Authors of RR have their own primary goals and properly avoid the election
methods wars that take place in EM, etc, - simply recommending that group's
rules authors should be careful as to what methods they choose to define
for their groups.
DWK
On Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:27:40 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> At 12:49 PM 12/14/2008, Steve Eppley wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I think Mr. Lomax missed the big point (though I agree he is right to
>> criticize Instant Runoff). The big point is that the authors of books
>> on Robert's Rules showed zero awareness of the existence of
>> Condorcetian preferential voting methods--or perhaps they were aware
>> but their analysis was made before the technological age made it easy
>> to exhaustively tally all the voters' pairwise preferences--so their
>> "recommendation" of single winner STV preferential voting was only
>> relative to a few even worse methods. Clearly, Condorcetian methods
>> have properties that are much closer to the properties of the Single
>> Elimination Pairwise method that RR advocates, because Condorcetian
>> methods are not subject to the criticism they made of STV that it can
>> easily defeat the best compromise.
>
>
> This analysis is incorrect. Yes, they show no specific awareness, but
> the language they used was quite precisely crafted, surprisingly so, if
> they were not aware that other preferential voting methods did not
> suffer from the failure of the STV method. That is, they make it a
> criticism of the *specific method they have described*, which is STV.
> They have also mentioned that there are many forms of preferential
> voting. That they spent precious words -- this is a manual of practice,
> not a dissertation -- to make it clear that center squeeze was a
> specific problem of "this method," i.e., the one they describe,
> indicates to me that they were quite aware that this wasn't a universal
> problem with preferential voting.
>
> You have missed something else. RR does not recommend single elimination
> pairwise. They recommend, indeed *require* by default, repetition of the
> election, until a majority is found. There is no candidate elimination.
> It's true, though. The RR method -- election repetition -- together with
> associated rules, is an approximately Condorcet compliant method. The
> deviation is, in fact, a Range-like effect. When a proposed candidate is
> "close enough," i.e., the general preference for the Condorcet winner is
> low enough, the process terminates. People would rather finish with the
> election than seek any more improvement in satisfaction with the result.
> If there is some group of voters who strongly oppose this, they will
> attempt to prevent it, they will attempt to wheel and deal to come up
> with some better compromise. It's when the remaining preference
> strength, possible improvement, is lower than the perceived cost of
> continuing the process, that it terminates. With the explicit consent of
> a majority for the result.
>
> I'm told that the reason they didn't describe other voting methods is
> that those other methods, at the time, were not in common use, and they
> still are not. They are a manual of actual practice, and it's remarkable
> that they said as much as they did. In any case, they clearly think that
> the practice of repeated elections is superior to IRV, and that using
> this *even with a majority requirement* is deficient compared to
> repeated elections. That's because, if voters do fully rank, a majority
> may be found which is *not* the compromise winner.
>
> But they don't seem to have realized that truncation is a reasonable
> voter strategy in Center Squeeze conditions. And when the election must
> be repeated, the top-two failure is irrelevant, or almost so.
>
>> (Approval can easily defeat the best compromise too, because many
>> voters will fail to approve compromise candidates out of fear of
>> defeating preferred candidates, which in turn will deter potential
>> candidates from competing. If Mr. Lomax likes Approval due to its
>> cheapness and simplicity, I'll point out that the family of voting
>> methods known as Voting for a Published Ranking are as cheap as
>> Approval, easier for the voters, some methods of the family are as
>> simple, and if I'm right about how candidates would behave would tend
>> to elect a good compromise.)
>
>
> Published ranking is interesting, for sure, but Approval is far, far
> simple and far less radical. Bucklin, in fact, addresses that
> reluctance. Unstated here was how the published rankings would be used.
> Condorcet? Bucklin is simpler, but when we are dealing with published
> rankings, we need only collect those votes en masse, and then applying
> them to a Condorcet matrix would be simple.
>
> However, politically, it's, shall we say, a step. Count All the Votes is
> a small step, *and* cheap. And quite surprisingly powerful, considering.
> Bucklin has been used, and this might make it easier to bring it back.
>
> The behavior of Published Rankings is unknown. There are a *lot* of
> questions, some of them quite difficult to answer. I'd prefer pure
> Asset; candidates could certainly publish their own Range ballots
> regarding other candidates, but I suggest that encouraging voters to
> select for trustworthiness, which covers a lot, is the best way to
> proceed to reform elections, and Asset has legs. It should be able to
> walk, one step at a time, all the way to full, highly accurate
> proportional representation, continuous democracy (no fixed terms of
> office, but, naturally, regular elections for electors).
>
>> It would be worthwhile, I think, to reach out to recognized experts in
>> Robert's Rules and teach them about better voting methods, and then
>> see what they recommend.
>
>
> It's an error to assume they don't know. They are not voting systems
> theorists, they put together a manual of actual practice. It's quite
> possible that in the next manual, there will be some description of
> Approval, for example, because there are some major organizational
> implementations.
>
>> Another deception by the IRVings is their widespread claim that IRV
>> eliminates spoiling. It's an even bigger deception, much more
>> important. A variation of IRV that permits candidates to withdraw
>> from contention after the votes are published, before the votes are
>> tallied, would be much better at eliminating spoiling and electing the
>> best compromise.
>
>
> Sure. IRV eliminates, to a degree, the lower-order spoiler effect. I.e.,
> minor party, no chance of winning, draws votes away from one major
> candidate, resulting in an election unsatisfactory to a majority. That,
> by the way, is an assumption. Nader, in 2000, claimed that voters who
> preferred him should vote for him because the majors were Tweedledum and
> Tweedledee, both shills for the corporations. If they believed him, then
> why would we think that they would add votes under IRV? However, in
> fact, voters are a bit more sophsticated and uncontrollable. Some of
> those who voted for Nader would have added ranked votes or additional
> Approvals for Gore.
>
> Bucklin is what I recommend, as a first reform, beyond Count All the
> Votes (Open Voting or Approval). It addresses the big problem that most
> people give as an objection to Approval, but it is very much like
> Approval. It's roughly as efficient as Condorcet methods with social
> utility.
>
> Ultimately, I prefer Range with explicit Approval cutoff, and pairwise
> analysis, and a runoff in the case of majority approval failure or a
> candidate who beats the Range winner by pairwise analysis. It's my
> contention, by the way, that a genuine, sincere Range winner would
> likely prevail in a direct runoff against a true Condorcet winner. And
> if you don't know why, ask!
>
> When I first proposed this, some thought it preposterous, a result of
> single-ballot, deterministic thinking that the whole field of voting
> systems fell into.
--
da...@clarityconnect.com people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
If you want peace, work for justice.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
