[EM] Comment on MJ discussion

[robert bristow-johnson]

On 1/6/13 2:46 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> On 01/06/2013 01:54 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>> We live in a technological society. Among some people, there's a
>> tendency to worship science. Anything that;s more complex is felt to
>> likely be better. That's MJ's mystique.
>>
>> It's just complicated enough that it's easy to obfuscate (for oneself)
>> what's going on, and whether it's an improvement. Given the need to
>> worship technology, and the consequent love for complexity, it's easy
>> to be tempted to deceive oneself that MJ must be doing something
>> good--even if one can't say what it is.
>
> There you go with the "motivations of the advocate" again. Didn't you 
> agree to hold off on that kind of speculation, back in our thread 
> about Condorcet and clones?
>
> I'm not going to bother replying to the rest if you can't hold 
> yourself to that standard.

i'm opposed to too much technology in governmental elections.  at least 
regarding the instrument of voting.  i think it's well worth it to kill 
a few trees to insure the integrity of the democratic process.  i think 
it's important that the physical instrument that voters mark has built 
into it the candidate names so it is clear upon manual review what the 
voter was looking at when the ballot was marked.  this is an inherent 
problem for those punch-card ballots of the "chad" days (Dec 12, 2000) 
because they might not align in the jig and the voter who punches the 
correct intended hole in the jig ends up punching out the wrong hole.  
so i'm pretty much a paper ballot and optical scan advocate.  and, for 
write-ins, it goes on the same instrument, that's another reason.

and as far as election method, i am convinced that inherent simplicity 
is important.  and i will concede that First-Pass-the-Pole is the 
simplest to vote and simplest to count and determine the winner.  and 
FPTP is inherently precinct summable which helps insure transparency, no 
way to fudge the precinct results as they are transferred from precinct 
to the central counting location where the winner is determined.  and i 
think that precinct summability is the simplest way to be transparent in 
that regard.  Instant Runoff Voting is not really precinct summable 
unless you limit the number of candidates to a very small number.  but 
each precinct could be required to give a copy of the raw ballot 
information which is what gets transported downtown to be counted, to 
share that information at the precinct with candidates, media, and other 
interested parties.  to *post* it.  but, with IRV, that information is 
too raw, too encoded for people to just look at it and use it.

but even IRV can be hand counted with the original paper ballots by 
literally transferring ballots from one pile to another, which is what 
the central election processor does with the raw ballot data.

the problem, of course, with single-mark ballots, is that in a 
multiparty, multicandidate setting, *voting* is the most complicated and 
tactical voting can be "rewarded".  the most common tactic is 
"compromising" and it's not a very fun tactic.  it's when you forsake 
your favorite candidate and mark a candidate that you dislike the 
least.  and your "reward" for using that tactic is that maybe you helped 
prevent Mitt Romney from getting elected.  this is opposed to the 
"reward" is discovering that you helped elect George W. Bush, because 
you voted for someone you thought was better than Al Gore.

because it makes it complicated for voters interested in being 
effective, that their vote really helps their political interest, an 
election method that protects voters from tactical influence and 
promises to allow them to express their sincere preference without that 
risk, that *simplifies* the voting system in reality.

i am convinced that the ranked ballot extracts the right amount of data 
from voters.  it's simple in concept and easy to fill out, despite the 
complaints of the anti-IRVers that i have had discussions with.  but the 
IRV method of tabulating the vote and deciding the winner is not as 
simple as the ranked ballot and i happened to be living in a town where 
we literally experienced a classic failure of IRV and only because the 
IRV did not elect the Condorcet Winner.

so i am a Condorcet advocate and so i am dubious that MJ will find it's 
way to governmental use.  i am still considering how to sell Condorcet 
to Vermonters after the 2009/10 Burlington IRV fiasco.  i have to first 
separate the concepts of the ballot form (which is the nearly the same 
with IRV, but equal-ranks are allowed) and the counting method.  and 
then i have to point out that Condorcet would not have resulted in the 
same anomalies that IRV had in 2009.  by this point some people are 
losing patience with the discussion and they say it's all too 
complicated.  i try to, very early in the discussion, suggest a simple 
principle that i would hope everyone agrees with: "If more voters mark 
their ballots preferring Candidate A over Candidate B, then Candidate B 
is not elected."

if we can get here, i am convinced that it's still pretty much organic 
and hopefully have no other conditionals ("if" statements in code) are 
needed.  *that's* simple and that Condorcet principle keeps the voting 
simple and does not reward superficial tactical voting.

so if a method requires *more* information from the voters (like Score 
voting does or MJ might), i think that burdens voters even more than the 
basic ranked ballot.  and if the method does not elect the Condorcet 
Winner when such exists, then i am not sure when it's 
one-person-one-vote, and you want the election to turn out the same when 
it was two of the many candidates, then i also do not know why you would 
want it.

*but* if any such method should be debated, i think right here is the 
right place.  i'm just still a bit dubious of its utility in a public, 
governmental election.  simply because it's not Condorcet.  (and i am 
also very dubious of claims, like those sometimes made by Score/Approval 
advocates, that their currently favorite little non-Condorcet method 
does a better job of electing the CW than does a Condorcet compliant 
method.  that's just silly.)

-- 

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."