Range Voting
Jan. 4th, 2007 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeThe folks advocating Range Voting contacted WSFS (actually, the WSFS webmaster, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."
I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.
WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.
sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.
WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.
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Re: Supermajority vote?
Date: 2007-01-23 05:46 am (UTC)Also, understand that utilities in these simulations were based both on randomness, AND on random positions on ISSUES. That is, take a plane (two-dimensional issue space) and put some dots on it to represent candidates, as well as lots of dots to represent voters of various stripes (one axis can be stance on abortion, and perhaps another can be position on taxes...the possibilities are endless, and you can use as many dimensions as you want). Now assign the utilities based on ideological difference (or "distance" in the graphical sense). What we find is that the results from using extremely realistic distributions of ideology, even based on real results of large-scale politics quizzes (with tens of thousands of participants) don't vary much from just picking random utilities. Hence your point has been fairly soundly refuted. But just to be on the safe side, these utility calculations were done with both random utilities, and utilities based on positions on various issues.
So your comment doesn't really make any sense upon closer inspection.
But I welcome any more articulate criticism you may have.