[Election-Methods] A Better Version of IRV?

[Dave Ketchum]

On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:37:28 -0400 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> At 02:01 AM 7/13/2008, Chris Benham wrote:
> 
>> Forest,
>> "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?".
>>
>> The harm is that voter's votes are used to help candidates that the 
>> voters may not wish to help.
>> It offends the principle that the voter should be fully in control of 
>> his/her vote.
>> Giving some voters (candidates) the power to fully control their own 
>> vote and also to complete
>> the rankings of some of the truncators offends the principle that as 
>> far as possible all voters
>> should have equal power.
> 
> 
> First of all, if we are talking about elections of representatives of 
> some kind, the voter isn't going to be  "in full control of his/her 
> vote" no matter what. At the point of the election, or later, when the 
> representative casts votes, individual control is lost.
> 
> The equal power issue is spurious. The voting power is in the hands of 
> those who cast ballots, originally, and they may choose to delegate that 
> power or not. More about this below. The original "candidate proxy" or 
> "Asset Voting" proposal was actually an STV proposal by Lewis Carroll, 
> aka Charles Dodgson, in 1994.
> 
...
> 
>>
>> > 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?"
>>
>> The short answer is because IRV isn't really amenable to "tweaks".  In 
>> terms of  positive
>> criterion compliances it isn't dominated by any other method, and has 
>> both good and quite
>> bad properties (averaging in my judgement to a "good" method).  
>> "Tweaks" generally muck
>> up its good properties  without enough compensation in terms of fixing 
>> or patching up its
>> bad properties.
> 
> 
> Problem is that the "good" property, Later No Harm, is actually a 
> *terrible* property, see Woodall's original paper that coined the term.
> 
> However, for proportional representation, there is, in fact, a very 
> simple tweak that is what Dodgson invented. He noted that many voters, 
> not being specialists in politics, wouldn't have sufficient knowledge to 
> rank all candidates, and therefore, if truncation were allowed, would 
> indeed truncate and would therefore be at risk of having their ballot 
> exhausted and thus their vote wasted. Why not allow voters to vote for 
> one only, with that one then being able to recast those votes, if 
> exhausted, in order to create quotas for election? I'm not sure that he 
> specified it, I don't have a copy of his full pamphlet yet, but I'd 
> assume that if one ranked more than one, but the ballot were exhausted, 
> the first preference would get the vote for reassignment (but there are 
> other ways to do it, I'm sure, and I haven't considered all the 
> contingencies). It's a simple tweak, but it turns STV into Asset Voting, 
> with voter control over transfers possible, to the extent that the voter 
> exercises the right. And then fallback to deliberative reassignment of 
> exhausted votes, based on the candidate the voter most trusts, the first 
> preference.

"wasted vote", as used above, is NOT TRUE!  The voter has expressed 
his desire and somehow adding more non-voter thoughts is not part of 
his desire - just as, in Plurality, no one else has a meaningful way 
to add something else to the voter's expressed desire.
      Note:  If it is PART of a voters desire to appoint someone else 
to add to what he has voted - fine.

As to quotas - they require thought, but pretending the voter has done 
more than he chose to do is not part of a valid solution.
> 
...
> 
> Further, LNH cannot be satisfied by any method that requires a majority, 
> unless the majority is artificially created, either by eliminations *of 
> votes* or by requiring full ranking, which amounts to coerced votes.

"majority" needs thought:
      Certainly appropriate with Plurality, for many voters were 
unable to completely express their desires in the base election.
      Little, if any, value in an election method that lets voters 
completely express their desires.
> 
>> "It is better than FPP in some ways and worse in others, especially in 
>> complexity."
>>
>> With separate paper ballots for each race, I don't accept that IRV is 
>> all that "complex".
>> I think that you have somewhat dodged my question.
> 
> 
> It is far harder to audit. That's what the election security experts 
> think. Sure, that can be overcome, but why is it worth the effort? There 
> are better, easier to count forms of preferential voting.

You cannot overcome the fact that IRV vote counting, and thus 
auditing, is more complex than even Condorcet - which has the same 
ballot but simpler rules for counting.

Mention of paper ballots is a distraction - they do no simplifying for 
races that extend across multiple precincts.
> 
> What is missing with much of this is that IRV, in nonpartisan elections, 
> almost always mimics plurality. Even in partisan elections, it tends to 
> do this strongly, but "comeback" elections become more common.
> 
>> "Do you think that Asset Voting is worse than FPP?"
>> No, on balance.
> 
> 
> We don't really know, since we have only theory. Asset hasn't been tried 
> in political contexts. But Asset is a form of proxy voting, which has 
> been used for centuries where property is involved.
> 
> 
>> "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."
>>
>> I find your  DYN method  less offensive than your "IRV tweak" 
>> suggestion because it is an "opt in" system
>> and to the extent that voters don't opt in it is just plain Approval 
>> (a not-too-bad method).
> 
> 
> Right. In fact, take Approval and require a majority for election, you 
> have an *excellent* method, better than Plurality with majority 
> required. (Simply because it avoids runoffs some of the time. Same thing 
> with Bucklin, which is really a ranked Approval, especially if multiple 
> votes are allowed in all rounds, unlike in the original form (Duluth is 
> what I have in mind), where multiple votes were only allowed in third rank.

Conceded that Approval is better than Plurality, and thus worth 
considering for this amount of improvement.

But such as Condorcet need consideration for permitting more complete 
expression of voter desires.
> 
...
> 
> IRV is changing election results, it does not "simulate" real runoffs, 
> and the reasons are pretty clear: real runoffs give the voters a new 
> look at a reduced field, plus there will be differential turnout, which 
> tests preference strength, probably pushing results toward what sincere 
> Range would produce.
> 
> Further, there is a little-known fact about *some* runoff elections in 
> the U.S.: write-in votes may be allowed, thus providing a safety valve 
> for the situation, fairly unusual *in nonpartisan elections* that a 
> Condorcet winner (from underlying preferences) isn't in the runoff. In 
> Long Beach, California, there was an election where the mayor won as a 
> write-in. This was an incumbent, and had been prohibited from being on 
> the ballot by term limit laws, which did not prohibit her election, 
> which would have been unconstitutional, but it prohibited her being 
> placed on the ballot. So she ran as a write-in. She was the leader in 
> the primary, but did not gain a majority. In the runoff, there was only 
> one candidate on the ballot, the runner-up. Again, with write-in votes, 
> she won that by a plurality, which was all that was required. (There was 
> another write-in with significant votes in the runoff.)

There is a smell to this one:
      That she could not be on original ballot - ok.
      BUT if her write-in votes were enough, she should have been on 
the runoff ballot (other choice is term limits disqualifying her from 
even being a write-in).
> 
...
> 
> What we consider "election methods" are shortcuts for basic democratic 
> process, which restricts itself to single questions which can be 
> answered Yes or No, with the questions themselves being designed by a 
> series of questions all of that kind. From my point of view, good 
> election methods are simply a way of making democratic process more 
> efficient without sacrificing the democratic value of majority approval 
> of any result. Good methods will also reveal possible improvements over 
> mere majority approval, and all of this *requires* that Later-No-Harm be 
> unsatisfied. The simplest such reform is Approval Voting, which is a 
> very small tweak to Plurality. Range is likewise pretty simple and easy 
> to count, particularly if the resolution is low. To be what I call 
> "Majority Rule compliant," Range must have a specified Approval cutoff, 
> probably an absolute one (such as midrange or above, or simply above 
> midrange). Likewise ranked methods would need an Approval cutoff, mere 
> ranking is not enough.

Do not see need for such an 'Approval cutoff' or any reasonable way to 
specify such.
> 
> All voting methods which require completion of the election in a single 
> round are not Majority Rule compliant, with the possible exception that 
> full ranking is required, and any ranking above bottom is considered 
> approval, which coerces votes, and if votes can be coerced, Plurality 
> satisfies it. (You will vote for Our Supreme Leader or we will discard 
> your ballot as obviously containing an error. Remember, Saddam Hussein 
> was re-elected in an election where nobody voted against him. As far as 
> we know.)
> 
> I'm always amused by the argument that the last-round majority of IRV is 
> a true majority, because, with this logic, we could always find 
> unanimity for the IRV winner: just carry the elimination one step further.
-- 
  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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