[EM] Corrections to inaccurate FairVote historical perspective
The historical perspective by Abd ul-Rahman Lomax posted by Richard Fobes has a number of inaccuracies. It is apparently a top of the head summary based on memories of what others, including myself, had written several years ago. The organization now named FairVote began with a two-day organizing meeting (not a conference) of about 75 people held in Cincinnati in the spring of 1992. Its initial name was Citizens [not Center] for Proportional Representation, with an exclamation point intentionally included with its acronym (CPR!). The name was changed a year or so later to Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD), then 10 or so years after that to FairVote. Virtually the entire focus of the 1992 meeting was on advocacy of proportional representation. Single winner voting was discussed very little. I attended the meeting after having learned about it from two articles about the need for PR in the US and an announcement/open invitation published in In These Times magazine. As I recall, they were written or co-written by Matthew Cossolotto, the meeting's leading organizer. The decision to strongly promote Instant Runoff Voting (a name that was chosen after a number of other names were used or considered), was made only several years after the organization was formed. The main reasons for promoting IRV rather than other single winner methods were initially political. The thinking was that it would be much easier to sell, as a logical improvement to familiar, widely-used runoff elections, than other methods. And in any case, CVD's leaders regarded single winner reforms as much less important than proportional representation. IRV was seen as a kind of foot-in-the-door reform that could pave the way to much more significant PR reforms. I don't think there has ever been much serious discussion among the organization's leaders about the pros and cons of IRV and other single winner methods, though I think it's unfair to suggest, as Abd seems to, that they have been intentionally deceptive in their arguments favoring IRV. In addition, a leading FairVote advocate of IRV (though he first called it majority preferential voting) was John Anderson, the 1980 independent presidential candidate. Anderson published a New York Times op-ed about it in July 1992, shortly after the CPR! organizing meeting (the url is http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/24/opinion/break-the-political-stranglehold.htmllehold). Soon after that he joined the CVD board of directors and has been an active, influential board member, serving for many years as its chair (he's now listed as chair emeritus). Although I have no information about the board's internal deliberations, I suspect the organization has been more influenced by Anderson and other board members and less dominated by long-time executive director Rob Richie than some people have believed. My own biggest disagreement with FairVote is that it has never, itself, been a truly democratic organization. At the 1992 founding meeting, I was under the impression that it would be incorporated as a member-controlled organization. In fact an initial board of directors was elected at the meeting using a PR procedure (STV as I recall). Only several years later did I learn that the organization was incorporated as a conventional nonprofit organization controlled by a self-perpetuating board (i.e., the board chooses all new board members). The initial board was selected by Matthew Cossolotto and the other incorporators and was not the board elected at the founding meeting. As a result of how it was incorporated, the organization has never been open to pressure from members (since it doesn't have any) regarding its positions on IRV and other issues. I initially supported it with a couple of donations, but I'm no longer a supporter and have been dismayed by its positions on IRV and some other issues and by its failure to become a democratic membership organization. -Ralph Suter On 13 Mar 2013 1:16 PDT, Richard Fobes wrote: For the benefit of those who don't understand why FairVote promotes IRV (instant-runoff voting) in opposition to many forum participants here, I'm posting this extract from an excellent, well-written, long message by Abd. On 3/13/2013 11:46 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: ... Example from the United States: There was a conference in the early 1990s to discuss and support proportional representation. A small group of people then formed the Center for Proportional Representation, and leaders appeared. Eventually this because the Center for Voting and Democracy. Early on, this thinking developed among the activists involved: 1. The best method for proportinal representation is Single Transferable Vote. (it isn't but that's what they believed, these were not voting systems experts, but political activists.) 2. STV requires a complex voting system. Read, expensive to canvass, difficult to audit, etc. 3. The single-winner version
[EM] Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting in San Francisco
Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting By SHANE SHIFFLETT Published: December 2, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/analysis-finds-incorrect-use-of-ranked-choice-voting.html The results are in: San Francisco voters have trouble with ranked-choice elections. Despite a $300,000 educational campaign leading up to last month’s elections, including a new smiley-face mascot, publicity events, and advertising on buses and in newspapers, only one-third of voters on Nov. 8 filled out all three choices in all three races, according to an analysis released this week by the University of San Francisco. Under the city’s system, voters were asked to rank their top three choices for mayor, sheriff and district attorney. Perhaps the analysis’ most troubling finding is that 9 percent of voters, mostly in Chinatown and southeastern neighborhoods like the Bayview, marked only one choice for each office, either because they considered only one candidate suitable or because they did not know how to fill out their ballot correctly. “Some people just prefer to rank one,” said Corey Cook, a political science professor at the university who wrote the report with David Latterman. “But the geographic component suggests it’s more systematic.” Although Edwin M. Lee did not receive a majority of first-place votes, he became the city’s first elected Chinese-American mayor based on the ranked-choice system, which was first used in San Francisco in 2004. Mr. Latterman, an associate director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at U.S.F., said voters in neighborhoods with large black or Asian populations tended to vote for different candidates than residents in other parts of the city. But the Nov. 8 election was the first time researchers saw a geographic or perhaps ethnic difference in how people used ranked-choice voting. The findings indicate one of two things, Mr. Latterman said: Either campaigns tried to manipulate the results by focusing on specific groups of people or there is not a clear understanding of how to use the system. A recent Bay Citizen analysis revealed that 16 percent of ballots in the mayoral race — those of more than 31,500 people — were filled out correctly but were discarded when all of their chosen candidates were eliminated from the race. San Francisco does not allow voters to rank all the candidates on the ballot. In June, a voting task force created by the Board of Supervisors recommended that the Department of Elections consider allowing voters to rank all the candidates to avoid this issue. The panel urged the department to work with city supervisors to increase voter education. Hence the mascot. “We made the conscious decision to have an image of a correctly marked ballot and to have a smiley face to draw people’s attention,” said John Arntz, the director of the Department of Elections. When asked whether ranked-choice voting has worked well for San Francisco, Mr. Arntz said, “I guess it depends if your candidate wins or not.” sshiffl...@baycitizen.org A version of this article appeared in print on December 2, 2011, on page A25A of the National edition with the headline: Analysis Finds Incorrect Use Of Ranked-Choice Voting. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting in San, Francisco
It's no more crap than your cranky knee-jerk comments, which are clearly based on your speculative (and therefore dubious) negative assumptions about the intent of the article's author and the people who conducted the university study. The article only briefly describes that study (which runs to 23 pages) and also refers to a separate study done by the news organization the author writes for (the Bay Citizen). In fact, an earlier article by the same author describing the Bay Citizen study sympathetically and at some length quotes two well-known long time supporters of RCV, Rob Richie and Steven Hill. A strong opponent of RCV, Terry Reilly, is also quoted, but at much less length. Both the university study (titled a preliminary RCV analysis) and the earlier Bay Citizen article are posted on the web. You should read them before posting any more comments about them or defending your initial ones. earlier Bay Citizen article: http://www.baycitizen.org/sf-mayoral-race/story/how-ranked-choice-voting-silenced-voters/ University of San Francisco study: http://www.baycitizen.org/documents/usf-rcv-ballot-analysis/ OR http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/269123/usf-rcv-ballot-analysis.pdf On 12/2/2011 7:12 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: This is crap! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 87, Issue 54
To James Gilmour: 1. Despite your own certainty about how the real world of partisan politics functions, your opinion is entirely speculative with no basis in historical events, since no Condorcet elections have ever been held in any major public elections (or even any minor ones I am aware of). 2. In arriving at your conclusions, you have neglected two critically important considerations. a. A so-called weak Condorcet winner could, immediately following an election, make strong and possibly widely persuasive arguments that she/he not only deserves to have won but is the strongest possible winner, one who in separate contests with every other candidate would defeat every one - or, in the event there was a cycle that had to be resolved, would still have credible claim to be stronger overall than any other candidate. She/he could then quickly move beyond such arguments to act in ways that demonstrate her or his actual political strength beyond any reasonable doubt. The early carpers about the candidate being a weak winner would soon be forced to shift focus to other more important issues. If you want to seriously address practical politics, you need to address this highly credible post-election scenario. b. Your arguments, weak though they are, are even less applicable (if at all) to elections of legislators than to elections of officials in executive offices (president, mayor, etc). In fact, in a sharply divided electorate (whether divided on ideological, religious, ethnic, or other grounds), most people would likely prefer a middle-ground compromise winner (even one from a small minority party or group) than one from the major opposing party or group they strongly disliked, since the middle-ground winner would, though far from ideal to most voters, also make far less objectionable legislative decisions overall than a stronger but widely disliked major party winner. -Ralph Suter On 9/23/2011 7:32 PM, James Gilmour wrote: But you are completely missing the point of what I wrote. It is the political consequences of the second result that are important. In the real world of partisan politics, such a weak Condorcet winner (and their policies) would likely be torn to shreds by the party politicians and their party members, to such an extent that s/he would be ineffectual in office. And based on my experience of UK electors, with their majoritarian views of elections, the weak Condorcet winner would get little support from those whose votes had voted him or her into office. It must be for others to judge whether the electors in their countries (USA, Canada) would react in a similar way, but I have seen nothing in the US or Canadian press to suggest otherwise. It is dirty practical politics that is the problem here, not the fact that voters could rank their choices honestly. In my view, such a result would be less acceptable to the electors than the plurality result, despite all the obvious defects in the plurality voting. That's just how it is - and if you want to achieve real, practical reform, you have to understand that. James Gilmour -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Kathy Dopp Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 8:48 PM To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 87, Issue 54 In both the following cases, candidate C, the Condorcet winner, is a GREAT choice because a majority of voters, in both cases, would prefer C over A or B. This system allows voters to honestly rank their choices, without worrying about helping their least favorite candidate to win - far better than methods like IRV or plurality. 35 AC 34 BC 31 C 48 AC 47 BC 5 C Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- Message: 4 Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2011 18:22:42 -0400 From: Kathy Doppkathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 87, Issue 54 Message-ID: CANqewJT-qK=CrgFKC=Q=cudNY0hnRkzkE_HR4=q5q0kgn6k...@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 James, My point is, that the two examples you gave IMO are very *strong* Condorcet winners in the sense that the vast majority of voters would prefer the Condorcet winner over one or the other of the other two candidates which are far less popularly approved. I think the IRV fanatics oppose centrist compromise winners who are supported by a majority of voters whenever IRV would elect a less popular winner. IRV proponents support a more extremist winner, supported by far fewer voters as long as the candidate, enough to fabricate hypothetical political consequences, claiming that a majority people would oppose the Condorcet winner. Sure, of course
Re: [EM] Publication suggestions for Declaration
Another option that would require more planning and work but could attract much more attention and have a vastly greater long-term as well as short-term impact would be to distribute a news release (possibly with the donated help of a good PR firm with experience in news release writing and distribution - ideally, to both US and international print and online news outlets) announcing the declaration and inviting the publication of stories derived from the release as well as stories involving additional reporting and interviews. To increase the impact of such a release, it would help if the declaration included well-thought-out concrete steps that interested readers could take to help the cause of improving methods used in real world public elections and other kinds of collective decisionmaking activities. Suggested steps could include ones involving contributions of money as well as time to specific activities and programs, including ones that don't yet exist (such as proposed research and promotional efforts and organizations) as well as existing ones - everything from lists like this one that people could join to already established programs and organizations that people could join or support. If distributed this way, the declaration could attract not only much more attention but could attract the attention of individuals and organizations (foundations and other kinds) that may be interested in and able to contribute significant funding to efforts to develop and promote improved election methods. If there is support for the idea of such a news release, I suggest taking a little more time to develop a list of existing and potential activities, programs, and organizations to include in the declaration or (if the list becomes too extensive for that) in an appendix to the declaration. -Ralph Suter On 9/13/2011, Jameson Quinn wrote: The suggestion has come from Warren Smith. His steps are (Warren, correct me if I'm wrong): 1. Write a version of the declaration suitable for publication as an editorial of an academic journal. 2. Get it published, preferably (quasi) simultaneously, by a few small journals. 3. Go to the journal Science, which published a lower-quality editorial in 2001, and use that fact to get them to publish it. I support this plan, as well as all of Richard's suggestions, but it is a significant amount of work, and by no means a sure thing. Jameson Quinn 2011/9/13 Richard Fobeselectionmeth...@votefair.org On 9/11/2011 8:19 PM, St?phane Rouillon wrote: When and where will the declaration be published? This declaration project was started by Jameson Quinn, and I'm not sure what he has in mind for publishing, and currently he may be busy monitoring the Guatemalan election results, Well, aside from the war criminal coming in first place (on youtube you can see an old 80s documentary where admits genocide and a subordinate implicates him in torture and perhaps murder of prisoners), the most notable result was the over 12% of blank/spoiled votes. That's obviously intentional; it's over a third of the first place result, over half of the second place one, and more than the (sizable) margin between them. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring version
Even if improving public elections is the statement's primary aim, that needn't be its only aim -- nor, I'm convinced, should it be. One point I've tried to make is that one of the best practical means for improving the prospects for reforming difficult-to-change public elections would be to promote the use of alternative voting and representation methods for use in non-public elections and other kinds of decisionmaking processes (both public and non-public), including not only formal ones such as organizational and formal meeting elections and decisions but also informal ones that involve small and temporary groups -- and for not only critically important decisions such as presidential elections and constitutional referendums but also much less important decisions such as groups of friends and co-workers deciding where to eat lunch together. (For the latter, I believe approval voting and other quick and simple methods are, in virtually all cases, indisputably better than more complicated and time-consuming though maybe technically superior ones.) The important things to keep in mind regarding this point are, first, that it is much easier to experiment with alternative voting and representation methods in other than public elections and, second, that doing so has the great added advantage of helping educate people about alternative methods and (hopefully) helping persuade much larger numbers of people that some alternative methods would be great improvements over plurality voting and single-representative legislative districts for use in public elections. -RS On 8/28/2011 12:45 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: I question adding this collection of paragraphs to the major declaration, which seems more aimed at improving public elections. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring, version
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
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement
On 8/15/2011 1:42 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: It's true that I might agree to a statement if all it said were We believe that approval is marginally superior to plurality (thought to the extent that I agreed, I don't think it's enough better to merit any energy in advocating it). I haven't been following discussions on this list at all closely for a long time, but I'm astonished to read someone assert that approval is only marginally superior to plurality. Does anyone else agree? Approval will pretty reliably overcome or at least greatly diminish plurality's worst weakness: the spoiler problem (as it is known and pretty well understood by most people who are experienced in voting in plurality elections). To me, that makes approval a great deal better (not merely marginally better) than plurality, notwithstanding the strategy issue, which I strongly doubt is nearly as problematic as Jonathan suggests it is. (Haven't Steven Brams and other well-informed advocates of approval persuasively addressed strategy concerns?) As a related question (I'm asking this as one of the less expert and engaged readers of this list): Have variations on approval voting been discussed that might have advantages over it, such as disapproval voting or favorites plus disapproval (i.e., vote for one or more most favored candidates and against any number of disapproved candidates)? One other important consideration: Approval voting is surely the single best method for making quick tentative or non-critical decisions during meetings. It is AS or NEARLY AS simple as plurality and doesn't even require that all the options be listed at the start of voting. For example, suppose a group is trying to decide where to hold its next meeting. Three different possible locations are selected. An approval vote is held, but none of the options get a lot of support. After that vote, additional options can be suggested and voted on and their support compared with support for the first three options. The reason this is important is that approval voting could be promoted as a very simple and practical improvement over plurality voting for making tentative or uncritical decisions in meetings and decisions among informal groups of people wanting to quickly make one or a few collective choices (e.g., a group wanting to agree on a restaurant or movie or something else to visit or participate in together). Even those concerned about approval's strategy problems can probably agree that because of the tentativeness or relative unimportance of such decisions, the strategy issue is much less of a concern. The point is that promoting approval as a simple, practical means for making many kinds of group decisions would, at the same time, be a good way of promoting the idea that there are practical alternative voting methods that are clearly superior to plurality voting for at least some purposes, possibly including formal elections. Furthermore, if a result of efforts to promote approval voting was that it became much more commonly used in meetings and by informal groups, the idea that serious consideration needs to be given to replacing plurality voting in formal elections should also become much easier to promote. -RS Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
appropriate for different voting situations. IRV advocates sometimes argue for using IRV in all kinds of situations, even in small groups to decide such things as what kind of food the group should order. But for most small group purposes, approval voting would be much easier and quicker to use and would produce more satisfactory results. If more precision is needed, some form of range voting would still usually be easier and better than either IRV or IRRV. It may also be that approval voting or range voting would be better for most but not all kinds of public single winner elections, especially ones for lower level offices and primary contests where most voters have difficulty acquiring enough information to do confident rankings. It may be best to reserve IRV or IRRV or range voting for a few of the highest level offices. A new voting methods reform organization that seriously considers these issues and allows for and encourages discussion as well as research and experimentation about different methods and their relative advantages and disadvantages in different kinds of situations could conceivably transform the debate about voting methods. It could result in much more effective efforts to get better methods adopted, both for public elections and for all kinds of other purposes. -Ralph Suter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [begin quote] Greg, you didn't actually say that IRV is good, you just said that it's unlikely to be bad. Huh? One reason I think it's good in part because it's very likely to elect elect the Condorcet candidate, if that's what you mean by unlikely to be bad. Some other reasons I think it's good is that it resists strategic voting, allows third parties to participate, and paves the way for PR. Why bother with something that's unlikely to be bad when we can just as easily get something without that badness? You can't get rid of badness. Every system is imperfect. IRV is non-monotonic; Condorcet is susceptible to burial. So we're left to balance the relative pros and cons. Oh, and actually it _is_ likely to be bad. See that first graph? See how over thousands of simulated elections it gets lower social satisfaction? Brian, you're graphs are computer-generated elections that you made up. They aren't actual elections that took place in practice, which show a high unlikelihood of being bad. When your theory is a poor predictor of the data, it's time to change the theory, not insist the data must be different from what they are. [end quote] Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] sortition/random legislature Was: Re: language/framing quibble
Aaron Armitage wrote: I don't think I expressed my point clearly enough: I consider that making the public the active agents in their own governance is a very major benefit of popular government. THE benefit, in fact. Increasing the percentage of majority policy preferences enacted, in such a way as to make the people passive consumers of policy rather than at least potentially the producers forfeits the reason for having popular government. Managing your own affairs is for adults; having your desires catered to without effort on your part is for spoiled children. Spoken just like an impatient know-it-all father would speak to his own ignorant and spoiled children. The pretty obvious truth is that you (as well as several other people on this list who have addressed the issue) have barely begun to think carefully about sortition and its relevance to democracy. Sortition is not only an appropriate means but probably the single best means for choosing some kinds of representatives, though not all kinds. The ancient Athenians, who chose many of their public officials by sortition (but not their generals), understood that a lot better than most people do today, including most political scientists. One thing they particularly understood is that democracy (rule of and by the people) requires not only empowering people of all kinds (though of course the Athenians excluded women and slaves) but also preventing people from gaining arbitrary power that they are then able to wield in undemocratic ways. Sortition is a much better way to achieve that goal than voting, which can be manipulated in all kinds of ways by clever and deceitful people (especially wealthy ones). Another thing the Athenians understood is that soritition does not, contrary to your unsupported assertion, prevent or discourage the public from becoming active agents in their own governance. To the contrary, by greatly expanding the number of people who gain direct experience in governance, sortition can encourage public participation much more than can elections - especially the kinds of highly manipulated elections that are now so commonplace in the U.S. and many other so-called democracies around the world. Before doing any more pontificating about sortition and democracy, I wish you would take a little time to seriously study it. A good place to start is a book by two Australian academics: Random Selection in Politics by Lyn Carson and Brian Martin, Praeger 1999. It's a ridiculously expensive book, but you can read it online at: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=od=15275891 -Ralph Suter Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Town E-meetings for encouraging group intelligence and working toward consensus
founder, Ned Crosby, who may be very interested in advising or even helping set up a Fort Collins citizens jury re the IRV controversy. http://www.thataway.org/ National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation -- an organization that advocates a much wider range of methods (including but not limited to citizens juries) for achieving the goal, as Jan put it in his subject line, of encouraging group intelligence and working toward consensus. -Ralph Suter In a message dated 7/9/08, Jan Kok wrote: Right now I feel like I've been struck with divine inspiration. Hope I don't wake up tomorrow feeling like an idiot. :-) Town E-meeting is a way to - disseminate information about competing proposals - allow a controlled debate and negotiation among supporters of the various proposals - allow/encourage supporters to present their case as strongly as possible, but providing a rebuttal mechanism that encourages honest arguments and discourages insincere, deceptive arguments - allow similar proposals without much redundant arguments (because proposals can refer to each other.) - allow similar proposals while neither encouraging nor discouraging their creation - does all that in a manner that is fair and neutral toward all proposals. It's similar in some ways to a court trial, where we strive to allow all parties to be fairly represented and heard. It's an application of FADP*. It also borrows infrastructure and culture from Wikipedia. (FADP: Free Association with Delegable Proxy. See http://beyondpolitics.org for an introduction. There is a FAQ at http://www.beyondpolitics.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=BeyondPolitics, and a glossary of FADP terms at http://www.beyondpolitics.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Glossary . The Glossary is also a mini-tutorial about FADP concepts.) Town E-meeting was inspired by this current, real-life situation: There is a movement to try to replace the voting method used for Fort Collins, CO elections with IRV. (Currently, Fort Collins elections use single-round Plurality Voting.) I would much rather have Range, Approval, or ER-Bucklin Voting, rather than IRV. How can I get the word out about those alternatives? How can I get the alternatives compared side-by-side in a fair manner? How can I promote multiple alternatives (proposals) without risking a vote-splitting effect among the alternatives? How can I encourage an honest discussion among backers of the various alternatives, to try to reach consensus about which is the best alternative? My proposed solution is a combination of several elements. I'm calling this generic solution Town E-meeting for now. (Feel free to suggest other names.) - Create an FADP. (E.g. the Fort Collins Voting Free Association. It's purpose would be To facilitate discussion of alternative proposals for the future of voting in Fort Collins.) - Anyone can become a member simply by signing up at a web site. There are two types of members: local voters, and other interested people. When polls are taken of the members, the votes of local voters and others are tallied and reported separately. - In order to participate in polls, members must agree to have this info about themselves be published in a publically accessable membership directory: real name, city/state, registered voter (y/n) in the city of interest (e.g. Fort Collins), member's proxy, accepting clients (y/n). (Publishing that information, and holding proxies accountable for verifying that their clients are real people, discourages creation of sock puppets.) - By default, all voting information related to polls conducted within the FA is public. Anyone can look up any member's voting history on any or all issues, or list out how each member voted (directly, or by proxy) on any issue. - There is a web site for the FA's use, featuring a wiki that is used for describing various proposals, listing and discussing pros and cons, etc. - Certain designated top proxies may edit the wiki. They may also grant and revoke editing privileges to their clients. Those new editors may grant and revoke editing privileges to their clients, and so on. This method of controlling editing privileges creates chains of accountability and encourages responsible, civilized editing behavior. - The wiki home page has a list of proposals. (E.g. Approval, Range, IRV, Top-2 (Delayed) Runoff, Proportional Representation for the city council seats, NOTA (i.e. keep Plurality Voting)) The proposals are listed as title and brief description. The titles are links to wiki pages fully describing the proposals. - There is an ongoing, real-time poll concerning the proposals. Each proposal has a poll score listed next to it. (How the score would be computed is not specified yet.) - The proposals are listed in the order that they would be chosen by a proportional representation method. The intent is to present a variety of proposals among the first few entries; to minimize the incentive to create clone proposals; and to avoid having any
Re: [Election-Methods] Town E-meetings for encouraging group intelligence and working toward consensus
Terry, Thanks for providing information about the British Columbia citizens assembly. I had forgotten about that. One minor clarification: the main purpose of the assembly, I believe, was to find better methods for apportioning representatives in the provincial legislature, not to find better single winner voting methods. As for your concern about circular firing squads being organized by opponents of IRV, that is not at all what I was proposing. Rather, I (and Jan as well) was proposing ways to help people become better informed about IRV and alternatives to it. That would include helping people understand that plurality voting is the worst alternative of all and needs to be replaced as soon as possible with better voting methods. Furthermore, I specifically argued against an anti-IRV effort in favor of efforts simply to help people become better informed about alternative voting methods. Jan and I and many other people are troubled not only with the weaknesses we believe IRV has but by the fact that FairVote, the leading pro-IRV organization, has for more than 10 years systematically failed to FAIRLY discuss concerns about IRV with people who don't think it is a good remedy, especially given the now-well-documented unreliability of voting systems throughout the U.S. -- a problem that Kathy Dopp and other voting administration activists are much better informed about than FairVote is. FairVote also has systematically failed to acknowledge that other methods may be superior to IRV for at least some purposes (e.g., in meetings of relatively small numbers of people where majority approval voting is not only far simpler and quicker than other methods but much better when the goal is to develop consensus agreement about important decisions). The truth is that if anyone has organized a firing squad against its opponents, it has been FairVote. I speak as someone who attended the founding meeting in 1992 of the organization that has evolved into FairVote (originally Citizens for Proportional Representation, then Center for Voting and Democracy or CVD). I know FairVote's Executive Director, Rob Richie, and I'm familiar with many of the details of how the organization came to adopt IRV as its preferred single winner election method without permitting any public debate about it, even though a number of prominent experts on its own advisory committee (Steven Brams, Arend Lijphart, and others) have expressed strong preferences for other methods. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the Election-Methods email list was started because Rob Richie and other CVD people thought debate about IRV was a waste of time and refused to allow it to be continued on an email list CVD had been sponsoring. (I'm not an original list subscriber, so others know more about that history than I do.) As for your concern about shoring up the status quo in favor of plurality voting, that doesn't have to be the result of an effort to better inform people about alternative voting methods. One alternative to plurality, approval voting, would be so easy and nondisruptive to implement that we all ought to agree that it would be a good first step to improving on plurality. Other and better methods could be adopted later, after voting administration problems that now make IRV and other complex methods (including Condorcet and Range) so problematic are resolved. -Ralph Suter Terry Bouricius wrote: Ralph and all, As you responded to Jan Koch's E-Meeting idea, I'd like to offer responses to a couple of your ideas (a tangent of a tangent). 1. The idea of a citizen jury is well worth pursuing. As many people on this list are probably aware, there was actually a successful use of this model in British Columbia dealing specifically with how best to change the voting method there. This citizens assembly drawn by lot was created by the Provincial government, and resulted in a provincial referendum. The assembly's web site has lots of information...at http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/public Ontario used the citizens jury model as well. There was also an attempt to get a bill passed in California to use such a citizens jury for examining voting methods in California. 2. As to taking action in regards to Fort Collins...Fundamentally, I believe election method reformers should NOT form circular firing squads...That is, advocates of Approval or Range, etc. should NOT insert themselves into places where a campaign for IRV is under way, just as advocates of IRV or Condorcet should not go into a community where there is a campaign for Approval. The more experiments with a variety of alternative voting methods the better. By raising one-sided objections to any particular reform proposal that is being seriously considered, the net effect is most likely to be to shore up the status quo, rather than to advance one's favored method. If election method experts put their united effort
