Jameson, The number two (2) is *not* arbitrary. It is the next integer after the number one (1). Therefore, two is the next simplest number of candidates to allow voters to vote for after the number one, since we cannot vote for portions of candidates.
Again, the idea is to follow Forest's principle of strictly improving, as well as the principle of equal votes per voter, equal treatment of all voters' votes (& thus precinct summable, easy to count and manually audit). Why would we need voters to have more than two votes for one office-holder to fix the problems of plurality? Perhaps you can make the case. I've programmed enough to know that allowing each voter to vote for at most two candidates is not a programming problem. So, please supply a more realistic argument against keeping the electoral method simplistic by increasing the number of candidates a voter can vote for by at most one. Kathy On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Jameson Quinn <[email protected]> wrote: > > > 2011/6/3 Kathy Dopp <[email protected]> >> >> > From: Jameson Quinn <[email protected]> >> > To: [email protected] >> > Cc: [email protected] >> > Subject: Re: [EM] Remember Toby >> > Message-ID: <[email protected]> >> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" >> > >> >> > >> > I'd add my "safety" fix to the near-clone problem, *if* someone can >> > think of >> > an easy way to describe and motivate it. Basically, it looks at any >> > candidate who mutually approve with the winner, and sees if they would >> > beat >> > the winner (pairwise) with those mutual approvals turned off. This helps >> > when, for instance (honest preferences): >> >> That sounds like it might work. > > Thanks! >> >> Here is my simplistic thought on a simplistic electoral method that >> might solve some of plurality's problems without introducing new ones: >> > > That's not a simple problem, and so it's probably hard to find solutions > that are both simple and new. > I think that your proposal, by arbitrarily setting the number of approvals > at 2, would introduce all kinds of distortions, ranging to the possibly > nightmarish. As a programmer, I know that when I set arbitrary constants in > my programs (except as ids), it almost always leads to bugs. > Jameson -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 "One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts." Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
