[EM] Chris: Approval vs IRV

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Chris--

I'd said:

>Actually, IRV is at its very worst when people vote sincerely. Often the CW 
>can be saved only be the extreme insincere strategy of favorite-burial.

You replied:

At least IRV has some appearance of TRYING to meet this standard.
"Electing the CW" is far from the only interpretation  of "performing 
reasonably".

I reply:

But voters have shown that they'll do what it takes to elect the CW. Most 
people's voting strategy here, though based on completely false information, 
is intended to maximize the voter's utility expectation or to elect the CW. 
That's evident from what people say, though they don't mention utility 
expectation or CW. Riker demonstrated that if voters want to optimize the 
outcome for themselves, and have complete information about eachother's 
preferences,  then the CW wll win. I don't know exactly what his assumptions 
were, but it might have involved repeated elections, converrging on the CW 
if one exists.

So a method that requires favorite-burial to elect the CW is going to make 
people bury their favorite.
That's what I & others object to about IRV.

You continued:

As Marcus S.
has explained to you before: "The aim of IRV is not to elect the sincere 
Condorcet winner. The
aim of IRV is to elect the sincere IRV winner."

I reply:

Every method does a perfect job of electing its own winner. The fact that 
IRV is good at electing its own winner can't be counted as an accomplishment 
of IRV.

And, because of the drastically insincere strategy (favorite-burial) that 
IRV will often require, IRV can't be said to be good at electing the sincere 
IRV winner. The sincere IRV winner will often be an extreme candidate far 
from the voter median, and the election of the sincere IRV winner could then 
be very bad news.

I'd said:

>Like when, in IRV, the election of a CW depends on voters insincerely 
>voting the CW in 1st place, over their genuine favorite?

CB: In Australia and doubtless many other countries, almost none of the 
voters have a concept of the
"CW"

I reply:

No, but that doesn't mean that they won't do what they can to elect the CW, 
though they've never heard the term. Or strategize to maximize their utility 
expectation, though they haven't heard of that either.

The CW tends to be the best compromise that you can get, if you need a 
compromise.

For instance, here, this year, many who prefer Nader to Kerry have been 
convinced by their tv that only Kerry can beat Bush. They believe that if 
all the people preferring Nader to Bush voted for Nader, there's a greater 
number preferring Bush to Nader who would vote for Bush, and Bush would win.

In other words, they believe  that Bush is preferred to Nader by more people 
than prefer Nader to Bush. But they believe that more prefer Kerry to Bush 
than Bush to Kerry, and it's probably true, for what it's worth. So, as they 
believe it, Bush has a pairwise win against Nader, but Kerry has a pairwise 
win against Bush.

Anyone with a sincere pairwise win against Bush is what they're looking for, 
and they know that if X has a sincere pairwise win against Y, and if 
everyone who has that preference votes for X in Plurality, Y loses. They 
don't call Bush the CW, but what they're going by differs only in wording. 
They're using the drasrtic defensive strategy of favorite-burial to elect 
whom they believe to be the CW, based on false information.

Sometimes they'll have to do the same thing in IRV.

And before you say that IRV works fine elsewhere, I point out that here 
isn't elsewhere. Political systems, voters, candidates differ.

Recorded data don't contain the information needed to tell us whether CWs 
are being eliminated in IRV in current use.

>From the 3 Australians that I had the opportunity to ask, I heard that it 
isn't unusual for preferrers of non-big-2 candidates to insincerely rank in 
first place the big-2 candidate whom they like better than the other big-2 
candidate, to avoid "wasting [their] vote". Australia has had IRV for a 
along time, but parties are still mostly unwilling to run more than 1 
candidate per election, contrary to the hopes when IRV was adopted.


So what concepts
do they have? They have the concept that political parties that win 
single-seat elections are those
that get lots of votes, including lots of first-preference ("primary") 
votes. They have the concept
that the winner definitely should never be the Majority Loser.

I reply:

IRV's flagrant majority rule violations are just as obviously wrong as 
Majority Loser violations. Majority Loser violations are a special case. IRV 
doesn't need a special case like that in order to fail.

You continued:

They have the concept that votes for
losing  candidates should not be avoidably completely "wasted".

I reply:

You mean the way they're wasted in IRV when the compromise that you need 
gets eliminated because your traveling vote didn't reach hir in time? So 
that your preference for hir over someone worse was never counted?

You continued:

They have a concept that elections
are not purely about who wins, but also about things like identity, 
self-expression, political
principles

I reply:

Well then, you've just told why the experience there isn't applicable here: 
American progressives care about who wins, and they're quite willing to 
flush their principles and self-expression down the toilet if they believe 
that it's the pragmatic thing to do, to elect a lesser-evil. Case closed.

You continued:

and  (sometimes class-based)party-loyalty. Very few voters in Australia are 
remotely
interested in strategising, and in (at least)some countries that even use 
Plurality, surprisingly
few are.

I reply:

...which demonstrates that there's no reason to expect U.S. voters to vote 
as those others do, in IRV either, if, for instance Australian voters 
strategize less than U.S. voters do. (But, as I've said, I've been told that 
favorite-burial strategy isn't unusual in Australia either).

You continued:

So instead of "elect the CW", and apart from (the admittedly somewhat 
circular) "elect the sincere
IRV winner", what do I mean by "perform reasonably"? The method chooses the 
winner in a (somewhat)
intuitive and orderly manner,without appearing to "waste" more than half the 
votes
I
I reply:

40: AB
25: B
35: CB

A wins. 60% had voted that they'd rather elect B than A. Do you really 
believe that their votes weren't wasted? Maybe you mean something different 
by "wasted", but definitely their B>A vote was ignored by IRV, resulting in 
a majority rule violation.

Ignore the voted wishes of a majority, and you have a majority rule 
violation. IRV will have many avoidable majorilty rule violations.

You continued:

There are many quite intelligent and thoughtful voters in Australia, to whom 
it has never occured
that there might be any better single-winner election method.

I reply:

There are people there trying to tell them different. You could help.

You continued:

They have failed to notice IRV's
"absurd non-monotonicity", and they have no concept of the "CW".

I reply:

Our voters, whether or not they have a concept of the CW, will do what it 
takes to elect the CW.

You continued:

They would laugh at Approval.

I reply:

Of course it's easy to say that without backing it up in any way. They 
haven't been asked about Approval. You don't know how they'd react. You're 
trying to speak for them. Approval is one of the most popular alternative 
methods.

Some object to Approval because of a mistaken interpretation of 
"one-person-one-vote", but that is avoided if Approval is presented as a CR 
version. Mention CR 0-10, and then CR 0,1.

Anyway, the topic was about the actual relative merits of IRV & Approval, 
not your unsubstantiated claim about how someone would react to a method 
that they have never heard of before.

You continued:

I think in many countries, even the US...

I reply:

Now you're getting even farther from justifiability, telling us how people 
in another country would react to what they've never heard of.

Admittedly Approval would be new to them. But you're speculating about their 
reaction.

You continued:

..., voters and political parties would hate approval.

I reply:

Why would voters hate Approval more than Plurality? Because it lets them 
always vote for their favorite instead of having to strategically abandon 
hir? Because it gives them the freedom to vote for and show support for 
people they like better than their Plurailty compromise?

Your claim is not only unjustified, it's absurd.

Of course, as you said, the Democrat & Repulican parties would hate 
Approval. Or Condorcet wv, or any good method, because it would end their 
artificial monopoly.

You continued:

If I
were to be persuaded to drop my Clone Independence standard and take a 
limited-slot method seriously,
I would go for one of Kevin Venzke's 3-slot methods, like "Withdrawable 
Approval".


I reply:

Sure, Approval can be improved upon by more elaborate methods. Especially 
Condorcet wv. Approval's appeal is that it needs only a very modest change 
from Plurality, with no new balloting or counting technology.

You continued:

As it is, I think most promising-looking for public political elections is 
probably something from
the "automated approval" family (which uses ranked ballots).

I reply:

That sounds like Bucklin or DSV(Approval). Well, then propose those instead 
of IRV.

Mike Ossipoff

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