[EM] IRV vs Plurality

[robert bristow-johnson]

On Jan 12, 2010, at 2:04 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Dave Ketchum  
> <davek at clarityconnect.com> wrote:
>> On Jan 11, 2010, at 4:16 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>>>
>>> On Jan 11, 2010, at 1:19 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Jan 11, 2010, at 11:45 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 11, 2010, at 8:54 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> Plurality is far better than IRV for many many reasons including:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1. preserves the right to cast a vote that always positively  
>>>>>> affects
>>>>>> the chances of winning of the candidate one votes for
>
> Everyone seems to have missed understanding my point which is that IRV
> is nonmonotonic, plurality is not.

you know.  for whatever reason, i don't care that IRV is non- 
monotonic to the non-Condorcet winner.  that it is non-monotonic is a  
pathology.  but the root to that pathology is that voters find out  
that they harm their own political interest by voting sincerely.   
Plurality, in the context of a multi-party or multi-candidate, single  
winner election, is *far* *far* worse in that regard.

>   In any one election, the voter in
> plurality retains the right to know which candidate his vote helps.

but she has to wonder if her vote actually damages her political  
interest.  to a greater degree than she has to worry about that with  
a ranked-order ballot.

> In IRV it's anyone's guess whether a vote will help or hurt a
> favorite candidate's chances of winning.

lotsa different pathologies can happen.  i've seen Tony Gierzynski's  
examples on YouTube, which are fine.  they point out how IRV screws  
up monotonicity for a winning candidate with some numbers the cooked  
up.  but the example we have in Burlington is not about that kind of  
nonmonotonicity.  it's more a secondary non-monotonicity.  by marking  
ballots Wright>Montroll>Kiss, they elected kiss.  but it wasn't that  
if Wright had campaigned less hard that Wright would win, like  
Gierzynski's examples.

> For instance in Aspen CO's most recent
> IRV election, if 75 *fewer* voters had voted for one candidate that
> candidate would have won.

that's a pathology (and sounds like a worse one than Burlington VT in  
2009).  so let's get rid of it.  but *throwing* *away* information by  
reverting to the single-vote ballot from the ranked ballot doesn't  
make things better.  it makes it worse for the majority.  i wish we  
had Condorcet.  it still is a curiosity to me how, historically, some  
leaders and proponents of election reform thunked up the idea to have  
a ranked-order ballot and then took that good idea and married it to  
the IRV protocol.  with the 200 year old Condorcet idea in existence,  
why would they do that?

>   That probably happens a lot in IRV but IRV
> is so darn complex to count and analyze after elections that no one
> has time or data to analyze all IRV/STV election vagaries.
>
>
>>>>>> 2. allows all voters the right to participate in the final  
>>>>>> counting
>>>>>> round in the case of top two runoff or primary/general elections
>>>>>
>>>>> but IRV does that in an instantaneous way UNLESS some voter  
>>>>> changes
>
> FALSE statement by ?? IRV always removes voters involuntarily from the
> final counting round, unlike plurality voting where all registered
> voters are allowed to participate. Voters are involuntarily excluded
> whenever:
>
> 1. they fail to fully rank all candidates and their choices don't make
> it to the final round,

that's a choice that they make.  the candidates that they don't rank  
are tied for last place on their ballot.  what's wrong with that?

but with Condorcet it would be better.  all it says is that this  
voter prefers her selected candidate over the others and she doesn't  
have another opinion about the candidates not selected.

> or
>
> 2. they rank all candidates possible to rank on the ballot, say 3, but
> there are more than 4 candidates in the contest with supporters.

the number of ranking columns should equal the number of candidates  
that legally get on the ballot plus one, the write-in candidate.  (i  
guess, if some voter wants to write-in and rank two write-ins,  
they're sorta screwed, but i don't see that as a practical right to  
grant to the electorate; unlimited number of write-ins?)  it should  
never be the case, unless you're in Italy or somewhere with 29  
parties and candidates.  even with 29, they should be able to print  
30 columns of ovals to fill in.  the ballot would look messy, but  
there is no reason it can't be done.  now if there were 1000 parties  
and candidates, that would be a pretty impossible ranked-order ballot  
that includes everyone, but i consider number 2. to be a very  
unlikely issue to worry about.  if the number of candidates greatly  
exceed the number of preferences that we can afford real-estate on  
the ballot, then it should be made clear the voter that everyone not  
ranked is tied for last place.  big deal.

> The only way IRV voters get to participate in the final counting round
> is if they vote for one of the candidates that happens to survive to
> the final round and since sometimes IRV eliminates the most popular
> candidate like it did in Burlington, that can be difficult to
> determine.

what's difficult to determine?  who the most popular candidate was in  
2006 or 2009?  that's simple!  but before, with the old ballot, you  
did not collect as much information from the voters, and then you  
wouldn't even know it, if the election rejected the most popular  
candidate.  why does not collecting the information give us a better  
idea of what the electorate wants over collecting the information?

it seems to me that what the anti-ranked ballot people want is the  
luxury of not having to be pinned down on Election Day as to whom  
they'd vote for as a fallback candidate.  is it that you'd rather  
have the ability to change your mind about your fallback candidate in  
the period between Election Day and Runoff Day?

i don't get it.  why is requiring voters to make up their mind by  
Election Day (even about second choices) such a violation of their  
rights as a voter?

>>>>>> 3. preserves voters' right to understandably verify the election
>>>>>> outcomes because the counting is simple enough for them to do,
>>>>>> precinct summable
>>>>>
>>>>> so does Condorcet.
>
> Yes. Of course. IRV/STV really are the only voting methods that are
> worse than plurality voting, that I have heard anyone promoting.

i don't see it as worse than plurality, but i see them both as worse  
than Condorcet.  and i think we can do better with any meaningful  
ranked ballot, but IRV sorta runs that ballot data through a weird  
nonlinear function with arbitrary thresholds which can have sorta  
"chaotic" results.

> Reminds me of the "big improvement" of DRE paperless e-ballot voting
> which was pushed for by some of the same players who are now pushing
> for IRV, including Common Cause, LWV groups, Fairytale Vote, etc.

i'll agree with you there.  i never understood even where the  
motivation came from.  so Florida 2000 is a fiasco, W likely steals  
the election (by undermining the state law in Florida), we have a new  
president starting with impaired legitimacy, and the solution is  
Paperless voting machines?  how does that solve the problem that a  
technology that can naturally deal with a paper ballot (like optical  
scan) cannot solve.  maybe every ward or precinct could have  
somekinda special audible computer for helping the blind fill out a  
ballot with complete privacy.  but the Diebold thing had no impetus  
and, of course, was very dangerous for tampering and other screw-ups.

>
>>>>
>>>> And Condorcet gives a more accurate view since the ballots more
>>>> completely state voters desires and all that they say gets counted.
>
> Yes.
>
>>>>>> 4. preserves the right for local precinct control of the  
>>>>>> counts or in
>>>>>> the case of election contests that cross county lines, local  
>>>>>> county
>>>>>> control of the counting process
>>>>>
>>>>> so does Condorcet.    i like precinct summable too, but it  
>>>>> isn't the
>>>>> end-all requirement for an honest election.
>
> Yes. I agree. Imagine counting all ballots in DC and carting all
> ballots to Washington DC to check the accuracy of the tallies to elect
> the President using IRV! Truly an insane picture.

assuming "write-in" is so negligible that it doesn't matter whose  
name is written in, then with a small set of candidates counting  
"write-in", there are a small number of permutations of ballots.   
each permutation can be totaled at the precint and state level and  
sent upward to the central counting place.  those numbers can be  
transmitted to the media for them to do the same.

>>>>>
>>>>>> 5. is far less costly than the IRV counting process
>>>>>
>>>>> not in Burlington.  once the infrastructure was set up (the ballot
>>>>> scanning machines didn't have to be changed at all, the  
>>>>> difference is that
>>>>> the precinct results (that had a record for how each ballot  
>>>>> looked) were
>>>>> transferred to city hall and a computer did the rest.  because  
>>>>> of FoI laws,
>>>>> this record is available for public scrutiny and has been  
>>>>> scrutinized.
>
> I don't know about that and am doubtful about the veracity of what you
> say as it does not seem logical or expected. We can agree to disagree
> for now as I admittedly don't have time to investigate fully.

as far as i have read, the optical scan machines needed no  
modification at all.  i believe that the hardware just determines  
which ovals in the array are filled in.  it is software (that is  
easily changed) that maps particular ovals to candidates or  yes/no  
questions and groups the counts into election results.

i have been able to obtain the specific ballot data for the mayoral  
race in file: "2009 Burlington Mayor Final Piles Report.txt" in  
http://www.burlingtonvotes.org/20090303/2009%20Mayor%20Reports.zip .   
i can also get it for 2006.  the conversion of data from the voting  
machines to what goes into this file is just a matter of software.   
it's all pretty transparent.

what specifically are you challenging, factually?

>>>> Topic seems to be that a second look at a ballot is required in  
>>>> IRV after
>>>> it is determined that the top rank lost.  In Condorcet all the  
>>>> looking is
>>>> done in one pass.
>
> Yes. I totally agree that Condorcet is far superior to IRV/STV and
> would solve the spoiler problem, unlike IRV/STV.
>
> IRV/STV is fundamentally unfair because a large group of persons whose
> first choice loses, never has their 2nd choice counted,

only if they don't mark their 2nd choice.  otherwise, that's  
certainly not true.  ("unfair" is subjective, but the latter half is  
untrue for voters who mark a 2nd choice with 3 credible candidates.   
or do you mean that if they vote for the 2 biggest losers, their 3rd  
or 4th choice that *does* count in the final round isn't their 2nd  
choice so it's unfair?)  IRV is screwed up, but you still have made  
no case that the weird pathologies of IRV are worse than the widely  
known pathologies of plurality in a multi-party or multi-candidate  
context.

> unlike some other voters. It's a highly inequitable method.

not as inequitable as plurality.   why is reducing the information  
obtained from the electorate more equitable?

--

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."