Sorry, I meant to post to the list....
I'm not aware of much in the way of serious opposition to the two-party majority vote. in fact any reasonable methodology should reduce to the majority vote when there are two candidates. The only method (to my knowledge) that doesn't do this is range voting. www.rangevoting.org. Range voting reduces to something similar to what you are saying. The problem lies in giving numerical value to something as intangible as "satisfaction." How do I measure my satisfaction relative to yours? Also, regardless of strongly I feel (perhaps I only have a weak preference for one candidate), strategically, I should give the maximum rating to the candidate I like to maximize my happiness. And could this even be called strategic voting, because there is no universal yardstick of happiness? Perhaps my weak preference is comparable to your strong preference. Ian Fellows Statistician University of California, San Diego http://thefell.googlepages.com p.s. The arguments on rangevoting.org are pretty fast and loose -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of rob brown Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 2:00 PM To: Ian Fellows Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election I was going to post a reply to the list but noticed your reply was just to me. (bummer, I was kinda hoping you'd go on record with that opinion) Yes I am no fan of range voting, and it is a range voting fan (clay shentrup) who inspired my post. What is particularly disturbing is now there is a new book coming out (gaming the vote) that, while otherwise excellent, endorses range voting. Interestingly, I did get Clay to admit that in range voting, it is expected that even honest voters will "scale" their vote so that at least one candidate gets a zero, and one gets a 100 (or whatever is max). In which case it would "reduce to the majority vote when there are two candidates." However, the rest of his arguments would not make sense if it is assumed that a two candidate election works fine with majority vote. > p.s. The arguments on rangevoting.org are pretty fast and loose Ha. A lot of people seem impressed with Warren's math, and while I haven't scrutinized it, I sure have seen their logic, which strikes me as craaaaaaaazzzzeeeeee. :) -rob ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
