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<p>While in accord with the sentiments of this post, John Stuart
Mill MP when in Parliament pointed out that "majoritarianism"
isn't majoritarian, a majoriity of a majority in Parliament may be
a minority, a half of a half is a quarter. He was advocating "Mr
Hare's system" of "Personal Representation" so grotesquely
misrepresented, here, as IRV.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 07/05/2024 18:27, Closed Limelike
Curves wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">This is great, thank you so much! No objections
from me to political scientists, especially not any on this
list. Definitely not any who are interested in social
choice. :)</div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
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<div dir="ltr">This left me a bit confused, though—</div>
<div dir="ltr">1. Would you think of the terms
"First-past-the-post" and "Plurality voting" as
interchangeable in a paper, when used without qualification?</div>
<div dir="ltr">2. What do you mean by "Categorical ballots"? I
haven't heard that term. Most social choice theorists think
of FPTP as a ranked ballot rule (one that just happens to
ignore everything after the first rank).</div>
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<div dir="ltr">With regards to the paper, I don't think ballot
exhaustion is a problem for majoritarianism; exhausted
ballots still produce simple/relative majorities in the last
step. No method can guarantee an absolute majority (>50%)
for one candidate over another, except by forcing voters to
express opinions they don't really hold (e.g. rank
candidates they know nothing about). The same problem is
true of two-round systems as well—the apparent absolute
majority is created by ignoring the voters who don't turn
out in the second round.</div>
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<div dir="ltr">The main reason IRV and two-round aren't
majoritarian is they can override the will of a majority of
voters, even when there's no need to do so (i.e. no cycle).
People who hear John won because he had "majority support"
naturally take that to mean most voters preferred John to
his opponent Jack; most would be surprised if the opposite
were true (as can be the case in non-Condorcet systems).
Social choice theorists use the term "majority-rule" the
same way (it means if most voters support A over B, then A
wins, unless someone else beats A).</div>
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<div dir="ltr">In other words, simply having a majority of
voters in the final round isn't enough: if most voters
preferred someone else, you're not really the majority
choice<i>. </i>(Was Chirac really the majority choice
because he had a majority against Le Pen? That seems like a
low bar, given a soggy baguette could've beat Le Pen as
well!)</div>
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<div dir="ltr">This is what most of us on this list mean when
we say IRV is plurality-like: the eliminated candidate is
determined by the loser of a plurality vote at each step, so
majority support isn't enough to win. You need to have
several pluralities as well (one for each round).</div>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, May 6, 2024 at
12:39 PM Jack Santucci <<a
href="mailto:jms346@georgetown.edu" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">jms346@georgetown.edu</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">Political scientist here. Please don't pelt me
with rotten fruit.
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<div>We generally use three categories to differentiate
electoral systems. The number of categories depends on
who's writing, but everyone pretty much agrees on three:
district magnitude (1 in your case), ballot type
(categorical in your case), and then allocation rule
(plurality in your case).</div>
<div><br>
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<div>Shugart, Latner, and I argued<span> </span><a
href="https://protectdemocracy.org/work/toward-a-different-kind-of-party-government/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">here</a><span> </span>that
'FPFP' did not really exist in the US due to the
widespread use of primaries, some of which have been
replaced with nonpartisan winnowing rounds (AK, CA, etc).
FWIW, Burnett and Kogan (2015) <a
href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2519723"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">noted</a> this
elision in their conclusion nearly a decade ago.</div>
<div><br>
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<div>Other examples of plurality allocation with categorical
ballots <i>and multi-seat districts</i>:</div>
<div>- multiple non-transferable vote (incl. as limited
voting)</div>
<div>- single non-transferable vote (incl. as
limited voting)</div>
<div>- cumulative voting</div>
<div>- etc...</div>
<div><br>
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<div>I generally stay quiet, but this issue is fundamental
enough, I think, to merit the above contribution. FPTP
often comes across as an imaginary target.</div>
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<div>A purist might insist on calling IRV 'plurality' as
well, so long as it does not require the voter to rank all
choices.</div>
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<div>Jack</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, May 6, 2024 at
3:10 PM Closed Limelike Curves <<a
href="mailto:closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">I just need to double-check I haven't
gone completely insane and both of these terms really
are synonyms. Comments on the talk page would be
helpful:
<div><a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Plurality_voting#Merge_from_FPTP"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Plurality_voting#Merge_from_FPTP</a><br>
</div>
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