01/16/03 - Hey James, Droop Quota is an Oxymoron: Greetings James and list members.
James, you wrote: "These [Donald's] comments seem to be based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of elections, on a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Droop quota, and on a misunderstanding of the arithmetic of an STV-PR election using the Droop quota." Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003, Subject: RE: [EM] 01/05/03 - Two Replies for Olli: Donald here: You are the `Pot calling the Kettle Black'. Instead of me, it is you that appears to have these three misunderstandings. Anyway, don't dispare, I am here to guide you away from the Demon Droop and to the light of true understanding and the love of the Hare quota - Ha Ha. James: "I'll (eventually) go back to one of Donald's related comments, but he seems to think the purpose of an election is to allocate voters perfectly to Hare quota groups. That is NOT the purpose of an election." Donald: You wrong me James. I am well aware and accept the fact that a candidate can win a seat with less than a quota, any quota. My position is that the best method should have an open door which will allow candidates to receive as many votes as possible up to a number of votes equal to a proportional share of total votes, a full representative share of the voters. The closer the elected candidates come to the Hare quota, the closer they become the ones who are most representative of the voters. James: "If it is an election to fill simultaneously, say, three seats, the purpose of the election is to identify the three candidates who are most representative of the voters." Donald: Yes, we agree on this point, but what is in dispute is what is to be the measure to tell us which candidate is more representative of the voters. While your candidate with 1/4 plus 1 has won a seat, a candidate with one-third of the votes is more representative of the voters. James: "If there are three candidates who can each secure a Droop quota of votes (1/4 plus 1, for a three-seat contest), it follows that these are the three winners, because no other candidate can then secure a Droop quota of votes." Donald: I will agree that these candidates have won the three seats, but it is not clear how this lower number of votes makes them more representative of the voters. Only seventy-five percent of the voters voted for these three, it would be more representative if ninety to one hundred percent of the voters voted for these same three. More would vote for these three if the method would allow, but Droop method does not allow, something must be wrong with the Droop method - yes indeed, there is something wrong. James: "It is not necessary to continue the transfer of votes until all votes are allocated perfectly to three Hare quota groups." Donald: Wrong! `The job's not over until the paper work is done.' The final transfer of votes will tell us how `representative of the voters' the election really turned out to be, or don't you like bad news with you morning after `Droop Coffee' (Drip Coffee, Don). Consider the example of the single-seat election. A candidate only needs fifty percent plus one to be the majority winner, but when the votes are being counted the count is not stopped at fifty percent plus one. No indeed, the count continues until the tally is finished, until the paper work is done. The same is true for all the multi-seat methods except your Droop STV (and Meek-Droop-STV). In the Droop method the math is stopped before it get too `amusing'. The results of a Droop election are reported as: `These are the winners and this is the first runner up.' In this way the results don't look too bad, the defect is hidden. James: "In any case, the voters will defeat you, because not all of them will mark all possible preferences." Donald: Again, you are wrong - you should stop this habit of being wrong? The voters are not going to defeat me. I know there are going to be some exhausted ballots, in any ranked method, but what you don't tell your readers is that in the Droop method there will be far more excluded ballots besides the exhausted ballots because the Droop method creates excluded ballots. James: "If there were a 3-seat election in which three candidates each secured exactly 1/3 of the first preference votes, that is what the STV-PR result sheet would show. And it would show the Droop quota as 1/4 of total valid vote plus 1. The arithmetic is quite clear - three candidates each secured (at least) a Droop quota of votes at the first stage of the count, so they are the three winners. Donald: I have already agreed that if three candidates received at least the Droop number of votes, that these three will be elected, but how can you say the results sheet would show one third each when we all know that in a Droop election the candidates are limited to only 25% +1 of the votes?? James: "There would be nothing to hide. There would be no shame. There would be nothing defective." James Donald: `Me thinks you protest too much.' Now is the time for a reality check of your letter. You started out claiming that there were three misunderstandings as follows: `the purpose of elections' - `the purpose of the Droop quota', and `the arithmetic of a STV-PR Droop election'. I agreed with you that the purpose of an election is to identify the candidates who are most representative of the voters, but we don't agree on how to measure this representative value. You want the Droop quota to be enough representative of the voters. I say we need more, that is, more votes is more representative. In your entire letter, you did not say what was the purpose of the Droop Quota. I think you know, you just don't want it to be made public that you support the political parties in Droop STV elections. Yes, the purpose of the Droop quota is to benefit political parties over independent candidates. In Droop elections the independent candidates will be eliminated sooner than they would be in a Hare STV election. This happens because votes from the higher candidates are transferred to the lower candidates of the same party. These extra votes can help a low candidates avoid a few eliminations, but somebody still must be eliminated. The Droop Quota also relieves political parties from the ordeal of averaging their votes on their candidates at the ballot box. By the way, speaking of the Droop Quota, did you know that the term Droop Quota is an Oxymoron. Yep, it sure is. The word `quota' means `a proportional part or share of the whole', while Droop is not `a proportional part or share of the whole'. These two conflicting words together form an oxymoron. I just thought you would like to know that. That's a juicy bit of information you can drop at your next peer cocktail party. Anyway, you still failed to tell us what you think is the purpose of the Droop quota, give it a shot, take a guess. Number three, the so called misunderstanding of the arithmetic of Droop STV. There is no misunderstanding of the arithmetic of Droop, we both know the arithmetic. The dispute is over how far to carry the math. You want to stop before it is finished. I want to continue until the job is done. In closing, I would like to go on record as saying that I am not opposed to the averaging of the votes of factions, if a jurisdiction votes in favor of averaging, but if a jurisdiction votes not to allow averaging of votes by the rules, like in non-partisan elections, then the method it should use is Hare Preference Voting, a method in which the rules do not favor the factions over independent candidates. The rules of Hare Voting will divide the total votes into proportional shares. In the case of three seats, the shares would be one third - one third - one third. The results of a Hare STV election can be very proportional, with results near perfect, perfect being one third of the total votes ending up on each of three winning candidates. If your jurisdiction votes not to allow averaging the votes for the political parties then you should not use the Droop Quota because the Droop quota is a means of averaging votes. While it does a crude job of averaging, it is never-the-less averaging the votes of political parties. Besides, the Droop also causes a near quota of votes to be wasted, which inturn lowers the proportionality of the election. In your case of three seats the proportionality will only be 75% plus three votes. The balance of 25% less three votes will be wasted votes of excluded voters. Other design features of the Hare Preference Voting method should be as follows: * Fractional transfer of all surplus votes, original and secondary: * Transfer value equal to surplus divided by all the votes of the candidate with the surplus, not by the number of fractional papers. * Transfer both transferable and non-transferrable ballots. * Transfer original surplus votes before eliminating any candidates. On the other hand, if your election is a partisan election, you are going to find that there will be pressure in your jurisdiction to allow the averaging of votes. Political factions want some of the votes of their higher candidates to be spread onto their lower candidates. And, being as all the factions together are a majority of the electorate, it is understandable that something like the Droop Quota was imposed into Preference Voting/STV many years ago. The Droop quota does spread votes over more candidates, kind of like averaging the votes. In the event your jurisdiction does approve the averaging of votes, you should still reject the Droop Quota, there is a better way to average votes. The Droop Quota is a crude way to average votes. It will not do the best job of averaging the votes for each faction, some candidates can still be left with lower votes than higher candidates in the same faction. Besides, don't forget, Droop also creates a near quota of excluded voters and that lowers the proportionality of the election. The better way of averaging the votes is a new elimination rule that I have created. That rule is as follows: `The candidate to be eliminated shall be the lowest candidate of the party with the lowest average votes per candidate.' This rule will average the votes equally across all the candidates of each faction, plus it does not exclude any voters, and will maintain proportionality, and it adjusts for exhausted ballots after every elimination which inturn makes Meek unnecessary. My new elimination rule can be added to three methods, SNTV, Bottoms Up, and Preference Voting/STV. All three are improved by this new rule, but Bottoms-Up+rule is the best because it has better proportionality than SNTV+rule and less math than Preference Voting/STV+rule and with about the same proportionality. ---- For more information about this list (subscribe, unsubscribe, FAQ, etc), please see http://www.eskimo.com/~robla/em
