<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/9/22 James Gilmour <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jgilmour@globalnet.co.uk">jgilmour@globalnet.co.uk</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Jameson Quinn > Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:00 AM<br>
<div class="im">> If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially<br>
> politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility<br>
> of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In<br>
> Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a<br>
> relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest<br>
> against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates.<br>
> The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that<br>
> everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other<br>
> extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the<br>
> low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important<br>
> flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner.<br>
<br>
</div>I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at<br>
FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your comment above - the problem of the weak Condorcet<br>
winner. This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to<br>
any reform) and to a sceptical public.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes. I think that your term "weak Condorcet winner" is clearer than my terms "mushy centrist" or "unknown centrist". And I think that a lot of IRV supporters talk about LNH, is actually about this problem.</div>
<div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant preferences) we could have:<br>
35 A>C<br>
34 B>C<br>
31 C<br>
"C" is the Condorcet winner. Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the<br>
electors.<br>
<br>
But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences):<br>
48 A>C<br>
47 B>C<br>
5 C<br>
"C" is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that. But I doubt whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the<br>
electorate, at least, not here in the UK.<br>
<br>
And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the<br>
politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder daily. And the media would be no help - they would<br>
just pour fuel on the flames. The result would be political chaos and totally ineffective government.<br>
<br>
The flaw in IRV is that it can, sometimes, fail to elect the Condorcet winner. But IRV avoids the "political" problem of the weak<br>
Condorcet winner. I suspect that's why IRV has been accepted for many public and semi-public elections despite the Condorcet flaw.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I agree. Let's look how susceptible the good systems are to this flaw:</div>
<div><br></div><div>Approval: Theoretically susceptible. Depends on whether the typical voter will approve a candidate who is in between the two frontrunners. I personally am skeptical that this would be a practical problem, but can cite no direct evidence of that.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Condorcet: Susceptible, especially in margins-based versions. Probably the least susceptible version is Condorcet-Approval(implicit); which, along with its simplicity, is the reason I favor this version.</div>
<div><br></div><div>MJ: Theoretically susceptible, but there is evidence to believe that it is not in practice. If B+L's empirically-based simulations rerunning the 2007 French presidential elections are to be credited, MJ is the least centrist-biased of the good systems (but also less extremist-biased than IRV or Plurality).</div>
<div><br></div><div>Range: Theoretically susceptible, even to the extent of violating the majority criterion. The fact that this is unlikely to be a practical problem is, in my opinion, not going to be enough to assuage voter fears about what can be portrayed as a serious flaw.</div>
<div><br></div><div>SODA: Uniquely unsusceptible among good systems (susceptibility roughly on par with IRV). This is a primary reason I see SODA as the proposal with the best chance of practical implementation over the long term.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Jameson</div></div>