[EM] SODA

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Jameson: SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it acceptable. You're speciflying the rules in too much detail. The street-description, and the petition-language, needn't be the legal language (though that should be available upon request). Likewise, for MTAOC or MCAOC, or AOC, people won't demandto see the computer program, but it will be available to the person who wants to look at it. The person who wouldn't accept a computer program also wouldn't ask to read it. So here's how I described SODA to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you can optionally check a box indicating that you want that personto be able to add approval votes to your ballot, on your behalf, if s/he doesn't win. S/he will have previously published a rankingof candidates to show the order in which s/he would give such delegated approvals. That's it. That brief descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is non-delegation.If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box to indicate that. I'd like SODA to be a bit fancier: Why should delegation only b e available to the person who has only voted for one candidate? Say you vote for several candidates. Each candidate has a delegation box by hir name. If you want to, you can designate as delegate anycandidate for whom you've voted. (but you can only deleglate just one candidate) As in your version, s/he can add to your ballot approvals for candidates for whom you haven't voted, as long as your resulting approval set doesn't skip any candidates in hir publicized ranking. Disadvantage: It loses some of SODA's simplicity. I understand that the "S" in SODA is for "simple". As you said, the optional-ness of the delegation should avoid any complaint of undemocratic-ness. But of couise opponentswill still try to use that complaint. I'll mention SODA (simple or more elaborate) along with the other FBC/ABE methods, any time I suggest new methods more complicated than Approval.  Of course sometimes you only have time to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-returncharacters.) Mike Ossipoff             11111111 		 	   		  
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