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

[Kathy Dopp]

> Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2008 22:39:02 -0500
> From: Greg <greg at somervilleirv.org>

> You have often cited Warren Smith as one of the experts who "peer
> reviewed" your prior arguments. I don't always agree with Warren, but
> I do on this point. To quote from one of his pages:
>
>  "But the delayed and instant runoff systems happen to be
> mathematically equivalent if the voters are consistent between rounds
> and if there are ?3 candidates."
>  http://rangevoting.org/Peru06.html
>
> You disagree, claiming they are "nowhere even close to equivalent."
> Nowhere! Should you be letting someone peer-review your papers who you
> makes a statement you deem "provably false and very simply so?" I
> don't know how you can continue to contradict yourself in this way.

Greg, I'm a mathematician, so when I say "provably so" I mean mathematically.

You don't need me to point out all the detailed ways that top-two
runoff is different than IRV, just sit down and think about it. You
have a brain.  Use a paper and pencil to help figure out and list the
differences if necessary. Obviously more voters are able to
participate if they choose to, in a top-two runoff  than in any final
IRV round in any IRV election where there are more candidates than the
number of possible ballot rankings. Thus in top two runoff there is
more likely to be a majority candidate, chosen by more than 50% of
voters as opposed to IRV where 100% of voters rarely participate in
the final counting rounds when there are alot of candidates, or if the
IRV winner is the same as the first-round winner, then the result is
the same as plurality with no runoff or second chance at all.  That's
just one big difference between the methods. Instant runoff is far
fairer to more voters and has lots of other advantages over IRV. Just
sit and study the issue for a while.

I don't know what "delayed runoff" is. Never heard of that.

Kathy