[EM] Burlington versus Aspen in Declaration

[Jameson Quinn]

2012/4/10 robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>

> On 4/10/12 2:06 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
>
>> Regarding the Aspen versus Burlington choice, no one else has commented,
>> so it will stay unchanged.  Given what I now know, Aspen would have been a
>> better choice, but the difference is too subtle for most people to
>> understand.
>>
>
> i dunno what happened in Aspen, but i doubt that IRV was repealed because
> it failed to elect the Condorcet winner and voters were unhappy with that.


I don't think anyone's arguing that there are voters out there who say, "I
don't have a personal preference who should win, but this method didn't
elect the so-called Condorcet winner, which is to say, the Smith-dominant
alternative, although of course it was actually Lull who originally
elaborated the concept, so I think we should repeal this method and return
to one which is much worse in every way."

The idea is, everybody is happy when they win, and sad when they lose. And
if you elect somebody who's not the CW, you'll make some coherent majority
sad, with some part of them being especially sad. And then they'll do
things like repeal the voting system. And since most of them have never
heard the word "Condorcet" in their life, and in Burlington the candidate
whose supporters were saddest and led the repeal fight happened to be a
plurality winner, they'll talk about how it's a crime against nature that
the plurality winner didn't win.

What I'm saying is, it can be true that Burlington voters repealed IRV
because it didn't elect the Condorcet winner, even if those voters tell a
different story when asked.

Jameson
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