[EM] Fwd: FW: IRV Challenge - Press Announcement

[Aaron Armitage]

But this must be true of any multiwinner system when the voters do not
fall into blocs that are evenly divisible by the number of seats,
including (especially) plurality when considered by reference to the
overall popular vote. And as for single-winner systems, as bad as IRV is,
it's massively better than plurality by any virtually desirable quality
ever identified by voting theorists.

I see in another brief you posted that the plaintiffs are making exactly
opposite arguments, that surplus transfers dilute vote strength and that
they augment it. Both are wrong, of course: they make it as close to even
as possible. By transferring fractions of votes, each bloc of voters is
represented in proportion to its size, which is means each individual vote
is equal. If, as your court filings seem to demand, much smaller groupings
had their second-choice rankings treated exactly the same as larger groups
of voters' second choices, the smaller groups' members would be
individually more powerful by the factor by which their groups were
smaller.


--- On Tue, 10/7/08, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Fwd: FW: IRV Challenge - Press Announcement
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Tuesday, October 7, 2008, 7:17 PM
> On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 3:03 PM,
> <election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 11:30:03 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: Aaron Armitage <eutychus_slept at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: [EM] Fwd: FW: IRV Challenge - Press
> Announcement
> > To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> > Message-ID:
> <39816.15264.qm at web39608.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> >
> > On your site, you also include a brief attacking
> multiwinner STV, at
> http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/ReplyMemoJG10-6-08.pdf.
> Do you agree with the argument presented?
> 
> Yes. I was the person who pointed out that the City's
> own example in
> its Memo shows how some votes are valued at more than one
> (1) for some
> voters in the City's example (and if the City's
> example were more
> realistic, it would show how some voters' ballots would
> be valued at
> less than one(1) vote.)
> 
> If you actually take the time to read my affidavit and the
> City's
> example in its Memo, you will see that Exhibit G and the
> City's
> example clearly mathematically prove the truth of the
> Plaintiffs'
> arguments.  The mathematics is irrefutable, despite any
> argument you
> could try to make to divert attention from the mathematical
> facts.
> 
> There is only one argument that is made in the Plaintiffs
> Reply Memo
> that I have not yet taken the time to supply an example to
> mathematically prove is true, but examples are readily
> available to
> show the factual truth of every statement in the
> Plaintiffs' Reply,
> and the algebra to prove that votes are diluted or inflated
> below and
> above one (1) are also derivable, but examples are easier
> for the
> Court to understand.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Kathy
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