Re: [EM] PR solutions
On 9.6.2012, at 1.46, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I don't know what you mean by minimize violation of opinions. It is just one natural way to measure delta to full proportionality. I don't claim that this is the only one or the absolutely correct one, but it is natural and it respects the philosophy of Largest Remainder, as appropriate when I try to seek justification to how LR works. The approach is simply to count how many quotas of votes did each group get, and how many seats did they get, and then count the sum of differences. If the vote counts are 1 and 2, there are two seats, and both groups get one seat, and the quota is votes / seats. In this case the quota is 1.5, the groups have 1/1.5 (=2/3) and 2/1.5 (=4/3) quotas and are entitled to as many seats, but since we can not give them fractional seats we give them 1 and 2 seats, and we violate the rightful decision or violate the opinions by 1/3 + 1/3 = 2/3 quotas. You migh say that I used the LR definition to justify that LR is right. But the idea of the parties having right to 2/3 and 4/3 seats respectively is very natural and maybe would be used if we were able to allocate fractional seats. (Maybe some representative body would give the two representatives 2/3 and 4/3 votes of voting power to make proportional representation as exact as possible. That would also cancel the paradoxical influences of the Alabama paradox, if measured in voting power.) I would just point out that if you give 5% of the seats to a party because 5% of the voters like that party, and 95% of the voters dislike them, then I would say that you're violating a whole lot of opinions. It would seem that PR is inconsistent with minimizing violation of opinions. If I got you right, then 95% of the voters might feel that the 5% marginal group should not get any seats. Giving that small group 5% of the seats would be a violation of majority opinion. But that would not violate proportional representation. Opinions can thus be violated in at least two ways. And there are at least two (incompatible) ways to respect the opinion of the voters. In PR systems the proportional represenative bodies typically make majority (or supermajority or consensus) decisions. The system thus still makes majority decisions that may violate the opinion of 49% of the voters (or their proportionally elected representatives), but when compared to majority oriented elections, that problematic phase has just been pushed one level higher, to occur within the representative body, instead of when electing the representative body. But if _proportionality_ is the goal of PR, then Sainte-Lague, and not Largest-Remainder supports that goal. I'm not sure. Note also that bias in favouring large or small parties and violations in giving all groups their proportional share of voting power are two slightly differing criteria. The ability of highest average style allocation methods (Sainte-Laguë, D'Hondt) to elect representatives serially for all sizes of representative groups can be seen as an additional requirement that may work against some other criteria. STV can be justified because some people prefer voting for individuals, and because STV gets rid of the small amount of split-vote problem that remains even with good list systems. Yes, STV allows voting individuals and even voting different individuals from different parties. But what is the split-vote problem? I have to say that I can't find any justification of Largest Remainder, other than the claim that it's simpler to justify to people who aren't familiar with proportionality--at the cost of an unaesthetic parting-of-ways with proportionality as soon as the remainder seats begin to be allocated. When the remainder seats begin to be allocated, proportionality is out the window. I don't know if it violates proportionality (maybe depending on how you define proportionality), but violations of the Alabama paradox could be seen to be unaesthetical (although maybe fair too, from another viewpoint). Btw, I have one merciful definion of proportionality that I often use to classify fully proportional methods. The idea is that if the method allocates the full seats correctly, that's enough to be fully proportional. From this point of view, what happens with the fractional seats is a minor problem that we need not care that much (assuming that the number of seats is not very small). Maybe one could say that such methods allocate full seats proportionally. Anyway, as a practical matter, all of the PR systems and methods are really alright. There are many working approaches. I guess most real life PR systems have however problems and/or strange features. Many of them violate also also PR more than marginally, i.e. more than just using D'Hondt or some other allocation algorithm that can be considered not to be accurate. But lso biased systems often work well enough, i.e. with just the normal amount of
Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled
On 06/09/2012 12:27 AM, Nicholas Buckner wrote:
Hello,
I am Nicholas Buckner. I developed an alternative method that takes
the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives path over the Condorcet
path. It handles single-winner elections and multiple-winner
elections. I believe it satisfies a great number of criterions,
including difficult ones like Clone Independence and Participation.
I don't think this passes IIA.
Consider the following CSV:
25,1,2,3
40,2,3,1
35,3,1,2
i.e. 25 ABC, 40 BCA, 35 CAB.
According to your program, the ordering is {0,2} 3 1 or B C A,
so B wins.
So let's remove irrelevant candidate C (3):
25,1,2
40,2,1
35,1,2
Now the ordering is {0,1} 2 or A B, as enforced by the Majority
criterion.
So eliminating irrelevant candidate C shifted the win from B to A.
The example above is engineered so that no matter who you pick in the
three-candidate election, one can remove an irrelevant alternative and
force someone else to win by the majority criterion.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled
Thank you for that information. I thought IIA referred to adding of irrelevant alternatives, not removing them. As a consequence I didn't look as strongly at criterions I thought were incompatible, from the Condorcet criterion group. Nicholas P.S. Give me a few moments to modify the file. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] California's adoption of Runoff
I don't know if this was sent to the right address, and so I'm sending it again. My apologies if it posts twice: California has made an astounding, bold experiment. They've taken away the official status of parties in California's state and congressional elections. State-sponsored party primaries don't make any sense. All of the political parties opposed Runoff, because it takes away their official status. Additionally, the fact that the California voters have adopted a new voting system for state and congressional elections is important for its own sake. It shows that people are open to change in the voting system. People everywhere will be a little more receptive now, to proposals for new voting systems. Change has been shown to be possible and feasible. I'm not saying that Runoff is any good. So what?--Neither is Plurality. The small parties object that their ballot status was the only thing keeping them visible. Yeah, but where did it ever get them? One percent? With the media's help, of course the Republocrats can probably continue to dominate in Runoff. I suppose progressives will still feel a need to vote Democrat, so that the Democrat candidates won't be shut out of the runoff. So, in that way, nothing will change. But now the Democrats will find out what the split-vote problem is like. Beautiful ! The Democrats will be divided something like the way the progressives have been.Their best vote totals might no longer exceed those of the non-Republocrats by as much as they have been. In something as stagnant as our politics here, any shuffle or shake-up, such as California's new Runoff system, is a good thing. All the more so, because it encourages more change, and gives precedent, respectability and plausibility to change proposals. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled
Hi Nicholas, I think that your basic method (page 2 of html version) is the same as QLTD: http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE6/P4.HTM I say this because the multiplier is expressed in terms of ranking slots and a candidate is allowed to win with only part of a subsequent slot instead of only in increments of entire slots. So your full method is what I would call QLTD elimination because you repeatedly eliminate the QLTD loser. (Hopefully I haven't misunderstood the definition.) Elimination+Recalculation methods are bad for monotonicity because the way information can be used for or against candidates is usually not predictable. It would need to be quite clear how other candidates will fare when another candidate is eliminated. Participation is satisfied by simple point scoring methods. I doubt it is compatible with elimination+recalculations. The problem is that you need to guarantee each voter that information will only work in certain ways, but eliminations tend to have chaotic results. __ De : Nicholas Buckner nlbor...@gmail.com À : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com Cc : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 9 juin 2012 4h04 Objet : Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled Thank you for that information. I thought IIA referred to adding of irrelevant alternatives, not removing them. As a consequence I didn't look as strongly at criterions I thought were incompatible, from the Condorcet criterion group. Basically adding them is a problem if removing them is. If there are only two candidates A and B and you add a new candidate C, and change the winner from A to B, then you could also take the new situation, and remove C from it, and thereby change the winner from B to A. You wrote originally I developed an alternative method that takes the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives path over the Condorcet path. Do you know that we don't have *any* serious rank methods that satisfy IIA? For example, STV doesn't satisfy it either. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled
Thank you for the article, as it was informative. It is very true that Elimination methods tend to eliminate candidates who could go onto become winners. QLTD doesn't have a single loser to eliminate (it doesn't mention losers much either). In fact I worn against first-past-the-post methods (vanilla QLTD) (that's why I go with the converse way--the elimination way), as they are susceptible to Burying mentioned here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting what I think the original article (http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE6/P4.HTM) tries to show is QLTD has a problem with a subset criterion to monotocity he called mono-add-top (which is very close to the Participation criterion). My method doesn't have that problem. Let me use his example (though I have some mild problems with the Droop Quota now, I'll still use it for these calculations). Election 2: abcdef 12 votes cabdef 11 votes bcadef 10 votes def27 votes when adding: ad 6 votes Pre add: Votes: 60 Quota: 31 Round 1: 1: 2.8 2: 2.818182 3: 2.83 4: 3.121212 5: 4.121212 6: 5.121212 Candidate 6 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 2: 1: 2.421053 2: 2.45 3: 2.476190 4: 3.121212 5: 4.121212 Candidate 5 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 3: 1: 1.95 2: 2.00 3: 2.047619 4: 3.121212 Candidate 4 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 4: 1: 1.50 2: 1.571429 3: 1.578947 Candidate 3 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 5: 1: 0.849315 2: 1.205479 Candidate 2 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Final order from worst to best: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Post add: Votes: 66 Quota: 34 Round 1: 1: 2.50 2: 2.96 3: 2.962936 4: 3.030303 5: 4.115942 6: 5.072464 Candidate 6 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 2: 1: 2.263158 2: 2.545455 3: 2.565217 4: 3.030303 5: 4.085714 Candidate 5 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 3: 1: 1.80 2: 2.130436 3: 2.17 4: 3.030303 Candidate 4 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 4: 1: 1.35 2: 1.625000 3: 1.636364 Candidate 3 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Round 5: 1: 0.80 2: 1.247059 Candidate 2 has the worst multiplier and was removed. Final order from worst to best: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. (Notice, it was unchanged. Not very chaotic, wouldn't you say?) On 6/9/12, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: Hi Nicholas, I think that your basic method (page 2 of html version) is the same as QLTD: http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE6/P4.HTM I say this because the multiplier is expressed in terms of ranking slots and a candidate is allowed to win with only part of a subsequent slot instead of only in increments of entire slots. So your full method is what I would call QLTD elimination because you repeatedly eliminate the QLTD loser. (Hopefully I haven't misunderstood the definition.) Elimination+Recalculation methods are bad for monotonicity because the way information can be used for or against candidates is usually not predictable. It would need to be quite clear how other candidates will fare when another candidate is eliminated. Participation is satisfied by simple point scoring methods. I doubt it is compatible with elimination+recalculations. The problem is that you need to guarantee each voter that information will only work in certain ways, but eliminations tend to have chaotic results. __ De : Nicholas Buckner nlbor...@gmail.com À : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com Cc : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 9 juin 2012 4h04 Objet : Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled Thank you for that information. I thought IIA referred to adding of irrelevant alternatives, not removing them. As a consequence I didn't look as strongly at criterions I thought were incompatible, from the Condorcet criterion group. Basically adding them is a problem if removing them is. If there are only two candidates A and B and you add a new candidate C, and change the winner from A to B, then you could also take the new situation, and remove C from it, and thereby change the winner from B to A. You wrote originally I developed an alternative method that takes the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives path over the Condorcet path. Do you know that we don't have *any* serious rank methods that satisfy IIA? For example, STV doesn't satisfy it either. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Differentness or similarity of Republicans and Democrats
I was going to let this drop, but the matter is highly relevant to voting, in Plurality or any method. A few people have been claiming that there is significant difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. A difference so significant as to justify abandoning your favorite to help the Democrat beat the Republican. Obviously, the matter of whether or not that claim is true is very much relevant to voting. So, those people disagree with Gore Vidal, who said that we don't have a 2-party system--We have 2 parties with one right wing. Who's right? When Jameson and someone else insisted that there is significant difference among the Republocrats, I invited them to tell what difference(s) they were referring to. They haven't answered :-) So I'll just tell of a few (of very many) _similarities_ between Democrats and Republicans. Let me just start out by saying this: Look at the Directory of American Political Parties. Search for that phrase on the Internet. It will show you a perspective that our Republocrat-Dissimilarists might benefit from. Better yet, search the web for G/GPUSA platform. And GPUS platform. Those are this country's Green parties. You'll find them so different from the Democrat and Republican, that you'll no longer consider Democrat and Republican to be different from eachother. Now, for a few examples of the identicalness of Republicans and Democrats: Example 1: During the Contra war, of the '80s, when the Reagan administration was funding terrorists and sending them into Nicaragua with specific written manual-instructions to kill teachers and doctors, destroy schools and hospitals, hurt a lot of people, and do various other similar things, the World Court and the U.N. were ordering our administration to cease the terrorism. I noticed, one day, a newspaper headline saying, Bipartisan Contra aid. Example 2: In 2004, my girlfriend at that time was very involved in campaigning for Kerry, to beat Bush. Because she was my girlfriend, I helped her with the campaign work, tabling, canvassing, helping with mailings. And I promised her that I'd vote for Kerry, even though I have no confidence whatsoever in the Democrats. There was a commercial in which John Edwards said, I know what John Kerry is made of. I told my girlfriend, I know what he's made of too, but I'm going to vote for him anyway. She was invited by her daughter's family to go over to their house to watch the first Kerry-Bush debate on TV. I hadn't been there long, and so, instead of going, I stayed and listened to the debate on the radio. I wouldn't have bothered listening to Republocrats debating eachother, except that she was watching it. When Kerry and Bush weren't specifying and listing everything they agree on, or heavily praising eachother, they were criticizing eachother for not waging war hard enough, not sending enough soldiers to die, not being hard enough on the countries we occupy. Not doing enough to _win_ the wars. Kerry was trying show that, in comparison to Kerry, Bush was a peace-sissy. During that debate, it was clear to me that I was going to have to break my promise to vote for Kerry, because he was just too disgusting for me. Also during that campaign, I called the Democrat Party headquarters, and questioned the humane-ness and justifableness of Kerry's war policy. The woman who answered, probably the woman who ran the place, fully supported that policy, argued that it was justified, and angrily hung up on me. Example 3: I don't know if you remember when Clinton was working on his medical care reform. After allegedly considering everything, he said that single-payer national medical insurance wasn't viable. Noam Chomsky responded by saying something to the effect, No, it isn't viable, because only the public want it. :-) Chomsky and others have pointed out that polls have shown that the public strongly favor that reform. Example 4: In fact, Chomsky and historian Michael Parenti have pointed out that the public, on the whole, are always much more progressive than the Democrats or the Republicans. But they're resigned to the media's claims that the Democrats and Republicans are the two choices. Each person feels isolated, feels that s/he is the only one who feels as s/he does. Feels that the tv's portrayal of the mainstream is accurate. Example 5: I once did a small phone poll myself, regarding the desirability of a more progressive tax system. The people whom I randomly called, from the phonebook, unanimously said that they would prefer higher tax on the wealthiest individuals, with less on the rest of us. No, not only are the Republican and Democrat the same as eachother, but they're very different from the public, whom they claim to represent and speak for. We interrupt this message for a joke: What do you get when you cross Tanya Harding, Elena Bobbit, and Hillary Clinton? You get kneecapped and mutilated, with no medical care. Example 6: Did you know that Obama, a
