[OT] Voting systems [was Wrong ad on www.linux.org]

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> On Jul 2, 2004, at 12:13 PM, Ian Goldberg wrote:
> 
> > Simply, in each riding, you pick a candidate to win with probability
> > proportional to the number of votes he/she received.
> 
> That's rather clever and might even result in more people voting.
> (i.e. There's no sense of, "why bother, this riding is obviously a
> 2-horse race.")

Unfortunately, it leaves two problems:

 1.  It doesn't permit any way of reacting to a need for a recount;

 2.  It mandates having a _very_ good way to choose randomly.
     I have read _Seminumerical Algorithms_, which is a pretty
     canonical text on the matter; understanding that the method
     is good requires knowing mathematics that to the average Joe
     is pretty much majick.

> Of course, to save time and money, you could just randomly select one
> person from each riding as *THE* voter and he/she/it gets to name the
> representative.  It should be the same distribution.  :-)

Before anyone laughs _too_ hard, that is remarkably similar to the
impact of the "Electoral College" used to elect the US president.  The
way the president is elected is that each state votes for some number of
such representatives.

In the last election, it was argued (mostly by Democrats) that the
election was unfair due to the bias introduced by the E.C.

Reality should rear its ugly head...

... Florida could easily have gone either way, given a few thousand
votes shifting this way or that.  And that would shift the election one
way the other.

And reality was, nation-wide, that the result was incredibly near.  For
it to go one way or the other is entirely to be expected.  Whomever won
couldn't claim any "grand" victory; whomever lost certainly couldn't
claim that it was clear that they ought to have won.

It's much like the 49.something % versus 50.1% situation with the last
Quebec referendum.  It was probably best that "No" won, as they
represented a status-quo.  You can't legitimately claim a mandate to
create a new country when virtually half the population voted against
it.
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