The fact that you say that with a straight face shows that You Don't Get It.
And I say that you do not get it. I'm not arguing that people will necessarily understand why Range Voting is better. Clearly, even a lot of smart people here are taking their sweet time to come to understand it (it took me WEEKS of non-stop argument to get there, so I can relate). The case I'm arguing is that it's better. So your responses are mostly invalid.
Whether the voters have confidence in the election system has a huge amount to do whether something is best.
Nope. The point of a choice is to derive the maximum utility. When you buy a car, for instance, you consider which choice gives you the greatest net happiness, considering cost, performance, fuel economy, etc. You want the maximum utility possible. An election is just a group choice, so the best election method (so long as it is not so complex that the negative utility of using it over-rides the utility benefit of its results) is the one that gives people the greatest utility. Even if people don't have confidence that a system will work, it can still work. For instance, even if I have no confidence in the competence of aircraft engineers and technicians (thus I get scared to death when I fly), I always arrive safely and quickly. I get greater utility from flying than from driving, even if I don't feel confident that I'll make it there alive. The issue isn't whether I believe I will, but whether I will. Utility isn't a measure of how happy you think you'll be, but how happy you really end up.
They can do that already. Indeed, we encourage people not to vote lower preferences if they have no preference.
Wrong. That's impossible with IRV. If they leave preferences completely off their ballots, that is mathematically identical to ranking those options DEAD LAST. It is NOT the same as simply not affecting them one way or the other. With Range Voting, abstention truly is abstention - it doesn't affect that candidate's average at all. This option, while not really very strategic from an individual's point of view, reduces the harm done to society by voter ignorance, when voters decide to be honest and use it. And a lot of them DO.
On the Site Selection ballot (not the Hugos), there is even an explicit "No Preference" selection, and any choices numbered after No Preference are ignored.
Nope. There's no way you could possibly "ignore" them with IRV.
This page explains the harm caused by leaving candidates off an IRV ballot:
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Supermajority vote?
Date: 2007-01-24 06:32 am (UTC)And I say that you do not get it. I'm not arguing that people will necessarily understand why Range Voting is better. Clearly, even a lot of smart people here are taking their sweet time to come to understand it (it took me WEEKS of non-stop argument to get there, so I can relate). The case I'm arguing is that it's better. So your responses are mostly invalid.
Whether the voters have confidence in the election system has a huge amount to do whether something is best.
Nope. The point of a choice is to derive the maximum utility. When you buy a car, for instance, you consider which choice gives you the greatest net happiness, considering cost, performance, fuel economy, etc. You want the maximum utility possible. An election is just a group choice, so the best election method (so long as it is not so complex that the negative utility of using it over-rides the utility benefit of its results) is the one that gives people the greatest utility. Even if people don't have confidence that a system will work, it can still work. For instance, even if I have no confidence in the competence of aircraft engineers and technicians (thus I get scared to death when I fly), I always arrive safely and quickly. I get greater utility from flying than from driving, even if I don't feel confident that I'll make it there alive. The issue isn't whether I believe I will, but whether I will. Utility isn't a measure of how happy you think you'll be, but how happy you really end up.
They can do that already. Indeed, we encourage people not to vote lower preferences if they have no preference.
Wrong. That's impossible with IRV. If they leave preferences completely off their ballots, that is mathematically identical to ranking those options DEAD LAST. It is NOT the same as simply not affecting them one way or the other. With Range Voting, abstention truly is abstention - it doesn't affect that candidate's average at all. This option, while not really very strategic from an individual's point of view, reduces the harm done to society by voter ignorance, when voters decide to be honest and use it. And a lot of them DO.
On the Site Selection ballot (not the Hugos), there is even an explicit "No Preference" selection, and any choices numbered after No Preference are ignored.
Nope. There's no way you could possibly "ignore" them with IRV.
This page explains the harm caused by leaving candidates off an IRV ballot:
http://rangevoting.org/IRV3.html