Comments for blog.limedaley.com/post/random-stuff

Comment #1464

2008-01-20T11:37:03Z

True, but sometimes it's the only way one's vote counts. Stephan reminded me that we've been blessed to be living where party affiliations don't determine elections. Offices -- local, state, and federal -- will go to either Republicans or Democrats depending on the candidates. But growing up in Main Line Philadelphia I found that the outcome of the general election was usually determined by the Republican primary. Then when we lived in New York, and especially Massachusetts, it was the Democratic Party that had iron control.

As you can see, I don't believe in party allegiance -- how could I, my own party having betrayed me in so many areas? -- but in registering as one thinks most practical. That's why New Hampshire's rules sound attractive to me. I could not only freely declare myself Independent but could also vote in whichever primary I thought most important.

Comment #1463

2008-01-20T04:17:50Z

It strikes me that voting to select the person who is most likely to lose to the other party, while technically allowed within the system, certainly isn't how it is supposed to work.

Comment #1462

2008-01-19T11:05:47Z

If you're in FL, which I'm guessing from your post, and if it doesn't actually matter because of internal DNC bs, then you should vote for whichever candidate you like best without regard to strategy. This is because all you can do with your vote is send a message. If your primary actually counted, you should for the least evil person, unless they're all so bad to you that you just stay home.

If you are actually happy with plurality voting, I think you really ought to spend some time reading about voting methods on wikipedia. Check out their tennessee example. It shows how for example, an alternative which is the most hated among over 60% of the population can win with plurality voting.

Comment #1461

2008-01-19T07:00:33Z

It's hard for me to contribute well to the discussion because my primary voting experience is the Swiss one. Very rarely do we have votes with a single winner: most our executive bodies have multiple members. From what I hear it will change in Basel and we will vote for the "Stadtpräsident" in a popular vote - the city parliament just chose the "Stadtpräsident" for the last time. In this case I suspect we'll have a two-round runoff system, which we usually have in such situations. That said, I'm unsure of how much actual power is attached to the job, because the "Stadtpräsident" is chosen as primus inter pares of the five city council members. I think we have a general aversion to having a single guy at the top.

My US voting experience is a little more jaded: vote for whichever candidate you like in the presidential election, watch Virginia vote Republican yet again, and watch your electoral representative vote for someone you don't like (unless you happen to like the Republican candidate). If you vote in Virginia, you just laugh at all the media noise about overseas ballots. Winchester and Grundy win, anytime. Even worse for primaries: I don't get to vote at all. So right now, during primary time, I don't really care. I just complain. ;-)

Comment #1460

2008-01-19T03:48:06Z

You're right, I haven't studied alternative voting systems, mostly because I'm pretty happy with what we have now. (Note: the voting system, not the candidates nor the campaigning.) But I wonder if any of them would help with my current dilemma. In a few days I must vote in the Democratic presidential primary. Should I (1) vote for the candidate I think would be best (or least bad), or (2) vote for the candidate I think most likely to lose to the Republican nominee -- assuming the Republicans come up with someone I find less objectionable than any of the Democratic candidates, or (3) thumb my nose at the DNC for disenfranchising my state (they're still sore about 2000) and vote for someone who hasn't a chance anyway, or (4) give it up and move to New Hampshire, which can have an early primary without being stripped of its votes, and where I could vote in the primary of my choice without having to pretend to align myself with any particular party?

Comment #1459

2008-01-18T22:53:40Z

And I flat out don't approve of Kerry or Bush because they're both creeps.

Comment #1458

2008-01-18T22:51:46Z

I don't approve of your stance on scruffy beards :-P

Comment #1457

2008-01-18T21:49:37Z

I don't understand your sample ballot. Can you explain why you picked Peter and Noah, and not Bush, Jon or Kerry? (I want to know why I didn't get your vote after all...)

Comment #1456

2008-01-18T20:23:24Z

Or if you concede that approval voting would be better but you don't see it improving things enough to make any difference, I don't see how you can claim to *know* it won't.

Comment #1455

2008-01-18T20:17:35Z

I'm not sure you understand how approval voting works. there is no "highest" on an approval ballot. I also don't think you understand the strategy a rational voter would employ, namely to ask oneself 1) if the frontrunners are sufficiently different for you to have a preference, to pick one and 2) to vote for anyone else that you'd actually like in a positive way. And if you really don't want anyone listed at all, you can write Peter in and say you approve of him. You could also turn in an empty ballot, have it registered that you hate all the candidates, and have that actually mean something. Right now your ballot just gets tossed if you do that. I don't see how you can't think that would actually be an improvement both in terms of practical results and in terms of a voter's ability to 'send a message'.

Comment #1454

2008-01-18T12:14:14Z

I seriously doubt it. And I have great respect for Peter and would probably vote for him, too. I wouldn't vote for either Jon or Noah because I wouldn't wish that job on my family. (Sorry, Kelly.)

However, I do agree that the election process is terribly flawed, though by that I mean not the voting but the whole media sound bite thing, the fact that candidates apparently need to spend oceans of money doing nothing productive, the apparent need to appeal to the country's consumer instincts, and the drive to get everyone to vote with no equivalent attempt to get anyone to vote knowledgeably and intelligently. Really. I have a friend who works hard for his party and truly believes that everyone should be voting, including new-born babies and probably illegal immigrants. This is extreme, but symptomatic of the problem.

The "anyone but X" syndrome applies not only to standing leaders. Bush would still have been highest on my approval ballot simply because all the others in the field would have been a lot lower. Peter wasn't running.

Comment #1453

2008-01-18T03:08:33Z

Americans aren't unhappy with their consumer choices. Just their political ones. And omplaining about stuff is entirely different than saying you "don't approve" at all.

And I'm willing to trade virutally any congressperson or the president for Peter. So in 2004, my approval ballot would have been:

[X] Peter

[ ] Jon

[X] Noah

[ ] Bush

[ ] Kerry

I think Peter's approval rating would have been higher than Bush's is right now.

Comment #1452

2008-01-17T12:50:19Z

Not at all. What I'm saying is that our society is currently predisposed to being unhappy. Most of us have so little exposure to real hardship that our happiness threshold is impossibly high. Put us down for a year in North Korea -- or Kenya -- and we'll find ourselves thrilled with our government at its worst. (It may only take a month; I say a year because it sometimes takes living somewhere, rather than being a tourist, to reveal problems, and because I know someone who was invited to visit North Korea and came back thinking it's a wonderful country and all the stories of repression and famine are lies.)

I doubt the "supermajority" is really all that unhappy. If you ask me if I'm happy with President Bush (or Congress), I'm likely to start listing all the things I don't like about him, but that doesn't mean I'd like to trade him in for any of the other offerings. Or anyone else I know, for that matter.

What's more, even if all those people are genuinely unhappy with the current leadership, they're certainly not unhappy for the same reasons, so I'm not sure any change would get you the majority you're looking for.

So yes, I agree that getting half of Americans to say they're happy with the government is probably impossible. We're hard to satisfy, and we like to complain. What's more, the effect of dissatisfaction will always be multiplied, because unhappiness sells news stories as sex sells new cars.

Comment #1451

2008-01-17T09:27:36Z

:) :) :) :)

Comment #1450

2008-01-17T09:27:05Z

I disagree. First of all, right now, we have a supermajority of people unhappy with both the president and congress. Getting half of americans to be happy with either would be a big improvement.

Making the change to approval voting etc. has real statistical and theoretical reasons for producing objectively better outcomes.

If you really think that no voting system change(s) can make for a happy electorate, I guess that implies that you think that no voting system at all can make for a happy electorate. The next logical question is, why are you in favor of dictatorship, and when are you moving to North Korea?

Comment #1449

2008-01-16T12:17:28Z

I don't think any electoral "reform" would help with low approval ratings. (1) People like to complain, and the media like it when people complain. (2) This country is so diverse, making half of us happy will likely displease the other half. (3) We have little or no knowledge of history and less of economics, so what makes us happy now could very well result in unhappiness down the road. (4) We have so little understanding of the rest of the world that we can get a clear view of neither what needs to be changed nor of what we ought to appreciate.

Comment #1448

2008-01-16T08:25:33Z

I'll say that one really big waste of time is the "popular vote" movement. Both our republican president and our democrat congress have historically low approval and the answer is a change whose ultimate effect would be what exactly? The only thing I can typically see happening is that instead of having to focus on several states, you'd just have to focus on several cities. The parties have the polsters and resources to figure out who they can ignore either way.

If you want to whip out a bunch of theoretical arguments, I can point out that for example, the electoral college localizes electoral problems like "My precinct has a billion votes for candidate A". More realistically, any time the popular vote difference is X, any district with a greater difference than X would probably be challenged and in Y2K, that would have been a lot of places.

I just don't see how the popular vote would fix anything that would justify any excitement over it. The problem is that we're deciding which electable politician we hate the least instead of, for example, which candidates would be at least "okay" to elect.

Comment #1447

2008-01-16T06:59:32Z

Most of the rest of the country doesn't vote. I'd rather just keep this in mind for when I pick a restaurant among friends.

Comment #1446

2008-01-15T04:23:41Z

Well, now that all of the problems are solved, now you just need to convince the rest of the country...

Comment #1445

2008-01-14T21:11:12Z

I agree, Phil.

Comment #1444

2008-01-14T20:46:02Z

I would divide methods into acceptable / not acceptable. I'd place plurality and IRV into not acceptable. I'd place approval, range, condorcet, and possibly some funky runoff voting techniques into acceptable.

Comment #1443

2008-01-14T19:20:31Z

Because it's so hard to reform a political system, it's important not to let quibbling over which method is "best" divide the reformers and prevent any meaningful reform at all. I'd prefer to unite with a group that has a good chance of success implementing my 3rd or 4th favorite vote-counting method, rather than standing up for the "best" method and getting nowhere.

Comment #1442

2008-01-14T18:04:58Z

Yep, I understand that there are alternatives that might be better. But I think that keeping things simple is more important, especially for Florida voters :-P. Approval Voting has good usability performance and is the most easily adoptable both in terms of interface design and in terms of people's comfort level. If you look at the regret chart, you see that when people are voting strategically as is the case in the real world, there is apparently no difference between range and approval voting. Not sure I totally believe that but I can see why it would be close.

Do you have any opinion on whether you prefer Range Voting to Condorcet Methods or Runoff Methods strictly from a theoretical standpoint? The only method I don't like besides Plurality is Instant Runoff Voting. There are other runoff methods that are okay with me but not IRV. Eliminating the person with the fewest "most popular" votes is kinda dumb. I see it has bad performance when tested also.

Comment #1441

2008-01-14T14:35:53Z

Approval voting is a special case of Range Voting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting). In range voting, voters give each candidate a score (from 0 to 99, for example; 0 to 1 is approval voting), and the scores are totaled up. Approval voting might be preferable in practice just because it's so easy to understand, but range voting has a lot of advantages. It satisfies the monotonicity criterion, the favorite betrayal criterion, the participation criterion, the consistency criterion, independence of irrelevant alternatives, resolvability criterion, and reversal symmetry. (see the link above for details)

Comment #1440

2008-01-12T21:35:58Z

Approval Voting isn't ranking, it's checking. Think of it as a switch from a radio button (one person only) to checkboxes on a web form. This makes it simpler and quicker than ranking systems like runoff and condorcet voting both for the voter and for the vote counters. So I think it would be the easiest alternative to adopt.

If you read the research in voting methods, people differ on which method is the absolute best, but 3 generally agreed upon facts are that 1) "pick one" sucks a lot, 2) approval voting is the easiest alternative, and 3) approval voting does not perform significantly worse than alternatives.

Comment #1439

2008-01-12T12:55:08Z

It does seem like a ranking system would be good, and more accurate, but you are probably right, that the complexity of people knowing enough to rank people in an order might be hard, at least in the smaller elections - in Pittsburgh, we have a hard time figuring out who is going to be on the ballot when we show up. I suppose if we got the paper, we would be more informed, or at least more informed with whatever bias that particular paper has.

Definitely people had the "anybody but X" in 2004, but it seems like this election, at least so far, the X is less specific, that I have heard that statement made about most of the people who have a shot in getting elected. Hrm, haven't heard that about McCain though, that would make mom happy.

Comment #1438

2008-01-11T20:48:45Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

Plurality voting systems become 2 party systems.

Personally, I think we *have* to introduce some measure of non-plurality voting to the election process. There's a lot of options but I think the easiest one to implement would be approval voting aka "Check all the candidates who are okay with you" Some other voting methods might be even better but I think the simplicity of not having to rank your choices is more important for easy adoption.

I think there's a lot of "anybody but X" sentiment in voters minds, particularly in 2004 but clearly it doesn't get reflected in vote totals. There is presently virtually no cost associated with having a large portion of the voters absolutely hate you and I think there should be.

Comment #1437

2008-01-11T16:27:49Z

"Jesus Take the Wheel" is performed by Carrie Underwood, who won American Idol one season.

Comment #1436

2008-01-11T13:55:16Z

As to primaries, they were put in in the first part of the 20th century by party reformers who did not like candidates being chosen at conventions of party officials who were there only because they were party officials. This was the era of the "smoke filled room." As with most reforms, after a while the reforms need reforming.

As to why the US has only two parties - just luck. It seemed that whenever a new one came along (say Republicans in the 1850s) an old one died off (the Whigs in the 1850s).

Comment #1435

2008-01-11T13:15:17Z

I hear that with even just the fastpass you can avoid most of the lines. Even if you don't plan ahead, but walk up to the fastpass machine and it might schedule you immediately, even though there is an hour wait for everyone else.

Presumably, more people will figure out how to use it, and the immediate skipping of lines won't work any more. But, if it can schedule everything so it works with less waits, that would still be pretty useful.

Comment #1434

2008-01-11T13:02:33Z

At EPCOT there were sometimes days when we could get on several of the rides with no wait, because they are better engineered than the Magic Kingdom rides, and because we usually went at off-peak times. (Once, just once, we went during spring break, and even the phones had long lines.) That is the only way to see Disney. Another major reason why we didn't usually wait as long as other people was an experience-gained feel for which rides are busiest when, and the proper order in which to do them. (Used to be back to front at EPCOT, until Disney fouled things up by opening the back part later.) It sounds as if the programmer has taken this kind of experience-based decision-making to the nth degree.

"Back in the day" they didn't have FastPass, which probably makes a lot of difference if you know how to use it.

I can picture the guy with his printed schedule; it reminds me very much of Dad helping visitors make the most of the parks. If you followed him you could fit two or three days' worth of Disney Experience into one day, which even in our day saved a lot of cash.

Comment #1433

2008-01-11T07:17:31Z

Somehow I doubt that would work in Orlando. Even on non-peak days there are lines. A five minute line is as lucky as you can get normally. At least 'back in the day.'

Comment #1432

2008-01-11T03:34:54Z

To continue my collection of random things, this guy found a pretty nifty program, though you'd have to be an awfully dedicated rider to have written it in the first place:

http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/01/disneyland-opti.html

Comment #1431

2008-01-11T02:13:50Z

'Cletus Take the Reel' is a parody on 'Jesus Take the Wheel,' by a contemporary Christian singer. I've heard the song, but I'm not familiar with the artist . . . you can search for it . . . I much prefer Tim Hawkins' version.

Comment #1430

2008-01-11T00:00:03Z

Maybe not a bad idea. Then I could ignore the media without feeling guilty.

Comment #1429

2008-01-10T23:56:02Z

And we certainly wouldn't want to deprive our media... :)

Comment #1428

2008-01-10T23:11:27Z

Italy is always chaotic, it seems. I'm not sure the Swiss system would work in the US, even though we pretty much copied it from the US with a few alterations on the way. However, most countries seem to manage with a multi-party system and, if on election day the outcome isn't clear, a run-off. Parties internally select their candidates without overt media influence or reporting. But I suppose cutting primaries would leave the media with nothing but Britney Spears's sister to report on.

Comment #1427

2008-01-10T13:17:47Z

Hooray for use of the generic "he"! I thought I was the only one who still did that. And I use "duck" to mean "duck or drake," too. :)

My American History classes were worse than useless, and I was allowed to skip the required Government and Economics courses in order to take Advanced Placement physics. (Don't ask me how I pulled that off; supposedly it was a state requirement. Oops; perhaps my high school diploma isn't really valid!) So I hope someone who really knows will comment here. But my impression is that the primary system whittles down the number of candidates so it's less messy on the real Election Day. I have a friend who lived in Italy many years ago, and at least at that time the government was always in a mess, with all sorts of secret deals and compromises and nothing getting done, because there were so many candidates and parties and no one could ever get a clear majority. Granted, I have plenty of complaints about our politics! But I can also see how it could be much worse.

Not that one wants the government to be too efficient. I kind of like it when the party of the president is effectively opposed by Congress; less harm is done, because they must work together.

Comment #1426

2008-01-10T12:14:36Z

Janet's comment makes me think of Dave Barry's year in review, where he sums up most of December 2007 in this nugget:

"But the big story on the GOP side is former senator or governor of some state Mike (or possibly Bob) Huckabee, who surges ahead in the polls because (a) nobody knows anything about him, and (b) it's fun to say "Huckabee." Huckabee Huckabee Huckabee."

I'm puzzled anyway about the whole primary thing. Why do we need to pick candidates twice? Does anyone else do that?

I need to be honest and point out that someone else pointed out the significance of patting before I pointed it out to Janet. Unfortunately, I've forgotten who that was, and I doubt he would know that he's responsible for a minor revelation. (Generic "he" there.)

Comment #1425

2008-01-09T17:23:13Z

At German Bible study people were saying "coo coos" is universal for saying when you look at a baby. I said we say "peek-a-boo" and one guys said that sounds like a presidential candidate: Huckabee. I found that funny and cute.

I'm partial to that video about the hug. I hadn't realized how important "the pat" was until Stephan pointed it out. I use it all the time.

Comment #1424

2008-01-09T05:18:41Z

Yeah - I figured Cletus was a parody, and I guessed "take the wheel", and Heather came up with the correct "Jesus". We looked up the video isn't all that good - who knows why it won a Grammy award.

A guy in Hillsboro wrote into the Concord Monitor about the politicians not being dumb enough to exclude themselves when they made the law.

Comment #1423

2008-01-09T02:29:15Z

We know someone who has an "I love my geek" shirt like that. Two people, actually, and they married each other. Both are bona fide, Silicon Valley geeks, but as far as I could tell from the pictures, their wedding was quite normal.

We knew someone who "cut" her wedding cake with a chainsaw -- an inside joke. Funny how they class the Scottish wedding (guys in kilts) as geeky.

Tim Hawkins is pretty good. "Homeschool family" is definitely the best. "Cletus Take the Reel" lost me altogether; I'm guessing it's a parody of a song I don't know.

A do-not-call list including politicians (and not-for-profits as well) would be very nice, but what politician would ever vote for it? If there is one, I'd be tempted to vote for him.

Comment #1422

2008-01-09T00:11:39Z

I knew there were more things to add, but I forgot them when I posted the first time, so this post has been edited.