Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: On May 24, 2011, at 6:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. I would propose Condorcet, with just a few clarifications: Leave CSSD beatpath as a detail method decision to resolve later. Reject IRV for known problems. Those unranked are simply counted as having the bottom rank. Write-ins permitted and counted as if actually nominated. This is a bit of extra pain, but I like it better than demanding extra nominations that enemies could make unacceptably difficult. Equal ranking permitted. Those who like Approval should understand that using a single rank lets them express their desire without considering ranking in detail. No restrictions as to how rank numbers compare - when considering which of a pair has higher rank, ONLY their ranks compare as HL, LH, or E=- what ranks are assigned to other candidates have no effect on this. No restriction as to how many rank numbers a voter may use, beyond fact that a chosen ballot design may impose a limit as to how many can be expressed. DYN is a simple addition for those who see value in that method. Having conducted in the CIVS system an experiment over the past several years as to whether people are able to deal with ranked ballots, I have to say that voters seem to be able to deal with ranking choices. In fact they will even rank dozens of choices. As long as the user interface is not painful, it's not a big deal for most people. So I would choose Condorcet in a second. Like Dave, I don't think the completion method matters a great deal. However, write-ins are a more complicated issue and it is still not clear to me how to handle them fairly. -- Andrew Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? Being who I am, I would either pick Ranked Pairs or CSSD (Beatpath, Schulze): the former if it's more important that it can be explained easily, the latter if precedence is more important. It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. I'm not sure about this. If you look at history, ranked voting has been used many places in the US, and the voters didn't seem to complain about ranking -- the methods were usually repealed because the candidates or the political machines didn't like them. For instance, as I've mentioned before, New York used STV for ten years. Cincinnati did, too, and I think they still use STV in Cambridge, MA. There was also the Minnesota use of Bucklin, which wasn't stopped because people didn't want to rank, but because the courts found it unconstitutional for some strange reason. Most ranked methods also permit the voters to truncate. Even IRV does, though it then loses the majority winner feature. Thus, if the voters don't want to rank all the way down to the write-ins, they don't have to. They can even bullet vote if they so desire. If I'm to speculate, I think the reason for truncated IRV is so that already existing optical mark counters can handle the ranked ballots, to save on the infrastructure. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
matt welland wrote: On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 22:42 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. Is this a generally accepted truth? I don't think I agree with it, can you point me to more information or explain? The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. But I think this is only a factor for the period after transitioning to approval from a plurality system. In the longer term both the candidates and the voters will change. I think the change would be for the better, candidates would generally be more accountable, voters need only decide who they could live with as leaders and it is worth it to listen to what the minority players are saying - giving them your vote is both possible and meaningful. I guess most of these would be true (perhaps more so) for asset voting also. The strategy holds even when there are more than two frontrunners. AFAIK, the best strategy (LeGrand's strategy A) is approve all you prefer to whoever has the most votes, then vote for that one if you prefer him to the one who has second most. When there are only two frontrunners, that's simple enough: you vote for the frontrunner if you prefer him to the other guy. When there are more than two, however, the importance of polls increases, since you have to know who is currently in the lead and who is second. In between, there could be an uncertainty point. For instance, in the 2000 example, if Nader has no chance, you approve of him and Gore (but not Bush). If Nader has a lot of support, you vote for Nader alone because you want to make sure Gore doesn't win. But if Nader has just about the same chance to win as Gore, then it gets tricky. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
For a legislature one could use also multi-winner and proportional methods, but I think the question was what single-winner method to recommend. (I'd probably recommend proportional methods for most multi-winner elections, unless the community explicitly wants to have a two-party system.) Jameson Quinn mentioned the kingmakers. Delegating the power to decide who will win to one or few candidates is risky since (depending on the environment) that might lead to buying personal benefits, instead of basing the decision on one's sincere opinions or doing only political trading. Kristofer Musterhjelm mentioned the possibility that the limitations of current voting machines might limit the maximum number of candidates to rank. Good sigle-winner methods tend to require evaluation and some knowledge of at least all the major candidates. Maybe ranking is not much more difficult than other simpler approaches like approval. Different ballot types might be used, depending on the preferences of the community. If the complexity of allocating some preference strength (e.g. a rating) to at least all major candidates is not too much, (almost) any Condorcet method would be a good first guess. (Alternatively also Range could be used for clearly non-competitive (and non-majority-based) polls / elections. But probably the question addressed competitive political elections only.) To pick one of the Condorcet methods one might use criteria related to simplicity, performance with sincere votes, performance with strategic votes (hopefully an maybe likely strategies will be marginal in Condorcet), ability to explain and visualize the results, easy marketing. All Condorcet methods tend to give the same winner in almost all real-life elections since in most cases there is a Condorcet winner, and even if not, the winner still tends to be the same, and even if it was not, then it will be difficult to say which one of the about equal candidates should really have won. Matt Welland discussed the Approval strategies. The strategy of approving some of the frontrunners and not approving some of them is well known. Therefore it makes sometimes sense to distribute fake (or hand picked) polls. One may also distribute different polls or other messages to different target audiences. I wrote something about this few years ago. See http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2006-December/019127.html. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On May 25, 2011, at 2:07 AM, Andrew Myers wrote: On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: On May 24, 2011, at 6:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. I would propose Condorcet, with just a few clarifications: Leave CSSD beatpath as a detail method decision to resolve later. Reject IRV for known problems. Those unranked are simply counted as having the bottom rank. Write-ins permitted and counted as if actually nominated. This is a bit of extra pain, but I like it better than demanding extra nominations that enemies could make unacceptably difficult. Equal ranking permitted. Those who like Approval should understand that using a single rank lets them express their desire without considering ranking in detail. No restrictions as to how rank numbers compare - when considering which of a pair has higher rank, ONLY their ranks compare as HL, LH, or E=- what ranks are assigned to other candidates have no effect on this. No restriction as to how many rank numbers a voter may use, beyond fact that a chosen ballot design may impose a limit as to how many can be expressed. DYN is a simple addition for those who see value in that method. Having conducted in the CIVS system an experiment over the past several years as to whether people are able to deal with ranked ballots, I have to say that voters seem to be able to deal with ranking choices. In fact they will even rank dozens of choices. As long as the user interface is not painful, it's not a big deal for most people. So I would choose Condorcet in a second. Like Dave, I don't think the completion method matters a great deal. However, write-ins are a more complicated issue and it is still not clear to me how to handle them fairly. I was not limiting how much deciding on completion method matters - just saying what I do care about matters more. Ranking dozens? I think some overdo that - It should be acceptable for any voter to quit after ranking those they care most about. Two thoughts on write-ins: When having a lone thought it matters little. When wanting to elect one who is not nominated, get serious and campaign, just as you do for a favored nominee. -- Andrew Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
matt welland wrote ... The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. But after the Citizens United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the exception. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
- Original Message - From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 11:31 pm Subject: Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon? To: fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? Being who I am, I would either pick Ranked Pairs or CSSD (Beatpath, Schulze): the former if it's more important that it can be explained easily, the latter if precedence is more important. It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. I'm not sure about this. If you look at history, ranked voting has been used many places in the US, and the voters didn't seem to complain about ranking -- the methods were usually repealed because the candidates or the political machines didn't like them. It's true that historically and even recently ranked systems have been adopted here and elsewhere. But these successes are infinitesimal in comparison to the failed initiatives. Why have the initiatives failed? Overwhelmingly because the voters have rejected the idea of ballots that require ranking of candidates. I first saw this pattern ten years ago when FairVote Oregon was working on an IRV ititiative here in Oregon. And it has been the constant theme in failed initiatives ever since then. Lewis Carroll was right! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On May 25, 2011, at 9:17 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: - Original Message - From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Being who I am, I would either pick Ranked Pairs or CSSD (Beatpath, Schulze): the former if it's more important that it can be explained easily, the latter if precedence is more important. being that they choose the same winner in the case that there are only 3 candidates in the cycle, i would recommend Tideman over Schulze (sorry Marcus) for the simplicity of explanation. while getting a Condorcet cycle is expected to be rare enough, how often in real elections in government, would you expect a situation where RP and CSSD will arrive at a different result? ... It's true that historically and even recently ranked systems have been adopted here and elsewhere. But these successes are infinitesimal in comparison to the failed initiatives. Why have the initiatives failed? Overwhelmingly because the voters have rejected the idea of ballots that require ranking of candidates. The single affirmative vote. a religious position, but it's more honest than misrepresenting another principle: One person, one vote. the most effective political sign was probably Keep Voting Simple. what these people say they don't wanna do is vote for *anyone* other than their choice of candidate. it's like ranking their contingency vote as #2 will somehow hurt their #1 choice (as it would with Borda). then (with IRV) they find out that their #1 choice actually hurt their #2 choice by helping the candidate they hated the most. this is why i'm kinda mad at FairVote. by equating the Ranked Choice with Hare/IRV, when IRV screwed up, they sullied the ranked ballot for all other cases. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 01:07 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: matt welland wrote ... The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. But after the Citizens United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the exception. For me it seems we are so far from a point were discerning the front runner is anything but blindingly obvious (at least in the US) that it is a complete non-issue. Did any of the alternative candidates get into the two digit range in 2008? The third party candidates are so irrelevant that after a couple searches I still hadn't found a link that mentioned the percentage results to put in this post. I would be thrilled if when voting I even *considered* dropping my vote for the lesser horror front runner in an approval vote. These concerns are like bikeshedding, we are arguing about the paint color and we don't even have a roof, walls or foundation, hell, we don't even agree on the plans. That doesn't mean the debate on this list is not important, it is very important, but I come full circle to my post from a while back. When the knowledgeable experts can't put out a unified front there will be no moving forward. Sorry, it's hard to watch a country which had so much potential to make the human condition better for people all around the world, turn a bit uglier, meaner and, yup, more fascist every day. I suspect that the only thing that can turn this around in a sustainable way is a change in the voting system but without a crystal clear rallying cry from the experts for *ONE* method that will never happen. Truth is that the goals of this list are at odds with my primary interest. After reading any replies to this I'll sign off the list. Cheers and thanks to all for the great work done in furthering the art and science of choosing our leaders! Matt -=- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
