Super-voters ...

[Joe Weinstein]

Dear Craig,

Thank you for your message directly to me, especially as (regrettably) you 
are not now on the EM list.

I myself was reinstated just a few weeks ago. Months ago I was dropped from 
the list, because my email program allegedly or actually couldn't handle the 
volume of list-generated emails.  In fact, from my own viewpoint I was in 
fact getting too many such emails to read and digest (and such is again 
threatening to happen).

In all honesty, some of the unwanted messages were yours.  I have found your 
email messages - and, for another signal example, Demorep's - unusually 
difficult to comprehend.  (In your case, the reason may owe not only to 
unique differences between our writing styles but also to differences 
between NZ and USA vocabularies in matters of voting and elections.)

Anyhow, I simply don't have the time and stamina and bent to devote as much 
energy and focus to election methods as apparently you do.  In particular, 
I'm often not up to reflecting and commenting even on proposals which 
clearly merit heed, let alone on proposals which strike me as unmotivated 
(in terms of a clearly stated problem to be solved), or as gratuitously 
vague or long-winded, or as too ludicrous.

In your present message I note both an apparently main point and a notable 
lesser point.  I would like now to comment on both points.

(1)  Your main point is objection to use of proxies - a device whose 
promotion you ascribe especially to Demorep.  To quote your message, such 
proxies would be "super-citizens with perhaps 10,000x the voting power of 
other citizens."

You rightly note that my brief list-posted comment (on 22 Oct.) skirted the 
main issue as to whether the use of proxies truly is a good idea.  In one 
sense, I really don't know.  However, if I reject use of proxies, I have got 
to find - and be able to support as at least marginally  better - some 
alternative which is radically  non-'traditional' - in terms of the last two 
hundred years of practice in almost all non-dictatorial societies.

After all, every nation which uses a 'parliament' or 'assembly' or 
'congress' or other 'representative body' is thereby using an 
institutionalized body of proxies.  The proxies in such a body not only 
typically have far more than '10,000x the voting power of other citizens' 
but moreover have this power on issue after issue, not merely on a single 
matter such as choice of a chief executive.

(2)  You also seem to dislike Approval Voting (AV) (which I like) and 
moreover equate it (to my mind inscrutably) to IRV (Instant Runoff Voting, 
which I intensely dislike - indeed I heartily endorse the proposed alias 
title 'insane results voting').  In particular, you complain that in an 
election with 4 seats to be filled and 1000 available candidates, an 
Approval ballot will present 1000 checkboxes.

My rejoinder is that - regardless of election method used, AV or other -NO 
electoral system should allow presentation to the voter of an unreasonably 
huge ballot for any one contest.  One of many possible screening (i.e., 
ballot-size-reduction)devices would be to require each candidate to file a 
nominating petition signed by 1 percent of the voters; with no signature 
counted if on more than one petition.  A further or alternative screening 
device would be to allow only at most the top (in terms of number of valid 
signatures on their petitions) twenty candidates.  Maybe you have a better 
screening idea.

In the interest of sharing these comments, I am taking the liberty of 
posting to the EM-list a copy of this reply message.

Sincerely,

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach  CA  USA



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