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Re: Math and the electoral college's virtue
Posted:
Nov 22, 2000 11:15 AM
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> I still have no idea what you mean by "random democracy".
> Whatever voting scheme you propose, one can produce a
> situation in which the results will be paradoxical.
OK, I explained in an earlier posting what I meant by it, maybe it's
disappeared from your news server by now? Anyway, here's the relevant
section:
I wrote:
> I came up with an interesting idea which I haven't really had much time to
> play with yet, the idea of "random democracy". Rather than choosing the
> president (or whatever) based on who has the most votes (be they electoral
> college or individual votes), you get everyone to vote, and then you
> randomly (uniformly) select an individual vote from all the votes cast and
> make the decision based solely on that. Statistically speaking it's
superior
> to the "maximum number of votes" principle, because everyone's vote is
> (statistically) of exactly equal value, whereas this isn't true in a
> traditional system (for example, voting for Nader effectively nullifies
your
> vote as far as choosing the president is concerned, although it does serve
> another purpose). Of course, there are problems with this system, but I
> think it's an interesting idea nonetheless.
You wrote:
> Let me first state what the essence of Arrow's thesis is.
Hey, no need to tell me, I've read his paper :)
> It is well known that all of the voting schemes fail,
> including whatever yours may be, if we could figure out
> what it is.
OK, but my point is not that I have a voting scheme which finds the "best"
action to take on the preferences of society. That (as Arrow showed) isn't
possible. Instead, I propose a fair voting system which is not guaranteed to
produce "best" results in any sense. However, that shouldn't be held against
it because NO voting system can produce "best" results. Given that you can't
achieve a "best" voting system, why not try for a fair one instead?
Dan Goodman
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