At 12:57 PM 3/8/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
It's well known that Approval is precinct-summable. Approval also
has the easiest, simplest, and least expensive hand-count, of any
method other than Plurality. That means that Approval can have the
security of a handcount. Even if it's somehow possible to make
a computer-count secure, the security of a handcount is easy,
already well-established and well-known.
Yup. Count All the Votes. Why did we ever think we shouldn't?
(Answer: Habit. Tradition. Our traditions, not world tradition.
Approval was used for a very long time by some successful societies.)
Of course Approval would be the obvious thing to replace Plurality
with, in state and national elections.
Forget national. There aren't any. Probably shouldn't be, my opinion.
Want national presidential election reform? Return the Electoral
College to its original intention. Electors should be on the ballot,
not the presidential candidates. It's tricky to do it. It's not where
I suggest starting. Start locally.
What about local municipal elections, where Runoff is what is
currently in use? Plainly the simplest, most modest change would
be to replace Runoff with Approval-Runoff. Just do Approval (instead
of vote-for-1) in the 1st balloting of a Runoff election, and then
hold the runoff as
usual, between the top two votegetters.
If there is no majority. With Approval, there is a small chance you
won't need a runoff that would otherwise be necessary.
That would almost surely violate FBC. Voting for favorite, F, in
addition to compromise, C, in the 1st election could cause F to edge
C out of the runoff. But maybe F can't win the runoff, but C would
have. So someone worse than C wins.
The final election, the voter fears, would be between F and this
worse candidate. Of course, if write-ins are allowed in the runoff,
it's possible to fix the situation, and if overvotes are allowed in
the runoff too (why not), it could be harmless to vote for a write-in
(i.e., C) and F.
I see why you call this Favorite Betrayal now, Mike. You are saying
that you would *suppress* your vote for F in order to help C win the
primary, or at least to get into the runoff. I'd like you to notice
the weirdness. You think that C might not make it into the runoff,
but you are afraid that F might. Yet you think that F can't win
against Bad Guy. But C can. What is wrong with this picture?
Sure, it's possible, but I'd really like to see the underlying
preference profiles (utilities, to be sure) that would set this up.
If you are afraid that F might make it into the runoff, you are quite
likely to think that F could win. Runoff elections reverse preference
about one-third the time. So you could be casting a vote that we
could call, technically, Really Stupid, by not approving F in
addition to the other compromise. I think that the idea that this is
forced strategically is basically made up.
Sure, it's possible. But that doesn't make it a significant possibility.
So Approval-Runoff is no good as a _destination_ method. But it's
still acceptable as a
_transitional_ method: It could bring some public attention to
Approval, give Approval some precedent, which might enable
its adoption for state &/or national elections. Or maybe that would
have to happen via the mechanism of Approval-Runoff being
replaced by Approval in municipal elections, where the municipal
Approval is what provides precedent for state and national
Approval.
I don't see TTR going back to simple Approval. People are not going
to care about technical criterion compliance. They will care about
real performance. What I do see is a next reform, after Count All the
Votes, is allowing and using Ranking. Probably Bucklin, from the
history and performance.
Local elections are the place to start, such as municipal elections,
which are usually nonpartisan. IRV performs very badly with
nonpartisan elections, i.e., if they are two-major-candidates, IRV
generally produces results the same as Plurality (whereas TTR
reverses preference in the runoff about a third of the time). IRV is
expensive to canvass. IRV breaks down if there are three major
parties or three major candidates. Bucklin doesn't.
Bucklin is much more efficient than IRV in collecting majorities,
because Bucklin doesn't discard votes, IRV does. Bucklin either finds
a majority in an early round, or it ends up Counting All the Votes.
Not that this is very important, because Approval-Runoff, failing
FBC as it does, is only a transitional proposal, but the
options available for Approval could also be offered in Runoff's 1st
balloting in which Approval replaces vote-for-one. But of course
I wouldn't suggest bothering to even mention options for
Approval-Runoff, since it's no good as a destination method, due to its
FBC failure.
That's your isolated opinion, Mike. That "failure" is extremely
unlikely, as a reality. What it amounts to, though, is that *if it's
true,* i.e., if there is a significant possibility of an FBC scenario
presenting, the method simply defaults to what happens with ordinary
Top Two Runoff. Count All the Votes has not made things worse.
I merely mention Approval-Runoff because it could maybe facilitate
earlier adoption of genuine Approval, municipally, &/or state
or federal.
Sure. I don't consider it optimal either.
The name SODA refers to Approval elections in which delegation is
the only option. I speak of delegation as one of various options
for Approval elections, most of which are mutually compatible for
availability in the same Approval election. I refer to that as
the delegation option, reserving "SODA" for a method consisting of
Approval with no added options other than delegation. I'd prefer
also offering and making available all the options I've named, such
as AOC, AOCBucklin, MTAOC, MCAOC (those of course include the
options of voting ordinary ABucklin, MTA or MCA ballots too). And
the delegation option too.
If any opportunity presents to use Asset techniques in public
elections -- or in any elections -- it should be seized. This is a
voting reform that goes way beyond what any single-ballot method
could even approach.
I've recommended it for NGOs. We had an Election Science Foundation
election that accomplished, easily, with a single vote-for-one poll,
what could otherwise have been impossible, electing a
fully-representative three-person steering committee for the
organization of the foundation. The election took a few days on-line
until the voting period ended. We had 17 voters. How do you, with 17
ballots, get a *fully representative* committee?
It was pretty simple, really. There were four or five candidates who
got votes. (We could look this up and nail it down). Clay Shentrup,
who is not an Asset expert, certainly not at that time, set up the
election, neglecting to specify the rules, or doing so in a confusing
way. We muddled through anyway.
I got the most votes. I had enough to be considered elected no matter
what quota one used (i.e, Hare or Droop). I then had extra votes. The
second vote-getter was Clay, and in third place was Warren Smith. And
then there were two more candidates with a couple of votes.
I gave enough votes to Warren to ensure that he would win, and then
sat on the situation for a bit, with some more votes in hand. Because
we didn't have clear rules, I didn't know how many, but it turned out
not to matter. It took less than a week. Clay decided to give his
votes to one of the other candidates, creating him as a winner (at
least with a Droop quota), and I then completed the election, so that
all votes were distributed and thus we could have three Hare winners.
Consider that! Hare quota, all votes used. Warren and I could have
functioned as a short committee to do anything we decided with
unanimity, if some problem had appeared. The remaining candidate, I
think, had one or two votes, and explicitly approved the election.
So everyone approved the complete election, involving 17 voters and
then a negotiation process among 5 candidates. There was one somewhat
disgruntled voter who apparently hadn't realized the implications of
the asset concept, that's all. I think he said, in the end, that it was okay.
I've never seen any election like it. It was effectively a unanimous
election. It proved that the Asset concept worked, as designed.
Small, for sure. So what? I don't see why this couldn't work on a
very large scale. It would simply, if much larger, require some kind
of facilitating intermediary process, and voluntary delegable proxy
could work spectacularly. The actual voting, then, in recasting the
votes, would possibly be done directly by the electors, per what
their proxies recommend.
Or actual proxies could be used. It's all public, that is crucial. Do
You Know Where Your Votes Are?
The delegation option would be for people who want to leave it all
to their favorite candidate. It also automatically avoids C/D, if the
various delegates can negotiate before they use their delegated
votes, and after they have the initial ballot-results, and if their
negotiated agreements are public
and binding.
I've written a great deal about why I think that multiple
designations are a waste of power. But, hey, if multiple designations
are what it takes to get this implemented, fine! I suggested
Fractional Approval Asset Voting to handle overvotes. That, then,
allows the creation of a virtual committee to recast your vote, you
can split it up, and people can deliberately decide to do that.
Frankly, though, I'd rather have clean and clear representation. I
can call up my elector and talk with him or her. Sure, if I divided
up the vote, I could call up each of them and pretend that I voted
for each of them fully, I suppose. I could lie, in other words.
What's that going to do with the rapport that makes direct
communication really work?
What asset does, that is a game-changer, is not only to create fair
and full representation, it creates a communications network, based
on trust. It's like delegable proxy in that. It's just delegable
proxy, perhaps, with a secret ballot stage to assign the initial proxies.
Now, I have someone interested in putting in the time to be active in
politics. I can talk with this person. Would I want to lessen their
*public voting power* to spread out the vote? What would I gain by this?
No, I'd *allow* multiple delegation, but not encourage it.
Complicating the ballot is a poor trade-off, I think. With real
asset, it's going to be tricky enough. It will be impossible to have
candidate's names on the ballot (it would be prejudicial). But that's
a problem that can be solved, there are obvious and cheap solutions
that would pay for themselves.
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