[EM] piling on against IRV

[Kathy Dopp]

> From: "Terry Bouricius" <terryb at burlingtontelecom.net>
> To: "Jameson Quinn" <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>,
>        <instantrunoff at yahoogroups.com>
..
>
> STV-PR is my primary interest, I believe IRV is an improvement over the status quo and a plausible path to PR. I

In truth, IRV and STV are an enormous step *down* from existing
plurality voting, possibly the only alternative methods that are,
because they fail more of Arrow's Fairness criteria than plurality,
failing to be monotonic and like plurality not solving spoiler
(irrelevant alternatives) criteria.

Also making IRV/STV worse than plurality are its not being
precinct-summable in any reasonable way, and having the
*later-no-harm* criteria which means that a voters' first choice can
always harm his later choices, causing his least favorite candidate to
win, and removing the ability to achieve compromise candidates, also
eviscerating public verifiability and hand-countability of elections,
centralizing election administration and encouraging the use of
inauditable voting technology methods, making auditing elections much
more costly, etc.

IRV/STV also finds majority winners far *less* often than does any
primary/general or top-two runoff plurality election system, unless
you apply your deceptive creative new definition of "majority" as not
a majority of all voters who cast ballots, but of all voters whose
ballots are not eliminated from consideration by the final counting
round (some of them after *not* having had all their choices counted
whenever a subsequent choice was eliminated prior to a higher choice.

> A primary concern we have come across consistently from average voters when presenting election method reforms, is the concern about Later-No-Harm. People have some vague concept of Borda rules, and ask whether ranking second choices under IRV might hurt their favorite candidate. Our experience has shown that this is just about the ONLY election method criterion that spontaneously occurs to average voters when learning about new methods. It may not be ultimately the most important criterion, but methods that violate Later-No-Harm seem to have no hope of adoption, and FairVote isn't going to devote resources to futile reforms.

Yes, truly the "later-no-harm" feature of IRV/STV is one of its flaws,
eliminating the possibility of finding compromise candidates that a
majority of voters favors more than the elected candidates who can be
opposed by a majority of voters, as happened, I believe, in
Burlington, VT where you live.

> 3. IRV has an analog (two-round runoff) already used in America, with which voters are familiar and comfortable (that is elimination of bottom candidates is deemed appropriate by most voters).

As we all know, top-two runoff is not remotely as bad as IRV/STV are
re. all the vagaries. Top-two runoff virtually always does find
majority winners, preserves the voters' right to participate in the
final election decision, preserves the right to have a positive effect
on a candidate's chances of winning, preserves local countability and
auditability, etc.

There is NO comparison between the two methods, except the
disingenuous one told by Fairytale Vote.

>
> Of course, IRV and STV can also be repealed (and have been in some jurisdictions).

Apparently it's been tried and repealed a lot historically in the US,
including in NYC. Too bad memory is so short that people keep trying
it, just like war I guess.


>However, it is important to understand why. Some people have suggested that IRV's failure to elect the Condorcet candidate caused its repeal in Burlington. That is not correct.

That's *your* analysis. In truth both Dems and Repubs opposed it
because they were in the largest majority of voters when taken
together, who would have both gotten a far better result if they'd not
been fooled by Fairytale Vote (and your own efforts) into thinking
that IRV/STV finds majority winners and eliminates spoiler candidates.
 The Republican acted as the spoiler knocking out the Democrat,
causing the Progressive, to win.  Repeating the same misinformation
over and over again does not make it true Terry.


>
> I would hope supporters of other reforms would try to enact their preferred reform in non-governmental organizations and municipal government elections anywhere in the U.S. that is not already engaged in IRV or STV reform, so we can get some real world experience with them. FairVote will absolutely NOT seek to undercut such reform efforts.

IRV/STV use in the US will set back the cause of implementing
alternative voting methods that improve upon plurality for decades
because the public will remember how they were lied to -- lied to
about IRV/STV finding majority winners, lied to about IRV/STV solving
the spoiler effects, lied to about IRV/STV being an improvement over
plurality, etc.


>
> I don't lie about IRV. ... FairVote uses the term "majority winner" in the same way that it is generally used by the public in discussing runoff elections.

ha ha. "I don't lie..." followed immediately by what most people who
understand IRV/STV would consider "a lie."  Let's see, San Francisco
where many candidates seem to run for office, routinely now elects
winners with around 40% of the vote, whereas prior to implementing
IRV/STV used to routinely elect majority winners with more than 50% of
the vote.

IRV/STV only elects majority winners when voters are given space to
and required to completely rank all candidates or there are fewer
candidates than the number of ballot rankings allowed plus one and
voters rank all candidates.


> Of course, no method can "guarantee" that a majority will like the winner (there may be a tie, or simply no candidate that voters even like at all).

That sounds a lot like the illogical reasoning "All voting methods
fail to meet all of Arrow's Fairness criteria" as a reason to
implement an alternative voting method that fails *more* of Arrow's
Fairness criteria than plurality voting does.  Terry when will you
*ever* stop the BS you sling?

>
> An absolutist definition of "majority" is never used by anybody, when discussing elections in the U.S.

Yet another lie Terry, or certainly deliberately misleading.  Most
certainly everyone does use an absolutist definition of majority when
discussing elections -- a majority out of all voters who vote in the
contest and every legally registered voter has a right to participate
by voting. This is totally not like IRV/STV where voters are
involuntarily excluded from participating in final counting rounds
whenever there are more candidates than the number of ballot positions
plus one.


> So when we use the term "majority" we do not mean a majority of people in a jurisdiction, nor a majority of the voting age population, nor a majority of registered voters, nor a majority of voters who went to the polls, nor a majority of voters that includes those who skipped a contest in the first round, nor a majority of voters that includes those who skipped the final contest, by staying home in the case of a separate runoff, or ranking neither finalist in the case of IRV.


Terry, you're an absolute genius at coming up with anything but the
normal, accepted definition of majority as applied to election
contests. No wonder you're hired as a consultant for Fairytale Vote. I
can see that you must have had quite a hand in helping write some of
their web pages.


>Just as in a traditional runoff, we mean a majority of those who expressed an opinion in the contest between the two finalists.

Except of course in IRV/STV you'd have to be a mindreader of all the
other voters to know which two candidates will be left standing in the
final round. Real the rest of the voters' minds wrong and don't vote
for one of the two finalists in your choice of three rankings allowed
on US ballots and you're involuntarily excluded.

Gee, so a majority in your twisted definition only includes all the
people who strategize correctly who the final two candidates will be
and makes sure to include one of them on his ballot?

Why does such a perversely creative definition of "majority", the
likes of which no one has ever heard of before, not surprising anyone
coming from you Terry?


OK. I've had enough of utter-BS rebutting today. Sigh.  Time to wash
dishes instead. ;-)



-- 

Kathy Dopp
http://electionmathematics.org
Town of Colonie, NY 12304
"One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the
discussion with true facts."

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

View my research on my SSRN Author page:
http://ssrn.com/author=1451051