[EM] R Suter's commentary on IRV

[Forest Simmons]

> Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 12:06:14 EST
> From: RLSuter at aol.com
> Subject: [EM] Corrected commentary re IRV
> To: election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com
> Message-ID: <144.3c6b0a48.2f0c2706 at aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

The commentary is better suited to its purpose than any that I have ever 
written.  However, I do have a few suggestions below.


> The truth about Instant Runoff Voting
>
> A recent newspaper editorial advocating Instant Runoff
> Voting began as follows:
>
>   What if we were able to streamline our
>   city and town elections, make them less
>   expensive, and at the same time, ensure
>   that the winner garnered a majority of
>   more than 50 percent of the vote? [1]
>
> The truth is that Instant Runoff voting (widely known by
> the abbreviation IRV) can't come close to ensuring this.


True the IRV winner will be ranked above at least ONE of the other 
candidates on more ballots than not, but it is often the case that there 
is another candidate who is preferred over each of its opponents 
(including the IRV winner!) by a majority of voters.

[I suggest using something like the above paragraph to replace text below 
down to "Voting experts have a name ..."]

> The only way a candidate can be said to have won a majority
> of the vote is if it can be shown that she or he would
> defeat every other candidate in a one to one contest.
> Voting experts have a name for such a candidate: the
> "Condorcet" winner, named after the 18th century French
> mathematician, political philosopher, and activist (he
> lost his life in the French revolution) who is now best
> known for his advocacy of what is now widely called
> Condorcet voting.
>
> A better name for Condorcet voting would be "instant round
> robin voting" (call it IRR). The IRR method would use the
> same kinds of ranked ballots as IRV and therefore would
> require the same kinds of voting equipment. (Both would,
> for all practical purposes, require computerized vote
> tabulators, because tabulating either IRV or IRR elections
> by hand would be prohibitively time consuming and prone
> to human error.)
>
> The one difference between the two methods -- and it is
> a very big difference -- is in how the ranked ballots
> are tabulated to determine the winner. The basic concepts
> are very simple. With IRV, the ballots are tabulated to
> simulate a series of runoff elections. As soon as a
> candidate gets a majority in one of those simulated
> runoffs, that candidate is declared the winner.
>
> With IRR, the ranked ballots are tabulated to simulate
> contests between each candidate and every other candidate.
> If one candidate defeats every other candidate in those
> simulated contests, that candidate is declared the winner.
> Such a Condorcet winner is the only candidate who can
> ever be said to have truly "garnered a majority of more
> than 50% of the vote."
>
> The problem is that both IRV and IRR have well known
> weaknesses. In fact, voting experts have long known that
> there are no voting methods for choosing among three or
> more candidates that have no weaknesses. Therefore, voting
> method researchers try to find methods that have the
> fewest or least objectionable weaknesses.
>
> The big problem with IRV is that the winner is very often a
> candidate who would have lost to one or more of the other
> candidates in a one to one contest. This is not just an
> occasional problem but would likely happen frequently.

How about the following instead?

The big problem with IRV is that majority preference is not the criterion 
that determines survival to the last round of the runoff.  So it is 
possible there are only two candidates in that round, neither of which is 
very good at winning majority contests.  The most that can be guaranteed 
is that the strawman that wins is ranked above the strawman that loses
on more ballots than not.

[Voters sometimes compensate for this defect by submitting insincere 
rankings on their ballots in an attempt to get the stronger majority 
candidates into the final round.  But this strategem can backfire.]

>
> The big problem with IRR is that sometimes there is no
> candidate who will defeat each of the others. In such
> cases, no matter which candidate is declared the winner,
> there would be at least one other candidate who would
> defeat the declared winner in a one to one contest.
>
> No one can say for sure how often these problems would
> occur in actual elections run with either IRV or IRR. My
> guess is that a non-majority IRR winner would be much rarer
> than a non-majority IRV winner. But advocates of IRV might
> disagree, or they might say it doesn't matter because IRV
> is superior to IRR for a variety of reasons. I won't try
> to settle that disagreement here.
>
> Unfortunately, advocates of IRV, IRR, and some highly
> regarded non-ranking methods that have the advantage of
> being much easier to tabulate (most notably, Approval
> Voting), almost never get to debate except among very
> small groups of specialists. The biggest organizational
> advocate of IRV, the Center for Voting and Democracy,
> has essentially prohibited debates under its auspices.
> Its leaders almost never engage in debates except when
> necessary to respond to articles in prominent publications
> such as Science News [2] and Scientific American [3]
> in which different methods are advocated or favorably
> discussed.
>
> In short, Instant Runoff Voting is not the panacea its
> advocates have made it out to be. If IRV advocates are as
> serious about democracy as they claim to be, they will
> cease to be merely advocates of a particular voting method
> but will also advocate and participate in honest, public,
> democratically conducted debates between IRV advocates
> and advocates of other voting methods.
>
> Ralph Suter
>
> (An attendee of the 1992 founding meeting
> of the organization that later became the
> Center for Voting and Democracy)
>
> [1]"Runoff vote system makes good sense", Southwest
> Florida News Press, January 3, 2005, www.news-press.com/
> apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050102/OPINION/501020401/1015
>
> [2] "Election Selection: Are we using the worst voting
> procedure?", Science News, November 2, 2002, p. 280.
> www.sciencenews.org/articles/20021102/bob8.asp
> [mainly about Approval Voting]
>
> [3] "The Fairest Vote of All", Scientific American,
> March 2004, www.sciam.com  [mainly about Condorcet
> voting, which is called "True Majority Voting" in the
> article]
>
>

All in all, excellent!

Forest