At 06:14 AM 11/1/2006, Dave Ketchum wrote: >A normal election is usually not close enough to a tie for what ONE voter >does to make a difference. If, generally, the collection of voters that >consider A and B tolerable vote your strategy, A and B can tie; if each >who has a clear preference votes it, this should properly affect the result.
I just want to note that Asset Voting can create a situation where practically no votes are wasted. It is quite possible, as well, for every vote to be connected with a winner who takes office. When no votes are wasted, voters will, I'd predict, have a sense that every vote counts. Under Asset, votes are redistributed at the discretion of the candidates who received them. If a voter overvotes, the votes are fractionally distributed (This is Fractional Asset Voting, the original Asset of Warren Smith allowed voters to cast a vote in the range 0.000 to 1.000, sum of votes being 1.000, but it is unclear to me that there is any substantial advantage of this over FAAV, which uses a standard ballot, same as plurality, and allows the choice of a single candidate, who is effectively a proxy, or of a virtual committee of proxies.) Now, an additional twist. Every vote is already tagged according to the precinct it came from. When the candidate transfers votes, he or she transfers precincts with them. The vote count transferred and the sum of precinct vote counts would not be exact, but that does not matter much. The idea is that every vote can look at a winner and say, "My vote elected him." This would allow a winning candidate with surplus votes to essentially assign representatives so that the ultimate elected reps are as local as possible. Yet some reps would largely represent the total voter space, because, say, there was only enough to elect that candidate state-wide, the candidate has no surplus votes. Or a seat is cobbed together with surplus votes from many candidates. However, I strongly suspect that, except for thinly and widely-distributed factions, who aren't even close to getting a seat now, voters would tend to vote for someone they know or who is local. The voters make the decision, through the candidates they voted for. Representative "districts" are effectively created without the possibility of gerrymandering. While the districts would overlap, a particular region would probably have a relatively stable set of local representatives. The representatives would not know who elected them, specifically, but they would not what precincts were involved. They would consider those precincts their bailiwick. ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
