[EM] There's nothing wrong with Average Rating.

Paul Kislanko kislanko at airmail.net
Tue Mar 2 11:58:36 PST 2004


That would be "Franchise", antholigized in the book "Earth is Room Enough",
included in the omnibus volume "The Far Ends of Time and Earth."

The copyright is 1955, and this was one of Asimov's best future-predictions.
Not only does the all-knowing computer Multivac pick a single voter to
decide all elections, it doesn't even ask the voter who they prefer, it just
asks questions like "What do you think of the price of eggs?".

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Gorr <eric at ericgorr.net>
To: election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com
<election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 1:41 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] There's nothing wrong with Average Rating.


>At 8:28 PM -0800 3/1/04, Ken Johnson wrote:
>>So the ideal of the "perfect voting system" is unattainable in the
>>real world because people exaggerate and misrepresent their
>>preferences (i.e., they lie).
>
>I just remembered this...
>
>As an almost off-topic side note, there was a story by Asimov, I
>believe, in which statistical analysis had become so advanced that a
>computer was able to select a single citizen who simply would,
>whether they lied or not (for such things were taken into account),
>select the winner who would have won had everyone been allowed to
>vote.
>
>I am blanking on the name of the story, but it was a rather good one.
>
>Perhaps Asimov could be credited with the 'perfect' voting system.
>
>----
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