James Gilmour writes: "If I've got it right, Approval Voting breaks the first and most fundamental rule of democratic representation: "one person, one vote".
JAMES, you've got it WRONG - or at any rate USELESS. If the rule is construed narrowly to mean just one mark allowed on a marked ballot, there are very few voting systems that would qualify. In fact maybe none apart from the existing lone-mark plurality. (Certainly not IRV, for instance.) Rather, in any reasonable interpretation, the rule MEANS 'one person, one ballot' (of equal inherent power to each other cast ballot). However, if you INSIST on the narrow interpretation, then Approval voting is still meaningful, as a short-hand way of voting on each of a list of propositions. Namely, look at each race for an office as a list of the propositions: Is candidate A acceptable? (In response you get one vote opportunity: "yes"=check, or "no"=blank). Is candidate B acceptable? (again you get one vote opportunity). Is candidate C acceptable? Etc. So long as at least one candidate IS acceptable to 50% or more of the voters, so that one or more of the propositions pass, the passed propositions will result in the office going to the candidate with the highest number of yes votes, i.e. the Approval winner. Various (though not all) on this list have argued that if there is no such candidate, then the office may as well remain unfilled (even by the Approval winner), or be filled by a legislative body, or by a re-election. Joe Weinstein Long Beach CA USA _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
