At 01:23 PM 3/14/2007, Chris Benham wrote: >I reject this on the same grounds that I reject the "candidate >withdrawal option" (in say IRV) and >"Asset Voting": I am only interested in single-winner methods where the >result is purely determined (as far as possible) by voters voting, >and not by the machinations of candidates/parties.
To be consistent, Chris should likewise reject deliberative process, and he should reject proxy voting. Asset Voting is merely proxy voting. Further, he should reject all pre-election process, including the processes by which candidates are nominated, as they are likewise "the machinations of candidates/parties." Only pure voting would be allowed. No consultation through coalitions of voters. Public elections without such pre-election process are rather difficult to imagine as being something desirable. Further, Chris should reject parliamentary government, where leading governmental officers are elected by representatives of the people rather than directly. Asset Voting allows voters total freedom. As Asset has been described, any voter can either vote for a proxy or can vote for himself or herself and thus participate directly in the next stage. While Asset has typically been described as using candidates as proxies (which seems reasonable to me, particularly if ballot access is relatively easy), if write-in votes are allowed, the freedom of the voter is totally unrestricted. Given how desirable this would seem (and, as proxy voting, it must be noted that the precedent is firmly established: it is what people do when they have choices, as did investors when corporations were originally formed), the objection would seem to be technical: Asset is not a complete "election method," it begs the question as to how the final determination is made. Thus, it might be argued, it is irrelevant here, we should only talk about "election methods." Yet, of course, Asset *would* be a procedure whereby a society can select from a multitude of choices, the one (or more) to be adopted. What would Chris think about Asset used for multiwinner elections? In particular, we have proposed using Asset to create full proportional representation, and have suggested that this could be used to create an assembly which would have nearly all voters with a known representative (known to the voter, and chosen by the voter directly or indirectly), whom the voter's vote elected, and who would usually represent a geographic district, completely independently of "party machinations," unless the voter elects to chose candidates who are party-affiliated. Because Asset wastes no votes, *anyone* can run and receive votes without harm. (The only "harm" would be if the candidate only gets one vote, his or her own vote, and the harm is that the canddidate has wasted his time: he will have to participate further, or waste the vote.) Frankly, I find it difficult to imagine an objection to this process used to create a fully representative assembly beyond one like "It will never fly, people won't go for something so different from what they know." And it would seem that Chris' objection to Asset is basically an objection to representative democracy entirely. Yet the very concept of a single-winner election, where the winner is to represent or make decisions on behalf of the voters, is that of representative democracy, though boiled down to a single winner (and single-winner district-based assemblies are a series of such elections). What's the problem? Is it the pedantic one of "Asset isn't an election method as I define it," or is it more substantial? ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
