[EM] Election day in Australia

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 05/20/2025 5:50 PM EDT Chris Benham via Election-Methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:
> 
  
>  A good video that I just came across that discusses the history and philosophy and legality of compulsory voting in Australia:
>  
>  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7YJciGycB0
>  

Thanks.  It's that we need to get politicians to listen to the poor and marginalized and they won't if the poor and marginalized don't vote.  That's what I picked up on.  (And that if so few enfranchised voters actually vote, the legitimacy of the elected candidates might be questioned as not really having a majority of support.)

I still think that we have a right to say "I dunno and I don't care."

>  I agree that Condorcet is nice, but not that it is necessary for votes to "count equally". In Hare for example, all voters who choose to rank all the candidates are guaranteed to participate in all the voting rounds with the same weight.
>  

But, again, that doesn't guarantee that all of our votes are counted equally.  Voters for the loser in the Hare IRV final round do not get their second-choice vote counted.  They can't have their first-choice candidate elected and their second-choice vote doesn't count.  That is not equal to those who have had their first-choice candidate eliminated earlier in the IRV process.

For it to be truly equal, it shouldn't make any difference.  A voter should be able to rank their sincere preferences and not worry that they'll regret voting for their first choice because their first choice might lose in the final round and their second-choice vote will never be counted.

If more voters marked their ballots preferring A to B and, at the end of the day (or in Alaska 15 days later), B is elected, the greater number of voters preferring A did not cast votes that were as effective, that counted as much, as the votes from the fewer voters preferring B.

If we have ranked ballots, and the election is spoiled (fails IIA), then some votes were not counted equally to others.  Even if there was no Condorcet winner to elect.  But if the CW exists and is elected, there is no way that anyone can show that votes were not counted equally.

Condorcet is Majority Rule in all election cases except the vanishing few that Arrow says are impossible to get a consistent Majority Rule.

That's my two-cents.

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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