On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:37:28 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 02:01 AM 7/13/2008, Chris Benham wrote:
Forest,
"The voter ranks all she wants to and the remaining candidates are
ranked (later, i.e. below) by the voter's
favorite or perhaps, as Steve Eppley has suggested, by the voter's
specified public ranking.
Since IRV satisfies LNH, what's the harm in this?".
The harm is that voter's votes are used to help candidates that the
voters may not wish to help.
It offends the principle that the voter should be fully in control of
his/her vote.
Giving some voters (candidates) the power to fully control their own
vote and also to complete
the rankings of some of the truncators offends the principle that as
far as possible all voters
should have equal power.
First of all, if we are talking about elections of representatives of
some kind, the voter isn't going to be "in full control of his/her
vote" no matter what. At the point of the election, or later, when the
representative casts votes, individual control is lost.
The equal power issue is spurious. The voting power is in the hands of
those who cast ballots, originally, and they may choose to delegate that
power or not. More about this below. The original "candidate proxy" or
"Asset Voting" proposal was actually an STV proposal by Lewis Carroll,
aka Charles Dodgson, in 1994.
...
> Why do you want to "stop" IRV? Do you agree with Kathy Dopp
> that IRV is worse than FPP?
"I would stop IRV if we could get a better method in its place.
If we cannot stop IRV, why not search for acceptable tweaks that would
improve it?"
The short answer is because IRV isn't really amenable to "tweaks". In
terms of positive
criterion compliances it isn't dominated by any other method, and has
both good and quite
bad properties (averaging in my judgement to a "good" method).
"Tweaks" generally muck
up its good properties without enough compensation in terms of fixing
or patching up its
bad properties.
Problem is that the "good" property, Later No Harm, is actually a
*terrible* property, see Woodall's original paper that coined the term.
However, for proportional representation, there is, in fact, a very
simple tweak that is what Dodgson invented. He noted that many voters,
not being specialists in politics, wouldn't have sufficient knowledge to
rank all candidates, and therefore, if truncation were allowed, would
indeed truncate and would therefore be at risk of having their ballot
exhausted and thus their vote wasted. Why not allow voters to vote for
one only, with that one then being able to recast those votes, if
exhausted, in order to create quotas for election? I'm not sure that he
specified it, I don't have a copy of his full pamphlet yet, but I'd
assume that if one ranked more than one, but the ballot were exhausted,
the first preference would get the vote for reassignment (but there are
other ways to do it, I'm sure, and I haven't considered all the
contingencies). It's a simple tweak, but it turns STV into Asset Voting,
with voter control over transfers possible, to the extent that the voter
exercises the right. And then fallback to deliberative reassignment of
exhausted votes, based on the candidate the voter most trusts, the first
preference.
"wasted vote", as used above, is NOT TRUE! The voter has expressed
his desire and somehow adding more non-voter thoughts is not part of
his desire - just as, in Plurality, no one else has a meaningful way
to add something else to the voter's expressed desire.
Note: If it is PART of a voters desire to appoint someone else
to add to what he has voted - fine.
As to quotas - they require thought, but pretending the voter has done
more than he chose to do is not part of a valid solution.
...
Further, LNH cannot be satisfied by any method that requires a majority,
unless the majority is artificially created, either by eliminations *of
votes* or by requiring full ranking, which amounts to coerced votes.
"majority" needs thought:
Certainly appropriate with Plurality, for many voters were
unable to completely express their desires in the base election.
Little, if any, value in an election method that lets voters
completely express their desires.
"It is better than FPP in some ways and worse in others, especially in
complexity."
With separate paper ballots for each race, I don't accept that IRV is
all that "complex".
I think that you have somewhat dodged my question.
It is far harder to audit. That's what the election security experts
think. Sure, that can be overcome, but why is it worth the effort? There
are better, easier to count forms of preferential voting.
You cannot overcome the fact that IRV vote counting, and thus
auditing, is more complex than even Condorcet - which has the same
ballot but simpler rules for counting.
Mention of paper ballots is a distraction - they do no simplifying for
races that extend across multiple precincts.
What is missing with much of this is that IRV, in nonpartisan elections,
almost always mimics plurality. Even in partisan elections, it tends to
do this strongly, but "comeback" elections become more common.
"Do you think that Asset Voting is worse than FPP?"
No, on balance.
We don't really know, since we have only theory. Asset hasn't been tried
in political contexts. But Asset is a form of proxy voting, which has
been used for centuries where property is involved.
"Just to clarify, I think that Condorcet Methods and Range, though
better than IRV, share this complexity
defect with IRV to some degree. I have suggested the same tweak for them.
In fact, that is the essence of DYN, wihich is simply carrying this
tweak to its logical conclusion in the case
of Range, which is the only one of the three (Range, Condorcet, and
IRV) that satisfies the FBC."
I find your DYN method less offensive than your "IRV tweak"
suggestion because it is an "opt in" system
and to the extent that voters don't opt in it is just plain Approval
(a not-too-bad method).
Right. In fact, take Approval and require a majority for election, you
have an *excellent* method, better than Plurality with majority
required. (Simply because it avoids runoffs some of the time. Same thing
with Bucklin, which is really a ranked Approval, especially if multiple
votes are allowed in all rounds, unlike in the original form (Duluth is
what I have in mind), where multiple votes were only allowed in third rank.
Conceded that Approval is better than Plurality, and thus worth
considering for this amount of improvement.
But such as Condorcet need consideration for permitting more complete
expression of voter desires.
...
IRV is changing election results, it does not "simulate" real runoffs,
and the reasons are pretty clear: real runoffs give the voters a new
look at a reduced field, plus there will be differential turnout, which
tests preference strength, probably pushing results toward what sincere
Range would produce.
Further, there is a little-known fact about *some* runoff elections in
the U.S.: write-in votes may be allowed, thus providing a safety valve
for the situation, fairly unusual *in nonpartisan elections* that a
Condorcet winner (from underlying preferences) isn't in the runoff. In
Long Beach, California, there was an election where the mayor won as a
write-in. This was an incumbent, and had been prohibited from being on
the ballot by term limit laws, which did not prohibit her election,
which would have been unconstitutional, but it prohibited her being
placed on the ballot. So she ran as a write-in. She was the leader in
the primary, but did not gain a majority. In the runoff, there was only
one candidate on the ballot, the runner-up. Again, with write-in votes,
she won that by a plurality, which was all that was required. (There was
another write-in with significant votes in the runoff.)
There is a smell to this one:
That she could not be on original ballot - ok.
BUT if her write-in votes were enough, she should have been on
the runoff ballot (other choice is term limits disqualifying her from
even being a write-in).
...
What we consider "election methods" are shortcuts for basic democratic
process, which restricts itself to single questions which can be
answered Yes or No, with the questions themselves being designed by a
series of questions all of that kind. From my point of view, good
election methods are simply a way of making democratic process more
efficient without sacrificing the democratic value of majority approval
of any result. Good methods will also reveal possible improvements over
mere majority approval, and all of this *requires* that Later-No-Harm be
unsatisfied. The simplest such reform is Approval Voting, which is a
very small tweak to Plurality. Range is likewise pretty simple and easy
to count, particularly if the resolution is low. To be what I call
"Majority Rule compliant," Range must have a specified Approval cutoff,
probably an absolute one (such as midrange or above, or simply above
midrange). Likewise ranked methods would need an Approval cutoff, mere
ranking is not enough.
Do not see need for such an 'Approval cutoff' or any reasonable way to
specify such.
All voting methods which require completion of the election in a single
round are not Majority Rule compliant, with the possible exception that
full ranking is required, and any ranking above bottom is considered
approval, which coerces votes, and if votes can be coerced, Plurality
satisfies it. (You will vote for Our Supreme Leader or we will discard
your ballot as obviously containing an error. Remember, Saddam Hussein
was re-elected in an election where nobody voted against him. As far as
we know.)
I'm always amused by the argument that the last-round majority of IRV is
a true majority, because, with this logic, we could always find
unanimity for the IRV winner: just carry the elimination one step further.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
If you want peace, work for justice.
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