Spread spectrum analysis: IR vs Condorcet

[Steve Eppley]

Mike O wrote:
-snip-
>So that's why I say that IRO is worse than Plurality, when it comes
>to strategy dilemma. Plurality is free of strategy dilemma when IRO
>is, but IRO has strategy dilemma when Plurality doesn't.

You're talking about voters' strategy dilemmas.  Candidates and 
potential candidates also have strategy dilemmas: the spoiler dilemma
is faced by potential candidates when they're deciding whether or not 
to run, which is long before the "election eve" polls can assist their 
decisions.

I think the absence of reliable polling data when candidates are
deciding whether or not to run implies that candidates will have a
spoiler dilemma in both IRO and Plurality, which makes me believe
your statement is true for candidates as well as voters.

-snip-
>Some IRO advocates also claim that IRO is ok by majority rule,
>because, after you eliminate the candidate who has a majority over
>everyone, then, among the remaining two, IRO will pick the one
>preferred to the other by a majority !! :-)

Soviet-style elections, where only one candidate runs, satisfy this
peculiar definition of majority rule too.

-snip-
>One IRO advocate re-defined the LO2E problem so that, if a voter
>doesn't mind the election of Worst, due to his failure to
>insincerely rank Middle in 1st place, and if that voter therefore
>votes sincerely, then the method doesn't have a LO2E problem, by
>that person's definition.

That advocate was wrong.  Even for voters willing to vote sincerely,
knowing they're risking election of the greater evil, the method has
a problem *for those voters* if other voters vote insincerely for
Middle.  For example, consider all the Nader supporters spending
their time trying to convince others not to vote for LOE-Clinton. 
They wouldn't be spending any time on this if they had no LOE
problem.  They'd only have no problem if the number of voters
willing to vote for LOE-Clinton was small.

-snip-
>What an effective & powerful way to eliminate any problem.

Sounds similar to what Mike York wrote in singlewinner at development.com:
he thinks it's fine that voters have to choose to abandon one of
their two goals (electing favorite or preventing election of the
greater evil) when voting.  For him, voting is about making choices,
and this choosing which goal to abandon is just another choice to 
be made.  In his mind, it's not possible to vote insincerely, since
any choice a voter makes is sincere.

>That same IRO advocate also said that the voter would resent
>it if Middle won with few 1st choice votes (we're talking 
>about the voter who likes Favorite best, with Middle his 2nd
>choice, and who hates Worst. This IRO advocate claimed that
>that voter would rather have the hated Worst win, because the
>election of Middle with fewest votes would offend that voter.

The Middle (beats-all) candidate would be offended a bit.  
Talk about your sore losers...

It looks like IRO would continue to elect Dems and Reps, and there
could be an anti-reform backlash when beats-all-pairwise candidates
lose in IRO. 

I'm amazed that IRO advocates, who properly care so much about
establishing prop rep to end the two-party system, can be so
inconsistent.  To drive a stake through the two-party system's
heart, the spoiler and LOE dilemmas must be eliminated (plus other
things, like campaign cost and finance reform).  Yet they're
comfortable with IR because it's "simpler" than Condorcet, and
they're comfortable with the parliamentary system even though many
voters will vote for one of the two largest parties in order to
prevent the other large party from picking the executive officers. 

I think they also underestimate the difficulty of establishing prop
rep at the federal level without the stepping stone of multiparty-
viable singlewinner districts.  In our ER commentary message about
sw, I think we should spend considerable effort pointing out how
important sw reform is.

---Steve     (Steve Eppley    seppley at alumni.caltech.edu)