[EM] Better Choices for Democracy

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 06/24/2025 2:34 PM EDT Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km-elmet at munsterhjelm.no> wrote:
> 
>  
> On 2025-06-24 19:49, robert bristow-johnson via Election-Methods wrote:
> 
> > I think the simplest augmentation to IRV that makes it Condorcet is
> > BTR-IRV.
> > I used to sorta like this method since it was a Condorcet-consistent 
> > "single-method system" and is the least possible modification to
> > Hare IRV.  But I have since become convinced from state legislators
> > and the legislative counsel (these are the lawyers employed by the
> > state legislature that assist legislators in writing law) that "the
> > law should say what it means and mean what it says".  So we're doing
> > a "two-method system"; straight-ahead Condorcet and a "completion
> > method" to deal with the contingency that there is no Condorcet
> > winner.  That is simple and straight-forward code and everyone can
> > see, simply, what the intent of the law is and how it pans out in
> > unusual situations.
> 
> What do you mean by that "the law should say what it means and mean what 
> it says"?

This is how I interpreted it when this was said to me by my state rep and the legislative counsel.  This is as pertains to this bill, (which went nowhere, unfortunately) in the previous legislature: https://legislature.vermont.gov/Documents/2024/Docs/BILLS/H-0424/H-0424%20As%20Introduced.pdf 

Now, the sponsors of the bill (both state reps in my district, which is in Burlington Vermont, the city with an infamous IRV failure to elect the CW in 2009) understood that we were proposing Condorcet RCV and also to make sure that ballots are tabulated locally, at the polling place.  Those were the two principal purposes of this bill.  So then, of course, the question was *which* Condorcet method and how will the actually legislative language be drafted?

We were looking at BTR-IRV as one possibility, simply because everyone knew about IRV and this was the simplest modification to IRV that people were familiar with.  There were two problems, we could still get pairwise tallies that are summable to see who the CW is, but the BTR-IRV method didn't rely on all of these tallies but *only* the pair tallies for the bottom-two candidates in each elimination round.  And, it seemed to the lawyer (the legislative counselor) and the state rep that this language was an "end-around" to sorta disguise or obscure the true purpose of the bill and that people will trust our intentions more if we just say clearly what it is we want to accomplish.

What we want is the Condorcet criterion to be adhered to whenever possible and when it cannot, the simplest and fair resolution to the election that most people, as a whole, would accept is fair and makes sense.  This basically told us that we needed to codify the straight-forward "two-method system" Condorcet language and put in a good completion method that is easy to understand and to sell to other policy makers:

§ 2691d. RANKED-CHOICE VOTING SYSTEM; IMPLEMENTATION
   (a) Implementation. A town, city, or village that has adopted the ranked choice voting system pursuant to section 2691b of this title shall implement its elections of candidates running for single-seat offices in that town, city, or village in accordance with this section.
   (b) Tabulation at polling places. All elections using the ranked-choice voting system shall be tabulated at polling places by the presiding officer.
   (c) Initial tabulation. Upon tabulation of the ballots, if a candidate receives a majority of first-ranked preferences, that candidate is declared the winner of the election.
   (d) Additional tabulation.
        (1) Upon tabulation of the ballots, if no candidate receives a majority of first-ranked preferences, the ballots shall be tabulated again by paired comparison and examining every possible paired comparison. In each paired comparison, the presiding officer shall note the winning candidate in each paired comparison or if there is instead a tie. 
        (2) Condorcet winner. If a candidate is the winning candidate in every paired comparison, the candidate shall be declared the winner of the election.
        (3) No Condorcet winner. If there is no candidate who is the winning candidate in every paired comparison, then the candidate having the plurality of first-ranking preferences is declared the winner.

Earlier in the bill they define what a "paired comparison" is.  We started to get a little hesitant to make it too complicated and we settled on Condorcet-Plurality.  But, if we do this again, I will try to persuade the sponsoring rep to do it a little better (Condorcet-TTR):

        § 2691d (d)(3)  No Condorcet winner.  If there is no candidate who is the winning candidate in every paired comparison, then the winning candidate of the paired comparison involving the two candidates having the most first-ranking preferences is declared the winner.

This is what we got to, to spell out to everyone in the room, in simple and plain English, what the proposed legislation is meant to accomplish.  This is what they meant when they told me that "the law should simply say what it means and mean what it says."  If it were Schulze or even Ranked Pairs, that language would be unclear to most people reading it what, in principle, the legislation is intended to accomplish.  (Sorry Markus, sorry Nic.)  Perhaps Minimax could suffice for legislative language. 

> Consider a method like IRV. Procedurally, it is simple: repeatedly 
> eliminate the Plurality loser until someone has a majority.

Of course, sometimes that doesn't happen.  This is one of FairVote's lies.  48% is no majority.

> ... But in 
> practice, it can exhibit chaotic behavior, nonmonotonicity, and so on. 
> How its procedure works doesn't seem to tell you much about how it behaves.
> 
> So if IRV is the standard, then the required connection between what the 
> law says (the procedure it defines) and what it means (what happens as a 
> consequence) doesn't seem very strict, and it doesn't seem like BTR-IRV 
> would be any worse in that respect.

I agree with all of that, but I read that as a problem for IRV.  The technical thing that we want RCV to do for us is to prevent the Spoiler Effect by granting to voters that their 2nd-choice vote will be counted in lieu of their 1st-choice when their 1st-choice candidate is defeated.

Ostensibly IRV appears to do that, but it really doesn't.  IRV does *not* grant to the voters primarily supporting the loser in the IRV final round, their 2nd-choice vote.  Their 1st-choice candidate is defeated, but their 2nd-choice vote is *not* counted.  (Usually, not counting those particular 2nd-choice votes makes no difference in the outcome of the election, but it certainly *does* make a difference when the CW is eliminated before the final IRV round.)

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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