[EM] Response to Kristofer Musterhjelm

Thu Nov 3 10:12:17 PDT 2011

>
>
> dlw: too much pluralism can make it hard to make needed changes.  You need
> leadership to make changes.  If the ruling coalition shifts often then it's
> hard to follow through with changes.
>

That's a feature of parliamentary systems. The US has a directly-elected
president, and also lacks the party discipline to have meaningful
"governing coalitions". True party-line votes are rare.

>
>> KM:If anything, I would say that the party political system here (which
>> is more fluid than the one in the US) is still quite hierarchical, and that
>> one could go to a system without parties (like demarchy or Gohlke's
>> Practical Democracy) without losing order amid change.
>
>
> dlw: I think it's okay for both major parties to be hierarchical, to have
> intra-party discipline, so long as neither can dominate the other and there
> are other meaningful options available for voters.
> I think we can trust in the politics of Gandhi/MLKjr (and hopefully #OWS)
> more so for the crucial sorts of changes needed.
>

Trust but aid. A citizen movement can accomplish things even in a monarchy,
but in a system which empowers them more, they will accomplish more.

>
>>
>>>
>>>  And very likely any other single-seated election...
>>> It's costly to run an effective multi-seat US Presidential election.
>>>  This does not deny third parties a constructive role in our political
>>> system, however.
>>>
>>
>> See my response regarding runoffs. Abd also claims that runoffs more
>> often overturn the Plurality ("first round") winner than does IRV.
>>
>
> dlw: I'm in favor of a three-stage election for the president<http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-electoral-college-should-be.html>.
>  I think we could have the first stage could follow the current state
> primaries(opened to all voters) to determine 6/7 of the 7 finalists, the
> second stage could have everyone pick their favorite 3 of the 7 finalists
> so as to choose which 3 of them would go to the third stage at the
> Electoral College.  At the electoral college, three electors from each of
> the 435 congressional districts in the US would determine the next
> president of the US.
>
> 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.
>
>>
>>>
>>> dlw:I'm familiar with AV and SV.  I've dialogued on these matters at
>>> length with Dale Sheldon Hess and Clay/Broken Ladder at my blog.    <
>>> http://anewkindofparty.**blogspot.com/2010/07/**
>>> strategic-election-reform-vs-**approval.html<http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2010/07/strategic-election-reform-vs-approval.html>
>>> >
>>>
>>> AV and SV are not as great when you relax the assumption of cardinal
>>> utility preferences over politicians among voters.  As I stated above, I
>>> like using a limited form of AV to reduce the number of candidates in IRV3
>>> to three.  You'd agree that IRV works far better with 3 than very many
>>> candidates?
>>>
>>
>> I think ranked voting is better than AV and SV because of strategy issues
>> with the former, so I can't really reply to that. However, some cardinal
>> methods resist strategy better than others. Perhaps you would be interested
>> in investigating Majority Judgement or the other median rating based
>> methods? Since the median has a high breakdown point, exaggerated ratings
>> by minorities will affect the outcome less than it will affect Approval or
>> Range/Score.
>>
>
> dlw: I have read about majority judgement.  I think it's very good for a
> country that has a strong cultural agreements about what is to be expected
> for their leaders.  And so I'd have no problem with its use in France or
> Scandinavia.
>

In MJ, the only meaningful cultural agreement you need is the "grading
curve", not the underlying meaning of that. If a majority can agree that
~10% of the candidates are "A+", ~20% are "A", etc., it does not matter
that these grades refer to entirely different qualities in entirely
different candidates.

>
>>
>> KM:As for IRV, I don't know. IRV3 still can exhibit nonmonotonicity,
>> Condorcet failure, reversal non-symmetry, etc.
>
> The "viable third party" problem that makes it risky to do IRV in certain
>> situations like Burlington also shows up even with only three candidates -
>> if those three are from different parties. If the third party candidate is
>> weak, IRV is essentially spoiler-free, but if the third party candidate
>> grows stronger, the order of eliminations can switch to one that elects the
>> second best winner instead of the best, and where voting for the best
>> candidate only moves the method further into not-best territory. It doesn't
>> have to be like this.
>>
>
> dlw: I think more practically that IRV3/AV3(uses a limited form of AV to
> get three finalists) enforces the maintenance of a two-party dominated
> system.   It also tends to be somewhat incumbent friendly.  This makes it
> easier for it to get adopted by legislators, who mostly are going to be
> incumbents.
>
> Most of the features mentioned above may happen, but they don't happen
> that often and their practical consequences aren't that great when we
> consider that parties can and do change(for worse or better) and that the
> best way to change things is to move the center via the politics of
> Gandhi/MLKjr/#OWS.
>

You're saying that the practical consequences of spoiled elections aren't
that great? Do you remember the rancor between Democrats and Greens after
2000? Not to mention the result itself...

>> KM:You can see this for yourself by tinkering with Ka-Ping Yee's 1D
>> Gaussian visualization. If you use three candidates and have two of them
>> far away from the middle, IRV acts like you would expect. Move the red and
>> yellow closer to the middle green, though, and on the IRV line, an island
>> of yellow suddenly appears. Tinker further and the island has both yellow
>> and red on it. I've attached an example of this.
>
>
> dlw: I've seen that before.  Like I said, if the center is dynamic and so
> are the two biggest party, it's not that big of a deal...
>

I disagree. Sure, it's not as bad as plurality, but it is worth avoiding.

>
>>>
>>> dlw: The real issue with Electoral Reform is a marketing problem, not an
>>> analytical problem.  FairVote is great at marketing.  Most electoral reform
>>> experts, including myself, aren't.  And, as I stated before, given the fact
>>> that we are in a FPTP-dominated political system, there can only be one
>>> alternative to FPTP at a time locally.  I don't have a problem with that
>>> alternative being IRV.  It doesn't bother me if IRV isn't self-evidently
>>> the best election rule from an analytical standpoint.
>>>
>>
>> This, to me, feels a bit like the national football (soccer) rules said
>> that all games should be played on a 40% incline, with those who have
>> gathered the most goals in previous matches at the top and the other team
>> at the bottom. Then some marketers come and say that this is obviously
>> unfair and we should play on a 20% incline instead, and they build up a
>> large organization to promote this.
>>
>> At some point, someone scratches their heads and say: hey, why do we have
>> to have any incline at all? Can't we be even more fair and play on a flat
>> field, so that the previously-winning team (major party) doesn't have an
>> undue advantage?
>>
>> Sure, a 20% grade is more fair than 40%, but we can still do better. A
>> 20% grade (IRV) might still not be enough to give points (victories) to
>> worthy challengers, and it might sour the people on reducing the grade to
>> zero because "we tried that and it didn't change anything".
>>
>
> dlw: It's easy  for you to say we need to push for a completely level
> playing field, but it's damn hard to get anywhere in a two-party dominated
> system that's tilting strongly towards becoming single-party dominated.
> Politics is the art of the possible.  If we make our system into a
> contested duopoly, it'll go a long ways, especially if we can strongly
> lower the political acrimony caused by the desires of both major parties to
> get a permanent majority.
>
> I'd hardly say IRV didn't change anything..., the kicker is to pair it
> with the use of PR, which is FairVote's position.   If neither of the two
> major parties can dominate then it'd be easier to play them off of each
> other or to get them both to reposition onto a new political center via
> major political cultural changes.
>
>>
>> It is true that the flat-fielders have been disorganized, and that's
>> unfortunate, because it diminishes the chance that we will get a level
>> field. May the declaration help in this respect, so that we don't have to
>> settle with "only somewhat less unfair than FPTP".
>>
>
> dlw:What we need most is electoral pluralism.  We needed that
> decades/centuries ago.  We had more electoral pluralism in ther US in the
> past (like with the 3-seat cumulative voting in IL from 1870-1980).  I
> believe FairVote can market critical reforms to the US population.  I can't
> say the same thing for folks pitching other alternative election rules and
> given that our system uses primarily FPTP right now in the US, we can't
> afford lots of alternatives being on the market.  It's too easy for those
> who benefit from the status quo to divide and conquer us.
>

Just wait for my vaporware...

Jameson

>
> dlw
>
>
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