To the Editor:
Tom Delay and James Wright: What's in common? If you don't win by the rules, change them. I have been following the discussion in The Dartmouth put forth by supporters of the current administration regarding the outcome of the trustee election. The administration supporters who lost an election, which was fair and by the rules, are not asking the right questions: Why did we lose? How did a pair of candidates who do not represent the political mainstream somehow overcome that obstacle by running on a platform of issues related to the management of the College? Why did the alumni vote against our slate of candidates? Instead, the administration and its supporters are asking a very different question: How can we change the rules to improve our fortunes in the future? Make no mistake about it, this is the very same thinking that is going on in the nation's capital. I work in the U.S. Senate, where Sen. Frist and the Republican leadership tried to change the very rules that our founding fathers established in order to win confirmation of a handfull of judges who are far outside the mainstream of judicial thought.
Across the Capitol, Tom Delay and his henchmen took the unprecedented step of redistricting Texas in between censuses to force out fairly- elected officials of the other party. Why? In order to hold onto power because they were afraid that ,unless they changed the rules, the other side might win fair and square. The parallels here are clear. (By the way, do I sound like a person who is politically aligned with Robinson and Zywicki?) But for those who want to go beyond the obvious intent of this administration: to gain and hold power at any cost, (quick question: what do Dick Cheney and James Wright have in common? Both served as chair of the search committee tasked with finding the person to hold their respective current jobs) I want to remind those folks why the College uses this voting system, which in the literature, is referred to as approval voting.
Under approval voting, people can choose as many or as few candidates as they want. Sounds simple enough. Can you picture anything more simple than picking as many or as few as you wish? This system clearly negates the argument put forth by William Montgomery '52 in his letter ("Consequences of Low Turnout," May 20) that Dartmouth College graduates are confused by the system. The reason that this voting method is in place is because it is mathematically superior in translating voter preferences into election results. Specifically, it is a much more effective system in combating strategic voting, in which voters try to influence the outcome by not voting their true preferences (example: when you have to rank six candidates in order, and you pick the one who you might like third best but perceive as the real threat your No. 1 choice, so you rank him or her No. 6). Approval voting is by no means perfect, according to Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow, whose work is the gold standard for all voting system comparisons. However, it comes closer than any other system to correctly translating voter preferences into outcomes. If you doubt this, I suggest that you take the wonderful course Mathematics and Social Sciences 46: Models of Voting and Decision Making. After taking that course, taught in my day by the excellent Professor Emeritus Robert Norman, and having a scholarly understanding of voting, you will be able to challenge any administration supporter's contention that there is a better voting system for conducting a fair trustee election.
