[EM]

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>May I interrupt your discussion for a moment to ask a couple of questions?

It's not an interruption. IRV is one of our topics. And because IRV
is being so aggressively promoted by CVD, IRV is one of our most
practical topics.

>
>(I currently chair Washington Citizens for Proportional Representation

Washington state or Washington D.C?


>and I
>believe this list began from our Web site.

We split off from the ER list, around 1994 or 1995, to discuss
method merit & issues outside the charter of ER, which is mostly
for electoral reform news & strategy, etc.

>I have been a silent member of
>the list for the last couple of months, just to see what was going on.)
>
>I am disturbed by the negative references to CVD and the League of Women
>Voters new national study.

Nothing bad has been said about the LWV's new national study. Some of
us on this list have had a really bad time with the incredible
sleaze of the _California_ LWV study.

In what way is the California study sleazy? How much time do you
have for the answer? :-)  I'll save that for a future letter, today
or tomorrow. But first I'll send the first installment of an answer to
your question about IRV.

>I am trying to influence the content of the
>latter.

Then I much appreciate the fact that someone involved in planning
that study-to-be is writing here. I hope that you'll ask them to
consider every single-winner reform that has significant support or
which can be convincingly argued-for. In particular, at least Approval
and Condorcet. I hope the study won't be limited to methods that have
actually been in use, as the California study is. But if it is, then
I hope that it will at least include Approval, which has been used
in public elections in some East European countries, and which has
a significant number of U.S. advocates. Approval is also used to
choose the U.N.'s Secretary General, and is used by mathematical &
engineering professional societies with combined membership in excess
of 600,000. That includes the large IEEE (Institute of Electronic
& Electrical Enginners) and the American Statistical Association. Maybe 
something can be learned from mathematicians & engineers.

>Could you put in simple, layman's words (not formulas), what is so
>bad about IRV for single winner offices?

Yes, I'd be glad to. And I want to thank you again for writing, and
being fair enough to listen to our side of the issue. My answer to
your question about IRV will be at the end of this letter, or else
in an immediately subsequent letter. By the way, how much time do you
have for the answer :-)


>Are you so adamant in your
>opposition that you will actively and publicly oppose any tiny steps toward
>Choice Voting that those of us working in the education trenches try to
>make?

I personally am interested in single-winner methods only. I don't
oppose other things, but single-winner is what I specialize in. For
one thing, single-winner reform is much more winnable in the U.S.
For another thing, it's an underdiscussed, little-understood topic
that needs all the attention that it can get.

Choice voting is sometimes called "rank-balloting". I'll use that
latter term. Rank balloting can be a good thing, or it can be a real
mess. It all depends on how the ballots are counted. Some of the very
best single-winner methods are rank-balloting methods. So are the
very worst single-winner methods. IRV isn't the worst. Borda is the
worst. IRV is only the 2nd worst.

Rank-balloting, then, for itself, isn't a good goal, because we could
end up with a rank-balloting count rule that's worse than the currently-
used Plurality method. This is something that you won't hear from
CVD. They seem to believe that rank-balloting automatically confers
merit on a voting system, but sadly it isn't so.

I know about the trenches, because I'm there too, but on the opposing
side on the IRV issue. Yes I & others will adamantly publicly oppose
IRV, because that apparently is what it's come to. As much as 10 or
more years ago, some of us were asking CVD (initially called "CPR") to
hold off on its IRV advocacy till there could be some discussion with
the single-winner reform community. We wanted our differences to
be resolved among ourselves instead of fought before the public.
We wanted single-winner reform advocates, as a whole, to get their act
together before taking it on the road. But no...o  CVD couldn't care
less about other single-winner advocates, or about the near-unanimous
academic low opinion of IRV. And so, on the road they took it.

So then, here we are, fighting CVD's bad proposal before the public.
Just what we were trying to avoid having to do.

I'd better discuss IRV in an immediately subsequent letter to EM.

Mike Ossipoff


_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.