http://talldarkandmysterious.ca Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:46:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 http://talldarkandmysterious.ca/2006/01/20/electoral-reform-or-in-which-the-author-extrapolates-wildly-from-an-extremely-small-and-biased-sample/ http://talldarkandmysterious.ca/2006/01/20/electoral-reform-or-in-which-the-author-extrapolates-wildly-from-an-extremely-small-and-biased-sample/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000 Moebius Strippe http://talldarkandmysterious.ca/?p=1032 On the agenda at work today: coordinate a meeting that as many as possible of two dozen-odd clients would be able to attend. Inane administrative duty? No: opportunity for field research into alternative voting systems!”Dear clients, I wrote, I’d like to hold a meeting with you during the first week of March. Could you please email me a list of times when you will be available during that week (eg, “Monday morning”, “Thursday afternoon”, etc)? If you have some times that are better than others, feel free to send that information as well (eg, “I am free Monday and Tuesday mornings, but the best times are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons”). I’m going to do my best to accommodate as many of you as possible, but I can’t guarantee anything.”And I got responses, some of which provided me with nice, STV-compliant rankings. But, oh, the others – for instance, the dozen that went something like this:” dear moebius stripper i am free tuesday mornings”Thank you for your quick response, I wrote back, But you’re a retired grandmother and like hell that’s the only time slot you have free Are there any other times you have available? I am trying to accommodate as many people as possible, and while I can’t guarantee that everyone will get their first choice, I will have a better chance of arranging a meeting that most people can attend if I have more options.” dear moebius stripper” yes there are other times i could come but tuesday mornings are the best, i do not want the meeting any other time.”Fully half of my clients did not want to provide me with their second choice because they were afraid that doing so would weaken their first choice vote. I’m wondering now how widespread this attitude is – does it account for a significant proportion of votes against electoral reform? If so, it’s both selfish and irrational, because we’re probably going to end up with a meeting date that hardly accommodates anyone.”Kind of like the government we’re going to end up with on Monday.

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