again, the subject is not about me and the header should reflect that.
On 11/27/11 4:15 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
dlw: The two major-party equilibrium would be centered
around the
de facto center.
KM: But positioning yourself around the de facto center is
dangerous
in IRV. You might get center-squeezed unless either you or your
voters start using strategic lesser-evil logic - the same
sort of
logic that IRV was supposed to free you from by "being
impervious
to spoilers".
dlw: the cost of campaigning in "less local" elections is high
enuf that it's hard for a major party to get center-squeezed.
And if such did happen, they could reposition to prevent it.
RBJ:the counterexample, again, is Burlington Vermont. Dems
haven't sat in the mayor's chair for decades.
dlw: Not sure this is a relevant counter example. With IRV, the two
major parties would become the Progs and the Dems who would be
centered around the de facto center of Burlington.
where is this de facto center? around the Progs? or the GOP?
RBF:
who's that?
the counterexample, again, is Burlington Vermont. Dems haven't sat in
> the mayor's chair for decades.
MW: Is this due to a split of the liberal vote by progressives or
other
liberal blocs? Or is it due to a truly Republican leaning demographic?
dlw: More to the point, this is not an arg against IRV since it was
only tried for one election in Burlington.
no, we used it in 2006 and 2009. in 2006, the IRV winner, Plurality
winner, and Condorcet winner were one and the same person.
dlw: I would not describe IRV as introducing unstable weirdness. It
maintains a two-party dominated system and facilitates that those two
major parties tend to position themselves around the de facto
(shifting) center.
the three parties do *not* shift to position themselves around any
shifting center. it's much more complicated than that.
MW:Is this due to a split of the liberal vote by progressives or other
liberal blocs? Or is it due to a truly Republican leaning
demographic?
RBS:
who's that?
Burlington is, for the U.S., a very very liberal town with a
well-educated and activist populace. it's the origin of Ben &
Jerry's and now these two guys are starting a movement (
http://movetoamend.org/ ) to get a constitutional amendment to
reverse the obscene Citizens United ruling of the Supreme Court.
the far north end of Burlington (called the "New North End", also
where i live) is a little more suburban in appearance and here is
where the GOP hangs in this town.
the mayors have been Progs with an occasional GOP. it is
precisely the "center squeeze" syndrome and IRV didn't solve that
problem. and without getting Condorcet adopted, i am not sure how
it will be reversed.
dlw: If you had given IRV another election, it would have likely
solved the problem.
what problem do you mean (that is likely solved)?
You cannot seriously think that one Burlington has driven a stake in
the heart of IRV for once and forever.
it has for Burlington, and likely for the rest of the state (there was
even a bill passed, but vetoed by the previous governor to use IRV for
the guv's election, that's where i would argue that precinct summability
would become a salient problem).
RBS:
????
but the only voting methods folks generally see here are FPTP,
FPTP with a delayed runoff, and IRV. and, thanks to FairVote,
nearly everyone are ignorant of other methods to tabulate the
ranked ballot than the STV method in IRV.
dlw: And it was hard work to get people to get IRV..., just think how
hard it would be to teach them about 4 very heterogeneous election rules.
IRV, with its kabuki dance of transferred votes, is more complicated
than Condorcet. when i was asked by one of the leaders in this town of
the anti-IRV movement to explain Condorcet simply (since that was most
of their case against IRV - most of their signs said "Keep Voting
Simple"), i answered "If more voters agree that Candidate A is a better
choice for office than Candidate B, then Candidate B is not elected."
pretty simple and hard to argue with.
often the discussion here and that regarding Approval eventually
discusses how voters can adapt their voting strategy to the method that
is advocated for, and i continue to say that this misses the point. the
voters shouldn't have to be burdened with any need to strategize at
all. and they shouldn't be punished for failing to strategize.
while it is true that Condorcet may tend to favor the centrist (whereas
IRV favors the largest subgroup in the largest group, e.g. in Burlington
IRV favored the largest group, the Liberals, and of the Liberals, it
favored the Progs over the Dems, because there was more Progs), it is no
reason to adopt Condorcet. the reason to adopt Condorcet is an argument
of converse: if a CW exists and you elect any other candidate, the
election has ignored the specific wishes of the majority of the
electorate in rejecting the candidate they preferred more to the
candidate the method elected. there is no good reason to elect
Candidate B to office when more of us have explicitly marked our ballots
that we preferred Candidate A.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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