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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">At 02:01 AM 7/13/2008, Chris Benham wrote:<BR>>Forest,<BR>>"The voter ranks all she wants to and the remaining candidates are <BR>>ranked (later, i.e. below) by the voter's favorite or perhaps, as Steve </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>Eppley has suggested, by the voter's specified public ranking.<BR>><BR>>Since IRV satisfies LNH, what's the harm in this?".<BR>><BR>>The harm is that voter's votes are used to help candidates that the <BR>>voters may not wish to help.It offends the principle that the voter should </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>be fully in control of his/her vote. Giving some voters (candidates) the </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>power to fully control their own vote and also to complete the rankings of </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>some of the truncators offends the principle that as far as possible all voters </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>should have equal power.<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote (Monday, 14 July, 2008) :<BR><BR>"First of all, if we are talking about elections of representatives of <BR>some kind, the voter isn't going to be "in full control of his/her <BR>vote" no matter what. At the point of the election, or later, when <BR>the representative casts votes, individual control is lost."</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">I'm afraid this is a typical bit of sophist blather from Abd. The type</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">of office that the election is for is completely irrelevant to the issue </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">of whether or not voters in that election are fully in control of their</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">votes in that election. <BR><BR>"The equal power issue is spurious. The voting power is in the hands <BR>of those who cast ballots, originally, and they may choose to <BR>delegate that power or not. More about this below. The original <BR>"candidate proxy" or "Asset Voting" proposal was actually an STV <BR>proposal by Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Dodgson, in 1994."</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">In the proposal from Forest Simmons that I was addressing, the only</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">way a voter could choose not to "delegate that power" is to fully rank.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Any truncated ballots would be filled by the voter's voted favourite.<BR><BR>>"In Australia, where (in single winner elections) most of the voters <BR>>copy candidate cards, this would save them a lot of bother."<BR>><BR>>In Australia the only significant "bother" stems from compulsory <BR>>full strict ranking (for the vote to be counted as valid). How many <BR>>or few voters choose to exercise their right to not follow their favourite's<BR>>ranking advice is no argument for removing that right.<BR><BR>"Compulsory full ranking, Dodgson noted, was a problem for voters who <BR>may not be sufficiently informed to understand how to rank *all* <BR>candidates. Obviously, full ranking only works when candidate count <BR>is limited, and even then donkey voting seems to be fairly common. It <BR>would be interesting to see statistics on straight sequence voting
<BR>(which wouldn't be visible in Australian results because of Robson <BR>Rotation, one would have to look at actual ballots or true ballot images.)"<BR><BR>Robson Rotation isn't used in any Australian IRV elections. As far as I</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">know it is only used in STV elections for multi-member districts in the </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">state of Tasmania and in the Australian Capital Territory.<BR><BR>> > And what do you have in mind as "Australia's worst problems<BR>> > with their version of IRV"?<BR>><BR>>"It has degenerated into a defacto second rate version of Asset Voting."<BR>>To the extent that that is true it can (and should) be fixed by <BR>>simply allowing truncation.<BR><BR>That is done in Queensland and NSW, it's called "Optional <BR>Preferential Voting," but, of course, in that there is no remedy for <BR>ballot exhaustion.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">"Ballot exhaustion" isn't a problem, so doesn't need a "remedy".<BR><BR><BR>><BR>> > Why do you want to "stop" IRV? Do you agree with Kathy Dopp<BR>> > that IRV is worse than FPP?<BR>><BR>>"I would stop IRV if we could get a better method in its place.<BR>><BR>>If we cannot stop IRV, why not search for acceptable tweaks that <BR>>would improve it?"<BR>><BR>>The short answer is because IRV isn't really amenable to "tweaks". </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>In terms of positive criterion compliances it isn't dominated by any other </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>method, and has both good and quite bad properties (averaging in my judgement </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>to a "good" method). "Tweaks" generally muck up its good properties </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>without enough compensation in terms of fixing or patching up its bad properties.<BR><BR>Problem is that the "good" property, Later No Harm, is actually a <BR>*terrible* property, see Woodall's original paper that coined the term.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Abd, thanks for the exact reference.<BR><A href="http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/UN16SP5h2KfHUAJcGXRtesX3hXxYWb9jBDf0yhOsY3xRy2NwboQ4Of2Ky67hAOHsd0xJ9c6iTYK1qZzZzVyKmJLN1lN_SFM/wood1994.pdf">http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/UN16SP5h2KfHUAJcGXRtesX3hXxYWb9jBDf0yhOsY3xRy2NwboQ4Of2Ky67hAOHsd0xJ9c6iTYK1qZzZzVyKmJLN1lN_SFM/wood1994.pdf</A></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">In that paper there is nothing but a reference to the fact that "not everyone agrees" </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">that it is desirable. </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Also, note that I wrote "properties" plural. <BR><BR><BR>"There are other possible tweaks: for example, allow multiple votes in <BR>each rank."</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Abd, as I've pointed out to you before this just makes IRV much more</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">vulnerable to Pushover strategy.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> <BR>>I think Smith (or Shwartz),IRV is quite a good Condorcet method. It <BR>>completely fixes the failure of Condorcet while being more complicated </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">>(to explain and at least sometimes to count) than plain IRV, and a Mutual Dominant <BR>>Third candidate can't be successfully buried.<BR>>But it fails Later-no-Harm and Later-no-Help, is vulnerable to Burying strategy, fails<BR>>mono-add-top, and keeps IRV's failure of mono-raise and (related) vulnerability to<BR>>Pushover strategy.<BR><BR>"Once again, LNH compliance is a mark against a method, in my view, <BR>and apparently in the view of at least one of Woodall's referees. <BR>It's the kind of thing that sounds good, until the implications for <BR>democratic process are considered. It treats signaling a possible <BR>compromise as a weakness. Only compromise if you are going to die <BR>otherwise, would be the equivalent. In order to avoid "betraying" a <BR>favorite by making it possible for our total vote to help someone <BR>else to win, we choose a
method, if we insist on LNH, that kills the <BR>candidate, instead of leaving the matter open for a broader <BR>determination. That eliminated candidate, my favorite, might have won <BR>if not for the LNH compliance of the method."</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Abd seems to wrongly assume that LNHarm is only met by methods that eliminate</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">candidates and is incompatible with Favourite Betrayal. MinMax(Pairwise</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Opposition) meets both.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><A href="http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/#methmmpo">http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/#methmmpo</A><BR><BR>"Further, LNH cannot be satisfied by any method that requires a <BR>majority, unless the majority is artificially created, either by <BR>eliminations *of votes* or by requiring full ranking, which amounts <BR>to coerced votes."</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Something like that might be true, but the phrase "requires a majority"<BR>doesn't really mean anything.<BR><BR>Chris Benham<BR><BR></DIV></DIV></div><br>
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