At 12:56 AM 12/21/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote:
Hello,
--- En date de : Ven 19.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman
Lomax <[email protected]> a écrit :
> With LNH, the "harm" is that the voter sees a
> second preference candidate elected rather than the first
> preference.
Actually, the harm need not take that form. It could be that you add an
additional preference and cause an even worse candidate to win instead of
your favorite candidate.
That's not called LNH, I think. LNH: Adding an
additional preference cannot cause a higher preference candidate to lose.
With Bucklin, the described behavior can't occur,
if I'm correct. The additional vote maintains a
vote for both candidates against all other
candidates, and only abstains from that pair. No,
*failing* to add an additional preference can cause the effect described.
Basically, the claim is that LNH is important
because voter fear of LNH failure will supposedly
cause voters to bullet vote, thus causing the third candidate to win.
But this is precisely a situation that the voters
can handle. They can balance the benefit and
risk; to do this zero knowledge is possible. I've
stated that the voter should, in that case,
assume that the voter's own preferences are an
indication of the overall preference of society;
making this fuzzy, understanding that it is
fuzzy, can then indicate a reasonably voting
strategy. I.e., the voter doesn't assume that the
voter's own position is *absolutely* an accurate
sample, just that it's a rough indication. The
voter can also make different assumptions; if the
voter knows that his or her own preferences are
idiosyncratic, unusual, the voter will normally
have *some idea* of how others generally feel. A
voter who knows that his or her own position is
far-left, as defined by society, will usually
know this! So the voter can model, normally, how
others are likely to vote. But it's better, of
course, to put this information together with
polls and other information, such as personal contact with other voters.
What's being said here is that voter knowledge of
the *situation,* the *context* of an election, is
an important element in voting and that it is
*normal* and *functional* for voters to
incorporate this judgement; that there exist some
abstract utilities, totally independent of
context, on which voter preferences are based, is
actually quite a leap away from what we know,
it's an unwarranted assumption. It seems that we
are designed, more or less, to find VNM
utilities, roughly, from the get-go, we do not
sit down and consider all possibilities, our
considerations are prefiltered following what we
think possible in the first place.
Dhillon and Mertens actually address this: they
start with a total candidate set, all possible
candidates, but that set considers what is
socially possible. It's prefiltered, in fact.
"All possible" is the key word. It includes
election rules and social norms. It's larger than
the candidates on the ballot, but it is not unlimited.
Yes, but the concern should not be that you personally will ruin the
result, it's that you and voters of like mind and strategy will ruin the
result.
There are two approaches: true utility for
various vote patterns, which is the "last voter"
utility, since if your vote doesn't affect the
outcome, it has no utility (except personal
satisfaction, which should, in fact, be in the
models. There is a satisfaction in voting
sincerely, all by itself, and this has been neglected in models.)
The other approach is the "what if many think
like me?" approach. That's not been modeled, to
my knowledge, but it's what I'm suggesting as an
*element* in zero-knowledge strategy. It's
particularly important with Approval! The
"mediocre" results in some Approval examples
proposed come from voters not trusting that their
own opinions will find agreement from other
voters, and if almost everyone votes that way, we
get a mediocre result. This actually requires a
preposterously ignorant electorate, using a bad strategy.
Optimal strategy shifts if a majority is
required. Requiring a majority, in a first round,
shifts optimal strategy toward the bullet vote,
in Approval as well as in other methods. It
shifts Range toward stronger expression of clear preference.
The electorate, then, has a solid basis for
determining strategy in the next round! (This
works in unlimited round systems, and classic
Approval studies considered how the rounds would
settle, but it also works with two rounds, just not as flexibly.)
From the beginning, we should have questioned
the tendency to believe that "strategic voting"
was a Bad Thing. It's actually a necessary thing;
VNM utilities are "strategic," and it's only the
use of VNM utilities that can make a method
Arrovian-compliant. At least that's what Dhillon
and Mertens seem to claim to have proven,
Relative Utilitarianism, they purport to show --
and it's been long enough, and enough work has
built on their work, that it's unlikely the proof
is false, it just hasn't been popularized -- is a
unique solution to the Arrovian conditions they
define, which aren't strange definitions at all,
they are actually "weak." I.e., should be relatively easier to satisfy.
> I'd have to look at it. How does MMPO work? I worry
> about "nearly," [...]
The "opposition" of candidate A to candidate B is the number of voters
ranking A above B. (There are no pairwise contests as such, though the
same data is collected as though there were.)
Score each candidate as the greatest opposition they receive from another
candidate.
Elect the candidate with the lowest score.
This satisfies LNHarm because by adding another preference, the only
change you can make is that a worse candidate is defeated.
Okay, that's clear. Now, "nearly" a Condorcet
method? But this is a peripheral issue for me.
Reading about MMPO, my conclusion is that, absent
far better explanations of the method and its
implications than what I found looking, it's not
possible as an alternative. Hence in my own
mental VNM utilities for voting systems, it's got
low preference strength, and I really don't know
where to rank it.... It would be nice if we could
get to the point that political practicality were
more ... rational. But we aren't there.
I've just been doing some research on Bucklin and
searching for preferential voting or the
preferential system, the name by which it was
often known in the U.S., I came across some IRV
stuff, specifically the San Jose Measure M that
passed in 1998. What is obvious is that the
electorate there was deceived, with the
opposition -- raising a legitimate concern --
being outmaneuvered by Steve Chessin. The
"unbiased" description of Measure M,
unfortunately, was dead wrong. And Chessin, I'd
have to assume he knows the truth, lied in the
ballot arguments. Directly and plainly. Unless,
perhaps, the IRV that was being approved by
voters there is different from every other IRV
implementation in the U.S. That would be refreshing!
My point is that we need to focus better. San
Jose is an active issue, there were efforts to
get IRV in place this year, and those will
continue. There is a real need for reliable
information about IRV and other systems, and for
that information to be made available to
decision-makers and, for example, the county
counsel who issued the "unbiased description."
"Preferential voting" has waited 10 years to be
implemented there because of the serious counting
difficulties. Yet, it appears, preferential
voting, the "American" version, was used in San
Francisco, I have not yet determined the details,
but something like 1916 as an adoption date, and
it lasted for some years. It was Bucklin. Which
is far easier to count, and which is *more*
likely to find a majority than IRV, and the only
serious argument against it is LNH fear: will it
cause voters to fail to specify additional
preferences? But, in fact, if it's not considered
"instant runoff," if it doesn't *replace* runoff
elections, but merely makes them more uncommon,
that isn't actually a problem. It appears that
it's also, quite simply, not what happened with
municipal elections using Bucklin. There were
very healthy numbers of additional preferences expressed.
The LNH argument crops up in books about
preferential voting, in particular one where the
"American preferential vote" and the "English
preferential vote" were being compared. (I.e.,
Bucklin and STV). Purely theoretical, no actual
data of substance, no consideration of the meaning and context. Same as today.
There is no evidence, in fact, that voters will
actually fail to add preferences with Bucklin
more than they will with IRV. What's been missed
is that bullet voting is a totally normal voting
pattern, having little or nothing to do with LNH
fears. Sure, *in theory*, LNH fears could
suppress additional preferences .... but, then,
strategic concerns could increase them. *Both* of
these are forms of strategy. One proponent of
Bucklin answered that voters, if they have some
mild preference between two candidates, the
favorite and one a bit less favored, would be
more concerned about defeating a bad candidate
than about their vote helping the less favored
one beat the more favored one. And this is
actually quite a sound argument, made in roughly 1920....
DSC is harder to explain. Basically the method is trying to identify the
largest "coalitions" of voters that prefer a given set of candidates to
the others. The coalitions are ranked and evaluated in turn. By adding
another preference, you can get lumped in with a coalition that you
hadn't been. (Namely, the coalition that prefers all the candidates that
you ranked, in some order, to all the others.) But this doesn't help
the added candidate win if a different candidate supported by this
coalition was already winning.
MMPO is easy to explain, but the *implications*
aren't easy without quite a bit of study. DSC
being harder to explain makes the implications
even more obscure. Thanks for explaining, I
appreciate the effort; but I'm prioritizing my
time. I'll need to drop this particular
discussion. If, however, a serious proposal is
made for implementing one of these methods, I'll
return. Right now, what I see is that Bucklin
should get priority, as a form of Approval that
*better* satisfies LNH concerns and the very
legitimate desire to express a favorite, and as a
very simple and easy to canvass and understand
method. It will produce the same results as IRV
in the favorite scenarios of FairVote: spoiler
effect situations, but it continues to function
-- and has been proved to function in history --
in situations where Center Squeeze would cause serious IRV failure.
And the fact that IRV is taking down the best
voting system we have in current application in
the U.S., based on a thoroughly misleading
argument that IRV simulates Runoff Voting, and is
supposedly cheaper, must be addressed. There is
work to do. San Jose is about to, probably by
next election, replace Runoff Voting with IRV,
based on a ballot Measure passed ten years ago,
that radically misinformed the electorate, in the
*same way* as the San Francisco electorate was misinformed.
The local Libertarian Party chair caught it, but
didn't explain it clearly enough. He was whacked
down by other Libertarians who said he didn't
have the authority to speak on behalf of the
party, and Chessin made sure this was mentioned
in the rebuttal. That rebuttal, however,
explicitly affirmed that the winner would be
required to obtain a vote from the "majority of
ballots." He said this denying the concern raised
by that Libertarian. Oops! That's a true
majority, and cannot be found unless you require
full ranking, which is almost certainly
unconstitutional in the U.S. (Dove v. Ogleby, Oklahoma).
Chessin, did you realize you were deceiving the
voters? That was a long time ago. The distinction
has escaped a lot of people, even those who
should know better, because they imagine full
ranking, even though we *should* have known that
full ranking simply doesn't happen unless you
coerce the voters, as they tried in Oklahoma.
> > In other words: I want to have a TTR election where
> candidates risk being
> > spoilers if they place worse than third.
>
> That would be a system where the candidate is risking
> damage to the overall benefit of the election. Did you mean
> to write it as you did? A spoiler typically will drop the
> "spoiled" candidacy one rank, not two.
That is what I meant to write, although I don't understand your second
statement.
In real voting systems, candidates who aren't
going to win *always* risk being spoilers in the
sense stated. It's not avoidable, unless you
coerce votes, which ain't gonna happen in the
U.S., at least. However, the risk can be greatly reduced.
As far as it being a "system where the candidate is risking damage to
the overall benefit of the election": We already have this with FPP,
with every candidate who places third or worse.
The problem is that there is disagreement as to
the "overall benefit." Nader claimed that there
was no difference between Gore and Bush. This is
equivalent to a position that the benefit of a
third party candidacy, expressing support for
that party, is more important, of more benefit,
than making a choice between Tweedledum and
Tweedledee. I think the position stank, and still
stinks -- Nader continues to defend it, in spite
of the huge damage done, which damage would have
been less likely than with Gore -- but I have to
say that this was a decision, how to vote, made
by each voter. Enough agreed with him, and it's
revisionist for us to say that, "Well, they
didn't mean it. They *really* preferred Gore."
Why? They voted for a candidate but didn't
believe what he was saying? No, they did *not*
prefer Gore. Some of them thought that it was
*better* for Bush to win, because then it would
get really bad and then comes the revolution....
However, I'm pretty sure that if the method in
Florida had been Approval or Bucklin or IRV, we'd
have seen some additional Gore votes. But what's
hard to figure out is what additional votes would
have gone to Bush, there would have been those.
My guess is that, since the election was very
close with Plurality, it would have remained very
close with any of the preferential voting methods
or Approval, and possibly also Range. Now,
imagine the flap over counting the vote if it had
been IRV in Florida, and close! Bad enough with
Plurality or one of the other sum-of-votes
methods. Total nightmare with IRV....
Basically I want a hybrid of FPP and TTR, that does better than either
at providing an actual third choice that might be able to win. That
everyone and their mother can be nominated fairly safely under TTR is
nice and democratic, but I think it's a waste of potential.
Sure. Bucklin. It seems to have handled an
election in Portland, OR, or was it Seattle, with
92 candidates on the ballot. (It was 5-winner
Bucklin, so voters had five votes in the first
two ranks, and unlimited votes in the third
rank). Next election, the excitement had worn off
and there were fewer frivolous candidacies. And
use Bucklin as a primary and runoff method,
allowing write-ins in the runoff. Otherwise top
two runoff. Want to make it more sophisticated? There are simple tweaks.
I'd like some credit for noticing that runoffs
solve a lot of problems with voting systems, and
for suggesting that using a better primary
method, in particular, can greatly improve TTR.
I've also pointed out, this seems to be original
as well, that voter turnout in elections exerts a
Range-like effect, by suppressing votes based on
weak preferences. This has the strongest effect
on a special election runoff; but it's also a way
of validating preference strength in a runoff
which is resolving a Condorcet conflict with a
Range primary. If the Range preference strength
estimates are accurate, the Range winner has a
huge advantage! Whereas when I first suggested
such a runoff, the response was immediate: the
Condorcet winner will win, so why bother?
That's only in a fantasy world, where voters have
fixed preferences, and the same voters will vote
in the runoff who voted in the primary. Doesn't happen!
Again, I've been almost a voice crying in the
wilderness, here, in pointing out the damage that
is being done by the mindless campaign to replace
Top Two Runoff with IRV, a campaign that only
makes sense as a rather Machiavellian political
strategy, thinking only of the eventual goal (PR)
and the vulnerability of TTR (expense and inconvenience).
It's quite possible to argue with a straight face
that IRV is better than Plurality in partisan
elections. But the problem is that IRV isn't
generally being implemented in that context, it
has almost always been *nonpartisan* TTR elections, not Plurality.
And it's pretty certain that this is a step
backwards. It took years of work to get as many
TTR elections as we have, it was long considered
a very important reform. It's the one that
actually gives third parties the best shot at
winning, certainly more than IRV. With a better
primary method that avoids center squeeze, it
becomes awfully close to ideal. So.... man the
barricades!!! We have work to do.
It's been very enlightening reading the history
of Bucklin in the U.S. It was all the rage for a
few years, it was implemented, it appears in at
least 55 municipalities, including some very big
cities, such as, my latest finding, San
Francisco. What happened? I don't know, it just
seems to have disappeared. Politicians who lost
elections fought back, that's clear, they blamed
the method instead of their lack of support from
voters. Preferential voting is easily seen as a
threat by the two major parties; I just saw
Fusion Voting shot down, two years ago I think it
was, in Massachusetts. You can bet the Dems and
Reps didn't support it! (And they said so!)
Fusion Voting, of course, gives minor parties a
toehold. Can't have that! Next thing, we might
have a Socialist elected! Or one o them
tree-hugging Greens! (Or one of them gun-toting
Libertarians! Never mind that Libertarians supposedly renounce coercion!)
> The *theory* of oscillation or endless regression based on
> feedback between polls and voter decisions is just that, a
> theory.
What is the alternative? Do you think polls will settle on two
frontrunners almost arbitrarily?
No, I think that the influence of polls on voters
is damped. They simply won't respond as strongly
as you think. And they don't depend exclusively
on polls, they depend on a whole complex of
communications, not only through media, but with
neighbors, friends, co-workers. It's not the
*polls* which settle on two frontrunners, but
*society,* the polls merely reflect this, with
more or less accuracy. Three-frontrunner
situations are relatively rare, and are more
likely to happen with minor nonpartisan elections.
In a strong two-party system, which we will have
for the foreseeable future, it is a practical
certainty that there will only be two, and the
voters don't even have to think about it. Minor
party supporters will know what they are facing.
My recommendation to minor party supporters is to
build party strength in two places: in minor
elections, particularly nonpartisan ones, local
offices, where party affiliation just isn't that
important -- but the winner gains a kind of
"bully pulpit" nevertheless -- and in coordinated
political activity aside from elections. Work for
Fusion Voting! It allows a party to build
strength without spoiling elections, getting
credit and ballot position for every vote it
effectively awards to a major party. And it
always has the option of running a third
candidate, but it should really work, first, for
voting system reform. Bucklin does it, even
though Open Voting (Approval) is cheaper and
simpler. Third parties will be better served by
the explicit first preference vote; *that's* why
they like IRV, they imagine that this will help
them. It will, in some ways. But it makes it
practically impossible to actually win, they have
to go all the way from the bottom to the top *in
one step.* TTR gives them an intermediate step
that is more in reach: second place. They then
have a real chance. No guarantee. Le Pen's
supporters didn't have a chance, really, but they
tried. They turned out, his runoff vote was a
million votes higher than the primary vote. But
the only reason he was in the runoff was center
squeeze failure in the primary, Jospin was
actually -- it's almost certain -- the Condorcet
winner, possibly by almost as large a margin over
Chirac as Chirac had over Le Pen (80%).
Better primary method! Bucklin will, I predict,
avoid about half of the runoffs, even with a lot
of candidates. It's possible that with a
sophisticated enough method, even more runoffs
could be avoided, but having the runoffs as a
possibility does, in fact, guarantee, almost
perfectly, majority support for a winner. (Want perfection? Asset Voting!!!!)
I see that Forest Simmons has proposed a Yes/No
form of Approval with Delegated Voting.
Essentially, as I recall, the voter designates on
the ballot a proxy, to handle the "abstentions*. It's Asset.
Like all Asset methods, it sets up a deliberative
process that isn't limited by number of ballots,
possibly. (Simmon's method might require a single
ballot, but that is no longer necessary once the
effective electors have been drastically reduced
in number, and if their votes are public.)
The only alternative I can think of is that there would be no effective
polls. And I suspect that would be just as bad as having polls that don't
stabilize.
Suppression of information isn't a great idea for
improving voter knowledge. Voter knowledge is
*important,* and that includes context -- the
position of the rest of the electorate -- as well
as knowledge of the candidates themselves.
It doesn't matter if polls stabilize. The
influence of polls on the voters is moderate.
Some voters don't care at all about them, they
will bullet vote no matter what you do, unless
you coerce them. I find it fascinating that a mix
of "strategic voters" -- read voting Approval
style, and probably bullet voting -- and "sincere
voters" -- voters who Range vote intermediate
ratings -- seems to have lower Bayesian regret
than either set alone. I really should nail that
down, it's what I recall reading from an unpublished paper by Warren Smith.
See, all Range votes can -- and should -- be
considered sincere. It's just that they are not
full disclosure of preferences, the voter has
chosen to express some and not others, to give
more strength to some, as more important, than others.
Trying to force "sincerity" by forcing the
expression of all preferences, or equating them
all, is very, very misguided. Rather, the voter
choices in terms of what preferences they express
and what preferences they do not express is
actually part of an efficient compromise process.
I'm really not offended if a voter's choice to
full rate A and B results in the election of B
when the voter "really preferred A." The voter
made the decision that the A>B preference wasn't
important enough to express, compared to other
considerations. The "other considerations" are
the voter's view of the rest of the electorate,
*and this is just what we do in real, direct
negotiations.* It's part of the process whereby a
good voting system simulates a deliberative
process of finding an ideal compromise.
Want to judge real election success? Ask voters
to ratify the election. If a majority don't
ratify it, *it fails!* And then the measure of
success is the ratification vote. The ideal is
100%. It can be done with small groups, I've seen
it and have described it. I've seen consensus
organizations do a fairly good job. (But it's
also well known that *demanding* consensus can be
quite oppressive and results, sometimes, in a
false appearance of consensus, or, alternatively,
in a dominance of those benefited by the status
quo, I've seen both of these as well.) It's
probably impossible to get all the way there with
large groups, but there is no particular level
that is impossible. I'd bet that we could get,
with good deliberative communications systems
(FA/DP anyone?) to over 90%. *There is power in
consensus, and people know that.*
(to be continued)
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