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James G-A and others,<br>
I applaud the recent posts in this thread from James Green-Armytage
and John Hodges. I am all for Proportional Representation, and I agree that
it is completely ridiculous for proponents of Approval, IRV and Condorcet
to be in any way publicly getting in the way of each other's reform efforts
(in effect helping Plurality to survive). I have some definite opinions on
the relative merits of several single-winner election methods and I shall
now lay out my case.<br>
For a start I think all good election methods should allow and be
able to handle the voter fully ranking all the candidates. On being offered
a voter's full ranking a method should either respond : <br>
(a) "Fine, I can handle that, that's all I need" (ranked ballot methods
like IRV and Condorcet, and also strictly speaking Plurality).<br>
or<br>
(b) " I will accept that and probably that is all I will be interested
in, but if you care to provide some extra information on how you rate the
candidates then I may have a use for it" (ranked ballot with approval
cutoff, or high resolution ratings ballot)<br>
but NOT<br>
(c) " I can't handle that and I won't accept it. I will only accept
some arbitary number of rankings/grades which is less than the number of
candidates, so you deal with that and then I am going to pretend that this
arbitary number represents your true number of preference levels" (take
a bow, Approval and MCA).<br>
<br>
My three most fundamental standards:<br>
1. Condorcet Loser:<br>
With sincere voting it must not be possible for a candidate to win
which, in pairwise comparisons, every other candidate is prefered by a majority.
Completely unacceptable scenario: A despot supported by only a small proportion
of the population is finally forced to submit to a "free and fair" election.
Lots of candidates stand, everybody votes for their favourite, and the
despot wins. <br>
IRV passes; Plurality fails (spectacularly), and so does Approval
(strictly speaking).<br>
<br>
2. Majority Favourite: <br>
With sincere voting, a single candidate who is the favourite of the majority,
must win.<br>
IRV , Plurality and MCA pass. In my book, Approval doesn't.<br>
<br>
3.Mutual Majority<br>
With sincere voting, if a faction of voters comprisng a majority prefer
a set of candidates over all other candidates, then one of the candidates
in the prefered set must win. <br>
IRV passes; Plurality, Approval and MCA all fail.<br>
<br>
Another important one is:<br>
<br>
4.Monotonicity:<br>
Changing nothing except ranking a candidate higher on some ballots must
never change that candidate from a winner to a loser, and changing nothing
except ranking a candidate lower on some ballots must must never change
that candidate from a loser to a winner.<br>
IRV is "famous" for failing; Plurality, Approval and nearly everything
else passes.<br>
<br>
I am middle-aged and I have lived in Australia all my life, in one of the
majority of States which elects the "lower" house (on which the government
is based) by IRV in single-member disricts. As far as I can tell, noone
even notices that IRV is not monotonic, nor do they notice the small Lesser
of 2 Evils problem. <br>
I might now digress to point out some of the biggest differences between
the political cultures of Australia and the US. One of the two major parties
here is called the Australian Labor Party. It is analogous to the Labour
parties in the Britain and New Zealand.<br>
It was originally started by the trade unions (labour unions), and it
still has links with the trade union bureaucracy. By contrast with the US,
Australian politics has been polarized largely along class lines as pro
and anti Labor. There is more party loyalty than in the US.<br>
Another huge difference is that in Australia voting is compulsory. There
is very little opposition to compulsory voting, and nearly all of that is
seen as coming from self-interested anti-Labor parties. Also in most Australian
IRV elections, voters are legally obliged to put a number in every box.<br>
Voters all either vote sincerely, or they sincerely choose one of the political
parties which is contesting their district and then just copy that party's
"how-to-vote card". Strategic or "tactical" voting is almost unheard of
and doesn't interest anyone. There is a small centre party which in a number
of seats would be the CW, and one of the 2 major parties in some of those
seats might be (based on polls and the results of the previous election)
seen as having no hope of winning. The supporters of that party never think
"Our favourite party can't win this seat, so lets abandon/"betray" our favorite
and try to elect the lesser evil". I would say that those voters who are
interested in elections would nearly all regard it as part of their civic
duty to vote sincerely, and those that aren't interested, aren't interested.
Voters are not just concerned about which or how many seats are won by which
parties, but irrespective of that they are also interested to see their favourite
party get as big a share of the total vote as possible. In the State of South
Australia, where I live, there is an institutional attempted anti-gerrymander.
There used to be a deliberate policy of having fewer voters in the relatively
sparsely populated rural seats, but now that is seen as completely unacceptable
and offending the fundamental principle of "one-vote-one-value".<br>
The Lesser of Two Evils problem.<br>
The vote splitting problem under Plurality has a profound effect on the
nominations. As soon as there are more than two candidates, the L2E problem
becomes painfully obvious, and the door opens for the Condorcet loser. The
individual voter who abandons Lesser Evil frontrunner for no-chance Sincere
Favourite, is faced with the horror of helping Unacceptable frontrunner.
So the elections become like self-fulfilling prophecies: the 2 major parties
are the 2 major parties partly because everyone thinks they are.<br>
In huge contrast to this, L2E only becomes a concern under IRV if there
is a possibility of both of two things happening:<br>
1. Your favourite overtakes Compromise, and then<br>
2. your favourite loses to Unacceptable , when Compromise would have won.<br>
This is never a problem in a 3-candidates election in the situation where
your Favourite and Compromise are close allies, and tightly exchange preferences.
This happens in Australia in some seats: there are two anti-Labor conservative
parties who presently are in federal government as a coalition.<br>
So in my book those despised US IRV advocates who "falsely" claim that IRV
completely gets rid of the L2E problem are only guilty of slight exaggeration.
Moreover it seems to me that CVD is proceeding according to a reasonably
intelligent 2-stage plan.<br>
By far the best and fairest way to open up electoral politics for more parties
is to use PR. Of all the PR systems currently in use around the world, the
one which gives the greatest power and flexibility to the voters is ranked-ballot
STV-PR. The idea is to first introduce the far less radical IRV, which
will result in (a) voters becoming accustomed to a ranked ballot , and (b)
other parties nominating, at least becoming visible and then to start winning
significant (say 10-25%) numbers of votes. Then the stage will be set to
push for STV-PR , and maybe Condorcet for single-winner elections. If Approval
is introduced, then there is a danger that the voters will get too comfortable
with single-member districts, and PR will never be achieved.<br>
So to sum up, Plurality is a completely unacceptable nightmare. In comparison
IRV is not a nightmare and is infinitely better, although certainly flawed
and not as good as Condorcet. Changing from Plurality to IRV is therfore
a very worthwhile reform!<br>
<br>
Chris Benham<br>
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