[EM] Response to Kristofer Musterhjelm

[David L Wetzell]

>
>
>>
> KM:Your first points seem to suggest that if you had PR, the problem of
> IRV leading to two-party rule (or 2.5-party rule, as I call it, since the
> NatLibs aren't one party) would be ameliorated. But Australia has PR - STV,
> to be precise - for the elections for its other house, and still that
> doesn't break the 2.5-party rule of the Senate.



> [endquote]
>

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:You might argue that Australia only has half PR (i.e. in one of its
> chambers) whereas you'd want the US to have PR for its legislature and IRV
> for executive elections such as Governor and President. Thus, it would make
> more sense to compare with a nation that elects a President by IRV and has
> PR everywhere else. Yet Ireland, which has an STV legislature and an IRV
> president, doesn't show a good record of that breaking two-party rule
> (fixed two-party rule, even) for the positions that *are* elected by IRV

[endquote]

dlw: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:Ireland doesn't have compulsory voting, yet the President has been
> elected from the same party almost every time. There have been two
> exceptions: the first, before the setup of parties, and then a Labour
> victory recently.
>
> Unfortunately, it's hard to find further examples of IRV going in either
> direction - simply because IRV is not widely used. What I *can* find on a
> national level is Malta (which is somewhat of a special case because it's
> two-party even where STV is used) and Fiji (which is no longer a democracy,
> to my knowledge).


dlw: My ideal type isn't in use anywhere.
<http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/03/strategic-election-reform-explained.html>

It was sort of used in the US, since the economically important state of IL
used a 3-seat quasi-proportional election rule for its state
representatives from 1870-1980.  This handicapped the rivalry between the
two major parties so that states who were economically dependent on IL were
not politically dependent on IL and had freedom to experiment.   (It'd be
hard to know how things would have turned out in the US without the
innovations done in WI under LaFollette's Progressive Party in the early
20th ctry.  )  Our system, without the use of PR in "more local" elections
tends to have had one party dominate a state's politics.  And yet, because
there are so many states, there's been scope for a third party to become
dominant in a state's politics, which has forced the two major parties to
accommodate them(like with the Democrat-Farm-Labor party in MN).

If there tends to be two major parties under my system then it will be two
parties per state and it won't necessarily be the same two parties per
state.  In this manner, the duopoly will be contested by minor parties.

>
>>>  dlw: A two stage election has a winner-doesn't-take-all first stage
>> and a winner-take-all second stage.  So it's still consistent with
>> single-winner leading to hierarchy and multi-winner leading to plurality.
>>
>
> KM:I'd still consider it single-winner, since at the end of the day, a
> *single* winner is elected to each district. I can be flexible here,
> though. The top-two article on Wikipedia mentions that top-two runoff is a
> game (in the game-theory sense) because the voters can adjust their votes
> from one round to another.
>

[endquote]

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)...


>
> 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.

[endquote]

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.


> KM:FairVote claims that IRV is cheaper than top-two, but others disagree.
> Warren argues that IRV needs more complex voting machines, and that this
> and the fact that IRV can't be precinct-summable could erase most of the
> gains from not having a runoff.

[endquote]
dlw: I'm not an expert on the cost of the machines, but extra rounds of
elections are quite costly... and IRV ccan 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...

 dlw wrote:And could we not argue that the difference between two major
>> parties and two coalitions of parties isn't as great as we may think it is?
>>
>>
>
> KM:The greatest difference, to my mind, is that having coalitions brings
> politics out in the open. Anybody may read the record of the parliament or
> legislature, and alliances between what would be the wings of the two
> parties are very clear, particularly in parliamentary systems where the
> continued existence of the executive rests on the coalitions remaining as
> they are.
>
[endquote]

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: Beyond this, coalitions also give a greater flexibility. To give an
> example of this: in Norway, lately the christian democratic party has made
> statements to the fact that they would ally with the right-leaning parties
> rather than the left-leaning ones, but only if the populist rightmost party
> isn't too strong in the remaining coalition. The Christian party has
> conservative and liberal shades of Christians in it, and this is probably
> an internal compromise. As such, it keeps the right bloc from veering too
> far to the right.
> If we'd had a two-party system, all of this would have happened under the
> covers, out of sight. You could argue that the right-populist party
> wouldn't have had a chance at all and so the outcome would be the same, but
> the right-populists' voters know why they have less of a say now than if
> everything was done internally. These voters can also consider whether they
> need the Christian democratic party at all, and the conservative voters of
> the CDP can consider if they should vote further to the right.
>

[endquote]

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.

>
> KM:So, in simple words about the above: having multiple parties lets the
> voters decide more about how politics is made. Since coalitions are fluid,
> they are ultimately responsible to the voters.

[endquote]

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.

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.

>
>
> dlw wrote: thus, I don't think it requires the end of a two-party system
>> to restore the US's democracy.  If we have a contested duopoly and a host
>> of LTPs(local thid parties who specialize in contesting "More local"
>> elections and vote strategically together in "less local" elections as part
>> of their more general issue-advocacy) checking the influence of $peech,
>> it'd suffice.
>>
>
> KM:.. but it seems like it's just the effects of a steady erosion. You had
> something a bit like social democracy with FDR. If you'd had a viable
> multiparty system, I think that system itself would have given support to
> that position, as well as countered the later departure towards one guided
> increasingly by money.
>

[endquote]
dlw: Well, we had an infusion of greater concentration of wealth among the
financiers who funded the rise of Nazi Germany in t he US...  The
military-industrial-congressional complex took advantage of the chronically
non-competitive elections in most "more local" elections.

I do not contest that the US's political system has been in need of reforms
for some time.   I simply do not believe that an EU multi-party system is
the goal we should be aiming for.

>
> KM: Maybe you'd like to have something similar with your contested duopoly
> concept. If so, where we differ is in how much leveling we think is
> necessary to guard against the kind of deterioration that has been going
> on. A truly contested duopoly will be quite difficult to achieve, I think.
> By analogy from oligopolies of the business world, if power is concentrated
> in a few organizations, then these can use that power to raise barriers to
> entry that seriously impede progress - in the business realm, keeping the
> producer surplus high even at the cost of deadweight loss, and in the
> political realm, leaving people unrepresented and moving the course of the
> nation away from that which society wanted.
>

dlw: Well, I am in favor of the use of 3-seat Largest Remainder Hare for
state representative elections so as to enable the proliferation of LTPs
who would collectively check the influence of $peech on both major parties.
 They won't try to rival the two major parties, but they could help a minor
party gain ground on them.  This could lead to a merger so we might end up
with somehting like a Green Democratic party and a Libertarian Republican
Party, with both parties being more green and libertarian(or less
corporatist).

I'd rather push for a contested duopoly than a contested monopoly.  I think
it's a more feasible "evolutionary step" that will engender less opposition
from those in the two major parties in the US.  As for what's next, we will
see...

>
>  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.
>>
>
> KM:True. I'm not sure what makes PR work less well in some countries, but
> I think it's got to do with political history. Where the political process
> is seen as something to game to the maximum extent, the outcomes seem to be
> more volatile - I'm thinking about the gaming of the additional member
> system in Italy with decoy lists in particular.
>
> Perhaps this is akin to the extent to which one would expect strategic
> behavior to appear in single-winner elections.
>
> 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.

[endquote]

>
> dlw: Habits matter more than rules for democracy.
>


>
>>>  I think we can trust in the politics of Gandhi/MLKjr (and hopefully
>> #OWS) more so for the crucial sorts of changes needed.
>>
>
> Should we? Movements like Gandhi's, MLK Jr.'s, and Occupy Wall Street
> are "release valves".

[endquote]
dlw: they are more than release valves. Self-sacrificial acts on behalf of
others can move people to be more selfless or to rebuild a political
culture that enables other much needed reforms..


> When conditions get too bad for the groups in
> question, change forces its way through. Nations that are less
> democratic get their own release valves, too, which fire less often but
> more fiercely. If they are blocked altogether, say by a secret police,
> the "vessel" eventually bursts in a revolution.
>

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:So it seems here that you have a continuum. On the one extreme, desires
> for change are picked up and made part of the political course. On the
> other, the dissatisfaction keeps building up until there's an explosion.
> Now, the US is a democracy, so I don't think there will be a revolutionary
> explosion, but the movements suggest that those that are part of it don't
> get their say in the ordinary political process. This means that there's
> been a significant period of time in which they've considered the situation
> quite bad - enough for the metaphorical pressure to build up. Wouldn't it
> be better for the system to adjust itself earlier? That is better for the
> people - because they get a world closer to the one they want sooner - and
> it's better for the system, which doesn't exhibit as sudden and drastic
> changes.
>

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

>
>
>>>> 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...

>
> If you use a non-PR method, you run the risk of teaming. Say that the
> Republicans decide to game the system. They therefore create shadow parties
> and hold primaries within them, so that the field includes 3 Republican
> candidates (even if they are not formally Republican). Then if 51% of the
> voters are Republican, the party instructs them to rank all the R
> candidates first, and the method passes mutual majority (which it should to
> be any good), the three remaining candidates will all be Republicans, and
> it doesn't matter what the college does.
>

dlw: There'd be no advantage to Republicans creating shadow parties.
 There'd be no official restriction (other than seven) on the number of
candidates a party can have among the final seven.

And it'd be okay if the 2nd stage determined that it'd be a Republican
winner, since that's the NPV stage that formerly determined who was the
winner.  But that doesn't mean the EC wouldn't matter, since there are
differences among Republicans.

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.

KM:This strategy would be a kind of decoy list strategy, in that the party
> that wishes to game the system makes "shadow parties" (instead of shadow or
> decoy lists) to get around limits that are enforced per party.
>

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.

>
>
>>>
>>>
>  dlw wrote: 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.
>>
>
> KM:It is possible to do a reform if the people wants it, even if the
> legislators do not. An example I like to point at for this is the adoption
> of STV in New York. It might even fit better with your idea of "politics by
> movement", since the proportional representation league (I don't remember
> its exact name at this time) was involved in promoting it.
>
> (Later, said league suffered setbacks as those in power linked PR to
> "Stalin Frankenstein" and called STV a Soviet invention - and STV was
> eventually removed. Such tricks, needless to say, would not be feasible
> now: the USSR is dead.)


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: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...
>>
>
> At the moment of the election, the center is static, though. I'll reply to
> this in greater detail in the other post, but to be simple about it: all
> dynamic centers give you is a capacity for the parties to compensate. But
> that will discourage parties from forming where they could cover most
> voters, because it's at just this point where the weird effects occur.

[endquote]
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:The question boils down to whether IRV (or IRV plus PR) is good enough
> to give meaningful political diversity, more precisely in the form of the
> major parties changing. It isn't in Australia. You could say that's because
> there's compulsory voting and how-to-vote cards in Australia, and then I
> could point at Ireland, and then you could say that the President there is
> ceremonial so the parties' hearts aren't in it.

[endquote]
dlw:You raise good points.

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:At some point, though, I run out of nations that use IRV. It could be
> the case that the few countries who did try IRV got two-party (or
> two-and-a-half-party) domination for different reasons, but it could also
> be the case that they did it for the same reason -- IRV.:

 Then one has to ask, do we risk it? That depends on the expected benefits
> of getting IRV, weighted by the chance of actually getting it (by whatever
> means most likely), versus the expected benefits of a given other method
> like Condorcet weighted by the chance of actually getting that.

[endquote]

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: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.

[endquote]
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?

>
>> 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.
>>
>
> KM:I agree with the need for pluralism, and so I would support
> proportional representation without a thought. A 90% incumbency rate is
> pretty appalling for a legislature.
>
> Linking the proportional representation method to IRV, however... that's
> another matter. FairVote's strategy seems to be that the people would see
> the better results of IRV and so also support STV - but if the "better"
> results of IRV end up causing backslides over costs (from having to remake
> voting machines), lack of transparency (due to no summability), and weird
> results - then that could hurt STV too.
>

dlw: costs aren't that great.  summability is possible under IRV3/AV3 as I
have described it, and the weird results are not common.

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

>
> KM:You are right that we have been divided. I hope the declaration helps.
> Whether it does, time will tell, but it might, particularly if authorities
> within the field sign it.
>

dlw: Endorsing 4 election rules and waving your hands over IRV hardly seems
very helpful.
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...

dlw
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