On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:57 AM, Kathy Dopp <[email protected]> wrote: >> From: "Terry Bouricius" <[email protected]> >> Subject: Re: [EM] STV and weighted positional methods > >> What is even more puzzling is Ms. Dopp's continued defense of plurality >> voting. > > > Gee Terry. I guess it must really puzzle you that I would rather: > > 1. cast a vote and know it helps rather than hurts my favorite > candidate to win (unlike in IRV/STV)
That isn't the case in plurality. Lots of people vote for one of the top-2 rather than their favourite. IRV allows you vote for your favourite first choice while still allowing you participate in the 'real' election between the top-2 candidates. You can consider it a series of elections. In each election, the weakest candidate is eliminated and a new election held with the remaining candidates. The ranked ballot allows this to be accomplished with only a single ballot. > 2. have my ballot and all its choices treated equally with all other > voters ballot choices (unlike in IRV/STV) All voters are given equal ballots. Any advantage that other voters have, you also have. > 3. have a method that is precinct-summable so easy to manually count > and audit (unlike in IRV/STV) That is an a valid complaint. However, you can still be almost precinct summable. Each precinct announces its results, and then a central office issues instructions on how to perform the next round. In Ireland, all ballot boxes are brought to a central location for counting in each constituency/district. > 4. use a method that does not require computer programs that are so > complex that they are considered to be of exponential runtime to run > and so difficult to accurately write that so far not one US vendor has > written an accurate one (unlike in IRV/STV) Huh? In Ireland, we hand count the votes for PR-STV. It certainly isn't exponential run-time. Each round takes a linear amount of time and the max number of rounds is equal to the number of candidates minus one. The count time is thus at most (number of votes)*(number of candidates-number of seats). However, in practice, each round generally only requires counting of surplus ballots or counting of votes for an eliminated candidate. > 5. allow all voters to participate in the final counting > round/decision on whom to elect. This is the case with IRV/STV. The only time it doesn't happen is if people don't fill in all the ranks (which granted does happen). Also, if you always rank one of the top-2, then you are likely to be part of the last round, even if you don't rank everyone. I don't actually think IRV is a good system, though PR-STV is a good system as long as it elects a reasonable number of candidates (say 4 or more). > Yes. You are very puzzled Terry that I would want a fair, equitable > system for counting votes. > > I, on the other hand, am very puzzled by your desire to implement a > voting method that is far less fair and equitable, in almost every > single way, than our existing voting method is. I think that you have rose coloured glasses for plurality. It is one of the worst voting systems out there. I am not sure if IRV is really that much better though. It seems to maintain 2 party domination (see Australia). Its advantage, if any, is that it provides more info to the elected candidates about their support base. If a large number of the voters who elected you, voted for a 3rd party as their first choice, it might be worth looking into what that party stands for. What is your view on approval? That is monotonic, precinct-summable, treats voters equally and produces fair results. Similarly, what do you think of the condorcet methods? (they have meet/fail various criteria) > 1. to help some voting system vendor handsomely profit by the sale of > new software and equipment that can count IRV, or I think that is a little unfair. It is perfectly reasonable to support IRV for non-corrupt reasons. I don't think you support plurality in order to maintain the monopoly of current voting machine vendors. I disagree with your reasoning, but I don't think you have an ulterior motive. > 2. to help implement a voting method that is virtually impossible and > very costly at best to manually audit after elections so that someone > you know, perhaps, can have a better chance of committing undetectable > fraud. In Ireland, we count PR-STV by hand and there are various checks that can be accomplished. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
