[EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results

[Michael Garman]

Also, the profile of an election is far less important than the frequency
of malfunctions — which, again, is practically nil. The actual results are
far more valuable than theoretical expectations.

On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:24 PM Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us>
wrote:

>
>
> Maine House 2018 with Jared Golden? You can’t just pick and choose “high
> profile” to mean “outlier I want to focus on.”
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
> closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
>>
>> I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
>> pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
>> competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
>> and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
>> Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
>>
>> Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
>> showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
>> (including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
>> race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
>> vote-counting.
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
>> michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in
>>> the NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called
>>> insignificant! Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
>>> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
>>> closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
>>>> hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
>>>> of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly *something*
>>>> fishy going on in that number.
>>>>
>>>> And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
>>>> the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
>>>> by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office *did*
>>>> run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
>>>> the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
>>>> by the nomination stage visible. In the *very first* major election
>>>> with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
>>>> monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
>>>> closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
>>>> all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
>>>> the time.
>>>>
>>>> The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its
>>>> pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope
>>>> of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a
>>>> 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because
>>>> it's just a simple majority vote).
>>>>
>>>> I think this bears repeating: *a low rate of **empirical** pathologies
>>>> is often a negative, not positive, indicator*. If your dataset has no
>>>> examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
>>>> Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
>>>> place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
>>>> Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
>>>> successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
>>>> one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
>>>> us from cycles).
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
>>>> michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've
>>>>> never pretended to.
>>>>>
>>>>> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who
>>>>> view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently
>>>>> preferable to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in
>>>>> favor of preserving FPP.
>>>>>
>>>>> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
>>>>> we'll ever have.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
>>>>> rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
>>>>>> michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
>>>>>> >
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Could work 99.6% of the time.  Or we could revert to FPTP and it
>>>>>> works 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference
>>>>>> occurs in who is elected).  The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad,
>>>>>> yet there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
>>>>>> organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But not interested in correcting their own flaws.  So much so that
>>>>>> they lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
>>>>>> objective failures when they do occur.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4%
>>>>>> of the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable.  But
>>>>>> elections are less important than bridges.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
>>>>>> become important.  The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
>>>>>> because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
>>>>>> bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
>>>>>> favoring a particular side).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
>>>>>> often.  Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
>>>>>> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens.  Like repeal efforts that get
>>>>>> on the ballot.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches?  Or
>>>>>> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You are clearly in the latter group.  You haven't learned yet that
>>>>>> course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
>>>>>> voyage.  We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
>>>>>> evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
>>>>>> the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
>>>>>> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
>>>>>> for adjustment.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
>>>>>> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
>>>>>> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
>>>>>> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
>>>>>> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement.  Right now, with
>>>>>> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
>>>>>> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
>>>>>> of the election.  This is what protects us from some corrupt official
>>>>>> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
>>>>>> Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is.  We need process
>>>>>> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
>>>>>> numbers from the tallies.  We need decentralization and process
>>>>>> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
>>>>>> that accurate tallies were fudged.  We lose all that with Hare RCV.  And
>>>>>> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But you're still in denial.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>> ----
>>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>>>>> list info
>>>>>
>>>>
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