Re: Weighting

[Aiviet Nguyen <aiviet@cat.syr.edu>]

Hi Anh Huy Duong and Lam,
   In the election of new chairman, secretaries, janitors cannot vote. 
This is the practice in the US. In VN, in my institution the annual
meeting that make research plan for the next years involved all kind of 
people, who have no ideas of what is going on. They can vote to the project
they feel like to vote, but in the most case they are affected by their
administrative supervisor. In the social election certainly their vote 
should be considered as equal. I wonder the uninterested people are 
rightly eligible in a election.
 
  Thank you Anh Huy for the weighting idea, however in many cases even 
more complicated methods should be applied. In HUngary and Poland the 
election rules are so complcated that a Westerner cannot comprehend.

Cheers
Aiviet


On Tue, 25 Feb 1997 huy.duong@ctsu.ox.ac.uk wrote:

> Dear anh Lam,
> 
> > To^i kho^ng bie^'t nha^n danh ai ma` xem la' phie^'u o^ng ba` gia'o 
> > su+.  tie^'n si~, khoa tru+o+?ng tro.ng ho+n la' phie^'u o^ng cai tru+o+`ng?
> 
> To specify a minimum age for the electorate is itself a weighting: 
> a person of 18 or over has the weight of 1 and a person of 17 has a
> weight of 0. The relative weighting is infinite, very drastic.
> There are plenty of 17 years old who are more politically mature,
> more socially responsible, more humane than plenty of 18+ years old,
> so by whose authority has this very drastic weighting been decided?
> I would say by the authority of statistics: statistically 18+
> year olds are more politically mature than 17 years old, even if a 18+
> individual is not necessarily more politically mature than a 17 individual.
> 
> So, it is not that we reject the principle of weighting based on
> statistics: we think that age, illness, crimimality are statistically
> correlated to democraticability and we have  drastic weightings for them. 
> 
> It is possible that education, social awareness, social responsibility are 
> statistically correlated to democraticability. Is a mild weighting for them
> different in principle from the above? I would say no. The ethical question
> is not whether this is more immoral than what we have already accepted,
> but whether we can apply it correctly.
> 
> Huy
>