[EM] Sincerity for criteria, Blake

[Forest Simmons]

Blake Cretney wrote:

> 
> But actually there's good reason to believe that reformers aren't 
> primarily concerned with the lesser-of-2-evils problem.  The biggest 
> single-winner campaign is for IRV, and this is because reform advocates 
> often become obsessed with quite different strategy problems than the 
> lesser of 2 evils (as least as you understand it).

I've had extensive interaction with the FairVoteOregon (FAVOR)
organization here in Portland, speaking at one of their meetings, etc. In
spite of all my efforts (too little, too late) they went ahead with an IRV
initiative.

Nobody on the committee had any inkling of any multiple candidate single
winner method other than IRV and First Past the Post Lone Mark Plurality.
And when I presented examples on the overhead in their meeting, some of
the members couldn't believe that IRV could eliminate their second choice
before their first choice was eliminated.  They believed that IRV would
always transfer their vote to their second choice when their first choice
was eliminated in the second round.

[I believe that this is indicative of the level of thought that went into
the choice of method. Their leader is as obtuse as the average member of
the committee when it comes to election methods.  His forte and primary
concern seemed to be advancing his own personal leadership opportunities.
He opined that there is no objective basis for saying that one method is
better than another, so since he liked IRV, it was irrelevant for me to
point out that IRV could eliminate the Condorcet Winner liked by other
people. It didn't make any difference to him that the CW would be
preferred by a majority of other people, despite his superfluity of
majoritarian rhetoric in support of the IRV initiative.]

They said they had only two reasons for abandoning plurality and
supporting IRV:  (1) the "spoiler" problem (some didn't like their Nader
vote detracting from Gore, others didn't like Gore votes detracting from
Nader).  (2) the lack of expressivity of the lone mark ballot. 

When I pointed out all of the criterion that IRV failed (Monotonicity,
Summability, Condorcet Criterion, FBC, etc.) the only one that concerned
them was the FBC, but they felt that IRV satisfied it "well enough" and
certainly better than Approval which lacked the expressivity that is
necessary for the strong version of FBC that they consider essential: "It
is never advantageous to rank another candidate as high as your favorite."

Some of them still believe that IRV completely satisfies this strong FBC. 
Others believe that, although there are exceptions, they will hardly ever
occur in practice.  This despite my detailed diagrams, examples, etc. 
showing how third party emergence dynamics almost inexorably lead to the
stage where Favorite Betrayal is as inevitable as plurality's spoiler
problem in the early stages of third party gestation.  I pointed out that
pregnancy tends to lead to the stage of labor.

Their attitude was, "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it; after all
we cannot expect birth without a few birth pangs." 

[The difference is that after the birth pangs you have something to show
for it, whereas after IRV's travail you still have two party dominance.]

The only other considerations were that in their minds IRV was a widely
used respectable method and a natural precursor to multiwinner STV as a PR
method.

I think Mike is barking up the right tree, so to speak, and that Five Slot
Grade Ballots are plenty expressive to satisfy them.

I would be plenty satisfied with your [Blake's] Ranked Pairs adapted to
the Five Slot Grade Ballot, but I hope that we can meet the design
constraints more completely and simply.

Forest