Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
Jameson Quinn Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:00 AM If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates. The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner. I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your comment above - the problem of the weak Condorcet winner. This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to any reform) and to a sceptical public. For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant preferences) we could have: 35 AC 34 BC 31 C C is the Condorcet winner. Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the electors. But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences): 48 AC 47 BC 5 C C is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at least, not here in the UK. And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government. The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner. But IRV avoids the political problem of the weak Condorcet winner. I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw. James Gilmour Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
Dear all, I agree with James, and that was why I proposed that election reform took the path through added election rounds. Reform of FPTP would thus add a second election round where the Condorcet winner would meet the FPTP winner. Who in the UK would object to that? I described also how to add a third election round the run-off elections while the voters would not have to go to the voting booth more than two times. If the two systems above are considered as beeing too simple for the experts and enthousiasts on this list, why not reform the FPTP to a three round system (although politically it might be a more difficult task to sell than a a two round system as a reform path from FPTP) Round 1: The FPTP, Condorcet and Bucklin Winners are elected (for example). Round 2: The voter Choses between the Condorcet and the Majority judgement (Bucklin) winner Round 3: The FPTP winner meets the winner from round two (i.e. the voter writer if he prefers the Condorcet winner to the FPTP winner and the Bucklin winner to the FPTP winner). Rounds 2 and 3 could take place at the sametime (i.e. not requiring the voter to go to the voting booth an extra time after round 2. So far there have been no objections to this reformpath. I see the weaknesses as the following: 1) increased election costs 2) risk of lower turn-out in the second round I see the advantages as the following: 1) The weaknesses of each method are greatly diminished by combining different methods and letting the voter chose the most preferred winner from the methods. 2) A second round allows for more deliberation from the side of the voters on the candidates 3) Voters actually like being granted more power through the extra round and voter who don't care enough to go to the voting booth a second time will not affect the election outcome 4) Multiple round systems where the old election system is combined with a new one is able to gather political support from those voters, who think the old system works well, and do not want to abandon it entirely, but are open to improvements. This might be crucial in order to gather the required political support for election reform. 5) The voter is in control of the extent of the voting reform, i.e. the multiple round system allows the voters to chose their preferred voting system according to its result. A voter who is a FPTP fanatic may always vote for the FPTP winner in the second round, same for the Condorcet/Majority judgement/score/approval fanatic, and then there is the voter who simply will vote according to his/her preference ordering in the second round. I think the multiple round path to election reform is a bit neglected as I consider it to be very powerful in its simplicity. Best regards Peter Zborník On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 6:40 PM, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: Jameson Quinn Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:00 AM If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates. The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner. I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your comment above - the problem of the weak Condorcet winner. This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to any reform) and to a sceptical public. For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant preferences) we could have: 35 AC 34 BC 31 C C is the Condorcet winner. Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the electors. But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences): 48 AC 47 BC 5 C C is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at least, not here in the UK. And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government. The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
On 9/22/11 12:40 PM, James Gilmour wrote: I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your comment above - the problem of the weak Condorcet winner. This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to any reform) and to a sceptical public. i remember Rob Ritchie arguing this case to me in 2009 (why sometimes IRV is better than Condorcet). For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant preferences) we could have: 35 AC 34 BC 31 C C is the Condorcet winner. Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the electors. But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences): 48 AC 47 BC 5 C C is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at least, not here in the UK. even though there were 48 voters who preferred C over B, 47 that preferred C over A, along with the 5 that preferred C over both A and B. that does not appear to me to be such a bad result. And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government. The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner. and even if that is the root to the problem, the complainers will *still* revert to FPTP which has even less of a chance of electing the CW. But IRV avoids the political problem of the weak Condorcet winner. I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw. i believe the reason why IRV has been sold to some jurisdictions is a decision, early on by FairVote, that its simplicity is more saleable than Condorcet. the concept of the transferred votes is an easy one. and that IRV can well take care of the spoiler problem (and the burden of strategic voting motivated by a spoiled election) when the spoiler is like Nader, having no chance of winning, but gets sufficient votes to change the outcome. we found out in Burlington in 2009, that while IRV relieved the liberal majority in town of the burden of strategic voting (we didn't have to make a painful choice between the Dem and the Prog), it actually placed a burden of strategic voting upon the GOP prog-haters. those folks found out that by marking their guy as #1, they ended up *causing* the election of the candidate they disliked the most. that's gotta make some people mad. and if IRV had survived the repeal (it didn't), these folks would have to be thinking in 2012: In this town full of liberals, I gotta choose between Liberal and More Liberal, because if I vote for the guy I really like, then More Liberal gets elected. So IRV transferred the burden of strategic voting from the liberal majority to the conservative minority. then FairVote deliberately conflates the ranked ballot with IRV, essentially presenting to lawmakers and the public that there is no other method of tabulating the ranked ballots other than the single-transferable vote (based *only* on the amount of support in first preference rank, IRV is opaque to one's second choice until the first choice is eliminated). i think politicians or the voting public that can understand the concept of a Round-Robin tournament can understand Condorcet. but if they believe religiously that only the simple mark only one ballot (the term they used here was the single affirmative vote), there is no convincing. i think that they believe that electing the candidate who benefits from the presence of a spoiler is appropriate. they may say that the people who get burned by a spoiler need to wise up and combine their forces in order to win elections. that, essentially, means that we have no viable third parties or viable independent candidates and reinforces the two-party system. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk I don't think I would have a problem with C winning here, if the votes were all sincere. But that's the problem. They might not be. A and B supporters might just be putting C ahead of their perceived main rival. I suppose this is similar to the DH3 problem - http://rangevoting.org/DH3.html - except with two main rivals instead of three. As far as I understand, range, approval and Majority Judgement should do OK here (and not forgetting SODA of course). But in the sincere case, every voter has ranked C above one of A or B, and if it happened that C and only one of A and B were running, then C would win and no-one would be bothered at all. Toby But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences): 48 AC 47 BC 5 C C is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at least, not here in the UK. And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government. The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner. But IRV avoids the political problem of the weak Condorcet winner. I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw. James Gilmour Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
Peter Zbornik Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 6:41 PM I agree with James, and that was why I proposed that election reform took the path through added election rounds. Reform of FPTP would thus add a second election round where the Condorcet winner would meet the FPTP winner. Who in the UK would object to that? I cannot think of ANYONE in the UK who would support a proposal for any form of two-round voting for public elections. James Gilmour Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
robert bristow-johnson Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 7:00 PM On 9/22/11 12:40 PM, James Gilmour wrote: But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences): 48 AC 47 BC 5 C C is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at least, not here in the UK. even though there were 48 voters who preferred C over B, 47 that preferred C over A, along with the 5 that preferred C over both A and B. that does not appear to me to be such a bad result. But you are missing the point. It is not how the Condorcet winner appears to you or to me - it is how that winner, with only 5% of the first preferences, is seen by ordinary electors and by hostile partisan politicians of Party A and Party B. I think I know how that result would be received in the UK (total rejection), and I would expect a similar reaction in the USA or Canada, judging by what I have read in their on-line newspapers. James Gilmour Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
Toby PereiraSent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 8:11 PM From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences): 48 AC 47 BC 5 C C is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the electorate, at least, not here in the UK. And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government. The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner. But IRV avoids the political problem of the weak Condorcet winner. I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw. I don't think I would have a problem with C winning here, if the votes were all sincere. Even if all the votes are sincere, it is irrelevant what you or I think. It is what ordinary electors would think about such a winner, with only 5% of the first preferences. And those electors would not be left in peace to reflect quietly on the potential of their (weak) Condorcet winner. Their views would be whipped up by partisan politicians and by a hostile press and media. That Condorcet winner would still be the Condorcet winner, but that's not how such an outcome would be portrayed. The world of real politics is a very brutal, nasty and dirty place, but that's where practical electoral reformers have to work (at least for the time being) if they really want to change anything. James Gilmour Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch
On the center for election science mailing list, someone just forwarded a comment from a prominent member of FairVote. Stripped of the extremely rude ad-hominem attacks, this is the actual content of what he had to say: ... in the process of trying to pass your preferred system somewhere, you will discover why IRV is superior to those systems. So, according to this person, IRV has some secret advantage over all other systems, which is obvious to anyone who's done real-world activism, but not obvious from a theoretical perspective. In fact, it's apparently so theoretically non-obvious that it can't even be stated coherently to someone who hasn't done real-world activism. This argument seems designed more to end the conversation than to actually convince anyone. But despite the pathetic rudeness with which it's stated, I suspect that there is actually some content here, something which deserves discussion. I can guess what the secret advantage is, partly from having read some of this person's other statements in Gaming the Vote. If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates. The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner. If I'm right that this is IRV's secret, unanswerable advantage... then I must say I'm not too impressed. This concern from the voters, or even from the candidates, is probably irrational; IRV has pathologies which will probably be much more common in practice. But OK; people are sometimes irrational, and it is certainly possible that this kind of result, which is impossible under plurality, seems scarier to people than Plurality's familiar pathologies which are reproduced in IRV. So OK, say people really have an outsized fear of this problem. Does that mean that IRV is the only good voting reform which actually has a chance of passing? Well, given how IRV advocates often use dishonest arguments, and especially how they often lose anyway --- even in high-profile battles where they start out with an advantage, such as the AV referendum in the UK --- I'd say that claim is very dubious. Still, I'd agree, advocates of other systems should have very clear talking points to respond to the mushy-centrist argument. There should be a single sentence which people can repeat every time they're faced with the argument. If each of us is reinventing a new counterargument every time this issue is raised, then voters will not get a coherent message they can understand. Here are my responses to mushy centrist concerns (which can also be cast as majority criterion concerns), for my two favorite systems: A mushy centrist doesn't have an unfair advantage under Majority Judgment, as Balinski and Laraki have shown (centrists and extremists have more balanced chances under MJ than under any other system in their empirical study of real voter behavior). And in SODA, it is 100% impossible to accidentally elect an unknown centrist; the centrist can't win unless some other candidate explicitly decides that she should. Jameson Quinn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
