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

[Dave Ketchum]

On May 5, 2010, at 10:52 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> 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).
>
Careful - the particular topic is "fewest" - for which IRV certainly  
discards the CW.  IRV discards the CW in many other cases.

>> 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.

Careful - "each" having a first preference means that voter ranked  
"each" over the CW - enough such voters would mean that that supposed  
CW could not actually be such.
>
>
>> 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.

Setting up rules is tricky, but many of us choke when we look  
carefully at IRV.
>
> 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.

Before throwing rocks at the Electoral College it would pay to think  
about how you would have managed campaigning for intelligent voting to  
elect a President at the time the EC was created.  What could and  
should be done now is an interesting topic.
>
>
> 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.

Here those who think seem agreed it is simply time to discard IRV.
>
> 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.
>
Letting loose can be very difficult - but many of us are urging  
FairVote to swallow the bitter pill.
> --
>
> r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com