[EM] the Mono-Raise criticism of IRV and its hybrids

[Michael Ossipoff]

There are at least two good answers to that criticism:

1. You know very well that, with voting systems, you get what you pay
for, and you pay for what you get. An extra advantage or good property
comes at a price. IRV meets MMC and is free of the chicken dilemma.
Benham and Woodall likewise, and they additionally meet the Condorcet
Criterion (CC). Though CC isn't really necessary, it often or usually
is a good idea, for rank methods for official public elections, or
even meetings or organizations, where IRV's compromise-elimination can
make the method adversarial. Beatpath meets Mono-Raise, but has the
chicken dilemma. It's a question of what has practical importance to
voters, and what is merely an aesthetic criticism.

2. For a Beatpath advocate to criticize IRV or its hybrids for failing
Mono-Raise is more than a little hypocritical, because Beatpath, like
IRV, fails Participation and Mono-Add-Top. Additionally, Beatpath
fails Mono-Add-Unique-Top, which IRV doesn't fail.

As for the count difficulty or insecurity criticism, as I've said, an
IRV count is little more than a series of Plurality counts. Each
precinct can have its counts sent in to Central, and the Central
results reported, just as in a Plurality election. The public imaging
approach to security would work as well with IRV as with any method.

As always, I disclaim that don't propose IRV , or any FBC-failing
method, for current conditions, where the media have most people
convinced that only the Democrat or Republican can win. The Greens
offer IRV,and it would be fine for the Green scenario. Maybe the
CW-preferrers won't like the elimination of their CWs (likely the
Greens will be the CW-preferrers). If so, then there will be a
majority who would like to change to a Condorcet-complying method.
That will probably be Benham or Woodall. I've been told that Benham
was actually first proposed by someone named Hill. I believe that Hill
called that method "Condorcet-IRV". Condorcet-IRV is offered at the
Condorcet Internet Voting Service (CIVS), as one of several
rank-counts that CIVS offers.

Condorcet-IRV:

Do IRV till there's an uneliminated candidate who isn't pair-beaten by
any other uneliminated candidate. Elect hir.

Woodall:

Do IRV till only one member of the Smith set remains uneliminated. Elect hir.

Schwartz Woodall:

Do IRV till only one member of the Schwartz set remains uneliminated. Elect hir.

[end of definitions]

I recommend Schwartz Woodall as my favorite general-purpose voting
system for organizations, clubs, meetings, etc.  But Condorcet-IRV is
more briefly defined, and nearly as good.

Sometimes Approval's social optimizations would make Approval the best
choice. Voters often do better with Score than with Approval, because
its fractional ratings mitigate strategic errors.

Michael Ossipoff