12/17/02 - Tom Ruen's Thoughts on Approval and IRV in two letters:
------------- Forwarded Letter ------------- To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "Tom Ruen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 03:43:03 -0600 Subject: [IRV-freewheeling] "IRV in action" and "The value of a vote" Dear IRV supporters, Part I: Example small IRV election Part II: Supporting argument for IRV over Approval/Ratings on the grounds of being less demanding to voters time. Comments are welcome. Sincerely, Tom Ruen ********** Part I: IRV in action I ran an IRV election in my Toastmaster club tonight, voting for best Tabletopics speaker. Usually my club doesn't vote on best speakers, but many clubs have weekly voting to encourage speakers to try their best. Usually votes are done by plurality, at least I've never witnessed any other method in the two clubs I've been a member. Being there can be 6 speakers or more plurality often can fail a majority opinion. So this meeting I called for the election and here's the results. In this case there was one strong candidate, although it is still interesting example. We had eight voters and 6 speakers (candidates). IRV count: Round 1: George: 4, Tom: 2, Suzanne 1, Brian: 1 (Implicit elimination of Brenda and Sharon with no votes.) Eliminate Suzanne and Brian (A slightly dubious step, except that neither were ranked next on the other single vote ballots and thus the either would follow the other in elimination.) Round 2: George: 6, Tom 2 Winner George with 75% Oops, for the pleasure of our idealist, Donald Davison, let's finish the process... Eliminate Tom. Round 3: George: 7 (I suspect the only exhausted ballot, with 3 solid choices offered, was from our ever humble George) Winner George with 100% And for curiosity it is always fun to look at an approval vote, adding all the ranked candidates. In this case it shows only George was ranked on enough ballots to have a chance to win a majority! Approval vote: (Counting all ranked votes equally) George: 7 Tom: 3 Benda: 3 Brian: 2 Sharon: 2 Suzanne: 2 Note - I don't offer an Approval count to suggest it has any meaning for determining a winner, only that it does suggest the relative strengths of many candidates in a quick and easy form to see. ****************** Part II: The Value of a vote The above election made me think about recent discussion over the value of a vote and how much a voting method demands from voters. I notice that for myself, spending 60 seconds to choose between 5 good speeches (humble speakers don't vote for themselves), I believe my vote was effectively randomized by a effect I'd call "whim of the moment." That means if you asked me ten times in a row, erasing my member of my thought process in previous voting, I would offer significant variation in my preferences each time. There may be a number of conclusions possible from this acknowledgement. One might be that elections that don't matter much will always have this, and it means nothing at all. Another more dangerous conclusion might be that any method is as good as any other. For example, my approval count might suggest someone say "Hey - approval does pretty darn well without much fuss at all!" And of course we might take that seriously and decide in an election that there is no issue of power, only member recognition, that we should expand approval into a ratings vote which will probably do even better to quickly determine the most popular candidate. And in elections like this that don't much matter, I would have no objection to Approval or Ratings to determine the winner. However when I return to my issue of accuracy and stability of vote, I must ask what is the simplest method that takes the least effort for voters - the less you ask of voters, the more likely they will be up to the task asked of them, especially on a trivial result like a weekly best speaker from a small club. We might ask voters to rate all candidates on a 1-10 scale, but that is asking more from them than ranking a few top choices. I conclude that IRV is a superior method to Approval, even in a simple fun election. Virtues of IRV: 1. It is easiest to vote. (Given a desire for a majority winner) 2. It is most accurate of voter intent, only using more random lower choices as a last resort. 3. It is fast and easy to count. Any voting method that has a questionable commitment from voters to thoughtfully consider all the choices and make a sound decision, should focus on minimizing the demands on voters, minimizing the failures of their incomplete analysis of their options. Single vote methods best satisfy this in my mind because it minimizes (and equalizes) power from each voter. Ranking certainly has some "randomness" to it since the voter must make a decision over nearly equally good options, but in the end, with the only other option as abstaining, making a top choice can be done by voters and voters will not be hurt if they are unable to well consider lower preferences. I say for me there is no fundamental flaw of power of Approval or Ratings in terms of unequal power. The failure of Approval for me is that it demands more thought from voters. I support IRV over Approval because it best protects voters from themselves. Voters won't "overvote" in IRV simply because they vote too quickly. ------------- Tom Ruen's Second Letter ----------- From: "Tom Ruen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Donald E Davison" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: 12/12/02 - Clarification needed on `overvote': Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 17:18:02 -0600 Hi Donald, I took the term "overvote" from a plurality election to mean there was more votes cast than seats, and the vote is considered spoiled and not counted. I remember news articles about "overvotes" in Florida and that overvotes that included Gore far outnumbered overvotes that included Bush. I'd call bad approval "overvoting" to mean offering extra "pity" votes for preferences lower than would have been voted for in a single-vote election. (Good approval "overvoting" is when one would have abandoned a weak favorite anyway in a single-vote election.) Overvoting is most dangerous when there are MANY choices (and minimum polling knowledge) and voters don't have time (or aren't willing to make time) to make a proper judgment over a threshold for support. A single vote would have been easier to judge because there is less freedom to vote badly. Ideally if you want to maximize "informed" votes, single-vote methods should do better. Tom ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
