To Ralph Suter, thank you for your extremely useful feedback!
You are the kind of person who is in a position to use our declaration
as (for lack of a better metaphor) ammunition in the battles against
plurality voting. The fact that you like it reveals that we are on the
right track.
The fact that you do not find the declaration to be too long is very
helpful!
I like your idea of emphasizing that these election methods first should
to be used in non-governmental organizations as a way of educating
voters about what works, and what doesn't. This approach could have
prevented the situations in which instant-runoff voting was adopted and
then rejected.
For this purpose we can add paragraphs such as:
------ begin ------
"The same election methods we recommend here for governmental elections
also can be used for electing officers (such as president, treasurer,
and secretary) in an organization. In fact, all(?) of the methods
recommended here have been used for officer elections, and the fairer
results have been widely appreciated (except by incumbents who were not
reelected)."
"We unanimously agree that plurality voting should not be used to elect
corporate board members. As a replacement we support using the same
election methods that we recommend for governmental elections. If legal
restrictions only allow plurality voting, we unanimously support legal
reforms that allow any one (or more) of the election methods supported
here."
"The above-recommended election methods also can be used in any
organization to make single-choice decisions, such as choosing a new
logo, choosing a time or date for an event, and choosing a restaurant
for a gathering. However, if one of the choices is to not make a change
(such as not changing the organization's logo), then two rounds of
voting are needed, with the first round choosing the most popular
change, and the second round choosing between that change and not making
any change."
"Although instant-runoff voting is not being recommended for
governmental elections, instant-runoff voting is useful when a small
group of people is physically gathered together and does not have access
to voting software. In this case paper-based ranked ballots can be
collected and then physically sorted into stacks based on the ballot's
top-ranked remaining choice. Until one of the ballot stacks contains
more than half the ballots, the smallest remaining stack of ballots can
be re-sorted based on the voter's next-ranked choice. This approach is
much fairer than plurality voting."
------ end ------
Regarding your comment about 1-2-3 ballots, verbally I have used that
name numerous times and it seldom produces the glazed and baffled look I
get when I use words like ranked ballot and order-of-preference ballot.
In other words, I have been testing it with success. Yet I agree that
there might be a better name.
I agree that the term "pairwise" would benefit from further explanation.
Yet I suspect that if I had done so in the first draft, there would be
criticisms from supporters of non-Condorcet methods claiming that the
declaration is biased in favor of Condorcet methods.
Your feedback reveals that this declaration accomplishes what I had
hoped it would accomplish, namely that it would be useful to the many
people who want election-method reform, but either don't know what would
work (and what wouldn't work), or do know what would work but need
evidence (they can give to others) to support their beliefs.
Again, thank you!
Richard Fobes
On 8/23/2011 9:38 PM, Ralph Suter wrote:
Several thoughts (not a thorough critique) after one straight-through
reading:
1. Length: I agree that for the reasons Richard described, the length of
his proposed declaration (less than 2300 words) is appropriate and that
trying to shorten it very much would be a mistake. It's long compared to
previously proposed versions, but it's still very short compared to,
say, a small pamphlet or even a fairly short magazine article, and it's
only two to three times the length of a typical US newspaper op-ed
article. At the same time, I think it is long enough (or nearly so --
see #5 below) to convey clearly, to a broad non-expert audience, at
least the minimum necessary information and explanation.
2. Readability: When opening the email Richard's post was in (I got it
along 4 other posts in an issue of Election-Methods Digest), I didn't
expect to want to take the time to read it carefully all the way
through, but after I started reading, I found it well-written and
compelling enough to want to do so -- almost like a "page turner" novel.
3. Language: I'm guessing most readers will find the language clear with
just a few exceptions. One exception, for example, may be "pairwise".
This is a word most non-expert readers will be unfamiliar with and many
may find puzzling and jargon-like. To find other exceptions, a variety
of non-expert readers should be asked to read the statement (or later
drafts of it) and note any words, phrases, or explanations they find
unclear.
4. When describing Condorcet methods: I suggest briefly describing
Condorcet himself and his role in developing such methods. I would also
explain that the main point of Condorcet methods is to use the
preference information voters provide to determine how each candidate
would fare against every other candidate in a series of one-to-one
contests, just as in a round-robin athletic tournament in which each
contestant competes one-to-one against every other contestant. In
addition, I suggest mentioning that for this reason, an alternative name
sometimes used to describe Condorcet methods is Instant Round Robin
methods, which can be abbreviated as IRR methods to distinguish them
from Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), a more widely known and promoted
method that makes use of the same kinds of ballots IRR methods do. (By
the way, "1-2-3 ballots" may not be much better than "preferential
ballots"; there may better names than either, such as rank voting
ballots, rank order ballots, or just ranking or ranked ballots. This may
be worth asking non-expert readers about.)
5. Finally, I think the statement could be greatly improved and made
more interesting, relevant, and compelling to a wider range of readers
by explaining that alternative voting and representation methods can
also be beneficially used for a large variety of purposes other than
general political elections and that different methods are often more
suitable for some kinds of purposes than for other purposes. Some
example of other purposes are: US-style primary elections; party
convention votes; decisions in legislative bodies and committees;
decisions by informal groups; decisions in meetings of different kinds
and sizes; uncritical or relatively minor decisions vs. major,
critically important decisions; opinion polling; TV/radio audience
voting; provisional ("straw") voting; and choosing organizational board
members and conference attendees. Furthermore, because alternative
voting and representation methods have the potential to greatly improve
collective decisionmaking in a large variety of situations other than
general political elections and because abstract analyses of different
methods need to be supplemented with well-designed experimentation and
social scientific research, there is a great need and justification for
support for such experimentation and research, possibly in the form of a
new well-funded non-partisan research institute.
Explaining these things would require lengthening the statement, though
I think not by a lot. An objection may be that this would make the
statement less focused and therefore less compelling and influential. My
reply would be that while election laws are generally very difficult to
change, it is often much easier (as I know from some personal
experience) to change how decisions are made for purposes other than
public elections. If such changes became increasingly frequent and
widespread, people would increasingly become more familiar with
alternative voting and representation methods and with the idea that
alternative methods are often far superior to ones currently used, and
it should also become increasingly easy to persuade people to support
major changes in public election laws.
-RS
PS: I'm actually not an election-methods expert and haven't read
messages on this list at all regularly for several years. At most, I'm a
fairly well-informed amateur, and even that may be overstating it. My
expertise is more in general political reform (especially US political
reform), with election reform being one of a large variety of kinds of
reforms I believe are badly and urgently needed. I also have some
expertise in political reform strategy -- i.e., the development of
practical strategies for bringing about changes that experts agree are
needed.
On 8/23/2011 9:06 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
...
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