[EM] The Hippopotamus Logic

[Mike Ossipoff]

Demorep, you've discovered that if one's favorite isn't likely to
win, then it's advantageous to rank lower choices. Actually
that's pretty much why we've been advocating rank-balloting all
along, or at least it's one way of wording it.

But no, that doesn't depend on having an additional y/n vote. 

By the way, there's the question of what to do if every candidate
in the election gets disqualified by getting "n" from a majority.

One possibility, in a Presidential election, would be for the rule
to be that the Presidential system would be scrapped, and Parliamentary
govt enacted. Another possibility would be to greatly shorten the winner's
term in office. Another possibility would be to hold another election
as soon as possible, which would be almost immediately. As has already
been pointed out, however, one tends to ask why the winnable 
candidates didn't take part in the 1st election. Well maybe they
were above getting involved in politics, or maybe they couldn't
get the support of their organization or party the 1st time, but
might the 2nd time.

Obviously a rule to scrap the Presidential system if every candidate
in a Presidential election gets disqualified wouldn't be nearly
as winnable a proposal as merely shortening the term of the winner
or holding another election as soon as possible.

But I hope you weren't implying that, if y/n voting is added,
it wouldn't matter what method is used. It would still matter
very much. Y/N voting isn't enough to get rid of the LO2E 
problem or ensure majority rule if there are more than 3
candidates. Oh it works fine if there are only 3. When there
are more, that absolute y or n becomes rather worthless
when you want to protect compromises without giving them
the election unnecessarily. Absolute y/n is no good for
protecting majority wishes when it comes to their preferences
between particular candidaes--and voters do have such preferences.
We vote a 2nd choice because we'd like to help it beat our
last choice & win if our favorite isn't winnable. So we
do it because we would rather have the compromise than the
last choice. A pairwise preference. Y/N voting is ok to add,
but don't have any illusion that it would protect majority
wishes when there are more than 3 candidates.

To protect majority wishes & to avoid the lesser-of=2-evils
dilemma, you need a good method, and that's Condorcet's method.


Mike



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