Sir, I will get a crappy president if a plain majority of the voters prefer a crappy president, no matter what the voting method. Getting a crappy president has nothing to do with the matter.
Nor has making the voting method "fun" have anything to do with the matter. Making it comprehensible and gaining the trust of the voters does. If we have nothing better than your arguments to offer, we will never gain the trust of these particular set of voters with range voting.
You seem to be mistaking science fiction fans for the kinds of soulless automatons who would apply scientific principles to every area of their lives. Convention running is not a science, but a combination of science and art. We must often balance what is theoretically most preferable with what is practically feasible to do, with what people want, and what they find easiest to do and to understand. That was the first lesson taught me when I went to work for a political campaign, and it applies just as well here. The theoretical, and if present the quite marginal, greater utility of range voting does not overcome these other factors, and it most emphatically does not overcome practical concerns about its utility.
This is especially true if, as you are saying, range voting is not perfect. And my point that you are calling "straw man" is not that you literally said it was perfect, it's that you are talking as if you think it is perfect.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Supermajority vote?
Date: 2007-01-24 04:24 am (UTC)Nor has making the voting method "fun" have anything to do with the matter. Making it comprehensible and gaining the trust of the voters does. If we have nothing better than your arguments to offer, we will never gain the trust of these particular set of voters with range voting.
You seem to be mistaking science fiction fans for the kinds of soulless automatons who would apply scientific principles to every area of their lives. Convention running is not a science, but a combination of science and art. We must often balance what is theoretically most preferable with what is practically feasible to do, with what people want, and what they find easiest to do and to understand. That was the first lesson taught me when I went to work for a political campaign, and it applies just as well here. The theoretical, and if present the quite marginal, greater utility of range voting does not overcome these other factors, and it most emphatically does not overcome practical concerns about its utility.
This is especially true if, as you are saying, range voting is not perfect. And my point that you are calling "straw man" is not that you literally said it was perfect, it's that you are talking as if you think it is perfect.