[EM] Better Choices for Democracy

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 06/21/2025 12:34 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
> 
> 
> If you don’t like the strategy, come up with a better one. Fight fire with fire, not with emails to a list read by the ivory tower set.
> 

The better strategy is telling the truth.

Condorcet came up with a better method than Hare.  He did it a half century before Hare.

But, like Trump, you're saying that better marketing means that it's a better product.

I'm saying that the fundamental principles of democracy are more important.

When I critique FairVote (would this be fighting fire with fire?) they respond with the falsehood that I am anti-RCV or that I am harming the movement or, at the least, that I am making perfection be the enemy of the good.

If we're gonna "correct" First-Past-The-Post, let's make sure that the correction itself is as correct as it can possibly be.  That means, in all contingencies where this is possible (I acknowledge the existence of Arrow's theorem and of the Condorcet paradox), that we must **always** value our votes equally.  RankTheVote and FairVote don't believe that.  RankTheVote and FairVote say that in the cases of Alaska 2022 (August) and Burlington 2009, we should *not* value our votes equally.

All sorts of good, bad, and half-baked organizations and movements get proficient at marketing their good, bad, or half-baked ideas.  Standing on the success of your marketing does not mean you're doing the world any good.

--

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
--

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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