http://irvfactcheck.blogspot.com/p/there-is-lot-of-miss-information.html
<http://irvfactcheck.blogspot.com/p/there-is-lot-of-miss-information.html>Myths
and Facts about IRV
Continuing from Part 2
1.3 Do voters like using IRV?
Yes. Voters overwhelmingly prefer IRV to the previous election
method, according to exit polls conducted in U.S. cities that use IRV.
Conducted by whom? Check it out. Typically conducted by FairVote or
FairVote enthusiasts.
In every case, a substantial majority of voters preferred IRV
compared to those who preferred the old system or had no opinion.
Excluding those who said the methods were equal or who had no
opinion, the gap between those favoring IRV and those favoring the
old system ranged from 71% vs. 29% in the lowest city to 89% vs. 11%.
<http://www.fairvote.org/?page=2170>[More information and links to
the various exit polls]
I'm not going to go into much detail here. What really has mattered
is that IRV has been voted out after being used, in a significant
number of places. That the method was difficult to use or confusing
was an argument raised. But it seems that other factors may have been
as important or more important. The cost of tabulating the vote. The
quirkiness of the results. The uselessness compared to plurality
(same results!). The failure to obtain real majorities (which was
important in most of the jurisdictions). If these were exit polls,
the voters did not know the results yet. They were new to IRV and may
not have realized what the implications were of how they had voted.
I've seen, in the actual votes from Burlington, signs that voters
really did not understand how to vote with IRV.
I forget the actual numbers, but suppose there were five candidates
on the ballot, plus a space for a write-in. The ballot allowed you to
rank five candidates. So some voters ranked all five candidates. That
meant that they were voting for *every candidate* against any
possible write-in vote. Really? Even the absolute worst of them? I
think they simply didn't understand.
The City of Cary, NC used IRV in a pilot program authorized by the
state. Both election officials and voters were extremely pleased with IRV.
Not what I've read from them!
Cary conducted a general public opinion survey of residents, and
included some questions about IRV. Residents favored IRV over the
former method by huge margins. The survey results can be viewed by
clicking
<http://www.sitesubplans.townofcary.org/__shared/assets/irv17690.htm>here:
(note that this survey was of residents, not just voters, and so
included many people who had no exposure to voting place voter education.)
Those poll results are being presented wtih rose-colored glasses by
FairVote. And the respondents in that poll were told some
misinformation about how much money would be saved by not holding a
runoff. First of all, runoffs are not always held. Secondly,
neglected in that was the extra cost of tabulating IRV when it's needed.
22% of respondents said that they "did not understand [IRV] at all."!
I was unable to verify who ran the poll. I found the following on the
Cary web site, presented to the City Council in February, 2009:
Dr. Michael Cobb, Professor at NC State University, designed an exit
poll to evaluate how voters in Cary felt about IRV. The exit poll,
which was managed by Bob Hall, Director of Democracy North Carolina,
contained interviews with more than 1600 voters from Cary Town
Council Districts B and D. The Board of Elections approved the
conducting of the poll; however, the Board did not make any findings
regarding the poll results. Dr. Cobb analyzed the results of the
polls. The results were sent to the State Board of Elections. Key
findings of the survey were:
Of those with a preference, 72 percent of Cary voters said they
preferred IRV while just 28 percent said that they preferred voting
for a single candidate.
Almost everyone (96%) reported it was at least "somewhat easy to
understand" the IRV ballot with 82% agreeing that it was "very easy"
to understand.
Most voters (69%) actually utilized the option of ranking at least
two of the candidates for city council
Among the minority of voters who did not rank more than one
candidate and gave a reason why (480), only 29% (139) said the
reason for not indicating a second choice was that they were
confused about how the rankings would be used.
Voters were more likely to rank candidates in District B, which was
the most competitive race where all 3 candidates failed to win an
outright majority; voters in District B were more likely to prefer IRV.
The study found no significant differences between different types
of voters in their understanding or preference for IRV: whites and
non-whites, males and females, lower- and higher-income voters all
evaluated IRV roughly equally.
Outreach efforts to inform voters ahead of time about IRV were
largely successful. Seventy-six percent said they knew they would
be asked to rank their preferences before coming to vote that
day. And those who reported knowing about IRV in advance were more
likely to rank more than one candidate and to prefer ranking
candidates over voting for only one candidate.
I believe Bob Hall is a FairVote activist. 31% of voters did not rank
an additional candidate? I've seen lower bullet-voting rates than
than in Bucklin election records.
http://www.townofcary.org/Sunshine/Agendas___Minutes/Town_Council/Action_Agenda_Archive__Abbreviated_Minutes_/2009_Action_Agenda/aa031209.htm
E. PUBLIC HEARINGS
1. Public hearing on (a) the method of election for the Town of
Cary beginning with the 2009 municipal election and (b) whether to
utilize Instant Runoff voting in the 2009 municipal election.
(Approved pursuing the non-partisan plurality method of election; the
legal process will begin at the 3/26 council meeting. The council did
not make a decision on Instant Runoff Voting. In order to bring up
the issue of Instant Runoff Voting on a future agenda, two council
members must submit a request in writing to the town clerk.)
There appears to be no move to use IRV again in Cary. But Joyce McCoy
would know more, I'm sure.
Back to the blarney:
1.4. But hasn't IRV been repealed in numerous jurisdictions?
Not exactly. In the 21st century, voters in X jurisdictions have
voted for charter amendments or statutory changes to move to IRV.
Voters in two jurisdictions have passed charter amendment to repeal
it: Pierce County (WA) and Burlington (VT). [Explanations]
Notice: they haven't figured out the explanations yet. Notice as
well, they limit this to "the 21st century." IRV was used quite a few
times in the U.S. in the 20th century. What happened? FairVote hardly
ever mentions this. Are they going to tell us why the voters repealed it?
Opponents like to list other repeals, but that is inaccurate [Aspen and Cary]
Sure. It wasn't repealed in Cary because it was a pilot program. They
had the possibility of continuing it in 2009, and didn't. Why not?
Aspen is more complicated.
They even like to keep saying Georgetown University has repealed IRV
because they happened to come across a news story saying it did. But
a few weeks later, Georgetown students restored IRV nad have used it
ever since, along with more than 55 additional colleges and
universities? Will all those schools keep IRV? Probably not. But we
expet the overwhelming number will keep it and support it. That's
the same with IRV in city elections.
Not if history is any guide. IRV is an expensive equivalent, in most
current applications in the U.S., to Plurality. This isn't a "Fact
Check." This is pure FairVote propaganda. I really don't care what
happened at Georgetown. Notice the contradiction: they imply that
people are mistaken about Georgetown repealing IRV. But apparently it
was indeed repealed. But later restored.
There are an enormous number of elections every year in colleges and
universities. Only a very small number use IRV, and this is likely
because of intensive efforts by FairVote to promote the method there.
I came to know one of these student activists well. He had basically
been brainwashed, coached in how to present IRV to make it seem
positive. He was pretty smart, though. It didn't take much to get
through that conditioning.
FairVote has made a big deal about the use of IRV in Takoma Park.
Takoma Park is a small bedroom community in Maryland, it's where the
Executive Director of FairVote, Rob Richie, lives. They need IRV like
they need a fish bicycle, most elections are uncontested or have only
two candidates. IRV has made no difference there at all, except to
FairVote, because it was one of their first "successes."
My guess is that they don't really care what happens in the long run,
just as long as the bubble lasts long enough to get Rob Richie
through retirement....
Most people with an undertanding of the situation seem to think that
IRV is doing serious damage to the cause of election reform in the
U.S. When a jurisdiction tries IRV and discovers that it really
doesn't help, or, as in Burlington, it does real damage, they are
soured on the concept of election reform for a long time. Maybe.
Let's hope that this does not prevent the consideration of better
methods, but FairVote is doing everything it can to deny that better
methods exist. There are objective ways to judge voting system
performance. You will not see a trace of this from FairVote.
IMPACT OF IRV
2.1 Does IRV address the "spoiler" problem as well as separate
runoff elections do?
Yes, but better. IRV solves the spoiler problem better than separate
runoffs and at least as well as any alternative voting method. A
"spoiler" is a negative term for a minor candidate with not chance
of winning the election. Under plurality rules such "spoiler"
candidacies can throw an election to a candidate the majority of
voters oppose. IRV tackles the "spoiler problem" in a manner similar
to a traditional two-election runoff, except that, due to its
sequential elimination procedure, it is more effective at
eliminating the spoiler effect.
Under a traditional two-election runoff, if there are several
candidates in the first round who have similar policy views, it is
possible for them to split the majority in such a way that none of
these similar candidates reaches the runoff round, while two
candidates with substantial core support but very narrow appeal
advance. Under IRV, voters who divided among these similar
candidates will see their votes automatically re-unite for the
strongest candidate in the group, and thus advance to the final
runoff. Some advocates for other alternative voting methods have
claimed that IRV does not solve the "spoiler problem" 100%. IRV
solves the problem as well or better than the alternatives.
<http://www.fairvote.org/?page=2491>[Examples of spoiler scenarios
under Plurality, Range, Approval and other voting methods]
Notice that to "spoil" an election with PLurality, the winner must
fail to gain a majority. Now, IRV elects without majorities, the way
the method has been implemented (as a runoff substitute). Voters, we
should remember, are free to vote how they choose, and it's rather
obvious that if voters vote the way they vote with Plurality, with
IRV, a "spoiler" can result in the election of a candidate who would
be beaten by another in a direct face-off. But IRV frequently does
this, and in more than one way. IRV, as to its positive function, is
practically identical to top-two runoff, but without the critical
re-examination by the voters. There are far better ways to improve
top-two runoff than by collapsing it to a single ballot no matter
what, which is the IRV approach. Bucklin was also designed originally
to make runoffs unnecessary, but it, too, sometimes failed to find a
majority. From my analysis, it appears that it's more likely to find
majorities, real majorities, than IRV.
If a majority is considered important (and IRV legislation often is
prefaced with a preamble about how important finding majorities is),
then ... a runoff is sometimes a necessary cost. Bucklin, because it
counts all the votes, is more efficient at avoiding runoffs than IRV
used as a primary method would be, and probably, because of the
ability to express a Favorite vote, in addition to other approvals,
it would be more efficient than Approval. In a sense, using a
three-rank Bucklin system for primary and runoff would be like
setting uo to hold as many as six runoff elections, using Approval
voting, three at a time, in which the voters can set which round to
introduce their additional approvals, thus showing their preference
strengths as well as preferences. Bucklin can be extended to use more
than three ranks and becomes even more accurate and flexible. It can
use a full Range ballot, which is the most expressive possible
ballot, allowing voters to, if they wish, accurately express how they
rate candidates.
(A Range ballot could actually be used to run IRV; just treat it as a
ranked ballot. But that is tossing away possibly valuable
information. Ratings ballots, where candidates are independently
rated, can serve as ranked ballots, but preference strength
information is lost.
FairVote is here mentioning that critics claim that IRV doesn't solve
the spoiler problem "100%." That's true. Why don't they explain what
these critics mean. You would not have a clue, and you would think
from this that it's all relative, just a question of degree, and that
IRV does "as well or better." That's a lie. IRV handles the "first
order spoiler effect," I've called it. This is the minor, no-hope
candidate problem. There are other methods which also solve this
problem, it's actually easy to solve, IRV does it well. But then IRV
sets up a much worse problem, "center squeeze," where, by leading in
first preference votes, a candidate who will go on to lose causes a
much more popular, overall, candidate to win. Popular in the sense of
being preferred to every other candidate by as much as two to one.
Now, as to 'examples of spoiler scenarios,' the reference is to a
FairVote document, which is at least better referenced than most
FairVote work, but it's still blarney. Consider this:
IRV is fully resistant to classic spoiler scenarios in which a minor
candidate splits off votes from an otherwise winning candidate.
However, IRV can still suffer a dynamic similar to the spoiler
dynamic when there are three or more candidates with strong support.
In such cases it may sometimes be possible that a voter's support
for a favorite candidate rather than a "lesser-of-two-evils"
candidate may result in the favorite making it to the final runoff
instead of the compromise candidate, and yet the favorite candidate
may be unable to win in that runoff against a less-preferred choice,
whereas the compromise candidate could have won. There are no known
examples of this scenario playing out in real world IRV elections,
but it is at least conceivable.
The first sentence isn't correct. It is not "fully resistant." But
I'd agree that it's strongly resistant to the spoiler problem.
Here, notice, their own paper is acknowledging a problem with center
squeeze. "No known examples" was preposterous in substance. IRV
behaves very similarly to top-two runoff, a point which they like to
make when it makes the method seem familiar to people, but top-two
runoff suffers from this same center squeeze problem. So they would
know that it's possible, and even somewhat common, there are quite a
number of famous elections where it happened. And then, with IRV,
Burlington. It actually happened, and, folks, this is why Burlington
dumpted IRV, almost certainly. Center squeeze can happen in just the
situation that they described, where there are "three or more
candidates with strong support." That was Burlingon, and it is a
routine situation there, it could certainly have been predicted that
it was possible.
The Fairvote document doesn't cover Bucklin at all, and in order to
impeach the spoiler behavior of Approval and Range, it makes up
internally contradictory situations. I.e., they assume that
supporters of a spoiler will bullet vote for their favorite. But they
can do this with IRV quite as well... Bucklin completely resolves
this by allowing voters to show their first preference without
ambiguity, which is the problem with Approval. Range likewise allows
the showing of the first preference with only a tiny loss of voting
power in the "main show." But the real fix for the center squeeze
effect is to use an advanced method, such as Bucklin (or Range!) in a
primary election in a runoff system. If voters err on the side of
bullet voting, it causes majority failure and they get another
chance. With proper method design, the compromise winner will
definitely make it into the runoff and will win (assuming that the
support is deep and not just some artifact of how people happened to
make "strategic voting decisions.) There is no doubt that in such a
system, the Democrat would have won in Burlingon, as the IRV votes,
when analyzed, showed was the majority choice.
FairVote has been denying what voting systems experts have known for
more than a century: IRV is a lousy single-winner method. There are
much better methods, from the simple repeated ballot used in
deliberative bodies, which can be approximated for public use by
Bucklin, which seems to have been proposed by the Marquis de
Condorcet before 1800, but was reinvented by James Bucklin in the
U.S. and first used in 1909, and which swept the country as
practically a fad, heavily supported by political scientists at the
time -- and then was swept away in a political backlash that wasn't
about how the method actually worked but seems to have been more
about the fact that it did work: it elected, in the first election, a
Socialist as Mayor of Grand Junction, Colorado, and Bucklin was
definitely not welcomed, either, by the "Democratic" party machine,
for the last things the party bosses want are voting methods that
allow voters to make the choices instead of them.
Bucklin voting is not, technically, "Condorcet compliant," but that
is a huge question. As Warren Smith wrote at one point about Range,
it may be "more Condorcet than Condorcet," which was probably
referring to an ability to maximize overall satisfaction as distinct
from the raw vote counts. Bucklin only fails to elect the "Condorcet
winner" if it fails to find a majority, sometimes, or it finds a
majority for more than one candidate. Those situations can be fixed
if Bucklin is used in a runoff voting system, such that if it does
still fail to find the Condorcet winner, it is because there is no
practical difference between that candidate and another. It would
have to be very close, and a very unusual situation.
The huge center squeeze problem of IRV isn't about a "close
election." It is about IRV ignoring many or even most of the votes
cast. Whether your vote cast for the compromise winner (preferred by
as much as two-to-one over all other candiates) is ever counted
depends on whom you prefer at a higher rank. IRV does *not* treat all
votes equally. It does treat voters equally but only in the sense
that all ballots are counted according to the same rules.
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