[EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi guys, I'm still here, still pondering, but now I have another question. I've been thinking about score voting, approval voting, and plurality (FPTP) voting, and I have a concern. Say we have a situation where we have three candidates, say Gore, Nader, and Bush. Say we have a voter, Abe whose greatest concern is that Bush NOT win. His second priority is that Nader win over Gore - but this priority is a distant second. He *really* doesn't want Bush to win. He would prefer Nader over Gore, but he *hates* Bush. Let's also say that Abe is intelligent, and he is committed to using his vote to maximize his happiness - in other words, rather than vote sincerely and cause his preferences harm, he will always vote strategically where it is to his benefit to do so. If Score Voting was in place, and he were to vote sincerely, Abe probably would vote something like 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0'. However, he's no fool, and he knows that while it is theoretically possibly that Nader *might* win, Gore is his best chance to stopping Bush, and that withholding score from Gore might (if all Nader supporters did it) result in Gore not getting enough of a score, therefor Bush could win. So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need - and so long as Nader's win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are: 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there's no strategic downside. 2) People who would rather feel more sincere about their vote than feel good about the outcome of their vote. 3) People who aren't intelligent to realize that by voting sincerely they may be helping elect their least preferred candidate. And say what you want about intelligence being a bar to entry, you can bet that the smart people behind ALL candidates will make sure that everyone gets the message, so we can largely ignore #3. Most people I imagine would be pragmatic enough to worry more about the end result and less about sincere vs. strategic, so we ignore #2. And #1 people are going to vote the same way anways, so they may as well use Approval voting. OK, so let's throw out Score Voting and use Approval voting. Gore v Nader V Bush. Abe (who hates Bush but prefers Nader) gives an approval vote to Nader, his top-most preference, but knowing that withholding approval from Gore could elect Bush (and not wanting to play the spoiler) he also gives an approval vote to Gore. Since Gore in this example is far and away receiving much more support than Nader, Gore now beats Bush. Let's call the party that put Nader on the ballot the Green party, and that they continue to field candidates in further elections that use the Approval voting system. Abe notices the following pattern: when the Green party fields a candidate that doesn't even have a glimmer of hope winning the election (like the Gore/Nader/Bush one) that people that support the Green party candidate also approve the Democrat candidate as a bulwark against the Republican. And since in those elections the Green party never really had a hope of winning, the Green approval vote is ultimately irrelevant - those elections would have proceeded no differently than if the Green supporters had simply voted Democrat. But much worse yet, Abe notices that in *some* election, the Green party actually gets a chunk of people thinking that Green could actually win. And emboldened by their hopes, many Green supporters decide to go for it, approve of the Green candidate, but *not* the Democrat one. Result: in elections where more voters think more favorably towards Green's chances, their least preferred choice (the Republican) tends to win more! This are my two thoughts: a) Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. b) Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates - which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person's least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. How is this not so? If it *is* so, then as much as I abhor Plurality Voting, I must now likewise abhor Score and Approval Voting. But that shoves me back at
[EM] Question about the Plurality Criterion
As I have had it explained to me, the Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. Which I think means that if X has, for example, 100 votes, then B would have to appear on less than 100 ballots and still *win* for this criterion to be failed, yes? I cannot imagine a (halfway desirable) voting system that would fail the Plurality Criterion - can anyone tell me the simplest one that would? Apart from a lame one like least votes win, I mean? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Why Random by itself doesn't cut it.
(if all Nader supporters did it) result in Gore not getting enough of a score, therefor Bush could win. So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need - and so long as Nader's win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are: 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there's no strategic downside. 2) People who would rather feel more sincere about their vote than feel good about the outcome of their vote. 3) People who aren't intelligent to realize that by voting sincerely they may be helping elect their least preferred candidate. And say what you want about intelligence being a bar to entry, you can bet that the smart people behind ALL candidates will make sure that everyone gets the message, so we can largely ignore #3. Most people I imagine would be pragmatic enough to worry more about the end result and less about sincere vs. strategic, so we ignore #2. And #1 people are going to vote the same way anways, so they may as well use Approval voting. OK, so let's throw out Score Voting and use Approval voting. Gore v Nader V Bush. Abe (who hates Bush but prefers Nader) gives an approval vote to Nader, his top-most preference, but knowing that withholding approval from Gore could elect Bush (and not wanting to play the spoiler) he also gives an approval vote to Gore. Since Gore in this example is far and away receiving much more support than Nader, Gore now beats Bush. Let's call the party that put Nader on the ballot the Green party, and that they continue to field candidates in further elections that use the Approval voting system. Abe notices the following pattern: when the Green party fields a candidate that doesn't even have a glimmer of hope winning the election (like the Gore/Nader/Bush one) that people that support the Green party candidate also approve the Democrat candidate as a bulwark against the Republican. And since in those elections the Green party never really had a hope of winning, the Green approval vote is ultimately irrelevant - those elections would have proceeded no differently than if the Green supporters had simply voted Democrat. But much worse yet, Abe notices that in *some* election, the Green party actually gets a chunk of people thinking that Green could actually win. And emboldened by their hopes, many Green supporters decide to go for it, approve of the Green candidate, but *not* the Democrat one. Result: in elections where more voters think more favorably towards Green's chances, their least preferred choice (the Republican) tends to win more! This are my two thoughts: a) Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. b) Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates - which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person's least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. How is this not so? If it *is* so, then as much as I abhor Plurality Voting, I must now likewise abhor Score and Approval Voting. But that shoves me back at the Bucklin, IRV, and other system that have one of my least favorite flaws - that ranking X higher than Y can cause Y to beat X. :( It's days like these that I feel that there *is* no way to elect people that is fair and right. :( -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20130624/7644697a/attachment-0001.htm -- Message: 3 Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:10:36 -0400 From: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com To: 'EM' election-methods@lists.electorama.com, electionscie...@googlegroups.com Subject: [EM] Question about the Plurality Criterion Message-ID: 01af01ce70e4$9a68fff0$cf3affd0$@4efix.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii As I have had it explained to me, the Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes
[EM] random eg w. improved version of IRV3.
I took Warren's example and ignored all of the voter information except the top 3 choices, tallied up (with Excel) the number of votes each got so that A, B and E were identified as the finalists. I then sorted each of the votes into one of ten categories based on preferences between the three finalists and then summed up the number in each category. Only two voters didn't have one of the three finalists in their top three. I added together the three categories for each of the three finalists, where they were the top preference among the finalists. The totals were: A: 11, B: 14, E:10. This eliminated E so that 3 votes were transferred from E to each of the two candidates, which made B beat A, 17 to 14. But let's say E demanded a recount and instead we considered the outcome if we eliminated A instead. Then B would beat E, 20 to 12. So B wins, almost with a majority, which isn't bad with 7 a-priori competitive candidates, an assumption that is not realistic for real-world important single-winner elections. And, 43% of the vote information was used, the lower rankings were not important and so their non-usage is not important and would be robustly not important if the number of competitive candidates tended to be relatively low for a variety of real world economic(cost of campaigning, building name recognition), psychological reasons(short-cuts used by rationally ignorant voters with opportunity costs to the time spent on politics). dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Is it professional?
To ignore the simple upgrade to IRV that I have proffered and defended at length on this list-serve, when you argue against IRV? dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Is it professional?
I am not sure who is ignoring your upgrade, but I am curious - can you remind me how your voting system works again? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of David L Wetzell Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:09 AM To: EM Subject: [EM] Is it professional? To ignore the simple upgrade to IRV that I have proffered and defended at length on this list-serve, when you argue against IRV? dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.eduwrote: Regarding the plurality criterion: The Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. It is NOT worthy of respect. Consider the following 2-candidate SV election. #votes C1 C2 51 9 8 49 0 9 C1 should win according to the Plurality Criterion, but obviously C2 is the people's choice. One of the advantages of SV is that it properly handles cases like this. Steve OK, SV=Score Voting, right? Score voting doesn't have places, does it, as it is not a ranked based system? I agree with you that in the above election C2 should win, of course - although some would not. I dunno, maybe I don't under this, or maybe the Plurality is better defined without referring to first place or any place. I guess that's my next question: is the Plurality relevant to non ranked systems? Is the Criterion used by experts (like you guys) to refer to C2 winning about as failing the Plurality Criterion? Or is it only about things like Bucklin and IRV? -Thanks. -Benn Grant Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
So if I understand you: You have a single election. You permit people to rank up to 3 candidates, no more. You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. Then, with only those three left, you proceed to process them with standard IRV to find the winner. Is that a correct summation of you system, do I understand it right? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.comwrote: To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.eduwrote: One point overlooked here is that any new party has to go thru an incubation period during which it has virtually no chance of winning. Voting for such a party helps strengthen it, and makes it more likely that others will support it next time around. At some point it may become a contender, and then it might actually start winning elections. If you cast votes (approve or give high scores to) only for parties that might win the current election, then we will be stuck forever with the existing 2-party scam. It doesn't seem like you are saying I am wrong about that, you just seem unhappy that I am right? And under Score/Approval/Plurality voting systems, there would be three phases a party might go through: A) unpopular enough not to be a spoiler B) popular enough to be a spoiler, but not popular enough to win C) popular enough to win often (25% of the time, for example.) On your way to C, you are going to have a LOT of B, and you may never make it to C, especially if people get burned voting for the emerging party by getting their least preferred candidate. The only way to build a strong new party in reality, as far as I can see, is to have a voting system that does not penalize you into getting your least favored choice by voting for your most favored one. Voters may have many different philosophies, and the voting system should accommodate as many as possible. I don't know that I agree with either side of this. Voters ultimately, by and large and by definition, I think, want the best outcome possible. If Nader isn't a real possibility, then a non-conservation wants Gore FAR ahead of Bush. Most non-conservative are intelligent enough to see that Gore and Bush are equally bad from their point of view. And most would rate the election of Bush far more a likely than the election of Nader, and even if it was a coind toss among all three (Gore/Nader/Bush) most would rightly view stopping Bush as more critical than helping Nader beat Gore. It is easily possible that, in the same SV election, voters A and B both score 3 candidates, C1, C2, C3, as 9, 0, 0, respectively for different reasons. A might consider C2 and C3 both to be terrible, while B might consider C2 to be perhaps a 4 or 5, but chooses 0 because of concern that C2 might defeat C1. A third voter with views similar to C2's might score the candidates as 9, 5, 0. All are perfectly legitimate actions. Since we cannot distinguish between pairs such as A and B, it is not appropriate to try to alter the voting system so as to prevent voters from acting strategically. (I think it would be a good idea to urge voters to cast SV votes that accurately correspond to their appraisals, and candidates might do well to so advise their supporters.) Again, is it *theoretically possible that Nader voters might prefer Bush to Gore, but in the real world, progressive tend to see democrats as far superior to republicans, and libertarians tend to see republicans as far superior to democrats. Ignoring that seems like a bad idea. Efforts to change the voting system to nullify or prevent strategic voting lead to systems that restrict the voter's options. E.g, median-based score voting, in effect, restricts the extent to which a voter can support a candidate. First of all, is efforts to ... nullify or prevent strategic voting the same meaning as efforts to make sincere voting produce similar choices to strategic voting.? Second of all, it seems to me that the less divergence there is between strategic and sincere voting, the more beneficial qualities the voting system has, such as: -we can worry less about the spoiler effect, which promotes more than just 2 parties -we can worry less that people are accidentally voting against their interests -we can have fewer debates about whether people have an obligation to vote strategically or sincerely This would seem to be a good thing. But ultimately, I don't think you answered my central questions (and pardon me if you did and I just don't see it): - Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. - Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates – which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person’s least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. Thanks.
Re: [EM] [CES #8924] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Most non-conservative are intelligent enough to see that Gore and Bush are equally bad from their point of view. was supposed to be Most non-conservative are intelligent enough to see that Gore and Bush are NOT equally bad from their point of view. My typing sucks and always has. You lucky bastards get to try to read what I write. ;) -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: electionscie...@googlegroups.com [mailto:electionscie...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Benjamin Grant Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:40 AM To: electionsciencefoundation Cc: EM Subject: Re: [CES #8924] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu mailto:un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: One point overlooked here is that any new party has to go thru an incubation period during which it has virtually no chance of winning. Voting for such a party helps strengthen it, and makes it more likely that others will support it next time around. At some point it may become a contender, and then it might actually start winning elections. If you cast votes (approve or give high scores to) only for parties that might win the current election, then we will be stuck forever with the existing 2-party scam. It doesn't seem like you are saying I am wrong about that, you just seem unhappy that I am right? And under Score/Approval/Plurality voting systems, there would be three phases a party might go through: A) unpopular enough not to be a spoiler B) popular enough to be a spoiler, but not popular enough to win C) popular enough to win often (25% of the time, for example.) On your way to C, you are going to have a LOT of B, and you may never make it to C, especially if people get burned voting for the emerging party by getting their least preferred candidate. The only way to build a strong new party in reality, as far as I can see, is to have a voting system that does not penalize you into getting your least favored choice by voting for your most favored one. Voters may have many different philosophies, and the voting system should accommodate as many as possible. I don't know that I agree with either side of this. Voters ultimately, by and large and by definition, I think, want the best outcome possible. If Nader isn't a real possibility, then a non-conservation wants Gore FAR ahead of Bush. Most non-conservative are intelligent enough to see that Gore and Bush are equally bad from their point of view. And most would rate the election of Bush far more a likely than the election of Nader, and even if it was a coind toss among all three (Gore/Nader/Bush) most would rightly view stopping Bush as more critical than helping Nader beat Gore. It is easily possible that, in the same SV election, voters A and B both score 3 candidates, C1, C2, C3, as 9, 0, 0, respectively for different reasons. A might consider C2 and C3 both to be terrible, while B might consider C2 to be perhaps a 4 or 5, but chooses 0 because of concern that C2 might defeat C1. A third voter with views similar to C2's might score the candidates as 9, 5, 0. All are perfectly legitimate actions. Since we cannot distinguish between pairs such as A and B, it is not appropriate to try to alter the voting system so as to prevent voters from acting strategically. (I think it would be a good idea to urge voters to cast SV votes that accurately correspond to their appraisals, and candidates might do well to so advise their supporters.) Again, is it *theoretically possible that Nader voters might prefer Bush to Gore, but in the real world, progressive tend to see democrats as far superior to republicans, and libertarians tend to see republicans as far superior to democrats. Ignoring that seems like a bad idea. Efforts to change the voting system to nullify or prevent strategic voting lead to systems that restrict the voter's options. E.g, median-based score voting, in effect, restricts the extent to which a voter can support a candidate. First of all, is efforts to ... nullify or prevent strategic voting the same meaning as efforts to make sincere voting produce similar choices to strategic voting.? Second of all, it seems to me that the less divergence there is between strategic and sincere voting, the more beneficial qualities the voting system has, such as: -we can worry less about the spoiler effect, which promotes more than just 2 parties -we can worry less that people are accidentally voting against their interests -we can have fewer debates about whether people have an obligation to vote strategically or sincerely This would seem to be a good thing. But ultimately, I don't think you answered my central questions (and pardon me if you did and I just don't see it): * Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
David L WetzellSent: Monday, June 24, 2013 4:19 PM Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In real world? Evidence please - on a WORLD basis.. I have never encountered such limits in any IRV election. But then, I don't live in the USA. Some 3-only limits are imposed because of the limitations of the out-of-date equipment used to tally paper ballots. James Gilmour Edinburgh, Scotland --- avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 130624-1, 24/06/2013 Tested on: 24/06/2013 17:17:08 avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2013 AVAST Software. http://www.avast.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
I limit the collection of ranking info to up to 3 rankings per voter, which is useful for practical purposes, and then treat the up to 3 rankings per voter as approval votes to determine which three of the umpteen candidates proceed. I then process those three with the standard IRV to find the winner. dlw dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.comwrote: So if I understand you: You have a single election. You permit people to rank up to 3 candidates, no more. You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. Then, with only those three left, you proceed to process them with standard IRV to find the winner. Is that a correct summation of you system, do I understand it right? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.comwrote: To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
Isn't that what I said? If not, where did I get it wrong? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of David L Wetzell Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 12:20 PM To: Benjamin Grant Cc: EM Subject: Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional? I limit the collection of ranking info to up to 3 rankings per voter, which is useful for practical purposes, and then treat the up to 3 rankings per voter as approval votes to determine which three of the umpteen candidates proceed. I then process those three with the standard IRV to find the winner. dlw dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com mailto:panjakr...@gmail.com wrote: So if I understand you: You have a single election. You permit people to rank up to 3 candidates, no more. You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. Then, with only those three left, you proceed to process them with standard IRV to find the winner. Is that a correct summation of you system, do I understand it right? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com mailto:wetze...@gmail.com wrote: To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw 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] re James Gilmour
Jame Gilmour: In real world? Evidence please - on a WORLD basis.. dlw: I mistyped, I know things are done differently in different places. In the US, it's common to have up to 3 rankings. It's not a serious limitation for most single-winner political elections. Once again, it depends on the number of competitive candidates and in the worse case, it might lead to some strategic voting, but less so than o.w. wd be the case. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi, (Benjamin wrote:) On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: Regarding the plurality criterion: The Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. It is NOT worthy of respect. Consider the following 2-candidate SV election. #votes C1 C2 51 9 8 49 0 9 C1 should win according to the Plurality Criterion, but obviously C2 is the people's choice. One of the advantages of SV is that it properly handles cases like this. Woodall (the inventor of the criterion) used a model in which all methods are rank methods (and optionally have the concept of truncation). If you want to use the criteria in other environments you just have to be consistent about how you extend it. I would interpret 0 ratings as truncation and translate the above scenario to say: 51: C1C2 49: C2 (C1 has no votes) So it is no violation of Plurality to elect C2, only a violation of Majority Favorite. But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated OK, SV=Score Voting, right? Score voting doesn't have places, does it, as it is not a ranked based system? I agree with you that in the above election C2 should win, of course - although some would not. I dunno, maybe I don't under this, or maybe the Plurality is better defined without referring to first place or any place. I guess that's my next question: is the Plurality relevant to non ranked systems? Is the Criterion used by experts (like you guys) to refer to C2 winning about as failing the Plurality Criterion? Or is it only about things like Bucklin and IRV? Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
Ben: You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. dlw: This was unclear about how the top 3 were chosen. dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com wrote: Isn’t that what I said? If not, where did I get it wrong? ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** *From:* election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] *On Behalf Of *David L Wetzell *Sent:* Monday, June 24, 2013 12:20 PM *To:* Benjamin Grant *Cc:* EM *Subject:* Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional? ** ** I limit the collection of ranking info to up to 3 rankings per voter, which is useful for practical purposes, and then treat the up to 3 rankings per voter as approval votes to determine which three of the umpteen candidates proceed. I then process those three with the standard IRV to find the winner. ** ** dlw dlw ** ** On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com wrote: So if I understand you: ** ** You have a single election. You permit people to rank up to 3 candidates, no more. You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. Then, with only those three left, you proceed to process them with standard IRV to find the winner.*** * ** ** Is that a correct summation of you system, do I understand it right? ** ** On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com wrote: To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com ** ** Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw ** ** ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ** ** ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
Let me try again, because I want to make sure I get what you are trying to communicate. 1) People vote from the pool of all candidate, for their top 3, ranked. For example, Candidate 1: 1st place, Candidate 2, 3rd place, C3, no place, C4, no place, C5, 2nd place, and the rest of the cnadidates, no place. 2) Each candidate who got ANY rank place (of the three) gets a +1 point per ballot they got ranked on. We know throw out all but the candidates with the top three point scores. 3) Now, we use the ballots to conduct an IRV style algorithm with the three remaining candidates and determine the winner. If I *now* got that right, it seems to me that if there are, for example, ten candidates, and if I choose three and NONE of the three I chose make it to the final three, then my ballot is irrelevant in choosing which of the final 3 I preferred. Therefor there would be a STRONG strategic reason to make SURE that at least one of the three I rank would be favored to make it to the final IRV round - which diverges from the possible sincere vote. -Benn Grant. On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:31 PM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.comwrote: Ben: You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. dlw: This was unclear about how the top 3 were chosen. dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com wrote: Isn’t that what I said? If not, where did I get it wrong? ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** *From:* election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] *On Behalf Of *David L Wetzell *Sent:* Monday, June 24, 2013 12:20 PM *To:* Benjamin Grant *Cc:* EM *Subject:* Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional? ** ** I limit the collection of ranking info to up to 3 rankings per voter, which is useful for practical purposes, and then treat the up to 3 rankings per voter as approval votes to determine which three of the umpteen candidates proceed. I then process those three with the standard IRV to find the winner. ** ** dlw dlw ** ** On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com wrote: So if I understand you: ** ** You have a single election. You permit people to rank up to 3 candidates, no more. You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. Then, with only those three left, you proceed to process them with standard IRV to find the winner.** ** ** ** Is that a correct summation of you system, do I understand it right? ** ** On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com wrote: To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com ** ** Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw ** ** ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ** ** ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated Kevin A little confused again. What voting system are we using above? Lost track of that. -Benn Grant Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi Benn, De : Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 11h45 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated Kevin A little confused again. What voting system are we using above? Lost track of that. My assumption was that we were talking about Range, with blank ratings counting as zero. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional?
Hi Ben, 1) they get to vote or rank up to 3 candidates. If someone only wants one candidate to win they need not rank others or if they only had time to learn about two or three and only really liked one or two of those candidates then they could rank one or two of them. 2 and 3 are right. Yes, if your top 3 were not among the top 3 for everyone then your vote would count in the first stage, not the final stage. And yes that could lead to some strategic voting, but there'd be less of such. And this would not be a common phenomenon if the top 3 are genuinely more competitive candidates. In Warren's example, only 2/37 votes didn't have one of the top 3 candidates among their top three candidates. That's basically 5.4% and that was with a system where all seven candidates had a priori equal chances of being the final winner, not a realistic assumption. dlw dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.comwrote: Let me try again, because I want to make sure I get what you are trying to communicate. 1) People vote from the pool of all candidate, for their top 3, ranked. For example, Candidate 1: 1st place, Candidate 2, 3rd place, C3, no place, C4, no place, C5, 2nd place, and the rest of the cnadidates, no place. 2) Each candidate who got ANY rank place (of the three) gets a +1 point per ballot they got ranked on. We know throw out all but the candidates with the top three point scores. 3) Now, we use the ballots to conduct an IRV style algorithm with the three remaining candidates and determine the winner. If I *now* got that right, it seems to me that if there are, for example, ten candidates, and if I choose three and NONE of the three I chose make it to the final three, then my ballot is irrelevant in choosing which of the final 3 I preferred. Therefor there would be a STRONG strategic reason to make SURE that at least one of the three I rank would be favored to make it to the final IRV round - which diverges from the possible sincere vote. -Benn Grant. On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:31 PM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.comwrote: Ben: You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. dlw: This was unclear about how the top 3 were chosen. dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:27 AM, Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com wrote: Isn’t that what I said? If not, where did I get it wrong? ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** *From:* election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] *On Behalf Of *David L Wetzell *Sent:* Monday, June 24, 2013 12:20 PM *To:* Benjamin Grant *Cc:* EM *Subject:* Re: [EM] Fwd: Is it professional? ** ** I limit the collection of ranking info to up to 3 rankings per voter, which is useful for practical purposes, and then treat the up to 3 rankings per voter as approval votes to determine which three of the umpteen candidates proceed. I then process those three with the standard IRV to find the winner. ** ** dlw dlw ** ** On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:24 AM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com wrote: So if I understand you: ** ** You have a single election. You permit people to rank up to 3 candidates, no more. You eliminate form consideration all but the top 3 people who were ranked, regardless of what rank they got. Then, with only those three left, you proceed to process them with standard IRV to find the winner. ** ** Is that a correct summation of you system, do I understand it right? ** ** On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:19 AM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com wrote: To: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com ** ** Most IRV in real world limits the rankings to 3 candidates per voter. In my approach, I treat the rankings as approval votes in the first round and tally up the number of times each candidate gets ranked to determine 3 finalists.There are 10 ways to rank 3 finalists so I sort the votes into these 10 categories, tally them up and use the info to have an instant runoff vote among the 3 finalists. Ben, this is the approach that I said gave the same result for all of the cases you brought up in your initial email to the list, which illustrated why you thought IRV was flawed. dlw ** ** ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ** ** ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:50 PM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated Kevin A little confused again. What voting system are we using above? Lost track of that. My assumption was that we were talking about Range, with blank ratings counting as zero. Kevin If we are talking about Range and counting blank rating as zero, then this: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated is really no different than this: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 rated 0 49: C2 rated 10, C1 rated 0 And I think, since plurality says If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win, then X and Y have the same number of any place votes, i.e., Range voting can NEVER fail plurality. Again, I can't imagine a decent system that would. Now if there was some functional difference between a 0 rating and no rating at all, we could examine that, I think. For example, I have hear some people talking about averages, what if a lack of rating *was* functionally different from a 0 rating? What if the score each candidate gets isn't the *sum* of all their ratings (with unratings = 0) but the average of all their ratings, with a non-rating not counting against them? Let me work this through here. According to the sum approach, C1 gets 5 * 51 = 255 and C2 gets 10 * 49 = 490, C2 wins. If we are looking for the average, then C! obviously has an average of 5 among the 51 people who gave him a rating, while C2 obviously has an average of 10. C2 wins. It's interesting to note that whether or not you use sum or average both of the first example above turn out the same way. In any case, with a Range/Score system that permits people to have a functionally different from zero no rating option, I still have an issue concluding the the Plurality criterion was failed. Did C1 have more first place votes than C2? I don't think so. Therefor Plurality is not violated, is it? Because in order for Plurality to be violated, the one candidate would have to get more first place votes that another has ANY place votes, and still lose. As far as I can see here, C2 had more first place votes that C1. Is there a way to get C1 to win while C2 has more first place votes than C1 has ANY place votes? I cannot imagine that in this circumstance. Can you? What am I missing? Or have I screwed up somewhere? -Benn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Please forward to the appropriate list for me. Thank you. From: electionscie...@googlegroups.com [mailto:electionscie...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Benjamin Grant Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:40 AM On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu mailto:un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: If you cast votes (approve or give high scores to) only for parties that might win the current election, then we will be stuck forever with the existing 2-party scam. Yes. But the point of approval or score voting is voters do not have to do that in order to keep their least favorite from winning. And under Score/Approval/Plurality voting systems, there would be three phases a party might go through: A) unpopular enough not to be a spoiler B) popular enough to be a spoiler, but not popular enough to win C) popular enough to win often (25% of the time, for example.) Those options apply to plurality and IRV, not to approval or score voting where a voter's 2nd choice vote cannot cause his least favorite to win. On your way to C, you are going to have a LOT of B, and you may never make it to C, especially if people get burned voting for the emerging party by getting their least preferred candidate. Speaking re. plurality or IRV still. The only way to build a strong new party in reality, as far as I can see, is to have a voting system that does not penalize you into getting your least favored choice by voting for your most favored one. Yes. Agreed. Second of all, it seems to me that the less divergence there is between strategic and sincere voting, the more beneficial qualities the voting system has, such as: -we can worry less about the spoiler effect, which promotes more than just 2 parties -we can worry less that people are accidentally voting against their interests -we can have fewer debates about whether people have an obligation to vote strategically or sincerely This would seem to be a good thing. Ideally, but practically we may have to continue to vote for all candidates other than our least favorates. * Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. I agree. * Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates - which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person's least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. First, why should anyone care if some votes turn out to be irrelevant according to your definition? Second, if someone uses approval voting like plurality byvoting for their true favorite without also voting for their most likely favorite candidate to win, then they are accepting that they might spoil the chances of their other favorite(s). Neither of these arguments is a logically coherent reason for favoring plurality over approval voting. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. There is no logically coherent reason for approval voting to devolve into plurality IMO. Kathy Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Question about the Plurality Criterion
Ben, MinMax(Margins) fails the Plurality criterion. It elects the candidate with the weakest pairwise loss as measured by the difference between the two candidates' vote tallies. An alternative definition is that it elects the candidate who needs the fewest number of extra bullet-votes to be able to pairwise-beat all the other candidates. 3:A 5:BA 6:C CB 6-5, BA 5-3, AC 8-6. That method elects B, but the Plurality criterion says that B can't win because of C. Given that if the B voters had truncated the winner would have been C, this is also a failure of the Later-no-Help criterion. The method meets the Condorcet criterion and Mono-add-Top. It has been promoted here by Juho Laatu. Chris Benham Ben grant wrote (24 June 2013): As I have had it explained to me, the Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. Which I think means that if X has, for example, 100 votes, then B would have to appear on less than 100 ballots and still *win* for this criterion to be failed, yes? I cannot imagine a (halfway desirable) voting system that would fail the Plurality Criterion - can anyone tell me the simplest one that would? Apart from a lame one like least votes win, I mean? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi Benn, De : Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 12h11 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:50 PM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated Kevin A little confused again. What voting system are we using above? Lost track of that. My assumption was that we were talking about Range, with blank ratings counting as zero. Kevin If we are talking about Range and counting blank rating as zero, then this: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated is really no different than this: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 rated 0 49: C2 rated 10, C1 rated 0 And I think, since plurality says If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win, then X and Y have the same number of any place votes, i.e., Range voting can NEVER fail plurality. Again, I can't imagine a decent system that would. Woodall's framework involves a concept of voters explicitly acknowledging candidates on their ballots, and Plurality is based on this. It doesn't really matter whether being unrated or being rated 0 are treated the same by the method. Personally I think a 0 rating is about the same as not being acknowledged as having any value, but if instead we say that an explicit 0 rating counts as the acknowledgment, then Plurality failures can be avoided as long as the voters put 0s instead of leaving candidates unranked. Now if there was some functional difference between a 0 rating and no rating at all, we could examine that, I think. The functional difference for Plurality relates to the input, not the result. Consider why this criterion should be of any interest in the first place. You seem to agree that it is not good to fail it. In any case, with a Range/Score system that permits people to have a functionally different from zero no rating option, I still have an issue concluding the the Plurality criterion was failed. Did C1 have more first place votes than C2? I don't think so. ... What am I missing? Or have I screwed up somewhere? What first place votes means in the rank context is strictly ranked above all of the other candidates. Plurality is originally defined for rank methods. If you want to apply criteria for rank methods to some other kind of method, you have to explain how you can interpret the latter as a rank method. For ratings ballots I think it's easiest to say that you just extract the relative rankings from the ratings. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: Please forward to the appropriate list for me. Thank you. From: electionscie...@googlegroups.com [mailto:electionscie...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Benjamin Grant Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:40 AM On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu mailto:un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: If you cast votes (approve or give high scores to) only for parties that might win the current election, then we will be stuck forever with the existing 2-party scam. Yes. But the point of approval or score voting is voters do not have to do that in order to keep their least favorite from winning. I understand that is it's goal, but I seem to have pointed out that it still does that. Aparently, not well, though. And under Score/Approval/Plurality voting systems, there would be three phases a party might go through: A) unpopular enough not to be a spoiler B) popular enough to be a spoiler, but not popular enough to win C) popular enough to win often (25% of the time, for example.) Those options apply to plurality and IRV, not to approval or score voting where a voter's 2nd choice vote cannot cause his least favorite to win. Except when it does? I know that the party line is that Approval and Score Voting cannot cause your least favorite to winner, but that's untrue if Nader being Abe's (our voter's) preference over Gore causes him to give less than 100 to Gore - that *can* cause Bush to win. The only way to be sure that he has done everything to prevent Bush from winning (if that is his highest priority in a Nader/Gore/Bush election) is to make sure to score the person most likely to beat Bush as high as possible. Therefore he *must* strategically score Gore a 100, Therefore Score/Range voting devolves into Approval voting. So let's examine Approval voting, since that is what we are left with. If we do an Approval voting system with Gore/Nader/Bush, assuming that Abe's first priority is to stop Bush and his next priority (a distant second, considering how opposed he is to Bush) is to support Nader over Gore. Well, now he cannot do that. He can support Nader *and* Gore, be he cannot support Nader *over* Gore without risking a greater chance of a Bush victory. And in our example (as in real life) Gore has much more support than Nader. This means that If he Approval votes for BOTH of them, it is unlikely that his vote for Nader will accomplish anything. If he votes for ONLY Nader, he has a better chance for Nader to beat Gore, but a much worse chance for stopping a Bush victory. And, this is the poison pill: Let's say that election after election people see that more and more people are voting for Nader,although he is not winning. Thinking optimistically (as some people like to) that this might be the year that Nader could take it all, they put all their money on Nader - they vote Nader, but *not* Gore. The result? Gore's numbers drop, Nader's numbers rise a little, but Bush still get's the most! This seems almost worse than plurality, in a way, because at least with plurality we all knew and admitted that we need to vote against the spoiler effect, but Approval voting may actually suffer from it just as much while not as obviously - meaning people may vote against there interests more by not seeing that. Make sense? On your way to C, you are going to have a LOT of B, and you may never make it to C, especially if people get burned voting for the emerging party by getting their least preferred candidate. Speaking re. plurality or IRV still. Huh? The only way to build a strong new party in reality, as far as I can see, is to have a voting system that does not penalize you into getting your least favored choice by voting for your most favored one. Yes. Agreed. Good. Second of all, it seems to me that the less divergence there is between strategic and sincere voting, the more beneficial qualities the voting system has, such as: -we can worry less about the spoiler effect, which promotes more than just 2 parties -we can worry less that people are accidentally voting against their interests -we can have fewer debates about whether people have an obligation to vote strategically or sincerely This would seem to be a good thing. Ideally, but practically we may have to continue to vote for all candidates other than our least favorates. Again, huh? we may have to continue to vote for all candidates other than our least favorates? When we we NOT vote for candidates other than our least favorites? You seem to be suggesting that I want voters to vote for their least favorite candidates? * Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. I agree. OK, so at least we agree that Score Voting is
Re: [EM] Question about the Plurality Criterion
Thanks for the note - squirreling this away for future study. :) -Benn On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Chris Benham cbenha...@yahoo.com.auwrote: Ben, MinMax(Margins) fails the Plurality criterion. It elects the candidate with the weakest pairwise loss as measured by the difference between the two candidates' vote tallies. An alternative definition is that it elects the candidate who needs the fewest number of extra bullet-votes to be able to pairwise-beat all the other candidates. 3:A 5:BA 6:C CB 6-5, BA 5-3, AC 8-6. That method elects B, but the Plurality criterion says that B can't win because of C. Given that if the B voters had truncated the winner would have been C, this is also a failure of the Later-no-Help criterion. The method meets the Condorcet criterion and Mono-add-Top. It has been promoted here by Juho Laatu. Chris Benham Ben grant wrote (24 June 2013): As I have had it explained to me, the Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. Which I think means that if X has, for example, 100 votes, then B would have to appear on less than 100 ballots and still *win* for this criterion to be failed, yes? I cannot imagine a (halfway desirable) voting system that would fail the Plurality Criterion - can anyone tell me the simplest one that would? Apart from a lame one like least votes win, I mean? 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] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Ben Grant wrote: - Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates – which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person’s least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. The idea is that some voters dislike feeling strategically pressured to vote their sincere favourites below equal-top. With voters never needing to vote their sincere favourites below equal-top, previous elections become a much better indicator of which candidates are really weak. So I don't see compliance with the Favorite Betrayal Criterion as pointless. Chris Benham Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Bejamin, I think we fundamentally agree about most things except for one statement you made (I think you're seeing some disagreement where there is none), which is why I'll only respond to this. You said Since this isn't fixed, tell me what the benefit of Approval is in the real world over Plurality? I want to be CLEAR about this, so please let me: I am not asking how the what supporters of Approval voting promise will happen, nor what Approval voting's creators intentions are - I am ONLY asking about pragmatic and real-world RESULTS. Me: E.g. If people see that the number of votes for Nader are virtually equal to those for Gore, and investigation (undistorted polling) shows that 9 out of ten of those voters preferred Nader first, and the least favorite candidate was more than 10% behind, then in the next election mathematically, only 5% of those voters have to switch to Nader for Nader to win and still beat the least favorite. I.e. People are influenced by perceived public opinion and as well since your scenario was counterfactual, it may be less likely than cases that are possible where approval voting ends up making it possible for small parties to grow large and beat currently large parties. You have no basis for claiming your counterfactual is more likely to occur than any other and yet you want to cut off clear opportunity for building support for smaller parties based on it? People, or at least some people may be able to figure out how and when to use approval voting to boost currently smaller parties. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: Bejamin, I think we fundamentally agree about most things except for one statement you made (I think you're seeing some disagreement where there is none), which is why I'll only respond to this. You said Since this isn't fixed, tell me what the benefit of Approval is in the real world over Plurality? I want to be CLEAR about this, so please let me: I am not asking how the what supporters of Approval voting promise will happen, nor what Approval voting's creators intentions are - I am ONLY asking about pragmatic and real-world RESULTS. Me: E.g. If people see that the number of votes for Nader are virtually equal to those for Gore, and investigation (undistorted polling) shows that 9 out of ten of those voters preferred Nader first, and the least favorite candidate was more than 10% behind, then in the next election mathematically, only 5% of those voters have to switch to Nader for Nader to win and still beat the least favorite. Yes, that is the best case scenario, and what we all hope would happen. What if the scenario I described happened instead? It's actually virtually guaranteed on the *way* to gettting to the scenario you painted. I.e. People are influenced by perceived public opinion and as well since your scenario was counterfactual, it may be less likely than cases that are possible where approval voting ends up making it possible for small parties to grow large and beat currently large parties. You have no basis for claiming your counterfactual is more likely to occur than any other and yet you want to cut off clear opportunity for building support for smaller parties based on it? People, or at least some people may be able to figure out how and when to use approval voting to boost currently smaller parties. I have yet to see any demonstration of any counterfactuality, so at this point I am not granting that claim. Unless I just plain don't understand what you mean when you say counterfactual - which is quite possible. In any case, among the things I seek in a voting system is a system where one doesn't have to choose between stopping your least preferred candidate and supporting your most preferred one. And so far as I can see, that will happen realistically in Approval voting when a minority group gets too optimistic. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Warren needs to double check his work.
There should be a few more fewer ranks in the red in his example. http://rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html Also, I don't think voters care that much if their deeper preferences aren't consulted when their top prefs get elected or come in 2nd place and so it seems contrived to make a big deal out of it. This does get at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV, which then makes it easier to use those rankings as approval votes for a first round that reduces the number of candidates much more quickly. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Is it professional?
On 06/24/2013 05:08 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: To ignore the simple upgrade to IRV that I have proffered and defended at length on this list-serve, when you argue against IRV? Yes, for many reasons. Among them: because other simple upgrades give way greater bang for the buck. Consider BTR-IRV: It's like IRV, except when eliminating, you don't remove the Plurality loser. Instead, you eliminate, of the two with worst Plurality results for that round, whoever is ranked below the other on the most ballots. That's two sentences, and boom, Condorcet compliance (and thus resistance against Burlington scenarios). I can hear the counter: But it's not IRV! It doesn't have momentum! But whatever force that counter has against BTR-IRV, it also has against your unproven hybrid. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.
On 06/24/2013 09:33 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: There should be a few more fewer ranks in the red in his example. http://rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html Also, I don't think voters care that much if their deeper preferences aren't consulted when their top prefs get elected or come in 2nd place and so it seems contrived to make a big deal out of it. This does get at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV, which then makes it easier to use those rankings as approval votes for a first round that reduces the number of candidates much more quickly. One man might say: This does get at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV. The other man might say: This does get at why full IRV is not much better than 3-candidate IRV. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Question about the Plurality Criterion
On 06/24/2013 04:10 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: As I have had it explained to me, the Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. Which I think means that if X has, for example, 100 votes, then B would have to appear on less than 100 ballots and still **win** for this criterion to be failed, yes? I cannot imagine a (halfway desirable) voting system that would fail the Plurality Criterion – can anyone tell me the simplest one that would? Apart from a lame one like “least votes win”, I mean? That depends on what you put into a candidate not being ranked on the ballot. If you think that voters mean that all the candidates they rank are better than those they don't rank, then Plurality obviously makes sense. On the other hand, if not ranking a candidate simply means the voter has no opinion, then the Plurality criterion is no longer as obvious. A very simple system that fails the Plurality criterion for this reason is mean (average) Range. In this system, you take the mean rating of each candidate, and greatest mean wins; but in this particular variant, if you don't rate candidate X, you don't change his mean in any way. So you could have a candidate A that's ranked with a mean of 8.5 by 1 million voters, and a candidate B that's ranked with a mean of 9 by 500 000 voters (and otherwise not ranked). Say more than 500k of the ballots list A first. Then B is barred from winning by the Plurality criterion. Yet by the logic of mean Range, B should win because, according to that logic, the voters who didn't list B were just saying they didn't *know* what rating B should have and instead left the task of determining B's mean to the others who did rate B. Now, pure mean Range has a problem in that candidates who are only known by a few fanatics could get an illegitimate win, so some sort of soft quorum (like IMDB does for its movies) is probably better. I just use mean Range as an example of a system that isn't obviously insane yet fails the Plurality criterion (or one particular way the Plurality criterion might be extended to rated ballots). Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.
Another might add, This is why the number of competitive candidates and the extent of low-info voters matters in the comparison. dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: On 06/24/2013 09:33 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: There should be a few more fewer ranks in the red in his example. http://rangevoting.org/**IrvIgnoreExample.htmlhttp://rangevoting.org/IrvIgnoreExample.html Also, I don't think voters care that much if their deeper preferences aren't consulted when their top prefs get elected or come in 2nd place and so it seems contrived to make a big deal out of it. This does get at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV, which then makes it easier to use those rankings as approval votes for a first round that reduces the number of candidates much more quickly. One man might say: This does get at why little is lost when only 3 rankings are allowed with IRV. The other man might say: This does get at why full IRV is not much better than 3-candidate IRV. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Is it professional?
The short-cut in my hybrid has been used in some elections and it had potential to coopt the momentum of IRV, but I think that FairVote's upgrade to top-two might take its place... Now, The same might be true of BTR-IRV, the main draw-back is that seems to work best with voters ranking the candidates. I've been presuming that many voters won't want to do a lot of research and rank all the candidates. My suggestion doesn't require that to improve on FPP. And, the same can be said for the new upgrade FairVote is pushing for. Maybe with only 4 candidates, voters will take the time to look at all four... dlw dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: On 06/24/2013 05:08 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: To ignore the simple upgrade to IRV that I have proffered and defended at length on this list-serve, when you argue against IRV? Yes, for many reasons. Among them: because other simple upgrades give way greater bang for the buck. Consider BTR-IRV: It's like IRV, except when eliminating, you don't remove the Plurality loser. Instead, you eliminate, of the two with worst Plurality results for that round, whoever is ranked below the other on the most ballots. That's two sentences, and boom, Condorcet compliance (and thus resistance against Burlington scenarios). I can hear the counter: But it's not IRV! It doesn't have momentum! But whatever force that counter has against BTR-IRV, it also has against your unproven hybrid. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Question about the Plurality Criterion
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: On 06/24/2013 04:10 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: As I have had it explained to me, the Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. Which I think means that if X has, for example, 100 votes, then B would have to appear on less than 100 ballots and still **win** for this criterion to be failed, yes? I cannot imagine a (halfway desirable) voting system that would fail the Plurality Criterion – can anyone tell me the simplest one that would? Apart from a lame one like “least votes win”, I mean? That depends on what you put into a candidate not being ranked on the ballot. If you think that voters mean that all the candidates they rank are better than those they don't rank, then Plurality obviously makes sense. On the other hand, if not ranking a candidate simply means the voter has no opinion, then the Plurality criterion is no longer as obvious. Yeah, I am starting to get that - that is a critical choice to make in crafting and executing the system. A very simple system that fails the Plurality criterion for this reason is mean (average) Range. In this system, you take the mean rating of each candidate, and greatest mean wins; but in this particular variant, if you don't rate candidate X, you don't change his mean in any way. So you could have a candidate A that's ranked with a mean of 8.5 by 1 million voters, and a candidate B that's ranked with a mean of 9 by 500 000 voters (and otherwise not ranked). Say more than 500k of the ballots list A first. Then B is barred from winning by the Plurality criterion. Yet by the logic of mean Range, B should win because, according to that logic, the voters who didn't list B were just saying they didn't *know* what rating B should have and instead left the task of determining B's mean to the others who did rate B. Now, pure mean Range has a problem in that candidates who are only known by a few fanatics could get an illegitimate win, so some sort of soft quorum (like IMDB does for its movies) is probably better. I just use mean Range as an example of a system that isn't obviously insane yet fails the Plurality criterion (or one particular way the Plurality criterion might be extended to rated ballots). Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Interesting - to wrap my brain around this going to have to create some exmaple fake elections with these stats, will reply back once I have, could be a day or more. -Benn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] All systems of voting are probably deeply flawed
Just a quick note to all, if I seem to be going after or down on whatever system of voting you prefer, don't take it personally. It's not that I have a better one in mind, it's just that I have a drive to truly know each system top to bottom, no holds barred. And just because I find an aspect of a system is abhorrent is not to say that I won't find another system even more abhorrent. It seems that every voting system I have check out thus far has what I would certainly call deep flaws. Even if I remove some of the Criteria from the list that I don't much care about - for example, if I understand it correctly, it doesn't bother me if a well-supported compromise candidate (ranked as 1 or 2 by 90%) is elected over a more narrowly supported first place candidate that still got 51% of the vote. But even if I remove from my personal consideration all the criteria that I don't care about, there are plenty left that I do, and it sure is seeming that no matter what, even the least bad system is going to have some (to me) serious flaws. So, again, if I am saying that your favorite voting system is horrible, that doesn't mean I'm saying that it isn't inevitable. Just that none of our choices seem that wonderful. After all, sometimes the lesser of evils is the best one can do - at least as a pragmatist, I must be open to that. :) Thanks. -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 06/24/2013 03:06 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: Hi guys, I’m still here, still pondering, but now I have another question. I’ve been thinking about score voting, approval voting, and plurality (FPTP) voting, and I have a concern. Say we have a situation where we have three candidates, say Gore, Nader, and Bush. Say we have a voter, Abe whose greatest concern is that Bush NOT win. His second priority is that Nader win over Gore – but this priority is a distant second. He *really* doesn’t want Bush to win. He would prefer Nader over Gore, but he *hates* Bush. Let’s also say that Abe is intelligent, and he is committed to using his vote to maximize his happiness – in other words, rather than vote sincerely and cause his preferences harm, he will always vote strategically where it is to his benefit to do so. If Score Voting was in place, and he were to vote sincerely, Abe probably would vote something like ‘Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. However, he’s no fool, and he knows that while it is theoretically possibly that Nader *might* win, Gore is his best chance to stopping Bush, and that withholding score from Gore might (if all Nader supporters did it) result in Gore not getting enough of a score, therefor Bush could win. So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need – and so long as Nader’s win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. You're generally right. There are some very particular situations with incomplete information where it makes the most sense to use partial ballots, but those happen way too rarely to make a difference. You can see this from the other end, too: say you're in an Approval election and want to vote 0-10-range style. You want to give X a rating of 4, but it's an Approval election. To do this, you generate a random number on 0...10. If it is lower or equal to the rating (in this case 4), you approve of X, otherwise, you don't. If everybody did that, the Range and Approval results would give the same winner (with high probability). So in a real sense, Range is Approval with fractional votes permitted. Also, Range could possibly give different results than Approval voting. Consider an election where 99% of the voters are strategic. The vote comes out to a tie between Nader and Gore, according to these 99%. Then the remaining 1%, voting sincerely, vote something like [Nader: 90%, Gore: 70%, Bush: 10%] (strategic would be [Nader: 100%, Gore: 100%, Bush: 0%]). Then those votes break the tie and Nader wins. For reasons like this, a mix of strategic and honest voters give better results than just having strategic ones. And say what you want about intelligence being a bar to entry, you can bet that the smart people behind ALL candidates will make sure that everyone gets the message, so we can largely ignore #3. Most people I imagine would be pragmatic enough to worry more about the end result and less about sincere vs. strategic, so we ignore #2. And #1 people are going to vote the same way anways, so they may as well use Approval voting. OK, so let’s throw out Score Voting and use Approval voting. Gore v Nader V Bush. Abe (who hates Bush but prefers Nader) gives an approval vote to Nader, his top-most preference, but knowing that withholding approval from Gore could elect Bush (and not wanting to play the spoiler) he also gives an approval vote to Gore. Since Gore in this example is far and away receiving much more support than Nader, Gore now beats Bush. Let’s call the party that put Nader on the ballot the Green party, and that they continue to field candidates in further elections that use the Approval voting system. Abe notices the following pattern: when the Green party fields a candidate that doesn’t even have a glimmer of hope winning the election (like the Gore/Nader/Bush one) that people that support the Green party candidate also approve the Democrat candidate as a bulwark against the Republican. And since in those elections the Green party never really had a hope of winning, the Green approval vote is ultimately irrelevant – those elections would have proceeded no differently than if the Green supporters had simply voted Democrat. But much worse yet, Abe notices that in *some* election, the Green party actually gets a chunk of people thinking that Green could actually win. And emboldened by their hopes, many Green supporters decide to go for it, approve of the Green candidate, but *not* the Democrat one. Result: in elections where more voters think more favorably towards Green’s chances, their least preferred choice (the Republican) tends to win more! This are my two thoughts: a)Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler
Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.
On 06/24/2013 11:22 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: Another might add, This is why the number of competitive candidates and the extent of low-info voters matters in the comparison. Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as to whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of Plurality or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence can exist, then there's no point in discussing.) And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call multi-winner elections like runoffs and not have to take on faith that no single-winner method can produce diversity. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Is it professional?
On 06/24/2013 11:28 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: The short-cut in my hybrid has been used in some elections and it had potential to coopt the momentum of IRV, but I think that FairVote's upgrade to top-two might take its place... Now, The same might be true of BTR-IRV, the main draw-back is that seems to work best with voters ranking the candidates. Consider these three scenarios. Scenario 1: Voters don't rank now, but will rank when they see it's worth it. Here IRV will eventually crash but BTR-IRV is, well, better. Scenario 2: Voters rank, contrary to your assumptions (but suggested by international evidence). Again, BTR-IRV does better. Scenario 3: Voters don't rank and never will. BTR-IRV is here no worse than IRV. Under what scenario does BTR-IRV *lose* against ordinary IRV? I've been presuming that many voters won't want to do a lot of research and rank all the candidates. Yes, but to back up that presumption, you have to more or less assume that America is so special that the claim itself is impossible to disprove. My suggestion doesn't require that to improve on FPP. Plain IRV itself is enough to improve upon FPP. This is like saying that I don't have to run very quickly to outrun a turtle. And, the same can be said for the new upgrade FairVote is pushing for. Maybe with only 4 candidates, voters will take the time to look at all four... That won't help when the correct candidate is center-squeezed out of the way. The only way to ensure there is no center squeeze is to limit the number of candidates to two - and then you have plain old runoff. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Is it professional?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:19 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: Scenario 1: Voters don't rank now, but will rank when they see it's worth it. Here IRV will eventually crash but BTR-IRV is, well, better. Scenario 2: Voters rank, contrary to your assumptions (but suggested by international evidence). Again, BTR-IRV does better. Scenario 3: Voters don't rank and never will. BTR-IRV is here no worse than IRV. Under what scenario does BTR-IRV *lose* against ordinary IRV? I am quite interested in the answer to this as well, as I imagine that whatever the answer is is a defining advantage, should any exist. -Benn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Warren needs to double check his work.
KM:Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as to whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of Plurality or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence can exist, then there's no point in discussing.) dlw:Let's switch to IRV + American forms of PR(in more local elections) and watch the feedback loop. We should be able to observe over time how the dynamics of elections shift, as voter-prefs get better cultivated. When folks get habituated to the new system then it'd be easy to put multiple alts to IRV on various ballots, using IRV to choose between them, and then we'd see from various experiments whether upgrading from IRV continues a feedback loop in improving the quantity as well as quality of competitive candidates on the ballot. KM:And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call multi-winner elections like runoffs and not have to take on faith that no single-winner method can produce diversity. dlw: We need both diversity and hierarchy. This is why we need a mix of election rules, some encouraging diversity/equality, others encouraging hierarchy/order. We need the latter because of the need for collective action and coordination. I classify multiple stage elections as hybrids between multi-winner and single-winner elections. I think they're costly but good systems. If we replaced all of our current fptp systems with a partisan primary in the US with the FairVote upgrade on top two primary, it'd improve the system. But I'd rather not use one election rule for all elections. I think it'd be hard to get turnout up and fair in the first election, even with four winners. dlw dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 5:10 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: On 06/24/2013 11:22 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: Another might add, This is why the number of competitive candidates and the extent of low-info voters matters in the comparison. Alright, then tell me what kind of evidence would change your mind as to whether the scarcity of competitive candidates is an artifact of Plurality or inherent to single-winner elections. (If no such evidence can exist, then there's no point in discussing.) And furthermore, tell me why we shouldn't just use what you call multi-winner elections like runoffs and not have to take on faith that no single-winner method can produce diversity. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Is it professional?
It's a good argument. 1. What if candidates/parties are inherently fuzzy and rankings are tenuous? It can be done, I just don't put a lot of faith in them. A. If I'm wrong and IRV proves defunct then IRV can be used to upgrade IRV. B. If I'm right then the switch to an upgrade might make it harder to switch away from FPTP/Top2 Primary and the return won't be higher. 2. At issue is how much better wd BTR-IRV be. Maybe voters will rank and there'll be GIGO. Not for all of them, but for enough of them. I'm not saying voters can't learn, I'm saying voters will need to learn and there still might be epistemic limits to their learning of how to vote. It's not like buying groceries every week, something relatively stable and done a lot of times. 3. We get IRV quicker and the US system must hew to the true center sooner, with the cultural wars wedge issues that have been poisoning our democracy more effectively reframed by outsiders who may not be able to get elected but would be able to get their ideas into the public square with a system like IRV. We needed a system like IRV over forty years ago. There'll be more scope for experimentation and voter-learning down the road, right now the gaming of the fptp system has accumulated so much dysfunction and resistance to reform that it's best to push forward with whatever will do the most good the soonest possible and that seems to be a modified form of IRV. dlw On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 5:25 PM, Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.comwrote: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:19 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: Scenario 1: Voters don't rank now, but will rank when they see it's worth it. Here IRV will eventually crash but BTR-IRV is, well, better. Scenario 2: Voters rank, contrary to your assumptions (but suggested by international evidence). Again, BTR-IRV does better. Scenario 3: Voters don't rank and never will. BTR-IRV is here no worse than IRV. Under what scenario does BTR-IRV *lose* against ordinary IRV? I am quite interested in the answer to this as well, as I imagine that whatever the answer is is a defining advantage, should any exist. -Benn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: On 06/24/2013 03:06 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need – and so long as Nader’s win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. You're generally right. There are some very particular situations with incomplete information where it makes the most sense to use partial ballots, but those happen way too rarely to make a difference. Excellent, that makes me feel like I am not utterly in left field wondering where everyone went. You can see this from the other end, too: say you're in an Approval election and want to vote 0-10-range style. You want to give X a rating of 4, but it's an Approval election. To do this, you generate a random number on 0...10. If it is lower or equal to the rating (in this case 4), you approve of X, otherwise, you don't. If everybody did that, the Range and Approval results would give the same winner (with high probability). So in a real sense, Range is Approval with fractional votes permitted. Also, Range could possibly give different results than Approval voting. Consider an election where 99% of the voters are strategic. The vote comes out to a tie between Nader and Gore, according to these 99%. Then the remaining 1%, voting sincerely, vote something like [Nader: 90%, Gore: 70%, Bush: 10%] (strategic would be [Nader: 100%, Gore: 100%, Bush: 0%]). Then those votes break the tie and Nader wins. For reasons like this, a mix of strategic and honest voters give better results than just having strategic ones. Of course, there are (in the circumstance where Gore is the better chance to beat Bush than Nader) likely more Gore:100 Nader:0 Bush) votes than Nader: 90 Gore:70 Bush 10 ones. In fact, given that we *are* talking about an election with two strong front running candidates and one spoiler weaker one, isn't it *far* more likely that Gore is far in front of Nader and the only real unknown is if Gore will beat Bush or not? Which leads right back to the entire scenario of issues I began with. The thing is, whenever we have more than two parties running, I think we will always have weaker spoiler parties that cannot really win, but that can, if the system allows or encourages people to vote against their best interest, cause people to get a much lower ranked choice, possibly their least preferred choice - this is my whole concern. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. How is this not so? I would much prefer a good ranked balloting system to Approval, but let me try to explain the other side as well. Your observation is right in that there's obvious tension between approving of only Nader (so Nader will win) and of both Nader and Gore (so Bush won't win). This is one of the reasons I dont like Approval all that much: I think it burdens the voter with having to convert an internal preference into an Approval-style ballot in what I call manual DSV. DSV is Designated Strategy Voting, a meta-system where one has a computer find out the optimal strategic vote for some given honest vote. The implication of having to engage in manual DSV is rather like having to do a mathematical task in your head before voting: we'd rather not and it makes the system more unwieldy. So there are really three stages to a prospective new party or candidate (like the Greens or Nader): 1. the candidate is not competitive (e.g. fringe candidate). 2. the candidate is competitive but either not strong enough to win, or there's been a miscalculation by the voters. 3. the candidate has taken over the position that would belong to a competitor (e.g. Nader becomes the new Gore). I think Approval advocates argue that the relative share of approvals will inform the voters of where they are. So the progression goes something like: In stage one, everybody who approves of Nader also approves of Gore. In stage three, the tables are turned: everybody who approves of Gore also approves of Nader, but Nader still wins. Stage two and the transition to three is the tricky part. In rounds of repeated polling, the voters start off cautious (approving both Nader and Gore). Then they see that Nader has approval close to Gore's level, so some start approving of Nader alone. This then reinforces the perception that Nader is winning, so more voters approve of Nader alone. And so it goes until Nader is slightly ahead of Gore and wins. Aha! But what if what is likely happens in stage two: People get ahead of themselves and give their full support to Nader and
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi, De : Benjamin Grant Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 17h53 Objet : Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? The only way to avoid this, I *think*, is with a system in which expressing a preference of A over B doesn't let C win - and such a system may well have worse flaws, possibly. Right, you are here so close to IIA that you'd be stuck with random ballot or similar. FBC is sort of a next best. It's very close in spirit, only you're guaranteed to be able to vote A top and equal to B, but not necessarily strictly higher. Otherwise, we might create conflicting entitlements. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
