Condorcet is easy for voters to move to for it is a strong, but
simple, step up from FPTP and:
1. Ranking means ability indicate order of varying desires of liking
candidates.
2. But ranking is much less of a task than Score's rating where you
have to calculate the difference in value of A vs B, and express this
difference as a number.
3. More detail below.
Not against PR here - PR is not suitable for electing a single-winner.
On Nov 26, 2011, at 10:31 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On 11/26/11 6:58 PM, matt welland wrote:
On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 16:56 -0500, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
The next two are related, though not directly quoted.
On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 1:39 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Sat, 2011-11-24 at 10:47 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
Initial topic is IRV.
the counterexample, again, is Burlington Vermont. Dems haven't
sat in
the mayor's chair for decades.
Is this due to a split of the liberal vote by progressives or other
liberal blocs? Or is it due to a truly Republican leaning
demographic?
Burlington is, for the U.S., a very very liberal town with a well-
educated and activist populace. it's the origin of Ben & Jerry's
and now these two guys are starting a movement ( http://movetoamend.org/
) to get a constitutional amendment to reverse the obscene Citizens
United ruling of the Supreme Court.
the far north end of Burlington (called the "New North End", also
where i live) is a little more suburban in appearance and here is
where the GOP hangs in this town.
the mayors have been Progs with an occasional GOP. it is precisely
the "center squeeze" syndrome and IRV didn't solve that problem. and
without getting Condorcet adopted, i am not sure how it will be
reversed.
Also, do folks generally see approval as better than or worse than
IRV?
they don't know anything about Approval (or Score or Borda or
Bucklin or Condorcet) despite some effort by me to illustrate it
regarding the state senate race in our county.
to attain some measure of proportional representation w.r.t.
geography, state senate districts are either divided ( http://www.leg.state.vt.us/lms/legdir/districts.asp?Body=S
) or, in the case of our county, have an unusually large number, 6,
of state senators all elected at large. this means that besides
running against Progs and GOP, the Dems are running against each
other. as a consequence, even though we are allowed to vote for as
many as 6, everyone that i know (bullet) votes for 1 or 2 or maybe
3. effectively, it is no different than Approval voting.
but the only voting methods folks generally see here are FPTP, FPTP
with a delayed runoff, and IRV. and, thanks to FairVote, nearly
everyone are ignorant of other methods to tabulate the ranked ballot
than the STV method in IRV.
To me Approval seems to solve the spoiler problem without introducing
any unstable weirdness and it is much simpler and cheaper to do than
IRV.
unless one were to bullet vote (which would make Approval degenerate
to FPTP), there is no way to express one's favorite over other
candidates that one approves of. it forces a burden of tactical
voting onto voters who have to decide whether or not they will vote
for their 2nd favorite candidate. i've repeated this over and over
and over again on this list. while Score voting demands too much
reflection and information from voters, Approval voting extracts too
little information from voters. both saddle voters with the need
for calculation (and strategy) that the ranked ballot does not.
both Score and Approval are non-starters, because of the nature of
the ballot. but a ranked ballot is not a non-starter, even if we
lost it recently here in Burlington. we just need to unlearn what
FairVote did and decouple the concept of ranked-choice voting from
IRV.
Back to promoting Condorcet:
It is easier to understand the basics the voter needs to know:
1. Voting is the same as for IRV, except equal ranking is also
permitted.
2. A voter familiar with FPTP can express the same thoughts, with the
same definitions and power, by approving of a single candidate and
ranking only that candidate. Often few will want to approve more than
one for offices such as Clerk or Coroner (but makes sense for ballots
to permit ranking for the rare incidents of more controversy in even
such offices).
3. To emphasize point 2, a voter satisfied with FPTP voting is not
seriously handicapped by not instantly learning Condorcet details -
what is already known is enough to pick and rank a single candidate.
4. Condorcet counting, unlike IRV's, requires reading all that the
voters vote in one pass at each reading station and then combining the
readings at one location to determine results.
5. Do not have FPTP's need for primaries.
6. Do not have FPTP's need for runoffs - because voters can express
themselves more completely, the leader is deserving of winning with
less than the majority that is truly needed with FPTP.
That the x*x matrix used in counting tells much about candidate
strength, among the weaker as well as the stronger, can be useful to
all who are interested in this data.
While there are a zillion Condorcet methods, picking among them is not
that difficult if you select only among those that award winning to
the CW when there is one (and there usually is - it takes three
leading candidates to form a cycle and thus not have a CW). Further,
the situation we often complain about - having election power owned by
two parties - says no cycle until some third party grows some muscle.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Dave Ketchum
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