[EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 12/1/11 5:14 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>     KM:If the cost of campaigning is high enough that only the two
>     major parties can play the game, then money (what you call $peech)
>     will still have serious influence. 
>
>
> dlw:My understanding/political theory is that $peech is inevitable and 
> all modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and 
> kleptocracy/plutocracy.  To bolster the former, we must accept the 
> inevitability of the latter.  This is part of why I accept a two-party 
> dominated system and seek to balance the use of single-seat/multi-seat 
> elections and am an anti-perfectionist on the details of getting the 
> best single/multi-seat election.  Deep down, I am skeptical of whether 
> a multi-party system improves things that much or would do so in my 
> country.

i am thoroughly convinced that a multi-party (and viable independent) 
system improves things over the two-party system. besides the money 
thing, i just cannot believe that exhausting our social choice to 
between Dumb and Dumber is the lot that a democratic society must be 
forced to accept.  what was so frustrating during Town Meeting Day in 
2010 (when the IRV repeal vote was up), it was another choice between 
Dumb and Dumber.  and, as usual, Dumber prevailed in that choice.  
nobody seems to get it (present company excluded).  added to the result 
of the 2000 prez election and, even more so, the 2004 result, the 
aggregate evidence is that American voters are stupid.  incredibly 
stupid.  and a large portion of Burlington Democrats were stupid to join 
with the GOPpers, the latter who were acting simply in their 
self-interest to repeal IRV.  and the Progs were dumb to continue to 
blather IRV happy talk as if it worked just fine in 2009.

> dlw:Burlington's two major parties would not be the same as the two 
> nat'l major parties.
David, we don't have two major parties.  we have three.  the Dems may be 
the least of the three, but they're centrist and preferable to the GOP 
than are the Progs and preferable to the Progs than are the GOP.  but 
they are literally "center squeezed".  that is precisely the term.

>  Republicans would vote Democrat in Burlington mayoral elections.
if forced to.  but they would like to give their own guy their primary 
support.  IRV promised them that they could vote for their guy and, by 
doing so, not elect the candidate they hated the most.  and in 2009, IRV 
precisely failed that promise.

it not a tug-of-war with a single rope and the centrists have to decide 
whether they get on the side of the GOP or the side of the Progs.  the 
idea of having a viable multi-party election and a decent method to 
measure voter preference is a joined, three-way rope going off in 
directions 120 degrees apart.  Progs get to be Progs, Dems get to be 
Dems, and GOP get to be dicks (errr, Repubs).  we know, because the 
ballots are public record, that the outcome that would have caused the 
least amount of collective disappointment is not the winner that the IRV 
algorithms picked, given the voter preference information available and 
weighting that equally for each voter.

> KM:So why would IRV improve things enough over Plurality? That 
> verdict, too, has to come from somewhere.
>
> dlw: more votes get counted in the final round than with FPTP.  Thus, 
> the de facto center is closer to the true center
i dunno what you mean by "de facto" or "true" center, but neither was 
elected in the Burlington 2009 example.  (but, again, favoring the 
center more than the wings is not why Condorcet is better than IRV.  it 
is because of the negative consequences of electing a candidate when a 
majority of voters prefer an different specific candidate and mark their 
ballots so.)

> and third party candidates can speak out their dissents and force the 
> major party candidates to take them seriously.
well, here the third party won, against the expressed wishes of a 
majority of voters.  i do not agree with the GOPpers that IRV was a 
method taylor made to elect the Progs, it's there to make a three-party 
system work which means that third parties have a good change and win 
(or lose) on their merits, not because they are perceived (or not) as 
electable.

>  Why not look at the total number of cities that have adopted IRV and 
> see what a small fraction have had buyer's remorse?
doesn't look good, David.  Cary NC, Aspen CO, Pierce Co WA, Ann Arbor 
MI, Burlington VT.  it's a damn shame that reform advocates didn't think 
this out a little in advance and sell the ranked-choice ballot tabulated 
by Condorcet instead of Hare.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."