[EM] reply to a reply to IRV args by Mike Ossipoff
Dave Wetzel-- You wrote: Not everyone thinks having a two-party dominated system is bad. [endquote] Quite so. The Republicans, the Democrats, and the media owned and run by the same corporate rich families that own the Republocrats don't think two-party domination is bad. Neither do some voting system academics. For the explanation, a hint: "Follow the money". Look at the books "Who Rules America?", and "The Powers that Be". You continued: Good luck getting electoral reforms in a two-party dominated system tilting to a single-party dominated system that level the playing fiield for all parties 100%. [endquote] You're quite right. Voting system reform may never happen. If it does, then maybe the children of our great grandchildren will benefit from it. That's why our immediate effort should be devoted not to getting a better voting system, but rather to best using the voting system that we already have. Plurality may be the worst (or maybe the 2nd worst, after Borda, or the 3rd worst, after Borda and IRV), but its full badness depends on more than just the voting system. It depends on worthless polling, maybe even combined with falsified polling. (Falsified poll-results have sometimes been caught). That's why suggest that we should be putting most of our effort into polling, to inform Plurality voting. As I've said, our Plurality elections are zero-information elections. The right strategy for 0-info elections is to just vote for one's favorite. Voters should be informed of those facts. This lesser-of-2-evils defensive stragegy could be valid, if it were the result of good information. But it isn't. Quite aside from that, tell people about these valid sayings: "If you vote for a lesser-evil, then you get an evil." "It's better to vote for what you want, and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want, and get it." And, as I said, polling should be done, to inform Plurality strategy. Ideally, it should be rank-balloting, nationwide, with the national results of each local poll weighted by the quotient of the population of the region represented by that poll (probably much more than the city polled) divided by the number of voters in the poll. The resulting national set of ballots should then be counted to look for a Condorcet Winner (CW). The CW is a candidate who doesn't have a pairwise defeat. X has a pairwise defeat if there is some Y such that the number of voters who rank Y over X is greater than the number of voters who rank X over Y. That CW is the candidate that Plurality voters need to come together on. If you want to avoid the election of someone worse than that CW, than you (and everyone who agrees with you on that) should vote for the CW in the Plurality election. So everyone, all the progressive parties, all the progressive political organizations, all the progressive media, should be told about that CW. Probably the CW will be a progressive, not a Republocrat. Ralph Nader won pretty much all of the Internet polls for President, when Nader was a candidate. It's sometimes said that there was selection bias. Yes, there was: People with more money are more likely to have a computer. People with more money are more likely to vote conservatively. Conservatives are more likely to vote. And who is more likely to be dishonest enough to ballot-stuff? Is a dishonest voter more or less likely to accept dishonesty in his preferred candidate? More or less likely to be dishonest with himself about the honesty of his candidate? So yes, there was selection-bias. Nader won in spite of that selection bias, not because of it. But let's do more polling this time, among the candidates (Starting immediately with all who've declared or might declare). Then, poll again after the nominations. Plurality with Condorcet polling is equivalent to Condorcet. Condorcet for 2012! MO:Theoretical or hypothetical? IRV's compromise-elimination problem is blatantly obvious: All it requires is that candidate-strength (favoriteness) taper gradually away from the middle sincere CW. That's hardly an unusual state of affairs. You wrote: dlw: Remind me what CW is? [endquote] CW is short for Condorcet Winner, defined above in this post. You wrote: I view voter preferences as endogenous, more so than exogenous and fuzzy. [endquote] If they don't matter, then there's no need for elections. And if voters are feeling the need to bury their favorite, then no one will ever know what voters really want. That's the worst state of affairs that a voting system can create. It makes a joke of voting. You wrote: I don't think we need to nail the center, so much as we need to have it moved via extra-political cultural change-oriented activities. This lets me deemph these purported flaws in IRV. [endquote] IRV forces voters to bury their favorite. De-emphasize that. MO:Under those conditions, eliminations begin at the extremes, and transfers send votes inwards, t
Re: [EM] reply to a reply to IRV args by Mike Ossipoff
I refer both David Wetzell and Mike Ossipoff to this guide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style I favor interleaved style with annotation headers and nested ">" quotation indicators. Which, according to that article, makes me an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy. Nevertheless, I believe it promotes clarity in long mailing list threads. Ted On 04 Nov 2011 12:20:42 -0700, David L. Wetzell wrote: > > -- Forwarded message -- > From:??MIKE OSSIPOFF > To:?? > Date:??Thu, 3 Nov 2011 21:12:09 + > Subject:??[EM] Reply to a few IRV arguments > > I'm sorry, I can't find the message that I'm replying to. It was by an > apparent > IRV > advocate. > > He said that claims about IRV's problems are "theoretical" or "hypothetical", > and have never > been observed. Of course that isn't true. > > In Australia, where IRV has been in use for a long time, various people have > reported to us on EM > that it isn't at all unusual for voters to bury their favorite to top-rank a > compromise, so as not to > "waste their vote". Sound familiar? That's what is done in Plurality, in this > country, by everyone who > doesn't consider the Democrat and Republican the best. > > dlw: Remind me, are voters required to rank all of the candidates in both > elections? > It may still happen, but it happens less with IRV. ?? > > MO:And, in Australia, as here, there remains a two-party system, a political > system with two large parties who > always win. Here, that's the result of Plurality. Given the way people vote in > Australia, and the > reason that they give, that might be why Australia, too, has a two-party > system. > > dlw: Not everyone thinks having a two-party dominated system is bad. ??Good > luck getting electoral reforms in a two-party dominated system tilting to a > single-party dominated system that level the playing fiield for all parties > 100%. > > MO:Theoretical or hypothetical? IRV's compromise-elimination problem is > blatantly obvious: > > All it requires is that candidate-strength (favoriteness) taper gradually away > from the middle sincere CW. > > That's hardly an unusual state of affairs. > > dlw:??Remind me what CW is? ?? > I view voter preferences as endogenous, more so than exogenous and fuzzy. ?? > > I don't think we need to nail the center, so much as we need to have it moved > via extra-political cultural change-oriented activities. ??This lets me deemph > these purported flaws in IRV. ?? > > MO:Under those conditions, eliminations begin at the extremes, and transfers > send votes inwards, till the candidates > flanking that middle CW accumulate enough votes to easily eliminate hir. > > We'll never know how often that happens unless the raw rankings are available > from IRV elections. But it > must happen quite often, given the common state of affairs that is its > reqirement. > > Andy himself implied an admission that voters in IRV should be advised that > sometimes it's necessary > to bury their favorite, to top-rank a compromise. > > dlw: Some may think that this is wise. ??IRV doesn't leave no party behind. ?? > But they'd be voting like that a lot more often with plurality. ?? > Ultimately, though if folks want to change things, they need to do more than > try to get the right party into power. ?? > > MO:Do we want a method that needs that??? Do we want that when there are > plenty > of methods that don't force > that favorite-burial strategy? > > dlw: Do most people care? ??Not really. ?? > At the end of the day, it's just not that key of a facet of an electoral rule. > IRV is a signicant improvement over FPTP. ?? > It's got a first-mover and a marketing edge over all other alternatives to > FPTP > in the US. ?? > There is no self-evident oft-used alternative. ??You all proffer four > possibilities. ?? > That's not going to help rally folks around electoral reform. > > IRV+(PR in "More local" elections) is a sound prescription for making the US's > political system a lot better, especially when coupled with even more critical > political cultural changes, like what #OWS is trying to accomplish. > This is what's going to be on the front-burner and so do you want to get > behind > it or do you want to try shoot its tires? ??Cuz, unless you got a clear > alternative that is easy to market to US voters, the consequence will be to > retain FPTP in the US for even longer. > dlw > > Mike Ossipoff > > > > 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
[EM] reply to a reply to IRV args by Mike Ossipoff
-- Forwarded message -- From: MIKE OSSIPOFF To: Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2011 21:12:09 + Subject: [EM] Reply to a few IRV arguments I'm sorry, I can't find the message that I'm replying to. It was by an apparent IRV advocate. He said that claims about IRV's problems are "theoretical" or "hypothetical", and have never been observed. Of course that isn't true. In Australia, where IRV has been in use for a long time, various people have reported to us on EM that it isn't at all unusual for voters to bury their favorite to top-rank a compromise, so as not to "waste their vote". Sound familiar? That's what is done in Plurality, in this country, by everyone who doesn't consider the Democrat and Republican the best. dlw: Remind me, are voters required to rank all of the candidates in both elections? It may still happen, but it happens less with IRV. MO:And, in Australia, as here, there remains a two-party system, a political system with two large parties who always win. Here, that's the result of Plurality. Given the way people vote in Australia, and the reason that they give, that might be why Australia, too, has a two-party system. dlw: Not everyone thinks having a two-party dominated system is bad. Good luck getting electoral reforms in a two-party dominated system tilting to a single-party dominated system that level the playing fiield for all parties 100%. MO:Theoretical or hypothetical? IRV's compromise-elimination problem is blatantly obvious: All it requires is that candidate-strength (favoriteness) taper gradually away from the middle sincere CW. That's hardly an unusual state of affairs. dlw: Remind me what CW is? I view voter preferences as endogenous, more so than exogenous and fuzzy. I don't think we need to nail the center, so much as we need to have it moved via extra-political cultural change-oriented activities. This lets me deemph these purported flaws in IRV. MO:Under those conditions, eliminations begin at the extremes, and transfers send votes inwards, till the candidates flanking that middle CW accumulate enough votes to easily eliminate hir. We'll never know how often that happens unless the raw rankings are available from IRV elections. But it must happen quite often, given the common state of affairs that is its reqirement. Andy himself implied an admission that voters in IRV should be advised that sometimes it's necessary to bury their favorite, to top-rank a compromise. dlw: Some may think that this is wise. IRV doesn't leave no party behind. But they'd be voting like that a lot more often with plurality. Ultimately, though if folks want to change things, they need to do more than try to get the right party into power. MO:Do we want a method that needs that? Do we want that when there are plenty of methods that don't force that favorite-burial strategy? dlw: Do most people care? Not really. At the end of the day, it's just not that key of a facet of an electoral rule. IRV is a signicant improvement over FPTP. It's got a first-mover and a marketing edge over all other alternatives to FPTP in the US. There is no self-evident oft-used alternative. You all proffer four possibilities. That's not going to help rally folks around electoral reform. IRV+(PR in "More local" elections) is a sound prescription for making the US's political system a lot better, especially when coupled with even more critical political cultural changes, like what #OWS is trying to accomplish. This is what's going to be on the front-burner and so do you want to get behind it or do you want to try shoot its tires? Cuz, unless you got a clear alternative that is easy to market to US voters, the consequence will be to retain FPTP in the US for even longer. dlw Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
