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• Some things are obvious (Score:2)

  by jdavidb (1361)

  Some things are now obvious to me about government procedures:

  • Every election should have a planned runoff. No candidate should be allowed to be elected to any office on only a plurality.
  • If the two final candidates in any election poll within 1% (or some threshold) of each other, the election should be declared a statistical tie and the law should specify a clear cut procedure for resolving the tie (legislature vote, temporary electoral college, court proceeding, or whatever). Unless the number of vote

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  J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
  • Re:Some things are obvious (Score:2)

    by pudge (1)

    I have no problem with plurality, as long as a majority chooses to accept a plurality. If that is what the people want, who am I to tell them they shouldn't do it? So I can't go along with "every election" and "no candidate."
    
    However, if it is a district of *mine*, that is a different story. In that case, I am conflicted. One nice thing about runoffs is that it helps third-party candidates, in that you might be more inclined to vote third party, as right now people might vote for Gore instead of Nader j
    • Re:Some things are obvious (Score:2)

      by jdavidb (1361)

      Well, when I said "should," I was assuming this was in a state/country/district where I/you have a vested interest in getting it right. Other governments can do whatever the people there want, and it's no skin off my back. I was just musing on what I'd do if I were writing a constitution (or whatever).

      Runoffs seem very fair to me. Seems like the Nader votes ought to go wherever the Nader voters wanted them, if he can't when. Maybe you'd enjoy reading about Condorcet's method and other interesting voti

      --
      J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
      • Re:Some things are obvious (Score:2)

        by pudge (1) on 2003.08.12 16:06 (#23045) Homepage Journal

        I disagree with your statement that it is not impossible to do a perfectly accurate count of an arbitrarily large number of votes.
        
        You can disagree all you like, but it is, in fact, not impossible. :-) It is easy to imagine a system where accurate counts are not only possible, but immediately tallied. Yes, software has bugs, but that doesn't mean it is impossible to write software that is provably accurate in its tallies.

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