Re: [EM] question about Schulze example (A,B,M1,M2)
capologist wrote: I'm no expert in this field, but it is one I find interesting and visit from time to time. My first encounter with it was when I stumbled on a website advocating what was then called the Tideman method, before it was called Ranked Pairs and before the Schulze method was discovered. I had an email conversation with the author of that website during which I proposed several modifications that seemed to me to make sense. In each case he responded with examples demonstrating how my proposal failed important criteria and convincing me that it made the method worse, not better. From the experience I learned that these methods can have behaviors that are not obvious to me and that I should never use a method that hasn't been carefully vetted by people who understand the field much better than I do. You appear to be such a person. Would you say you have carefully vetted the suggestion you just made, or was it merely a thought off the top of your head? Something in between. I haven't verified that extending the minmax logic in the manner I mentioned wouldn't break, say clone-independence. However, since Schulze said that you could use any nondeterministic tiebreaker you'd like as long as the tiebreaker itself doesn't fail the criteria you want to have, one could reason that having a deterministic tiebreaker that itself doesn't fail the criteria won't make the method mysteriously fail a criterion it otherwise would pass. Criteria failures are absolute: even if you fail just one in a million elections, you fail the criterion; and in the context of this, a nondeterministic tiebreaker that happens to emulate a deterministic one with very low probability would fail the criterion if the deterministic one did. Since Schulze said you can pick any random tiebreaker as long as it passes the criteria, that would also include such tiebreakers that could emulate deterministic ones if you were very lucky. Therefore, the same logic should hold for deterministic tiebreaks: as long as they pass the criteria you want, you can pick any of them. With all that being said, I could be wrong. If you want to play it safe, and you want M1 M2, your best bet is to pick a method that is decisive in that case. So if you're not sure whether I'm right, and if you don't need to have Schulze for other reasons (e.g. that it's a popular method, or the poll is explicitly a Schulze poll), pick Ranked Pairs. Unlike the other advanced methods discussed here, it's not too obscure, and it's cloneproof, monotone, and elects from the Smith set -- just like Schulze. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] (1) The fact of an objectively meaningless vote
Dear Fred, I've pondered your assertion that the effect of an individual vote is exactly zero for a considerable time and do not believe it is sound. Your 5 points assume that elections are static events. They're not. 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its political outcome (P). Who got into office? 2. Subtract your vote from that election. 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. Elections do not take place in a vacuum. Individuals are inspired to vote (or not vote) by the circumstances extant at the time of polling. You cannot subtract a vote from an election without considering the change in circumstances that caused the individual to not vote and accounting for the effect of the changed circumstances on the electorate. If the new circumstances caused an entire bloc of like-minded individuals to not vote, it would alter the election result. The only question is the extent of the alteration. It may, or may not, change the result. I think it's simpler than you suppose. In changing an experimental variable (to vote or not), science need not consider the circumstances that would have preceded such a change, because the hypothesis concerns only the circumstances that follow from it. The hypothesis is that *if* an individual vote is changed, then that change *in itself* will have no effect. The implicit qualifier in itself makes the experimental conclusion valid regardless of prior circumstances. Otherwise experimental science as a whole is called into question. The hypothesis about the vote is only about the vote, not about all the circumstances that might cause one to vote, or not to vote, or to vote in a certain way. The hypothesis of no effect is actually false under the circumstances that result in a tie breaker/maker election; but true in all others. This can be proven using actual electoral equipment if necessary, although the thought experiment alone is sufficient. I do not question the fact that the effect of a single vote is infinitesimal, but it is not zero. A single vote affects an election in the same way a single drop of sea-water affects the tides. I'm afraid it cannot have that effect, even in theory, because the effect is nullified once the fine-grained sum is rounded to a coarse-grained outcome (who gets into office). * The empirical evidence merely confirms this theory. Everything points to the fact that the vote has no effect whatsoever on the official outcome. * See end of http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht#fla I'm unclear about why you think the difference between infinitesimal and zero is significant. Perhaps your response to the questions about other sections will clarify the matter. I thought it was a premise; but it turns out the powerless vote is only an indicator that something is wrong. You see, it should hardly be possible to run an experiment like this. The effect of any given vote (and thus voter) should be incalculable and unbounded, just like all other effects of a person in the social world. Then again, it's fortunate we can measure the absolute powerlessness of individual votes so precisely. We know the sum of those votes is not powerless (quite the contrary) which allows us to conclude that *all* electoral power must exist in communications external to the electoral system itself. A design that enforces the formal isolation of voter from voter, as does ours by separating the ballot from the elector, is therefore inconsistent with its own purpose. If all power *must* be excercised in external communication networks, then the last thing we want is to erect communication barriers among voters that might exclude them from those networks, and thus exclude them from electoral power. Exactly such an exclusion appears to have resulted in the transfer of power to the mass parties in the late 19th century, and has perhaps contributed to other mass effects in the 20th century. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proxy Direct Democracy
Dear Mike (and Kathy), Mike wrote: And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate, or anyone special. One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy). It could be a friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate, etc. I see such flexibility as a step toward the more general facility of giving the elector hir own ballot to do with as s/he pleases. In that sense, proxy voting is a partial solution to the problems described here in my thesis, which I trace precisely to the lack of such a facility: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht I do technical work with proxy voting myself for project Votorola. See the figure caption at bottom for links to the voting theory: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht As You [Kathy] suggested, you could designate a different proxy for various kinds of issues. But there could be different opinions on which issues are in which categories, unless vote issues are specifically designated by categories. For that reason, it might be necessary to designate such special proxies at the time of voting. But maybe not: Maybe, if vote issues are officially-designated by category, you could have pre-chosen proxies for different categories of votes. Of course, in addition, you could designate a special proxy (or a special ranking of proxies) for any particular vote too. We found it simpler to begin there, with the assumption that the voter would cast a separate vote on every issue. This is the general case for us. Category voting then becomes the special case; or actually cases, because we allow any number of category schemes to be layered atop the simple general system. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Mike Ossipoff wrote: Kathy-- You wrote: Why not make the idea better yet? Allow all voters to select a different representative for each issue of interest to the voter, so that one rep might be tasked to vote on environmental issues, another on education issues, and perhaps another on foreign trade treaty issues or on judicial appointments A voter could simply select a person to vote on all issues, or select separate persons for different issues. [endquote] Absolutely. I don't remember if that was in my earlier proposal, but of course it should be. One would have a pre-chosen default proxy designation, as I described, but one would also be able to designate a proxy on any particular vote. And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate, or anyone special. One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy). It could be a friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate, etc. The Proxy Direct Democracy that I proposed could be voted by telephone or Internet. As I mentioned, the voter would have an anonymous voter ID number. That would make voting by telephone or website feasible. Here's one way that the voter could get that ID number: The person intending to register to vote writes a random 20 digit number on a piece of paper, and folds the paper. In the registration office, s/he drops it into a drum of other people's similarly-folded, identical-looking, voter ID number slips, and turns the drum, to obscure which paper s/he dropped in. That number now is an anonymous voter ID number. A voter can use it to vote by phone, or at a website. And, additionally, of course, the voter can designate a default proxy, for any vote in which that voter doesn't take part. As You suggested, you could designate a different proxy for various kinds of issues. But there could be different opinions on which issues are in which categories, unless vote issues are specifically designated by categories. For that reason, it might be necessary to designate such special proxies at the time of voting. But maybe not: Maybe, if vote issues are officially-designated by category, you could have pre-chosen proxies for different categories of votes. Of course, in addition, you could designate a special proxy (or a special ranking of proxies) for any particular vote too. So you can vote only on issues that interest you and that you're informed on, confident that you've designated someone else to vote on the others for you. Mike Ossipoff guess a potential problem with this is that some issues overlap and Congress would have to stop the horsetrading process of throwing dozens of unrelated things into the same bill. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proxy Direct Democracy
Hi all, proxy voting for a person i in a specific election could maybe be formalized as follows: V:=(v1,...vi,..., vN), where vi is the vote of voter i, 1=i=N, N is the number of voters. V is the actual or publically announced votes of the voters, where 1 means yes, and 0 means no. sum(V) counts the number of yes votes in V. sum(-V):=sum(-1*V+1) counts the number of no votes in V. Let Wi:=fi(V). Wi is the vector of weights that voter i attaches to the votes in V, Wi=(Wi1,...Wii,...,WiN), 1=i=N., where the sum of all weights in Wi, sum(Wi) must be =1 fi(V) is a function which is specific for voter i and allocates the vote of person i according to the votes in V. Example, voter i gives the vote to voter j (i.e. j is the proxy of i). We get Wi=fi(V)=(0,...,1,...,0), where the 1 occurs on place j in the vector, The vote tally is conducted as follows: The yes vote of voter i is then calculated as the sum of weights for the yes votes: sum(Wi*V):=Wi1*V1+Wi2*V2+...+WiN*VN The no vote of voter is is calculated as the sum of weights for the no votes: sum(Wi*-V). Example: Say we have three voters a, b, c. The vote is on bill B. V=(1, 0, 1), i.e. a and c votes yes. b votes no. Wa=(1,0,0), a votes for him/herself not delegating to any proxy Wb=(1,0,0) if sum(V)=2, Wb=(0,1,0) otherwise (i.e. the weight vectors with weight 1 for the first yes vote and the first no vote in V respectively), i.e. b votes according to the majority of the voters (like in a party fraction in parliament) Wc=(1/3,2/3,0), i.e. c gives 1/3 of the vote to a and 2/3 of the vote to b. Tally: a: yes: 1, no: 0 b: yes: 1, no: 0 c: yes: 1/3, no: 2/3 Total: yes:2 1/3, no: 2/3 B gets a majority of yes votes and bill B is approved. I think the generic framework above could be helpful when discussing the possibilities of proxy voting. Best regards Peter Zbornik On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: Dear Mike (and Kathy), Mike wrote: And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate, or anyone special. One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy). It could be a friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate, etc. I see such flexibility as a step toward the more general facility of giving the elector hir own ballot to do with as s/he pleases. In that sense, proxy voting is a partial solution to the problems described here in my thesis, which I trace precisely to the lack of such a facility: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht I do technical work with proxy voting myself for project Votorola. See the figure caption at bottom for links to the voting theory: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht As You [Kathy] suggested, you could designate a different proxy for various kinds of issues. But there could be different opinions on which issues are in which categories, unless vote issues are specifically designated by categories. For that reason, it might be necessary to designate such special proxies at the time of voting. But maybe not: Maybe, if vote issues are officially-designated by category, you could have pre-chosen proxies for different categories of votes. Of course, in addition, you could designate a special proxy (or a special ranking of proxies) for any particular vote too. We found it simpler to begin there, with the assumption that the voter would cast a separate vote on every issue. This is the general case for us. Category voting then becomes the special case; or actually cases, because we allow any number of category schemes to be layered atop the simple general system. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Mike Ossipoff wrote: Kathy-- You wrote: Why not make the idea better yet? Allow all voters to select a different representative for each issue of interest to the voter, so that one rep might be tasked to vote on environmental issues, another on education issues, and perhaps another on foreign trade treaty issues or on judicial appointments A voter could simply select a person to vote on all issues, or select separate persons for different issues. [endquote] Absolutely. I don't remember if that was in my earlier proposal, but of course it should be. One would have a pre-chosen default proxy designation, as I described, but one would also be able to designate a proxy on any particular vote. And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate, or anyone special. One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy). It could be a friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate, etc. The Proxy Direct Democracy that I proposed could be voted by telephone or
[EM] hello from DLW of A New Kind of Party:long time electoral reform enthusiast/iconoclast-wannabe...
I just joined the list. I'm a political economist turned electoral enthusiast. My views are: 1. All modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and plutocracy. 2. Electoral Reform is meant to bolster the former. 3. There are two basic types of election rules: winner-take-all (all single-seat elections or non-proportional multi-seat) elections and winner-doesn't-take-all (proportional or quasi-proportional multi-seat) elections. We need to use both. Right now, in the US, we need most to push for more American forms of PR. 4. American forms of PR don't challenge the fact we have a two-party dominated system. They tend to have 3-5 seats. They increase proportionality and handicap the cut-throat competitive rivalry between the two major parties. They give third party dissenters more voice... 5. Most alternatives to FPTP are decent and the biases of FPTP tend to get reduced over time and place in elections. 6. I advocate for FairVote's IRV3. It's got a first-mover and marketing advantage in the US, over the infinite number of other single seat winner-take-all election rules out there. In a FPTP dominated system, there can only be one alternative to FPTP at a time locally. 6b. I think that IRV3 can be improved upon by treating the up to three ranked choices as approval votes in a first round to limit the number of candidates to three then the rankings of the three can be sorted into 10 categories and the number of votes in each category can be summarized at the precinct level. 7. Moreover, I believe that the number of political issues, their complexity, matters of character bound the rationality of voters and make choices among candidates inherently fuzzy options. So there's no cardinal or ordinal utility for any candidate out there and all effective rankings of candidates used to determine the Condorcet Candidate are ad hoc. 8. This is why I believe a lot of the debate over the best single seat election rule is unproductive. 9. What matters more is to get a better balance between the two basic types. 10. Winner-doesn't-take-all elections are preferable for more local elections that o.w. tend to be chronically non-competitive. I think that's probably enough for now. I look forward to dialogues with y'all (I lived in TX from 3-9 then moved to MN, where my father became a professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the private liberal arts college where he met my mother, Bethel University.). dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] question about Schulze example (A,B,M1,M2)
On 10/28/2011 2:21 PM, capologist wrote: ... Not quite what I'm looking for. ... ... I'm looking for a deterministic method for generating a picture (partial ordering) of how the voters, in aggregate, feel about the preferability of the available options. (What we're doing at this stage is more akin to a poll than an election.) It seems to me that the A(M1,M2)B ordering does not reflect the voters' preferences as well as the AM1M2B ordering. I entered your example into the (free) VoteFair-ranking service at VoteFair.org and here is the results page: http://www.votefair.org/cgi-bin/votefairrank.cgi/votingid=10305-48109-09917 VoteFair popularity ranking is mathematically equivalent to the Condorcet-Kemeny method. The Data and Calculation Summary section lists the pairwise counts, and this might be the tool you are looking for. These pairwise counts, which are the same for both the Condorcet-Schulze and Condorcet-Kemeny methods, show that M1 is preferred over M2 by two voters. Richard Fobes On 10/28/2011 2:21 PM, capologist wrote: See section 5 of my paper: Not quite what I'm looking for. That section describes a non-deterministic method for generating a complete linear order. I don't require a linear order. I'm OK with a partial ordering. I'm looking for a deterministic method for generating a picture (partial ordering) of how the voters, in aggregate, feel about the preferability of the available options. (What we're doing at this stage is more akin to a poll than an election.) It seems to me that the A(M1,M2)B ordering does not reflect the voters' preferences as well as the AM1M2B ordering. I'm open to the possibility that the Schulze method is the wrong tool for this purpose. I'm also open to the possibility that the Schulze method is the right tool for this purpose, and is serving that purpose effectively in this scenario. That would imply that, in some meaningful sense, A(M1,M2)B is at least as good or a better picture of the voters' preferences than AM1M2B. This is counterintuitive but perhaps it makes sense and I don't yet understand why. I think the latter is likely the case. M1 and M2 are beatpath tied. What's going on in this example is that there is a beatpath of strength at least 2 (using margins) from every candidate to every candidate. Since M1's pairwise win over M2 is not stronger than this value, it has no effect. Is this a case of a meaningful but weak signal being lost in noise? Or is the strength-2 cycle itself a meaningful signal that, for good if inscrutable reason, overrides the weak preference between the clones? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
