[Election-Methods] A Better Version of IRV?

[Dave Ketchum]

Again, why NOT Condorcet?

Its' ballot is ranking, essentially the same as IRV, except the directions 
better be more intelligent:
      Rank as many as you choose - ranking all is acceptable IF you choose.
      Rank as few as you choose - bullet voting is acceptable if that 
completes a voter's desired expression.
      Equal ranking permitted.

Condorcet usually awards the same winner as IRV.  Major differences:
      Condorcet looks at ALL that the voters rank, while IRV ignores parts.
      Condorcet recognizes near ties, and tries to respond accordingly.

Could be a debate about the near ties - would it be better to resolve such 
with a runoff?  Runoffs take time and are expensive.  Are they enough 
better than what Condorcet can do with the original vote counts?

DWK

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:11:38 +0000 (GMT) fsimmons at pcc.edu wrote:
>>Forest Simmons wrote (Sun Jul 6 16:36:32 PDT 2008 ): > There is a lot of momentum behind IRV.? If we cannot stop it, 
>>are there some tweaks that would make it more liveable?
>>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?
>>The unranked candidates would be ranked below the ranked 
>>candidates in the order of the ballot of the favorite.
>>If the candidates were allowed to specify their rankings after 
>>they got the partial results, this might be a valuable improvement.
>>Forest
> 
> 
> Chris Benham replied:
> 
> 
>>Forest,
>>To me in principle voter's votes being commandeered by 
>>candidates isn't justified.
> 
> 
> Commandeered?  
> 
> The voter ranks all she wants to and the remaining candidates are ranked (later, i.e. below) by the voter's 
> favorite or perhaps, as Steve Eppley has suggested, by the voter's specified public ranking. 
> 
> Since IRV satisfies LNH, what's the harm in this?
> 
> In Australia, where (in single winner elections) most of the voters copy candidate cards, this would save 
> them a lot of bother.
> 
> 
>>This particular horrible idea would create a strong incentive 
>>for the major power-brokers
>>to sponsor the nomination of a lot of fake candidates just to 
>>collect votes for one or other
>>of the major parties.
> 
> 
> Am I mising something here?  I thought IRV was clone free.
> 
> 
>>How do you think it "might be a valuable improvement"?? What 
>>scenario do you have in
>>mind?
> 
> 
> (Besides the aboved mentioned advantage):
> 
> In conjunction with the candidate withdrawal option, it might enable the (other) losing candidates to save the 
> Condorcet candidate, or otherwise compensate for IRV's non-monotonicity.
>  
> 
>>And what do you have in mind as? "Australia's worst problems 
>>with their version of IRV"?
> 
> 
> It has degenerated into a defacto second rate version of Asset Voting.
> 
> 
>>Why do you want to "stop" IRV? Do you agree with Kathy Dopp? 
>>that? IRV is worse than 
>>FPP?
> 
> 
> I would stop IRV if we could get a better method in its place.
> 
> If we cannot stop IRV, why not search for acceptable tweaks that would improve it?
> 
> It is better than FPP in some ways and worse in others, especially in complexity.
> 
> Do you think that Asset Voting is worse than FPP?
> 
> Just to clarify, I think that Condorcet Methods and Range, though better than IRV, share this complexity 
> defect with IRV to some degree.  I have suggested the same tweak for them.  
> 
> In fact, that is the essence of DYN, wihich is simply carrying this tweak to its logical conclusion in the case 
> of Range, which is the only one of the three (Range, Condorcet, and IRV) that satisfies the FBC.
> 
> This tweak works best for Range, because (in the case of Range) the ballot that accomodate this tweak is 
> of the extremely simple "Yes/No/Favorite" style.  The Favorite category could easily be augmented to 
> include Eppley's "Published Ballots" idea.
> 
> Forest
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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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