On Mar 22, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Markus Schulze wrote:
Dear Robert, are you the questioner at 00:42:00 -- 00:44:25?
it could be. i dunno if i wanna load the video again and figure that out. i was pointing out that the purpose we adopted IRV in the first place was to relieve the split majority the burden of strategic voting in the form of compromising. the liberal majority did not have to make a painful choice between Prog and Dem as they would with the "traditional" ballot. but that burden wasn't eliminated, but transferred to those that preferred Wright first, Kiss not at all, and Montroll somewhere in between. (i like to call them "GOP Prog- haters".) those folks actually caused the Prog to be elected purely by marking the GOP as their first choice. whether it's Nader in 2000 or Wright in 2009, we should be able to vote for our favorite without electing our least favorite. but this minority group wanted to just toss that burden back to the majority group and i wanted to know if the anti-IRVers understood that and how they thought that it's better to burden the majority.
i was interrupted before i could frame the question and they said they didn't understand the question and didn't answer it.
the thing that was very irritating to me was that the pro-IRV folks surely didn't come to this knife fight with their knives sharpened. i couldn't even tell that they brought their knives. there were so many dumb things the anti-IRV side said that should have been pounced on and was let go.
Terry Bouricius is also a Burlington resident and is known in Burlington for being the primary promoter of IRV (i think that's right, ain't it Terry?). i didn't see him at the debate, but Rep. Mark Larson and someone from League of Women Voters were on the pro- IRV side and they didn't come fightin', in my opinion. and part of the problem is that *they* didn't really understand or acknowledge the cascade of anomalies that resulted when the IRV election fails to elect the Condorcet winner as it did in 2009.
and, i'm not sure who, but someone introduced a measure in the state legislature to elected the governor by IRV (there is a perennial Prog candidate that doesn't get any traction because Vermont is not all like Burlington or Brattleboro). but we know (and Kathy won't let us forget) that IRV is not "precinct summable" and that would be a ridiculous mess for a statewide election (they would have to transmit via internet, individual ballot data to the capitol for tabulation and then securely bring up a disk or thumb drive (and the original paper ballots) with the ballot data up for verification on a later date. it's not so instant if the central counting location is distant. more so now (after the IRV repeal), but that bill had essentially zero chance of being passed by the legislature and the introduction of it was not well conceived. and that also should be a lesson to FairVote regarding where (and why) they should be marketing IRV.
i'm still mostly bent outa shape that wherever Preferential Voting was introduced to some population for use in government, it is also introduced only with the STV method of tabulation (under whatever name: "IRV" "RCV"). what a sad mistake. i really think that FairVote and other IRV promoters should soberly assess the product that they are selling instead of continuing to focus on how they're gonna market it. IRV is bound to screw up again and will, by association, sully the ranked ballot.
-- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
