<div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>From: Jameson Quinn <<a href="mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com">jameson.quinn@gmail.com</a>><br>
To: EM <<a href="mailto:election-methods@lists.electorama.com">election-methods@lists.electorama.com</a>><br>Cc: <br>Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2012 16:25:26 -0600<br>Subject: Re: [EM] not fair.<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
2012/2/3 David L Wetzell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wetzelld@gmail.com" target="_blank">wetzelld@gmail.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
[sarcasm]Thanks for the constructive criticism of the model building process.<div><br></div><div>I'm so sorry I haven't had as many pseudo-experimental models to buttress my args on this list. They so commonly shed so much light on the matter, it's no wonder you all agree on so much...[/sarcasm]</div>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>We actually do agree on a lot. We talk about the stuff we don't agree on.</div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: 4 electoral rules in your consensus statement is not a lot of agreement. </div>
<div>You're going back and forth on Approval vs Condorcet. I believe I can get some amens from some of our less techie readers here that it's rather bewildering for them. </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><div>Once again, you're the one w.o. any institutional backing.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>OK, I'll go back to writing the voting server for Ubuntu then.</div></div></blockquote><div><br>
</div><div>If political voting rules were only like such... </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>Seriously, you can do better than sarcasm. I think "simplify, simplify, simplify" is in fact very constructive feedback on model-building. It's exactly what I want to hear when I'm doing it.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: I said there were parts that I could leave out. </div><div>I'd rather start w. the whole and then drop feature by feature to see what's driving the results. </div><div>
It's something I learned in a Computer Science course I took as an undergrad. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div class="gmail_quote">
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div> I'm the guy defending a modified version of the status quo single-winner electoral alternative. The burden of proof is on you more so than me, simply because the amount of time/energy spent educating folks about IRV is o.w. a sunk cost that will likely have to be repeated if we theoretically were to start over again.</div>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes. What percent of US voters understand IRV? (Even if I substituted "US" with "Cambridge" or "SF", I doubt you'd reach even half.) The sunk cost is trivial relative to the size of the task.</div>
</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Among progressive/centrist activists who are the movers and shakers of the US's democracy, there's a lot higher understanding of IRV. </div><div><br></div><div>dlw</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><div>dlw<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Jameson Quinn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com" target="_blank">jameson.quinn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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Please, stop talking, and start calculating. If you're not ready to calculate, then at least stop arguing with us, and start arguing with the fuzzy beast, until you are.<div><br></div><div>Jameson<br><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">
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2012/2/3 David L Wetzell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wetzelld@gmail.com" target="_blank">wetzelld@gmail.com</a>></span><br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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dlw: When you try out a new piece of technology, you can't expect to get it right right away. A democracy is a function of both the rules and people's habits. If GOPers had seen that their party couldn't win then some of them wd've voted Dem first and the CW wd have won....<br>
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David! That's the point! That's the problem! IRV promised that you could vote for your favorite candidate and that would not help elect your least favorite. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: They promised it to those who had to vote strategically way too often with FPTP. They did not promise it was always true. </div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">it explicitly failed to do that on the second try. In this town that, at least 3 years ago, had 3 major parties (so the spoiler wasn't some kinda Ron Paul or Ralph Nader gadfly who had no hope of election but could still rob victory from the majority candidate). In the context where the 3 (or more) candidates are *all* plausible, Condorcet would have elected a candidate where, by definition, no other candidate was preferred over this CW and, at least in the Burlington 2009 example, would not have suffered spoiler, punishment for sincere voting, non-monotonicity, and non-summability/transparency.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: non-monotonicity is not at fault here, unless you expect a large no. of GOP supporters to have a huge change of heart to support the Prog party first....Neither was there a problem with summability/transparency...</div>
<div><br></div><div>And how do you know there wouldn't be other foibles that emerge as folks got adjusted to a Condorcet method? </div><div><br></div><div>Perhaps the number of candidates would proliferate so much that it'd be a vote-counting nightmare...</div>
<div><br></div><div>At the end of the day, 3-way competitive elections for single-seat positions are hard to sustain. IRV wd have made the parties around the true center be the major parties. Now, it seems that won't be the case...</div>
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<br>rbj: It *failed*, David. (but it still beats Plurality and, unfortunately the voters of Burlington, who adopted IRV by 65% in 2005, tossed the baby out with the bathwater in 2010 and *really* did in 2011 when they rejected the 50% threshold.)</blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>dlw: Depends on your loss-function and whether you take a single-period or multi-period assessment of the outcomes. </div><div>I refuse to accept a pass-fail assessment of IRV wrt Burlington. It's not appropriate. It's playing into the hands of the opponents of electoral reform by repeating their frames. </div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">rbj: now, elections are something that we (any particular group of people) do not do every day. it's not like you got your iPhone or iPad and it worked the day you bought it, and had trouble the second day, but you are willing to see how well it works the next day. it's more like a high-rise building technique or bridge-building technique (e.g. Tacoma Narrows Bridge). if you use some new technique and it fails the first time you use it, you better believe there will be hesitation and controversy the next time its use is proposed. and very similar if it happens the second use.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>It depends on the severity of the loss. You are exaggerating the practical bads of the election of a non-CW somewhat left of the CW. </div><div>Micronumerosity says we got to not draw strong conclusions from very limited use of something new. It tells us we need to turn away from our fallen human natures driven by our fears. </div>
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<br>rbj: on the other hand, if the technique was used 50 times before it failed, you would more likely look at the failure as a fluke or outlier. elections happen once or twice a year (if you're politically active, if you're not it's more like once in four years) and their consequences are significant, in some cases worse than a building collapse. <br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: Once again, assess the "damage" and take the longer view of how this will play into the next election. If IRV had been continued the Prog candidate wd have moved to the right some to woo Democrats so the outcome wd have been preferred by most people. </div>
<div><br></div><div>"a failure that occurs so soon after adoption might very well be an indication of something systemic, not just an outlier."</div><div><br></div><div>dlw: It ain't necessarily so... and you got to consider the relative import of type one vs type two errors. A sample of type 2 is not going to be powerful and when you try to make it powerful, you increase the likelihood of a type one error, ending the use of a good election rule before it had a chance to prove itself among a populace that understands it better. </div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>dlw:To prevent all tactical voting is not the greatest good.<br>
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The *primary* reason for adopting ranked-choice voting, the greatest good promised, is to remove the *burden* of tactical voting from voters so that they do not experience voter's regret the day after the election (which, here in Burlington, soured many voters that do not return to the polls, thus reducing participation in democracy). i don't suggest that we can prevent all tactical voting, but the common burden of tactical voting, the tactic called "compromising", is avoidable and *should* be avoided where at all possible.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>Think about it. Really? Preventing anyone from being pressured to tactical voting is the greatest good? Shouldn't it be to make the parties responsive to the general views of the population? To reduce the distance between the de facto and true political center? </div>
<div><br></div><div>I don't have a problem if a major party chooses to get ideologically stuck so some of its supporters have to abandon it because of its non-electability. </div><div><br></div><div>In our context where $peech is so strong the "tactical voters" are more likely to be the ones who've been gaming the system for their own bottom line for quite some time. It isn't the same thing for them to be pressured to vote insincerely as it is when third party dissenters from "dumb and dumber" get pressured to vote that way. The former bonds the de facto and true center. The latter severs the two.</div>
<div><br></div><div><br></div><div>dlw</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br></blockquote></div>
<br></div></div>----<br>
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