[EM] re Burlington

[robert bristow-johnson]

okay, Sennet, I am posting this to the EM mailing list.



---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: Re: re Burlington

From: "Sennet Williams" <sennetwilliams at yahoo.com>

Date: Sat, May 18, 2019 12:50 pm

To: "robert bristow-johnson" <rbj at audioimagination.com>

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> yes, I meant to put that in the email.  you are free to post it to the list.

> As I probably typed before,  the problem with Condorcet is that it would be "practically" impossible to count by hand.
No, Sennet, it isn't.  It's straight forward, but laborious.  If doing this by hand, you would need a team of 4 (2 callers and 2 counters) for
each pair combination of candidates.  If you had 2 candidates, that's one pair (and it's just like FPTP)..  If you had 3 candidates, it's 3 pairs.  If you had 4 candidates, it's 6 pairs.  If you had 5 candidates, it's 10 pairs.  The counting could be done simultaneously if
you had sufficient people or serially, in turn, if you don't have more enough for simultaneous counting.  all ballots would be handled by each counting team once.  and it is precinct summable so the burden can be distributed to many precinct locations.  unlike IRV, the counting need
not be done at a single central location.
but for a lot of candidates, like a dozen, IRV would be faster to do by hand, but still practical.
>  In real elections, IRV, and Condorcet will have the same results:  The winning candidate will be the one who has the broadest
preferred support.
No, Sennet, that is decidedly false.  This is why i asked you if you really "understand what the difference is between IRV and Condorcet?"  When you make claims like that, it makes me wonder.  It's simply a demonstrably false assertion.
The
Burlington mayoral election in 2009 was a "real election".  Someone **really** got elected to office in that election.
And IRV and Condorcet would have clearly gotten different results in that real election.  The IRV elected Bob Kiss.  And Condorcet would have elected
Andy Montroll.  (And plurality of first-choice votes would have elected Kurt Wright.)  But it is only Condorcet that elects the candidate that is explicitly preferred by voters over every other candidate.

>

> On Friday, May 17, 2019, 11:40:35 AM PDT, robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:

>

>

> hi Sennet,

>

> can we post this to the list?  i didn't wanna do that without your consent.  it's just that maybe we can get someone else besides the two of us to pipe in on the conversation.

>

>

>

> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

> Subject: re Burlington

>

From: "Sennet Williams" <sennetwilliams at yahoo.com>

> Date: Thu, May 16, 2019 8:54 pm

> To: "rbj at audioimagination.com" <rbj at audioimagination.com>

> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

>

>> well, I have no idea what IRV system Burlington used.

>

> it's the same IRV as in every other governmental RCV election except we had 5 ranking levels and 5 candidates.  so no one was "disenfranchised".  you could have ranked the candidates in opposite order of their expost facto popularity, and you would still be able to weigh in
on the IRV final round that actually selects the mayor.
>

> here is an analysis of what went wrong: https://rangevoting.org/Burlington.html

>

> here's another: http://bolson.org/~bolson/2009/20090303_burlington_vt_mayor.html

>

> essentially, we had 4 strong candidates going in.  3 were all plausible winners.  the GOP candidate had the Plurality, the Prog candidate wonthe IRV, and the Dem candidate was the pairwise champion.  the Dem would have beaten **any** other candidate in the IRV final round had he
been able to advance to the final round.  that IRV eliminated him in the semi-final round was the execution of this inherent flaw of IRV.
>

>

>> The problem we have had in SF, Berkeley and Oakland is that each voter can only select three candidates, and the number of exhausted ballots exceeded the winning margin in at least several elections.

>

> yes, that's a known problem with **any** RCV if the number of candidates on the ballotexceeds the number of ranking levels.  you need more ranking levels than 3 and you need stronger (or stricter) ballot access requirements so that fewer candidates get on the ballot and only those that are
plausible winners.  i think 5 levels is enough, and the number of signatures on apetition needed to get on the ballot can be adjusted by law in response to the usual number of candidates that make it onto the ballot.  if there are consistently more names than ranking levels, the
legislative body has the information and the authority necessary to increase the number ofrequired signatures to have candidate access to the ballot.
>

>

>> Most clearly in the Kaplan/Quan/Perata mayor's contest (Oakland''s 1st IRV election)  There were also six "minor" candidates.  Kaplan was  almost surely the most preferred, but Quan gamed the system by mortgaging her house and spending a lot asking casual voters
to"make me 2nd.  The winning margin over Kaplan was very narrow but the number of exhausted ballots was very large because most of the minor candidates were black while none of the big three were.   A lot of people blamed the IRV system for electing Quan, who was
basicallyincompetent, but there has been no serious attempt to repeal IRV.
>

>  

>

> Ranked-Choice Voting will not stop bad politicians that are good salespersons from winning office.  But it is intended to stop spoiler candidates from preventing the candidate with the actual popular supportfrom winning.

>

>

>> When CA gets statewide IRV, we would presumably Maine's system and all counties will be given new equipment so all candidates can be ranked.

>

> In Burlington we didn't need new equipment.  just new software.  the optical-scan machines were the same machines, but they had to beprogrammed slightly differently.

>

> Sennet, do you understand what the difference is between IRV and Condorcet?  What it is that we on the list bitch about regarding IRV.

>

> Our issue is not that we don't like RCV, we **want** Ranked-Choice Voting, we just want the rules reformed so thatthe pairwise champion is always elected.  IRV will do that *most* of the time, but it does not always do that.  and like the Electoral College, when IRV fails to elect who
we all know should have been elected, it never brings legitimacy to the election.  failure to elect the pairwisechampion will only harm voting system reform.
>  

>

>

> --

>

> r b-j                         rbj at audioimagination.com

>

> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

>

>  

>  

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>  

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>  

>
 
 
 


--



r b-j                         rbj at audioimagination.com



"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

 
 
 
 
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