[EM] a response to Andy J.

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/10/31 David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>

>
>
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> 2011/10/31 David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> dlw: I beg to differ.  My approach uses the first stage to reduce the
>>>>> number of candidates to 3.  In Burlington, those three would have been the
>>>>> Dems, Progs and Pubs so the LNH would still be in place in the second
>>>>> stage.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> JQ:Hmmm.... I could certainly counter that the Dems could theoretically
>>>> third-rank a Dem clone or a turkey candidate in order to push the Prog out
>>>> of the top three. The turkey is pretty implausible, but I could imagine it
>>>> becoming the norm to run two clones, as in early presidential elections
>>>> when VP was not a separate election.
>>>>
>>>
>>> dlw: I'm sure if we used a mix of PR and single-winner elections that
>>> 3rd parties would get enuf status to instill rules that would make running
>>> clones a losing idea for major parties.
>>>
>>
>> But wait a minute. The turkey/clone would not actually have to make it
>> into the top three to make the LNH failure a problem. It would only have to
>> be a possibility which is plausible to the "Dem" voters (in the Burlington
>> example). Given how Australian voting patterns seem to show voters burying
>> even with a real LNH guarantee, I still think that your 90% LNH is is not,
>> as you claim, equivalent to 100% LNH for practical purposes.
>>
>
> I guess I don't quite get your point.
> My point is that given the use of American forms of PR, 3rd parties cd
> enforce campaign finance transparency laws that would make the use of
> clones not feasible.
>

In the Burlington case, imagine you're a Dem voter. You think: "If I can
keep the Prog from being in the top 3, the Dem wins. So I'll vote for the
[Dem clone/ UFO party candidate] in 3rd place instead of the Prog." My
point is that this attempted strategy doesn't actually have to successfully
put the UFO candidate above the Prog for it to be a problem. Even just
attempting it brings a risk that the Republican will win - a risk that
could be self-reinforcing as both Dems and Progs attempted such a strategy,
perhaps even using the same UFO candidate as a proxy. (And the Republican
voters could safely encourage this chaos by also bottom-ranking the UFO
candidate).

If you're about to argue that Dem voters wouldn't do that and risk electing
a Republican... remember that that same argument would refute any
importance at all for the LNH criterion. It may be correct that LNH doesn't
matter - but that's not how FairVote thinks.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20111031/48a4b30e/attachment-0004.htm>