[EM] The Green scenario, IRV, contd.

[Michael Ossipoff]

There's a scenario that I refer to so often that I should have a brief
name for it. I'll call it "the Green scenario". It goes like this:

The Greens (GPUS) have been elected to the presidency, and most of
Congress. We have a Green government. In keeping with their platform
policy proposals, IRV is the national voting system (A constitutional
amendment could make IRV the national voting system, in accordance
with the GPUS platform's proposal).

The GPUS platform emphasizes expanded and improved public choice via
initiative and referendum, and surely there would be one regarding
what the voting system should be, though IRV would be the initial
default voting system.

I claim that the Green scenario is the only way that voting-system
reform can happen.

That's why I say that IRV will be our next voting system. Because it's
going to be our next voting system, there's good reason to give it a
better look. I've been discussing it here lately.

I often speak of mutual majority, or a mutual majority, and because I
say it so often, I'd like to abbreviate it "MM". A mutual majority
(MM) is a set of voters, who are more than half of all the voters, who
all prefer some set of candidates to all the other candidates. The
Mutual Majority Criterion says that one of those candidates should
win, if the members of that MM vote sincerely. IRV meets the Mutual
Majority Criterion (MMC), Later-No-Harm (LNHa), Later-No-Help (LNHe),
and Clone-Independence. Its LNHa compliance gives it compliance with
the Chicken Dilemma Criterion (CD).

IRV fails FBC, and the Condorcet Criterion.

I agree that IRV would be completely inadequate for us now, for the
reasons that I always give. But, in the Green scenario, it would be an
entirely different matter, for reasons that I've also often stated.

As I said before, IRV gives a guaranteed automatic win to a MM. If
you're in a MM, you'd like IRV. And that MM can vote like one, because
of compliance with CD and LNHa. That's why I say that compliance with
MMC and LNHa is a very powerful combination.

Comparing it to Approval and Score, which are excellent
general-purpose, all purpose, methods, I've referred to IRV as a
special purpose method, an adventurous and ambitious gamble. It could
work very well for you (if you're in a MM), but when it doesn't, you'd
then on the favorite-burial-need end of IRV, and you'd wish the
voting-system were Approval or Score.

But, as I said, there's nothing wrong with government by a cohesive
majority. And there's nothing wrong with an adventurous gamble. Maybe,
in politics, everyone would like to believe that they're in a MM, a
cohesive majority. Fine. So, under better conditions, Green scenario
conditions, let's find out.

I've said that, though I expect (for reasons that I've often stated)
that there will be a progressive majority it might not be a _mutual_
majority, because there could be a progressive party that would have
strategic motivation to tell its voters to rank the Democrat over the
other progressive candidates.

But the progressive parties' platforms are nearly identical in nearly
all respects. Just as the Democrats and Republicans are identical to
eachother, so are the progressive platforms nearly identical to
eachother.

For that reason, even if some party-leadership said to vote the
Democrat over other progressive candidates, there's good reason to
believe that those voters wouldn't do so. I suggest that there
probably is a progressive MM, in terms of sincere preference, and it
will probably be reflected in voting too.

IRV has no chicken dilemma to interfere with that sincere MM support.

So, by that optimistic assessment, progressives would benefit from
IRV, which would automatically elect progressives, because they have a
MM.

It can still be complained that, within that MM, IRV doesn't
necessarily elect the CW. In fact, IRV's "squeeze-effect"
disproportionately disfavors CWs.

But the squeeze-effect can only eliminate the CW if, among the MM
voters, there is a win-candidate preferred to the CW by more voters
than vice-versa.. The squeeze-effect doesn't sound so undemocratic
then.

The CW might not be a CW if you only count the voters in the MM.
Regard IRV as choosing a winner from within the MM-preferred set,
based only on the preferences of MM voters, and it doesn't sound so
undemocratic when the squeeze-effect eliminates a CW.

As I said, the reason I discuss this, is because it appears that IRV
will be the next voting system. I suggest that that's ok.

Don't worry about it. That's my point, with this.

The voting-system outlook looks good, in spite of the fact that
pre-Green-scenario voting-system reform appears impossible.

And, in the Green scenario, how should progressives vote, in
candidate-elections? The spirit of IRV is risk-tolerance, and IRV
advocacy has assumed a MM, and only looked at its beneficiaries. So,
in the spirit of IRV, especially when it's been put in place by a
progressive party, shouldn't the progressives vote in that optimistic
spirit, assuming a MM and voting sincerely?

How should they vote in a referendum on what the voting system should
be? That would depend on what the information is, at that time,
regarding the existence of a progressive MM. But most likely there
will be one, as I've suggested.

Anyway, as I suggested in my previous post, it seems to me that, in
votes on voting-systems, methods would tend to choose themselves,
because a group favored by a method would want it to win. So IRV
might, for that reason, always remain the voting-system anyway, once
it's initially part of a new Green government. ...because whomever
it's working for will want to keep it, and will be able to, because it
works for them.

As I said, due to the great similarity among progressive party
platforms, the progressive majority must be mutual, in terms of
sincere preferences.  --suggesting that progressives will be that
cohesive majority automatically elected by IRV.

Mike Ossipoff