[EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

I agree with James, and that was why I proposed that election reform
took the path through added election rounds.

Reform of FPTP would thus add a second election round where the
Condorcet winner would meet the FPTP winner. Who in the UK would
object to that?

I described also how to add a third election round the run-off
elections while the voters would not have to go to the voting booth
more than two times.

If the two systems above are considered as beeing too simple for the
experts and enthousiasts on this list, why not reform the FPTP to a
three round system (although politically it might be a more difficult
task to sell than a a two round system as a reform path from FPTP)

Round 1: The FPTP, Condorcet and Bucklin Winners are elected (for example).
Round 2: The voter Choses between the Condorcet and the Majority
judgement (Bucklin) winner
Round 3: The FPTP winner meets the winner from round two (i.e. the
voter writer if he prefers the Condorcet winner to the FPTP winner and
the Bucklin winner to the FPTP winner).

Rounds 2 and 3 could take place at the sametime (i.e. not requiring
the voter to go to the voting booth an extra time after round 2.

So far there have been no objections to this reformpath.

I see the weaknesses as the following:
1) increased election costs
2) risk of lower turn-out in the second round

I see the advantages as the following:
1) The weaknesses of each method are greatly diminished by combining
different methods and letting the voter chose the most preferred
winner from the methods.
2) A second round allows for more deliberation from the side of the
voters on the candidates
3) Voters actually like being granted more power through the extra
round and voter who "don't care" enough to go to the voting booth a
second time will not affect the election outcome
4) Multiple round systems where the old election system is combined
with a new one is able to gather political support from those voters,
who think the old system works well, and do not want to abandon it
entirely, but are open to improvements. This might be crucial in order
to gather the required political support for election reform.
5) The voter is in control of the extent of the voting reform, i.e.
the multiple round system allows the voters to chose their preferred
voting system according to its result. A voter who is a FPTP fanatic
may always vote for the FPTP winner in the second round, same for the
Condorcet/Majority judgement/score/approval fanatic, and then there is
the voter who simply will vote according to his/her preference
ordering in the second round.

I think the multiple round path to election reform is a bit neglected
as I consider it to be very powerful in its simplicity.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 6:40 PM, James Gilmour <jgilmour at globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Jameson Quinn  > Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:00 AM
>> If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially
>> politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility
>> of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In
>> Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a
>> relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest
>> against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates.
>> The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that
>> everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other
>> extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the
>> low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important
>> flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner.
>
> I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at
> FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your comment above  -  the problem of the weak Condorcet
> winner.  This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to
> any reform) and to a sceptical public.
>
> For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant preferences) we could have:
>        35 A>C
>        34 B>C
>        31 C
> "C" is the Condorcet winner.  Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the
> electors.
>
> But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences):
>        48 A>C
>        47 B>C
>         5 C
> "C" is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that.  But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the
> electorate, at least, not here in the UK.
>
> And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the
> politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily.  And the media would be no help  -  they would
> just pour fuel on the flames.  The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government.
>
> The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner.  But IRV avoids the "political" problem of the weak
> Condorcet winner.  I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw.
>
> James Gilmour
>
>
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