[EM] piling on against IRV

[Kathy Dopp]

> Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 14:55:19 -0400
> From: robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>
> To: election-methods Methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>

>>>> 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,
>
> i never said you did.  you were taking about IRV failing to elect the
> "majority winner" (think about who you mean by such).  in the same
> manner, so also does TTR.

False claim. *You* were the person to bring up "Condorcet" above, not I.


>
> TTR doesn't find the majority winner either.  it's no better than

False claim. Find *one* TTR election where there was not a majority
winner out of all voters who cast votes in the TTR election. You
cannot, unless you fabricate yet another wild definition of "majority"
where "majority" means a majority of voters, not in the election, but
in the prior election.

Any wild distortion of what "majority" means to avoid having it simply
mean a majority out of all voters who cast votes in the contest during
the election!!  You really do not see a problem with your
ever-changing creative definitions of the word "majority" do you?

>> 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,
>
> that (the latter regarding IRV) is false and you've never shown it to
> be true.  you just keep repeating the same canard hoping, like
> Goebbels, that a lie repeated oft enough evolves in status from
> outright falsehood to plausible notion to gospel truth.  it doesn't
> but you may continue to pretend otherwise.
>
>
>> the
>> greater number of voters are excluded INVOLUNTARILY from participating
>> in the final IRV/STV round.
>
> repeating the falsehood doesn't make it true.

False again. Come on, I could explain this to any 10 year old in less
than 30 seconds.

Even in Burlington, VT I'm sure that there were fewer voters' ballots
being considered in the final counting round than in the 1st round.

Look at ANY STV election in San Francisco and try to see what's in
front of your face instead of inside your head, and you'll see that
FAR FAR fewer voters' ballots are in play in the final STV counting
round than in round 1.

MANY MANY voters are excluded from participating in the final counting
round in any STV election, and not by choice as in TTR where all
voters have the option to participate in the election and have their
vote counted.

This exclusion of voters by the STV counting process is why in San
Francisco had to eliminate its prior requirement for majority winners
(in the normal definition of the word) by legally removing language
requiring marjority winners after implementing STV and finding that
they'd been misled by STV proponents about the "majority winner" hype.

Or if you still can't figure this out, try reading the court documents
from the recent case in San Francisco where there was a law suit that
protested the removal of the right to participate in the final
decision-making process by plaintiffs.

I know you are just pretending that 100% of the voters in every
election have their votes counted in the final STV/IRV counting rounds
now, because no one is remotely as ignorant or obtuse as you pretend,
and any ten year old could understand the exclusion of voters by the
final STV/IRV counting rounds.

>> IRV/STV historically has maintained the 2-party dominant system where
>> it has been tried in 2-party dominant locations.
>
> well, FPTP creates pressure in a 3-party town to return to a 2-party
> dominant system.  the 2 parties that have the most in common and

Ah, the old "change the subject" tactic.  I never claimed, as you
imply, that FPTP did not encourage the 2-party system.

I was simply exposing the lie you told about IRV/STV supposedly
helping 3rd party candidates.


> together command a clear majority will now have to run a consolidated
> candidate in order to securely beat the 3rd party with the nearly
> opposite ideology.  that's even what Geirzynski alludes to.  he thinks
> it's a good thing, i think it's a bad thing.  it is the beginning of
> the end of the separateness of those 2 parties that have the most in
> common.

And you lied about IRV/STV not doing the same as plurality in this
regard, just like Fairytale vote lied about IRV/STV finding majority
winners, solving the spoiler problem and allowing voters to cast
sincere ballots,....

The list of lies by IRV/STV proponents is enormous, and yet you
continue to tell the same disproven lies and try to change the subject
to confuse your audience into thinking the topic was about plurality.


>
>> In fact IRV is
>> designed ideally to prevent minor party candidates from interfering
>> with the 2-party system.
>
> that's bullshit.  you have no idea what you are talking about.  you


Very funny. Now are you claiming falsely that IRV wasn't sold in the
US on the basis that it could have prevented Ralph Nader voters from
disrupting Gore's win in Florida? (i.e. make it so the most popular of
the 2 major parties' winners wins office without disruption.)

You IRV/STV proponents are very very good at reinventing history.

So, you've added quite a few tactics to this email:

1. reinventing history

2. changing the subject

3. another creative definition of "majority" (not out of this
election, but the last election's voters)

4. pretending I was speaking about things you mentioned first

You are really perfecting such discourse Robert.

> misrepresent what the "design" was about.  what i have been saying in
> my complaints about IRV is that it *failed* to do what it's designed
> to do.


IRV is ideally designed to avoid having minor parties from interfering
with the top two major parties, although its designers may not have
realized what IRV was designed to do. IRV certainly is designed well
if the goal is to discourage 3rd party political participation where
there are 2-major parties because people, like they did in Burlington,
immediately realize that a sincere vote, where one of the two top
contenders is not listed, can create havoc. In Burlington, the two top
contenders happen to be the Progressive and the Democrat, with the
Republicans being the 3rd, not so minor, party.

True, IRV/STV will always fail to avoid the havoc of a 3rd party
candidate whenever the 3rd party candidate becomes competitive enough,
as the Republicans are in Burlington - competitive to knock out the
favorite candidate prior to the last round.

Exactly why IRV/STV were repealed in Burlington, when it failed to
prevent a 3rd party from wreaking havoc by eliminating the most
popular candidate prior to the final round.

> not always (sometimes IRV *does* work), but it surely failed
> to accomplish the very goals for which it was designed to accomplish
> in Burlington in 2009.

Yes, failed to keep that nasty-old-3rd party from causing voters to
elect the least favorite of the top two candidates (Progressives and
Dems in Burlington, VT).

>
> it does better (certainly not perfectly, not as well as Condorcet)
> than FPTP in "finding the majority winner" (using your language.  you
> keep repeating this falsehood and you have never offered anything to
> support it.  you then try to obfuscate the discussion with talk of
> "voting rights" which is non-sequitur because "rights" have nothing to
> do with it.  the same rules that apply to those who claim their rights
> were violated are the same rules that applied to everyone else.


I never said that IRV/STV were worse than plurality  *in every way*. I
maintain that IRV/STV are worse than plurality in sufficient number of
ways to make it a huge step backwards from far simpler, more
auditable, fairer exising FPTP methods.

There are methods that are a step forward from plurality. IRV/STV are
not among them.

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