[EM] More About Ranked Choice

[Dave Ketchum]

I like what I wrote a couple hours ago, but want to add comments on  
Kristofer's words.

On Aug 14, 2010, at 5:37 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Re: [EM] it's been pretty quiet around here...
> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>> ... my goodness!  it's been at least 2 weeks with no activity.
> Yes. Other things have occupied my time, and that seems to have been  
> the case for the other ones around here, too...
>
>> just a little story: we are about to have our primary elections  
>> (August 24) here in Vermont.  it's also a very small state where  
>> any old Joe could waltz into the capitol in Montpelier, and make an  
>> appointment to see the guv.  anyway, recently when i bopped into  
>> the Vermont Dem HQ to pick up some signs, i happened to notice a  
>> candidate for Sec of State (who has responsibility to carry out  
>> elections for state offices and Vermont's contribution to the  
>> national offices).  in a recent debate, he was debating his  
>> opponent about election policy and IRV came up (both candidates  
>> were for IRV, as far as i could tell).
>> since he wasn't from Burlington, he was not as familiar with the  
>> Burlington debate as he could have been (he knew we had IRV and  
>> that it was repealed last March).  there have been a couple of  
>> bills to introduce IRV to statewide offices (notably guv) since the  
>> Progs have a statewide presence, not just Burlington.  he was  
>> thinking that the problem Burlington had with the election was in  
>> the *software* (as if the software "failed").  i told him that if  
>> that were the case, it would likely wind up in court, not just a  
>> repeal question on the ballot.  anyway, it was interesting  
>> educating this leading candidate for the primary official  
>> responsible for elections what *did* go wrong with IRV in  
>> Burlington in 2009 and also what the problems would be if it were  
>> adopted for a statewide election (namely that it's not precinct  
>> summable).
>> anyway, i like this candidate (better than the alternative), but  
>> it's just a shame that, in the popular mind, there is no  
>> differentiation between the concepts of Preferential Voting (the  
>> ranked-order ballot) and IRV.
>
> I like Condorcet and so a lot of this will be preaching to the choir  
> (at least for you), but:
>
> Since FV thinks IRV is so nice, it's to their benefit to link  
> preferential voting, the concept, to IRV, the method, so that others  
> thing "oh, either IRV or Plurality". Since IRV appears better than  
> Plurality (at least until the summability issues are encountered),  
> this makes it relatively easy to slip in IRV, and the theory then  
> goes, to go from IRV to STV, which is much better.
>
> It doesn't appear that we can change FV's minds from IRV to  
> something better (like Condorcet). When you dig really far down, the  
> issue boils down to "weak centrist! Condorcet winner! weak centrist!  
> Condorcet winner!" and there you go -- and then they sprinkle LNHarm  
> and *perhaps* burial resistance on top.
>
> Cardinal ratings technically pass both because it can pass IIA since  
> it doesn't care about universal domain. However, I think that CR  
> (Range, Score, etc) will be hard to get passed, since it doesn't  
> even pass Majority. Even if Warren is right and social utility  
> comparisons are better than majority rule, most people associate  
> democratic fairness with that if some candidate is preferred by a  
> majority, he should win. There are also the tactical issues: CR  
> reduces to Approval (as Youtube raters found out) and pretty soon  
> voters who want their vote to count must haul around concepts like  
> "maybe frontrunner, plus" (LeGrand's Approval strategy A), something  
> which really should be inside the method rather than outside.
>
> Thus we can't follow FV; and while we could advocate cardinal  
> ratings, I don't think that would be very successful (and in any  
> event, should be DSV instead). That leaves Condorcet, and so I think  
> there should be an organization or group or at least some sort of  
> coherent support for Condorcet.
>
> (Alas, I'm not a very good organizer and I'm about 5000 km away.)
>
> What should such a group do? First, it should state that the concept  
> of ranked voting is different from what method may be used as its  
> back-end. Second, it should have a clear and easily understandable  
> name for Condorcet, or for the Condorcet method it settles upon. The  
> former could be done more simply: "round robin voting", "maximum  
> majority voting", "championship" or "tournament" voting (but beware  
> of equating it with an elimination tournament), etc. The latter  
> would be more difficult, as Schulze, for instance, is hard to explain.
>
> For reasoning, it might point out that if you put all the voters on  
> a line, and cancel out the leftmost with the rightmost until one  
> voter remains, the candidate closest to that voter wins -- if that's  
> not too advanced.

"leftmost with the rightmost" scares me for it sounds like something  
different from Condorcet, but not clear how, supposedly, better.
>
> It might also show that if there's a CW, no recall by any of the  
> other candidates can work against him, because a majority prefers  
> him to each of the other candidates. That particular argument might  
> be useful for those who dread a repeal, because if the method elects  
> the CW, supporters of a single loser can't dress the complaint that  
> the wrong candidate won up as a repeal of the method, simply because  
> they don't have the voters required to make the repeal pass simply  
> by that property alone. That is not what happened in Burlington, but  
> it's similar - Condorcet minimizes this chance, and beatpath-based  
> methods try to do so in the case of cycles as well.
>
> It should also ask the actual people, voters, what they think is  
> important with respect to an election method, if such can be done.  
> If simplicity matters, Ranked Pair's relative simplicity may be more  
> important than Schulze's track record, for instance. Asking in that  
> manner could also help letting it know which arguments work - e.g.  
> if the canceling-out phrasing of the singlepeakedness theorem gives  
> a sense of fairness.

Simplicity DOES matter.  Also need to agree on, and promote, a  
particular method.

Dave Ketchum
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