[Election-Methods] Dopp:"17. Unstable and can be delicately sensitive to noise in the rankings."

[Dave Ketchum]

I care little for IRV, which deserves an early death, but think of needs 
of Condorcet, which also uses a ranked ballot.

On Tue, 8 Jul 2008 08:28:24 -0700 (PDT) Chris Benham wrote:
>  From Kathy Dopp's anti-IRV propaganda "report":
>  
> " 17. Unstable and can be delicately sensitive to noise in the rankings. 
> If an election is not
> resolved after 3 rounds of IRV then one is deep in the ranking for many 
> people. This means
> noise in the rankings. Do people really study candidates they don't care 
> much about? Thus
> the noise in the ranking for the most ill-informed voters is determining 
> the outcome in deep
> rank run-offs.
> When a race is unresolved after 3 rounds of IRV, a better solution is to 
> hold a real run off
> with the remaining candidates. Having winnowed the field, voters can now 
> properly study
> their allowed few choices with the required care and presumably enough 
> will to make the
> outcome not contingent on noise. Moreover, can you fathom how awful it 
> would be to fill
> out a ballot ranking every candidate 10 deep? In Australia, voters are 
> required by law to fill
> rank ever candidate running (generally 20) from 1 to 20. Do you think 
> there is anything
> besides noise in the last ten? The saving grace on the Australian ballot 
> is that generally there
> are only 2 questions, one with 3 to 4 rankings and one with about 20. 
> Not like our USA
> ballots. Restricting the ranking depth of ranked choice ballots could 
> improve IRV methods
> by reducing noise and making it easier for voters. "
>  
> 
> No-one I gather is suggesting that in the US voters should be compelled 
> to fully rank, so all
> this is silly crude stuff.
>  
>  
> "In Australia, voters are required by law to fill rank ever candidate 
> running (generally 20) from 1 to 20."
>  
Ranked voting is valuable via allowing voters to favor more than one 
candidate.

It is wasteful and destructive if it demands that they "rank" candidates 
beyond their desires.
>  
> The "generally 20" figure is false. For Australian IRV elections there 
> is rarely more than about
> seven candidates.
>  
> The figure 20 is about right for elections to the Senate, which uses 
> multi-member  STV
> (corrupted into a quasi-list system).
>  
>  
> Elsewhere in the paper we read that IRV is inadequate because it can't 
> guarantee  that the
> winner will be elected with the support of a majority of all the voters 
> who submitted
> valid ballots.
>  
Majority is a word that makes sense for Plurality elections.

Associating it with other election methods ranges toward useless and 
destructive.
      Demanding that every voter rank every candidate means that each 
candidate must be ranked by 100% of the voters - a "majority" without 
value for each.
      Even with voters choosing how many to rank (or to approve in 
Approval) getting ranked or approved by more than half does not mean a 
useful majority - some other candidate could earn the win via stronger 
backing.
>  
> "Restricting the ranking depth of ranked choice ballots could improve 
> IRV methods
> by reducing noise and making it easier for voters."

The obvious way to reduce noise is to not demand it (discussed above) and 
educate voters that introducing noise is wasteful and can be destructive,

Restricting ranking depth can accommodate inadequate equipment - which 
should be replaced by adequate equipment - this should be a moderate 
expense to accommodate the occasional voter who desires such.
>  
> But Kathy favours "restricting ranking depth" which of course has the 
> effect of making
> this avowed aim much less likely.
>  
> And of course restricting ranking doesn't "make it easier for voters". 
> If  truncation is allowed,
> how could it? 
>  
> In fact it just makes it harder for some voters. Say there are many 
> candidates and I judge
> that 2 of them are the front-runners, I have a preference between them 
> but they are my
> 2 least favourite candidates. I am stuck with the same dilemma and 
> strong incentive to use
> the Compromise strategy that I have in FPP. To have some hope of having 
> an impact on
> the result I must insincerely rank my preferred front-runner above 
> second-bottom.
>  
>  
> Chris Benham
-- 
  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.
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