[EM] PR vs Single-Winner Reform

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

If you want to really do some good, something that will have an important 
and potentially vast global beneficial influence, adopt Condorcet or 
Approval (or maybe Bucklin) in your country instead of just PR.

Single-winner reform in other countries would be precedent for its adoption 
in the U.S.

There are arleady many countries using PR, including the best PR methods. 
But PR isn't a feasible proposal in the U.S. People here are suspicious of 
change, and PR would be a big change in the concept of representation. But 
single-winner reform would merely be an obviously better way of doing what 
we already do--electing candidates to 1-seat offices. People are rightly 
suspicious of and disgusted with their "representatives". Any change in the 
concept of representation woudl be perceived by many as giving more power to 
representatives, or to some disliked group. For instance, we ofen hear that 
PR would give power to the "special interests". Never mind what that 
means--my point is that PR won't be adopted here.

So what can you do for the world? Adopt Condorcet, Approval, CR, or maybe 
Bucklin. Give us a precedent for genuine single-winner rerform. If you do 
that, you would be helping to democratize the U.S. And if you do that, you 
could make a big difference in the qualitly of life in the world.

Condorcet has the advantage of being the best. Approval has the advantage of 
having the easiest implementation,and being a small, obvious modification of 
Plurality. CR has the advantage of being familiar to people, and is 
strategically equivalent to Approval, and therefore is just as good as 
Approval. Bucklin has the advantage of having an easier hand-count than 
Condorcet, if elections must be hand-counted. Compared to other methods as 
easily hand-counted, Bucklin has by far the best properties.

Mike Ossipoff

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