[EM] Re: Chris: Approval vs IRV

[Kevin Venzke]

Chris,

First of all it seems you won someone over; congratulations:

Dave Ketchum wrote:
>If two voters rank 
>A=B, the effect should be the same as if one ranked A>B and the other 
>ranked B>A.

Dave didn't say anything about no votes for truncated candidates, so I guess he now
advocates Margins.

 --- Chris Benham <chrisbenham at bigpond.com> a écrit :
> >I think that parenthetical bit is important, since I claim nomination disincentive
> >is IRV's biggest problem (and also that of FPP, cumulative voting, DAC/DSC...).
> 
> CB:I can't say that there is any significant evidence of that in Australia.

I'm not sure what this evidence would look like.  I think that is why so many
people, such as Langer, when discussing different methods, don't seem to consider
nomination incentives.  Most people see that Borda would start a clone war, I suppose.

> In Australia, most voters don't know or care who the individual candidate is. They usually 
> just decide 
> which party they're going to support, and then fill out their ballots as that party 
> reccomends.

I think this is a side-effect of a parliamentary form of government.  I'm very sad if
this is inevitable, because I prefer this form of government.  But I think some measures
might be effective in reducing this.  One is to use an election method which isn't so
prone to being spoiled by a new, non-party candidate.

My other idea is to give legislators long, fixed terms, and to have a small chamber.
The reasoning is that if the individual legislator is more important, voters will pay
more attention to the race.

> In some 
> seats a major party will have a big majority, and so the election itself seems like a formality.
> The  major parties are not run particularly democratically, so the decision of who gets 
> endorsed for a given "safe seat" is sometimes made by party bureacrats on criteria other than >
> merit or local popularity. 
> Sometimes they go too far, and try to impose a candidate that the local branch and/or the local
> electors  don't like. In that case, an independent who identifies as a supporter of the major 
> party (whose "safe" 
> seat it is) will sometimes run ("directing preferences" to that party), and win the seat
> (sometimes with the help of the preferences of the other major party). The threat of this 
> happening puts some limit on 
> the power of major party machines to just give out these seats to whoever they like. Under
> Approval, I  don't think that this would work as well.

I think it would work 10x better in Approval.  In IRV the independent's supporters can
spoil the election just by voting sincerely.  In Approval those voters have to downrank
the unpopular nominated candidate, which has obvious risks which they can consider, in order 
to spoil the result.

> >This is a tired scenario, but consider this while thinking of "half-clones":
> >40 A
> >35 C>B
> >25 B
> >
> So something like your scenario would only be possible if A and B both submitted "split
> tickets",
> in which case C and A would each get half B's second preferences, and A would win.

On a different note, it occurs to me that an independent candidate could also be
discouraged by major party supporters who claim to be uninterested in giving a lower
preference to the independent.  Even if voters are unaware of this, the independent
candidate should probably realize he has a good chance of being a spoiler.

> But all that aside,I think that any "disincentive to run" with IRV is absolutely negligible
> compared
> to Plurality, and on balance probably less than with Approval.

I think the disincentive is considerably less in IRV than in Plurality, but this is
mostly because unwinnable third parties can run harmlessly in IRV.  Neither method can
gracefully handle three viable candidates, in my view.  It's really more *viable*
candidates that I would like to see in an election.

> With Approval, a new candidate/party
> running for the first time has to either say to the voters "I'm a sure loser, so vote for me and
> one of the the candidates who isn't" or "Vote for me alone in first place and split the
> (anti-X)vote".

I think every candidate says "vote for me alone."  Approval's mechanism is simple enough
that voters should then be able to decide for themselves how to vote.

> >>  From the point-of-view of voters that aren't interested in 
> >> strategising, Approval doesn't "guarantee" anything.
> >
> >I don't follow here.  Order-reversal never helps in Approval.  That isn't a 
> >valuable guarantee to a sincere voter?
> 
> CB:I had in mind the "one big guarantee" that voters are "never strategically forced" to
> downrank their favourite (use the Compromise strategy) that Mike O. trumpets. 
> Ok, in theory a sincere voter could be disadvantaged, but in practice, voters who are not
> interested in strategising are usually not interested in strategy. If after an IRV election 
> in which some voters successfully Compromised, you wanted to demonstrate to some sincere 
> voters that they had been disadvantaged, you would show them the ballots and say....what??

I have trouble imagining what you have in mind.  I would never think of the problem
being that one voter compromised and caused another voter to be disadvantaged.  The
idea is that the voter is disadvantaged (i.e. kicked in the ass) by *not* compromising.
I would show that kind of scenario.

> You wrote:
> 
> >I can't picture these voters, who just want to vote sincerely, and think IRV
> >has better guarantees than Approval.  I would think that valuable guarantees
> >would have to be something about the way a sincere vote will be counted.  If
> >you're just voting sincerely in IRV, without any direction from a party, you 
> >couldn't expect that you would be able to take advantage of Majority, for
> >instance.
> 
> CB:I would think that voters who just want to vote sincerely, wouldn't even understand
> Approval's "guarantees", let alone appreciate them.

Well, I'm talking about weak FBC and Participation, which I think are quite easy
to explain.  I have much greater difficulty explaining "majority for solid
coalitions," Clone Independence, and Condorcet Loser, which require me to first
explain, respectively, "solid coalitions," "clones," and "pairwise contests."

> I can't see any sense in your last  sentence. Usually it is 
> easily predictable which two candidates will make the final runoff, so if you have a preference
> between them, you rank the preferred one over the other.

If there are a number of candidates, and you are not using a party's advice card,
it is hard to expect that your sincere vote will place you in a majority-strength
solid coalition.  (In response to which one might say the below...)

> Also Majority (for solid coalitions, aka Mutual Majority) is not really something that is 
> there for individual voters "to take advantage of". It is a criterion that is about the 
> fairness of the result.

Then I don't follow, why a voter who is only interested in voting sincerely is more
concerned about criteria about the "fairness of the result" than about criteria 
regarding how a ballot (every single ballot) will be counted, such as weak FBC and
Participation.  I'm not even sure it is possible to make a clear distinction between
these two types of criteria...

Kevin Venzke
stepjak at yahoo.fr



	

	
		
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