On Apr 18, 2010, at 11:21 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:
--- En date de : Sam 17.4.10, robert bristow-johnson <[email protected]
> a écrit :
but cycles don't always happen, and i
would bet that they rarely happen in the real world.
[Burlington example]
I actually view this as possibly evidence of a possibly correctable
problem. Or at least "limitation."
It's the same when people say, why worry about scenarios with three
significant candidates? The real world doesn't have them.
we've known about having 3 or more credible candidates for a long
time, long enough to know of specific problems when a minority-
supported candidate wins by plurality, much to the chagrin of the
majority.
now, it *is* similar to what i was thinking in 2005 as i was voting
for adopting IRV to the town charter. i knew it wasn't Condorcet but
i also understood that if the Condorcet winner makes it to the final
IRV round, he/she will also win the IRV. and i expected that it would
be very unlikely for a candidate to get enough support to be the CW
and not have enough primary support (1st-pick votes) to get to the
final round. so, although i deemed the method clunky, unnatural, and
not as reflective of the will of the people, i thought it would
virtually never occur that the Condorcet winner would not be elected.
boy, was i wrong.
but, i still think it's even more rare that a cycle occurs in reality
(despite the fact that we can dream up scenarios where it does) and
what i think is *really* rare is that a meaningful method of resolving
the cycle would choose different candidates. if the Smith set is 3
candidates, we know that Schulze and RP will pick the same winner.
so, politically, i still think the main advocacy should be for
"Condorcet" (what Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin calls "True Majority
Rule") and worry about *which* Condorcet method later. the
differences between the Condorcet-compliant methods is much smaller
potatoes than the differences between Condorcet and the non-Condorcet
methods.
But the election method, and other facets of the political framework,
affect who can be nominated, and where, in what quantities etc.
the law doesn't affect it directly. just because you have the so-
called "traditional ballot" (plurality and/or delayed runoff) doesn't
mean you *can't* have 3 or more credible candidates. but it *can*
discourage it. a local poly-sci prof (Tony Gierzynski) who used the
objective conclusions from Warren's analysis of the anomalies/
pathologies of the 2009 Burlington election (all stemming from the
fact that the IRV winner and CW were not the same) and sorta concludes
with this:
____________________________________________________________________________
Failing to Address the Real Problem
In essence what IRV is, is an attempt to use a technological fix to
solve a political problem. Single seat contests (such as mayor, or US
Senator, or governor, or president) provide an incentive for those of
similar political mind (that is ideology) to coalesce behind a single
candidate in order to win a majority of votes and capture the seat—
those that work together to build a majority before elections win,
those that don’t lose. This structural incentive is the main reason
the US has a two party system. Forcing people of like mind to work
together to win elections then creates the governing majorities that
have been approved by the people and that can then go about the work
of implementing the will of the people.
When a group with a (mostly) shared ideology—such as the case the
Progressive Party and the Democratic Party in Vermont—becomes
fragmented in this type of system, with each putting forward their own
candidates, the problem that arises is a political problem (politics
defined here simply as the means by which conflicts are resolved in
order to determine who controls the government). In such cases, what
IRV does is it allows the factions to ignore the political problem by
using a technological fix while failing to resolve their political
differences through the necessary negotiations that characterize
politics. In other words, IRV allows such factions to avoid working
together (as they should if they want mostly the same thing). When
such factions fail to work together, they ultimately fail to
accomplish the raison d'être of such organizations, which is not just
to continue existing, but is to win control of government in order to
use it to make people’s lives better in a manner consistent with their
political values.
____________________________________________________________________________
now i disagree with Gierzynski's value system here, but i agree with
him about the consequences. if the Liberals in Burlington want to
minimize the likelihood of electing the Conservative candidate for
mayor, they will now need to seriously consider putting together a
*single* coalition candidate rather than run a candidate from each of
the Prog or Dem caucuses. Gierzynski thinks this is good, i think
it's bad.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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