12/23/02 - Comments on Mikeo's list of Best Methods: Greetings list members,
Mikeo wrote: From: "MIKE OSSIPOFF" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] Best Method In Use Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 06:15:45 +0000 I only know of 3 single-winner methods that are used in public political elections, and all 3 are used in national elections: 1. Plurality (aka 1-vote Plurality or 1st Past The Post (FPTP) ). 2. Top-2 Runoff (aka Runoff) 3. IRVf (aka the Alternative Vote, Preferential Voting, Majority Preferential Voting, Hare) Donald here: Actually, there is a number four Mikeo, it's a variant of Approval Voting, it's called `Plurality-at-Large for single-seat' (Correction: Approval Voting is a variant of `Plurality-at-Large for single-seat'). It is used to elect the president of a council in many American cities, big and small. This variant of Approval Voting does not elect the choice of the people, it elects the candidate with the most pity votes. Mikeo: "Of those, I claim that Runoff is the best." Donald: Runoff is not the best, anyone who is not a fool should be able to see that. Runoff requires a follow up election and it is only valid for three candidates in the original election. The only thing that can be said in its favor is that the voters know who the final two candidates are to be in the follow up election, but that piece of information could be considered as a possibility when ranking choices in an Irving election, without a second trip to the polls. Besides, Irving is valid for more than three candidates. Mikeo: "One advantage that Runoff has over IRV is that, with Runoff, at least a CW can't lose if s/he comes in 1st or 2nd in the 1st balloting, whereas in IRV a CW can lose even if s/he's the favorite of by far the most people. The scenario in which that happens isn't at all implausible. It requires only that candidates' favoriteness support taper gradually for candidates farther away from that Plurality winner CW. Then, the eliminations at the extremes, and the centerward transfers, will reach candidates adjacent to that CW before they reach the CW, and the CW will likely be eliminated. IRV's poor social utility scores in simulations resulted from the frequent elimination of median candidates, probably happening largely as described above." Donald: You should be ashamed of yourself. This is merely more of the same gobbledegook that you have been handing out for the last five years. It is clear you haven't learned much in five years. People are not going to think you are super smart just because they don't understand what the hell it is you are talking about. <snip> (useless text) Mikeo: "The Secretary General of the U.N. is elected by Approval. <snip> (more useless text) Though your question was about official governance elections, let me just add that Approval is also used by mathematical and engineering professional societies with combined membership in excess of 600,000." Mike Ossipoff Donald: This is not the first time you have bragged about Approval Voting being used in the UN and some societies. By now, I should think that you would be able to show us some real ballot results from one of these elections, which will tell us more about Approval Voting than all your gobbledegook. Approval Voting is just fine for any meaningless election, but as the election becomes more political we will find more voters bullet voting and therein lies the trump card that Irving holds over Approval Voting. While there is no danger for the voter to make choices in an Irving election, but if most of the voters do bullet vote, Irving can survive and still function as Irving, but Approval cannot function as Approval when faced with bullet voting by most of the public, it will turn into a variant of Irving (poetic justice). Mikeo, you are like a monk sitting on his fat ass in a dark room trying to think how the universe works without observing the universe. You need to observe real elections. No good to just say you are sorry, you need to redeem yourself by getting off your fat ass and getting some ballots from a real Approval Voting election - Show Us The Ballots Mikeo!! Regards, Donald Davison, host of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald Candidate Election Methods +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ | Q U O T A T I O N | | "Democracy is a beautiful thing, | | except that part about letting just any old yokel vote." | | - Age 10 - | +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Please be advised that sending email to me allows me to quote from it and/or forward the entire email to others. ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em