[EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring, version

[Richard Fobes]

To Ralph Suter, thank you for your extremely useful feedback!

You are the kind of person who is in a position to use our declaration 
as (for lack of a better metaphor) ammunition in the battles against 
plurality voting. The fact that you like it reveals that we are on the 
right track.

The fact that you do not find the declaration to be too long is very 
helpful!

I like your idea of emphasizing that these election methods first should 
to be used in non-governmental organizations as a way of educating 
voters about what works, and what doesn't.  This approach could have 
prevented the situations in which instant-runoff voting was adopted and 
then rejected.

For this purpose we can add paragraphs such as:

------ begin ------

"The same election methods we recommend here for governmental elections 
also can be used for electing officers (such as president, treasurer, 
and secretary) in an organization.  In fact, all(?) of the methods 
recommended here have been used for officer elections, and the fairer 
results have been widely appreciated (except by incumbents who were not 
reelected)."

"We unanimously agree that plurality voting should not be used to elect 
corporate board members.  As a replacement we support using the same 
election methods that we recommend for governmental elections.  If legal 
restrictions only allow plurality voting, we unanimously support legal 
reforms that allow any one (or more) of the election methods supported 
here."

"The above-recommended election methods also can be used in any 
organization to make single-choice decisions, such as choosing a new 
logo, choosing a time or date for an event, and choosing a restaurant 
for a gathering.  However, if one of the choices is to not make a change 
(such as not changing the organization's logo), then two rounds of 
voting are needed, with the first round choosing the most popular 
change, and the second round choosing between that change and not making 
any change."

"Although instant-runoff voting is not being recommended for 
governmental elections, instant-runoff voting is useful when a small 
group of people is physically gathered together and does not have access 
to voting software.  In this case paper-based ranked ballots can be 
collected and then physically sorted into stacks based on the ballot's 
top-ranked remaining choice.  Until one of the ballot stacks contains 
more than half the ballots, the smallest remaining stack of ballots can 
be re-sorted based on the voter's next-ranked choice.  This approach is 
much fairer than plurality voting."

------ end ------

Regarding your comment about 1-2-3 ballots, verbally I have used that 
name numerous times and it seldom produces the glazed and baffled look I 
get when I use words like ranked ballot and order-of-preference ballot. 
  In other words, I have been testing it with success.  Yet I agree that 
there might be a better name.

I agree that the term "pairwise" would benefit from further explanation. 
  Yet I suspect that if I had done so in the first draft, there would be 
criticisms from supporters of non-Condorcet methods claiming that the 
declaration is biased in favor of Condorcet methods.

Your feedback reveals that this declaration accomplishes what I had 
hoped it would accomplish, namely that it would be useful to the many 
people who want election-method reform, but either don't know what would 
work (and what wouldn't work), or do know what would work but need 
evidence (they can give to others) to support their beliefs.

Again, thank you!

Richard Fobes

On 8/23/2011 9:38 PM, Ralph Suter wrote:
> Several thoughts (not a thorough critique) after one straight-through
> reading:
>
> 1. Length: I agree that for the reasons Richard described, the length of
> his proposed declaration (less than 2300 words) is appropriate and that
> trying to shorten it very much would be a mistake. It's long compared to
> previously proposed versions, but it's still very short compared to,
> say, a small pamphlet or even a fairly short magazine article, and it's
> only two to three times the length of a typical US newspaper op-ed
> article. At the same time, I think it is long enough (or nearly so --
> see #5 below) to convey clearly, to a broad non-expert audience, at
> least the minimum necessary information and explanation.
>
> 2. Readability: When opening the email Richard's post was in (I got it
> along 4 other posts in an issue of Election-Methods Digest), I didn't
> expect to want to take the time to read it carefully all the way
> through, but after I started reading, I found it well-written and
> compelling enough to want to do so -- almost like a "page turner" novel.
>
> 3. Language: I'm guessing most readers will find the language clear with
> just a few exceptions. One exception, for example, may be "pairwise".
> This is a word most non-expert readers will be unfamiliar with and many
> may find puzzling and jargon-like. To find other exceptions, a variety
> of non-expert readers should be asked to read the statement (or later
> drafts of it) and note any words, phrases, or explanations they find
> unclear.
>
> 4. When describing Condorcet methods: I suggest briefly describing
> Condorcet himself and his role in developing such methods. I would also
> explain that the main point of Condorcet methods is to use the
> preference information voters provide to determine how each candidate
> would fare against every other candidate in a series of one-to-one
> contests, just as in a round-robin athletic tournament in which each
> contestant competes one-to-one against every other contestant. In
> addition, I suggest mentioning that for this reason, an alternative name
> sometimes used to describe Condorcet methods is Instant Round Robin
> methods, which can be abbreviated as IRR methods to distinguish them
> from Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), a more widely known and promoted
> method that makes use of the same kinds of ballots IRR methods do. (By
> the way, "1-2-3 ballots" may not be much better than "preferential
> ballots"; there may better names than either, such as rank voting
> ballots, rank order ballots, or just ranking or ranked ballots. This may
> be worth asking non-expert readers about.)
>
> 5. Finally, I think the statement could be greatly improved and made
> more interesting, relevant, and compelling to a wider range of readers
> by explaining that alternative voting and representation methods can
> also be beneficially used for a large variety of purposes other than
> general political elections and that different methods are often more
> suitable for some kinds of purposes than for other purposes. Some
> example of other purposes are: US-style primary elections; party
> convention votes; decisions in legislative bodies and committees;
> decisions by informal groups; decisions in meetings of different kinds
> and sizes; uncritical or relatively minor decisions vs. major,
> critically important decisions; opinion polling; TV/radio audience
> voting; provisional ("straw") voting; and choosing organizational board
> members and conference attendees. Furthermore, because alternative
> voting and representation methods have the potential to greatly improve
> collective decisionmaking in a large variety of situations other than
> general political elections and because abstract analyses of different
> methods need to be supplemented with well-designed experimentation and
> social scientific research, there is a great need and justification for
> support for such experimentation and research, possibly in the form of a
> new well-funded non-partisan research institute.
>
> Explaining these things would require lengthening the statement, though
> I think not by a lot. An objection may be that this would make the
> statement less focused and therefore less compelling and influential. My
> reply would be that while election laws are generally very difficult to
> change, it is often much easier (as I know from some personal
> experience) to change how decisions are made for purposes other than
> public elections. If such changes became increasingly frequent and
> widespread, people would increasingly become more familiar with
> alternative voting and representation methods and with the idea that
> alternative methods are often far superior to ones currently used, and
> it should also become increasingly easy to persuade people to support
> major changes in public election laws.
>
> -RS
>
> PS: I'm actually not an election-methods expert and haven't read
> messages on this list at all regularly for several years. At most, I'm a
> fairly well-informed amateur, and even that may be overstating it. My
> expertise is more in general political reform (especially US political
> reform), with election reform being one of a large variety of kinds of
> reforms I believe are badly and urgently needed. I also have some
> expertise in political reform strategy -- i.e., the development of
> practical strategies for bringing about changes that experts agree are
> needed.
>
> On 8/23/2011 9:06 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
>> ...