Warren D. Smith suggested you check out this range voting pr

Warren D. Smith suggested you check out this range voting procedure
http://RangeVoting.org  <-- add your endorsement (by clicking
"endorse" as 1st step)

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 7:48:55 AM
 

I've looked at range voting

http://rangevoting.org/

I've reviewed quickly range voting.  I am not 100% certain that strategic voting should be totally emliminated.

I wil as Warren Smith to explain why it is absolute evil.

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 7:51:57 AM
 

Warren had written a critique of the Klarreich piece-here-

The Klarreich piece you read, I had also read, and posted a critique of
it here:
http://www.rangevoting.org/BackAtKlarreich.html

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 7:53:28 AM
 

voting methods

This is a vital issue. If the American people are to regain control of the goverment in an appropriate way, electoral reform is essential. Recent events show clearly that a small minority can force its will on the majority with disastrous consequences.

Whatever system is proposed it is essential to ensure that minor parties are given more power. Proportional representation is one way to do this. The advantage of having some small parties represented is that if the ruling party tries anything that is not in the interests of the nation the smaller parties can side with the opposition party and block it. It leads to cooler heads and sounder policies.

by gravity32 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 174 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 10:12:59 PM
 

We need to start with constitutional reform at national leve

I think what you have stated is accurate:

"This is a vital issue. If the American people are to regain control of the goverment in an appropriate way, electoral reform is essential. Recent events show clearly that a small minority can force its will on the majority with disastrous consequences."

The frustrating matter is that this is tied into the one-man-one vote plurality system virtually tied in with our constitution when we are talking about electoral reform.

Without our havining changed/amended the constitution and just hoping a third party candidate will shake up the system, we have been getting nowhere for decades. In short, we need constitutional reform ASAP.

This is why I adocated the formation of a party called CPR  (Constitutional Party of Reform) as an umbrella coalition to all candidates and voters who want to stop talking about reform and see it done in their lifetimes.

Kevin Stoda, first member of CPR, and candidate for US Senate in Kansas

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 11:01:19 PM
 

what has IRV achieved in the United States?

San Francisco has had IRV since 2004. Can you point to how or if it has improved politics or government there?

The media reports record low turnout for the most recent election, a 4 page ballot with 1 page for the mayoral contest (and his dozen or so challengers, none considered to have any chance at all), and another page for the Sheriff's contest (2 people running), and the DA contest (1 candidate).

Voter registration is down too, compared to previous years.

We have a busy electorate, many who do not see local politics as being engaging enough or understandable enough to participate.  The hard core political folks turn out for the municipal races, and especially if there are hot issues like over development of the city, or education etc.

I have seen a recent traditional  runoff election that had a far higher turnout than the regular election preceding it. In this election, the incumbent had trailed her opposition by 12 ballots, but in the runoff she beat him by several hundred, winning about 60% of the ballots cast on election day.

So perhaps we know that we want more, but perhaps we are not looking at the solution that might improve things.

Perhaps it is due to the fact that many people are either too busy to pay attention, or they get their news and information from the MSM.

Just a thought.

by ncvoter (16 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 107 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 10:14:35 PM
 

anyone still for IRV

I imagine we need to find out, as you have asked, whether any positive things have come out of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, I'd like to encourage you and other readers to add your comment as to which other types of run-off elections U.S. citizens in America and aboad have had experience with.

I feel that the system in SF is still a bit new and  confusing to voters, but I imagine if people and more potential candidates are involved in the future, things might improve.

However, at face value the system is so foreign to U.S. average perception of how votes are cast that a learning curve is lon in coming on the IRV model.

I hope Americans living in or from Australia, Ireland and other lands weigh in. (I lstill ike the German model because half of it is plurality--which Americans understand--and half is more representative by percentage of vote being represented fairly equally.  The dual system is easier to convert to if we change the constitution to not define everything in terms of one-man, one vote.)

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 11:09:32 PM
 

Vote for Someone Else

I am against Instant runoff unless there is also an option to vote for someone else.

Part of Citizen Amendment 7 – Elected and Appointed Officials

All elected offices (Federal and State) shall have a vote for “Someone Else”. If someone else gets the most votes, than the other candidates will be eliminated and a new election will be held with other candidates. The State procedures for replacing a Congressperson will be followed if a new election cannot be held before the services of the vacant office are required. If necessary, a temporary President and Vice-President shall be selected by the various States using the original Amendment XII of the Constitution.

From Comments that I have received, Citizen Amendment 7 will need to clarify that Exit Polling will be barred only for declaring winners before all polls close. Another point that has been made is the Electoral College. Some definitely want to get rid of it. I am opposed to its elimination, since in close elections the fiasco in Florida would engulf the entire United States. This would make many happy Lawyers and many angry voters. If all States were to adopt the electors voting by winners of each Congressional District, that would probably minimum the occurrence of another Florida fiasco.

Get your FREE copy of the Citizen Amendments at www.citizenamendments.org

Also Checkout the National Initiative for Democracy and then vote on it. It will give the people the right to a National Initiative.

http://ni4d.us/

by Anton Grambihler (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 297 comments) on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 1:07:29 AM
 

Tony. please go back and reintroduce the citizens amendment

Tony,

It isn't clear that you are following the same discussion or original article when you begin by talking about the electoral college--I don't think any of the discussion above or original article or in any of the discussion. (Which thread were you referring to?  Maybe I misunderstood--but that is why I ask you to clarify again from point A to point B.  Thanks.)

I think you have a lot of good ideas.  Could you just go back up to either thread or article and tell us where you started the commentary and also please tell us more about the citizen amendment movement.???

Thanks. 

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 11:51:30 AM
 

Citizen Amendments

The Citizen Amendments are amendments that I wrote in hopes that the Federal Government will once again represent the people. I send them to all the All State Governors, All State Legislatures, All Members of Congress, and the President. I received very little response back.

The purpose of my comment was to address: The Current system and the proposed voting methods do not allow the voters to eliminate all the candidates. This is necessary since the political parties choose candidates to meet their desires and not the desires of the people. This is especially true when a candidate has no one is running against them and it is someone that only the party wants.

by Anton Grambihler (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 297 comments) on Saturday, November 24, 2007 at 3:02:49 PM
 

Good, How can we join?

As you know, we are all concerned about the issue of getting the system amnded and changed.  Do you have another weblink--that clarifies or shows the way to getting good amendments implemented?

More importantly, we need to stop stallling as a nation, and change it quickly.  In order of preference, which amendments need to be undertaken and in what order? 

Do you suggest any particular line of strategy to follow?

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Saturday, November 24, 2007 at 10:32:23 PM
 

Citizen Amendments

The Citizen Amendments is my organization for expressing my views and hopefully provide others with some food for thought.

I think that the best approach will be to get the National Initiative for Democracy approved: http://ni4d.us/. This was started by Mike Gravel. I am promoting it with a yard sign and trunk stickers on my car. I had them made up at a local sign shop.

by Anton Grambihler (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 297 comments) on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 4:38:58 PM
 

Range Voting & reply to Kevin's queries

Q[Kevin]: oK, I have reviewed the range voting procedure. It has more salience than any other form--but how do we get around the need of depending on computers to calculate scores.

A. range voting is essentially just addition. You can do it with
computers, or you can do it
without computers. Interestingly, the old-style voting machines
(e.g. mechanical levers, etc)
which have no computers and are designed for plurality voting, ALSO can handle
range voting. I repeat. Every voting machine, computerized or not, that
can do plurality voting, can also be used to do range voting, without
any modification,
and without any reprogramming. Mind you, the result may or may not be
especially user-friendly,
but it always works.

The reason is a mathematical transformation allows us to regard any
range voting election
as a collection of plurality "elections"; the two views are
equivalent. Explained
http://www.rangevoting.org/VMSumm.html
and pages linked from there.

This makes range voting easy+painless to adopt, unlike, say, instant
runoff which requires
totally new machines and/or software.

A. Well, that was not exactly comprehensible English, but I'll try to answer. :)
"Strategic voting" arises because, in some voting systems in some
election-situations,
if you vote "honestly" that is "strategically foolish" since you would
be more likely
to get an election result that is better (in your view) by voting "dishonestly."

So voters get the choice of being a fool or being a liar. Not good.

For example, with the present plurality voting system, voting Nader,
even if that was your
honestly-felt top choice, was strategically foolish in 2000.
Nader in 2000 was a "spoiler" meaning that voters who voted Nader could cause
BOTH Nader AND their second choice to lose.
2000 also was an instance of "favorite betrayal" where a voter, by
voting her true-favorite top,
was being strategically foolish.

Range voting NEVER, under any circumstances, exhibits
favorite-betrayal. That is,
with range voting, it is never, under any circumstances, strategically foolish
to vote your true-favorite top. That is an example of a way in which
range-voting is
"strategy-resistant."

Range voting also never, under any circumstances, exhibits "spoilers."
That is, voting
X top, can never cause both X and your second-favorite candidate, to
both lose, as opposed
to if you'd voted some way with X non-top, you could have caused one
of your favorite-two to win.
That is another example of a way in which range-voting is
"strategy-resistant."

In contrast, with instant runoff voting, there are spoilers, and
favorite-betrayal scenarios are common.
Also, with Borda and Condorcet, again, there are both spoiler and
favorite-betrayal scenarios.
That is an example of two ways in which range voting is superior to
IRV, Borda, and Condorcet.

To see some specific examples of IRV spoiler and favorite-betrayal and
other nasty misbehaviors, see
http://rangevoting.org/CoreSupp.html
http://rangevoting.org/Ireland1990.html
http://rangevoting.org/Peru06Exec.html
http://rangevoting.org/ClayIrv2.html
http://rangevoting.org/IRVpartic.html
http://rangevoting.org/IRVcs.html
http://rangevoting.org/IRV1519.html
http://rangevoting.org/IrvRevFail.html
etc.

This all is not to say that range voting is completely immune to
strategic voting.
It isn't. However NO VOTING SYSTEM exists, or can exist, which is immune
to strategic voting. This is an imprecise statement of the famous
"Gibbard-Satterthwaite
theorem." See
http://www.rangevoting.org/GibbSat.html

(Range voting actually partially evades this impossibility theorem!)

In view of this theorem, we can only ask for voting systems to be
comparatively better or worse
about strategic voting. Perfection is not possible.
Range voting is better than Borda, IRV, and Condorcet in the senses
we've already discussed
1. no favorite-betrayal
2. no spoilers
and it also is better than some or all of these in the senses that
3. range has no "DH3 pathology" (a serious strategic-voting induced
problem suffered by
Condorcet voting methods, see http://www.rangevoting.org/DH3Summ.html )
4. if every range voter "strategically exaggerates" then range reduces
to "approval voting" which still behaves quite well
5. studies of real humans indicate only about 25% of voters actually
do range vote in approval-style,
the rest are honest to at least some degree, which causes range voting
to do better than approval voting
in practice
6. with strategic voters (under reasonable assumptions) range voting
will elect a "Condorcet winner" whenever one exists. In this sense
range voting is actually SUPERIOR to "Condorcet methods" at their
own game, because they can fail to elect Condorcet winners if the
voters are strategic. Explained here
http://www.rangevoting.org/AppCW.html
This superiority has in fact been confirmed in computer simulations.

At present, no comparable package of
'good behavior despite voter strategy" theorems exists for any seriously-proposed voting method beside range voting.

by wds (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments) on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 12:29:00 PM
 

Could you clarify why you think San Francisco's range voting

I like it that you have clarified (below) that range voting doesn't get us 100% from strategic voting. 

I had recognized that judges and writing exam teachers (like myself) need to make judgements and we try to error on the side of the best choice and not the bad choices. However, we in triple or quintuple scoring systems there will be some degree of taking the point scale to the margins within a point scale.

Could you clarify why you think San Francisco's range voting is not encouraging increased voter participation as one writer above noted???

(Range voting actually partially evades this impossibility theorem!)
In view of this theorem, we can only ask for voting systems to be
comparatively better or worse
about strategic voting. Perfection is not possible.
Range voting is better than Borda, IRV, and Condorcet in the senses
we've already discussed
1. no favorite-betrayal
2. no spoilers
and it also is better than some or all of these in the senses that
3. range has no "DH3 pathology" (a serious strategic-voting induced
problem suffered by
Condorcet voting methods, see

by ALONE (145 articles, 1 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 318 comments) on Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 2:24:38 PM