At 12:49 PM 12/14/2008, Steve Eppley wrote:
Hi,
I think Mr. Lomax missed the big point (though I agree he is right
to criticize Instant Runoff). The big point is that the authors of
books on Robert's Rules showed zero awareness of the existence of
Condorcetian preferential voting methods--or perhaps they were aware
but their analysis was made before the technological age made it
easy to exhaustively tally all the voters' pairwise preferences--so
their "recommendation" of single winner STV preferential voting was
only relative to a few even worse methods. Clearly, Condorcetian
methods have properties that are much closer to the properties of
the Single Elimination Pairwise method that RR advocates, because
Condorcetian methods are not subject to the criticism they made of
STV that it can easily defeat the best compromise.
This analysis is incorrect. Yes, they show no specific awareness, but
the language they used was quite precisely crafted, surprisingly so,
if they were not aware that other preferential voting methods did not
suffer from the failure of the STV method. That is, they make it a
criticism of the *specific method they have described*, which is STV.
They have also mentioned that there are many forms of preferential
voting. That they spent precious words -- this is a manual of
practice, not a dissertation -- to make it clear that center squeeze
was a specific problem of "this method," i.e., the one they describe,
indicates to me that they were quite aware that this wasn't a
universal problem with preferential voting.
You have missed something else. RR does not recommend single
elimination pairwise. They recommend, indeed *require* by default,
repetition of the election, until a majority is found. There is no
candidate elimination. It's true, though. The RR method -- election
repetition -- together with associated rules, is an approximately
Condorcet compliant method. The deviation is, in fact, a Range-like
effect. When a proposed candidate is "close enough," i.e., the
general preference for the Condorcet winner is low enough, the
process terminates. People would rather finish with the election than
seek any more improvement in satisfaction with the result. If there
is some group of voters who strongly oppose this, they will attempt
to prevent it, they will attempt to wheel and deal to come up with
some better compromise. It's when the remaining preference strength,
possible improvement, is lower than the perceived cost of continuing
the process, that it terminates. With the explicit consent of a
majority for the result.
I'm told that the reason they didn't describe other voting methods is
that those other methods, at the time, were not in common use, and
they still are not. They are a manual of actual practice, and it's
remarkable that they said as much as they did. In any case, they
clearly think that the practice of repeated elections is superior to
IRV, and that using this *even with a majority requirement* is
deficient compared to repeated elections. That's because, if voters
do fully rank, a majority may be found which is *not* the compromise winner.
But they don't seem to have realized that truncation is a reasonable
voter strategy in Center Squeeze conditions. And when the election
must be repeated, the top-two failure is irrelevant, or almost so.
(Approval can easily defeat the best compromise too, because many
voters will fail to approve compromise candidates out of fear of
defeating preferred candidates, which in turn will deter potential
candidates from competing. If Mr. Lomax likes Approval due to its
cheapness and simplicity, I'll point out that the family of voting
methods known as Voting for a Published Ranking are as cheap as
Approval, easier for the voters, some methods of the family are as
simple, and if I'm right about how candidates would behave would
tend to elect a good compromise.)
Published ranking is interesting, for sure, but Approval is far, far
simple and far less radical. Bucklin, in fact, addresses that
reluctance. Unstated here was how the published rankings would be
used. Condorcet? Bucklin is simpler, but when we are dealing with
published rankings, we need only collect those votes en masse, and
then applying them to a Condorcet matrix would be simple.
However, politically, it's, shall we say, a step. Count All the Votes
is a small step, *and* cheap. And quite surprisingly powerful,
considering. Bucklin has been used, and this might make it easier to
bring it back.
The behavior of Published Rankings is unknown. There are a *lot* of
questions, some of them quite difficult to answer. I'd prefer pure
Asset; candidates could certainly publish their own Range ballots
regarding other candidates, but I suggest that encouraging voters to
select for trustworthiness, which covers a lot, is the best way to
proceed to reform elections, and Asset has legs. It should be able to
walk, one step at a time, all the way to full, highly accurate
proportional representation, continuous democracy (no fixed terms of
office, but, naturally, regular elections for electors).
It would be worthwhile, I think, to reach out to recognized experts
in Robert's Rules and teach them about better voting methods, and
then see what they recommend.
It's an error to assume they don't know. They are not voting systems
theorists, they put together a manual of actual practice. It's quite
possible that in the next manual, there will be some description of
Approval, for example, because there are some major organizational
implementations.
Another deception by the IRVings is their widespread claim that IRV
eliminates spoiling. It's an even bigger deception, much more
important. A variation of IRV that permits candidates to withdraw
from contention after the votes are published, before the votes are
tallied, would be much better at eliminating spoiling and electing
the best compromise.
Sure. IRV eliminates, to a degree, the lower-order spoiler effect.
I.e., minor party, no chance of winning, draws votes away from one
major candidate, resulting in an election unsatisfactory to a
majority. That, by the way, is an assumption. Nader, in 2000, claimed
that voters who preferred him should vote for him because the majors
were Tweedledum and Tweedledee, both shills for the corporations. If
they believed him, then why would we think that they would add votes
under IRV? However, in fact, voters are a bit more sophsticated and
uncontrollable. Some of those who voted for Nader would have added
ranked votes or additional Approvals for Gore.
Bucklin is what I recommend, as a first reform, beyond Count All the
Votes (Open Voting or Approval). It addresses the big problem that
most people give as an objection to Approval, but it is very much
like Approval. It's roughly as efficient as Condorcet methods with
social utility.
Ultimately, I prefer Range with explicit Approval cutoff, and
pairwise analysis, and a runoff in the case of majority approval
failure or a candidate who beats the Range winner by pairwise
analysis. It's my contention, by the way, that a genuine, sincere
Range winner would likely prevail in a direct runoff against a true
Condorcet winner. And if you don't know why, ask!
When I first proposed this, some thought it preposterous, a result of
single-ballot, deterministic thinking that the whole field of voting
systems fell into.
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