At 07:28 AM 10/26/2009, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
Dear folks,
earlier this year Forest and I submitted an article to Social Choice and
Welfare (http://www.fair-chair.de/some_chance_for_consensus.pdf)
describing a very simple democratic method to achieve consensus:
> Simple Efficient Consensus (SEC):
> =================================
>
> 1. Each voter casts two plurality-style ballots:
> A "consensus ballot" which she puts into the "consensus urn",
> and a "favourite ballot" put into the "favourites urn".
>
> 2. If all ballots in the "consensus urn" have the same option ticked,
> that option wins.
>
> 3. Otherwise, a ballot drawn at random from the "favourites urn"
> decides.
Well, I find it hard to believe how wrong-headed this is. I won't
achieve consensus, ever, unless the society is so connected that it
doesn't need to vote!
I've found the logic of consensus inexorable: if we want to maximize
consensus in a democracy, we must have a society which values
consensus. I have no doubt that the method described, in its logic,
is quite clever. Unfortunately, people don't play game theory, that's
well known; the game-theoretical predictions don't work. In a real
society that is large enough, the consensus urn will never choose a
winner unless there is a true consensus process already in operation,
people will not naturally agree on a large scale, and, while in small
organization, 100% consensus is attainable, attaining it in very
large ones is next to impossible. With 100,000 voters, at least one
of them, even if they all agreed, would accidentally mark the wrong choice.
Are write-in votes allowed?
In any case, I've come to the conclusion that collective
decision-making must be deliberative except as to one aspect,
consent. It is traditional in democracies that no collective action
can be taken without the consent of a majority. Nothing. Election
under Roberts Rules of Order requires a truer majority of marked
ballots cast, and the voter can mark on the ballot "None of these
jerks," and it's a valid ballot even if there is no candidate by that
name. It counts in the basis for a majority, *as it should*. It's a
No vote on all the candidates on the ballot. And the voter can,
similarly, vote for any eligible candidate; normal small-organization
ballots don't have names printed on them anyway, they are just blank
pieces of paper. (Hence if you don't mark the ballot, it is 'scrap
paper' and isn't counted as a ballot, though it may be reported as blank.
So Robert's Rules, unless a bylaw permits otherwise, requires
repeated balloting until a majority is found. IRV is claimed to
simulate this, but actually it simulates repeated elimination, which
is not what RR recommends.
Voting reformers, I suggest, must understand that Runoff Voting is
the most advanced system that is in actual use, it is much better
than shallow analysis suggests, and Roberts Rules says why: voters
may base their votes in subsequent balloting based on the earlier
results. RR does not allow elimination, period. And, in fact, some
Runoff Voting implementations allow write-ins. California took this
away in a recent decision that voting theorists seem to have
completely overlooked, so little attention is paid to Runoff Voting.
San Francisco, for the last runoff election, decided to outlaw
write-in votes. Very bad idea, and probably politically motivated.
Candidate -- who might actually have won the election -- sued.
California law requires that write-in votes be allowed in all
"elections." They decided that a runoff was just an extension of the
original election, so that write-ins were allowed in the first round
meant that the law was satisfied, so cities were free to prohibit
them in the runoff.
A loss for democracy, and very bad analysis. All of us know the big
flaw of runoff voting, the possible elimination of a compromise
winner in the first round, which winner would beat all others in
direct face-offs, even by a landslide. Write-ins make it possible for
the public to fix the problem. With better election methods, there
wouldn't be a spoiler risk in that runoff.
But aren't runoffs unnecessary if you have a good method? And there,
my friends, lies the real problem. The holy grail has been the best
single-ballot method. The method described is best only if it is used
by an electorate sufficiently knowledgeable to make the best choices.
I might point out that such an electorate could do the same with
plurality. The electorate needs to know, to adjust individual
preferences to choose the ideal compromise, what everyone else
prefers. And how does it do that? It does it with a poll. A poll is
another name for an election, only we tend to think of polls as non-binding.
There is no single-ballot polling method that will choose a winner
approved by a majority, without coercing voters, that's the bottom
line. And a winner not approved by a majority may, indeed, be the
best possible choice, given the restriction that repeated voting is
impossible. That, however, is a stupid restriction, because it is
clearly possible to hold a runoff in public elections, because
communities do it, and consider it worth the expense.
Comrades, to arms! The campaign for instant runoff voting has
targeted cities using runoff voting because it is vulnerable to
attack based on the argument that IRV is cheaper (probably a lie) and
finds majorities without the need for a runoff (definitely a lie.)
FairVote is actually damaging American democracy, it is not merely
that this is a less-than-perfect reform. It's harmful.
It can be argued that it is also harmful as a replacement for
plurality elections; Roberts Rules of Order only suggests
preferential voting where it is impractical to repeat the election."
And then, when it describes the counting, it mentions that the winner
is the first one to attain a majority of the ballots. It does not say
"the unexhausted ballots." It does not say "all the ballots." The
book was written by parliamentarians, and "majority of the ballots"
is defined elsewhere. All the ballots. A true majority of those who cast votes.
Terril Bouricius and Rob Richie just debated this point on a League
of Women Voters list, I'd been asked to comment. Richie claims that
my "interpretation" is my own and that obviously many organizations
disagree with me. No, Robert's Rules is clear, but organizations are
free to do what they want, they can implement PLurality if they want,
and if they adopt IRV and allow election by a "last round majority"
that is exactly what they are doing. If they, on the other hand, pass
a bylaw that says that the winner shall be determined as described in
Robert's Rules in the secion on preferential voting, then they have
not adopted "IRV," as is being sold by FairVote, they have adopted a
system that may sometimes under some conditions produce a better
result than plurality, though under real conditions as shown by
actual election results in the U.S., it produces the same results as
plurality in nonpartisan elections.
Runoff voting, on the other hand, in one-third of nonpartisan
elections where a runoff is held, there is a comeback election.
In Long Beach, California, there was a write-in candidate who won the
runoff. That kind of result would not be possible if Long Beach
passes the rule that San Francisco passed -- which was made moot by
RCV's adoption there, where the ballot information pamphlet lied to
the voters: "A winner will still be required to gain a majority."
Worst "impartial" ballot question analysis I've ever seen, and the
opponents of RCV, and they were many, didn't even notice it. That
shows how little attention has been paid to the value of Runoff Voting.
In any case, there are instructions to the clerks in Robert's Rules
about the importance of educating voters as to the value of complete
ranking, because if voters don't completely rank the candidates, it
is possible that no candidate will gain a majority, "and the election
will have to be repeated." It is totally explicit, and Rob Richie is
a bold-faced liar. He made his usual "I don't have time to continue
this" escape.
While random choice has an appeal, where deliberation is impossible
and where results over many elections will average out, what if 1% of
the electorate wants to elect a crazy who will start a nuclear war?
Could we afford to take a 1% chance of that?
Election process is best when it actually seeks consensus, and that
requires more than one ballot, on occasion. Range ballots are great,
but explicit approval should be indicated, which could be done by
setting midrange as an approval cutoff. And if there is no majority
approval, there should be a runoff. It could be argued that if there
is more than one candidate with a majority, there should be a runoff,
but I won't go there now. In spite of FairVote arguments, multiple
majorities are very unlikely if Approval were implemented, or Bucklin
or Range, or hybrids that allow multiple simultaneous approvals.
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