[EM] Re2: Fobes wrt IRV w. relatively few competitive candidates.

[Richard Fobes]

A clarification would be helpful in this discussion (below).

David seems to be talking about the number of candidates in _general_ 
elections.

I am more focused on the number of candidates in _primary_ elections. 
This is where the greatest unfairnesses now occur.  This is where there 
should be more candidates.

Specifically, in a congressional election where the district boundaries 
do not ensure victory for the incumbent's party, the other party should 
have about four to seven credible candidates in their primary election.

IRV cannot handle that many credible candidates.

Richard Fobes


On 5/29/2013 11:44 AM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>
>
>     On 5/28/2013 12:51 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
>      >> Richard Fobes wrote:
>      >>     Plurality voting and limited voting (and the Borda count if
>     the voters
>      >>     are undisciplined) are about the only methods that _cannot_
>     handle 3 or
>      >>     (maybe) 4 popular choices along with any number of unpopular
>     choices.
>      >
>      > So you agree that IRV works w. relatively few popular candidates?
>
>     The results for IRV get worse as the number of candidates increase.
>
>     Condorcet methods give fair results regardless of the number of
>     candidates.  Approval voting gives reasonably fair results regardless of
>     the number of candidates.
>
>     IRV can usually -- but not always -- handle 3 candidates.  And IRV can
>     sometimes handle 4 candidates.  But IRV becomes quite unreliable -- and
>     also vulnerable to strategic voting -- if there are 5 or more
>     candidates.
>
>
> dlw: So if there is a feedback from the election rule used that tends to
> change the number of competitive candidates then it might make sense to
> first push IRV and then
> something more "advanced" later on, after the expected number of
> candidates rises?
>
>
>      > > So it seems disengaged from reality to let C, the number of
>      >     candidates,
>      > > go to infinity... and if a lot of candidates are not going to get
>      > > elected then to disregard voter info/preference over them is of
>     much
>      > > less consequence.
>      >
>      >     Although the number of popular candidates is now small,
>     that's because
>      >     we use plurality voting.  When we use better voting methods,
>     the number
>      >     of popular candidates will increase; of course not to
>     infinity, but
>      >     frequently beyond the 3 or 4 popular choices that IRV can
>     handle with
>      >     fairness.
>      >
>      > dlw: This is a conjecture.  One that I don't think makes economic
>     sense
>      > when one considers all that is entailed with a competitive
>     campaign for
>      > an important single-seat election.
>
>     The biggest campaign contributors (a.k.a. special interests) have forced
>     voters into the Republican and Democratic parties, and then taken
>     control of the primary elections of both parties by taking advantage of
>     vote splitting.  All sorts of things will change when these constraints
>     are removed.
>
>
> dlw: These constraints won't per se be removed entirely.
> Special interests will still exist and $peech will still matter for
> elections, regardless
> of what election rules get used.
>
> If there exists varying cognitive limits in voters, it doesn't negate
> the need for electoral reform but it does mitigate the scope for
> expanding the number of competitive candidates/parties, or how much
> merely changing the single-winner election rule used would make a
> difference.
>
> I believe the diff IRV makes makes it worth it.  Given the current
> habits of the US, I don't see "advanced-systems" havinge sufficient
> additional value-added to justify switching from the extensive marketing
> campaign already in place for IRV.  If things evolve, it will be easier
> to switch from IRV, in part because of widespread habituation to IRV and
> how it'll make it harder for those who benefit from the status quo to
> divide and conquer advocates of reform.
>
>
>     My point is that Condorcet and Approval methods can handle whatever
>     number of parties arise.  In contrast, IRV will fail if there turn out
>     to be more than 3 or 4 effective parties, so IRV is not a reliable
>     choice.
>
>
> You mean IRV is not reliable if it becomes reasonable to expect for
> there to be more than 3 or 4 effective candidates in a single-winner
> election...  This is not the case in the US today.
>
>
>      >     Although it's a non-governmental example, take a look at the
>     current
>      >     VoteFair American Idol poll.  The number of popular music
>     genres is
>      >     about 5, and there are about 7 singers who get more than a few
>      >     first-choice votes.
>      >
>      > http://www.votefair.org/cgi-bin/votefairrank.cgi/votingid=idols
>      >
>      >     IRV would correctly identify the most popular music genre
>     (based on
>      >     current results), but probably would not correctly identify
>     the most
>      >     popular singer.
>      >
>      > Apples and Oranges.
>      > There's no serious economic costs to competing in American Idol
>     and so
>      > the number of competitive singers is not naturally hampered by
>     that and
>      > the need for a large support base or expensive advertisements or
>      > connections for important endorsements.
>
>     Here you seem to be saying that IRV is OK in governmental elections even
>     though it can't handle a singing contest.
>
>
> Only because the number of competitive candidates tends to be
> significantly lower, as is consistent with my economics-based argument.
>
>
>      >     Why would voters trust a voting method that stops getting
>     fair results
>      >     with so few popular candidates?
>      >
>      > Because when one considers the potential candidates have for
>     taking on
>      > ideas, there isn't a need for a large number of candidates to
>     make the
>      > de facto center much more like the true center.
>      >
>      > Only among theorists does one constrain candidates to fixed
>     positions in
>      > policy-spaces.
>
>     Actually I see politics as multi-dimensional, which is why I don't talk
>     about left and center and right (because that's one-dimensional).
>
>
> dlw: But any multi-dim policy-space can be collapsed into a one-dim
> system.  So left/center/right can still prove useful... and my more
> important point about candidates/parties shifting within the one or
> multi-dim system still holds in mitigating the import of raising the
> number of competitive candidates.
>
> We can increase the expected quality of competitive candidates w.o.
> increasing the expected number of competitive candidates much.
>
>
>      >     Yes, IRV is easy to explain, but that advantage becomes
>     unimportant as
>      >     the number of popular candidates increases, which it will
>     when better
>      >     voting methods are adopted.
>      >
>      > That may be your story, but when one adds realism with folks able to
>      > express voice thru other means besides voting then it becomes less
>      > important to amp up C much.  The non-competitive candidates can still
>      > move the center.
>
>     I don't know what your words here mean.  As I said, "center" implies
>     one-dimensional thinking, and I see things as multi-dimensional (which
>     means there is lots of cross-party voting [although mainstream media
>     mistakenly calls those voters "undecided"]).
>
>
> dlw: There is still a center in a multi-dim system and it's not per se
> either multi-dim or single-dim, since a multi-dim can be collapsed into
> a single-dim.
>
>
>      > And the opportunity cost of trying to settle on an alternative
>      > alternative to FPTP than IRV will become apparent.
>
>     I support the idea of having (initially, small) organizations try out
>     different kinds of voting and letting that process educate citizens as
>     to what works and what doesn't.
>
>
> dlw: But if the scale is small then the number of competitive candidates
> will tend to be bigger, which in turn will affect the relative value of
> IRV vs non-IRV and so there needs
> to be a mindfulness of how the expected number of competitive candidates
> matters.
>
>
>     This means I oppose the belief that IRV is the only method that should
>     be tried.  It has been tried, and the results have not been impressive.
>
>
> dlw: The jury is still out and there's also an aggressive status quo
> that has a strong perverse incentive to stir up rivalries among
> advocates for different electoral alternatives to FPTP. As an advocate
> for alternative rules than IRV you aren't the most disengaged person
> from the assessment of the evicence.
>
>
>     One broader point underlies this discussion.  A major reason why the
>     U.S. has only two political parties is that if a third-party
>     Presidential candidate gets even a (relatively) few _electoral_ votes,
>     that would likely block a majority of votes going to either the
>     Republican or Democratic candidate, and that would throw the election
>     into the House of Representatives (with each state getting one vote),
>     and the House is not going to choose the third-party candidate.  That
>     scenario has happened in the past, and the after-effect is the
>     abandonment of an otherwise strong third party.  IRV would not solve
>     this problem, yet many proponents of IRV seem to think it would, and
>     accordingly (but mistakenly) they promote IRV as a way to help third
>     parties grow in popularity.
>
>
> dlw: I doubt anyone who supports 3rd parties wants IRV alone.  IRV in
> our prez election wd get 3rd party candidates R-E-S-P-E-C-T and help
> them to move the "de facto" political center that the two major parties
> tend to center around.  They may want that a lot more than an end to our
> two-party system.
>
> For there's nothing intrinsic to a two-party dominated system to be as
> dysfunctional as our current two-party dominated system with its tilt
> towards becoming a single-party dominated system.
> dlw
>
>
>     Richard Fobes