At 04:25 PM 3/13/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
Abd:
I'm starting this reply today, though I probably won't have enough
computer-time
today to complete this reply.
First, two definitions that you asked about:
AOC:
AOC is Optional Conditional Approval. You can make any of your
approvals conditional
by mutuality. Then, that approval is counted only if it is
reciprocated. The best
way to describe how it actually works is by the pseudocode for the
proposed process
for optional conditionality by mutuality. That pseudocode can be
found in my first
posting that introduced (and mentioned in the subject-line)
"MTA-Optional-Conditional (MTAOC)"
That posting contains the pseudocode for determining whether a
conditional MTA middle-rating will
be counted. AOC uses that same algorithm to determine whether to
count a conditional approval.
Some days later I posted a message with a subject line indicating a
fix for a typo, an
inadvertently-omitted line that needed to be added to the
pseudocode. Then later I posted another message in which I
suggested that all of your top-rated (in MTA) candidates should be
regarded as "coalition-suitable"
(instead of asking the voter to mark some top-rated candidates as
"coaliton-suitable") for you.
In AOC, unconditional approval is, for that purpose, treated as top-rating.
I admit that that is a mess--when my
optional-conditionality-by-mutuality algorithm definition
is in three widely-separated postings. At least I should re-post the
corrected pseudocode in
one posting. Should have already done that before now. Will within a few days.
While there may be value for this in terms of working on improved
methods, as to theory, as to possible public implementations, not
method that is so complex to explain has a prayer of seeing
application outside of specialized societies where they are willing
to tolerate that.
u/a election:
u/a stands for unacceptable/acceptable. A u/a election is one in
which there is one or more completely unacceptable
candidates who could win.
If write-ins are allowed, this is theoretically possible for all
zero-knowledge elections. However, many elections, for many potential
voters, do not fall into this category. As shown by the fact that
they do not vote. Obviously, whatever is the result of the election,
it doesn't make enough difference to them to vote. That's actually
important. If you somehow entice these voters into participating in
an election, without shifting something else, you will be adding
noise, and noise probably biased by such factors as media exposure of
candidates.
I have been, in general, pointing out that increased turnout can
actually harm the social utility of results. In runoff elections, the
common lower turnout doesn't mean that there is anything wrong. It
means that the potential electorate largely doesn't care about that
choice, which might be because they are just fine with both, or
equally diapproving. The ballots have been pre-filtered, we might
say, for low preference strength, which pushes the results toward
normalized utility maximization.
In such an election, avoiding the election of an unacceptable is
all-important.
Sure. However, in situations where that election is reasonably
likely, the voter is teetering on the edge of a falling-out with
society itself.
In a u/a election by ABucklin,
it's definitely your best strategy to top-rank all the acceptables,
and not rank any unacceptables.
This is a black-and-white analysis. "Unacceptable" has been pushed to
the maximum of unacceptability, i.e., if So-and-So is elected, I
might as well commit suicide. Given that, if some truly horrible
candidate is on the ballot, I'll definitely vote, and I'll vote in
such a way as to defeat the candidate, that's the condition of the
problem. If there is more than one such "totally unacceptable"
candidates, each a possible winner, I might really wonder about the
society itself.
Note that if I don't consider the unacceptable candidate a possible
winner, the whole argument is false. If I truly believe it's
impossible, I'll not give it any voting strength; for this not to be
the case, my horror at possibility of the candidate's election would
have to be infinite. Otherwise zero times a finite disapproval is still zero.
I consider our
public political elections to be u/a. The Republocrats are the among
the unacceptables, though there are probably
others too. That's just my opinion as a voter, judging by standards
such as dishonesty, corruption, bought-ness, etc.
That's your opinion, to which you have a right, but you are rather
obviously not typical. At all. And how you would vote is not
particularly relevant, then, to the design of public systems. I would
argue that public systems should allow you to express your
preferences fairly. If you want to vote by categorizing candidates
into two classes, acceptable and unacceptable, voting only for the
acceptable candidates, with maximum strength, you should be free to
do so, because you are, by definition, willing to accept the loss of
choice between the acceptable ones.
I think, Mike, that you may want your cake and to eat it too. You
want to be able to get the "unacceptables" out of the way, first,
then you can choose. I only see one way to do that which doesn't
bring up the various voting paradoxes, and that's a system with at
least two rounds as a possibility. As long as the first round makes
the choice you need, you are okay. The problem is that there may be a
winner of the first round who is still unacceptable to you (but
obviously is acceptable, or more, for many voters).
Mike, I'll repeat this: most voters will not be thinking like you.
We all support voting systems which will allow you to, at least, act
clearly to prevent unacceptable results. With Count All the Votes,
you know how to vote, and it's simple and easy to understand. I'm
merely suggesting that with some better knowledge of the
probabilities, you may be able to maximize your expected return. This
black-and-white understanding of what is acceptable leads you to the
black-and-white voting. It reduces your real effectiveness in the
world. But it's only one vote, after all. Your participation in the
other aspects of the political process can be much more important.
The Republocrats are a set, effectively a party, consisting of two
nearly identical subsets called
Democrats and Republicans. Gore Vidal said that we don't have a
two-party system--We have one party with two right wings.
Must be true if Gore Vidal said it.
No, if he was actually making sense, we have one party with a right
and a left wing. Sort of. So we have a one-party system. We are
accustomed to thinking of that as a bad thing. Is it? I'm not sure at
all. We have one government, and that is really "one party." Imagine
the communist regimes, where the Party nominates the candidates, for
unopposed elections. Is this undemocratic? Not necessarily. It
depends on the Party's nomination process, and whether or not the
Party truly represents the people, as it claims. The problem was that
it didn't. Or doesn't, as the case may be.
If the people, voting directly in secret ballot elections, were able
to actually reject the election of the Party's nominee, that would be
democratic! At least in part!
End of definitions of AOC and u/a election.
At 04:04 PM 3/5/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote:
You said that achievability, getting from here to there, is more
important than optimality, for
a voting system proposal. Yes, and that's why strongly suggest that
Approval should be the first
proposal. In later proposals, vote-management options could be
added. They include:
Count All the Votes. Terminally simple, clear improvement, only bogus
arguments against it.
Not Perfect. So?
AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin (Bucklin with the MTAOC kind of
optional conditionality),
the delegation option of SODA, and fractional voting (RV). All of
these options could be offered
for the same Approval election. Of course they needn't all be
offered in the same enhancement
proposal. I'd start with AOC. But, first, Approval should be proposed.
Count All the Votes. When it's is presented as Approval, hosts of
distracting questions are raised, such as "Do I really approve of
that frontrunner?"
Voting is better understood as adding weight to a balance, rather
than as a "sincere expression of an opinion," though we can design
systems that make the adding of the weight relatively easy to deduce
from the opinion. But, always, it's an action, not a sentiment. And,
my view, we are responsible for the anticipable results of our actions.
Approval, though entirely adequate as a destination method, is also
the best route to ABucklin or
SODA or maybe RV.
Or, alternatively, RV could be the first proposal:
In NGO elections, quite possibly. In public elections, I'm obviously
not opposed, but ... understand that Range can badly fail, because of
utility normalization problems. I'm a whole lot happier with Range as
an element in a runoff system.
Range polling of course, is drastically superior to any other kind. A
Range ballot is maximally expressive, with one exception. It doesn't
express approval, which is a separate decision. We need either a
voter-determined approval cutoff, which is complicated, or we need to
predefine the ratings, classifying them into approved and
not-approved. We may not need so many unapproved ratings as we do
approved ones, so the proposal of using mid-range with a linear range
ballot is certainly not the only one.
Approval, in a runoff system, means "I prefer this candidate to a
runoff being held." That pushes off compromise to the runoff, if it's
a difficult compromise. That's quite proper. If the stage is
deterministic, then, approval means something a little different, it
means "i prefer this candidate to the expected outcome of the election."
Of course it goes without saying that Approval voting is
automatically a way of voting in RV (you
top-rate your approved candidates and bottom-rate everyone else).
Then, all of the abovementioned
Approval vote-management options could be proposed too.
Which is how you would vote in the u/a scenario, right?
Approval, then, is naturally, easily, expandable to AOC, AOCBucklin,
ABucklin, RV, SODA, etc.,
as vote-management options in the Approval election.
Yes. It all starts with counting all the votes.
You spoke of the "one-person-one-vote" (opov) objection to Approval.
Yes, that objection amounts to a complete misunderstand of what opov
was originally intended to mean.
It reduces it to technical compliance with a particular and shallow
understanding of the intention.
Opov meant that each person should have the same voting power. One
person shouldn't be able to outvote
two or three people. Approval doesn't violate opov.
At all.
If someone wants more elaboration about that, point out to them
that, in an Approval election, my ballot
can cancel your ballot, no matter how many candidates you vote
for--I could do that by voting for all
the candidates you don't vote for, and not for any that you do vote for.
This is true, but doesn't seem directly convincing to me. I prefer to
simply point out that my vote has either the ultimate effect of one
vote, or has no effect. (there is one exception, in a runoff system,
and it brings up some interesting possibilities.) This argument is
true, in basic Approval.
For example, suppose that you vote for all of the candidates except
for one. I can cancel your ballot
by voting only for the one candidate that you didn't vote for.
Of course.
So, obviously, you don't have more voting power by voting for more
candidates. In a 10-candidate election,
in the above example, you've voted for 9 times as many candidates
I've voted for, but I've canceled you
out. Voting for more candidates didn't give you more voting power.
Any ballot can be cancelled out by
an oppositely-voted ballot.
It's true.
Approval is a point system. Like the 0-10 point system, or the 0-100
point system, Approval is a point
system. Approval is the 0-1 point system.
Of course.
Approval asks you to rate each candidate as acceptable or
unacceptable. Your vote on a candidate's
acceptability is no stronger than anyone else's.
You can interpret it that way. I prefer, simply, that you are allowed
to vote for any candidate, equally. In basic Approval, same ballot as
plurality (the place to start), you are adding a vote to the total of
each candidate you "approve." This is equivalent to voting against
any candidate you do not approve. If it is truly take that way, then
awaring the election to a candidate without a majority is quite
equivalen to awarding it to someone when the majority voted against
that candidate. That's why, in direct deliberative process, a mere
plurality is never enough.
"Approval" can be understood in two ways: as an action allowing
something to happen, in this case, the election of the candidate, or
as a sentiment. A lot of the confusion over approval is due to
understanding it the second way.
Approval elects the candidate who is acceptable to the most voters.
Not exactly, but close. It elects the candidates who were given the
most votes. The winning total is the same as the number of voters who
"approved" the candidate. Any given voter has only contributed one
vote to that total, which is why it is still one-person, one-vote.
I've probably mentioned this in my other reply, but all of the
Approval strategies that we've discussed at EM
amount to voting for all the candidates who are better than your
expectation for the election. In other words,
vote for a candidate only if you'd rather appoint hir to office
instead of holding the election.
Yes, assuming that this is the only choice you have. "The election"
includes all the other candidates and probabilities you assess. It is
inherently a "strategic" decision, in a meaning of the word.
So, Approval maximizes the number of voters for whom the winner is
better than their expectation was. The candidate
who was better than what they expected. The candidate who maximizes
the number of pleasantly-surprised voters.
Yup.
>(First, when I speak of ABucklin as an Approval option, that's only
>for brevity and simplicity,
>because, starting from Approval, I'd offer AOC as an option or an
>alternative method, before ABucklin.
>AOCBucklin, for me, would be next, after AOC. Still, as Abd
>suggested, ABucklin is the natural
>1-balloting implementation of a reasonable and obvious collective
>deliberating process, and, thereby,
>might be the first alternative voting system that people would
>accept--Then AOCBucklin could be reserved
>for a later enhancement.)
Unfortunately, I don't know what "AOC" is, and I searched the subject
headers here. It was used in many posts, none of which explained what
the method was, some contained long sentences with unexplained
alphabet soup..... Sigh.
You continued:
Bucklin is a simululation of a *common* collective
deliberating process, not just a reasonable one. Bucklin/runoff is a
more sophisticated simulation that splits up the compromising process
into two ballots.
[endquote]
...But the runoff would complicate the proposal. You could propose
it later, though.
But when you complicate or elaborate a method, FBC-failure tends to sneak in.
Maybe. But if the existing method is top-two runoff, you could be
making things worse by, say, going to raw Approval, which often
reduces to plurality.
In your posting you suggest a runoff between some two members of
{CW, Bucklin-winner, RV-winner}.
That adds complication, and so, as you probably know, it shouldn't
be proposed other than as a
later enhancement. And deciding which two members of that 3-element
set should go into the runoff adds another complication.
I agree it is a later enhancement, very likely. The earlier step I
would propose is using a Range ballot for a Bucklin method. (Since I
already think Bucklin ballots, i.e., 3-rank Bucklin, are range
ballots, I mean, by this, that the ballot has more than one
unapproved rank. If the method was traditional Bucklin, where we
might assign ratings of 0 (default, no vote), 2, 3, 4, to the ranks,
we would add an unapproved rank, meaning "not approved -- not a part
of a majority if that is required" but better than the worst. In the
runoff, this might be used, under some conditions. And then it might
be used in a primary, to determine a Range winner, and test this
against the Bucklin winner. And to determine a Condorcet winner, the same.
These are actually easy to express and understand.
Part of the goal is simply to collect better data on real preferences
and expressions, in real elections, for the advancement of election science.
If you want to know what I'd really propose, as to voting system
reform, I propose the creation of committees to study voting systems,
deeply, with the responsibility of making recommendations to those
that appoint them. These committees should take whatever time it
takes to thoroughly study the issues. I saw such a committee in
Colorado largely fail because it really wanted a quick decision, and
was then easily vulnerable to the sound-bite arguments of UnFairVote.
Such a committee should be encouraged to be careful, above everything
else, and to propose, first, reforms that will do little or no harm,
if they fail to realize the promises that the theory predicts.
Count All the votes, regardless of whether or not the existing system
is Plurality or Top Two Runoff (and maybe IRV, I don't know if people
have noticed it, but Count All the Votes would have some salutary
effect on IRV, and would do no harm), is an ideal first reform. Any
reform process should include study and followup. We can expect from
Approval Voting, that it will not be a vast advance over Plurality.
Most elections it will make no difference. But elections where there
is a significant spoiler effect from a minor candidate, it can help.
It doesn't need to be a large percentage of the vote.
And whatever reform is then considered, unless it can be seen as
actually harmful, will keep Count All the Votes and will improve on it.
Adding that runoff would mean making a new method, instead of just
having Approval with vote-management options.
I'm not saying that that rules it out, but an enhancement other than
an option would, of course, require more
justification and more convincing.
Consider, instead, that top two runoff already exists. Proposing
Bucklin, say, as a way to avoid some runoffs, then, makes complete
sense. Then the methods for choosing the runoff candidates can be
improved. (It could start top two, perhaps).
Or simply Counting All the Votes will make some improvement, and
might avoid a few runoffs. Because Bucklin does allow multiple
approvals while preserving a level of Later No Harm *protection* --
not avoidance of all possibility of "harm" -- Bucklin will encourage
the addition of additional approvals over raw Approval in a top two
runoff context, avoiding more runoffs.
Besides, anything using the CW almost surely violates FBC.
Technical FBC compliance is not an essential characteristic of voting
systems under all conditions.
Condorcet *failure* is far more serious. It means that the electorate
has rejected a winner, compared to another candidate. That, to me,
means that the election should not complete, for the other candidate.
Consider a Range ballot. As we know, Range is not Condorcet
compliant. We sometimes imagine that Range is theoretically optimal.
It is not, because of the normalization problem. Suppose we assume
that voters vote Borda style in Range, because it fits their real
preferences. One voter's A>B>C is not generally equivalent in real
preference strength (i.e, utility distance) to that of another. To be
optimal, Range ballots must allow absolute utilities, which is not
possible except with devices like a Clarke tax. So even setting aside
strategic voting, which cannot be avoided, normalization can cause
error. Yet awarding an election to a Condorcet loser ignores a basic
principle of democracy, majority rule (which is best understood with
narrow Yes/No votes, but, next to that, simple choice between two
alternatives).
In a runoff system, though, the runoff tests the reality of the
apparent preference as well as testing absolute utilities of the
voters. If voters absolutely have high preference, they will turn out
to vote. And if it is low, they will not. Thus the results are pushed
in the direction of absolute utility maximization.
Usually the Range winner will be the Condorcet winner. When ballot
analysis shows, instead, that by raw preference, some candidate beats
the Range winner, it makes sense, then, to present the two in a runoff.
In this discussion, I've come across, from prior comments of others,
the issue of clones. Voters voting to place two clones in a runoff is
a possible phenomenon that bears further examination. I know of no
real-world examples, except, of course, that someone with preferences
far from normal may think that runoffs are always doing this!
(Indeed, that was the express view of Nader in 2000, that Gore and
Bush were Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and seems to be your view, Mike.
So I really wonder, then, would Nader supporters have turned out in a
runoff between Gore and Bush? However, Gore and Bush making it into a
runoff would not be the result of voters voting for both, the
strategy suggested with real clones! If Nader could make it into the
runoff, he might win. The trick for a Nader>Gore>Bush voter might be
making sure that a runoff was between Gore and Nader, if possible.
And that could require voting for both in the primary. If the primary
is Bucklin, that would mean voting Nader>Gore or maybe Nader=Gore.
This maximizes the possibility of both candidates being in the
runoff, unless it causes both to gain a majority.)
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