At 03:34 AM 2/6/2010, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I don't think it's true that it has been "without problems." There
are and have been problems. But if IRV were an optimal method, it
might be worth the trouble. For multiwinner STV, indeed, it might
well be worth the trouble. But for single-winner? I don't think so.
There are simpler methods that produce better results, by all
objective measures.
(Frankly, there is only one clearly objective measure, which is how
a method performs in simulations, particularly with reasonable
simulation of actual preference profiles -- full utility profiles
-- and voting strategies as voters are known to use or are likely
to use. "Election criteria," like the Condorcet Criterion, tend to
be criteria that are intuitively satisfying, but that can actually
fail completely and obviously under certain conditions, and a
method failing a criterion may mean nothing if the failure is so
rare and requires such unusual voting patterns that it will never
be encountered under realistic conditions. Basically, how do we
judge the criteria? And there are only two ways that I see, one is
through utility analysis and the other through basic democratic
principles, broadly accepted, such as the right of decision that is
held by a majority; a majority of voters voting for a single
proposition, with no opposing majority voting simultaneously for a
conflicting proposition, must have the right to implementation.
When there are multiple majorities there is not a simple question
and there remains doubt as to a majority decision.)
I'm not quite sure about this. Say you have an almost-perfect
method: usually it elects great candidates, but once in a while, it
picks a very bad dictator, or respects the wishes of a tiny
minority, or somesuch. It does this seldomly enough that it's just
ever so slightly better than the best alternative, on average.
Fine. I don't see this as a response to what I stated.
However, those who hold democracy as an ideal would probably not
like this method, because once in a while, it "hiccups". The jitter
or hunting, itself, provides a bad outcome; and in a sense, criteria
are guarantees that a bad outcome (according to the criterion) won't
happen, period.
Right. Bad outcome according to a criterion. But an outcome that
satisfies the criterion can cause a revolution, it's so bad. The
point is that the Condorcet and Majority criteria *can* fail in this
way. It's very rare, as to anything so major. Normally a Range result
and the Condorcet winner coincide. But if they don't, it means that a
minority with a large preference is faced with a majority with a
small preference.
Normally, the difference isn't great. Or maybe it's just an artifact,
i.e., maybe the majority actually did have as strong a preference as
the minority, but for some reason didn't vote that way. But what if
it is real and what if it is significant, and what if the majority
margin is very small? What this means is that the minority, which is
roughly as large as the majority, has the incentive to defy the
election result, and has the motivation (that's what preference
strength means, really, it means that they will invest in it, if needed).
Note, however, that I have not recommended awarding an election to a
range winner over a majority or condorcet winner. I've said that this
is an ambiguous situation and should be tested with a runoff, unless
election data can conclusively resolve it (by predicting accurately,
based on prior experience, not just theory) what the runoff result will be.
My position is that the majority has the right of decision, it's a
general democratic principle. But it does this through binary
decisions, in standard deliberative democracy, never through
multiple-choice elections, unless they show a majority result.
However, once we have a voting system that collects better data, it
becomes possible to detect a range anomaly in a majority result, and
to ask again, with the electorate now informed from the first
election and an opportunity for the minority to explain itself in a
more focused environment.
It's still up to the majority. I've argued, though, that in a runoff
between a range winner and a majority winner, the range winner,
assuming that the range gap is real, has a leg up, because of effects
on turnout. If it is true that the majority has low preference, they
will not turn out to vote in as high numbers as the
stronger-preference minority. And this is classic; quite simply, it's
not uncommon that, for some reason, a majority result is
reconsidered, it goes the other way. I read an example the other day
in the history of the Alcoholics Anonymous World Service Conference,
that a measure approving a publication passed by almost-unanimity.
AA, however, always asks the minority if they want to present a
report. They did, and someone moved reconsideration, apparently, and
the new vote rejected the same publication with almost unanimity.
What was the first preference of a majority there?
On the other hand, if the range anomaly was an artifact, the result
of poor strategy -- or effective strategy on the part of the
minority, perhaps -- then the runoff will show that, there will not
be the turnout differential and the majority position will be sustained.
When people care they turn out to vote. Not caring can mean despair,
or it can mean satisfaction with either outcome. It's important, I'd
say, for every vote to count, and taking this to an extreme, Asset
Voting. Every vote is not only counted, it is *effective*, and the
effect is visible and trackable.
To make it somewhat more familiar: Range may be the best Bayesian
Regret method, but that won't help once people notice that it gives
a minority power to outvote a majority.
But I'm not recommending that at all. What Range/Bucklin would do is
to give a minority the power to, under some conditions, call
attention of the majority to an anomalous situation requiring a
little more attention, asking for a reconsideration.
And this is only as an advanced reform. Much more important is
getting majority results, which Bucklin does a great job of doing, I
expect, if used in runoff voting. It would avoid many runoffs, but
not all. Used in a runoff, it would allow write-in candidacies that
would not spoil elections (this is important in California, where
write-ins are allowed, by default, in all "elections," and that has
included runoffs unless specifically excluded by local law. Used to
include runoffs until San Francisco figured out it could stop a
serious runoff challenger and outlawed write-ins in the runoff, based
on a supposed desirability of getting a majority. Right. Get a
majority by preventing someone from running, that's cart before the
horse! And the California Supreme Court, against all parliamentary
precedent, decided that a runoff was part of the same election, and
if write-ins were allowed in the primary, that was enough. And,
folks, we were asleep at the switch, because we had our heads buried
in the ideal single-ballot sand, and forgot to defend the most
prevalent election reform, runoff voting.
And, of course, FairVote has been picking it off. They even named the
method IRV as a way to promote it, to go after vulnerable runoffs.
Sure, that may be "better" according to BR, but it's not
majority-rule democracy, which is the context in which these
methods are considered. If you're going to fail Majority, you at
least need a runoff so it's intuitively possible for people to keep
that from happening.
Bingo! In other words, overall, we are not going to fail Majority.
Twere it up to me, we'd *require* a majority, and that's practical
with Asset Voting. It's done in parliamentary systems! They don't
elect the prime minister by plurality, period.
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