[Election-Methods] Dopp: 1. "Does not solve the "spoiler " problem except in special cases."

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:48 PM 6/15/2008, Steve Eppley wrote:
>Most analyses of spoiling (and voters' strategizing to avoid 
>spoiling) narrowly focus on the candidates who reached the general 
>election ballot. The much bigger spoiling problem is during the 
>nomination process, when candidates choose not to run in the general 
>election due to concern they will make the outcome worse if they 
>run. (Example: McCain in 2000, who chose not to run for President as 
>an independent after failing to be nominated by the Republican 
>party.) It's a deterrence of competition. It explains why parties 
>each nominate only one candidate per office and it explains why few 
>politicians who care about the outcome join minor parties.

Well, you can call it "deterrence of competition," which is true, but 
it is also how the system works. We might notice that deliberative 
process works through a series of Yes/No questions, with majority 
rule. A series of choices made in a process culminating in a 
two-candidate election does come fairly close to simulating a more 
sophisticated single-ballot process, and may be superior in some 
respects: If, in fact, the Democrats appoint the best candidate they 
can find from their party (I'll make that the "most electable 
candidate") and the Republicans do likewise, the general election -- 
if not for spoilers -- would be likely to come up with a good overall 
choice. However, there are a pile of ifs in there. Nevertheless, this 
is approximately how the existing system works. And to reform systems 
we should understand how they work, not merely look at how they don't work.

>That sort of analysis falsely makes spoiling in major elections 
>appear rare, regardless of the voting method (even plurality rule). 
>When analysis properly includes the deterrence of competition, the 
>spoiling problem is rampant with plurality rule, top two runoff, 
>instant runoff and approval.

Mmm... it's more correct that the issue hasn't received sufficient 
study. To extend the concept of spoiler to pre-election processes is 
problematic. Spoiler effects can, of course, happen in pre-election 
process. They are, after all, *elections*, but the application of 
"spoiler" to Approval is quite problematic.

As was mentioned earlier, there are two kinds of spoilers: what I 
call a "first order spoiler," which is a minor candidate with no 
chance of winning who vote splits with a major candidate, causing the 
other, less preferred (overall) candidate to win. IRV generally fixes 
that, so does top-two runoff and Approval. Approval does it at lowest 
cost. Then there is Center Squeeze. IRV fails, reasonably frequently, 
I'd expect, in the three-viable-candidate scenario. Top-two runoff 
appears to, though it does provide for a recovery mechanism, if 
preference strength is sufficient. The influence of preference 
strength has largely been ignored. Top-two runoff often does not 
actually eliminate any candidates, they merely have a hump to 
overcome, and the lower turnout generally expected with runoff 
elections should help a write-in campaign to succeed: fewer clueless 
voters who don't really care and who might mark one of the two on the 
ballot without even being aware of the write-in campaign. In most 
cases where there is a center squeeze effect with top-two runoff, 
though, the preference strength is probably not enough to motivate a 
serious write-in effort.

(And, of course, if it fails, and if there is no majority requirement 
in the runoff -- BAD IDEA, as my daughter would say -- then it could 
elect the least desired candidate. If you are going to shoot the 
king, don't miss!)

>The deterrence of competition is the worse problem, in my opinion. 
>The effect tends to be only two parties that have a chance to win, 
>each party nominating only one candidate per office, using badly 
>flawed procedures (primary elections, for example) to decide which 
>one candidate the party will nominate.

I'm not convinced that deterrence of competition is a problem. Yes, 
primary procedures are flawed. Simplest fix: use Approval or Bucklin 
or Range (possibly Range 2 or Range 3) for primaries. All of these 
would tend to find the most-approved candidates, which would probably 
be closer to center, making it more difficult for extreme wings of a 
party to take it over. (That happening will generally backfire in 
future elections, as the party base evaporates -- party loyalty only 
goes so far -- but the damage can take years to undo.)

>Furthermore, the two parties tend to become polarized.

In one way. They tend to become centrist in another. And there is 
overlap, there is a middle which may affiliate with one party or the 
other. Worse than polarization, in my view, is issue linkage. The 
party system creates strange bedfellows. I have a friend who is 
socially progressive in many areas, just about all, in fact, but for 
religious and philosophical reasons is opposed to abortion. Where 
does she go? I find it rather odd that people are forced to choose 
between what are effectively pro-war, pro-life candidates and 
anti-war, pro-right-to-choose candidates.

There is a solution, but few willing to look at it yet. The earliest 
hints, in fact, go back to Lewis Carroll, publishing a pamphlet in 
1884 that suggested a simple modification of STV: representation of 
voters by candidates who received votes. The process still created a 
peer parliament (he used the Droop Quota and an STV ballot, but .... 
no exhausted ballots. I'd guess -- I haven't gotten the original text 
yet -- that he assigned any exhausted ballot to the first choice on 
that ballot, to be distributed at the discretion of that candidate. 
This system allows voters, if they choose, to vote for one, the 
person they most trust to represent them. Whether or not that person 
gets a lot of votes isn't important. This is a *choice* of proxy, not 
actually an election. The election takes place deliberatively, 
through negotiation, except for those seats where a candidate has 
received enough votes directly. No wasted votes. It seems that for 
most people, even and maybe even especially those familiar with 
standard voting systems, it takes quite a while for the idea to sink 
in. Ultimately, it could mean the end of elections as we know them, 
with elections being replaced with something far more democratic. 
What elections take place, then, take place deliberatively. For 
starters, deliberative process is Majority Criterion Compliant, 
Condorcet Compliant (under reasonable interpretations), and, in fact, 
takes account of preference strength informally.

>  One name that's been given the cause of the polarization is the 
> "center-squeeze effect." That is, candidates who want to win avoid 
> moderate positions because candidates at those positions will tend 
> to lose due to being sandwiched between the candidates to the 
> "left" and the candidate to the "right."

Center squeeze doesn't cause polarization; rather polarization causes 
center squeeze, combined with Plurality methods.

>  A much older analysis was the model of "two candidates under risk 
> of 3rd candidate entry" (given plurality rule). That analysis was 
> more realistic than the conditions in the median voter theorem. The 
> median voter theorem leads to the prediction that when there are 
> exactly two candidates competing on one issue dimension, they will 
> both try to take the position of the median voter, given plurality 
> rule or any voting method that reduces to majority rule when there 
> are 2 candidates. The prediction of the more realistic analysis 
> where more than 2 candidates can compete is that neither of the 2 
> major candidates will compete at the median position, since if 
> either does, a 3rd candidate at a position a little further from 
> the median can enter the race and win.

If vote splitting is allowed to do its work. Absolutely, whether 
there is incentive or not, if the two parties run separate primary 
processed, the winner will tend to be at the center of the party, not 
at the center of the electorate. So a two-party system will tend to 
oscillate, as one party wins, starts to exercise its power, and 
alienates the middle by going too far to one side. So then the other 
party wins and repeats the same. *Usually* the parties don't go very 
far to the extreme very quickly. But it could be pretty dangerous. 
Some think, I'm sure, that it *has* been dangerous and more than dangerous.

>On the matter of polarization, Instant Runoff looks as bad to me as 
>plurality rule and top two runoff.

Depends. IRV with a majority requirement (which is *actually* what 
Robert's Rules describes, contrary to FairVote propaganda) would 
likely be better than top two runoff. But who would want to spend the 
serious money involved for IRV when there are better, simpler systems 
to improve the first stage of top-two runoff. Simple example: 
Approval. Both elections are Approval, the primary and the runoff. 
Write-ins are allowed in both elections, so, *theoretically*, the 
runoff could fail to find a majority winner. My own view is that this 
risk in public elections is quite low, and, because majority failure 
could indicate that something serious is going on, it's worth the 
risk (and expense). But I think that majority failure in a runoff 
would be so extraordinarily rare, particularly if the runoff were 
Approval, that it's not worth worrying much about it. I could be 
wrong, which doesn't mean that a majority requirement is bad. Might 
be better to make it easier for people to vote!

>Polarization of two big parties may create a false impression that 
>the voters too are polarized. It may also increase actual 
>polarization among voters, since voters won't hear as many moderate arguments.

That's right. Voters, in fact, aren't nearly as polarized as public 
campaign rhetoric -- which doesn't come from the average voter -- 
might make us think. It's pretty obvious that real voters aren't so 
attached to one party or the other winning, long-term. Many, many, 
think of themselves as "independents," whether or not they are 
registered as a member of one party or not.

>One reason some people are clamoring to replace plurality rule with 
>Instant Runoff appears to be occasional election outcomes like Bush 
>in 2000, when Nader was a spoiler. Most Nader voters preferred Gore 
>over Bush, so Gore would have won if Florida had used Instant Runoff.

Maybe. What about Buchanan, etc.? I agree that Gore likely would have 
won, but I don't think it is by any means certain. Nader was arguing 
that it didn't make any difference, that a vote for Gore was a vote 
for the status quo, and, I think as well, if Bush won it would help 
hasten the end of corporate dominance. Many Nader voters wouldn't 
have voted for Gore.

>The trouble with the argument is that in a close spoiled election, 
>the number of voters who prefer the spoiled outcome is a large 
>minority; there won't be a consensus that the spoiled outcome is 
>worse. When the winner of a spoiled plurality rule election has a 
>large minority of the votes, given only the votes it doesn't matter 
>to the well-being of society which of the top two wins. It only 
>appears to matter, since the combination of the spoiling and the 
>polarization leads to a big difference in policy choices. The 
>closeness of the vote totals means one cannot tell, given only the 
>votes, which set of policy choices is better for society, so in my 
>opinion the ever-present problem of nomination deterrence is much 
>worse than occasional spoiling in general elections.

Hard to tell, don't you think? Certainly there are common opinions 
that have never been proven to be true. Such as, for example, the 
opinion that low turnout in runoff elections is a bad thing. It may 
be a good thing, shifting results toward Range results (by 
preferentially devaluing low-preference-strength votes.)

>P.S. - I presume some people will say the 1992 Clinton-Bush-Perot 
>election was spoiled, since some polls indicated Bush would have won 
>if Perot hadn't run. In other words, that Perot took more votes from 
>Bush than from Clinton. That may be. However, there was apparently a 
>majority cycle, according to a poll by Gary Jacobson of UC San 
>Diego. If Perot had dropped out, Bush would have won. If Clinton had 
>dropped out, Perot would have won. If Bush had dropped out, Clinton 
>would have won. So which one was the spoiler?

Most would assign this title to the minor candidate, without a chance 
to win. Otherwise it would be a Center Squeeze effect.

>Furthermore, the smallest of the three majorities was the majority 
>who preferred Bush over Clinton. That means Clinton would have won 
>anyway given the Condorcetian methods most popular among the members 
>of this email list, if Jacobsen's numbers were right.
>
>P.P.S. - Kathy Dopp's request for arguments about Instant Runoff was 
>expressed in terms of support and opposition. Those terms are 
>absolutist shorthands that omit the key information about what the 
>item is being compared against. By the same reasoning that a voter 
>could oppose Clinton (when compared against Obama) and support 
>Clinton (when compared against McCain), someone could both support 
>and oppose Instant Runoff. How should someone who believes Instant 
>Runoff is slightly better than plurality rule and Condorcet is much 
>better than Instant Runoff respond to her request? Preference orders 
>are more informative than statements about support or opposition, 
>since they reveal the comparisons being made.

Preference order is certainly more informative than core support or 
first-preference-only, i.e., Plurality. However, missing from it is 
preference strength. Approval incorporates a kind of preference 
strength measurement through averaging of votes; the independence of 
approvals makes this work. Range does even better, of course, by 
allowing the direct expression of preference strength. It's an error 
to consider that ratings are "sincere," they are votes, just like 
Approvals. Just as some theorists dismissed approval because 
"approval" doesn't have any fixed meaning, the same has happened with 
Range, the ratings don't have a fixed meaning. But Range, regardless, 
allows voters to feed preference strength information into the 
hopper, and "strategic exaggeration" is quite possibly an oxymoron. 
There is no motive, no reward, for actually exaggerating one's true 
preference strength. The idea that this is comes from assuming some 
"sincere preference strength" which is then modified by 
"exaggaration" in order to "improve the outcome." Wait: under Range, 
if it improves the outcome, that's a sincere voter preference. What 
Range does is to restrict voter preference strength choices so that 
the sum of them is one full vote. So one assigns the vote strengths 
where they matter; they are von Neumann - Morganstern utilities, 
adjusted according to probabilities so that the voter puts the votes 
where they count.

My own proposal has been Range with pairwise analysis. If the Range 
winner is unbeaten by any other candidate, and the Range winner has 
majority approval (approval cutoff must be specified, probably by 
setting it as 50% Range), then the Range winner is elected. If there 
is a candidate who beats the Range winner pairwise, there is a runoff 
between that candidate and the Range winner. It should be noticed 
that runoff elections generally test preference strength. If, indeed, 
the Range winner was by significant preference strength, the Range 
winner has a serious leg up on winning the runoff, even though the 
pairwise winner would, as most election theorists look at it, 
"automatically" win, an argument I've seen many times when this was 
proposed. No, I don't think so. Differential turnout and voters who 
reconsider could turn it the other way, and properly so.