Alex raises interesting points on two topics: coin-toss strategy; and Communist Russia.
Alex writes: 'The suggestion of "toss a coin, and go with your gut if you don't like it" is probably a little insulting to most people....[Opponents] would mock Approval Voting as "Coin Toss Voting" were we to put this forward as a reasonable strategy for "average citizens.' Alex seems to be saying that if we promote Approval, we will have to give citizens at least one simple strategy, and moreover that strategy must not be seen to use chance. Alex may well be right. If so, his point is anyhow readily addressed. What's at issue is how a voter is to decide a 'marginal' vote - i.e. vote on a candidate for which (to the voter): existing information indicates that 'yes' and 'no' votes would be equally good, and moreover that the expected benefit, of any feasibly gathered further information, does not exceed the expected cost of that information. To decide such marginal votes, any rule whatever will work, including a simple deterministic one. The 'always vote no' rule would most closely match both spirit and letter of today's prevalent lone-mark voting. Alex also notes that a history of Approval use in Russia might have to read: "in the Communist era and Gorbachev era (before the attempted coup) the Russians used Approval Voting." He writes that this account would be 'Not very inspiring....' Maybe not inspiring, but maybe quite helpful if you consider and mention the context. Likely, the design goal of Russian elections then was to assure continued Communist Party domination while at the same time inspiring some popular support for the party. In effect Russian elections may have operated as an 'open' primary would here, were we to have a one-party state. In order to inspire popular support, savvy party leaders would have done well to use Approval to enable identification and selection of the most popularly accepted of the party's candidates. Joe Weinstein Long Beach CA USA _________________________________________________________________ Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
