[EM] Guarding the Instant Runoff movement (Our Mike is mentioned)

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Don:

I'm not going to waste my time answering your arguments for IRV. I've
already answred all of them many times. But I'll comment on a few
other things you said:

Mr. Quinn wants to democratize CVD. That's been tried, and he'll find
out that it can't be done. Don, forward this to Quinn: You can't
democratize CVD or the IRVie movement. Better to just abandon it.

No question about it: The IRVies don't have to discuss what they
promote. They can be the grunts that they are, and promote what they
want, without trying to justify it. I don't care. But these same
people then complain when I occasionally make public statements about
the IRVie folly. Don't discuss it, fine. But then don't tell me that
I shouldn't talk to others about your folly.

You say that discussion is endless. Not if it's honest and orderly,
with a distinct goal and procedure. But there are people with whom
discussion is a waste of time and will never get anywhere.

But what you're saying is: "Discussion is endless, so forget discussion
and just adopt our proposal" :-)

Actually, with the IRVie twits involved in public discussion, any
effort to publicly discuss rank-counts and adopt a good one might
be futile. Then it would likely be true that discussion is endless
, a hopeless quagmire. That's a good reason to advocate Approval
, to go around your quagmire instead of trying to go through it.

You said that Approval is my method of choice. But I've repeatedly
said here that I personally prefer Condorcet because it meets
SFC, and, with at least some Condorcet versions, GSFC & SDSC.
Also, I like the luxury of being able to sincerely vote all of my
preferences, with the assurance that they'll be counted. I say that
to explain why I personally prefer Condorcet. But I don't say it to
encourage you in an argument about which method is better. I've already
been over that with you and have no wish to keep answereing your
repetitious arguments.

Approval doesn't allow us to vote all of our preferences, but it
at least counts those that we vote, the ones that we consider important
enough to be the ones that we vote when we can't vote them all.
It means that I, not your arbitrary IRV count rule, decide which of
my pairwise preferences will be counted.

But because of you IRVies, Approval may be the most practical proposal,
to avoid your aforementioned rank-count debate quagmire.

You say that nonIRVies don't agree on what method they like best.
So what? I support Approval and all the Condorcet versions.


>Donald: I agree, we must avoid that problem. Allow me to give everyone some
>history. About four or five years ago, the Center for Voting and
>Democracy(CVD) started a list called Elections Reform, but the list got
>infected by a small band of Bottom Method Supporters, the BMS people. They
>turned the list into a cesspool of Rancorous Debate about the Bottom
>Methods, methods like Approval, Condorcet, etc, you name it, they debated
>it. They were told to leave the list.

No, many on ER wanted to talk about promotional strategy and
news about enaction efforts, and felt that technical discussion
about method merits was outside the scope of the list. That made
sense to us, and so we started a new list, EM. But we didn't leave
ER right away. I personally left it eventually later.
>Freedom of speech also includes the freedom not to listen,
>not to be a captive audience.

Is that why you keep dumping your IRVie list's material on EM?

>MikeO is not nasty all the time, but he is always
>willing to bad mouth IRV, CVD, Rob Richie, and any and all who does not
>agree with his agenda.

Yes, part of advocating better voting systems is advocating against
asinine proposals like yours. Freedom of speech, remember?

>I suspect
>he has already done so. [called Quinn names]

Actually, I haven't.

>For five years I have been sparing on and off with MikeO and/or his
>BMS cronies.

You haven't been sparring, Don. You've been blathering. You still are.

Mike Ossipoff

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