A Capuano story

[cos]

I posted a story about Mike Capuano in my own LJ earlier today. I hope you'll read it and pass it on before tomorrow's election.

Comments

[trtls.livejournal.com]

I'm already voting for him tomorrow, but thanks so much for helping solidify my choice!

[xthlcm.livejournal.com]

Thanks, great story! Even though I'm fine with Capuano's positions and experience I was thinking about voting for Khazei, mainly because I admire his ground-up organizing experience and think the Senate would benefit from his perspective. But honestly Khazei has very little chance, and I like Capuano enough that a strategic vote for him over Coakley doesn't feel like "settling" for a candidate. So yeah, thanks for tipping the balance a little more. :)

[cos]

Tangentially, don't you wish we had preference voting (like instant runoff), so you could vote for Khazei and Capuano instead of being forced into a strategic choice based on your best guess of how other people will vote?

There will be a signature campaign for IRV to get it on the Massachusetts 2012 ballot. Help out when the time comes!

[teele-sq.livejournal.com]

that sounds terrific.

IAWTC

[prog.livejournal.com]

DIdn't know that... will be on the lookout, thanks.

[mwsound.livejournal.com]

I just tweeted your story and the Capuano campaign retweeted it. Very positive and probably just solidified my vote. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Voting for Khazei too.

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

And I agree... Preference voting would be great. A nation that does not organize something as fundamental ad elections according to scientific principles is destined to fail, in my opinion.

Re: Voting for Khazei too.

[lbmango.livejournal.com]

well, to be fair, Arrow's theorem states that there is no voting system that has all of the properties that one thinks a voting system should have... (wikipedia it)

Re: Voting for Khazei too.

[cos]

While every voting system has at least some edge cases where it can produce results some people think don't make sense, the definition of what is "perfect" isn't clear cut anyway (I don't think all of those properties necessarily define perfection in a reasonable way) ... in practice, in actual elections with actual candidates and actual voters, all of the commonly suggested preference voting systems are far far superior to the "first past the post" system we have (and also superior to approval voting) by most measures, and where they differ from each other are in cases that a) rarely happen in real life, and b) reasonable people can disagree on what the right result should be given the votes cast.