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

[Dave Ketchum]

On May 6, 2010, at 4:18 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
> Letting loose can be very difficult - but many of us are urging  
> FairVote to swallow the bitter pill.
>
> I manned phones, made donations to FairVote, and voted, to help pass  
> IRV in San Francisco. And I now, personally, think that IRV is  
> considerably worse than most systems besides plurality and Borda -  
> including Range, Bucklin, Approval, and a wide variety of Condorcet  
> systems.
>
> But I'm not asking FairVote to "swallow the bitter pill". I think  
> you have every right to continue promoting IRV, if that's what you  
> believe in.

Having a visible invalid belief raises continued suspicion as to the  
quality of one's other beliefs - FairVote, to recover, really needs to  
recognize and admit to IRV's problems.  I offer a sample race -  
possible though an unlikely extreme.  I use "?" for ballot content  
where details do not matter:
      2 A>?
      9 B>A>?
      9 C>A>?
      9 D>A>?
1/3 like best B or C or D. For each of those 1/3s, 2/3 like A better  
than that one.  That A does not get elected is due to IRV counting  
never counting the As that are voted in second place.

> I'm just asking you what I've always asked, since the time when I  
> still counted myself as one of your strongest supporters: that you  
> be honest and open about it. That means 3 things:
>
> 1. Don't denigrate other solutions to problems you acknowledge. In  
> fact, I think you should support them. That means that whenever  
> comparing IRV to another reform proposal, make it clear from the  
> outset that the other proposal is superior to plurality (except in  
> the very rare cases where it isn't).
> 2. Don't lie about the benefits of IRV. For instance, unless full  
> ranking is mandatory, IRV does not guarantee a majority. You could  
> say instead that it "does a better job of getting a majority" than  
> plurality, or whatever.

Here I choke.  A candidate ranked only because of some demand such as  
full ranking is not truly a vote by the voter, and should not be  
counted as if it was.  Think of a voter "approving" all candidates in  
Approval - that voter has done nothing to favor any one of the  
candidates.

"Majority" needs careful thought as to its purpose and meaning.  If  
truly the largest group of voters is only 40%, we need thought as to  
what is doable and what that means.

Dave Ketchum

> 3. Be open to dialogue with other voting reformers. For instance,  
> don't turn off comments on all your blogs and HuffPost pieces, and  
> don't moderate out relevant but critical posts on the instantrunoff  
> mailing list. I know that it hurts, because there are definitely  
> people with much more of an animus against IRV than I have, but the  
> problems in running away from dialogue are worse.
>
> With respect,
> Jameson Quinn
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