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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">Forest,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">Experience
of new election systems in the </span><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">UK</span><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold""> convinces me that
two different votes in one election are a non-starter, for
practical use, as
well as in principle. A comparable situation existed with
lobbying for the
alternative vote top-up method, proposed by the supposedly
“independent”
Jenkins report. This had a covertly disreputable background,
too lengthy to go
into. But the outcome was that voters would be obliged to have
both a
preference vote and an x-vote. The governments own MPs would
not support it. (Stuart
Bell MP correctly predicted that “It will sink without a
trace.”) But they
asked subsequent official reports to consider it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">First
up was the Kerley report for local Scottish government
elections (recommending
STV). They did not so much as sneeze at AV Top-Up, dismissing
the very idea of
an electoral system with two different kinds of votes.
Apparently they had some
strange idea that the voters matter in voting arrangements.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">I
predict that sooner or later, depending on whether reason or
stubbornness
prevail, that combining so-called approval votes with ranked
choice voting
would please no-one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">Under
existing voting methods, tied to varieties of elimination
counts, the
elimination problem cannot be solved, and no definitive
solution be possible.
The only thing that can be done, under existing voting
conventions, is to
minimise the elimination problem. This is what the <span
style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Hare system (in particular
</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial
Rounded MT Bold"">Cambridge</span><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold""> elections) does. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">The Hare system
is known from a long history of practical test, giving ample
time for any
serious short-comings to reveal themselves.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">This
is not the case with untested approval voting cum RCV. (I
would not even
recommend my own method without proper preliminary testing.)
That is why you did the right thng as a tester of mathematical
proficiency.<br>
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold""> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">On
another subject, two women friends independently could not
contain themselves
from asking me: “Richard, don’t you ever read anything but
serious books?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">When
young and energetic, when I would look at any book that caught
my interest, as
if I would live forever, I filled volumes of diaries with
notes on books read,
that were an embarrassment to me most of my adult life. Since
then it occurred
to me to publish some of them. Just out is “Don’t You Ever
Read Anything But Serious
Books?”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold""> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1439523">https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1439523</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">Regards,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT
Bold"">Richad Lung. <br>
</span></p>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/08/2023 22:27, Forest Simmons
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CANUDvfr8XeRpdng_m3dSUocgfy=JoVOsRs0hAt7qkkmGyS+COQ@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="auto">Richard,
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">The department chair for my first teaching
position was someone who had done his master's thesis on the
efficacy of True/False tests for assessing student proficiency
levels in mathematics.
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">The thesis that his work seemed to support was
that a well designed T/F test with sufficiently many well
chosen statements was just as reliable statistically .(as a
predictor of success on standardized tests) as tests that
gave students partial credit based on their written progress
towards the correct answers of the respective "problems,"
etc.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I never followed his advice to use them
because I liked the student/teacher interaction over student
work ... and it was easier for me to quickly come up with
ten problems that would thoroughly test the students'
proficiency on the material in question than to carefully
construct a 400 statement T/F test with the same information
potential.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">But I can see the value of T/F and multiple
choice tests for placing multitudes of students at the right
level when their last math class was ten years ago, and no
mathematician is available to interview them.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I would compare narrowing down a field of
California governor wannabes to this rough placement level
problem ... quick and dirty may be the right bang for the
buck.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Best Wishes,</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Forest</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Aug 26, 2023, 4:39 AM
Richard Lung <<a href="mailto:voting@ukscientists.com"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">voting@ukscientists.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"><br>
Combining an approval vote with a preference vote is an
example of a <br>
makeshift combination method. It cannott be justified but it
is <br>
attempting to do something better, not amenable to existing
methods.<br>
<br>
Approval voting is really classificatory voting. That is to
say a <br>
classical logic black or white, all or nothing, approval or
rejection <br>
vote. Yes, approval voting seems to be being tried as
rejection or <br>
elimination voting.<br>
<br>
This corresponds to the first thing HG Wells said about that
other <br>
classificatory vote, the x-vote: We no longer have elections
in this <br>
country (UK) we only have Rejections. (1912. The Labour
Unrest).<br>
<br>
A preference vote covers opposites and everything in between.
But it is <br>
only used as an election. Preference voting can, however, also
be used <br>
in an exclusion count, including the whole range of dislikes
and likes. <br>
That is the system I invented.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Richard Lung.<br>
<br>
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href="https://electorama.com/em" rel="noreferrer noreferrer"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electorama.com/em</a>
for list info<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
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