[EM] Open letter to STAR voting promoters

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

 >>     In fact, some of us suggested to Richie allowing equal-ranking,
 >>     each vote counted whole, & he immediately refused it.

Although I don't like to agree with what Rob Richie says, he's correct 
in this case.  In other words, I agree this would not be a good change.


 > Maybe. Probably. …but it was suggested because it’s better garbage
 > than ordinary IRV. ... I wouldn’t advocate garbage, but I
 > suggested that garbage to Richie because it’s a
 > “Lesser-Of-2-Garbages”.  ... At least it avoids IRV’s worst.

IRV has two major weaknesses:

* dismissing equal-rank markings

* not eliminating a candidate who is clearly less popular than the 
candidate with the fewest transferred votes.

Both are easy to remedy.

I dislike IRV, yet I find myself supporting it as a stepping-stone to 
better election methods.  That's because a ranked choice ballot is 
better than a STAR ballot, and better than a Score ballot, and better 
than an Approval ballot.


Richard Fobes
the VoteFair guy



On 6/5/2024 7:52 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 5, 2024 at 01:18 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au 
> <mailto:cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au>> wrote:
> 
>     __
> 
>     Mike,
> 
>>     In fact, some of us suggested to Richie allowing equal-ranking,
>>     each vote counted whole, & he immediately refused it.
> 
>     And he was very correct to do so, because the resulting ER-IRV
>     (whole) method is garbage.
> 
> 
> Maybe. Probably. …but it was suggested because it’s better garbage than 
> ordinary IRV.
> 
> I wouldn’t advocate garbage, but I suggested that garbage to Richie 
> because it’s a “Lesser-Of-2-Garbages”.
> 
> At least it avoids IRV’s worst.
> 
> [I don’t have any comments farther down in the text. It’s easier to say 
> that than to delete the unreplied text.]
>