[Election-Methods] Why monotonicity? (was: Smith +mono-add-top?)

[James Gilmour]

daniel radetsky > Sent: 11 January 2008 03:01
> > On Jan 10, 2008 2:05 AM, James Gilmour 
> > to put correct this defect we have no option but to sacrifice 
> > something else, e.g. "later no harm".  
> 
> I'm not sure later-no-harm is a good thing in the first place.

Ok, so that's your opinion.  As I have indicated in other posts on this topic, opinions about the relative importance of the various
incompatible criteria do differ.  All I can say, based on more than four decades of campaigning for practical electoral reform, is
that UK voters appear to attach considerable importance to the concept of "later no harm".  I have no reason to believe that voters
elsewhere who have suffered the appalling British legacy of Fisrt-Past-The-Post in single-member districts will have significantly
different views.

 
> > That would be nice, but all the evidence to date shows that 
> > it is impossible.  No-one has yet devised a voting system 
> > that incorporates all of the desirable features.  
> 
> The evidence does not show that this is impossible. If nobody 
> has designed a voting system that incorporates all the 
> desirable features this could mean: 
> 
> A. It is impossible to do so.
> B. We haven't figured out a way to do so.
> C. Our criteria are misguided.
> 
> Remember: most innovations in human history were not 
> available for most of human history.

When a Nobel Prize has been handed out for showing the impossibility of combining all the desired criteria into one voting system, I
am happy to leave such discussions to others and to get on with some practical reform of our defective voting systems.  Of course,
if someone does square the circle ......................

James Gilmour

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