At 04:29 PM 11/25/2008, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
On Nov 25, 2008, at 1:19 PM, Markus Schulze wrote:
Or are only IRV supporters allowed to use polling data
to show the greatness of IRV, while advocates of other
methods have to use complete ballot data?
I think we must be careful about using polling data when we're
comparing election methods in which voters have different strategic
motivations, and that taking sufficient care may preclude drawing firm
conclusions.
Absolutely; however, the difference in "strategic motivation" between
three-rank IRV (as is used in the U.S.) and top-two runoff is
practically nil. The vast majority of voters simply vote sincerely,
I'm sure, in both methods. They will vote in the first round of
top-two runoff for their favorite, almost certainly. Strategic voting
(such as turkey-raising) can backfire, you know. Make a mistake, you
might end up with a turkey. Top two runoff allows the voter to
postpone the decision of who to rank "second."
I just saw the video from the San Francisco Department of Elections,
2006, that said it elects winners with a "majority." No qualifier.
Not majority after excluding exhausted ballots. A lot of people,
including officials and others who should know better, *including
opponents of IRV*, were hornswoggled. If IRV were to actually be a
majority method, as claimed, i.e., if it continued to require a true
majority, it would be a much better method. I.e., top-two runoff IRV.
Instead, San Francisco gets Plurality results for a far higher cost
than Plurality. Basically, SF could have gotten the same result by
eliminating the majority requirement. There is not one election that
that has turned out differenty.
Would Plurality voters have voted the same as in IRV. Most of them
would have, I'm pretty sure. The difference would be fewer votes for
minor candidates, and the rations between the frontrunners would
generally have remained the same. Voting systems analysts have
generally thought of factional elections, where supporters of a minor
candidate will, almost entirely, vote for only one of the two
frontrunners, where vote-splitting only affects one side. In
elections with a lot of candidates, there are likely to be
vote-splits that cuts both ways. The Nader effect in Florida, for
example, would have been countered to some degree by the effect from
Libertarian and other candidates. We really don't know what would
have happened had Florida been IRV or another method allowing more
than one vote.
Personally, I don't think that any available single-winner method, IRV
not excepted, is particularly "great", though I prefer ranked-ordinal
methods to FPTP or TTR.
It's almost certainly true that TTR has generally better results than
IRV. Essentially, when needed, two ballots are better than one. Three
would be better than two! Democratic process skips all this crap and
iterates binary decisions, with a majority requirement to make any
decision. It continues to iterate until a majority is found, or a
majority decides to adjourn....
None of the Above is always on the ballot with true democratic
elections, and doesn't have to be a named candidate. With Approval,
for example, just write it in! Lizard People would have been fine.
My mild preference for IRV over Condorcet
methods (and stronger preference over approval and range) has to do
with wanting to keep strategic voter considerations to a minimum. That
ends up being a somewhat subjective and intuitive conclusion; at least
that's how I see it.
Yeah. Unfortunately, "intuition" sucks when its been misled by
centuries of diffuse propaganda and simple habitual assumptions, plus
a boatload of very targeted spin-doctrine actively promoted recently.
You want to minimize strategic voting, why not use methods designed
to do exactly that, to the point where it is debatable whether what
remains is "strategic voting" or "harmful" at all?
Why *prohibit* voters from equal ranking? Why do you imagine that you
get better results by confining the voters without clear cause? IRV
with equal ranking allowed: much better! It would allow voters to
vote Approval style or Ranked style, whichever they prefer. Power to
the Voters! Count All the Votes!
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