[EM] The Equal Vote Coalition and robla

[robert bristow-johnson]

There are so many things to respond to, Rob.  I'll start with the easiest.

> On 04/18/2025 10:32 PM EDT Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
...
> Even the three-way race between Kiss, Wright, and Montroll in 2009 also had Smith and Simpson in it. I'm just going to assume that even Simpson had folks knocking on doors, and I'll bet he was door-knocking himself.

I didn't even know who Simpson was or that they were on the ballot until election day.  Combined Write-In got more 1st-choice votes than Simpson did.  It appeared to everyone to be a 4-candidate race with Wright, Kiss, Montroll, and Smith.  They had lawn signs and appeared at debate events.  I considered Smith to be a credible candidate, but he was much lower in votes than the other three.  Smith got batch eliminated along with Simpson and Combined Write-In.  Montroll was eliminated in the following semifinal round.

> All of Kiss's challengers were saying "the incumbent is awful",

I wasn't saying that.  Kiss was my second-choice ranking.  And my vote got transferred to Kiss in the final round.

> but I'm guessing they all emphasized different reasons why he was awful.

There was a fiscal thing that all of the Kiss opponents were running against.  Turned out to be quite a mess.  Has to do with Burlington owning utilities like the electric company.  Kiss got us started on Burlington Telecom and that became a $50 million liability for the city.  I'm still pissed off about how that went.

> When one layers the "anti-incumbency" effect on the left-center-right political model, we can see at least one more dimension to voters' choices. If one adds "quality of campaign", that turns it into a 3D model. If one adds "money" as a dimension...well, now we're in 4D space, and that breaks my brain. I'm guessing it breaks your brain as well, Robert, even if you won't admit it.
> 

I really can only visualize the 2D thing, like the Nolan chart or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Spatial_model .  Left vs. Right and Libertarianism vs. either Communitarian (more left) or Authoritarianism (more right).

Lotsa dimensions.

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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