At 08:02 AM 12/23/2008, James Gilmour wrote:
Dave, I never said that I would find that result
objectionable. What I did say was that I thought such a result would be
POLITICALLY unacceptable to the ELECTORS - certainly in the UK,
and perhaps also in the USA as there are SOME similarities in the
political culture. It goes almost without saying that such a result
would be politically unacceptable to the two main parties I had
in mind.
The main parties don't like losing, is what this boils down to.
However, it's unlikely that any advanced voting system is going to
magically award victories to minor party candidates more than rarely,
at least at first. By the time it does, it will have been
well-established as fairer than Plurality.
Preferential voting in the U.S. -- usually Bucklin -- won many
judicial victories, definitely, losers tried to overturn it, only in
Minnesota was there the idiosyncratic Brown v. Smallwood decision
that did it because of the method itself. In Oklahoma, it was
mandatory ranking.
Political acceptability is extremely important if you want to
achieve practical reform of the voting system. The Electoral Reform
Society has been campaigning for such reform for more that 100 years
(since 1884), but it has still not achieved it main objective
- to reform the FPTP voting system used to elected MPs to the UK
House of Commons.
Sure. What this means is simple: if the status quo gives inequitable
power to some, those, who, by definition, have excess power, will
resist reform toward equity. Could it be, however, that the ERS has
been pushing the wrong methods? Asset Voting was invented in England,
over 120 years ago, as a tweak on IRV. It would be a far better
method than standard preferential voting, allowing voters who only
want to rank one candidate to vote, and it could produce true
proportional representation with minimal compromise.
The obstacles to that reform are not to do with
theoretical or technical aspects of the voting systems - they are
simply political.
Yes. And "political" doesn't mean massive voter outcry against fair
election results. Voters don't massively reject results in the U.S.
even when they are patently unfair, just look at Presidential 2000.
The fact is, though, that the 2000 election was close. A close
election is, in my view, an *inherently* poor result unless there is
truly low preference strength involved.
It was for political reasons that the Hansard
Society's Commission on Electoral Reform came up with its dreadful
version of MMP in 1976 and for political reasons that the Jenkins
Commission proposed the equally dreadful AV+ in 1998. Jenkins' AV+
was a (slight) move towards PR, but it was deliberately designed
so that the two main parties would be over-represented in relation
to their shares of the votes and that one or other of two main
parties would have a manufactured majority of the seats so that it
could form a single-party majority government even though it had
only a minority of the votes.
Sure. Politics. And this is why I believe that true reform must start
with organization outside of government. The fact is that if the
electorate were organized, it could ensure that the best possible
candidate was on the ballot, and close elections, even with
plurality, would be rare. In small jurisdictions, where people know
each other and know the candidates, it's common for elections to be unopposed.
It is sometimes possible to marginalise the politicians and the
political parties in a campaign if you can mobilise enough of the
ordinary electors to express a view, but our experience in the UK is
that constitutional reform and reform of the voting system are
very rarely issues on which ordinary electors will "take up arms"
(metaphorically, of course).
That's right. However, Bucklin was very popular in the U.S., that's
what I'm finding. What I *don't* know is how the reform disappeared.
It seems it was usually replaced with top two runoff, and that may
indeed be an improvement. But holding a runoff with a Bucklin primary
would have been even better, and about half the runoffs would
probably be avoided.
> In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any
> business objecting?
> 52 of 100 prefer M over D
> 53 of 100 prefer M over R
> Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes.
Leaving aside the debate about the meaning of "majority", it is
clear to me that M is the Condorcet winner - no question. But, as
explained above, it is MY view that such an outcome would not be
acceptable to our electors. I base my view of UK electors' likely
reaction on nearly five decades of campaigning for practical reform
of the voting systems we use in our public elections.
It's hard to argue with experience, except that it's obvious that
this experience doesn't include actual experience with such an
outcome. James is extrapolating from other opinions that he's seen,
just as he has with the Later No Harm criterion. It appears from what
I've seen that, though I'd agree that voters are very likely to
express strong support for LNH, that, in practice, with Bucklin, they
will add the additional votes pretty much independently of LNH. I'd
expect a stronger effect with Approval, but Approval, applied
immediately, wouldn't suffer from *practical* harm from this, because
the Approval votes that matter would be those where the voter prefers
a minor candidate and the voter knows the candidate is not going to
win. Supporters of frontrunners aren't normally going to add an
Approval vote for the other frontrunner.
So, first of all, the 5% scenario is highly unlikely. Secondly, the
election shown is remarkable in that, while the M voters truncated,
which means that they had strong preference, the D and R voters did
not truncate, which means that their preference was weak. I'd venture
an educated guess that if the voter utilities that would explain
these voters were studied, M would be the best winner by far. In a
Range election with sincere votes, it would be a landslide. And
nobody would complain, they'd have gotten a good outcome to the
election. That's what democratic compromise is about! The magic
compromise, the ideal, is one that is pleasing to nearly everyone,
that minimizes serious dissatisfaction and maximizes overall
satisfaction, which M appears to do in the scenario described.
> As to my "no first preferences" example, surest way to cause
> such is to be unable to respond to them.
I'm not sure what this statement is really mean to say..
I understand that a Condorcet winner could, indeed, have no first
preferences at all. But in political terms, such a possibility is
not just unacceptable, it's a complete non-starter.
It's just plain impossible, so stating whether it would acceptable or
not is shallow. Let me put it this way: if there were an election
environment such that such an extreme vote were possible, it might
also be such an unusual environment that the outcome would be
extremely acceptable. What's being done is to posit some very unusual
outcome, but then apply existing standards to it, standards based on
systems where the outcome is doubly impossible.
And then, what is pernicious is to pretend that this relates to
actual reforms and actual political possibilities. I've been
promoting as the simplest, no-brainer reform, Count All the Votes.
That's the simplest form of alternative vote, it is simply
simultaneous consideration of the alternative votes, with a
simultaneous abstention from participating in the pairwise elections
between the alternative choices.
But Bucklin starts out with the first preference votes, so the first
round satisfies the clear desire of voters to vote for their
favorite. Then, if no majority is found, the additional votes are
added in, one rank at a time. My opinion is that this is sufficient
to satisfy voter's desire to specially support their favorite. That,
by itself, doesn't mean that they will add additional preference
votes, just as it isn't guaranteed, by any means, in IRV, and, it
appears, many voters didn't and don't.
Bucklin is not Condorcet compliant, but will usually detect a
Condorcet winner. Unless everyone truncates. Which is highly
unlikely. Of course, if everyone truncates, every method behaves like
Plurality.
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