IRV unconstitutional?

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

I'd said:

>>Anthony said that equal protection under
>>the law means that eveyone's favorite
>>candidate must win, or that it could be
>>so interpreted. Pehaps by Anthony.

Anthony replied:

Perhaps Mike is not familiar with the literary device of
parody

I reply:

Is that what you call it. And here I thought that you were
just making mistaken or irrelevant comparisons. Oh yes I assure you
I'm familiar with that device. Exaggerated dramatic misquotes,
comparisons that aren't really valid--these are all too familiar in your
postings.

Anthony continues:

, or the corresponding logical method of reductio ad
absurdam (it's one of those nefarious mathematical things).

I reply:

Perhaps Anthony doesn't know what reductio ad absurdum means.
So I'll carefully explain it to him: You demonstrate that what you
want to disprove logically implies something that is considered absurd
or known to be untrue. But you didn't show that what I said logically
implied what you said. As you said, you were using poetic license
to say something that didn't follow from what I said.

What was the date and/or message-number of the message in which
I said that mathematics is nefarious? Your hostility, which I
must admit that I don't understand the reason for, has, maybe
subconsciously, led you to cast me in the role of someone who
is anti-mathematics.

Anthony obviously identifies himself with mathematics, and so it's
disappointing that he doesn't understand what reductio ad absurdum
means. Or were we just using poetic license again? Maybe are we
more poet than mathematician? There's nothing wrong with that. But
my advice is to try to apply your poetry more productively, instead
of in the service of whatever petty hostility, animosity or resentment
you may feel toward another list member. What should I say?
Can we have a truce? I don't know how I got you started, but are you
able to stop?

As I said, I really don't understand what causes
your animosity, but I don't believe that airing it on EM is productive
for the purposes of the list. I claim that voting systems are the
proper topic here, and there's very little if any of voting systems
in your exaggerations, misquotes and mistaken comparisons that you
call parody.

Anthony continues:


[referring to the equal protection clause]

Perhaps Mike has forgotten a previous suggestion that
Approval is unconstitutional because it does not ensure that
everyone gets the same number of votes, and therefore
violates "one man one vote", or some such.

The mistake here
is the same as the mistake then, of failing to see that in
this context, a 'vote' refers to a ballot.

I reply:

The equal protection clause doesn't mention votes, much less
say that "vote" refers to "ballot".

Or are we now confusing the equal protection clause with prop
43, which _does_ mention votes?

"Vote" refers to whatever the speaker wants it to refer to.

To the Plurality preferrer, everyone should have exactly one vote
to cast for one candidate, and that's what 1-person-1-vote means
to that person. But obviously that isn't necessary for fairness.
Fairness merely requires that each person have the same voting
options, counted by the same rules. I support your advocacy
for each person to have only one ballot, but no, Anthony, it isn't enough
for each person to have a ballot. For one thing, the ballot must
be counted. For another thing, there are count rules, some in use
and some hypothetical, that treat voters unequally. I doubt that
"1-person-1-vote" refers to the problem of some people receiving
2 ballots. That isn't poetic license; you said that that phrase
refers to how many ballots voters get.

The definition of "vote" is irrelevant to the matter of whether
IRV runs afoul of the equal protection. I suggest that even when the
same count rule is applied to all the ballots, it's still treating
voters unequally when it it capriciously ignores voted preferences of some
people. And that unequal treatment could reasonably
be called a violation of equal protection under the law. There's
nothing in the equal protection clause that says it's only about
making sure that each person gets one ballot, and it gets counted.
Maybe, after Anthony re-studies "reductio ad absurdum", he'll want to
look up the equal protection clause. And next time, one may hope that
he'll check things like that before he posts.

Anthony continues:

"every vote must be counted" means "every ballot
must be counted".

I reply:

I assume that you're now referring to prop 43. That proposition
was written with Plurality in mind. Its wording suggests that it's
understood that each person has one vote in a race, and says that
it should be counted. Vote, in that wording, means vote. That's why
they said "vote" instead of "ballot".

But it's true that the votecounting failure they were concerned about
resulted from not counting a ballot, rather than from a bad count
rule like IRV. I believe that's what Anthony was trying to say.

So, going by that immediate intent of the proposition, a court would
probably say that it's enough to count everyone's ballot in accordance
with the count rule, whatever it is.

Still, it's reasonable to suppose that what really bothered people,
fundamentally, was uncounted preferences among candidates. And
that happens in IRV even when everyone's ballot is counted. So I
suggest that IRV goes against the wishes that motivated prop 43.
I'm not saying that argument will win in court.

I'd said:

>>Saying that everyone's favorite candidate
>>must win isn't like saying that everyone's
>>voted preferences must be counted. For
>>one thing, of course, it would be impossible
>>for everyone's favorite candidate to win in
>>any meaningful sense.

Anthony replied:

The important thing about the two examples is that both are
fallacious -- mine intentionally, as an example
, Mike's apparently not.

I reply:

But because your example was fallacious, it wasn't useful for
demonstrating anything, except your sloppiness--excuse me, your
poetic license.

You say that Mike's example was fallacious. It isn't quite clear what
you mean by that. What example? Are you trying to refer to my
claim that counting some preferences but not others violates
equal protection? If that's the "example", how is it fallacious?

When some prefernces are counted, and some are not counted, without
any guarantee that this is done equally for different people, I
call that unequal. Is that fallacious? You claim that the equal
protection clause is only about the requirement to give everyone
one ballot and count it. Maybe "fallacious" isn't the word for that,
but "ignorant" may be the right word to describe your grasp of the
equal protection clause. You see, Anthony, you're attributing to that
clause a precision or specificity that it doesn't have. It's more
general than just saying to count each ballot.


I'd said:

>>Californians have just passed a state
>>constitutional amendment requiring that
>>everyone's vote must be counted, suggesting
>>that not only is that possible, but it's also
>>considered reasonablle.

Anthony replied:


There's a common belief that reality can be manipulated by
manipulating the corresponding ideas and, very importantly,
the words that represent those ideas. Thus, if we can come
up with some bizarre interpretation of the notion of counting
a vote, then we have somehow changed the reality.

I reply:

As I said, most likely prop 43 was motivated by the desire that expressed
preferences not go uncounted.

But I'm not saying the court would go by that. I only meant that
it isn't at all unreasonable to ask that all voted preferences be
counted. Actually, of course, the reasonableness of that doesn't
depend on any interpretation of prop 43, and so there was no need
for me to make the statement that Anthony was answerin there.
Saying that voted preferences should be counted has none of the
unreasonableness of Anthony's statement that everyone's favorite
candidate should win.

Anthony continues:

If Mike were to take such an argument [as the claim that prop 43
was motivated by the desire that voted preferences not go uncounted]
to court, he would end up sitting next to the guy who is
arguing that Texas is still and independent republic.

I reply:

I didn't say that approach would win. The court would probably
point out that the proposition was written because ballots weren't
counted, not because a count rule was bad, and that therefore,
however badly a count rule unequally ignores voted preferences,
prop 43 doesn't apply. Maybe, but the desire that ballots be
counted resulted from the desire that voted preferences be counted.
That's obvious. IRV's ignoring of some voted preferences goes against
the intent that motivated prop 43.

As I said, I don't know where Anthony gets the festering anger
that seems to drive his replies to me, but I don't have time to
answer another letter of his this time. Maybe when I don't answer
his next one, he'll quit.

Mike Ossipoff







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