Placeholder, sort of - 13 January 2008

[silveradept]

I’m back, I survived, it’s all good, I’m going to bed. Regular news service resumes tomorrow. Oh, and Doctor Football is still unbeaten.

Missing Marine found dead. Investigation underway, both on crime and on the lack of speed or response police seemed to be showing about the missing Marine.

In politics, choosing a voting system other than plurality would be an improvement to our democracy.

And the writing piece for tonight - 10 things Teenage Writers Should Know.

Comments

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Okay, I stopped reading as soon as the guy mentioned hot or not, but is the basic gist that he thinks we need to do the ranking thing like the way the coaches polls are done for college football? I read this part and it didn't make sense:


WP: Instant runoff voting has been used in San Francisco, Minneapolis, and they're phasing it in in the state of North Carolina. That's where you rank the candidates and if your first choice is someone who is not one of the front-runners, your vote is basically transferred to the more preferable of those two front-runners. Everyone gets to honestly say who they really like, but your vote also counts where it really needs to count—in the crucial matchup.


Okay, so say I can't decide between Obama and Clinton. I vote for both, but I rank Clinton 1 and Obama 2. But Obama is in the lead, so my vote goes to Obama and then doesn't that counteract the fact that I put Clinton above Obama? I mean, what if it's the Presidential election, and you vote the democrat candidate #1, and the republican #2? Then just because the republican has more votes, the republican gets your vote even though you wanted the democrat over them?

[silveradept]

Regarding ranking, no, that's a different method that he describes. What he's talking about is a straight-up ranking. Out of ten, what do you give X candidate? Ten, seven, two? Then the candidate with the highest average ranking across the voting populace is the winner. So if you're equally pleased with Clinton and Obama, rank them the same.

IRV, on the other sand works like this. Say the winning candidate needs seven votes to win by having the majority. There are three candidates, A, B, and C. The voters rank the three candidates according to their preference, #1, #2, #3.

So, counting everyone's first choice, it looks like this.

A: 3
B: 5
C: 5

So nobody wins, because nobody has enough votes. What IRV does is it eliminates candidate A, because he has the least first-place votes. Then, it checks to see which candidates were the second choice of all those who voted for A, and applies those votes. So now, it looks like this.

B: 7
C: 6

...and B wins the election, because now B has the 7 votes to win, based on those that ranked him as their first choice and those that ranked him as their second choice.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

But if you rank more than one candidate the same, how is that giving them a vote?

I understand the IRV, but I still don't understand how I can rank two candidates equal and consider that my vote. If you follow Robert's Rules, and you can't decide on a candidate for office, you're supposed to abstain from voting.

[silveradept]

You're not voting, in the first part, you're ranking. So if you feel equally well about two candidates, you rank them that way, and let someone else who does have an opinion between then tip the rankings one way or another.

With IRV, you're not ranking candidates equally, not as far as I know. You're voting for them. "I want Candidate A into office, but if I can't get Candidate A, I'd like Candidate C, and if not either of them, Candidate B, then Candidate X..." and so on down the list of candidates. You can't give your 1 to two candidates in IRV.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

okay, so then I don't like the first one if you're not actually electing someone to office. I could live with the IRV,and I think that might be a better way of doing things, but I also think it would take a long time to process either.

[silveradept]

You are electing someone in the first one, you're just allowing for the possibility that you'd be happy with either or many candidates. You're not going to rank everyone a 5, now are you? Your choice-hating Republicans can go down to one, and choice-positive candidates can get sevens and eights. Then, the nation's preferences pan out. Of course, adopting that voting system might mean we see a conservative dynasty for years upon end, but it would be an accurate polling of the American populace in a lot of ways.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

But what if you want to rank someone at zero because you don't want them elected at all?

[silveradept]

Then you rank them zero. This brings their average down.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Okay...I think I get it. Sort of.