[EM] PR vs Single-Winner Reform

[Forest Simmons]

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Alex Small wrote:

> Forest Simmons said:
> > I think the public would find the televised Election Completion
> > Convention to be very informative and interesting, a great educational
> > experience, especially if Condorcet and Approval were sometimes used as
> > the completion methods.
> >
> > After the public had a few years of exposure to these methods through
> > the Completion Convention, perhaps they would want to try them directly.
> >
> > Candidate Proxy might be the best bridge to better methods.
>
> Maybe the easiest way to get some publicity for this idea is to find a
> member of Congress who has introduced an amendment to abolish or reform
> the electoral college (there have been several such amendments in recent
> years) and try to bring this amendment to his or her attention.
>
> I have no illusion that the idea would take the Congress by storm and
> bring about radical reform, but it might garner a news story or two, which
> would be one or two more news stories than its gotten thus far.

Another method that bears up well under direct comparison with the
Electoral College is Joe Weinstein's random citizen "jury" idea.

If the Electoral College were replaced by a randomly selected jury of the
same size, the choice of president by this statistically perfect PR jury
would be arguably more representative of the voters than that achieved by
the crudely semi-proportional representation of the EC.

Forest