Trying one more time to start a sales pitch for switching from IRV to
Condorcet.
On Dec 1, 2011, at 10:18 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On 12/1/11 5:14 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
KM:If the cost of campaigning is high enough that only the two
major parties can play the game, then money (what you call $peech)
will still have serious influence.
dlw:My understanding/political theory is that $peech is inevitable
and all modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular
democracy and kleptocracy/plutocracy. To bolster the former, we
must accept the inevitability of the latter. This is part of why I
accept a two-party dominated system and seek to balance the use of
single-seat/multi-seat elections and am an anti-perfectionist on
the details of getting the best single/multi-seat election. Deep
down, I am skeptical of whether a multi-party system improves
things that much or would do so in my country.
i am thoroughly convinced that a multi-party (and viable
independent) system improves things over the two-party system.
besides the money thing, i just cannot believe that exhausting our
social choice to between Dumb and Dumber is the lot that a
democratic society must be forced to accept. what was so
frustrating during Town Meeting Day in 2010 (when the IRV repeal
vote was up), it was another choice between Dumb and Dumber. and,
as usual, Dumber prevailed in that choice. nobody seems to get it
(present company excluded). added to the result of the 2000 prez
election and, even more so, the 2004 result, the aggregate evidence
is that American voters are stupid. incredibly stupid. and a large
portion of Burlington Democrats were stupid to join with the
GOPpers, the latter who were acting simply in their self-interest to
repeal IRV. and the Progs were dumb to continue to blather IRV
happy talk as if it worked just fine in 2009.
Voters know ranking from IRV (except equal ranks are permitted).
Voters can rank as many as they approve of (and SHOULD get told they
are not required to rank any others they would not want to have win).
BIG deal is ability to rank both choice among likely winners, and own
best choice, and use strongest ranking for the one you like best.
Big difference from IRV is that counters read all that the voters
rank. From this the counters produce the x*x matrix that anyone can
learn to read and see how close any third parties are getting to
becoming winners.
When there are one or more strong third parties such can win, or
become part of a cycle among the strongest candidates. Not likely to
happen often but cycle members were each close to winning. There are
multiple Condorcet methods to support the various ways cycles may get
resolved.
dlw:Burlington's two major parties would not be the same as the two
nat'l major parties.
David, we don't have two major parties. we have three. the Dems
may be the least of the three, but they're centrist and preferable
to the GOP than are the Progs and preferable to the Progs than are
the GOP. but they are literally "center squeezed". that is
precisely the term.
Republicans would vote Democrat in Burlington mayoral elections.
if forced to. but they would like to give their own guy their
primary support. IRV promised them that they could vote for their
guy and, by doing so, not elect the candidate they hated the most.
and in 2009, IRV precisely failed that promise.
it not a tug-of-war with a single rope and the centrists have to
decide whether they get on the side of the GOP or the side of the
Progs. the idea of having a viable multi-party election and a
decent method to measure voter preference is a joined, three-way
rope going off in directions 120 degrees apart. Progs get to be
Progs, Dems get to be Dems, and GOP get to be dicks (errr, Repubs).
we know, because the ballots are public record, that the outcome
that would have caused the least amount of collective disappointment
is not the winner that the IRV algorithms picked, given the voter
preference information available and weighting that equally for each
voter.
KM:So why would IRV improve things enough over Plurality? That
verdict, too, has to come from somewhere.
dlw: more votes get counted in the final round than with FPTP.
Thus, the de facto center is closer to the true center
i dunno what you mean by "de facto" or "true" center, but neither
was elected in the Burlington 2009 example. (but, again, favoring
the center more than the wings is not why Condorcet is better than
IRV. it is because of the negative consequences of electing a
candidate when a majority of voters prefer an different specific
candidate and mark their ballots so.)
and third party candidates can speak out their dissents and force
the major party candidates to take them seriously.
well, here the third party won, against the expressed wishes of a
majority of voters. i do not agree with the GOPpers that IRV was a
method taylor made to elect the Progs, it's there to make a three-
party system work which means that third parties have a good change
and win (or lose) on their merits, not because they are perceived
(or not) as electable.
Why not look at the total number of cities that have adopted IRV
and see what a small fraction have had buyer's remorse?
doesn't look good, David. Cary NC, Aspen CO, Pierce Co WA, Ann
Arbor MI, Burlington VT. it's a damn shame that reform advocates
didn't think this out a little in advance and sell the ranked-choice
ballot tabulated by Condorcet instead of Hare.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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