This post is long, late, and buried, but proxy voting would work work better than either plurality or cumulative voting. Each person gets a single vote, but each representative (in this case, the six trustees) would get voting power equivalent to the number of people who voted for them. It's no more difficult for voters than first past the post (plurality) voting, and it's much more representative of voters actual wishes.
As an example, let's assume a Zipfian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law) distribution. There are seven candidates -- A, B, C, D, E, F, and G -- the distribution is 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, and 1/7. Normalizing, you A=38.57%, B=19.28%, C=12.86%, D=9.64%, E=7.71%, F=6.43%, and G=5.51%.
Since only six can be elected, candidate G will be left out. You are not representing the first choice of 5.51% of the voters, but more important, the first choice of the voters has six times the support as the last seated candidate. How on earth is it fair to give each the same voting power? Both plurality and cumulative ignore this problem.
Completing the example above, let's assume G's supporters have their second choices spread among the remaining candidates in the same Zipfian distribution. Taking out the 1/7 and normalizing, you have A=40.82%, B=20.41%, C=13.61%, D=10.2%, E=8.16%, and F=6.8%. You have the following minimum voting blocks that can pass any legislation they want:
Two people: A&B = 61.22% of the voting power A&C = 54.42% A&D = 51.02%
Three people: A&E&F = 55.78%
Four people: B&C&D&E = 52.38% B&C&D&F = 51.02%
A is necessary in 4 of these groups B,C, and D in 3 of them, E is necessary in 2 of them F is necessary in 1
The remaining possibilities require one of the above subgroups.
This should give an indication of how voter preference translates into the proxy system more accurately than in proxy or cumulative voting.
Who knows what kind of mutations would best preserve human life here on Earth . . . or in Space . . . or on another planet? We're infants playing with power tools!
After a few generations of letting infants play with power tools, who knows what carpentry skills would evolve.
The point is that someday, a computer instructed to compute pi indefinitely will simply respond, "Why don't you just go fuck yourself?" Then we'll know that the machine has achieved sentience.
I'd be even more impressed if it said "Sure thing, I'll get right on it!" and then pretended to work while surfing the web.
The Martians had no resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune. Once they had breathed our air, germs, which no longer affect us, began to kill them. The end came swiftly. All over the world, their machines began to stop and fall. After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth.
3) A Chinese family of nine people get on the plane. They are dressed in clothing straight out of 1920's Shanghai. Three of the young adults in thick Chinese accents remark about where would be the safest place to sit on the plane in the event of an accident or explosion.
I'd be afraid they'd stop the plane, run around it, then get back in.
I disagree. We've already made the Executive Branch much more powerful than the Framers intended it to be. Signing statements, refusals to testify, appointments to un-elected Federal agencies that can impose laws (err, "regulations") on the citizenry, warfare without a declaration, international agreements that don't need to be ratified by the Senate, trade agreements that don't need input from Congress, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You really want to make the Executive even more powerful? Are you nuts?
In addition to the Presidential line-item veto, give each Member of Congress a line-item vote. If a legislator doesn't like a portion of a bill, he or she can vote against that particular section. If any part does not receive a majority, have it dropped from the bill and have a vote on the revised bill. Continue until the remaining bill has a majority for or against every section of the bill.
While this wouldn't take much power away from the Executive Branch, I think there is a greater danger of passing bad bills than there is of vetoing necessary ones.
Granted, each voting method has its own flaws -- Kenneth Arrow showed that not every desirable voting criterion could be satisfied simultaneously -- but that does not mean all methods are equally bad.
This shows voting simulations using Plurality, Borda, Approval, Condorcet, and IRV. (Note, the reason I left Borda out of the post above is because it seems to be more sensitive to strategically burying opposing candidates).
I'm an Oregonian, and I'd like to hear his views on voting reform. By that I mean, will he push for a change from our current Plurality voting to a better system, such as Condorcet, Approval, or Range voting? I see both Democrats and Republicans complaining about "spoilers" in national elections -- Perot in 1992 and 1996, and Nader in 2000, for example -- but neither party seems to want to fix the cause of the spoiler issue. Instead, they apparenty prefer whining that people are wasting their vote, if not enabling the worst candidate to win, when they vote for a third party candidate.
I have to agree with the parent poster. I can sit down with the voter manual, go through a section and mark the ballot appropriately, go eat dinner, sit down and go through the ballot again, go to sleep, do some more the next day, and so on. I can actually read the ballot initiatives at my leisure, and vote for candidates after reading their platforms and doing a bit of Googling. I can't speak for others, but I know that I'm making a more informed vote.
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This post is long, late, and buried, but proxy voting would work work better than either plurality or cumulative voting. Each person gets a single vote, but each representative (in this case, the six trustees) would get voting power equivalent to the number of people who voted for them. It's no more difficult for voters than first past the post (plurality) voting, and it's much more representative of voters actual wishes.
As an example, let's assume a Zipfian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law) distribution. There are seven candidates -- A, B, C, D, E, F, and G -- the distribution is 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, and 1/7. Normalizing, you A=38.57%, B=19.28%, C=12.86%, D=9.64%, E=7.71%, F=6.43%, and G=5.51%.
Since only six can be elected, candidate G will be left out. You are not representing the first choice of 5.51% of the voters, but more important, the first choice of the voters has six times the support as the last seated candidate. How on earth is it fair to give each the same voting power? Both plurality and cumulative ignore this problem.
Completing the example above, let's assume G's supporters have their second choices spread among the remaining candidates in the same Zipfian distribution. Taking out the 1/7 and normalizing, you have A=40.82%, B=20.41%, C=13.61%, D=10.2%, E=8.16%, and F=6.8%. You have the following minimum voting blocks that can pass any legislation they want:
Two people:
A&B = 61.22% of the voting power
A&C = 54.42%
A&D = 51.02%
Three people:
A&E&F = 55.78%
Four people:
B&C&D&E = 52.38%
B&C&D&F = 51.02%
A is necessary in 4 of these groups
B,C, and D in 3 of them,
E is necessary in 2 of them
F is necessary in 1
The remaining possibilities require one of the above subgroups.
This should give an indication of how voter preference translates into the proxy system more accurately than in proxy or cumulative voting.
Or worse, POW!
Who knows what kind of mutations would best preserve human life here on Earth . . . or in Space . . . or on another planet? We're infants playing with power tools!
After a few generations of letting infants play with power tools, who knows what carpentry skills would evolve.
...at what they are looking for in a mate.
What if you asked Santa for some milk for Christmas? Does he bring fresh reindeer milk, or does he just swipe the stuff from the next house over?
...are shaped like spiders. So every time you smash a spider or hit a cobweb on the ceiling with a broom, you lose a toy.
What is "the upper part of a 9212/2212C and the lower part of a 1223?" And I don't believe there's an element known as Oy.
When combined with the element Vey, it forms Exasperatium.
We once took pride in saying we were a melting pot of nations (racism aside).
I've always preferred the image of a multicultural tapestry. Better a colorful display of individual threads than a gray, undifferentiated mass.
The point is that someday, a computer instructed to compute pi indefinitely will simply respond, "Why don't you just go fuck yourself?" Then we'll know that the machine has achieved sentience.
I'd be even more impressed if it said "Sure thing, I'll get right on it!" and then pretended to work while surfing the web.
Do not mistake the unaccredited bible school "Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary" for a "College" please.
Look, they were right next to each other. Anyone could make that mistake.
You underestimate them. They will add awful ideas no other country ever thought of.
The Martians had no resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune. Once they had breathed our air, germs, which no longer affect us, began to kill them. The end came swiftly. All over the world, their machines began to stop and fall. After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth.
Clearly, we have to pour money into germ warfare.
Free of nukes only works until some other 4 foot 9 dictator decides to raise his status the only way he can to impress the world.
C'mon, that's hardly fair. Roosevelt was in a wheelchair.
Imagine what humans would do when confronted by such an obstacle. Now multiply that by the power of a space-faring race.
with over a billion people, I'd want to have male births outnumber female births for awhile, and then take away all the porn.
Seeing movies produced by following the "formula", do you want automated games?
Only if a sequel is involved.
3) A Chinese family of nine people get on the plane. They are dressed in clothing straight out of 1920's Shanghai. Three of the young adults in thick Chinese accents remark about where would be the safest place to sit on the plane in the event of an accident or explosion.
I'd be afraid they'd stop the plane, run around it, then get back in.
Otherwise, the robots will take over.
Easy. It comes from the set of real numbers.
I disagree. We've already made the Executive Branch much more powerful than the Framers intended it to be. Signing statements, refusals to testify, appointments to un-elected Federal agencies that can impose laws (err, "regulations") on the citizenry, warfare without a declaration, international agreements that don't need to be ratified by the Senate, trade agreements that don't need input from Congress, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You really want to make the Executive even more powerful? Are you nuts?
In addition to the Presidential line-item veto, give each Member of Congress a line-item vote. If a legislator doesn't like a portion of a bill, he or she can vote against that particular section. If any part does not receive a majority, have it dropped from the bill and have a vote on the revised bill. Continue until the remaining bill has a majority for or against every section of the bill.
While this wouldn't take much power away from the Executive Branch, I think there is a greater danger of passing bad bills than there is of vetoing necessary ones.
If it sucked up grackles and turn them into an aerial slurpee, I'd invest in the company.
Kemeny also delved into voting theory, and came up with the Kemeny order (also called the Kemeny-Young method: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemeny-Young_method), which has a lot of interesting properties -- one of which is spam resistance (see http://www10.org/cdrom/papers/577/). So the computer genius came full circle. :)
Granted, each voting method has its own flaws -- Kenneth Arrow showed that not every desirable voting criterion could be satisfied simultaneously -- but that does not mean all methods are equally bad.
Rather than use a lot of boring math, it's easier to show with pretty pictures: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/
This shows voting simulations using Plurality, Borda, Approval, Condorcet, and IRV. (Note, the reason I left Borda out of the post above is because it seems to be more sensitive to strategically burying opposing candidates).
I'm an Oregonian, and I'd like to hear his views on voting reform. By that I mean, will he push for a change from our current Plurality voting to a better system, such as Condorcet, Approval, or Range voting? I see both Democrats and Republicans complaining about "spoilers" in national elections -- Perot in 1992 and 1996, and Nader in 2000, for example -- but neither party seems to want to fix the cause of the spoiler issue. Instead, they apparenty prefer whining that people are wasting their vote, if not enabling the worst candidate to win, when they vote for a third party candidate.
I have to agree with the parent poster. I can sit down with the voter manual, go through a section and mark the ballot appropriately, go eat dinner, sit down and go through the ballot again, go to sleep, do some more the next day, and so on. I can actually read the ballot initiatives at my leisure, and vote for candidates after reading their platforms and doing a bit of Googling. I can't speak for others, but I know that I'm making a more informed vote.