Finally an Actual Argument from the No Side

I have to say, give some credit to NO2AV blogger DBirkin. He's not trying to hide any partisan agenda, nor is he bringing in any irrelevant smears or misleading myths about AV. He's got an argument based on the voting mechanics and is trying to put forward a principled case to defend FPTP against AV.


He's wrong, of course but at least he's playing the game properly.


His latest blog post is an analogy that tries to demonstrate that you care more about somethings than others. It is based on the idea of rescuing precious items from a burning building, some more important to you than others. Where he goes wrong is that he associates the absolute level of support - the importance of the items, with degrees of preference which are relative, and can be compared only to each other, and not to anyone else's preferences or absolute levels of support.


Here's a link to the post: http://dbirkin.blogspot.com/2011/01/principles-of-avfptp-in-real-life.html


and below are the contents - his analogy and a further dialogue between us in the comments. All of DBirkin's words are in Italics. (I haven't included Lee Griffin's comments or replies addressed to them as I'm sure Lee will tackle this in his own blog soon).


The Famous Fire Analogy

Two men are standing outside their respective houses. 

Unfortunately for the two men their houses are on fire. 
Each man has a wife, a beloved pet and a TV (they are minimalist).

Out of the two men, one of the man's wives, let call him Man 1, has already evacuated his wife. Man 2 on the other hand, hasn't.

Out of the two men, which one would you imagine is more prepared to charge into the flames?

Now, is it far to say that the newly introduced Man 3, who has got both his wife AND his pet out of the house is even more likely to charge in?

Transfer this over to the AV voting system.

Who has most support, someone voting for their first choice (wife) or someone voting for their second choice (pet) because their first choice is now out of the picture or someone voting for their third choice (wardrobe) because their first and second are out of the picture ?

Would it be accurate to Man 1 cares no more about charging the flames than Man 3 does? I don't think so and when the Fire Department turn up I know where any non bias person would send them first.

1st preferences count more than 2nd , 2nd count more than 3rd. Any system that does not recognise this, does not accurately measure support.




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The problem is your analogy is missing an important factor. The difficulty to rescue the item, which represents the likelihood of the candidate winning.


If your wife is in there, she is a, an obvious first choice, but b, relatively easy to get out of the building. 


In a first past the post situation, your 'wife' would be a main party candidate with a reasonable chance of winning and also your first choice. I was lucky in the last general election in that the party I wanted to vote for was also the party I would have voted for if I had to vote tactically.


However it's far more common, that the most important object to you is something incredibly difficult to rescue. Let's say you don't have any family or pets, just lots of precious valuable items, a grand piano, some valuable paintings and a TV.


The grand piano is the most precious to you. There's no way you're going to get it out of a burning building though. If you have to make just one choice, ideally you'd choose the piano but you know you'd just die trying to get it out and save nothing (wasted vote). So instead you go for the paintings, (your second choice, reasonable chance of rescue).


With AV, you rank the Piano 1st and the Paintings 2nd. Someone else, might have a wife and not a piano but they have paintings too. Chances are they care more about the wife than you do about the piano, but you both value the paintings the same, and paintings are both of your second choies. 


OR someone else might NOT have a wife or a piano, but have paintings. They will rescue the paintings and they will care just as much about their paintings as you do about yours, even though their paintings are their 1st choice and your paintings are your 2nd choice.


This aims to show that preferences are NOT measures of absolute support. They are only measures of relative preference between the available options. Absolute support does not change with what's available. Relative preferences do change. So whether you put a candidate 1st or 4th is not an indication of how much you support them. Two voters could support a candidate the same amount as each other, but one happens to support a number of others even more so. 


Let's say there are two voters who like a candidate. They agree with each other completely on all of that candidate's policies and support the candidate just as much as each other. However it just happens that there's another candidate who has offered a really attractive sounding policy on immigration, and immigration is really important to one of the voters but not the other. So one voter gives a 1st preference, the other gives a 2nd, but both are equally supportive of the candidate.


This is why it's fair to measure votes coming from different degrees of preference as equal, and why it would be completely unfair to add weightings to preferences, not least of all because it would bring back tactical voting. 





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Ben, we have spoken about this. how difficult it is to save is irrelevant as this is about how much you want to.

Your support is not influenced by how likely they are to win. Your support happens.


In your example, one person did not support the candidate the same as the other, as they would have both voted the same. To one the immigration policy on one made one candidate better than the other


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I'm afraid the difficulty has a huge impact. That's why FPTP encourages tactical voting and AV does not. How much a voter cares and what a voter actually does shouldn't be different, but with the wrong voting system they are. When the voting system makes you choose between acting on the postive or negative end of your views you're going to end up with your ballot not necessarily representing your positive support. Difficulty is an essential factor in this.


And again you are confusing preference degrees with absolute levels of support.

If I have a wife I'll choose her over a piano. If I have just a piano I'll choose the piano first. If someone else chooses their wife first and I choose my piano first does that mean we both care about our respective first choices the same amount? Of course not.

Especially if I have a just a piano and someone else has a wife AND a piano. I care about my piano the same amount as he cares about HIS piano. It just happens that he cares about his wife EVEN MORE. Absolute support and degrees of preference are entirely separate and you can not infer one from the other.


Essential to this is the fact that your 1st preference is only ever your first preference of what's available. When your vote is counted in any round of AV, it always goes to your first preference of what's available, even if to begin with it might have been your 2nd or 3rd or any other preference. All that matters is that out of everyone available it's your 1st choice. It is easy enough for anyone to imagine an ideal candidate, one who'll never be available to vote for, but who would be absolutely the first choice against anyone else. It's also easy to imagine a large number of candidates whom in an ideal world you would rank in between that ideal candidate, and any of the candidates who actually stand. That would mean that in absolute terms the candidate you put 1st is really much much lower down. But they are the 1st choice of what's available.


This referendum itself is a fine example. There are just two choices: AV or FPTP. Very few people think that either AV or FPTP are the best system we could possibly have. But plenty of people have a clear idea which of the two they prefer. DBirkin's argument suggests that your vote shouldn't count as much (or even at all) in this referendum if you can think of a better system than the two available because you don't care as much as everyone else. That's obviously nonsense. People have preferences between the available options and they declare them. It doesn't matter how many options there are to begin with - it's always possible for there to be more, so you can never define a 1st preference, or any other degree of preference as an absolute level of support.