[EM] Populism and Voting Theory

[Dave Ketchum]

I argue for Condorcet, include Range, Approval, and IRV in my discussion, 
ad claim it to be the best for single winners.

For all these I talk of Best, Soso, Worst, and other unnamed candidates.

Pick the one or more candidates you would like to vote for.

Proceed by method:
      Approval:  You are giving them equal indication of desirability.  B 
is obvious.  S is questionable - including it would be doing your best to 
elect either B or S, though you want S ONLY if you cannot get B.
      Range:  With ratings you can rate B as best and  S as less desirable. 
  Deciding on ratings gets tricky if you vote for several.
      Condorcet:  Scoring ballots as in a tournament.  It's ranks have 
neither the power of ratings, nor the pain of trying to use them.  Here you 
rank candidates according to how well you like them, including equals if 
you like two equally well.
      IRV:   Almost the same ballot as Condorcet, except no equals.  Its 
way of counting sometimes awards the win to someone most would agree is not 
deserving.

Back to scoring Condorcet.  If 5 rank A>C and 6 rank C>A, C is on the way 
to winning - and will win if outranking each other candidate.
      As in sports tournaments, there can be headaches such as A>C, C>E, 
and E>A, and no clear winner.  These have to be provided for but do not 
have to be studied in detail to understand the method.

DWK

On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:11:47 -0700 Greg Nisbet wrote:
 > As I?m sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting
 > system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they
 > will either:
 > a) say they don't understand it
 > b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV
 > c) say that the current system will never be changed
 >
 > Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take
 > the least amount of convincing for the greatest gain?
 >
 > I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that
 > it is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote
 > for whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their
 > vote. You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably
 > better than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of
 > passing. It breaks two party domination reasonably well and people
 > understand it. It isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important
 > stuff done.
 >
 > Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem
 > to think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if
 > someone else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice,
 > according to them.
 >
 > Range I have actually managed to do.
 >
 > I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a
 > Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make
 > it sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c).
 >
 > Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable?
 >
-- 
   davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
   Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
             Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                   If you want peace, work for justice.