[From: the New Yorker - The article implies the incorrect idea of Nader having been a spoiler in 2000, and is too hard on IRV, but is in general a good article. --RS ]
No voting system is flawless. But some are less democratic than others.
Can theorists engineer a better way to elect candidates?
Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic.
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.
Don’t worry if you blinked: bewildering complexity was part of the point. The election aimed to reassure Venetians that their new ruler could not have been eased into place by backroom deals. Venetians had been coming up with inventive ways to make political decisions for a couple of hundred years before they concocted this rigmarole. Earlier elections in Venice, and in other Italian communes, required a winner to be endorsed by two-thirds, or sometimes three-quarters, of the voters. The hallmark of the Venetian approach has come to be known as “approval voting,” in which electors do not need to pick a favorite but may vote for several candidates they like.
In this week’s magazine, Anthony Gottlieb reviews “Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present,” a new book by George Szpiro, a journalist and mathematician. The book—and Gottlieb’s essay—are about a subject that got its teeth around my ankle years ago and refuses to let go: voting systems.
For me, Gottlieb’s piece has many pleasures, including a brisk demolition job on “first past the post,” the system used for the mother of parliaments—you know, the old lady with that nice House on the Thames, which she shares with her husband, Big Ben—and her colonial offspring in the United States, Canada, and India. As Gottlieb points out, the rest of the democratic world has opted for more up-to-date political technologies, so much so that
it’s clear that no country would pick first-past-the-post voting today. Of democracies with no significant British past, only Nepal now elects its national assembly this way.
A jury ruled yesterday against a woman who claimed her reputation was damaged after she was featured on a “Girls Gone Wild” video. What makes this case remarkable is that she didn’t expose her own breasts - she was assaulted.
STLToday reports that the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, was dancing in at the former Rum Jungle bar in 2004 when someone reached up and pulled her tank top down, exposing her breasts to the “Girls Gone Wild” camera. Jane Doe, who was 20 at the time the tape was made, is now living in Missouri with her husband and two children. She only found out about the video in 2008, when a friend of her husband’s saw the “Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy” video and recognized her face. He called up her husband, and in what has got to be the most awkward conversation ever, informed him that his wife’s breasts were kinda famous.
The woman sued Girls Gone Wild for $5 million in damages. After deliberating for just 90 minutes on Thursday, the St. Louis jury came back with a verdict in favor of the smut peddlers. Patrick O’Brien, the jury foreman, explained later to reporters that they figured if she was willing to dance in front of the photographer, she was probably cool with having her breasts on film. They said she gave implicit consent by being at the bar, and by participating in the filming – though she never signed a consent form, and she can be heard on camera saying “no, no” when asked to show her breasts.
“I am stunned that this company can get away with this,” said Jane Doe after the ruling. “Justice has not been served. I just don’t understand. I gave no consent.” When she heard what O’Brien had said, she tearfully added, “I was having fun until my top was pulled off. And now this thing is out there for the world to see forever.”
So let this be a lesson to us all. “Consent” is a flexible thing – at least in the eyes of the St. Louis courts. No means yes, and assault means it’s okay to roll the cameras. If there were ever a time to get righteously angry, it’s now.
Too many officials think taking photos is a crime. Here’s why they’re wrong.
BY GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS
Illustration by Rui Ricardo
Today, most people walk around with a camera of some sort in their possession. Point-and-shoots, DSLRs and tiny video cams–not to mention cellphones–have become ubiquitous. And yet it seems that in many public locations, security officials are touchier than ever about letting people actually use those cameras. Our guardians of public safety often have the idea that shooting pictures in public places might be a precursor to some sort of terrorism. It’s an understandable concern, but misguided. I believe there is a good case to be made that having lots of cameras in the hands of citizens makes us more, rather than less, safe.
Here’s how bad it has gotten: Not long ago, an Amtrak representative did an interview with local TV station Fox 5 in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station to explain that you don’t need a permit to take pictures there–only to be approached by a security guard who ordered them to stop filming without a permit.
Legally, it’s pretty much always okay to take photos in a public place as long as you’re not physically interfering with traffic or police operations. As Bert Krages, an attorney who specializes in photography-related legal problems and wrote Legal Handbook for Photographers, says, “The general rule is that if something is in a public place, you’re entitled to photograph it.” What’s more, though national-security laws are often invoked when quashing photographers, Krages explains that “the Patriot Act does not restrict photography; neither does the Homeland Security Act.” But this doesn’t stop people from interfering with photographers, even in settings that don’t seem much like national-security zones. Read more
A jury ruled yesterday against a woman who claimed her reputation was damaged after she was featured on a “
