[EM] Utilitarianism and Perfectionism.

[Dave Ketchum]

On Feb 8, 2012, at 3:29 PM, Juho Laatu wrote:
> On 8.2.2012, at 16.18, David L Wetzell wrote:
>> ...
>> At any rate, this is why I've argued that ascertaining the best  
>> single-winner election rule is nowhere near as important as  
>> pitching the importance of mixing the use of single-winner and  
>> multi-winner election rules, with the latter replacing the former  
>> more so in "more local" elections that are not competitive often in  
>> single-winner elections.

I disagree:
.     We have single-winner purposes such as mayor or governor, unless  
we redesign the goals.
.     And purposes such as legislator which can be packaged as single- 
winner or multi-winner, with the PR backers promoting multi-winner.
>
> I think I agree when I say that the first decision (in the USA) is  
> whether to make the current two-party system work better or whether  
> to aim at a multi-party system. After that has been agreed, it is  
> easier to pick the used election methods. Now, in addition to  
> technical problems one has also a mixture of political higher level  
> targets injected in the discussion, and that does not make it any  
> easier.
>
> At the top level there is the presidential system that is tailored  
> for the two-party approach. If one would give up the two-party  
> approach at that level one might move also e.g. away from the single- 
> party government approach towards multi-party govennments.

Presidency is important, done in its own way.  It might continue as  
such handled here with minor changes per single-winner, or major  
changes in government that would fit multi-winner.
>
> At the lower levels one might consider also two-party oriented  
> methods that are allow also third parties to take part in the  
> competition. I mean that if one wants to stay in the two-party  
> model, one may not need full multi-winner methods at the lower  
> levels. It would be enough to e.g. guarantee that also third parties  
> can survive and get their candidates elected, and that some third  
> party may also one day replace one of the major parties as one of  
> the two leading parties in some states, and maybe at national level  
> too. I think this more lmited approac to multiple parties is quite  
> different from typical multi-party requirements that typically  
> include requirements like proportional represnetation.

Here, such as Condorcet for single-winner, and PR by whatever method  
does well for multi-winner.  Likely Condorcet best for presidential.

Note that, unlike with TPTP, or even IRV, Condorcet voters can back,  
besides the "better" of the two-parties, those for whatever issues  
this voter considers important - and get their backing noted in the  
vote counts (the big difference between IRV and Condorcet).

Dave Ketchum
>
> Of course one may also adopt different models in the two layers, two- 
> party system for the rop level and proportonal representation for  
> some state level representative bodies. Above I also made the  
> assumption that the strict tw-party approach where there are two  
> fixed parties and that's it, is not considered acceptable /  
> sufficient.
>
> The message I'm trying to carry with this, is simply that after one  
> names the targets, it is much easier to discuss what the best  
> methods to implement those targets would be. Is it a two-party  
> system, a flexible two-party system, or a proportional system, and  
> are the targets different at different levels and in different bodies.
>
> Juho
>
>
>
> ----
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