[EM] Expert report reveals weaknesses of RCV | The Maine Wire

[Forest Simmons]

I was hoping readers would consult the thread that I mentioned to see the
context ... what are the perceived concerns of small town voters ... their
psychological barriers to acceptance of anything more complicated than FPP
elections?

As I mentioned in previous posts in this thread (Yes/?/No) none of the
typical small town objections have anything to do with actual method
defects ... which of Arrow's axioms or which of Woodall's conditions might
be violated. Small town complaints are totally about what seem like trivial
concerns to EM list readers.

But if we want to get anything better than FPP adopted, we cannot just say
"people
 like that are too stupid to vote," as at least one comment put it.

The one thing I hear over and over when I ask students (after three weeks
of studying mathematics of social choice), "Which is your favorite of all
the election methods that we have studied?" ... "My favorite is Majority
Rule, because that's Democracy!"

Help!

Aussies are not allowed to truncate their rankings ... such a ballot cannot
be accepted .. because of the Majority fetish.  Hence the use of "candidate
cards" and voting "the party line" which can be done without actually
copying the party ranking into your ballot.

Which brings us to the main problem that we ignore at our peril ... voters
do not consider rankings to be voter friendly .. something Charles Dodgson
pointed out in 1884. His solution was what we now call Asset Voting.  Steve
Eppley's solution is what we call VPR ... Vote a Published Ranking which
automates copying candidate cards for those who feel a need for that
service.

Most people, even educated people, are not familiar with these (and other)
voter friendly solutions to the wasted vote/ spoiler problem.

So let's spread the word!

Thanks for your input and enthusiasm!








On Tuesday, November 17, 2020, Greg Dennis <greg.dennis at voterchoicema.org>
wrote:

> The Maine Wire? That's an outlet of an outlet highly partisan, right-wing
> think tank that believes RCV is bad for conservatives. I don't think you'll
> find good faith arguments there.
>
> It talks about the number of voters that did not "fully participate" under
> RCV, which is defined as "ranking at least all but one candidate." So by
> this definition, a Maine voter that ranked Biden first and then no one else
> would have not "fully participated," even though there was no question that
> their ballot would make it to the final round? That's not a useful measure.
>
> I think a relevant measure is what fraction of voters ultimately expressed
> a preference between the two frontrunners. and RCV (regardless of what you
> think of it in relation to other methods), was a clear improvement in that
> regard.
>
> Greg
>
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