[EM] RE: Election-methods Digest, Vol 10, Issue 30

[Simmons, Forest]

Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:10:15 -0700
From: Russ Paielli <6049awj02 at sneakemail.com>
Subject: Re: [EM] Collecting Ordinal Information
....

Problem 1. Getting "scientific" polling results from partial samples is
a science. It can only be done reliably by unbiased organizations that
have no "axe to grind." Imagine the practical difficulty just getting a
consensus on how to select the participants. Note also that one of the
biggest challenges in scientific polling is how to deal with people who
do not answer the phone or who answer but refuse to participate (I've
heard that this comprises approximately 40% of those called).

Answer: There is no "poll" other than the election itself.  All registered voters who want to vote get ballots. The ballots are randomized so that which pairwise races you vote on are determined at random.
 
I think you have my method confused with Joe's.  But even his method is no more problematic than picking juries to decide criminal cases, for example.

Problem 2. If the identities of the participants are publicly known,
then bribes or coercion could be applied to influence their decisions.
Even if their identities are concealed, someone who wants to be bribed
will find a way to make their status known.

Answer: Every voter is a participant.  Which voters vote on which races is never known if not divulged by the voters themselves.

Problem 3. Your scheme would probably be unconstitutional in many if not
most races. Many voters, conservatives in particular, would never go
along with it.
 
Answer: If the voters like the method, they can change the constitution.

Russ continues ...

I sympathize with your concern that voters don't have time to study all
the issues and candidates. The votes for judges are always particularly
confusing for me. All the typical voter has to go by is a half-page
statement by the candidates, which could be one big lie.

What is the answer? Well, I don't know the whole answer, but I think I
know a part of it. We need to discourage people from voting. That's
right: *discourage* them. All this stuff about encouraging people to
vote just for the sake of "participating in democracy" is a mistake, I
believe. Peolpe who don't understand the importance of voting are
unlikely to vote wisely and should not be encouraged to vote. People who
understand that the right to vote was earned with blood are more likely
to vote wisely, I believe.
 
Answer:  The "get out the vote" folks are mostly concerned about getting out people that will support their candidates, all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.  Do Republicans urge blacks to get out and vote?

Russ continues...

People who vote because someone told them it's a good idea are usually
parasites who want something for nothing. Their vote is likely to be
calculated to forcibly transfer wealth from someone who earned it to
someone who did not -- themselves. Walter Williams calls this "legalized
theft."

Answer: Those who receive the greatest amount of subsidies by the tax payers are members of the parasitic rich class, who do not have to vote subsidies for themselves, because they have the politicians bought and paid for, and can therefore protect their privileged status with all of the political, legal, and police power of the state.
 
Hence the saying, "Subsidies for the rich. Market discipline for the poor," and the related saying, "Privatize the profits. Socialize the costs."
 
According to no less an authority than the late Hugh W. Nibley, the old adage "The idle shall not eat the bread of the laborer" originally meant that the idle rich should not be eating the bread of the working poor.
 
Forest

Simmons, Forest simmonfo-at-up.edu |EMlist| wrote:

....
> My idea is that in a large enough election, the individual pairwise contests could be farmed out at random to the voters.
>
.... 
> 
> To be specific, suppose that you had twenty single winner races with ten candidates each, and no ballot measures.
> 
> Each of the ten candidate races could be broken down into 45 pairwise contests, so the total number of pairwise contests would be 20*45=900.
> 
> If there were nine hundred thousand voters, and each of them received a random selection of ten pairwise contests to weigh in on, then each pairwise defeat would be based on ten thousand ballots, well above the statistical sample size requirement for 99% confidence.
> 
> Forest
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ----
> Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info



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End of Election-methods Digest, Vol 10, Issue 30
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