Majority Rule p.s.

[Mike Ositoff]

In my reply to Saari, I should have added that the way we avoid
mugging the voters in the way I described is to let them vote
preferences, and to count all preferences at full-strength,
even though no one pretends that all preferences are the same
strength. We're not trying to represent the actual strength
of the preferences, merely allowing each voter to have equal
say on each 2-way comparison. 

You can ask people to be a nice-guy and give up that right, but
you certainly can't say that it isn't their right.

***

That's putting it in terms of our right to express & have fully
counted all of our preferences. But, as I said, if you don't agree
with that, & have no sympathy for voters who'd be mugged by
your point system, then I appeal to the widely-held standard
of majority rule.

A majority has the power to make happen whatever it wants to.
You can't change that, MIke S. But in Plurality, and in a
points assignment system, members of tha majority would have
to use various drastsic defensive strategies to get what they
all want.

Protecting majority rule is really synonymous with getting
rid of the LO2E problem, and with avoiding methods that force
voters to use drastic insincere voting strategy, which subject
voters to strategy dilemma of a particulary undesirable kind.

Mike Ossipoff