Re: [EM] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp
On Dec 16, 2011, at 6:16 PM, Ted Stern wrote: On 16 Dec 2011 13:29:30 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Cc: Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: Re: [EM] Egg or Chicken. Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:59:14 -0600 From: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform. This is also a good reason to strategically support IRV, since we can trust that with changes, there'll be more scope for experimentation and consideration of multiple alternatives to FPTP. This is precisely the kind of game theory that leads to the two party problem with FPTP: we need to coalesce behind the strongest contender in order to have some kind of voice, be it only a compromise. So no, I don't think it is a good reason. While IRV offers ranked choice voting - a big improvement over FPTP, It fails to have a defendable way to count the votes - and, by that incompleteness, can reject the true choice of a majority of voters - see Burlington as a widely heard example. See Condorcet, a method that is a good reason for dumping IRV - by accepting the same votes as IRV, but then actually reading what the voters vote, Condorcet is a major improvement. KD: Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation, it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems. dlw: That is what is in dispute. PR makes sense for legislatures - but is no help for electing such as governors or mayors. KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been tried and rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades. dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by considering only one vote per voter at a time? Yes, precisely. The traditional Robert's Rules method of taking only a single vote at a time is at fault. It produces a suboptimal result by segmenting the problem too much. IRV does allow the voters to make a complete statement of their desires, with no segmentation, which means no information from other voters (as would happen in a caucus) as to what the other voters are doing in what is called above a single vote. IRV does segment the vote counters' work by restricting their reading of each ballot to what is, for the moment, the top rank. It is similar to the less optimal result you get from dividing space by partitioning in each dimension separately to get bricks, instead of hexagons in 2D or truncated octagons in 3D. dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the results can be tabulated at the precinct level. Could he be thinking of Condorcet, which tabulates the same ballots intelligently at precinct level? dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and elsewhere a lot more than IRV KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not solve any of plurality's problems, so it's a great way to convince people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods can be. (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and on and on...) dlw: It's called marketing. FairVote wisely simplified the benefits of IRV. IRV does find majority winners a lot more often than FPTP and it reduces the spoiler problem considerably. It does save money compared with a two round approach and its' problems are easy to fix. But when marketers lie and get caught, potential customers get suspicious as to future marketing. I do not understand the above claim about majority winners - true that FPTP voters cannot completely express their desires, but the counters can, accurately, read what they say with their votes. Dave Ketchum That is debatable. I happen to think that the goal/object of IRV is different from what one wants to achieve in a single winner election. If you model your government on a natural system (and the US Founders based their arguments by appealing to Natural Law), then you do best when you create a diverse and representational set of options (hence PR for legislatures) and only then apply selective pressure using a centrist single winner method. IRV is not based on centrism. As the single-winner limit of STV, it is better (not best) at finding a representative of the
[EM] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp
-- Forwarded message -- From: Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Cc: Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: Re: [EM] Egg or Chicken. Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:59:14 -0600 From: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform. This is also a good reason to strategically support IRV, since we can trust that with changes, there'll be more scope for experimentation and consideration of multiple alternatives to FPTP. KD:Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation, it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems. dlw: That is what is in dispute. KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been tried and rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades. dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by considering only one vote per voter at a time? dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the results can be tabulated at the precinct level. dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and elsewhere a lot more than IRV KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not solve any of plurality's problems, so it's a great way to convince people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods can be. (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and on and on...) dlw: It's called marketing. FairVote wisely simplified the benefits of IRV. IRV does find majority winners a lot more often than FPTP and it reduces the spoiler problem considerably. It does save money compared with a two round approach and its' problems are easy to fix. dlw Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Renewable energy is homeland security. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp
On 12/16/11 4:29 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: KD:Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation, it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems. dlw: That is what is in dispute. the point is, while STV might be the best and simplest method to gain a more proportional representation for multi-winner elections, it still is inferior to a simple Condorcet method (say, minmax margins or ranked-pairs) for single-winner elections. and, although i usually don't agree with her, she has a point with souring the public. here, in Burlington, the anti-IRV crowd (which Kathy has identified with, here in the local blogs) has the attitude that while they won this election by a small margin (about 300 outa 6K or 7K), it was a vindication of the commandment from God that thou shalt mark the ballot only once. and with an X. it will take a generation to pass before we'll be able to revisit the question of election reform and then we'll only do it if the Progressive Party survives that period of time. if we devolve back to a 2-party system, i doubt there will be much political incentive to revisit the issue of ranked-choice voting (tabulated by a decent Condorcet-compliant method, i would hope that they wouldn't forget the lesson learned regarding IRV, and do forget the phony-balony arguments from the Keep Voting Simple crowd). KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been tried and rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades. dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by considering only one vote per voter at a time? dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the results can be tabulated at the precinct level. dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and elsewhere a lot more than IRV KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not solve any of plurality's problems, this is where Kathy overstates the case. IRV *definitely* speaks to (but not in a consistent way) the common problem (in 3+ way races) of tactical voting where the voting tactic is called compromising. it did not solve that problem in Burlington 2009 completely. it only solved it for the liberal majority of voters while effectively transferring that to the GOP Prog-haters. but she is wrong that it does nothing, in comparison to FPTP, to reduce the problem. so then the justification she needs to make is why support the method that increases the occurrence of this problem from IRV (where the burden of tactical voting is placed in the shoulders of a minority) to FPTP (where the burden of tactical voting is placed on a split majority). so it's a great way to convince people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods can be. that also polemically overstates the case. (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and on and on...) need more than 2 uses to recoup non-recurring costs. (you recoup them by being a decisive method and not going to runoff.) and the argument that IRV yields a false majority winner is ineffective coming from the Keep Voting Simple crowd because they returned us to a clearly more false majority winner. that was confirmed one year later when we tried to require a 50%+ majority to elect. this side clearly wants a method that they can game to get their minority-supported candidate elected and we are now, dealing with that fact (the first mayoral election since IRV was repealed). we won't know for about a month, but the Progs might not nominate a candidate and *maybe* even will simply endorse the Democrat nominee. if that happens, it will be a straight two-candidate race (well, there *might* be a significant independent, so we might still have a problem) and no one will be able to dispute who is the majority candidate (unless it's very close). IRV also failed in 2009, but it's failure was in electing the 2nd-most preferred candidate, but without IRV, we could very well have gotten the 3rd-most preferred candidate. neither method sends the correct pair combination of candidates to the runoff. (one caveat, if IRV-BTR is used, it *would* send the correct candidate to the final runoff, who the other candidate going to the runoff is is sorta irrelevant.) so Kathy misses it, in preferring Dumber over Dumb. and it was an thick irony in 2010 (the IRV repeal vote) to have to choose between Dumb and Dumber,
Re: [EM] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp
On 16 Dec 2011 13:29:30 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Cc: Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: Re: [EM] Egg or Chicken. Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:59:14 -0600 From: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform. This is also a good reason to strategically support IRV, since we can trust that with changes, there'll be more scope for experimentation and consideration of multiple alternatives to FPTP. This is precisely the kind of game theory that leads to the two party problem with FPTP: we need to coalesce behind the strongest contender in order to have some kind of voice, be it only a compromise. So no, I don't think it is a good reason. KD: Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation, it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems. dlw: That is what is in dispute. KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been tried and rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades. dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by considering only one vote per voter at a time? Yes, precisely. The traditional Robert's Rules method of taking only a single vote at a time is at fault. It produces a suboptimal result by segmenting the problem too much. It is similar to the less optimal result you get from dividing space by partitioning in each dimension separately to get bricks, instead of hexagons in 2D or truncated octagons in 3D. dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the results can be tabulated at the precinct level. dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and elsewhere a lot more than IRV KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not solve any of plurality's problems, so it's a great way to convince people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods can be. (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and on and on...) dlw: It's called marketing. FairVote wisely simplified the benefits of IRV. IRV does find majority winners a lot more often than FPTP and it reduces the spoiler problem considerably. It does save money compared with a two round approach and its' problems are easy to fix. That is debatable. I happen to think that the goal/object of IRV is different from what one wants to achieve in a single winner election. If you model your government on a natural system (and the US Founders based their arguments by appealing to Natural Law), then you do best when you create a diverse and representational set of options (hence PR for legislatures) and only then apply selective pressure using a centrist single winner method. IRV is not based on centrism. As the single-winner limit of STV, it is better (not best) at finding a representative of the majority, not the best representative of the entire population. As for STV, one can keep patching to deal with its many problems, but at its core it also make a number of false choices: * why can't a voter say that they prefer several candidates equally? * why must choices be ranked? * why do candidates have to be eliminated? * why can't lower rankings be considered? Ted dlw Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Renewable energy is homeland security. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
