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

[Russ Paielli]

James Green-Armytage jarmyta-at-antioch-college.edu |EMlist| wrote:
> 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.
> 

<cut>

> 	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.

James,
I did not mean to suggest that others should not discuss "complicated" 
methods. I am merely suggesting that, for their own good, they should 
avoid setting themselves up for disappointment by imagining the public 
will be open to complicated methods for major public elections.

>>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.

IRV is deceptively simple from the voter's perspective. The count at 
each "round" is identical to a conventional plurality election. If your 
top choice loses your vote transfers to your next choice. What more 
could a voter want? (The fact that it's non-monotonic and non-summable 
would never occur to 99% of voters, and even if they are told they won't 
care.)

I tried to explain a few weeks ago that this apparent simplicity is the 
reason for the popularity of IRV, but I got some flack that I didn't 
have time to reply to.

>>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 was being a bit flippant about the "margins vs. wv" issue. Let me take 
another shot at it. Many voters will intuitively reject wv in favor of 
margins. You can call them naive if you wish, but the point is that such 
"naive" intuition will create a major impediment to adoption. The issue 
will never get resolved to the point where ordinal-only Condorcet can be 
adopted. If public acceptance of Condorcet/margins ever reached a 
critical mass, Mike Ossipoff would start throwing stink bombs or 
threaten to light himself on fire in protest, for example.

But the issue will never get anywhere near that far. The whole Condorcet 
ordinal-only method is so complicated that public interest will never 
reach a critical mass. And when it becomes clear to the public that many 
variations exist and even the "experts" do not agree on which is best, 
even receptive members of the public will simply throw up their hands 
and move on to other issues -- like who the major-party candidates 
should be in the next election.

We on this list are one ten-millionth of the population, folks. Please 
try to remember that.

--Russ