<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><DIV>From Kathy Dopp's anti-IRV propaganda "report":</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><!--StartFragment -->" 17. Unstable and can be delicately sensitive to noise in the rankings. If an election is not<BR>resolved after 3 rounds of IRV then one is deep in the ranking for many people. This means<BR>noise in the rankings. Do people really study candidates they don't care much about? Thus<BR>the noise in the ranking for the most ill-informed voters is determining the outcome in deep<BR>rank run-offs.<BR>When a race is unresolved after 3 rounds of IRV, a better solution is to hold a real run off<BR>with the remaining candidates. Having winnowed the field, voters can now properly study<BR>their allowed few choices with the required care and presumably enough will to make the<BR>outcome not contingent on noise. Moreover, can you fathom how awful it would be to fill<BR>out a ballot ranking every candidate 10 deep? In Australia, voters are required by law to fill<BR>rank ever candidate running (generally 20) from 1 to 20. Do you think
there is anything<BR>besides noise in the last ten? The saving grace on the Australian ballot is that generally there<BR>are only 2 questions, one with 3 to 4 rankings and one with about 20. Not like our USA<BR>ballots. Restricting the ranking depth of ranked choice ballots could improve IRV methods<BR>by reducing noise and making it easier for voters. "</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>No-one I gather is suggesting that in the US voters should be compelled to fully rank, so all</DIV>
<DIV>this is silly crude stuff.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"In Australia, voters are required by law to fill rank ever candidate running (generally 20) from 1 to 20."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The "generally 20" figure is false. For Australian IRV elections there is rarely more than about</DIV>
<DIV>seven candidates.<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The figure 20 is about right for elections to the Senate, which uses multi-member STV</DIV>
<DIV>(corrupted into a quasi-list system).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Elsewhere in the paper we read that IRV is inadequate because it can't guarantee that the</DIV>
<DIV>winner will be elected with the support of a majority of all the voters who submitted </DIV>
<DIV>valid ballots.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>"Restricting the ranking depth of ranked choice ballots could improve IRV methods<BR>by reducing noise and making it easier for voters."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But Kathy favours "restricting ranking depth" which of course has the effect of making</DIV>
<DIV>this avowed aim much less likely.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And of course restricting ranking doesn't "make it easier for voters". If truncation is allowed,</DIV>
<DIV>how could it? </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In fact it just makes it harder for some voters. Say there are many candidates and I judge<BR>that 2 of them are the front-runners, I have a preference between them but they are my</DIV>
<DIV>2 least favourite candidates. I am stuck with the same dilemma and strong incentive to use<BR>the Compromise strategy that I have in FPP. To have some hope of having an impact on</DIV>
<DIV>the result I must insincerely rank my preferred front-runner above second-bottom.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Chris Benham</DIV></div><br>
<hr size=1>
Start at the new Yahoo!7 for a better online experience - <a href="http://au.rd.yahoo.com/mail/taglines/au/y7mail/default/*http://au.docs.yahoo.com/somethingwonderful/index.php?p1=brand&p2=other&p3=au&p4=tagline" target=_blank>Start Here</a>.</body></html>