<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 12:12 PM, 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;">
<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"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div><div>dlw: too much pluralism can make it hard to make needed changes. You need leadership to make changes. If the ruling coalition shifts often then it's hard to follow through with changes. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>JQ:That's a feature of parliamentary systems. The US has a directly-elected president, and also lacks the party discipline to have meaningful "governing coalitions". True party-line votes are rare.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlwIn the past, there was intra-party discipline in the US. An unintended consequence of the CFR enacted in the mid 70s and the emergence of primaries has been to make our system way too entrepreneurial. </div>
<div><br></div><div> My point is that if we handicap the rivalry between the two major parties through the use of American forms of PR for "more local" elections then we should be able to restore intra-party discipline. </div>
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<br>KM:If anything, I would say that the party political system here (which is more fluid than the one in the US) is still quite hierarchical, and that one could go to a system without parties (like demarchy or Gohlke's Practical Democracy) without losing order amid change.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>dlw: I think it's okay for both major parties to be hierarchical, to have intra-party discipline, so long as neither can dominate the other and there are other meaningful options available for voters. </div>
<div>I think we can trust in the politics of Gandhi/MLKjr (and hopefully #OWS) more so for the crucial sorts of changes needed. </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>JQ: Trust but aid. A citizen movement can accomplish things even in a monarchy, but in a system which empowers them more, they will accomplish more.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: Aye, but if we're putting most of our chips on the politics of Gandhi then we can afford to be pragmatic, rather than perfectionistic, wrt electoral reform. </div><div><br>
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<div class="gmail_quote"><div>dlw: I have read about majority judgement. I think it's very good for a country that has a strong cultural agreements about what is to be expected for their leaders. And so I'd have no problem with its use in France or Scandinavia. </div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>In MJ, the only meaningful cultural agreement you need is the "grading curve", not the underlying meaning of that. If a majority can agree that ~10% of the candidates are "A+", ~20% are "A", etc., it does not matter that these grades refer to entirely different qualities in entirely different candidates.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: It's been a little while since I read Majority Judgement by Balinski and Laraki and so my thoughts/intuition here is rusty. The typical comparsion is with wines, I believe. There may be objective qualities, but their relative import is un question du gout.</div>
<div>But I believe MJ works best when there's a strong plurality of cultural judgements about what's important. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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KM:As for IRV, I don't know. IRV3 still can exhibit nonmonotonicity, Condorcet failure, reversal non-symmetry, etc. </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
The "viable third party" problem that makes it risky to do IRV in certain situations like Burlington also shows up even with only three candidates - if those three are from different parties. If the third party candidate is weak, IRV is essentially spoiler-free, but if the third party candidate grows stronger, the order of eliminations can switch to one that elects the second best winner instead of the best, and where voting for the best candidate only moves the method further into not-best territory. It doesn't have to be like this.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: I think more practically that IRV3/AV3(uses a limited form of AV to get three finalists) enforces the maintenance of a two-party dominated system. It also tends to be somewhat incumbent friendly. This makes it easier for it to get adopted by legislators, who mostly are going to be incumbents. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Most of the features mentioned above may happen, but they don't happen that often and their practical consequences aren't that great when we consider that parties can and do change(for worse or better) and that the best way to change things is to move the center via the politics of Gandhi/MLKjr/#OWS.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>JQ:You're saying that the practical consequences of spoiled elections aren't that great? Do you remember the rancor between Democrats and Greens after 2000? Not to mention the result itself...</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: Over time, with IRV and a dynamic center(and consequently two more dynamic major parties), the consequences wouldn't be that great </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<br>KM:You can see this for yourself by tinkering with Ka-Ping Yee's 1D Gaussian visualization. If you use three candidates and have two of them far away from the middle, IRV acts like you would expect. Move the red and yellow closer to the middle green, though, and on the IRV line, an island of yellow suddenly appears. Tinker further and the island has both yellow and red on it. I've attached an example of this.</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>dlw: I've seen that before. Like I said, if the center is dynamic and so are the two biggest party, it's not that big of a deal... </div></div></blockquote><div><br></div></div><div>JQ:I disagree. Sure, it's not as bad as plurality, but it is worth avoiding.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Why? The location of parties is dynamic/endogenous and so static models are always incomplete and rarely dispositive of the matter. This comes down to whether it's desirable or not to continue a two-party dominated ssytem. And I think that's a matter of political culture.... I happen to think that two major parties is preferable to two coalitions of parties. </div>
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<br></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div><div>Just wait for my vaporware...</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Sure, but keep your day job. There's serious economies of scale in peddling electoral reforms to the masses who are ignorant on the complex subject.</div>
<div>dlw </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>Jameson </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div><br></div><font color="#888888"><div>dlw </div></font></div><br>
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