[EM] To Bill Lewis Clark re: stepping-stone

[Dave Ketchum]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 21:55:04 -0500 Eric Gorr wrote:

> At 9:01 PM -0500 1/21/04, Bill Lewis Clark wrote:
> 
>> First and foremost, IRV is a change.
> 
> 
> Change is perfectly capable of doing more harm then good.
> 
>>  Any change at all gets people
>> thinking about election system reform. That's a good thing.  The natural
>> desire to stick with the status quo is the biggest obstacle to reform.
> 
> 
> The same benefit can be gained by supporting a genuinely better system, 
> like Approval or Condorcet (rp, wv).
> 

I concede that Approval beats Plurality, but Condorcet gives me something 
extra - the ability to indicate which of those I consider tolerable (above 
the rejects) I like best.


>> Secondly, IRV gets people used to ranking candidates.  From a voter
>> standpoint, the procedure they'd use in an IRV election is EXACTLY THE
>> SAME AS the procedure they'd use in a Condorcet election.  The only
>> difference is in how the tallying is done.  That means that it wouldn't be
>> as hard to transition from IRV to Condorcet, as it would to go from
>> Plurality.
> 
> 
> The same benefit can be gained by supporting a genuinely better system, 
> like Approval or Condorcet (rp, wv).


AND, the ranking is not identical - with Condorcet I simply rank by 
preference and am done; with IRV I can get headaches over strategy.

> 
>> Thirdly -- and please correct me if I'm wrong here -- the problems with
>> IRV aren't likely to spring up in a political climate with only two major
>> parties and relatively small additional parties.
> 

Think back to the 2000 US elections when many wanted to vote for Nader as 

their true preference AND for Gore to help defeat Bush.  We do not have a 

count, for such votes were not permitted, but we have plenty of reports that 

the desire was there.


Make ranked ballots available and you could expect voters and candidates 
to learn to use them (remind them that bullet voting is permitted - just 
not as powerful for those who choose to be thus crippled).

ALSO, we have primary elections in the US - another place where ranked 
ballots give voters useful power.

> 
> Only if you believe that polarizing issues do not or would not play a 
> significant roll in any election.
> 
> For example, consider the case of Abortion. Pretend we have a democrat 
> who was pro-abortion, a republican who wasn't and a libertarian who was. 
> Do you really think that the pro-aborition voter would rank someone who 
> wasn't above someone who was?
> 
> Many more, similar examples could be given as well.
> 
>> Finally, IRV is similar enough to the existing traditional runoff system
>> that it wouldn't be as difficult to convince people to transition to it,
>> as it would be to convince them to switch to Condorcet outright.
> 

Perhaps being like runoff is not a true advantage.  Runoff lets voters 
recover from a weakness of Plurality.  Ranked ballots let them rank more 
than the single candidate they can rank in Plurality.

Condorcet lets them, if they rank Tom ahead of Dick, know that they have 
said all there is to be said about this pair of candidates, no matter what 
they also say about other pairs of candidates.

IRV is not as similar to runoff as some claim - at runoff time I know the 
result of the original vote; with IRV I must do all of my ranking at one time.

> 
> Mere assumption based on no evidence that I have ever seen.
> 
> It has already found acceptance in the Debian and Free State projects. I 
> personally have demonstrated these various election methods to people 
> and invariably they reject IRV in favor of Approval or Condorcet (rp, wv).
> 
>> Once
>> they were comfortable with a new voting system that used ranking, it would
>> be easier to argue for additional changes to how the votes are tallied, in
>> order to complete the transition to Condorcet.
> 
> 
> It would seem equally likely that they will be turned off of additional 
> changes, no longer believing the promise that this 'new' system really 
> is better.
> 

AGREED.


>> So, do you see why IRV might be a good stepping-stone, after all?
> 
> 
> You have yet to show that IRV provides any benefit over Condorcet.
> 

AGREED.
-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
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