[EM] Remember Toby

[Kathy Dopp]

Jameson,

The number two (2) is *not* arbitrary. It is the next integer after
the number one (1).  Therefore, two is the next simplest number of
candidates to allow voters to vote for after the number one, since we
cannot vote for portions of candidates.

Again, the idea is to follow Forest's principle of strictly improving,
as well as the principle of equal votes per voter, equal treatment of
all voters' votes (& thus precinct summable, easy to count and
manually audit).   Why would we need voters to have more than two
votes for one office-holder to fix the problems of plurality?  Perhaps
you can make the case.

I've programmed enough to know that allowing each voter to vote for at
most two candidates is not a programming problem.  So, please supply a
more realistic argument against keeping the electoral method
simplistic by increasing the number of candidates a voter can vote for
by at most one.

Kathy





On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 2011/6/3 Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com>
>>
>> > From: Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>
>> > To: fsimmons at pcc.edu
>> > Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
>> > Subject: Re: [EM] Remember Toby
>> > Message-ID: <BANLkTinPCsb7KG4Q3-EM5gQ5NR-xn+4TZw at mail.gmail.com>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>> >
>>
>> >
>> > I'd add my "safety" fix to the near-clone problem, *if* someone can
>> > think of
>> > an easy way to describe and motivate it. Basically, it looks at any
>> > candidate who mutually approve with the winner, and sees if they would
>> > beat
>> > the winner (pairwise) with those mutual approvals turned off. This helps
>> > when, for instance (honest preferences):
>>
>> That sounds like it might work.
>
> Thanks!
>>
>> Here is my simplistic thought on a simplistic electoral method that
>> might solve some of plurality's problems without introducing new ones:
>>
>
> That's not a simple problem, and so it's probably hard to find solutions
> that are both simple and new.
> I think that your proposal, by arbitrarily setting the number of approvals
> at 2, would introduce all kinds of distortions, ranging to the possibly
> nightmarish. As a programmer, I know that when I set arbitrary constants in
> my programs (except as ids), it almost always leads to bugs.
> Jameson



-- 

Kathy Dopp
http://electionmathematics.org
Town of Colonie, NY 12304
"One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the
discussion with true facts."

Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections
http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

View some of my research on my SSRN Author page:
http://ssrn.com/author=1451051