[EM] 12/23/02 - Show Us The Ballots Mikeo!!

[Donald E Davison]

12/23/02 - Comments on Mikeo's list of Best Methods:

Greetings list members,

Mikeo wrote:

From: "MIKE OSSIPOFF" <nkklrp at hotmail.com>
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Best Method In Use
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 06:15:45 +0000

I only know of 3 single-winner methods that are used in public
political elections, and all 3 are used in national elections:

1. Plurality (aka 1-vote Plurality or 1st Past The Post (FPTP) ).
2. Top-2 Runoff (aka Runoff)
3. IRVf (aka the Alternative Vote, Preferential Voting,
   Majority Preferential Voting, Hare)

Donald here:  Actually, there is a number four Mikeo, it's a variant of
Approval Voting, it's called `Plurality-at-Large for single-seat'
(Correction: Approval Voting is a variant of `Plurality-at-Large for
single-seat').  It is used to elect the president of a council in many
American cities, big and small.  This variant of Approval Voting does not
elect the choice of the people, it elects the candidate with the most pity
votes.

Mikeo: "Of those, I claim that Runoff is the best."

Donald:  Runoff is not the best, anyone who is not a fool should be able to
see that.  Runoff requires a follow up election and it is only valid for
three candidates in the original election.  The only thing that can be said
in its favor is that the voters know who the final two candidates are to be
in the follow up election, but that piece of information could be
considered as a possibility when ranking choices in an Irving election,
without a second trip to the polls.  Besides, Irving is valid for more than
three candidates.

Mikeo: "One advantage that Runoff has over IRV is that, with Runoff, at
least a CW can't lose if s/he comes in 1st or 2nd in the 1st balloting,
whereas in IRV a CW can lose even if s/he's the favorite of by far the most
people. The scenario in which that happens isn't at all implausible. It
requires only that candidates' favoriteness support taper gradually for
candidates  farther away from that Plurality winner CW. Then, the
eliminations at the extremes, and the centerward transfers, will reach
candidates adjacent to that CW before they reach the CW, and the CW will
likely be eliminated.
   IRV's poor social utility scores in simulations resulted from the
frequent elimination of median candidates, probably happening largely as
described above."

Donald:  You should be ashamed of yourself.  This is merely more of the
same gobbledegook that you have been handing out for the last five years.
It is clear you haven't learned much in five years.  People are not going
to think you are super smart just because they don't understand what the
hell it is you are talking about.

<snip>  (useless text)

Mikeo: "The Secretary General of the U.N. is elected by Approval.

<snip>  (more useless text)

Though your question was about official governance elections, let me just
add that Approval is also used by mathematical and engineering professional
societies with combined membership in excess of 600,000."       Mike
Ossipoff

Donald:  This is not the first time you have bragged about Approval Voting
being used in the UN and some societies.  By now, I should think that you
would be able to show us some real ballot results from one of these
elections, which will tell us more about Approval Voting than all your
gobbledegook.

Approval Voting is just fine for any meaningless election, but as the
election becomes more political we will find more voters bullet voting and
therein lies the trump card that Irving holds over Approval Voting.  While
there is no danger for the voter to make choices in an Irving election, but
if most of the voters do bullet vote, Irving can survive and still function
as Irving, but Approval cannot function as Approval when faced with bullet
voting by most of the public, it will turn into a variant of Irving (poetic
justice).

Mikeo, you are like a monk sitting on his fat ass in a dark room trying to
think how the universe works without observing the universe.  You need to
observe real elections.

No good to just say you are sorry, you need to redeem yourself by getting
off your fat ass and getting some ballots from a real Approval Voting
election - Show Us The Ballots Mikeo!!







Regards,
   Donald Davison, host of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald
                        Candidate Election Methods
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