Jameson: SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In
a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it
acceptable. You're speciflying the rules in too much detail. The
street-description, and the petition-language, needn't be the legal language
(though that should be available upon request). Likewise, for MTAOC or MCAOC,
or AOC, people won't demandto see the computer program, but it will be
available to the person who wants to look at it. The person who wouldn't accept
a computer program also wouldn't ask to read it. So here's how I described SODA
to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you
can optionally check a box indicating that you want that personto be able to
add approval votes to your ballot, on your behalf, if s/he doesn't win. S/he
will have previously published a rankingof candidates to show the order in
which s/he would give such delegated approvals. That's it. That brief
descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me
that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is
non-delegation.If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box to indicate
that. I'd like SODA to be a bit fancier: Why should delegation only b e
available to the person who has only voted for one candidate? Say you vote for
several candidates. Each candidate has a delegation box by hir name. If you
want to, you can designate as delegate anycandidate for whom you've voted. (but
you can only deleglate just one candidate) As in your version, s/he can add to
your ballot approvals for candidates for whom you haven't voted, as long as
your resulting approval set doesn't skip any candidates in hir publicized
ranking. Disadvantage: It loses some of SODA's simplicity. I understand that
the "S" in SODA is for "simple". As you said, the optional-ness of the
delegation should avoid any complaint of undemocratic-ness. But of couise
opponentswill still try to use that complaint. I'll mention SODA (simple or
more elaborate) along with the other FBC/ABE methods, any time I suggest new
methods more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time
to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably
opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text
editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to
be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-returncharacters.) Mike Ossipoff
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