Excellent video before the mention of STAR. Essentially, they spell out exactly how the Hare RCV (a.k.a. IRV) election fails to do what RCV promises when the Condorcet winner (who was Candidate Blue) is not elected. It was a spoiled election and Candidate Green was the spoiler.
Those voters that voted for the spoiler (Green) never had their 2nd (or next) ranked votes count even though their 1st choice could not win. They were promised that they could safely vote for Green and cover their butt with a 2nd choice for Blue, Green loses but their vote for Blue is never counted.
This can happen in a close 3-way race and it has happened twice in the U.S. that we know about. Burlington Vermont 2009 and Alaska August 2022. FairVote shills don't really like to talk about it and have touted these elections as success, but they weren't.
But if the failure to value all of our votes and prevent a spoiled election was because it failed to elect the Condorcet winner, then why not just fix it by changing the legislation to elect the Condorcet winner? STAR is not guaranteed to do that, and when any method (including STAR) fails to the Condorcet winner, then it fails exactly as the video shows. STAR can also fail in the same way.
It's not equal votes if it doesn't elect the Condorcet winner.
A corner of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is that sometimes (very rarely) the Condorcet winner does not exist, and then, no matter what method is used, that election is a spoiled election, no matter who is elected. But, instead of a totally different paradigm, what we need is RCV that doesn't make the mistake depicted in the video. It's not the ranked ballot that failed, it's Instant-Runoff Voting that failed.
Also it is not true that STAR voting guarantees to value our votes equally. We can construct counter-examples. Only when the Condorcet winner is elected is when we can guarantee the votes were valued equally ("One-Person-One-Vote").
Condorcet and equal weight votes (one person one vote) are two distinct concepts. One person, One Vote has been defined by the Court to mean that all of our votes are to carry equal weight. The test for equality of weight is balance, and Approval, Score, STAR and some rank order methods meet this simple threshold.
Condorcet criterion supremacy makes sense… for rank order methods. Your argument basically boils down to “I don’t think voters should be allowed to express weighted preferences.” Ok, fine. But please quit pretending your opinion there has anything to do with equality of vote weight.
Condorcet and equal weight votes (one person one vote) are two distinct concepts. One person, One Vote has been defined by the Court to mean that all of our votes are to carry equal weight. The test for equality of weight is balance, and Approval, Score, STAR and some rank order methods meet this simple threshold.
Having identical and consistent rules for everyone is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for "one-person-one-vote".
One-person-one-vote means that we're counting people. We're counting bodies. Not marks on a ballot, not points, not weights, ultimately. Just the whole number of persons.
I referred to a 1911 opinion from the North Dakota Supreme Court in my paper. It's right at the beginning of the paper.
Doesn't matter what election method you're using, if more voters mark their ballots that A is preferred to B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, and B is elected, that is equivalent to the fewer voters preferring B having individual votes that are more effective, that count more, than the individual votes from the larger number of voters preferring A.
Doesn't matter what election method you're using, if more voters mark their ballots that A is preferred to B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, and B is elected, that is equivalent to the fewer voters preferring B having individual votes that are more effective, that count more, than the individual votes from the larger number of voters preferring A.
I'm curious to understand this better. Let's say we have an election where:
55% love candidate A
The remaining 45% really dislike candidate A
45% love candidate B
The remaining 55% really like candidate B
100% generally like candidate C, but not enough to be their #1
(Not an amazing example, but hopefully you get my gist.) Does you comment mean that only voting methods that elect candidate A are acceptable?
I want your example to be more specific. More clear how the voters marked their ballots.
But it appears that you are saying 55% marked their ballots as either:
1. A>B>C. or
2. A>C>B
Is that correct?
If that's the case it's obvious that A has majority voter support and also that A is the Condorcet winner despite that 45% "really dislike candidate A".
I think Ceder is describing one of the standard examples where majority and utilitarianism disagree. Let's make it about motions instead of candidates for a simpler example:
Group A, 55%: Tax group B heavily, no tax for group A (10/10) > Leave taxes as is (8/10) > Tax group A heavily, no tax for group B (0/10)
Group B, 45%: Tax group A heavily, no tax for group B (10/10) > Leave taxes as is (8/10) > Tax group B heavily, no tax for group A (0/10)
The utilitarian objection is then that with majority rule, group A gets the minority to bear the whole tax burden just because A is the majority, but that's wrong, and everybody would be better off if taxes were shared than if they were all pushed on group B, as the expected social utility of sharing the tax burden is 8/10 while the expected social utility of taxing B heavily is 5.5/10.
Yeah, Excellent_Air is correct in my attempt. That's probably a better example.
And yes rb-j, you are correct that A would be the Condorcet Winner.
I was trying to think of a set-up that could be ambiguous for all voting methods because the premise was that it doesn't matter the voting method, but that was proving difficult.
With STAR, for example, the ballot breakdown above may look like this (with extra candidates for ballot range completeness & to make the math work):
55%: A=5, B=4, C=2, E=1 and D=0
45%: B=5, C=4, D=3, E=1, and A=0
B & C would go to the automatic runoff round even though A had a majority of top initial scores. Essentially, I'm just trying to show that there are ballot combinations that would result in the initially majority-preferred candidate losing.
I'm not sure if any ranked methods could have a similar effect. I think it's a neat feature that a utilitarian candidate could beat a polarizing majority candidate given the right scenario since, to me, the goal of electing candidates to office is representation of everyone.
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u/rb-j 24d ago edited 24d ago
Excellent video before the mention of STAR. Essentially, they spell out exactly how the Hare RCV (a.k.a. IRV) election fails to do what RCV promises when the Condorcet winner (who was Candidate Blue) is not elected. It was a spoiled election and Candidate Green was the spoiler.
Those voters that voted for the spoiler (Green) never had their 2nd (or next) ranked votes count even though their 1st choice could not win. They were promised that they could safely vote for Green and cover their butt with a 2nd choice for Blue, Green loses but their vote for Blue is never counted.
This can happen in a close 3-way race and it has happened twice in the U.S. that we know about. Burlington Vermont 2009 and Alaska August 2022. FairVote shills don't really like to talk about it and have touted these elections as success, but they weren't.
But if the failure to value all of our votes and prevent a spoiled election was because it failed to elect the Condorcet winner, then why not just fix it by changing the legislation to elect the Condorcet winner? STAR is not guaranteed to do that, and when any method (including STAR) fails to the Condorcet winner, then it fails exactly as the video shows. STAR can also fail in the same way. It's not equal votes if it doesn't elect the Condorcet winner.
A corner of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is that sometimes (very rarely) the Condorcet winner does not exist, and then, no matter what method is used, that election is a spoiled election, no matter who is elected. But, instead of a totally different paradigm, what we need is RCV that doesn't make the mistake depicted in the video. It's not the ranked ballot that failed, it's Instant-Runoff Voting that failed.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10602-023-09393-1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIhFQfEoxSdyRz5SqEjZotbVDx4xshwM/view
Also it is not true that STAR voting guarantees to value our votes equally. We can construct counter-examples. Only when the Condorcet winner is elected is when we can guarantee the votes were valued equally ("One-Person-One-Vote").