> Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 09:36:27 -0400 > From: "Terry Bouricius" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Dear Kathy Dopp, > > Please stop referring to your report on IRV as "peer-reviewed." That is an > absolutely false statement.
I referred to it as "peer-reviewed" because it was referred to as "peer-reviewed" by an engineer who has been on more than one of the IEEE voting system standards groups and because at least half a dozen PhD computer scientists who are voting system experts reviewed it and I took virtually all of their suggestions. In addition, Warren Smith and Abd ul Lomax Rahman from this list contributed heavily. > > Peer-reviewed as used in the social sciences (and hard sciences too) > typically means a blind review process where a journal editor sends a > draft article to several reviewers whose identity is unknown to the author > and vice versa. Typically good journals require that the author at least > address the weaknesses noted by the reviewers; authors who refuse > sometimes find their article rejected instead of published. I did try to address all of the weaknesses which were pointed out to me by anyone, and I did respond to virtually every point of every review I was given, as well as doing extensive research and reading on the topic. > > You selectively took comments from a few people who agreed with your > opinions and derisively dismissed those from experts who pointed out > errors That is flatly incorrect. It is BTW delusional to imagine that you (or anyone) could know all about a research and writing process which you were not privy to and never asked me about. (such as your miss-understanding of Arrow's use of the Pareto > Improvement Criterion.) There is no mention of Arrow's Pareto criterion in the paper currently. Perhaps you are referring to an early version of my report? I essentially dropped discussion of Arrow's theorem from the paper after realizing that most of the proofs I read of it were bogus and/or ill-defined and that to thoroughly understand Arrow's theorem I would have to read Arrow's original book and spend months reading everything written on it since then, much of it mathematical nonsense, from what I could gather after reading some of what was written on it. It hardly seemed to be worth that kind of effort. > Your report has so many errors of fact and > analysis that any legitimate journal would require substantial re-writing > before even considering it. Terry. People who have no facts to back up their claims often make unsubstantiated statements like this without any details. I try to live by a simple principle: "To be terrific, be specific." You have not given one instance of any "errors of fact and analysis" in my paper, let alone "so many... that any legitimate journal would require substantial re-writing." Cheers, Kathy > > Terry Bouricius > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Kathy Dopp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[email protected]> > Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 7:31 PM > Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] A Better Version of IRV? > > >> Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:36:32 +0000 (GMT) >> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Subject: [Election-Methods] A Better Version of IRV? >> To: [email protected] >> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> >> There is a lot of momentum behind IRV. If we cannot stop it, are there >> some tweaks that would make it more liveable? > > Hi Forest. > > I think we can stop that madness. I believe that the LWV, US will no > longer be seriously considering supporting IRV since my writing a > report on IRV's flaws - and that other State LWV groups and other > State legislators where IRV was being considered are stopping their > push for it. > > However, to answer your "if" question ... > >> Someone has suggested that a candidate withdrawal option would go a long >> way towards ameliorating the damage. >> Here's another suggestion, inspired by what we have learned from >> Australia's worst problems with their version of IRV: >> Since IRV satisfies Later No Harm, why not complete the incompletely >> ranked ballots with the help of the rankings of the ballot's favorite >> candidate? > > But that would still leave the problem of having to count IRV > elections centrally and alot of the other worst flaws of IRV > (including its lack of fairness, cost, tendency to promote secret > electronic vote counting, etc. Please peruse my report when you have > a chance (It is only 11 pages plus appendices and endnotes and is > well-organized to make it easy to read.): > > http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf > >> The unranked candidates would be ranked below the ranked candidates in >> the order of the ballot of the favorite. > > While that might be a slight improvement, the better idea would be the > one suggested in my paper (I heard it first from Charlie Strauss) that > also fixes some of the counting problems of IRV elections. I.e. Let > all the candidates (before election day) pick their own ranked choices > of other candidates - and not the voters. This system has many > advantages over IRV including: > > 1. gives the minor party candidates more political power > > 2. simpler ballots that do not confuse voters - i.e. voters only need > vote for their top choice > > 3. The RCV ballots can be counted and summed much more easily because > all the ballots of voters who voted for an eliminated candidate are > counted the same way - no need for individual ballot examination and > sorting, etc. I.e. Only the voters' first choices are needed to be > summed for each precinct and reported to the central facility as > always, to know who wins. > > 4. Much much easier to manually count and audit. > > > >> If the candidates were allowed to specify their rankings after they got >> the partial results, this might be a valuable improvement. > > Having the candidates only rank "incompletely ranked" ballots would be > an election nightmare, but having candidates rank all the other > candidates and having voters only give their first choice, would work > better than IRV, but I still think other voting methods are available > that are superior. > > I believe that my email contacts with the LWV and with US Election > Officials and others who have now been apprised of my report on the > "17 flaws and 3 benefits of IRV" will have the effect of stopping IRV > from creating very additional serious problems with US elections. > > Look at the mess in San Francisco and WA now. Most election officials > will not want to emulate those messes. > > The push for manual audits to verify the accuracy of machine counts, > will make IRV virtually impossible to implement. Election integrity > advocates, once they understand all the problems IRV causes, will > oppose it. > > It is amazing to me that anyone would consider supporting IRV when it > does not even solve the spoiler problem except in one case, and there > are an amount of possibly subtotals that could be used to count votes > for each precinct equal to the sum from i = 0 to N-1 of N!/i! where N > is the number of candidates. > > The only reason some people supported IRV initially is because it is a > very seductive idea until one actually sits down and thinks about all > the implications of using it. > > If you know any legislator or election official who is contemplating > using IRV, simply attach a copy of my peer-reviewed report on the "17 > flaws and 3 benefits of IRV" to them. Since I wrote this paper, I > personally know of at least two US States where legislators have > changed their minds about supporting IRV and are no longer supporting > IRV. If we get my peer-reviewed report on IRV out to all the > decision-makers, I feel certain we can avert another mess similar to > the 2002 HAVA bill. > > As usual the group Common Cause is causing problems with US election > systems while raising money to allegedly solve the election problems > because Common Cause has officially endorsed IRV just like Common > Cause was instrumental in pushing through the HAVA bill in 2002. The > leadership of Common Cause never seems to adequately think about the > election reform positions they take prior to taking them and yet are > very slow to drop their bad positions once they take them. Sigh. > > Kathy > ---- > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Election-Methods mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com > > > End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 49, Issue 13 > ************************************************ > -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org History of Confidence Election Auditing Development & Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Vote Yes on HR5036 http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/legislation/SummaryFlyer5036.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
