On May 11, 2008, at 1:58 , Kathy Dopp wrote:
Friends,
I need help to rebut these points about IRV voting that are being
spread via a US League of Women Voters' email list that is tracked by
persons in the US office of the LWV (and apparently the LWV of Mass.
has already officially taken a position in favor of IRV voting).
Thanks. I'll forward your comments back to the LWV list. I do not
follow this issue sufficiently to respond without help, as I'm
focusing on figuring out how to do post-election audit discrepancy
analysis now.
I removed all but the pertinent points that need response from someone
with more expertise in this issue than I possess.
I added a few comments in []s. Please help me because I do not have
information on this topic at my fingertips and do not have time
currently to research a reply. Thank you.
Here are some comments. Not so much directly against IRV but maybe
trying to see the benefits and problems of different reform proposals
in the US.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, May 10, 2008 at 7:22 AM
There are 3 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: IRV Voting is a really Bad Idea
Posted by: "Steve Chessin" [EMAIL PROTECTED] steve_chessin
Date: Fri May 9, 2008 10:43 pm ((PDT))
Kathy doesn't say what voting method she prefers, but it's well-known
among electoral experts that there is no such thing as a perfect
voting
system. The mathematical proof of this is known as Arrow's
Impossibility
Theorem, after Stanford economist Kenneth Arrow, who received the
Nobel
Prize in 1972 for proving his theorem in 1951. Pathological scenarios
can be constructed for all voting systems, including whatever ones
Kathy
may prefer to IRV.
Yes. I prefer IRV to all other systems for electing a single
winner to
an executive office because it elects a majority winner in a single
election without the need for a separate expensive runoff election.
Yes.
It
eliminates the spoiler effect
Yes it does when there are two major candidates and few minor
candidates. The IRV related problems mainly emerge when there are
more than two candidates with serious chances of being elected.
, and it encourages positive
issue-oriented campaigns instead of mudslinging opponent-attacking
campaigns.
Probably better than plurality here but not as good argument against
other methods.
It is also easy to understand and easy to administer.
Basic understanding is easy enough. Inability to count the local
results locally maybe makes "administering" not as easy as in some
other methods.
Exit
polls of voters show that they vastly prefer IRV to two-round runoff
elections, and this is across all ethnic groups.
I'm not sure how Kathy defines "support", but it must be different
from
how I would define it. IRV uses the same basic logic as a traditional
runoff election to find a majority winner. Any argument along the
lines Kathy presents is equally true of IRV AND traditional runoff
elections. Imagine a traditional runoff election (or IRV election)
with three candidates, A, B, and C. If A gets 48%, B gets 46% and C
gets 6%, the runoff would be between A or B. Now let's say all the C
voters prefer B over A, so B ends up with 52% to A's 48%.
I think Kathy's statement is based on the following scenario, in which
someone might claim that C (the one who got 6%) is actually supported
by the MOST voters. Here is how that reasoning would work: It COULD
be that all of the supporters of B would prefer C over A and all the
supporters of A would prefer C over B, thus (according to this view) C
is in some sense "supported" by 94% of the voters (all of A and B's
supporters). But in this scenario C is still only the first choice of
6% of the voters, and I don't think most people would support a system
that would declare the winner of a 3-way race the candidate who was
the
first choice of only 6% of the voters.
This reaction is possible in the US with respect to the presidential
elections where there is a strong tradition that the winner always
comes from one of the two major parties. In some other elections (and
maybe in US presidential elections too) people might also be happy to
get a candidate that is liked by all instead of getting one of the
extremists that is not liked by half of the voters.
I belong to an email list which discusses various alternatives for
voting schemes, and although I don't pay close attention to this
list,
it is generally agreed on the list that IRV does not work and that
other approaches might work better.
Well, given that that list (if it's the one I think it is) is made up
primarily of advocates of other systems (Condorcet, Borda, Approval,
Range, to name a few), I am not surprised that they agree that "IRV
does not work" and that their own pet approach works better.
I think the EM list does not systematically promote some certain
methods nor attack some others. Individual members do often have
strong and stable opinions but there is no unified front. There are
not that many active IRV promoters but I'm sure they are just as
welcome as promoters of some other methods.
But all
of them agree that our current election method, plurality elections
(complete with the spoiler problem), is the worst method.
Many dislike plurality but I wouldn't say that all consider it to be
the worst.
The vast majority of informed opinion (not just that of the
IRV-dislikers) is that IRV is the best option for single-seat
elections. For example, the organization of political science
professors, the American Political Science Association, has
incorporated IRV into their constitution to elect their own national
president. While the members of Kathy's list [Note: I never said that
this was "my" list] have their pet methods,
none of those methods are actually used for governmental elections
anywhere in the world. In contrast, IRV is used in the United States,
and has been used for generations in places like Australia and
Ireland. Also, none of the pathological scenarios the IRV-dislikers
like to put forth have ever surfaced as a problem.
I think two-round runoff is more commonly used than IRV. There have
been some problems with two-round runoff. Similar problems may occur
in IRV too. But I'm not aware of any major campaigns against these
systems. People tend to satisfy with the systems they have. Maybe the
problems are not bad enough and alternatives well identified enough
to kick off a reform campaign. This should however not stop trying to
find even better methods, and choosing the best one from the ones
that are available.
Also some other reasons not to promote IRV (besides the fact that it
often ends up putting candidates into office that are not
supported by
- or even are opposed by - a majority of voters) include:
It is theoretically possible to have an election in which NO candidate
has majority support, like a rock, paper, scissors endless loop,
but IRV
is FAR more likely to elect a true majority choice than our current
plurality election method with its rampant spoiler problem.
IRV would help in this one problem. So would some other methods.
1. It can be very difficult and time-consuming to count manually, and
so makes auditing elections very difficult.
[Notice his response to my comment begins by employing a
misinterpretation of my comment.]
IRV has been counted easily and quickly in recent U.S. elections in
places like Burlington, Vermont, and Cary, North Carolina. Auditing
can be more complicated, simply because there is more information from
each voter to double check, but can also be more thorough. San
Francisco and Burlington, for example, posted a record of every
ballot's set of rankings on the Internet, allowing anyone to tally
those elections themselves.
3. IRV makes it virtually impossible to conduct post-election exit
poll discrepancy and vote count pattern analysis to detect suspicious
patterns that are consistent with vote miscount and voter
disenfranchisement. I.e. IRV makes any problems with vote count
integrity harder to detect.
This is false. Exit polls can and have been conducted for IRV
elections. The fact that voters are giving more information about
their preferences does not make detecting misconduct any harder.
[He is incorrect in making the above statement, but I do have the
expertise to rebut this one incorrect statement.]
As explained previously, there are no perfect voting methods, although
I believe that IRV is the best method. Many of the advocates of other
reforms seek to denigrate IRV in hopes of advancing their favorite
reform method. (I note that none of them have been successful in
getting any jurisdiction to adopt their methods.)
As to IRV not achieving its "claims": There are two claims often made
for IRV that may be somewhat over-stated. Although political
scientists and courts have recognized IRV as a majority voting method,
it is possible that some voters will not rank either of the two
finalists in the runoff count. In this case, it is possible that the
runoff winner will have less than 50% of the votes cast in the
original
election. This is the same dynamic as in a traditional runoff
election, in which some voters don't show up at the second election,
and the runoff winner may end up with fewer votes than 50% of those
voting in the first round. This "non-majority" winner is FAR less
of a
problem with IRV than it is with our current plurality elections, or
with separate runoff elections (where turnout generally drops
sharply). Thus, while IRV will elect a majority winner among those
voters expressing a preference between the final winner and the other
candidates, one could claim this does not assure a majority winner
among all the voters.
IRV elects the majority winner when comparing the
_two_last_remaining_candidates_. It may fail e.g. to elect the
Condorcet winner, a candidate that wins all others by majority in
pairwise comparisons. Instead of the 6% example discussed above one
could also look at the following example where electing the centrist
C (with 30% first place support and 100% first or second place
support) instead of A and B makes more sense.
35% A>C>B
15% C>A>B
15% C>B>A
35% B>C>A
With IRV it may also happen that there are e.g. two right wing
candidates in the race and the method eliminates first the one that
would have also considerable left wing support, and this would leave
the right wing at the last rounds with a candidate that left wing
(and centrists) definitely do not want to support. Left wing could
then win (to the disappointment of the right wing), or the less
popular right wing candidate would win (to the disappointment of the
left wing).
The second claim of IRV that may be over-stated is that it eliminates
the "spoiler problem." While compared to our current voting method,
IRV indeed solves the spoiler problem when independents or third
parties run against two major parties. However, concerns about
"spoilers" could possibly resurface in some scenarios when there are
three or more major parties. But none of those scenarios have
appeared
in practice in those countries that use IRV and have more than two
major parties.
I wouldn't consider the lack of information of such problems a proof
that they would not occur. As said above, people are often ok with
what they have.
The analysis of potential problems when there are more than two
serious contenders is correct.
I took a spreadsheet once and it took me just a few minutes very easy
to create examples when IRV voting doesn't work as anyone would want
to. I recommend taking a few minutes to try that yourself before you
recommend IRV again.
As Arrow's Impossibility Theorem shows, it is impossible to invent a
perfect voting method, as reasonable and desirable features that one
would want in a voting method are mutually exclusive. IRV does better
than most in real world experience, and virtually all elections
methods
experts agree it is superior to plurality elections we use currently.
While it is easy to construct pathological scenarios for any voting
system, none of the pathological scenarios for IRV have ever been
observed in practice.
Fair Vote is a misnomered organization.
It saddens me that Kathy thinks this. I would suggest people visit
www.fairvote.org and come to their own conclusions.
I make a difference between sites whose aim is to promote some
certain method and sites/lists that aim at neutrality when comparing
different methods. I recommend visiting both sites that promote
certain methods and sites that point out their problems.
"Sophistry" is a statement or claim that at first glance sounds good,
but upon closer examination is found to be incorrect or inaccurate.
And not applicable, I hope, to anything I've said about IRV.
Kathy
(Kathy, it's customary to include one's League after one's name.)
--Steve Chessin
LWV Los Altos - Mountain View Area (CA)
--
Thanks for helping respond to this person who is trying to push the
LWV to support IRV and needs to have some of his comments rebutted.
Cheers,
Kathy
I don't know what your own favourite reform would be. I'll make some
comparisons to Condorcet since that is a method that is quite similar
to IRV but that would fix some of the IRV related problems.
IRV problems were quite openly addressed also in the text above.
Condorcet has its own specific problems. One should compare the
problems (and benefits) of different methods to see which one is best.
The IRV problems are more likely to emerge when there are more than
two credible candidates. Condorcet treats cases with more than two
credible candidates more smoothly. Condorcet strategic voting related
problems are tricky but they may have even smaller probability to
occur (since they are not easy to apply successfully) in real life
(large public) elections than the IRV problems.
Strategic voting may also emerge in IRV in situations where the
voters want to elect the Condorcet winner. If we modify the example I
gave above a bit so that A is more popular than B and would win the
last round, then the B voters would do wisely to abandon their
favourite B and vote directly for the compromise candidate (and
Condorcet winner) C. Condorcet would elect C automatically.
In USA IRV may be a realistic alternative since it seems to have
quite good momentum at the moment. Condorcet is in much weaker
position since to my understanding Condorcet promoters are much less
active. It is possible that IRV would be a good first step that might
later lead also to adoption of Condorcet in some places. (Some people
however seem to think that use of IRV would close the doors and never
lead to Condorcet.)
One reason why Condorcet promoters are less active is that there are
many different Condorcet methods and the proponents of those methods
each promote their own variant of the method. This means that they
will also fight against each others and do not promote the Condorcet
methods in general. Some of the methods are also clearly more complex
than IRV, but some are also very simple and easily understandable.
The vulnerability of different Condorcet methods to strategic voting
is slightly different, which often makes the discussion very strategy
oriented, and makes Condorcet methods look like being plagued by
numerous strategy problems (more than they actually are).
Codorcet also doesn't yet have much history in country level
political elections. To my understanding it has performed well in
places where it has been used (e.g. Debian has had many Condorcet
elections).
One reason why IRV is popular could be that it has the tendency to
favour large parties. This of course suits the large parties better
(well, if they want any reform at all) than methods that would not
have this tendency.
Condorcet can elect compromise candidates that have wide support but
not necessarily as much first place support as some other candidates.
In a general purpose method this can be considered to be a good
feature. In USA where the tradition is to elect the president from
one of the two major parties this is a change to the current
practices and can be considered by some also as a weakness of
Condorcet (for the US purposes). (But as already noted above, also
the IRV voters may sometimes have the incentive to vote strategically
to elect a compromise candidate.)
One benefit of Condorcet is that votes can be counted locally and
those local results can then be summed up. IRV collects all votes
together and then makes the calculations. Computers will naturally
nowadays help with this, but this is one problem anyway.
It would be interesting to know if the IRV promoters find also
Condorcet to be a good method and worth promoting. Maybe their
preference of IRV is partially based on the fact that it seems to be
achievable right now. If the basic need is to change plurality to
something that eliminates the current (small party) spoiler problem I
think both IRV and Condorcet will do the job.
All methods do have strategy problems and careful analysis is needed
(especially since strategies are different in different methods). IRV
would have done fine e.g. in the recent US presidential elections
with two major candidates and some small "spoilers". When the
political environment changes and there will be numerous viable
candidates, then Condorcet maybe performs better. If IRV will face
these problems (and people will recognize them as problems instead of
just as "some interesting randomness in the competition") then
further transition to Condorcet is an option.
In USA it would make most sense to join forces and promote transition
from plurality to any of the better methods (e.g. Condorcet, IRV,
maybe also some others). (That is, if large part of the US citizens
feel that plurality and the pure two-party system idea that it builds
on should be changed to something else.)
Juho
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