Adam & Paul--
Ok it's true that people who've heard of rank balloting correctly sense that it can give them something that can't otherwise be gotten. I don't want to seem to be opposing the proposing of Condorcet; it's my favorite too. In fact, the 2000 Presidential election, and what followed, is a convincing argument for the desirability of being able to vote 3 candidate merit levels instead of 2. A luxury of the best Condorcet versions is that you can vote as many merit levels as you want to. Three merit levels would be just right for me in the 2000 Presidential election, if that election were re-held tomorrow. But compared to Plurality, Approval gives voters a lot more opportunity for expression, and variety of ways to vote, different strategies, different ways of saying something by your vote. And most important of all, no matter what strategy you use, you can be assured that no one will ever use the strategy of burying their favorite. Though Approval doesn't let us vote all of our pairwise preferences, people will typically be voting about half of their preferences in Approval. Of course I'd rather have the best Condorcet methods, ideally. I guess my main concern with Condorcet proposals is that it takes some listening, some attention, some study, for a person to understand why one rank-count is better than another. I just don't know if enough people will make that effort. And it's necessary that they do, if we're going to get a _good_ rank-count adopted. People who listen and take the necessary time will understand that Condorcet(wv) is the rank-count that they want. But will enough people make that effort? Mike Ossipoff _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
