[EM] A quick, dirty, and somewhat obvious method for a secret proxy ballot

[Paul Kislanko]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: election-methods-bounces at electorama.com 
> [mailto:election-methods-bounces at electorama.com] On Behalf Of 
> Scott Ritchie
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 6:01 PM
> To: Paul Kislanko
> Cc: election-methods at electorama.com
> Subject: Re: [EM] A quick, dirty,and somewhat obvious method 
> for a secret proxy ballot
> 
> On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 14:57 -0600, Paul Kislanko wrote:
> > 2) But the votes BY the proxy MUST be be "public" - at 
> least to the ones who
> > delegated their vote to them.
> > The reason? If I delegate X as a proxy, it is because I 
> voted for "X's
> > proposed ballot configuration". If X's actual ballot is not 
> available for my
> > review, then if my alternative loses the election I have no 
> way of knowing
> > if it was because a majority didn't like it, or my proxy 
> was lying when she
> > said she would vote my preference.
> > 
> 
> If you have a preference, why are you delegating to a proxy?

Why have proxies? I guess you're saying it's a dumb idea. 

If the idea of delegable proxy is to have folks with no preferences allow a
proxy to vote their ballots, then only folks with no preferences must choose
from available proxies. Now, that would be equivelant to their votes being
replaced by random ballots, since if they have no preferences, their choice
of a proxy can be random.

One of us doesn't understand delegable proxy. 

I doubt any voter asked to change from plurality to delegable proxy would do
so based upon the arguments made by "experts" on the subject.