[EM] piling on against IRV

[Kathy Dopp]

to correct my own typo below (sorry - see CAPS)

> Date: Sun, 9 May 2010 13:42:23 -0400
> From: robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>
> To: election-methods Methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] piling on against IRV

>>>> 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.
>>>
>>> so how does delayed TTR solve that problem?
>>
>> In TTR, every voter is allowed to vote and all their votes are
>> counted.  I'm surprised you didn't know that.
>
> what voter, in the IRV election in Burlington 2009 was not allowed to
> vote.  other than 4 ballots (out of 8980) that were machine rejected
> (3 of those ballots were later examined and hand counted) were not
> counted?
>
>> TTR - all voters are allowed to participate
>
> and which voters, in the IRV election, were not allowed to participate.

Robert, I know that you are much smarter than you are pretending to be
here. Read the next sentence in my prior email (below) and you've got
your answer.  The reason why IRV/STV rarely finds majority winners is
the same reason why it violates the rights of voters to participate -
by excluding many voters from voting in the final round of deciding
who is to govern, (as well as by not counting the 2nd choice votes of
a huge chunk of the voters, thus causing their least favorite
candidate to win.)

>
>> IRV/STV - the more candidates who run, the fewer voters can
>> participate in the final counting round, given the US system of
>> allowing up to 3 ranks on a ballot.
>
> you are ignorant of the fact that in Burlington, all 5 candidates were
> ranked (at least they were on the ballot i had).

My understanding was that Burlington voters were allowed to rank up to
3 candidates on their ballot.

OK you're right, so I am wrong then about the ballot restriction not
existing in Burlington.

However, all [MANY - not all] voters who do not fully rank all five
candidates and fail
to rank one of the top two finalists ARE EXCLUDED from participating
in the final counting round, although I do agree it is debatable
whether or not such exclusion is involuntary or voluntary.  One of the
flaws of IRV/STV is that all voters must fully rank all candidates or
risk exclusion in the final decision round.

IRV/STV IS NOT DESIGNED WELL FOR ANY BUT THE ELITE VOTER WHO FOLLOWS
CANDIDATES WELL ENOUGH TO FULLY RANK ALL CANDIDATES AND THUS OFTEN
EXCLUDES THE AVERAGE VOTER FROM PARTICIPATING IN LATER RUNOFFS -
UNLIKE IN REAL RUNOFF ELECTIONS.


> Burlington is not
> San Francisco.  we evidently have stricter ballot access laws.  i
> don't know what Burlington would have done if there were 25 mayoral
> candidates on the ballot.

OK.  However, most Burlington voters probably were still fooled by the
sales rhetoric and thought that they could honestly rank their
candidate choices without having "wasted votes" or causing their least
favorite candidate to win, as happens in IRV/STV as well as in
plurality.

I.e. both IRV/STV and plurality requires voting for one of the top two
choices (ranking 1st if IRV/STV) if you want to be sure not to help
your least favorite candidate win.  Many voters were fooled by
Fairytale Vote and Terry's rhetoric into thinking that IRV/STV solves
that problem.

>
> in comparison, i have seen 3 different TTR elections for City Council
> in Burlington.  none had more than 55% turnout on runoff day (in
> comparison to the number of voters that came on the first election
> day).

Unlike with IRV/STV (at least in San Francisco) that is the voter's
choice, not an involuntary exclusion, as I'm sure you recognize.


> the IRV election had 93% of the voters participating in the
> final round.   93% turnout is a lot better turnout than 55%.  every

Depending on the number of candidates and the number of rankings
allowed by the ballot, IRV/STV could easily cause the final round
participation to INVOLUNTARILY fall below 55%, rather than being a
voluntary choice of voters who don't care to vote to decide between
the two finalists.

> voter that expressed an opinion of at least one of the two candidates
> that made it to that final round participated in the actual choice of
> the elected candidate.
>
>> It's a very simple concept to understand.
>
> which you evidently don't.  your arrogance, Kathy, is greater than
> your ignorance.  you greatly underestimate the people you talk to here
> on this list.  no one here is using those canards as criticism of
> IRV.  we know what they are.

Ha ha.  Good one.  I love it when name-callers so aptly describe
themselves by thinking everyone is just like they are by being lost
inside their own imaginations.

>
> we all expect that people fill out their ballots to express their
> political interest (or, perhaps, they are trying to vote

I think you are expecting WAY TOO MUCH of voters to imagine that they:

1. understand how IRV/STV works and that in IRV/STV they must rank one
of the two top vote getters first or risk helping their last choice to
lose, and

2. to expect voters to invest the time and energy to investigate all
the candidates on the ballot and rank them all or risk being excluded
from making the final decision (INvoluntarily, unlike with plurality
top-two).

Research on voting behavior backs me up and does not agree remotely
with your idea that voters will investigate and be able to rank a
whole slew of candidates in each contest.

> strategically).  none of us are stupid enough to buy into the canards
> that you and the IRV opponents repeated over and over again that
> somehow IRV "disenfranchises voters" or doesn't count their vote.

So explain to me how you imagine that IRV/STV's counting the 2nd and
later choices of only *some* voters when their 1st choice loses is
"counting their votes" and "not disenfranchising some voters".

Use some logic and apply it to IRV. Explain to me why should the
voters who cast first choice votes for the least popular candidates
have their 2nd choices counted but not any voters who cast 1st choice
votes for the more popular candidates?

So you apparently truly believe that all the Republican voters whose
1st choice candidate lost but whose 2nd choice vote  for the Democrat
were never counted, will agree with you that their votes were treated
fairly and equitably with  all the other voters who had their 2nd
choice votes counted?

OK. Well I think you are being hopelessly illogical to even imagine
that the IRV/STV counting process is fair (considering STV degrades to
IRV in some of its rounds).

Perhaps if I were not a fan of fundamental fairness and were an
IRV/STV advocate, I would not like it either when people tell the
truth about how fundamentally unfair and inequitable its counting
method is.

I am far too fundamentally honest though to fabricate stories about
IRV/STV being a fair equitable method and always immediately abandon
support for anything if I learn that it will be harmful or wrong or
increase the problems we already have with elections like IRV/STV do.


> everyone's ballot entered the counting algorithm with equal status,

FALSE. How the fundamentally unfair IRV/STV algorithm counts your
ballot depends on which candidates you rank 1st relative to how other
voters vote whether or not your ballot is treated fairly and equitably
by the IRV/STV methods.

In IRV, rank a more popular candidate first, and your 2nd and later
choices will never be counted to help that candidate, because that
candidate may lose first.  My 2nd choices only are assured of counting
if I vote for the least popular candidate eliminated in round one.


> just as would happen in a fair "traditional" election.  those whose
> vote for candidates with low 1st-choice *lost* (the problem we have
> with IRV is that the measure of electoral support depended *only* on
> those 1st-choice votes, a problem not solved with the traditional
> TTR).  those who *chose* not to rank either of the candidates that
> ended up in the final round, did not participate in the runoff just as
> would have happened if they chose to stay home on runoff day in TTR.
> they can blame no one else for their decision not to rank candidates
> they evidently

You don't seem to understand any of the finer points because IRV/STV
are not remotely similar to real runoff elections and are MUCH MUCH
worse and disenfranchise voters in the following ways:

1. IRV/STV remove the right cast a vote with a positive effect on a
candidate’s chances of winning.

2. IRV/STV remove the right to participate in the final decision of
who wins the election by eliminating voters’ ballots prior to the
final counting round. The more candidates, the more voters are
eliminated prior to the final counting round.

3. IRV/STV remove the right to have one’s votes counted equally and
fairly with all other voters’ votes because only voters supporting the
least popular candidates as their 1st choice are assured of having
their 2nd choice candidate counted when their 1st choice candidate
looses.

4. In comparison with top‐two runoff elections, IRV/STV remove the
right to elect majority winners. San Francisco had to eliminate its
legal right to elect majority winners when it adopted IRV/STV because
STV routinely elects winners with far less than 50% of the votes.

5. IRV/STV remove the right to a transparent, verifiable election
process with a decentralized, simple counting process that can be
easily manually counted and audited.

6. IRV/STV removes the right to have an economical election process.

7. IRV/STV removes the right to change one’s mind between the primary
and general election and to have time to get to know the candidates.
> all the below is crap.  just a distraction.  Kathy is pretending that
> it's some form of scholarship.

Ah the old "I can't rebut on the facts so I'll throw around some
negative labels approach..."  Not surprising since that is all the
IRV/STV proponents really have to support a really horrific method of
counting rank choice ballots.

>
>>
>> 1. none of the voters in Burlington, VT were fooled by Terry's
>> rhetoric into thinking that their votes "would not be wasted" and did
>> not realize that in STV/IRV their 1st choice vote can cause their 2nd
>> choice to lose,  (i.e. you assume all votes understood that their 1st
>> choice would hurt their 2nd choice in IRV/STV), and
>>
>> 2. none of the voters in Burlington, VT would be knowledgeable about
>> plurality voting (that they've used in VT for decades) to know to vote
>> for their favorite top-two contender if they wanted their vote to
>> count  (I.e. you assume with IRV/STV voters understand how to
>> strategize by voting for one of the top-two candidates 1st perfectly,
>> but when using plurality voting, they're suddenly too stupid to
>> understand that they need to vote for one of the top two if they want
>> their vote to elect a winner).
>>
>> So you assume that the voters in Burlington, VT are both (at the same
>> time) infinitely brilliant about IRV/STV and how it works, but
>> clueless about how plurality voting works.  So voters are both
>> brilliant and utterly stupid at the same time.
>>
>> I would call this a proof ad reductio absurdum that you are wrong.
>
>
> you are sooo hypocritical (and disingenuous).


Ha ha. The old "can't rebut on the issues so name-call approach"

You're very talented at ducking the issues and pronouncing you've won
the argument by name calling and mischaracterization Robert. You seem
to be perfecting the technique.

BS-rebutting continues... Sigh. Why don't you make it easy on yourself
and quick slinging the BS?