[EM] Re: Candidate withdrawal option

[James Green-Armytage]

	Mike has recommended CWO as an improvement on Condorcet-wv (although he
does not see the improvement as an urgent one. Is there anyone who thinks
that adding CWO to ranked pairs or beatpath would be a bad idea? Anyone
else who thinks its a good idea? The more people weigh in, the better.
	The rest of this e-mail is my reply to Mike.

>I believe that it was Steve Eppley who pointed out that the CWO, for 
>Plurality, would be very helpful for getting rid of strategy problems, 
>without asking for a change in the actual voting system.

	How would CWO work with plurality? Ranked ballots? 
>
>When CWO is suggested to IRV promoters, they always emphatically reject
>it, 
>saying that it would take control away from the voter. As if it somehow 
>violates your rights when your favorite withdraws when he can´t win, and 
>lets your vote go immediately to your next choice.

	Yes, I tend to agree with you, although I admit this anti-CWO argument
has a certain kind of persuasiveness. Many people just have an immediate
negative reaction to the idea of anyone being able to alter the result
after the election, and it can take a bit of convincing to show that it
makes good sense. (Note also that in some cases (MR cycles, I think) a
withdrawing candidate is someone who *could* win, if someone else was to
withdraw instead. This could get slightly messy, I suppose, although I
would be willing to adopt it.)
>
>I never replied on-list to your most recent posting about Cardinal
>Pairwise, 
>AERLO & ATLO. So let me just say here that it seems to me that CP
>probably 
>accomplishes the same gains as AERLO & ATLO. The advantage of AERLO &
>ATLO 
>is that they´re enhancements that can be added later, without changing
>the 
>voting system itself. It seems to me that they´re a more proposable route
>to 
>enhanced Condorcet. CP would be good too, but AERLO & ATLO offer a more 
>explicitly, transparently obvious way to accomplish the enhancement goals 
>than CP does, it seems to me.

	I'm glad that you think CP would be good. On December 10th I sent you an
e-mail which few arguments for CP over AERLO/ATLO, which you haven't yet
responded to, and which responded to statements similar to those made
above. I think I'll post it now, since it seems that I didn't post it at
the time.
>
>These enhancements are things to suggest _after_ Condorcet has been
>adopted.

	We disagree here, because we disagree about the inherent stability of wv
in contentious elections. Personally, I'd like to have some enhancement in
there from the beginning, whether CWO, CP, AWP (the simplified version of
CP with approval cutoffs; similar to AERLO and ATLO rolled into one),
AERLO/ATLO, or something else. As to the practicality of suggesting CWO
from the beginning, I'm not sure. Given the right sales pitch, you might
be able to slide it into the bylaws like it was no big deal; an
afterthought. ("Yes, of course if you have a ranked ballot method, one can
instantly figure out what the votes would look like without a given
candidate, so it makes perfect sense to allow candidates to withdraw
during the tally process...")
>
>Anyway, now, when Condorcet has yet to be widely-known, much less
>adopted, 
>and enhanced Condorcet is farther away still, this isn´t the time to let 
>ourselves be distracted about the relative advantages of two Condorcet 
>enhancements (and there aren´t only two of them). That energy would be 
>better spent doing what we can to stop IRV, and proposing Approval, CR, 
>& 
>Condorcet. 

	I've always felt that one can simultaneously spend energy on promoting
simpler methods while keeping one's eye on the goal of more ideal methods.
This is where I differ most with the approach taken by the fairvote
network.

>There are enough advocates of Condorcet, CR & Approval that, with 
>a little unity, we could probably stop IRV and get one of those better 
>methods enacted somwhere.
>
	I'm all for it, but I'm not really in the political organizing business
right now; on more of an academic track, though I hope to get back into
organizing later in life. I can do a brief post on organizing tactics,
though; stay tuned for that.

my best,
James