[EM] piling on against IRV

[Kathy Dopp]

> 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

>> However, that does not alter the fact that .
>
> they have the choice in *either* TTR or IRV.  and *both* can fail to
> arrive at the Condorcet winner


I said nothing about the fact that IRV/STV tends to eliminate the
Condorcet winner prior to the final round, not solve the spoiler
problem, not find majority winners.

Again:

Voters have the CHOICE to vote or not in the real runoff elections,
unlike with STV/IRV where the more candidates who run for office, the
greater number of voters are excluded INVOLUNTARILY from participating
in the final IRV/STV round.

Surely this is not that tough a concept to comprehend or are you
deliberately conflating concepts and mischaracterizing what I said to
confuse your audience?


> and i think it's bad): the repeal of IRV will create pressure (if they
> want to win) for people with more aligned political interest to unite
> behind a consolidated candidate.  it will push Burlington back to a
> predominate 2-party environment.  we'll get to choose between Dumb and
> Dumber, and if you ever dare to vote for Smart, then Dumber will get
> elected.

IRV/STV historically has maintained the 2-party dominant system where
it has been tried in 2-party dominant locations. In fact IRV is
designed ideally to prevent minor party candidates from interfering
with the 2-party system.

Yet another flaw of IRV/STV to add to the list of comparisons where
there is either no improvement or a decrease in voting rights as
compared to plurality.


>
>> Voters may decide not to vote in the runoff for many reasons, such as
>> not caring which of the two finalists win, but they ought to have the
>> right to participate and to have the opportunity to learn about the
>> two finalists and make a decision if they want to
>
> and you have NEVER shown that they were not allowed to with IRV.


Really, I do not believe that you are this obtuse as not to understand
that IRV/STV excludes many many voters from participating in the final
counting round.  Just try counting some ballots where the number of
candidates is greater than the number of rankings allowed on the
ballot plus one, or where voters do not fully rank all the candidates.
 I am fairly certain anyone with a 90 IQ can understand the concept if
they try counting a few IRV elections, for instance the last
Burlington, VT mayoral contest excluded some voters from the final
round.

Or just look at the results of using IRV/STV in San Francisco, CA
where candidates now rarely get 50% of the vote because so many voters
are excluded involuntarily from participating in the final counting
rounds because they weren't lucky enough to strategize correctly by
voting for one of the two final candidates.

>> 1. IRV/STV remove the right cast a vote with a positive effect on a
>> candidate?s chances of winning.
>
> non-monotonicity.  we agree about that.

Yea! Reality discussion is possible.

>
>> 2. IRV/STV remove the right to participate in the final decision of
>> who wins the election
>
> no it doesn't.  no more than TTR.

You think that voters are involuntarily excluded from participating in
the top-two runoff election in the US?  I.e. not allowed to cast a
vote in the runoff election?

Really?  Come on, you really are pretending you cannot see reality now.

> oh, so you're complaining about *who* it is that goes to the final
> round.

No. never said that. Read my "words". The real ones on the page, not
the ones inside your head.

>
>> 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.

> so people whose 1st choice is not eliminated are complaining?  if your
> 1st choice is left standing in the final round, what's the problem?

In IRV (and the elimination rounds of STV)

Any voter whose 2nd choices are eliminated prior to their 1st choice,
never has their 2nd choices considered.

Any voter whose 1st choice loses in the final counting round, never
has their 2nd choice considered. (this turns out to be one of the
largest group of voters whose 2nd choice is never considered although
their 1st choice loses.)

This fundamental inequity of treatment of voters (privileging the
votes of the supporters of the least popular candidates and penalizing
the votes of the supporters of the more popular candidates) is why IRV
does not find Condorcet winners, and tends to elect extreme right or
extreme left candidates after eliminating the centrist voter preferred
candidates.  (Electing extreme rightists if there are more extremist
voters on the right or vice-versa).

I know you understand all this because you most assuredly are not as
obtuse as you are pretending to be here for your audience.


>
>> 4. In comparison with top?two runoff elections, IRV/STV remove the
>> right to elect majority winners.
>
> *both* IRV and TTR runs the risk of removing the majority-preferred
> winner before the runoff,


I see that you are once again (along with Terry) finding a clever new
way of defining "majority winner" to suit your purposes.  Not
interested in hearing your latest new creative perversion of the
meaning of majority winner.

>> 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.
>
> precinct summable.  definitely a preferred property and Condorcet
> (using the same ranked ballot that IRV uses) is also precinct
> summable.

A rank choice ballot is *not* the problem. The problem is with IRV's
fundamentally unfair, inequitable method of counting rank choice
ballots, that has the corollary that it makes the ballots much more
difficult to count and audit.

Condorcet is a fair, equitable counting method and thus also much
easier to count and to audit.


>IRV *could* be precinct summable but the number of piles
> grows quite large if there are any more than 3 candidates.  but the

Yes. I give a formula for the number of piles in my report on IRV/STV
linked from my signature file.

> transparency and verifiability can still be accomplished in a *small*
> venue (like a small city or county, but not for a statewide or
> nationwide election) by, at the precinct level, handing each
> legitimately interested party (and media pool representative) a thumb
> drive that has the same ballot information that Burlington published
> and that we were able to use for our own computer programs to rerun
> the IRV or Condorcet or Borda or Bucklin or whatever that uses the
> same ranked ballots.  precinct summable is a good thing and we should
> seek to have it, but it is not precisely the same thing as transparent
> and verifiable.  you can still have the latter (in a small venue)
> without the former.

While I agree with you that it is not precisely the same concept it is
related because precinct-summable methods are much much easier to
count and to audit.

>
>> 6. IRV/STV removes the right to have an economical election process.
>
> well, if people weren't fussing so much about it, we could have
> recovered the onetime $10K costs in Burlington when 1 runoff was
> avoided.  nothing needed to be changed in the optical scan voting
> machines (because they only scanned and recorded the ovals and did not
> count anything in the IRV election), the counting software was free
> and sorta public domain and appropriated from Cambridge MA who still
> uses IRV.  the money (now wasted) was used in voter education and in
> training of the clerks/judges and was a onetime cost.  there was
> literally no extra money needed in Burlington for the "process".

You also forget to mention all the additional costs that IRV/STV
entails and since IRV does not find majority winners, there would
still need to be runoff elections to find majority winners if that is
desired.

>
>> 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.
>
>   what you say is true except it's debatable that it's a
> "right".  and i think that is, at the core, what the IRV opponents in
> Burlington didn't like.  i see no reason that people can't be expected
> to make up their minds by Election Day.  it's what we normally require
> from voters anyway.

OK. Perhaps you're right that it's not a right. However, it is yet
another thing that IRV/STV takes away as compared to plurality
elections.  So we agree on this then.


>
> according to this "right" you espouse, then Condorcet or any other
> method that uses a ranked ballot and fully resolves the election on a
> single Election Day also violates that "right".  i guess, so also does
> FPTP with no runoff, also violates that "right" to change one's mind
> after Election Day.

 I said:

 "the right to change one?s mind between the primary and general
election", not "after Election Day".

Mischaracterizing is always a strategy, but not an honest one, but I
do see your point.

However Condorcet methods treat voters' votes fairly and equitably in
the initial counting process, and do not exclude any voters from
participating in all the counting rounds or processes, and does not
require voters to fully rank all candidates in order to fully
participate, so the problem with STV/IRV is that:

1. IRV/STV excludes voters from the final counting round unless voters
are required to fully rank all candidates

2. IRV/STV does not treat all voters' votes equally and fairly

Hence, voters, unlike in Condorcet, are forced to fully consider all
the candidates if they even want to participate in the final counting
round in IRV/STV, and are not given the chance to contemplate who they
would want out of the two finalists.

I'm having trouble explaining the logic, IRV/ST proponents like
yourself and Terry try to fool people into thinking that IRV/STV are
analogous to conducting individual runoff elections, when there are
stark differences between runoff elections and IRV/STV and this is one
of them.

So my complaint is for the purpose of comparing IRV/STV with TTR and
showing another negative feature of IRV/STV in comparison with TTR.

When all people are allowed to participate and all their ballots are
treated equally, as with the Condorcet method, then I think there are
enough advantages of the process over TTR which is fair and equitable
and does allow all voters to participate, so that the loss of time in
deciding among all the options is less a consideration.

Anyway it is *you* who pretend that TTR and IRV/STV are essentially
the same process, not me.

>
>> SURELY THERE ARE ALTERNATIVE VOTING METHODS THAT DO NOT MAKE THE
>> ELECTIONS PROCESS LESS FAIR AND REMOVE SO MANY VOTER RIGHTS!!
>
> when people start yelling, i stop listening.

When did you start listening rather than pretending you don't
understand, name-calling, and mischaracterizing what I've said?

>
>> I am sure that Condorcet, Approval and other methods that can also be
>> applied in PR elections would be far less problematic and destructive
>> of voting rights and even be an improvement over plurality.
>
> twisting this issue into one of "rights" is and always has been
> obfuscation.  the same rules applied to me as to those complaining
> that their "rights" were violated.

So you are saying that as long as the rule is applied "the same" to
everyone, it does not violate any rights?

Let's use your logic then:

"Blacks may not ride the bus"  or "Women may not vote"

does not violate rights as long as the rule is applied equally to everyone?

I.e. It does not matter how fundamentally UNFAIR the rule is, like
IRV/STV are by treating the supporters of different candidates
unequally, as long as it is applied equally to everyone, it does not
remove any rights using your logic.

OK. That does not surprise me about your logic.


> the issue is what method correctly (or most correctly) reflects the
> will of the electorate without rewarding strategic voting swinging an
> election or punishing sincere voting.

Yikes. Do you still not comprehend that in Burlington, IRV/STV
punished all the Republicans who voted sincerely for the Republican
first, and taught them that in IRV/STV you MUST vote insincerely for
one of the top-two finalists or your vote will not be counted.

IRV/STV is NO DIFFERENT THAN PLURALITY in that you MUST rank one of
the top-two finalists first or be risk being punished for your sincere
vote otherwise.

Reality exists. Please join us by taking a look at the results of
real-life IRV/STV elections, or take a spreadsheet and try out IRV/STV
on a range of possible elections so that you can understand how voters
MUST STRATEGIZE and rank one of the candidates who is the top-two
vote-getter first, just like with plurality voting, or risk having
their votes help their last choice candidate win the election.



-- 

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