[Election-Methods] A Better Version of IRV?

[Dave Ketchum]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 17:31:34 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote:
>>Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:36:32 +0000 (GMT)
>>From: fsimmons at pcc.edu
>>
>>There is a lot of momentum behind IRV.  If we cannot stop it, are there some tweaks that would make it more liveable?
> 
> 
> Hi Forest.
> 
> I think we can stop that madness.  I believe that the LWV, US will no
> longer be seriously considering supporting IRV since my writing a
> report on IRV's flaws - and that other State LWV groups and other
> State legislators where IRV was being considered are stopping their
> push for it.

This sounds like a step ahead.
> 
> However, to answer your "if" question ...
> 
> 
>>Someone has suggested that a candidate withdrawal option would go a long way towards ameliorating the damage.
>>Here's another suggestion, inspired by what we have learned from Australia's worst problems with their version of IRV:
>>Since IRV satisfies Later No Harm, why not complete the incompletely ranked ballots with the help of the rankings of the ballot's favorite candidate?
> 
UGH - such a ballot no longer represents what the voter offered!
> 
> But that would still leave the problem of having to count IRV
> elections centrally and alot of the other worst flaws of IRV
> (including its lack of fairness, cost, tendency to promote secret
> electronic vote counting, etc.  Please peruse my report when you have
> a chance (It is only 11 pages plus appendices and endnotes and is
> well-organized to make it easy to read.):
> 
> http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf
> 
> 
>>The unranked candidates would be ranked below the ranked candidates in the order of the ballot of the favorite.
> 
> 
> While that might be a slight improvement, the better idea would be the
> one suggested in my paper (I heard it first from Charlie Strauss) that
> also fixes some of the counting problems of IRV elections. I.e. Let
> all the candidates (before election day) pick their own ranked choices
> of other candidates - and not the voters.  This system has many
> advantages over IRV including:
> 
> 1.  gives the minor party candidates more political power

BUT they only deserve what the voters offered.
> 
> 2.  simpler ballots that do not confuse voters - i.e. voters only need
> vote for their top choice

Again leaving IRV - why not admit that and go for something with quality 
as a replacement?
> 
> 3.  The RCV ballots can be counted and summed much more easily because
> all the ballots of voters who voted for an eliminated candidate are
> counted the same way - no need for individual ballot examination and
> sorting, etc.  I.e. Only the voters' first choices are needed to be
> summed for each precinct and reported to the central facility as
> always, to know who wins.
> 
> 4. Much much easier to manually count and audit.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>If the candidates were allowed to specify their rankings after they got the partial results, this might be a valuable improvement.
> 
Again leaving IRV.
> 
> Having the candidates only rank "incompletely ranked" ballots would be
> an election nightmare, but having candidates rank all the other
> candidates and having voters only give their first choice, would work
> better than IRV, but I still think other voting methods are available
> that are superior.
> 
> I believe that my email contacts with the LWV and with US Election
> Officials and others who have now been apprised of my report on the
> "17 flaws and 3 benefits of IRV" will have the effect of stopping IRV
> from creating very additional serious problems with US elections.
> 
> Look at the mess in San Francisco and WA now.  Most election officials
> will not want to emulate those messes.
> 
> The push for manual audits to verify the accuracy of machine counts,
> will make IRV virtually impossible to implement.  Election integrity
> advocates, once they understand all the problems IRV causes, will
> oppose it.

The test cases BETTER involve voting in multiple locations to properly 
complicate the counting.
> 
> It is amazing to me that anyone would consider supporting IRV when it
> does not even solve the spoiler problem except in one case, and there
> are an amount of possibly subtotals that could be used to count votes
> for each precinct equal to the sum from i = 0 to N-1 of N!/i! where N
> is the number of candidates.
> 
> The only reason some people supported IRV initially is because it is a
> very seductive idea until one actually sits down and thinks about all
> the implications of using it.
> 
> If you know any legislator or election official who is contemplating
> using IRV, simply attach a copy of my peer-reviewed report on the "17
> flaws and 3 benefits of IRV" to them.  Since I wrote this paper, I
> personally know of at least two US States where legislators have
> changed their minds about supporting IRV and are no longer supporting
> IRV.  If we get my peer-reviewed report on IRV out to all the
> decision-makers, I feel certain we can avert another mess similar to
> the 2002 HAVA bill.
> 
> As usual the group Common Cause is causing problems with US election
> systems while raising money to allegedly solve the election problems
> because Common Cause has officially endorsed IRV just like Common
> Cause was instrumental in pushing through the HAVA bill in 2002.  The
> leadership of Common Cause never seems to adequately think about the
> election reform positions they take prior to taking them and yet are
> very slow to drop their bad positions once they take them. Sigh.
> 
> Kathy
-- 
  davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
            Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                  If you want peace, work for justice.