[EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending non-Monotonic voting methods & IRV/STV

[Bob Richard]

Part of Kathy's argument here appears to depend on treating the first 
and second rounds as if they were separate elections rather than two 
steps in a single election method. If they could be taken separately, 
each of the two rounds would be monotonic. The first round is either (1) 
a plurality election if one candidate gets a majority, or (2) an SNTV 
election to choose two finalists. The second is a plurality 
election..Does anyone else find this convincing?

By itself, the first round isn't an election method at all, since it's 
not known in advance whether there will be one "winner" or two. So to 
me, at least, top-two runoff is a single election, even though the 
rounds take place on different days (in some California local elections, 
the rounds are five *months* apart). Understood in this way, top-two 
runoff is non-monotonic. No one actually disputes that.

Also, for Kathy's edification on the difference between top-two and IRV. 
Top-two fails the mutual majority criterion. IRV satisfies it.

--Bob

Kathy Dopp wrote
>> From: Greg <greg at somervilleirv.org>
>> Subject: Re: [EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending
>>        non-Monotonic   voting methods & IRV/STV
>>     
>
>   
>> As you acknowledge, IRV does not satisfy monotonicity when there are
>> three (or more) candidates.
>>     
>
> True. IRV does not, but plurality does.
>
>   
>> Top-two runoff is equivalent to IRV when
>> there are three candidates.
>>     
>
> Greg,
>
> Your statement above is provably false and very simply so. IRV and
> top-two runoff are nowhere even close to "equivalent".  Read my
> affidavit from a month ago or my paper on the flaws of IRV or any of
> Abd'ul's emails, or just think about it for a while.
>
>   
>>  So if you're going to claim IRV is
>> unconstitutional due to non-monotonicity, you would, at least
>> logically, have to deem top-two runoff unconstitutional as well.
>>     
>
> Why because top-two runoff elections are provably monotonic?
>
> You do know that that doesn't make sense right?
>
>   
>> The
>> affidavit from David Austen-Smith that you are hosting on your site
>> shows you a simple example of this:
>>  http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/11AffidavitofDavidAusten-Smith.pdf
>>     
>
> Obviously it does not, and that is simple to see.  When one votes for
> any candidate in either a primary or a general or a runoff election,
> it INCREASES the chances of that candidate winning, unlike IRV.
>
> Try getting any example that really shows that any plurality election
> is nonmonotonic. You Can't.  Just proclaiming it to be so, is just a
> simple lie.  Some IRV proponents might like to believe lies like that
> which support their position, but we know that repeating the same lie
> over and over is never going to make it true.
>
>   
>>>> Note also that other arguments by the "MN Voter's Alliance" would, if
>>>> successful, would render *any* voting method that involves putting
>>>> marks next to multiple candidates -- IRV, Bucklin, Approval,
>>>> Condorcet, Range -- by its nature unconstitutional.
>>>>         
>
> Yes. *IF* they are successful at convincing a judge that an obvious
> falsehood that is simply disproven is the truth.
>
> Any judge could be expected to be too smart than to fall for claims
> that are so quickly and easily shown to be false.
>
> Look, I'm asking for true comments of fact. Anyone have any of those
> about these affidavits?
>
> Kathy
> ----
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>
>
>   

-- 
Bob Richard
Marin Ranked Voting
P.O. Box 235
Kentfield, CA 94914-0235
415-256-9393
http://www.marinrankedvoting.org