[EM] Don't care much about a little disenfranchisement (was Re: Correction of false statements by Ossipoff & Schudy about range voting.)

[Steve Eppley]

Paul Kislanko wrote:
-snip
> But from my parochial perspective the most badly
> broken aspects of US elections aren't related to the choice of election
> method - I have first-hand experience with supposedly illegal
> dis-enfranchisement. The surest way to win re-election is not to allow your
> opponents' supporters the opportunity to vote, and if you can get away with
> that then it doesn't matter which method is used to count the votes.
-snip-

If disenfranchisment and fraudulent votes change the candidates' totals 
by only a few percent, then it's not as significant as the voting 
method.  It may change the outcome in a close election, but in a close 
election it's unclear from the votes which candidate is better.  I'd 
worry only about massive fraud (such as could occur with poorly 
supervised electronic voting machines).

If the voting method is one that encourages competition toward a similar 
platform, so voters can rank the less corrupt over the more corrupt, 
then there'd be even less reason for people to care about which of the 
top candidates wins.  I think those top candidates would tend to beat 
pairwise today's polarizing candidates in landslides too large to be 
reversed by a bit of fraud.  So in my opinion, improving the voting 
method significantly is far more important than reducing disenfranchisement.

--Steve