Re: Questions

[Joe Weinstein]

Forest Simmons has proposed a readily understood lone-mark election method wherein voters give proxies to the candidates.

This method is certainly improves on the current lone-mark 'plurality' method, for both third parties and for voters. It would give minority third-party candidates some negotiation leverage, and thereby would give some new and not merely 'spoiler' instrumental effect to pro-third-party votes.

IRVites would complain to the public that the method does not go far enough: it does not let the voter directly express anything more than what usual lone-mark allows: namely a preference for one candidate over all the others.

The counter to that objection is that the method is intended as an absolutely first-cut trial reform - as it does not change the ballot layout, or what voters may and may not do to mark the ballot, or how the voter ballots are tabulated.

The method fills a basic reform niche not filled even by Approval (which also requires no new type of ballot nor tabulation method, but does make a change - namely, allows more options - in what the voter may do). By comparison, IRV requires new sorts of ballots and tabulation.

[Soapbox digression: In fact, IRV requires far more tabulation - and thus unverifiable results, and possibilities for error - than any other oft-discussed method.]

Joe Weinstein
Long Beach CA USA

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