This post does a decent job at describing how plurality (and single-member districts) makes political problems more intractable than they look. However, it doesn’t describe some of the more pathological failure modes of these voting systems (hint: was Bush or Gore closer to the median? How about Clinton or Bush Sr? What did those elections have in common?). Note that as with many strategic situations, pathology doesn’t have to actually manifest as in the examples above in order to have a substantial effect.
Because it fails to mention these things, the post does a disappointingly poor job at discussing voting systems in general. It doesn’t even touch on other voting system proposals and their possible effects on collective rationality; nor the theorems which put limits on those effects.
I tend to geek out on these matters. I’ve even accumulated some “expert” credentials: I’m on the board of directors of the Center for Election Science, as well as being currently engaged in conducting a behavioral study of motivated human strategy under 8 different voting systems. I have been mulling whether to write a post on this for Less Wrong. The success of this post makes me more likely to do so. Upvotes on this comment would too. Responses to this comment mentioning recent donations to CES of $60 or more would make it certain that I’d do so.
(Obviously, you could figure out my real name from the above info; that’s fine, but please don’t post it here.)
This post does a decent job at describing how plurality (and single-member districts) makes political problems more intractable than they look. However, it doesn’t describe some of the more pathological failure modes of these voting systems (hint: was Bush or Gore closer to the median? How about Clinton or Bush Sr? What did those elections have in common?). Note that as with many strategic situations, pathology doesn’t have to actually manifest as in the examples above in order to have a substantial effect.
Because it fails to mention these things, the post does a disappointingly poor job at discussing voting systems in general. It doesn’t even touch on other voting system proposals and their possible effects on collective rationality; nor the theorems which put limits on those effects.
I tend to geek out on these matters. I’ve even accumulated some “expert” credentials: I’m on the board of directors of the Center for Election Science, as well as being currently engaged in conducting a behavioral study of motivated human strategy under 8 different voting systems. I have been mulling whether to write a post on this for Less Wrong. The success of this post makes me more likely to do so. Upvotes on this comment would too. Responses to this comment mentioning recent donations to CES of $60 or more would make it certain that I’d do so.
(Obviously, you could figure out my real name from the above info; that’s fine, but please don’t post it here.)