[EM] A conversation with an English woman about IRV [WARNING: mildly obnoxious and long rant]

[matt welland]

On Tue, 2011-05-03 at 21:38 -0400, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> On May 3, 2011, at 9:17 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote:
> 
> > 	An English woman came into my work today.  This is very unusual.  I  
> > brought up the coming referendum she will miss.  She had no  
> > opinion.  I explained that IRV which the English call AV for some  
> > crazy reason even though AV is approval voting is a false reform.   
> > She gave me a blank stare.
> >
> > 	Then I brought up that with the new ballots would support  
> > Condorcet, which is better than what she call alternative vote.  She  
> > had no idea what Condorcet is.  I brought up that the old ballots  
> > support the real A V, approval voting which easily beats Plurality  
> > and IRV.  She had know idea what Approval voting is.  I said that  
> > one votes for as many candidates as one wishes, thus making the  
> > system clone-immune.
> >
> > 	She left.  If she is at all representative of the English as an  
> > whole, the English need much instruction about voting methods and  
> > are not qualified to vote on this referendum.  That explains why the  
> > referendum goes down to defeat for the wrong reasons:
> >
> > 	IRV will almost certainly loose because of FUD (fear, Uncertainty,  
> > and Doubt).  It should go down to defeat because it is still  
> > susceptible to Duverger’s Law, is not precinct-summable, costly,  
> > and nonmonotonic.
> >

> it's not just the English.
> 
> unfortunately, both the Keep_Plurality_Rule crowd (with their mantra  
> "Keep Voting Simple") and the IRV crowd (or whatever acronym used,  
> like AV or RCV or PR or STV) muddy the discussion.  i, personally,  
> feel that the Approval or Range crowds do too (actually, i think  
> Approval Voting is a good way to retain judges and such if the local  
> politics is that judges must answer to the public as do politicians).
> 
> after IRV has been beaten up so badly because of its perceived  
> complexity, people ask me how can i explain Condorcet in a sentence  
> and i answer:
> 
>    "If Candidate A is preferred by more voters than Candidate B, then  
> Candidate B is not elected."
> 
> it's simple and sensible and, of course, fails if there is a cycle.
> 
> *everybody* needs to be educated.  the unfortunate thing is that when  
> FairVote did the educating, they plugged only IRV as if it was the  
> only way to use a ranked-choice ballot to solve the spoiler problem.   
> they equated ranked ballot and the STV method of tabulation and that  
> falsehood needs to be de-educated out of people.  it was really sad  
> that they did that.

When the pragmatists collide with the perfectionists you get a lot of
noise, no directed action and absolutely no results. This is a primary
reason why we (the humans) are pretty much screwed, and it is indirectly
why broken ideas such as IRV perpetuate. 

The pragmatists know that the English woman written about above pretty
much represents the norm around the world. Judge them if you will but
people have lives to get on with and understanding complicated voting
methods for reasons that are hard to explain just doesn't compete with
thinking about lovers, current or ex or the latest Friends episode.
Ordinary people will struggle with approval, roll their eyes at range
and go catatonic over Condorcet.

The perfectionists on the other hand cannot accept any method with even
the slightest unintended consequences and so will not endorse imperfect
methods even if they agree that said method is an improvement over the
status quo. 

The two extremes of Approval vs. Condorcet are the best example. I have
followed this list for years and read many explanations on Condorcet and
just like the description given to the English woman above none of them
are easy to assimilate. How the heck do you translate my rankings into
"if more prefer A over C ..." You are asking people to have faith in
your fancy math and programming. At the end of the day I remain
unconvinced that it is a sufficiently better method than Approval by any
metric grounded in the messy reality of imperfect humans voting for
other imperfect humans to be their leaders.

From the perspective of US single winner elections I say the following:

1. Approval voting;
     - trivial to transition to (no over-voting), want to vote for the
       underdog while hedging your bet for the frontrunner, no problem
     - everyone gets the mechanics and the nuances of approval after a
       minute of explanation
     - very low effort to vote, avoids all the comparisons in ranking
     - minimal real world risk of unintended consequences
     - naturally resistant to strategic voting. It's binary, what can
       you do?
2. Range voting
     - degree of improvement over approval is debatable, at least for 
       today, maybe a few years from now the need will be different
     - significant step in complexity for the equipment, 1 bit toggle
       to n bit integer. I can't implement that on the current ballots
       used in Arizona for example.
3. IRV
     - this one feels good to half assed thinkers and that is its 
       greatest danger. 'nuff said.
4. Condorcet
     - theoretically near perfect but I don't grok it and neither will
       99% of the populace. 
     - a bitch to implement without a computer for the UI and we all
       know how great it is having computers in this process
     - any ranking system is way to much of a pain for the average
       Joe who just wants to get out of the damn polling booth and 
       home to dinner. Go try any of the example systems available 
       on the web, I'm guessing it takes 10x the time for normal
       non-geniuses to articulate that they want in a ranked system vs.
       approval. Remember, you have an interest in the mechanics of
       voting and have practiced doing ranking. Everybody else
       will experience it as a tedious pain.
     - my gut tells me that Condorcet is more vulnerable to strategic
       twists than Approval. But that could be because I don't get it.

Humankind appears to me to be on a path to self destruction largely
caused (IMHO) by the fact that we are forced to choose between the
lesser of two corporate sponsored politicians (usually moronic very evil
vs moronic mildly evil) that will not and cannot make decisions with the
long term interests of all. This is a natural outcome of plurality
voting. 

I think it is within reach for us to change this bad situation but we
need the experts (you) to accept that the world isn't ready for the
perfect solution and drive hard for the most achievable and pragmatic
solution. Please consider getting behind Approval voting and to stop
confusing the politicians and public with complicated ideas. Repeat this
everywhere: Approval good, plurality bad, IRV worse.

I apologize for this rant but this list is frequented by a bunch of very
smart people and if you all could put the lofty goals and perfectionism
on the back burner for a short while and drive hard for imperfect but
sufficient Approval voting we would have a shot a breaking the current
slide into chaos. By virtue of being informed you are influential, but
when your influence is spread out in N different directions it adds up
to pretty much no influence at all. To me this is sad. The potential to
create good change lost, mostly due to attachment to perfection.

Obviously by the way you should keep in mind that at some time in the
not-so-distant future you will be able to *realistically* drive for a
transition to the perfect system from the "horribly broken approval
voting system in use today" :)

Cheers,

Matt
-=-

> r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com
> 
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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