[EM] [Fwd: Re: approval voting and majority criterion]

[Forest Simmons]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Ken Johnson wrote:

> It may be that majority rule is preferable, but as illustrated above it
> is clearly not self-evident that majority rule is always preferable.
> Therefore majority rule should not be posited axiomatically; it needs to
> be justified on the basis of a more fundamental statement of "the goal
> of single-winner voting".

A more fundamental goal might be to go with the choice that would be
acceptable to the greatest number of voters.

By way of analogy, which is better, an economic system that makes 51% of
the people rich and relegates the other 49% to abject poverty, or a system
that makes 90% of the population comfortable, and still provides for the
basic needs of the other 10%?

Forest