Letters to the Editor
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Hey, let's start now!
Barak Obama: Hot!
John McCain: Not!
To see how the flip-flops in figure skating ranking thing went, see http://www.frogsonice.com/skateweb/obo/score-tech.shtml
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Bush v Constitution v Gore.
Electoral college system was created in 1787 to
1) avoid telling states how to run their elections
2) not to reward states that lie about the size of their popular vote, and
3) allowed states a good reason to continue to denying the vote to non-land owners, slaves, women and the local natives... (1869 Wyoming gave ladies the vote to increase their electoral numbers... PR for statehood? .... or was it to get chicks to move a forsaken wind-swept wilderness?)
Forward to December 2000, U.S. Supreme Court forgot their "Strict Constructionist Pledge" and when into "Activist-Judge" mode (OK, just 5 of 9) when it ignore the Constitution:
1) That gives states the sole authority over conducting elections.
2) US Congress will resolve ties and disputes.
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Nadar?
Nadar was the pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (April 6, 1820 – March 21, 1910), a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist.
He never caused anyone to lose an election, to my knowledge.
Those who wish to blame Ralph NADER for Al Gore's loss of Florida ignore the fact that the "winner"'s brother was governor of the state, a state with a well known reputation for its cornucopia of fraudulent behavior. I'm not willing to let them what stole the election off the hook because they found a fig leaf named Ralph. I still consider the election to have been 100% stolen.
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No thanks, unless...
...unless the votes of fair-minded, reasonable citizens are going to carry more weight than those of the fanatics on both sides of the political fe...wait, that would be unconstitutional.
I can easily see a large contingent of voters behaving exactly as Asher and Treerol described. And if we're expected to score the candidates as you outlined, Farhad, then A) that sounds rather more like IRV and B) I vaguely recall a couple of instances of people having trouble with voting instructions. Comparatively simple voting instructions.
Another issue: How would candidates be presented to the voter if this system were used in an election? Regardless of layout on a page or screen, there will be an Order. And voting of this type -- whether in quick succession like HotOrNot, or with a bunch of info available for each, like Amazon ratings -- the score you give one candidate will likely be tainted by the score you gave the candidate immediately prior. "I just gave McCain a 4, and now here's Romney. I would've given him a 4, but I like him less than McCain, so I guess he should be a 3. Wait, here's Huckabee. Erase, erase, erase, *phooo*." At which point you say screw it, let's scrap candidate-voting entirely and do a LiveJournal-style "Which [historical figure, LotR character, Fraggle] Are You?" quiz, leaving it to the programmers to match up our positions on issues with the available My Little Ponies. Err, candidates.
I'd really like to see IRV used on a larger scale, perhaps in state-wide elections. Not that it's proof against insincere voting and shady strategizing, but likely better than what we've got now, and much more straightforward and comprehensible than many of the other options.
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Figure Skating Controversies Explained
Someone above asked how Kwan changed the standing above her by finishing fourth. I'm not entirely certain what happened at that particular event, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with the rather arcane method used to judge figure skating. In the old 6.0 scale, each judge individually evaluates each performer. Television broadcasters typically average these scores into a single score, which gives the mistaken impression that it is this combined average that determines the winner. This is not the case. Each judge ranks all the performers and these ordinal ranks, NOT the actual scores, determine placement. So, if a small number of judges rank a performance MUCH lower than the other judges, that performer can have a higher "score" but a lower ordinal rank. After Kwan performed, what I suspect happened was that Kwan was ranked higher by several judges than either Bobek or Bonaly (i.e. 2nd) and these same judges placed Bobek 4th and Bonaly 3rd.
That's why this isn't a great example of what Manjoo is getting at. The controversy is based on a poor understanding of the judging method, and nothing else. The winner is going to be the person who gets the highest individual scores from the most individual judges (the most first place finishes) not necessarily the person with the highest average score. The point of this system is actually to make it FAIRER, since some judges grade ALL performers higher than others. So, if a majority of judges think one performance is superior then it will place higher even if most of those judges give more conservative base scores to all performers.
Yes, Bobek had a higher average, but more judges gave Bonaly the second place rank and therefore she finished second. And she deserved that position because she had EARNED MORE VOTES, thus making her silver medal about as democratic as it could be.
[Of course -- this whole system has now changed to a cumulative score system that is unwieldy and even less possible to understand for home viewers, all in the name of "fairness." Even the competitors rarely have an idea of how well they will do and often must sit in befuddled silence while they try to figure out if they won or not.]
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A Lesson from the Competition
Salon's subliminal support of Obama has never been more evident than in the past two days. Yesterday's email promo photos, with Obama looking confident and presidential while Clinton looked strikingly like a harpy (in one of the most unflattering images I've seen to date), were a low water mark. Today, the headline reads, "Hot or not?" and Obama's image is featured alone -- clearly Salon wants me to slip him into the "hot" slot. It strikes me as Fox News journalism at its finest. Bravo. I didn't realize you had it in you.
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Who's HOT...
Barack Obama: Hot when dressed up. Funny ears.
Hillary Clinton: Hot back in the day when she was a foxy hippie. Still kinda hot as a corporate MILF when she switched to pant-suits.
John Edwards: Pretty-boy hot, but not hot faking a working-class look in jeans and pulled-up sleeves.
Dennis Kucinich: Not, but his wife? So hot it's a wonder he's not crispy from standing next to her.
Bill Richardson: Chili-pepper hot!
The other Democratic also-rans: Lukewarm.
John McCain: NOT.
Mike Huckabee: Hot when joking around or speaking about general matters. NOT when speaking about specific issues. WAY NOT when discussing religion, evolution, or the Constitution.
Mitt Romney: So hot he's burned out!
Fred Thompson: Not hot, but plays hot on TV.
Rudy Giuliani: Hot as a N.Y. fireman after 9/11? Not!
Ron Paul: Hotter than Ross Perot! NOT as hot as Ralph Nader.