I take offense at Abd repeatedly suggesting I am a liar or am engaging in deception. We have a legitimate difference of opinion about the appropriate use of the term "majority" and interpretation of RRONR.
At the outset, we might all agree that no system can really assure a _true_ "majority winner" in an ultimate sense, since there may be a tie, or there may simply be no candidate running who a majority of voters can abide. The core of my argument is that if the winner of a traditional two-round runoff system (without write-ins) is appropriately called a "majority winner," so can the winner of an instant runoff election. The term "majority" simply means more than half, and it is regularly applied to different denominators...a "majority" of the entire membership, "majority" of those present and voting, "majority" in the second round of a runoff system, etc. In governmental elections we generally use the short-hand "majority" without specifying all of the exclusions from the denominator. Abd is insisting that uniquely for IRV elections, we should list the exclusions (i.e.. "a majority of unexhausted ballots," or "a majority of those who expressed a preference between the final two candidates", etc.). It is acceptable to make this detailed explanation, but not necessary in normal speech. In a typical U.S. governmental runoff election we do not list the exclusions from the denominator when naming a majority winner...We do not say "Jane Smith won with a majority, excluding those who were eligible but did not register to vote, or registered but did not cast a ballot, or cast a ballot but skipped the race, or that ballot was blank, or spoiled, or illegal, or contained identifying marks, and excluding those who may have participated in the first round of voting but not the second." We just say she was the "majority winner." Abd accepts that the winner of a top-two runoff (TTR) system (without write-ins) is appropriately called a "majority winner," but not necessarily the winner of an instant runoff. He treats the "majority winner" of a two-round runoff as somehow better, or more valid. Ironically, it is typical for the winner of an IRV runoff to have won more total votes within a given jurisdiction and have a larger majority threshold to reach, than a "majority winner" of a two-round runoff, simply due to higher voter participation resulting from a single trip to the polls (yes, I know this is not an absolute as separate runoffs do on rare occasions have higher turnout). One essential difference between these two "majority winners" is simply the duration of time between the beginning and ending of he candidate marking process, in that the IRV ballot allows the voter to complete the task in a single visit to the polls. (Yes, I know voters also get to have a "second-look," etc. but that is irrelevant to the "majority" issue here). A top two runoff system, JUST LIKE IRV, finds a "majority winner" by excluding from the denominator any voters who expressed a preference in the first round of counting, but whose preferred candidate gets eliminated and who express no preference between the two final candidates for the final round of counting. Let me set out some thought experiments (these are silly, perhaps, but are presented to illustrate an underlying point.)... 1. First, I still think my interpretation of RRONR's use of the word "abstention" is sound (that not indicating any preference between finalists can reasonably be deemed an abstention that RRONR says should NOT be counted in the denominator). Note that on page 394 in the section on the "Right of Abstention" RRONR points out that in an at-large election a voter may "partially abstain" by marking fewer candidates than allowed. In other words, the voter has participated in the election with some marks for some candidates, but may still be said to "abstain" from some aspect of that contest. Thus Abd's insistence that under RRONR a ballot with some candidates marked cannot also be an abstention is incorrect. Abd agrees that RRONR says to treat "each segment of a ballot" separately in considering blanks and abstentions. I have argued that each possible pairwise final runoff combination is functionally the same as a separate segment of the ballot. To explain...imagine if the IRV ballots were inefficiently, but logically, divided into a series of questions or segments as follows: Section A. Rank the candidates in the order you would prefer they be included as finalists in a runoff count. Jane 1 2 3 4 Mary 1 2 3 4 Stan 1 2 3 4 Dave 1 2 3 4 Section B. In each possible final runoff pairing below mark an "x" for the one candidate you would prefer. (1) Jane __ vs. Mary__ (2) Jane __ vs. Stan __ (3) Jane __ vs. Dave__ (4) Mary__ vs. Stan __ (5) Mary__ vs. Dave__ (6) Stan __ vs. Dave__ Now suppose a voter completely marks the ballot except in segment B. (4) of this unusual, but functional, IRV ballot where the voter abstains and votes for neither Mary nor Stan in that possible match-up. Further suppose the elimination process from the first segment of the ballot results in a final runoff tally between Mary and Stan. This voter has clearly abstained from that particular question or segment of the ballot. This is the same as the exhausted ballot situation on a normal ranked ballot, except that the series of pairwise questions is extrapolated from the initial rankings, rather than asked redundantly. 2. Secondly, I assert that the top-two-runoff generally functions, de facto, as a single election system with two stages, and not two completely independent elections. I suspect you will argue this point, but I think it is a reasonable assessment on my part, since the total purpose is to have voters fill an office. Voters may abstain in the first, second, both, or neither of the stages. In the first round, let's say all 10,000 eligible voters cast valid ballots. In the second round, perhaps 5,000 voters opt not to participate, and 5,000 cast valid ballots. the winner of the runoff might have 2,501 votes in this round. That is clearly a "majority" of the ballots cast in the final round, but clearly NOT a majority among voters who cast ballots and participated in the election process to fill the seat. Even though the winner might receive fewer votes in the runoff than the ultimate loser received in the first round (which can never happen with IRV), and a huge majority of all voters who participated in some way in this election process may consider the ultimate winner to be the worst choice, we generally say the winner is a "majority winner" because we exclude the voters who abstained in the final round. The denominator used is the number of voters who opted to express their preference between the finalists, not the number of voters who voted in the process and may have voted for losing candidates at the earlier stage. Abd has expressed agreement with this interpretation of a "majority winner" in the second stage of a traditional runoff. Now what if the second stage of balloting followed immediately upon the first stage, while an association's members were still assembled? Most would agree that those who now don't participate in the runoff stage or express any preference between the finalists should not be included in calculating the majority threshold. A voter who passed in a ballot for the runoff without any marks showing her preference between the two finalists would have her ballot counted as an abstention or blank and it would not be included in the denominator. Perhaps each voter could even have their original ballot redistributed to them to make their subsequent choice in some way -- so it need not be a "separate" ballot paper. Now what if all of the voters were voting simultaneously (perhaps on hand-held devices linked by wireless RF). As the voter is pressing the first-choice button for one candidate the voting device indicates (after reading all voters' simultaneous first choices,) that this candidate has just been eliminated. The voter proceeds to push a second choice, and the device shows that this candidate has also just been eliminated, etc. Once the voter decides not to give any more choices, that voter is "abstaining" from any further inclusion in the decision process, and the denominator for calculating a majority threshold. Now suppose the hand-held device only _appears_ to be linked to the master computer in real-time, and the device automatically reports to all voters that their first choice has been eliminated (without any actual factual basis), and all voters have the opportunity to indicate their second choice, and so on. Whether or not the device is linked, it can ask for the same information from the voters about next choices _as if_ their prior choice actually were eliminated. Now we have exactly replicated the essence of an IRV voting process, getting to it in a gradual transition from a two-round voting process, or from an exhaustive ballot voting system, showing that there is no FUNDAMENTAL difference, as long as the voter is entitled to rank as many choices as she wishes. We still have a "majority winner," as the term is generally used, whether the runoff choices are marked on a ballot by voters a month apart, or seconds apart. The one point on which I long ago agreed with Abd is that if an implementation of IRV has imposed restrictions on the number of rankings the voter may make (due to inadequate voting technology, for example), there is a genuine difference between a two-round runoff "majority" and a possible winner of such an imperfect implementation of IRV. I can not go back and correct historic claims made by others, but I myself long ago stopped saying such imperfect implementations "assured" majority winners. Terry Bouricius ----- Original Message ----- From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <a...@lomaxdesign.com> To: "Terry Bouricius" <ter...@burlingtontelecom.net>; <kathy.d...@gmail.com>; <election-methods@lists.electorama.com> Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 11:55 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 At 08:50 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: >Kathy Dopp wrote: > ><snip> >since "abstentions or blanks" are from those who have not voted. ><snip> > >I believe my interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order is correct. In >order for a ballot being reviewed by a teller to be "blank," and thus >excluded from the majority threshold calculation, as directed by Robert's >Rule of order, the voter must certainly have submitted a ballot paper. Bouricius, you are totally off, stretching, trying desperately to find ways to interpret the words there to mean what you want them to mean. A "blank" is a blank ballot with no mark on it. From p. 401: "All blanks must be ignored as scrap paper." There is no way to know if this was actually cast by a voter, or if it was a piece of paper stuck to the underside of another ballot. It is a *blank*. There is another possibility: the ballot has multiple questions on it. In this case, each section is treated as if it were a separate piece of paper. In this case, if an election is in a section, and there are no marks in the section, the ballot is considered, for that election, as if blank. In this case, we may consider that the voter has abstained. But if the voter marks in the section, but the marks are ambiguous, or do not cast a vote for an eligible candidate, in this case the voter is considered to have voted, and is part of the basis for a majority. Public election rules differ here. A voter must generally have cast a vote for an eligible candidate, and the vote must not be spoiled, if I'm correct, for it to count as part of the basis for a majority. Robert's Rules of Order places particular emphasis on finding a majority, and if a vote is doubtful, it may have been the intention of the voter to participate, but not to vote for the otherwise-winner. >RRONR is clearly not referring to hypothetical ballots from those members >of an association who did not submit a ballot at all. Not submitting a ballot at all -- or submitting an explicitly abstaining ballot -- is an abstention. > Those who do not >submit a ballot clearly did not vote, but those who cast ballots may >abstain or leave the ballot blank, and thus not have their ballots >included when calculating the majority threshold. Casting a blank ballot is equivalent to an abstention, except it isn't explicitly recorded as such, because the member pretended to vote. However, all the member has to do is write on the ballot NO! and it is a vote. Against all the candidates, effectively. (YES! would have the same effect!) > The only question is >whether an exhausted ballot should be interpreted as abstaining on the >question of which finalist should win, or if that ballot should be >interpreted as an "illegal vote," which RRONR says should be included in >calculating the majority threshold. There is no question. Bouricius, THERE IS NO QUESTION. Not for any parliamentarian. Robert's Rules are quite clear, if you actually read the whole section on preferential voting, that majority failure may occur if voters don't fully rank candidates. This was utterly clear from precedent, and the interpretation that you are making up here does enormous violence to the very concept of majority vote. Questions submitted to votes should be explicit. Voters don't definitively know who the finalists are, with IRV. They may have intended to vote for a finalist, but got it wrong as to who the finalists were. They may detest both finalists and are unwilling to support either. If a majority is required, truncation is a very legitimate strategy, it means, please, if it is not one of the candidates I have ranked, I want further process to determine a winner, I want the chance to reconsider and maybe even to write in a candidate on the runoff ballot. (*Which is allowed in many places.*) > One can think of the ranked ballot as >a series of questions about pairwise contests...not unlike the way a >Condorcet ballot is viewed... You can. But that's not what's on the ballot. > one of the questions could be IF the race >comes down to a final runoff between candidate C and candidate E, which >should win? Sure. Now, there are 23 candidates, as in San Francisco. There are three ranks on the ballot. Further, I don't even recognize most of the names. Maybe I know the frontrunners, but what if I don't? Should I vote for someone who I don't know? No, I vote for the candidate or candidates I know and trust. In a real runoff election, if no majority is found, I am then presented with, usually, two candidates, and I can pay particular attention to them. We see comeback elections with real runoffs that we don't see with IRV, for several reasons, all of which indicate that these comebacks improved results. > The difference between IRV and Condorcet is that IRV uses a >sequential algorithm to determine which candidates are finalists, while >Condorcet does not reduce to "finalists" at all. Condorcet could be conceptualized that way. In fact, so can Plurality. Imagine an IRV ballot, only nobody adds additional ranks. (Bucklin elections saw additional ranking of 11% in an Alabama primary series, and my expectation is that IRV elections in the same environment would probably have about the same truncation level. -- but this isn't the point here). Run the eliminations. Presto! Majority vote, using Plurality voting. What has happened is that all the ballots that do not contain votes for the top two are not counted. It's totally arbitrary, actually, we could claim Unanimity, just carry the rounds one more step with this Plurality counting or with IRV. Imagine the campaign! GUARANTEE UNANIMITY! Of course it would be immediately seen as ridiculous. You don't get unanimity by disregarding all disagreement, and you don't get a majority by a similar approach. > However, if a voter has >indicated no ranking for either C or E, that voter has effectively >abstained from that particular question. Sure. That particular question. But not the election. Why is Bouricius torturing this point? Because, obviously, the claim of "finds majority winners" is very important to the FairVote talking points, it's been central for a long time, it is found in ballot arguments, articles, all over the place. He's trying to find a way to justify it. Retroactively. Quite simply, those words did not mean what he is claiming they *might* mean, to the people they were dumped on. People, quite simply, didn't think carefully about the implications of truncation. A lot of people have in mind Gore v. Bush, and immediately think that those votes for Nader might have flipped that election. They look at the numbers and think that this would have given Gore a win. Maybe. There were also other minor party candidates involved, and many of them would not have added preferences. Quite simply, we don't know if the election outcome would have changed, and we don't know if preferential voting would have found a majority. But "majority" sounds like a very good goal, and communities which have majority-required top two runoff clearly have valued it. "Find majorities without expensive and inconvenient runoff elections" plays well. I'm sure much of this occurred immediately to Richie when "instant runoff voting" was suggested to him in the mid 1990s. Quite simply, it doesn't happen. IRV, with nonpartisan elections, is not electing anyone other than the plurality winner (first preference), and when a majority is not found in the first round, it usually isn't found after that. "A majority of votes will continued to be required" is what the voters of San Francisco were promised. The IRV "majority" is not a requirement, it is a mathematical certainty, if it refers to last-round majority, created by disregarding all those inconvenient ballots with legal, sincere votes for the wrong candidates. Did they notice that the IRV proposition actually struck the majority requirement from the law? If it was still required, why was it being struck? I could blame the voters, for sure, but I could also blame the members of the committee that put together the "impartial summary," the promoters of IRV who clearly encouraged that misunderstanding, and the opponents who quite clearly didn't do their own homework. > Since the voter who voluntarily >truncates is de facto abstaining from deciding which finalist should be >elected, if the voter has indicated no preference between them, I think >it >is reasonable to treat this abstention as an abstention as directed by >RRONR. That is pure deception, turning Robert's Rules of Order on its head, producing a result clearly contrary to the result that they explicitly say will occur. A voter who has voted in an election has not abstained, no matter how you slice it. The voter may have abstained from a pairwise election, for sure, but that is a specific abstention, ot an abstention from the election, and, in addition, may not be voluntary, as Bouricius slips in. 3 ranks on the ballot. 23 candidates. >While I agree that it may not be completely UNresonable to take the view >that Abd and Kathy Dopp favor, I think it is contrary to the most usual >interpretation of RRONR. And now the kicker: we have explained -- and I could cite word for word, and have in many places -- the explicit language of Robert's Rules of Order on this. Bouricius has just said the exact opposite of the truth. What he is proposing as the meaning of "abstention," and the basis for majority, is totally contrary to the plain language of RRONR, not to mention the "usual interpretation." Usual interpretation by whom? By FairVote activists and those duped by them? I'm saddened, to tell you the truth. This is the absolute worst argument I've ever seen from Bouricius, it's word manipulation to try to take a text and make it say the exact opposite of what it plainly says. I'd thought that he was above that, but, apparently not. The public will *not* be fooled when the issues are made plain and clear. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info