On May 28, 2012, at 8:05 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
On 27.5.2012, at 22.37, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
You know, that's the Condorcetists' and IRVists' objection to
Approval.
The question is what happens when Approval doesn't let you vote
A>B>C. The
difference is that there is no division to minor and major
candidates. The
worst
Approval problems appear when there are three or more potential
winners.
The differences between the methods appear when there are more than
2 viable
candidates. It's for that situation that we want a better voting
system. The
assumption in all of this discussion is that there are more than 2
potential
winners.
There can be 2, or even 1, viable candidates - but our only concern is
that we don't, somehow, make this be more of a problem than it needs
to be.
What you call "Approval's problems" are only a nuisance. Sometimes
not even
that. That nuisance needs to be kept in perspective, in comparison to
Plurality's problems.
And Approval doesn't share Condorcet's favorite-burial incentive
problem.
And Condorcet shares Approval's C/D problem.
after the 1st Approval election, in which the non-Republocrat
parties
and candidates have somehow managed to make at least some people
aware
of their different platforms, policies and proposals, the count
results are going to show many more votes for non-Republocrats, now
that everyone, for the first time, has the freedom to rate anyone as
they themselves choose to, and no longer constrained by the
lesser-of-2-evils problem.
The first Approval elections in a former two-party system could go
really
well if
we assume that the third parties won't be potential winners yet.
In the first Approval election, that may very well be assumed by the
lesser-evil Democrat voter. So s/he'll approve the Democrat. But s/
he'll
additionally approve everyone whom s/he likes more. The resulting
count
result will therefore more accurately show who is liked and what is
wanted.
Always there can be such as a "lesser-evil Democrat" candidate who
must be voted for in defense against the greater-evil potential
winner. Additionally approving all liked more goes with this.
. What voters soon see is that, while liking these more, Approval
forces the voter to indicate equal liking for all voted for rather
than permitting the voter to indicate the difference in liking and,
hopefully, electing one of the better-liked candidates. This is what
leads many of us to want a better election method.
DWK
Therefore your assumption that the Republocrats are all that's
viable won't
hold up long in Approval. That mis-assumption can only be preserved
by means
of Plurality voting.
People want something better. Believing that only the Republocrats are
viable, people convince themselves that somehow the Republocrats
will be
what the voter wants them to be--because it's believed that they're
the only
game in town. The need to believe is amazingly strong. The suckers
will keep
coming back for more, when their Democrat tells them that he's in
favor of
"change", and that's he's dedicated to helping them. The suckers
need to
believe.
With Approval, it will immediately be apparent that people want more
than
what the Republocrats have proven to be. The "problem" that you
speak of, in
which people have the preferences Green>Democrat>Republican will
vanish when
it becomes obvious that he Republocrats aren't as popular as the
media have
been claiming. The Republican threat will no longer be taken
seriously, and
the idea of a need to support the nearly-identical Democrat, to
protect
from the Republican, will be seen as hilarious.
Don't Democrat and Republican candidates continually offer "change"?
:-) They promise those things because they know that the public want
those things. But the public will now notice that they don't offer
squat, in regards to those things.
This is a problem of all political systems, also when there are
multiple
parties.
The problem may be one step worse in a two-party system where these
two
parties are almost guaranteed to return back to power soon,
whatever they
do.
You catch on fast. The problem is that, since people believe that
only Dem
can beat Repub, they're going to vote for the Dem no matter what,
and the
Dems know that, and so they know that they don't have to be less
corrupt
than the Repubs. They don't even have to keep their own promises.
You should
have seen and heard Bill Clinton trying to keep from laughing, when
he told
us that he realized that he wouldn't be able to keep his middle-class
tax-break campaign promise.
We had a congressional candidate who emotionally spoke against
NAFTA, and
campaigned in an anti-NAFTA T-shirt. But when he won and got to
Washington,
he immediately became pro-NAFTA.
And no, that isn't a problem of all political systems. It's a
problem where
people believe that there is no alternative to "the two choices".
Mike Ossipoff
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