[EM] Countering FairVote propaganda on Wikipedia

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 03/16/2024 3:45 PM EDT Closed Limelike Curves <closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> If y'all want to understand why FairVote has been so successful, the most widely-read Wikipedia pages on voting systems+theory are all extremely soft on IRV/Hare for a system with so many pathologies.
> 
>   1. "Comparison of electoral systems" is a complete mess. ~0 help to anyone who wants to understand which systems are better or worse.
>   2. Tables, charts, etc. provide information overload with tons of columns but ~0 information on how common these failures are. Most people would think twice about Hare if they knew it has even more pathologies than FPP (under impartial culture, when counting monotonicity and participation failures).
>   3. The "Criticism" section under IRV has zero criticism except from right-wing nutjobs saying it's a way to rig elections. None of the major problems with IRV (monotonicity, frequent spoiler effects) are mentioned in the lead at all.

I think the section "Pathologies of IRV" in the IRV article should be scrutinized and possibly corrected.  It says...

"Systems which fail Condorcet but pass mutual majority can exclude voters outside the mutual majority from the vote, essentially becoming an election between the mutual majority.[citation needed] IRV demonstrates this exclusion of up to 50 percent of voters, notably in the 2009 Burlington mayoral election where the later rounds became a runoff between the mutual majority of voters favouring Andy Montroll and Bob Kiss. This can recurse: if a mutual majority exists within the mutual majority, then the majority becomes a collegiate over the minority, and the inner mutual majority solely decides the votes of this collegiate."

Is the description about Burlington 2009 accurate?  I am not sure exactly what is meant by "mutual majority of voters".  The paragraph sounds very wonky.


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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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