At 11:51 AM 3/14/2013, Ralph Suter wrote:
The historical perspective by Abd ul-Rahman
Lomax posted by Richard Fobes has a number of
inaccuracies. It is apparently a "top of the
head" summary based on memories of what others,
including myself, had written several years ago.
Yes. I just wrote it. I did not go back and review the e-mail from Mr. Suter.
The organization now named FairVote began with a
two-day organizing meeting (not a conference) of
about 75 people held in Cincinnati in the spring
of 1992. Its initial name was Citizens [not
Center] for Proportional Representation, with an
exclamation point intentionally included with
its acronym (CPR!). The name was changed a year
or so later to Center for Voting and Democracy
(CVD), then 10 or so years after that to FairVote.
I don't recall seeing that name before, but maybe
that's just my poor memory. It really doesn't
matter. The essence of what I wrote is being
confirmed, but Ralph provides some significant
new information. My point here, by the way, was
just to explore an example of how activists take
over, it's in the nature of activism, as others
were saying. It is, I believe, possible to avoid
this hazard *without* sacrificing the energy of
activists. But it takes a certain kind of initial
organization, I suspect. And, generally, nobody knows how to do that.
Virtually the entire focus of the 1992 meeting
was on advocacy of proportional representation.
Single winner voting was discussed very little.
Right. Single-winner elections guarantee, under
the *best* of conditions, that up to 50% of the
voters are not represented. It can easily be
worse than that! (In San Francisco, RCV (IRV)
candidates have won with less than 40% of the vote.)
I attended the meeting after having learned
about it from two articles about the need for PR
in the US and an announcement/open invitation
published in In These Times magazine. As I
recall, they were written or co-written by
Matthew Cossolotto, the meeting's leading organizer.
The decision to strongly promote Instant Runoff
Voting (a name that was chosen after a number of
other names were used or considered), was made
only several years after the organization was formed.
Yes. That history has been described elsewhere.
The main reasons for promoting IRV rather than
other single winner methods were initially political.
As I wrote.
The thinking was that it would be much easier to
sell, as a logical improvement to familiar,
widely-used runoff elections, than other methods.
And that logic was not widely debated and
questioned. The decision was made by a small group, as a *political strategy.*
And in any case, CVD's leaders regarded single
winner reforms as much less important than proportional representation.
Who were they? Further, there may be some set of
"leaders" who thought that, but activists tend to
become focused on specific goals, the near-term.
IRV was seen as a kind of "foot-in-the-door"
reform that could pave the way to much more significant PR reforms.
Yes. It even made a kind of sense, *if* one
assumes that that PR will use STV. The position
also missed something important, certainly in the
history of voting system reform. It missed that
the *target* had become the most widely-used
reformed voting method. Reading back over
political science documents in the early part of
the last century, runoff voting was considered a
very important reform. Yes, it has one major
problem, Center Squeeze, but IRV has the same problem.
I don't think there has ever been much serious
discussion among the organization's leaders
about the pros and cons of IRV and other single
winner methods, though I think it's unfair to
suggest, as Abd seems to, that they have been
intentionally deceptive in their arguments favoring IRV.
Well, what I've suggested is not being
"intentionally deceptive," but being "willfully
negligent." There are various common arguments
about IRV that are frequently advanced by
FairVote, and some of them are highly misleading,
and if Rob Richie, for one, doesn't know that,
he's turning away from clear evidence, and we
have seen that. He's an *activist*, and activists
argue to win, not to tell the plain truth. His
career depends on being perceived as successful,
and it would probably take sophistication that he
doesn't possess to see how to pursue the
*original goals* of his organization without
being deceptive at all. He only needs to be
deceptive, to suppress what "would only confuse
people," -- in other words, might risk a lowering
of support for what he believes is good for ...
the cause ... because he set a tactical goal that was poorly chosen.
In addition, a leading FairVote advocate of IRV
(though he first called it "majority
preferential voting") was John Anderson, the
1980 independent presidential candidate.
Anderson published a New York Times op-ed about
it in July 1992, shortly after the CPR!
organizing meeting (the url is
<http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/24/opinion/break-the-political-stranglehold.htmllehold>http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/24/opinion/break-the-political-stranglehold.htmllehold).
Soon after that he joined the CVD board of
directors and has been an active, influential
board member, serving for many years as its
chair (he's now listed as chair emeritus).
Although I have no information about the board's
internal deliberations, I suspect the
organization has been more influenced by
Anderson and other board members and less
dominated by long-time executive director Rob
Richie than some people have believed.
I've seen what happens in nonprofits. It is rare
for a nonprofit board to restrain the Executive
Director. I was on a nonprofit board where the ED
was actually violating the law, risking a great
deal, including the whole future of the
organization. All in a good cause, mind you. (And
I mean that, I'm not claiming that she was a bad
person or something like that.) When I protested,
as a Board member, I was considered a
"trouble-maker" and encouraged to resign. I've
seen this happen with other nonprofits, and few
stay and fight. Often, the other board members
are personal friends, and the whole experience can be excruciating.
My sense is that the strategy came from Richie,
but certainly he may have consulted the board.
Now, how did it happen that there were not
effective and knowledgeable voting system experts
on the board? Ralph, you tell the story....
My own biggest disagreement with FairVote is
that it has never, itself, been a truly democratic organization.
When I became interested in voting systems, it
was still CVD, and we used to make the joke all
the time, that CVD was for democracy everywhere
except in their own process. It's not uncommon,
actually, among advocates for "democracy." They
don't actually trust the people, the demos.
At the 1992 founding meeting, I was under the
impression that it would be incorporated as a
member-controlled organization. In fact an
initial board of directors was elected at the
meeting using a PR procedure (STV as I recall).
Bingo.
Only several years later did I learn that the
organization was incorporated as a conventional
nonprofit organization controlled by a
self-perpetuating board (i.e., the board chooses
all new board members). The initial board was
selected by Matthew Cossolotto and the other
incorporators and was not the board elected at the founding meeting.
Again, personal control. It's *very* limiting.
Those founders could have worked with the
original elected board, but .... it might have
restrained them! If these were political
activists, that's the last thing they wanted.
As a result of how it was incorporated, the
organization has never been open to pressure
from members (since it doesn't have any)
regarding its positions on IRV and other issues.
I initially supported it with a couple of
donations, but I'm no longer a supporter and
have been dismayed by its positions on IRV and
some other issues and by its failure to become a
democratic membership organization.
What we found -- many of us attempted to
cooperate with FairVote -- was that it was totally closed to *advice.*
It occurs to me to give an example of deceptive arguments.
http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting#.UUOJ9FK9ofw
Upholding the principle of majority rule and
accommodating genuine voter choice are marks of
a well-functioning democracy. That's why we
encourage understanding, adoption and effective
implementation of instant runoff voting, a
ranked choice voting system used in a growing number of American elections.
"Majority rule." Great idea. The reality of IRV
in actual elections is that when there are more
than very few candidates, and in nonpartisan
elections (and many of the implementations have
been for nonpartisan elections), the system fails
to find a majority of votes. It's essentially
useless, the results almost always confirm
first-preference. In real runoff elections, the
runner-up wins about a third of the time. The
equivalent (runner-up in first preference
becoming the winner) only happens with
nonpartisan IRV, sometimes, when the first round results are very close.
Now, many arguments can be raised on this issue.
Supposedly runoff elections are a problem because
of low turnout. However, history has shown that
when the public is highly interested in a runoff,
they turn out in droves. Low turnout in runoff
elections indicates that the public mostly
doesn't care about the choice. And so those who
are more highly motivated vote. This, from
Bayesian Regret theory, indicates that comeback
elections probably improve overall public
satisfaction with the result. Some political
theorists simply, knee-jerk, think that low
turnout is *bad.* Maybe. But isn't it fairly
obvious that it means that the people who don't
vote don't care about the choice being presented?
Real runoff voting allows dark horses to win. In
nonpartisan elections, again, to win with IRV
requires rising all the way up to top position in
one fell swoop. With real runoff, they only need
to get up to second position. In some improved
runoff voting systems, they might manage to win
by getting up to third position, but that gets
complicated. The main effect is that by placing
in the primary, then they get serious attention,
and their supporters, who might have despaired of
winning in the primary -- and some of whom
therefore stayed home, perhaps -- turn out
preferentially in the runoff, whereas the
supporters of the frontrunner may have been only
weak supporters. Some of them might change their
vote, but, more likely, they don't care enough to turn out.
However, runoff voting could be improved, and
that's what FairVote totally disregarded. Because
their goal was the STV voting method, improving
runoff voting was the *last* thing they wanted to
do! Then they might lose their opportunity. But
this set them up for a conflict of interest. They
were advising municipalities on a single-winner
system, but behind that was a different, not-disclosed motive.
My purpose here was actually to look at how
FairVote presents information about Robert's
Rules of Order and IRV. Looking only for recent statements, I found
http://www.fairvote.org/good-things-come-to-those-who-rank#.UUOPIlK9ofw
Instant runoff voting is a ranked choice voting
system that allows voters to rank candidates in
order of preference. Recommended by Robert's
Rules of Order and used in a rapidly growing
number of elections here and abroad, it
represents a major improvement over the usual
plurality-based and two-round systems of voting.
It protects majority rule, eliminates the need
for costly extra elections and all but
eradicates the potential chaos of "spoiler"
candidacies. But beyond its clearly established
benefits, we are seeing anecdotal evidence that
suggests that IRV has a positive effect on the
influence of big money on elections, and
mitigating the temptation for campaigns to "go negative."
The data on which I based my estimate of
one-third of real runoffs being "comeback
elections" was based on a FairVote study. Then I
looked at San Francisco and other results.
"Instant" comeback elections are rare, and
majority failure is common. There are contrary
opinions on the issue of negative campaigning;
FairVote simply cites someone's impression. What,
again, are the "established benefits"? Spoilers
can afflict IRV, IRV only works with *minor party
spoilers,* where a few percent of votes going to
a hopeless candidate can then flip the election
to the candidate whom those voters would prefer
to the plurality winner. There are *plenty* of
solutions to this problem. Runoff voting solves
it, and where write-ins are allowed in runoffs
it's actually possible to fix Center Squeeze,
once the real positions of candidates are known.
But there are, quite simply, much better methods
for addressing the problems. IRV looks good in
one narrow circumstance: partisan minor-party
spoilers, where there are predictable vote
transfers, i.e., say, Green Party to the
Democratic Party, as in Bush v. Gore v. Nader. In
Burlington, where there are three parties at rough parity, IRV failed badly.
http://www.fairvote.org/instant-runoff-voting-used-for-major-organizational-elections-based-on-roberts-rules-of-order/#.UUOQElK9ofw
<http://www.robertsrules.com/>Robert's Rules of
Order (RRO) has been the basis for dozens of
major private associations and more than fifty
colleges and universities choosing to elect
officers with instant runoff voting . RRO
clearly
<http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=1797>spells
out the rules for an instant runoff elections,
to the point that association bylaws often
simply say "officers shall be elected by
preferential voting as detailed in Robert's Rules of Order."
RRO recommends IRV (which it calls "preferential
voting," a term also used to describe IRV in
Australia) when association members aren't all
in the same place and able to engage in repeated balloting.
Right. But Bucklin was also called "American
Preferential Voting," and, in fact, the term
refers to any ranked ballot, and it could be
extended easily to Range Voting, where preference
*strength* can be expressed. Does RRO claim that
the rules they give are superior to other forms of PV? No.
I've been told that RRO is not a theoretical
manual, it's a manual of actual practice, and the
form in wide enough use for them to be able to
refer to it is STV. They are simply describing
what is done. And, from the commentary, you can
tell that they don't like it. We'll get to that.
All the organizational bylaws FairVote has
examined with IRV rules follow the model we
recommend them for public elections, with one
round of voting, and the winner being the
candidate who has a majority of votes in the final round of counting.
Right. Now, it's *implied, by context and
presentation,* that this is what RRO recommends,
remember, so many organizations just refer to
RRO's method. They don't mention the difference
between what RRO actually describes and what
these organizations allegedly do. (In at least
one major case, the organization doesn't actually
do what FairVote claims, I'll get to that.)
RRO points out that election officials should
instruct voters of the risk of majority failure
if voters fail to rank all the candidates,
because, then, *the election will have to be
repeated.* Parliamentarians *never* recommend
restricting elections, unconditionally, to a
single ballot, and they never allow candidate
elimination, either. Rather, a repeated election
generally requires new nominations. They
recommend preferential voting, and educating
voters to rank fully, precisely to avoid
unnecessary runoffs. Parliamentary rules never
allow *any* decision to be made without a majority approving it.
The phrase "majority of votes in the final round
of counting," is a cute phrase that lots of
people don't understand. They think it simply
means "majority of votes." No, PV in Robert's
Rules of Order is seeking a true majority, not a
"majority of last-round ballots," from which
*many votes have been eliminated.* Robert's Rules
requires an *actual majority of votes.* IRV
doesn't consider all the people who just voted
against both of the top two in the last round. In
a real runoff, no write-ins allowed, they could
then decide if they wanted to vote or not, and
they might well be better informed. If write-ins
are allowed, they can actually, if the numbers
and community consideration warrant it, to run a
write-in campaign. It's been done, and it worked.
But there is a far better method than IRV, that
is more efficient at finding true majorities, and
that's been used in the U.S., more extensively
than IRV ever was, here. Bucklin. Unlike IRV,
it's a "count all the votes" method, i.e, a form
of Approval Voting, but it is also preferential
voting, using a ranked ballot. IRV can fail to
find a majority because it can eliminate the true
majority preference, before all the votes are
counted. (Bucklin can do this, technically, but
it's rare and involves multiple majorities.)
The simple reform recommended first by the Center
for Election Science is Approval Voting, simply
Count All the Votes. But most people, I think,
prefer to be able to rank candidates, and making
the Approval cutoff decision can be difficult;
Bucklin makes it much simpler. And even better reforms are possible.
FairVote took over the voting systems field,
dominating it, and very possibly, by *succeeding*
in getting IRV passed in some places, making
future reforms more difficult. After you've been
connned once, you may well be suspicious of
people promoting another "new" system. Bucklin
isn't new though, so ... maybe. FairVote has put
a fair amount of energy into attacking Bucklin....
[...]
Associations electing top officers with IRV
(some of which have very hotly contested
elections) [...] American Political Science
Association (the leading professional
organization for the study of political science,
with more than 15,000 members in over 80 countries)....
They always mention the APSA since, supposedly,
political scientists would use the best system,
right? Well, the APA has apparently *never* held
a PV election. The rules are designed to avoid
elections entirely. A nominating committee --
selected by the President -- is tasked with
coming up with a single nominee, who is then
presented to the annual convention, and is
normally elected by acclamation there. Floor
nominations are possible, though, and if there
are three candidates or more, they would use PV
by mail ballot. The bylaw seems to go back a
century, when PV was the latest and greatest.
Now, there are also committees elected, N-winner.
Hey, great application for STV! But ... no, as I
recall, it's majority-at-large. Vote for N. The
candidates with the most votes win. (So a
majority faction, if one existed, can simply elect all the committee members.)
And then they go directly to RRO, but first, they
need to frame it for you. I did not have a copy
of RRONR, the more recent edition that describes
PV, so I depended, for some time, on the FairVote
description, and simply accepted what they were
saying, with the framing. That's how powerful
framing facts can be. When one reads the facts,
one easily reads *into them* what has been said.
And I was reasonably well informed! So when I
read the RRO excerpt, I thought, yes, that's IRV
all right! (And I was puzzled that parliamentarians would do this!)
http://archive.fairvote.org/?page=1797
Robert's Rules of Order on Instant Runoff Voting
Robert's Rules of Order (RRO), the well-known
guide to fair procedures, makes the point that
an election by a mere plurality may produce an
unrepresentative result. It recommends voting
methods that can determine a majority winner when electing single-seat offices.
"Can determine?" Yes, if all voters rank all
candidates, IRV will determine a majority winner.
Not necessarily the best one, it could be far
from that, but it will be mathematically a majority of all votes.
At conventions of private organizations, etc.,
where the electors can cast repeated ballots,
RRO prefers a system that allows open ended
repeat balloting with no runoff eliminations to
finally elect a majority winner.
Yes, they are telling the truth here. In fact,
they don't allow anything else unless a bylaw ordains it.
Organizations, in fact, make their own rules,
Robert's Rules only has authority of the
organization implements the rules through a
bylaw. RRO dislikes election by plurality, the
parliamentarians consider that very unwise. It
doesn't particularly like mail ballot, but it is
recognized that some organizations consider a
mail ballot as possibly more representative. So
they then suggest *if you must* conduct a mail
election, you can use preferential voting, and then they describe one method.
Such a system may be time consuming but can
allow a compromise candidate to emerge after a number of ballots.
A sane preferential voting system can do that
*usually* with one ballot. Unless you coerce
voters, demanding that they rank all candidates,
no voting system can guarantee a true majority.
But real organizations do, in deliberative
process, settle. What voting systems experts know
-- and parliamentarians are not voting systems
experts, generally, but they *talk with them* --
is that advanced voting systems can speed up the process.
A parliamentarian, however, will *never*
recommend that an organization use plurality
voting, and this is the tragedy: with nonpartisan
elections, preferential voting, with no genuine
majority requirement, using the candidate
elimination system of single-winner STV -- i.e,
IRV -- almost never produces different results
from plurality voting. So all those organizations
actually using IRV, for what are almost always
nonpartisan elections, are simply running a fancy
form of plurality voting. Of course, when there
are not a lot of candidates, which is what
usually happens, someone may get a majority, and
IRV blesses this, and if voters have ranked
enough candidates, again, there is the appearance
of a majority, and it might be real.
However, in elections where open-ended re-voting
is not practical, such as in elections by mail
(or governmental elections), instant runoff
voting (called "preferential voting" in RRO) is the recommended procedure.
Notice that 2-round elections are completely
glossed over. And the procedure *actually
recommended* still *requires* a majority of votes
cast (and, by the way, the basis for majority
includes spoiled ballots, with *any writing on them at all.*)
In the section detailing the procedure for
conducting an instant runoff election RRO states
that "It makes possible a more representative
result than under a rule that a plurality shall
elect..... This type of preferential ballot is
preferable to an election by plurality."
And they really haven't considered all the
issues. It *could be better,* yes, but ... how
much better? The parliamentarians who have put
together RRO have not actually studied the real
performance of IRV. Obviously, *on occasion* it
can be better. But Approval, very simple, is
better than IRV, that's what the evidence shows.
If someone objects that IRV allows more than one
vote to be active at a time, there is a way to
count Approval that only considers one vote at a
time. You basically count it like IRV, but
pairwise. (And for the pair, if the voter
approved both candidates, you *don't count the
vote* -- so you are never counting more than one
vote at a time from a voter.) I won't give the
method, but it shows that the objection is purely
formal. In the end, the only votes which actually
count are those for a winner, you could eliminate
all other votes and the winner would not change.
Having told you the meaning of the text, they then give you the text.
The full text is below. (Again, note that the
term "preferential voting" is another one for
instant runoff voting). It is from:
Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised
In Chapter XIII §45. 10th edition, 2000, pp. 411-414
(Used with permission from The Robert's Rules
Association, <http://www.robertsrules.com/>www.robertsrules.com)
§45 VOTING PROCEDURE
Preferential Voting: The term preferential
voting refers to any of a number of voting
methods by which, on a single ballot when there
are more than two possible choices, the second
or less-preferred choices of voters can be taken
into account if no candidate or proposition
attains a majority. While it is more complicated
than other methods of voting in common use and
is not a substitute for the normal procedure of
repeated balloting until a majority is obtained,
preferential voting is especially useful and
fair in an election by mail if it is impractical
to take more than one ballot. In such cases it
makes possible a more representative result than
under a rule that a plurality shall elect. It
can be used only if expressly authorized in the bylaws.
Notice that in this section, RRO is not referring
to the specific method called STV. So they have
*not* stated that the PV method they detail is
better than plurality. But having been prepared
by the introduction, it's easy to miss this.
Preferential voting has many variations. One
method is described here by way of illustration.
On the preferential ballotfor each office to be
filled or multiple-choice question to be
decidedthe voter is asked to indicate the order
in which he prefers all the candidates or
propositions, placing the numeral 1 beside his
first preference, the numeral 2 beside his
second preference, and so on for every possible
choice. In counting the votes for a given office
or question, the ballots are arranged in piles
according to the indicated first preferencesone
pile for each candidate or proposition. The
number of ballots in each pile is then recorded
for the tellers report. These piles remain
identified with the names of the same candidates
or propositions throughout the counting
procedure until all but one are eliminated as
described below. If more than half of the
ballots show one candidate or proposition
indicated as first choice, that choice has a
majority in the ordinary sense and the candidate
is elected or the proposition is decided upon.
But if there is no such majority, candidates or
propositions are eliminated one by one,
beginning with the least popular, until one
prevails, as follows: The ballots in the
thinnest pilethat is, those containing the name
designated as first choice by the fewest number
of votersare redistributed into the other piles
according to the names marked as second choice
on these ballots. The number of ballots in each
remaining pile after this distribution is again
recorded. If more than half of the ballots are
now in one pile, that candidate or proposition
is elected or decided upon. If not, the next
least popular candidate or proposition is
similarly eliminated, by taking the thinnest
remaining pile and redistributing its ballots
according to their second choices into the other
piles, except that, if the name eliminated in
the last distribution is indicated as second
choice on a ballot, that ballot is placed
according to its third choice. Again the number
of ballots in each existing pile is recorded,
and, if necessary, the process is repeatedby
redistributing each time the ballots in the
thinnest remaining pile, according to the marked
second choice or most-preferred choice among
those not yet eliminateduntil one pile contains
more than half of the ballots, the result being
thereby determined. The tellers report consists
of a table listing all candidates or
propositions, with the number of ballots that
were in each pile after each successive distribution.
If a ballot having one or more names not marked
with any numeral comes up for placement at any
stage of the counting and all of its marked
names have been eliminated, it should not be
placed in any pile, but should be set aside. If
at any point two or more candidates or
propositions are tied for the least popular
position, the ballots in their piles are
redistributed in a single step, all of the tied
names being treated as eliminated. In the event
of a tie in the winning positionwhich would
imply that the elimination process is continued
until the ballots are reduced to two or more
equal pilesthe election should be resolved in
favor of the candidate or proposition that was
strongest in terms of first choices (by
referring to the record of the first distribution).
Notice that eliminated ballots are put in a pile.
FairVote activists have claim that then excludes
them from the "majority" referred to above. They
made that up, and that becomes obvious later.
They are put in a separate pile because they need
not be examined any more in this poll. The
criterion being used for election is established
at the beginning, and it is "more than half of
the ballots." Notice that this includes *all
ballots.* that have any mark on them. (That's
detailed in other sections covering ballot
spoilage. Blank ballots are "so much scrap
paper," but a ballot with any mark is assumed to
have been intended as a vote, even if it's
unintelligible. They also treat ballots violating
rules, like overvoting, the same way. The ballot
is simply considered to be a vote against all the candidates!)
If more than one person is to be elected to the
same type of officefor example, if three
members of a board are to be chosenthe voters
can indicate their order of preference among the
names in a single fist of candidates, just as if
only one was to be elected. The counting
procedure is the same as described above, except
that it is continued until all but the necessary
number of candidates have been eliminated (that
is, in the example, all but three).
Notice that this simplified STV system does not
require any quota for election. "Majority" is not
used. Really poor method, I have no idea why RRO
does it this way. Okay, I know why. A real PR-STV
system is too complicated, I suspect. This method
is only a slight improvement over Plurality at
large, because a majority faction can easily
elect all the seats. (They are comfortable with that.)
When this or any other system of preferential
voting is to be used, the voting and counting
procedure must be precisely established in
advance and should be prescribed in detail in the bylaws of the organization.
In other words, the statement above, "association
bylaws often simply say "officers shall be
elected by preferential voting as detailed in
Robert's Rules of Order" violates RRO.
The members must be thoroughly instructed as to
how to mark the ballot, and should have
sufficient understanding of the counting process
to enable them to have confidence in the method.
Sometimes, for instance, voters decline to
indicate a second or other choice, mistakenly
believing that such a course increases the
chances of their first choice. In fact, it may
prevent any candidate from receiving a majority
and require the voting to be repeated. The
persons selected as tellers must perform their work with particular care.
They don't mention the problem that a single
miscount can require a total recount, but they emphasize "particular care."
Notice that they *assume* that the election must
be repeated if there is no majority. They could
not be referring to the "last round majority"
that FairVote IRV is seeking, because it is
mathematically guaranteed. Very simple, setting
aside ties, if you eliminate all ballots not
containing a vote for the top two, one of them
has a majority. Same as Plurality with two
candidates! I've suggested that if they simply
went more step, they'd have *unanimity.* Wouldn't
that be better than a mere majority?
The system of preferential voting just described
should not be used in cases where it is possible
to follow the normal procedure of repeated
balloting until one candidate or proposition attains a majority.
Now, remember, FairVote is working mostly for
public elections. Almost all organizations can,
if it's considered important, run at least two
rounds, and a decent preferential voting system
-- like Bucklin -- could easily make a second
round relatively rare. A full-ranking Bucklin, in
fact, could *guarantee* a majority result.
(Standard Bucklin was really ranked Approval, so
all votes on the ballot were Approvals. But
Bucklin can be extended from that, plus it can by
hybridized in various ways, to make for an
extremely sophisticated system that, for example,
will seek and find Condorcet winners, but this is
not the place for that full system. FairVote
turned away, deliberately, from election science,
and went for a narrow political expediency. IRV
was known as a poor system in the *19th century.*
(multiwinner STV is *far* better than single-winner IRV.)
And then RRO describes why they don't like the method:
Although this type of preferential ballot is
preferable to an election by plurality, it
affords less freedom of choice than repeated
balloting, because it denies voters the
opportunity of basing their second or lesser
choices on the results of earlier ballots, and
because the candidate or proposition in last
place is automatically eliminated and may thus
be prevented from becoming a compromise choice.
It's very clear that, if needed, RRO would
consider two rounds better than one, and it's
very possible to set up a system that
discriminates quite well if the electorate is
ready to make a decision with a first ballot or
not. Two-round runoff, with vote-for-one, and
elimination of all but the top two, is a very
primitive system, but it can already be argued
that it's better than one-poll IRV.
Like IRV, Bucklin was sold as a runoff
eliminator. It worked, by the way, until later,
in the last standing Bucklin implementations,
into the 1940s (the heyday of Bucklin was around
1920), it was used for party primary elections,
and voters tended to bullet vote, and majority
failure was common. While there was an obvious
fix: hold a runoff if there is majority failure,
instead the jurisdictions went to .... top two
runoff. And so they created Center Squeeze, which
isn't so bad in party primaries.
In selling IRV, FairVote constantly repeats the
theme of "find majorities without expensive
runoff elections." In the San Franscisco
Proposition that implemented IRV, the ballot
information pamphlet explicitly explained that
the winner would still be required to gain a
majority of votes. That phrase has well-established meaning.
In Australia, in some states, they require all
voters to rank all candidates on the ballot. The
rules then specify the quota to win: an absolute
majority of votes. In some states, though, they
have "optional preferential voting," where the
ballots are not spoiled if not completely ranked.
And then the rules state the winning standard
differently: a majority of all votes containing a
vote for an uneliminated candidate, or similar
language. (And they do, in fact, see frequent majority failure.)
The ballot information pamphlet stated the
majority requirement, but if one read the actual
change in the law, the second of the code
requiring a majority was *removed*. Did voters
know what they were voting for? I think it's not
likely at all. People simply believed the propaganda.
The ballot information pamphlet was written by a
independent commission, but ... a dollar to a
donut that the language was supplied by FairVote.
Or they simply believed FairVote and did not
think of the effect of eliminated ballots. That's what's common.
In some races in San Francisco, there are well
over twenty candidates for one Supervisor seat.
In those races, ballot exhaustion is *common*,
particularly because the ballot only allows three ranks.
I'll say it again: fancy and expensive and
complicated form of plurality. SF elections
demonstrate that. There are much better *and simpler* systems.
But, of course, they won't get FairVote their
stepping stone to STV-PR. Unfortunately, IRV
breakdowns may be postponing the day, not hastening it.
In fact, however, STV-PR is only one PR method.
There are other methods that are theoretically
superior. And, of course, there is Asset, which,
if we want true, accurate proportional
representation, blows all other methods out of
the water. Invented in about 1883 by Charles
Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) as a tweak on STV,
allowing voters to vote for one and not see their ballot be therefore useless.
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