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<pre><br>Dave:<br><br>You wrote:<br><br>On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:<br> <br>> On 03/22/2012 07:57 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:<br>>> There are plenty of voters who report having to "hold their nose" and<br>>> vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to<br>>> vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one<br>>> only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically <br>>> forced<br>>> to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of<br>>> people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval.<br> <br>If there is no one acceptable to vote for, the voters have not done <br>their job:<br>. Could happen occasionally such as failures in doing <br>nominations. Write-ins can help recover for this.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>There could be elections in which there's no one acceptable to vote for, but, as you<br>said, even then, there should be write-ins.<br><br>But, even with the difficulty of getting non-big-2 parties on the ballot, and especially<br>after the way Approval will open things up, there will usually be someone reasonably<br>acceptable on the ballot. Even now, ballots often have a wide variety of candidates<br>and parties.<br><br>You continued:<br> <br>"strategically forced" should not be doable for how a particular voter <br>voted <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>It's doable because many voters are so resigned and cowed that it doesn't<br>take much to force them to do giveaway compromise strategy, without any<br>reliable information to justify that strategy. I refer to the progressive people<br>who think they strategically need to vote for the Democrat.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>(but no one voted for the supposedly forced choice <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Regrettably, millions vote for that "choice", because it's billed as one of "the two choices".<br><br>You continued:<br><br>- why force <br>such a hated choice? <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>To keep voters from voting for someone whom they genuinely prefer. What the public, <br>including the voters, would like isn't the same as what is most profitable to those who<br>own the media that tell us about "the two choices". Everyone believes that only they<br>have the preferences that they have, because that's how it looks in the media. <br><br>Notice that all politicians routinely promise change. That's because they know<br>that the public wants change. So the politicians are adamant about change. They're<br>mad as hell and they want to do something about it, and give us change. Amazingly, that <br>pretense continues to reliably work, every time. <br><br><br>You continued:<br> <br>OMOV may inspire some - many of us have to argue against it having <br>value because we back, as better, methods this thought argues about - <br>such as Condorcet, Score, and even IRV.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>OMOV is easily answered by pointing out that Approval let's everyone rate each<br>candidate as approved or unapproved.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>Part of the chicken dilemma difficulty is that it depends on what some <br>voters will do without any compulsion, and what others will do after <br>making promises to cooperate<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>The chicken dilemma is very difficult to get rid of. I don't know of anyone<br>proposing a FBC-complying method that really gets rid of that problem.<br><br>The methods that I call "defection-resistant" do much to alleviate that problem,<br>but don't eliminate it. They just push it to a secondary level, where defection strategy is more<br>complicated and counterintuitive, and therefore less likely to be used. <br><br>A party whose members might defect by not support your party in Approval isn't likely<br>to engage in the Machiavellianly bizarre strategy of conditionally approving Democrats,<br>Republicans, Libertarians and Nazis in order to gain some mutual conditional approvals. Not<br>if ethical reputation counts for anything. <br><br>I've said that methods that don't get rid of that problem don't significantly<br>improve on ordinary Approval. All that can be said for the defection-resistant methods<br>is that they might improve a little on Approval, in a way.<br><br>In other words, the improvement is questionable at best. And, for most methods trying<br>to improve on Approval, the improvement is outright illusory.<br><br>I'd say that Approval can't be improved on, other than questionably or doubtfully.<br><br>Mike Ossipoff<br><br> </pre> </div></body>
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