[EM] Correlated Instant Borda Runoff, without Borda

[Abd ulRahman Lomax]

At 04:39 PM 12/23/2005, Paul Kislanko wrote:
>Awhile back Dave Gamble and I speculated off-list that the "best" election
>method would have each candidate fill out an extensive questionaire, and
>have each voter fill out the same questionaire. Then a computer program
>would find the best correlation between voters' answers and candidates'
>answers.

Even if "best correlation" could be reasonably defined, what this 
would be doing is creating an election system where the candidate who 
can best anticipate the electorate's responses and thus provide the 
winning match on the questionaire is the one elected.

What is totally lost is the decision of the electorate on whom to 
*trust*, which is, indeed, the central question in government, not 
"issues" per se.

Once we see that, it's also easy to see why Asset Voting, delegable 
proxy, or similar systems are so attractive. In Asset Voting, the 
only question the voter need answer in the voting booth is "whom do I 
trust?" And Asset Voting *could*, in some implementations, allow 
voters to choose, quite simply, *whomever* they trust.

(This could create problems with voter security, where secret ballot 
is considered necessary; but there are solutions to this problem; 
while they necessarily place small restrictions on the voter's 
freedom, they would make it much more difficult to divine a 
particular voter's vote from the election results.)

>This has the distinct advantage that there would be no advertising,
>campaigning, or opportunities for special interests to try to sway the
>election.

The problem is not special interests trying to sway the election, the 
problem is that the largest special interest group of all is not 
organized and is therefore vulnerable to influence and manipulation 
from smaller, less wealthy, but more organized interests. (A 
billionaire is less wealthy.) The solution to this problem is not 
going to be found in an election method, per se, though, along the 
way, election methods might be drastically improved.