[EM] Burlington Vermont repeals IRV 52% to 48%

[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 8:31 PM, robert bristow-johnson
<rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:
> i don't get it.  just because the party i most identify with proffers 6
> candidates (as does two or three other parties) doesn't mean that i, as a
> independently-minded voter, care if all of those candidates are elected.  if
> i "approve" of *all* of those candidates, it's only because of blind party
> affiliation.

Actually, my statement that you should always approve six isn't correct.

As I said, the strategy should be based on approving those who you
prefer to the expected 6th place candidate and your favourite of the
6th and 7th most popular candidate.

If there are more than six candidates who you prefer to the expected
6th place candidates, then you should cast all six.

The six candidates you should pick are the 6 who are most likely to
end up in 6th place.

This is assuming that your are voting as a pure individual.

> but what if there is *one* (or maybe two) of those candidates that i take an
> affirmative interest in seeing elected?  that is, i would really like to see
> that one candidate elected more than i would want to see any other
> candidate, including those others in my party that i *might* have tepid
> approval for.  i know that, even being in the same party, those other
> candidates *are* effectively running against the candidate i like.  it's not
> just the candidate from the other parties that are running against my
> preferred candidate.  voting for *any* other candidate (by me or by any
> other voter) independently of the party that other candidate is from,
> reduces the likelihood of my preferred candidate getting elected.

It comes down to personal vs party power.  Is it more important that
party X wins or do the legislators have more freedom.

In fact, you could look at it like a deal between you are the other
party supports to support each other's candidates.

Btw, is it normal under that system for 1 or other party to take all seats?

> i actually think that, even in a multi-winner election, that Condorcet
> ordering of the candidates could make sense (with the top 6 preferred
> candidates elected).  of course there is a problem if there is a cycle that
> is transected by the cutoff boundary of the top 6 who get elected and those
> lower who do not.  i am not seriously proposing actually implementing this
> without some serious study, and a good method (perhaps Ranked Pairs or
> Schulze) would be needed to deal with a cycle that crosses the win/lose
> boundary.

This will elect a centerist legislature.

I think a mixed legislature with say 2/3 elected by PR and 1/3 elected
could be reasonable at combining stability and representation.

> that said, Approval voting requires more strategy from me than just ranking
> candidates in my preferred order.  whether it's a single or multi-winner
> election, i really think that the ranked ballot is the simplest way to
> extract necessary information from voters, without expecting too much from
> voters (which is what Range or Score voting does).

The theory is that in most approval elections, all you need to know is
who are the top-2.  As long as you only vote for 1 or other of them,
then your vote will almost certainly be effective.  However, it stops
3rd party candidates from losing before the campaign even begins.