[Election-Methods] RELEASE: Instant Runoff Voting

[Terry Bouricius]

While I agree that "core support" is not always well measured by first 
choices (multiple clones can make all these clones appear to have little 
"core" support, where any of them would appear to have massive core 
support running alone). However, I think the concept of "core support" is 
still an important factor in multi-candidate elections. While I think 
Condorcet methods are much better than most methods, I remain concerned 
that it may, in fact, reward inoffensive candidates who successfully hide 
their policy positions, rather than just true "compromise" candidates. 
Voters tend to have clear opinions of candidates at the top and bottom of 
their preference rankings, leaving the door open for inoffensive 
candidates who have avoided revealing any controversial views, to become 
EVERY voter's second choice ("at least he must be better than X") and 
likely Condorcet winner. The voting method will cause candidates to tailor 
their campaigns accordingly, and I fear Condorcet encourages candidates to 
limit voter information and instead campaign with slogans like "I am the 
candidate who listen to you" and policy will become even LESS discussed in 
campaigns than is already the case in the U.S.

So an important caveat to the assertion that "if a majority prefers Brad 
over Carter, this preference exists whether the voting system does 
anything with it"...is that the voting method in use will affect candidate 
behavior, and thus may result in Brad NOT being actually preferred over 
Carter under a different voting method. In other words, voter preferences 
among candidates (whether scores, or rankings) are not actually "given," 
as we assume when working out models (A>B>C), but will change depending on 
what campaign style is rewarded by the voting method in use.

Terry Bouricius


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Armitage" <eutychus_slept at yahoo.com>
To: <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2008 2:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] RELEASE: Instant Runoff Voting


--- On Sun, 7/27/08, James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:

>
> That is a consequence of your interpretation of how the
> voting system is supposed to work and what the voting
> system is supposed to
> be doing.  But that's not what IRV is about.  As I said
> in the previous message, the origins of IRV are in the
> Exhaustive Ballot,
> and in the Exhaustive Ballot there is no possibility of
> looking "at the entire ballot".  IRV is not about
> satisfying a set of
> criteria derived from social choice philosophy.
>

Of course every reason you might offer for choosing one system over 
another is based on an idea of what a reasonable decision rule for making 
collective decisions in very large groups should look like. This is true 
for IRV advocate no less than advocates for other systems; where the 
system came from is beside the point, especially since most jurisdictions 
have never used the Exhaustive Ballot.

In an important respect, Condorcet is more natural than IRV: if a majority 
prefers Brad over Carter, this preference exists whether the voting system 
does anything with it, or even elicits enough information to determine 
that it exists. Condorcet simply discovers and applies this preference. 
IRV, on the other hand, elicits enough information to discover it exists, 
but may decide to ignore it based purely on procedural grounds. There are 
no good reasons for this, ever. "Core support" is a bogus reason: every 
time IRV chooses someone other than the plurality winner you're letting an 
overall majority trump a comparison of core supporters. But other times 
IRV will fail to do this, for reasons that simply don't exist apart from 
the system itself.



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