robert bristow-johnson wrote:
i was looking for Kristofer's posts to EM and came across this, i may
have missed it:
On Jun 22, 2011, at 5:30 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
I've mentioned it before, but I think Condorcet enjoys an additional
advantage here. Say there's a CW and he is not elected. Then that
means a majority prefers the CW to the candidate who was elected, and
if that majority is annoyed enough, it could try to repeal the voting
method in question. However, if the method always elects the CW, any
attempt to do so must face a majority who did prefer that CW to all
the other candidates, and if that majority feels the candidate is good
enough, they can block the repeal by virtue of being a majority.
it's curious to me, Kristofer, that this is a theorem that states that
Condorcet-compliant will eventually, naturally become the norm because
eventually the majority will be well aware of their status (as the
majority) and know their loss, be outraged, and change the system to
something different. until Condorcet is landed on, there will always be
the probabilistic pressure to change to something different.
i dunno if i would be as optimistic as that. i don't think that people
think about it.
No, I don't think it would be conscious. I don't think the voters would
go about and think, to themselves "You know, I would really have liked
Montroll to win, but since he didn't, I'm going to repeal the system".
Instead, if the effect above is real, it would take the shape of, say,
Wright-supporters and Montroll-supporters (or the fraction of the latter
that didn't think long enough about that Montroll would also lose under
Plurality or 40% TTR) could unite in the feeling that Kiss is no good.
Thus united under the feeling that Kiss was the wrong choice, they could
propose to repeal the system.
But now consider a parallel universe where the CW always won (and these
victories were significant, i.e. people really preferred the CW to the
rest). Say Montroll won. Then Kiss-supporters and Wright-supporters
might try to unite in the feeling that Montroll wasn't what they wanted
("we don't want any steenkin centrists"); but if they tried so, there
would be a majority who did like Montroll (because he was the CW), and
therefore these could block the repeal if it came to a referendum.
I'm making a lot of assumptions here. Perhaps Wright- and
Montroll-supporters would be too different from each other to unite in
that way, or perhaps there would never be a "we don't want any steenkin
centrists" campaign in the alternate universe. I don't know enough about
Burlington politics to say, but I hope it does show the shape of the
indirect dynamics that would be in play, anyway.
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