[EM] Better Choices for Democracy

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 06/21/2025 3:49 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us> wrote:
> 
> 
> > If we're gonna "correct" First-Past-The-Post, let's make sure that the correction itself is as correct as it can possibly be
> 
> I, for one, don’t believe in making the perfect the enemy of the good.
> 

The "as correct as it can possibly be" is not perfect.  I acknowledge the existence of Arrow's theorem and of the Condorcet paradox.  Nothing is perfect.

But bad outcomes (such as thwarted majority causing unequal votes and spoiled election that harms voters for voting sincerely which then incentivizes tactical voting) due to unnecessary flaws are less correct than unavoidable bad outcomes.  I, for one, believe in correcting unnecessary flaws.

These unnecessary flaws are a consequence of an RCV method based on the wrong principles, more precisely the lack of principles.  IRV is procedure someone thought up (and Condorcet did 40-some years before Hare and rejected the idea because he knew what could happen) with intent to solve a problem, essentially the spoiler effect (or IIA) when there are three or more candidates.  Hare proposes a method without really telling us what principle the method is based on.  Or, perhaps, Hare thinks that IRV gives voters a second-choice vote if their favorite candidate cannot be elected.  But that's not true.  It never applies to the voters behind the loser in the final round.  Most of the time that doesn't change the outcome of the election, but when it does, it's always bad; spoiled election and all the bad things that come outa that.

So IRV is a procedure without a principle.  It just says "Count the highest-ranked votes for candidates that have not yet been defeated, then defeat the candidate with the least votes.  Rinse and repeat."  That's simple, but not a principle.

Condorcet says "When more voters rank A over B than than to the contrary, B is not elected."  That's also simple.  The procedure is derived from that principle.  The thing that IRV apologists have to justify is why *should* B be elected?  Why is it a good thing that B is elected?  What principle or what public good is it?

--

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

.
.
.