[EM] SEC quickly maximizes total utility in spatial model

[Jobst Heitzig]

Dear Abd ul-Rahman,

you wrote:
> Well, I find it hard to believe how wrong-headed this is. 

Well, thank you very much.

> In a real society that is
> large enough, the consensus urn will never choose a winner unless there
> is a true consensus process already in operation, people will not
> naturally agree on a large scale, and, while in small organization, 100%
> consensus is attainable, attaining it in very large ones is next to
> impossible. With 100,000 voters, at least one of them, even if they all
> agreed, would accidentally mark the wrong choice.

Of course. The method is not suggested for large groups. The cited paper
includes suitable variations for that case (using thresholds and the
like).

> It is traditional
> in democracies that no collective action can be taken without the
> consent of a majority. 

And that precisely makes those "democracies" undemocratic since it gives
majorities the power to ignore minorities.

> While random choice has an appeal, where deliberation is impossible and
> where results over many elections will average out, what if 1% of the
> electorate wants to elect a crazy who will start a nuclear war? Could we
> afford to take a 1% chance of that?

Of course not. But such an option must never appear on a ballot in ANY
voting method, since such options could easily reach majority support as
well, as history has proven over and over again. Exclusion of such
options is a different topic which in my view cannot be addressed by
voting methods but must be addressed with legal measures.

The rest of your post does not seem to be related to mine, and I wonder
how you were able to write this much in such short time. Sorry if I
don't have the time to read it.

Yours, Jobst