On Jan 7, 2010, at 8:45 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 8:28 PM, robert bristow-johnson
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Jan 7, 2010, at 7:55 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
I've answered that question on this list before and Abd ul also
answered
it.
There are *many* good alternative voting methods that do solve the
spoiler problem, are monotonic, and elect majority winners and are
precinct summable.
would this list include Condorcet?
Yes. Condorcet is precinct-summable in an n x n matrix where n is the
number of candidates.
i knew that. but what i wanted to know is if, from where you stand,
it was one of the acceptable alternatives to IRV. or if your ideal
solution is to return to the "traditional" runoff or just first-past-
the-pole.
I don't know of any alternative voting methods as
bad as IRV/STV (although there must be one somewhere), so I would
probably support almost any alternative method that lacks the
multitude of flaws that IRV/STV have. Abdul has convinced me that
regular top-two runoffs are good too.
i'm sure as hell not convinced. if that were the case in
Burlington in
2009, a candidate would be elected on Runoff Day that was less
preferred by
the electorate than an identified specific candidate who was not
included in
the runoff.
Well, let's just say top-two runoff is precinct-summable, monotonic,
virtually always finds majority winners, preserves voters' rights and
otherwise lacks most of the major flaws of IRV/STV, but does not solve
all the flaws of plurality that IRV/STV was incorrectly envisioned as
solving.
with that i agree with you on everything. but, for Burlington, until
we get Condorcet, i still think that IRV does a better job than
plurality of solving the main problem of rewarding the compromising
strategy for supporters of 3rd-party candidates. but i do not
understand why anyone would envision the ranked-order ballot, skip
over the Condorcet concept (something i thought of 38 years ago in
high school, 3 decades before reading the term "Condorcet"), and come
up with the STV method. specifically the arbitrary threshold that
the weakest candidate to eliminate is the one with the fewest 1st-
pick votes (that 2nd-pick count as well as last pick). whose idea
was that? even in high school, i knew that the problem was in the
difference on how people who are idealistic would choose their
candidate in a multi-party or multi-candidate race compared to if
there were only two candidates. the latter is a simple problem for
both the voter and for the election system. no strategies to be had;
vote for the candidate you like the most or vote for the candidate
you like the least. there is no reason why the latter would serve
any political interest of the voter, so he/she may as well vote
sincerely and hope for the best. but once there is a credible 3rd
candidate, that is no longer the case. all Condorcet does (assuming
there *is* a Condorcet winner) is extend the concept to the extra
candidates. if there is a Condorcet winner and if that person is
always elected to office, there is no reason why the multi-candidate
election would turn out better for anyone by trying to be tricky.
throwing a Condorcet election into a cycle for strategic reasons is
pretty risky and i've never been convinced that a cycle is common at
all. and if a cycle does happen, Tideman ranked-pairs is fine, as
far as i can tell. Shulze is probably better, but hard to explain to
Joe 6-pack. but i can explain Condorcet to Joe 6-pack. it's simple
enough.
thanks for responding, Kathy.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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