[EM] re Burlington

Mon May 20 11:52:59 PDT 2019

"But it is only Condorcet that elects the candidate that is explicitly 
preferred by voters over every other candidate."

I wonder tho, whether that satisfies the requiremant for one candidate 
(of their number) to be prefered over a whole range of candidates?

from
Richard Lung.

On 19/05/2019 01:30, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
> 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>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > 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."
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
>
> r b-j                         rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
> ----
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