He offers good thoughts - I will try to add a bit.
On May 4, 2011, at 4:26 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On May 4, 2011, at 1:48 AM, matt welland wrote:
On Tue, 2011-05-03 at 21:38 -0400, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
after IRV has been beaten up so badly because of its perceived
complexity, people ask me how can i explain Condorcet in a sentence
and i answer:
"If Candidate A is preferred by more voters than Candidate B, then
Candidate B is not elected."
it's simple and sensible and, of course, fails if there is a cycle.
I have
followed this list for years and read many explanations on
Condorcet and
just like the description given to the English woman above none of
them
are easy to assimilate. How the heck do you translate my rankings
into
"if more prefer A over C ..."
If more voters rank A above C on their ballots (than those who rank
C above A). It translates directly to a simple, traditional
election where only A and C are candidates on the ballot. It means
the same thing. All the ranked ballot requires the voter to do is
decide how they feel about candidates B and D (relative to A and C)
by Election Day. So we require voters to make up their mind about
the candidates by Election Day. Such an imposition.
Actually we often ask more effort by voters than Condorcet requires.
Voters are required to rank only the one or more they choose to rank
above any they choose to leave at the bottom (unranked). If they
choose to use only one rank level there is no more deciding to do than
there would be in Plurality (rank only one of A/B/C/D etc) or Approval
(rank as many as they choose among A/B/C/D etc).
You are asking people to have faith in
your fancy math and programming.
It is not fancy math - count how many voters voted A>C and how many
voted C>A.
Condorcet is precinct-summable. It can be counted by hand, but is
much more laborious than counting First-Past-The-Post by hand. But
the counting principle is simple. We rely on computers to do
tabulating anyway, but what the computers are (or should be)
counting should be readily understood. If there is no cycle,
Condorcet satisfies that.
And, if multiple precincts, the results from all can be summed. The
winner, or the data defining cycles, is contained in those results.
At the end of the day I remain
unconvinced that it is a sufficiently better method than Approval
by any
metric grounded in the messy reality of imperfect humans voting for
other imperfect humans to be their leaders.
Does not allow the voter to express a preference over two approved
candidates. A Libertarian that leans Republican when forced to
choose in a two-party race should be able to express that he/she
likes the Libertarian more than the Republican (and would feel
forced to "approve" of both as opposed to the Dem with Approval
voting).
Why bother? Worth it if it would make a difference often enough; or
even lets voters express their desires more completely often enough
though almost never affecting who wins.
From the perspective of US single winner elections I say the
following:
1. Approval voting;
- trivial to transition to (no over-voting), want to vote for the
underdog while hedging your bet for the frontrunner, no problem
- everyone gets the mechanics and the nuances of approval after a
minute of explanation
- very low effort to vote, avoids all the comparisons in ranking
- minimal real world risk of unintended consequences
- naturally resistant to strategic voting.
No, it is not. It requires a great deal of strategic thinking in
voting. I had (virtually) a first-hand experience of that in the
Vermont State Senate race last year.
It's binary, what can you do?
You can (and must) decide whether or not to approve of a lessor-
preferred (but "approved of") candidate, relative to the candidate
that you really want to see elected.
2. Range voting
- degree of improvement over approval is debatable, at least for
today, maybe a few years from now the need will be different
- significant step in complexity for the equipment, 1 bit toggle
to n bit integer. I can't implement that on the current ballots
used in Arizona for example.
3. IRV
- this one feels good to half assed thinkers and that is its
greatest danger. 'nuff said.
4. Condorcet
- theoretically near perfect but I don't grok it and neither will
99% of the populace.
Grok this: If more voters prefer Candidate A to Candidate B, then
Candidate B is not elected.
Hard to grok?
An example may help. With Plurality those against Bush had to vote
for Gore or Nader. With Approval they could vote for Gore and Nader
as equals. With Condorcet they could vote for Gore as better than
Bush, and for Nader as best.
- a bitch to implement without a computer for the UI and we all
know how great it is having computers in this process
Falsehood.
Needs the same old ranked-ballot we had with IRV. just a different
method to count them.
This matters. Voters rank just about as with IRV (but can rank
multiple candidates equally).
Computer counting, once learned, can be used on many computers.
- any ranking system is way to much of a pain for the average
Joe who just wants to get out of the damn polling booth and
home to dinner.
Falsehood.
It requires less out of the voter than either Range or, because of
the need for tactical thinking, Approval.
Here I can vote for Gore and Nader, with one preferred over the other;
with Approval voting for both implies equal liking.
Go try any of the example systems available
on the web, I'm guessing it takes 10x the time for normal
non-geniuses to articulate that they want in a ranked system vs.
approval. Remember, you have an interest in the mechanics of
voting and have practiced doing ranking. Everybody else
will experience it as a tedious pain.
- my gut tells me that Condorcet is more vulnerable to strategic
twists than Approval. But that could be because I don't get it.
Anyone (who has any secondary preferences) can do a ranked ballot
just as easily as traditional ballot. They don't have to think to
themselves "how much *more* do I like Candidate A over Candidate
B?" They only have to decide "If it's between A and B, I prefer A.
Alternately, if it's between B and C, I prefer B." Naturally that
means that if it's between A and C, this voter prefers A.
Even if the voter has no secondary preference, all he/she has to do
is marked their chosen candidate with number 1 (although any number
would do, since all unmarked candidates are tied for last place on
any single ballot).
All Condorcet asks you (and the other voters) is to consider your
contingency vote and IF there is no cycle, Condorcet will resolve
the choice between any given pair of candidates exactly as a
traditional vote-for-one election would. Everyone's vote has equal
weight (unlike it would with Range) and the election treats your
vote as such.
UNLESS there is a cycle (which I maintain is rare), there are no
funny surprizes that "Gee, A clearly would be B, but when C entered
the race, somehow B wins." That's what we're trying to avoid with
IRV, but we know, not just theoretically but in reality (Burlington
2009) that IRV fails that very objective.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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