[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative

[Dave Ketchum]

A good summary.  If we only cared about the easy ones Plurality would be 
good enough.

DWK

On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:43:42 -0500 Brian Olson wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2008, at 5:53 AM, Greg wrote:
> 
>>> Oh, and actually it _is_ likely to be bad. See that first graph?  See how
>>> over thousands of simulated elections it gets lower social  satisfaction?
>>
>>
>> Brian, you're graphs are computer-generated elections that you made
>> up. They aren't actual elections that took place in practice, which
>> show a high unlikelihood of being bad. When your theory is a poor
>> predictor of the data, it's time to change the theory, not insist the
>> data must be different from what they are.
> 
> 
> Given the substantial lack of data (pretty little real world rankings  
> ballot data available), I think the simulations are still valid and  
> interesting. The simulations explore a specific and small portion of  
> the problem space in detail. I'm looking at races of N choices which  
> are similarly valued by all the voters. It's a tight race. Actual  
> elections haven't been that tight. But tight races are the interesting  
> ones. When it's crunch time, those are the ones that matter. Almost  any 
> method can correctly determine the winner of a race that isn't  tight. 
> So, IRV has demonstrated in the real world that it can solve  easy 
> problems. So what? Why wait until it gets the wrong answer in a  real 
> election to admit that IRV can get the wrong answer? In matters  of 
> public safety that would be called a 'tombstone mentality'.
-- 
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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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