Hello Jameson,<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Jameson Quinn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com">jameson.quinn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Others have already responded to most of your points. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>Walabi got to some of them. But that's it so far...</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
I just wanted to say one thing:<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. <br>
</blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>I am not a big fan of IRV, though I find it better than plurality. Your "improvement", however, would remove its primary selling points. There would be incentives to truncate --- not use lower rankings --- and to bury --- use the lower rankings to dishonestly promote easy-to-beat turkeys. I suspect your proposed system would be opposed by many here as well as by many inside FairVote --- two groups which don't agree on much.<br>
</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: I disagree that there is an incentive to truncate. If one's second and third are comparable in "utility" with one's third then all things considered, one would prefer for either of them to have a better chance of being among the three finalists. </div>
<div>As it is, since only a small fraction of votes get reassigned, many people's second and third choice votes end up not counting at all. And then there's the delays, like the 48 days delay for the statewide judicial election last year. And finally, a lot of the vote counting and tabulating can be done at the precinct level, which has its advantages. </div>
<div><br></div><div>IRV3/AV3 will reduce the number of candidates to 3 on election night and then it'll have the final winner the next day, most of the time. </div><div><br></div><div>It is a hybrid between AV and IRV. As such, if one's preferences are AV>IRV3 then one should expect that IRV3/AV3>IRV3. Or if one prefers IRV3>AV then one would prefer IRV3/AV3>AV. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>
<br></div><div>In general, it is often tempting to "improve" a voting system with ad-hoc extra steps. Doing so successfully isn't impossible, but it is not as easy as it looks.</div></div></blockquote><div>
<br></div><div>It's not ad hoc. It solves a problem. How to expedite the vote-counting process when the number of possible permutations gets unwieldy. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
7. Moreover, I believe that the number of political issues, their complexity, matters of character bound the rationality of voters and make choices among candidates inherently fuzzy options. So there's no cardinal or ordinal utility for any candidate out there and all effective rankings of candidates used to determine the Condorcet Candidate are ad hoc.</blockquote>
<div><br></div></div><div>Yes, I believe that this is true. However, I don't think that you should stop trying to do better just because you'll never attain perfection. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>
It does relativize the importance of debating over single seated elections. What we need much more so is to push for American forms of PR than trying to work out the rankings of single-seat election rules.</div><div><br>
</div><div>Moreover, if we put more of our trust in the politics of Gandhi then it takes the edge off of getting Electoral Reform perfect. We can push to diversify our electoral system by insisting that one election rule does not fit all elections and FPTP is especially inappropriate for "more local" elections that then become rarely ever competitive due to de facto segregation. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="im"><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
8. This is why I believe a lot of the debate over the best single seat election rule is unproductive.<br></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>Again, qualified agreement. I certainly think it's worthwhile to hash out details here, among people with patience for that stuff. And I was the instigator for the collective statement that Richard Fobes linked; so as you can see, I think the best way to avoid wasting time on debate is not to supress it (which doesn't work), but to keep it minimal and in its place.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>sure. I'll be sure to check out your statement. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="gmail_quote">
<div><br></div><div>We can agree to disagree, while agreeing that plurality is the main enemy.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'd go further and argue that the near-exclusive use of FPTP/plurality is the main enemy. </div>
<div><br></div><div>If we introduced American forms of PR into "more local" elections, it would inevitable affect single seat elections for the better, even if FPTP were still in use. It would do this by handicapping the rivalry between the two major parties so that more of their single-seat elecitons became competitive and third parties could exert more potential spoiler influence. This should then give them the leverage to get FPTP replaced in single-seat elections. </div>
<div>dlw </div></div>