At 11:45 PM 11/25/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote:
Hello,
--- En date de : Mar 25.11.08, Abd ul-Rahman
Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit :
> What Approval sincerely represents from a voter is a
> *decision* as to where to place an Approval cutoff.
But is it not true that what *all* methods sincerely represent from a
voter are the decisions related to voting under that method?
If a decision makes sense in a given context, then that is a sincere
decision. Is that not your stance?
No. My stance, or my current point of view, is
that sincerity is a red herring. Votes are
generally actions, not sentiments or even
statements of truth. They represent, ordinarily, decisions.
Under many voting systems, a voter may vote a
preference that is not the voter's true
preference, specifically, that *reverses*
preference. The most common form of this is, of
course, voting for a frontrunner in Plurality
when one would prefer a different candidate *if
that option were considered possible.* In the
U.S., where write-in votes are generally allowed,
this means that *almost always,* voters are
voting *insincerely*, and they will continue to
do so with Instant Runoff Voting.
There is only one system which truly allows
"fully sincere voting," where the voter can vote
for their absolute preference out of all eligible
candidates, and need not add any other votes, and
that's Asset Voting, and it does so by a trick:
it is not a deterministic method, it is really an
input stage to a deliberative process.
(Interestingly, this was originally invented by
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) as a means of
fixing the problem of exhausted ballots in STV.)
The best writing on this that I've found, it's
related to the Dhillon-Mertens work, is that of
voting on lotteries. Which would you prefer, x%
chance of A or y% chance of B? If you choose the
latter, does it mean that you "sincerely" prefer
B to A. No. It means that you prefer -- choose to
support -- the outcome that represents the
highest expected return, i.e., absolute value of
the outcome times probability of the outcome. We
vary from this kind of behavior for various reasons, but not too far.
In real elections, the voter makes choices based
on two factors: personal utilities, which create
preferences of various strengths, and outcome
probabilities. With ranked methods, an "insincere
vote" has a clear meaning, it is one which, on
its face, supports one candidate over another
while, in fact, the voter prefers a different
candidate. Voters vote this way in order, we can
assume, to the extent that they do, in order to
improve the outcome; a good method will not
require or reward this. However, there is a class
of methods which do not provide any incentive to reverse preference.
But there still is an incentive to equate
preferences when the voter actually does have a
preference. This has been called "strategic
voting," in the basic meaning, confusing the hell
out of the field, because originally "strategic
voting" was used with respect to preferential
voting systems and meant preference reversal, and
thus strategic voting implied insincere voting.
But setting an approval cutoff and voting
according to that isn't *insincere*. It simply
does not disclose a preference that the voter
considers less important than voting effectively.
Much of the fluff about Approval Voting has been
based on the concept that there is some absolute
Approval cutoff, that it can be assumed that
voters "approve" one set of candidates and not
another set, and that if the voter votes
differently, then the voter is voting
"insincerely" and the method can encourage this,
and that therefore "Approval is vulnerable to
strategic voting." But there is no absolute; what
outcomes we "approve" is not a quality of the
outcomes alone, but of our assessment of the probabilities of each.
John offers you $1000. Do you accept it? Doesn't
it depend on the alternatives? No strings
attached, sure. But if you have a choice between
a 10% chance of $10,000 -- with an expected value
of $1000 --, or a 90% chance of $5,000 which do
you "approve"? One could imagine that one would
approve of all gifts, but these aren't purely
gifts, and they are exclusive. You can't have
both. By voting for the $10,000 option, one would
be voting "sincerely," by some definitions. But,
Burr Dilemma: really one "approves" of both
outcomes, so by that definition, one is voting
"insincerely." The whole so-called Burr Dilemma
is based on an assumption that voters "really"
approve of two candidates, but only vote for
their favorite. And the dilemma is that
supposedly this is a difficult choice, because by
voting only for their favorite they risk a loss, perhaps, to someone worse.
But this is totally ordinary with choices. And in
the real situation behind the Burr Dilemma, there
was no problem, because the bullet votes caused
majority failure. *That was the design.* Further
process then ensued. There was no constitutional
crisis, there was merely some frustration as it
took some time, and many ballots, before it was
sorted out. Better, in my view, would have been
Asset Voting -- or, short of that, top-two runoff, back to the electorate.
*No method can guarantee the best result with a
single ballot, unless you define "best result" as
the best that could be obtained by a snapshot of
accurate voter utility profiles at that moment.*
Preferential voting systems did not allow voters
to vote with *accuracy*, by which I mean that an
accurate understanding of voter preferences,
including preference strengths, could be derived
from the ballot. Unrestricted Range Voting
likewise fails, but for a political reason: we
have decided to equate the preferences of all
voters *who show up*, thus distorting utilities through normalization.
However, if we accept that restriction, and
likewise accept distortion through round-off
error caused by practical limitations, only a
Range ballot collects the information needed to
determine an optimized outcome, given "accurate"
ballots, what others have called "sincere" ones.
However, voters won't vote accurate ballots, for
a number of reasons. I'd contend that we don't
even know how to do it. Rather, we are
*instinctively* programmed to consider
probabilities. It's relatively easy for me to
determine, of A and B, that I prefer one to the
other. But then, introduce C. If A and B remain
the favorite and least-favored, where do I rate
C? When we try to think of Range Voting as
involving "sincere ratings," then, we see the
purported difficult of Range. There is no
specific meaning to those intermediate ratings.
But when we simply think about Range Votes as
fractional votes in an Approval election, that
they are weights we are tossing in baskets, and
the heaviest basket will win, we are
instinctively able to do this kind of analysis.
We do it all the time with any goal-seeking
behavior. We don't necessarily put our efforts
toward the ideal outcome, when we don't think it
reasonably possible; rather, we devote our
limited resources to an outcome that is an
optimal combination of desirability and probability of success.
Because we can conceive of Approval Voting very
simply, as representing a decision to support a
set of candidates, all of whom are preferred over
all non-supported candidates, and because
Approval never rewards insincerity in this (i.e.,
including a candidate in the Approved set, when
there is another candidate preferred to that one
who is left in the unapproved set, or
vice-versa), Approval is strategy-free, in the
old sense, and this is why Brams introduced it as
such. The voter sets the Approval cutoff at will,
based on election probabilities, presumably, or
just on pure personal preference (reasons other
than affecting the outcome), and then will vote,
we may assume, sincerely with respect to this.
This created chaos in the voting systems world;
it offended many authors because there was a
family of sincere votes, not just one. Suddenly
there was no way to take a preference profile and
determine from it, alone, a "sincere vote." One
needed to make some other assumptions. Messy. But real.
Range Voting creates "problems," because it
allows the expression of critical information,
preference strength. If voters choose not to
express this, they may, under realistic
conditions, find some advantage. But what is the
alternative? The alternative is much worse: don't
allow that expression. Range, when voted
"strategically," "degrades" to Approval. Which
when voted "strategically," "degrades" to
Plurality (normally, for some reason we don't see
criticism of Approval with respect to voters
"insincerely" approving of candidates when the
voter doesn't "really" approve of them -- I'll get back to this.)
And Plurality is actually a much better method
than we've given it credit for, when it is used
within a generally functional political system.
Proof? Look at the results of U.S. nonpartisan
IRV elections. We can assume that if voters voted
sincerely, with Plurality, the results would
*always* have been the same as with IRV. This
phenomenon has not received the attention it
deserves. There will be exceptions, but they are
much more rare than I would have expected,
certainly. It's been known in Australia, though,
that with optional preferential voting, vote
transfers heavily favor the leader in the first round.
There are exceptions related to the spoiler
effect, where vote-splitting hurts only one
candidate, a phenomenon that arises when a third
party rises up and gains a few percent of the
vote, without a counterbalancing third party on the other side of the spectrum.
In any case, isn't it suspicious that voting for
the favorite is considered "sincere" with Plurality, and not with Approval?
What critics of Range would have us do is to
continue to forbid the expression of preference
strength, on the argument that some of us won't
do it "sincerely," and thereby gain some
advantage. Simulations show that, as I'd expect,
Range continues to perform well with various
levels of "incomplete expression," or "strategic voting."
Because we can't be sure that all voters will
vote "sincerely," something which is never,
conveniently, defined, we should prevent all voters from voting accurately?
Because some voters may "get what they want" by
voting with full strength -- I thought that
seeking to get what they want is what voters are
supposed to do! -- we should require all voters
to accept results that are, overall, inferior to Range Voting?
From my discussions here and elsewhere over the
last few years, I've come to see a very clear
path to election reform. The first step is
extremely clear, and at one time I was able to
say that voting systems experts actually were in
agreement about it, except for the few who had
fallen into the trap that promoting anything
other than instant runoff voting was politically
foolish, because of its "momentum."
(1) Start counting all the votes, and the
candidate with the most votes wins. I have yet to
see anyone knowledgeable about voting systems who
thinks that this would be a step backwards! When
I started, I, like many, though that IRV was
better than Plurality; I still think that, but
only in restricted circumstances, which happens
to be ones which don't apply for nearly all U.S.
implementations! IRV is *not* better than top-two
runoff, it is, quite clearly, worse, and only
better, if that, from an expense or convenience
point of view. I.e., let's tolerate worse results
because voting is too much trouble. Bad idea.
There are, from this point, quite a number of
alternative paths. I'm not even sure which path to pursue first.
(2) Allow fractional votes. That's Range Voting,
sum of votes version. Warren, dump Average Range,
there isn't any solid theoretical foundation for
it, it is a wild idea that can sound appealing
until one realizes the complications.
Sum-of-votes Range is entirely consistent with
standard Approval practice. Average Range is
*not* used, and has never been used, for any
political application, and I don't think that
natural range voting (the honeybee thing) uses
Average Range. It is sum of votes, which is
computationally much simpler for an organism.
(Actually, decisions are made through a fractal
hierarchy, so it's more complex than simple sum
of votes, except for very primitive organisms.
I'm pretty sure that slime molds decide which
direction to move in by summing the impact of messenger molecules.)
(3) Require that a majority of voters explicitly
approve an outcome for that outcome to be
implemented. Note that we already have this
reform, in many places. It is standard in
deliberative process. Even when plurality voting
is used, it often takes a majority vote to
implement the result. *This method is Condorcet
compliant!* (Particularly if we qualify
"Condorcet winner" to allow another winner when
preference strength is insufficient to motivate
voters to change the result, even where they have
the power to do so. The whole concept of
preferential analysis needs modification like
this to allow that there is a difference between
a weak preference and a strong one.)
(4) Use Asset Voting techniques to generate fully
democratic results. Asset Voting should really be
a no-brainer for representation. Only Asset
allows truly maximized representation; all other
systems assign representative power without the
consent of a substantial number of voters.
(5) Shift to a parliamentary system so that
single-winner elections are handled through
deliberative process, and so that there are no
fixed terms; rather, single-winner is only for
officials or what are essentially "hired
servants," not democratic representaties; such an
official should only be able to act when
supported by, at the minimum, a majority of
voters or their chosen representatives.
(6) Where single-winner elections are still used,
use Range, either high-resolution or with means
of indicating preference within a rating level,
incorporate an acceptance marker, which might be
built into the rating system --- i.e., Range 5, a
rating of 3 or more could be considered
acceptance (and voters would be motivated, then,
to vote that way); "acceptance" means, "I prefer
accepting this result to going through the
election again." If restricted runoff is used
(i.e., top two or, better, Range winner vs
Preferential winner), then use an advanced method
like Bucklin or Approval in the runoff -- even
though there are just two candidates on the
ballot -- and allow write-in votes. This allows
the electorate to fix a problem with the first
election, if they care sufficiently. And if they
don't care sufficiently, then fixing the problem is not important!
(7) Use the electoral college created by Asset
Voting -- the collection of identified public
voters, those holding and exercising votes they
received in the general election by secret
ballot, which, under reasonably settled
conditions, means anyone who wants to be such a
voter and so registers, and gets at least one
vote -- to create hybrid representative/direct
democracy. An Assembly seat, then, becomes a
representative for the purposes of participating
with deliberative rights, continuing the solution
to the problem of scale that has, heretofor,
forced us to switch from direct democracy to
representative democracy whenever the scale
became too large, while allowing electors to vote
directly when they choose to do so.
The result of all this: we'd think of the government as "us." And it would be.
(8) Organize directly outside of the legal,
political system, to maintain a watch over it.
Use FA/DP principles and techniques to make this
easy and efficient and not vulnerable to attack
at concentrated nodes, because FA/DP is
independent of such. In short, following the
excellent book, The Starfish and the Spider,
create a starfish/spider hybrid, with the
starfish being the people, with the
communications structures that FA/DP creates,
bottom-up, exercising power only through the
power to advise, and the spider being the
government, with relatively traditional
structures, but dependent on the continuous
consent of the people to maintain power.
"Spider" is used as an example of an organism or
organization which dies immediately -- becomes
powerless or ineffective -- when you cut off its
head. Starfish, some species, cut them up, and
each piece regenerates a complete organism. It is
extremely difficult to fight starfish
organizations; the book makes the point that the
Navajo survived for hundreds of years fighting
the Spanish because of their distributed power
culture. The Spanish would kill the leaders, new
ones would pop up, quickly and spontaneously.
Al-Qa'ida is a starfish; fighting starfish as if
they were spiders is a seriously Bad Idea. Pretty
much, you have to change the environment to fight
starfish, you have to motivate the members of
such to do something else. You have to convince
them. *Maybe* you can exterminate them, but that
requires a ruthlessness that isn't generally
supportable. You have to kill everyone who has
joined a starfish cell, or even who might join
one. ("Thinks dangerously.") And I rather doubt
that this is, in the modern world, successful in the long term.
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