Monarchs are also subject to selection by how good they are at defending themselves against foreign threats. Europe was almost constantly at war as one monarch tried to take land from another.

@rob

but need clarification on what is meant here.

yeah fair enough. I think the way I'm interpreting it, if you gave me 40 candidates and asked me to rank them, I would be able to easily sort into 5 or 6 piles, and then have to think harder for the actual order inside each pile.

@jack-waugh Ok. although I ignore categories as I browse via the recent page

Hi all,
Sorry for the delay, but this thread was recently brought up again as an example so I'd like to post a comment addressing the Code of Conduct issues raised.

Making the forum welcoming for new (and old) people is important. To that aim, we do have a code of conduct that can be helpful.

It includes this: "Please make an effort to stay on topic and to not waste people's time. Keep in mind that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that time contributed by participants and moderators is appreciated and valued. Try to keep all discussions relevant to voting theory and reform efforts. Avoid sweeping generalizations or assumptions."

@mosbrooker said in Can Democracy have an air-tight legal definition?:

OMOV

I assume OMOV is One Man, (Person) One Vote? (Defining your acronyms the first time you use them is always helpful.)

If so, I'm curious if you have heard of the Equality Criterion, which many of us believe is a stricter definition of One Person, One Vote. A few of us just published an article on it which you can read here that attempts to formally define One Person One Vote and build on the Supreme Court Ruling that stated that the "weight and worth of the citizens' votes as nearly as is practicable must be the same."

I'll paste in a quote for discussion, and you can also find a more lay friendly explanation over at the Equal Vote Coalition website here and here.

"We posit that by passing the Equality Criterion, vote-splitting caused by the voting method itself can be eliminated. The Equality Criterion states that for any given vote, there is a possible opposite vote, such that if both were cast, it would not change the outcome of an election.7 The Equality Criterion ensures that if one party had the support of 51% of the voters and ran multiple candidates, and another party had the support of 49% of the electorate and ran only one candidate, the majority faction would always have some way to give all of their candidates full support and thus guarantee a win, even if the front-runners were unknown.

In 1964, Wesberry v. Sanders, (Black, 1964) The U.S. Supreme Court declared that equality of voting—one person, one vote—means that “the weight and worth of the citizens’ votes as nearly as is practicable must be the same.” Passing the Equality Criterion ensures that it’s possible for voters who disagree to cast equally weighted and opposite votes, no matter how many candidates are on their side. Approval, Score, Smith/Minimax, and STAR Voting all pass this basic and ’practicable’ criteria; Plurality and Instant Runoff Voting do not."

@lime said in State constitutions that require “a plurality of the votes” or the “highest,” “largest,” or “greatest” number of votes.:

Yes, many state laws and include clauses specifying which parts are intended to be severable.

Good that using severability is not be legally controversial when changing state law. "If not Score than Approval" would be a legally reasonable provision in a voting reform law.

@matija yeah, it seems that there were many factors that converged. I guess we never know what might have been or might be especially instrumental per se in the rise of anti-democratic regimes. As we’re seeing now in the USA, even supposedly “stable” vote-for-one systems are vulnerable to the most basic kind of fragmentation, namely splitting in half.

I’m not sure how stable these systems are then, considering the bipolar oscillations of government. The same gridlocks that make legislature impotent appear in a more blatant form. To me, that means vote-for-one is even less desirable than previously imagined, since even its claim to purported stability is moot.