[EM] Sincerity for criteria, Blake

[Blake Cretney]

  Forest Simmons wrote:

>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.
>
-snip--

>
>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. 
>
Since these problems are distinct from lesser-of-2-evils, you are 
arguing in favour of my point, which was that lesser-of-2-evils isn't of 
overwhelming importance to reformers generally.

>
>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."
>
I have some sympathy for their point.  People certainly don't like 
feeling compelled to vote someone over their favourite.  But they also 
don't like voting someone equal to their favourite.  It seems to me that 
you FBC-boosters greatly deride the first kind of strategy (even calling 
it "betrayal") while being largely unconcerned with the second.  It 
seems a lot of people don't feel that way.  Maybe they are wrong, but I 
hope we can end the constant claims that criteria like FBC reflect the 
real desires of voters.

>
>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.
>
To put this in concrete terms, let's think about the Greens and the 
Democrats.  Eventually, in IRV, if the Greens get strong enough, once 
they have more first choice support than the Democrats, they risk acting 
as a spoiler.  I suspect most Democratic IRV-enthusiasts don't believe 
this will ever happen.  They believe that the Greens will remain 
marginal, but IRV will prevent them from acting as spoilers.

But, let's say that the Greens do eventually gain enough to become 
spoilers in IRV.  Have you noticed that a very similar thing happens in 
Approval.  The reason the Greens wouldn't be spoilers in approval is is 
Greens all approve the Democratic candidate as well as the Green. 
 Otherwise they can be a spoiler.  But the Greens can't possibly win an 
election if they all vote for the Democrat.  The Greens have to get a 
lot of votes for them alone, to counteract those for the Democrat alone. 
 But as soon as this happens, there is a risk that the Republican will 
win, and the Greens will regret their purely Green vote.

So, Approval has a very similar problem to IRV.  I can certainly see why 
Green supporters wouldn't see why IRV is much worse from this perspective.

>
>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 must admit that I haven't been paying too much attention to the Five 
Slot idea.  Does five-slot pass FBC without being strategic ally 
equivalent to approval?  Or is it just that Five Slot is supposed to be 
a simpler ballot than a normal rank ballot.

---
Blake Cretney