RB
robert bristow-johnson
Sat, Jun 8, 2024 10:13 PM
On 06/08/2024 5:46 PM EDT Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us wrote:
The QAnon idiots will cry fraud no matter what if their candidate loses. Hell, at least one Green shill is still crying foul about FPP tabulations from a quarter century ago! We can't let the conspiracy theorists win.
But you give them ammunition when you refuse to allow process transparency that we already have with FPTP.
If you don't want to let the conspiracy theorists win, you must not choose to help them. You must not give them anything that they can stand on.
Loss of process transparency is a real thing that you are allowing the conspiracy theorists use to oppose RCV reform.
Your organization is not.
I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never pretended to.
Your organization does pretend to. And sometimes they're wrong. And even sometimes, they are dishonest with the facts. Normally we call such dishonesty "lies".
My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable to the status quo
It is. And that's because it can be corrected, but the promoters of the "something" refuse to be honest about both the failure, the significance of the failure, the wrong-headed thinking regarding the failure, and that the failure can be corrected up to what we all know about the limits identified early on by Condorcet and, in modern times, by Arrow et. al.
and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of preserving FPP.
Well, you didn't get the bridge analogy. The problem is when RCV fails to do exactly the beneficial goal that we tout RCV to do, the opponents latch onto that and have a real complaint that they can harp about. We mustn't give them such an easy example they can use a reason for opposition.
When close elections are contested (even not-so-close elections) and opponents point to opacity and question if, behind the opacity, the numbers were nefariously changed, we mustn't give them such an easy example that they can used as a reason for opposition.
You probably know that it's really hard to reform election methods. Lots'a resistance. Reforming FPTP to Hare RCV, touting it as the best thing since sliced bread, then watching it fail on a few occasions, then denying the facts of that failure, sets the movement back. That's what you refuse to understand.
Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best we'll ever have.
Actually, your colleagues in your organization do not agree, nor do they give a shit.
You can't credibly make this claim that you just did above while, at the same time, you're trying to entrench the "currently viable option". We know this because your organization will never admit that the "currently viable option" has any flaws and certainly none that can be corrected.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
> On 06/08/2024 5:46 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
>
> The QAnon idiots will cry fraud no matter what if their candidate loses. Hell, at least one Green shill is still crying foul about FPP tabulations from a quarter century ago! We can't let the conspiracy theorists win.
>
But you give them ammunition when you refuse to allow process transparency that we already have with FPTP.
If you don't want to let the conspiracy theorists win, you must not choose to help them. You must not give them anything that they can stand on.
Loss of process transparency is a real thing that you are allowing the conspiracy theorists use to oppose RCV reform.
> On 06/08/2024 5:44 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
>
> I'm happy to make tweaks!
Your organization is not.
> I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never pretended to.
>
Your organization does pretend to. And sometimes they're wrong. And even sometimes, they are dishonest with the facts. Normally we call such dishonesty "lies".
> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable to the status quo
It is. And that's because it can be corrected, but the promoters of the "something" refuse to be honest about both the failure, the significance of the failure, the wrong-headed thinking regarding the failure, and that the failure can be corrected up to what we all know about the limits identified early on by Condorcet and, in modern times, by Arrow et. al.
> and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of preserving FPP.
>
Well, you didn't get the bridge analogy. The problem is when RCV fails to do **exactly** the beneficial goal that we tout RCV to do, the opponents latch onto that and have a *real* complaint that they can harp about. We mustn't give them such an easy example they can use a reason for opposition.
When close elections are contested (even not-so-close elections) and opponents point to opacity and question if, behind the opacity, the numbers were nefariously changed, we mustn't give them such an easy example that they can used as a reason for opposition.
You probably know that it's really hard to reform election methods. Lots'a resistance. Reforming FPTP to Hare RCV, touting it as the best thing since sliced bread, then watching it fail on a few occasions, then *denying* the facts of that failure, sets the movement back. That's what you refuse to understand.
> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best we'll ever have.
>
Actually, your colleagues in your organization do not agree, nor do they give a shit.
You can't credibly make this claim that you just did above while, at the same time, you're trying to entrench the "currently viable option". We know this because your organization will never admit that the "currently viable option" has any flaws and certainly none that can be corrected.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
CL
Closed Limelike Curves
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 5:49 PM
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something fishy
going on in that number.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on the
incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected by
the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office did run,
pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where the
top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug by
the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election with
multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
the time.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is
often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no examples
of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing Condorcet
winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first place.
Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere) Condorcet
cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:
I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
pretended to.
My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
preserving FPP.
Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
we'll ever have.
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that they
lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
objective failures when they do occur.
A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But elections
are less important than bridges.
You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates become
important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but because
in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's bringing
attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is favoring a
particular side).
As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
on the ballot.
So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that course
corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the voyage.
We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid evidence of
not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny the
indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
for adjustment.
The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
results along with T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
process transparency hurts the election reform movement. Right now, with
FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins directly
from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but Jeffery
Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
But you're still in denial.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly *something* fishy
going on in that number.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on the
incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected by
the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office *did* run,
pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where the
top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug by
the nomination stage visible. In the *very first* major election with
multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
the time.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: *a low rate of **empirical** pathologies is
often a negative, not positive, indicator*. If your dataset has no examples
of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing Condorcet
winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first place.
Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere) Condorcet
cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <michael.garman@rankthevote.us>
wrote:
> I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
> pretended to.
>
> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
> something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
> to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
> preserving FPP.
>
> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
> we'll ever have.
>
> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
> rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman@rankthevote.us>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
>> >
>>
>> Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
>> 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
>> in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
>> there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
>> organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>>
>> But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that they
>> lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
>> objective failures when they do occur.
>>
>> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
>> the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But elections
>> are less important than bridges.
>>
>> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates become
>> important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but because
>> in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's bringing
>> attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is favoring a
>> particular side).
>>
>> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
>> often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
>> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
>> on the ballot.
>>
>> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
>> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>>
>> You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that course
>> corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the voyage.
>> We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid evidence of
>> not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny the
>> indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
>> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
>> for adjustment.
>>
>> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
>> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
>> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
>> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
>> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement. Right now, with
>> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
>> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
>> of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
>> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>>
>> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but Jeffery
>> Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
>> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
>> numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
>> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
>> that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
>> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>>
>> But you're still in denial.
>>
>> --
>>
>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
>>
>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>
>> .
>> .
>> .
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
MG
Michael Garman
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 5:51 PM
Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in the
NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called insignificant!
Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something
fishy going on in that number.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on the
incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected by
the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office did run,
pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where the
top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug by
the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election with
multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
the time.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is
often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no
examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
pretended to.
My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
preserving FPP.
Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
we'll ever have.
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that they
lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
objective failures when they do occur.
A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But elections
are less important than bridges.
You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
favoring a particular side).
As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
on the ballot.
So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
for adjustment.
The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
results along with T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
process transparency hurts the election reform movement. Right now, with
FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins directly
from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
But you're still in denial.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in the
NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called insignificant!
Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
> hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
> of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly *something*
> fishy going on in that number.
>
> And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on the
> incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected by
> the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office *did* run,
> pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where the
> top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug by
> the nomination stage visible. In the *very first* major election with
> multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
> monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
> closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
> all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
> the time.
>
> The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
> mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
> so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
> all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
> majority vote).
>
> I think this bears repeating: *a low rate of **empirical** pathologies is
> often a negative, not positive, indicator*. If your dataset has no
> examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
> Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
> place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
> Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
> successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
> one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
> us from cycles).
>
> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
>> I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
>> pretended to.
>>
>> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
>> something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
>> to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
>> preserving FPP.
>>
>> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
>> we'll ever have.
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
>> rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
>>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
>>> >
>>>
>>> Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
>>> 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
>>> in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
>>> there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
>>> organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>>>
>>> But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that they
>>> lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
>>> objective failures when they do occur.
>>>
>>> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
>>> the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But elections
>>> are less important than bridges.
>>>
>>> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
>>> become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
>>> because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
>>> bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
>>> favoring a particular side).
>>>
>>> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
>>> often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
>>> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
>>> on the ballot.
>>>
>>> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
>>> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>>>
>>> You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
>>> course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
>>> voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
>>> evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
>>> the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
>>> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
>>> for adjustment.
>>>
>>> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
>>> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
>>> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
>>> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
>>> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement. Right now, with
>>> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
>>> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
>>> of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
>>> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>>>
>>> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
>>> Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
>>> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
>>> numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
>>> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
>>> that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
>>> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>>>
>>> But you're still in denial.
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
>>>
>>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>>
>>> .
>>> .
>>> .
>>> ----
>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>>> info
>>>
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
>
RB
robert bristow-johnson
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:23 PM
On 06/09/2024 1:49 PM EDT Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com wrote:
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97% of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something fishy going on in that number.
I'm just saying that approx 15 RCV elections (outa ca. 500 in the U.S.) had a dramatic come-from-behind victory where the plurality leader (of just first-choice votes) in the semi-final round was defeated in the IRV final round. That's about 3%.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected by the electoral system.
It may be. But we don't know for sure that the assumption is incorrect either. It could be that for most or nearly all of these elections, the same set of candidates would have run.
We try to anticipate when voters vote insincerely and it's easier to do in the case of FPTP when there are more than two significant candidates and the margin of victory was far less than the vote that the third-place candidate received. We can, sometimes accurately, speculate that the election was spoiled and would have turned out differently if that third-place candidate had not run.
But we don't really know for sure if we didn't have ranked ballots that tell us explicitly who the voters for the third-place candidate would have voted for in the contingency that this candidate had not run. But we do know if we have ranked ballots.
If everyone who wanted to run for office did run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug by the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous monotonicity/participation/majority failure.
Do you mean Alaska August 2022? Or Burlington 2009?
This lines up much more closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections, all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of the time.
But we just don't know. I wouldn't necessarily be using someone's parochial model to justify changing the law in public elections.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning, so they never run in the first place.
We just don't know that. It's speculative. It's like insisting that we know some FPTP election was spoiled when we just don't know for sure. Perhaps, in Florida 2000, all those Nader voters would have stayed home if Nader hadn't run. Or perhaps they would have leaned toward Bush (not likely, I'll admit) and the outcome would have not changes.
At that point, in a 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first place.
We just don't know that. It's speculative.
Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere) Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time.
We just don't know that. It's speculative.
Admittedly, I would expect cycles to be more common if Condorcet were used, but it's just a speculative expectation. Perhaps RCV voters would rank the the candidates no differently than they had with IRV. With the exception of a few equal-rankings, to assume that they would mark their ranked ballots differently under Condorcet than they do under Hare is speculative. I would rather assume that voters mark their ballots with they're sincere preferences. But if IRV starts to more often burn voters for marking their ballots sincerely, I would expect voter behavior to change a little. But we just do not know for sure.
That's how we'll know we've successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects us from cycles).
> On 06/09/2024 1:49 PM EDT Closed Limelike Curves <closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97% of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something fishy going on in that number.
>
I'm just saying that approx 15 RCV elections (outa ca. 500 in the U.S.) had a dramatic come-from-behind victory where the plurality leader (of just first-choice votes) in the semi-final round was defeated in the IRV final round. That's about 3%.
> And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected by the electoral system.
It may be. But we don't know for sure that the assumption is incorrect either. It could be that for most or nearly all of these elections, the same set of candidates would have run.
We try to anticipate when voters vote insincerely and it's easier to do in the case of FPTP when there are more than two significant candidates and the margin of victory was far less than the vote that the third-place candidate received. We can, sometimes accurately, speculate that the election was spoiled and would have turned out differently if that third-place candidate had not run.
But we don't really know for sure if we didn't have ranked ballots that tell us *explicitly* who the voters for the third-place candidate would have voted for in the contingency that this candidate had not run. But we *do* know if we have ranked ballots.
> If everyone who wanted to run for office did run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug by the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous monotonicity/participation/majority failure.
Do you mean Alaska August 2022? Or Burlington 2009?
> This lines up much more closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections, all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of the time.
>
But we just don't know. I wouldn't necessarily be using someone's parochial model to justify changing the law in public elections.
> The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning, so they never run in the first place.
We just don't know that. It's speculative. It's like insisting that we *know* some FPTP election was spoiled when we just don't know for sure. Perhaps, in Florida 2000, all those Nader voters would have stayed home if Nader hadn't run. Or perhaps they would have leaned toward Bush (not likely, I'll admit) and the outcome would have not changes.
> At that point, in a 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple majority vote).
>
> I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first place.
We just don't know that. It's speculative.
> Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere) Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time.
We just don't know that. It's speculative.
Admittedly, I would expect cycles to be more common if Condorcet were used, but it's just a speculative expectation. Perhaps RCV voters would rank the the candidates no differently than they had with IRV. With the exception of a few equal-rankings, to assume that they would mark their ranked ballots differently under Condorcet than they do under Hare is speculative. I would rather assume that voters mark their ballots with they're sincere preferences. But if IRV starts to more often burn voters for marking their ballots sincerely, I *would* expect voter behavior to change a little. But we just do not know for sure.
> That's how we'll know we've successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects us from cycles).
>
I dunno.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
CL
Closed Limelike Curves
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:23 PM
Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
(including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
vote-counting.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in the
NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called insignificant!
Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something
fishy going on in that number.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office did
run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
by the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election with
multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
the time.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies
is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no
examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
pretended to.
My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
preserving FPP.
Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
we'll ever have.
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that they
lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
objective failures when they do occur.
A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But elections
are less important than bridges.
You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
favoring a particular side).
As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
on the ballot.
So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
for adjustment.
The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
results along with T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
process transparency hurts the election reform movement. Right now, with
FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins directly
from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
But you're still in denial.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
(including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
vote-counting.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
>
> Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in the
> NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called insignificant!
> Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
> closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
>> hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
>> of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly *something*
>> fishy going on in that number.
>>
>> And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
>> the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
>> by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office *did*
>> run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
>> the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
>> by the nomination stage visible. In the *very first* major election with
>> multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
>> monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
>> closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
>> all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
>> the time.
>>
>> The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
>> mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
>> so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
>> all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
>> majority vote).
>>
>> I think this bears repeating: *a low rate of **empirical** pathologies
>> is often a negative, not positive, indicator*. If your dataset has no
>> examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
>> Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
>> place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
>> Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
>> successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
>> one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
>> us from cycles).
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
>>> pretended to.
>>>
>>> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
>>> something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
>>> to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
>>> preserving FPP.
>>>
>>> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
>>> we'll ever have.
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
>>> rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
>>>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
>>>> 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
>>>> in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
>>>> there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
>>>> organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>>>>
>>>> But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that they
>>>> lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
>>>> objective failures when they do occur.
>>>>
>>>> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
>>>> the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But elections
>>>> are less important than bridges.
>>>>
>>>> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
>>>> become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
>>>> because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
>>>> bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
>>>> favoring a particular side).
>>>>
>>>> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
>>>> often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
>>>> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
>>>> on the ballot.
>>>>
>>>> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
>>>> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>>>>
>>>> You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
>>>> course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
>>>> voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
>>>> evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
>>>> the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
>>>> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
>>>> for adjustment.
>>>>
>>>> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
>>>> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
>>>> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
>>>> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
>>>> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement. Right now, with
>>>> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
>>>> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
>>>> of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
>>>> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>>>>
>>>> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
>>>> Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
>>>> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
>>>> numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
>>>> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
>>>> that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
>>>> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>>>>
>>>> But you're still in denial.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
>>>>
>>>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>>>
>>>> .
>>>> .
>>>> .
>>>> ----
>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>>>> info
>>>>
>>> ----
>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>>> info
>>>
>>
MG
Michael Garman
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:24 PM
Maine House 2018 with Jared Golden? You can’t just pick and choose “high
profile” to mean “outlier I want to focus on.”
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
(including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
vote-counting.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in
the NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called
insignificant! Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something
fishy going on in that number.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office did
run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
by the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election
with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
the time.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its
pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope
of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a
2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because
it's just a simple majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies
is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no
examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
pretended to.
My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who
view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently
preferable to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in
favor of preserving FPP.
Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
we'll ever have.
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that
they lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
objective failures when they do occur.
A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4%
of the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But
elections are less important than bridges.
You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
favoring a particular side).
As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
on the ballot.
So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
for adjustment.
The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
results along with T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
process transparency hurts the election reform movement. Right now, with
FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins directly
from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
But you're still in denial.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
list info
Maine House 2018 with Jared Golden? You can’t just pick and choose “high
profile” to mean “outlier I want to focus on.”
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
>
> I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
> pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
> competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
> and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
> Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
>
> Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
> showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
> (including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
> race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
> vote-counting.
>
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in
>> the NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called
>> insignificant! Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
>> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
>> closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
>>> hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
>>> of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly *something*
>>> fishy going on in that number.
>>>
>>> And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
>>> the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
>>> by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office *did*
>>> run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
>>> the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
>>> by the nomination stage visible. In the *very first* major election
>>> with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
>>> monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
>>> closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
>>> all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
>>> the time.
>>>
>>> The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its
>>> pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope
>>> of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a
>>> 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because
>>> it's just a simple majority vote).
>>>
>>> I think this bears repeating: *a low rate of **empirical** pathologies
>>> is often a negative, not positive, indicator*. If your dataset has no
>>> examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
>>> Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
>>> place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
>>> Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
>>> successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
>>> one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
>>> us from cycles).
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
>>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
>>>> pretended to.
>>>>
>>>> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who
>>>> view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently
>>>> preferable to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in
>>>> favor of preserving FPP.
>>>>
>>>> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
>>>> we'll ever have.
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
>>>> rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
>>>>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>>> >
>>>>> >
>>>>> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
>>>>> >
>>>>>
>>>>> Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it works
>>>>> 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs
>>>>> in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet
>>>>> there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
>>>>> organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>>>>>
>>>>> But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that
>>>>> they lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
>>>>> objective failures when they do occur.
>>>>>
>>>>> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4%
>>>>> of the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But
>>>>> elections are less important than bridges.
>>>>>
>>>>> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
>>>>> become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
>>>>> because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
>>>>> bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
>>>>> favoring a particular side).
>>>>>
>>>>> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
>>>>> often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
>>>>> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
>>>>> on the ballot.
>>>>>
>>>>> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
>>>>> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>>>>>
>>>>> You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
>>>>> course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
>>>>> voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
>>>>> evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
>>>>> the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
>>>>> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
>>>>> for adjustment.
>>>>>
>>>>> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
>>>>> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
>>>>> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
>>>>> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
>>>>> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement. Right now, with
>>>>> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
>>>>> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
>>>>> of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
>>>>> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>>>>>
>>>>> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
>>>>> Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
>>>>> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
>>>>> numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
>>>>> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
>>>>> that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
>>>>> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>>>>>
>>>>> But you're still in denial.
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
>>>>>
>>>>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>>>>
>>>>> .
>>>>> .
>>>>> .
>>>>> ----
>>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>>>>> list info
>>>>>
>>>> ----
>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>>>> info
>>>>
>>>
CL
Closed Limelike Curves
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:27 PM
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races where
there are at least 3 major candidates.
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races where
there are at least 3 major candidates.
MG
Michael Garman
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:27 PM
Also, the profile of an election is far less important than the frequency
of malfunctions — which, again, is practically nil. The actual results are
far more valuable than theoretical expectations.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:24 PM Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:
Maine House 2018 with Jared Golden? You can’t just pick and choose “high
profile” to mean “outlier I want to focus on.”
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
(including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
vote-counting.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in
the NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called
insignificant! Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly something
fishy going on in that number.
And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office did
run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
by the nomination stage visible. In the very first major election
with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
the time.
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its
pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope
of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a
2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because
it's just a simple majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies
is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no
examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've
never pretended to.
My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who
view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently
preferable to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in
favor of preserving FPP.
Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
we'll ever have.
On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it
works 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference
occurs in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad,
yet there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that
they lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
objective failures when they do occur.
A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4%
of the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But
elections are less important than bridges.
You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
favoring a particular side).
As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
on the ballot.
So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
for adjustment.
The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
results along with T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
process transparency hurts the election reform movement. Right now, with
FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins directly
from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
But you're still in denial.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
list info
Also, the profile of an election is far less important than the frequency
of malfunctions — which, again, is practically nil. The actual results are
far more valuable than theoretical expectations.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:24 PM Michael Garman <michael.garman@rankthevote.us>
wrote:
>
>
> Maine House 2018 with Jared Golden? You can’t just pick and choose “high
> profile” to mean “outlier I want to focus on.”
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:23 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
> closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Michael—that seems a bit uncalled for.
>>
>> I did forget about the NYC race, you're right. Like I said, IRV only has
>> pathologies about 10-15% of the time, so out of the first 4
>> competitive+high-profile IRV elections (NYC, the two Alaska House races,
>> and the Alaska Senate race) only 2 have had gross pathologies (Alaska
>> Senate was a decapitation pathology that avoided a center-squeeze).
>>
>> Although, with that said, I don't think the New York primary was a good
>> showing for IRV either. Every method had Eric Adams as the winner
>> (including FPP), but 17.5% of the ballots were exhausted by the end of the
>> race, and NYC almost declared the wrong winner because of errors in
>> vote-counting.
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 10:51 AM Michael Garman <
>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Oh, I’m sure the highly-funded, endorsed, and publicized candidates in
>>> the NYC mayoral election not named Adams would love being called
>>> insignificant! Brilliant analysis from the politics understander.
>>> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 1:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
>>> closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Michael—the issue is it fails much more than 1% of the time, it's just
>>>> hidden from sight. We can see the same mistake in FPP. If it looks like 97%
>>>> of FPP elections "got the right result", there's clearly *something*
>>>> fishy going on in that number.
>>>>
>>>> And there is! The issue is that those 97% and 99% figures are based on
>>>> the incorrect assumption that which candidates choose to run isn't affected
>>>> by the electoral system. If everyone who wanted to run for office *did*
>>>> run, pathologies would be much more common. We saw this in Alaska, where
>>>> the top-4 format made the pathologies that usually get swept under the rug
>>>> by the nomination stage visible. In the *very first* major election
>>>> with multiple significant candidates, we saw a simultaneous
>>>> monotonicity/participation/majority failure. This lines up much more
>>>> closely with what models predicted: in competitive 3-candidate elections,
>>>> all of these pathologies should be quite common, happening around 5-15% of
>>>> the time.
>>>>
>>>> The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its
>>>> pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope
>>>> of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a
>>>> 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because
>>>> it's just a simple majority vote).
>>>>
>>>> I think this bears repeating: *a low rate of **empirical** pathologies
>>>> is often a negative, not positive, indicator*. If your dataset has no
>>>> examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
>>>> Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
>>>> place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
>>>> Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
>>>> successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
>>>> one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
>>>> us from cycles).
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 2:44 PM Michael Garman <
>>>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've
>>>>> never pretended to.
>>>>>
>>>>> My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who
>>>>> view something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently
>>>>> preferable to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in
>>>>> favor of preserving FPP.
>>>>>
>>>>> Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
>>>>> we'll ever have.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
>>>>> rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <
>>>>>> michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> >
>>>>>> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
>>>>>> >
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Could work 99.6% of the time. Or we could revert to FPTP and it
>>>>>> works 97% of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference
>>>>>> occurs in who is elected). The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad,
>>>>>> yet there is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local
>>>>>> organizations, with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But not interested in correcting their own flaws. So much so that
>>>>>> they lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
>>>>>> objective failures when they do occur.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4%
>>>>>> of the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable. But
>>>>>> elections are less important than bridges.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates
>>>>>> become important. The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but
>>>>>> because in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's
>>>>>> bringing attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is
>>>>>> favoring a particular side).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
>>>>>> often. Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
>>>>>> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens. Like repeal efforts that get
>>>>>> on the ballot.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches? Or
>>>>>> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> You are clearly in the latter group. You haven't learned yet that
>>>>>> course corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the
>>>>>> voyage. We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid
>>>>>> evidence of not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny
>>>>>> the indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
>>>>>> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
>>>>>> for adjustment.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
>>>>>> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
>>>>>> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
>>>>>> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
>>>>>> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement. Right now, with
>>>>>> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
>>>>>> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
>>>>>> of the election. This is what protects us from some corrupt official
>>>>>> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but
>>>>>> Jeffery Clark (a different high official) obviously is. We need process
>>>>>> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
>>>>>> numbers from the tallies. We need decentralization and process
>>>>>> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
>>>>>> that accurate tallies were fudged. We lose all that with Hare RCV. And
>>>>>> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But you're still in denial.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>>
>>>>>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> .
>>>>>> .
>>>>>> .
>>>>>> ----
>>>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>>>>>> list info
>>>>>>
>>>>> ----
>>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>>>>> list info
>>>>>
>>>>
MG
Michael Garman
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:28 PM
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
where there are at least 3 major candidates.
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
> Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
> where there are at least 3 major candidates.
>
CL
Closed Limelike Curves
Sun, Jun 9, 2024 6:39 PM
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I think
the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree. However, if
you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and win an
imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
where there are at least 3 major candidates.
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I think
the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree. However, if
you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and win an
imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
>
> There were four candidates on the ballot.
> On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
> closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
>> where there are at least 3 major candidates.
>>
>
