Most elections aren’t big. Most elections are about questions like a random group electing their chairman. It’s a lot easier to convince a random group to use a different voting system than to change the way voting is done on a national election.
I think the most likely way to create change in the national way of voting is to first change the way smaller groups run their elections.
Your post doesn’t really analyses the desirable features of an electoral system and I think that’s a common failure mode for people who think theoretically about voting systems without any practical involvement into implementing them.
Running elections costs time and given that most groups need to elect their chairman every year minimizing the amount of time it takes to make that election is desirable.
The role of an election is not just about finding the optimal candidate but about establishing that the candidate was picked in a trustworthy way. This means that “our tech person runs a server and we trust the results of the voting software” is not a satisfactory strategy. Complex counting rules also make fraud easier.
This is a theory post. I post activism stuff elsewhere.
(Anybody reading this in Somerville, MA who’s interested in activism on this, get in touch with me via gmail. Obvious address, both names. Also goes for other parts of US, or for BC, less urgently.)
Most elections aren’t big. Most elections are about questions like a random group electing their chairman. It’s a lot easier to convince a random group to use a different voting system than to change the way voting is done on a national election.
I think the most likely way to create change in the national way of voting is to first change the way smaller groups run their elections.
Your post doesn’t really analyses the desirable features of an electoral system and I think that’s a common failure mode for people who think theoretically about voting systems without any practical involvement into implementing them.
Running elections costs time and given that most groups need to elect their chairman every year minimizing the amount of time it takes to make that election is desirable.
The role of an election is not just about finding the optimal candidate but about establishing that the candidate was picked in a trustworthy way. This means that “our tech person runs a server and we trust the results of the voting software” is not a satisfactory strategy. Complex counting rules also make fraud easier.
This is a theory post. I post activism stuff elsewhere.
(Anybody reading this in Somerville, MA who’s interested in activism on this, get in touch with me via gmail. Obvious address, both names. Also goes for other parts of US, or for BC, less urgently.)