[EM] What would Tom impose, and how?

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>>I would be interested in experimenting with approval in practice, but I'm
>not willing to impose it on anyone.

Excuse me? Did anyone suggest imposing Approval on anyone? In a state,
county or city initiative, the public could choose Approval. How
were you considering imposing a voting system on people? Which voting
system would you impose on people, and how would you impose it?

As a change from Plurality, Approval doesn't take away anyone's rights.
It merely adds a freedom which there was never any justification
for denying in the first place. It removes the unjustifed rule that
, in the 0-1 point system, a voter must give 0 to all but one candidate.
When people vote for a compromise, it doesn't require them to falsely
vote that they like the compromise over their favorite. Instead of
saying "This candidate is better than this set of candidates", which
the voter often doesn't really believe, he can say "This set of candidates 
is better than this set." Even if the legislature "imposed"
Approval, who would be wronged by the changes described in this
paragraph?

Mike Ossipoff





For me it is an experiment only.
>
>I do plan now that when pollers call me in the future and ask who I 
>support,
>I'm going to make an effort to pick two choices I like. Then I expect
>they'll say they'll put me down as undecided and I'll say NO, I'm decided
>FOR these two and AGAINST all others. Perhaps it'll get them thinking of
>making new categories and approval will be born! Well, I can dream.
>
>That's my thoughts for now, whatever they are worth.
>
>Tom
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Anthony Simmons" <asimmons at krl.org>
>To: <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
>Sent: Monday, April 02, 2001 3:37 PM
>Subject: [EM] Unranked IRV versus Approval
>
>
> > >> From: Tom Ruen
> > >> Subject: Re: [EM] Unranked IRV versus Approval - divergent winners
>exist!
> >
> > >> My main defense for and attraction to Unranked-IRV is that
> > >> it satisfies the one vote/seat rule of our current
> > >> elections. It is a good compromise in my opinion since it
> > >> is just another way to count approval ballots. I like that
> > >> approval votes could still be used for measuring support
> > >> for each party, and split votes can be used to determine
> > >> elimination order.
> >
> > But it's already been demonstrated that whether there is one
> > vote or more per seat is just a matter of definition.  If a
> > perceived problem turns out to be a trivial technicality that
> > depends on an arbitrary definition, why should matter?
> >
> > What is so special about the number of marks on the paper?
> > Why is one vote/seat a good rule?  Yes, I understand that it
> > reminds us of what we have now, but if that's what counts,
> > the best thing we could do is use Plurality, which is as
> > close as we can get to what we have now.
>

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