On 04/10/2012 10:20 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
Kristofer:
You wrote:
On 04/09/2012 11:31 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
I've said seemingly contradictory things about IRV. It's particularly
flagrant FBC failure makes it entirely inadequate for
public political elections, more so than Condorcet, which, too, is
inadequate due to FBC failure.
You keep saying anything without FBC is automatically a no-go. How do
you know that?
[endquote]
It is a country-specific observation, regarding the electorate of the U.S.,
where I
reside. I don't know that about any other country, though there is evidence for
it in various
countries where people are used to Plurality voting.
Yes this is "anecdotal", but I've personally observed favorite-burial in
Condorcet voting.
A safe and prudent rule is "Never underestimate the voter's inclination for
resigned over-compromising
give-away, if there's any chance that it could help a compromise against someone
worse."
Yet that isn't absolute. Again, consider Burlington. The Burlington
voters, thinking they could now vote as they wished, ranked the
candidates in a manner suggesting a relatively close race between the
three major candidates. They didn't discover this was a bad idea until
after the election, but a Condorcet method would have given them the
right winner.
Given that observation, would not Condorcet acting properly have
encouraged the voters to vote in a non-compromising manner in later
elections? Although there's no hard evidence, it seems reasonable.
Or do you prefer the voting method to give an ironclad assertion that
there won't ever be a favorite betrayal problem, so you can be *sure*? I
can see that. Since I'm in a country where favorite betrayal isn't a
problem, I don't really feel the need to be absolutely sure. That, and I
like Condorcet :-)
And I also said that IRV would be a fine method, were it not for the
public's inclination towards resigned, cowed overcompromise,
and their very sad and disastrous lowering of standards for
acceptability. "Vote for the least bad of the corrupt candidates,
because they're the
winnable ones".
I disagree. Look at Burlington with its center squeeze again. The
Burlington voters didn't strategize (much or effectively). Yet instead
of picking the candidate closest to the median voter, IRV threw that one
away because it didn't have enough first-place votes and picked the
largest wing instead.
[endquote]
Never choose IRV as a way to attain the voter median. For that, I recommend ICT
for public political elections. Condorcet(wv), maybe Beatpath, would be ok for
organizations.
If it fails to acquire the voter median even when voters aren't
overcompromising, how can IRV be a fine method?
You continued:
How about this zero-info: Rank all the acceptables in alphabetical
order. Rank the unacceptables in random order after the acceptables.
[of course, in that situation, there'd be no need to rank the
unacceptables, unless the rules require ranking everyone]
Some IRV implementations require that the voters rank everyone, so the
strategy might have to take that into account. If the voters don't have
to rank everyone, then I agree with you. Since IRV passes both LNHarm
and LNHelp, the only reason you'd rank unacceptables would be if you had
some preference between them.
...if the rules require ranking everyone. You'd be preferentially helping the
unacceptables
least likely to benefit from that help.
But, by the time your vote gets to the unacceptables, the acceptables must have
all been
eliminated. So, if you're going to rank the unacceptables, wouldn't it be best
to rank
them in order of preference (in reverse order of unacceptability)?
There's a good case for not bothering to rank them, if the all-important thing
is
keeping an unacceptable from winning. But, by ranking them, you could at least
try
to help the least bad of them against the worst of them.
That's a good point.
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