After reading the title, my main objections to voting theory were:
The theory is already understood well enough, what is hard is convincing existing institutions to change.
Convincing existing institutions to change is really hard, so there’s not much point in advancing the theory
Though I do agree that public elections are a process by which huge amount of resources get allocated, in many of the world’s richest countries, so it’s an important problem.
You make some arguments against these two:
The debate among reform activists between various voting methods (IRV, approval, Condorcet, score, STAR, etc.; as well as the understanding of proportional representation) has progressed substantially (emphasis mine) in the 20 years that I’ve been a part of it, and I think it can progress further.
Can you point to an example of this? Something the understanding of which has improved in the last 20 years. Also, are activists and the academia one and the same? Is this improved understanding because new theory was developed, or because the activists started understanding theory that had already been developed in the academia.
Voting reform has happened before in various contexts, and it should be expected that sooner or later and somewhere or other it will happen again. Will it happen in the particular ways and places I’d like it to? There’s no way to be sure either way, but I’d say that the probability is certainly over 1%,
The key question is not whether it will happen somewhere with a probability of at least 1%, but rather whether you or the people you inspire can move the needle with probability 1 in a millionth (or less), in a place that’s sufficiently big (or even bigger). Are you thinking of influencing the US Gov in particular? That would certainly qualify for a big entity. What are the wins that the voting reform movement has done in the past few years? ( I suppose the #1 USA example is Fargo, in North Dakota, that passed approval voting )
(There’s probably a lot of people unhappy with voting in some way, so if you can convince them that your proposal is going to make their group more powerful, maybe it’s not so hard).
I am a board member of the Center for Election Science, which was behind the campaign in Fargo. They definitely deserve your support, and are a big part of the improvement I see over 20 years. 20 years ago, the debate was largely between IRV and Condorcet; though approval voting had been proposed, its theoretical grounding was still not complete. Now, the theory of cardinal voting is much better, and we’re beginning to seriously look at cardinal/ordinal hybrids such as STAR or 3-2-1. I could go on for pages about the intellectual history of this transition but I have to work on my thesis.
Are activists and academia one and the same? Sadly, not at all. That’s why I, an activist, am at Harvard doing a PhD in statistics.
Yes, my ultimate targets are the big ones: the federal governments of the USA, Canada, and the UK. Aside from the Fargo case you mentioned, I was also deeply involved in the BC referendum on proportional representation last year; though this failed, I think we laid some good groundwork for future similar attempts in Quebec, PEI, and eventually Ontario. There’s also some good reform energy in the US Pacific Northwest, with groups like equal.vote, Counted, and Sightline. I could go on, but you get the idea.
After reading the title, my main objections to voting theory were:
The theory is already understood well enough, what is hard is convincing existing institutions to change.
Convincing existing institutions to change is really hard, so there’s not much point in advancing the theory
Though I do agree that public elections are a process by which huge amount of resources get allocated, in many of the world’s richest countries, so it’s an important problem.
You make some arguments against these two:
Can you point to an example of this? Something the understanding of which has improved in the last 20 years. Also, are activists and the academia one and the same? Is this improved understanding because new theory was developed, or because the activists started understanding theory that had already been developed in the academia.
The key question is not whether it will happen somewhere with a probability of at least 1%, but rather whether you or the people you inspire can move the needle with probability 1 in a millionth (or less), in a place that’s sufficiently big (or even bigger). Are you thinking of influencing the US Gov in particular? That would certainly qualify for a big entity. What are the wins that the voting reform movement has done in the past few years? ( I suppose the #1 USA example is Fargo, in North Dakota, that passed approval voting )
(There’s probably a lot of people unhappy with voting in some way, so if you can convince them that your proposal is going to make their group more powerful, maybe it’s not so hard).
I am a board member of the Center for Election Science, which was behind the campaign in Fargo. They definitely deserve your support, and are a big part of the improvement I see over 20 years. 20 years ago, the debate was largely between IRV and Condorcet; though approval voting had been proposed, its theoretical grounding was still not complete. Now, the theory of cardinal voting is much better, and we’re beginning to seriously look at cardinal/ordinal hybrids such as STAR or 3-2-1. I could go on for pages about the intellectual history of this transition but I have to work on my thesis.
Are activists and academia one and the same? Sadly, not at all. That’s why I, an activist, am at Harvard doing a PhD in statistics.
Yes, my ultimate targets are the big ones: the federal governments of the USA, Canada, and the UK. Aside from the Fargo case you mentioned, I was also deeply involved in the BC referendum on proportional representation last year; though this failed, I think we laid some good groundwork for future similar attempts in Quebec, PEI, and eventually Ontario. There’s also some good reform energy in the US Pacific Northwest, with groups like equal.vote, Counted, and Sightline. I could go on, but you get the idea.