[EM] Advocacy

[Michael Ossipoff]

"I'm becoming more and more convinced that evidence is what counts. We
can keep on going rounds about what people *might* do, but when it comes
down to it, what matters is what people *will* do."

You can speculate about what people might do, and that's alright, if
that's what you like.

Or you could consider the beliefs and assumptions expressed by pretty
much everyone in this country, and the simple strategy for traditional
unimproved Condorcet, that is optimal for those beliefs and
assumptions.(ranking the Democrat alone in 1st place)


"And having
organizations try out better methods would definitely help in that regards."

Many organizations are already trying out alternative methods. That
tells us little or nothing about how those methods would be voted in
U.S. state and national official public elections. Different
electorate, different assumptions and beliefs about winnability, u/a
nature of election, etc.

But organizations can be very helpful if they use methods known to be
suitable for official public elections for state and national office.
That's because their using those methods provides some precedent for
and experience with those methods. That experience doesn't inform us
about how people will vote in official public elections, but it does
give the methods some use-precedent and familiarity--things that would
be helpful for enactabilty.

Of course, realistically, it ain't gonna happen. No one is even trying
to enact better voting systems at state level. We have IRV in some
municipalities, and some well-meaning person is (or was) trying to
enact Beatpath in Phoenix, Arizona. But no effort at state level, and
little success even at municipal level, even for IRV, which, due to
its FBC-failure, is entirely inadequate for official public elections
with our current electorate.

So how can voting system reform happen? Not by itself, that much is evident.

Voting system reform can only happen as part of a larger package of
improvements that will come by electing a non-Republocrat party to
office. Preferably a progressive one. That would be the Greens, the
most winnable progressive party. FairVote says that the LIbertarians,
like the Greens, favor IRV.

In Plurality the optimal u/a strategy is to vote for the most winnable
acceptable candidate. If you're a progressive, that means the most
winnable progressive. And that would be the Gfeen nominee. Of course
it will be a few years before the next election, but that will be the
next chance for improvement.

So then, how can we get a better voting system? Vote for the Green
nominee in every official public election, starting with the next one.

Sure, the Greens' platform offers IRV as the voting system. I told why
that's ok. An electorate that's competent enough to elect the Greens
to the presidency and most of Congress, using Plurality, is also
competent enough to make good use of IRV. To achieve that, the
electorate must no longer believe the Democrat disinformation, and my
strongest arguments against FBC-failing methods wouldn't fully apply.
Then IRV's advantages, such as Later-No-Harm, CD, Later-No-Help, MMC,
Clone-Independence, would come into effect. Of course, even under
those better conditions, with that better electorate, Approval or
Score would still be much better. Even when FBC isn't _necessary_ it
would remain very desirable. But, under those better conditions, IRV
would be fully ok.

Besides, given the kind of a population that could achieve the
election of a Green government, and the honest, free and open media in
a Green America, and the expanded and facilitated referenda and power
of initiative that a Green govt would surely have, would all make it
easy to further improve the voting system, and so maybe we'd soon have
Approval or Score.

But of course at first it would be IRV. Because IRV is what the Greens
offer, IRV is what we can get.

So. Want a better voting system (&/or lots of other improvements)?
Vote for the Green nominee in the elections.

If it's true that the Libertarians support voting system reform, and
would enact a better one if they were in office, then maybe the
preferrers of the Greens, and of the LIbertarians, should combine
their Plurality votes on one candidate--the nominee, Green or
Lilbertarian, who gets more votes in the primary.

Even if the Green preferrers and Libertarian preferrers consider
eachother's candidates to be worse than Republocrats, maybe they
should do that voting coalition, if they trust eachother to enact a
better voting system (at least IRV). Someone said that Ron Paul
endorsed Approval. Then, with the better voting system in place,
voters could choose between Greens and Libertarians.

As for whether the Libertarians are worse than the Republocrats, from
the Green-preferrers' point of view, it could be argued either way.
Some of the Libertarians' worst policy proposals do sound worse than
the Republocrats. But would they ever be implemented, if everyone
refuses to accept them? Maybe only the better policy proposals would
ever be implemented. Wouldn't that make the Libertarians effectively
better than the Republocrats?

In any case, such a voting coalition would double the strength of the
non-Republocrat vote in Plurality elections, and could be by far the
quickest route to non-Republocrat government--which could end up as
Green or LIbertarian, depending on what the public prefer.

Mike Ossipoff