Open Letter: Why I, Kevin Kofler, am not rerunning for FESCo

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 11:09 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>> They aren't voted in. The range voting method does not vote people in
>> or out.. it determines who the majority of people are most likely to
>> 'live' with. Basically it tries to remove the emotional political ends
>> and find who the 'silent' majority want. How much it does that is
>> dependant on other factors but that is what it (and the Debian voting
>> system) aim for.
>
> I wonder how strong this effect really is. I think many of us are giving
> degenerate all-or-0 votes, I know I am.

>From the math, and the people I asked to look at it.. the all or
nothings round out the extremes so it is harder to push a candidate
that the majority would not find acceptable.

I am not a fan of range voting. I don't like the complexity but I will
agree that it looks for a way to remove extreme partisanship from
elections. It does not remove partisanship after an election, and I
think that it requires like all things a motivated electorate:
motivated to run and motivated to vote.

In any democracy it takes more than one person to make large changes
(one person on a board, etc). And it takes more than marches, flurries
of emails, and polls. It takes time and compromise to persuade others
and bring about any lasting change... and that change will not ever be
as radical as some would like it.

>From what I have studied of human history and psychology this seems to
be about how it always works. Groups grow more change averse over
time, and those that do not fit in must move to the frontiers to find
new places to work out their energy. Eventually though they too become
the status quo that some other group will fight against.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
“The core skill of innovators is error recovery, not failure avoidance.”
Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University.
"We have a strategic plan. It's called doing things.""
— Herb Kelleher, founder Southwest Airlines