[Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election

[rob brown]

On Dec 23, 2007 11:43 AM, Dave Ketchum <davek at clarityconnect.com> wrote:

>  > And then Gore loses, just like he did with Plurality.
>
> But what other voters do also matters.
>

Surely you understood that I had considered that others might do the same
thing.

The point is, the issue of vote splitting with plurality is there with range
as well.

 > People already have the ability to not vote.  I skip candidates and
>  > propositions I don?t know much about or care much about.  Here in san
>  > francisco, I even get to rank candidates, and will rank candidates
>  > equally if that?s how I feel.  But if I actually have a preference, I
>  > will express it as strongly as I can.
>
> This puzzles.  I understand that San Francisco has ranking via IRV -
> but assume that it does not permit equal ranking, which IRV has
> trouble implementing.


I allows you to express a first choice but treat second and third as equal.


If I had my way, it would be condorcet, and would allow equal rankings at
any position.

I will, however, say I much prefer IRV to plurality, and think it is a step
in the right direction.  First we had runoff elections (which people seemed
to understand), then we have an automated version of the same that involves
ranking candidates, and hopefully in the future we will have a better way of
tabulating it that also uses ranked candidates.  As much as I understand the
imperfections of IRV, it still thrills me to get to rank candidates.



>   >     With 3-or-more choice elections, I think the benefits of Range
> Voting
>  >     would be HUGE.
>  > >
>  > Understood.  Disagree.
>
>  > I think people already feel like their vote doesn?t count for much.
>  >
> Range and Condorcet give benefits whenever there are more than two
> seriously contending candidates.
>

I am well aware that with 3 candidates there are problems that are not there
in two candidate elections.  (
http://karmatics.com/voting/movienite.htmlsums up my view on this) To
be clear, I think Condorcet (and related things
like DSV) addresses them (if imperfectly), while Range doesn't come close.
Approval is somewhere in the middle.

My point in talking about two candidate elections is that the main
differentiating effect Range has (allowing people to voluntarily express
their opinion with less than maximum weight) could equally apply to two
candidate elections as well.  By looking at it where the complexities of
3-candidate elections are absent, its absurdity might be more apparent.
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