Hi Chris,
I didn't notice you replied on EM. I've forwarded my previous message.
This reply is on-list because I don't think you said anything that you might
not want posted. Apologies in advance if that is wrong.
--- En date de : Mar 17.6.08, Chris Benham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
> Kevin,
> I'm a bit surprised that you apparently didn't
> copy this response
> to EM. It hasn't shown up in the Electorama EM
> archive.
>
> "At this time, though, my approach is to try to deliberately
> create the nomination disincentive that would prevent there
> from ever being uncertainty as to who the top 3 candidates
> are. I'm reading from FPP's playbook."
>
> Strong nomination disincentive (as in FPP) is a great evil,
I am trying to look at the big picture, at the desired results. The election
method doesn't exist in a vacuum. The most strategy-free (wrt voting and
nomination) method with the greatest degree of expression permitted, while
great in principle, is still a failure if it doesn't provide the desired
results.
FPP's nomination disincentive creates mistakes. I think it would make far fewer
if it permitted three candidates, with the same "positioning" incentives it
already offers two candidates.
I also don't think (and am not too sure I ever thought) that it's part of the
job of an election method to reveal support for candidates that could scarcely
win under any method.
I think it's largely a question of at what point in the process voters are
asked for their input. With FPP, the major players have already whittled the
possible decisions down to two, understandably making many voters feel they
can't vote for what they want. With high-magnitude PR in a parliamentary
system, voters can vote directly for what they want, but the actual decision
(as to policy and the composition of the government) is left to the
negotiations of the leaders of the elected parties.
A more complicated method like Schulze(wv), or a method like I want to make
which just tries to expand on the best part of FPP, just ask for the voters'
input at a different stage of the process of finding a group decision. What I
am suspecting is that it won't work very well to ask voters to consolidate the
options on election day, using their complicated vote expressions. I think
whichever parties consolidate in advance will probably still win. There may be
other good options, but they need support and attention prior to election day
or they won't get enough votes. (This could explain candidates playing for
second under TTR.)
> as is wilfully and avoidably wasting votes.
It would be important to frame the rule so that it doesn't sound like that. For
example, you don't hear of FPP having an explicit rule to "throw away all the
ballots that don't vote for first place."
The fundamental problem is that I need voters to rank the three major
candidates. I can ask the voter to kindly identify just those three and rank
them (two of them, that is), or I can force everybody to rank all the
candidates. I think the latter is worse for everybody, except for people who
just want their vote for fourth place to be noted.
Candidates "playing for third" at the voting stage is not supposed to be
possible.
> An intermediate version that might frustrate your purpose
> less would be to Contingent Vote-style eiliminate at once
> all but the FP top 3.
The method might not even use elimination in its core rules, though. So any
kind of preference transfer seems like a lot of work just to satisfy voters who
basically cast protest votes (which is less understandable when they're
theoretically being given three viable choices). Plus I believe it would still
substantially undermine what I'm trying to do, in that the voters would be less
focused on the big three.
> "That could undermine the perceived legitimacy of the method"
> I have been assuming that this is a bizzare academic
> exercise on your part,
> and not some serious reform proposal that might have any
> "perceived legitimacy".
The three-faction "winner-takes-all second preferences" part is an academic
exercise. But "winner-takes-all" would solve the problem of voters insisting on
ranking only one of the three viable candidates.
> With your set-up "3-candidate, 3-faction, full strict
> ranking" scenario many weird and wonderful methods are
> possible.
> You might get some ideas from the "3-small
> elections" part of Woodall's draft paper.
> Maybe even Black wouldn't be bad? Or whichever is
> Borda-superior of the winners of methods A and B (and C?)
> ?
I haven't looked at the draft paper for this purpose yet, but some of the ones
I remember (and also Borda) can't be performed under the framework because in
e.g. Borda it isn't possible to find the winner knowing only the relative sizes
of the factions.
Also, there are only 9 Condorcet-efficient methods under the framework, and
only three of them are "monotonic." They differ only in the cycles, and
correspond to e.g. Schulze, Bucklin, and VFA Runoff.
I would like to consider expanding the framework, but it's hard to introduce
anything without causing the number of possible scenarios to balloon. If I
allowed all six strictly ranked ballot types, there would be I think 720 ways
to order the factions, allowing 3^720 methods to be defined. Most of those
would be garbage, or have silly inconsistencies; in addition you couldn't even
represent a method like Schulze because you'd have to be able to compare sums
of factions' sizes.
Kevin Venzke
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