Re: [EM] Remember Toby
fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: As I remember it, when Toby settled on CSSD, we made a huge psychological mistake: we got bogged down in the description of the CSSD algorithm for the public proposal. I think that was a fatal mistake, and I would like to propose a strategy for avoiding that mistake in the future. It was a mistake because it gave the impression that to understand the proposal, you have to understand a detailed algorithm. Here’s an analogy: Complicated Version of the law of refraction: Snell’s law says that the ratio of the signs of the angles of incidence and refraction are equal to the ratios of the speeds of light in the respective media at the interface where the refraction takes place. This is way too technical for the average man on the street. Simple version of the law of refraction: Fermat’s Principle's says that light takes the path of least time. The man on the street can understand this. Snell’s law gives a way of finding that path of least time for the technician. What is analogous to Fermat’s principle in the context of CSSD? Answer: the beatpath winner idea. We elect the alternative A with the strongest beatpaths to the other alternatives. This means that for each alternative B, alternative A has a stronger beatpath to B than B does to A. Once the concept of a beatpath is explained (and that its strength is that of the weakest link) then the man on the street can understand this definition of the method. The CSSD algorithm is the technical part like Snell’s law,that the man on the street doesn’t have to worry about. So perhaps something like: An indirect defeat of B by A is one where A beats B, or A beats someone who indirectly beats B. An indirect defeat is a chain made of direct defeats, each of whose strength is equal to the number of voters preferring the winner. The strength of the indirect defeat itself is equal to the strength of the link of least value[1]. When direct defeats contradict themselves, indirect defeats give a claim as to whether one candidate is better than another. Therefore: Elect the candidate that, no matter what other candidate you compare it to, the former more strongly indirectly defeats the latter than vice versa. - It could be interesting to try to make short descriptions of various Condorcet methods. The above is quite a bit longer than descriptions of, say, Minmax or FPC, but the Schulze method also passes criteria the other two don't. [1] Or perhaps closest to being overturned. Should one mention that if there are more than one such chain, the strongest one counts? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Eric Maskin promotes the Black method
and we've all been groping for a name for this primary voting criteria that is not this non-American, Frenchie, probably sorta pinko-socialist secular humanist intellectual (did i mention *not* American?) whose heresy is leading us away from the One True Faith of the Single Affirmative Vote. we have sects in the One True Faith, some of us believe in the sanctity of the Two Party System: if yer ain't fer us, you agin' us. and pass da ammunition, Ma. i don't have a better idea than true majority rule. but there must be a better one than that. Warren, i remember you like beats-all winner for the CW. i wonder if the beats-all method is a good label. At one point I ran a poll to try to decide on good names for Condorcet voting (as well as for Range/Score and for MCA/ER-Bucklin/median-based systems). You can see the results here http://betterpolls.com/v/1189. Ironically, there was a Condorcet cycle on what to call Condorcet; the smith set was [Instant?] Round Robin Voting; Pairwise Champion Voting; and Beats-All Voting. Since then, I've tried to use the term pairwise champion for the CW, except occasionally when I'm writing about mathematical issues to a highly-savvy audience. In my opinion, that terminology works well. I do not, therefore, think that PCV is necessarily the best brand for Condorcet systems; I think that probably IRRV is good for that (despite the fact that it suggests Copeland as the tiebreaker, whereas I support C//A as the best simply-explainable tiebreaker). The similarity with IRV is a good thing, to my mind, though I understand that some may disagree. Note that if you google True Majority Voting, you'll find that there was a recent (but now-defunct??) attempt by IRV advocates to appropriate this term. I think that true majority is less explanatory than IRRV, PCV, or BAV. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
My impression was that the remember Toby thread(s) was (were) inclining towards advocating simpler systems than CSSD. I heard more support for C//A, minimax, and SODA. Separately, I agree that it's best to describe a system by focusing on the outcome rather than the procedure. The difference is not so large for C//A and SODA; for minimax, though, that inclines one to the least extra votes description. (Although with a covering Smith set 4, this is not technically identical to minimax, I'm happy to ignore that difference, or even to actually use the least extra votes system instead of minimax.) JQ 2011/6/21 fsimm...@pcc.edu As I remember it, when Toby settled on CSSD, we made a huge psychological mistake: we got bogged down in the description of the CSSD algorithm for the public proposal. I think that was a fatal mistake, and I would like to propose a strategy for avoiding that mistake in the future. It was a mistake because it gave the impression that to understand the proposal, you have to understand a detailed algorithm. Here’s an analogy: Complicated Version of the law of refraction: Snell’s law says that the ratio of the signs of the angles of incidence and refraction are equal to the ratios of the speeds of light in the respective media at the interface where the refraction takes place. This is way too technical for the average man on the street. Simple version of the law of refraction: Fermat’s Principle's says that light takes the path of least time. The man on the street can understand this. Snell’s law gives a way of finding that path of least time for the technician. What is analogous to Fermat’s principle in the context of CSSD? Answer: the beatpath winner idea. We elect the alternative A with the strongest beatpaths to the other alternatives. This means that for each alternative B, alternative A has a stronger beatpath to B than B does to A. Once the concept of a beatpath is explained (and that its strength is that of the weakest link) then the man on the street can understand this definition of the method. The CSSD algorithm is the technical part like Snell’s law,that the man on the street doesn’t have to worry about. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Composite methods (Re: Eric Maskin promotes the Black method)
robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jun 21, 2011, at 7:56 AM, Markus Schulze wrote: Hallo, Eric Maskin, a Nobel laureate, is currently very active in promoting the Black method. and we've all been groping for a name for this primary voting criteria that is not this non-American, Frenchie, probably sorta pinko-socialist secular humanist intellectual (did i mention *not* American?) whose heresy is leading us away from the One True Faith of the Single Affirmative Vote. we have sects in the One True Faith, some of us believe in the sanctity of the Two Party System: if yer ain't fer us, you agin' us. and pass da ammunition, Ma. I've mentioned it before, but I think Condorcet enjoys an additional advantage here. Say there's a CW and he is not elected. Then that means a majority prefers the CW to the candidate who was elected, and if that majority is annoyed enough, it could try to repeal the voting method in question. However, if the method always elects the CW, any attempt to do so must face a majority who did prefer that CW to all the other candidates, and if that majority feels the candidate is good enough, they can block the repeal by virtue of being a majority. i don't have a better idea than true majority rule. but there must be a better one than that. Warren, i remember you like beats-all winner for the CW. i wonder if the beats-all method is a good label. Alas, as Jameson has pointed out, the IRVistas have muddied the waters by saying that the candidate that makes it to the last IRV round *is* a majority winner. (By extrapolation, every candidate that is not the Condorcet loser is a majority winner, because given an arbitrary loser-elimination method, you could make any non-CL win, but never the Condorcet loser.) The Black method says: If there is a Condorcet winner, then the Condorcet winner should win; if there is no Condorcet winner, then the Borda winner should win. i hadn't heard of the Black method before, but just reading this shows pretty superficially a problem. above is one way to say something... [snip] at the core, let's assume that we are already disciples of Condorcet, we all agree that method X is best for domain X, he doesn't say squat about why method Y is preferred in domain Y. if we're nowhere near to a conclusion that Borda is good for anything (he might have been a good general, i dunno), then how do we conclude that it is preferable to everything else when there is no CW? sorry, i haven't even got past this block. I guess Maskin thinks Borda is the best on domain Y. Why, I don't know. Maskin's argumentation doesn't work because of the following reason: Whether an election method is good or bad depends on which criteria it satisfies. Most criteria say how the result should change when the profile changes. Now it can happen that the original profile and the new profile are in different domains. This means that, to satisfy some criterion, election method X for domain X and election method Y for domain Y must not be chosen independent from each other. but, this is the fundamental argument of those who claim that it is natural for an election to be spoiled, to be dependent upon irrelevant alternatives. isn't that what the fundamental issue is about for why Condorcet (assuming a CW exists) is consistent with any simple-majority, two-candidate election where every vote carries equal weight? that's what's fundamental about it, it is consistent to the concept that if Candidate A is preferred to Candidate B, Candidate B is not a winner, and being consistent with the result when the profile changes in that manner is both tangible and operational (we can get a handle on it and doing it differently, like using IRV instead, makes a difference). The point is that the transition between the X- and Y-domain also matters, and just sticking methods together doesn't take the transition into account. Example: The participation criterion says that adding some ballots, that rank candidate A above candidate B, must not change the winner from candidate A to candidate B. does Black do this? Nope. Condorcet is incompatible with Participation, even though Condorcet is compatible when there is a CW, and Borda is compatible on its own. Consider it analogous to having a function that's made out of two horizontal lines, but the rules (impossibility theorems) forbid the two lines from having the same height. Then, although both the first (Condorcet) and second (Borda) line is flat (passes Participation), there's no way to combine lines (base methods) so that the function (composite method) is flat, as a whole, along its entire domain. There will always be a jump between the first and second domain. okay, since adding a positive number to the margin increases the size of the margin, and since, if there is no cycle (domain X), the Condorcet winner is decided *solely* by the margins (even the signum function of the
Re: [EM] [CES #3089] Re: Theoretical Issues In Districting
A bit of thinking, and a bit of personal history. I see no value in splitline. . It happily mixes city and rural and suburbs - city and rural each should be kept together, as should suburbs, though suburbs fit with either of the first two. . It happily mixes new collections of people, giving them little opportunity to get together and work together. 1990 - NY-28 includes Kimgston on the Hudson, Ithaca on the Finger Lakes, and Owego where I live. FAR from compact. 1992 - NY-26 inherits above NY-28 description. Assemblyman Hinchey from near Kingston is completing 18 years in Albany and gets elected to Congress. 2002 - NY-22 inherits above NY-28 description. How tightly can a waist be bound? Near Nichols NY-22 northern boundary, on the Susquehanna River, is less than 5 miles from PA. . Congressman Hinchey, completing 10 years, is reelected. 2012 - Hinchey is completing 20 years. NY will have two less congressmen. NY's habit is to keep current districts, amended as needed for census results, so what to do? . NYC area needs to lose one and a scandal leaves nothing to save in NY-9 - so dump that one. . NY-26 is having a special election, so that seems like a good prospect. Hochul's win makes her deserve a full term, so look elsewhere. Dave Ketchum On Jun 14, 2011, at 10:33 AM, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org ) wrote: I think Justin Levitt's view of optimal districting, is basically this. (Although perhaps this is a caricature? I'm not trying to caricature, I'm just trying to present just an honest picture of what, as far as I can tell JL thinks -- but I'm only going by his emails, not his paper weighing the potential of citizen redistricting which he emailed me the pdf of 2 times, but both times my computer refused to open it claiming file was invalid/corrupted etc. Can anybody else obtain/read that paper? Perhaps if you can convert it to postscript it'd fix it?) Justin Levitt's view as described by WDS: There should be some committee of beneficent people, unbiased by party politics, who draw the districts in such a way as to help everybody, because they have beneficent purposes in mind. These people should not care about how the map looks, they should care about what purposes it accomplishes. (JL made the analogy of Susan Boyle, a singer who, he claimed, did not have a very good visual appearance, but sung well, and, JL said, that proves appearance does not matter, what matters is results.) JL disparages mathematical approaches, because with them the human element is sacrificed, and because they concentrate on appearance, not -- what really matters -- results. These beneficent people need to cluster people with common interests into common districts, so that their representatives will be able to know what they represent. But what exactly is a common interest? What qualifies, and what does not? Does lovers of feathered animals who also like mining gravel count as a common interest? Does likes reality TV shows count? And what if you are BOTH Black, AND a Commie Sympathizer (2 interests simultaneously) but can only be located in one district? Then what? Well, the beneficent people will decide those things. They're kind of like your big brother, helping everybody to overcome those annoying real-world problems to get good results. What will be the net effect of this? Well, it will be essentially this. That committee will decide (a) what are the top issues of the day and (b) who wins on each issue. But they will not have total power on (b) because gerrymandering is only capable of making a 26% minority win a 2-way choice, not a 24% minority. So subject to those limitations they'll effectively BE the government. So then the question arises: how are they to be elected, or appointed, or randomly chosen, or what? It's a bit difficult to elect them, because almost all people do not even know who even a single such committee member is, and also do not know what each one did and how each one affected the district maps, and even with maximum possible effort to make the process transparent (which, as far as I know, has never happened in the prior history of the universe, but I suppose it could) it would still be very hard for Joe Voter to understand+know that. They could be appointed, in which case you can be damn sure the appointer will have a pretty good idea how each appointee will behave, and now this appointer will effectively be the government. Of course the committee-candidates could try to overcome that by lying to him. Finally, they could be randomly chosen, in which case the main decisions made by our government will basically be decided by dice rolls. Perhaps the best such system would be something like the way juries are selected -- random selection followed by a deterministic winnowing conducted by the legislature. In that case I daresay the committee would be biased to try to help some
