Some more standards

[Mike Ositoff]

> 
> 1. Unknown candidates lose.  There should be a way to distinguish
My mailer failed to copy the beginning of this message, so I've
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[There should be a way to distinguish...]

> between candidates who have a consensus, and those who are simply in the
> middle because the most popular candidates are also the most hated.

Maybe that isn't possible. Probably not. If the Democrats &
Republicans, in '92, voted Perot second because they hated eachother
but not Perot, then doesn't that mean they'd rather have Perot
than the other big party? The voters are adults. They know that
ranking Perot 2nd, if successful, can make Perot win instead
of the other big party. We have to give those people credit
for wanting what they vote for. Would I rank an unknown over
a hated candidate? Sure, if I knew that he wasn't as bad. But
if he were genuinely unknown I wouldn't know that, and he might
be worse, and so I wouldn't do it. Say there's a John Smith
 or a "Bob", about whom you've heard nothing. You're not going
to put that unknown in your ranking, unless you're adventurous
enough to try order-reversal, which is another issue.

> 
> 2. If "most hated" candidates are to be excluded, there should be a way
> to distinguish truly hated candidates from those who are ranked last
> merely because they compete with the voter's favorite -- in other words,
> there should be no advantage to insincerely ranking a competitor last.

Again, that would be difficult or impossible to carry out.
There was a proposal that one could separately rank from the
bottom. Maybe, but it carries the risk that you're inadvertantly
ranking your most hated below an unknown who would be more
hated by you if you knew something about him. I don't propose
the separate ranking-from-bottom, for that reason.

Mike


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