Questions

[Joe Weinstein]

Forest Simmons has proposed a readily understood lone-mark election method 
wherein voters give proxies to the candidates.

This method is certainly improves on the current lone-mark 'plurality' 
method, for both third parties and for voters.  It would give minority 
third-party candidates some negotiation leverage, and thereby would give 
some new and not merely 'spoiler' instrumental effect to pro-third-party 
votes.

IRVites would complain to the public that the method does not go far enough: 
it does not let the voter directly express anything more than what usual 
lone-mark allows:  namely a preference for one candidate over all the 
others.

The counter to that objection is that the method is intended as an 
absolutely first-cut trial reform - as it does not change the ballot layout, 
or what voters may and may not do to mark the ballot, or how the voter 
ballots are tabulated.

The method fills a basic reform niche not filled even by Approval (which 
also requires no new type of ballot nor tabulation method, but does make a 
change - namely, allows more options - in what the voter may do).  By 
comparison, IRV requires new sorts of ballots and tabulation.

[Soapbox digression:  In fact, IRV requires far more tabulation - and thus 
unverifiable results, and possibilities for error - than any other 
oft-discussed method.]

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach CA USA

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