At 11:22 AM 1/15/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
(about a voting security expert)
you are in the rabid anti-IRV party.
Robert, your slip is showing.
Experts in various fields tend to be strongly against IRV. Political
activists who are working for IRV tend to see strong opposition as
"rabid." You want to see rabid opposition, you'll have to look
elsewhere, though.
I'm thinking over the opposition material. It might look rabid to
someone who isn't aware of the problems, and there are some opponents
who can lose perspective, but the more I learned about IRV, the more
I realized what damage it can do. It's not as simple as being a
terrible system. In some ways, it isn't terrible, in terms of
results. But there are, indeed, serious problems with our voting
systems, and if a "reform" is implemented, with high hopes --
fantasies, really -- and at high cost, it can impede the progress of
true reform for decades.
That's why I recommend starting with the simplest and cheapest
reforms. As simple and as cheap as counting all the votes. And this
aligns with the interests of the voting security experts. They also
want us to count all the votes!
Just that one change, with a corresponding change in instructions,
turns Plurality into a quite sophisticated voting system. No change
in voting equipment (it must already be able to handle multiple votes
in one race because of plurality-at-large elections, plus there are
other ways to arrange the ballot even if this approach is for some
reason impossible).
Is that system ideal? I think not, but it's an improvement, and I've
never seen a cogent argument that tossing "overvotes" was better than
keeping them. There are a series of knee-jerk arguments we see.
Supposedly it violates one-person, one-vote, but it's easy to show otherwise.
And that improvement, which will *at worst* do nothing, it defaults
to Plurality, but we can be sure that not all voters will bullet
vote. In particular, as to the big concern about the spoiler effect,
the supporter of a minor no-hope candidate gains an option and no
longer must face a Hobson's choice: betray the favorite or lose
voting power. And when we do instant runoff approval voting, the
voter can vote that first preference, and if a majority agree, the
first preference wins.
(I won't go into all the various options and tweaks that would
further improve IRAV, because the point here is that a no-brainer
improvement that costs nothing should be first to be considered, not
last. And if we are going to do IRV, we must ask, why not allow
voters who want to do so to equal-rank? Why toss those votes? What
harm would be done? And, I can tell you, IRV gets much better if
multiple approvals are allowed. But ... there are even better
methods, and why use the complicated elimination system of IRV, which
requires central counting or centrally coordinated counting, where an
error in any precinct can require all other precincts to recount. Is
it "rabid" to note these severe problems?)
There is a particular problem with activists who are trying to change
the status quo. They think they have a better idea, but anyone who
strongly points out the problems with this idea they will then
identify as a rabid supporter of the status quo. Robert, you have
done this, and you have pushed an expert into your imagined "rabid
anti-IRV party." In this, you have quite strongly allied yourself
with FairVote, which has sought to so identify all opponents of IRV,
dismissing Warren Smith and others as simply biased against IRV,
often presumed to be because they are "pro-Range," when, in fact,
Smith is a mathematician and, while he got all hot and bothered some
years back over his realization that Range could have some very
salutary effects, and somewhat thought of the situation as an
emergency, he never allowed himself to leave behind his balance, and
he openly acknowledges problems with Range and studies them.
I don't agree with Smith's overall political analysis. But, after
all, that's not his expertise. The expert you have attacked is not an
expert -- not yet! -- on voting systems, but on voting security.
However, she's learning. Are you? It seems you have learned
something. You started as an IRV supporter. You listened to enough of
the criticism to get that it wasn't without basis.
Once upon a time, I'd have said, okay, IRV has problems, but it's
still better than plurality, so I'd support a measure to replace
plurality with IRV. I am no longer so confident of that, and it might
depend on details, among them the specific application. Take Takoma
Park, Maryland, which was an early IRV adopter in the current fad.
Why do they have IRV? It makes no sense there. The majority of
elections are unopposed, common in small towns, where it can actually
be difficult to get anyone to run, sometimes. A few elections have
two candidates. And a very few have more than that but are easily
decided in the first round, in reality. The elections are
nonpartisan, and we know that in nonpartisan elections in
environments like that, there is no difference between the results of
IRV and the results of plurality. So .... if I lived in Takoma Park,
would I support IRV?
It would depend on another factor, my identity. If I were Rob Richie,
I'd support IRV there, because it would further my national campaign.
And you can guess where Rob Richie lives.... IRV was harmless in
Takoma Park because they basically get the result in the first round,
at least most of the time, and the results are, after all, the same
as plurality. So why not help out a prominent town resident?
But where there are elections with 23 candidates on the ballot, IRV
gets very expensive. And the method breaks down and starts to show
serious pathologies. Does it produce better results than Plurality?
No. The same results. Show me an exception in a nonpartisan election
and we can discuss this, there may actually have been one, but the
rarity proves the point. And IRV wasn't replacing plurality in San
Francisco, it was replacing top-two runoff, which, for reasons which
are not necessarily obvious to people who haven't deeply studied
voting system theory and experience, is a much better method than
IRV. It was a step backwards. At great expense, though in one way it
may have been worth it.
It gave us, quickly, a large body of data allowing to study the
actual performance of IRV. Who is paying attention to that data? Only
the people whom you might call the "rabid anti-IRV party." Has it
occurred to you, Robert, that IRV might be much worse than you've
realized and that these people might actually be onto something?
Yes, there are some anti-IRV activists who are, in fact, attempting
to preserve Plurality, it seems, and who may have other suspect
motives; the prominent group in Minnesota uses arguments that are
sometimes pretty shaky. There is also a truly excellent video
producer on YouTube who is astonishingly effective in calmly pointing
out the problems with IRV, and I haven't seen him proposing
alternatives, so is he a "Plurality-pusher"? I don't know. I don't
know who he is, but, boy, if I had a political campaign, I'd want him
on my side. He's not "rabid," and that's why he's so effective. He
calmly leads his audience into a clear realization of the problems.
You really should study the history of the relationship between
FairVote and voting systems theorists. The Center for Range Voting
people, basically Warren Smith and Jan Kok, with my assistance,
attempted to find ways to cooperate with FairVote. It was impossible,
Richie didn't give a fig about broader consensus, he's a professional
political activist and he has one goal: victory. Victory for what?
Whatever he's pushing, and he's not about to dilute it or weaken it
with compromise. To be fair to Rob, he's just doing what many other
political activists do, it's the norm, in fact. When you decide to
support a candidate, you don't back up and allow yourself to have
doubts, you persist and do your best at least until the election is
over. It's like being a lawyer for the prosecution or defense. If the
defense lawyer starts to have doubts about the guilt of the client,
he or she will nevertheless do his or her best to convince the jury
that the client is innocent.
And there is even a value to this. If the decisions are made in an
environment where there is deliberation, as happens with a jury. They
talk it over, review the evidence, and (when the system is working)
the evidence is all laid out, with expert testimony as needed. But
this is in a situation where the question is simple: Yes (Guilty) or
No (Not Guilty) or No Decision (Hung Jury), and with serious issues
(criminal cases), unanimity is required. (With civil issues, it's
simple majority, but no decision can be made by a jury without a
majority consent. They *never* would use plurality or IRV. But they
might use approval voting in their process, or even deeper Range, to
poll the jury, it's a great idea. The final result would always be
ratified by a majority, so there is absolutely no damage from the
asserted pathologies caused by supposed strategic voting.)
But there is a better way, in fact; the adversarial technique is part
of the problem with our social decision-making system. It tends to
drown out the still, small voice of knowledge and wisdom, in favor of
heat and fervor.
Robert, I'm suggesting to you a fast path. Drop your attachment to
what you think you know, much of it is shallow and incomplete. I'm
not suggesting that you rush to the opposite side and accept
everything you are being told. Be skeptical, ask for proof or
evidence or clear explanation.
A long time ago, I realized that if I met some perfect expert who
knew everything, and whose analysis was deep and accurate, I would
surely disagree with him or her on many issues....
That doesn't mean that I'm wrong on any particular issue, and there
is no such expert. But it does mean that I'm surely wrong on some
things, and how am I going to correct myself if I automatically
believe that I'm right?
So I discuss stuff, and, for sure, I've stuck my foot in my mouth
many times. Discuss stuff with experts when you aren't an expert, the
fastest way to learn is, in fact, to taste your foot. And learn from
it. Don't get stuck in personality conflicts, they will distract you
and cause you to harden your positions. After all, who wants to admit
that the arrogant jerk was right?
Sometimes that is exactly the best thing to do, and it's admirable.
It doesn't make an ass into a nice guy, or anything but right on that
point, for even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and we could
say that sometimes the stopped clock is, at those times, more correct
than the best and usually most accurate clock, because the latter is
almost always off by some value, so it is almost never fully correct!
But it can be made more and more correct, the average error is far
lower than for the stopped clock. I prefer not to be a stopped clock
until I'm dead. And maybe not even then, we'll see, eh?
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