<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Mar 23, 2012, at 7:28 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote">2012/3/23 MIKE OSSIPOFF <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:nkklrp@hotmail.com">nkklrp@hotmail.com</a>></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr"><pre>Dave:<br><br>You wrote:<br><br>On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: <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.</pre></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote>My point is that it is voter responsibility to see to it that there are acceptable candidates on the ballot:</div><div>. The laws should provide for practical quality nominations - if not, the voters should see to fixing.</div><div>. Voters should see to good nominations - another voter responsibility.</div><div>. Even with quality above there can be failures - occasional failures can be expected - we just need to worry when they are too common.<blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr"><pre>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></pre></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote>My point was that, except for absentee ballots, secrecy should be known to be perfect and thus the enforcers have no power:</div><div>. If there are no votes as demanded, that proves no one obeyed - but this should be very unlikely for normal expected voting.</div><div>. There can be ways to violate secrecy on absentee processing, though doing this should be avoided.<blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr"><pre>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.</pre></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div>But the complaint is that that letting makes Approval an invalid system. Response to that is that letting each voter rate or rank more than one leaves them equal power.</div><div>. I was noting that many of the better methods permit violating OMOV.<blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr"><pre>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.</pre></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote>On the other hand, it is very difficult to cause trouble with. The plotter:</div><div>. Needs to know expectable normal vote counts for this collection of voters and this topic.</div><div>. Know the change wanted and get it voted.</div><div>. Somehow avoid others, perhaps due to hearing of these proposed changes, of making conflicting changes.</div><div><br></div><div>Dave Ketchum<blockquote type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr"><pre>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.</pre></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'd counter that SODA is a clear improvement for those who want to delegate, and no worse for those who don't.</div> <div><br></div><div>Jameson </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div dir="ltr"><pre><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br>Mike Ossipoff</font></span></pre></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></body></html>