Range Voting
Jan. 4th, 2007 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeThe folks advocating Range Voting contacted WSFS (actually, the WSFS webmaster, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."
I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.
WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.
sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.
WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.
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Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 02:39 am (UTC)I don't see WSFS changing their rules without a significant number of their own regular attendees being convinced of the need for such a change. And that's not going to happen from an outside source. Either convince some of the regular Business Meeting attendees or join Worldcon and come push the changes in person. WSFS isn't run by remote elected representatives or some far-off cabal; it's more like a Town Meeting.
And I'm Chairman of the next such Town Meeting. I'll help you frame your proposal and point you to the people you really have to convince to have any hope of getting a fair hearing. But either you or someone you convince is going to have to do the actual legislative work.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 03:43 am (UTC)And just maybe doing a drive-by that, worse, says "what you're doing is wrong; trust us and all will be solved" is supercilious and patronizing. It is unlikely to give us a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Perhaps the two people who have built this system have something useful to offer...but evangelizing at us when they are not a part of our community is irritating as all get-out.
I'm really glad they've seen the light and all. But if they knock at the door, they probably won't be nearly as entertaining as the Mormons.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 05:15 am (UTC)And no, it's not more complex than IRV, it's much simpler. It's simpler to use, and VASTLY easier to total.
Voters in San Francisco decided to use a modified form of IRV, because it was marketed well to them, and because they were so desperate for reform that they latched on to what was out there. FairVote beat us to the punch, and told a LOT of lies. They still tell lies all the time. They say that IRV only elects majority winners, and prevents strategy incentives, and prevents spoilers. All lies, and we've pointed it out to them numerous times, but they still do it over and over again.
http://rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html
You might care to note that Oakland also recently voted to change from traditional runoffs to _instant_ runoff. This move was largely pushed by Greens and independents. Interestingly, IRV has led to two-party duopoly in EVERY country where it has been used on any scale: Ireland, Australia, Malta, Fiji. Yet 21-23 of the 27 countries that use traditional runoffs have broken free of two-party domination, and have healthy third parties that actually WIN. So Oakland's Greens were apparently suicidal. Well, they didn't mean to be, but they swallowed the IRV propaganda. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and tried to get the word out, but it was me against an army of progaganda and myth. We're like the round-earthers trying to get the message out, and no one wants to hear it. It's rather frustrating.
The voter satisfaction ratios of the various voting methods should more than suffice to prove to you that you will see ENORMOUS benefit by switching to Range Voting. Let me phrase it like this. Imagine if you picked the winner by just drawing a name out of a hat. Okay, sounds dumb right? Now imagine you go from that to IRV. Now you are getting more satisfaction with the winner. Now switch to Range Voting from IRV, and you get that same amount of satisfaction, all over again! Range Voting is about as big an improvement over IRV as IRV is over plurality.
Do you not like having an election method that picks the right winner?
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:17 am (UTC)I think we'd get better representation than the current system by adopting this method.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:56 am (UTC)http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXPf6D8HwIWncwYJKKb4CcQ
The plurality winner, under honesty, would be a tie between C1 and C5. Under strategy it would be C5. That's still better than electing a random winner. The VSR of random winner would be 0%, by definition.
Now set up sheet like this for yourself, and go in there punching in random values based on the rolls of dice or something. And see what the expected utility return is for plurality as compared to random selection (i.e. just averaging the utilities of all candidates).
Enjoy.
CLAY
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:18 am (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 07:01 am (UTC)The Dáil uses proportional representation, I believe, probably STV (IRV is just STV applied to single-winner races).
If you like proportional representation, then you should love Range Voting, because Reweighted Range Voting is better than STV in every conceivable way.
http://RangeVoting.org/RRV.html
Also, with IRV, which leads to two-party domination, we'll never EVER get to proportional representation in this country, aside from a few local elections - nothing that will effect big time politics. But with Range Voting, we'll break out of two-party domination, and have an actual chance of getting proportional representation.
See, if you had just done a little research before hastily trying to prove me wrong, this dialog could have gone a lot better for you.
Thanks,
Clay
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 11:51 am (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 12:38 pm (UTC)All of my examples were IRV. Ireland uses IRV in their presidential post, and it is two-party dominated (or more like ONE party dominated, except for a single exceptional fluke, when Mary Robinson won). This is especially significant, because Ireland's legislature has multiple viable parties, which should help there be more competetive parties for the post.
The same is true of Australia's house of representatives, since its Senate uses STV, and had something like 6 greens last I checked. But it's house of reps, which uses IRV, is a two party body. Australianpolitics.com says IRV "promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents." In Australian politics, this isn't even questioned, it's just accepted as a fact.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 07:48 am (UTC)Heck, IRV is more "fair" than first-past-the-post as far as I'm concerned, but I know it confuses a lot of people, particularly when the candidate that gets the most first-preference votes doesn't win the election. When that happens, you get people complaining about how "unfair" it is that the first-preference leader didn't win, even though a majority favored some other candidate.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 04:25 pm (UTC)That is not true. Don't you know anything about Irish or Australian politics, or do you just look at a list of the party affiliations of the prime ministers?