[Election-Methods] RELEASE: Instant Runoff Voting (Chris Benham)

[Kathy Dopp]

On Sun, Jun 22, 2008 at 1:58 AM, Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>
> Apart from a passing reference to Range the only voting method I discussed
> or referred to was Approval.

OK Chris,

Let us look at your alleged two examples of "approval" voting. LOOK at
what you gave us:

65 A
35 B

then you gave
40 AB
25 CA
35 BC

What you did was CHANGE the votes of 40 of the 65 people who did not
approve of B in the first example, so that 40 of them all of a
suddenly approve of B now in the second example. Which is it?  Do
these 40 people approve of B or not?  Apparently you simply alter the
votes of your voters in the second example to get the result that you
want and hope that people will not notice your slight of hand.

In actuality, if these are the same voters both before and after you
add another candidate C, then your first example with two candidates,
to be consistent with your second example with three candidates should
be:

25 A
40 AB
35 B

so that B wins in the first example AND in the second when another
candidate is introduced.

Or alternatively, if you want to give an honest logically consistent
example by altering your second case with three candidates to be
consistent with the first case with two instead, it would be:

40 A
25 CA
35 BC

so that A wins in both the first and second example.

Your manipulating and changing the candidates whom voters approve of
all of a sudden when you add another candidate - well this type of
trick is very consistent with the tactics of Fair Vote and IRV
proponents and not only does not impress me, its lack of honesty
offends me.

Again Chris, I would like to be working on more productive pursuits
than discussing this nonsense with you.  Please try to find an honest
example where voters' opinions of the first two candidates do not
change when you add a third candidate and I believe that you will find
that you cannot

Cheers,

Katy

>
> Chris  Benham
>
>
>
> Kathy Dopp kathy.dopp at gmail.com
> Sat Jun 21 17:54:52 PDT 2008
> Chris,
>
> You example clearly does not provide an example of approval voting
> being subjected to the spoiler effect.
>
> You managed to invent a really bad voting method (asking voters for
> ratings and then converting their ratings to approval/disapproval by
> your new voting method) and applied your method of conversions to your
> own example, but it has nothing to do with either range or approval
> voting methods.
>
> Chris, This is the LAST time I will take any of my time to respond to
> any of your emails since your emails either lack any logic or show
> that you did not take the time to read and study either Abd ul's email
> rebuttals of Fair Vote or the paper I wrote and I don't have time to
> waste on annoying silliness.
>
> On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 5:03 PM,  > Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 > Ok.
> Suppose the method is Approval, there are two candidates (A and B)
> and the voters'
>>utilities (sincere ratings on some fixed scale independent of the candidates) are:
>>40: A100, B98
>>25: A98, B1
>>35: B100, A1
>
> OK. Then if this example is counted using approval voting by removing
> the ratings for these voters, there is a TIE since 100% of voters
> approve of both A and B.
>
>>
>>I assume that with just 2 candidates, all voters will simply approve the one they prefer to
>>the other, to give the Approval result:
>>65: A
>>35: B
>
> OK. This is a completely separate example of approval voting than your
> first example.  BTW, in any election:
>
> 1.  voters have to make a choice on how they vote and cannot vote more
> than one way in the same election using one ballot, and
>
> 2. the election has to be either conducted via one election method or
> another - I.e. approval voting is analogous to rating candidates 0
> (not approved) or 1 (approved), and so your above example shows ALL
> candidates are approved if one tries to switch that to approval from
> ratings.
>
> In this example A wins.
>
>>A wins. Now suppose that a third candidate (C) is introduced, and including this extra
>>candidate the voters' utilities are:
>>
>>
>>40: A100, B98, C1
>>25: C100, A98,B1
>>35: B100, C98, A1
>
> OK. In this example, removing the ratings to get approval voting
> example (a third example related to neither of the first two, ALL
> voters approve of A, B, and C and so A, B, and C are TIED again. It
> seems like a pretty unlikely scenario, but then I suppose it is
> possible.
>
>>Now all the voters have one candidate they like very much, another they like nearly as much,
>>and one they like very much less. The voters best zero-information strategy is to all approve 2
>>candidates, to give the Approval ballots:
>>40: AB
>>25: CA
>>35: BC
>
> OK, in THIS (yet another separate example of approval voting which is
> not related to either of your prior examples in any way except by
> dropping particular candidates from prior examples), B wins.
>
> You are capable of understanding I hope that this example is entirely
> different from your prior examples and that none of your examples are
> of the same approval election?
>
> If you are illogically claiming that these three entirely separate
> examples are the same you must (I am guessing) be thinking in
> backwards fashion that you can devine voter ratings from approval
> ballots or that you can delusionally know how all voters would change
> ratings to approval votes and vice-versa.
>
> I.e. Certainly you must agree that:
>
> 1. voters must decide ONE way to cast their ONE ballot, and
>
> 2. it is not humanly possible to devine what ratings voters would give
> to each candidate from looking at their approval voting ballots
> because IF you are talking about APPROVAL voting, then there ARE NO
> RATINGS, and you might agree that no one has superhuman powers to know
> by looking at approval ballots, the ratings voters would give.
>
> Chris, If you want to provide an example that makes a lick of sense
> and does not assume that you can magically read all voters' minds, and
> is logical and valid for EITHER approval or range voting which
> exhibits the spoiler effect, then you must find an example that is
> RANGE voting alone or an example which is APPROVAL voting that
> exhibits the spoiler effect; or alternatively use only 0's and 1's to
> signify your approval voting ratings.
>
> Approval voting is analogous to giving a rating of 1 or 0, not the
> example you gave.
>
> So Chris, go back to the drawing board and eventually I believe that
> you will discover that you can NOT come up with a valid example of
> either approval or range voting that is susceptible to the spoiler
> effect.
>
> I.e. If you want to give an example where approval voting fails, use 1
> or 0 for your approval/disapproval for candidates. Otherwise come up
> with a range voting example, but your twisting all logic like you have
> done in order to come up with a fake example is very annoying because
> it is so stupid, and I am simply *not* going to respond to any more
> illogical silliness on your part Chris; nor am I going to continue to
> waste my time copying and pasting sentences from this list or from my
> paper which you have not bothered to read.
>
> Take the time to due your own research and reading and try again to
> come up with a *valid* example and take the time to READ what Abd ul
> and I have written, or stop wasting our time.
>
> Kathy
>
>
>
>      Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address.
> www.yahoo7.com.au/mail
>



-- 

Kathy Dopp

The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author
Kathy Dopp's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a
Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in
exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at

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