2012/6/10 Juho Laatu <[email protected]> > It is easy to fill the ballot in VPR. It is one step more difficult to > check the preferences of the candidates and decide whom to vote. If one > goes one step further in this simplification path, one might end at tree > voting. We could have a candidate that belongs to the free rifle group of > the green group of the socialist party. That's close to open lists but > allows voters to clearly position themselves to the level of a full binary > tree, provides proportionality also within the parties, allows voters to > see easily what each candidate intends to stand for, and is quite strategy > free. Voters may vote a green socialist or a socialist green, depending on > which criterion is more important to them. One can say that trees are > policy oriented (candidates rank themes) while VPR is person oriented > (candidates rank candidates). >
Trees show promise for eliminating voting paradoxes by limiting voter freedom. However, you'd have to actually develop a system for building the trees. Just assuming that they exist doesn't cut it; that hides hairy strategy and coordination problems for the candidates, factions, and parties. Also, the way trees work is by privileging certain dimensions of a candidate over others. One set of dimensions which is almost sure to get short shrift is quality – that is, intelligence, honesty, hard work, you name it. In other words, I'd be interested in reading about a system built from the ground up around trees, but I don't think it's a good idea to vaguely speculate that VPR would be even more perfect if we just sprinkled magic tree dust on it. Jameson
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