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<big>As someone who claims to have invented a better voting method
(Binomial STV) I agree with the general drift of these rules. <br>
I note that that there is an implicit support for proportional
representation (point 5) This rule can be generalised, not merely
to the fair representation of more than two parties and political
independents, to the fair representation of all social groups. My
main example is the UK NHS which formerly elected all white male
GPs by FPTP to the GMC. In 1979, STV proportionally represented
women, immigrants and specialists. This is also the reason why STV
is favored - treasured - in Cambridge, because of the PR of gender
and ethnic diversity, in the city. So the League of Women Voters
found on visiting. (This is a more substantial reason than that,
suggested by an EM member, that </big><big>"nerdy" </big><big>STV
appealed to MIT, however their academic brilliance may have helped
STV prevail in the city.)<br>
<br>
A couple more points. In my estimate, Theorem Arrow deserves more
incredulity than the credulity it seems to attract. In a previous
post, I mentioned the widespread practise of trying to demonstrate
the theorem with examples of different voting systems, giving
different results. The one I picked-up on (in Beyond Numeracy by
von Paulos) was an artefact of different levels of information,
giving different results. It had nothing to do with the claims of
the theorem. When I recalculated Condorcet pairing by using the
standard statistical technique of weighting in arithmetic
proportion, the extra information conformed with the result for
Borda method. This example was small enough to see by intuitive
inspection that the two most informative methods gave the best
result, in what was a highly contrived election example, to make
the result as ambiguous as possible.<br>
<br>
Perforce admitting some informative value in the weighted
Condorcet pairing method, this was not the direction I chose to
take, for reasons I won't go into here.<br>
Already, posts have given a few good and relevant reasons for
better voting method. The last century, of mainly abortive
electoral reform, has shown how determined rulers are to control
and degrade, if it serves their turn, electoral practises. Perhaps
worst of all, proportional representation, as it is generally
known, is nearly always a form of the original Andrae (or Hare) PR
system degraded to merely party-proportional counts. <br>
<br>
Human frailty demands that competitions must have impartial
referees. Politics works so badly, because professional incumbency
is an exercise in oligarchic ignorance against the public good.
The trick is to create impartial referees with democratic
authority, to be respected by all. In science, theory is tested by
experience. So, the first chamber of political theories competing
to serve community law, must be tested by a second chamber
representing the division of labor of society. This scientifically
complements, but does not compete with, the political chamber, yet
has the democratic authority and the authority of its
comprehensive expertise, to referee it. <br>
Both chambers could and should be elected by STV (a system which
can be enhanced to Meek method STV or, eventually, even something
like my own method of Binomial STV. Electoral democracy can
evolve, the transferable voting way.)<br>
</big><br>
Richard Lung.<br>
<br>
On 09/01/2017 09:42, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:03babbb51582ddd71e76f79177e3c372.squirrel@webmail04.register.com"
type="cite">
<p><br>
<br>
---------------------------- Original Message
----------------------------<br>
Subject: [EM] What is the goal of a "better" election method?<br>
From: "Sennet Williams" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:sennetwilliams@yahoo.com"><sennetwilliams@yahoo.com></a><br>
Date: Sun, January 8, 2017 9:49 pm<br>
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:election-methods@electorama.com">"election-methods@electorama.com"</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E"
href="mailto:election-methods@electorama.com"><election-methods@electorama.com></a><br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>for me, the end goal of a "better" election method (like
Ranked-Choice Voting decided by a Condorcet-compliant method) is
FAIRNESS and INCLUSION.</p>
<p>Fairness for voters means</p>
<p>1. Level playing field for *all* voters ("One person, one
vote")</p>
<p>2. No burden of tactical voting (therefore no punishment for
voting sincerely) in a multi-candidate election. No voter
regret. </p>
<p>3. Obtain and use contingency preference information from
voter. Sincere voting is facilitated. Should be obvious to
voter how to vote for their second choice.</p>
<p>4. Minimum burden to vote. No delayed runoff that</p>
<p>Fairness for the candidates means</p>
<p>5. Level playing field for *all* candidates and parties. The
two major parties have no systemic advantage over the other
parties or independent candidates. (Remove Duverger's law and
give 3rd parties a level playing field with the major parties.)</p>
<p>6. No advantage realized for "swinging" voting strategy or
"gaming" the system.</p>
<p>7. No punishing losing candidate (who runs sincerely) by making
that candidate a spoiler and hurting their allies.</p>
<p>Fairness for everyone means</p>
<p>8. No pathologies. (No spoiler, no non-monotonicity)</p>
<p>9. Transparency for honest, authoritative elections that nearly
everyone can accept and no one can rig. "Precinct summability"
is part of this.</p>
<p>10. Tabulation method and identifying the winner is simple and
comprehendable to everyone and generally accepted as "fair".</p>
<p> </p>
<p>To this end, I support Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV) (but *not*
the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) that is promoted by
FairVote.org). The tabulation method should be Condorcet
compliant which means simply:</p>
<p>"If more voters mark their ballots that they prefer Candidate A
over Candidate B than the number of voters who mark their ballot
to the contrary, then Candidate B is not elected."</p>
<p>stated less precisely:</p>
<p>"If a majority of voters prefer Candidate A to Candidate B,
then Candidate B is not elected."</p>
<p>I want this to be true whether there is a Candidate C in the
election or not. I don't want the presence of Candidate C to
change the apparent preference of Candidate A over Candidate B.</p>
<p>Condorcet is not perfect (Arrow's Impossibility Theorem says no
system is perfect), but I think does better than any other
system. I believe that the Ranked Ballot requires just the
right amount of information from the voters. Score Voting
requires too much information and Approval Voting requires too
little information from the voters. So also, of course, the
traditional Vote-For-Only-One ballot requires to little
information from voters.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><br>
<br>
> I follow this list when I can, but it is not really clear
what the benefit would be of a different election system, except
possibly "counting more votes" or "representing more voters."
It seems like a waste of energy unless it will accomplish a goal
that the most eligiible voters will be motivated by. <br>
> -Personally, I want "better govt." <br>
> -China is working to end "multi-party politics" because it
results in bad govt. (I think that the Chinese govt. is
referring to parliament rather than the two-party system)</p>
<p>well, one-party rule in government is the best. as long as
it's *my* party.</p>
<p>> -The Berkeley Daily Cal editorialized for IRV because
"IRV lets you vote for who you really want" (something to that
effect, that was a long time ago and memory fades)</p>
<p>and the Burlington 2009 election (where the IRV winner, the
Condorcet winner, and the plurality winner were three different
candidates) is a counter example. there were about 1/6 of the
voters that found out that simply by marking their first choice
as #1, they **caused** the election of their least favorite
candidate. they voted for who they really wanted and they were
punished for it in the election result.</p>
<p><br>
> The point is, comments on this list might be more effective
if you declare1-what benefit to the organization that your
voting system will accomplish.<br>
> Keep in mind that lots of people DO NOT want to enfranchise
more voters. They might not see the benefit of it. More people
voting reduces the influence of the previous voters.</p>
<p>well, then let's take that to extremes and disenfranchise
everyone except me. whoever i cast my vote for, that's the
person who wins.<br>
<br>
<br>
--</p>
<p>r b-j <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:rbj@audioimagination.com">rbj@audioimagination.com</a></p>
<p>"Imagination is more important than knowledge."</p>
<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Richard Lung.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.voting.ukscientists.com">http://www.voting.ukscientists.com</a>
Democracy Science series 3 free e-books in pdf:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://plus.google.com/106191200795605365085">https://plus.google.com/106191200795605365085</a>
E-books in epub format:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/democracyscience">https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/democracyscience</a>
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