[EM] One vote per voter

[Forest Simmons]

Besides the excellent points made by Anthony I would like to add a couple
of others.

In the second round of a runoff, the voters get to either repeat their
first vote or vote for someone else, all for the same office in the same
election. So if IRV doesn't violate the slogan, then neither does
Approval.

If I'm not mistaken, the slogan "one man, one vote" reached its pinnacle
in the context of reapportionment. Up until the Baker vs ( ? ) decision of
the Supreme Court some urban congressional districts had populations
several times larger than some of the rural districts. (Someone on this EM
list should know the details.) 

Anyway, in that context the slogan meant the right to proportional
representation, as much as the right for each eligible citizen to submit
a ballot.

Forest

On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Anthony Simmons wrote:

> >> From: "Tom Ruen" <tomruen at itascacg.com>
> >> Subject: [EM] Unranked-IRV
> 
> >> I've been interested recently in using
> >> approval voting to end the spoiler effect of
> >> plurality elections, but I get objections to
> >> the approval process, most strongly from Don
> >> Davison, that everyone only should get one
> >> vote, and he's right that is how our current
> >> system works. For Don's sake, I considered
> >> split-vote tied-ranks within IRV. Tied ranks
> >> in IRV is completely reasonable and can be
> >> supported by dividing a vote by the number of
> >> candidates in the tie.
> 
> Tom,
> 
> I've enjoyed reading your report on your test
> election, and the idea of instant runoff approval
> is intriguing.  But there is one thing we won't
> have to worry about, which is the notion that
> approval allows voters more than one vote, or
> that some voters (those who approve more
> candidates) get more votes than those who approve
> fewer candidates.
> 
> The first objection, that voters are allowed to
> vote more than once, is easy to dismiss.  It is
> merely confusion over the meaning of words.  In
> primitive elections using Plurality, one mark on
> the ballot constitutes one vote.  "One man one
> vote" (using the appropriately primitive gender-
> specific slogan) thus equates "one man one
> ballot" with "one man one mark".  What the slogan
> actually means is that each person should get one
> ballot.
> 
> Do we object to a voter getting to vote twice --
> once for President and once for Senator?  Of
> course not.  Were we to do so, it would simply be
> another example of thinking derailed by devotion
> to loose use of language.
> 
> The number of marks on the ballot has nothing to
> do with whether the election method is fair.  And
> that is, after all, what "one man one vote" is
> actually about.  An election fair is not fair
> because each voter is restricted to making a
> single mark on the ballot.  What makes the
> election fair is that everyone has the same
> ballot and marks it according to the same rules.
> 
> The second objection is equally specious.  If we
> think about each mark on the ballot as a vote,
> that is one way to think about it.  Another is
> that every voter votes for or against every
> candidate.  Which way we think about it is
> arbitrary, and any argument based on such an
> arbitrary conceptualization is specious.
> 
> If that isn't convincing, here's another way of
> looking at it.  An approval election could also
> be held by requiring voters to mark all of the
> candidates they *disapprove* of.  Then, voters
> who approve of more candidates would supposedly
> have fewer votes than those who approve of fewer
> candidates -- the exact opposite of the usual
> approval election, even though they are logically
> equivalent.
> 
>