On Nov 7, 2009, at 8:14 PM, Warren Smith wrote:
--well... there is the whole rangevoting.org website...
my more-recent papers at
math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html
discuss range voting including some ways it is provably better than
every
rank-order voting system for either honest or strategic voters...
okay...
--but those are not exactly "succinct"...
OK Let me try:
1. Range for 100% honest voters behaves better than IRV, Borda,
Condorcet and it is pretty intuitively clear why -- strength of
preference info used, not discarded.
2. For 100% strategic voters Borda is a total disaster as is also
pretty obvious... far worse than approval voting... but range voting
just degenerates basically to approval voting, which still works
pretty well since, e.g. it obeys the "favorite betrayal criterion."
If the strategic voters use "I'll exaggerate on the top two" naive
strategy (which in fact, in the real world, they pretty much do) then
Condorcet and IRV both degenerate
to strategic plurality voting, which is pretty obviously worse than
approval voting,
so range beats them. For Condorcet systems with ranking-equalities
allowed,
they might behave better with strategic voters, though. I've posted
on that topic before.
... so *not* always "better than every rank-order system for ...
strategic voters".
now the relationship that citizens of a community or nation have with
each other is not the same kind of trusting and sometimes blind
relationships we have with members of our families and other partners
(like business partners) that we end up trusting by default,
essentially in our own enlightened self-interest. in general, we
have contracts and laws essentially intended in the best
circumstances to "keep honest people honest". we have locked doors,
secret credit card numbers and passwords that we don't share with
even people we normally trust (they have no legitimate need for
them). essentially we rely on a system that does *not* rely on
individual honesty in completely opaque, private, or confidential
situations. what if, instead of passing the offering plate around in
full view, everybody gets to go into a private booth with the open
plate (and not a secure drop box with a slot) and "add" their offering?
the guarantee that you and i have (at least in the US) is to vote in
complete secrecy and security. one *big* difference between any US
election and what i have read for the UK is that there are no serial
numbers on our ballots just in case there may be a legal ruling that
someone was mistakenly allowed to vote in an election they weren't
eligible to vote in that turned out to be critically close and
contested. i believe that i read, in the UK they can actually run
the ballots through the scanning machine and yank an errant ballot
and uncount it. in Saddam's Iraq, there was an election in the 1990s
where Saddam Hussein was re-elected with 99% of the vote, but the
ballots there were also serialized and associated with the voter when
issued and i'm surprized that even 1% felt it safe to vote against him.
but you can't do that in the US, and there *was* a case that went to
the US Supreme Court that even Scalia voted the correct way on (and
interestingly, his lapdog Thomas did not vote likewise). in this
case someone was discovered to live on the other side of the district
or town line in some election. when this was discovered, the person
(and his wife, i think) was brought to court, everyone understood and
acknowledged that these persons weren't supposed to vote in that
election and the judge asked the guy what his vote was so they could
uncount it and decide the election. to the guy's credit of
integrity, instead of lying and telling the judge exactly opposite
(guaranteeing that his choice is elected), he tells the judge that he
voted by secret ballot and refuses to say how, even though he was
ordered to by the judge. (i dunno what his wife did.) anyway, the
SCOTUS upheld that right.
every place i have lived and voted in the US (ND, IL, ME, NJ, NH, VT)
had ballots with no serial number nor distinguishing marks on it when
it ultimately went into the ballot box. in IL i worked as a poll
watcher, and watched the precinct officials open absentee envelopes,
decide on their inclusion, and if included tossed an interior
unmarked envelope onto a pile with others. at that point, the
inclusion or the ballot was committed because of its anonymity. we
have totally confidentiality with the content of our vote, but not
with fact of whether we voted or not.
so Warren, you're gonna sell your system on the hope that in this
place of absolute privacy, we'll all be sincere. that i can count on
the sincerity of voters who are political opponents just as they can
count on my sincerity.
i want a system that offers nothing for the voter's political
interest for voting insincerely. i s'pose Arrow tells us that this
cannot be completely counted on, but, save for the case of a
Condorcet cycle, i don't see how voting insincerely in a Condorcet-
decided race ever serves the political interest of the voter. now,
you and others have suggested that having a Condorcet-decided
election will cause voters to vote in such a way to *cause* a cycle
(as if these voters could somehow control the resolution of the cycle
to favor their guy?) in a manner similar to how we *know* that FPTP
favors an adversarial 2-party system (we end up voting for the lessor
of evils of the two major-party candidates). i find that to be so
unlikely (in comparison to 2-party compromising in FPTP) that it's
unpersuasive.
3. The main perceived flaw in range voting is for strategic+honest
voter MIXTURES
and under the worrying assumption that who decides to be strategic, is
CORRELATED with the politics of that voter. Thus for example,
strategic Bush voters could beat unstrategic Gore voters. Problem
isn't really much of a problem if the Bush strategy-fraction is the
same as the Gore strategy fraction (a claim backed up by computer
sims).
just like the issue of drawing random ballots in multi-winner PR STV
and counting on that as "representative", i wonder why counting on
computer simulation to support this balance of tactical voters would
be as trustworthy.
It is only if they differ.
in other words, if in some election, one side has more politically
savvy strategists, advocates, and voters? isn't that often how one
side wins and the other side loses? one side has a Karl Rove and the
other side has John Kerry and one of his 3 serial campaign managers.
don't count on it not differing.
4. I'm unaware of any evidence from the real world that Bushy and
Gorey voters really are any different strategically with range voting.
Bushy vs. Kerry?
However, there is evidence that
Nader voters are less strategic and more honest. (Not surprisingly
since voting Nader
in the USA *was* unstrategic.)
sure, idealists throwing away their vote. we want to be able to be
idealist without having to throw away our vote. and we want to be
able to vote effectively without sacrificing or compromising our ideals.
However, the evidence from the real
world is that all political types of range voters are substantially
honest, i.e.only a small fraction vote approval-style, and this causes
Nader, despite this relative disadvantage, to do a lot better with
range voting than he does with approval voting.
Warren, i know you've worked so much more in this whole area than i
have, your experience is greater than mine, but i just cannot buy
into your premises.
i want a system that does not *assume* or count on our sincere
intentions, but *enables* or *supports* our sincere intentions by not
penalizing our acting according to our sincere intent.
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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