On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 3:49 PM,
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Send Election-Methods mailing list submissions to
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
http://lists.electorama.com/listinfo.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
You can reach the person managing the list at
[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Election-Methods digest..."
Today's Topics:
1. Re: STV vs Party-list PR, could context matter? (Richard Fobes)
2. Re: (Kevin Venzke) and James Gilmour. (Kevin Venzke)
3. Re: STV vs Party-list PR, could context matter? (Kevin Venzke)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Fobes <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Cc:
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 12:47:31 -0800
Subject: Re: [EM] STV vs Party-list PR, could context matter?
On 2/17/2012 12:54 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
> From: Richard Fobes <[email protected]>
> As for STV, going beyond two seats easily produces unfair
results.
> And in the U.S. the results also would be quite unstable
> (i.e. not mesh well with the current two-party system).
>
> Can you elaborate?
> I don't see why 3-5 seat STV with a droop quota wouldn't have results
> like what you described that would maintain yet transform the US's
> 2-party system.
If STV is used with an odd number of seats (3 or 5) per district, in
a (U.S.) state that feels well-represented by the Republican and
Democratic parties, two problems arise. The first is that it would
give an undeserved advantage to a third party in every district
(which is more obvious in the 3-seat case, but still applicable in
the 5-seat case).
dlw: If it's only used for one branch and single-winner is used in the
other branches then you could say the undeserved advantage given 3rd
parties in the one is balanced b an undeserved advantage given to the
major parties in the other. What's more, this might be what is needed
to tie ourselves to the mast to do better by our
ethnic/economic/ideological minorities than we have historically in the US.
The second problem is that luck or (more likely) political
manipulations, would determine which party wins the third (or fifth)
seat, and that would increase the need for more party-based seats
for the purpose of correcting the imbalance.
dlw: Only if we make a fetish out of nailing proportionality, like
Germany does. The more popular major party will have an advantage due
to their greater likelihood in winning 2(or 3) seats and the greater
likelihood that successful 3rd parties will tend to favor them, assuming
that the larger 3rd parties ccome from the same side of the ideological
spectrum as the larger major party.
It will tend to work according to majority rule, but even still, it may
be necessary to have that uncertainty to protect minority rights. If
the bigger major party tends to control all branches it can leverage
that to dominate a state/country's politics. If they cannot guarantee
their control of one of the 2 branches then they cannot leverage as
much, and there will tend to be a more even playing field between the
two major parties.
It's been observed that some randomness can be a good thing in an
organization.
Another way to understand the second problem is to consider what
would happen if 55% of the voters in a state favor the Republican
Party, and the remaining 45% favor the Democratic Party, and there
is an even distribution of these preferences throughout the state.
If STV uses 3 seats per district, the likely result would be that
two thirds of the elected representatives would be Republicans, and
only one third would be Democrats.
Which would be a lot better than 100% domination and that's just the
worse case scenario... And since there'd be no limit on candidates per
party, there'd be room for intra-party rivalry that can be good too...
The 2nd republican won't be quite the same as the first, which is the
point.
If STV is used with 4 seats per district, in a (different) state
that strongly favors a third party, the fourth seat would yield
unpredictable results. Here I'm assuming that the first three seats
would be filled by one Republican, one Democrat, and one third-party
politician.
dlw: Yes, and unpredictability is part of what gets folks interested in
political elections. The odds are the bigger major party would win it,
especialy if the Droop quota is used.
As I see it, accommodating proportional results in any state (and in
the United States overall) has to occur at a higher level than the
district level.
Instead of the 3, 4, or 5 seats per district that you recommend,
if STV were used with just 2 seats per district, many districts
would choose one Republican and one Democrat, some districts would
choose one Republican and one third-party candidate, and yet other
districts would choose one Democrat and one third-party candidate.
In that case, relatively few additional "proportional" seats are
needed to accommodate either third parties or an imbalance between
the Republicans and Democrats, or (more likely) both.
dlw: I'm sorry I don't follow the logic of why 2-seat STV is better than
3-5 seat STV. If you can't get proportionality right then why bother
trying?
You -- and many other fans of third political parties -- view third
parties as the solution to the current problem of government not
doing what voters want.
dlw: I believe the strategic use of PR is critical to handicap the
cut-throat competition between our two biggest parties that makes it so
hard for them to do anything together. I believe PR is necessary to
make some elections more likely to be competitive. I doubt that any
single-winner election rule will make a diff in a state-reps district
that's heavily skewed to favor a certain major party. And I believe 3rd
parties are essential to check the influence of $peech on both major
parties and to enforce its regulation via CFR.
In contrast, my view is that first we -- the voters -- need to
reclaim control of the Republican and Democratic parties, and then
we can decide whether we need one or more third parties. (I expect
that we will need small third parties, but that they will primarily
serve as a way for voters to steer the two main parties in wiser
directions.)
dlw: How do you expect to do that, in the absence of more competitive
elections and better exit threat into 3rd parties?
We don't need a level playing field across all parties to make things
work a lot better in our 2-party system.
Remember that state legislatures and Congress use a voting method
(for choosing which proposed laws to pass) that works reasonably
well with just two main parties, but that voting method would break
down into chaos if a legislature or Congress had to form coalitions
(in order to get a majority of support for each proposed law). Also
remember that in Congress (and presumably in state legislatures) the
chairmanship of each committee switches to a committee member who is
from the majority party; there is no graceful way to choose which
committees switch their chairmanships to which of three (or more)
parties.
dlw:With the use of 3-5 seat STV with a droop quota it will still be
hard for 3rd parties to get into the US house of reps. If they did gain
enuf seats to make the current voting method not reliable then I'm
confident they'd change their method. It's that simple.
As for the state house of reps, I advocate the use of 3-seat LR Hare,
but I also advocate that at the beginning the parties choose their
leadership and then the reps all vote by plurality to put one party in
power. That party would get some extra procedural controls so its
leaders can get things done in the absence of a majority. But it'd be
the 3rd party reps who would decide which party is in power. And the
ease with which a small 3rd party can win that 3rd seat is what would
make it hard for the leadership of the party-in-power to use their
controls to keep themselves in power indefinitely.
My main point is that any voting system used in the United States
has to accommodate both times of transition and times of stability.
You seem to be focused on accommodating a transition to a
three-party system, without also accommodating a later transition
back to a two-party system.
Remember that a two-party system is not necessarily bad -- if voters
control both parties. The two-party situation we are in now is bad
because special interests (not the voters) control both parties.
dlw: 3-5 seat quasi-PR for US house of reps and 3-seat PR for state reps
won't move us to a 3 party system. I also advocate for the use of an
approval voting enhanced form of IRV that also tends to maintain a
2-party dominated system due to its "center squeeze problem" so I see
myself as trying to make our 2-party system more robust and dynamic, and
to prevent the onset of a 1-party dominated system, not unlike what
recently existed in Egypt with its nearly exclusive use of single-winner
elections.
Election-method reform must (first and foremost) cut the puppet
strings that currently connect politicians -- of both parties -- to
the biggest campaign contributors ("special interests"). That alone
will change the political landscape dramatically, and that change
might result in a stable two-party system that all the voters like.
We have to allow for that possibility -- rather than to assume
that voters will always be unhappy.
In summary, any well-designed election method not only must
accommodate a transition to fairer elections, but also must
accommodate whatever stable situation follows the transition.
I do favor having more than two parties, but I don't see how three
(or more) strong parties can be accommodated until after Congress
and state legislatures use voting methods that are compatible with
more than two parties.
I'll add that I don't see any other democracy, including the
multi-party ones in Europe, that have cut the puppet string between
politicians and special interests, so we have no successful models
to follow.
dlw: We used 3-seat quasi-PR in IL from 1870-1980. This forced the
puppeteers to hedge more and accept a relatively lower and more variable
return.... it also kept either party from dominating IL's politics,
which let other nearby states that were economically dependent on IL to
have more freedoms in their politics, which in turn spilled over to
bring changes in other states that were typically dominated by one party
but feared change.
We have a successful model. It is the USA. The use of PR in "more
local" elections has an important trickle up effect that makes
single-winner elections in "less local" elections more meaningful. The
UK is now doing something like this and it led to their serious
consideration of the use of IRV. The point being that there is pressure
to replace FPTP once 3rd parties can gain sway via the use of quasi-PR
or better in "more local" elections.
------ Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin Venzke <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
To: election-methods <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Cc:
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:30:50 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and James Gilmour.
Hi David,
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*De :* David L Wetzell <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
*À :* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Envoyé le :* Samedi 18 février 2012 14h10
*Objet :* Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and James Gilmour.
You are supposed to get the EM list to agree first, before writing
Soros directly.
If there were such a pot at the end of the rainbow then maybe the EM
list would have an incentive to agree.
I like to think we don't agree because we think other people are
mistaken. But if there were incentive to compromise I could see
writing more posts on the subject of
reaching one.
I tend to take a more psychological view of the matter. We project our
tastes/preferences onto voters and design election rules that fit these
tastes/preferences. Or we get a vested interest in defending such a
rule and selectively value those characteristics that it has over
others. It doesn't have to be super-strong, but in the absence of any
real money or organizational imperatives, it's easy for those things to
loom.
But in the context of a 2-party dominated system, there
aren't as many serious candidates
That doesn't make much sense to me. The election method is a
part of the system and it has an obvious effect on how
many candidates could run.
dlw: It depends on the size of the effect of the election method.
There still are cost-benefit rationales that would keep the number
of serious candidates down, depending of course on the size and
importance of the election. Ceteris paribus, to have a party
institution behind you will make a difference regardless of what
election method gets used.
Well, in SODA's case, I think the size of the effect is probably
massive. It reminds me of the open party list in Brazil.
dlw: Aye, but that's multi-winner. Multi-winner vs single-winner is a
major effect. We were talking amongst single-winner election rules.
and so what relative advantages there are of SODA over
IRV will be less, which then makes the first-mover
marketing problem more significant, especially if IRV
can be souped up with the seemingly slight modification
of the use of a limited form of approval voting in the
first stage.
dlw
If I remember correctly your idea is to use approval to pick
finalists. I don't think this is a good idea because it breaks
clone independence, which is an IRV selling point.
But does it break it strongly? Let there be A, B, and C. Let BB be
a B clone.
The field is split 30.1-40-29.9. Normally B wins. If BB enters
then either B or BB gets eliminated in the first round but then
their votes transfer to whoever remains and so the outcome wouldn't
change. You'd need to have a crowded field so that an original
finalist and their clone would both get eliminated. If either the
original winner and clone(s) got eliminated, which would be harder,
in all likelihood, or you might change the order of elimination in
the 2nd round so that there'd be a different winner.
I don't think you get the concern. It's not clone-winner, it's
clone-loser. Suppose the original winner was 3rd place on approval.
Then clone one of the other two candidates to
shut out the original winner.
[sarcasm]That sounds realistic.[/sarcasm] You realize that the
"approval votes" are just the number of (up to 3) rankings a candidate
receives? How often do you think you can clone one of the other 2 and
thereby shutout the winner? I'd love to see an example of that. If the
winner is preferred to the top-2 ranked-vote getters then if they were
cloned, it'd not be the eventual winner who'd lose out on approval votes.
They don't even need to know whether 3rd place was going to win, it
should just be the standard nomination strategy. If you nominate
three, you
could even win the entire race just on approval. There's some risk
to this strategy (voters may not agree to approve everyone their
party wants), but if a party so much as tries
to use this strategy the method will look dumb. You should be really
clear on what you're trying to do if you want to tell people to use
a mechanic that looks manipulable.
If you can give me a robust example of this, ie one that's not on a
knife edge, I will abandon the idea.
JQ tried to do this a while back for a slightly different matter and it
was very hard to do and he eventually agreed that it "worked", except
for how it tended to reenforce the 2-party domination thing that he
believes (along with others) is the bane of democracy.
For me, I think there are real world safeguards against clones in
politics and so to be 100% clone independence is not important.
I kind of agree with that, but only for cloning winners.
I'm not worried about cloning non-winners.
If your goal is to e.g. not elect Condorcet winners who place third,
I don't think my goal is not to elect CW's who get 3rd amount of
top-rankings among the three finalists. I think the goal is to
reduce the distance between the de facto center and the true center,
while allowing that we don't know the true changing center and don't
want to chase it too easily.
That's a pretty unusual goal that I still don't quite get. (Why do
you pick the terms "de facto" and "true"? Wouldn't it be
"anticipated" vs. "actual" or something? If the "true
changing" center is the actual location of the median voter, how on
earth does "de facto" contrast with this?)
dlw: de facto is based on the positioning of parties and determines what
issues are on the docket. True is what would be the case if every vote
was taken seriously by the system as a whole, but this in real life is
really dynamic and there could be some unintended consequences behind
voting methods that successfully always nailed the true political
center. Typically, it takes time to enact serious policy changes, hence
the need for a 2-party dominated system to provide the leadership
required for serious changes.
I think you should use the Approval-IRV hybrid that eliminates
the least approved candidate until there is a majority
favorite. I call it AER... I think Woodall called it Approval AV.
dlw: IRV+ is easy to tabulate at the precinct level. One could
get the 3 finalists on election night.
The next day the votes can be sorted into 10 categories, once again
at the precinct level, and the results used to find the winner.
This is more important than clone independence, cuz the true
winner(for normal irv) would be more immune to the existence of
clones than other finalists.
I wish I understood what you feel makes IRV good and how you are
trying to improve it.
My arg has been that what is crucial is to change the mix of
single-winner and multi-winner elections and that in our system the
diffs in quality among single-winner rules is of 2nd order import. As
such, it's best to go with a tweaked version of the first-mover
alternative to FPTP that's been endorsed by the president of the USA and
John McCain and many others, as shown in Rob Richie's NYTIME article.
I'm pretty sure that if those were nailed down, you could find
something easier and
better. Using approval you are already discarding the LNHarm guarantee.
dlw: But not very much. The use of IRV for the last 3 keeps most of the
LNH.
Why stick to something relatively difficult to tabulate?
It's not hard to tabulate how many times a candidate gets ranked, so
long as you catch the cases where voters rank the same candidate twice
or what-not. That's easy to do.
I don't think you can ride IRV's coattails if you
won't keep the (demonstrable) properties of it. And picking
finalists using raw approval... That is just a basic thing not to
do, like plurality-at-large for multiple seats.
It's not raw for a first stage of single-winner election. Plurality
at-large for multiple seats is not unlike single-winner elections, but
that's the point, it's a single-winner election rule.
thanks for the good comments.
dlw
Kevin
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
