[EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

David L Wetzell wrote:
> http://politeaparty.blogspot.com/2011/11/free-and-fair-elections-and-their.html
> 
> They're trying to end the use of IRV in SF.
> Obviously, they're concerned about non-monotonicity or that the 
> Condorcet candidate is not guaranteed...

I'm still writing my reply to the long mail, trying to shorten it. But 
while I'm doing that, I can reply to this, if briefly.

If the IRV-opponents are concerned about non-monotonicity or the lack of 
Condorcet, neither the page nor the KQED page it links to mentions this. 
I also hope that you're not implying that non-monotonicity or 
lack-of-Condorcet objections are somehow disingenuous and that 
IRV-opponents are all incumbents trying to protect their little domains.

While I don't find it that important, I can see how some could object to 
the relative opacity of IRV. Plurality has its score (how many top votes 
each candidate got), Range has mean score, and Minmax has the magnitude 
of the worst defeat (where lesser is better). What does IRV have? It has 
the round in which the candidate was eliminated, but that doesn't, by 
itself, say anything about whether it was a squeaker or the candidate 
was a sure loser.

(In a sense, this ties in with the sensitivity to initial conditions of 
IRV. You might say "B lost in the second round, and the guy that was 
next to last in the second round only survived by a single vote, so that 
was close". But perhaps B would have led someone else (D instead of E) 
to win, had he survived -- or perhaps defeating C instead of being 
defeated by C would only have made B lose soundly in a later round?)

> I think that if IRV3/AV3 were used instead, it would be easier to 
> explain the vote-counting method to folks.
> 
>     I think it'd be easier if a two stage approach were used. Like
>     before, let folks rank up to three candidates. 
> 
>     Then, in the first stage, count up the number of times each
>     candidate gets ranked by voter(if voters ranked the same candidate
>     more than once, it would only count once). Publish these results on
>     election night. Make the three candidates who get ranked most often
>     be the finalists. 
> 
>     Then, for the second stage, use an instant runoff vote. First, tally
>     the number of times the three finalists are the favorite of voters.
>     If one is preferred by a majority of voters then (s)he is the
>     winner. Otherwise, eliminate the candidate who is preferred by the
>     fewest voters and transfer her/his votes as much as possible to the
>     other two candidates. Then, after tallying the votes for the two
>     finalists, the one with the most votes wins. 
> 
>     Does that sound simple enuf, D.Eris? It could be done in two days
>     time, most of the time...
>     dlw
> 
> 
> The real issue that prevents electoral reform in the US is marketing, 
> not electoral analytics.  Electoral analytics, as illustrated by this 
> board, are very good at exposing attempts to pass bad election reforms 
> for the wrong reasons.  But I don't think it works in creating a working 
> consensus on which electoral reforms to push for among activists.  This 
> is illustrated by how your own "consensus" statement recommends 4 
> alternatives to FPTP and waves its hands over IRV.  It also says nothing 
> about the pragmatic use of PR to make "more local" elections become 
> competitive, to handicap the cut-throat rivalry between the two major 
> parties and to make them both more attentive to the issues of minority 
> groups.  

It says nothing about the use of PR in a local setting to handicap 
rivalry between the two major parties because we don't know that it will 
do so enough to matter. More generally, it doesn't mention PR as it 
can't cover too wide an area - there was an earlier objection that the 
declaration was already too long.

(I do like PR, but I can see that logic.)

> So how about it?  Can we try to rewrite the consensus statement to 
> include an endorsement of IRV3/AV3 and to make it more marketable to 
> #OWS and other folks?

If you think the statement is too dilute as it is, then wouldn't adding 
another method make it less forceful still?

You could, as Richard points out, sign the statement and then say you 
support IRV3/AV3 as an improvement upon IRV. If you want to see 
Plurality gone, and think the main proposed alternatives would work, why 
not?