At 02:51 PM 1/2/2009, Paul Kislanko wrote:
I think the cited text provides an important distinction we need to use on
EM.
In theory, we want to discuss election methods based upon how they collect
and count ballots, which is "analytic" in some sense. As soon as you
introduce real candidates and party politics (i.e. "strategies") we get a
real mess that is not so easily analyzed.
Yes. The biggest thing we neglected, going way back, was preference
strength. In real decision-making, it is crucial, but theorists
didn't like it, it was messy. It was imagined that "preference" was
nice and neat. Though it isn't!
This is relevant to the "how do you define majority?" question because if
the denominator doesn't include all of the non-voters who dis-approve of
EVERY alternative it's not a "majority of stakeholders" and in some sense
you need to count the non-voters, especially if the method discards ballots
in its "counting rounds."
Sure. It's pretty simple, though: "Majority of the votes" refers to
more than half of those who voted. We could analyze an election like
the mess in California a few years back by referring to a "majority
of votes from those who voted for a Democrat," or a "Republican," or such.
A major point is that most people, asked, want to see majority
winners. Turns out that, where I have looked, U.S. state
constitutions required a majority of votes to win, then resorted to
various devices when a majority wasn't found. We see that with the
electoral college: if no majority is found, the election goes to the
House. In New Hampshire, the state House could choose between the top
two, if I'm correct.
So, people want to see majority winners. Telling them that they will
get a majority winner from a method means to them that more than half
of those who voted will have voted, in some way, for the winner. It
*looks* to a casual observer that IRV will do that. I should have
known better, but I was actually astonished to see the high
percentage of majjority failure. It is the bulk of elections that
didn't find a majority in the first round, with nonpartisan
elections, and with some partisan ones.
"Majority" is independent of the voting method, though the data must
be collected to distinguish between support of a candidate and
merely, with a full-ranking required system, saying that the
candidate is better than the absolute worst.
Elections aren't merely picking some ideal best winner in a bad
situation, they are seeking, if a majority is sought, one who will be
accepted, *at least*, by most voters.
So, just from a logical perspective a claim to "always select a
majority-approved winner" must define "majority" in terms of Eligible
Voters.
That's "absolute majority," and it isn't what we've been talking
about, except that I have, as part of this discussion, noted the
effect of preference strength on turnout. Those voters who don't care
about the available choices don't bother showing up (for better or
for worse). This exerts a range-like effect on the election, shifting
results toward those who care. In other words, methods which make
voting trivially easy might actually worsen results, unless it's a
Range method, because the factors that make ranked methods, and
especially Plurality, work reasonably well might be taken away.
Or at least define "majority" in terms of voters in the first
round. So, an IRV winner with 47 votes out of 100 originally cast is NOT a
"majority-winner."
This is the meaning I've been using, and it is the meaning of
Robert's Rules, except that they would include a few more ballots
(informal ballots with no recognizable vote by the rules, but still
considered to be a "vote.")
For public elections, yes, it's the first-round vote.
Bucklin is a method that identifies the rank for which a Majority agrees the
alternative should be ranked at least that highly. No information is
discarded in the counting process, and no ballots are ignored just because
the ballots' #1 isn't a plurality winner.
That's right. All votes become equal if it goes to the last round. As
implemented, it was a plurality method like IRV, but, because all the
votes are counted, and especially where it's a nonpartisan election,
there may be votes hidden under the other frontrunner(s), so there
might actually be a real majority, but it's not reported as moot,
because the method isn't looking for an overall majority, it's only
looking for a "last round majority."
Hence, in one San Francisco election, where it was touted that the
winner will still be required to gain a majority, one Supervisorial
position was won with less than 40% of the vote.
Most elections where there are runoffs don't find a majority, but
several have, it happens with elections where the first round result
is close to a majority. In one election, the reported vote was shy of
a majority, but it would be a practical certainty that if counting
had continued, the winner would have had a majority.
If we make the reasonable assumption that majority be defined in terms of
the number of eligible voters who cast any (ranked-) ballot at all, we'd
prefer counting methods that do not discard any of those ballots.
Just my opinion.
It's the standard meaning. The canvassing method is a different
matter, though. Robert's Rules describes a method which is IRV as to
canvassing method, but the majority required for the election to
complete with a winner continues to be a majority of ballots (other
than blanks). (The goal is that "one pile contains more than half the
ballots.") Not half the ballots after rejecting some as exhausted.
Those exhausted ballots are set into a separate pile, they don't
choose between remaining candidates, but are still part of "the ballots."
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