[EM] Election Reform

[Martin Harper]

two points.

Forest Simmons wrote:


> By way of comparison the Approval ballot would look like this:
> 
> Candidate | Oval
> -------------------
> Bush      |  ()
> -------------------
> Gore      |  ()
> -------------------
> Nader     |  ()

Oval? Surely "approve" would work better?


> In fact, why just talk about future elections?  The assumptions we made
> would not be too far fetched for last November's election if it were to be
> repeated with preference ballots, CR ballots, or Approval Voting with
> ordinary ballots. No where did we assume that Faction 3 was larger than
> the few percent it would take to spoil majority first place for each
> corporate candidate. Nader accomplished that even without election reform.

Well, it *could* be correct, or it might not. I can't see many people 
voting Rep/Green/Dem, for example. I think this weakens your argument 
because people will use their intuitions about the last elections, 
rather than looking at your hypothesis, and I suspect many of their 
intuitions will be that Nader wasn't a serious contender. (In 
particular, the oil tycoons of this world).

Then again, if oil tycoons are unlikely to be reading the newsletter... ;-)