[EM] IRV vs. plurality

[Dgamble997 at aol.com]

Eric Gorr wrote:

>James Green-Armytage asked for people's opinions regarding IRV 
>versus Plurality.
>
>Not surprisingly, and for reasons I've already stated and won't 
>repeat here, I feel IRV is greatly superior to plurality ( and 
>Condorcet and approval).

I am always interested in why people feel this way.

Do you have a detailed summary of why you feel way?

For example, why is it the right thing for A to win in this case:

   40 A
   35 C > B
   30 B

when clearly > 60% of the voters preferred B over A?


-- 
== Eric Gorr ========= http://www.ericgorr.net ========= ICQ:9293199 ===
"Therefore the considerations of the intelligent always include both
benefit and harm." - Sun Tzu
== Insults, like violence, are the last refuge of the incompetent... ===


At the risk of repeating myself, my argument against Condorcet can be 
summarised as follows:

I do not support Condorcet because I believe that in practice, regardless of 
the theoretical and conceptual advantages it may possess, it would be too 
favourable towards parties who succeed in positioning themselves in the centre and 
correspondingly discriminatory against wing parties.

IRV succeeds, I believe, in striking a balance between the two somewhat 
conflicting aims of ensuring that a candidate has majority support ( a candidate 
does not win with a minority of the vote because the opposition is split) and 
preventing dominance by candidates/parties who position themselves in the 
centre. 

The example given by Eric is not that realistic ( it is not likely you would 
see such a vote set in a real election)  and in the normal course of 
discussion I would probably counter it with my favourite 49 A>B>C, 3 B>A>C, 48 C>B>A 
example with some comment about the importance of first preference 
votes/utility, somebody else would them make a comment about how first preference votes 
have no significance of themselves and so it goes on .........

Right, now something I haven't  mentioned before - Approval Voting.  

Approval voting is presented as a cleaner, fairer, more consensual election 
method than pluality. It is also presented vis-a-vis Condorcet and IRV as a 
simple, easy to understand method. The candidate approved by the most voters wins 
and the voting instruction (copied from the Americans for Approval Voting 
website) 'Vote for any number of candidates' is easy to understand. It couldn't 
be more simple. Except of course it isn't that simple.

To get a reasonable result from Approval voting the voter needs to have at 
least a working knowledge of how to vote strategically in an Approval election. 
This is my major objection to Approval. I feel that that many, if not a 
majority of voters when presented with the Approval question will take the question 
at face value and vote for all the candidates they approve of. Very few people 
unfamiliar with AV strategy will look at the instruction and think " ah, what 
I need to do is approve every candidate whose utility ( to me ) exceeds that 
of the candidate most likely to win" or any similar thing. If people do use 
strategy it is more likely to be on the level of " well I approve of A,B and C, 
oh but if I approve all of them I'll have approved 3 of the 4 candidates on 
the ballot, maybe that's too many. Well, I like A and B a lot more than C so 
I'll only approve A and B".

Getting back to one of James Green-Armytage's points I feel that IRV 
supporters attacking Approval supporters attacking Condorcet supporters in public ( as 
opposed to an internet discussion group like this) is the surest way on this 
Earth to maintain plurality.

David Gamble




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