At 10:09 AM 12/4/2008, James Gilmour wrote:
Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 8:17 AM>
> I'm not Abd, but I think the argument goes like this: in TTR, if a
> (usually) third candidate gets enough FPP votes to make it to the second
> round, that candidate has a real chance of winning, since the second
> round will be focused on those two candidates alone, whereas, on the
> other hand, if it's IRV, then IRV's chaos may deprive the candidate of
> its rightful victory, and even if it wouldn't, people can only vote for
> the third candidate that would become the winner as one of
> many, not as one of two.
I'm afraid I cannot follow your argument at all. The whole point
about TTRO is that a strong third-preferred candidate, who with
IRV or Condorcet might come through to be the eventual winner, is
dumped at the first stage by TTRO rules. That is almost certainly
what happened in the 2002 French Presidential election - and that
"defeat" ended the political career of the politician concerned.
But, of course, the same can happen with IRV, we need only posit a Le
Pen with some broader support, such that vote transfers don't alter
relative positions. In nonpartisan elections, this is actually the
most likely scenario. But that election was very close in the first
round, so, even if it had been nonpartisan, it could have gone either
way, the difference was down in the noise.
The argument is not that TTRO is "better" than Condorcet methods;
when the first round is Plurality, it's obvious that it can make a
poor choice of the top two. (Essentially, it's making a poor choice
of the second candidate, once the frontrunner is eliminated -- and
all the voters who voted for that candidate as well. Batch
elimination IRV, exactly.)
IRV *sometimes* will find the compromise winner, but it's not
reliable at all for this. It's really closer to TTRO than Condorcet
methods. A Condorcet method *must* find Jospin in a situation like
that which was faced, assuming that voters express the necessary preferences.
If the defeat in that election ended the political career of Jospin,
it was ripe to end. However, it wasn't Jospin's fault that the method
did what it did, and neither was it a fault that the French desire a
majority result. Rather, they simply have used a limited method for
the primary. Rather, consider using two-winner STV for the primary.
If a true majority is found for one candidate, done. If not, then
runoff between a better top two.
It can be done better and cheaper, but if that's what people want
.... The sin is in leaving behind a majority method for one which
would demolish the French multiparty system, probably, IRV.
IRV is being sold in the U.S. as finding a majority without the need
for runoffs, but that is one of the most deceptive arguments in this
field. It "finds a majority" by simply eliminating the vote of every
voter who didn't vote for one of the top two. As I've pointed out,
with a procedure like this, you can claim election by unanimity, just
carry the IRV procedure one step further. That's not a "majority of
votes cast," as the San Francisco voter information pamphlet for the
proposition that brought them RCV, their name for IRV, claimed. It's
a majority of ballots "containing votes for continuing candidates,"
i.e., excluding those who voted only for candidates other than those.
Their sin? Assuming that they could vote sincerely, and only vote for
candidates they liked.
(The latter problem still exists with full ranking allowed.)
And just to be clear, in the examples I gave we are not dealing with
TTRO that started with only three candidates . In the 2002
French Presidential there 16 candidates. And some of the mayoral
elections in England also have large numbers of candidates - one
immediately to hand had 14. I think in these circumstances I would
prefer the risk of some lower order chaos with IRV exclusions to
the high risk of excluding of the most-preferred candidate with TTRO.
But the problem is not the real runoffs, it's the primary method.
Want IRV? Use it for the primary method. But you could accomplish the
same effect much more cheaply and more reliably. Bucklin.
Mr. Gilmour, you really should take a look at U.S. IRV elections,
which have almost entirely been nonpartisan. With sometimes over
twenty candidates on the ballot. IRV in that environment, functions
like plurality. There have been *no* comeback elections before
November 2008; and in this most recent election, I think there was a
comeback, but it was a partisan election, where these things happen
more often. French 2002 was very close in the primary, between all
the frontrunners, actually, so you can argue that IRV would have done better.
However, if you also look at runoff elections in the same places, I
looked at data for Cary, NC and San Francisco, runoffs were
"comebacks" about one-third of the time. There are various
explanations for this, but the lack of such elections with IRV is a
strong indication of possible Condorcet failure. You may "prefer the
risk," but you don't seem to have any idea of how strong a risk it is.
And you are making an artificially defective comparison. TTRO has
major benefits that aren't present with IRV, which involve the
reconsideration of the candidates by the electorate. There is no
doubt that the final round is a true majority result, with the
restricted set, and it's possible to *not* have a truly restricted
set, but only ballot exclusion.
Essentially, TTRO has an obvious flaw, which can strike under
conditions like that in France 2002. But that flaw can also strike
with IRV, and it is not what would reasonably be considered rare.
TTRO can be fixed or made better by quite a few different techniques,
which include:
(1) Use an advanced method in the primary. In partisan elections,
probably a method which avoids most strategic voting by voters, which
could be Bucklin or 2-winner IRV. Both of these would terminate with
a majority vote for any candidate. (I'm presuming that there isn't
obligatory ranking and that the method does allow unrestricted
bottom-ranking.) Approval is the simplest primary fix and, for sure,
it would not make matters worse, and it's free. Same ballot can be
used, except for the instructions. Any of these methods would reduce
the need for runoffs, but not eliminate it. Bucklin would almost
certainly be the most efficient at reducing runoffs.
(2) Use a better method for the runoff. Either allow more candidates
into the runoff -- which would create the possibility for a third
runoff -- or allow plurality election in the runoff, but with
write-in votes. This allows a *major* Condorcet failure, accompanied
by significant preference strength, to be corrected, and such
corrections have happened in the U.S., which sometimes allows
write-ins in all elections, including runoffs. If, of course, the
preference strength involved is small, few will bother, and be
willing to risk a spoiler effect in the runoff.
(3) Conduct the runoff using Asset Voting. I.e., each candidate
receiving votes in the primary -- which could then be vote-for-one,
though there is a neat interpretation that avoids considering
overvoted ballots spoiled, then has those votes to recast in an
"electoral college" runoff. The candidates are electors, holding
various numbers of votes reflecting their primary vote strength,
which they vote publicly. Jospin would have won, I'd predict, with
practically no fuss. Of course, he'd have had to negotiate with some
of the smaller parties. That's a good effect, and would give them
real power, reflective of their true vote strength.
Of course, the best solution here is Asset; is it a down side that
this could radically transform the entire system, shifting it toward
direct democracy (i.e., democracy by chosen proxy)?
This would be, of course, using a form of proportional representation
in the Presidential election process. Asset Voting was invented,
first proposed as far as we know, by Lewis Carroll, as a tweak to
STV, to avoid discarding exhausted ballots. The world would be a
different place if the Australians had used this instead of an
alternate, and quite undemocratic fix, requiring full ranking, which
essentially extracts noise from many voters and uses it in
determining the winners, thus making the voice of minor parties
largely moot. That's a political choice, but certainly not a
democratic one. Carroll knew that this was noise, but he realized
that these voters knew who their favorite was, the candidate they
most trusted, so he suggested utilizing that.
There have been proposals to use something like this for the U.S.
electoral college, and it would shift the college toward its original
intention, but that's politically very difficult. It's too bad that
the National Popular Vote movement didn't realize that there was a
better way than attempting to turn the U.S. Presidential contest into
pure Plurality!
(I've described elsewhere how it would be possible to move in that
direction *immediately,* state by state, without waiting for an
electoral college majority before implementing it. Basically, a state
would decide to support a representative electoral college, and would
phase that in, using its full electoral weight to rebalance the
college to reflect the popular vote. It would not be the mindless
"proportional assignment of electors for the state," such as the
Republicans attempted to set up for California, which would be
political suicide for the majority party in the state involved. It
would be a compact, of sorts, but one not dependent on other states
for it to work. If we were serious about electoral college reform,
we'd go for something like this.)
James Gilmour
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