[EM] [ApprovalVoting] Re: The IRV-Disease has reached my town.

Tue Mar 5 00:56:32 PST 2019

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Subject: Re: [EM] [ApprovalVoting] Re: The IRV-Disease has reached my town.

From: "Juho Laatu" <juho.laatu at gmail.com>

Date: Tue, March 5, 2019 12:12 am

To: "EM" <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>

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> P.S. I think the STV-BTR method that Robert proposed could make a lot of sense in societies where IRV way of thinking is strong.
i can't take any credit for proposing that.  i dunno who thought of it first.  wasn't me.
the thing that i sorta don't like about it is that it
is still IRV and not strictly precinct-summable.  otherwise it's okay, i guess.  and we could still precinct-sum each defeat pair as a check on the election if there *is* a CW.  But it would be necessary that a physical instrument representing each ballot be transferred from the
precinct to the central tabulation location to tally the election and determine the winner.  if transparency is salient, then STV-BTR is still more like IRV and less like Condorcet.

> P.P.S. Limiting the number of ranking levels or number of ranked candidates could make sense when the number of candidates is very high, or just to keep things simple for the vote counting process, or to keep things simple enough for the voters (not to frighten them with the idea of ranking all
100 candidates). I.e. not theoretically ideal, but in practical situations ranking some candidates may be much better than ranking only one, or not bothering to vote at all.----

the problem is, in 2010, when the IRV opponents were gearing up their rhetoric in Burlington, they **falsely** claimed there was "voter disenfranchisement" with IRV in Burlington.  because they read some propaganda that pointed to *real* disenfranchisement in San
Francisco for voters that didn't realize who the race was really gonna end up between.  these "disenfranchised" voters marked their ballots 1,2,3 and none of those candidates were in the IRV final round.  they had no say in who was ultimately elected.  and, like plurality,
they would have to guess who is likely to win and vote insincerely for the major candidate that they dislike the least.
in Burlington, we had 5 candidates and 5 ranking levels.  i think 5 or 6 levels is enough and we should make our ballot access laws tough enough to *approximately* limit
the number of candidates on the ballot to that number.  maybe there's enough room on the ballot for 8 or 9 levels, but i don't think we would need them.

--

r b-j                         rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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