I think all majority oriented methods are quite similar from
campaigning point of view. Different methods may impact campaigning
somewhat but I don't any very clear differences between IRV and
Condorcet. The campaigning traditions of different countries are
probably much more important in determining the spirit of campaigning.
See some further observations below.
All serious candidates need to impress >50% of the voters. One must
thus get support also outside one's own party. A right wing candidate
must appeal also to left wing oriented or centrist voters, especially
those that are relatively close to the right wing in opinions. This
means that one may attack the extreme left, their opinions and values,
but one must not hurt the opinions of the more moderate voters. It is
another matter to attack individual candidates. One could attack also
nearby candidates personally (their personal history etc.). Also in
this case it is however typically wiser to let someone else do the
attacks on behalf of the candidate and let the candidate be "more
diplomatic". Especially in multiparty counties ability to co-operate
is an important property. In two-party systems co-operation is not as
critical (although a benefit there too). One could thus roughly say
that every serious candidate should appeal try to appeal at least to
60% of the voters (probably more than that in multiparty countries).
This means that their opinions will be quite rounded, without any
edges that would hurt their potential voters, and also trying to give
all the impression that this candidate is especially good for them
(may mean different messages to different audiences). All this applies
to all majority oriented methods.
It is possible that Condorcet elects someone with no first preference
support. This is however a very special case (could maybe happen in
theory in a country with fighting groups and one compromise candidate
that is not part of any of the groups). In practice there can be no
campaigns that would aim at getting second preference votes only. It
is difficult to make a difference between fighting for first vs.
second preferences. All candidates try to present themselves as first
preference candidate to as many voters as they can. And as described
in the previous paragraph they must also aim at being the second
preference of many more voters (including supporters of the non-
serious candidates).
The Burlington/Montroll case is a typical example where IRV would have
required Montroll to have more first preference support to win the
election. How does that impact campaigning? One key point is that
Montroll should have made it known to the Wright supporters that there
is a risk that Kiss will be elected if Wright supporters will not rank
him first. This means that instead of trying to attract more first
preference support he would try to make IRV more centrist oriented by
encouraging strategic voting. And as discussed above it makes sense
also to IRV candidates not to try to position themselves and
representatives of their first preference supporters only but to
collect also second preferences from other groupings.
This means that in both methods all the serious candidates need thus
both first and second preference support (as good as they can get) and
they can not concentrate on core support in the style of digging
trenches around their core support. It is not wise for a candidate to
take strict position in any controversial question (in either system)
unless one is certain that sufficient majority of the voters is not
offended because of that decision. Candidates may indeed benefit of
giving only answers that seem to offer good things and no harm to all
voters that are listening. Candidates should maybe not "fly below the
radar" (can't get even second preferences that way) but should appear
as flying above the radar but in some soft form that pleases all. That
means nothing negative but still some or lots of positive messages.
The definition of the core support requirement is not clear to me.
That is not a generic property that all single-winner elections would
need. There may be different requirements in different elections. E.g.
USA that is a two-party system and has single-party governments may
have some specific needs. Is it enough to be able to rule in
Washington and nominate all the required new officials alone (=> 5%
support would be enough) or are we talking about e.g. 40% support of
such voters that do not have any more preferred (serious?) favourites?
Is preference X>Y>... still core support to Y if Y is a major
candidate and X is just a minor one? It should also be clear if we are
talking about maintaining the two-party system or if the intention is
to allow also other parties to get meaningful positions and/or to take
steps towards a multiparty system. For a pure two-party system basic
plurality could be the method of choice (plurality guarantees strong
core support to each party/government).
If we have a clear definition of the core support requirement then we
could also see how other methods like Condorcet can meet or can be
modified to meet this requirement. IRV offers us one way to implement
it (not very accurate due to the impact of the sequential elimination
process). In Condorcet one could use e.g. an approval cutoff and some
agreed level of required support (if that technique would meet the
requirements).
I hope I covered most of the points. My basic viewpoint is anyway that
all majority oriented methods are quite similar from campaigning point
of view, and that with a clear definition of core support we could
better see how well different methods can meet those requirements.
Juho
On Jan 13, 2010, at 4:30 PM, Terry Bouricius wrote:
Juho,
That was a good summary of IRV and Condorcet dynamics, and how their
different weaknesses might be perceived by a citizenry. I would
like to
add one more to your list. Different voting systems provide different
incentives for candidate behavior and campaigns and thus voter
information.
It has been argued that IRV tends to reduce negative campaigning, or
makes
campaigns overly bland (depending on your stance), because in
addition to
seeking first choices, candidates want to reach out to the
supporters of
other candidates. However, with Condorcet rules, it is possible for a
candidate to win in a crowded field while receiving no first choices
at
all. There haven't been any real-world high-stakes elections to know
for
certain what effect this might have, but it would seem reasonable to
expect candidates to avoid taking stands on controversial issues.
Candidates would have an incentive to campaign just using a vacant
theme
of "I promise to listen to YOU."
IRV seems to strike a reasonable balance between appealing for a
strong
core of supporters (the only requirement in a plurality election with
many candidates) and also developing broad appeal as an alternate
choice.
Condorcet tips towards the broad appeal alone. Condorcet would seem to
encourage candidates to simply avoid alienating anybody, with little
need
to develop strong core support.
Thus, I wonder if Condorcet would "dumb down" campaigns to the point
that
voters would have even less information to evaluate candidates by.
A candidate who flew below the radar, such that no voters had any
negative
opinions of the person, just might win, even if finishing in last
place in
terms of first choices. I suspect the voters wouldn't be happy, even
though that was the logical result of their ballots.
Terry Bouricius
----- Original Message -----
From: "Juho" <[email protected]>
To: "EM Methods" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 4:49 AM
Subject: Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality
On Jan 13, 2010, at 9:14 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
it still is a curiosity to me how, historically, some leaders and
proponents of election reform thunked up the idea to have a ranked-
order ballot and then took that good idea and married it to the IRV
protocol. with the 200 year old Condorcet idea in existence, why
would they do that?
1) The basic idea of IRV is in some sense natural. It is like a street
fight. The weakest players are regularly kicked out and they must give
up. I'm not saying that this would lead to good results but at least
this game is understandable to most people. Condorcet on the other
hand is more like a mathematical equation, and the details of the most
complex Condorcet variants may be too much for most voters. Here I'm
not saying that each voter (and not even each legislator) should
understand all the details of their voting system. The basic Condorcet
winner rule is however a simple enough principle to be explained to
all. But it may be that IRV is easier to market (to the legislators
and voters) from this point of view.
2) IRV is easier to count manually. Condorcet gets quite tedious to
count manually when the number of candidates and voters goes up. One
can use some tricks and shortcuts to speed up manual Condorcet
counting but IRV probably still beats it from this point of view.
Manual counting was the only way to count for a long time. Nowadays we
have computers and Condorcet tabulation should thus be no problem at
all (at least in places where computers are available). But this is
one reason why IRV has taken an early lead.
3) Large parties are typically in a key role when electoral reforms
are made. Election method experts within those parties may well have
found out that IRV tends to favour large parties. In addition to
trying to improve the society the best way they can, political parties
and people within them also tend to think that they are the ones who
are right and therefore the society would benefit of just them being
in power and getting more votes and more seats. The parties and their
representatives may also have other more selfish drivers behind their
interest to grab as large share of the power as possible :-). IRV thus
seems to maintain the power of the current strongest players better
than Condorcet does, and that may mean some bias towards IRV.
4) The problems of different election methods may appear only later. A
superficial understanding of IRV reveals first its positive features.
Like in Burlington the negative features may be understood only after
something negative happens in real elections. This applies also to
Condorcet. On that side one may however live in the hope that the
problems are rare enough and not easy to take advantage of so that
sincere voting and good results would be dominant. The point is that
IRV may be taken into use first (see other points above and below)
without understanding what problems might emerge later. And once it
has been taken into use it may well stay in use for a long time
(electoral reforms are not made every year, people have already gotten
used to the method, having to change the method could be seen by the
society/legislators as a failure/embarrassment, and people/parties who
were elected based on those rules and are strong in that system may be
reluctant to change the rules).
5) Both IRV and Condorcet have some weak spots that can be attacked.
As you point out the weak spots of IRV may well be worse than those of
Condorcet methods (for most typical use cases in politics). Different
problems may have different weight in different political
environments. For example in countries with strong two-party tradition
and single party government some Condorcet properties like the
possibility of electing candidates that do not have strong first
preference support in the ballots may work against it (both in the
case that one does not want the system to change and in the case that
one wants to renew the system). Also strategic voting and fraud
related problems (like later no harm, burial, precinct counting) may
be seen in different light in different societies, e.g. in countries
where strategic voting is the norm vs. in ones where sincere voting is
the norm. One may thus have/develop points of view where Condorcet
looks worse than IRV (I guess it could also be worse for some uses in
some societies from some points of view).
Juho
P.S. One more reason is that Condorcet promoters seem to be lazier
that IRV promoters :-). Condorcet has made some progress in the
academic circles but not yet in politics.
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