Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
David L Wetzell wrote: Hello Walabio, et al. On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:41 AM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com mailto:wala...@macosx.com wrote: 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. I hate to break this to you, But FairVote.Org is Astroturf. The Republicrats and Democans know that people want reform. IRV (Instant Runoff-Voting) is a reform changing nothing. We need to take a step back and look at Duverger’s Law: dlw: IRV3 hardly changes nothing. It doesn't by itself change the tendency for there to be two major parties, but I take issue with the view that that has to be changed. In my explanation of Strategic Election Reform, I outline my vision of a contested duopoly with 2 major parties, an indefinite number of minor parties trying to replace one of the two major parties or for one of them to merge with them on their terms, and a large numer of LTPs, Local Third Parties who specialize in contesting more local elections and who vote strategically together in less local elections as a part of their wider practice of the politics of Gandhi, as I believe will emanate from the #OWS led political cultural changes. So IRV3 gives dissenters more exit threat and voice in elections and it makes both of the two major parties reposition themselves closer to the true political center (a moving target) more often. What's not enough is IRV3 alone, but that's not what FairVote is pushiing. That doesn't seem to be what IRV actually causes, though. In Australia, the Senate's pretty much Labour plus National-Liberal coalition and has been so for a long time. If IRV with AV (or STV) accelerates the change of major parties, Australia doesn't show it. Duverger’s Law is an observation. Let us suppose that we have more candidates on the left than right. Let us also suppose that we use plurality (only vote for one candidate for each office). The candidates on the left will split the vote causing the 1 of the candidates on the right to win. Over time, this causes only one party on the left and one party on the right to survive. That is why we have republicrats and democans. My dissent from Duverger's law is that I think it's the Economies of scale in winning single-seat elections that leads to fewer major parties and that this tends to be true with almost all single seat elections. Why, because rational choice theory for politics is not very realistic. We do, as a matter of fact, act not unlike sheep a good deal of the time, especially when it comes to politics. As a result, marketing matters in the (re)formation of preferences and there are economies of scale in marketing, or reshaping the preferences of enough people to win a big single-seat elections, thereby leading to major parties. Duverger's law has another part, too, namely that the double ballot majority system (FPTP runoffs) and proportional representation each lead to multiple parties. While France's minor parties more or less have to be in coalition with one of the major parties, they are there, have a presence in the assembly, and those that have, are more numerous in Australia. Therefore, I don't think it's clear that every single-winner method is doomed to lead the nation to a party duopoly. Now to IRV. With IRV, one ranks the candidates. One eliminates candidates from the ballot. In IRV, someone on the right may list Libertarian first, but just in case list Republican as third. Someone on the left might list Green as first, but list Democrat as third. People will disagree about who should be first or second, leading to eliminations to third place. In third place, one only finds republicrats and democans. Let us look at Australia as an example: In Australia, one finds 2 houses. 1 house represents the political views of Australia and uses STV (Single Transferable Vote). The other house represents the interests of districts. It uses IRV. In the STV-house, one finds lots of parties and independents. In the IRV-house, one finds only 2 parties with no independents and no third-parties. Aye, and that's not per se a bad thing. There's a thing in the social sciences called, the problem of order http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=enq=%22problem+of+order%22+spenglergs_sm=egs_upl=14759l16228l2l16537l8l7l1l0l0l0l328l1552l0.2.4.1l8l0bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osbbiw=1366bih=631um=1ie=UTF-8sa=Ntab=ws. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. We need both hierarchy and equality and change and continuity in working out the rules that govern us all, and this is possible with a contested duopoly in our political systems. It is also possible with multiple parties. PR-only nations have shown as much - they don't seem to crash and burn even though they have multiple
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. I hate to break this to you, But FairVote.Org is Astroturf. The Republicrats and Democans know that people want reform. IRV (Instant Runoff-Voting) is a reform changing nothing. We need to take a step back and look at Duverger’s Law: Duverger’s Law is an observation. Let us suppose that we have more candidates on the left than right. Let us also suppose that we use plurality (only vote for one candidate for each office). The candidates on the left will split the vote causing the 1 of the candidates on the right to win. Over time, this causes only one party on the left and one party on the right to survive. That is why we have republicrats and democans. Now to IRV. With IRV, one ranks the candidates. One eliminates candidates from the ballot. In IRV, someone on the right may list Libertarian first, but just in case list Republican as third. Someone on the left might list Green as first, but list Democrat as third. People will disagree about who should be first or second, leading to eliminations to third place. In third place, one only finds republicrats and democans. Let us look at Australia as an example: In Australia, one finds 2 houses. 1 house represents the political views of Australia and uses STV (Single Transferable Vote). The other house represents the interests of districts. It uses IRV. In the STV-house, one finds lots of parties and independents. In the IRV-house, one finds only 2 parties with no independents and no third-parties. IRV occasional reverses whether the republicrat or democan wins but does not allow independents or third-parties to win: If we would have had IRV in 2000, Gore would have won, but in Presidential Election since 1856 no third-party or independent would have won under IRV. Many competitive single-winner voting systems exists such as Condorcet, Score-Voting, Approval, et cetera. My favorite is Approval because it is simple and runs on existing voting equipment: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Approval_voting I hope that you will be weary of the Astroturf of FairVote.Org now. For a general feeling of the feelings of voting experts, you should read this position-paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oyJLxI9dciXBbowM5mougnbGHzkL3Ue1QkD8nnMwWLg/edit?hl=en_USpli=1 The position-paper is a work in progress. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
Welcome David, Richard Fobes wrote: An excellent summary of the collective view of most participants here is our recently created Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates. ... Mind you, most of us have yet to agree to this collective view. That doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong or anything, but it may yet prove to be! I just mention this to show that we're still, for the most part, open minded on the question. :-) -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Richard Fobes wrote: Welcome! An excellent summary of the collective view of most participants here is our recently created Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates. It doesn't yet have a permanent home; a temporary copy is here: http://www.votefair.org/declaration.html Your views overlap with many of ours, yet you will meet some resistance to some of your positions. The above Declaration will quickly convey which areas are which. Please ask any specific questions. Richard Fobes On 10/30/2011 6:33 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: I just joined the list. I'm a political economist turned electoral enthusiast. My views are: 1. All modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and plutocracy. 2. Electoral Reform is meant to bolster the former. 3. There are two basic types of election rules: winner-take-all (all single-seat elections or non-proportional multi-seat) elections and winner-doesn't-take-all (proportional or quasi-proportional multi-seat) elections. We need to use both. Right now, in the US, we need most to push for more American forms of PR. 4. American forms of PR don't challenge the fact we have a two-party dominated system. They tend to have 3-5 seats. They increase proportionality and handicap the cut-throat competitive rivalry between the two major parties. They give third party dissenters more voice... 5. Most alternatives to FPTP are decent and the biases of FPTP tend to get reduced over time and place in elections. 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. It's got a first-mover and marketing advantage in the US, over the infinite number of other single seat winner-take-all election rules out there. In a FPTP dominated system, there can only be one alternative to FPTP at a time locally. 6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. 7. Moreover, I believe that the number of political issues, their complexity, matters of character bound the rationality of voters and make choices among candidates inherently fuzzy options. So there's no cardinal or ordinal utility for any candidate out there and all effective rankings of candidates used to determine the Condorcet Candidate are ad hoc. 8. This is why I believe a lot of the debate over the best single seat election rule is unproductive. 9. What matters more is to get a better balance between the two basic types. 10. Winner-doesn't-take-all elections are preferable for more local elections that o.w. tend to be chronically non-competitive. I think that's probably enough for now. I look forward to dialogues with y'all (I lived in TX from 3-9 then moved to MN, where my father became a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the private liberal arts college where he met my mother, Bethel University.). dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
Hello Walabio, et al. On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 4:41 AM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com wrote: 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. I hate to break this to you, But FairVote.Org is Astroturf. The Republicrats and Democans know that people want reform. IRV (Instant Runoff-Voting) is a reform changing nothing. We need to take a step back and look at Duverger’s Law: dlw: IRV3 hardly changes nothing. It doesn't by itself change the tendency for there to be two major parties, but I take issue with the view that that has to be changed. In my explanation of Strategic Election Reform, I outline my vision of a contested duopoly with 2 major parties, an indefinite number of minor parties trying to replace one of the two major parties or for one of them to merge with them on their terms, and a large numer of LTPs, Local Third Parties who specialize in contesting more local elections and who vote strategically together in less local elections as a part of their wider practice of the politics of Gandhi, as I believe will emanate from the #OWS led political cultural changes. So IRV3 gives dissenters more exit threat and voice in elections and it makes both of the two major parties reposition themselves closer to the true political center (a moving target) more often. What's not enough is IRV3 alone, but that's not what FairVote is pushiing. Duverger’s Law is an observation. Let us suppose that we have more candidates on the left than right. Let us also suppose that we use plurality (only vote for one candidate for each office). The candidates on the left will split the vote causing the 1 of the candidates on the right to win. Over time, this causes only one party on the left and one party on the right to survive. That is why we have republicrats and democans. My dissent from Duverger's law is that I think it's the Economies of scale in winning single-seat elections that leads to fewer major parties and that this tends to be true with almost all single seat elections. Why, because rational choice theory for politics is not very realistic. We do, as a matter of fact, act not unlike sheep a good deal of the time, especially when it comes to politics. As a result, marketing matters in the (re)formation of preferences and there are economies of scale in marketing, or reshaping the preferences of enough people to win a big single-seat elections, thereby leading to major parties. Now to IRV. With IRV, one ranks the candidates. One eliminates candidates from the ballot. In IRV, someone on the right may list Libertarian first, but just in case list Republican as third. Someone on the left might list Green as first, but list Democrat as third. People will disagree about who should be first or second, leading to eliminations to third place. In third place, one only finds republicrats and democans. Let us look at Australia as an example: In Australia, one finds 2 houses. 1 house represents the political views of Australia and uses STV (Single Transferable Vote). The other house represents the interests of districts. It uses IRV. In the STV-house, one finds lots of parties and independents. In the IRV-house, one finds only 2 parties with no independents and no third-parties. Aye, and that's not per se a bad thing. There's a thing in the social sciences called, the problem of orderhttp://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=enq=%22problem+of+order%22+spenglergs_sm=egs_upl=14759l16228l2l16537l8l7l1l0l0l0l328l1552l0.2.4.1l8l0bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osbbiw=1366bih=631um=1ie=UTF-8sa=Ntab=ws. The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order. We need both hierarchy and equality and change and continuity in working out the rules that govern us all, and this is possible with a contested duopoly in our political systems. IRV occasional reverses whether the republicrat or democan wins but does not allow independents or third-parties to win: If we would have had IRV in 2000, Gore would have won, but in Presidential Election since 1856 no third-party or independent would have won under IRV. And very likely any other single-seated election... It's costly to run an effective multi-seat US Presidential election. This does not deny third parties a constructive role in our political system, however. Many competitive single-winner voting systems exists such as Condorcet, Score-Voting, Approval, et cetera. My favorite is Approval because it is simple and runs on existing voting equipment: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Approval_voting I'm familiar with AV and SV. I've dialogued on these matters at length with Dale Sheldon Hess and Clay/Broken Ladder at my blog. http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2010/07/strategic-election-reform-vs-approval.html AV and SV are not as great when you relax the assumption of cardinal utility preferences over
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
Hello Jameson, On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: Others have already responded to most of your points. Walabi got to some of them. But that's it so far... I just wanted to say one thing: 6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. I am not a big fan of IRV, though I find it better than plurality. Your improvement, however, would remove its primary selling points. There would be incentives to truncate --- not use lower rankings --- and to bury --- use the lower rankings to dishonestly promote easy-to-beat turkeys. I suspect your proposed system would be opposed by many here as well as by many inside FairVote --- two groups which don't agree on much. dlw: I disagree that there is an incentive to truncate. If one's second and third are comparable in utility with one's third then all things considered, one would prefer for either of them to have a better chance of being among the three finalists. As it is, since only a small fraction of votes get reassigned, many people's second and third choice votes end up not counting at all. And then there's the delays, like the 48 days delay for the statewide judicial election last year. And finally, a lot of the vote counting and tabulating can be done at the precinct level, which has its advantages. IRV3/AV3 will reduce the number of candidates to 3 on election night and then it'll have the final winner the next day, most of the time. It is a hybrid between AV and IRV. As such, if one's preferences are AVIRV3 then one should expect that IRV3/AV3IRV3. Or if one prefers IRV3AV then one would prefer IRV3/AV3AV. In general, it is often tempting to improve a voting system with ad-hoc extra steps. Doing so successfully isn't impossible, but it is not as easy as it looks. It's not ad hoc. It solves a problem. How to expedite the vote-counting process when the number of possible permutations gets unwieldy. 7. Moreover, I believe that the number of political issues, their complexity, matters of character bound the rationality of voters and make choices among candidates inherently fuzzy options. So there's no cardinal or ordinal utility for any candidate out there and all effective rankings of candidates used to determine the Condorcet Candidate are ad hoc. Yes, I believe that this is true. However, I don't think that you should stop trying to do better just because you'll never attain perfection. It does relativize the importance of debating over single seated elections. What we need much more so is to push for American forms of PR than trying to work out the rankings of single-seat election rules. Moreover, if we put more of our trust in the politics of Gandhi then it takes the edge off of getting Electoral Reform perfect. We can push to diversify our electoral system by insisting that one election rule does not fit all elections and FPTP is especially inappropriate for more local elections that then become rarely ever competitive due to de facto segregation. 8. This is why I believe a lot of the debate over the best single seat election rule is unproductive. Again, qualified agreement. I certainly think it's worthwhile to hash out details here, among people with patience for that stuff. And I was the instigator for the collective statement that Richard Fobes linked; so as you can see, I think the best way to avoid wasting time on debate is not to supress it (which doesn't work), but to keep it minimal and in its place. sure. I'll be sure to check out your statement. We can agree to disagree, while agreeing that plurality is the main enemy. I'd go further and argue that the near-exclusive use of FPTP/plurality is the main enemy. If we introduced American forms of PR into more local elections, it would inevitable affect single seat elections for the better, even if FPTP were still in use. It would do this by handicapping the rivalry between the two major parties so that more of their single-seat elecitons became competitive and third parties could exert more potential spoiler influence. This should then give them the leverage to get FPTP replaced in single-seat elections. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 10:50 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: 2011/10/31 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com Hello Jameson, On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: Others have already responded to most of your points. Walabi got to some of them. But that's it so far... I just wanted to say one thing: 6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. I am not a big fan of IRV, though I find it better than plurality. Your improvement, however, would remove its primary selling points. There would be incentives to truncate --- not use lower rankings --- and to bury --- use the lower rankings to dishonestly promote easy-to-beat turkeys. I suspect your proposed system would be opposed by many here as well as by many inside FairVote --- two groups which don't agree on much. dlw: I disagree that there is an incentive to truncate. Look, this isn't a matter of opinion. IRV's advantages include LNH, which, as a reassurance to voters, loses all its power if it isn't perfect; dlw:Non sequitur. Something doesn't lose all of its power if it isn't perfect. Things can generally be true and we can as a whole accept that what really matters is changing our habits rather than trying to get our election rules perfect. its disadvantages are many. But the severity of these purported disadvantages in real life are open to disagreement. Approval's advantages include simplicity; its disadvantages include the fact that there is no clear definition of honesty, which among other things means a strategic truncation incentive. The number of politicians one gives one vote to is indeterminate, as also is the strategy used to decide who to approve. In pure approval, the strategic incentives combine to give a good result; but combined with IRV, that is not true. So your combination has lost some advantages of both base systems. dlw: It's good result isn't as good when cardinal utility is relaxed. Just as in finance, investments are valued based on their return and their volatility, we can value election rules based on their return and their volatility. AV is quite volatile. It'd exchange some of the perceived advantages. Whether the exchange was worth it is an empirical question. I understand the advantages of your proposal. I still oppose it on balance. dlw: But pragmatically speaking if IRV3 is going to continue to have its first mover and marketing advantage then wouldn't you prefer for it to be enhanced by the use of AV3? It is a hybrid between AV and IRV. As such, if one's preferences are AVIRV3 then one should expect that IRV3/AV3IRV3. Or if one prefers IRV3AV then one would prefer IRV3/AV3AV. Disagree. In some ways it is clearly worst of both worlds. You need to elaborate on the use of the word, clearly. I hardly think that making LNH no longer always hold is *clearly *worthy of the label, worst of both worlds. And so far, that's all you've given me. In general, it is often tempting to improve a voting system with ad-hoc extra steps. Doing so successfully isn't impossible, but it is not as easy as it looks. It's not ad hoc. It solves a problem. How to expedite the vote-counting process when the number of possible permutations gets unwieldy. Being ad hoc and solving a problem are not contradictory; quite the reverse. If one takes for granted the use of IRV3 then it's the simplest way to solve the problems mentioned above. What may seem ad hoc is the presumption that we should take IRV3 for granted. However, I think that's quite a realistic assumption given the de facto pre-eminence of FairVote among US electoral reform advocates. Among those getting their hands dirty, which presently excludes myself, there's a strong majority in favor of it. It does relativize the importance of debating over single seated elections. What we need much more so is to push for American forms of PR than trying to work out the rankings of single-seat election rules. I believe that PR is important. But also, talking about single-winner reform allows a head-on attack on all of plurality's defects, something that is much harder when talking about PR. Also, it is very easy to sound like a whiny loser when talking about PR (either a third-party loser or local-minority-party loser). So there's no way single-winner issues should be put on the back burner. We can walk and chew gum here. (Gum on back burner ... eewww) dlw: We don't need to go off on all of plurality's defects to push for electoral pluralism. It's a much easier position to defend to say that one election rule does not fit all elections and that if we don't mix the
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
The reason PR makes you sound more like a whiny loser than single-winner reform is that PR is essentially a results-oriented idea. If you say you want PR, people know that you mean you want different winners, and they can easily check who that would be in practice. And that makes it easy for them to pigeonhole you. Single-winner reform lets you talk about process and deeper issues more easily, and because immediate results are harder to predict exactly, it's harder to pigeonhole and easier to keep the focus on longer-term results. I think we agree on the deeper goals, I'm just saying that it would be a mistake to stop talking about both PR and single-winner reform, even if you think PR is more important. JQ 2011/10/31 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com Also, it is very easy to sound like a whiny loser when talking about PR (either a third-party loser or local-minority-party loser). So there's no way single-winner issues should be put on the back burner. We can walk and chew gum here. (Gum on back burner ... eewww) Jameson:Also, it is very easy to sound like a whiny loser when talking about PR (either a third-party loser or local-minority-party loser). So there's no way single-winner issues should be put on the back burner. We can walk and chew gum here. (Gum on back burner ... eewww) dlw: once again, if we frame it as solving a problem then it's not a matter of whining. 3-5 seat forms of PR or quasi-PR are very much needed for more local elections that otherwise tend to be rarely competitive due to de facto segregation. This is not about getting third party candidates elected, it's about making our polity tend towards a contested(and far more dynamic) political duopoly, rather than a (somewhat contested) political monopoly. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. I am not a big fan of IRV, though I find it better than plurality. Your improvement, however, would remove its primary selling points. There would be incentives to truncate --- not use lower rankings --- and to bury --- use the lower rankings to dishonestly promote easy-to-beat turkeys. I suspect your proposed system would be opposed by many here as well as by many inside FairVote --- two groups which don't agree on much. David, thanks for bringing up this idea. Sounds interesting. I'm willing to consider it. If you want to convince us on this list, then determining which mathematical criteria it passes and focusing on specific voter profiles where other methods do poorly would be a good strategy. I would elaborate on Jameson's sentiment here. I think this e-m list will be very willing to discuss your method, but most of us will probably end up not supporting it in the end. That's just the law of averages, since the vast majority of methods ever designed have serious problems and we're pretty good at picking holes in methods here. We're also biased toward simplicity. And we know that hybrid methods have a particularly bad track record. If you did get some of us to support it, it would probably take months of light discussion and constant revisitation to do so. On the other hand, I think you would have a very hard time getting IRV supporters to even consider this method. They don't seem very open to ANY changes to IRV at all. Someone once proposed a small change to IRV called IRV-BTR where the step of eliminating the one candidate with the fewest first place votes was replaced with taking the two candidates with the fewest first place votes and eliminating the one that would lose in a one-on-one race between those two. It stands for IRV-Bottom Two Runoff and it actually meets the Condorcet criterion. It would probably be an acceptable compromise for many of the Condorcet supporters here. But it has gotten no traction among IRV supporters. ~ Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: The reason PR makes you sound more like a whiny loser than single-winner reform is that PR is essentially a results-oriented idea. If you say you want PR, people know that you mean you want different winners, and they can easily check who that would be in practice. And that makes it easy for them to pigeonhole you. dlw: all election rules are results oriented ideas. Some pragmatists believe that the essence of all ideas are their results. PR(or quasi-PR) promotes pluralism. Single-seated elections promote hierarchy. Both are needed in politics. But hierarchy is more important in the less local elections. It is in More local elections that it's important to give the ethnic/economic/ideological minorities more voice. O.W., the tyranny of the majority leads to a tyranny of the select minority due to how voter interest in elections is endogenous to whether they are competitive. Single-winner reform lets you talk about process and deeper issues more easily, and because immediate results are harder to predict exactly, it's harder to pigeonhole and easier to keep the focus on longer-term results. I don't think it gets a lot deeper than the need to compromise or blend together the values promoted by PR and Single winner elections. A lot of times, the purportedly deeper issues can be deceptive, because they are relatively abstract and hard to connect to reality. The truth is GIGO. If political candidates/parties are inherently fuzzy options then many of the funky things you can do to rank or what-not among those options are less meaningful or helpful than purported. I think we agree on the deeper goals, I'm just saying that it would be a mistake to stop talking about both PR and single-winner reform, even if you think PR is more important. Well, I believe that making more more local elections more competitive and thereby more meaningful checks on $peech is something that would appeal to the different factions of the #OWS a lot more than stuff on single-winner reform. The latter is too esoteric and let's face it, a lot of it is chasing each other's tails, as it's too easy to tease out something that might be (mis)construed as a deal-killer in any election rule. dlw JQ 2011/10/31 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com Also, it is very easy to sound like a whiny loser when talking about PR (either a third-party loser or local-minority-party loser). So there's no way single-winner issues should be put on the back burner. We can walk and chew gum here. (Gum on back burner ... eewww) Jameson:Also, it is very easy to sound like a whiny loser when talking about PR (either a third-party loser or local-minority-party loser). So there's no way single-winner issues should be put on the back burner. We can walk and chew gum here. (Gum on back burner ... eewww) dlw: once again, if we frame it as solving a problem then it's not a matter of whining. 3-5 seat forms of PR or quasi-PR are very much needed for more local elections that otherwise tend to be rarely competitive due to de facto segregation. This is not about getting third party candidates elected, it's about making our polity tend towards a contested(and far more dynamic) political duopoly, rather than a (somewhat contested) political monopoly. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
2011/10/31 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: The reason PR makes you sound more like a whiny loser than single-winner reform is that PR is essentially a results-oriented idea. If you say you want PR, people know that you mean you want different winners, and they can easily check who that would be in practice. And that makes it easy for them to pigeonhole you. dlw: all election rules are results oriented ideas. Some pragmatists believe that the essence of all ideas are their results. My point was: many politically-active people quickly filter new ideas by partisan advantage. This can be as blunt as If it hurts my party, I oppose it or as sophisticated as If it helps the party of the person who is proposing it, then that must be their primary motivation. Since PR, unlike single-winner reform, has highly predictable partisan results in the short term, fewer people have the open mind to listen to you talk about it. Well, I believe that making more more local elections more competitive and thereby more meaningful checks on $peech is something that would appeal to the different factions of the #OWS a lot more than stuff on single-winner reform. This is a good non-partisan goal. Both PR and single-winner reform would help here. It is easier to convince people that this is your sincere goal when talking about single-winner reform, for the reasons above. The latter is too esoteric and let's face it, a lot of it is chasing each other's tails, as it's too easy to tease out something that might be (mis)construed as a deal-killer in any election rule. Yes, it is important to stay grounded in reality, and not get caught up in improbable scenarios; something which, you're right, is more of a danger when talking about single-winner reform. Anyway, I think we probably already agree more than it would sound like, in that activism should be balanced between PR and single-winner advocacy, and not too focused on just one side of that. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
I just joined the list. I'm a political economist turned electoral enthusiast. My views are: 1. All modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and plutocracy. 2. Electoral Reform is meant to bolster the former. 3. There are two basic types of election rules: winner-take-all (all single-seat elections or non-proportional multi-seat) elections and winner-doesn't-take-all (proportional or quasi-proportional multi-seat) elections. We need to use both. Right now, in the US, we need most to push for more American forms of PR. 4. American forms of PR don't challenge the fact we have a two-party dominated system. They tend to have 3-5 seats. They increase proportionality and handicap the cut-throat competitive rivalry between the two major parties. They give third party dissenters more voice... 5. Most alternatives to FPTP are decent and the biases of FPTP tend to get reduced over time and place in elections. 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. It's got a first-mover and marketing advantage in the US, over the infinite number of other single seat winner-take-all election rules out there. In a FPTP dominated system, there can only be one alternative to FPTP at a time locally. 6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. 7. Moreover, I believe that the number of political issues, their complexity, matters of character bound the rationality of voters and make choices among candidates inherently fuzzy options. So there's no cardinal or ordinal utility for any candidate out there and all effective rankings of candidates used to determine the Condorcet Candidate are ad hoc. 8. This is why I believe a lot of the debate over the best single seat election rule is unproductive. 9. What matters more is to get a better balance between the two basic types. 10. Winner-doesn't-take-all elections are preferable for more local elections that o.w. tend to be chronically non-competitive. I think that's probably enough for now. I look forward to dialogues with y'all (I lived in TX from 3-9 then moved to MN, where my father became a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the private liberal arts college where he met my mother, Bethel University.). dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
