[EM] Correlated Instant Borda Runoff, without Borda

[Paul Kislanko]

All true.

We were, in fact, talking about a science fiction short story written in the
1950s. The very idea of figuring out how to correlate such data has been a
thorny problem for AI researchers going even farther back.

But when I talked about the positives, part of it was serious. Exactly how
different is "the candidate might guess how the voters feel about all the
issues and fill out his ballot that way" than "the candidate might guess how
the voters feel about all the issues and tell them on TV that he feels the
same way"?

In the (fantasy) the process is double-blind - the candidates don't know who
the voters are and the voters don't have to put up with candidates. 

But, it was and is a fantasy. Didn't mean for anybody to take it seriously
(but Asimov's short story is a good one that has held up remarkably well for
1950s-era science fiction). 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: election-methods-bounces at electorama.com 
> [mailto:election-methods-bounces at electorama.com] On Behalf Of 
> Abd ulRahman Lomax
> Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2005 2:38 PM
> To: election-methods at electorama.com
> Subject: Re: [EM] Correlated Instant Borda Runoff, without Borda
> 
> 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.
> 
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