On 12/16/11 4:29 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
KD:Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation,
it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the
public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and
greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems.
dlw: That is what is in dispute.
the point is, while STV might be the best and simplest method to gain a
more proportional representation for multi-winner elections, it still is
inferior to a simple Condorcet method (say, minmax margins or
ranked-pairs) for single-winner elections. and, although i usually
don't agree with her, she has a point with souring the public. here, in
Burlington, the anti-IRV crowd (which Kathy has identified with, here in
the local blogs) has the attitude that while they won this election by a
small margin (about 300 outa 6K or 7K), it was a vindication of the
commandment from God that thou shalt mark the ballot only once. and
with an "X".
it will take a generation to pass before we'll be able to revisit the
question of election reform and then we'll only do it if the Progressive
Party survives that period of time. if we devolve back to a 2-party
system, i doubt there will be much political incentive to revisit the
issue of ranked-choice voting (tabulated by a decent Condorcet-compliant
method, i would hope that they wouldn't forget the lesson learned
regarding IRV, and do forget the phony-balony arguments from the "Keep
Voting Simple" crowd).
KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been
tried and
rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency
eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now
there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried
decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades.
dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by
considering only one vote per voter at a time?
dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the
results can be tabulated at the precinct level.
dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and
elsewhere a lot more than "IRV"....
KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not
solve any of plurality's problems,
this is where Kathy overstates the case. IRV *definitely* speaks to
(but not in a consistent way) the common problem (in 3+ way races) of
tactical voting where the voting tactic is called "compromising". it
did not solve that problem in Burlington 2009 completely. it only
solved it for the liberal majority of voters while effectively
transferring that to the GOP Prog-haters. but she is wrong that it does
nothing, in comparison to FPTP, to reduce the problem. so then the
justification she needs to make is why support the method that increases
the occurrence of this problem from IRV (where the burden of tactical
voting is placed in the shoulders of a minority) to FPTP (where the
burden of tactical voting is placed on a split majority).
so it's a great way to convince
people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how
deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods
can be.
that also polemically overstates the case.
(Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds
majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and
on and on...)
need more than 2 uses to recoup non-recurring costs. (you recoup them
by being a "decisive" method and not going to runoff.)
and the argument that IRV yields a "false majority" winner is
ineffective coming from the "Keep Voting Simple" crowd because they
returned us to a clearly more false majority winner. that was confirmed
one year later when we tried to require a 50%+ majority to elect. this
side clearly wants a method that they can game to get their
minority-supported candidate elected and we are now, dealing with that
fact (the first mayoral election since IRV was repealed). we won't know
for about a month, but the Progs might not nominate a candidate and
*maybe* even will simply endorse the Democrat nominee. if that happens,
it will be a straight two-candidate race (well, there *might* be a
significant independent, so we might still have a problem) and no one
will be able to dispute who is the majority candidate (unless it's very
close).
IRV also failed in 2009, but it's failure was in electing the 2nd-most
preferred candidate, but without IRV, we could very well have gotten the
3rd-most preferred candidate. neither method sends the correct pair
combination of candidates to the runoff. (one caveat, if IRV-BTR is
used, it *would* send the correct candidate to the final runoff, who the
other candidate going to the runoff is is sorta irrelevant.)
so Kathy misses it, in preferring Dumber over Dumb. and it was an thick
irony in 2010 (the IRV repeal vote) to have to choose between Dumb and
Dumber, when the whole point of having election reform like
ranked-choice voting, is so we don't get stuck with a two-party system
when a Smart and independent candidate is not a viable choice, because
voters are afraid of throwing away their vote.
but David, you and Rob miss it when you settle for Dumb.
i'm gonna un-plonk Kathy for a while so i can read what she has to say.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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