[EM] Burlington VT reconsidering IRV 10 years after IRV failed to elect the Condorcet Winner

[C.Benham]

>> For what it's worth, there have been about 250 IRV elections in the US
>> since San Francisco started using it in 2004, many of which were highly
>> contested between three or more candidates, and that Burlington 2009
>> race remains the one and only one where the Condorcet candidate was not
>> elected. It seems to me that if you care about the Condorcet candidate
>> winning, IRV is a big step forward to that end.
> A Condorcetist would probably say that this only supports his point. If
> the chance that IRV is repealed is lower whenever the CW is elected,
> then it's important to elect the CW, so why not ensure that the CW is
> elected whenever he exists?
>
> (There are two not very complex ways of doing so, as this thread has
> shown: Benham and BTR-IRV. So I don't really see the reason not to. Is
> this about later-no-harm?)

Obviously if we are only  (or perhaps just mainly) interested in 
electing the CW, then a
Condorcet method is a bigger advance over FPP than  IRV.

Later-no-harm is a big part of pro-IRV propaganda, but I don't put a big 
value on it in
single-winner elections.  In single-winner elections I put a much bigger 
value on Later-no-Help,
beacuse meeting that means that the method isn't vulnerable to Burial 
strategy.

Compliance with Mono-add-Top is also nice.

And I repeat that I think making sure that voters can (at least 
strictly) rank however many candidates they
wish is more important than IRV versus Benham.

Using some sort of ratings (or grading) ballot that limits the number of 
ranking/rating levels
(to maybe as few as four) may be acceptable for some Condorcet methods, 
but never limiting
the absolute number of candidates the voter is allowed to vote above 
bottom (or equal-bottom).

Some people here don't like the Australian practice of declaring ballots 
that include any above-bottom
equal-ranking to be "invalid" and not counting them towards the result.

I repeat this is my recommended way of handling above-bottom 
equal-rankings in IRV or Benham:

In any given round first we determine the fractional totals of each 
candidate. So ballots that equal-top
rank (among remaining candidates) A and B  contribute half a vote to 
each of A and B. Those that vote
equal-top A and B and C conrtibute a third of a vote to each of A and B 
and C (and so on).

Then the ballots that equal top-rank more than one candidate are 
assigned in full to the one of those
with the highest fractional total.

The candidate with the lowest thus-derived total is eliminated.

The point of this is to make Pushover strategising more difficult, and 
also it is consistent  with the "sincere STV"
idea that the voter is anxious to maximise the chance that one of 
his/her favourites (among remaining candidates)
should make it into the next round.

Chris Benham

On 6/12/2019 8:12 pm, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> On 06/12/2019 03.50, Greg Dennis wrote:
>> Agreed.
>>
>> It seems like a bit of revisionist history to portray the cause of the
>> repeal to be the failure to elect the Condorcet candidate. As has been
>> noted, the repeal effort was led by the Republican Wright and his allies
>> who felt that he should have won because he had the most first choices.
>> Among the three leading candidates Wright was the Condorcet _loser_; his
>> supporters wanted a plurality result, a result even further removed from
>> any sense of majority. By electing Kiss, at least IRV chose a candidate
>> in the smallest mutual majority set.
>>
>> Wright supporters didn't like the idea of a winner who in their mind
>> "came in second," and you wouldn't have placated them by electing
>> someone who (again, in their mind) "came in third." If anything, you
>> probably would have been in a more precarious political situation.
> On the other hand, when the method fails to elect the CW, it gives
> opponents a group of allies almost immediately: namely, the majority who
> preferred the CW to whoever *was* elected. If the CW is elected, there
> is no such majority (by definition), and anti-repeal forces would have
> to compose multiple majorities together.
>
> The point that the recall was a "hit job" kind of reinforces the point.
> If Montroll was a better liked candidate in the Condorcet sense, then it
> would presumably have been harder to arrange a hit against him.
>
>> For what it's worth, there have been about 250 IRV elections in the US
>> since San Francisco started using it in 2004, many of which were highly
>> contested between three or more candidates, and that Burlington 2009
>> race remains the one and only one where the Condorcet candidate was not
>> elected. It seems to me that if you care about the Condorcet candidate
>> winning, IRV is a big step forward to that end.
> A Condorcetist would probably say that this only supports his point. If
> the chance that IRV is repealed is lower whenever the CW is elected,
> then it's important to elect the CW, so why not ensure that the CW is
> elected whenever he exists?
>
> (There are two not very complex ways of doing so, as this thread has
> shown: Benham and BTR-IRV. So I don't really see the reason not to. Is
> this about later-no-harm?)