[EM] Another article on the Australian controversy

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>The thing I don't like about this is that Condorcet is just as vulnerable
>to this sort of attack.  I suppose this is a good argument against
>treating IRV as an acceptable "stepping stone" to IRV; the major parties
>still have the power to exploit the system, without truly empowering the
>minor parties.  This in turn creates a situation where people sour on the
>whole concept of preference voting.

Where a party is bribed to put another party high on their
how-to-vote card, that's just another variation in the old problem
of bribery. In the U.S. we don't have preferential voting, but
does anyone think we don't have a bribery problem?

So it's unfair to attribute that bribery problem to preferential
voting. Sure, it's a form of bribery that is peculiar to preferential
(or Approval) voting, but it seems obvious that, given a good
rank-count (which IRV isn't), the voter's freedom to vote sincerely
would have a more important effect against corruption than the
preferential bribe would have for corruption. With Plurality,
as Myerson pointed out, _any_ 2 parties can be made into
equilibrium frontrunners by the media, by calling them "the 2 choices",
even if everyone prefers someone else. I earlier talked about
Myerson's corruption test. My Unanimously Unpreferred Candidate
Criterion (UUCC) is a simplification and extension of Myerson's
corruption test.

My point is that Plurality is second only to Borda for electing
despised, corrupt candidates. It would be absurd to say that the
possibility of bribe-influenced how-to-vote cards outweighs the
necessity of getting rid of Plurality, in regards to corruption.

Plurality is worse than crooked how-to-vote cards.

And if the
voters do whatever they're told, if they misjudge that badly the
honesty level of the people from whom they take advice, then that's
the problem, not the voting system.

Get rid of IRV, sure. But replace it with something better.

Mike Ossipoff





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