[EM] Poll, preliminary ballots

[Closed Limelike Curves]

Majority rule? Sure (in fact, Condorcet goes by the name "Majority-rule" in
economics literature.) One-person-one-vote? Condorcet is unrelated to that,
and in some cases these outright conflict. Most notably, participation
failures give you cases of one-person-negative-one-votes.

On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 6:23 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:

>
>
> > On 04/21/2024 2:28 PM EDT Richard, the VoteFair guy <
> electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 4/18/2024 12:32 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> > >
> > >  > The payoff is that RCIPE would not have failed in Burlington and
> Alaska!
> > >>  That's huge.
> > >
> > > Any Condorcet method would have that huge payoff.  What "huge" benefit
> > > does RCIPE have that a simpler Condorcet method doesn't have?
> > >
> > > Like Condorcet-Plurality or Condorcet-TTR?
> > >
> > > Or MinMax?
> >
> > Condorcet methods require explaining pairwise comparisons between every
> > candidate and every other candidate.  That's a significant disadvantage
> > for voter education.  And voter understanding.  And voter trust.
>
> Really?
>
> "If more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A over Candidate B
> than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then
> Candidate B should not be elected."
>
> > In contrast, I have never heard anyone claim that a pairwise losing
> > candidate doesn't deserve to be eliminated.
>
> It's not enough insuring that the Condorcet loser loses.
>
> > Regarding the simplicity advantage, the RCIPE (Ranked Choice Including
> > Pairwise Elimination) method only needs two simple sentences added to a
> > well-written IRV law:
> >
> > "Pairwise losing candidates are eliminated when they occur.  A pairwise
> > losing candidate is a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest
> > against every other remaining candidate."
> >
> > Robert, I know you strongly dislike the misrepresentations from the
> > FairVote organization.  I too dislike those misrepresentations.  (I've
> > been hearing them for the three decades since I got the VoteFair domain
> > name.)
> >
> > Yet I do not share your opinion that those misrepresentations justify
> > your low opinion of IRV as being worse than plurality (if I recall your
> > poll ballot correctly).
>
> I have never said that IRV is worse than plurality.  But, because it's so
> hard to change long-standing law, regarding something as fundamental and
> important as how our leaders are elected, I am normally opposed to changing
> from plurality to IRV, because that entrenches IRV further.  IRV is not a
> good stepping stone to Condorcet.  I believe that making course corrections
> early in the voyage is less expensive than making sufficient course
> correction (to get to the same destination) much later.
>
> So, politically, as far as I'm concerned, being for converting from FPTP
> to IRV in any jurisdiction in the U.S. is being *against* converting to
> Condorcet RCV.  I am only *for* converting to Condorcet RCV.  IRV is the
> wrong RCV standard to carve into stone.
>
> And I consider the Precinct Summability issue to be important too.  That
> is something we have right now with FPTP and we lose it if we go to IRV (at
> least for contests that go beyond the first round).  This is a loss of a
> component of process transparency, which to me is as fundamental to keeping
> elections honest.  I don't think we should give up on that property,
> especially when we don't have to with RCV done correctly (Condorcet).  But
> IRV makes us give that up.  I don't want to see any incremental losses to
> process transparency.
>
> I'll repeat something I've said before:
>
> 1. Finite limit to elected terms of office
> 2. Well-warned elections
> 3. Equal and unhindered access of the enfranchised to the vote
> 4. The secret ballot
> 5. Process transparency
> 6. Equality of our vote (One person, one vote), which requires
> 7. Majority rule
>
> These are the fundamental ethical principles on which fair single-winner
> elections are based.  We need all of those things for elections to be what
> they promise to be in participatory democracy.
>
> > Specifically, unlike you/Robert, I see value in these aspects of IRV:
> >
> > * Uses ranked choice ballots (like Condorcet methods, unlike score,
> > unlike Star, unlike Approval)
> >
> > * Eliminating one candidate at a time can work well if the eliminated
> > candidate is really the least popular candidate during that counting
> round.
> >
> > * When a counting round does not include a pairwise losing candidate,
> > eliminating the IRV-based fewest-transferred-votes candidate is a
> > reasonable cycle-resolution method.  In particular it's cloneproof, but
> > without the complexity of the Schulze method.
>
> Seems to me that BTR-IRV would be a lot simpler to explain.  Particularly
> to people who already understand "traditional" IRV.
>
> > So in my opinion, adding the elimination of pairwise losing candidates
> > elevates the resulting method, RCIPE, to the top of my poll ballot.
> >
> > It offers both math advantages and
> > easy-for-voters-to-understand-and-trust advantages.
> >
> > In contrast, most voters don't trust starting with the idea of creating
> > a full pairwise counting matrix and then looking for a candidate who
> > wins every one of their pairwise contests.  That's why Condorcet methods
> > have been so easy for FairVote and other organizations to criticize and
> > dismiss.  And why it's so difficult for us math-savvy experts to explain
> > to non-math folks.
>
> Really?
>
> "If more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A over Candidate B
> than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then
> Candidate B should not be elected."
>
> That's it.
>
> That's how I explain Condorcet to people.  Then I ask them "If more voters
> mark their ballots preferring Candidate A over Candidate B, then why
> *should* B be elected?"
>
> If Candidate B were to be elected, that would mean that the fewer voters
> preferring Candidate B had cast votes that had greater effect, essentially
> had greater value and counted more than those votes from voters of the
> larger set preferring Candidate A.
>
> If our votes are not going to count equally, then I want my vote to count
> more than yours.  If that's unacceptable to you, then let's together insist
> that all of our votes count equally.  Then, in order for that to happen in
> a single-winner race, Majority Rule must be controlling which means "If
> more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A to Candidate B than
> the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate
> B should not be elected."
>
> That's it.  No other rule reflects Majority Rule and One-Person-One-Vote
> better than the Condorcet criterion.
>
>
> --
>
> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
> .
> .
> .
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
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