Kerry's electors, instructing them to vote for Kerry. In that way, the votes for Nader would count for Kerry. No more spoiler problem. And, with that assurance,

Re: [EM] Wikipedia

On Jun 4, 2004, at 6:21 PM, Eric Gorr wrote: Thought people here would be interested in this message... http://groups.yahoo.com/group/instantrunoff-freewheeling/message/779 Thanks, I'd missed that change. Perhaps people here could help on the taxonomy question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk

Re: [EM] Pseudo-election reform in California

Hi all, On Jun 1, 2004, at 3:38 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Recent French elections demonstrated need for something better than Plurality plus rerun. I believe they also demonstrated that IRV does not cut it - IRV too easily locks out acceptable candidates when minorities each rate a few minor c

Re: [EM] Pseudo-election reform in California

se reformers achieve *their* goals, rather than trying to get them to -change- their goals. Any suggestions? -- Ernie P. Curt On Jun 1, 2004, at 11:15 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: I should add best-two-runoff to my sims to check that. I bet it's worse than IRV. It's probably analyt

Re: [EM] Pseudo-election reform in California

On Jun 1, 2004, at 8:38 AM, Brian Olson wrote: On May 31, 2004, at 6:47 PM, Dr.Ernie Prabhakar wrote: The justification for multiple rounds, I suspect, is that primary campaigns will still tend to be lower-profile, and more sectarian, compared to the fall general election. At any rate, it is f

Re: [EM] Proxy - bicameral

On May 17, 2004, at 12:57 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, 17 May 2004, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: My concern is to ensure that the process is friendly to multiple-choice options. My fear is that the traditional yes/no vote could easily be used to hold the assembly 'hostage', by o

Re: [EM] Proxy - bicameral

Hi Adam, On May 17, 2004, at 11:35 AM, Adam H Tarr wrote: Right now, decisions are typically a force between options 2 and 3, excluding the 'radical middle' option. Some method of allowing the assembly to sort through options easily would be nice. But it's not really crucial, since (again) it sho

Re: [EM] Proxy - bicameral

Hi Adam, On May 15, 2004, at 6:59 PM, Adam Tarr wrote: How about this: - Bicameral legislature. I'll call the two houses "senate" and "house" but this is just for identification purposes. - The "senate" is elected by a PR method. The "senate" would act like a normal legislative body, meeting i

Re: [EM] Proxy

Hi Mike, On May 15, 2004, at 11:51 AM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: So that's 3 reasons why financial disincentive for proxies needn't be a problem: 1) Rich proxies; 2) Contributions required to be small, or (better yet) contributions whose sum is required to be below a specified amount that is just eno