On 2/3/12 10:41 AM, David L Wetzell wrote:
dlw: I do change my mind. The fact I haven't wrt IRV is
because I
got a good case and it is a huge non sequitur to
presume that
"the" solution to the US's political problems is for it to
become an EU-style multi-party system....
RBJcareful, David. a hard-won reform that performs
poorly the
*second* time it's used, sets *back* the movement for voting
reform. it's important that we get this right, not just
change it
from the status quo.
dlw2: But it didn't perform poorly.
other than electing the wrong candidate (and all the anomalies
that resulted), i guess it didn't do too bad.
When you try out a new piece of technology, you can't expect to get it
right right away. A democracy is a function of both the rules and
people's habits. If GOPers had seen that their party couldn't win
then some of them wd've voted Dem first and the CW wd have won....
David! That's the point! That's the problem! IRV promised that you
could vote for your favorite candidate and that would not help elect
your least favorite. it explicitly failed to do that on the second
try. In this town that, at least 3 years ago, had 3 major parties (so
the spoiler wasn't some kinda Ron Paul or Ralph Nader gadfly who had no
hope of election but could still rob victory from the majority
candidate). In the context where the 3 (or more) candidates are *all*
plausible, Condorcet would have elected a candidate where, by
definition, no other candidate was preferred over this CW and, at least
in the Burlington 2009 example, would not have suffered spoiler,
punishment for sincere voting, non-monotonicity, and
non-summability/transparency.
It *failed*, David. (but it still beats Plurality and, unfortunately
the voters of Burlington, who adopted IRV by 65% in 2005, tossed the
baby out with the bathwater in 2010 and *really* did in 2011 when they
rejected the 50% threshold.) now, elections are something that we (any
particular group of people) do not do every day. it's not like you got
your iPhone or iPad and it worked the day you bought it, and had trouble
the second day, but you are willing to see how well it works the next
day. it's more like a high-rise building technique or bridge-building
technique (e.g. Tacoma Narrows Bridge). if you use some new technique
and it fails the first time you use it, you better believe there will be
hesitation and controversy the next time its use is proposed. and very
similar if it happens the second use.
on the other hand, if the technique was used 50 times before it failed,
you would more likely look at the failure as a fluke or outlier.
elections happen once or twice a year (if you're politically active, if
you're not it's more like once in four years) and their consequences are
significant, in some cases worse than a building collapse. a failure
that occurs so soon after adoption might very well be an indication of
something systemic, not just an outlier.
As far as we know, the sort of graft discovered about the
Progressive party's mayor was par for the course, but it got
revealed as part of a campaign to hurt the Prog party.
the political and legal difficulties of the Kiss administration is
non sequitur. the failure of IRV in 2009 does not stem from any
political failures afterward. the failure of IRV is because it
didn't do in 2009 what it was promised to do. it literally did
not protect voters from a spoiler situation that (if IRV continued
to be the law) leads to tactical voting.
To prevent all tactical voting is not the greatest good.
The *primary* reason for adopting ranked-choice voting, the greatest
good promised, is to remove the *burden* of tactical voting from voters
so that they do not experience voter's regret the day after the election
(which, here in Burlington, soured many voters that do not return to the
polls, thus reducing participation in democracy). i don't suggest that
we can prevent all tactical voting, but the common burden of tactical
voting, the tactic called "compromising", is avoidable and *should* be
avoided where at all possible.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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