On Dec 6, 2011, at 4:19 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
How to vote in IRV:
When there are completely unacceptable candidates who might
win (I call that condition u/a, for “unacceptable/acceptable”)
You DO NOT rank such since, if you rank such a candidate, so might
enough others for this one to win - you do not want to be part of
causing such a win.
IRV, like many methods, has a relatively simple strategy:
Rank the acceptable candidates in order of (some guessed or
complicatedly-calculated measure of) their popularity.
Rank in the order of what YOU see as should be most popular first.
The vote counters look at what, for the moment, are top rank, discard
the least liked of these, revising the ballots involved, and try
looking again.
If the discarding bared many of the truly best liked after discarding
just a few - success.
If the truly best liked got discarded early - failure and much weeping
(get here if too many voters ranked too many others in front of the
best).
Ideally, then rank the unacceptables in order of some
complicated combination of their disutility and
(some guessed or complicatedly-calculated measure of) their
popularity.
Actually, ignore that last paragraph. In u/a, all the
unacceptables are just unacceptable. What matters is the election of
an
acceptable instead of an unacceptable.
In u/a, IRV is just ranked Plurality. In Plurality you vote
for the acceptable candidate who is most popular (most likely to get
the most
votes).
Read that carefully. You do not vote for unacceptable here even if
you expect such to win.
The difference is that the needed measure of popularity is
simpler in Plurality (Which of the acceptables will be the best
votegetter?). In that (decisive)
regard, Plurality is better than IRV.
Oh, and, by the way, our public political elections are u/a.
IRV’s LNHa and LNHe:
Some boast that IRV meets those two criteria.
Well, if your 2nd choice gets your vote,
your favorite, by that time, is beyond help or harm, isn’t s/he.
Let’s protect hir from harm from your 2nd choice
vote, by expelling hir from the election. :-)
…A sort of electoral euthanasia.
In IRV, you don’t have to
be afraid to vote your 2nd choice necessary compromise at
least in 2nd place. In fact you have to be afraid to not rank hir
alone in 1st place.
So, you see, IRV takes LNHa one step farther :-)
What’s that you say? You might get lucky, even if you don’t
top-rank a compromise?
“Step right up, folks, and pick a card!”
IRV, a game of chance, should only be allowed in states that
allow gambling.
Mike Ossipoff
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