[EM] STV's rejection: it's "not a defect, it's a feature!"

[David Catchpole]

On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Craig Carey wrote:
> 'Equal information' has no analogy to equal richness or equal power.

Hell yeah, it does. By "Equal information" we mean equal knowledge about
the opinions and responses of other voters- and, in most cases, that =
power = wealth quite definitely.

An example that will unravel over the next 3 weeks... on the 25 of March
Queensland elections for local government are held. Queensland's local
election system is weird- if a LG area is broken up into single-member
wards, the system is preferential (single-winner STV) for councillors
_and_ for mayor, who is elected seperately. If not, the system is
"FPP" such that a voter marks as many candidates as there are to be
elected and the election is determined on aggregate marks. My local
authority, Redcliffe, has the latter system (blerrk) with 8 councillors, 
and is being contested (the council, that is) by two major teams of 8
(More-or-less-the-present-council = conservative vs. left team) and
10 (other...) independents (loonies...). The left
team was organised about 9 months ago (with some cajolling from me hupf
hupf :<}| ) and is somewhat of an experiment for us. Previous attempts
have involved standing only 5 candidates-we got routed. The idea this time
is to ensure that our vote is not split. Candidate and voter strategy is
very, very important. Notice the similarity to approval...

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"Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be put down to stupidity"- DJ No MC