There's been a considerable amount of bickering lately, some of it slightly rancorous. I just want to offer this comment for people to think about: Our disagreements are technical, not political.
Politically, we all agree that citizens should have greater freedom of choice and greater opportunities to be represented in public decision-making. This is true whether you're interested in the purest and fairest possible democracy (e.g. Demorep), a system that emphasizes citizen participation rather than selection of leaders (e.g. Joe) or simply improvements on our current systems (e.g. many of us). We all agree that citizens should be able to indicate more information than just the approval of a single option (i.e. plurality voting). Finally, we all agree that decision-making bodies should represent a variety of citizen interests, and not simply the single favorite in each arbitrarily drawn district. Technically, of course, there are sometimes significant disagreements over which procedures are the fairest and which criteria ensure the greatest public good. These technical disagreements can be quite profound and complicated, and since this is a forum for debating these matters it's not surprising that the debate becomes quite complicated. Nonetheless, whenever posts tend toward condescension, or whenever people get too up in arms over the favorable reception IRV is getting, we should all remember that ultimately we all want the same thing: A society in which citizens enjoy greater freedom of choice when public policy decisions are made. The catalysts for this message were (a) some posts I've read (no point in naming the posters, that would defeat the purpose) and more importantly (b) an essay by a CVD staffer http://www.fixingelections.com/Prologue.htm Although many of us here disagree with the CVD's proposed solution to political problems (IRV and STV) I think most will agree with the sentiments at the above URL: That we have a system that allows for only two options, resulting in polarization, and it's time to fix that. Seen in that light, the quarrels that some of us have with IRV supporters are like quarrels between scientists with different ideas for curing cancer, not a quarrel between a cancer researcher and a tobacco executive. Anyway, just a thought. Alex ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
