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<br>Kristofer:<br><br>You wrote:<br><br><pre>On 04/09/2012 11:31 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:<br>> I've said seemingly contradictory things about IRV. It's particularly<br>> flagrant FBC failure makes it entirely inadequate for<br>> public political elections, more so than Condorcet, which, too, is<br>> inadequate due to FBC failure.<br> <br>You keep saying anything without FBC is automatically a no-go. How do <br>you know that?<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>It is a country-specific observation, regarding the electorate of the U.S., where I<br>reside. I don't know that about any other country, though there is evidence for it in various <br>countries where people are used to Plurality voting.<br><br>Yes this is "anecdotal", but I've personally observed favorite-burial in Condorcet voting.<br><br>A safe and prudent rule is "Never underestimate the voter's inclination for resigned over-compromising<br>give-away, if there's any chance that it could help a compromise against someone worse."<br><br>You continued:<br><br>Condorcet elections seem to work well where they're used: <br>in the Pirate Parties, in Debian, on Wikimedia, and in smaller <br>organizations (see the Wikipedia article on the Schulze method for more).<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Of course. I said in my answers for Democracy Chronicles that Condorcet is fine for organizational<br>elections, where the lesser-of-2-evils problem has nothing resembling the magnitude that it has<br>in public political elections.<br><br>You continued:<br> <br>IRV's compromise problem is particularly bad. <br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Most definitely.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>In a Burlington scenario, <br>the voters (and/or parties) immediately know they didn't compromise well <br>enough. In contrast, that doesn't happen in Condorcet, because it picks <br>the CW.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Quite so. The FBC problem is _qualitatively_ worse in IRV than in Condorcet. But<br>it's still present in Condorcet. If I had to choose between Condorcet and IRV,<br>for our public political elections, with the electorate that we have, of course<br>I'd choose Condorcet.<br><br>But I'd rather have Approval, ABucklin, or ICT, to name a few better methods.<br><br>I believe that ICT has tremendous promise. As I'm going to say in a separate posting,<br>there's a sense in which Approval is the best method, due to its FBC-compliance, its<br>unique optimizations, and its simple and clear strategy (things that I mentioned in my<br>Declaration signature).<br><br>But of course it depends on what you want, and you might want more expressivity, for a<br>gradation of preference. I question the value of that, but I myself would use, in an Approval<br>election, an option allowing that. So I certainly understand that goal. I suggest that ICT<br>is the best, among the methods attempting that goal, due to its FBC compliance and its<br>defection-resistance (actually nearly a defection-proofness). ICT deals with defection more<br>neatly than do the conditional methods (but I still like them due to their usability as options<br>in Approval). And defection in ICT can only help a candidate if s/he is the top-favorite among<br>the undefeated candidates.<br><br>For a method other than Approval, to improve preference-level expressiveness, I'd choose ICT.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>I suppose you could argue I'm making the same mistake as the IRVists. <br>The IRVists say "oh, we need a way of not making small third parties get <br>in the way of the major parties - here's a fix". You might argue I'm <br>saying "oh, we need a way of the method not messing up when third <br>parties get reasonably large - here's a fix, in the form of Condorcet <br>compliance". But if I'm just proposing a fix and the fix isn't <br>substantial, then we should be seeing backsliding from Condorcet where <br>it's used, and I don't know of any such.<br> <br>[endquote]<br><br>Condorcet is probably fine for most organizations. In that implementation, there won't<br>be the intense "lesser-of-2-evils inclinations" that is necessary to induce favorite-burial<br>in Condorcet.<br><br>> And I also said that IRV would be a fine method, were it not for the<br>> public's inclination towards resigned, cowed overcompromise,<br>> and their very sad and disastrous lowering of standards for<br>> acceptability. "Vote for the least bad of the corrupt candidates,<br>> because they're the<br>> winnable ones".<br> <br>I disagree. Look at Burlington with its center squeeze again. The <br>Burlington voters didn't strategize (much or effectively). Yet instead <br>of picking the candidate closest to the median voter, IRV threw that one <br>away because it didn't have enough first-place votes and picked the <br>largest wing instead.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Never choose IRV as a way to attain the voter median. For that, I recommend ICT<br>for public political elections. Condorcet(wv), maybe Beatpath, would be ok for organizations.<br><br>(But I remind you that it's been pointed out that Approval will result in a candidate configuration<br>equilibrium with a candidate at voter median, and a candidate there will win at Myerson-Weber <br>voting equilibrium.)<br><br>But, even in organizational or committee elections, I feel that it's important to use<br>a method that is public-suitable, in order to provide use-precedent for a good public<br>voting method.<br><br>I don't deny that IRV has center squeeze, or that center squeeze is undesirable.<br><br><br>You continued:<br><br>Sure, it's better than Plurality. It's not as polarizing as Plurality, <br>either, but it does have some element of polarization in picking the <br>largest wing.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Yes, but how bad the effect of that is, depends on the electorate.<br><br>You continued:<br> <br>How about this zero-info: Rank all the acceptables in alphabetical <br>order. Rank the unacceptables in random order after the acceptables.<br><br>[of course, in that situation, there'd be no need to rank the <br>unacceptables, unless the rules require ranking everyone]<br><br>Yes, that sounds like a perfectly good way to vote in 0-info u/a <br>IRV elections.<br><br><br>You continued:<br><br>By <br>ranking the acceptables in the same order, you focus the first <br>preference votes on a few candidates so that compromise is maximized<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>I hadn't thought of that, and I like it.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>; by <br>ranking the unacceptables randomly, you discourage strategy that <br>attempts to compromise with your pattern (because there is no pattern).<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>But, as I mentioned above, you could also just not rank them, unless the<br>rules require ranking everyone.<br><br> <br>You continued:<br><br>If you have information, then rank the acceptables in order of first <br>preference votes<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>Sure, that's a good rough measure of their ability to take victory away<br>from an unacceptable.<br><br>You continued:<br><br>, then the unacceptables in reverse order of first <br>preference votes.<br><br>[endquote]<br><br>...if the rules require ranking everyone. You'd be preferentially helping the unacceptables<br>least likely to benefit from that help.<br><br>But, by the time your vote gets to the unacceptables, the acceptables must have all been<br>eliminated. So, if you're going to rank the unacceptables, wouldn't it be best to rank<br>them in order of preference (in reverse order of unacceptability)?<br><br>There's a good case for not bothering to rank them, if the all-important thing is <br>keeping an unacceptable from winning. But, by ranking them, you could at least try<br>to help the least bad of them against the worst of them.<br><br>Anyway, IRV's complete defection-proofness and its Mutual Majority Criterion compliance are powerful<br>advantages, for an electorate that had decent judgement about acceptability and compromise-deservingness.<br><br>I'm not saying that I'd choose IRV then, only that it could be worth considering then. <br><br>If voters only care about winning by mutual majority, then they could just all rank sincerely in IRV.<br><br>If they want to maximize their expectation, then they'll sometimes favorite-bury, in the strategies that<br>we've described. But if their judgement is any good, then it won't be the kind of dismal overcompromise<br>that we're used to. <br><br>But I emphasize that IRV is no good whatsoever, completely inadequate, for the kind of electorate that actually<br>exists here, for public political elections.<br></pre>Mike Ossipoff<br><br> </div></body>
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