[EM] Re et al Chicken and Egg

[David L Wetzell]

Happy Holidays, I reply to RBJ, Ted Stern, Dave Ketchum and Kristofer M
below.

RBJ:the point is, while STV might be the best and simplest method to gain a
more proportional representation for multi-winner elections, it still is
inferior to a simple Condorcet method (say, minmax margins or ranked-pairs)
for single-winner elections.

dlw: It's a question of |Xirv-Xother| vs |Pirv - Pother|.  I maintain that
the diffs in the Xs other than FPTP or Top Two Primary are not that great
and that most claims that Xother>>Xirv are wrong and lower Pirv without
raising Pother.

RBJ: and, although i usually don't agree with her[Kathy Dopp], she has a
point with souring the public.  here, in Burlington, the anti-IRV crowd
(which Kathy has identified with, here in the local blogs) has the attitude
that while they won this election by a small margin (about 300 outa 6K or
7K), it was a vindication of the commandment from God that thou shalt mark
the ballot only once.  and with an "X".

dlw: Which is compounded by wrong, misleading statements like that of Kathy
Dopp's about the significance of the Burlington referendum that rescinded
the use of IRV.   "Actually, ... IRV and STV which will sour the public on
any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades"  Now is as good
of a time as any for folks like you who preferred something else over IRV
to admit that it probably was wrong to end the use of IRV in Burlington.
 Otherwise, it's just more anti-IRV spin...

RBJ: it will take a generation to pass before we'll be able to revisit the
question of election reform and then we'll only do it if the Progressive
Party survives that period of time.  if we devolve back to a 2-party
system, i doubt there will be much political incentive to revisit the issue
of ranked-choice voting (tabulated by a decent Condorcet-compliant method,
i would hope that they wouldn't forget the lesson learned regarding IRV,
and do forget the phony-balony arguments from the "Keep Voting Simple"
crowd).

dlw: Why on earth will it take a generation to revisit election reform?
 That sounds like defeatism.  We need to remind folks that democracy is an
experiment!  Maybe the lesson is that you don't call of experiments after
one or two tries...  you let experiments run their course before casting
judgment and that there's nothing intrinsically wrong if someone decides to
vote strategically.  It's inevitable to a degree.  The same is true in
terms of election rules...

Let me add RBJ that I really do appreciate your comments in response to
Kathy Dodd.  I would add that if the GOP/Prog Haters cd go back in time to
the '09 election then IRV would have worked better because more of them
would have voted strategically for the Dem candidate as their first ranked
choice.  So I'd say 2009 was a learning election....  and I have no
problems whatsoever with some still having to vote strategically.  I see
this as a consequence of how IRV retains a tendency for there to be 2 major
parties.  What it does is makes it so those 2 major parties are more
dynamically drawn to be centered around the shifting de facto center.

I don't think that's dumb.  I think it's the art of the possible and why
|Xirv-Xoth| << |Pirv-Poth|.

Now to Ted Stern:
>> dlw: if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation
>> it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will
>> prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform.
>>
>> This is also a good reason to strategically support IRV, since we
>> can trust that with changes, there'll be more scope for
>> experimentation and consideration of multiple alternatives to FPTP.

TS: This is precisely the kind of game theory that leads to the two party
problem with FPTP: we need to coalesce behind the strongest contender
in order to have some kind of voice, be it only a compromise.  So no,
I don't think it is a good reason.

dlw: The strongest contender should be based on X*P, not X alone for X is
somewhat fuzzy and I'd argue that it's plausible that the diffs in the
value of many alternatives to FPTP aren't that great.  Even if Xoth>Xirv
that does not imply that claims that Xoth>>Xirv will raise Poth.  It most
certainly will lower Pirv.  It can hold up reform if the "strongest
contender" is not self evident, as I would argue from how this list had to
endorse 4 alternatives to FPTP and wave hands over IRV to get a
quasi-consensus.  The fact of the matter is that it's easy to muddy the
waters about any election rule, which is what enables those who benefit
from the status quo to divide and conquer us reformers.

TS: Yes, precisely.  The traditional Robert's Rules method of taking only
a single vote at a time is at fault.  It produces a suboptimal result
by segmenting the problem too much.

dlw: But there are ways to mitigate this problem.  1. There are factors at
work that reduce the proliferation of serious candidates and make it easier
for voters to identify who are the serious candidates with little effort.
 2. While fewer serious candidates reduce the scope of issues considered,
there are non-election ways to advance serious issues, which further makes
it less critical to agree on which election rule has the highest X.  3. The
continued possibility of spoiling is mitigated by the potential of parties
to modify their positions to appease potential spoilers.

All of which is to say that even if Xoth>Xirv that does not mean
Xoth-Xirv>>Pirv-Poth.

TS: It is similar to the less optimal result you get from dividing space
by partitioning in each dimension separately to get bricks, instead of
hexagons in 2D or truncated octagons in 3D.

dlw: yeah, but such rational choice-like models only look at what happens
on election day, they abstract from everything else that happens, which is
not a trivial assumption in assessing the relative value of election rules.


> dlw: It's called marketing.  FairVote wisely simplified the benefits
> of IRV.  IRV does find majority winners a lot more often than FPTP
> and it reduces the spoiler problem considerably.  It does save money
> compared with a two round approach and its' "problems" are easy to
> fix.

TS: That is debatable.  I happen to think that the goal/object of IRV is
different from what one wants to achieve in a single winner election.

dlw:  I don't know which of the above you are saying is debatable.
 It's not perfectionism, but over time it makes for better elections and so
the two major parties must follow the de facto center.

TS:If you model your government on a natural system (and the US Founders
based their arguments by appealing to "Natural Law"), then you do best
when you create a diverse and representational set of options (hence
PR for legislatures) and only then apply selective pressure using a
centrist single winner method.

dlw:  It's not clear what's "natural".  It's natural to want both order and
equality, continuity and change...  we have freedoms here in the US, but
we've also had a melting pot effect in part due to how we've long had a two
party dominated system.  I don't think having a 2 party dominated system is
what's "wrong".  I believe that what's wrong is how our system too easily
tilts to effective single party rule due to our nearly-exclusive use of
FPTP/single-winner elections.  If we used a better mix of single and
multi-winner elections, it would tend to lead to a system with 2 major
parties, an indefinite no. of minor parties contesting the major parties
and a large number of LTPs that specialize in contesting "More local"
elections and vote strategically together o.w. and come and go as there is
a felt need.  This wd suffice to make our system more of a melding than a
melting pot.

TS:IRV is not based on centrism.  As the single-winner limit of STV, it
is better (not "best") at finding a representative of the majority,
not the best representative of the entire population.

dlw: And my arg is that IRV+American forms of PR in "More local" elections
-> dynamic centrism.  Since I am fine with a 2 party dominated system, the
fact that IRV does not end a 2 party dominated system does not disqualify
it as a significant improvement over FPTP.

TS: As for STV, one can keep patching to deal with its many problems, but
at its core it also make a number of false choices:

 * why can't a voter say that they prefer several candidates equally?

 * why must choices be ranked?

 * why do candidates have to be eliminated?

 * why can't lower rankings be considered?

dlw: The exigencies of getting electoral reform puts the burden of proof on
the advocates for alternative alternatives to the status quo to show why
their issues mandate an alternative alternative.  Me, I personally don't
think it makes a huge diff which sort of PR gets used, it's much more
important that we start to use some PR in our system as a whole period.


Re to David Ketchum:
DK: While IRV offers ranked choice voting - a big improvement over FPTP, It
fails to have a *defendable *way to count the votes - and, by that
incompleteness, can reject the true choice of a majority of voters - see
Burlington as a widely heard example.  See Condorcet, a method that is a
good reason for dumping IRV - by accepting the same votes as IRV, but then
actually reading what the voters vote, Condorcet is a major improvement.

dlw: Did you mean defendable or dependable?  I think IRV can be defended as
the supremum of X*P of alternatives to FPTP or Top 2 Primary, and is
dependable.  I myself prefer IRV3/AV3, which uses a limited form of
Approval Voting to narrow down the candidates to 3 and then uses IRV.  I
trust IRV will make the two major parties(whoever they may be) consistently
shift to be around the de facto center and be more civil to third party
candidates/voters.

DK:Could he be thinking of Condorcet, which tabulates the same ballots
intelligently at precinct level?

 dlw:No, I was referring to IRV3/AV3.  You tally the total number of
rankings the candidates get in the first stage and then you sort the votes
into one of ten categories based on the 3 finalists who got the most
rankings.

DK:But when marketers lie and get caught, potential customers get
suspicious as to future marketing.

dlw: To simplify is not to lie.

Now to Kristopher M.
On 12/14/2011 09:59 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:

> if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation
> it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will
> prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform.
>

KM: You keep on saying that. We can keep stating our priors until the cows
come home, but that won't do anything. Instead we should find some
information that would resolve the uncertainty.

dlw: What uncertainty?  These are not simply priors.
PR does help 3rd parties(we agree right?) and American forms of PR would
tend to help LTPs since there'd be fewer seats in plenty of "more local"
"super-districts", this tends not to encourage nation-wide 3rd parties.
 3rd parties are great places to experiment with electoral reform.  This
would especially be true with LTPs since any org that is smaller and
consequently has less hierarchy is better at innovating.  And, when you got
a whole lot of 3rd parties, as with LTPs, there's great scope for
experimentation.  The kicker is to get them to share with others about the
experiments so that the results will trickle out and up.


What kind of information would resolve the difference? What observation
would make you think IRV is more likely to pull harder than STV pushes, or
that advanced voting methods are so good that IRV is a net loss?

dlw: I don't expect LTPs woud resolve "IRV is more likely to pull harder
than STV pushes".  I do expect that the use of 3-5 seat forms of PR in
"more local" will give a greater return than IRV or any other single-seat
election, due to de facto segregation.  I expect a variety of voting
methods to be tried out, sometimes multiple at the same time with the
results then processed by the LTPs.  I also expect we'd find that different
election rules are better for different sorts of elections, which is
something that'll also emerge from case-studies of experimental results.

KM: You have suggested using Bayesian regret as a heuristic. I have been
away for some time. I haven't replied to your Bayesian regret post, and I
will likely be more idle in the future than I am now, as well. But all that
said, if you want to use Bayesian regret as a heuristic, how much weight
would you put on it? If the improvement of IRV over Plurality is 100%, how
much do you need for the advanced methods over IRV? 50%? 100%? 1000%?

dlw: My heuristic arg is that typically comparisons of election rules have
presumed 7 candidates.  I argue that 4 candidates is more realistic, since
there are limits in the number of serious candidates in single-winner
elections.  In a 4 candidate election, the select candidates at random rule
would do quite a bit better for BR than in a 7 candidate election.  And if
that rule does better so would all of the other rules between it and the
Score Vote/Approval Vote rule.   Then, you can also add the effect of
hybridization between AV and IRV IRV3/AV3, which is bound to redress some
of typical args made against IRV by its electoral analytical critics. Thus,
|Xirvav-Xoth| gets lowered and consequently the Ps become more important
for deciding what is the right election rule alternative to FPTP to push
for right now.

KM:Only if STV pushes harder than IRV pulls. It doesn't in Australia. You
disclaim Australia because you say the data can't be generalized, and you
consider repeals of IRV to be merely victories by Plurality advocates won
by incomplete or flawed presentation, whereas incomplete presentation in
the other direction is simply "marketing" and thus nothing to be concerned
about.

dlw: AU uses IRV in "More local" elections where it is less likely to help
due to de facto segregation by characteristics correlated with political
preferences.  It uses PR in "less local" elections where it is less needed.
 And so yes, it's not generalizable.  I consider IRV to be reliable
improvement on FPTP and two-round elections, moreso when coupled with the
strategic use of PR that takes the edge off of how IRV does not tend to end
effective 2-party domination.

KM: So, in summary: I don't trust that IRV will give the necessary changes.
You do. We can keep on stating our claims backed by those positions, but as
long as we disagree on a more fundamental level, those claims won't do
anything but highlight our own positions yet again.

dlw: I recommend that you not push for the use of IRV in Norway.  I also
hope that you and others do not stymie the coupling of IRV(hopefully in
hybrid form) + Am. Forms of PR that is emerging as what
progressives/centrists/activists are going to be rallying around in the US.
 When smart people like you and others here state unequivocally that
Xoth>>Xirv it lowers Pirv without increasing Poth.  Ethically, the burden
of proof is on those who oppose the working consensus proposal for reform
to show that their preferred approach is considerably better.  I believe I
have been holding to this ethical principle in my emails on this list.

dlw
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