<div class="gmail_quote"><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>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>
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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>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>
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And very likely any other single-seated election...<br>
It's costly to run an effective multi-seat US Presidential election. This does not deny third parties a constructive role in our political system, however.<br>
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See my response regarding runoffs. Abd also claims that runoffs more often overturn the Plurality ("first round") winner than does IRV.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: I'm in favor of <a href="http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-electoral-college-should-be.html" target="_blank">a three-stage election for the president</a>. I think we could have the first stage could follow the current state primaries(opened to all voters) to determine 6/7 of the 7 finalists, the second stage could have everyone pick their favorite 3 of the 7 finalists so as to choose which 3 of them would go to the third stage at the Electoral College. At the electoral college, three electors from each of the 435 congressional districts in the US would determine the next president of the US. </div>
<div><br></div><div>This would elect a president with broad appeal who will then be sheltered from the partisan rivalry for control of the Senate or House of Representatives. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><br><br></div>dlw:I'm familiar with AV and SV. I've dialogued on these matters at length with Dale Sheldon Hess and Clay/Broken Ladder at my blog. <<a href="http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2010/07/strategic-election-reform-vs-approval.html" target="_blank">http://anewkindofparty.<u></u>blogspot.com/2010/07/<u></u>strategic-election-reform-vs-<u></u>approval.html</a>><div>
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AV and SV are not as great when you relax the assumption of cardinal utility preferences over politicians among voters. As I stated above, I like using a limited form of AV to reduce the number of candidates in IRV3 to three. You'd agree that IRV works far better with 3 than very many candidates?<br>
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I think ranked voting is better than AV and SV because of strategy issues with the former, so I can't really reply to that. However, some cardinal methods resist strategy better than others. Perhaps you would be interested in investigating Majority Judgement or the other median rating based methods? Since the median has a high breakdown point, exaggerated ratings by minorities will affect the outcome less than it will affect Approval or Range/Score.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><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>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>
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<br>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>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>
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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>I disagree. Sure, it's not as bad as plurality, but it is worth avoiding.</div>
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dlw: The real issue with Electoral Reform is a marketing problem, not an analytical problem. FairVote is great at marketing. Most electoral reform experts, including myself, aren't. And, as I stated before, given the fact that we are in a FPTP-dominated political system, there can only be one alternative to FPTP at a time locally. I don't have a problem with that alternative being IRV. It doesn't bother me if IRV isn't self-evidently the best election rule from an analytical standpoint. <br>
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This, to me, feels a bit like the national football (soccer) rules said that all games should be played on a 40% incline, with those who have gathered the most goals in previous matches at the top and the other team at the bottom. Then some marketers come and say that this is obviously unfair and we should play on a 20% incline instead, and they build up a large organization to promote this.<br>
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At some point, someone scratches their heads and say: hey, why do we have to have any incline at all? Can't we be even more fair and play on a flat field, so that the previously-winning team (major party) doesn't have an undue advantage?<br>
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Sure, a 20% grade is more fair than 40%, but we can still do better. A 20% grade (IRV) might still not be enough to give points (victories) to worthy challengers, and it might sour the people on reducing the grade to zero because "we tried that and it didn't change anything".<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: It's easy for you to say we need to push for a completely level playing field, but it's damn hard to get anywhere in a two-party dominated system that's tilting strongly towards becoming single-party dominated. </div>
<div>Politics is the art of the possible. If we make our system into a contested duopoly, it'll go a long ways, especially if we can strongly lower the political acrimony caused by the desires of both major parties to get a permanent majority. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I'd hardly say IRV didn't change anything..., the kicker is to pair it with the use of PR, which is FairVote's position. If neither of the two major parties can dominate then it'd be easier to play them off of each other or to get them both to reposition onto a new political center via major political cultural changes. </div>
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It is true that the flat-fielders have been disorganized, and that's unfortunate, because it diminishes the chance that we will get a level field. May the declaration help in this respect, so that we don't have to settle with "only somewhat less unfair than FPTP".<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw:What we need most is electoral pluralism. We needed that decades/centuries ago. We had more electoral pluralism in ther US in the past (like with the 3-seat cumulative voting in IL from 1870-1980). I believe FairVote can market critical reforms to the US population. I can't say the same thing for folks pitching other alternative election rules and given that our system uses primarily FPTP right now in the US, we can't afford lots of alternatives being on the market. It's too easy for those who benefit from the status quo to divide and conquer us.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Just wait for my vaporware...</div><div><br></div><div>Jameson </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><font color="#888888"><div>dlw </div></font></div><br>
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