Re: [EM] Markus Manipulability
Dear Mike, you wrote (2 Feb 2002): Markus wrote (2 Feb 2002): Due to Nurmi and Bartholdi, the more information you need about the opinions of the voters resp. the more accurate this information must be to be able to calculate a strategy, the less vulnerable to strategies the used election method is. To my opinion, this argument by Nurmi and Bartholdi is plausible. When academic authors write about methods with regard to strategy, they tend to speak of vulnerability to strategy. Strategy is taken to mean offensive strategy, by which someone is manipulating the method. It's (almost) common knowledge on this list that strategy is important as an undesirable _need_ for voters, rather than as a manipulation opportunity. However that's something that most academic authors, and those who worship them, remain ignorant of. When there's a problem with offensive strategy, the problem is the problem that that offensive strategy causes for others, the defensive strategy dilemma that it causes for them. I'm almost certain that it was Nurmi who, in one of his books or articles, rated the methods on their vulnerability to strategy. IRV rated best or near best in that regard, because offensive strategy is difficult in IRV. But what good does that do, when defensive strategy is necessary in IRV, regardless of whether or not anyone is using offensive strategy? Is it possible that the academics their loyal are unaware that Plurality has a strategy problem not because someone can offensively manipulate it, but because Plurality forces voters to use a drastic defensive strategy, a kind of strategy needed to protect a sincere CW, or to enfore majority rule? With any non-probabilistic voting system, a majority can get their way about something that they all agree on. If there's an alternative that they all want to win, they can make it win. If there's an alternative that they all want to lose, they can make it lose. The former is usually easy, but the latter, with most methods, can require members of that majority to vote something else over their favorite. Strategy that's needed to protect the win of a sincere CW, or to enforce majority rule--I call that defensive strategy. It's the old lesser-of-2-evils problem, and it's the reason why most of us want a better voting. And still the academics their obedient copiers don't seem to understand that, and still consider strategy problem to mean vulnerability to manipulation. When the strategists use a strategy as a reaction to the voting behaviour of their opponents then they never know whether their own strategy is offensive or defensive because they never know whether the voting behaviour of the opponents is sincere or insincere. Actually, for the strategy to work it is irrelevant whether the voting behaviour of the opponents is sincere or insincere. Therefore, it doesn't make much sense to differ between offensive strategies and defensive strategies and to say that the first kind of strategies should be as difficult as possible and the second kind of strategies should be as simple as possible. Markus Schulze
[EM] 02/03/02 - STV for Candidate Lists:
02/03/02 - STV for Candidate Lists: Dear Adam, You wrote: While it [Party List] is not quite as efficient in making every vote elect a representative as STV is, it is highly proportional, highly democratic, and extremely simple to implement and understand. Donald: While I agree to the good things you say about Party List, it does have a number of faults. One: Its high proportionality is only for party. Two: The voter is not allowed to cross party lines. Three: The order of the candidate list of each party is suspect. The mathematical correct way to determine the order of candidates for a party would be to use STV, but then why not use STV for the entire election and drop Party List? Yes indeed, why not? Regards, Donald
[EM] Newcomers Claim New Orleans Runoff
D- A report from the real political land about a top 2 runoff election. Any CW in the 48 percent of the votes NOT for the top 2 ??? Only the Shadow knows !!! -- Newcomers Claim New Orleans Runoff By JANET McCONNAUGHEY NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Two men who had never run for office, a cable executive and the police chief, led 13 opponents in Saturday's primary for mayor to reach the March 2 runoff. With 432 of 442 precincts - 98 percent - reporting, Cox Cable executive Ray Nagin had 36,396 votes, or 28 percent. Richard Pennington, on leave as superintendent of police, had 30,300 votes, or 24 percent. ``This is about New Orleans growing,'' Nagin, 45, told his supporters. ``It's about one of the greatest cities in America finally waking up and saying, `We're sick and tired, and sick and tired of the same old politics.''' Nagin's self-financed grassroots campaign had no backing from any of New Orleans political organizations. However, he was endorsed by the city's daily newspaper, The Times-Picayune, and two weekly tabloids - Gambit, the free alternative paper, and Louisiana Weekly, a paper aimed at black readers Pennington, 54, in a speech claiming the second spot, said security would continue to be part of his campaign. ``The Super Bowl is here; this is a safe city,'' he said. State Sen. Paulette Irons had 23,529 votes, or 18 percent. Councilmen Jim Singleton and Troy Carter had 16,619 and 13,335 votes, or 13 and 10 percent. Opponents said both men were too close to Mayor Marc Morial, who could not run for a third term. Pennington was recruited and appointed by the mayor; Nagin's partners in the New Orleans Brass hockey team are friends of Morial's. Each says Morial will not influence his decisions if he is elected. Pennington had been expected to make the cut. But nobody else - except candidates and their partisans - would predict his opponent. A referendum on raising the city's minimum wage to $6.15 an hour, $1 above the national minimum, also was on the ballot. It passed, but legal challenges are certain. With 98 percent of the precincts reporting, the vote was 70,635 yes to 41,330 no, a 63 percent to 37 percent split. ``The business and social leaders of New Orleans have gotten by for decades by giving the citizens and workers promises and parades, and now the voters have clearly said `Enough! We want real jobs with real wages,''' said Wade Rathke, chief organizer of Local 100 of Service Employees International Union. The mayor's race got off to a late start after Morial mounted a campaign to lift the city's two-term limit. Voters soundly rejected the bid in October and the field of candidates ballooned. Pennington, who has widespread name recognition as a popular reformer - he is credited with cleaning up a corrupt police department - was among the late entries. Irons, 48, had been the only major aspirant before the third-term referendum. But she was hurt by Pennington's candidacy - and the revelation that a brother described in campaign ads as a victim of ``violence in the streets'' actually died in a shootout with police after a robbery. Singleton, 68, has spent 24 years on the City Council. His age has been portrayed as a drawback for a high-profile job. Troy Carter, 38, elected to the council in 1994, has become a successful businessman in recent years. Term limits keep both Singleton and Carter from running again for council.
Re: [EM] 02/03/02 - STV for Candidate Lists:
At 06:17 AM 2/3/02 -0500, Donald Davison wrote: One: Its high proportionality is only for party. How else do you define proportionality? You can't define it on a per-candidate basis; candidates are either 100% elected or 100% un-elected.. Two: The voter is not allowed to cross party lines. True, this is a weakness, without a doubt. Three: The order of the candidate list of each party is suspect. Only slightly suspect. Think of Open List this way: once you have determined how many seats a party gets, you re-apply those votes in a SNTV election within the party to find which candidates take the seat. While SNTV is not the best way to do things (STV is likely better) the distortion is not terribly bad. The mathematical correct way to determine the order of candidates for a party would be to use STV, but then why not use STV for the entire election and drop Party List? Well, in essence I agree with you. However, there are practical reasons to do otherwise: - Open party list can be implemented on even the most primitive voting equipment. - Open party list ballots are as easy to tally as plurality, single-winner ballots are. STV Ballots could be a nightmare to tally if used for, say, the 52 California representatives to congress. - Open party list is extremely simple to use, and in fact the voter need not distinguish it from SNTV in order to vote in an effective fashion. Moreover, while STV becomes unwieldy when the number of seats available becomes very large, Open List stays very easy to use. - Its simplicity can make it easier to push its adoption. But are you asking me whether STV is better for multi-winner elections? Yes, sure it is. Although I think you need to give the voters a crutch by allowing the to mix party lists into their vote list, or it becomes too much of a pain in a large district. -Adam
[EM] Kuro5hin discussion on Political Parties
Hi all, The discussion site Kuro5hin is running an article entitled Are Political Parties Inherently Undemocratic?, which laments about the fact that we have political parties in the U.S., despite George Washington's desire not to have them. The article is here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/2/2/214045/7030 I've already posted a reply to this, and I encourage you all to do the same. Rob Rob Lanphier [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.eskimo.com/~robla
Re: [EM] World Series and EC
From: Adam Tarr [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [EM] World Series and EC But most importantly, I think the analogy is a poor one, because we expect and desire this inconsistency in baseball, and sports in general. Not only is the World Series inconsistent due to the multi-game format (why not just play one 60 inning game over a few days?) but scoring is made erratic by the inning breakdown in games (why not just give a team 27 outs in a row to each team?) These erratic effects are by design. We say may the best team win because, on some level, we are aware that they may not. This uncertainty is part of the excitement of sports: sports are filled with surprising heroes and storybook last-second wins. This is the stuff of dreams and it sells tickets. After having thought about this some, it's occurred to me this is an important observation. Margins of victory tend to be much greater in the electoral college than in the popular vote. Usually, anyway; it didn't seem to work out that way in 2000. In elections, proportional representation is a reasonable ideal. In sports, it's the opposite. We don't want a compromise outcome in which all of the teams agree on a proportional scheme that distributes the championship evenly. One appealing situation is teams that are evenly matched enough that we can't predict the winner, and a method of scoring that makes a decisive victory possible anyway, by amplifying small fluctuations in performance. In elections, we want chance eliminated because it doesn't reflect the underlying reality of popular choice. We want other irregularities (elimination of popular candidates in the first round of IRV, etc.) for the same reason. In sports, we want small differences accentuated. This reinforces the similar effect of districts (and their counterpart, a series of games) in sports and elections. Except that the effect is desirable in one case and a hindrance in the other. These are NOT properties I want in an election method. I do not want any fringe, Cinderella candidate to be able to capture the presidency on any given November. I do not want to see hope spring eternal for the American Nazi party. I want boring, predictable elections where the best candidate wins. -Adam
[EM] 02/02/02 - Alexander, don't get stuck in a `Time Warp':
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donald Davison) Subject: [EM] 02/02/02 - Alexander, don't get stuck in a `Time Warp': If you are of normal intelligence, then sometime in you life you will come full circle and return to IRVing. Most do, but some get stuck in a `Time Warp' and never get beyond the mire of the ABC methods. A few of the people on this backwater EM list are suffering that condition, which should make you feel at home for now. `Me thinks' they like the way these three methods deceive the voters. That sounds familiar, that story about how only stupid people are unable to see the superiority of IRV. Except that in the version I heard, a child watching the procession shouts Irving isn't wearing any clothes!
