[EM] Approval vs. IRV

[Bill Clark]

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:03:28 -0700, Brian Olson <bolson at bolson.org> wrote:

> I think I'm allergic to the use of randomness in election methods, so I
> don't plan on implementing such an option.

The unique appealing feature of random methods is that they're the
only ones that can be completely immune to the the "Tyranny of the
Majority" problem.  If a particular political party consistently gets
10% of the vote, wouldn't it be nice if their candidates were elected
10% of the time?  Random methods are the only ones (that I know of, at
least) capable of accomplishing that for single-seat elections --
they're basically the single-seat "time-sharing" version of PR.

Random methods are nothing to be concerned about, they've been used in
mathematical physics and other hard-sciences for quite some time (e.g.
the Monte-Carlo method).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

-Bill Clark