On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 12:14:56 -0000 James Gilmour wrote:
> Kevin Venzke > Sent: 27 December 2007 02:16
>
>>--- James Gilmour <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
>>
>>>As I have said
>>>before, and in other EM threads, the preferences recorded on an IRV
>>>ballot are CONTINGENCY choices. It would be a great help to all these
>>>discussions if both proponents and opponents of IRV would recognise
>>>this historical fact.
>>
>>It doesn't seem to me that one would need to understand the
>>mentality or history behind an election method in order to
>>judge it against other methods. It isn't really "the thought
>>that counts" with election methods.
>
>
> Kevin
> OK, but that was not the criticism that was being made of IRV. I am very
> happy to agree that in some circumstances a Condorcet
> voting system may give a "better" result than IRV, but Condorcet is a
> different voting system from IRV and the preferences on
> Condorcet ballots would be marked by the voters who were aware that the votes
> would be counted by Condorcet rules. One crucial
> feature of IRV is that the Returning Officer can give each and every voter an
> absolute guarantee that under no circumstances will a
> later preference ever count against an earlier preference. (This does seem
> to be important to UK electors - I cannot speak for
> electors elsewhere.) When the Condorcet winner and the IRV winner are
> different, it is at least debatable that in the Condorcet
> count a voter's later preference has counted against that voter's earlier
> preference. In system like Borda, where all the
> preference information is used simultaneously, that criterion goes right out
> window.
>
Condorcet promises that EVERY preference indicated by a voter's ranking is
counted equally, whether by ranking either or both candidates.
These are combined with ALL the references ranked by ALL other voters, and
usually clearly indicate a winner.
Finally, if this provides conflict as to clear winning among three or more
candidates, Condorcet systems offer a formula for resolving the conflict.
These choices offer room for debate as to whether they are "best", or
whether a runoff might be better.
>
>>Maybe pointing out IRV's strategy advantages (i.e. lower
>>preferences are "contingency choices") would paint a broader
>>picture about IRV, but the fact that e.g. Dave Ketchum
>>doesn't value these advantages, doesn't in my mind undermine
>>his criticisms.
>
That they are "contingency choices" is fine, but Condorcet's advantage is
honoring ALL that the voters say, unlike IRV's noticing only the tops of
the lists.
>
> Dave's criticism was that IRV did not use all the preference information on
> the ballots in the way that Condorcet and some other
> voting systems do. That is not a valid criticism. IRV "does exactly what is
> says on the tin". In IRV, the preferences on the
> ballots are contingency choices - no other interpretation is possible in
> IRV because that is the way IRV works. So it is not
> valid to say that IRV fails to make use of "all" the information on the IRV
> ballots when that voting system was not intended or
> designed to do that. And crucially, the voters would know that when marking
> their preferences on the IRV ballots.
Agreed that the criticism may not be valid as stated.
Perhaps a truer criticism would be based on IRV's failure to recognize
voters' true stated preferences.
>
> It is, of course, perfectly valid to say that there are better ways than IRV
> of deciding the winner in a single-winner election.
> And some of the alternatives will require the voters to mark preferences on
> the ballot papers which will then be counted in some way
> differently from how the preferences on IRV ballots are counted. But that is
> a totally different comparison of two (or more)
> different voting systems.
Many of us claim that Condorcet is a better way.
Condorcet wants ballots to be marked in the way that IRV claims to want,
and offers less encouragement to voter tricks than IRV.
>
> James
--
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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.
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