Short thought: IMO all voting systems are messed up in some way and open for abuse or even just ruined by differing standards, and it's in the nature of the thing, as it's all about opinions.
This is demonstrably wrong. Throwing your hands up in the air and saying, hey, no matter what we do it'll have problems, is a false leveling. As an attorney who studied economics and law, I can assure you that there are better and worse ways of structuring systems of rules. If you decide that it doesn't matter, you're likely to wind up with one of the worse ways, since you're deliberaately ignoring the pros and cons.
This isn't terribly obvious on first blush, so I'll provide an example. Our system of rules governing contracts in America is one of our oldest, built on a history of problems and solutions going back well over 400 years (it relies heavily on English common-law). It has addressed questions that seem intractible or just unimportant repeatedly. Suppose two parties disagree on the meaning of an item in a contract, for example. Whose meaning should apply?
On the face of it, there is no right answer. If, however, you stop to consider that one of those two parties drafted the contract, things get a little clearer. We can consider the goals we want to achieve with our system of rules, and see how each choice effects outcomes - are they more, or less, in line with our goals? In the case of contract law, one of the foundational goals is to maximize pareto-efficient outcomes - in non-econspeak, to ensure that contracts where economic gains are to be had, tend to happen, and those which are inefficient, don't. Clearly written, unambiguous contracts help achieve that end, by ensuring that there is a meeting of the minds - that both parties have the same things in mind; put another way, they have both based their assessments of the contract's value to them accurately, and not on a misinterpretation of a term. Thus came about the rule that ambiguous contract terms are to be interpreted against the drafter of the contract - creating an incentive for those drafting contracts to be as clear as possible, rather than attempting to engage in trickery.
There absolutely are right and wrong ways to go about this, based on non-subjective standards. It is NOT simply 'all about opinion' - that's a very ignorant assesment (no offense intended, he likely hasn't spent any time studying the subject).
Funky
