[EM] The Allure of IRV...

[hager2002 at lsh107.siteprotect.com]

On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Alex Small wrote:

> I was talking to a co-worker about France.  I said this indicates a flaw of
> runoff methods.
> 
> She doesn't know much about voting methods, so she started saying that
> the "successive elimination method" is much better because in France a
> whole bunch of liberals divided the vote and kept any liberals out of the
> finale, whereas "successive elimination" (her name for IRV) would have put
> a liberal in the finale.  Basically, she'd heard somebody describe IRV once
> and she thinks it's great.  (In all fairness, I also thought it was great
> when I first learned there were alternatives to plurality.)
> 
[...]
> 
> This is the problem with dissuading people against IRV:  The idea of a
> guaranteed majority looks so great, never mind that the majority is very
> path-dependent (which leads to non-monotonicity, IIAC, etc.).  It also
> looks so great that if our favorite is gone, well, at least we can weigh in
> on the remaining candidates.  Face it, folks, IRV _LOOKS_ really good.

Funny, I first read about AV only after I'd heard about IRV -- which I 
knew as preference voting.  AV was immediately attractive to me because it 
was much simpler.  It was only in the past couple of years that I learned 
that IRV has all sorts of nasty properties.

> 
> I don't know how to break through that psychology for others.  I myself
> broke through it because I enjoy math, so I was drawn to investigate
> election methods further.  Also, I went to a talk by Saari, and although I
> don't agree with him on BC he at least illustrated issues I'd never thought
> of.  Even though I don't share his conclusions, I'm glad Saari showed that
> the issue is much bigger than simply making sure you get a majority
> (however manufactured) in the end.
> 
> But, not everybody will attend a talk by an expert who doesn't like IRV.
> Not everybody will bother to read up on it.  They just hear that it worked
> in this one election, and if your first choice is gone, well, don't worry,
> you still have some say.  How to dissuade them?

It's somewhat early to tell, but I had an initial battle with pro-IRV 
people on the Bylaws Committee of the national Libertarian Party.  I 
basically ripped them to shreds -- very nicely of course -- and I think 
they've all come around.  Of course, that process took several back and 
forth exchanges.

Regarding my challenge in the general election, I won't have time for back
and forth.  However, I have a big advantage in that Indiana is virgin
territory -- the IRV folks haven't been around to muddy the waters.

If I'm challenged about (very rarely) IRV, my current approach is to
briefly explain that IRV, unlike AV, is a ranked voting system (most
people won't know what it is and I'm not going to attempt to explain it).  
I then say something like: 

"The advantage of AV over other systems is that it is very simple, very
good at finding the true majority candidate, and would cost essentially
nothing to implement.  I know of no other system which has all three
attributes.  Having said that, there are other voting systems that are
worth considering and the task force on voting reform that I will put
together when I'm elected will be charged with evaluating alternatives.  
The best ranked system, incidentally, is not IRV -- it's called the
Condorcet method.  In voting science, Condorcet is the standard by which
all other voting methods are measured.  In fact, the term voting theorists
use for the majority winner is the "Condorcet winner" because Condorcet
will always find the true majority winner in an election.  If Hoosier
voters would prefer to see their tax dollars go for replacing all of our
voting machines in order to have a ranked system, then I and, I'm sure,
the task force will ratify that desire.  But I strongly suspect that the
recommendation would be for Condorcet, not IRV. A Condorcet ballot and an
IRV ballot are identical.  The difference is in how the votes are tallied.  
That difference is important because the expert view is that, although IRV
is better than the current plurality system, it has some nasty properties
that make it a questionable choice for voting reform.  One of these is
that if you rank three candidates A, B, and C, it is possible that if you
swap your A and B choices, it could cause C to win.  Another is that,
unlike Condorcet, IRV will often fail to find the true majority
candidate."

At that point I say that if people are interested I'll be happy to go into
more detail.  

> 
> Don't say "Hitler-Stalin-Washington."  The example is so extreme that it
> will be ignored.
> 
> Don't say "monotonicity" or "IIAC".  Most people will fall asleep.
> 
> I guess the only way to beat the IRV psychology is to reach them before the
> IRV people do.  I got started on my Eastern European research by contacting
> Steven Brams.  He admits that his knowledge of E. Europe is dated, so the
> info posted to the list is likely right.  Well, time to get going faster on
> it...

AS I said, so far, I've had pretty good success converting people away 
from IRV.  Of course, I haven't encountered any IRV true believers yet.  
It probably helps that I say that ultimately, all I want is a system that 
works and that the voters of Indiana will accept.

> 
> Alex
> 
> P.S.  This person is an engineer.
> 
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-- 
paul hager		hager2002 at hager2002.org

"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
			-- Thomas Paine, THE AGE OF REASON

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