Rhinocrisy

I’m coming back from my 2-year hiatus! Why? It’s election method time!

2006 is an election year for Texas governor. Rick Perry (the one with the hair) is the incumbent, polling 34%. There are three other major candidates on the ballot: Chris Bell (D), Carol Keeton Strayhorn (ex-Republican, decided to take her chances in the general rather than the primary), and Kinky Friedman (comedian). All 3 are polling about 20%.

It’s quite possible that none of the other 3 could beat Perry in a one-on-one race. If this is the case, then our current system comes to the same result as virtually any other decent method. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that any of the other 3 candidates would beat Perry in a one-on-one election. That means Perry could be elected despite 2/3 of the voters preferring anybody else to him.

In that circumstance, IRV would offer an improvement: Perry would not be elected. However, it wouldn’t be perfect: it’s still possible that the vast majority of the electorate would prefer one of the losing candidates to the one that won. For example, Strayhorn might end up with less first-place votes than Bell or Friedman because most Republicans vote for Perry, but be much preferred to either because most who voted for Perry prefer her to Bell or Friedman.

A far worse case for IRV, though, is if only one or two of the candidates can beat Perry. If Strayhorn got fewer first-place votes than Bell or Friedman, she’ll be knocked out immediately. But it might well be that she’s the only candidate among the 3 who can beat Perry head-to-head.

While this might seem like a strange what-if brought on by the special circumstances of a 4-way election, circumstances like these are latent in virtually every election we hold. After all, if John McCain had been running head-to-head against George Bush in the general election in 2000, he would have won a landslide. Under a sane voting system, he wouldn’t have been forced out of the race because a majority of a minority preferred another candidate.

Regular commentor Hibiscus recently started a bloogh of her/his own, and it is impressive.

It appears that Saddam Hussein’s attempt to steal the jobs of hard-working Americans went further than burying people alive.

“The Iraqi forces pounded our village in April 1987, forcing us to hide in nearby mountains which were later surrounded by the Iraqi army,” said the woman, the 14th complainer in the Anfal case.
“In the detention camp of Debis in Kirkuk, several masked soldiers sprayed us with unknown substance, which caused spreading diseases like whooping cough among children, and many of them died of the diseases later,” she said.
“Six months later we were released by the Iraqi army, only to find all family members disappeared for good,” she added.
A second witness who spoke anonymously told the court that rape was frequent in detention camps and many detainees died during their captivity, their bodies were eaten by dogs.

The guy was a trooper among despots, but he really shouldn’t have tried to challenge the masters.

Indiscriminate aerial bombardment
Chemical warfare
Disappearances
Routine rape in prison
Improper disposal of remains

Now I know this is a bit sophistic — you could go back into the history of any country and find a lot of horror, and I’m not sure that Teddy Roosevelt or George W. Bush are really worse than Saddam Hussein. What I’m trying to show is that the Iraqi leader’s problem may have been a failure to think as big as the Americans.

This is true even when it comes to deaths. In 22 years running Iraq, the most exaggerated estimate of the murders he oversaw is 1 million. By all accounts I’ve seen, private-sector murders were pretty much nonexistent during that period. In the three and a half years that the U.S. has nominally run the joint, we’re up to between 300,000 and 900,000!

Which just goes to show: If you want quality, you should stick to the brand you can trust.