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

[Dave Ketchum]

On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:55:20 -0700 (PDT) Chris Benham wrote:
> Kathy,
>  
> Imagine  that  Approval is used to elect the  US President and
> as in the current campaign the Republicans  are fielding one
> candidate, McCain.  Does that mean that the big fight for the
> Democrat nomination between  Clinton and Obama we've just
> seen would in the Approval scenario be completely unnecessary?
>  
> 
> Why not simply endorse both candidates?  After all, one cannot
> possibly spoil the election for the other because Approval has
> no spoiler problem. Voters simply approve candidates or not
> completely regardless of what other candidates are on the ballot,
> right?
>  
BUT, Approval is unable to be told that, while both Democrats are seen as 
better than McCain, one is MUCH better than the other.
> 
>  
>  
> I  think that in practical effect Approval  does have a "spoiler" or
> split-vote problem  that would be sufficient for the Democrats to
> still want to endorse one candidate only.
> 
>  
> What I actually wrote in my initial post on the 5  "fairness
> principles in your paper (regarding IIA):
>  
> In practical effect  *no* method meets this.Approval and Range can be 
> said to meet 
> Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) only if the votes are 
> interpreted as the voters giving
> ratings on some fixed scale that is independent of the actual candidates. 
> 
> On this perverse interpretation Approval and Range do not reduce to  FPP 
> in the 2 candidate election,
> in violation of  Dopp's "fairness principle 4":
> 
> "Any candidate who is the favorite [first] choice of a majority of 
> voters should win."
>  
> (approval or non-approval counts as "rating" on a 2-point  scale).
>  
> This latter point you seem to implicitly acknowledge in one of your 
> recent posts:
>  
> 
> "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."
>  
> 
> 
> Chris Benham
-- 
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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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