<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><BR>> Forest,<BR>> "The voter ranks all she wants to and the remaining candidates <BR>> are ranked (later, i.e. below) by the voter's <BR>> favorite or perhaps, as Steve Eppley has suggested, by the <BR>> voter's specified public ranking. <BR>> <BR>> Since IRV satisfies LNH, what's the harm in this?".<BR>> The harm is that voter's votes are used to help candidates that <BR>> the voters may not wish to help.<BR>> It offends the principle that the voter should be fully in <BR>> control of his/her vote.<BR>> Giving some voters (candidates) the power to fully control their <BR>> own vote and also to complete the rankings of some of the truncators </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">> offends the principle that as far as possible all voters should have equal power.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><BR>Forest Simmons wrote (Wednesday, 16 July, 2008 ):<BR><BR>"This is easy to fix: just make it optional.<BR><BR>> "In Australia, where (in single winner elections) most of the <BR>> voters copy candidate cards, this would save <BR>> them a lot of bother."<BR>> In Australia the only significant "bother" stems from compulsory <BR>> full strict ranking (for the vote to be<BR>> counted as valid). <BR><BR>Suppose that compulsory ranking were removed. In the multi-winner case, "above the line" voting would <BR>still be a great practical help. Help me find the best single winner analog of "above the line" voting."</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Why are we talking about the "multi-winner case"? "Above the line" voting should be abolished. Yes, in</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">the multi-winner case it is of some "practical help" to voters who are happy to follow their favourite's </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">ranking advice, probably more-or-less mindlessly and even blindly. Why should those voters be</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">privileged (compared with those that don't)? </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 multi-winner STV races, normally the candidates of the same party are grouped together on the</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">ballot paper under the name of the party. It isn't that difficult to find them and number them in order of</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">preference. The STV algorithm can readily handle truncation.<BR><BR>> <BR>> <BR>> >This particular horrible idea would create a strong incentive <BR>> >for the major power-brokers to sponsor the nomination of a <BR>> > lot of fake candidates just to collect votes for one or other<BR>> >of the major parties.<BR>> <BR>> "Am I mising something here?"<BR>> Yes, but I'm not sure exactly what.<BR><BR>"Why do you think parties would run fake candidates?".</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Suppose there are two big front-runners A and B, and no-one has any doubt that all and any other</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">candidates will be eliminated before these two. In Australia the voters' big-2 pairwise preference</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">is called the "2-party preferred vote".</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Now, sticking with your original compulsory "ballots completed by voter's favourite" proposal,</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">supporters of A have incentive to nominate a candidate F who will attract truncating voters who</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">would otherwise not vote for A. Note I didn't say "parties", I said "powerbrokers". It doesn't</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">work so well if F is clone-like similar to A, because then the people who would vote for F</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">probably would have voted directly for A anyway, and those that would stay home or vote </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">for B because they're not impressed with A wouldn't likely want to vote for F.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">F is a fake candidate who may pretend to be hostile to A and closer to B, but F's only purpose</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">is to be eliminated and then hand his/her truncated votes to A.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Juho has pointed out that something like this was a problem in Fiji IRV elections. In Australian</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">multi-winner STV elections, the combination of compulsory voting, very easy mark-one-box</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">above-the-line voting and very difficult below-the-line compulsory full strict ranking, create incentive</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">for the nomination of fake micro-parties with often misleading party-names on the ballot paper</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">just to gather a few extra preferences for one of the competitive parties.<BR><BR><BR> <BR>> I'm not impressed with embracing some evil definites in exchange <BR>> for some vague "mights".<BR><BR>This thread is an appeal to brainstorm, not a finished proposal.<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 <BR>> Voting."<BR>> To the extent that that is true it can (and should) be fixed by <BR>> simply allowing truncation.<BR><BR>Warren's page on the subject <BR><BR><A href="http://www.rangevoting.org/AusAboveTheLine07.html" target=_blank>http://www.rangevoting.org/AusAboveTheLine07.html</A><BR><BR>gives the impression that allowing truncation would not fix the problem. It is most clear in the multi-<BR>winner
case, but the same psychology applies in the single winner case."</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 certainly didn't get that impression from reading it.<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>> The short answer is because IRV isn't really amenable to <BR>> "tweaks". <BR><BR>"How about if the only tweaks are to facilitate the gathering of voter preferences in a way that makes it <BR>easier for the voters to vote?"</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Maybe something technical like the voter can fill out a "ballot" at home, take it to</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">the polling booth where a machine scans it and copys it and then prints out an official</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">ballot and the voter's receipt.<BR><BR>> In terms of positive criterion compliances it isn't dominated by any other method, <BR>> and has both good and quite bad properties (averaging in my judgement to a "good" method). <BR>> "Tweaks" generally muck up its good properties without enough compensation in terms of <BR>> fixing or patching up its bad properties.<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">> I think Smith (or Shwartz),IRV is quite a good Condorcet method. It completely fixes the<BR>> failure of Condorcet while being more complicated (to explain and at least sometimes to<BR>> count) than plain IRV, and a Mutual Dominant Third candidate can't be successfully buried.<BR><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>> <BR>> "It is better than FPP in some ways and worse in others, <BR>> especially in complexity."<BR>> With separate paper ballots for each race, I don't accept that <BR>> IRV is all that "complex".<BR>> I think that you have somewhat dodged my question.<BR><BR>"It doesn't seem too complex to you, but how about to the
voters in public elections? Most of the ordinary <BR>voters that I have talked to agree with Lewis Carroll. They would rather not have to fill out rankings."<BR></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Truncation should be allowed, so no-one has to "fill out rankings" if they don't want to.</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif"> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 13px; FONT-FAMILY: arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Chris Benham<BR><BR></DIV></DIV></div><br>
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