[EM] 'lection de trois

[David L Wetzell]

>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Cc:
> Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:13:51 -0500
> Subject: Re: [EM] élection de trois élection de trois
> On 2/19/12 8:53 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>> It seems quite a few election rules get quirky in one way or the other
>> with a 3-way competitive election.
>>
>> That might be a point worth considering in the abstract in a paper or
>> something.... why are 3-way single-winner elections quirky?
>>
>>
> isn't it obvious?
>
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Duverger%27s_law<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law>


Duverger's law was based on the assumption of FPTP.  I'm being more
general, suggesting that any single-winner rule(apart from hybrids like a
2-stage rule) will
tend to get quirky when there's a competitive 3 way election, which will
tend to make it hard to sustain there being 3-competitive parties.  .

>
>
> to wit: Duverger suggests two reasons why single-member district plurality
> voting systems favor a two party system. One is the result of the "fusion"
> (or an alliance very like fusion) of the weak parties, and the other is the
> "elimination" of weak parties by the voters, by which he means that the
> voters gradually desert the weak parties on the grounds that they have no
> chance of winning.
>

I'm dealing with a fuzzy monster on this more general quirkiness of 3-way
competitive elections.  That's just one case.

>
>  On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:31 PM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com<mailto:
>> jameson.quinn at gmail.**com <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>>
>>        ..., cuz the simple fact of the matter is that IRV works best
>>        with only 3 candidates.
>>
>>
>>
> geez, i wish people used only plain text email.  or that the list server
> converted every post to plain text, perhaps wrapping lines at 70 columns.
>
>     2.5, actually.
>>
>>
> yeah, i don't get the reasoning behind David's claim.  IRV works just as
> well with 4 or more candidates as with 3.  if there are 3 nearly equal
> candidates IRV may screw up just as bad as if there are 3 nearly equal
> candidates with more minor candidates added.  i am not assuming "IRV3".
>

dlw: Cuz, there's more opportunities for the order of elimination to make a
difference when you eliminate more candidates?

> I don't think there's a big diff between IRV w. 3 candidates and IRV with
> 4 candidates, but my debates with Dale Sheldon Hess have confirmed that
> according to the measures they found with simulations that IRV was closest
> to their favorites with only 3 candidates.
> --
>
> r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Richard Fobes <ElectionMethods at VoteFair.org>
>

BTW, Richard, you're a pretty good dancer!!!  I saw the U-tube video from
your website...

>
> As for the U.S., the biggest (but not the only) election unfairness occurs
> in primary elections as a result of vote splitting.  "Special interests" --
> the people who give the largest amounts of money to election campaigns --
> have learned to give money to candidates in the primary elections of _both_
> the Republican party and the Democratic party (as needed), and give
> additional support to "spoiler" candidates when needed.  The result is that
> the money-backed candidate in each party's primary election wins, and then
> it doesn't much matter whether the Republican or the Democrat wins the
> "general election".
>

dlw: Our system is too entrepreneurial with pretty weak intra-party diffs
to maintain party brands against this sort of opportunism.
IRV(and other rules) gets rid of some primaries.

>
> Simply getting one political party or the other to use a fairer voting
> method (any of the ones supported by the Declaration of Election-Method
> Reform Advocates) in the primary elections would greatly improve the
> ability of voters to elect problem-solving leaders -- instead of
> special-interest puppets.  (After one party adopts such fairer primary
> elections, the other party would soon have to do the same or else risk
> losing lots of support.)
>

dlw: primaries are good places to push for electoral reform.

>
> That's all I have time to write now.
>
> Richard Fobes
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr>
> To: election-methods <election-methods at electorama.com>
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 02:39:40 +0000 (GMT)
> Subject: Re: [EM] élection de trois élection de trois
> They are quirky because of IIA. The papers on this are from the 1970's.
> Quote Wikipedia:
>
> "The *Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem*, named after Allan Gibbard<http://fr.mg40.mail.yahoo.com/wiki/Allan_Gibbard>and Mark
> Satterthwaite <http://fr.mg40.mail.yahoo.com/wiki/Mark_Satterthwaite>, is
> a
> result about the deterministic voting systems<http://fr.mg40.mail.yahoo.com/wiki/Voting_system>that choose a single winner using only the preferences
> of the voters, where each voter ranks all candidates in order of
> preference. The Gibbard–Satterthwaite
> theorem states that, for three or more candidates, one of the following
> three things must hold for every
> voting rule:
>
>    1. The rule is dictatorial (i.e., there is a single individual who can
>    choose the winner), or
>    2. There is some candidate who can never win, under the rule, or
>    3. The rule is susceptible to tactical voting<http://fr.mg40.mail.yahoo.com/wiki/Tactical_voting>,
>    in the sense that there are conditions under which a voter
>
> with full knowledge of how the other voters are to vote and of the rule
> being used would have an incentive to vote in a manner that does not
> reflect his preferences. "
>

dlw: Hmm, doesn't this cast a different light on the fact that in
Burlington VT the Republican voters were susceptible to tactical voting for
the Democratic candidate?

>   One cannot say that there'd never be a situation where such could arise
> with seemingly any election rule, which gets to my point that with IRV or
> IRV+ that the pressure to vote strategically incidence is on supporters of
> a major party that has been ideologically captured by its extreme and
> thereby refuses to re-center itself nearer to the true center.   And that's
> not the same thing as forcing dissenters from the two major parties to vote
> strategically....
>

dlw
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