Re: GRs, irrelevant amendments, and insincere voting

[Raul Miller <moth@magenta.com>]

On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 10:44:30PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> My thesis, as I unfortunately and apparently failed to make clear in the
> original post, is that, given that we view as desirable the practice of
> ranking one's ballot preferences sincerely, that there is a procedural
> mechanism for subverting that desirable property.

As I understand it, these mechanisms only work reliably when the people
doing the subverting have comprehensive information about who is voting
for what, and when the people being subverted have little or no access
to this kind of information.  And, even there, it's a matter of taking
advantage of a close vote -- even with complete omniscience, if there's
a clear enough of a majority, there's no way to manipulate the voting
system to hide that majority.

However, in what I remember from an earlier post, you seemed to be
talking about a significant group of participants dominating the vote
against a much larger group of non-participants.  But voting systems
can't be immune to that.

But neither of these correspond to what it seems like you're talking
about.

> I raise that only for the sake of being thorough, though.  That's not a
> practical fear, as long before an infinite number of votes are held ( :)
> ), the Project would rebel against it in some way.  Probably by amending
> the Constitution or abandoning the SRD temporarily or permanently while
> the system is reformed.

Perhaps you could be a bit more thorough and post the message id of
the message which presents the mechanism fully?  [Or just restate the
mechanism, in complete detail?]

> I hope the above helps.

I'm afraid not.  Maybe I missed a post.

Thanks,

-- 
Raul