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Rob,<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">I was recently made aware of a paper published by researchers at Yale that
suggests that RCV makes polarization and extremism even more likely:
<a href="https://isps.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/di-pb-2-3-23-v3.pdf" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://isps.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/di-pb-2-3-23-v3.pdf</a>
I haven't read the paper yet, and I could be summarizing it incorrectly,
but it matches my intuition about RCV.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Unfortunately that is probably true. The conclusion of the paper
includes this weird absurd statement:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">When a Condorcet Loser exists, RCV may
weaken her electoral prospects for some
primitives, but we unearth contexts in which the candidates’
strategic choices offset RCV’s
benefits from second preferences to such a degree that a
Condorcet loser’s victory prospects
may increase, relative to plurality.
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Lewis Reed was one of the first on the bandwagon to repeal approval voting:
<a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/effort-underway-to-repeal-approval-voting-in-st-louis-replace-it-with-new-system/article_2c3bad65-1e46-58b6-8b9f-1d7f49d0aaeb.html" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/effort-underway-to-repeal-approval-voting-in-st-louis-replace-it-with-new-system/article_2c3bad65-1e46-58b6-8b9f-1d7f49d0aaeb.html</a></pre>
</blockquote>
I got to read that Lewis Reed was in favour of repealing Approval
voting in favour of "a new system", but not any more unless I
wanted to subscribe. Is that "new system" RCV?<br>
<br>
If so, that would be a big improvement over Approval
Top-Two-Runoff. That is much more vulnerable to Push-over
incentive than RCV. It loses compliance with Favorite Betrayal,
which is one of <br>
plain Approval's main selling points. <br>
<br>
It would be much less bad if the runoff was between the Approval
winner and the candidate most approved on ballots that don't
approve the Approval winner.<br>
<br>
Chris Benham<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<h1 style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New
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initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">[EM] Reply to Rob
regarding RCV</h1>
<b style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New
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initial;">Rob Lanphier</b><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
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!important; float: none;"><span> </span></span><a
href="mailto:election-methods%40lists.electorama.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BEM%5D%20Reply%20to%20Rob%20regarding%20RCV&In-Reply-To=%3CCAK9hOYk%2BKZJ4Ms5ygvaLXw9iKxc_GQAQhjAvaaK%3DB8-0PgG-ag%40mail.gmail.com%3E"
title="[EM] Reply to Rob regarding RCV" style="font-family:
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<i style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New
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<p style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Times New
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<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Hi Michael,
I've been letting this thread go without me, even though my first name is
in the title (and presumably doesn't refer to the ED of Fairvote or the CEO
of RealNetworks).
I think I largely agree with Kristofer Munsterhjelm and Forest Simmons in
this thread, but admittedly, I've only skimmed the conversation
(which...has a lot of words). Earlier this weekend, was inspired to copy
over some prose from English Wikipedia to create the following page because
of your mention of "L02E":
<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/LO2E" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/LO2E</a>
It would seem that you are deep into the community/tribe of the Greens
based on this quote:
"Greens win all of our non-mass-media polls."
I don't think the Greens are a mainstream party. They seem to be quite
happy being a niche party complaining about how the Democrats are not as
pro-socialism and pro-environment as they are. I'm going to guess that the
Greens are fighting for fully compostable voting booths right now, and for
all of the weapons used by the police and the military to be fully
compostable. You know, the important stuff ;-)
I have two sets of recommendations based on whether discussing
single-winner reform or mult-winner reform.
- STV for multi-winner elections -- I like the proportional aspect of
STV, and the biggest problems of STV are masked by its strength at
selecting multiple candidates proportionally. I suspect that's why the
Greens are super into it. The Greens probably look at European democracies
and at Australian/New Zealand politics and believe that STV is FANTASTIC.
But if one imagines a circular, 2D space where voters' beliefs are
scattered throughout it, then I would suggest that STV is great at
selecting candidates near the perimeter of the space (proportionally
equidistantly around the edge), but does a poor job of picking candidates
in the middle of the space.
- Approval, STAR, or a Condorcet-consistent method for single-winner
reform -- this is how we plug the donut hole created by STV, and get .
We're polarized enough as a country (here in the U.S.) such that it's going
to be difficult for people who identify as Democrat/liberal/left-wing are
going to have a difficult time trusting anyone who is
Republican/conservative/right-wing. I'm cautiously optimistic that Dr.
Nicolaus Tideman's Condorcet group will actually start a well-funded
organization to match the organizations behind Approval (the Center for
Election Science) and STAR (the Equal.Vote Coalition). Very cautiously
optimistic. I think that ANYONE starting a new group may underestimate the
challenges of doing so. I also generally trust that Dr. Ka-Ping Yee did
the analysis correctly in 2005 (<<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/Yee_diagram" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/Yee_diagram</a>>),
and that Approval and Condorcet-consistent methods perform roughly
equivalently.
Having met some folks I like from FairVote (they exist...or at least, they
did in 2018 or so), I believe their analysis regarding
Condorcet-consistency of past IRV/RCV (i.e. the vast majority have picked
the Condorcet winner). However, my fear is that we're going to see
more-and-more close RCV elections in the very near future. Most
responsible political organizations hire quants to crunch numbers (if they
have the money to do it), and/or listen to their quant volunteers who offer
compelling data-backed advice. EVERYONE is against corruption (right-wing
voters and left-wing voters), and hence why I suspect Tishuara Jones and
Cara Spencer both clobbered Lewis Reed in the first St. Louis mayoral
primary using approval (<
<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/2021_St._Louis_mayoral_election" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/2021_St._Louis_mayoral_election</a>>).
Lewis Reed was one of the first on the bandwagon to repeal approval voting:
<a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/effort-underway-to-repeal-approval-voting-in-st-louis-replace-it-with-new-system/article_2c3bad65-1e46-58b6-8b9f-1d7f49d0aaeb.html" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/effort-underway-to-repeal-approval-voting-in-st-louis-replace-it-with-new-system/article_2c3bad65-1e46-58b6-8b9f-1d7f49d0aaeb.html</a>
However, I wouldn't be surprised if it was an open secret among St. Louis
voters that Lewis Reed was on the take (including Republican, Democratic,
Green, and Libertarian voters among others):
<a href="https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/politics/newly-released-photos-show-st-louis-aldermen-lewis-reed-jeffrey-boyd-john-collins-muhammad-taking-thousands-in-bribes/63-e17024ae-eba0-4f6a-af9c-adeaa1d2a04c" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/politics/newly-released-photos-show-st-louis-aldermen-lewis-reed-jeffrey-boyd-john-collins-muhammad-taking-thousands-in-bribes/63-e17024ae-eba0-4f6a-af9c-adeaa1d2a04c</a>
I have no idea if it was corruption, incompetence, or both when it comes to
Bob Kiss in Burlington Vermont in 2009. I'm virtually certain, though,
that the numbers show he primarily appealed to his base, and only threw his
his opponents (even a substantial number of Democrats) a bone:
<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election</a>
And mind you, this was with all of the advantages of incumbency. If Kiss
was any good at his job from 2006 until 2009, he should have won the 2009
election in a landslide. The fact that he won in 2006 (and was presumably
Condorcet winner in that election), and then wasn't able to pull together
THE SAME VOTERS in 2009 who ranked him first place in 2006 just goes to
show that there was a lot of regret about him. The biggest problem in this
election was that many Republican voters ranked Montroll (a Democrat), Dan
Smith (an independent), and even Jason Simpson (a Green) higher than Kiss.
But because of the way the rules worked, their preferences with respect to
all of the candidates other than Kiss were ignored BECAUSE Republican Kurt
Wright made it to the last round. They would have gotten one of their
compromise candidates (e.g. Andy Montroll) if Kiss had not been as popular.
I've thought about that election a lot, because I've put myself in the
shoes of the Wright voters, and just imagine if Kurt Wright was the
vaguely-left-of-center Democrat, and Montroll was a vaguely right-of-center
Republican, and Bob Kiss was a far-right extremist who managed to get
elected to his first term because of a new election method. I would have
been pissed if the same system RE-ELECTED the crazy right-winger, even
though Kiss's support CLEARLY eroded since the initial election. But
(flipping the electoral spectrum back around) it would seem that Burlington
repealed IRV because it didn't do its job (i.e. letting the opposition to
the incumbent have some say).
I was recently made aware of a paper published by researchers at Yale that
suggests that RCV makes polarization and extremism even more likely:
<a href="https://isps.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/di-pb-2-3-23-v3.pdf" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://isps.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/di-pb-2-3-23-v3.pdf</a>
I haven't read the paper yet, and I could be summarizing it incorrectly,
but it matches my intuition about RCV. We discussed the paper quite a bit
at Sass's weekly Open Democracy Discussion a week or two ago:
<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sass_Open_Democracy_Discussion" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/Sass_Open_Democracy_Discussion</a>
I'll probably be attending again this coming Tuesday as I often do. All
y'all are welcome to join, and if you join, you can learn more about it
from some of the people who likely have read it (or you might learn about
other research).
Rob</pre>
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