[EM] Re: IRV bill on Washington State Governor's desk

[James Green-Armytage]

James replying to Russ, on the subject of the relative feasibility of new
methods...

>Thanks for this little dose of reality. I see that this bill simply sets 
>up a *study* of *IRV* for *non-partisan* offices, and it took six years 
>to get this far (not yet signed into law)!
>That should give the people on this forum a clue about how difficult it 
>will be to sell their favorite methods. And that's why I've tried to 
>emphasize simplicity.

	You may remember that I briefly worked for the Center for Voting and
Democracy two years ago, while San Francisco's IRV implementation was
still being fought over. So I have some inkling of the political struggles
involved with any change in the election system. However, that doesn't
stop me from advocating methods such as CWP, which I believe to be
excellent but somewhat difficult to understand. If CWP is never adopted in
my lifetime, that's fine, but I can still engage in meaningful discussion
about it now. If it is adopted in my lifetime, so much the better. There's
certainly no harm in trying, and the process of discussion can help us to
understand some things about voting systems in general. Furthermore, there
is the possibility of these more-complex systems being adopted on smaller
scales, where resistance to change is not so intense.
	So, it can be useful to estimate the public adoptability of theoretical
voting systems, but please don't expect people to abandon discussion of
the more ambitious methods just because you deem them to be overly complex.
>
>Actually, as simple as DMC/RAV is, it may still be too complicated for 
>public acceptance within, say, the next 20 or 30 years. If so, I guess 
>we're left with Approval.

	What exactly do you mean by that? That approval is the only method that
is both immediately adoptable and better than the status quo? I'd suggest
that IRV fits that category as well, especially if it allows for equal
rankings. I still think that I'd rather have ER-IRV than approval. 
	Also, I don't know if CWO-IRV will be adoptable or not, but if so, that's
a pretty good method. It tends toward Smith compliance while dampening
many of the strategic issues commonly associated with Condorcet-efficient
methods.
>
>The one thing we can be absolutely, 100% sure about is that the issue of 
>Condorcet margins vs. wv will *not* be a significant public issue 
>anytime within the next 1,000 years!

	I'm hoping that it will never need to be a significant public issue,
because before too long it should be clear that margins doesn't have a leg
to stand on. WV vs. AWP/CWP might be an interesting public issue at some
point, though. Don't know if that will take 1,000 years, but I would be
rather surprised if it happened on a large scale during my lifetime. On
small scales, perhaps...
	I think that Condorcet methods in general will have a better chance of
becoming a public issue as IRV is used more often. If there are multiple
cases of real elections where the IRV winner differs from the Condorcet
winner, then I think that this could be used to make a case for Condorcet
(or perhaps CWO-IRV) that large numbers of people will be able to
understand. As long as there are no such cases, then the change may not be
necessary. If this argument for Condorcet becomes politically significant,
then it will be necessary to ask which Condorcet completion method to
adopt. This question should bring up the issue of the burying strategy,
which should eliminate margins as a contender and bring up the possibility
of AWP/CWP.

Sincerely,
James