2012/4/16 Richard Fobes <[email protected]> > Mike seems to be in a hurry for an explanation for my earlier statement. > > As I recall the issue is that I stated in a previous message that Approval > voting was very unlikely to be adopted for use in U.S. Presidential > _general_ elections. Here are some reasons: > > 1: Making that change requires adopting a Constitutional Amendment. >
No, it requires an interstate compact between states with a majority of EV votes. Still highly improbable, but not inconceivable. > 2: By the time Congress is ready to consider writing such an amendment, > various kinds of advanced voting methods will have been tried, which means > that voters will be familiar with various kinds of better ballots, which > means they will not be intimidated by marking ranked ballots or score > ballots. This situation undermines the biggest advantage of Approval > voting, which is that it is simple, and the easiest to understand (in terms > of both ballot marking and ballot counting) for someone who is only > familiar with plurality voting. > > 3: The majority of voters do not understand mathematics (and even most > judges would not be comfortable with mathematics) so they would think that > being able to mark more than one candidate would violate the "one person, > one vote" rule. > > Richard Fobes > > > > On 4/15/2012 3:54 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: > >> ... >> >> Thanks for your explanation about the delay in supporting your claim >> about Approval's enactability (in comparison to those of Condorcet, >> Kemmeny, SODA, MJ, etc.). I certainly agree with replying to messages in >> the order n which they were posted. >> Let me just add a few comments, though: >> 1. Though it's too late now, of course, I'll just repeat something that >> I said before. If you don't have time to support that statement (for >> now, at least), then you shouldn't have had time to make the statement >> in the first place. >> A good rule: Don't make statements that you don't have time to support. >> 2. I certainly do not want to hurry you. In fact, I'm not criticizing >> you if you don't even try to support your claim at all. (Who could blame >> you--it isn't supportable). >> 3. But, if you don't, then I just want to clarify to everyone that your >> claim remains an unsupported claim. I would have no objection to that. I >> am not saying that you should support the claim if you don't want to. >> Leave it unsupported if you want to. >> 4. I want to emphasize that, every time that I've said that Approval is >> the enactable method, I've told why that is. >> 5. The subject of which method(s) are the most promising to support, >> advocate, work for, is highly relevant to success. Claims regarding that >> matter should only be valued according the the justifications offered >> for those claims. >> > > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info >
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