[EM] Raw Deal for Mayors, more unfairness than improvement

[Craig Carey]

http://www.fairvote.org/irv/faq.htm

 >      Who opposes IRV?
 >
 >      Little  organized  opposition  to   IRV   exists.   Election
 >      officials are understandably cautious about  a  system  that
 >      may increase their workload, and some  incumbents  fear  any
 >      change to the system that elected them. If you  can  win  an
 >      election under a plurality or runoff  system,  however,  the
 >      odds are that you would also win under IRV.  The  exceptions
 >      are rare but can  be  important.  Examples  include  several
 >      recent  House  races  in  New  Mexico,  where  Green   Party
 >      candidates threw races to Republicans, and state legislative
 >      races  in  Alaska  in   which   Libertarians   and   Alaskan
 >      Independent Party candidates knocked off Republicans.
 >
 >      Some political minorities may believe that they can only win
 >      representation in a  plurality  election.  Such  groups  may
 >      oppose IRV, but of course,  in  such  situations,  a  larger
 >      groups stands to gain representation by IRV.
 >

At their own FAQ they assert that it is also "rare" for the Alternative
Vote, to produce a different result from the result that
First Past the Post ("a plurality election") would produce.

The makes assertions that would increase this ratio:


    The number of events where AV/IRV gets the winner wrong
   ---------------------------------------------------------
    The number of events where AV/IRV gets a different winner


In my opinion, a problem is that is that IRV only needs monotonicity
for it to be fixed and made fair. Thus there is a linkage between
getting the winners wrong, and non-monotonicity.

The CVD argues (apologetically. the top 1-2 leaders of the CVD, USA's
new architects of how to get a tiny number of winners in US local
governments, wrongly chosen), that monotonicity problems are really
unlikely.

The more secretive the CVD is over what monotonicity is, and why it is
in the Alternative Vote, then the more we can expect that they are
perfectly aware that the probability far greater than some "rare"
event.

Mr Brian Wichmann of UK produced a PDF document showing that about
1 in 3 of the winners of Meek STV differed from the winners of some
other STV. Later the document vanished and someone else can try
to get it back online.

The probability of IRV failing seems (the probability of a mayor
going down in flames due to the unfairness of IRV) is evidently
painted by the Centre of Voting and Democracy propaganda group,
as being a somehow bigger than the chance that IRV picks a winner
that differs from the First Past the Post winner.

The CVD offers to mayors a "Raw Deal" [quoting from a title of
an Anorld Schwarzenegger movie.]

Political minorities are a topic I might get back once I think of
something.



Craig Carey
New Zealand

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