Places to discuss voting methods
-
I mainly post on this forum, but most stuff goes to silence these days. There is also the EM mailinglist, but discussions there are mainly about single-winner methods. Then there's the EndFPTP Reddit group. Is that the best place to be discussing proportional methods these days? I'd rather post on here really, but that place is more active. I'm not a member of Reddit, but I'm considering signing up.
-
@toby-pereira yes this place seems to have surges of activity punctuated by somewhat lengthy periods of silence. I actually think that may be indicative that we have generally come to some (not fully comprehensive) tacit agreements—or what Tideman would call a “pseudo-consensus”—through our past more active discussions, which may be a good thing. Or maybe it’s indicative that many of us have gotten even more disillusioned with the abysmal state of public education in the theory and politics of voting. Some of both probably.
I also think that most people who are members here have historically focused on single winner methods, but if my intuition is accurate (and I may be way off and significantly biased by my own trajectory of thought), it seems like we may have converged on a recognition that PR systems are probably just all around a more promising means of achieving a democratic system of adequate quality.
We have had ongoing parallel discussions about PR systems here, but it may not be as active as on other forums. Again, that may not be a bad thing, as often in this area I find that much active discussion is driven by individuals with pet ideas (I am guilty of this). I definitely encourage engagement across a variety of forums, hopefully there is cross-talk between members on this site and other sites like Reddit. But this site I think tends to lean toward the conservative/skeptical side (not as in “right wing” in terms of the politics, but rather moderate, hopefully my meaning is clear) of the voting theory conversation, which—again in my opinion—is probably because most of our community is quite fairly educated in the area.
In my opinion that’s a good thing, because we need both kinds of discussions going on—a combination of constructive skepticism/criticism and supportive engagement/dialogue. You may like to share links to interesting discussions you are having on other forums, that might engage more of our community.
-
Regrettably, all, or very nearly, all, of the PR discussion is about someone's new invention. New inventions aren't enactable. There are some excellent (open & closed) List-PR systems & allocation-rules. 2/3 of the world's countries are using PR, nearly all Party-List, With so many good methods & systems with literally a world of precedent, some of them should be proposed.
The Oregon legislature has ordered an "RCV" referendum for this November. It applies to all elections other than state legislature. So why not ask them to add a referendum for the simple, zero-cost implementable, Finnish Open-List PR for the legislature or one of its houses.
(...or an Approval referendum to be parallel & competitive with the "RCV" referendum...or an Approval proposal for the legislature.) -
Don't consider joining reddit EndFPTP.. It's a troll-playground. All the loud bullshit trolls that are found at typical controversial forums.
...& add to that the arbitrary irresponsible absolute power of the subreddits' admins, & it would be a complete waste of your time.
-
@michaelossipoff said in Places to discuss voting methods:
Regrettably, all, or very nearly, all, of the PR discussion is about someone's new invention. New inventions aren't enactable.
While I don't think all discussion should be about new methods, I think they are still useful to discuss. Over at EM, a lot of the discussion is about new Condorcet methods that reduce burial incentive while maintaining other desirable criteria, for example.
-
Yes, but the big winner, so far, in the burial-deterrence category, is RP(wv), which isn't a new-invention method, but, rather is a traditional, classical, immensely popular & high-prestige method.