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

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

I responded later in this thread, I've now gone back to the beginning 
of it. I have had, of course, a special interest in Brown v. 
Smallwood, the reasoning (or lack of same) behind it, and the 
implications. Contrary to a couple of years of propaganda on the 
topic, Brown v. Smallwood clearly prohibited any kind of "alternative 
vote," not just the specific form known as Bucklin voting.

Brown v. Smallwood did not follow the precedents of other states, nor 
did it become a precedent for other states. That's one side of this 
issue. I'd consider BvS ripe for reversal.

But the problem is that FairVote and its proxies have argued that BvS 
is valid, but that it does not apply to sequential-elimination 
preferential voting, because only one vote is considered at any given 
time. Thus they have attempted, in effect, to use BvS to allow IRV, 
but not the probably superior Buckling voting, Approval, or Condorcet methods.

In particular, while Bucklin, like Approval, does allow votes for 
more than one candidate to be active at any given moment, as must any 
Condorcet method (with an exception of sequential-ballot forms with a 
true majority requirement, used in parliamentary procedure but never 
for public elections), in the end, only one vote *at most* is 
effective. All other votes are moot and could be struck from the 
ballots without affecting the outcome. Thus these methods do satisfy 
the basic requirement of one-person, one-vote, *in terms of 
determining the outcome.*

FairVote has attempted to make a virtue of the very serious Center 
Squeeze problem of Instant Runoff Voting. They will say, over and 
over, "voting for a lower preference candidate can never harm your 
first preference." (It's not always true, if there is a true majority 
requirement for election, but that's an unusual detail. IRV usually 
*replaces* majority requirements, being sold as a supposedly cheaper 
substitute for runoff elections. But it was true for the IRV proposed 
by Mr. Bouricius in Vermont, while he was still in the legislature 
there. Even though the "promise" was, by the legislation, placed in 
the ballot instructions.)

However, when Woodall proposed Later-no-harm as a criterion, he noted 
that a referee had commented, expressing disgust with this criterion. 
It does, in fact, strike at the heart of democratic process, which 
ideally involves seeking broadly-acceptable compromises (with the 
minimum standard of acceptance being a majority approval of an 
outcome); in order to collapse this into a single ballot, reasonably, 
it's necessary for lower preferences than first preference to be 
considered. Hence STV, used for single-winner elections, eliminates a 
very important aspect of electoral democracy; this is why Robert's 
Rules treats IRV as they do (with some distaste), and they do *not* 
advise allowing election by plurality, ever. I.e., the "IRV" that 
they describe does not avoid all runoffs, just, possibly, some. A 
true majority continues to be an election requirement.

STV used for multiwinner elections still has this flaw in the last 
candidate elected, but it does a generally good job with all the 
other candidates; thus STV used for PR, particularly with more than 
just two or three seats elected in a block, is quite a respectable 
method. It's just the single winner variant that is truly 
problematic. The problem arises when candidates start to be 
eliminated before all the possible votes for them have been 
considered. And this elimination is necessary to satisfy 
later-no-harm, a very recently invented election criterion that seems 
desirable only to the shallow in understanding.

Consider a ballot as a means whereby neighbors negotiate some common 
decision. If I refuse to allow my lower preferences to be considered 
until it has become clear that my favorite outcome has lost, and if 
this is enforced by the ballot analysis method, it is impossible to 
find compromise candidates, and the decision may fail to be the most 
broadly acceptable, even if my first preference is only slightly 
better for me than my second. When electing representatives, this 
seeking of compromise is crucial, for government and the people to 
remain closely connected. Clearly, proportional representation 
methods, if properly designed, are far more desirable than 
winner-take-all, single representative per district elections; 
however, short of that reform, single-winner elections that go to the 
first preference plurality can be expected to tend toward partisan 
loyalty and two-party rule, as per Duverger.

Now, if IRV did, in fact, find majorities, it would be an improvement 
over Plurality. By applying the study of single-transferable-vote, 
done with full preference listings, to IRV, the promoters of IRV have 
made it seem that this method would be such an improvement. But they 
have glossed over a serious problem: IRV, in actual practice, as 
implemented in the United States, where a majority does not appear in 
the first round votes, only rarely finds one after vote transfers. It 
is thus *normal* that most voters have voted *against* the winner, 
i.e., they voted for someone else. What happened?

Their votes were exhausted, discarded, as not containing votes for 
one of the top two candidates. If you've been paying attention, this 
should start to sound familiar. That's what Plurality does. In 
Australia, it seems that they get around this by requiring all voters 
to rank all candidates; however, this only produces an illusion of 
majority support, by requiring voters, essentially, to vote for one 
of the top two, or their vote will be discarded as informal. (I.e., 
the voters are required to vote for all candidates but one.) Where, 
in Australia, voters may truncate (not rank all candidates) (Optional 
Preferential Voting, as in Queensland), the law was changed to 
eliminate the absolute majority requirement used elsewhere; instead 
something like "a majority of ballots containing votes for continuing 
candidates" is substituted. And it's well-known that the first round 
leader almost always wins the election.

Bottom line: IRV frequently elects by plurality, just like Plurality. 
In non-partisan elections, exceptions are rare. There is no example 
in recent U.S. history of the usage of IRV (since the adoption in San 
Francisco) where the first round leader did not go on to win the 
election. On the other hand, in Top Two Runoff elections, there is a 
"comeback" election about one-third of the time. The strong 
implication is that in about one IRV election out of ten, a candidate 
is elected who would have lost a runoff against one of the other 
candidates. The very existence of this phenomenon, and its 
implications, except for my own so-far little-known work, have been 
generally ignored.

Top Two Runoff has an obvious problem, if the first round is simple 
vote-for-one. Sometimes a compromise candidate fails to make it into 
the runoff. This is really the same problem as IRV, but the problem 
doesn't exist -- or is ameliorated -- under some election rules. In 
particular, Robert's Rules, for runoff elections, does not allow 
ballot restriction. Partly for practical reasons, and partly for 
political reasons (favoring major parties), popular political 
elections do; however, under default rules in some places, including 
California, runoff elections allow for write-in votes. Thus no 
candidate is ever actually eliminated. Further, because 
runoff-elections often involve more highly motivated voters, the 
possibility of a write-in winner in a runoff becomes more real than 
we would ordinarily consider it to be. A recent mayor of Long Beach, 
California, won re-election even though term limits prevented her 
from appearing on the ballot. (Long Beach is not a small town, 
population is 466,718). If a candidate is a Condorcet winner as 
determined by sincere preference rankings, and if the preference 
strength is significant, as it apparently was in this Long Beach 
election, the Condorcet winner should prevail, even though 
"eliminated" in the first round.

(For years, election methods theorists totally disregarded preference 
strength, though it is crucial in understanding election method 
performance. A criterion "failure" that is based on minor preference 
is less serious than one, otherwise similar, where the offended 
preferences were strong. When a Condorcet winner fails to make it 
into a runoff, but a candidate who is only slightly less preferred 
does, voters or their leaders would not be exercised to conduct a 
write-in campaign. But if the preference is strong, they can and 
would. And have. Likewise, if  a voter has only a small preference 
between two candidates in a runoff (perhaps likes both, or detests 
both), the voter is not exercised to turn out and vote, thus exerting 
a Range-like effect on runoff vote totals.)

But, of course, IRV eliminates the runoff, thus eliminating a crucial 
democratic principle, considered essential, that no decision be made 
without majority approval of those voting in the election. Now, with 
the Long Beach election, no majority was found even in the runoff, 
because there was an independent write-in campaign. (The runoff had 
only the name of the runner-up from the primary election on it.) 
That's a compromise. But TTR is far closer to the democratic 
majority-rule ideal than any method confined to a single ballot could 
possibly be. To make it perfect, one would have to continue to 
require a majority, thus risking a lengthy series of ballots, though, 
in actual practice that doesn't happen much.

(Obviously, Plurality similarly discards this principle. One might 
note that deliberative bodies, even large ones like the U.S. House, 
would never use Plurality to elect their leaders. They use the 
*method*, i.e. the ballot is vote-for-one, but with that crucial 
detail: if there is no majority, the election fails and must be 
repeated. Thus *the method is Condorcet-compliant, if there is a 
Condorcet winner.* And TTR, a method which is not uncommon in the 
U.S., likewise meets, *substantially,* the Condorcet Criterion if 
write-ins continue to be allowed. IRV is replacing that method with 
something inferior.

This is pernicious. But Brown v. Smallwood was a bad decision and 
should be overturned, fully. The danger is that FairVote arguments 
would result in a warped application of Brown v. Smallwood, to allow 
IRV but not superior preferential or other advanced methods. Further, 
wherever IRV has replaced top-two runoff, it should be made clear and 
publicized that this is giving an inferior result about one-tenth of the time.

I only did a preliminary study, but Bucklin voting would find more 
majorities than IRV does, because it does end up counting all the 
votes, unlike IRV. (That IRV only counts some of the votes and not 
others is an equal protection argument that could be advanced against 
it. In Bucklin, all votes are treated equally. Bucklin is a kind of 
sequential Approval voting.) My estimate is that about one-third of 
the "majority failures" of IRV would be handled by Bucklin. I don't 
have proof of it, but there is a good chance that most of the 
possible "comeback elections" would have an unresolved majority 
failure in the first round, under Bucklin. Bucklin, because it does 
not eliminate candidates, but continues to count all votes to the 
end, would, I believe, do a better job of finding a set of two 
candidates to present in a runoff than would IRV. It is highly 
unlikely that a possible runoff winner wouldn't be one of the top two 
in a first round.

I will examine the affidavits posted by Kathy Dopp, separately.