At 06:39 PM 4/18/2010, Kevin Venzke wrote:
I think that a modest goal would be to have a method that provides
incentive to coalesce behind three candidates.
The Burlington votes are inspiring. I'm amazed at how close the
first preference counts were, and that a fourth candidate even got
15%. Unfortunately the resolution is so stereotypical you could
think it was contrived to make a point.
What worries me is the possibility that every time we succeed in
implementing an election method which can handle any number of
candidates that we throw at it, we will mostly see scenarios with
one or two strong candidates and a half-dozen losers that never
coalesced into anything, so that we mostly will not be able to tell
the difference in effect from just using FPP.
Bucklin. In one election it handled something like 90 candidates.
(People got really excited at the prospect of using the method!) And
it did produce quite different results from Plurality. That, in fact,
is why it got shot down in Minnesota. It worked. The winner was
obviously a better choice, but a disgruntled voter sued, and the
Minnesota Supreme Court, following what it knew were idiosyncratic
principles (it acknowledged the lack of precedent, and that majority
legal opinion was against its decision, and basically said, "We are
the Supremes, if you don't like it, amend the Constitution to permit
it!") threw the election out and awarded it to the plurality winner
in the first round (a truly unjust result, by the way, since people
voted differently trusting that the method would be used).
IRV probably would have produced the same result, but with a lot more
fuss and counting difficulty.
In Burlington, I have very little doubt, Bucklin would have elected
the Democrat, unless the Republicans were really stupid, and while, I
might reflexively think that about Republicans, I don't think they
were *that* stupid! (And voters are actually quite independent and
cantankerous sorts, try to force them to vote the way you want, they
just may defy you!)
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