[EM] voting reform effort in DENVER - PLEASE HELP

Chris Benham chrisjbenham at optusnet.com.au
Sun Jun 11 13:35:53 PDT 2006


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> At 12:09 PM 6/11/2006, Chris Benham wrote:
>  
>
>> Elections should be decided directly by the votes of voters, and as far
>> as practicably possible all voters
>> should have equal/power weight  in this process.  So I reject Asset
>> Voting.
>>   
>
>
> All voters have equal/power weight under Asset Voting. Indeed, I could 
> easily argue that nearly other method fails this to some degree. This 
> is because of wasted votes, votes which did not choose a winner. Asset 
> allows these votes to be recast deliberately and in consideration of 
> the electoral context, by someone much more likely to be familiar with 
> the consequences, and able to use the voter's power in negotiations, 
> so much less voter power is wasted, if any.
>  
>
That assumes that the interests and/or preferences of voters are 
identical to the candidates they
vote for.

>  
>
>> Candidates should not be
>> "super-voters".
>>   
>
>
> What if voters want to assign this power to candidates?
>
And what if they don't?

>
> Fundamentally, the position expressed here is that voters are not to 
> be allowed this freedom.
>  
>
No, the shoe is on the other foot.

>
>
> Mr. Benham has not stated why vote delegation should not be permitted.
>
Because that is a completely different issue.

> Note that, ultimately, power *is* delegated, with any election method. 
> To the winner or winners of the election. So why not during the 
> election process itself?
>  
>
That doesn't make any sense at all.  The voters have little power, 
occasionally getting to elect
"representatives"/office holders with no (or next- to- no) control over 
them between elections.
The power to choose these office-holders  (directly, by their votes) is 
obviously greater than
the power to choose who chooses.
In my view the aim should be to increase the power of ordinary voters, 
not decrease it at the
expense of candidates.

>
>
>  
>
>> Approval Voting doesn't  meet Majority for Solid Coalitions and is
>> vulnerable to disinformation.
>>   
>
>
> As if any election method is not vulnerable to disinformation!
>
Approval is much more vulnerable to disinformation than any reasonable 
ranked-ballot method,
including IRV.  Because of disinformation, it is possible that the 
sincere strict favourite of more
than half the voters can lose.
In Approval, voters can feel at sea without some "information" about the 
viability of the candidates,
but with the (ok- to-good)  ranked-ballot methods they can fall back on 
just ranking sincerely.

> Asset Voting, in fact, is the least vulnerable, since votes end up 
> being ultimately distributed according to the decisions of trusted 
> candidates who have better access to information than the general 
> voter. With Asset Voting, a voter need make no strategic decisions; it 
> is enough to find a single candidate that one trusts; but Asset also 
> allows voters to distribute the trust among a set of candidates.
>
>
>  
>
I thought that one of the problems of US democracy is that candidates 
are generally not very
trustworthy.


Chris Benham




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