[EM] Re: IRV letter

[wclark at xoom.org]

Forest Simmons wrote:

> When  FairVoteOregon  tried to get an IRV initiative on the ballot in
> Oregon a few years back I went to their meetings, explained some of the
> defects of IRV, and made some suggestions.

> It was like talking to a brick wall.

Why do you think that is?  Do you think they saw you as adversarial, and
went on the defensive?  Were they predisposed (perhaps by means of faulty
stereotypes) to dismiss Condorcet supporters as crackpots?  Were they
simply stupid?

I think it's very important to find a way to get along with IRV
supporters, to find some strategy for dealing with them that doesn't
always result in division.  They vastly outnumber us.  They actually wield
enough political clout to get election reform measures on the ballot --
and passed.  It's worth making friends with them (and of course, quietly
taking over their organization while we're at it.)

> What bothers me the most is that election reform is about choices, but
> the IRV folks don't want to give choices.  They just want IRV.

For the most part, they only *know* IRV (or else all they know about other
methods are half-truths at best.)  If they've ever dealt with Condorcet
supporters in the past, chances are the encounter was unpleasant.

There are lots of reasons (justifiable or not) for IRV supporters to be
dismissive of competing systems.

> Why not pit all the best methods head to head against Plurality, and
> then adopt the method that beats Plurality by the greatest number of
> votes (if plurality isn't the CW).

What about pitting all the best methods against Plurality one at a time,
and then selecting a winner *using* Plurality?  That's basically what we
have right now... except that only IRV has had much luck even getting on
the ballot.

I'd like your way better... except I suspect that by the time you educated
people enough to see the need for it, most of them would already have
become Condorcet supporters.

> P.S. The one open minded person on the committee liked IRV better than
> Approval, CR, or Condorcet, and explained to me why.  All the reasons
> were psychological.  To make a long story short, I came up with
> Candidate Proxy in an effort to address those psychological issues.
> When I tried it out on him, he thought it was a great inprovement on
> IRV; the simplest way to approximate the strong FBC.

Maybe that's the trick, then -- give IRV supporters "stepping stone"
systems that improve on what they're already familiar with.  That will
eventually get them thinking about the kinds of issues that makes IRV less
appealing (or at least better understood for how it really works.)

So, rather than pointing out the flaws with IRV, perhaps a better strategy
would be to take all the features of IRV that supporters *like* and to
devise an election method that also exhibits those features.  Then, once
they realize that an attack on IRV isn't necessarily an attack on the
features they consider important, it's safe to point out IRV flaws.

-Bill Clark

-- 
Protest the 2-Party Duopoly:
http://votenader.org/