Monday, May 20, 2019

Winning Elections with Rank Choice Voting-Part VI-Origins and The Condorcet Paradox

".....A Condorcet method (English: /kɒndɔːrˈseɪ/) is an election method that elects the candidate that would win a majority of the vote in all of the head-to-head elections against each of the other candidates...."







William Robert Ware. MIT Professor of Architetcure. He was the person who came up with the idea of a form of Rank Choice Voting in 1871. Many of you have no idea who this guy is. I surely didn't until I began this expose'. Bare was a brilliant professor who went on to form an architecural firm during the building boom after the Civil War as America recovered and entered the 20th Century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robert_Ware

But it is at the end here that is telling: 

    "....Ware also dabbled briefly in voting systems and used the idea of the single transferable vote to devise what is now called, in the U.S., instant-runoff voting[6]..."

     So, the entire structure of the American version of Rank Choice Voting is based upon some one who 'dabbled briefly' in voting systems?

    "....Instant-runoff voting was devised in 1871 by American architect William Robert Ware,[18] although it is, in effect, a special case of the single transferable vote method, which emerged independently in the 1850s. Unlike the single transferable vote in multi-seat elections, however, the only ballot transfers are from backers of candidates who have been eliminated...."

     Ware essentially designed a system that uses eliminated candidates for their rankings.

https://www.jstor.org/topic/voting-paradox/?refreqid=search%3A668a05eb93b70bbaef74ae27dc7b150c


".... The voting paradox (also known as Condorcet's paradox or the paradox of voting) is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic (i.e., not transitive), even if the preferences of individual voters are not cyclic. This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other. When this occurs, it is because the conflicting majorities are each made up of different groups of individuals. Thus an expectation that transitivity on the part of all individuals' preferences should result in transitivity of societal preferences is an example of a fallacy of composition..."

    This is why Poliquin challenged the results in Maine during 2018. Clearly he won by a head to head campaign against his opponent. But under RCV voters who voted multiple times for their first, second and third choices overpowered Poliquin's tallies. While RCV claims this represents a more true face of the will of voters Condorcet's Paradox disagrees. All RCV did was tally the votes from eliminated candidates' second and/or third rankings to manufacture a win. Coupled with Arrow's Theorem that you are choosing from best to worst Maine essentially elected the winner because people 'settled' for the second place loser.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method


".... The votes can be tallied in many ways to find a winner. Some - the Condorcet methods - will elect the Condorcet winner if there is one. They can also elect a winner when there is no Condorcet winner. But some arrive at different winners than others...."

    If the opponent was so awesome a candidate why didn't they just win outright? This win was not 'transitive'. It wasn't a head to head winner take all. Instead people elected the winner based on what they would 'settle for'. Or, as Condorcet's methodology goes on to explain;
".. votes can be tallied in many ways to find a winner.."

     RCV manufactures the winner from the second/third place loser through a multiple voting system.

     If we are to believe that RCV will create a better system then we need to see some definitive results. So far the only cities where it has been adopted have had only Democrat leadership. One party rule is never good for any city, state or country. Multi-party rule is not a good thing either. European elections are built around coalitions. While this sounds laudable the current political situation in France is not exacly a positive recommendation.

     If RCV is going to create better elections, better candidates then why are the winners chosen after a second or third round of voting? Third party candidates are currently degraded into 'spoilers' then degraded again under RCV by being used for their rankings. And this is all predicated upon the premise that third party candidates will choose (settle for) a second choice that closely resembles their political ideology. While Libertarians may vote Republican as their second choice no Republican is going to vote Democrat and vis-versa. However Greens, Labor, Socialists Parties WILL vote Democrat as their second choice ALL OF THE TIME. With only one Republican Party and multiple offshoots of Leftists parties Rank Choice Voting ensures Democrat wins.


https://fee.org/articles/the-paradox-of-voting/

Condorcet was the first one to clearly isolate a strange phenomenon that came to be known as the "paradox of voting": even if each voter is rational, the result of a vote can be irrational.

Mathematician Charles L. Dodgson (18321898) rediscovered the phenomenon a hundred years after Condorcet.

Duncan Black (19081991), a Scottish economist.... rediscovered the paradox in the mid-twentieth century.

Arrow mathematically demonstrated that the discovery of Condorcet, Dodgson, and Black was only a special case of a more general theorem: Whatever the decision mechanism used, a social choice cannot be both democratic and rational. If all individual preferences are to count equally (and given a few other axioms), a social choice must be either irrational or imposed by some on others.

Pierre Lemieux 12/3/13

    Speaking of imposing upon society here is a name mentioned in an earlier segment of this expose'.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.32543/naticivirevi.107.4.0062?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&&searchUri=%2Ftopic%2Fpreferential-voting%2F%3Frefreqid%3Dsearch%253A522595be2faa9f6b794b03ad0d901269&ab_segments=0%2Fdefault-2%2Fcontrol&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Nancy Lavin.
     Where have we seen her name before? She was the person I mentioned in an earlier segment who escoriated British Columbia voters who rejected RCV in her Fairvote.org article. Love her statement here in the article linked above: "... ranked choice voting changes the political game forcing voters and candidates to adopt to a new set of more fair and democratic rules.."

     My, how fair and democratic she is.
     Leftism, ideas so good they have to be enforced.

     How rational is it to believe that ranking by preference (Arrow's best to worse) is a better way of choosing a candidate? How is imposing upon society a new system of voting fair and democratic?



Condorcet's paradox is basically that, in a preferential ballot (a vote where voters rank candidates in order, rather than just selecting one) it is possible for there to be no candidate who is preferred by a majority of voters.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110227153416AAllpRS


    As I have stated in the first and second segments concerning the Fall River Mayoral recall/re-election RCV claims that their system would have ensured Correia wouldn't win. Instead it would declare a winner who clearly did not represent (nor receive) the majoriy of votes. Plurality voting declares a winner outright. Third party candidates do not 'split' the vote. Some people just vote third party.
     A great way to sum up how Rank Choice Voting is a Condorcet paradox can be seen in an old Soviet era joke:



God comes to the Soviet people and says: 'I will give each of you a choice of three blessings in life, but you can only have two out of the three.

You can be an honest person, you can be a smart person, or you can be a member of the Communist Party.

If you are smart and honest, then you cannot be a communist. If you are a smart communist, then you cannot be honest.

And if you are an honest communist, then obviously, you must not be very smart.

 
....And That Is The Diatribe....


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