[EM] ICCPR Article 25(b) violations of Washington Citizens for Proportional Representation

[Craig Carey]

This is draft quality material.
Please understand that I hardly know anything of both the CVD and STV.
I don't know what the CVD is upto.



At 08:47 08.10.00 -0700 Sunday, JanetRAnderson wrote:
 >May I interrupt your discussion for a moment to ask a couple of questions?
 >
 >(I currently chair Washington Citizens for Proportional Representation and I
 >believe this list began from our Web site.  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.  I am trying to influence the content of the
 >latter.  Could you put in simple, layman's words (not formulas), what is so
 >bad about IRV for single winner offices?  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?

Since IRV is being shown to be bad, numerical examples will suffice (unless
you want volumes calculated or something). My message #68 (URL below) has the
simplest examples. I really do believe that the CVD aims can be failed over
a single example.

 >
 >I am a teacher and strong supporter of STV.  If there is something better,
 >that you can make understandable to me, and that I can help make
 >understandable to others, I'd like to hear about it on or off the list..
 > Thank you.
 >JanetRAnderson at msn.com
 >
 >----- Original Message -----
...
 >Subject: [EM] Papers are voters: asserting aspects of voters
...

I have online my IFPP (Improved First Past the Post) theory. On this page is
tow 3 candidate formula, and also the axioms. It is my claim that the axioms
are desirable. I don't mind if that are not able to be educated to others.
I don't know what to do if they "disturb" others.

IFPP axioms and formula: http://www.ijs.co.nz/ifpp.htm
I am running into a trace of possible ambiguity in my 4 candidate derivation
and I hope to eliminate that.

There are some central ideas to my reply: firstly infinitesimals should rule,
which corresponds to the minority point of view of requiring a method to be
good to individual voters and candidates and indifferent to society. It turns
out that quotas seem to turn up and it doesn't look like society would get
a method all that much different. The STV advocates have a common collective
problem of not having a clue of what is ideal. STV is not fair on a small
scale. Inside STV-style preferential voting, fairness on a global scale is
very far from being an idea simple enough for people to guess at. The next
lot of mathematical messages I send to my Politicians and Polytopes mailing
list at Egroups will define that better. Nevertheless, STV is quite unfair
in a overall sense (i.e. where the changes in votes can be over 10% or
whatever).

In my opinion, the CVD is advocating a reduction of human rights for
American citizens. Its website seems to show that it is content on no public
discussion on that likely real intent of the CVD. I allege now that CVD
advocates a reduction in Article 25(b) ICCPR rights of persons inside of
the United States of America:
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr.htm

I guess the list shares my opinion of wanting to monitor the CVD and leave
USA up to whatever. I don't even know the names of the regions under threat
of losing human rights that the US Senate and Congress held a previous aim
of upholding and protecting. None of these seeming planned violations are
lessened by the CVD website dispersing over 100 gigabytes of documents on
"fairness". They would get a bit of fairness too if FPTP is removed. What
they don't get with FPTP is an very plain material loss of human rights to
vote for their representatives. We need to assume that the voters do not
for the opposite of what they want (after the CVD, etc., has won the dispute
over the method to be used).

My comments and a smallest example making the case:
http://www.egroups.com/message/politicians-and-polytopes/68

Monotonicity is a rule that prohibits the weights becoming negative. Unlike
proportionality outside of preferential voting, it makes no statement when
the weights are 0.
In Article 25(b) there is the words "equal suffrage". The High Commissioner
in Geneva might regard the CVD as being out of touch with the international
law. I suppose they don't check these sorts of things, any more than they
do research into their own methods.

Lawyers and mathematicians can agree on strictness. If the USA wants to
shut down its courts, then let the CVD have the success it can. In the
meantime, can't the CVD do something about bringing its aims into compliance
with the mind of Congress and Senate: those that wanted the ICCPR. The CVD
has no defence and is incriminated with a single example, and it is badly
out of step with the monotonicity following proportional representation
'weights applied to votes shall not be negative' community. Nevertheless,
the CVD may have a capacity for magic success. The CVD could hold a national
competition for the best reasons on why it is desirable to have methods
with stages and each loses only one candidate. Tell us what the position
of the Washington Citizens for Proportional Representation group is, over
the key aspect of IRV that attracts to it so much of the criticism, and
an aspect that also makes it have a vote for, be counted as a vote
against, ?.

Isn't Washington a big city?: really. I just got a message on the voting
rat, from Oz, and wouldn't it be easier for all if your group and the CVD
could prepare a report on the human rights losses that you are jointly
proposing for (what is it?, the capital of USA?).


----

Anybody see a page at the CVD website saying that they are researching
into the Choice Vote and continually improving it?. The CVD seems to
not admit that people have been criticising STV. So the CVD may think
that it has good reason for presenting the case for so called fairness
in a way that is unfair. The problem is that the CVD looks as if it is
doing no research. In Britain, an intent to do no research has been
sustained for years. I suggest councils keep a distance from the CVD
and give them 150 years to adopt a scientific approach.

The author asked what the CVD ought be promoting?. Well, that is a
tough question indeed: one of their internal groups tasked with
reforming the CVD can take that issue up.



-------------

Regarding this:

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

That is something I can do. (a) For small numbers of candidates
the main defect of the IRV and STV and Choice and the Alternative Vote is
that the method fails my P1 rule. That is similar to saying it fails
monotonicity. (b) The STV method deteriorates and becomes unfair too quickly
as the number of winners and/or candidates increases due to wastage associated
with the "multiplying of transfer values". A good method doesn't have
any multiplying of transfer values. The STV method has more than 1 division
and multiplication so it is non-linear. Where-ever there is a curved region
in the method, it can be unbent. What of the CVD?: another ERS holding the
faith for 1 century or two, but for what outcome?.


The CVD's silent website:   http://www.fairvote.org/

Why if I had a dime for every statement the CVD made that it was advocating
fairness.... or is it the influx of dimes that lead to the statements that
goodness and fairness is needed. Our councils had nationwide pro-STV
reforms killed off without trouble while it was still a bill (at the
first reading if I recall).

The rejection of a few woman political candidates careers is good for all
(yes?) once STV is in. If they disagree then could they write to the CVD and
get the raw paper counts analyzed?. It doesn't seem from the website of
Mr Loring. I guess the answer is no: the CVD is the blind leading the blind.
Politicians can hold their own opinions on that trait in idealistic
lobbyists. It is enough to switch them over to using desire when making
decisions, unless they can think of good questions. Some STV advocates
would admit to problems with the method. But I can't go along with
tolerating faults because the issue here is why there is no better method
and no research. The CVD has no R&D efforts?. Who would doubt that the
CVD would mess up?.

Suppose the CVD is not merely secretive about its modifications to STV
but it is also adjusting the algorithm to create certain biases. Readers
will agree that the CVD likely has been testing different methods with
different data. It might be trying to make women win, possibly since they
can be brought onside more easily. I think government should reject
algorithms from the CVD without even looking at them and reject the
algorithms forever until the CVD states it admits that the design was
never influenced by testing against data from real elections. Let the
CVD make the tweaks it considered, optional for the councils, and let
the councils supply their own data and do the tests in secret. I am
suggesting the should be zero tolerance of corrupt methods. If the
councils copy from UK European parliament Irish member that
Mr Ian Paisly (etc.) stood for, the method may be suboptimal but it won't
be both corrupt and a method that leads to unwelcome loss of basic human
rights and freedoms of inhabitants of states in USA. There are foreigners
subscribed, and it looks like were are out of the loop with CVD purposes.

Suppose at the next election this rejected woman candidate becomes
a voter and her vote is similarly negated in its effect and a similarly
like minded candidate voted for was caused to lose. A problem here is
that the CVD is upholding (through advocacy of the Choice vote) unfairness
to the candidate (and supporters) but it isn't gaining anything that
good enough to justify the CVD's intelligent detailed public
information-withholding [provable] advocacy of unfairness. If the women's
groups want to say that overall the CVD Choice voting is really truly
to women's benefit: who cares: the women's point of view can be rapidly
discarded because they are rejecting the rigour of jurisprudence (and
also human rights as well as speaking evidently contrary to their own
interests, except I can't judge the size of these matters).



---------------------------------------------------


PaP: http://www.egroups.com/group/politicians-and-polytopes



At 13:46 08.10.00 -0400 Sunday, RJ Vein wrote:
>I, too, am a lay observer of this discussion, and would like to second these 
>questions, with an emphasis on the "understandable" part. I am one of those 
>uneducated voters you speak of.
>--R.V., Student
>   East Lansing, MI


On opposing Choice Voting: I don't have a definition of it. For those
that follow the CVD, it could be the only reality.

The CVD is tweaking up STV (?) as if it were transferring knowledge on
how to fix taps into the topic of how to substitute parts into a rocket
engine. Do they have the people competent to the task?. They can perhaps
do their job well just by using random walks inside the algorithm and
numerical simulation. Has the CVD done that?. The CVD seems to have no
software available for downloading. If the CVD has software then it quite
probably is trying to restrict the public knowledge in what are good
voting methods. The CVD seems to not have software. No even 300 lines
of computer code. If they could do 1 to 2 lines a year they might be
able to outstrip the good research the Electoral Reform Society of the
United Kingdom has been doing. Or maybe that is wrong. Questions about
STV is best treated numerically. There seems to be no other way. Yet the
CVD seems to have no software. Does the CVD throw I Ching yarrow sticks
when deciding on how to alter STV?. I am not really particularly
interested in criticising the CVD. But I believe I have made a strong
case that questions about the CVD should be directed to the CVD. And
also, councils could delay perhaps up to 200 years and see if the
CVD reforms itself.


John Cleese: when humour is not enough and the councillor is out of
office but should still be there (gunned down with an badly designed
algorithm that is designed to fail):
http://www.fairvote.org/issues/popvotes/cleese.htm


Matters closely about STV are programming problems, for STV is too complex
to progress far with using REDLOG (a symbolic existential logic package).

If you want to force me out: great stuff. Africa will be the shining star
of democracy. I am not even following the problems of the USA.