[EM] To Bill Lewis Clark re: stepping-stone

[Dave Ketchum]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:11:32 -0800 (PST) Forest Simmons wrote:

  > On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Dave Ketchum wrote:
  >
  >
  >>IRV is not as similar to runoff as some claim - at runoff time I know the
  >>result of the original vote; with IRV I must do all of my ranking at
one time.
  >>
  >>
  >
  > For sincere voters, i.e. voters bound and determined to vote their
  > favorite among the uneliminated candidates at every stage no matter the
  > consequences ... for these dyed-in-the-wool sincere voters the two methods
  > are essentially equivalent, except for events that might change opinions
  > about favorites between trips to the polls.
  >
To decide how important that is, we have to decipher what percentage of
the voters qualify as "sincere".

And even they sometimes have to react as I suggested - look back at the
French election we keep looking at:
        For MOST voters the favorite to stay with was NOT Chirac.
        For MOST voters the favorite to stay with was NOT Le Pan.
        So the MANY voters who fit both of those descriptions had both the
opportunity and requirement to do new thinking at runoff time.

NOTE - responding as required by circumstances does not require changing
opinions about favorites - those who voted for Chirac over Le Pen did not
necessarily consider Chirac to be even tolerable, let alone a favorite -
they were only doing the best they could with the hand that had been dealt.
-- 
    davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
    Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
              Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                    If you want peace, work for justice.