[EM] The tree is known by its fruits.

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 10/08/2017 01:26 PM, Richard Lung wrote:
>
>
>
> The tree is known by its fruits.
>
> So, election methods cannot be perfect. Whoever said they could? This
> superficial conclusion has caused immense mischief to the improvement of
> election methods. The Plant report eagerly seized on it, to justify
> digging their heels in, or dumping, half a dozen dud voting systems on
> the British public. New Zealandtook their cue from Plant, in their Royal
> Commission on election systems. And now Canadais blithely
> following.
>
> Imperfection is in the voters knowledge of who to elect. They must act
> on imperfect information. And their choices must be probabilities. An
> election is a statistical summation with margins of error. Election
> method is improved by further marginalising the errors. Imperfection is
> not a conclusion about election methods, it is a premise, on which they
> are founded.

This all seems to be a matter of politics, as it were. The imperfection 
of voting methods mean that you have to choose which is best based on 
what behavior and criteria you value.

Similarly, the kind of people who have a vested interest in the status 
quo can adjust their arguments to fit a desired conclusion (instead of 
the other way around). That there's no perfect method gives enough 
wiggle room to say "but it just so happens that Plurality is the best 
according to what I consider important, which has nothing to do with the 
fact that Plurality got me here to begin with".