> If there's some way in which the outcome in the districts > can be called the people's choice, representative of what they want, > then how can we say that about the systemwide result?
If I say that Bill Smith chooses candidate X, we all know what that means. But what do I mean when I say Northern California chooses X? Do I mean that Northern California has wills and desires in the same sense that Bill Smith does? Of course not. I can ascribe decisions to Northern California only metaphorically. Probably what I mean is that Northern Californians generally prefer X, or that their constitution designates X as the winner, or something like that. I think you're taking the choice of a district quite literally, as if there were some kind of entity called the district with a capacity to choose in the same way that Bill Smith has a capacity to choose. This allows you to take a district and mentally replace it with a single voter, the group. So, when two groups say A, but their combination says B, its kind of like B winning despite the unanimous choice of A. But its just a trick of the language. --- Blake Cretney (http://condorcet.org) ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
