[EM] Kristofer Musterhjelm

[David L Wetzell]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at lavabit.com>
To: David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 14:45:29 +0100
Subject: Re: [EM] Response to Kristofer Musterhjelm
Since many of your replies follow the same pattern, I'm going to address
them where I first see each. Thus I may veer a bit from replying only to
the issue quoted.

KM:I've also been a bit slow in writing this. I'll blame work and play :-)

dlw:I'ts been mostly work for me...
-

David L Wetzell wrote:

No, I'm saying that we don't need to end 2 party rule in the USA to make
> our political system work considerably better.   IRV makes it so that the 2
> major parties will have to center themselves around the true center.
> I advocate the use of 3-5 seat PR in "more local" elections so as to
> handicap the rivalry between the two major parties, increase the number of
> competitive elections and to give third parties a more constructive role to
> play in the US political system: ensuring the protection of
> economic/ethnic/ideological minority rights.
>

KM wrote:  I'll use Australia again. Its IRV chamber should give some idea
of what you would expect to see in terms of IRV elections, because each
member of parliament is elected on a single-winner basis from a single
district.

If IRV produced competitive local elections, you would expect to see some
of those local elections have an effect on the national IRV seats. Then the
major parties would move to reclaim the seats, and so readjust themselves
closer to the center. Say that Congressional seats were elected by IRV and
because of the local elections advantage you mention, the Progressives grew
strong in Vermont. Then you might see at least one Progressive member
elected to the House from Vermont. This would then signal to the major
parties (probably the Democrats) to consider whether to move to the left to
recapture those seats.

However, in Australia, there are very few third-party seats in the IRV
chamber at all. According to Wikipedia, minor parties only won seats in
1946, 1996, and 1990-2010. The mean number of third party seats for these
years were 2.9, or 2.1% of the house (because of changing number of seats).

Either the major parties were very good at anticipating the direction they
were to move to the center (and very good also at avoiding any slipups), or
the feedback is weak indeed.
[endquote]

dlw: I agree that with IRV, all the two biggest parties in an area got to
do is keep the third party challengers from breaking into the top two.
 This retains two-party dominance.  So you're saying the available evidence
doesn't favor IRV being improved by use along with PR.

This however misses my more important point of prescribing the use of local
forms of PR for "more local" elections and IRV for "less local"
elections.... And so I think the Aussie mixed approach would work better if
the use of PR and IRV were switched between Senate and the IRV chamber. The
goal here is to maximize the number of competitive seats so as to keep
legislators/parties responsive while retaining a big two to ensure quality
control and to trust that major changes will come about thru political
cultural changes apart from elections or the circulation of our political
elites.

KM:State election results also show the state heads - the states'
equivalents of prime ministers - to be either NatLib or Labour most of the
time. See the Wikipedia article about Politics of Australia for a graph of
that. I know it's not analogous to Governor elections because the
legislature picks the state head, but in PR countries, small parties may
get the prime minister anyway.
[endquote]
dlw: So long as there's turnaround between the two big ones and they're
both adaptive to emerging issues, this is not a deal-killer for me.

KM:Finally, IRV may not actually improve ethnic divisions. See
http://rangevoting.org/**FraenkelG.html<http://rangevoting.org/FraenkelG.html>
 .
[endquote]

dlw:I didn't say it would.  I would never call for IRV alone as a way to
secure minority rights or to reconcile a polarized society.  My belief is
that what matters most is for us to work out the right balance between
single-winner and multi-winner/PR elections and that the sorts of options
given voters in single-winner elections are of second order importance.  So
I would go a step further and forecast that if IRV had been replaced with
some other single-winner election, like Approval Voting, it wouldn't have
improved things.


>>
dlw wrote:I take as given that the economies of scale in running for
> single-winner offices will make it so that there are two major parties.
>

KM:I'll consider it likely that economies of scale will favor major
parties. It does not, as such, need to favor them so severely that there
are only two viable options for the candidacy, however.
[endquote]

dlw: This is probably why I want a multi-stage presidential election that
makes folks pick their 3 favs out of 7.

KM:From a logical point of view, Plurality elections favor major parties
because minor parties would split the vote. Therefore, it's important to
know who the candidates most likely to win are, so that you don't actively
hurt your case by voting for a minor party of your preference and splitting
the vote. What is the problem here? It is that voting in the way you prefer
would hurt you.

In IRV, voting in the way you prefer doesn't hurt you... until the third
parties get large enough that they might affect the elimination order. When
they do, the election can swing the wrong way, so voting the way you want
can hurt you if your choice would have made a difference - i.e. if minor
party candidates have any chance of winning.
[endquote]

dlw: But if the parties and third parties know that when a third party gets
stronger it can have a spoiler effect, it should lead to strategic changes
to prevent this from happening.  Strategic voting will still happen and
will tend to support there being two major parties, but if IRV had been
retained in Burlington, those two parties would have been the Progs and the
Dems.  Pubs would have started voting strategically for Dems and the center
would shift, relative to where it was due to FPTP.  The duopoly would be
contested.

KM: So when we go at this from the logical point of view, the extent to
which single-winner methods favor major parties seems to differ. I would
point out that top-two runoff works, and that (as I showed in another post
of mine) it does give a number of effective candidates significantly
greater than two -- but you don't consider top-two runoff a single-winner
method. Since I do, I don't think single-winner methods (or should we say,
methods that are used to elect individual candidates for single positions)
have such a steep barrier that only major parties can participate.
[endquote]

dlw: It's a hybrid.  There are more than two effective candidates in the
non single-winner stage....
And, even if third parties win some seats due to a top-two runoff, it
doesn't mean there aren't going to be two major coalitions of parties that
will function not unlike two major parties in many ways.

KM: If you disqualify the runoff method, then pretty much all you're left
with is Plurality and IRV. In both Plurality and IRV nations, you see major
parties winning almost all the time, even when counterbalanced with PR
(e.g. Australia). So then you could of course say that from our {Plurality,
IRV} based sample, all single-winner methods elect overwhelmingly from
major parties, and you could say that it's because of economics of scale.

To me, it seems these economics of scale are of the sort that are needed to
compensate for the methods' failure modes. You need to unite to win in
Plurality, and that kind of unification, almost by definition, favors the
major parties greatly. You also need to unite to win in IRV because IRV has
problems once the third parties get large enough.

dlw: Basically, We're saying the same thing.

KM:If I'm right, then the extent of major-party dominance isn't given by
the single-winner approach, but by the tool used. What we'd really need
would be examples of non-{IRV, Plurality} methods being used. How did the
Bucklin method fare in Minnesota?

(And I know about Borda and Nauru Borda. The latter is pretty much
Plurality, and the former has severe cloning problems that rewards those
who can field the most candidates.)

dlw: The only counter example you give me from single-winners leading to
two major party rule is an "impure" single-winner method.  This does not
suggest that the use of other pure single-winner methods would end
two-party rule.


>>
dlw wrote: My ideal type isn't in use anywhere.   <http://anewkindofparty.**
> blogspot.com/2011/03/**strategic-election-reform-**explained.html<http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/03/strategic-election-reform-explained.html>
> >
>
>
KM:That sounds like a runoff method. You have an Approval first stage and
an IRV second stage. (This initially threw me off because "AV" also is an
abbreviation for "Alternative Vote", another term for IRV.)

Perhaps the runoff aspect of the combined method can outweigh the two-party
dominance of IRV. On its own, IRV seems to give two parties, but also to
give them such power that they aren't really contested by minor parties.
IRV has at least kept the same major parties major in both countries where
it's used, despite the PR that pulls in the other direction. So again, I
think IRV's hierarchy force is stronger than PR's pluralizing force. It
might be weaker than Plurality's, but if you get a two-party situation in
both cases, then what's the difference? As for trying to fix IRV by
applying a runoff round, it seems like a hack. If you're going to depart
from the one-stage-IRV approach, let's get it right. Let's use a good
method, not a fix that may or may not work on a method that, in my opinion,
doesn't get far enough away from the uncontested duopoly tendencies of
Plurality.
[endquote]

dlw: It seems the key difference between us is how to make the two party
dominance more contested.

I'm arguing that if we used PR in "More local" elections that IRV would
significantly improve upon FPTP in most "less local" elections and could
still be tabulated at the precinct level and counted more quickly by virtue
of the use of an Approval Vote first stage.  I think that so long as some
of the PR elections enable third party candidates to get elected then they
can play the two major parties off of each other to make the overall system
more fair and enable the rise of a minor party if the two major parties
fail to adapt.  You think we need another single-winner alternative to get
the job done, because IRV+PR in its limited usage hasn't been adequate at
faciliting the circulation of the elites.

KM: Even if you disregard that, IRV still tends to amplify small changes
into great ones. If you have a narrow victory in any round of IRV's
elimination, you might have to do a recount in that one  (assuming it
has an impact on the subsequent eliminations), not just in the final round.

I also think that if you have to have an IRV3 second round, the first
round should be proportional. Otherwise, the cloning problems I have
mentioned earlier may happen and thus make IRV3 itself redundant.
[endquote]
dlw: But with IRV3/AV3 then if there was a narrow victory between the third
and fourth place candidates in the first stage you could do the tabulations
for two different sets of three finalists and only have to do a recount if
their final outcome in the second stage differed between the two.
As for PR in the first round, cloning problems can be resolved by
increasing intra-party discipline and developing ways to fight skullduggery
with exposure of campaign finances.  What AV3 has in favor as a first stage
is simplicity.  It's damn easy to tabulate the number of rankings each
candidate receives, just as the number of votes get tabulated with a FPTP
election.

KM:Consider this situation, for instance. You have Republicans and
Democrats, and either R or D will win the approval vote. Then both parties
field, say, ten candidates, and all who like the Republicans approve of
only the Republicans - and all who like the Democrats approve of only the
Democrats. Say without loss of generality that the Democrats win. Then all
ten Democratic candidates will have more Approval votes than any
Republican, and so the next stage will be filled with Democrats. Therefore,
a Democrat will win, no matter how the IRV3 stage behaves. The same thing
holds for the Republicans: if there are ten R candidates and all R-votes
strategically approve of all of them, the IRV3 stage will be populated
entirely by Republicans and so have little meaning (except to apply the IRV
logic to determine *which* Republican wins).
[endquote]

dlw: A smart party would do what it could to reduce the number of
candidates if not officially, effectively.  If the smaller R party does it,
then the D party will need to do the same....when they reduce the number of
serious candidates then there'd be scope for moderate Rs to vote for
moderate Ds and vice versa.
As for the Dems crowding teh 3rd stage, if they're the more popular party,
it doesn't really matter that they are the only finalists.
What does matter is that the Democrat who wins will be more appealing to Rs
on average than would be the case if it was FPTP.

 dlw: All election rules can be viewed as like games.  My point is that one
> can account for the greater pluralism with a top-two runoff by the fact
> it's first stage is not single-winner.  So it's consistent with my theory
> that it's single-winner elections that lead to relatively few parties.  And
> since there inevitably have to be important single-winner elections, it's
> also inevitable that there will tend to be two dominant parties (or two
> dominant party coalitions, which will act not unlike the two dominant
> parties)...


You're equivocating here. First you say that "single-winner elections
lead to relatively few parties" (where single-winner means those that
have only one stage). Then you say that "there inevitably have to be
important single-winner elections", where single-winner means elections
to single seats. There inevitably has to be no such thing by your first
definition of single-winner. France uses single-winner in the second
sense by having legislative elections, as well as presidential ones, use
top-two runoff.
[endquote]
dlw: I believe the top two runoff in France has retained the existence of
two major parties, albeit with some significant minor parties and lots of
me-threes and so I don't see it's use as upsetting my point.  They use
hybrids between single and multi-elections.  This is why there's scope for
more parties and some who play a significant role.

KM: To avoid further confusion, let's call the one-round methods
"single-winner" (as by your terminology) and the methods used to pick a
winner for an individual position "single-office". You haven't shown
that there must inevitably be single-winner elections, only that there
must be single-office elections.

dlw: by your terminology that is true.  I consider the second stage of ttr
as a single winner election.  I also consider the indirect selection of the
PM after their use of a nationwide PR election in Israel as single-winner
election.

   KM:In any case, if the runoff method leads to plurality, why not use
>>   it? It clearly doesn't produce paralyzing Plurality - France tried
>>   PR and then returned to top-two as they considered PR to fragment
>>   too much, which implies that top-two didn't. Furthermore, runoffs
>>   have seen wider use than IRV, including in the US, and so practical
>>   cases can be used to argue for it; and it seems to overturn
>>   Plurality more often than IRV does.
>>
>
dlw: I'd rather use 3-5 seat forms of PR in "more local" elections to
> ensure plurality.  I'm okay with using IRV for "less local" elections,
> because I value both plurality and hierarchy at the same time.
>

I think IRV gives too much hierarchy - so much that its dynamics isn't
noticably different from Plurality. I try to back that up with references
to Ireland and Australia, as well as pointing out where the problems start
to show up with IRV (when third candidates start to matter and are no
longer just for show).

If you want a Plurality level of hierarchy, just use Plurality plus PR.
(I wonder if any country actually does that.)
[endquote]

dlw: I believe Germany's MMP system uses Plurality plus PR.
IRV ties the two major parties more so to the center.  It allows thrid
party candidates to raise important issues in "less local" elections and
get treated with respect by the major party candidates.  It's a clear
improvement over FPTP, it just doesn't end effective two party domination.


>
>  dlw: I'm not an expert on the cost of the machines, but extra rounds of
> elections are quite costly... and IRV can be precinct-summable if IRV3/AV3
> is used.  If one treats the ranked votes as approval votes then one can get
> three finalists almost immediately.  Then, one can summarize the votes by
> sorting them at the precinct level into the ten ways one can rank the three
> finalists: 6 rankings of 2 of them, 3 rankings of one of them, and 1
> ranking of none of them.
> So the cost arg for IRV is a valid one.  And I'm cool with advocating for
> IRV plus (more local) PR, as opposed to IRV alone...
>

KM:Is IRV3/AV3 single-winner or just single-office?

dlw: I'd say it's single-winner by your criterion.  The first stage
tabulates the votes differently than the second stage.

KM: If it has two rounds,
then you are dealing with a runoff. If it has only one round, and you
infer the Approval data from the ranking, then you're going to have to
have some sort of communication (or central counting) to know which
three candidates you're going to pass to the IRV stage, and thus it
isn't strictly summable.

dlw: It's not strictly summable, because there's the back and forth to
determine the three finalists so that the rankings information can be
sorted into the ten relevant categories.  But the 10 categories can be
summarized at the precinct level.


 dlw: It's also possible that one can bring too much info into the open and
> thereby gain an degree of obscurity.  Lots of inevitable compromises in
> politics are easier to work out when there's less transparency.
>

KM:I can only speak for my own country, but that has never been a problem
here. I haven't heard of such being a problem except for places where
they have other, more serious, problems too (like the participants of
the political system trying to game said system by any means available and
so actively muddy the situation as much as they can).
Perhaps Juho can tell us whether it's a problem in Finland, but I don't
think it is there, either.
[endquote]

dlw: It's easier to do that with smaller country with a relatively
homogenous culture.
It's also hard to move directly from a two-party dominated system to a
system such as yours.
This is part of why I focus on alternatives that retain two-party
domination but prevent single-party domination.
It is the destructive cut-throat competition from the tendency to
single-party domination in the US that has
caused a lot of the problems that people pin on us having a two-party
system.

KM: The transparency means that parties can't promise an unwavering
position at the center of their area of political space. They will have to
compromise in order to get what they want, and so pull the mean position of
political decisions closer to their point. In a world where parties are
expected to be hard and unflinching, this may seem hypocritical, since they
can no longer be the defenders of their positions through and through. In
reality, the people get used to the more pragmatic nature of give-and-take,
and can use the record to judge how well parties are negotiating for their
position when they can't get it all.
[endquote]

dlw: I've no dout expectations change and so does behavior/habits.

KM: I also have a more abstract argument in favor of transparency. If you
have too little transparency, you can't really synthesize more transparency
out of it. However, if you have "too much" transparency, the media or
independent efforts like OpenSecrets can aggregate the wealth of data for
the people's benefit.
So if there are disadvantages to transparency, it's either that the
feedback by the people upsets the process too much -- or it is that said
media and independent efforts not being up to the task, the torrent of data
overwhelming the people.
When small towns feel too small because everybody knows everything about
everybody else and thus nobody has any privacy, it's the former. When one
speaks of information overload, it's the latter.

dlw: Even if I agreed about the desirability of such a system, it's not in
the cards for the US.
BTW, did you watch the documentary film "too much Norway"??  I liked it.
 I'm mainly Swedish-American.

dlw: If the rivalry of the two major parties is handicapped so that there's
> more circulation among the elites and third parties can win some seats and
> threaten the duopoly, there'd also be greater transparency.
>

By indirect means, perhaps. Yet we don't know that, as we have so few
examples. What I've seen of IRV countries seem to indicate that the rivalry
of the two major parties isn't handicapped enough. The major parties stay
major parties, and not even the PR counterweight dislodges them to make
other parties the new major parties.
[endquote]

dlw: So you repeat.  The US is on the verge of a significant major
realignment of its two major parties, IMO.  We'll still have two major
parties, but there'll be two different parties.  All you need is a catalyst
issue that splits both the existing parties.  Methinks that the use of PR
in "more local" elections to change our country's political dynamics and
circumvent $peech by increasing the number of competitive elections could
be the issue that brings about a change in regime.

KM:And if you want to optimize a certain metric, it's best to directly
optimize it, rather than something that is corelated with it. If you want
transparency, I think it's better to make the political system transparent
than to try to find some change (IRV) that leads to a change (handicapping)
that leads to transparency. If any link of that chain fails, the whole
thing fails, so the fewer links, the better.

dlw:The use of 3-5seat forms of PR in "More local" elections isn't a long
chain.  That's what I'm betting on far more so than IRV to improve the
state of the US's democracy.

dlw:  Do voters decide how ad hoc coalitions among multiple parties are
> worked out after a PR election?  Hardly.  If coalitions are fluid then it's
> also hard to get things done and it's possible to blame the other coalition
> members for problems.  One can even bet on becoming a part of the next
> coalition if this coalition falls apart so long as you keep your base
> happy.
>

KM:The voters don't directly determine what the coalitions are like. The
voters don't veer off from one extreme to another, either, so they have
some idea of which coalitions are realistic.

dlw: that'd be the kicker.

KM:In the Christian party example, a voter might consider whether to vote
for the party, or, if he thinks their compromise is too soft, vote for
another more right-leaning party instead. The advantage to voting for a
more right-leaning party is that he knows he'll strengthen the particular
coalition that he does want; but the disadvantage is that he has to accept
that party's position on issues where he agrees more with the more moderate
party. He can think about which is better, then express that opinion in
terms of his vote. If the party sees that its voters are fleeing, they then
know the voters didn't want that compromise after all, and they can
reposition themselves.

dlw: There's similar dynamics in a political system that doesn't use PR so
much.  I'm betting they'd be enhanced with the use of 3-5 seat PR in "more
local" elections.

KM:Or in US terms: with a coalition, a tea-partyist or an Occupier might
directly vote for a further right-wing or left-wing party knowing that this
party will either make it more likely that the more moderate parties will
ally in that direction, or that the further right/left party will serve as
a stronger opposition if the other coalition wins. Tea-partyists or
Occupiers have little chance to alter the power dynamic directly by voting
in the current system, since they would vote Republican or Democratic
respectively anyway - the only way they *can* change things is either
internally (where the tea party has had quite a bit of success) or by
threatening not to vote at all.

dlw: I'm guessing that's what a good deal of the Occupiers are going to do:
only vote strategically, based onstrategically chosen electoral reforms.

I'm trying to get some of them to rally around the use of American forms of
PR.  If they wanted to get revenge on city hall for treating them so badly,
they could focus on really local electoral reform, with PR for city council
elections, and a two stage mayoral election where the second stage would be
by the quasi-PR-elected city council members)

KM:Thus the coalition system is more responsive because the voters can say
what part of what would otherwise be one party that they like, instead of
just having to take it or leave it. It's not perfect, of course: voting
power is not linear and there's a lot of negotiation going on that may turn
the power distribution less representative of how the voters voted - but
it's better.

In a way, the coalition systems behave like the proxy methods that have
been discussed here, though of lesser fidelity. In a proxy method, you vote
for someone who votes the way you want, and you change your vote if he
stops voting the way you want. The alliances then shift because the voters'
support of the proxies (or the policies of the different proxies) shift. A
coalition does the same, but more coarse-grained, and a major-party system
more coarse-grained still.

dlw: agreed.

dlw wrote:If you have two major parties then the replacement of one with
> the other being in power is a meaningful incentive to rule well.  It can be
> improved upon, but having two major parties is not inherently bad.
>

KM:Not necessarily. Another pattern that might emerge is that one party
appeals to one group, the other to the other. Then the first party says
"these guys are all corrupt, as you've seen, so vote for us instead". They
win and resume their corrupt practices with the second party in opposition.
Then the first and second party switches places and the same thing happens
with signs reversed. Each party has a solid base to which go the spoils,
and an undecided middle who vote for "the other party" (whoever was in
opposition the last time around) because they want things to change. No
party wants to permanently claim the middle group by becoming more honest,
because they gain more by perpetuating the system than by cleaning
themselves up.
[endquote]

dlw: But when there are many such bases of single-seat elections, like say
50 states, then it becomes harder for the two parties to keep up the shell
game.  Cuz, the system in fact doesn't require that the two dominant
parties are the same in every state.  As such, there's scope for outsiders
to come in and threaten the duopoly.

KM:AFAIK, that happened in certain South American states, but I am not
completely certain of this. You could also consider the lobbying dynamic in
the US weakly related, with each party's base being made of different types
of wealthy donors.
[endquote]

dlw: undoubtedly, but this has always held true in part, not in full, and
it has not stymied MLKjr-like movements that have succeeded in moving the
center in ways that forced both parties to stop whistling dixie...

KM:This might be fixed by making the field competitive enough that the
model doesn't pay, but I can't find evidence that IRV gives honest parties
a chance to unseat the old major parties and become new major parties. At
least I know that a multiparty system will give competition, if for no
other reason than that it's much harder to buy off ten parties than two.

dlw: I do not believe electoral reform can end the fact that "modern
democracy" is an unstable mix of "popular democracy" and
plutocracy/kleptocracy.  But I believe it can bolster "popular democracy"
if it is accepted that plutocracy/kleptocracy is going to continue.  I
stand by the notion that "PR" for "more local" elections(that is set up so
third parties can play a constructive role, able to win some seats and play
the two major parties off of each other) and IRV3/AV3 for "less local" and
multi-stage for the "least local" election would be a potent mix.  This is
not the Australian model.

>
>>
>>  here's an unfortunate side-effect to the way FairVote has been linking
> the ranked ballot itself to IRV, as if to imply: "there's one ranked ballot
> method, and that is IRV: if you want a ranked ballot, you want IRV". To
> some extent, I think the IRV-supporters among liberal wings of the parties
> also have this idea. They support the ranked ballot (the idea is obvious!
> Have a contingency if your main vote doesn't count), and then, because IRV
> has been marketed so heavily, they say "Ah! I want a ranked ballot, that
> means IRV!". So those who don't like fairness won't support a ranked ballot
> anyway, and of those who do, they're supporting the ranked ballot more than
> they're supporting IRV.


(A Washington Senator tried to get the legislature to vote on using the
Schulze method, so non-IRV methods aren't entirely unknown. However, it was
blocked by the committee leadership. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/**
Condorcet/ <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Condorcet/> for more about that.)

   Perhaps this is akin to the extent to which one would expect
>>   strategic behavior to appear in single-winner elections.
>>
> [endquote]

Yes it is.  It's also decent marketing to simplify the choice so the
reformers don't get divided and conquered by the Stalwarts.

>
>> KM:  Instability can also occur in places that are transitioning to a
>>   democratic form of government. Early post-Soviet Poland and Hungary
>>   are good examples. I think they settled down, though.
>>
>
   dlw: Habits matter more than rules for democracy.
>

Maybe one could say that the rules make some paths easier to reach than
others, but the habits determine where one actually *does* go.

[endquote]
dlw:That sounds wise.

>    dlw wrote:    I think we can trust in the politics of Gandhi/MLKjr (and
>>>
>>  dlw: IMO, We have just begun to see the effects of such movements and
> their potential to move the political center that the parties center
> themselves around.
>

KM:Yes, after a long while, you're getting some change. My point is that
this change takes a long while and it doesn't happen at once; in the
meantime, you have a period of discontent that builds up. You could say
that therefore we can go with the most marketable slight improvement
because if it's not good enough, groups outside the political system will
reform it later -- but that ignores the long period of bad rule before the
group grows strong enough to "not take it anymore" and large enough to
actually have an effect.
[endquote]

dlw: I guess that's why I'm psyched up about pushing long and hard for
American forms of PR more than any particular single-stage rule.  I believe
that it will refocus folks to taking care of their own gardens in ways that
will trickle up to make important changes possible at the top.

KM: Let's have proportional control, not bang-bang control. It's gentler on
the system and reaches the (changing) target more quickly.

dlw: Let's move from where the US is right now, not aim for what we think
is the sun.

 dlw : I agree.  This is why I'm pushing for the electoral reform that is
> most likely to be adopted the soonest.
>

KM:If it isn't good enough, you'll simply have traded off gradualism in the
political process in general for gradualism in adopting the election
method. Since there are many more decisions not involving elections than
there are decisions involving them, the benefits to the smooth transition
of the election method is outweighed by the disadvantages in having to wait
for another extra-political movement to correct it properly the next time
(or for extra-political movements to fix what would otherwise be fixed
through the political process).

dlw: If a multitude of LTPs are fostered then they'd be a ferment of ideas.
 We wouldn't have to wait so damn long.

KM:Further, if the method isn't good enough, the political movements may
end up moving away from it. "We tried that, it didn't work", as I've said
before. FairVote's attempts to link the ranked ballot and IRV (such as by
using the name "Ranked Choice Voting") would make such a reversal more
likely. "We tried the ranked ballot, and IRV didn't work/just gave us weird
results, so forget about it" - something like that.

dlw: That isn't a common outcome and we can't assume the ground has been
poisoned by a few bad apples.

      This would elect a president with broad appeal who will then be
>>>      sheltered from the partisan rivalry for control of the Senate or
>>>      House of Representatives.
>>>
>>
   If that's what you want, I don't think you need a single-winner
>>   method at all. Either have party primaries or use a method like STV
>>   in a grand jungle primary, in either case narrowing the field to 6
>>   or 7 candidates. Then use a PR method (probably the same as in the
>>   first stage, if that's what you'll use) to narrow it down further to
>>   three. Finally, have the electoral college decide. Since the college
>>   itself is small, it doesn't need a voting method - it can just reach
>>   a decision in the same way that the House or Senate does.
>>
>
 I agree that there are plenty of alternatives for how to do the first two
> stages.  I'm sure some sort of STV will be involved in the state
> primaries...
>

KM:Well, that would get around most of our disagreement. If you use a
proportional method like STV, then IRV never enters the picture, while you
also get the election form you want.
[endquote]
dlw: I meant STV in the first round to pick the 7 finalists.  IRV could
still be used in the final round...


>
I think it'd be hard for a party to get 3 virtual clones among the 7
> finalists if a form of PR is used in the first stage.  The strategy would
> be to get two of your candidates who get along okay among the three
> finalists so as to max the chances of one of them becoming president.
>

So use PR for the first stage, yes. (Or cut the second stage out
altogether.)

It's 3 stages.  STV in the first, everyone picks their 3 favs of 7
candidates in the 2nd(along with picking three electors for their
congressional district), and then voting by proxies until there is a
majority of electors in favor of one candidate in the 3rd.

dlw: You're forgetting that the US will likely still have a two-party
> dominated system with a relatively even split between the big two due to
> the exigencies of having so many single-winner elections and if PR is used,
> there'd be no need to have quotas.   It'd be quite hard for a party to get
> more than 4 candidates among the seven.
>

KM:What do you mean by "no need to have quotas"? All forms of PR has some
type of quota, whether fuzzy (in Sainte-Lague or Webster) or strict (in the
Hare or Droop quota).

dlw:I meant no official limits on the number of candidates per party.
This is because there'd be only 7 "winners" in the 1st stage, which means
the typical outcome in a 2 party dominated system might be 3 winners per
major party and a minor party candidate.


 dlw: It's possible, but it's easier to get it sooner if you play political
> jujitsu.  But I'm fine with local strategies.  If another STV movement
> gained momentum in NY, I'd support it.
>

KM: It's easier to get something done if you play political jujitsu, but
this something is limited by what's well known. Currently, that's
FairVote's IRV as well as variants on the same format (contingent vote,
three-choices-of-many IRV, etc). If I'm right and IRV won't lead to
multipartyism nor weaken the big two enough, then selling IRV is a huge
wasted chance. Instead, one should try to show better systems to the
friendly politicians. Being politicians, they don't have time to go into
detail and find out which of the many ranked methods are good, but that's
where the declaration comes into play.

dlw: No, that's where the strong push for American forms of PR comes into
play.  It's simpler than pushing 4 other alternative
single-winner/single-stage elections.  And now is a great time to push for
election rules that'll handicap the rivalry between the two major parties
and enable third party candidates to get elected.  This can be done without
ending two-party domination, which is why that's the path of least
resistance.


>>>
 dlw:  sure.  But that compensation is what makes the diffs among the rules
> not so great, and even if the center at the end of the election is not
> covered that is less bad when one considers that the center is inherently
> dynamic...
>

KM:If the people change their opinions quickly, then they would tend to
land in the middle of one of the parties' areas and the other parties would
then ideally adjust their positions to move to the new center (because
that's where the voters are); but by the next time, the center would have
changed so much that it would land in the middle of some other party's
coverage, and so you wouldn't expect to see the artifacts. That is true.

On the other hand, if the people change their opinions less quickly, or the
way they move can be predicted by the parties, then the clustering happens
before the election. The center according to the voters' preferences could
be in the middle of a strange region, and as the Yee diagrams show
("Shattered" and "Disjoint"), these regions can be quite large.
[endquote]

dlw: I don't dispute that, I was proffering why we shouldn't focus on
getting the right single-winner/single-stage election rule.  Methinks LTPs
will expedite the adaptation of voters but not make them change their
opinions really quickly, since they'd be able to take advantage of their
small size to proceed more often by consensus, and make them harder for the
major parties to control.

KM: Furthermore, if people change their opinions quickly, their standard
deviation might be greater - and a greater sigma amplifies the oddities of
IRV. To see this, consider the opposite situation, where the standard
deviation is so small everybody agrees on the complete ordering. Then every
nondeterministic method that passes the unanimity criterion would elect the
same winner.
[endquote]

I don't anticipate wild fluctuations in people's political preferences.

.
>
> dlw wrote: I doubt Aussies would want to switch to FPP plus PR or FPP
> alone.  I believe the Aussie Prime Minister is derivative of its lower
> house, which uses IRV.  I would not recommend this.  The lower house should
> use a 3-5 seat form of PR and the upper house should have IRV.
> Single-winner elections are more meaningful in bigger elections where the
> balance between the biggest parties tend to be stronger.  The strength of
> the US presidency is significant.  It makes our prez(single-winner)
> elections important elections, which is another reason why it's damn hard
> to end effective two party rule and very important to prevent effective
> single-party rule.
>

KM:I doubt they wuld want to do that, too. Australia's minor parties would
prefer instead to have a change to PR in both houses (e.g.
http://www.greens.org.nz/**press-releases/trans-tasman-**
action-ge-labelling-**proportional-representation<http://www.greens.org.nz/press-releases/trans-tasman-action-ge-labelling-proportional-representation>
).
[endquote]
dlw: The politics of electoral reform does not support that happening any
time soon.  They'd be smarter to push for switching the use of PR in
between the houses...

KM: I also agree that presidential elections are important. I might even
say they are so important that they should be left to people who can elect
and recall them at any time and keep them under scrutiny (i.e.
parliamentarism), but I know that has absolutely no chance of succeeding.

Since that's not an option, I think it's very important to get the
presidential election right. If the playing field under the new system is
still tilted too far to give other presidents a chance, then the lack of
alternatives for the presidential position can propagate throughout the
system and harden the other branches. Also, the more imbalanced the field,
the more important it is to be seen as one of the two "who have a chance",
and that takes marketing and the heavy weight of the party structure.

Here again we come to the disagreement. I think IRV's field is too tilted
to give the required amount of responsiveness to people's votes and that it
thus won't lead to enough competition.
[endquote]

dlw: I think we agree a lot on this.  I know I wrote about this before
above, but 1. STV, 2. 3 of 7, And for the third stage, we could let the
Electoral College keep on voting (not unlike the bishops selecting the next
pope) until one of the three finalists gets a majority.  That should do the
trick.

KM:Finally, I also agree that in a parliamentary system with multiple
chambers with different methods, the PM should be elected from the
proportional chamber.

dlw: If the multi-stage election of the PM/President were set up right then
there'd be no need to have the PM elected from a legislative chamber.  But
if you did it that way, I would most agree.


 dlw:That's a way to put it.   I think so long as we don't have too many
> serious candidates in an election and a good number of considerably
> boundedly rational voters then the purported diffs in values would not make
> it worth it to push for a seemingly more ambitious election rule.
>

KM:You need at least some serious candidates besides the main two under at
least some conditions, because otherwise the main two can just follow the
strong pull of money instead of the weak pull of the voters. Beyond that, I
can only rephrase that I don't think IRV can handle the domain between
enough candidates to give the main two a challenge and too many candidates
well. (For that matter, I don't think it can handle the case of many
candidates, true multiparty style, either, but you don't consider that a
problem.)

dlw: I said there'd tend to be up to 4 strong candidates, due to the cost
and benefits of running for a single-winner office.  I want more
uncertainty about who the top 2-3 will be at the onset of an election, not
wholly unlike as is happening right now for the Republican party nomination
of a presidential candidate.  My point is that the purported diffs among
single stage, single-winner elections get reduced considerably when this is
the case.  I do not foresee it changing in the near future in the US and so
I'd rather stick with IRV as the front-runner alternative to FPTP.

   KM:I look at Australia and at Burlington, and to me, the former
>>   doesn't speak very well of the benefits of getting IRV vs Plurality
>>   (you might compare parliamentary IRV-Australia to parliamentary
>>   FPTP-Britain here); and the latter doesn't speak very well of the
>>   chances of getting it *and* retaining it. In Burlington, IRV was
>>   left alone when it elected the CW, as it did in the first election,
>>   but then it failed to elect the candidate that was the CW and would
>>   have won under almost every other method considered, and the repeal
>>   followed.
>>
>
dlw:  You mean after a strong campaign was run against it???  If they'd let
> well enough alone, the problem would have fixed itself and they'd still
> have IRV, as opposed to FPP.  How many well-heeled folks wage campaigns
> against FPP after it "spoils" an elections?
>

KM:Note that Burlington IRV survived when it elected the Condorcet winner.
I have a little idea of my own regarding this: when the Condorcet winner is
elected, for any single group you may rally against the vote because their
candidate didn't win, there's another group that preferred the Condorcet
winner to that candidate, and the latter group always has a majority.

It is then considerably easier to organize a push against a method if it
fails to elect the Condorcet winner than if it does elect the CW. Marketing
and money probably had its part, but Condorcet failure could well have made
it easier.
[endquote]

dlw: It's a matter of degree of emph.  I myself think progressives should
have rallied hard to keep IRV, since the system undoubtedly would have
corrected itself....as stated before my interp was that the election of the
Prog was the birth pains of the formation of there being two different
dominant major parties in Burlington.

KM: IRV's artifacts didn't stop there, and so gave the campaigners more
ammunition. I'd say IRV's failure to elect the Democrat was a good example
of its center squeeze, as well - its tendency to pick the wing with the
greatest support rather than the center with even greater support because
the center's votes are obscured by first preferences for the wings. The
Republican candidate was, in a sense, a spoiler because his presence hid
the Democrat that would otherwise have won.
[endquote]

dlw: I'm sorry this is where things get ugly among electoral reform
advocates.  My first thought was to respond that there was strong monetary
support for folks to bring up such artifacts, with less than altruistic
motivations.

KM: I agree that the campaigners wouldn't have waged their campaign against
FPTP. I do think they would have done so if the system had been changed
from status quo to FPTP.

(And as a correction: Burlington doesn't have FPTP, it has top-two runoff
with an odd 40% threshold instead of the more sensible 50%.)
[endquote]

dlw: Well that's better than FPTP.

KM:As for the weird results, those can happen when the election is hard to
call (close to the border of the cell in the Yee diagram given by candidate
positions at the time of election) or voter opinions move slowly (for their
sigma) so that the center-squeeze and nonmonotonicity phenomena show up.
While not ubiquitous, the latter puts strain on IRV precisely when it has
to meet the challenge - when it exits the Plurality domain and minor
candidates start to matter.

dlw: But a lot of them are not consequential if they're essentially
"sour-grapes" phenomena, like with non-monotonicity.  If a large number of
Republicans had a serious change of heart from supporting their candidate
to supporting the Prog candidate at the other end of the spectrum then they
might have gotten the Democrat candidate elected.  Yes, that could happen
theoretically, but it is not by any means a common occurrence.

dlw:The big thing with FairVote is that they get people out of the FPTP
> stupor, which is a major step in the US!!!
>

KM:FairVote gives by showing people that an alternative to FPTP is
possible. They then take away by telling people that IRV is both a good
alternative and the only alternative. I don't agree about the former, and
the latter is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy. FairVote markets IRV
so heavily that their actions serve to turn IRV into "the only alternative".
[endquote]
dlw: IMO, their marketing campaign is pragmatically based.  There are an
infinite number of single-winner electoral rules.  Y'all on this list have
managed to get it down to 4 other alternatives to FPTP.  That's a lot for
most folks to take in.  They've framed the debate the best for the US's
FPTP system.  Outsiders like you all are muddying the waters and not
providing a single clear-cut alternative.  Later on, there'll be more scope
for using or considering a variety of election rules for different
elections.

I'm reminded of rule 13 of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".
Rules for Power Tactics:

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
*2. Never go outside the experience of your people.
*3. Whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all
events of the period for your purpose.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that
will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into
its counterside.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
*13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.*
*
*
*dlw: FairVote has picked the target, replacing FPTP with IRV.  And the
opponents of electoral reform have done the same thing in their campaigns
to undermine IRV so there's no strong agreement among activists on what
should be the alternative single-winner(my usage) election rule in the US.
*

 dlw:   Why not endorse pushing hard for American forms of PR in
> nat'l/state representative elections (and city council elections) and
> trusting that there'll be more demand for alternatives to FPTP once the
> rivalry between the two major parties is handicapped and third parties have
> more potential to spoil more elections...
>

KM:I have no problem pushing for American PR. I get the impression that the
single-winner first strategy was chosen because single-winner
(single-office) elections are more familiar to voters than are PR
elections. Is that wrong? If so, that's another way of handling the
disagreement: unify around PR first and leave Condorcet vs IRV for later -
but then so should FairVote.

dlw:I think a key part of politics is about recognizing the need for
hierarchy.  FairVote is the leader of electoral reform in the US.  I'd
rather encourage them to push for IRV3/AV3(at least in bigger elections)
and support their push for PR strongly than to ask them to back off from
what's been a significant work-horse for them.

KM:However, even if we wanted to choose that strategy, those who organize
voting might at any point ask "well, what of single-winner elections?".
Then we can say "pick Approval, Schulze (e.g.), MJ or Range; authorities X,
Y, Z, think they're all pretty good". We just have to get X, Y, and Z to
sign.
If some local governments try any of them and find out that, say, MJ is
good enough, then we can later say "X, Y, Z think they're all pretty good,
and [county W] says they've had good experience with MJ".
[endquote]
dlw: Why not say,  "the use of PR in "more local" elections will create a
greater ability for third parties to spoil single-winner elections, thereby
increasing the demand for single-winner election reform.  Right now, the
plurality of support among electoral reform activists is for the use of a
form of IRV to replace FPTP.  We think that will change later down the
road, since there are other options, but we'd rather just stay united in
pushing hard for American forms of PR than cause dissent over an issue that
is secondary in importance.

dlw
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