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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
2. Re: Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias
(Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
3. what's wrong with random ballot (Hay voting) (Warren Smith)
4. Hay voting simulated in IEVS (Warren Smith)
5. A really simple, stupid usability point for 0..99 (Brian Olson)
6. Re: Hay voting bust, busted (Jobst Heitzig)
7. Re: Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
8. Re: Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias
(Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
9. Asset Voting (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 09:37:38 EST
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [EM] Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Anyone who wants to talk credibly and constructively about Senate
representation needs to read a pathbreaking and decades overdue
book about the subject by two political scientists: "Sizing Up the
Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation"
by Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, U. of Chicago
Press, 1999.
Mathematical analyses of this issue that are not informed and
tempered by a good understanding of the issue's history and
political consequences are close to worthless, if not worse than
worthless in that they muddy the issue and are used to justify
one of the most undemocratic aspects of the U.S. political
system and the least representative legislative body of any
major nation (and possibly any nation) in the world.
-Ralph Suter
<< Here's the link to the data supporting the fact that the defacto super
proportional representation of our small states is not enough to make
up for their Banzhaf Voting Power deficiency:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~livingst/Banzhaf/#results
Thanks,
Forest >>
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:44:08 -0500
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [email protected]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
At 09:37 AM 2/6/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Mathematical analyses of this issue that are not informed and
>tempered by a good understanding of the issue's history and
>political consequences are close to worthless, if not worse than
>worthless in that they muddy the issue and are used to justify
>one of the most undemocratic aspects of the U.S. political
>system and the least representative legislative body of any
>major nation (and possibly any nation) in the world.
There are two activities of value here: one is theoretical
mathematical analysis and the other is practical, having to do with
applications of election methods and, in this case, apportionment
issues and their effects. The activities are independent, and it is
not correct to claim that the first activity, in particular, is
worthless merely because it does not currently impact the second.
This list, in general, focuses on theory. If you want more focus on
actual political work with Election Methods, the place to look is
probably the Range Voting list on yahoogroups, which does not confine
itself to Range Voting but is concerned with election and related
reform in general.
Now, there is no doubt but that the Senate is in some respects
"undemocratic." It wasn't intended to be the representative of the
"people." It was intended to lend balance, "gravitas," to be an elite
institution. I'd suggest that any replacement for the Senate should
ideally perform a similar function. As an example of a reform that
could move the Senate toward democracy without sacrificing its elite
and state-representational character, the state representation for
states below a certain population could be reduced to a single Senator.
But, still, the Senate is vulnerable to shifts in the majority, just
like the House. Some kind of proportional representation could be
more stable. (When you have representation by district, elected by
majority vote within each district, a small shift in which party
holds the majority can create a drastic shift in party
representation. This would seem to be undesirable if gravitas is what
we want.) I'd suggest, in fact, Asset Voting with the Senate being
elected nation-wide. Asset Voting for PR has the benefit that no vote
need be wasted. You end up with a Senator who either you picked, or
someone you picked, picked. And you know exactly who your Senator is.
And quite likely your Senator would be based relatively close to you,
unless you find yourself affiliating with some group that is thinly
spread about the nation, in which case all of you could share one
Senator. Asset, if the candidates use vote transfers by precinct,
essentially is districting-on-the-fly; that is, a Senator could
generally represent a set of precincts geographically contiguous, but
would not be limited to that.
Personally, I don't understand all the fuss about more fixed PR
methods when Asset is such a brilliant solution, one which Warren
should more frequently take credit for. (His Asset Voting is more
complex than what I generally proposed, which is Fractional Approval
Asset Voting, where the ballot is essentially an Approval ballot,
but, because no vote is wasted, unlike standard Approval
single-winner, the votes are divided by the number of approved
candidates on the ballot. I think most voters would pick just one and
leave it at that.)
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:13:53 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Warren Smith)
Subject: [EM] what's wrong with random ballot (Hay voting)
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
I agree with Ossipoff.
That is, Hay voting is really a parameterized class of methods (parameter P).
When P=1/2 you get the original method. When P-->0+ you get a log-based method.
When P-->1- you get random ballot.
There are reasons to believe P=1- is actually the best member of the family.
If so, then Hay voting is actually worse as a voting method, than random ballot.
Which is well known to be a horribly bad voting method.
So Hay voting is not a good voting method. However, from the point of view of
a theoretician,
it has some neat properties. Namely, strategic vote = honest vote. Actually
ranodm ballot already had that property, but Hay goes further in that it
actually
causes the voter to reveal her honest utility values. Also, Hay with P=1/2 can
guarantee that the candidate with the greatest summed utility for all of society
is the one with the largest chance of being elected. I cannot think of any
other
voting method that can say that (aside from, say, Clarke-Tideman-Tullock but it
in some
sense isn't really a "voting method" since you pay money as your vote).
Warren D Smith
http://rangevoting.org
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:06:53 -0500
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Warren Smith)
Subject: [EM] Hay voting simulated in IEVS
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Hay voting (a version of it anyhow, using sqrts) is
now available in IEVS 2.53
http://rangevoting.org/IEVS/IEVS.c
and tests indicate that it indeed seems to be one of the worst voting methods
in trms of Bayesian Regret. It seems ot usually be worse than RandomBallot
but better than RandomWinner.
wds
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 10:15:23 -0800
From: Brian Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [EM] A really simple, stupid usability point for 0..99
To: Election Methods Mailing List <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
someone didn't see the hyphen and asked how they vote on a 10 to 10
scale. is 10 good or is 10 bad?
Doh!
Brian Olson
http://bolson.org/
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 19:18:46 +0100
From: Jobst Heitzig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] Hay voting bust, busted
To: Peter de Blanc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Warren Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Forest W Simmons
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed
Dear Peter!
Sorry to insist, but could you please show that given your new formula
it is indeed optimal to vote the true utilities?
For this you would have to differentiate the expected utility by each
expressed rating and show that all these derivatives vanish when the
ratings equal the true utilities.
I have the strong impression that, because of the normalizing constant c
which also depends on all expressed ratings, these derivatives are,
however, far from being zero,
meaning that the expected utility is in fact maximized by some set of
ratings different from the true utilities!
Yours, Jobst
Peter de Blanc schrieb:
> Here's the new article:
>
> http://www.spaceandgames.com/?p=14
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2007 13:34:54 EST
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [EM] Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
This is just another example of a lengthy comment by a person
who has not taken the time to learn about the subject he has decided
to pontificate about. I'm close to 100% certain that Lomax will never
read or even take a serious look at the book I mentioned ("Sizing
Up the Senate"), yet he doesn't hesitate to write a message purporting
to express authoritative opinions about the issue addressed in
that book, whose authors have spent literally years of their lives
researching the issue and taking great care to get their facts straight.
See below for more specific responses to Lomax's comments.
-Ralph Suter
In a message dated 2/6/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote
(quoting my previous message):
>> Mathematical analyses of this issue that are not informed and
>> tempered by a good understanding of the issue's history and
>> political consequences are close to worthless, if not worse than
>> worthless in that they muddy the issue and are used to justify
>> one of the most undemocratic aspects of the U.S. political
>> system and the least representative legislative body of any
>> major nation (and possibly any nation) in the world.
>
> There are two activities of value here: one is theoretical
> mathematical analysis and the other is practical, having to do with
> applications of election methods and, in this case, apportionment
> issues and their effects. The activities are independent, and it is
> not correct to claim that the first activity, in particular, is
> worthless merely because it does not currently impact the second.
Few if any people do strictly theoretical analyses of Senate
representation, because it is not a subject of much if any
intrinsic theoretical interest. It is of interest because of the
importance of the Senate to the U.S. political system.
Even if someone were to do a strictly theoretical analysis,
it would be perfectly reasonable to say their analysis is "worse
than worthless" if it were totally unhelpful in any conceivably
practical way and had the further effect of causing confusion
about the issue, distracting attention from much more important
aspects of the issue, and/or being used for the purpose of
justifying the way the political system is now structured.
That's just my opinion, of course, but your comment was also
your opinion, not any sort of "correct" analysis. I'll leave it up
to others to judge whose opinion is the most persuasive and
worthwhile.
> This list, in general, focuses on theory. If you want more focus on
> actual political work with Election Methods, the place to look is
> probably the Range Voting list on yahoogroups, which does not confine
> itself to Range Voting but is concerned with election and related
> reform in general.
Spoken by someone who has been on this list less than two
of its 12 or so years and has not hesitated to write on many
occasions and at great length about all kinds of subjects,
including "actual political work."
> Now, there is no doubt but that the Senate is in some respects
> "undemocratic." It wasn't intended to be the representative of the
> "people." It was intended to lend balance, "gravitas," to be an elite
> institution. I'd suggest that any replacement for the Senate should
> ideally perform a similar function. As an example of a reform that
> could move the Senate toward democracy without sacrificing its elite
> and state-representational character, the state representation for
> states below a certain population could be reduced to a single Senator.
You don't have any credible understanding of why the Senate
was constituted the way it was. It was a very contentious issue
during the Constitutional Convention, and the "Great Compromise"
that resulted was strictly a result of political necessity without
which representatives of the slave states would not have signed
on to the Constitution.
As for the remainder of your comments, including your advocacy
of Asset Voting, these are just the kinds of comments about "actual
political work" that you have just claimed this list is not intended for.
Asset Voting is actually a terrible as well as impractical form
of representation. Any theoretical advantages it has are far
outweighed by its serious theoretical disadvantages and its
impracticality.
> But, still, the Senate is vulnerable to shifts in the majority, just
> like the House. Some kind of proportional representation could be
> more stable. (When you have representation by district, elected by
> majority vote within each district, a small shift in which party
> holds the majority can create a drastic shift in party
> representation. This would seem to be undesirable if gravitas is what
> we want.) I'd suggest, in fact, Asset Voting with the Senate being
> elected nation-wide. Asset Voting for PR has the benefit that no vote
> need be wasted. You end up with a Senator who either you picked, or
> someone you picked, picked. And you know exactly who your Senator is.
> And quite likely your Senator would be based relatively close to you,
> unless you find yourself affiliating with some group that is thinly
> spread about the nation, in which case all of you could share one
> Senator. Asset, if the candidates use vote transfers by precinct,
> essentially is districting-on-the-fly; that is, a Senator could
> generally represent a set of precincts geographically contiguous, but
> would not be limited to that.
>
> Personally, I don't understand all the fuss about more fixed PR
> methods when Asset is such a brilliant solution, one which Warren
> should more frequently take credit for. (His Asset Voting is more
> complex than what I generally proposed, which is Fractional Approval
> Asset Voting, where the ballot is essentially an Approval ballot,
> but, because no vote is wasted, unlike standard Approval
> single-winner, the votes are divided by the number of approved
> candidates on the ballot. I think most voters would pick just one and
> leave it at that.)
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:13:36 -0500
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] Minmax under-representaton causes small-bias
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [email protected]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
At 01:34 PM 2/6/2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[a series of comments which appear to be motivated by animosity, from
which I'm only extracting one.]
>As for the remainder of your comments, including your advocacy
>of Asset Voting, these are just the kinds of comments about "actual
>political work" that you have just claimed this list is not intended for.
I did not claim that this list was not "for actual political work,"
but that clearly it *was*, from the vast numbers of posts regarding
it, clearly *for* theoretical work. Mr. Suter had decried theoretical
analysis and discussion essentially on the basis that it was
politically useless. So? Maybe now it is. Not necessarily forever.
>Asset Voting is actually a terrible as well as impractical form
>of representation. Any theoretical advantages it has are far
>outweighed by its serious theoretical disadvantages and its
>impracticality.
Note that there is a severe paucity of such comment. I haven't seen
*one* theoretical disadvantage. But perhaps I've missed it. As to
practicality, well, much discussion here is of methods that aren't
practical *now.* But they might be someday, somewhere.
Mr. Suter's comments are essentially useless. If Asset is "terrible,"
either theoretically or practically, surely it would be useful to
tell us *why* and *how*!
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2007 14:33:26 -0500
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [EM] Asset Voting
To: [email protected]
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
I see that there is no Electowiki page on Asset Voting. So I'm
starting a thread to gather some commentary on it.
Asset Voting, the name, was apparently invented by Warren Smith. In
his version, candidates are awarded a number between 0 and 1, with
the restriction that the sum of numbers awarded should equal one.
Then the total votes received by an individual candidate is
reassignable by the candidate to create a winner or winners. This
essentially turns an election where winners do not appear from the
direct votes into a deliberative process, conducted on behalf of the
voters by those trusted by them.
It's thus a variation on delegable proxy, which is how I came to be
interested in it initially.
Variations have been proposed:
(1) Candidates publish a list of reassignments that they will follow.
However, this loses the flexibility that simple Asset has, the
negotiation component is lost. If the list is not a binding promise,
it could be useful. Don't vote for someone you don't trust!
(2) Fractional Approval Asset Voting was my suggestion. In this, the
votes are restricted to 1 whole vote per candidate, but the ballot is
normalized so that the sum of votes is one vote. The advantage of
this simplification is that the ballot is quite simple. The voter
either delegates his or her vote to a single candidate, or to a
virtual committee.
(3) It is fairly simple to use Asset Voting for Proportional
Representation, creating a quite exact peer assembly, with,
nevertheless, district connection with elected members being quite
likely for many or most. This is enabled most specificaly by
encouraging candidates to reassign votes in precinct blocks. (This
could create some error in precision of number of voters per seated
member, but at the great advantage of voters knowing *exactly* who
was elected by their vote.)
I recall having read somewhere about another independent invention of
Asset Voting, I'd appreciate if anyone has references.
I'll only note one special feature of Asset, one reason why it is
worthy of serious consideration:
The voter is totally free to vote for anyone. Electability is not
relevant. There is utterly no pressure for strategic voting. The only
requirement is that the candidate voted for be one who is
identifiable and who is willing to take part in the public part of the process:
The reassignment process, presumably, is public; it is not, I would
think, a fixed thing with all reassignments taking place in one "poll."
If I had my choice of election methods, I'd either pick Asset or
Delegable Proxy. DP, however, does not create a peer assembly, which
might be considered desirable; rather it would normally create --
unless it is used in the Asset manner -- a body with members having
variable voting power.
------------------------------
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