[EM] Simulating multiwinner goodness

[Brian Olson]

A couple years ago I moved from the California Democratic Party Machine to the Massachusetts Democratic Party Machine.
I'm not sad when my party wins, I'm sad when they run boring stick-in-the-mud establishmentarian candidates.
I'd love pressure from other parties to keep them honest, and that's what a lot of this whole election method reform thing is about.

Anyway, an election method can't (directly) give me better choices, but just help me and the rest of society choose from the options available at the time. I posit that a better choice method will (eventually) encourage the availability of better choices. The current pick-one-primary and pick-one-general favors the boring old establishment too much. If I can safely vote for the obscure but awesome candidate as my first choice, and the safe establishment choice as second or third, I think we'll se more interesting little guys, and sometimes they'll win.

But we knew all that.
</advocacy>

On Mar 11, 2010, at 9:42 AM, Terry Bouricius wrote:

> But obviously, real world satisfaction with an election outcome is not so 
> straight forward. I may favor a certain slate of candidates, but feel huge 
> dissatisfaction if they all win, such that there is no opposition in the 
> legislative body to "keep them honest." This is what happened for many in 
> British Columbia in 2001, when the Liberal Party won 77 out of 79 seats in 
> the Provincial legislature.