[EM] `Head them off at the Pass' Mike

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

>How is the Good Fight going against Irving and his Irvies???

>
>Will you and your posse be able to `Head them off at the Pass'??
>
>Ha Ha
>
>Don

Yes, Don, it would be funny if it weren't so regrettable for electoral 
reform.

By the way, what inspired this letter? I haven't written about IRVies
in the last few days.

If you're implying that all the busy little marching IRVies are too
numerous to successfully oppose, then maybe you're right. But in no
way does that mean that we shouldn't keep telling people about IRV's
faults, about its complete inadequacy as a "reform".

That's because the more we register these facts in the public record,
(and the fact that we've made this information amply available to the
IRVies), then, later, when IRV fails in use, or when people generally
find out about how good it really isn't, the more difficult it will
be for the IRVies to explain why they pushed it on the public so
aggressively, and why they didn't share with the public any of the
information about IRV's serious problems. They won't be able to say
that they didn't know.

Now, Don, can I entertain you with an amusing IRV story?

Candidate Sleazeworth is going to lose the Presidential election, but
then the media publish some newly-discovered information about
Sleazeworth's contributors, and the relationship between his contributions 
and his policies and broken promises. As a result,
a number of Sleazeworth's supporters who were going to rank him 1st
in the IRV election, are so disgusted and angry that they decide to
instead rank Sleazeworth last.

But because they do that, now Sleazeworth wins, though he'd have lost
if those people had left him in 1st place.

Someone could say that IRV didn't respond very well to what those
people wanted to do. Some people would question the value of any
device or system that does the opposite of what its users are trying
to make it do.

That problem is known as "nonmonotonicity". If you prefer, we can
just call it "opposite response".

And it will happen, though it won't happen every time. That result
is nonsense. Any voting system that would do that is nonsense. IRV
is nonsense.

But IRV has other problems that will happen even more often. IRVies
like to boast that IRV lets you vote all of your preferences, but they
forget that it doesn't necessarily count them. When your traveling
vote hasn't yet reached a compromise candidate whom you need, then
he can get eliminated because you didn't insincerely vote him in 1st
place. In IRV, you have one vote that can only be on one candidate at
a time. How likely is it that it will be where you need it, at the
right time? Don't count on it. Sometimes your last choice will win
because you didn't insincerely rank some lesser-evil in 1st place.

The IRVies, so enthusiastic about being able to vote all of their
preferences, similar to someone sitting in the driver's seat
of a car that's up on blocks, having fun turning the steering wheel
back and forth.

At least Approval actually reliably counts every preference that you
vote. Sure, you can't vote all of your preferences, but at least Approval
counts every preference that you consider important enough to be one
of those that you express (at the expense of some other preference(s)).

I like to be the one to decide which of my pairwise preferences will
be counted. IRVies apparently prefer that to be idiosyncratically
decided by IRV.

Of course Condorcet counts all the preferences that you vote.

Mike Ossipoff


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