[EM] SODA rationale, part 1 of 4: Undecided voters (was: Record activity on the EM list?)

[Jameson Quinn]

>
>
> but, as a peripheral actor here, i haven't been participating too much in
> this SODA thing or any other asset voting systems.  i have to admit that my
> attitude toward such is "why bother?".  i still don't get it.  maybe in an
> election in an organization or corporation, but i just can't see such in a
> governmental election.  people who complain about IRV or a ranked ballot as
> complicated will feel no different about an proxy-assignable contingency
> vote.  toss in the option to not assign the contingency vote to a proxy
> (with an additional check box) and these people will all the more so say
> "hunh?".
>

It's a fair criticism. So let me try to explain why I think SODA is
especially promising from a practical standpoint.

I think SODA would be better than other good systems from the perspective of
several constituencies who are typically skeptical about voting reform. RBJ
speaks of "people who complain about IRV", but I think it's worth being more
specific.

-

First off, there's the typical "undecided" voters, whom I'd recast as being
mostly more like *disengaged voters*. My thinking about such people has been
influenced by this 2004 article from the New
Republic<http://www.csus.edu/indiv/f/friedman/spring2011/govt1/schedule/g/g2/undecided.htm>.
Basically it argues that undecided voters are not so much the centrists that
pundits like to make up just-so stories about, but rather, they're just
people who view politics as an unappealing chore. They accept voting as
their civic duty, but see it as a boring and distasteful requirement to
choose between a bunch of people they don't know and probably wouldn't like
or even trust if they did. A person like that really does not care about how
the ballot-counting process works, any more than they want to have to think
about where their electricity comes from. And they don't want anyone coming
around to tell them later that they should have spent more effort to make a
"strategically optimal" vote (whatever that means).

SODA's advantages for this group are clear. They want to vote-for-one and
forget about it. And they don't care about the rest. Sure, they may express
their skepticism about IRV in terms of how the inner workings seem to
complex, but in reality they don't care about the inner workings.

Note that, even though it adds undesirable complexity, the "optional" part
of SODA, the ability not to delegate, is also important in convincing this
group of people. They don't trust politicians, and so any system which
forces voters to delegate and trust is a non-starter. So it's important to
have the option not to delegate, even if these voters will rarely use it.

Why even worry about such people, if they're so disengaged? It's not as if
they'll ever become political activists for your cause. But still, ignore
them at your peril. It's easy for a negative campaign to bring to the
forefront these people's simmering distrust, and while they are the weakest
of allies, you do not want them as enemies. Disengaged they may be, but they
are still voters. (They might have plenty in common with non-voters, but
that's not who I'm talking about).

(By the way, I have friends like this, as I'm sure most of you do. I
certainly hope I'm not being insulting. They are just as smart as anyone
else on average. The difference between the kind of person who'd be on an
election methods mailing list, and the kind of person who views voting as
about as fun as cleaning the toilet, isn't that the former is necessarily
more capable of understanding voting systems, it's that they're more
interested.)

*(to be continued)*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20110803/5d30a1b5/attachment-0003.htm>