At 02:22 PM 1/10/2010, Terry Bouricius wrote:
Stephane,
Although Abd often asserts that IRV replicates FPTP results, I don't think
he is claiming that in the last Burlington election.
That's correct. I make that claim with respect to nonpartisan
elections, where the data is quite solid on this.
The plurality leader
was the Republican Kurt Wright with 33%. He presumably would have won
under FPTP.
That's highly speculative. There hasn't been a Republican mayor of
Burlington in many, many years. Rather, the voting method allowed
certain kinds of voting. We cannot predict how voters would have
voted with Plurality, because they would have made compromises, many
of them. Certainly a Republican voter in Burlington would have known
that the Republican wasn't likely to win.
But it's possible. This is not the ordinary spoiler effect, though.
It's a three-major-candidate effect, which is quite unusual in the
U.S. for partisan elections.
However, as the weaker candidates were eliminated (first the
Green and Independent, and then the Democrat) the Progressive Party
incumbent mayor who was in second place in the initial first-choice tally
won the runoff.
That's right. But, it must be noted, the "weaker candidate" as
defined by IRV was preferred by a strong majority of voters over the
Progressive who won. What happened with IRV is that it concealed the
second-rank votes of the Republicans, officially, it never even
counted them. There is some great video on this from SJVoter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAGlVOi2sEY&feature=channel
I just discovered SJVoter's video work. Terry, the IRV campaign is in
serious trouble.
Of course, there is the additional factor that a change in voting rules
would likely change both campaign tactics as well as fears about spoilers,
and whether all five candidates would have even run.
That's correct. Plurality works well, of course, when there are two
major candidates and no serious spoilers. "Serious spoilers" means
that there are candidates who actually draw off votes from one of the
major candidates, but not the other, votes which involve serious
preference strength. I don't consider as a "serious spoiler," a third
party candidate who gains votes from people who might otherwise not
really care about the result, even if they have some preference left....
It is certainly
possible that the Democratic Party candidate would be dismissed as a
"spoiler" with the Republican challenger and Progressive incumbent being
seen as the "credible" candidates.
Its possible for that perception to occur, but not once the actual
voted preferences are known. The spoiler, if any, was the Republican.
Which is odd, considering that he had the largest first-preference
support. But that is merely the result of a lack of serious spoilers,
so to speak, on the Republican side. It's been claimed that IRV
favors extreme results and discriminates against compromise winners.
This is, I'm sure Terry remembers, one of the major criticisms of
Robert's Rules of Order of IRV. Burlington demonstrated that,
demonstrating that the claims of FairVote that such scenarios were
rare, didn't actually occur under IRV, were false. Center squeeze
isn't rare when there are three major candidates in a partisan election.
It is also quite possible that the
Independent with around 10% first choice support would not have run if
FPTP had been used. Voters rather universally ranked their true favorite
choice as number one, but that wouldn't have been true under FPTP.
The candidate may have run but may have gotten much lower support.
That's why Warren Smith writes about the "incubator effect" of Range
voting, which effect would also apply to Bucklin. There is no reason
at all not to vote for your favorite in first rank in Bucklin. Under
some very unusual scenarios, maybe, adding an additional first rank
vote *might* be optimal, if it is permitted, but this would be so
rare that I'd not advise voters to even think about it.
I do assume that, at present, IRV or RCV voters are voting sincerely
for first preference. However, with IRV, this can be a seriously
suboptimal vote, I'm pretty sure that the Republicans who relied on
the promises that they could safely vote for Wright in first rank
are, some of them, regretting that vote, for it gave them the worst
result, for most of them.
Under Bucklin, we would see, I'd predict, more truncation, less usage
of additional ranks, but there would still be enough that *usually* a
majority would be found, even with substantial numbers of candidates.
But if candidate counts increase without limit, almost any voting
system can be overwhelmed, unless Asset techniques are used.
IRV resulted in a VERY different set of dynamics than would have existed
with FPTP, so it is impossible to say with any certainty what the outcome
would have been.
That's correct.
It is also noteworthy that the current debate is NOT
about substituting typical FPTP, but rather FPTP with a 40% requirement.
Under that scenario, it is quite likely that the Progressive would have
won as well, since no candidate reached 40% initially, and IRV replicated
the likely runoff outcome.
But you are assuming as "quite likely" that the Democrat would have
been eliminated. Maybe.
I oppose a 40% requirement, it's the wrong measure. I do consider top
two runoff to be better than IRV, but, without modification, it
doesn't address center squeeze, which is the problem in Burlington.
Use a better advanced method -- which can be simple as Bucklin -- and
require a majority, or, alternatively, a vote margin above a certain
level such that a "comeback election" is highly unlikely.
I've come, Terry, to realize that Bucklin was quite an advanced
method, and the historical problem was partly that it was oversold as
a method of finding majorities without runoff elections. That should
sound familiar! No single-ballot method can guarantee majorities, but
some are more efficient than others at finding them. IRV, with
optional ranking, as is politically necessary in the U.S., not only
does not find true majorities, when runoff rounds of counting are
needed, but we can expect that to increase, based on the Australian
experience with OPV. Bucklin, likewise, will experience higher levels
of truncation as voters become familiar with it, but when there is a
true spoiler effect operating, we can expect that Bucklin will either
head it off or truncation will cause majority failure and thus a
runoff. With Bucklin, under majority failure conditions, all the
votes have been counted, which is quite unlike IRV, so Bucklin will
make the best possible effort to find an actual majority, and is also
more likely to pick the best top-two candidates.
And the requirement need not be as strict as "majority."
In a plurality election, if we have 49%A, 30% B, and 21% other, the
likelihood of a comeback is practically zero. If this were a Bucklin
election, and those were first preference votes, we'd have a sum of
votes, at the end, greater than 100%, and the likelihood of there
being enough second rank votes to take A over the majority level for
explicit approval is very high. A runoff would be avoided even if the
requirement is for a majority. There was an IRV election like that in
San Francisco, perhaps you remember it, Terry. There was majority
failure, sure, but only by a few votes.
What's needed, Terry, is for communities to start to consider voting
systems overall, gathering information and knowledge, and making
deeper choices than the simplified ones being presented to them by
activists. The ideal voting method may vary from community to
community. IRV has been sold in places where it really wasn't
appropriate and where whatever arguments can be made for IRV actually
didn't apply. But seemed to apply.
Multiwinner STV is a reasonable method, under some conditions. It was
the original goal for the organization that preceded FairVote. For
shallow political reasons, IRV became the centerpiece, but the
defectiveness of IRV has been known for more than a century, I found
academic criticism of it from the nineteenth century. Even the much
better Bucklin system (called American Preferential Voting in the
political literature from the second decade of the nineteenth
century) was rescinded, but not because it was an inferior system;
rather, the only cogent argument against it seems to have been that
it was oversold as finding majorities without runoffs. That is not
the ideal application of Bucklin. It is a method which can properly
*reduce* the need for runoffs, and more effectively and efficiently,
quite likely, than IRV.
But because FairVote contemptuously dismissed academic and expert
criticism as "ivory tower," and refused to seek consensus with
experts and more informed voting system activists, it has done great
damage to the cause of election reform in the U.S., opportunities
were missed and wasted and people will now be suspicious of any
reform. Perhaps they should be suspicious, but ... reform capital has
been spent and is likely to ultimately be wasted. We need to stop
this, Terry, and you could be part of the solution instead of part of
the problem, and I sense that this is possible for you. Am I wrong?
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