At 10:48 AM 5/14/2010, Jameson Quinn wrote:
Basically, I'd summarize my feelings about Bucklin in light of this
strategy analysis as:
Bucklin is no more than sugar-coated approval. And that makes it the
best system available in a wide range of circumstances.
Well, it's Approval with the most common objection addressed, an
inability to express the favorite. Mr. Quinn is clearly supporting
Bucklin, but I'll point out that it is not "no more" than
sugar-coated. That tasty ability to express the favorite causes
Bucklin to satisfy the Majority Criterion. It allows the addition of
more approvals without sacrificing the right of a majority to make a decision.
This almost certainly encourages additional approvals, and historical
Bucklin election usage of additional approvals was often high. I'm
sure it depends on the election circumstances. We've been told for
years that Bucklin was dropped because voters didn't use additional
approvals because of fear of Later-No-Harm violation, and therefore
low usage, but, in fact, so far, that hasn't been born out by what
actually happened.
In San Francisco, for example, Bucklin was used for two or three
elections, around 1919. It was not dropped directly; rather, a
technicality allowed the Board of Elections to revert to the state
default (vote for one!) by choosing to buy a few (just a few! not for
everyone) new-fangled voting machines....
By that time, I'm suspecting, it was being realized that Bucklin
worked, it started to get around that the first Bucklin election, in
Grand Junction Colorade, elected a SOCIALIST!!!!
Third in first preferences! That does not happen with IRV, period.
Bucklin was dropped because it worked, and there are lots of people
who didn't -- and don't -- want voting systems to work.
I'm not making this up. The Socialist argument was actually advanced
in San Francisco, when the "Grand Junction" method was discussed
before the Commonwealth Club there. Allegedly, those selfish partisan
SOCIALISTS! were bound and determined never to vote for anyone but a
SOCIALIST, so they didn't add votes for anyone else, but the
good-hearted Republicans and Democrats, of course, added additional
preferences, which explains why the SOCIALIST! won.
The data doesn't support that.
The Grand Junction election (this was 1909) was non-partisan, and we
can assume that people voted for the winner because they knew and
liked him. His party was probably irrelevant. Grand Junction had
about 8000 voters, as I recall. Small town.
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