[EM] James G., IRV

[James Gilmour]

MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote
> James G.--
> You wrote:
> Nowhere in my comments will you find any such suggestion.  Do 
> not attribute  to me comments I have not made.
> 
> I reply:
> I'm not saying that you advocate IRV, but, if you do, and if 
> part of your 
> argument for IRV over Condorcet is your claim that people 
> won't like a low-favoriteness CW winning,

Mike, you just cannot help yourself, can you?
What I wrote in the message from which you have quoted could hardly have been clearer:
"
I have no problem with the CW being "more representative" or "better representative" of the voters
than the IRV winner in both the 35/33/32 election and in the 49/48/3 election.
"
But that doesn't stop you.

<CUT>

> Fine, but that's a speculation.

OK, I'll settle for "speculation", but it is a speculation founded in long and current experience of
campaigning for voting system reform and is based on my interpretation of some of the political
reactions I have encountered.  It is not an issue that has researched here, because we are not
campaigning to reform single-winner elections.  We are campaigning to replace them.


> A speculation remains only a speculation even when no one has 
> proved that it 
> isn't so. Obviously it would take a Condorcet election to 
> prove that your  claim isn't so.

Not necessarily.  Relevant evidence may be available from elector attitude surveys, if appropriate
questions have been asked.


> But, when you claim that a majority who prefer the CW to Y 
> are going to start liking Y better than the CW because the CW isn't a big 
> favorite, then, with a strange claim like that, the burden of 
> proof is on you. Without proof, your speculation doesn't sound very likely.

I don't think the claim is so strange as you suggest.  There is great hostility among those who are
political active here to low placed choices coming through as winners.  The survival of
First-Past-The-Post (plurality) for so long has depended on much more than just the self-interest of
the politicians who have been elected by it.  The electorate generally consider such results
"acceptable"; very rarely do they express the view "there is something wrong here".  And when they
do, it is at the over-all PR level rather than at the individual district level.  So there is a high
acceptance of the "front-runner winner".  It is exposure to a combination of these views that leads
me to believe that the electorate would reject the 49/48/3 CW, or at least have very great
difficulty in accepting it.


> But actually I do have evidence, from real public elections and from elector 
> attitude surveys, that voters prefer their compromise to 
> their last choice even though their compromise isn't very favorite.
>  gave that  evidence in my 
> previous message: Everyone who votes Democrat says that they 
> have to hold their nose in order to do so.

I think there might be a slight exaggeration in that last sentence: "everyone" really does mean
"100%".  My turn to have a doubt.  You say there are also elector attitude surveys that provide
relevant evidence: could you please point us to the links where we'll find the data or the reported
results?

James Gilmour