The Problem With Instant Runoff Voting - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

SecretMethod70 · 10-20-2004, 10:52 PM

With Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/irv/jacksonirvbill.htm">introducing a bill</a> for Instant Runoff Voting, I figured it appropriate to point out the problems with this election method. It seems good - God knows I once thought it was at least decent - but the truth is it's not an improvement at all, and could quite possibly be a step backwards. If voting reform isn't done right the first time, it will be that much harder to get it fixed again.

From: http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVproblems.html

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The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) has been officially endorsed by several organizations and is gaining momentum. Unfortunately, however, confusion reigns regarding its advantages and disadvantages. IRV is very good at preventing minor parties from interfering with the two-party system, but it is arguably no better than our current plurality system at expanding the two-party system and giving other parties a chance to actually win elections. Furthermore, if a third party ever does become strong enough under IRV to seriously threaten the two major parties, they could hurt their own cause and wreak havoc with our entire political system, just as they could under our current plurality system.

IRV can prevent the spoiler effect, in which a minor party splits the vote with a major party and tilts the election toward the other major party, hurting its own cause. IRV therefore seems to allow supporters of minor parties to cast protest votes without "wasting" their votes. This advantage is illusory, however, because it applies only as long as those minor parties are sure to lose. As soon as one of those minor parties threatens to become a major party and actually win, its supporters vote for them at the risk of hurting their own cause, just as in the current plurality system. Under IRV, votes for minor parties are therefore symbolic at best, or dangerous at worst. An example will illustrate why.

Suppose my true preference is for the Libertarian first and the Republican second. Suppose further that the Libertarians are the strongest "minor" party. At some round of the IRV counting process, all the candidates will be eliminated except the Republican, the Democrat, and the Libertarian. If the Libertarian then has the fewest first-choice votes, he or she will be eliminated and my vote will transfer to the Republican, just as I wanted. But what if the Republican is eliminated before the Libertarian? Unless all the Republican votes transfer to the Libertarian, which is extremely unlikely, the Democrat might then beat the Libertarian. If so, I will have helped the Democrat win by not strategically ranking the Republican first. But that's the same situation I'm in now if I vote my true preference for the Libertarian!

What happened in the above example is that IRV essentially ignored one of my key preferences. By voting (Libertarian, Republican, ..., Democrat), I increase the chances that the Republican will be eliminated before the Libertarian. If that then happens, my preference for the Republican over the Democrat is essentially discarded or ignored. This is the fundamental problem with IRV. The only preference that is sure to be counted is my first choice. The problem gets worse as the number of candidates increases. The outcome of the election can depend in a very quirky way on the order in which candidates are eliminated for having the fewest top-choice votes. The only way a voter can be assured of not wasting his or her vote is to rank one of the two major parties as their first choice, which is precisely what happens now under plurality voting.

The example is hardly contrived. The "lesser of two evils" problem is almost guaranteed to rear its ugly head again under IRV. Until a minor party is strong enough to win, a first-choice vote for them is essentially only symbolic. After a minor party is strong enough to win, on the other hand, a vote for them could have the same spoiler effect that it could have under the current plurality system. Hence, if IRV is ever actually adopted, we will likely remain stuck in the old two-party system, just as Australia still is, despite the fact that it has used IRV since around 1920. On the other hand, if minor parties do somehow manage to become competitive under IRV, they could wreak havoc with our entire system of government. As in our current system, the stronger a minor party becomes, the more it could hurt its own cause.

In other words, IRV can have either of two completely opposite effects, depending on whether a third party is truly competitive or not. Before a third party is competitive, the effect of IRV is equivalent to a plurality system in which all supporters of minor parties are somehow convinced to abandon their principles and vote for the "lesser of two evils." Yes, those voters get the satisfaction of knowing they voted for the party and the candidate they truly prefer, but their first choice is eventually eliminated and has no effect on who actually wins. After a third party is competitive, on the other hand, the effect if IRV is equivalent to a plurality system in which many voters are somehow convinced to forget about strategy and vote sincerely. As most intelligent voters know, that would wreak havoc with the stability of our political system.

IRV has been said to make strategic or defensive voting very difficult. But strategic voting is difficult under IRV only after more than two parties are truly competitive. Before that time, strategic voting is essentially the same as what it is in our current plurality system: rank the "lesser of two evils" candidate as your first choice. As soon as more than two parties are truly competitive, strategic voting could indeed become very difficult because the "lesser of two evils" concept no longer applies when more than two parties are competitive. However, this difficulty, far from being an advantage, is actually a huge disadvantage. Voters will then need to vote strategically but will be unable to figure out how to do so, except to revert back to the old two-party paradigm. Hence the original duopoly will remain intact. In other words, IRV will not solve the classic "lesser of two evils" problem that plagues plurality voting.

IRV does have one possible advantage over our current plurality system: it could be a step toward true electoral reform in the form of Condorcet voting, which is far superior to IRV. The actual voting mechanics of IRV and Condorcet voting are identical. In both IRV and Condorcet voting, the voters rank the candidates, and the required voting equipment is the same for each. The only difference is the actual algorithm (and its implementation software) for determining the winner. In other words, the "front end" is common for IRV and Condorcet voting, and only the "back end" is different. From a purely technical perspective, that "back end" software would be very easy to replace, but the political perspective is another story altogether, of course. If IRV is widely adopted, it could be transitional to true reform -- or it could become entrenched.

IRV has other serious problems too, which are explained in more detail elsewhere at the website. It is an erratic voting system because ranking a candidate higher can actually cause the candidate to lose, and ranking a candidate lower can cause the candidate to win. As if that weren't bad enough, it can also fail to elect a candidate who is preferred over each of the other candidates by a majority of the voters. It is also much more difficult to implement with security and integrity because the votes cannot be summed as in most other election methods.

In summary, IRV is a deceptive and potentially dangerous non-reform masquerading as a reform. If adopted, the cure could be worse than the disease. Once the inadequacy of IRV becomes clear in actual practice, it could disillusion the public with electoral reform and thereby close the door to true reform. The stakes are way too high to get this one wrong. We can only hope that the well-intentioned and devoted advocates of IRV are still open-minded enough to recognize this reality. The battle for electoral reform will be difficult enough without insurmountable ignorance within the reform movement itself.

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Other informative pieces regarding Instant Runoff Voting and voting reform in general:

http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVing.htm

http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVing2.html

http://www.electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm

seretogis · 10-21-2004, 01:51 AM

Very well written and informative, thank you.

Electoral reform is needed, but as you state, the cure would be worse than the disease with IRV.

irateplatypus · 10-21-2004, 01:56 AM

hmm... this reinforces my belief that it's impossible to legislate a real 3rd party option. such changes have been made in the past... but they have mostly been of the slow and gradual variety.

i think the only plausible scenario in which a third party comes to prominence soon is for one of the major parties to make a serious blunder (like watergate plus 10) that alienates 4/5ths of the population and have an alternative party on the same side of the aisle ready to takes the reigns at a moment's opportunity.

SecretMethod70 · 10-21-2004, 07:53 AM

Actually, the site I referred to not only points out the problems with IRV but shows much better solutions and ones that would make votes for third parties much more plausible.

Approval voting: http://electionmethods.org/approved.htm

and, the best, Condorcet voting: http://electionmethods.org/Condorcet.htm

Rekna · 10-21-2004, 07:57 AM

Here is what I think needs to be done to help make our election system better.

1st: Electoral College, Don't eliminate it but states should not be all or nothing they should be porportional. As it is now If you live in an opposing color state your vote is worthless.

2nd: IRV is way to confusing and has problems switch to approval voting where everyone votes for as many canidates that they want. If we can get around the IRV confusion problems then combine IRV and approval voting such that you can vote for multiple first/second/third canidates.

3rd: Fix the campaign finance problems. Contributions to the political system should go to the government where it is divided evenly amoung canidates. No individual or corperation should be able to give money to a canidate (doing so should be a felony).

Redlemon · 10-21-2004, 08:05 AM

I've always been a fan of approval voting, and have tried to implement it for decision making in some groups I'm involved with, but it is hard to convince people. They just want to go through runoff voting, and I think they'd come up with the same result more quickly if they used approval. I haven't heard any really good arguments against approval voting.

From SM70's link:

Quote:

n Approval voting, each voter simply votes for, or "approves," as many of the candidates as desired (without ranking them). As in plurality voting, the votes are counted, and the candidate with the most votes wins. No new voting equipment is needed (except perhaps in rare cases), and the ballots don't even need to be changed. Moreover, the change to the current voting rules is trivial: "vote for one" simply becomes "vote for one or more."

SecretMethod70 · 10-21-2004, 08:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

Here is what I think needs to be done to help make our election system better.

1st: Electoral College, Don't eliminate it but states should not be all or nothing they should be porportional. As it is now If you live in an opposing color state your vote is worthless.

While I do not like the idea of electoral votes being distributed based on a state's popular vote, I think I would be fine with the idea of electoral votes being distributed proportionally to the winner of each county. So, if a state has 4 electoral votes and roughly 75% of the counties go to one candidate and 25% go to the other, the votes would go 3 to the one candidate and 1 to the other. This would help to keep the buffer between large cities and rural areas since the votes would still not be counted against each other. I'm not entirely set on this idea yet, but I'm pretty sure that it's better than just dividing the electoral votes proportionally based on the popular vote.

Quote:

2nd: IRV is way to confusing and has problems switch to approval voting where everyone votes for as many canidates that they want. If we can get around the IRV confusion problems then combine IRV and approval voting such that you can vote for multiple first/second/third canidates.

While I'm not a fan of IRV really, I'm not sure how it's confusing. From a voter perspective, all one has to do is rank the candidates. I mean, if it's confusing to say "1. Badnarik, 2. Kerry, 3. Bush" I think a person has bigger problems than just figuring out how to work the voting system

Quote:

3rd: Fix the campaign finance problems. Contributions to the political system should go to the government where it is divided evenly amoung canidates. No individual or corperation should be able to give money to a canidate (doing so should be a felony).

Campaign finance is a definite problem - starting with the fact corporations are considered to be like people.

OpieCunningham · 10-21-2004, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

1st: Electoral College, Don't eliminate it but states should not be all or nothing they should be porportional. As it is now If you live in an opposing color state your vote is worthless.

Not that I am defending the Electoral College system in any way, but this is not a good idea. All this will do is dillute the intentions of the popular vote by averaging out the votes in any given state and assigning a disproportionate value to those votes.

For example, lets take two states, A and B. They each have 10 EVs and 20 million people.

If State A ends with a 11,000,000 to 9,000,000 popular vote, each candidate will receive (depending on how the values are averaged) either 5 EV or 6 for one and 4 for the other.

If State B ends with a 10,000,000 to 10,000,000 popular vote, each candidate will again receive 5 EV.

State A will either be eliminating the value of 1 million votes for each candidate or eliminating the value of 1 million votes for one candidate while doubling the value of 1 million votes for the other candidate (a 6 to 4 EV breakdown would imply a 12mil to 8 mil popular vote).

thefictionweliv · 10-21-2004, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rekna

Here is what I think needs to be done to help make our election system better.

1st: Electoral College, Don't eliminate it but states should not be all or nothing they should be porportional. As it is now If you live in an opposing color state your vote is worthless.

2nd: IRV is way to confusing and has problems switch to approval voting where everyone votes for as many canidates that they want. If we can get around the IRV confusion problems then combine IRV and approval voting such that you can vote for multiple first/second/third canidates.

3rd: Fix the campaign finance problems. Contributions to the political system should go to the government where it is divided evenly amoung canidates. No individual or corperation should be able to give money to a canidate (doing so should be a felony).

Private Contributions shouldn't be divided up, however funding for the debates, Secret Service support(if they are giving it to rep and dem they need to give it to others), a place in the debates, should be given to any candidate with the capacity to win the election(can get enough EC points).

Rekna · 10-21-2004, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OpieCunningham

Not that I am defending the Electoral College system in any way, but this is not a good idea. All this will do is dillute the intentions of the popular vote by averaging out the votes in any given state and assigning a disproportionate value to those votes.

For example, lets take two states, A and B. They each have 10 EVs and 20 million people.

If State A ends with a 11,000,000 to 9,000,000 popular vote, each candidate will receive (depending on how the values are averaged) either 5 EV or 6 for one and 4 for the other.

If State B ends with a 10,000,000 to 10,000,000 popular vote, each candidate will again receive 5 EV.

State A will either be eliminating the value of 1 million votes for each candidate or eliminating the value of 1 million votes for one candidate while doubling the value of 1 million votes for the other candidate (a 6 to 4 EV breakdown would imply a 12mil to 8 mil popular vote).

And this is worse then eliminating 9 million votes for one canidate while giving them to the other?

Rekna · 10-21-2004, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

While I'm not a fan of IRV really, I'm not sure how it's confusing. From a voter perspective, all one has to do is rank the candidates. I mean, if it's confusing to say "1. Badnarik, 2. Kerry, 3. Bush" I think a person has bigger problems than just figuring out how to work the voting system

The process of voting is not the confusing part it is the process of counting that is confusing. People want to understand it before aproving it. It would be hard to inform everyone how IRV works. Second, IRV turns into random voting in the lower numbers (which shouldn't effect the election anyway). But deciding who is better between multiple canidates that you don't know is impossible and turns into a guess. In approval voting if you don't know a canidate you don't vote for them.

smooth · 10-22-2004, 04:10 AM

I want to see more stats on the Australian phenomenon. I am mainly curious whether their "two" party system really has a high turnover (multiple growths of third parties replacing ossified branches of the previous duel set) or whether their two parties are just immensely popular (shock, people may actually be voting for either of the two parties consistenly).

I'm not convinced of the argument laid out. IRV doesn't guarantee your candidate will be elected. The only reason a dem would win if you voted for lib and repub second would be if more people voted for the dem than either of your candidates--that's what's supposed to happen. You aren't guaranteed a win--but the article is written with that implicit assumption.

SecretMethod70 · 10-22-2004, 04:29 AM

the goal is to find the candidate most generally liked.

SecretMethod70 · 10-22-2004, 07:57 AM

News of the IRV bill and an electoral college abolition bill has <a href="http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/22/1327257&tid=226&tid=219">reached slashdot</a>. I urge everyone who wants to see fairer elections to contact their congresspersons and point them toward the better alternatives of <a href="http://electionmethods.org/approved.htm">approval voting</a> and the <a href="http://electionmethods.org/Condorcet.htm">condorcet</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method">method</a>. It's very important that voting reform is done RIGHT. The fact that plurality voting sucks is nothing new - it has been known for well over 100 years to be a terrible system - but we are just now finally making inroads to changing it. After reading some of the information I've pasted and linked to, do you really think another 100+ years of IRV is a step in a positive direction for change? I don't. I will be calling my congressmen today to tell them to vote against this bill and instead work towards changing it to either approval or, hopefully, condorcet voting. Please, if this is something that concerns you, do the same as soon as you can.

Be sure to point them (well, point their interns who answer the phone in hopes that they will relay the message) to http://www.electionmethods.org and mention that it is a public service of the Election Methods Education and Research Group. Hopefully - and maybe this is too much to ask for from our current representatives

- they will take the initiatiev and spend 15 minutes becoming better educated on the options.

<a href="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/"><b>Contact your representatives, by letter, fax, e-mail, or phone</b></a> (remember, phone is definitely the most effective, but it doesn't hurt to send letters, etc as well)

Booboo · 10-22-2004, 11:14 AM

I'm probably missing something here... but whats wrong with Just putting down one name as opposed to 3 or what not. Ie having the popularity vote be it: The majority of the pople like this person best so he wins.

Generally it seems that a mass of people is "smarter" or I guess better informed would be the way of putting it. If you have a jar of jellybeans and you have 10,000 people guess the amount in it.. chances are the average will be closest.

No doubt i'm missing something....

Redlemon · 10-22-2004, 11:24 AM

Booboo - Let's say Candidates A and B are very similar, and C is very different. 60% of the voters like both A and B. 40% like C. In the current system, C could easily win, since A and B could end up with about 30% apiece. Approval voting would put A and B both above C.

Booboo · 10-22-2004, 11:34 AM

Edit: Nevermind... Misunderstood your point.

SecretMethod70 · 10-22-2004, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redlemon

Booboo - Let's say Candidates A and B are very similar, and C is very different. 60% of the voters like both A and B. 40% like C. In the current system, C could easily win, since A and B could end up with about 30% apiece. Approval voting would put A and B both above C.

Likewise, in 1992, Bush, or maybe even Perot, would have won. In fact, this would have been the case with pretty much any election system other than the one we have now.

smooth · 10-26-2004, 04:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redlemon

Booboo - Let's say Candidates A and B are very similar, and C is very different. 60% of the voters like both A and B. 40% like C. In the current system, C could easily win, since A and B could end up with about 30% apiece. Approval voting would put A and B both above C.

As I understand it, candidate C should win in this scenario. If C has 40% and A and/or B only have 30% each, C is more generally like than either A or B. Approval voting would put A and B (each netting just 30%) above C (netting 40%).

I'm still not following the logic you are laying here as to why that would be better than IRV.

This is from the original website:

Quote:

Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is also known as the "Alternative Vote" and "Preferential Voting." Voters rank the candidates as first, second, third, etc. The tables to the left illustrate the IRV tallying procedure for an example with four candidates (A,B,C,D) and 16 voters. The leftmost table shows the original votes in sorted order (the last choice is not shown).

The first step is to count the first choices. Candidate B got 6 of the 16 first choices, while A got 5, D got 3, and C got 2. If one candidate had received a majority of first choices, that candidate would have won, but nobody did in this case. The counting procedure therefore goes to a second round.

The candidate with the fewest first choices, candidate C, is now eliminated. Each vote for C is transferred to the next candidate. Thus, all C entries are eliminated and the remaining choices are pushed left, if necessary, to fill in the empty cells. The middle table shows the result (the third column is no longer needed).

The top choices are now counted again. Candidate A gained one new top choice (the second from last vote) for a total of 6. Still no candidate has a majority, so the counting procedure goes to a third round. Candidate D now has the fewest top choices and is therefore eliminated. The rightmost table shows the result.

In the final round, the third from last vote has been exhausted, so only 15 active votes remain. Candidate A picked up two votes and now has 8 votes, which is a majority of the remaining votes, so candidate A wins. In this example, candidate A had fewer first choices than candidate B in the first round, but ultimately won the election.

The main contention I have with their conclusion is that they constantly argue against the results based on the initial vote pattern.

In this case, it's more explict than in the original claim. Notice--in the last sentence, the claim is that A won over B even though A had fewer initial votes. Of course, we should back up here and realize that the purpose of IRV is not to guarantee that the person with the most initial votes wins, but htat the person with the most end votes wins. That is, to guarantee that the majority of the population gets a candidate it is willing to accept if the top choice doesn't net a majority of the votes. That is, it's perfectly acceptable and desirable that B not win, because A received a majority of the votes with the final tally--not B.

This is from the top of this thread:

Quote:

Suppose my true preference is for the Libertarian first and the Republican second. Suppose further that the Libertarians are the strongest "minor" party. At some round of the IRV counting process, all the candidates will be eliminated except the Republican, the Democrat, and the Libertarian. If the Libertarian then has the fewest first-choice votes, he or she will be eliminated and my vote will transfer to the Republican, just as I wanted. But what if the Republican is eliminated before the Libertarian? Unless all the Republican votes transfer to the Libertarian, which is extremely unlikely, the Democrat might then beat the Libertarian. If so, I will have helped the Democrat win by not strategically ranking the Republican first. But that's the same situation I'm in now if I vote my true preference for the Libertarian!

What happened in the above example is that IRV essentially ignored one of my key preferences. By voting (Libertarian, Republican, ..., Democrat), I increase the chances that the Republican will be eliminated before the Libertarian. If that then happens, my preference for the Republican over the Democrat is essentially discarded or ignored. This is the fundamental problem with IRV. The only preference that is sure to be counted is my first choice.

Notice that the writer is hinging his argument of a dilemma on the spectre that the only 'sure' preference is one's first choice. Well, we could argue that's all that should be sure, except that secret method responded to me that the idea isn't to 'guarantee' a candidate anyway--so what's the problem here?

The only way a candidate will win is if he or she nets a majority of the votes. I could argue hypothetically, as this article id, that it's unlikely that the republican votes would transfer to the libertarians. But isn't it just as unlikely (or moreso) that they would shift to the democrat?!

In any case, one's preference is not 'ignored.' It simply didn't win out. If that were a valid criticism of voting procedures, roughly half of america is going to feel left out this voting cycle when their top (and only) choice isn't selected. In fact, under no circumstances will every voter get his or her top choice unless we agree to elect all candidates! I find that proposition silly.

The only way a libertarian couldn't get either a libertarian or republican candidate into office is if all libertarian votes or all republican votes still couldn't muster a majority. The only way the democratic candidate would win is if he or she was able to muster a majority of the votes--that's exactly what should happen in my opinion of how the voting system operates best.

If you can't get a majority with all of the votes sliding from one to another, then you don't have the most popular candidate and will just have to suck it up until the next cycle. That's the short and nasty of it unless someone will take the time to explain where my logical errors are occurring.

SecretMethod70 · 10-26-2004, 01:35 PM

35 Lib Rep
35 Dem Rep
30 Rep Dem

Rep is eliminated in the first round. End vote is 65 Dem 35 Lib. Problem is, 65 ACTUALLY preferred the Rep OVER the Dem.

smooth · 10-26-2004, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

35 Lib Rep
35 Dem Rep
30 Rep Dem

Rep is eliminated in the first round. End vote is 65 Dem 35 Lib. Problem is, 65 ACTUALLY preferred the Rep OVER the Dem.

Where are you getting that the democrat would get 65 votes? That's what I tried pointing out above.

I also want to point out that this example hinges on two unlikely extremes:

1) That all republican votes would shift to the democratic candidate.

2) That the republican candidate would be eliminated in the first round.

Using this example, wherein we only have three candidates to choose from, opponents of IRV are asserting that one of the major parties would be eliminated in the first round. Rather than using an extreme hypothetical, why not use a more realistic example? I believe it's because a more realistic example wouldn't support their oppositions.

What do we really know as of right now: That at least 4 parties are vying for voters: Dem, Rep, Lib, and Green. A massive number of smaller parties exist, and I suspect even more would appear if IRV were allowed (i.e., people could vote their conscious without penalty--as in, they actually want a democrat to win but would be willing to vote for an obscure candidate for ideological reasons).

At the very least, we would suspect that the Green or Libertarian party would be eliminated in the first round. Or one of the major parties, but that doesn't automatically translate to the eliminated votes going to the opposition--as this article seeks to claim without any evidence whatsoever.

So let's try this again with a more realistic appraisal of what would happen in this election cycle:

25% - Dem
30% - Repub
30% - Lib
7-15% - Green

(although both this example and Secret Method's grants huge amounts of voters to the conservative pool without evidence).

Currently, it's projected that libertarians are going to get 1% of the vote, while Cobb will get 1% of the vote. While many people might shift from one of the major parties if IRV were implemented, it seems more likely to me that libertarian voters would come from the conservative pool--I haven't met any democrat or green who would shift to lib.

So where is the evidence that major amounts of people (30+%) would vote lib and that the republicans would still garner 30+% of the popular vote?

I'll stipulate it for the sake of discussion so that we can see how the IRV wouldn't subvert the will of the people even if democrats/greens did shift en masse to the libertarian party.

After the first round, the green party would be eliminated. That leaves the republicans with 30%, plus whatever comes from the green voters (not many I suspect), democrats with a bump and maybe even some new libs after the retally.

Now we are left with the fact that either the libs or one of the major parties are going to be eliminated.

If republicans get eliminated, then the win goes to libs (unless we entertain the idea, which I think is ludicrous, that substantial republicans would vote for kerry wherein the dems win)

If libs get eliminated, then repubs win (unless substantial amounts of first choice libs listed dems as second choice--which would not subvert their will since they originally came from the democratic party unless Secret Method is going to argue that libs and repubs together garner over 60% of the popular vote without pulling from the democratic party. That leaves him with the task of telling us where they are now since repubs currently have roughtly half the vote and libs only have 1%).

If dems get eliminated, we can expect that libs would win--unless substantial numbers of dems listed Bush as their second choice.

In a nutshell, IRV allows people who were previously voting mainstream parties to shif their vote to a less instituted party. Of course, we have to assume they are going to list the mainstream party they used to vote for as their second choice, not the other mainstream party. That is, republicans might be inclined to list Lib --> Repub, but not Lib --> Dem. If their new vote doesn't fly, they fall back on the mainstream party they traditionally voted for.

We can entertain hypotheticals of what might occur if only 3 parties were voteable--but that doesn't amount to much insight since we don't know how people would vote if IRV were in place. The simple solution is to ensure more than three parties are on the ballot, however. Currently, that's not even an issue. A fair appraisal of IRV would take these real factors in account and address them.

SecretMethod70 · 10-26-2004, 02:36 PM

The goal of reforming voting methodology is to move to a method which works under ALL circumstances. The point is that IRV does not satisfy that. Furthermore, the point with the example that I gave is that the minute a third party gains substantial support it again has the potential to be a spoiler. I'm not sure I see the point in only looking at the curent situation to see what a reasonable voting method is. The article I pointed out says so itself - IRV is perfectly fin at the moment. The problems arise once third parties gain more support. And they WOULD gain more support if more people (all the people waiting for them to "have a chance") were able to see the true underground support that they have.

I mean, seriously, look at my avatar. If IRV were reasonable don't you think I'd support it?

smooth · 10-26-2004, 02:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

The goal of reforming voting methodology is to move to a method which works under ALL circumstances. The point is that IRV does not satisfy that. Furthermore, the point with the example that I gave is that the minute a third party gains substantial support it again has the potential to be a spoiler. Condorcet voting eliminates this.

I mean, seriously, look at my avatar. If IRV were reasonable don't you think I'd support it?

I think you would if you thought it worked, but you read some information that is long on speculation and ideology and short on evidence. Although, you might have discussed this in your Poli-Sci courses--information I'm not privy to. It uses extreme hypotheticals to refute an idea. If I get some time, let me concoct some extreme hypotheticals that show condorcet voting wouldn't work under "all" circumstances. First of all, I haven't seen how IRV doesn't work in all circumstances (the three party argument was a seperate issue from you explaining how 65% of the population initially wanted a republican candidate, which inadvertantly was eliminated in the first round. Realistically, the republicans have barely half of the voting population, if that, and the libs only have 1%. Where are you getting 65%?

You've read enough of my posts to know that I vote third party, too. So the same question applies to you, do you think I'd support IRV if I thought it wasn't going to address the entrenched duelopoly?

Likewise, Nader supports IRV. Does your candidate?

[edit] Evidently, Badnarik feels it's better than what we have, but he would prefer approval voting. I should also point out that we have more than 4 parties on this ballot. Finding a system that satisfies all unknowns is impossible without data--and maybe even with it. Everything is speculation. Rather, we need to use data from what we know to explain what might happen in an unknown circumstance. That means we need to look at the current election and past elections, and work from there. We can't create a hypothetical situation that illustrates how a system would fail when no real world situation matches the hypothetical and call it a fair appraisal of the system being evaluated.

SecretMethod70 · 10-26-2004, 03:01 PM

When you're looking for the voting method that, statistically, is most likely to choose the candidate that most people can agree with, then hypothetical situations are very important. Current situations are easily covered in hypothetical situations. Looking strictly at the current situation, IRV is fine. But the goal is to find an election method which will result in the most preferred candidate winning under nearly all circumstances. When an election method provides such a clear and obvious method of strategic voting, it doesn't even come close to doing this.

IRV is the only seriously discussed voting method alternative that does NOT satisfy the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotonicity_criterion">monotonicity criterion</a> - probably the single most important criterion that a voting system should satisfy.

It's far too long to quote in the thread, but you chould check out this page as well as it goes into the technical details a bit more and the various different tests which can and should be used to test voting methods: http://www.electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm

Here is what the evaluation page had to say about IRV regarding the monotonicity criterion. I felt that since this is the one I referred to in this thread I would provide it in here....

Quote:

Statement of Criterion

With the relative order or rating of the other candidates unchanged, voting a candidate higher should never cause the candidate to lose, nor should voting a candidate lower ever cause the candidate to win.
Complying Methods

All the methods listed in the compliance table above are monotonic except Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).
Commentary

In the ordinal methods (Condorcet, Borda, and IRV), a candidate is "voted higher" by being ranked higher. In Approval Voting, a candidate is "voted higher" by being "approved" rather than "disapproved." In a conventional plurality system, a candidate can be "voted higher" only by being voted for at all rather than not voted for.

Monotonicity is perhaps the most fundamental criterion for election methods. Common sense tells us that good election methods should be monotonic. Methods that fail to comply are erratic.

A simple example will prove that IRV is non-monotonic. Consider, for example, the following vote count with three candidates {A,B,C}:

8: A,C
5: B,A
4: C,B

In this example, eight voters ranked the candidates (A,C), five ranked them (B,A), and four ranked them (C,B). Candidate C was ranked first by the fewest voters and is eliminated. Since all the voters who ranked C first also ranked B second, B now has nine top-choice votes and wins.

Suppose, however, that two of the voters who had ranked A first reverse their first two preferences so their votes change from (A,C) to (C,A). Now the vote count is:

6: A,C
5: B,A
4: C,B
2: C,A

Candidate B is now ranked first by the fewest voters and is eliminated. Since the five voters who ranked B first also ranked A second, A now has eleven top-choice votes and wins. Hence, the two voters who demoted A from first to second choice caused A to win. That is, they caused A to win by ranking A lower, without changing the relative ordering of the other candidates. IRV therefore fails monotonicity.

For an even more bizarre example, consider the following vote count with four candidates {A,B,C,D}:

7: A,B,C
6: B,A,C
5: C,B,A
3: D,C,B

Applying the rules of IRV, candidate A wins. But suppose the three voters who voted (D,C,B) now promote A from last choice all the way up to first choice, without changing the relative order of the other candidates. Now B wins instead of A. So by promoting A from last to first choice, those voters caused A to lose instead of win. An election method that allows such nonsensical anomalies is erratic and should be rejected.

These are hardly contrived theoretical examples without practical relevance. IRV has serious problems both in theory and in practice. In practice, voters would soon realize, or be advised, that they cannot safely vote sincerely, and the political system would likely remain bogged down in a two-party duopoly just as it is today. And that is the optimistic scenario. If a third party somehow manages to become a strong contender, it could throw the entire political system into chaos, just as it could in our current plurality system.

This is just one criterion. Of 10. All of which IRV fails.

Clearly, it makes little sense for me to essentially rehash the entire site onto TFP. I don't expect the answers here to address every question every person may have. This is why I highly recommend looking at electionmethods.org and reading the ENTIRE site yourselves as well. It's not particularly a lot and shouldn't take more than a couple days if you spread it out.

There is also very useful information at www.condorcet.org although I have not had the chance to go through the entire site yet.

10-20-2004, 10:52 PM	#1 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	The Problem With Instant Runoff Voting With Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. <a href="http://www.fairvote.org/irv/jacksonirvbill.htm">introducing a bill</a> for Instant Runoff Voting, I figured it appropriate to point out the problems with this election method. It seems good - God knows I once thought it was at least decent - but the truth is it's not an improvement at all, and could quite possibly be a step backwards. If voting reform isn't done right the first time, it will be that much harder to get it fixed again. From: http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVproblems.html ------------- The Problem with Instant Runoff Voting Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) has been officially endorsed by several organizations and is gaining momentum. Unfortunately, however, confusion reigns regarding its advantages and disadvantages. IRV is very good at preventing minor parties from interfering with the two-party system, but it is arguably no better than our current plurality system at expanding the two-party system and giving other parties a chance to actually win elections. Furthermore, if a third party ever does become strong enough under IRV to seriously threaten the two major parties, they could hurt their own cause and wreak havoc with our entire political system, just as they could under our current plurality system. IRV can prevent the spoiler effect, in which a minor party splits the vote with a major party and tilts the election toward the other major party, hurting its own cause. IRV therefore seems to allow supporters of minor parties to cast protest votes without "wasting" their votes. This advantage is illusory, however, because it applies only as long as those minor parties are sure to lose. As soon as one of those minor parties threatens to become a major party and actually win, its supporters vote for them at the risk of hurting their own cause, just as in the current plurality system. Under IRV, votes for minor parties are therefore symbolic at best, or dangerous at worst. An example will illustrate why. Suppose my true preference is for the Libertarian first and the Republican second. Suppose further that the Libertarians are the strongest "minor" party. At some round of the IRV counting process, all the candidates will be eliminated except the Republican, the Democrat, and the Libertarian. If the Libertarian then has the fewest first-choice votes, he or she will be eliminated and my vote will transfer to the Republican, just as I wanted. But what if the Republican is eliminated before the Libertarian? Unless all the Republican votes transfer to the Libertarian, which is extremely unlikely, the Democrat might then beat the Libertarian. If so, I will have helped the Democrat win by not strategically ranking the Republican first. But that's the same situation I'm in now if I vote my true preference for the Libertarian! What happened in the above example is that IRV essentially ignored one of my key preferences. By voting (Libertarian, Republican, ..., Democrat), I increase the chances that the Republican will be eliminated before the Libertarian. If that then happens, my preference for the Republican over the Democrat is essentially discarded or ignored. This is the fundamental problem with IRV. The only preference that is sure to be counted is my first choice. The problem gets worse as the number of candidates increases. The outcome of the election can depend in a very quirky way on the order in which candidates are eliminated for having the fewest top-choice votes. The only way a voter can be assured of not wasting his or her vote is to rank one of the two major parties as their first choice, which is precisely what happens now under plurality voting. The example is hardly contrived. The "lesser of two evils" problem is almost guaranteed to rear its ugly head again under IRV. Until a minor party is strong enough to win, a first-choice vote for them is essentially only symbolic. After a minor party is strong enough to win, on the other hand, a vote for them could have the same spoiler effect that it could have under the current plurality system. Hence, if IRV is ever actually adopted, we will likely remain stuck in the old two-party system, just as Australia still is, despite the fact that it has used IRV since around 1920. On the other hand, if minor parties do somehow manage to become competitive under IRV, they could wreak havoc with our entire system of government. As in our current system, the stronger a minor party becomes, the more it could hurt its own cause. In other words, IRV can have either of two completely opposite effects, depending on whether a third party is truly competitive or not. Before a third party is competitive, the effect of IRV is equivalent to a plurality system in which all supporters of minor parties are somehow convinced to abandon their principles and vote for the "lesser of two evils." Yes, those voters get the satisfaction of knowing they voted for the party and the candidate they truly prefer, but their first choice is eventually eliminated and has no effect on who actually wins. After a third party is competitive, on the other hand, the effect if IRV is equivalent to a plurality system in which many voters are somehow convinced to forget about strategy and vote sincerely. As most intelligent voters know, that would wreak havoc with the stability of our political system. IRV has been said to make strategic or defensive voting very difficult. But strategic voting is difficult under IRV only after more than two parties are truly competitive. Before that time, strategic voting is essentially the same as what it is in our current plurality system: rank the "lesser of two evils" candidate as your first choice. As soon as more than two parties are truly competitive, strategic voting could indeed become very difficult because the "lesser of two evils" concept no longer applies when more than two parties are competitive. However, this difficulty, far from being an advantage, is actually a huge disadvantage. Voters will then need to vote strategically but will be unable to figure out how to do so, except to revert back to the old two-party paradigm. Hence the original duopoly will remain intact. In other words, IRV will not solve the classic "lesser of two evils" problem that plagues plurality voting. IRV does have one possible advantage over our current plurality system: it could be a step toward true electoral reform in the form of Condorcet voting, which is far superior to IRV. The actual voting mechanics of IRV and Condorcet voting are identical. In both IRV and Condorcet voting, the voters rank the candidates, and the required voting equipment is the same for each. The only difference is the actual algorithm (and its implementation software) for determining the winner. In other words, the "front end" is common for IRV and Condorcet voting, and only the "back end" is different. From a purely technical perspective, that "back end" software would be very easy to replace, but the political perspective is another story altogether, of course. If IRV is widely adopted, it could be transitional to true reform -- or it could become entrenched. IRV has other serious problems too, which are explained in more detail elsewhere at the website. It is an erratic voting system because ranking a candidate higher can actually cause the candidate to lose, and ranking a candidate lower can cause the candidate to win. As if that weren't bad enough, it can also fail to elect a candidate who is preferred over each of the other candidates by a majority of the voters. It is also much more difficult to implement with security and integrity because the votes cannot be summed as in most other election methods. In summary, IRV is a deceptive and potentially dangerous non-reform masquerading as a reform. If adopted, the cure could be worse than the disease. Once the inadequacy of IRV becomes clear in actual practice, it could disillusion the public with electoral reform and thereby close the door to true reform. The stakes are way too high to get this one wrong. We can only hope that the well-intentioned and devoted advocates of IRV are still open-minded enough to recognize this reality. The battle for electoral reform will be difficult enough without insurmountable ignorance within the reform movement itself. --------- Other informative pieces regarding Instant Runoff Voting and voting reform in general: http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVing.htm http://www.electionmethods.org/IRVing2.html http://www.electionmethods.org/evaluation.htm __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling Last edited by SecretMethod70; 10-28-2004 at 08:40 PM..

10-21-2004, 01:51 AM	#2 (permalink)
seretogis Huggles, sir? Location: Seattle	Very well written and informative, thank you. Electoral reform is needed, but as you state, the cure would be worse than the disease with IRV. __________________ seretogis - sieg heil perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

10-21-2004, 01:56 AM	#3 (permalink)
irateplatypus can't help but laugh Location: dar al-harb	hmm... this reinforces my belief that it's impossible to legislate a real 3rd party option. such changes have been made in the past... but they have mostly been of the slow and gradual variety. i think the only plausible scenario in which a third party comes to prominence soon is for one of the major parties to make a serious blunder (like watergate plus 10) that alienates 4/5ths of the population and have an alternative party on the same side of the aisle ready to takes the reigns at a moment's opportunity. __________________ If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. ~ Winston Churchill

10-21-2004, 07:53 AM	#4 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	Actually, the site I referred to not only points out the problems with IRV but shows much better solutions and ones that would make votes for third parties much more plausible. Approval voting: http://electionmethods.org/approved.htm and, the best, Condorcet voting: http://electionmethods.org/Condorcet.htm __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

10-22-2004, 04:10 AM	#12 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	I want to see more stats on the Australian phenomenon. I am mainly curious whether their "two" party system really has a high turnover (multiple growths of third parties replacing ossified branches of the previous duel set) or whether their two parties are just immensely popular (shock, people may actually be voting for either of the two parties consistenly). I'm not convinced of the argument laid out. IRV doesn't guarantee your candidate will be elected. The only reason a dem would win if you voted for lib and repub second would be if more people voted for the dem than either of your candidates--that's what's supposed to happen. You aren't guaranteed a win--but the article is written with that implicit assumption. __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

10-21-2004, 07:57 AM	#5 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	Here is what I think needs to be done to help make our election system better. 1st: Electoral College, Don't eliminate it but states should not be all or nothing they should be porportional. As it is now If you live in an opposing color state your vote is worthless. 2nd: IRV is way to confusing and has problems switch to approval voting where everyone votes for as many canidates that they want. If we can get around the IRV confusion problems then combine IRV and approval voting such that you can vote for multiple first/second/third canidates. 3rd: Fix the campaign finance problems. Contributions to the political system should go to the government where it is divided evenly amoung canidates. No individual or corperation should be able to give money to a canidate (doing so should be a felony).

10-22-2004, 04:29 AM	#13 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	the goal is to find the candidate most generally liked. __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

10-22-2004, 07:57 AM	#14 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	News of the IRV bill and an electoral college abolition bill has <a href="http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/22/1327257&tid=226&tid=219">reached slashdot</a>. I urge everyone who wants to see fairer elections to contact their congresspersons and point them toward the better alternatives of <a href="http://electionmethods.org/approved.htm">approval voting</a> and the <a href="http://electionmethods.org/Condorcet.htm">condorcet</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method">method</a>. It's very important that voting reform is done RIGHT. The fact that plurality voting sucks is nothing new - it has been known for well over 100 years to be a terrible system - but we are just now finally making inroads to changing it. After reading some of the information I've pasted and linked to, do you really think another 100+ years of IRV is a step in a positive direction for change? I don't. I will be calling my congressmen today to tell them to vote against this bill and instead work towards changing it to either approval or, hopefully, condorcet voting. Please, if this is something that concerns you, do the same as soon as you can. Be sure to point them (well, point their interns who answer the phone in hopes that they will relay the message) to http://www.electionmethods.org and mention that it is a public service of the Election Methods Education and Research Group. Hopefully - and maybe this is too much to ask for from our current representatives - they will take the initiatiev and spend 15 minutes becoming better educated on the options. <a href="http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/"><b>Contact your representatives, by letter, fax, e-mail, or phone</b></a> (remember, phone is definitely the most effective, but it doesn't hurt to send letters, etc as well) __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling Last edited by SecretMethod70; 10-22-2004 at 08:03 AM..

10-22-2004, 11:14 AM	#15 (permalink)
Booboo Insane	I'm probably missing something here... but whats wrong with Just putting down one name as opposed to 3 or what not. Ie having the popularity vote be it: The majority of the pople like this person best so he wins. Generally it seems that a mass of people is "smarter" or I guess better informed would be the way of putting it. If you have a jar of jellybeans and you have 10,000 people guess the amount in it.. chances are the average will be closest. No doubt i'm missing something.... __________________ "Your life is yours to live, go out and live it" - Richard Rahl

10-22-2004, 11:24 AM	#16 (permalink)
Redlemon Devoted Donor Location: New England	Booboo - Let's say Candidates A and B are very similar, and C is very different. 60% of the voters like both A and B. 40% like C. In the current system, C could easily win, since A and B could end up with about 30% apiece. Approval voting would put A and B both above C.

10-22-2004, 11:34 AM	#17 (permalink)
Booboo Insane	Edit: Nevermind... Misunderstood your point. __________________ "Your life is yours to live, go out and live it" - Richard Rahl

10-26-2004, 01:35 PM	#20 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	35 Lib Rep 35 Dem Rep 30 Rep Dem Rep is eliminated in the first round. End vote is 65 Dem 35 Lib. Problem is, 65 ACTUALLY preferred the Rep OVER the Dem. __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

10-26-2004, 02:36 PM	#22 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	The goal of reforming voting methodology is to move to a method which works under ALL circumstances. The point is that IRV does not satisfy that. Furthermore, the point with the example that I gave is that the minute a third party gains substantial support it again has the potential to be a spoiler. I'm not sure I see the point in only looking at the curent situation to see what a reasonable voting method is. The article I pointed out says so itself - IRV is perfectly fin at the moment. The problems arise once third parties gain more support. And they WOULD gain more support if more people (all the people waiting for them to "have a chance") were able to see the true underground support that they have. I mean, seriously, look at my avatar. If IRV were reasonable don't you think I'd support it? __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling Last edited by SecretMethod70; 10-26-2004 at 02:40 PM..