[EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On Aug 4, 2011, at 3:20 AM, bob wrote:
>>
>> --- In RangeVoting at yahoogroups.com, "thenewthirdparty" 
>> <thenewthirdparty at ...> wrote:
>>>
>>> Guys and Gals,
>>> I now see Range Voting as a very important component to getting 
>>> third parties elected.  But I don't see how the Range Voting group 
>>> will ever change the minds of the public in order for it to be a 
>>> reality.

and they haven't changed my mind about it, even though i'm not opposed 
to election policy reform nor of moving past FPP.  i fully recognize why 
the simple vote-for-one ballot (either FPP or delayed-top-two-runoff) 
disadvantages third-party and independent candidates.

this was a point i brought up during in Burlington IRV debate:  one of 
the vocal opponents to IRV was, 3 years previously, a minor candidate 
for mayor in Burlington Vermont.  i would almost say a non-serious 
candidate, but he got on the ballot (his name is Loyal Ploof).  now he 
lost to the Prog candidate who was elected in 2006 and he was a sorta 
anti-establishment rabble rouser (if he could get a rabble).

now (i told them this), suppose i'm standing in the rabble and Loyal 
says something that we all sorta know but the contending candidates 
aren't gonna bring up and i hear it and i say "yeah, right!  Loyal's 
right!"  maybe even he's a largely single-issue candidate, maybe not.  
but i want to send a message to city hall by voting for Loyal but the 
election between the real contenders might be close and my two-party 
contingency candidate may need my vote.  so Loyal doesn't get it, 
because even if i agree with him and *want* to vote for him, i dare not.

it's the typical Spoiler problem, that discourages voting for 
third-party or independent candidates.  if they can never sufficient 
vote (because the race between credible candidates may be close) third 
parties cannot get off the ground and become contenders.  but i was 
surprized that this guy who would directly benefit from a ranked ballot 
would be opposed to it.  (he didn't like the Prog mayor and essentially 
jumped in the boat with the other Prog-haters that believed, falsely, 
that IRV specifically favored the Progs in Burlington.)

that said, and to repeat that i also understand IRV to have *failed* in 
Burlington in 2009, i am not at all impressed with Range or Score voting 
for governmental elections (for certain Olympic sports, sure, but not 
for governmental elections).  one of the complaints we have against both 
FPP and IRV (as we found out in Burlington in 2009) is placing obvious 
burdens of tactical voting on the electorate.  we don't *like* having to 
forsake our favorite candidate in order to accomplish some other 
political imperative.  FPP discourages the Nader voters from voting for 
their favorite candidate in 2000 by punishing them when it became clear 
that their vote cause Bush to be elected.  and IRV discourages the GOP 
Prog-haters in Burlington from voting for their favorite candidate in 
2009 when they discover that marking their favorite as #1 on the ballot 
actually caused the Prog to win.

now, it's not the ranked ballot that failed these voters, it was the 
Hare-STV method of tabulating the vote. Condorcet would have taken the 
same ballot data and elected the candidate that was preferred by the 
electorate over any other specific candidate.  The GOP who lost the most 
in the election would neither have gotten punished for their sincere 
1st-choice vote (if IRV had survived, in 2012 these guys would be saying 
to themselves in the polls: "I gotta choose between Liberal and 
More-Liberal, because if I vote for the guy I really like, More-Liberal 
gets elected"), they would have been more satisfied with the Condorcet 
winner than with the IRV winner, who was their least favorite.  And the 
Progs would have been more satisfied with the Condorcet winner than with 
the apparent FPP winner (the GOP), but they would be unhappy with the 
result due to rivalry the Progs and Dems have for the common liberal 
voter in this town.

Ranked-choice voting requires less strategizing by the voter than Range 
because it requires less information.  with a ranked ballot, all the 
voter needs to decide is who, in every contingency that matters to the 
voter, who he or she would vote for.  they don't need to decide how much 
*more* they like Mother Teresa over Ghandi.  If they really want to bury 
a third candidate, Stalin, they have to sacrifice their preference 
between the two virtuous and the election might be decided between 
them.  Or maybe the election will turn out to be a battle between Stalin 
and Satan and they might rather live under Stalin than Satan, so they 
want to bump him up a little (leave Satan with a score of 0).  but what 
if Satan wins because not enough voters scored Stalin up enough?  or 
what if either Teresa or Ghandi lose to Stalin because too many voters 
scored Stalin too high (for fear of electing Satan)?

what to do?  what to do?

but a ranked ballot is easy:

       Teresa > Ghandi > Stalin > Satan

or, if you're more Hindu than Christian:

       Ghandi > Teresa > Stalin > Satan

no tactical thinking necessary for the ranked ballot when it decided by 
Condorcet and a Condorcet winner exists.  and, if a CW exists, the 
result is perfectly consistent, in every contingency, with the 
simple-majority, two candidate, one-person-one-vote election that 
everyone is familiar with.

>>>   Does someone have thoughts on how to get your Range Voting plan 
>>> voted into action?  I would like to hear how Range Voting moves 
>>> beyond more than just a good idea.

how does it move beyond "good idea" when it hasn't advanced to that 
square?  (sorry Warren, i *really* have a lot of respect for you and 
your scholarship and your Burlington IRV page at your website, but 
you're still not convincing regarding Range.  a little more convincing 
regarding Approval, but i would still not support that for political 
office, maybe the judiciary or some boards, but not executive nor 
legislative.)

listen, everybody agrees with how a simple 2-candidate election should 
be decided: person with the most votes wins and every voters vote is of 
equal value.  "simple majority" and "one-person-one-vote".

wouldn't it make a lot more sense, since IRV is discredited, and FPP is 
clearly flawed, to put your energy into educating people about what goes 
wrong and *has* gone wrong in those elections and present an alternative 
with ballot no more complicated than with IRV and truer to the 
hypothetical 2-person race, whether the spoiler runs or not?

>> I think we need to start a PAC or even maybe a party that has the 
>> sole objective of getting rid of plurality voting.

doesn't one exist?  why not team up with FairVote?

>>   We need to be able to communicate that competitive elections in 
>> which there is no vote splitting is the most important thing we can 
>> do to hold politicians accountable.

sure, and how does Condorcet cause vote splitting?  you don't need Range 
to address the problem of splitting the majority vote.

>>   We also need to be willing to vote for candidates who support 
>> getting rid of plurality regardless of what other positions that 
>> candidate holds.
oooh, i dunno if i can handle that.  weirder things have happened than 
that of Michelle Bachmann supporting ranked-choice voting.  i wouldn't 
vote for her even if she *loved* Condorcet.

>> We need to communicate that once we get over this hump, we will no 
>> longer have to worry about having to vote for the lesser of two evils 
>> ever again.
>>
>> Another thing we can do is email and tweet news hosts like Rachael 
>> Maddow and ask them to do a segment on different voting systems.  If 
>> we organize to tweet pundits at the same time, maybe they'll get the 
>> message.

dunno who Rachel Maddow is.  guess i better google her.  how about Chris 
Matthews?


On 8/4/11 9:16 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> Here I talk of moving up from FPP to Range or Condorcet.  I do not get 
> into other single-winner elections or into multi-winner elections - 
> while such deserve considering, they distract from my primary goal, 
> which is to promote moving upward without getting buried in details.
>
> Voters should see advantages in moving up to a better method.
>
> To vote for one, as in FPP:
> .     In Range, assign your choice a maximum rating.
> .     In Condorcet, simply rank your choice.
>
which is simpler?

> Voting for two is using more power than FPP offers.  Often there is a 
> major pair of candidates for which you prefer one, and one other that 
> you also want to vote for:  For your second choice you could give the 
> same rank or rating, or lower:
> .     In Range you assign first choice maximum rating.  Unrated share 
> minimum.  The farther you rate second below max, the stronger your 
> vote for max over second.  BUT, the nearer you rate second to unrated, 
> the weaker you rate second over unrated.
> .     In Condorcet, rank your first choice higher than your second.
>
ditto.

> Voting for more is doable:
> .     In Range your difference in rating between any two is how much 
> you prefer the higher over the lower, and the sum of these differences 
> decides which wins their race.
> .     In Condorcet they count how many rank A>B vs how many rank B>A.
which meaning complies more with equal weighting of each voter's vote 
(what we normally mean by "one-person-one-vote")?

> Politicians may hesitate in moving up to more powerful methods.  Range 
> or Condorcet can cost more, but getting a truer reading as to voter 
> choices can be worth the pain.

i'm sorry, guys.  i'm really sorry, Warren, but between Condorcet and 
Range, it just ain't close.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."