An Analysis of Various Election Methods

An anonymous reader writes "David Cobb talked about Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) as the best choice in electoral methods in his interview here, but is it really? The folks over at electionmethods.org seem to think it isn't. They favor Condorcet voting, which is another ranking style method using simulated one on one elections. Here is an evaluation of various methods, including IRV and Condorcet."

Comments

Simulation Of Voting Models for Close Election

[Isomorph]

Another interesting thing to read is this essay by Brian Olson.

He has made a simulation that is open source.

So hack away. Look here and here.

Re:Mechanism not listed

[shobadobs]

This is somewhat like the Borda voting method, except that in the Borda method, you must give N points to your favorite candidate, N - 1 points to your second favorite, and so on - the number of points is fixed.

The problem with your method is that everybody is going to throw their points at one candidate - their favorite. The problem with the Borda method is this scenario: Suppose you have high school band members voting on where they want the band trip to be. The options are Chicago, Toronto, and Myrtle Beach. The situation is this: 45 bandies want Toronto over Myrtle Beach, 45 prefer Myrtle Beach over Toronto, and 10 loonies prefer Chicago (which is such a bad idea, by the way). Each person lists their three choices in order - first place votes are worth 3 points, second place 2 points, third place 1 point.

All the Toronto-wanters decide that to screw the Myrtle Beach crowd, they'll vote for Myrtle Beach in third place, with Chicago in second, even though it is a crappy place for a band trip (because they shouldn't have to worry about Chicago getting picked). The Myrtle Beach-wanters do the same thing. The result is that 180 points go to each Myrtle Beach, Chicago, and Toronto.

Then the Chicago loonies vote for Chicago in first place, putting Chicago over the edge. Chicago wins, and 90% of people hate the band trip.

Re:Must explain in one sentence or less

[bgog]

Rank the candidates in your order of preference.

There is your sentance. Condorcet voting indicates that you vote a preference for each possible combination, however this can be simplified to just ranking them in order because it satisfies all of the possible combinations. For example:

Choose A over C
Choose B over A
Choose B over C
Choose B over D
Choose D over A
Choose D over C
Is exatly the same as saying:
1. B
2. D
3. A
4. C
But ranking is easier for people to understand.

Tough shit for rural voters...

[Goonie]

This self-serving rubbish gets thrown up by rural voters, and the mostly conservative politicians who rely on their disproportionate electoral influence, all the friggin' time. Your contention that those sheep living New York, LA, and Chicago are more susceptible to charismatic bullshit-spinners than the good citizens of Bum's Rush, Alabama simply isn't supported by any evidence.

In my experience, the only thing that electoral bias in favour of rural voters does is to artificially inflate farmers property values by turning them into into welfare recipients (in all but name), while indulging their worst tendancies to blame people who aren't WASPs for the world's problems and tell everybody else what they can and can't do in their own bedrooms.

The subsidy for American farmers works out to about $20,000 per rural job - yep, those salt of the earth folks you love so much have a huge proportion of their income paid by those city pagans. That's what the electoral college, and 2 senators per state regardless of population, does.