[EM] more anti-IRV propaganda...

[David L Wetzell]

>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ralph Suter <RLSuter at aol.com>
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com, Range Voting <
> RangeVoting at yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:02:22 -0500
> Subject: [EM] Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting in San
> Francisco
> Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting
>
> By SHANE SHIFFLETT
> Published: December 2, 2011
> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/**12/02/us/analysis-finds-**
> incorrect-use-of-ranked-**choice-voting.html<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/analysis-finds-incorrect-use-of-ranked-choice-voting.html>
>
> The results are in: San Francisco voters have trouble with ranked-choice
> elections.
>

dlw: The US media, vanguard of the common man, has trouble with IRV.

>
> Despite a $300,000 educational campaign leading up to last month’s
> elections, including a new smiley-face mascot, publicity events, and
> advertising on buses and in newspapers, only one-third of voters on Nov. 8
> filled out all three choices in all three races, according to an analysis
> released this week by the University of San Francisco.
>

And only  9% ranked one candidate so that means more than half of the
voters ranked two candidates, more than they would have been able to do
with a FPTP....

>
> Under the city’s system, voters were asked to rank their top three choices
> for mayor, sheriff and district attorney.
>
> Perhaps the analysis’ most troubling finding is that 9 percent of voters,
> mostly in Chinatown and southeastern neighborhoods like the Bayview, marked
> only one choice for each office, either because they considered only one
> candidate suitable or because they did not know how to fill out their
> ballot correctly.
>
> “Some people just prefer to rank one,” said Corey Cook, a political
> science professor at the university who wrote the report with David
> Latterman. “But the geographic component suggests it’s more systematic.”
>

dlw: people who don't speak/read english or have been failed by a bad
public education system in high-poverty areas are less likely to learn how
to use IRV?  Clearly, the advocates of IRV hate democracy.

>
> Although Edwin M. Lee did not receive a majority of first-place votes, he
> became the city’s first elected Chinese-American mayor based on the
> ranked-choice system, which was first used in San Francisco in 2004.
>

wow, a minority gets elected.  IRV is terrible.

>
>
> The findings indicate one of two things, Mr. Latterman said: Either
> campaigns tried to manipulate the results by focusing on specific groups of
> people or there is not a clear understanding of how to use the system.
>

just 2 things?  1. all campaigns target voters who are more likely to vote
for them.  With IRV, this tends to be a broader set of voters and
minorities are more likely to be key swing voters.  2. Or they don't want
to rank more than one or two candidates?

>
> A recent Bay Citizen analysis revealed that 16 percent of ballots in the
> mayoral race — those of more than 31,500 people — were filled out correctly
> but were discarded when all of their chosen candidates were eliminated from
> the race. San Francisco does not allow voters to rank all the candidates on
> the ballot.
>

dlw: Hmm, maybe there were lots and lots of candidates for a single-winner
election?  When you force people to rank all of them the number of
permutations rises very fast, even more so when you permit ties.  When
people get more used to IRV and start ranking 3 candidates, this number
will go down.

>
> In June, a voting task force created by the Board of Supervisors
> recommended that the Department of Elections consider allowing voters to
> rank all the candidates to avoid this issue.
>
> The panel urged the department to work with city supervisors to increase
> voter education.
>

dlw: Look, if most peeople didn't want to rank 3 candidates, why do we need
to let them rank umpteen candidates?

>
> Hence the mascot. “We made the conscious decision to have an image of a
> correctly marked ballot and to have a smiley face to draw people’s
> attention,” said John Arntz, the director of the Department of Elections.
>
> When asked whether ranked-choice voting has worked well for San Francisco,
> Mr. Arntz said, “I guess it depends if your candidate wins or not.”
>

How did the election fare in terms of turnout and other indicators relative
to a CA election that does not use IRV or uses FPTP?

 This is crap!

dlw

>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ted Stern <araucaria.araucana at gmail.com>
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:26:42 -0800
> Subject: Re: [EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
> On 02 Dec 2011 13:05:04 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >     There is a fundamental difference between two-party dominance, which
> will
> >     probably not change any time soon, and a two-party duopoly. 45%,
> 40%, 8%,
> >     5%... is dominance; 51% 47% 1%... is duopoly. Any system which gives
> bad
> >     enough results when there are more than two parties will be a two
> party
> >     duopoly; and it seems highly possible that that includes IRV. And I
> think
> >     that many of the current problems, including the outsized power of
> >     "$peech", are inevitable consequences of a monopoly.
> >
> > duopoly you mean? ????
> >
> >     David, you believe differently. But your guesses about how things
> would
> >     work are just that. You can't point to a real-world example. And so,
> as
> >     you've essentially admitted, we're not likely to believe you until
> you do
> >     have evidence. Nor, in my opinion, should we.
> >
> > I can offer the history of the US prior to the past 40 years as
> > evidence that a 2-party duopolized system can work. ??
>
> Monarchies can "work":  See Darius's arguments to the Persians [from
> Herodotus].
>
>    http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/herodotus-persdemo.asp
>    (section III.82)
>
> And Henry II's good government of England in the 12th century laid the
> groundwork of expectation of fairness that led to the Magna Carta in
> the 13th.
>
> Whether a system works is no argument.  The question is whether it is
> consistent with the goals that the country has set out for itself.
>

dlw: We've always had a balance between strong ideals and a conservative
structure of the gov't.
A two-party dominated ssytem is a part of that.  And it's worked rather
well for a great deal of our history.
We can't put the blame for how things have backslid in recent decades on
duopoly.

>
>
> > It is not a coincidence that from 1870-1980 that in one of the
> > economically most important states of the US, IL, the competition
> > between the two major parties was handicapped by the use of 3-seat
> > quasi-PR state rep election rule.  ??This enabled other states who
> > were economically more dependent on IL to be politically independent
> > of IL. ??They experimented and a lot of those experiments spilled
> > over to foster critical changes in the rest of the USA. ??
> >
> > All of this while FPTP was still being used...
>
> Your argument is mixing apples and oranges and is therefore pointless.
>

dlw: nonsense.  My point is that I push hard for American forms of PR
that'll handicap the rivalry between the two major parties, because US
history suggests that this can work rather well without having to end a
two-party system.

>
> A semi-PR method (CV) was used for Illinois representatives, while
> FPTP was used for other offices.
>

And my point is that the system worked well, because we used a mix of
single-winner and multi-winner elections, without having to get the "right"
single-winner election.

>
> As I'm sure you're aware, the type of representation one wishes to
> achieve in legislatures is different than the type one wants for
> executive office.  In legislatures, PR leads to diversity, while for
> executives, we want a centrist-biased method to apply selection
> pressure, in the fairest way possible, to the diverse voices of the
> legislature.
>

As I'm sure you're aware, the political system causes interdependencies
between legislative elections and executive elections.  If you make
legislative elections more competitive, it'll spill over to make more
executive elections more competitive.  The mere fact that the use of PR
will make it hard for one party to dominate a state legislature is enuf to
enable there to be a center between the two major parties that right now
can't compromise because they're both gaming to get a permanent majority.

>
> > So why do you claim I don't have evidence? ??The US doesn't need an
> > EU-system to reinvigorate its democracy. ??It needs to draw from its
> > own history and to trust that local activism will have a trickle-up
> > effect on national and international outcomes. ??
>
> There are also strong examples from its own history that the system
> can lead to systemic corruption that can only be resisted by
> overwhelming public support.
>
> In other words, instead of designing things to work correctly, we tend
> to let things go on until they break and then we put in a fix.
>

dlw: The fix we need isn't per se an EU system.  We still gotta move from
where we are right now.  We gotta play the politics of electoral reform,
which requires compromising our ideals with the reality of the distribution
of power in the present.

dlw

>
> Ted
>
> >     In other words: You could be right. So stop arguing about this
> >     and go out there and prove it.
> >
> > will do.
> >
> > dlw??
> >
> >     Jameson
> >
> >     2011/12/2 David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>
> >
> >         ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >         From:??MIKE OSSIPOFF <nkklrp at hotmail.com>
> >         To:??<election-methods at electorama.com>
> >         Date:??Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:19:28 +0000
> >         Subject:??[EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
> >
> >         David Wetzel said:
> >
> >         s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as
> a
> >
> >         whole...
> >         Third parties are too small and scattered.
> >
> >         [endquote]
> >
> >         MO: Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in
> a two-party system.
> >
> >         dlw: David is saying,
> >
> >         Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
> [two-party dominated system in US]
> >
> >         and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying
> support of others around American forms of PR + IRV]
> >
> >         and the wisdom to tell the difference between a dysfunctional
> two-party system and one that would "work".
> >
> >         dlw
> >
> >         ----
> >         Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/emfor list
> >         info
> >
> >
> > ----
> > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
> --
> araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com
>
>
>
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