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Hello all, Robert in particular.<br>
Re point 1.<br>
I forget which, but there is an official (STV) election that counts
an x-vote as a first preference. Those, who don't want to change,
don't have to. But those, who do, can rank their choices beyond one
order of choice. This is not a problem of a learning difficulty,
beyond the difficulty of learning consideration for others.<br>
Re. 2.<br>
Agree completely about score voting. I can't help but feel approval
voting is essentially a rebranding of cumulative voting. In about
1867, John Stuart Mill knew it was only a trifling improvement on
plurality counting but at least opened peoples minds to
alternatives.<br>
Re 3. <br>
Weighted Condorcet pairing arguably offers a back-door that partly
gets round the Laplace criticism of Condorcet pairing, that it does
not establish the relative importance of higher and lower
preferences, in the over-all election count.<br>
I see Condorcet pairing primarily as a research tool for
cross-referencing the results of an at-large election with the
results from sub-elections of one-to-one contests or less minimal
partitions. Ideally, we would have an election system that does not
have to watch its back for a Condorcet paradox. <br>
Even an admittedly crude election like IRV (Alternative Vote),
according to this group, has only come-up with the Burlington case.
That may have been politically unfortunate. But, if about 150?
elections have not suffered the paradox, that incidence is not
statistically significant.<br>
The real comparison is how many "Bush beats Gore minus Nader"
contests are there? And how many simple plurality elections make
voters act as their own returning officers in an implicit ranked
choice election, where the voter excludes his first preference for
Nader, and counts it for second preference Gore?<br>
<br>
Re 4.<br>
Thankyou, Robert for the thankless task of reading my book or manual
on the subject. It took me 14 years to develop FAB STV, on top of a
lifetimes study of voting method. It is bound to be unfamiliar to
readers.<br>
The key to understanding the FAB STV procedure is that one thing
leads to another, starting with the Meek method keep value. It is a
logical succession of steps each required for greater consistency.
All this hugely complex system is to fulfill this guiding purpose of
representation to higher degrees of statistical accuracy. <br>
I can answer questions. I did think of outlining the FAB STV thread
of logic. But I found myself leaving out key explanations, to not
get bogged down in details.<br>
<br>
Re 5.<br>
You are way ahead of me, on administration of the new electoral
system. You are completely right. There is no chance of its
political adoption in the forseeable future. Brian Meek did not live
to see Meek method adopted for official elections in New Zealand. <br>
Re 6.<br>
In a multi-member constituency, a voters fifth choice may be more
liked than his first choice in a single member constituency, such is
the expansion of choice and comprehensiveness of representation.
This was why HG Wells specified the three conditions: proportional
representation with the single transferable vote in large
constituencies.<br>
It is not ranked choice that is the problem but the fixation on
single winner elections, that do not have to be more than minimally
democratic.<br>
<br>
from<br>
Richard Lung.<br>
<br>
On 13/07/2018 19:27, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:abc99f62057b6e18f52252b00f66847f.squirrel@webmail04.register.com"
type="cite">
<p><br>
<br>
---------------------------- Original Message
----------------------------<br>
Subject: Re: [EM] IRV / RCv advances<br>
From: "Richard Lung" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:voting@ukscientists.com"><voting@ukscientists.com></a><br>
Date: Fri, July 13, 2018 2:53 am<br>
To: "Sennet Williams" <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sennetwilliams@yahoo.com"><sennetwilliams@yahoo.com></a><br>
Cc: <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Election-Methods@lists.electorama.com">"Election-Methods@lists.electorama.com"</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Election-Methods@lists.electorama.com"><Election-Methods@lists.electorama.com></a><br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
><br>
> It is ironic that the world seems to have this electoral
reform battle<br>
> of the big-enders versus the little-enders (from Gullivers
Travels).<br>
> That is to say the collectivist Europeans and their
outliers, back a<br>
> proportional count with party lists - such as sabotages
individual<br>
> choice, without a ranked choice for voters. While the good
ole US of A<br>
> does not forget individual representation with a ranked
choice, but<br>
> forgets equality of representation with a proportional
count. The only<br>
> exception is Cambridge Mass. using STV, and one or two
minor cases of<br>
> STV in Minnesota, I believe.<br>
> One EM member says STV is BAD. As the ignored inventor of
FAB STV, I<br>
> know the limitations of traditional STV but essentially it
is on the<br>
> right lines, laid down by the original inventors, Carl
Andrae and Thomas<br>
> Hare, namely the quota-preferential method, as the Aussies
pithily<br>
> describe its essence.<br>
><br>
> As for ranked pairing, my understanding is that it is not
an independent<br>
> method at all, but a means of cross-referencing a ranked
choice<br>
> electoral system.</p>
<p>i was referring to the Tideman Ranked-Pairs method, which is a
Condorcet compliant method of RCV.<br>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><br>
> As previously mentioned to this email group, I wrote a<br>
> supplemetary chapter on this, in my book FAB STV: Four
Averages Binomial<br>
> Single Transferable Vote.<br>
</p>
<p>Richard, I think i found this e-book
at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/806030">https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/806030</a> .</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There are a couple of observations (or criticisms, sorry about
that):</p>
<p>1. RCV advocates have trouble convincing people that just
insist that a ranked-ballot is too
complicated. No matter *how* the ranked-ballot election is
tallied, they complain that instructions which are anything more
than "Mark your choice with an 'X'." is too complicated. I
really disagree, but that is a reality that we voting-reform
advocates have to deal
with. </p>
<p>2. I **do** think that Score Voting (I like that term for it,
rather than "Range Voting") is too complicated and that both
Score Voting and Approval Voting are **inherently** presenting
voters with a tactical decision, which is: What do they do with
their 2nd-choice
candidate? I want to remove any pressure for tactical
decisions. And when it comes to a binary decision ("Do we elect
A or B?"), I fundamentally want each voter's vote count
equally. This is one basic reason I'm for Condorcet.</p>
<p>3. IRV (or STV or, nowadays,
"RCV") advocates say to me that "Condorcet" is too complicated.
I disagree emphatically in the case of no cycle in which I think
that Condorcet is far **simpler** than IRV. All Condorcet
simply says is "If more voters mark their ballots preferring
Candidate A
over Candidate B than voters marking their ballots to the
contrary, then Candidate B is not elected." That's **all** it
says and, with one-person-one-vote as an electoral dogma, I
cannot see how anyone can disagree with that. The **only**
thing that makes Condorcet appear
complicated is: "What to do in the case of a cycle?" and
Ranked-Pairs is the **simplest** meaningful rule to answer to
that.</p>
<p>4. Even looking at your online book that I note above, I cannot
figure out what FAB-STV is. With study, maybe I *can* figure it
out. But because of
its inherent complexity, *selling* this method to a legislature
or a voting public appears to me to be dead-in-the-water. If
it's complicated, it will never-ever-ever be adopted for
governmental use, and that is because we want elections to be
transparent to the public. The public needs
to know **exactly** how and why some particular candidate won
the election, and it must not be obfuscated behind an opaque or
hard-to-understand algorithm for tallying votes and picking the
winner.</p>
<p>5. There are several reasons why STV is a problem and I doubt,
once I understand what FAB-STV
is, that these problems will be surmounted. e.g. Is FAB-STV
precinct summable? Or do all of the ballots (or electronic
facsimiles of the ballots) have to be transferred from the
precincts to a central location where the tabulation is done and
after each round, votes are transferred from
one pile to another according to the FAB-STV rules? If that
problem doesn't go away, there will always be election integrity
advocates (as well as conspiracy theorists) that will suspect
that maybe some monkey business happens when the ballots are
transferred from the precincts to the central
location, or maybe the code at the central location got hacked,
and there is no immediate way to check that out. Precinct
summability is an important safeguard that the resistors to
change (those who support keep First-Past-The-Post) will use to
beat over our heads. And with today's STV
(and I assume also with FAB-STV) they can still bonk us over the
head with that.</p>
<p>6. Lastly, I am not (yet) venturing into the multi-winner
election problem. I realize that with multi-winner elections
(often multi-seat legislative districts or city councils with
large districts or
at-large councilors), that STV might be the simplest way to get
to proportional representation (PR). And despite the
precinct-summability problem, STV might be preferable to other
methods (but it seems to me that the ranking that happens from
Ranked-Pairs *might* work for multi-winner).
So when I say "STV --> BAD", I mean that principally for
single-winner elections.</p>
<p><br>
--<br>
<br>
r b-j <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rbj@audioimagination.com">rbj@audioimagination.com</a><br>
<br>
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."<br>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<br>
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