On 4/16/2012 2:34 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Richard said:
Mike seems to be in a hurry for an explanation for my earlier statement.
[endquote]
That's funny. I thought that I emphasized that there was no hurry. ...
You said you were in no hurry for me to remove your email address from
your signature.
... In fact,
I additionally said that it would be fine with me if Richard didn't even
support his claim at all, leaving it as an unsupported claim.
This sounds to me like an invitation to hurry, or else to consider my
claim to be unfounded.
Richard continued:
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.
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.
[endquote]
Riohard is missing the point. It isn't that the voters will be intimidated
by the voting of a rank ballot. The problem is and will be that it's easy to
say,"This will require more study."
I certainly agree that Congress will try to stall as long as possible.
That's partially why I said that voters will have learned a lot about
voting methods by the time anything is done.
Congress will be"ready" to support voting system improvement only at such time
as the public is well aware of the need for it, to the extent that
congressmembers
will either support it or be out of politics. Whether or not it takes an
amendment
isn't crucial to this subject. Whether it does or doesn't, they'll support it
and
enact it only when the public wants it strongly enough to jeopardize the
re-election
of uncooperative congressmembers.
I agree that the voters will have to very much want voting reform before
Congress will act.
But,for one thing, the voters will understand that Approval is an
unquestionable, unqualified
advantage over Plurality long before they'd (if ever) understand that about
Kemmeny (or even
Condorcet).
And, as for Congress, Approval's simple transparent improvement won't leave
Congress the
wiggle-room of saying"This needs a lot more study, to ensure that it won't be
worse than
Plurality." I can assure you that they _will_ say that about Condorcet, and
very especially
about Kemmeny.
And so, even with public demand, Congress still would have an excuse to refuse
to support
Condorcet, and especially Kemmeny.
I have not claimed that the Condorcet-Kemeny is a likely choice for U.S.
Presidential general elections.
Lots of things will happen between now and then, so it's impossible to
know the details about what will be done.
Yet I am optimistic that a fairer method will get adopted eventually.
Your arguments are based on some optimistic and self-serving (as a
Kemmeny-advocate) assumptions.
See above. This issue has nothing to do with specifically which fair
voting method will be eventually adopted -- beyond my predicting that it
isn't likely to be Approval voting.
Richard continued:
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.
[endquote]
Approval's transparency, and the unquestionable obviousness that it is an
improvement,
and only an improvement, in comparison to Plurality is an enactment advantage
unique to Approval.
I assume you are saying that transparency is a big advantage. I don't
disagree with that.
Approval is the minimal change to Plurality that gets rid of its ridiculous
property
of forcing falsification (when it requires voters to bottom-rate all but one of
the candidates--especially
when one of those whom they must bottom-rate is their favorite).
Approval is the minimal change that would fix Plurality's ridiculousness.
Richard continues:
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.
[endquote]
Nonsense. Richard hasn't read the EM posts on this subject.
It doesn't take a mathematician to understand why Approval doesn't violate
1-person-1-vote
I don't disagree.
I do say that I'm amazed at how lots and lots of people have no clue
about anything mathematical, even numbers (and especially division and
percentage numbers).
As soon as someone mentions _anything_ numerical (even the number
"one"), those people mentally check out. And logical arguments are not
relevant to them.
I once heard a woman say "The sign says the cookies are two for a
dollar. Just roughly, about how much is that?" And she otherwise was an
intelligent person.
You somehow seem to think that I think that Approval violates
one-person-one-vote. I am not one of the people I am referring to here.
Perhaps it is relevant to again mention that I have a degree in Physics.
That means that I took lots of mathematics courses.
Now that I've supported my claim that Approval voting is unlikely to be
adopted for U.S. Presidential general elections, I hope to get back to
answering the mathematical questions from Jameson and Kristofer that I
haven't had time to reply to.
Richard Fobes
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