While discussion of strategies whereby a
political party might attempt to manipulate
Bucklin/runoff is interesting, we should be
careful not to treat these "hazards" as if they
were facts, unless there are facts to back them.
The strategy mentioned, to clone a candidate, for
a party to attempt to "pack" a runoff with
clones, is highly suspect. Under reasonable
rules, it would almost certainly fail.
Partisan election rules do not ordinarily allow a
party to add candidates under the party flag. So,
for starters, there would have to be an "official
party candidate," then the clone.
At 11:25 PM 3/9/2012, Kevin Venzke wrote:
Hi,
De : Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]>
À : Kevin Venzke <[email protected]>;
election-methods <[email protected]>
Envoyé le : Vendredi 9 mars 2012 17h04
Objet : Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff.
At 07:36 PM 3/8/2012, Kevin Venzke wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> I don't think Approval-Runoff can get off the ground since it's too
> apparent that a party could nominate two candidates (signaling that one
> is just a pawn to aid the other) and try to win by grabbing both of the
> finalist positions. If this happened regularly it would be just an
> expensive version of FPP.
Number one. This objection does not apply to nonpartisan elections.
Not sure why it couldn't. You just wouldn't have
a party, as such, executing the strategy.
So, the situation here is that there are two
natural clones. And they are both so popular that
they both outperform all the other candidates on
the initial ballot measure. These candidates
would very likely win under any single-winner
with a deterministic front end. It's a standard
election problem, not some strategic manipulation.
In my view, runoff elections should always allow
write-ins, so the electorate can fix a problem if
it appears. More likely, though, if the situation
is such that the clones make it into the runoff
-- *which would be expected, i.e., if either one
of them would make it into the runoff, would not
both?* -- the electorate is not going to be
exercised to mount a write-in campaign. The real
harm here is an unnecessary runoff. If they are
true clones, then one might withdraw to avoid
that. But the whole concept of "clone" is flawed.
People are not clones of each other, and we are
electing people, not abstract collections of opinions.
What this means, if it's nonpartisan, is simply
that two identical candidates, in every respect,
including public perception of them, which is
critical, will tie. If they tie in a winning
position, then some process must distinguish between them.
This is *not* a major problem in real elections.
Ties occur for other reasons, i.e., factions in
the electorate are divided. It's the opposite of
cloning. It's not a major problem because
political forces don't favor it. True clones will
have the same set of supporters, largely, and
those supporters will select one of them. If the
clones fight each other and don't cooperate, then
they aren't clones, and the supporters will take
one side or another. (And weaken the faction's
power. This narrow selfishness has natural
consequences.) The political forces favor
complete cooperation, and it won't be done by
fielding both candidates in the public election,
when that choice can be made much more
efficiently and effectively within the faction.
Number two. The strongest factor in elections is
positive name recognition. That's become
obvious. By running two candidates, you are
diluting name recognition. If you have one, you
might win. With two, quite possibly not. Risky strategy.
Possibly true.
So risky that it simply won't happen. The real
problem is balanced factions. It deserves a systematic approach.
Number three. The strategy assumes that there
will be no rivalry between the two candidates.
Even if they are in cahoots, their supporters may not be.
You'd pick a second candidate who doesn't have supporters.
Who therefore doesn't have a prayer. Put them on
the ballot, supporters will appear. The original
candidate, through this silly strategy, has split
his own party. Brilliant. Next case.
Number four. Who gets the campaign funds?
It's a single campaign, so it doesn't matter.
Presumably the serious nominee gets them.
Single campaign? No, there are two candidates.
Sure, they could share ads. "I'm running for
dogcatcher, but I'd also like to recommend my
friend, here, Ralph. Ralph, would you like to say
a few words about how we are equally qualified
for the job, and would you like to ask the public to vote for both of us?"
As a voter, I'd think, these guys are nutty. If
they are both equally qualified, why didn't they
just decide which one of them should run. Toss a
coin or something, and spare us the election process.
Remember, if both these guys make it into the
runoff, they have wasted the city's money on a
useless runoff election. Sorry, this strategy is
a blatantly losing one. Political suicide, like a
lot of theoretical methods of manipulating voting systems.
Number five. Others can play the same game, if
it's a real strategy. I don't think it is.
I was actually assuming everybody (at least
major candidates) would play the same game. The problem
is that the second round doesn't play the role
it was supposed to if this happens.
Depends on the details of the rules. Almost any
voting system becomes clogged if there are many,
many candidates. If write-ins are allowed in a
runoff, it's conceivable that there can be
majority failure in the runoff, but there still
is a choice made. Almost always it will be by a
majority. That's the function of repeated
elections, to seek a majority for a winner. It's
not possible to guarantee this with two ballots.
In theory, it's not possible to *ever* guarantee
it, but, well the cows do eventually come home,
that's real-world experience. People want to get the job done.
A method like Bucklin/Runoff will almost always
find a majority, if not in a primary, then in a
runoff. Perfect? No. But with good rules, close.
Multiple candidates who are almost identical
creates a problem, not just for any voting
system, but for the voters as well. What the
hell? Who are all these people? What happened to
our nomination process? Why aren't these people cooperating to preselect?
In small towns, it's very common to have only one
candidate on the ballot for a position. There is
nothing wrong with this! If people don't like
that candidate, they can write in someone else,
they could even write in "So-and-so is a jerk."
They can express their disapproval. It's
embarassing to be the only candidate on a ballot
can get a lot of write-in votes for someone else.
Ignore the problem and next election there just
might be another candidate on the ballot.
We need to remember that elections don't take
place in a vacuum. They are merely one part of a much larger process.
Asset addresses far more of the overall process.
Number six. If this is a partisan election, who
gets the party slot? The strategy could badly
backfire, as supporters of the non-party
candidate decide not to support the official
party candidate, after all, the party made a bad
choice. No, the tradition is strong, and there
are strong reasons for it, that a party unites
on a candidate. It's more powerful.
This seems to be the same as number three.
A clone, eh? No, this issue of party slot is
important here. It means that a party can't put
true clones on the ballot, becausa only one of
them will have the obvious party nomination. Lots
of voters don't pay much attention until they see
the ballot! Then they vote based on party
affiliation and name recognition. The former is
powerful in partisan elections, the latter in nonpartisan ones.
Number seven. If both candidates make it into
the runoff, very good chance one of them would
win anyway. This means that they are top two,
really. If this is nonpartisan, very difficult to reverse that.
The intention of the first round is to pick two
finalists who are likely to be the best winner.
The intention of the first round is to find a
winner if possible from the original ballot. In
theory, we'd simply repeat the process until the
electorate gets tired of dithering and is ready
to make a choice. Practically, speaking, this
means one of two things. It means lowering
approval cutoff, if nothing else changes. But it
also means that the public becomes more informed,
through the process. "Two finalists" is not
intrinsic to the method. It's possible to simply
repeat the election. With write-ins, *there is no
elimination*, there is merely a recommendation made through the first ballot.
With a good method, it could be three candidates
on the ballot, under some conditions. A good
method will use the ballot data to detect all
reasonably possible winners. It should detect a
Condorcet winner. It should detect a utility
maximizer. It is highly unlikely that even a
clone would tie on both of these measures.
We are talking, though, about simply tacking
Count All the Votes into a top two runoff system.
It's obviously flawed, but the question is
whether or not this is an improvement, or, at
worst, would cause little to no harm.
I haven't seen a realistic election scenario
where it causes actual damage to social utility.
Rather, we are seeing a common knee-jerk
response. Strategy is "bad." Strategy, in fact,
indicates strong voter preferences. The common
assertion that Approval Voting is insincere is probably just made up.
So if one finalist
gets both positions by running a weak clone, his
odds of being the one who would have won "anyway" are
probably better than half, yes. The criticism is
that the second round serves little purpose if that's what is
happening.
Number eight. You might be able to figure out a
scenario where this makes some sense.
Now, compare that scenario with the real and known hazard of center squeeze.
And where should that lead me? You know that
nobody is backed into a corner where they have to
advocate either an approval runoff or nothing.
In the situation under consideration we have Top
Two Runoff, which is vulnerable to Center
Squeeze. Now, do we Count All the Votes?
I think it is a no-brainer. Of course we do. So
we then have Approval/Runoff. Perfect? No. Better? Yes.
Costly? No. Free.
Besides, once we are Counting All the Votes, a
ranked version of approval becomes far better.
My simulations do often find that specific
rank/approval hybrids are the best wrt minimizing insincerity and
electing sincere CWs and utility maximizers. It
depends on the scenario, but JGA's Approval-Weighted
Pairwise is often the best Condorcet method and
my various "Single Contest" methods are usually the
best non-Condorcet ones (especially wrt sincerity).
"Single Contest" methods are actually like an
instant approval runoff, except the finalists are the two
candidates who together minimize the number of
voters who approved neither of them.
Thanks.
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