On May 6, 2010, at 4:18 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
Letting loose can be very difficult - but many of us are urging
FairVote to swallow the bitter pill.
I manned phones, made donations to FairVote, and voted, to help pass
IRV in San Francisco. And I now, personally, think that IRV is
considerably worse than most systems besides plurality and Borda -
including Range, Bucklin, Approval, and a wide variety of Condorcet
systems.
But I'm not asking FairVote to "swallow the bitter pill". I think
you have every right to continue promoting IRV, if that's what you
believe in.
Having a visible invalid belief raises continued suspicion as to the
quality of one's other beliefs - FairVote, to recover, really needs to
recognize and admit to IRV's problems. I offer a sample race -
possible though an unlikely extreme. I use "?" for ballot content
where details do not matter:
2 A>?
9 B>A>?
9 C>A>?
9 D>A>?
1/3 like best B or C or D. For each of those 1/3s, 2/3 like A better
than that one. That A does not get elected is due to IRV counting
never counting the As that are voted in second place.
I'm just asking you what I've always asked, since the time when I
still counted myself as one of your strongest supporters: that you
be honest and open about it. That means 3 things:
1. Don't denigrate other solutions to problems you acknowledge. In
fact, I think you should support them. That means that whenever
comparing IRV to another reform proposal, make it clear from the
outset that the other proposal is superior to plurality (except in
the very rare cases where it isn't).
2. Don't lie about the benefits of IRV. For instance, unless full
ranking is mandatory, IRV does not guarantee a majority. You could
say instead that it "does a better job of getting a majority" than
plurality, or whatever.
Here I choke. A candidate ranked only because of some demand such as
full ranking is not truly a vote by the voter, and should not be
counted as if it was. Think of a voter "approving" all candidates in
Approval - that voter has done nothing to favor any one of the
candidates.
"Majority" needs careful thought as to its purpose and meaning. If
truly the largest group of voters is only 40%, we need thought as to
what is doable and what that means.
Dave Ketchum
3. Be open to dialogue with other voting reformers. For instance,
don't turn off comments on all your blogs and HuffPost pieces, and
don't moderate out relevant but critical posts on the instantrunoff
mailing list. I know that it hurts, because there are definitely
people with much more of an animus against IRV than I have, but the
problems in running away from dialogue are worse.
With respect,
Jameson Quinn
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