05/03/02 - The Lower Choices are Mostly Junk: Layton wrote: "The above line option is only there for multi-winner (PR) elections, where 90-95% of ballots are above the line."
Donald here: The 90-95% numbers are most likely that high because the voters are required to rank all the candidates if the voter opted to vote below the line. This will drive many voters to vote above the line. When a voter does vote below the line he may make a few informed ranking and then rank the rest in alphabetical order or he may vote according to a `How to Vote' card. Either way we can be sure that most of the lower choices will be junk choices, that is, choices based on little informed intelligence. The next quote from Layton will also touch on the topic of junk choices. Layton: "However, in single winner elections how-to-vote cards are very important and followed by a large number of voters, which pretty much amounts to the same thing. I'm not aware of any studies or concrete figures on exactly how many voters follow the cards, but anecdotal evidence suggests any close three way contests are more often than not decided on the preferences on the cards (ie, in a close-ish race between A, B & C, if A and B both "endorse" C to recieve their 2nd preferences, then C is likely to win whether he is the sincere IRV winner or not)." Donald: There is a message in what Layton has told us. That message is that lower choices are not to be trusted. This message should be recorded in the minds of those of you that are anti-IRV, for it is you people who say that `IRV does not use all the information'. The information you are referring to is the lower choices, but those lower choices are suspect even in an IRVing election, and yet you insist on using more of them in your junk methods. You go around with your head in the air, pretending that there's some high intelligence in the lower choices, if only we would use the proper method to revel this wisdom - bullshit. There is no more higher intelligence in the lower choices than someone reading a `How to Vote' card. You don't need to be informed about the candidates in order to do that. Have you people not heard the term `Garbage In - Garbage Out'. The more garbage that is included in your favorite election method, the more garbage will be the results. Condorcet will use three times as many of the lower choices than IRVing will use, so therefore the Condorcet result is three times more likely to be garbage. Approval will use six, and counting, times more of the lower choices, which means we can be sure the Approval results will be garbage results. Most of the discussions on this list consist of junk math being used to create variants of junk single-seat election methods, but now and then a good piece of information comes along like what Layton has told us in his post. No one should miss out on the value of this information. What Layton has told us comes from real elections in the real world, not from people wading around in a swamp at night with their heads in the air inhaling swamp-gas. Regards, Donald Davison, host of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald Candidate Election Methods +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ | Q U O T A T I O N | | "Democracy is a beautiful thing, | | except that part about letting just any old yokel vote." | | - Age 10 - | +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ APV Approval Voting ATV Alternative Vote aka IRV Instant Runoff Voting aka IRVing FPTP First Past The Post aka Plurality NOTA None of the Above aka RON Re-Open Nominations STV Single Transferable Vote aka Choice Voting aka Hare-Clark aka Preference Voting aka Hare Preferential Voting Please be advised that sending email to me allows me to quote from it and/or forward the entire email to others. ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em