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Marcus Ogren's avatar

"Even if one believes that center-squeeze scenarios weaken RCV’s propensity for moderating our politics, it’s implausible that they could be consequential at such a low frequency. Those who insist otherwise owe us either a careful argument as to why such rare events could have a substantial impact, or an argument as to why they might be more common in the future."

I agree. Here's my argument for why center squeezes have a substantial impact despite occurring infrequently: https://medium.com/@voting-in-the-abstract/rarely-occurring-pathologies-can-frequently-be-relevant-9b9dc8e9fe22

Moving beyond the frequency of center squeezes, the central argument of this post is poorly reasoned.

"If the Alaska race used Condorcet, Peltola and Palin would not improve their odds by earning more second choice rankings of Begich supporters."

This can only be true if Begich is a strong enough frontrunner that the probability of Palin and Peltola tying for first is negligible. If (say) Palin and Begich are competing for first, then under Condorcet they each have a strong incentive to appeal to to Peltola's supporters - an incentive that does not exist under RCV unless Peltola is liable to be eliminated in the first round. These incentives for Republican candidates to appeal to Democratic voters (and vice versa) are incentives against political extremism.

Alternatively, suppose Begich isn't a frontrunner (maybe he's a lot less popular in general in the alternative reality), and Palin and Peltola are the leading candidates. In that case, Condorcet provides every bit as strong of an incentive for Palin and Peltola to appeal to Begich's voters. In order to be the Condorcet winner, Peltola needs to have more voters rank her ahead of Palin than there are voters ranking Palin ahead of Peltola, and it doesn't matter whether these voter's first choice is Peltola, Begich, or a write-in. The claim the second-choice rankings are valuable under RCV, but not under Condorcet, is completely false.

"As Left and Right would soon discover, in a center-squeeze configuration they have an incentive to encourage their respective supporters to “bullet vote,” meaning rank them first and leave the rest of the rankings blank."

If Palin tells her supporters to bullet vote, that helps Peltola win; it does not help Palin. Palin getting her supporters to bullet does not cause her to be ranked higher than her opponents on any ballots, so it cannot help her become the Condorcet winner. Maybe you're claiming that Palin and Peltola would make a "deal with the devil" to tell each of their supporters to bullet vote, but individual voters are best off not heeding such suggestions.

"While bullet-voting offers no advantages to candidates under RCV, under Condorcet it could take the Center candidate out of the running, effectively setting up a plurality-style contest between the Left and Right candidates where they might stand a better shot at winning."

Even if there is a deal between the more extreme candidates to promote bullet voting and this successfully takes the centrist out of contention, it doesn't mean there would be a Plurality-style contest between Left and Right. Instead, it would be an RCV-style contest, with both the Left and Right candidates competing to be ranked higher than the other by the Center candidate's supporters.

I do agree with you and Ned Foley on one point: RCV provides better incentives to reduce extremism than Plurality. My research that found that Condorcet methods offer much stronger incentives for depolarization than RCV also found that RCV has better incentives than Plurality (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S026137942400057X).

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Robert Bristow-Johnson's avatar

Now, one thing that is disingenuous, is to represent "The Case for Condorcet Voting" with an example that is cherry-picked to make the Condorcet results appear nonsensical. Now I presented the case for Condorcet RCV *solely* as the case for RCV. The very reasons we want Condorcet RCV are the stated reasons that RCV advocates make for RCV, yet those RCV advocates are usually plugging Hare or IRV.

Now the reason to use a Condorcet-consistent method to tally the vote, instead of Hare, is to prevent a failure of IRV to respect majority rule and the equality of our votes. This failure does not happen often, but when it *does* happen, the consequences are *never* good. So I will cherry pick (or make up) another example to show this. But I will not disingenuously call this "The Case for Hare (Instant Runoff) Voting". This is presented to point out the essential flaw of IRV instead. And that case is that of a close 3-way race, so my example is gonna make it *really* close. All three candidates are plausible winners.

99 voters in total

34 Right voters

---30 R>C>L

--- 1 R>L>C

--- 3 R only

32 Center voters

---13 C>L>R

---11 C>R>L

--- 8 C only

33 Left voters

---30 L>C>R

--- 1 L>R>C

--- 2 L only

Now that's a pretty close 3-way race. Who should win? Who truly has the most voter support? Who will Plurality elect? Who will IRV elect?

Now the FPTP people will say that Right should win in this close race because more voters prefer Right as their first choice than any other candidate.

The IRV people will say that Left should win because Left is preferred over Right by 46 to 45 votes (after Center is eliminated). Even though Right gets more first-choice votes (barely), Left is preferred over Right by 1 vote (again, barely).

But Center is widely preferred over either Left (62 to 34) or Right (62 to 35). You can call Center "milquetoast" if you want, but the electorate would *greatly* prefer Center over either Left or Right in this extreme example. Neither FPTP nor IRV will see that.

That is the cherry-picked example that really presents the Case for Condorcet.

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