RB gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs,
preferentiality
give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, &
even put an end to all war forever.
Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties,
but all combinations of programs, “RB” is the only thing that’s truly
both just & free. Because it always elects the candidate most exactly
in the middle of all voting, RB is top-dead-center counter extremist,
& thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments
combined & thus will even disallow the tendency of (virtually two-
party) parliamentary systems to give the top to the biggest gang on
the block, sometimes with violently extremist results.
RB is the sole unchangeable plank & bylaw of a Ranked Ballot Party,
the only practicable third party.) We imagine running on the single
issue of RB, promising a citizens’ advisory board based on Organized
Communications, “OC”, small randomly assigned discussion groups
electing reps to higher & higher randomly assigned levels, by means of
RB, ‘til one small group, most exactly in the middle of all voting,
remains at the top, to guide us in the rest, which group by its merest
invitation to speak inevitably names the perfect compromise & next
winner That’s the instant part. You do the same, from the most local
on up.
By the power of its example alone, RB will give us practicable instant
worldwide true democracy. Virtually no democracy has ever been
attacked by another. In a world of only democracies, there would no
longer be need of the counter-productive wastefulness of armies, war
or the preparation for war. RB will bring us that & all else: a real
solution to terror, a perfect marriage of Freedom & Justice, Tradition
& Modernity, Palestinian & Jew, Free Market & Communalism, all the
fairness, payback & make-up one could wish for, clean back to the Cro-
Magnons, ecologically sustainable politics, what’s best for all
workers, instant global women’s liberation, world-wide luxury, a
rationalization of the drug wars, human unity, the Freedom of Justice
& the Justice of Freedom, perhaps the only possible solution to the
world’s only real problem, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (once they
both are made to have to adopt RB), even integrity. RB is to the horse
& buggy two-party system as shopping in the Mall of America is to
shopping in Soviet Russia. The majority of the problems we face are
due to the heavy-footedness of the two party system. RB lessens the
power of the extremes, whether authoritarian, economic or sectarian,
except through what they can gain by persuasion, which is only what’s
just. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real power
is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of Iraq. Unless its
Parliament comes to select the Prime Minister by means of RB, it may
not hold & the country, region & world will be in danger of going to
war over some ancient grudge, oil well, multi-ethnic city, or
sabotaged pipeline. While the new constitution does call for the
selection of the President by a 2/3 vote in the first round (even if
only by the parliament & not the people) (who may then decide who will
form the new government) & then by a run-off between the top two vote
getters in the second round, if that fails to move all three tribes to
nominate centrists, then the resulting handful of old men in a back
room will fall far short of RB’s ultimate retail politics. RB would
be equally useful for all electoral systems (parliamentary or
presidential, the parliaments choosing their PMs by RB from among
their members, lest they produce another Hitler or other extreme)
coops, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious
confessions, political parties, associations or, even cabals. Whoever
gets there first wins. For leaders to best represent their country,
or district, whether chosen at large or by a representative body, they
must be the perfect compromise, most exactly in the middle, as is
given by RB. Yet because it gives minorities a real say in which
member of the plurality/majority gets chosen, RB is the only thing
that will lead Iraqis, or anyone else, to support any plan more than
inadequate confederation. It will result in “phantasmagoric
subtlefaction”, real-time alternatives to all proposals, from
wherever: market, coop or social, or tribal, theological or universal,
answering infinitely more questions at a time than the two party
system’s “who is least bad”. Both more Liberty & Justice can be found
in RB than in any ideology. With brakes & reverse comes no more need
to suppress popular movements around the world. RB will give us
subtlety, responsivity, light-footedness, long-sightedness,
objectivity, economy, unity, accountability, integrity & victory over
extremism. Palestinians & Jews will give up fighting over a sliver of
desert & become members of global cooperatives, all the various forms
of hegemonism, whether up front, subterranean or unconscious, will be
given up, in exchange for leading the world to the light, & America
will finally realize the need for an adequate, howsoever minimal,
safety net as the price & foundation of a free market.
Help put this idea, in time, to as many as possible, before “Clockwork
Orange” (overpopulation), “1984” (high-tech dictatorship), cosmic
collision, tectonic, economic or environmental collapse, or literalist
or criminal contretemps. The cost of a full page national ad
(sufficient to put RB to virtually all the world) would be repaid in
no time, once all that money gets put to actual productive use, at
pre-9/11 US annual defense spending of $10,000 per family. Ten to the
power of ten (ten levels of groups of ten) would be sufficient to
organize & unite all mankind.
RB is very freeing. Because it always chooses the candidate in the
middle, all who support it are perfectly top-dead-center, with no more
need to fear self expression. Politics will become a family
discussion around the kitchen table, with no more jumping back & forth
between extremes, or absence of the economists’ requirement of
predictability for growth. All that’s needed is to let go of the nut
& get your fist back out of the knothole, to free yourself, & to rest
in the knowledge that RB will give us perfect Freedom & perfect
Justice, at one & the same time, even if not necessarily in the form
imagined, as if anyone would then care. For instance, no woman ever
got pregnant to have an abortion, but RB will make the point moot.
Good enough for New Zealand, Australia, Kerala India, Iraq, London,
Ireland, Cambridge Mass, Burlington & 95% of the townships of Vermont,
Pierce County Washington, St Paul & Minneapolis Minnesota, the Utah
Republican Party for the selection of statewide candidates, the
platforms of both the Green & Libertarian Parties & 50 college student
bodies across the US with more places coming every year, but not good
enough for the rest of us? It must be in somebody’s interest! How
can any wish it of others if they do not have it themselves? Having
spent every spare moment from the invasion, to the vote on the
constitution emailing every Iraqi we could find about RB, we would
like to claim some little credit for the reforms they did adopt. The
only imaginable definition of Freedom (& Morality) is “Do as you wish,
but harm no other”. The maker & sustainer of this world (& cosmos!)
could have no need of one bit of it. The fiercer the history of the
planet, the sooner it would have been blissed out behind ethnic
homogeneity, & thus democracy. Tax consumption, not investment, &
spread the productivity around. All powers to their lowest
appropriate level. All human evil is due to the out of phase
fluctuation of population & food supply, so no-one alive is
responsible for the mess we find ourselves in, except for what they do
now. Justice is the redress of past violence, Freedom the current
absence of violence & Nonviolence the only basis of all Morality.
Just go out & collect signatures, asking those who sign to collect
them for you as well. The more the merrier. (The “additive” form of
RB is to count the first choices & if no-one has 50%, to add in the
next choices, & so on until someone finally does.) “Consider that
which is common in the sight of all men.”
Dave Ketchum
paragraph below makes me wonder how valid the the author's claims may
be. The very last few lines help.
. STV - not used here - THANKS
. Condorcet - also not used here - think more whether this is
better.
On Jul 23, 2011, at 3:59 PM, preferentiality wrote:
> Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will
> give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, &
> even put an end to all war forever.
>
> Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties,
> but all combinations of programs, “RB” is the only thing that’s truly
> both just & free. Because it always elects the candidate most exactly
> in the middle of all voting, RB is top-dead-center counter extremist,
> & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments
> combined & thus will even disallow the tendency of (virtually two-
> party) parliamentary systems to give the top to the biggest gang on
> the block, sometimes with violently extremist results.
Worth reading more - I am not buying the author's claims of achieving
perfection.
Dave Ketchum
> --
Dave Ketchum
I see it as worth considering the thinking, although I AM NOT signing
on as backing any of it.
On Jul 23, 2011, at 11:32 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> Knowing of IRV and Condorcet methods of counting ballots, the first
> paragraph below makes me wonder how valid the the author's claims
> may be. The very last few lines help.
> . STV - not used here - THANKS
> . Condorcet - also not used here - think more whether this is
> better.
>
> On Jul 23, 2011, at 3:59 PM, preferentiality wrote:
>
>> Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will
>> give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, &
>> even put an end to all war forever.
>>
>> Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties,
>> but all combinations of programs, “RB” is the only thing that’s truly
>> both just & free. Because it always elects the candidate most
>> exactly
>> in the middle of all voting, RB is top-dead-center counter extremist,
>> & thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments
>> combined & thus will even disallow the tendency of (virtually two-
>> party) parliamentary systems to give the top to the biggest gang on
>> the block, sometimes with violently extremist results.
>
> Worth reading more - I am not buying the author's claims of
> achieving perfection. There are many topics for which more than two
> possible choices seem worth debating possible value.
frederick ellis
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Jeffry R. Fisher
>
> Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will
> give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, &
Ranking candidates is only part of the process. How would "RB" tally its
rankings? Instant Round Robin Voting (IRRV) uses ranked ballots, but so does
IRV, and they're poles apart in quality.
I got tired of wading through the morass of wild, irrational claims, so if
the answer was in there, I never saw it. Since the post was overwhelming, I
suspect that I'm not going to like the answer even if the author deigns to
reply (there's a high probability such poorly constructed propaganda was
hit-and-run spam).
BTW, for the subject line to be true ("an equal chance of winning"), we
shouldn't have any voting at all. Instead, we would simply hold a lottery in
which each candidate has one ticket.
Cheers,
-- Jeff Fisher ><> Vancouver WA
http://jeffryfisher.net/Statesman
"Individual liberty can only be built on a foundation of individual
responsibility."
frederick ellis
Dave Ketchum
IRV is fine but not close to the answer. Change the entire system to parlmentary with PR. It's time to get tough and stop diddling around with Mikey Mouse attemps.
Frederick Ellis MBAReno, NVFrom: Jeffry R. Fisher <jrf_subs...@comcast.net>
To: covote...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2011 8:39 PM
Subject: [COVoterChoice] Re: RB gives an equal chance of winning
preferentiality wrote:
>
> Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will
> give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, &
> even put an end to all war forever...
Ranking candidates is only part of the process. How would "RB" tally its rankings? Instant Round Robin Voting (IRRV) uses ranked ballots, but so does IRV, and they're poles apart in quality.
I got tired of wading through the morass of wild, irrational claims, so if the answer was in there, I never saw it. Since the post was overwhelming, I suspect that I'm not going to like the answer even if the author deigns to reply (there's a high probability such poorly constructed propaganda was hit-and-run spam).
BTW, for the subject line to be true ("an equal chance of winning"), we shouldn't have any voting at all. Instead, we would simply hold a lottery in which each candidate has one ticket.
Jeffry R. Fisher
> IRV is fine but not close to the answer.
I disagree. Because it gives more weight to 1st place votes than 2nd and
lower place votes (and especially ignores last-place votes), IRV promotes
love-me or hate-me polarization.
Such polarization isn't healthy for a democracy, and for that reason alone,
IRV is awful. Add in its opacity and IRV may be even worse than the FPP that
we have now.
What we need instead is a system that rewards intelligent win-win
compromise, and the best I've seen so far is IRRV (aka Condorcet). AV
(Approval Voting) is a close second.
Dave Ketchum
> frederick ellis wrote:
>> IRV is fine but not close to the answer.
>
> I disagree. Because it gives more weight to 1st place votes than 2nd
> and lower place votes (and especially ignores last-place votes), IRV
> promotes love-me or hate-me polarization.
Many would be pleased with more weight for first place - reading these
would give the same winner as FPP, assuming most voters agreed on
winner. Needing more for winner from IRV style ballots:
. AV offers equal ranking, but voters often prefer unequal.
. For IRV discarding those FPP would see as being little liked
gets to what other those voters ranked below - sometimes nice, but can
be discarding those truly best liked, which makes many argue against
IRV.
. Condorcet looks at entire ballot and sees races between each
pair of candidates. Usually one wins all such races and, if not, the
resulting cycle can get analyzed for winner among the best liked.
. This thread has its own way of looking - competitive with
Condorcet.
Zoe Zidbeck
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Dave Ketchum
By IRV I suppose you are referring to the "eliminative" form of Ranked Ballot, where if noone has 50% the one with the lowest first choice votes is eliminated & his voters second choices distibuted to whoever won them. While this form is the natural evolution of regular runoff voting, it is true that it gives some small greater weight to the extremes, & no doubt some individuals will be inclined to be so calculationg as to not just go ahead & feel free to vote their heart.
A better form of RB is the "addtive" form, where if noone has 50& of the first choices, noone gets eliminated, but rather the second choices get ADDED in & so on until someone finally does get 50%. This will be the one most nearly exactly in the middle of all participating, ie it results in centrism, which is just wonderfully anti-extremist, but at the same time gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combos of programs.
However, I do not get "Because it gives more weight to 1st place votes than 2nd and lower place votes (and especially ignores last-place votes), IRV promotes love-me or hate-me polarization.". I've heard such things before, but noone has ever broken it down for me, & it would be fine should Frederick Ellis be so inclined. Anything beyond going to Additive RB, such as "con-d'or-sit" is pure obstructonism & just showing off, to my mind.
Jeffry R. Fisher
>
> By IRV I suppose you are referring to the "eliminative" form of Ranked
Yes, that's the only one I have seen promoted as IRV.
> A better form of RB is the "addtive" form, where if noone has 50& of the
> first choices, noone gets eliminated, but rather the second choices get
> ADDED
Interesting. I'd like to see what the math and logic experts have to say
about strategic voting and paradoxical outcomes. My first impression is that
it starts to look like AV: Two or more candidates could go over the 50%
threshold after the same addition (because more than one vote is being
counted per voter). You'd then need a secondary victory criterion, and the
most obvious is to select the candidate with the highest %.
> I mean condorcet couldn't come up with an encapsulating little descriptor
> no more burdensome than Additive Ranked Ballot?
"Instant Round Robin" is descriptive, at least for those familiar with
sports tournaments.
> IRRV? FPP? Please spell them out.
In a general discussion I would have, but in a voting methods group I lazily
assumed that everyone knew the jargon or had a reference at hand.
IRRV = Instant Round Robin Voting
FPP = First Past Post or First Place Plurality
For these and many many more, with full descriptions, analyses, test cases
etc, see Electowiki http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Main_Page
Zoe Zidbeck
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Zoe Zidbeck
preferentiality wrote:
>
Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will
give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, &
even put an end to all war forever...
Ranking candidates is only part of the process. How would "RB" tally its rankings? Instant Round Robin Voting (IRRV) uses ranked ballots, but so does IRV, and they're poles apart in quality.
I got tired of wading through the morass of wild, irrational claims, so if the answer was in there, I never saw it. Since the post was overwhelming, I suspect that I'm not going to like the answer even if the author deigns to reply (there's a high probability such poorly constructed propaganda was hit-and-run spam).
Cheers,
-- Jeff Fisher ><> Vancouver WA
http://jeffryfisher.net/Statesman
"Individual liberty can only be built on a foundation of individual responsibility."
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James Gilmour
> The "additive" form of RB as opposed to the "eliminative",
> IRV, is the count up all the first choices & if noone has
> 50%, to ADD IN the second choices & so on until someone
> finally does have 50%.
Two major problems with this. First, unless every voter marks a preference against every candidate it will not comply with "one
person, one vote". Second, ADDING second choices to first choices means that my second preference counts against the election of my
first preference. That failure to comply with "Later no harm" will likely lead voters to "bullet vote", i.e. mark only a first
choice - which defeats the objective of the system completely.
James Gilmour
frederick ellis
Zoe Zidbeck
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Zoe Zidbeck
James Gilmour
-----Original Message-----
From: covote...@googlegroups.com [mailto:covote...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Zoe Zidbeck
Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2011 6:17 PM
To: covote...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [COVoterChoice] Re: RB gives an equal chance of winning
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
That's been a common argument against the Bucklin method. However,
first of all, it's just not true and it neglects the important issue
of preference strength. It would be a good idea, especially for those
in Colorado, where Bucklin was invented, to look at actual election
results. In real, final elections, people did vote for additional
candidates, plenty of them.
In later usage of Bucklin, for party primaries, there was a lot of
bullet voting, sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Ultimately, lots of people, if you allow them to, will just vote for
one candidate. That's what led Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) to propose
what recently came to be called Asset Voting, to deal with this. (It
makes STV into a truly spectacular election method! But Dodgson was
mostly ignored for more than a century).
Later No Harm is a voting system criterion guaranteed to poison
results for any method that satisfies it.
The argument of OPOV is quite foolish. In the end, either one vote
counts from each voter, or none have an effect. It *looks like* the
voter is casting two votes, but in a single-winner election, the
voter is either participating in the "final pair" or not. With
approval-style voting, which Bucklin is, just staged so that there is
"limited LNH protection," if the voter votes for both candidates, the
voter has indicated approval of both and this, then, has no effect on
which one wins. Except for one thing!
And it's an important thing.
It can make the election be by a majority of voters. In Bucklin
systems, it's voters that count, not votes.
I've argued that Bucklin would make a spectacular first-ballot method
for systems that do require a true majority, such as runoff voting,
which is the most advanced voting system in common use in the U.S.A.
Bucklin is much better than IRV in finding true majority approval, as
can be seen by study of actual election results.
The arguments against Bucklin generally are old, shallow, political
arguments that were used to kill reformed voting systems in the U.S.
The people apparently loved Bucklin, it was taken down through
machinations (such as in San Francisco, where the Election Board got
a measure passed to allow an experiment with voting machines, then
used this to kill Bucklin, since the machines couldn't handle it. The
public didn't know what hit them....) or an court obviously intent on
finding what arguments it could to kill the method (Brown v.
Smallwood in Minnesota).
Bucklin worked, it worked extremely well, electing a minor-party
candidate in Grand Junction when first used (the guy was a Socialist!
Can you imagine that?). That really worried some, and they had the
power to do something about it.
The flaws of Bucklin, and there are some, almost entirely disappear
if it's used as a primary method with runoff voting. If a majority in
the primary, done. If not, runoff. I've argued that write-in votes
should be allowed in the runoff. It's a way that an electorate can
fix bad strategy in the first round. If the runoff is Bucklin as
well, then at least first-level spoilers don't damage the results.
You can still vote for your favorite, then add a backup.
By the way, there were, in the early Bucklin elections, quite a few
voters who voted for their favorite, then skipped the second rank.
And then added a vote in third rank. That was adding to LNH
protection! They knew what they were doing. It indicates stronger preference.
And this led me to thinking of using a Range ballot for a
Bucklin-like method, and to the idea of doing Condorcet analysis on
the ballots. If the result isn't clear, then there is a runoff.
Under direct democratic election process, no result is accepted
without a majority approval. That's abandoned for public elections
because it is considered more important to get a result, and
*usually* the plurality winner would win a revote. However, there are
exceptions, and they can be doozies.
Zoe Zidbeck
Jeffry R. Fisher
>
> unless every voter marks a preference against every candidate it will not
> comply with "one person, one vote".
This is a red herring: Even now, unless every voter votes in contest, we
fail that flawed interpretation of "one person, one vote". The truth is that
as long as the voter has the *option* to vote, the ballot is fair.
If the voter *chooses* not to exercise the option, that's his or her
business, and it does not invalidate the voting method being discussed.
> Second, ADDING second choices to first choices means that my
> second preference counts against the election of my first preference.
Yup, too bad. Your first choice didn't garner 50% in stage one, so maybe you
should compromise.
> That failure to comply with "Later no harm" will likely lead voters to
> "bullet vote"
If you don't tell us your 2nd, then maybe the rest of us will put your
*last* place choice over the top. It's your choice, but don't complain about
the outcome if you bullet vote and lose.
If there's one voting criterion I could let go, it's this fanatical
attachment to the 1st place vote. What if I like two candidates almost
equally but hate everyone else? Can I become fanatically attached to the top
two? I demand a top-two system!
Oh wait, there are already a couple states that do primaries like that.
BTW, Additive RB looks a *lot* like approval voting. Question: What happens
if two candidates both break 50% at the same stage?
Zoe Zidbeck
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