[EM] piling on against IRV (was ... Czech Green party - Council elections)

[robert bristow-johnson]

Terry, i didn't originally intend to just pile on ...

On May 5, 2010, at 9:48 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:

> "a Condorcet winner can be a candidate that has the fewest first  
> preferences."
>
> True in Condorcet, though not expected to happen often.

i dunno, but my derriere still hurts.  in Burlington Vermont this  
happens 50% of the time (we had two IRV elections and one of them  
actually elected the CW).

>  Compared with each other candidate, the CW must win in each such  
> pair.  Each such can have first preference over the CW as seen by  
> SOME voters.

it could be virtually *all* of the voters (but in Burlington in 2009,  
23% chose the CW as their first preference).  still doesn't make the  
CW a bad candidate to elect.

> IRV, looking only at first preferences when deciding [who to  
> eliminate, may eliminate] such a CW.  It is IRV's discarding without  
> looking at all that the voters vote that makes many of us desire to  
> discard IRV.

for me, it's just that IRV does not necessarily elect the CW when such  
exists.  i am still convinced that it is fundamental in a democracy  
where each citizen's vote counts equally, that if a majority of voters  
agree that Candidate A (as in "Andy") is a better choice than  
Candidate B (as in "Bob"), then Candidate B should not be elected  
[unless perhaps when there is a cycle]. it's as simple as that, and  
because that is not the primary function of IRV, that's why it comes  
up short.

it's similar to the existence of the Electoral College in US  
presidential elections.  the E.C. doesn't do too bad when it elects  
the same candidate with the popular majority, but when it doesn't  
(like in 2000) it *never* brings legitimacy to the election result.   
you don't hear people say "Whew!  That was close!  Boy am I glad we  
have this Electoral College to protect us from the rule of the  
population!"  so the E.C. does well when it agrees with the popular  
vote tabulation and not so well when it doesn't.  it raises the  
question as to why we should use the electoral vote over the popular  
vote at all.

likewise with IRV and Condorcet.  why bother with the IRV tabulation  
at all when the best we can hope for it is that it *may* likely elect  
the Condorcet winner, the candidate who is unambiguously preferred by  
the majority of voters to any other specific candidate when these  
voters are asked to choose between the two.  this is, i think, why  
Nobel Laureate Eric Maskin calls the Condorcet winner the "true  
majority" winner.

Terry, you and Rob and company still need to address this  
philosophical deficit of IRV (besides all of the other anomalies that  
result when IRV fails to elect the CW).  i think that Tony  
Gierzynski's analysis of the 2009 election was good only to the point  
where it drew facts from Warren's quantitative analysis (and i  
disagree specifically with Tony's conclusion where he says that IRV is  
merely a technical solution to a political problem), but you and Rob  
have *failed* to refute the identified pathologies of the 2009  
election.  because we have discussed this over tea, i still think that  
you "get it", but i just cannot see that Rob (and Paul F) and company  
"get it".  IRV is repudiated and the trajectory doesn't look so good  
for it.  FairVote needs to reconsider its position on it rather than  
just how best to market it.

--

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."