At 12:03 AM 1/22/2010, Kathy Dopp wrote:
Terry, just do not imagine that people do not see the "trick" you use of redefining words that have had a common meaning for decades.
The biggest is "majority," which has been redefined to mean something very different, which is then justified on a bogus analogy with real runoffs. "majority" has always been shorthand for "containing a vote from a majority of ballots cast in an election," but this gets slipped into "majority of ballots containing a vote for one of the top two remaining after eliminations."
And the dirty little secret is that in most elections where there is no majority in first preference, i.e., when the sequential elimination retabulation is done, there is no majority -- real majority of *voters* -- after retabulation.
If the Robert's Rules method is followed, the elimination continues one more step in that case, to find if there is a majority of votes who have ranked the candidate instead of refusing to vote for the candidate. Education on IRV doesn't say, unfortunately, that ranking a candidate is a form of vote for the candidate, and many or most voters imagine that ranking a candidate "last" is a vote against the candidate. Because it is actually a vote for the candidate against all the write-ins or minor candidates who can't be ranked, if the ranking is eliminated.
No, if you want to vote against a candidate without taking a stand on every possible write-in, don't rank the candidate at all.
That's why this "majority" redefinition is so pernicious; without realizing it, voters approving IRV have eliminated a majority requirement without being aware of it, having bought the propaganda that IRV "guarantees" a majority result. Top two runoff does guarantee a majority result (if write-ins are not allowed; if they are, it's possible for majority failure to occur, though rare).
The classic case is in San Francisco, where the voter information pamphlet panel gave a "neutral" description of the measure that claimed something like "winners will be required to gain a majority of the votes."
It's very difficult to interpret that in a sane way to make it the truth, it's a deceptive statement, and it was, I'm sure, based on FairVote propaganda, and if the *accurate* statement had been made, the effect would have been very different.
"Winning candidates will have gained more votes than the leading opponent after the rest of the candidates and ballots which don't rank them have been eliminated. Mathematically, this is a "majority," not of "the votes," but of "votes remaining after all but two candidates are eliminated and the ballots not ranking those two are eliminated as well."
"Will be required" sounds like some standard which must be reached -- and thus which could fail -- and, since this redefined "majority" is a tautology, a mathematical construct of the method, that's deceptive.
As I've pointed out, use the Robert's Rules method of counting, which continues to the last elimination, not terminating when there are only two candidates left, but seeking to find a complete majority, and we could then make a parallel claim. "Candidate must receive unanimous support from votes cast."
In Brown v. Smallwood, the Minnesota court noted, with approval, prior judgement in another state that wrote about the issue being a "majority of voters" rather than a "majority of votes." Or was it "plurality" or language like that, I forget. It's too bad that they didn't follow what they apparently did not understand and failed to apply. Bucklin seeks to find a majority of *voters* who have approved a candidate. Not a majority of "votes." The number of voters is the number of valid ballots. If the ballot is valid, votes on it are then considered, and if a majority is required, a winning threshold is established that then must be found or the election fails. Or the election is decided by plurality.
IRV, in every implementation so far in political elections, is being decided by plurality, in most of the elections that go to "instant runoff."
But FairVote, even after all of this has been made abundantly clear, continues to promote the deceptive arguments, even if modified cleverly to make them not-exact-lies. That is, if you know the truth, you'd have to say that the FairVote propaganda is true, as to literal fact, but only deceptive as to impression created. And, of course, individual activists continue to promote the deceptive impression, probably not realizing that they are lying, or not caring. We will see that FairVote has turned the corner when it becomes willing to be "fair." Thus Kathy's Fairytale Vote is quite on point. FairVote is selling false hopes, fairytales, based on a collection of misinformation and deceptive political argument, designed to play on voter ignorance of the complex issues of voting systems. And, long ago, Rob Richie indicated his contempt for the "ivory-tower theorists" who objected to his deceptions, on the basis that they were not "practical" and not "politically realistic." Which means, boiled down, that, in his view, to be politically successful you have to lie.
That's not reform, that is the same old shit. With lipstick on it. Looks good, if you don't look and smell too closely. Bite into it and swallow it and pay attention to what happens.... what happens?
That's why studying actual IRV performance is so important. I didn't get half or more of the problems with IRV until I started studying actual results and comparing with top two runoff results.
TTR has its defects, for sure, though not as many as FairVote has alleged, their campaign has, almost entirely, been against top-two runoff, and, as a result, they have reduced election fairness in the actual jurisdictions they have targeted, based on deceptive arguments about cost, and plastering over the "majority" issue. Those jurisdictions, all of them, thought finding a majority was important, so the cost of runoffs was worth it. Obviously! But tell them, deceptively, that you can find a majority without the expense and inconvenience of a runoff, why, sure, what a great idea!
But it was a lie, originally, and it remains as deceptive propaganda that is turned into lies by those who don't understand it.
Terry, as long as you support this, you are properly tarred with the same brush. If you don't like the tar, stop supporting the spewing of deceptive propaganda by FairVote. Take a stand on it, both within FairVote and in public fora.
There are preferential voting methods that clearly will improve voting system performance, or, at worst, do no harm. Take top two runoff, and use an advanced preferential voting method for the primary, seeking a true majority (or possibly some lower criterion that solidly predicts that a majority would be found in a runoff, not the naive "40%" which does no such thing), and then use the method also, possibly with reduced ranks, for the runoff. Use an intelligent method for finding the best two candidates for ballot position, and allow write-in votes in the runoff, using a spoiler-free method in the runoff (so that write-ins can't spoil the election through vote-splitting, unless the voters really can't stomach voting for the lesser evil as well, in which case a majority failure indicates a real failure. As you know, Robert's Rules would continue seeking a majority, it is an unconditional requirement unless bylaws permit an election by plurality, which parliamentarians strongly discourage.)
Stand up for the best. You can still argue, at this point, that IRV is a better method than plurality, but only with partisan elections. Kiss was a better result than Wright, and Wright *might* have won under Plurality, and Wright was the worst result (though not by a large margin compared to Kiss). But in nonpartisan elections, there is no longer any reasonable argument that IRV is better for the jurisdiction adopting it.
Stand up to the FairVote ideologues and demand that FairVote start to work for real reform. Insist that FairVote cooperate with the voting system expert community. Insist that FairVote support and aid in reasonable implementation of other alternatives than IRV, and you will find that the expert community will be far more moderate about STV used for proportional representation, which was the original goal of the predecessor organizations to FairVote. STV is reasonable for PR. I'd argue that there are better methods, but I'd be thrilled to see an STV-PR proposal on the ballot or in legislation, and I'd support it, even though I know it is not ideal.
But IRV on a local ballot, in nonpartisan elections, is actually worse than plurality at much higher cost, and I have come to the position of strong opposition (from an initial support), based on study of actual elections. In partisan elections? I'd be more divided, but, given the Burlington results, the claim that the pathological behavior of IRV would be rare -- often it was claimed that there were no examples, but the reality was that there wasn't the data, Australia did not disclose the necessary ballot data to do real analysis -- can be seen to be false. And there is no reason not to use, instead, the much better performing American Preferential Voting, as it was called in the political science literature of the time, instead, plus if jurisdictions want a majority, they can use APV (Bucklin) in a runoff voting context, it will avoid many or most runoffs, reducing cost and inconvenience. It works better at finding majorities than IRV, because it does count all the votes. If IRV is going to be used, it should be in a runoff voting system, and top-two is lousy with IRV, if it means that lower-preference votes can't be counted. IRV with all votes counted would be far better for this purpose.
Later-no-harm makes sense with multiwinner elections, to a degree. Single-winner, it is a pernicious criterion, one much better off violated than respected. Allowing equal ranking with IRV would allow the voter to decide which they prefer: protection of the favorite, or casting an effective vote for a major candidate. But once we are going to do that, why not go all the way, and use instant runoff approval, which has a very solid theoretical basis in repeated election theory, a sliding down of approval cutoff to find a compromise? Instant runoff approval is a closer simulation of repeated balloting without eliminations, the basic Robert's Rules method, than is sequential elimination. IRA? Also known as Bucklin. That is exactly what it is.
Support experimental use of other methods, particularly ones which are low-cost, as any approval method on the table is, without question.
If you don't do this, Terry, fine, it's your right. But since you have entered this arena and have publicly supported IRV, and even incorporated some of the deceptive propaganda into the Vermont legislation you introduced, we, as well, have the right and possibly the obligation to expose your behavior and that of FairVote.
Instead, Terry, join us and keep us honest. By all means, don't allow us to make false and misleading statements, either. But don't attach yourself to lies. If you do, the flimsy lipstick will break away and you will indeed be smeared with shit.
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