Problems with Condorcet

[Mike Ositoff]

> 
> Mike Ositoff wrote:
> > 
> > On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, bartman wrote:
> > 
> > > While Condorcet-type elections favor a compromise candidates in a closed
> > > setting such as a parliament (as favored in Roberts Rules) where
> > > candidates are relatively well-known peers of the voters themselves,
> > > Condorcet is not well suited for use in large public elections.  Given
> > > the realities of political advertising and voter psychology, full
> > > ranking can not be relied on to give meaningful enough results to
> > > support pairwise counting.
> > 
> > Though it isn't clear what you mean, people I've talked to would
> > very much welcome the opportunity to express all their preferences
> > & have them counted. Where do you get your information?
> 
> How about the voter turnout figures?  Most eligible voters can't be

Yes, how about those turnout figures. Countries that do their
single-winner elections by rank-balloting have far higher turnout
than we do.


> bothered to go to the polls to vote for one candidate per race, let
> alone rank every candidate.  I don't know how many people you have

When you hear what a nonvoter says, he doesn't say "The election
is meaningful, and the choices are good, but it's still too
much work to spend a few minutes every 2 years." He says, instead
that there's no meaningful choice, that there's lousy selection.
He'll probably mention the lesser-of-2-evils problem that means
your vote is wasted if you vote for someone you really like, so
any effective vote has to be for someone you have a low opinion
of. Can you blame that person for not voting? Rank balloting
lets you vote for your favorite, makes the election much more
worthwhile, interesting, and less boring. And also, thereby,
it lets  less well-funded candidates enter the race without fear
of being a spoiler. And therefore, it results in a much more
interesting & broader selection among genuinely different 
candidates. 

It's hardly any surprise then that our turnout is so poor, and
that Australia & Ireland have such better turnout.

> talked to outside of these election reform lists, but I don't think you
> will find many for whom "all their preferences" include every candidate
> on the ballot.  Do you have any studies or surveys to the contrary?

You've misunderstood us. We don't advocate forcing voters to 
rank everyone on the ballot. Do you? Good, then a voter can rank
as many or as few as he wants to. It isn't at all unusual for
people to be able to express a "better than" relationship between
every pair of candidates--but no one has to.

> 
> > People like the idea of voting for their favorite over everyone,
> > without giving up their opportunity toi vote a lower choice
> > compromise over less-liked alternatives.
> 
> I would agree, except for the idea that a lower choice is necessarily a
> "compromise" (where the word is taken to mean "negotiated solution" or
> "middle ground").  The lower choice is simply the most palatable
> remaining alternative.  

It's usually a "middle-ground". And a compromise in the sense of
"If I can't have A, then at least B would be better than C".


	> 
> > > For example, a vote which ranks a major candidate last may simply mean
> > > that he is perceived as the greatest threat to the other major
> > > candidate.  This is reinforced by negative advertising by major
> > > candidates, who tend to demonize their main opponents while ignoring the
> > > rest.  This does not necessarily mean he is an extremist or unqualified;
> > > it may simply mean he is the second most popular.
> > 
> > Were you here when we were discussing order-reversal?  I wrote
> > at great length, a month or 2 ago, about why it won't be a
> > problem in the votes-against methods that we recommend.
> > Are you saying that you have a proposed method that's
> > strategy-free? Are you saying even that you have one that's
> > as strategy-free as the various votes-against Condorcet versions
> > we've recommended, and are discussing? Maybe you'll propose one
> > further down in this letter that I'm replying to.
> 
> I don't know that "strategy-free" is even a worthwhile objective,

That, good buddy, is where you part ways with everyone who wants
single-winner reform. Even voters who never heard of electoral
reform know that they're regretably constrained by the lesser-of-
2-evils problem. That's a strategy problem.

> compared to solving some of the grossest problems present in the current
> system, and I don't see why my pointing out a flaw in one system

All electoral reform advocates consider the LO2E problem to be
a quite gross & serious one. Many, maybe all, consider it the
grossest problem of FPTP. Again, you've neglected to tell us what
_is_ a gross problem of FPTP, if the need for defensive strategyk
isn't in your opinion a gross problem.

> requires that I propose another in its place anyway.  You're not just

Of course you needn't. But not many will believe your criticisms
if you don't offer anything better. Shall we scrap reform efforts
till you decide to tell us what reforms would be better?

> setting up a straw-man that you plan to knock down later in your reply,
> are you?

Sometimes people nicely set them up on their own.

> 
> > > Middle-rankings are also suspect, since not all candidates are equally
> > > well known.  A vote which ranks a candidate somewhere in the middle may
> > > mean the candidate is an acceptable compromise, or it may simply mean he
> > > is an unknown who is not perceived as a threat to a more favored
> > > candidate.  Even if he is a reasonable compromise in one sense, he may
> > > be an extremist in other areas.  He may also be otherwise unqualified
> > > for some reason which could easily be overlooked, since a voter is not
> > > likely to use the same care in selecting lower-ranked candidates that he
> > > would use for his first choice.
> > 
> > So you feel that voters might not know all the candidates well,
> > or that they'll overlook something. And, for that reason you'd
> > deny them the right to express as many preferences as they want
> > to, and to have them counted reliably & fully. Maybe it's not
> > for you to judge the voter's judgement? I just wanted to establish
> > just what it is that you were saying.
> 
> I don't object to counting all of everyone's preferences, I only object
> to drawing false conclusions from the results.  I don't think I am

Is that vague statement your best argument against rank-balloting?
that true conclusions can't be drawn from them?

> calling the electorate incompetent by claiming that aggregate results
> for lower rankings will contain increasing amounts of "noise" the
> farther down you go, and that at some point the data becomes
> meaningless.

Do you realize how many unsupported statements you make? At least
say "I conjecture that people's preferences are meaningless".
It isn't at all clear, you see, why you claim that someone's
preference for their next to last choice, and their highly
abominable last choice is meaningless.

[...]


> > 
> > People really do have opinions about the relative merit of
> > candidates for an office. You only care about voting for your
> > top 2 or 3 choices? Fine. I encourage you to only rank 3 or 4.
> > With our methods you an do that without worry. It won't
> > adversely affect the results. But it certainly isn't for you
> > to say how many preferences others have, and how many they should
> > be allowed to express.
> 
> Nonsense.  I have just as much right to an opinion as you, whether to
> express my guess as to how many choices the majority of people would be
> happy with, or to say where I think a ballot should be truncated. 

Absolutely. You have the right to advocate denial of any right
or freedom that you want to. You even have the right to advocate
systems of government other than democracy, in which there's
zero public participation. But that's only your opinion. If you
want to claim that voters shouldn't be allowed to express preferencess
that they want to express, you should give a good reason. Claiming
that, or that it would be better without democracy, you might
not convince many. But you surely won't without giving good 
reasons. You're certainly wrong if you claim that no one has
more than one or two pairwise preferences. You said to only
allow 2 or 3 rank positions, and not to allow equal ranking.
Do you know what 2 rank positions without equal ranking is?
It's FPTP, which we currently use.


> Ultimately it will be up to the public or their representatives to make
> a judgement call.  You may have an opinion on every candidate in a race,
> but since when does having more opinions entitle someone to more votes?

Again, you could say that people aren't entitled to express
preferences that they want counted. Or you could say that people
aren't entitled to democracy. It would be pointless to argue
that with you. What, in your mind, would entitle people to
democracy, or the right to express preferences that they
want to, & have them counted? Either you agree with us on
that, or you don't. Maybe we can agree to disagree.

> 
> > IRO encourages the expression of long rankings too. It just
> > doesn't reliably count the preferences that it allows you
> > to express. It's rather like a car, up on blocks. You get to
> > have fun running the engine & turning the steering wheel back
> > & forth, but nothing more is guaranteed.
> 
> Kind of like sitting in Condorcet Hell debating endless variations on
> the same theme.

Could you be more specific? :-) If a debate or discussion is Hell for
you, then you might be well advised to withdraw from it.
You would write to election-methods-list-request at eskimo.com
and your subject line would say "unsubscribe" (without the quotes).

It's already been explained here that it's better if electoral
reformers have a good idea what's best, and have made some
study of the merits of & the results of the methods that
they advocate. Some reform advocates disagree. Maybe CVD disagrees.


> > You've gone and disappointed me, Bart. You didn't tell us what
> > method is better than the ones that we recommend & propose.
> 
> Why did I know that shot was coming?  It doesn't refute anything I have
> said, anyway.
> 
> I think any reasonable method that addresses the FPTP problems and can
> be adopted sooner than yours is by definition "better".  It could be

The sooner the better, sure. But it has to be a genuine reform.
It's always necessary to weigh merit vs quick winnability. I
tend to lean toward the latter more than others on this list.
But not as far as IRO advocates, who lean all the way to
non-reforms. And many would agree that Sequential Dropping
isn't more complicated than IRO. Plain Condorcet(EM) is
simpler still.


> IRO, truncated IRO, or even a simple runoff election -- unless you
> believe that none of these is a vast improvement over FPTP.  I keep

That's putting it mildly. Those methods have defensive strategy
dilemma (lesser-of-2-evils problem) whenver FPTP does.
They're non-reforms.

> seeing Condorcet billed as a way to promote compromise winners, but I
> suspect much of the interest in this method is due to the way it favors
> third-party candidates more strongly than other methods.  If you want to

Yet another unsupported claim from you. Actually, someone near
to the middle tends to be Condorcet winner, and our proposals
are the best for electing Condorcet winners. It's IRO & Runoff
that will often fail by electing a more extreme candidate
(but maybe not the one you like).

> support it for that reason, fine, but it will be a tough sell getting it
> through a two-party legislature.  At least the "--runoff" methods can be

Yes it will, because, though our methods would often choose
from the middle, they don't force voters to insincerely vote
for 1 of the 2 candidates claimed or believed to be frontrunners.
That may be perceived as a threat to the "2-party" monopoly.

But eliminating that forced defensive strategy doesn't unfairlly
favor anyone.
>[Runoff methods could be...]

> presented as a win/win situation for both major and minor parties, with
> the major parties becoming immune from vote-splitting, and minor parties
> being freed of the "wasted vote" stigma;  I know of at least one

Wrong. The split vote problem, in general, remains with IRO &
Runoff. Wasted votes remain a problem. Your IRO vote is wasted
when it's held by your favorite, resulting in the elimination of
the only candidate who can win for you. Same with Runoff when
that winnable candidate doesn't make the runoff because you
voted for your favorite instead.



> Republican representative who is in favor of a runoff.

I know of at least one Republican representative who is in
favor of lots of things, but that doesn't prove that they're
desirable. I daresay many Republican representatives (& democrats
too) favor FPTP.

> 
>