> Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:29:17 -0700 (PDT) > From: Chris Benham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] RELEASE: Instant Runoff Voting - > Since I regard? "IRV" (the Alternative Vote,?unlimited strict > ranking?"version") as > one of? the good methods, the best in my judgement of the methods that meet > Later-no-Harm,?I am encouraged to respond? to Kathy Dopp's anti-IRV propaganda > piece. >
Chris, All of your points have already been addressed in my paper or by Abd ul Rahman Lomax on this list. For example, re "later no harm": "Later-No-Harm", that a lower preference cannot harm a higher preference, is FairVote's favorite election criterion. "Later-No-Harm", however, is incompatible with the basic principles of majority rule, which requires compromise if decisions are to be made. That's because the peculiar design of sequential elimination guarantees -- if a majority is not required -- that a lower preference cannot harm a higher preference, because the lower preferences are only considered if a higher one is eliminated. But many think that later-no-harm is undesirable because it interferes with the process of equitable compromise that is essential to the social cooperation that voting is supposed to facilitate. If I am negotiating with my neighbor, and his preferred option differs from mine, if I reveal that some compromise option is acceptable to me, before I'm certain that my favorite won't be chosen, then I may "harm" the chance of my favorite being chosen. If the method my neighbor and I used to help us make the decision *requires* later-no-harm, it will interfere with the negotiation process, make it more difficult to find mutually acceptable solutions. On the other hand, the "harm" in Bucklin method of counting votes only occurs if your favorite doesn't win by a majority in the first round. BTW, you are in point of fact, incorrect that some voting methods do not meet Arrow's "independence of alternatives" condition, that is unless, like Arrow, you are excluding all rating voting methods like range and approval voting. If I am wrong in this, then you will be able to provide an example using the range or approval voting method which does not meet this Arrows' condition that "the introduction of a nonwinning candidate changes the outcome of who wins", not merely make the claim without any supporting example. -- All your questions are either already answered in my paper somewhere or are deliberately not addressed in my paper because the topic of the paper is restricted to the flaws and benefits of the IRV method and only touches on other topics only as necessary to provide an overview, as in the recent appendix supplied by voting system experts. Please re-read my paper again and I am certain that you will see this. Thank you for correcting my grammatical mistake in using "criteria" where I should have used "criterion". Cheers, Kathy Dopp ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
