Best posts made by rb-j

@jack-waugh It pretty easy to analyze how IRV and BTR work with a simple 3-candidate cycle that's like Rock-Paper-Scissors. Since this defeat line is circular we can assign whatever label to the candidate that has the most first-choice votes, say "Rock".

So it's Rock > Scissors > Paper > Rock ...

Now in the semifinal round, it's either

1. Rock
2. Paper
3. Scissors

or it's

1. Rock
2. Scissors
3. Paper

in the ranking of first-choice votes.

In the IRV case, Paper wins the first scenario and Rock wins the second. It's inconsistent.

In the BTR case, Scissors and Paper have a runoff, Paper loses and is eliminated, then Rock always beats Scissors in the final round.

For the 99.9999% of the cases (that either have a Condorcet winner or a simple Rock-Paper-Scissors cycle), the result with BTR is the same as using "straight-ahead" Condorcet and explicitly using plurality as the "completion method" for how to elect a candidate if there is no Condorcet winner. Then it really is a question of which has simpler language? BTR-IRV or simple Condorcet with an explicit completion method for the contingency that there is no Condorcet winner.

@rob said in Bottom Two Runoff (Condorcet IRV hybrid):

Unlike IRV though, in almost every election, you can give results immediately with precinct sums (which would be pairwise matrix data, i.e. (N*N-1)/2 discrete integer values).

Two little mistakes. First, you need to either add a pair of parenths or you need to move one. And you're off by a factor of 2.

N*(N-1)/2 is the number of pairings of N candidates. For each pair, there are 2 numbers.

So, it's N(N-1) summable tallies that each polling place needs to publish at the end of the election day after the last voter has voted. Now, for the explicit Condorcet-plurality method, you would also need N tallies of first-choice votes for each candidate (to determine the plurality winner). Then it becomes simply N(N-1)+N tallies, which is N^2 tallies for each precinct to print. For 6 candidates, that's about 5 inches of paper tape to publish all of the tallies necessary to be fully precinct summable. For 7 candidates, it would be about 7 inches. Easily photographed with a smart phone.

For Hare IRV to be precinct-summable, you would have 205 numbers to publish for 5 candidates. Maybe 4 feet of paper tape. 1236 numbers for 6 candidates. Maybe 15 feet of paper tape to post at the poll entranceway.

@rob

it is about 9000 lines that look like this (there's some extra fluff I removed):

If you want results to be consistent with the City Clerk's report, you need to use the Kiss pile, the Wright pile, and the Exhausted ballot pile but remove the first four ballots from the Exhausted ballot pile. Those were never counted. You want exactly the same 8976 ballots that the City Clerk counted to at least one of those six candidates (counting Combined Write-In as one of the six).

I think FairVote's position against Condorcet is along the lines of

1. "Our current RCV method (Hare) already has momentum that we don't want to damage by conceding it's not the best thing ever since sliced bread."

2. "We hear enough complaining about how RCV or IRV is too complicated. Condorcet RCV is even more complicated and harder to sell to skeptical voters and policy makers."

3. "What are they complaining about? IRV and Condorcet elect the same candidate 99.8% of the time. IRV only once did not elect the Condorcet winner. Just once. Likely to not happen again very soon."

4. "Whenever the Condorcet winner is not elected with IRV it's because the Condorcet candidate did not have enough base support. So the Condorcet candidate deserves to lose."

Yes. You are exactly correct, @rob.

Besides RCV, I am involved in a sorta complex multi-directional "discussion" in Vermont about the nation's most successful third party, about the effect of party crossover in primaries, and of the value of the "open primary" (not to be confused with what California, Washington, or Alaska are doing, where there is no party primary).

Someone is systemically taking undeserved advantage of someone else. And there is a lotta disingenuity tossed around. It's:

1. the Center Squeeze of Hare RCV and who, in Vermont, benefits and who loses.

2. "clone" party crashing another party's primary.

3. single-member vs. two-member vs. mixed different-sized districts in a legislative body (how well constituents are served by each) and the political effect of switching one to another - who benefits and who loses (and remember, elections are a zero-sum game),

And I'm drawing maps for ward redistricting in Burlington and we're getting in crunch time. Big decisions being made soon about what map the voters will get to see on the ballot next town-meeting day. And some, not-entirely-transparent reasons for preventing voters from seeing more than one plan.

So I'm kinda grumpy. I'm sorry.

Hello folks,

Nic Tideman emailed me a few days ago, asking me this question.

The Burlington 2009 Hare RCV failure can happen when there is a close 3-way race.

I sure as hell do not know unless we can get the records of the individual ballot data for 188,582 ballots. Does anyone know where to get it?

bestest,

r b-j

@andy-dienes said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:

You can have a race with 3 or more competitive candidates with FPTP. It happens all of the time

No, it doesn't. It happens sometimes, but given how many more FPTP elections than IRV that's not saying much.

Sure it does. Nothing about FPTP that stops anyone from having an election with more than 2 candidates. The problem is electing the correct candidate. FPTP sometimes fails to do that. And so does Hare IRV.

But what good is using a ranked ballot if you ignore the content of the ranked ballot and elect a candidate that does not have majority support.?

Placebo effect is real and important.

So you're promoting dispensing placebos instead of medicine that actually has physiological effect?

Even just feeling like you get to express your true opinion is important, even if the rest of the rankings were entirely thrown away.

And when the election results are reported and you discover that you were robbed from having your candidate (or your second-choice candidate) elected because the method ignored the second-choice votes of 1/6th of the electorate, despite the promise that it does not, I don't think you'll be "just feeling like you get to express your true [vote]".

I would also prefer the ability to rank candidates on the ballot with choose-one too, even if it just elects the one with the most first-place votes.

This is so stupid and irresponsible. And disingenuous.

Big fucking deal! FPTP can make a similar claim: *Selects a better candidate than choosing the candidate selected by sortition or selected by military support."

yeah, and if I lived in a country where the winner was chosen by military bureaucracy I would prefer FPTP a hell of a lot more.

But FPTP ain't good enough, is it, Andy?