[EM] Question on RCV/IRV multi-seat method used in Minneapolis

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:49 PM 9/23/2008, "Raph Frank" <raphfrk at gmail.com> wrote:
>On Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 5:59 PM, Kathy Dopp <kathy.dopp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>It should be OK as long as the random selection is actually reasonably random.

In theory. But Kathy Dopp is a voting security expert. They like to 
be able to recount elections and, if no errors were made, get the 
same results. While this can be done with pseudo-random sequences, 
I'm not sure I'd trust local election officials, who often have 
trouble counting plain ballots as it is, with the complexity.

The vote transfers in STV, using strictly mathematical methods, can 
be done centrally. Deweighting is done with *ballots*, not with 
votes, as such. I.e., if a particular ballot has been part of a block 
of votes that elects a winner, it becomes deweighted accordingly. (If 
the exact quota was met, the deweighting is 100%.)

Yes, it can get complicated. Usually, though, the number of winners 
is not huge, and deweighting only takes place when winners are 
created (and not the last one), so the number of possible 
combinations isn't huge.

Asset Voting finesses the problem; I'd expect that most voters, even 
if the system remained STV, would simply vote for one. (I know a lot 
of people who think differently from me on this, at least at first. 
But if I don't trust a candidate to properly delegate authority, I 
probably shouldn't trust that candidate in the office, for they are 
going to make lots of decisions in office that I can't specify in 
advance, including many which delegate authority. Asset Voting would 
radically change the way we think about elections; current methods 
require us to make compromises with our trust, to choose to trust 
those whom we already perceive as being trusted by others. Asset 
Voting pokes strategic voting in the eye. Yet ... where is the chorus 
of support? When it comes to Range Voting and other methods, the 
"bad" strategic voting problems are trotted out ... but if we could 
eliminate it, make it essentially stupid and useless, nope, too radical.

What if we could *trust* those we elect? The only way to get there is 
to vote only for people we trust! And current methods make this 
politically suicidal, they waste such fully-sincere votes, except rarely.