I like what I wrote a couple hours ago, but want to add comments on
Kristofer's words.
On Aug 14, 2010, at 5:37 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Re: [EM] it's been pretty quiet around here...
robert bristow-johnson wrote:
... my goodness! it's been at least 2 weeks with no activity.
Yes. Other things have occupied my time, and that seems to have been
the case for the other ones around here, too...
just a little story: we are about to have our primary elections
(August 24) here in Vermont. it's also a very small state where
any old Joe could waltz into the capitol in Montpelier, and make an
appointment to see the guv. anyway, recently when i bopped into
the Vermont Dem HQ to pick up some signs, i happened to notice a
candidate for Sec of State (who has responsibility to carry out
elections for state offices and Vermont's contribution to the
national offices). in a recent debate, he was debating his
opponent about election policy and IRV came up (both candidates
were for IRV, as far as i could tell).
since he wasn't from Burlington, he was not as familiar with the
Burlington debate as he could have been (he knew we had IRV and
that it was repealed last March). there have been a couple of
bills to introduce IRV to statewide offices (notably guv) since the
Progs have a statewide presence, not just Burlington. he was
thinking that the problem Burlington had with the election was in
the *software* (as if the software "failed"). i told him that if
that were the case, it would likely wind up in court, not just a
repeal question on the ballot. anyway, it was interesting
educating this leading candidate for the primary official
responsible for elections what *did* go wrong with IRV in
Burlington in 2009 and also what the problems would be if it were
adopted for a statewide election (namely that it's not precinct
summable).
anyway, i like this candidate (better than the alternative), but
it's just a shame that, in the popular mind, there is no
differentiation between the concepts of Preferential Voting (the
ranked-order ballot) and IRV.
I like Condorcet and so a lot of this will be preaching to the choir
(at least for you), but:
Since FV thinks IRV is so nice, it's to their benefit to link
preferential voting, the concept, to IRV, the method, so that others
thing "oh, either IRV or Plurality". Since IRV appears better than
Plurality (at least until the summability issues are encountered),
this makes it relatively easy to slip in IRV, and the theory then
goes, to go from IRV to STV, which is much better.
It doesn't appear that we can change FV's minds from IRV to
something better (like Condorcet). When you dig really far down, the
issue boils down to "weak centrist! Condorcet winner! weak centrist!
Condorcet winner!" and there you go -- and then they sprinkle LNHarm
and *perhaps* burial resistance on top.
Cardinal ratings technically pass both because it can pass IIA since
it doesn't care about universal domain. However, I think that CR
(Range, Score, etc) will be hard to get passed, since it doesn't
even pass Majority. Even if Warren is right and social utility
comparisons are better than majority rule, most people associate
democratic fairness with that if some candidate is preferred by a
majority, he should win. There are also the tactical issues: CR
reduces to Approval (as Youtube raters found out) and pretty soon
voters who want their vote to count must haul around concepts like
"maybe frontrunner, plus" (LeGrand's Approval strategy A), something
which really should be inside the method rather than outside.
Thus we can't follow FV; and while we could advocate cardinal
ratings, I don't think that would be very successful (and in any
event, should be DSV instead). That leaves Condorcet, and so I think
there should be an organization or group or at least some sort of
coherent support for Condorcet.
(Alas, I'm not a very good organizer and I'm about 5000 km away.)
What should such a group do? First, it should state that the concept
of ranked voting is different from what method may be used as its
back-end. Second, it should have a clear and easily understandable
name for Condorcet, or for the Condorcet method it settles upon. The
former could be done more simply: "round robin voting", "maximum
majority voting", "championship" or "tournament" voting (but beware
of equating it with an elimination tournament), etc. The latter
would be more difficult, as Schulze, for instance, is hard to explain.
For reasoning, it might point out that if you put all the voters on
a line, and cancel out the leftmost with the rightmost until one
voter remains, the candidate closest to that voter wins -- if that's
not too advanced.
"leftmost with the rightmost" scares me for it sounds like something
different from Condorcet, but not clear how, supposedly, better.
It might also show that if there's a CW, no recall by any of the
other candidates can work against him, because a majority prefers
him to each of the other candidates. That particular argument might
be useful for those who dread a repeal, because if the method elects
the CW, supporters of a single loser can't dress the complaint that
the wrong candidate won up as a repeal of the method, simply because
they don't have the voters required to make the repeal pass simply
by that property alone. That is not what happened in Burlington, but
it's similar - Condorcet minimizes this chance, and beatpath-based
methods try to do so in the case of cycles as well.
It should also ask the actual people, voters, what they think is
important with respect to an election method, if such can be done.
If simplicity matters, Ranked Pair's relative simplicity may be more
important than Schulze's track record, for instance. Asking in that
manner could also help letting it know which arguments work - e.g.
if the canceling-out phrasing of the singlepeakedness theorem gives
a sense of fairness.
Simplicity DOES matter. Also need to agree on, and promote, a
particular method.
Dave Ketchum
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