On Jul 8, 2010, at 8:28 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
Sorry to be so wordy here. There are 3 different issues (the number
of ranking levels and the value of ballot access criteria, procedure
if Write-In wins, and visual effectiveness of the "pairwise defeats
matrix") to respond to:
On Jul 7, 2010, at 9:56 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
On Jul 6, 2010, at 11:31 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Jul 6, 2010, at 9:31 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:
Ballots: Must support write-ins and, perhaps, 3 ranks (do not
need to rank rejects and can do equal ranking).
i think that the number of ranking levels should be as large as
the number of candidates (and there should be ballot access laws
that make it difficult enough to get on the ballot that no more
than maybe 5 candidates normally get on).
Making getting on the ballot unreasonably difficult affects who
gets to run, unreasonably - lets don't.
there is a question about what is reasonable.
No real need for a ranking level for every candidate. Especially
when there are many candidates voters will happily use some equal
ranks and will not bother to rank those they see as not worth
ranking.
well, one of the complaints of the anti-IRVers (that applied more to
San Francisco and not to Burlington Vermont) was that, because the
number of candidates was much larger than the number of ranks, then
voters could not express a vote regarding every candidate. if the
candidates that ended up leading the race (getting to the final and
semi-final rounds) were not any that the voter ranked (due partly to
the too few ranking levels), the claim was that this voter was
"disenfranchised". i have her kill-filed, but i'm sure Kathy Dopp
can fill you in on what this sentiment is all about. the funny
thing is that, while this "feature" of IRV (in SF) was a major
complaint of the IRV opponents, what the alternative offered (the
return to the affirmative vote for a single candidate and FPTP and/
or delayed runoff) was even more so a "disenfranchisement" in that
very same manner. it is equivalent to a ranked-order ballot but
with only one ranking level deep.
also, sometimes a voter wants to bury a candidate. how does one
vote negatively against a candidate when they cannot rank all the
other candidates above that one? it's okay that all candidates not
ranked by a particular voters are tied for last place on their
ballots if that voter can lift all other candidates, not deemed the
absolute worst, above that level.
Do you mean that some voters want to bury candidates or do you want to
offer this possibility to the voters? I think in most cases burying is
harmful to the method and voters should be discouraged to vote that
way (i.e. rank some strong candidates insincerely lower than their
sincere ranking is).
Juho
similarly to voter registration and ballot access to voters being a
political question, i think that ballot access to candidates is also
a political question. reasonable people can disagree, but i see a
future with political parties to be inevitable. it doesn't mean
that we should have only two viable parties nor that independent
candidates cannot credibly run for office.
but any candidate that deserves the ink and real estate on the
ballot for their name, should be required to demonstrate some level
of electoral support to get there. if the race is broad enough (a
national election in a large country), some candidate need not be on
the ballot for every state or district within that nation, if the
candidate cannot satisfy the qualifying threshold (in petition
signatures) for every district. but whatever the size of the
election venue, be it a city ward, entire city, legislative
district, statewide, whatever, there should be a minimum number of
signatures required for ballot access that is approximately
proportional to the voter population of that venue. that constant
of proportionality would have to be experimentally and empirically
determined, but it should be made high enough to reduce the
candidate field to about half dozen meaningful candidates.
since that number would be fixed in law in advance of the race,
there could certainly be election flukes where many more candidates
satisfy the ballot access criteria and, in that case, the number of
ranking levels would be much less than the number of candidates, but
that would be a fluke. if it turned out to become common, the
ballot access threshold should be raised by legislative action.
i think Write-In can just be considered another candidate.
Agreed each should be, and my way of counting provides for this.
Counters can hear before election day of likely need.
one thing, i don't think it would be so good if the election *law*
pays any respect about who is a merely *reputed* viable write-in
candidate. i would suggest that, since Condorcet is precinct
summable, that after the polls close, the ward or precinct officials
transmit their pairwise subtotals up to the government seat to be
counted, but do not yet pack up until they hear from the central
authority that Write-In did not win. if Write-In wins, they have to
separate all of the ballots where Write-In is the likely leading
candidate and all others, but just because the newspapers are saying
that some write-in candidate is a significant figure, that should
not be the basis of the procedure provided in law.
because, if Write-In wins, there would have to be a lot of ballots
that have Write-In marked. i would suggest that each precinct draw
ballots at random from the stack, examining each Write-In name and
the first name to get to 10 (or some other threshold) write-ins of
the same name, that name would be identified as the likely write-in
leader. then they would have to separate all ballots with that name
as Write-In from all other ballots. then they can run the two piles
of ballots through the counting machines separately, zeroing the
pairwise totals between each run. for all other candidate pairs not
involving Write-In, they can sum the vote totals (and that should
equal the pairwise vote totals they had before), but Write-In for
the first pile (where Write-In is a specific person's name) would be
a different candidate than the other Write-In. they can report
those totals (and the name of the primary write-in candidate that
they separated) up to the central election authority who then reruns
the totals for each Condorcet pair and *then* they can see if this
specific write-in candidate continues to win. if this Write-In
doesn't quite win and some precincts had one name as their primary
write-in and other precincts had a different name, the election
officials at the central authority would have to determine (by venue-
wide vote counts) which Write-In is the more significant candidate
and communicate to all precincts to separate ballots according to
that name and then run the totals again. if that same Write-In
(where all precincts assumed that name and separated ballots as
such) doesn't win, someone else is the Condorcet winner or there is
a cycle.
of course, if Write-In doesn't win, it doesn't matter who Write-In
is, and all this would not be necessary.
Near here, a few years ago, someone's error resulted in no
petitions being submitted on time. Recovery was to do entire
election with write-ins.
no candidates but multiple write-ins? how would we prepare law in
advance for that contingency? perhaps, if the number of candidates
gaining ballot access (having met the threshold of signatures) is
equal to or greater than the (fixed) number of ranking levels minus
one, then only one line for Write-In would be on the ballot. but if
the number of registered candidates is less than that, there would
be that many more Write-In slots so a voter could write in more than
one candidate and rank them against each other. the number of
ranking levels would remain the same.
the only issue is what to do if Write-In wins, then there must be
some assumption first to determine who the likely write-in
candidate is, hand separate those ballots from the others with a
write-in (and call them two different candidates, Write-In1 and
Write-In2). and then retabulate as a Condorcet election and see
if Write-In1 still wins.
oops, i guess i already said this.
i still think that rectangular N*N matrix is sorta useless. it's
hard to read. each pair should be grouped together for visual
inspection.
Debatable.
i guess it is, but i just cannot see how this:
M K W S H
------------------------------------------
M | 4064 4597 4570 6263
K | 3477 4313 3944 5515
W | 3664 4061 3971 5270
S | 2997 3576 3793 5570
H | 591 844 1310 721
... is as easy to inspect and extract meaning as this:
M 4064
K 3477
M 4597 K 4313
W 3664 W 4061
M 4570 K 3944 W 3971
S 2997 S 3576 S 3793
M 6263 K 5515 W 5270 S 5570
H 591 H 844 H 1310 H 721
the numbers are only meaningful in their respective pairs. why not
group the pairs together?
--
r b-j [email protected]
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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