[EM] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 12/16/11 4:29 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
> KD:Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation,
> it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the
> public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and
> greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems.
>
> dlw: That is what is in dispute.
>

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.  and, although i usually 
don't agree with her, 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".

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).


> KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been 
> tried and
> rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency
> eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are.  Right now
> there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco.  IRV was tried
> decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades.
>
> dlw: Unfair?  Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by 
> considering only one vote per voter at a time?
>
> dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the 
> results can be tabulated at the precinct level.
>
> dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and 
> elsewhere a lot more than "IRV"....
>
> KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not
> solve any of plurality's problems,

this is where Kathy overstates the case.  IRV *definitely* speaks to 
(but not in a consistent way) the common problem (in 3+ way races) of 
tactical voting where the voting tactic is called "compromising".  it 
did not solve that problem in Burlington 2009 completely.  it only 
solved it for the liberal majority of voters while effectively 
transferring that to the GOP Prog-haters.  but she is wrong that it does 
nothing, in comparison to FPTP, to reduce the problem.  so then the 
justification she needs to make is why support the method that increases 
the occurrence of this problem from IRV (where the burden of tactical 
voting is placed in the shoulders of a minority) to FPTP (where the 
burden of tactical voting is placed on a split majority).

> so it's a great way to convince
> people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how
> deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods
> can be.

that also polemically overstates the case.

>  (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds
> majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and
> on and on...)

need more than 2 uses to recoup non-recurring costs.  (you recoup them 
by being a "decisive" method and not going to runoff.)

and the argument that IRV yields a "false majority" winner is 
ineffective coming from the "Keep Voting Simple" crowd because they 
returned us to a clearly more false majority winner.  that was confirmed 
one year later when we tried to require a 50%+ majority to elect.  this 
side clearly wants a method that they can game to get their 
minority-supported candidate elected and we are now, dealing with that 
fact (the first mayoral election since IRV was repealed).  we won't know 
for about a month, but the Progs might not nominate a candidate and 
*maybe* even will simply endorse the Democrat nominee.  if that happens, 
it will be a straight two-candidate race (well, there *might* be a 
significant independent, so we might still have a problem) and no one 
will be able to dispute who is the majority candidate (unless it's very 
close).

IRV also failed in 2009, but it's failure was in electing the 2nd-most 
preferred candidate, but without IRV, we could very well have gotten the 
3rd-most preferred candidate.  neither method sends the correct pair 
combination of candidates to the runoff.  (one caveat, if IRV-BTR is 
used, it *would* send the correct candidate to the final runoff, who the 
other candidate going to the runoff is is sorta irrelevant.)

so Kathy misses it, in preferring Dumber over Dumb.  and it was an thick 
irony in 2010 (the IRV repeal vote) to have to choose between Dumb and 
Dumber, when the whole point of having election reform like 
ranked-choice voting, is so we don't get stuck with a two-party system 
when a Smart and independent candidate is not a viable choice, because 
voters are afraid of throwing away their vote.

but David, you and Rob miss it when you settle for Dumb.

i'm gonna un-plonk Kathy for a while so i can read what she has to say.

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."