Re: [EM] Better runoffs
On Jul 10, 2012, at 6:51 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: When runoffs are subjected to criterion analysis, one usually considers voters to vote in the same order in each round. If they prefer A to B in the first round, and A and B remain in the second round, they'll vote A over B in the second round. This seems reasonable to me - however much they thought, they decided on A vs B for the previous round and have no real need for more thinking now. However, those preferring C or D have only A and B available in the top-two runoff round and therefore must change. Should C and D have lost in the previous round? Experience with IRV demonstrates that those deserving to win can lose due to bad methods before runoffs. Assuming C and D deserved to lose, their backers need to accept their weakness and move on. Further, C and D could be clones who lost out because the method was Plurality, in which clones often lose due to the method. Plurality has primaries to help with this but clones can get nominated via multiple parties. DWK This may not necessarily fit reality. Voters may leave or join depending on whether the second round is important or not, and the same for later rounds in exhaustive runoff. But let's consider top- two runoffs and, to begin with, that the voters will stay consistent. The kind of criterion analysis performed on top-two then says that top-two Plurality runoff is not monotone. Furthermore, it is worse than IRV (i.e. fails participation, consistency, and so on, but also things IRV passes like MDT and mutual majority). If we want to have a method that does better, what would we need? Some methods (like Ranked Pairs or Kemeny) pass what is called local IIA. Local IIA says that if you eliminate all candidates but a contiguous subset (according to the output ranking), then the order of those candidates shouldn't change. If you eliminate all candidates but the ones that finished third and fourth and rerun the election, then the candidate that finished third should win. More specifically, for runoff purposes: if you pick the two first candidates to the runoff, and voters are perfectly consistent, then the order doesn't change. Thus, all that you really need to make a runoff that isn't worse than its base method is that the method passes LIIA. Use Ranked Pairs for both stages and there you go -- if the voters change their minds between rounds, conventional criterion analysis doesn't apply, and if they don't change their minds, you don't lose compliance of any criteria. However, such runoffs could become quite boring in practice. Say that there are a number of moderates in the first round and people prefer moderates to the rest. After the first round is done, two moderates are retained and run in the second round. What does it matter which moderate wins? The closer they are to being clones, the less interesting the runoff becomes. More formally, it seems that the whole voting population is not being properly represented. Two candidates represent the middle but nobody represents either side. That might be okay if voters are normally distributed around the candidate, but if they are, you wouldn't need the runoff to begin with. If that's correct, then it'd be better to have a proportional ordering. That proportional ordering should still put one of the moderates first (assuming he'd be the winner had there been only one round), but also admit one of the side candidates. But here's the tricky part. That proportional ordering method should also pass LIIA, so that all the criterion compliances held by the base method are retained. It's thus necessary that the winner of the base method comes first. Beyond that, however, I have little idea how the method might be constructed, or if it's even possible to have both a proportionality criterion and LIIA. Finally, if such a method were to be found, one could possibly have more than two candidates in the runoff. The runoff would serve as a way of the method to say hey, look at these candidates more closely, where their positions could then be compared and voters possibly change their minds. If the method passes LIIA, it doesn't matter how many (or few) candidates you put in the second round - the method acts like the one-round method if all the voters remain perfectly consistent. Practically, also, if there are only two candidates and one is a moderate, the other wing not represented might feel cheated out of a chance if only one of the wings are represented. If the centrist and the leftist goes to the second round, the right-wingers may complain that their candidate is not represented, whereas ordinary top-two runoff would have no such problem because both the right-wing and left-wing candidate would be represented at the cost of the centrist. Election-Methods mailing list - see
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
On Jul 10, 2012, at 3:49 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Dave re: I would not do away with primaries - instead I would do away with Plurality and leave primaries to any party that still saw value in them. I believe the discussion was more about opening primaries to the public than to eliminating them. True, but I suggest looking a little deeper. Clones are a problem for Plurality, and primaries were invented to dispose of clones within a party - still leaves us with such as multiple parties nominating clones. These are not Plurality's only problem, so looking for better election methods is still worth doing. Anyway, I do not argue against primaries for anyone who sees other value in them. re: I see value in parties - Green, libertarians, socialism, etc., let voters with particular desires work together. Absolutely, but there must also be a way for those who don't subscribe to any party to participate in the electoral process. They have no voice at present, and that's the rub. Could say that if they have no voice they have no need of anyone to speak to. If there is an idea worth speaking about and no party is interested, its backers could form a party. Fred Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process
Time to think. Primaries are a problem. Primaries were invented to solve an intolerable problem for Plurality elections - too easy to have multiple candidates for a party, those candidates having to share the available votes, and thus all losing. I would not do away with primaries - instead I would do away with Plurality and leave primaries to any party that still saw value in them. So, what is Plurality's basic problem? That a voter can see value in more than one candidate, want to vote accordingly, and be prevented by Plurality. Voters need to agree that this fix is essential and apply whatever effort is needed. Where to go? Desirable, but not essential, to use the same new method everywhere. Consider: . Approval - each voter is signaling equal desire for every candidate voted for. Better than Plurality, but too often a voter can have a true desire, and secondary candidates voter wants considered only if true desire loses. . Condorcet - voters rank their true desire highest and others lower. Ranking A over X says A more desired, but not what strength this desire has. . Score/range - thoughts similar to Condorcet, but here difference in rating indicates strength of liking. . IRV - This sees some trials, and use in Burlington has indicated lacks. . Others - this list does not attempt completion. Such changes could change strength of parties - perhaps, but I consider the changes too important for this to interfere with going for better election methods I see value in parties - Green, libertarians, socialism, etc., let voters with particular desires work together. On Jul 7, 2012, at 3:29 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 07/06/2012 02:22 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm said: - Thus, it's not too hard for me to think there might be sets of rules that would make parties minor parts of politics. Those would not work by simply outlawing parties, totalitarian style. Instead, the rules would arrange the dynamics so that there's little benefit to organizing in parties. Such rules would be difficult to implement while the parties are still in power. They control the legislatures. I think we need to look at the primaries. A system of open primaries would be beyond the reach of the parties, and it might undermine their power. Has anyone tried this approach before? We don't really have primaries here, at least not in the sense of patches to make Plurality work, because we don't use Plurality but party list PR. There are still internal elections (or appointments, depending on party) to determine the order of the list - those are probably the closest thing to primaries here. I imagine that the primary link is even weaker in STV countries. Say you have a multimember district with 5 seats. To cover all their bases, each party would run at least 5 candidates for that election, so that even if they get all the seats, they can fill them. But that means that people who want members of party X to get in power can choose which of the candidates they want. There's no predetermined list, and there's less of a take it or leave it problem than in single member districts. But I digress. The way I see it, there are two approaches to changing the rules. The first is to do it from within - to have a party or other organization that implements those rules internally. The second is from without, by somehow inspiring the people to want this, so that they will push for it more strongly than the parties can. In the United States, the latter might be rather difficult (since money counts for so much). And perhaps in the US, primaries would be a good place to start. I don't know, as I don't live there :-) Don't some local elections over there have free-for-all primaries where anyone can vote, so the system turns into top-two runoff? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Best winner
Quoting from today's Demoncracy Chronicles, 6/24/12: The basic idea is avoid the situation faced today, where many candidates that are well liked do not get votes because voters choose the most likely to win candidate instead of their favorite. Source: Democracy Chronicles (http://s.tt/1fy4W) Reads like a typo - that these voters would vote for the one they think is most likely to be voted for by other voters. for Approval voters should: . Start with their favorite. . Add the best they see among possible winners - but not if this best likely will cause their favorite to lose. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Best winner
On Jun 24, 2012, at 8:55 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: To Democracy Chronicles, EM, and Dave Ketchum: On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com wrote: Quoting from today's Demoncracy Chronicles, 6/24/12: The basic idea is avoid the situation faced today, where many candidates that are well liked do not get votes because voters choose the most likely to win candidate instead of their favorite. Source: Democracy Chronicles (http://s.tt/1fy4W) Dave comments: Reads like a typo - that these voters would vote for the one they think is most likely to be voted for by other voters. I reply: The voters are certain that the winner will be either the Republican or the Democrat, and so they (nearly) all vote for the Republican or the Democrat. And so guess what?...The winner is therefore predictably always the Republican or the Democrat. Assuming X is reported as likely to win, these voters would help this along by also voting for X, rather than voting for X or Y according to which they would prefer to have win. Agreed that if X and Y are Rep and Dem, considering only among them as major candidates makes sense - but voting for the one reported as ahead fails as to being useful. But thanks for your suggested wording-change, Dave. Dave continues: for Approval voters should: . Start with their favorite. . Add the best they see among possible winners - but not if this best likely will cause their favorite to lose. [endquote] Sounds about right. I like and agree with Dave's emphasis on avoiding helping an unliked compromise. You won't find any unliked compromises marked on my approval ballot. In Approval, one never approves an unacceptable candidate. But I also refer Dave to the strategy suggestions in my Approval article at Democracy Chronicles, for voters who want to use strategy. But my best suggestion for voting in Approval is: Just approve (only) the candidates whom you like, trusts, /or consider deserving of your support. If all you know is that you see X and Y as each deserving, you properly vote for both. However, changing that to preferring X, and X and Y each being possible deserving winners, you need to consider: If your vote will likely not affect which one wins, vote for both. If voting for Y could cause Y to win over X, you think on this as part of deciding whether to also vote for Y. It gets sticky. If considering only Y, then whether Y may be deserving is all you need as to voting. Add to this X being deserving, and you need to consider possibility of voting for both causing X to lose. Mike Ossipoff DWK Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] What happens when Approval doesn't let you vote FavoriteDemRepub?
On May 28, 2012, at 8:05 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: On 27.5.2012, at 22.37, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You know, that's the Condorcetists' and IRVists' objection to Approval. The question is what happens when Approval doesn't let you vote ABC. The difference is that there is no division to minor and major candidates. The worst Approval problems appear when there are three or more potential winners. The differences between the methods appear when there are more than 2 viable candidates. It's for that situation that we want a better voting system. The assumption in all of this discussion is that there are more than 2 potential winners. There can be 2, or even 1, viable candidates - but our only concern is that we don't, somehow, make this be more of a problem than it needs to be. What you call Approval's problems are only a nuisance. Sometimes not even that. That nuisance needs to be kept in perspective, in comparison to Plurality's problems. And Approval doesn't share Condorcet's favorite-burial incentive problem. And Condorcet shares Approval's C/D problem. after the 1st Approval election, in which the non-Republocrat parties and candidates have somehow managed to make at least some people aware of their different platforms, policies and proposals, the count results are going to show many more votes for non-Republocrats, now that everyone, for the first time, has the freedom to rate anyone as they themselves choose to, and no longer constrained by the lesser-of-2-evils problem. The first Approval elections in a former two-party system could go really well if we assume that the third parties won't be potential winners yet. In the first Approval election, that may very well be assumed by the lesser-evil Democrat voter. So s/he'll approve the Democrat. But s/ he'll additionally approve everyone whom s/he likes more. The resulting count result will therefore more accurately show who is liked and what is wanted. Always there can be such as a lesser-evil Democrat candidate who must be voted for in defense against the greater-evil potential winner. Additionally approving all liked more goes with this. .What voters soon see is that, while liking these more, Approval forces the voter to indicate equal liking for all voted for rather than permitting the voter to indicate the difference in liking and, hopefully, electing one of the better-liked candidates. This is what leads many of us to want a better election method. DWK Therefore your assumption that the Republocrats are all that's viable won't hold up long in Approval. That mis-assumption can only be preserved by means of Plurality voting. People want something better. Believing that only the Republocrats are viable, people convince themselves that somehow the Republocrats will be what the voter wants them to be--because it's believed that they're the only game in town. The need to believe is amazingly strong. The suckers will keep coming back for more, when their Democrat tells them that he's in favor of change, and that's he's dedicated to helping them. The suckers need to believe. With Approval, it will immediately be apparent that people want more than what the Republocrats have proven to be. The problem that you speak of, in which people have the preferences GreenDemocratRepublican will vanish when it becomes obvious that he Republocrats aren't as popular as the media have been claiming. The Republican threat will no longer be taken seriously, and the idea of a need to support the nearly-identical Democrat, to protect from the Republican, will be seen as hilarious. Don't Democrat and Republican candidates continually offer change? :-) They promise those things because they know that the public want those things. But the public will now notice that they don't offer squat, in regards to those things. This is a problem of all political systems, also when there are multiple parties. The problem may be one step worse in a two-party system where these two parties are almost guaranteed to return back to power soon, whatever they do. You catch on fast. The problem is that, since people believe that only Dem can beat Repub, they're going to vote for the Dem no matter what, and the Dems know that, and so they know that they don't have to be less corrupt than the Repubs. They don't even have to keep their own promises. You should have seen and heard Bill Clinton trying to keep from laughing, when he told us that he realized that he wouldn't be able to keep his middle-class tax-break campaign promise. We had a congressional candidate who emotionally spoke against NAFTA, and campaigned in an anti-NAFTA T-shirt. But when he won and got to Washington, he immediately became pro-NAFTA. And no, that isn't a problem of all political systems. It's a problem where people believe that there is no alternative to the two choices. Mike
Re: [EM] Addenda to What will happen... post
On May 28, 2012, at 9:17 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: As usual, I don't know what Dave Ketchum means. Guessing as to what Mike O is assuming, our topic is whether Approval's inability to indicate such as ABC matters. I read the words below indicating that voters can estimate, accurately, various situations to respond to. While such may be possible, sometimes, it is better to not require such estimating. Returning to the subject-line's topic: In Approval, with 3 candidates, or 3 candidates perceived viable: 1. From the point of view of the middle candidate's supporters, there are 2 possibilities: a. One of the extreme 2 has a majority, in which case it doesn't matter what the Middle voters do b. Or Middle is the CW, in which case it is the responsible for the smaller extreme faction to approve Middle, not vice-versa. 2. From the point of view of an extreme voter, misjudging whether to approve Middle would amount to misjudging whether your faction is a majority, vs whether your faction is smaller than the opposite faction. That would be a big mis-estimate indeed, unless the middle faction is very small. And, continuing #2, from the point of view of an extreme voter, everyone has access to the same information, and so if it looks as if extreme A is smaller than extreme B, then the B voters will think they don't need to approve Middle. But the A voters will think that they _do_ need to approve Middle. That means that, if the B voters are mistaken, the B voters' mistake won't be costly. The situation favors Middle. Because of #1 and #2, the Middle voters have no reason to approve either extreme. And for that reason, candidate A's approval count is a good estimate for the number of A voters, and B's approval count is a good estimate of the number of B voters. These are the things that the extreme voters would like to know, or at least have an idea of. In the 2nd Approval election, the progressives or Green-preferrers will have a good idea of whether or not the Green can beat the Republican. The Democrat good-cop/bad-cop scam will be finished, when people are supporting what they really like, and therefore know what others like. Given that, and the disillusionment about what the Republocrats have been doing, and their difference from eachother, today's pessimistic and resigned situation will be no more. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] What happens when Approval doesn't let you vote FavoriteDemRepub?
On May 27, 2012, at 5:12 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 27.5.2012, at 22.37, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You know, that's the Condorcetists' and IRVists' objection to Approval. The question is what happens when Approval doesn't let you vote ABC. The difference is that there is no division to minor and major candidates. The worst Approval problems appear when there are three or more potential winners. It does not take that long. As soon as ability to vote for A=B is in your future you think of wanting ability to vote for FavoriteComprmise, as is doable in IRV - matters only that Favorite is your favorite, not the possibility of Favorite actually winning. Mike O's voters seem to think slower: after the 1st Approval election, in which the non-Republocrat parties and candidates have somehow managed to make at least some people aware of their different platforms, policies and proposals, the count results are going to show many more votes for non-Republocrats, now that everyone, for the first time, has the freedom to rate anyone as they themselves choose to, and no longer constrained by the lesser-of-2- evils problem. The first Approval elections in a former two-party system could go really well if we assume that the third parties won't be potential winners yet. Don't Democrat and Republican candidates continually offer change? :-) They promise those things because they know that the public want those things. But the public will now notice that they don't offer squat, in regards to those things. This is a problem of all political systems, also when there are multiple parties. The problem may be one step worse in a two-party system where these two parties are almost guaranteed to return back to power soon, whatever they do. With voters able to vote for favorites, lesser-of-2-evils, etc., the vote counts will more usefully indicate the popularity of candidates - making nominating candidates more useful for lesser parties. DWK Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] What happens when Approval doesn't let you vote FavoriteDemRepub?
On May 27, 2012, at 7:43 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 28.5.2012, at 1.47, Dave Ketchum wrote: As soon as ability to vote for A=B is in your future you think of wanting ability to vote for FavoriteComprmise, as is doable in IRV - matters only that Favorite is your favorite, not the possibility of Favorite actually winning. Yes, people want to promote their favourite even if he might not win. Getting lots of support (although not enough to win) means that this candidate will gain political power in general. Voters may also prepare for the next electons where their favourite might already win. Voters are also optimists in the sense that they estimate the winning chances of their favourites to be higher than they actually are. People hope that also other people will see the good properties of their favourite, that will then get more votes. One example in the current system is Nader that gets considerable support although he is not lkely to win. People want to rank him first although that takes a vote away from their compromise candidate. As we improve election methods, their echoing desirability of candidates improves. As this improves, desirability of copying what attracts votes improves. Net of all this is good expectation of better elected officers with better election methods such as Condorcet. DWK Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Juho , 5/21/12, roughly 0800 UT
Thanks Juho, for working to make this dialog more useful! DWK On May 21, 2012, at 7:36 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: [Note: Michael Ossipof's message was not a reply to a mail on this list but to an offline discussion.] On 21.5.2012, at 23.13, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I don't know what you mean by all regular voters. I requested strategy descriptions that would be intended for real life elections and normal voters (not EM experts) in such elections. That means that the strategy shall be clear enough so that normal voters can implement it. The above strategy is for voters who perceive the above-desecribed conditions. If you want a general strategy for Condorcet, none is known. Also strategies that do work only under specific conditions are ok. You just have to write the strategy description so that a regular voter can see when that strategy can be applied and when not. I don't require that a general strategy should be used (=modify your vote) in every election. It is enough if there is a strategy that can be applied reasonably often, and that will clearly improve the outcome from that voter's point of view. I encourage you to rewrite the strategy so that it clearly indicates when a voter should use it and how the vote should be modified. A working strategy for public elections must be such that regular voters can successfully implement it (or get strategic guidance e.g. from his party and implement that strategy). I have no idea what examples you're referring to. You identified two of your examples by giving their characteristic numbers, 27,24,49 and 33,32,34. I found and commented the latter one in a mail (http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-May/030400.html ). If you want to say that one of them isn't good enough, then you need to clearly specify it, and then tell what's wrong with it, and why you think so. I hope the mail was clear enough. Maybe you did not notice that mail since you did not comment it yet. Juho says: That would make the strategy a working strategy (although not necessarily a strategy that would work often). [endquote] Then it wouldn't be a general strategy, would it. I used term general just to indicate that the voter can refer to that strategy description in all elections and check what it says, not that it would always lead to a modified vote. Ok, but which Approval article? [endquote] The one that I posted to EM. The one that is at Democracy Chronicles. Google gave me this: http://www.democracychronicles.com/2012/05/06/problems-current-voting-system-plurality-voting/ . It seems to be the correct one since it talks about Approval strategies at the end. Do you mean that you only want your favorite to win? Then, in Approval, approve hir only. This doesn't sound like a good strategy. You know well that there are better Approval strategies. If you want to maximize your expection, I've told Approval strategy for that purpose. What I'm missing is a description of the strategy in an exact format that can be used by regular voters. (But I think I got one for Approval at least towards the end of this mail. Only Condorcet strategy still missing.) But if you're questioning the assumption that people wouldn't strategize in Approval, I merely suggest voting for all whom you like. If you want to, you can strategize. Suit yourself. Yes, that is what I meant. And I'm still confused with your idea that people would choose between those two options in a competitive election. “Would I rather appoint him/her to office than hold the election?” What should I provide? I'm willing to be more concrete if you tell me what you want. [endquote] In general, what you should provide is the specifics of what you mean. You never do that, and no doubt you never will. That's why talking to you is a waste of time. In particular, in this instance, you speak of focusing on concrete practical strategic vulnerabilities. I suggested that you specify and focus on one. You say that Condorcet is vulnerable to strategies. I say that it is not enough to sow that in theory some modification in the votes would give a better winner to the strategists to prove a practical vulnerability. I say that in order to prove that there is a practical vulnerability one must be able to give practical guidelines on how some strategy can be applied successfully in real life elections when the voters have some poll information available. You can pick any vulnerability type that you think is easiest to take benefit of. If I'd pick one strategy that would be a limitation to you. On the Approval side you say that Approval works fine. I say that there are situations where Approval fails in the sense that the voters don't have any reasonable strategies. You should pick the strategy that works in all situations. I'm to point out the vulnerabilities based on
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
This started as a thread to talk a bit about Condorcet. That has faded away, and all I see is trivia about Plurality vs Approval - too trivial a difference between them to support enough thoughts to be worth writing this much, even less for reading. DWK On May 18, 2012, at 9:56 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: How could using Approval instead of Plurality in our single-member districts be bad? I've talked about how Approval's results would differ from those of Plurality. Proportional representation and two-party systems are two well known approaches. Approval with single winner districts is a new kind of a system, and that may bring surpises (I wrote about them before the referenced line) [endquote] No you didn't. That's why I asked the question. And now you're just repeating the vague and unspecified worry that you expressed before. Will it be different with Approval? You be it will. I'm going to repeat this: It will be different in regards to the fact that people who think they need to support a lesser-evil can also support everyone they like, including those they regard as the best. It will be different because the voter hirself can be the one to decide to which candidate(s) s/he wants to give 1 point instead of 0 points, instead of the method deciding that all but one must get 0 points. That change seems to worry you. What will happen as a result?, you ask. What will happen is that voters will be in charge of their ballots. You keep repeating that you're worried about the results. I keep asking you what bad results you expect from the above changes. And instead of answering that question, you just repeat your unspecified and vague worry. You said: . Also Approval method itself is not free of problems (my key concern is its strategic problems when there are more than two potential winners). [endquote] And what problems might those be? Ones that I've already answered about? Because I've already answered lots of claims about problems, you need to say, specifically, what problems you mean, and how you answer my rebuttals to the claims about those problems. Remember that one of the conduct-guidelines for EM is that we shouldn't keep repeating claims that have already answered, without first responding to the answers. You claim a problem. I answer you about it. You just keep repeating that there would be problems. You say that hasn't been discussed enough? Ok, shall we discuss the properties of the political system that would result from choosing what people actually like, when voters are free to indicate all the candidates that they like? How would it differ from now? If you're suggesting that there would be some drawback, disadvantage or bad result that could happen because we elect candidates and parties that are more liked than what Plurality elects, then please let's hear them. You said: I have now understood that your ideal (or actually best reachable) target system is a system that elects from few large parties, where few 2. [endquote] You keep saying that too. I have no idea why. I've never said what number of parties in government is ideal. Approval will elect as many parties as people like. ...just as I said when you made that statement before. I don't care how many parties are in government. It could be one. It could be many. You continue: Technically multi-winner elections would use single-winner districts and Approval. Also the president could be elected with Approval. [endquote] Yes, in this country we use single-member districts. As I've said, PR isn't a feasible proposal here. So yes, my proposal is to use Approval for all of our state and national single-winner elections. Ideally we'd elect the president in one big direct election, but maybe at first we can use Approval in each state. In any case, Congress is the area where a single-winner method is straightforwardly used. But remember that we supposedly _effectively_ use Plurality, in each state, to allocate that state's electoral votes. We should use Approval instead. You said: At some point I thought that you might aim at electing good individuals without strong party affiliations, but maybe you are more party oriented that that. [endquote] I corrected that strange mis-statement of yours in my previous post. And now you're just repeating your mis-statement again. I have no idea where you get that statement. I haven't said anything about aiming for individuals with or without strong party affiliation. When people are approving whom they like, Approval will elect the most liked candidate. It will do so whether or not s/he has strong party affiliations, and regardless of whether or not s/he belongs to a part at all. Which part of that don't you understand? And yes, if people are strategizing, and voting for a compromise that they don't really like, at least, unlike in Plurality they're also voting for
Re: [EM] Concerns of KM RF. Approval, Condorcet ICT strategy. Reform schedule.
On May 17, 2012, at 2:09 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Kristofer: You expressed concern about uncertainty about how to vote in Approval. Let me re-word what I was trying to say about that: First, for simplicity let’s say that you belong to a faction that all prefer and vote as you do. What you object to is that, in Approval, you don’t know the way of voting by which your faction can get the best result possible. But what you _do_ know (if you like and choose strategic voting) is the way of voting that will maximize your expectation, based on what your expectation already is. (I’ve already said much about the better- than-expectation strategy of Approval) That’s good enough. You can’t expect to know exactly what ballot marks will give the best outcome for you. But the voting method will affect your proper thinking: If Approval you are expressing equal liking for all that you vote for - thus should not vote for those liked too little. If Condorcet you are expressing amount of liking via ranking and can include voting for all wanted if all liked better are not elected. I emphasize that, in Condorcet, you don’t know either of those things, _even if it’s a u/a election_. Especially if it’s a u/a election. And do you really think that our elections don’t have unacceptable candidates who could win? …or two sets of candidates such that the merit differences within the sets are negligible compared to the merit difference between the sets? In contrast, Approval’s u/a strategy (as is its non-u/a strategy) is not only known, but is the simplest there is: Approve (only) all the acceptables. That sounds simple - until I try to apply it to actual voting as to a candidate who I see as on the edge between acceptable and non- . Wrong if non- but would have deserved winning. . Wrong if voted for and wins without deserving. Yes, Condorcet has the consolation or compensation that, if the election isn’t u/a, and if you don’t much care about the results, then you can rank the candidates at as many rank positions as you want to. But sincere ranking would be a big mistake in a u/a election. And often in a non-u/a election too, if the result matters. Condorcet’s supposed strategy-free-ness is only a sometimes, maybe, thing. And when it isn’t that “sometime”, then you _really_ don’t know what to do. Approval voting is incomparably easier and simpler. And this is simpler, for I can rank less-liked below all I like better. Richard expressed the concern that, if Approval were enacted, then maybe people wouldn’t be willing to later change to something else, and those who would like to go to something better wouldn’t have the opportunity. In other words, if you don’t enact Condorcet instead of Approval, before Approval, then you’ll never get an opportunity to enact Condorcet. A valid concern. Valid to ask about, but not valid to be concerned about. Forgive me for repeating this: If Approval were enacted, there would be changes in government and society, such that the media would be incomparably more free and open. Campaign laws and ballot-access laws would be more fair. Political debates would be more inclusive. These things would result from a government that is more what the voters want. Also, for one thing, after the results of the first Approval election, it would no longer be as easy to exclude non- Republocrats from ballots, debates, editorial letters, articles, news coverage, airtime, etc. Enacting Approval or Condorcet, or most any other true improvement, would help as described above. Would also include freer selection among candidates: . As always, vote against the worst of such as Republocrats. . Can also vote for the most desirable candidates. And it would be well-established that voting system improvement is possible, because it would be an observed fact. People would be open to it. People would know the subject of voting systems better than they do now. The environment would be _much_ more favorable to rank-balloting than it now is. Now, make no mistake: Condorcet, or rank-methods in general won’t be easy, any time. But if they’re ever do-able at all, then it will be when Approval has started the improvement and shown that there is such a thing as good voting system reform. …and shown the numerical importance of non-Republocrat candidates, voters and parties. So no, getting a fancier method won’t be harder after Approval. That’s when it will be possible, if it ever will. Any improvement would be a step. That’s the spirit of the Declaration. That’s why none of us should oppose eachother’s proposals in any publication or forum other than here at EM. Fighting eachother and opposing eachother’s proposals in public would be counterproductive, a ruinous hindrance to reform. Does it sound self-serving when I say that Approval should be the first step, the
Re: [EM] Kristofer, April 3, '12, Approval vs Condorcet
Oops - took so long stripping Mike O's zillion words that I forgot to respond. On May 16, 2012, at 10:05 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: On May 15, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 15.5.2012, at 11.11, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Juho and Kristofer: Just a few preliminary words before I continue my reply to Kristofer that I interrupted a few hours ago: We all agree that Approval would be much easier to propose and enact than would Condorcet. Therefore, we must also agree that, given the same level of effort, the expected time needed to enact Approval is quite a bit less than the expected time needed to enact Condorcet. Now, given that, there are two reasons why you could say that we should try for Condorcet instead of Approval: I'm still not quite certain what elections this proposal refers to. If it refers to use of different single-winner methods in single- winner districts of a multi-winner election to elect members to some representative body, then I'm not ready to recommend elther of those changes before I understand what the goals are. On another subject: But if you want to suggest that others shouldn't propose Approval, then you need to give a good reason. Approval may be an easy and acceptaböe first step. My opinion is that you should plan also next steps, in case someone wants to cancel the reform, drive it further, or if the strategic vulnerabilities of Approval pop up in some election (like the Condorcet criterion problem popped up in Burlington, althogh that was maybe not even noticed by all). I know of no useful reason for rejecting Approval's replacement of Plurality - it's permission to approve of more than one as equally desired while rejecting less than Plurality and the increasing in complexity is trivial. But stepping from Plurality or Approval to Condorcet is also doable and worthy. This is a bigger change because it allows voting for unequally desired candidates with unequal ranks, thus directing those preferred to be given preference in winning. This preference allows voters to include less-liked candidates while directing counters to consider better- liked candidates as preferred. Note: Burlington, as displaying IRV's weakness, is not truly Condorcet, for it has restrictions on ranking and its counters must make decisions without considering all the content of the votes. DWK Juho Now, to resume my Kristofer reply: Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Responding because you wrote, but with no authority. On May 12, 2012, at 9:04 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Condorcetists: You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best. No - we want to move past that. You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your 1st choice against your 2nd choice. True that while Approval is much better than Plurality, it keeps this weakness. But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all. We get back to wanting more when offered Approval's offering only best and worst and we are looking at a candidate we cannot stand grouping with best, yet desperately want to vote as being better than worst. Plurality very effectively puts a gag on everyone who would like something better than the corrupt sleazes that your tv offers as the two choices. We have to hold our nose and vote for the lesser-evil [Democrat], so that we don't waste our vote. Again, we do not want this lesser-evil to be seen in the counting as desired equally with best, yet also see this lesser-evil as better than those we classify as worst. Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support? For all to support their favorites is our desire, hoping we do equal seeing. Do you understand the difference between liked and unliked? And what would happen if everyone could support whom and what they actually like best? Do you have any idea how far-reaching the resulting changes would be? No, I'm not saying that the resulting country and world would be perfect in every way. I'm saying that it would be what people actually want--something that they can support without holding their nose. But don't underestimate the magnitude of that change. Though I consider Approval to be the best in some meaningful ways, I also would like more--as you would. But, as I said, most of the benefit comes from everyone being able to support 1st choice and 2nd choice _at all_. Let's not be greedy and dwaddle around forever about what else we could ideally get. Do you want improvement or not? Or would you rather debate forever? Do want the improvement we see Condorcet offering, and see you seeming to be promoting endless debate rather than working to move ahead. With Condorcet: . Those who still see Approval as good enough can vote it in Condorcet by using a single rank for all liked candidates. .. Those who want to indicate unequal liking simply use unequal ranking. .. The vote counters can see and respond to the unequal liking. And, as for helping 1st choice over 2nd choice, while helping both over last choice, free of strategy need: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co- operation/defection problem. The problem can be overstated. It requires willing plotters, whose efforts can be too easily seen and responded to - especially in significant elections such as for governor or senator. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. With better voting methods the party balance can vary in response to voter desires. And that's not even counting the good chance of successful offensive burial strategy when there are more than 3 candidates. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Rarity, FBC, Condorcet, comparison of criteria
Mike O had written: We often hear about how Condorcet, but not Approval, lets you help Favorite against Compromise. I agree, but not with Mike O's many words. He offers one special case - I will try to be general as to the ideas, but base my thoughts on Plurality, Approval, and a sample Condorcet method. Starting with the example Mike O provides below, C is Worse, A or B is Favorite, and remaining candidate, B or A, is Compromise. Any of the three, as well as many other methods, can be used to vote for a single candidate: . A . B Approval or Condorcet can vote for more than one with equal approval or ranking: . AB Condorcet can vote for 1-to-many at each of multiple ranks, with each preferred over all but those given the same or a higher rank by the same voter: . AB . BA Condorcet allows voting for both A and B, while showing preference for the preferred candidate. On May 8, 2012, at 1:33 AM, Richard Fobes wrote: On 5/7/2012 11:10 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Yeah? How about this, then?: 27: AB (they prefer A to B, and B to C) 24: BA 49: C (indifferent between everyone other than C) Cases that require carefully chosen numbers, as this example does, become less important than patterns that occur over many elections. His discussion involved multiple voters considering cooperating - possible, but such discussion is not practical when electing such as a governor. A Condorcet voter - notice the ranking implied for the voting - can use any ballot variation I describe above. A Condorcet voter can choose among AB, AB, and BA in response to what ever his studying and/or debating leads to. You pointing out a weakness that can only occur in rare cases is quite different than, say, what happened in Burlington and Aspen where IRV declared a non-Condorcet winner after only one (or perhaps just a few?) elections. IRV requires decisions based only on whatever is weakest top choice on each ballot - usually proper loser, but true unwanted requires considering all that each voter votes. Mike, if you really want to elevate FBC above the Condorcet criterion, I suggest that you start by noticing that it is the only voting criterion in the Wikipedia comparison table that does not link to a Wikipedia article about the criterion (and such a link is also missing from the text section just above the table). I'll let other election-method experts debate with you on Wikipedia if you choose to add a Wikipedia article about FBC. As for comparing FBC to Condorcet, have you not noticed that other debates about which criteria is more important than another criteria typically end up being inconclusive because mathematics supports the recognition that no single voting method is objectively best? And FBC cannot happen with Approval, for those ballots do not have the information for FBC to consider. As I've said on this forum before, some studies should be done to compare _how_ _often_ each method fails each criterion. Those numbers would be quite useful for comparing criteria in terms of importance. In the meantime, just a checkbox with a yes or no leaves us partially blind. (I changed the subject line because the subject line is not intended to be used to specify who you are writing to. The subject line should indicate the topic.) Good point! Also important to say when they posted it, for readers to look back to the previous post. Richard Fobes Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Dave Ketchum: Handcounts
On Apr 30, 2012, at 7:02 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote: On 04/29/2012 04:48 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Computers do well at performing the tasks they are properly told to perform - better than humans given the same directions. Thus it would make sense to direct the computers and expect them to do what is needed accurately. Still, we sometimes wonder exactly what the computers have been told to do. In my original suggestion THAT aspect of verifiability is covered by the notion that if all ballots are made a public record, independent programmers could perform whatever algorithm is the counting-method against the input. If 1000 members of EM (or one media outlet like CNN) got a different result than the vote-counting authority published, we'd know there was a counting error in the official computer code. And that would happen within minutes, not weeks. Automatically trusting CNN, or any other single source, with automatic credit for being more dependable than an official authority program is stretching it. As I wrote earlier, a program can be rigged to give either a correct or a biased result, as cued, with existence of the cue being hidden from observers. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Kristofer: Approval vs Condorcet, 4/28/12
As the subject indicates, the topic is Approval vs Condorcet. To Mike O: How did we get here? To RBJ: Thanks for clarifications. On Apr 29, 2012, at 12:47 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: ... On Apr 28, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: For one thing, Condorcet discourages honesty, this is just stupid. because, even if you top-rank Compromise, top-ranking Favorite too can cause Compromise to lose to Worse. as long as Compromise is ranked above Worse, it doesn't matter what you do to Favorite, you are not affecting your contribution to Compromise's position with respect to Worse's position (your vote increases Compomise's lead over Worse or decreases Worse's lead over Compromise). when ranking Compromise _alone_ in 1st place would have defeated Worse. To do your best to defeat Worse, you have to vote Favorite below Compromise. baloney. unless you're assuming some kind of pathological cycle is to happen. and i don't accept that cycles are anywhere close to common. You have to say with your vote that Condorcet is better than Favorite. ??? you mean Compromise is better than Favorite.? if that is what you meant to say, then i say you are mistaken. Consider that before you criticize Approval for not letting you vote Favorite over a needed compromise. What is going on here? I properly have to rank Favorite above Compromise. Exactly how can this fail? i am still unimpressed with Mike O's analysis if this is what it is. maybe i should un-plonk him, but i dunno why. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Richard: Approval vs Condorcet.
Any spectators, please don't overdo your reading. This started with Mike O describing one voter changing a vote for Favorite vs Compromise and this somehow affecting Compromise vs Worse. Now it has grown to many votes, which could involve cycles - with many votes the destination can be far from the source. A cycle can be of three or more candidates, such as ABCA, in which each wins over the next and one link is broken - change the content enough and the cycle is broken or the broken link moves to a different point. Seems to me Mike O could be clearer with many less words. Dave Ketchum On Apr 29, 2012, at 3:09 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: What happened to Richard's promise to not read my postings? :-) Instead of continuing to repeat that he doesn't read them, maybe it would be better if he could actually llve up to that promise. Given Richard's particularly low level of discussion, that of a common Internet flamewarrior, it would definitely be better not to hear from Richard. Richard's presence lowers the quality of EM discussion, and I would thank him to stay out of my discussions. Paul said: On 4/28/12 11:46 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote: It fails when approval is used as vote counting method. In approval COUNTING, if you voted Favorite above Compromise, you vote Favorite EQUAL Compromise, and even though you don't like Compromise, you helped elect the idiot. Then don't approve him. Approve candidates whom you like, trust, or consider deserving of your support. Or use the simple strategies that I described. No one will force you to approve a compromise if you don't want to. You're free to approve only your favorite. I've already explained that Condorcet, contrary to popular belief doesn't guarantee what you seem to want. I've discussed that at length. Read my previous postings. Richard says: i've been saying this for months. in Approval voting, how does a voter decide whether to approve of their 2nd choice. [endquote] I've amply discussed that. I'm not going to repeat it again for Richard. Richard says: they surely want their 2nd choice to beat their most hated candidate, but they don't want to help their 2nd choice to beat their favorite. [endquote] Wouldn't it be nice if we could always have what we want :-) Only in LaLa Land does Condorcet give the ideal guarantee that Richard wants. Richard says: Approval sucks. [endquote] Is that supposed to be a compelling argsument? :-) ...or just another example of what Richard has to offer? Richard says: you just cannot say that these two systems speak adequately to the burden of tactical voting they place upon voters. [endquote] Just approve candidates whom you like, trust, /or consider deserving of your support. If there unacceptable candidates who could win, then approbve the acceptables and no one else. Additionally, I've described various simple and _unburdeonsome_ strategies that you could use, if you wish to. On Apr 28, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: For one thing, Condorcet discourages honesty, Richard says: this is just stupid. [endquote] Another of Richard's compelling arguments :-) and a further example of his Internet manners. because, even if you top-rank Compromise, top-ranking Favorite too can cause Compromise to lose to Worse. as long as Compromise is ranked above Worse, it doesn't matter what you do to Favorite, you are not affecting your contribution to Compromise's position with respect to Worse's position (your vote increases Compomise's lead over Worse or decreases Worse's lead over Compromise). [endquote] Only in LaLa Land. Richard apparently is unaware of EM discussion about Condorcet's properties. That explains his misbeliefs about Condorcet's properties. Maybe Favorite barely pairwise-beats Compromise. There is a cycle that includes Favorite, Compromise, and Worse. Worse, by Condorcet's rules, is the winner among the candidates of that cycle. You (and maybe a few who agree with you) have been ranking Favorite over Compromise. Suppose you change your ballots, to move Compromise up to 1st place, equal to Favorite. Now you are't voting Favorite over Compromise. But,regrettably, there aren't enough of you to thereby keep Favorite from pair-beating Compromise. But, if you and your friends were to vote Compromise _over_ Favorite,then you could reverse that defeat. Compromise's only defeat was by Favoite, and now Compromise is the voted CW, because you and your friends have voted Compromise over Favorite. In other words,as I said, if you aren't voting Compromise _alone_ in 1st place, then you aren't helping Compromise against Worse as much as you could. If you want to _fully and reliably_ help the Democrat against the Republican in Condorcet,then you'd better vote the Democrat alone in 1st place. when ranking Compromise _alone_ in 1st place would have defeated Worse. To do your
Re: [EM] Dave Ketchum: Repetition of previoius Approval discussion
On Apr 28, 2012, at 12:56 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: First, my apologies to Paul Kislanko, whom I called by the wrong name when I replied to his posting, a few minutes ago. _This_ reply is to Dave Ketchum: Dave: I'd said: How to avoid this problem? Why not repeal the rule that makes Plurality so funny? Let people rate _every_ candidate with a 1 or a 0. Rate every candidate as Approved or Unapproved. The candidate with the most Approved ratings wins. The result? Well, we'd be electing the most approved candidate, wouldn't we. Who can criticize that? You replied: Anyone who realizes that there is more to wish for. My next sentence was part of completing that thought: Here you can vote for both Favorite and Compromise to help defeat Worse, but cannot vote for both without implying equal liking for each - and thus risking unwanted election of Compromise. [endquote] Ah, If wishes were horses... :-) Far be it for to tell you what you should or shouldn't wish for. But you should keep the distinction between wishes, fantasy, and feasible possibilities. Anyway, as I explained to you when we had this same discussion a few days ago, even you can't complain about changing from Plurality to Approval. (At least I assume that you don't believe that you have an argument agains that change). It being an improvement I did not, and do not, argue against changing from Plurality to Approval - the improvement is minor, but the effort is comparatively minor. Going back to your thoughts when starting this series, Plurality does not allow voters to adequately express their desires. They do not want Worse, so vote for Compromise as the best hope of accomplishing this major goal under Plurality - they feel that voting for Favorite may let Worse win. Approval helps by letting them vote for both Favorite and Compromise. However this is only a partial correction since it says they have equal liking for each. Thus I argue for using a stronger method, such as Condorcet, that will let voters more completely indicate which candidates they most prefer when voting for more than one: . It matters little whether Approval is used until we agree on something better - it is better than Plurality but very little different. . While I promote Condorcet, I do not here argue for or against varieties, even such as ICT that Mike talks of. You can say, But I want something more complicated that I claim will be better. But that isn't an argument against changing from Plurality to Approval. That change (from Plurality to Approval) amounts to nothing more than repealing the ridiculous rule that is Purality's problem. Now, as I've discussed, a proposal to change from Plurality to Condorcet would be a whole other ballgame.If you want to try that, then feel free to. But don't say I told you to. You continued: Here you can vote for both Favorite and Compromise to help defeat Worse, but cannot vote for both without implying equal liking for each [endquote] In a u/a election (there are unacceptable candidates who could win) your best strategy in Condorcet is to rank all of the acceptable candidates in 1st place, and not rank any unacceptable candidates. Doing so doesn't imply that you equally like everyone whom you equal- rank. 1st place puzzles. Thinking of Favorite and Compromise, I likely want to vote for both in Condorcet, but to rank Favorite higher to indicate my preference. You continued: - and thus risking unwanted election of Compromise. [endquote] Sorry, but you do need to risk that, in Condorcet, in a u/a election. But don't feel too bad, because unwanted has a whole other (and stronger) meaning when applied to the unacceptable candidates. I'd said: If you have given 1 point to Compromise, and 0 points to Worse, then it’s obvious that also giving a point to Favorite won’t change the fact that you’ve fully helped Compromise against Worse. You say: The above sentence emphasizes what happens to Compromise vs Worse, ignoring that it destroys Favorite's desired advantage over Compromise. [endquote] But, with Condorcet, you can't say what I said: Top-ranking Favorite means that you aren't fully helpng Compromise against Worse. There are situations in which Worse will win instead of Compromise because you top-ranked Favorite alongside Compromise. The thinking is getting confused. You are quoting what I said about Approval, and then incorrectly stating what this might do to Condorcet. In Condorcet if I rank Compromise, but not Worse, that is as strong as I can be as to this pair. If I also rank Favorite higher, that is as strong as I can be as to these. Worse, being unranked, is shown as least liked among these. As to top-ranking both Favorite and Compromise, that indicates liking them equally, but does not affect them vs unranked Worse. Dave Ketchum Therefore, many people
Re: [EM] Kristofer: Approval vs Condorcet, 4/28/12
On Apr 28, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: For one thing, Condorcet discourages honesty, because, even if you top-rank Compromise, top-ranking Favorite too can cause Compromise to lose to Worse. when ranking Compromise _alone_ in 1st place would have defeated Worse. To do your best to defeat Worse, you have to vote Favorite below Compromise. You have to say with your vote that Condorcet is better than Favorite. Consider that before you criticize Approval for not letting you vote Favorite over a needed compromise. What is going on here? I properly have to rank Favorite above Compromise. Exactly how can this fail? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] as to Favorite vs Compromise vs Worse.
elect someone more liked. That voting system, the minimal improvement on Plurality to fix its ridiculous problem, is called Approval voting, or just Approval. Occasionally we hear a claim that Approval violates “1-person-1- vote”. But Approval is a points rating system. Every voter has the equal power to rate each candidate as approved or unapproved. 1 point or 0 points. If you approve more candidates, does that give you more power? Hardly. Say you approve all of the candidates. You thereby have zero influence on the election. And obviously, any ballot will be cancelled out by an oppositely- voted ballot. Suppose you approve all of the candidates but one. I approve the candidate you didn’t approve, and not ones that you approved . My oppositely-voted ballot cancels yours out. You voted for nearly all of the candidates. I voted for only one. But I cancelled you out. Some Approval advantages: Approval is one of the few voting systems in which you never have any reason to not top-rate your favorite(s). For the first time, everyone would be able to fully support their favorites. As said above, when people can fully support the candidates whom they really like, we elect someone better-liked--someone to whom the most people have given approval. That makes an Approval election into something positive and hopeful. In a presidential straw-poll, using Condorcet, I’ve personally observed someone ranking compromises over their favorite. In Plurality and Condorcet, that can be the only way to maximally help the compromises against someone worse. But never in Approval. That observed favorite-burial in Condorcet suggests to me that many would feel a need to bury their favorites in Condorcet, as they do in Plurality. Never underestimate voters' need to help a compromise all that they can, even when that's at the expense of their favorite. I should add that, in Approval, not only does the voter never have any reason to not top-rate their favorite(s), but it is transparently obvious that that is so. If you have given 1 point to Compromise, and 0 points to Worse, then it’s obvious that also giving a point to Favorite won’t change the fact that you’ve fully helped Compromise against Worse. The above sentence emphasizes what happens to Compromise vs Worse, ignoring that it destroys Favorite's desired advantage over Compromise. Another thing, which really counts as a separate advantage: In Plurality, whether people compromise (as they seem so prone to do), or whether, instead, they all vote for someone they like--either way, their votes will be split between their various compromises or favorites. Suppose the progressives add up to at least a majority. That won’t do them any good in Plurality unless they can somehow guess or organize exactly which candidate they’ll combine their votes on That’s especially a reason why voters now let the media lead them by the nose. That wouldn’t be a problem in Approval, where each person is approving a _set_ of candidates, maybe various favorites and various compromises. It would no longer be necessary to guess where everyone else will combine their votes. In Plurality, that need, especially, makes voters let the media lead them by the nose. Approval , as I said, is the minimal change that gets rid of Plurality’s ridiculous problem. There won’t be any question about whether that’s an improvement. When Plurality’s falsification problem is discussed, Plurality’s inexplicable problem-causing rule, then anyone trying to claim that that problem should be kept will be arguing an indefensible position, and will be seen by all for what he is. I’m not saying that desperate arguments for keeping Plurality’s problem won’t be made. I’m saying that they won’t work. Agreed that Approval was an easy, but valuable, step up from Plurality. But, Approval does not help us vote our preference for Favorite over Compromise. I offer Condorcet as one easy step for this capability. Easy for the voter - rank each approved candidate: . Each candidate ranked by a voter is preferred over each candidate unranked, with much the same power as in Approval. . Among those a voter ranks, each given a higher rank is preferred over each given a lower rank. Picking the winner is based on the candidate pairs - best is for a candidate to win all its pairs. Note that, like Approval but unlike such as IRV, batches of ballots can be counted into arrays and the arrays summed. The negatives below suggest this is a difficult step. Agreed, but its value says it is worth trying. Dave Ketchum In contrast, when anything more complicated than Approval is proposed , opponents, media pundits and commentators, magazine writers, politicians, and some hired academic authorities will point out that it could have unforeseen and undesired consequences. They’ll take advantage
Re: [EM] (no subject)
On Apr 22, 2012, at 11:14 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I missed the fact that Dave was answering my question here, and so I'll reply to his answer: I'd said: Approved ratings wins. The result? Well, we'd be electing the most approved candidate, wouldn't we. Who can criticize that? Dave says: The voter who did not have equal liking for all Approved. [endquote] Ok, Dave is saying that that voter could complain about electing the most approved candidate, the candidate to whom most people have given an approval. One can only wonder how that voter would criticize electing the candidate to whom the most voters have given an approval. Dave is welcome to share with us the complaint that that voter could make. Dave, don't forget to include that voter's justification for his complaint. Let your hypothetical voter tell us what is wrong with electing the candidate to whom the most voters have given an approval. But I'm going to guess what Dave means. He's saying that he wants more; he wants something else. He wants the expressivity of rank balloting. No matter how much Dave wants that, it doesn't amount to something wrong with electing the candidate to whom the most candidates have given an approval. Certainly Dave can make that complaint--that he wants something more. But his complaint and ambitions don't amount to an answer to my question (when I asked who could object to electing the candidate to whom the most voters have given an approval. The rank-balloting advocates' ohjection, desire and ambition certainly deserves to be answered. I will answer it in a subsequent post (though I answered it to a large extent in the part of my article that discusses Approval's advantages--I invite Dave to re- read that part). To try to sort out the question: . In Plurality voters objected to being unable to vote for more than one. . Approval is better, for having fixed that, so now voters wish they could express preferences as to which candidate they like better. Quite aside from that, is the important question that can be asked about any propoesd replacement for Plurality: Is this method going to turn out to be worse than Plurality? Does it have unforseen consequences and problems that will have some unspecified disastrous effect? Proper question when considering any new method, whatever the current base may be. IRV is an example that scares thinkers. I know that I've already addressed this problem, and pointed out that Approval's stark, elegant, transparent simplicity doesn't leave any room for that question. That was why I asked who could object to electing the candidate to whom the most voters have given an approval. You see, it's one thing to say, I want something even better. I claim that there can be more, and I want to ask for more! But it's quite another thing to be able to claim that the method will be worse than Plurality. It was regarding that, that I asked my question, Who could object You refer back to Plurality here - but from context we were at Approval and those of us who looked ahead realized that we need something better. DWK I'm addressing the person who wants to keep Plurality. The person who wants to say thalt Approval would be worse than Plurality. One question that I'd ask that person is, Ok, then what's wrong with electing the candidate whom the most people have approved? I'd also remind that person that the only difference between Approval and Plurality is that the person who, in Pluralilty approves a compromise candidate who isn't his favorite, would, in Approval, be able to also approve everyone he likes more, including his favorite(s). People are then supporting candidates whom they like more. The winner will be someone who is more liked by all of those people. Thats's another thing that would be difficult for the Plurality-defender to object to. Another question that I'd ask the Plurality-defender is; What's wrong with letting each voter have equal power to rate each candidate? ...equal power to give to each candidate one point or 0 points? ...or, which amounts to the same, to give to each candidate an Approved rating or an Unapproved rating? In fact, what's wrong with getting rid of Plurality's forced falsification (which I described in the article)? It's easy to show that Approval will be an improvement on Plurality, and nothing but an improvement. That can't be said for more complicated methods, such as the rank-balloting contraptions. I've already said all this in the article. With any method more complicated than Approval, the public aren't going to be able to be sure that it won't make things worse. Rank methods are contraptions. How many peoiple will feel confident that they know what those complicated contraptions will do? And what they'll do wrong sometimes? Opponents, media, etc. will be able to take full advantage of that
[EM] Election thinking,
Seemed to me Mike left out some important thoughts - can we do better? On Apr 21, 2012, at 3:41 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote, as: Article, with the added paragraph and some better wording Adrian and EM: Elections are important to many organizations - and important that they help the voters express their desires effectively. Important enough that voters should see to it, whatever it takes, that they get the information they need and that their thoughts find their way correctly to whoever is responsible for responding. This article's topic is election methods. Normally candidates get nominated, and can campaign as needed. Even with these, write-in voting should almost always be permitted - there is almost always the possibility of a nominated candidate becoming unsuitable too late for formal replacement. Our current voting system, of course, is the vote-for-1 method. Also called Plurality, or the single mark method. In our Plurality elections, we often hear people saying that they're going to vote for someone they don't really like, because he/she is the lesser-of-2-evils. Note that they're voting for someone they don't like, and not voting for the people they really do like, because the people they like are perceived as unwinnable. A related possibility is voting for the unwinnable candidate and letting the worst-of-2-evils win. A possibility that helps, sometimes, is to be permitted to Approve as many candidates as the voter likes best - protecting against the worst-of-2-evils winning. This Approval method is a trivial expense and trivial improvement over Plurality voting. The candidate with the most Approved ratings wins. The result? Well, we'd be electing the most approved candidate, wouldn't we. Who can criticize that? The voter who did not have equal liking for all Approved. There are many voting methods to choose from, so we will only mention a few here: . Condorcet - really a family of methods - variations on a design using ranking. One can use a single rank value for one candidate (same value as Plurality), or several (same value as Approval). A voter can also use different ranks, using higher ranks for those most preferred, and leaving unranked those least-liked. Here each pair of candidates is in a two-party race counting how many voters rank one, or rank one higher than the other. The candidate winning all of its races wins but, if none, the one coming closest wins. . IRV - a Condorcet method, though a voter can use each rank number only once and the counting is different. Considering only each voter's top rank, see if there is a winner. If not, discard the top rank for the least-liked candidate and move each such ballot to next candidate. The discarding sounds good, and usually discards truly least-liked. Trouble is. the truly best-liked may have been hidden behind lesser- liked by enough voters to have been discarded as least-liked. .. Score - voters rate each candidate and ratings are added to determine winner. Tricky because making a rating higher or lower can affect who wins. DWK Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Election thinking,
Mr. Ossipoff writes much about Approval, saying that is as far as we can get. I say elections are important and that readers should respond to the importance. I go thru the series, hitting on the reasons for stepping thru Plurality, Approval, and Condorcet, suggesting that Condorcet is a target more should be working toward. I was in a hurry, so did not go into detail about Condorcet. Since I handed this out a couple hours ago there has been little time for others to react. DWK On Apr 22, 2012, at 9:49 PM, Adrian Tawfik wrote: I think it is good to have the issue analysed from multiple perspectives. If someone want to write a different article than Mr. Ossipoff, than we can definitely incorporate it on the website. I'm not sure what you believe Mr. Ossipoff left out, can you clarify? I think the best thing is to print Mr. Ossipoff's article and also have different articles that look at other solutions. There a million articles lurking in the work that you all do. I would love to have any of you write about election method reform but also any aspect of democracy that you think is important. Democracy is a big subject and very complex but it is the foundation of modern life. What do you think? From: Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com To: election-methods Methods election-meth...@electorama.com Cc: Adrian Tawfik adriantaw...@yahoo.com Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2012 8:41 PM Subject: Election thinking, Seemed to me Mike left out some important thoughts - can we do better? On Apr 21, 2012, at 3:41 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote, as: Article, with the added paragraph and some better wording Adrian and EM: Elections are important to many organizations - and important that they help the voters express their desires effectively. Important enough that voters should see to it, whatever it takes, that they get the information they need and that their thoughts find their way correctly to whoever is responsible for responding. This article's topic is election methods. Normally candidates get nominated, and can campaign as needed. Even with these, write-in voting should almost always be permitted - there is almost always the possibility of a nominated candidate becoming unsuitable too late for formal replacement. Our current voting system, of course, is the vote-for-1 method. Also called Plurality, or the single mark method. In our Plurality elections, we often hear people saying that they're going to vote for someone they don't really like, because he/she is the lesser-of-2-evils. Note that they're voting for someone they don't like, and not voting for the people they really do like, because the people they like are perceived as unwinnable. A related possibility is voting for the unwinnable candidate and letting the worst-of-2-evils win. A possibility that helps, sometimes, is to be permitted to Approve as many candidates as the voter likes best - protecting against the worst-of-2-evils winning. This Approval method is a trivial expense and trivial improvement over Plurality voting. The candidate with the most Approved ratings wins. The result? Well, we'd be electing the most approved candidate, wouldn't we. Who can criticize that? The voter who did not have equal liking for all Approved. There are many voting methods to choose from, so we will only mention a few here: .Condorcet - really a family of methods - variations on a design using ranking. One can use a single rank value for one candidate (same value as Plurality), or several (same value as Approval). A voter can also use different ranks, using higher ranks for those most preferred, and leaving unranked those least-liked. Here each pair of candidates is in a two-party race counting how many voters rank one, or rank one higher than the other. The candidate winning all of its races wins but, if none, the one coming closest wins. .IRV - a Condorcet method, though a voter can use each rank number only once and the counting is different. Considering only each voter's top rank, see if there is a winner. If not, discard the top rank for the least-liked candidate and move each such ballot to next candidate. The discarding sounds good, and usually discards truly least-liked. Trouble is. the truly best-liked may have been hidden behind lesser- liked by enough voters to have been discarded as least-liked. ..Score - voters rate each candidate and ratings are added to determine winner. Tricky because making a rating higher or lower can affect who wins. DWK 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] Dave, IRV, 4/20/12
On Apr 20, 2012, at 5:30 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
You said:
I choke when I see IRV called fine
[endquote]
Have I ever said that, without qualifying it? No.
I've said that IRV would be fine with an electorate different from
the one tht we now have--an electorate completely free of inclination
to overcompromise, so that even IRV's flagrant FBC failure wouldn't
induce them to overcompromise.
I've said that IRV would be fine for me, as a voter.
I'm not one of those who is inclined to overcompromise for a lesser-
evil.
Its MMC compliance and defection-proofness would work fine for me.
You continued:
- it too easily ignores parts of
what the voters say. For example, look at what can happen with A
being much liked, yet IRV not always noticing:
20 A
20 BA
22 CA
Joe ?
Condorcet would see A elected by 62 votes (plus, perhaps, Joe's
63rd).
[endquote]
It would help to specify more about Joe. Examples with a voter whose
preferences
and vote are unknown are difficult to comment on.
Mike chose to ignore the rest of what I wrote. I will copy that at
the end and comment.
A is well liked - except for Joe, every voter votes for A.
B and C contend, with NO voter voting for both.
A and B voters are a majority, but not a mutual majority. the A
voters are indifferent
Huh! B and C each got 1/3 of the votes - about tying each other, but
far from a majority.
between B and C. So, maybe you're pointing out that for {A,B} to win
or not win, it depends on
which one gets eliminated first. True. Not ideal, I agree, but the B
voters want the coalition
and the A voters don't. So whether there's a coalition will depend
on which one gets eliminated
first.
And we do know that the A voters are indifferent between B and C,
because IRV gives them
no incentive to defect.
Mike Ossipoff
End of my email, that Mike did not include:
Condorcet would see A elected by 62 votes (plus, perhaps, Joe's
63rd). IRV would be affected by Joe's vote:
. A - 63 votes with B and C discarded.
. B - 22 for C after 20A and 21B20A discarded.
. C - 23 votes with A and B discarded.
Joe could have voted for A, B, or C, and have this noticed by IRV. A
vote for A or C would cause them to win; a vote for B would cause C to
win.
DWK
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Correction: Smith set instead of winning set
It pays to be careful when rearranging topics. Here is a quote from Wikipedia, where they have to be careful: In voting systems, the Smith set, named after John H. Smith, is the smallest non-empty set of candidates in a particular election such that each member beats every other candidate outside the set in a pairwise election. beats is what I went looking for. Note that such as 1st rank level are not mentioned - most CW s and cycle members are such, but the definition does not demand that all such be first rank. DWK On Apr 20, 2012, at 1:58 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: When I defined Condorcet-Top (CT), I defined winning set. Instead, I should have just said Smith set, because that concisely says what I meant. Condorcet-Top (CT): The winner is the Smith set member who is ranked at 1st rank level on the most ballotss. [end of CT definition] Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A modification to Condorcet so that one can vote against monsters.
How do we identify a monster? Ŭalabio‽ seems to think they are identifiable. I claim not - Ŭalabio‽ says they got excess ranking - we can see this after a race (deciding excess ranking identifies a monster - which even then is a problem only if the supposed monster got ranked by too many, but have no way to assign one as being a monster before a race. Someone claims voters should rank all candidates. I claim not - voters should rank those they recognize as being better than the collection of unranked. Going beyond this imposes extra work on the voter, and risks mis-ranking those they do not have time to attend to better. Condorcet counts a race between each pair of candidates, with counts as to which is better liked (ranked higher).. The CW candidate wins each such race, while cycle members win most, but not all. DWK On Apr 14, 2012, at 10:59 AM, Michael Rouse wrote: On 4/14/2012 5:42 AM, Andrew Myers wrote: On 4/14/12 8:31 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On 4/14/12 3:45 AM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote: ¡Hello! ¿How fare you? It is tedious to rank hundreds of candidates, but sometimes monster is on the ballot and all unranked candidates are last. If the field is so polarized that the voters idiotically refuse to rank other serious candidates other than their candidate and the evil candidate has followers, the bad candidate might win. I suggest that Condorcet should have a dummy-candidate: 0 The ranked candidates. 1 The unranked candidates. 2 The dummy-canditate. 3 The monsters. All unranked candidates have higher ranks than the monsters. One can then rank the monsters by how terrible they are. Basically, it is a way to vote against monsters in Condorcet without having to rank all of the hundreds of also-rans. all this is complicated crap that gunks up elections. it has an ice-cube's chance in hell. I've been observing experimentally how people use a Condorcet election system in practice over the past ten years (since 2003) and in fact the use of a dummy candidate to signal approval has become increasingly common. It seems to be intuitive, at least to web users, and effective. I do agree that trying to distinguish 0 vs. 1 is probably overly complicated. -- Andrew You could say Rank all candidates you approve of or even List the candidates you like in order of preference. Ignore all other candidates. Such a ballot would be easier for the average voter to understand and fill out. If there are fifteen people running for office, and you like three, hate three, and don't know anything about the remaining nine, you can just say the equivalent of ABC, and ignore the rest. No dummy candidate would be necessary Sure, it wouldn't give as much information as a ballot that has all of the candidates ranked, but it would make certain forms of strategic voting (such as burying) more tedious and less attractive. Then just use the ballots to find the Condorcet winner. Such a ballot could be used with Approval-Completed Condorcet or Ranked Approval Voting, or any other completion method that takes into account Approval votes. For example, you could say If there is a cycle, compare the two candidates with the lowest Approval score in the cycle, and drop the pairwise loser. Continue until there is a single winner. Or whatever. Mike Rouse 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] Oops! IRV.
I choke when I see IRV called fine - it too easily ignores parts of what the voters say. For example, look at what can happen with A being much liked, yet IRV not always noticing: 20 A 20 BA 22 CA Joe ? Condorcet would see A elected by 62 votes (plus, perhaps, Joe's 63rd). IRV would be affected by Joe's vote: . A - 63 votes with B and C discarded. . B - 22 for C after 20A and 21B20A discarded. . C - 23 votes with A and B discarded. DWK On Apr 14, 2012, at 3:51 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I said: With an electorate that doesn't need FBC, and who are clear and honest with themselves about what they consider to be acceptable--that's when and how FBC can be a fine method. ...because it is entirely defection-proof, and because it meets the Mutual Majority Criterion. Of couse, when I said FBC the 2nd time, near he end of that 1st paragraph, I meant IRV. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] I made an understatement
On Apr 12, 2012, at 6:47 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I said that Plurality only lets you rate one candidate. That isn't true. You're still rating all of the candidates in Plurality, but you're required to bottom-rate all but one of them. Looking ahead, Plurality lets the voter present a small amount of information; Approval a bit more; and Condorcet additional - each such as the previous methods do not permit. So Plurality doesn't have a _lack_ of information. It has forced falsification of informtion. It should be pretty obvious that that can't be desirable. And it shouldn't be surprising, the adverse societal consequences of it. Approval is such a simple, minimal change that there can be no question that Approval is an improvement on Plurality, and only an improvement. Agreed that Approval allows approving more than one, and that each approved is preferred over each unapproved, just as the one approved in Plurality is preferred over all others. That can't be said for Condorcet or Kemeny, or any other rank method or complex method. Now it is time to be more careful. In Condorcet if I give one rank to all I prefer I have given the same preference to those ranked over those unranked as I could do with Approval's approving. But ability to use multiple ranks in Condorcet or Kemeny gives me additional power - among the ranked candidates my preferences can be unequal and I show this by ranking higher each that I prefer over other ranked candidates. Condorcet perhaps should be described as a family of election methods, usually agreeing as to details such as winner chosen - such as Kemeny. I don't know anything about Kemeny's properties, and I was just asking what it does with the 2nd set of rankings in my previous posting, and whether or not it passes FBC. I don't claim to know Kemeny's properties. 2nd set implies misunderstanding - in the Condorcet family voters are normally permitted to use more than two rank values. FBC is simply one of many acronyms for which definitions are hard to find (and to verify having found correctly). Ask some people, some members of the public, what they think of various proposed methods. Mike Ossipoff DWK Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Dave: Condorcet
CW, without risk of electing that candidate whom we're ranking over the sincere CW. Huh? If you do not risk your candidate getting elected you have no chance of more than annoying the CW. ICT has some good protection against burial, because burial can only work for a candidate who is ranked #1 by more people than anyone else in the cycle. ICT or ITC? Your zillion titles are beyond understanding. ICT would be a better proposal than Condorcet, since it also meets FBC and CD (it's defection-resistant, unlike Condorcet). But ICT share's Condorcet's problems #1 snd #2, above. Mike Ossipoff Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Dave: Improvement on Approval
On Mar 26, 2012, at 2:44 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: Dave: On Mar 24, 2012, at 3:49 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: Approval can't be improved upon, other than questionably and doubtfully. You wrote: This is a bit much, considering that there are many competing methods that offer various worthy capabilities. Looking at the ABucklin that you mention: Assuming that I wish to elect A, but want to have B considered ONLY if I cannot get A elected: . I cannot say this with Approval, where I must give equal approval to every candidate I approve. . With ABucklin I can give B a lower rank than I give A, to be considered only if A's rank does not decide on a winner. [endquote] Yes, and I don't deny that Abucklin's improvement can be desirable. In fact, if our voting system now were Approval with the options that I've been describing, I probably would use the MTA option, or, better, the MTAOC* option. The only reason why I wouldn't use ABucklin or AOCBucklin is because there wouldn't, for me, be many levels of candidate-merit. Under different circumstances, I might use ABucklin or AOCBucklin. *(We've been talking about how the conditional methods have a ridiculous secondary defection strategy. I'd use the MTAOC option anyway, because I don't think that people would use that ridiculous, counter-intuitive, and potentially disastrous defection strategy. So, while 1st-level defection is discouraged, there might well not be any 2nd level defection. Let me just add that, because I only suggest AOC and MTAOC, etc., as _options_, the appearance of complexity of the conditionality-implementation software code isn't an acceptance problem, because everyone will know that s/he needn't use it. An _option_ for managing one's Approval voting power isn't a problem. Anyone's voting power is his/her own, and if s/he chooses a complicated way of managing it, that isn't anyone else's problem.) What did you say? On or before the 24th I wrote of ABucklin based on a partial definition of it since I could not find anything complete and solid. Here I read of what must be collections of methods: . Deciding on implementing would require decisions on ballot format and counting rules. , To be a voter would require much of that - and if vague or incomplete would properly inspire complaints. It isn't that Approval can't be improved on at all. I'm just saying that voting system reform advocates often have (in my perception) an exaggerated impression of _how much_ Approval can be improved on. For instance, though I like ABucklin, and it's one of my favorites, it isn't perfect. Improvements and refinements of Approval don't bring perfection. Maybe you rank one of the acceptable candidates in 3rd place, because you want to distinguish between the merit of the various acceptable candidates. But then, in the count, someone gets a majority when ballots give to their 2nd choices. A candidate unacceptable to you wins because you ranked that acceptable candidate in 3rd place. Or maybe the opposite could happen: You give 2nd place rankiing to B, and 1st place ranking to A. No one gets a 1st place majority, and so all the ballots, including yours, give to their 2nd choice. B then gets a majority and wins. But A would have gotten a majority in the next round. Or maybe A and B both got a 2nd rank majority, but B got a bigger majority than A did. A would have won if you hadn't ranked B. Of course that can happen in Approval, and, in fact, of course ABucklin makes it less likely. My point is merely that it's still possible. Yes, I know that ABucklin offers something that Approval doesn't offer. I'm just saying that it doesn't _always_ prevent accidentally giving the election away to a 2nd choice. And you can regret not voting Approval-style. Probably some improvement--I'd use the multi-level MTA or MTAOC--but not the perfect improvement that some expect. And, whether in Approval with options, or in Abucklin, the person voting an Approval ballot has simpler strategy (though he/she has to of course be willing to forgo the multi-level nature of ABucklin or MTA). Of course ABucklin adds MMC compliance, and I value that. Bottom-line: Improvement, yes. Perfect or complete improvement, no. I suggest offering improvements, such as the options of AOC, ABucklin, AOCBucklin, MTA, MTAOC, etc., maybe delegation, sometime after the enactment of Approval. Especially if there's considerable talk about wanting something fancier than ordinary Approval. Which leaves me promoting Condorcet. It allows ranking but, unlike ABucklin or IRV, all that a voter ranks gets counted. Further, any voter able to match their desires to Plurality or Approval for a particular election, can vote by those rules and have them counted with the same power by Condorcet rules. Dave Ketchum Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em
Re: [EM] Dave: Approval-objection answers
On Mar 23, 2012, at 7:28 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2012/3/23 MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com Dave: You wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 03/22/2012 07:57 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: There are plenty of voters who report having to hold their nose and vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically forced to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval. If there is no one acceptable to vote for, the voters have not done their job: . Could happen occasionally such as failures in doing nominations. Write-ins can help recover for this. [endquote] There could be elections in which there's no one acceptable to vote for, but, as you said, even then, there should be write-ins. But, even with the difficulty of getting non-big-2 parties on the ballot, and especially after the way Approval will open things up, there will usually be someone reasonably acceptable on the ballot. Even now, ballots often have a wide variety of candidates and parties. My point is that it is voter responsibility to see to it that there are acceptable candidates on the ballot: . The laws should provide for practical quality nominations - if not, the voters should see to fixing. . Voters should see to good nominations - another voter responsibility. . Even with quality above there can be failures - occasional failures can be expected - we just need to worry when they are too common. You continued: strategically forced should not be doable for how a particular voter voted [endquote] It's doable because many voters are so resigned and cowed that it doesn't take much to force them to do giveaway compromise strategy, without any reliable information to justify that strategy. I refer to the progressive people who think they strategically need to vote for the Democrat. You continued: (but no one voted for the supposedly forced choice [endquote] Regrettably, millions vote for that choice, because it's billed as one of the two choices. You continued: - why force such a hated choice? [endquote] To keep voters from voting for someone whom they genuinely prefer. What the public, including the voters, would like isn't the same as what is most profitable to those who own the media that tell us about the two choices. Everyone believes that only they have the preferences that they have, because that's how it looks in the media. Notice that all politicians routinely promise change. That's because they know that the public wants change. So the politicians are adamant about change. They're mad as hell and they want to do something about it, and give us change. Amazingly, that pretense continues to reliably work, every time. My point was that, except for absentee ballots, secrecy should be known to be perfect and thus the enforcers have no power: . If there are no votes as demanded, that proves no one obeyed - but this should be very unlikely for normal expected voting. . There can be ways to violate secrecy on absentee processing, though doing this should be avoided. You continued: OMOV may inspire some - many of us have to argue against it having value because we back, as better, methods this thought argues about - such as Condorcet, Score, and even IRV. [endquote] OMOV is easily answered by pointing out that Approval let's everyone rate each candidate as approved or unapproved. But the complaint is that that letting makes Approval an invalid system. Response to that is that letting each voter rate or rank more than one leaves them equal power. . I was noting that many of the better methods permit violating OMOV. You continued: Part of the chicken dilemma difficulty is that it depends on what some voters will do without any compulsion, and what others will do after making promises to cooperate [endquote] The chicken dilemma is very difficult to get rid of. I don't know of anyone proposing a FBC-complying method that really gets rid of that problem. On the other hand, it is very difficult to cause trouble with. The plotter: . Needs to know expectable normal vote counts for this collection of voters and this topic. . Know the change wanted and get it voted. . Somehow avoid others, perhaps due to hearing of these proposed changes, of making conflicting changes. Dave Ketchum The methods that I call defection-resistant do much to alleviate that problem, but don't eliminate it. They just push it to a secondary level, where defection strategy is more complicated and counterintuitive, and therefore less likely to be used. A party whose members might defect by not support your party in Approval
Re: [EM] Kristofer: The Approval poll
Many thoughts catch my eye here - I will not attempt to respond to all. On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 03/22/2012 07:57 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: There are plenty of voters who report having to hold their nose and vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically forced to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval. If there is no one acceptable to vote for, the voters have not done their job: . Could happen occasionally such as failures in doing nominations. Write-ins can help recover for this. .. If it happens often, time to improve how nominations are done - perhaps by voters getting more involved in nominating; perhaps by improving related laws. strategically forced should not be doable for how a particular voter voted (but no one voted for the supposedly forced choice - why force such a hated choice? the forcers should not be so demanding). Especially since it would no longer be necessary to try to guess who one's necessary compromise is (because you can vote for all the candidates you might need as compromise). No more split vote, since it isn't necessary for candidate Worst's opponents to all vote for the same candidates--They'd easily be able to vote for the same _set_ of candidates, without all agreeing on one candidate to unite on. These things answer the complaint of someone who says that they had to hold their nose to vote for the Democrat. With Approval they can approve the Democrat if they think they need to, and also everyone better, including their favorite. Such voters will no longer be resigned to pure giveaway. Yes, that could work for Democrats and those who don't want to vote for the lesser evil. The poll does seem to have a rather large number of people who go this is a liberal plot to swindle the election from us, though. Could a primary argument work as a response? Something like... okay, you feel free to watch your party use oodles of money to find out who's most electable in the primary, when they could have used Approval and saved that money to use against the Democrats in the general election? I'm not very familiar with what Jameson calls tribal counting coup as politics here is a lot more issue-based than American politics, so I don't know if it'd work. Plurality is the method that needs primaries to recover when a party has nominated clones (because, in plurality the clones would divvy up the available votes - in most other methods voters could see clones as equally attractive and vote for both). Of course there is no escape in plurality for multiple parties could nominate clones and primaries are done within parties. Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about what the thing means, as one can see by the oh, and let the voters vote for a single candidate many times type of posts. Others think it violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then the voting power is the same for each. [endquote] OMOV may inspire some - many of us have to argue against it having value because we back, as better, methods this thought argues about - such as Condorcet, Score, and even IRV. Yes, if you give thumbs-down to nearly all of the candidates, you're giving just as many ratings as the person who gives thumbs-up to nearly all of the candidates. S/he doesn't have more voting power than you do. As I said, you can cancel out any other voter, by an opposite ballot, no matter how many candidates s/he gives thumbs-up to. With N candidates, each voter has the power to rate N candidates, up or down. True. I know that, you know that. How do we easily show the people that? I think it's a matter of framing. If cast in terms of being you can give as many votes as there are candidates, then Approval feels like it violates OMOV. If cast in terms of for each candidate, you determine if you approve/not or if your thumbs will be up or down, then it's more clear that it doesn't, because every voter has that choice for every candidate. But, if you approve every candidate, you might as well have stayed home - because the same count is received by every candidate you vote for. My preference for what to call approval is entirely pragmatic. The term approval has precedence (it's called Approval voting after all). The term thumbs-up vs thumbs-down might be easier to understand for someone who's never heard of Approval before. I don't know which phrasing would be stronger. (In better set vs in worse set, is probably not it :-) )
Re: [EM] Utilitarianism and Perfectionism.
On Feb 8, 2012, at 3:29 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 8.2.2012, at 16.18, David L Wetzell wrote: ... At any rate, this is why I've argued that ascertaining the best single-winner election rule is nowhere near as important as pitching the importance of mixing the use of single-winner and multi-winner election rules, with the latter replacing the former more so in more local elections that are not competitive often in single-winner elections. I disagree: . We have single-winner purposes such as mayor or governor, unless we redesign the goals. . And purposes such as legislator which can be packaged as single- winner or multi-winner, with the PR backers promoting multi-winner. I think I agree when I say that the first decision (in the USA) is whether to make the current two-party system work better or whether to aim at a multi-party system. After that has been agreed, it is easier to pick the used election methods. Now, in addition to technical problems one has also a mixture of political higher level targets injected in the discussion, and that does not make it any easier. At the top level there is the presidential system that is tailored for the two-party approach. If one would give up the two-party approach at that level one might move also e.g. away from the single- party government approach towards multi-party govennments. Presidency is important, done in its own way. It might continue as such handled here with minor changes per single-winner, or major changes in government that would fit multi-winner. At the lower levels one might consider also two-party oriented methods that are allow also third parties to take part in the competition. I mean that if one wants to stay in the two-party model, one may not need full multi-winner methods at the lower levels. It would be enough to e.g. guarantee that also third parties can survive and get their candidates elected, and that some third party may also one day replace one of the major parties as one of the two leading parties in some states, and maybe at national level too. I think this more lmited approac to multiple parties is quite different from typical multi-party requirements that typically include requirements like proportional represnetation. Here, such as Condorcet for single-winner, and PR by whatever method does well for multi-winner. Likely Condorcet best for presidential. Note that, unlike with TPTP, or even IRV, Condorcet voters can back, besides the better of the two-parties, those for whatever issues this voter considers important - and get their backing noted in the vote counts (the big difference between IRV and Condorcet). Dave Ketchum Of course one may also adopt different models in the two layers, two- party system for the rop level and proportonal representation for some state level representative bodies. Above I also made the assumption that the strict tw-party approach where there are two fixed parties and that's it, is not considered acceptable / sufficient. The message I'm trying to carry with this, is simply that after one names the targets, it is much easier to discuss what the best methods to implement those targets would be. Is it a two-party system, a flexible two-party system, or a proportional system, and are the targets different at different levels and in different bodies. Juho 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 #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet
On Feb 9, 2012, at 9:02 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Robert, De : robert bristow-johnson r...@audioimagination.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 9 février 2012 10h07 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet On 2/8/12 1:25 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 8.2.2012, at 7.33, robert bristow-johnson wrote: ... if it's not the majority that rule, what's the alternative? I'm not aware of any good alternatives to majority rule in competitive two-candidate elections (with some extra assumptions that rule out random ballot etc.). Juho thank you Juho, for stipulating to the obvious. i will confess that i am astonished at the resistance displayed here at the EM list to this obvious fact. Nobody on EM said anything contrary to Juho's statement. I agree with Juho. And Bryan said something similar at the end of his post. With two candidates, most of us agree that you have to use majority rule. That doesn't mean it gives perfect answers according to some ideal. If your ideal is maximum utility, then it's pretty clear majority rule isn't always giving the correct answer. Not because the ballots make it clear that this is happening, but because almost any model of voter preferences will lead to this conclusion. It would be frankly bizarre, if fairness and utility always gave the same answers. Actually, a majority is not needed here, but is close enough that we almost never complain. For an excuse for making trouble I offer: 40 A 41 B 8 A,B legal to vote for more than one in Condorcet. 8 spoiled ballots - can happen even here. (Your idea of all the utilities being 0 or 1 can't even be made to work as a model, I don't think, unless voters really only have two stances toward candidates. Because what happens when you introduce a third candidate that some people like even better? Utilities don't change based on who else is in the race, they are supposed to represent in absolute terms the benefit from a candidate being elected.) Utilities do not change? I buy that they do - given that A or B offer no special value and that neither is worth voting for, getting C in the race can matter if C is known as willing and able to be useful. When you try to make an argument for Condorcet and 3+ candidate scenarios, based on the inevitability of using majority rule with two candidates, you will fail to convince an advocate of utility, because an advocate of utility probably doesn't think the method options are as limited anymore, once you have 3+ candidates. The majority rule procedure with two candidates may be necessary (Clay may even disagree with that though), but that doesn't mean it was always doing the right thing. Those of us that dislike runoffs might argue against demanding majority in what follows : 40 A 30 B 15 CBA I count 45B40A, 30B15C, 40A15C - with B winning if we do not demand majority Is this clear enough? I understand you want to make a fairness argument in favor of majority rule with two candidates, and then build off of that. But a utility advocate may reject fairness and prefer utility, even without offering a different method that could be used with two candidates. (He may perceive that there is no utility improvement to be had by doing something else.) So even if you attack Range as silly in the two-candidate case, you're not making the point that fairness is paramount over utility. Seems to me the voters saw utility - but there is nothing here giving it a measurable value because there is nothing to measure it with other than the vote counts (but it is the vote counts that show how much they saw backing the value they voted for). I'd note also that utility goes far beyond the question of whether Range is a workable method. A utility advocate is free to leave Range in the trash-bin while seeking to maximize utility under other methods that you might recognize as less prone to exaggeration strategies. And from your last mail to me: It could be true if it so happens that nobody wants to vote truthfully under Condorcet methods, while Approval in practice never has any bad outcomes, etc. it could be true that hundreds of people who have testified to such have actually been abducted by extraterrestrial aliens who poked needles into them and did experiments on human subjects. but it's an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Yes, you're right. However, the important point here is just that it could be true. More Condorcet than Condorcet isn't inherently nonsense. You just have to read it as better sincere Condorcet efficiency than under Condorcet methods. Such a thing is possible. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet
How did we get here? What I see called Condorcet is not really that. On Feb 6, 2012, at 10:02 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: ... Say people vote rated ballots with 6 levels, and after the election you see a histogram of candidate X and Y that looks like this: (better) 6:Y X 5: Y X 4: YX 3: XY 2: X Y 1:X Y (worse) N:123456789 That is, 3 people rated X as 6 and only one person rated them as 1, and vice versa for Y. X wins, right? If it's Condorcet, not necessarily. This is consistent with a 14:12 victory for Y over X. I count 15 vs 6, being that all you can say in Condorcet is XY, X=Y, and XY. There being no cycles in this election, I would not expect any variation among Condorcet methods. Perhaps Jameson was thinking of something other than Condorcet - consistent with saying rated rather than ranked? If you present the pairwise total, it's obvious to people that Y should win. If you present the histogram, it's at least as obvious to people that X should win. If what people find obvious isn't even consistent (which even just pairwise isn't, of course; that's why there is more than one Condorcet system), then you can't elevate obvious to an unbreakable principle. ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4435] Looking at Condorcet - Runoffs
FPTP brings us runoffs because they have a need - their voters can like more than one but cannot vote for more than one in any election. Majority makes sense for them and they can force that by selecting among only two in a runoff. Runoffs are expensive for all involved, so it is not clear that a majority should be demanded in methods such as Condorcet that allow more complete expression and counting of desires in the main election. Some, to compete among methods, would combine selected methods for a test election, and use a runoff if the methods disagreed as to winner. . I do not object to such for the purpose of testing methods, but do object to imposing it on voters in an otherwise normal election - it adds unneeded complications for those voters. Dave Ketchum On Feb 2, 2012, at 8:15 PM, Bruce Gilson wrote: On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com wrote: For combined systems, I definitely prefer Abd's suggestion: vote a Range ballot, count it by various rules, and if the winner by the different rules does not agree, hold a runoff. In most cases, it would agree; and in the rest, a runoff would be a worthwhile second look at the best candidates, not a timewasting requirement to repeat a determination already given. As I have said numerous times, I really do not like any system that would require a runoff. The big thing I dislike is that a voter, having once taken the trouble to go to his polling place to cast a vote, now finds he has to go yet again to settle the question -- in effect, his previous trip was wasted. A secondary problem is that the county, city, or whoever runs elections has to spend the money to set up another poll. If schools have to be closed to use the building as a polling place, there is further disruption. Abd likes runoffs -- this argument I've had with him numerous times. I absolutely detest them, for the reasons have just cited. I really think that any method of holding elections that requires runoffs is immediately unacceptable. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4433] Looking at Condorcet - Recounting
I believe this topic needs more thought. Ability to do accurate recounts should be considered essential. Sooner or later counters will be tempted to adjust counts to help achieve desired wins - we should consider it unacceptable to tempt them by letting them hide evidence of such. Recounts do not have to recount entire ballots. If suspicious as to major candidates A and B in Condorcet. look at which of these is ranked highest but, having found one, not necessary to check whether that voter ranked the other some place lower. If counts are reported by such as precinct, as in Condorcet, counts that look odd are the most likely locations of trouble. Dave Ketchum On Feb 2, 2012, at 9:29 AM, Stephen Unger wrote: A fundamental problem with all these fancy schemes is vote tabulation. All but approval are sufficiently complex to make manual processing messy, to the point where even checking the reported results of a small fraction of the precincts becomes a cumbersome, costly operation. (Score/range voting might be workable). Note that, even with plurality voting, manual recounts are rare. With any of the other schemes we would be committed to faith-based elections. Steve Stephen H. Unger Professor Emeritus Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Columbia University Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4437] Re: Looking at Condorcet
On Feb 3, 2012, at 12:31 AM, Clay Shentrup wrote: As far as I can tell, no amount of evidence will change DaveK's mind. But it's worth pointing out that Score Voting is superior to Condorcet in essentially every way. * Lower Bayesian Regret with any number of strategic or honest voters NOTE: Some would argue that maybe people are more honest with Condorcet, but if you look at this graph, the difference would have to be pretty enormous in order for Condorcet to outperform Score Voting (http://scorevoting.net/BayRegsFig.html). And there's some evidence it's actually the opposite — i.e. Score Voting inspires more honesty. No comments on BR for now. * Is simpler for voters. 1) Ranked ballots tend to result in about 7 times as many spoiled ballots, whereas Score Voting REDUCES ballot spoilage. Huh! Was there bias by the measurers? Both have voters use numbers for voting. ANY number valid for Score could also be valid for Condorcet, which needs no more than to be able to read the numbers assigned to A and B by a voter and decide whether they say AB, A=B, or AB. IRV, by prohibiting equal ranks, demonstrates having more opportunity for spoilage. 2) Even voters who can cast a valid ranked ballot will typically have no understanding of how the system works. E.g. we use Instant Runoff Voting in San Francisco, and experiments (plus my own experience asking around) has shown that the vast majority of people cannot correctly describe how the system works, or correctly pick the winner given a simplified hypothetical set of ballots. They generally assume it uses the counting rules of Borda (you get more points the better your ranking is, and the most points wins). So in reality, the same thing would happen with Condorcet. Whereas the principle behind Score Voting happens to match people's intuitive expectations, so it is simpler in that they will tend to just inherently understand it, the same way people understand restaurant ratings on Yelp. Discussing IRV is not especially helpful here since it is somewhat more complex than Condorcet. For Condorcet the basic is simply saying which candidate is liked best via assigned ranks - if more voters vote AB than vote BA, then B cannot be CW (liked better than each other candidate). Score ratings say a bit more - how much better is A liked than B. Rating gets tricky when deciding how much - when wanting to say ABC, decreasing rating for B increases A's chance of winning over B but decreases limit for BC, and thus increases possibility of C beating B (if other voters rate C about equal to B, this change could make C win the race). * Is MASSIVELY simpler for election officials. Condorcet is not especially complex - read the ranks from each ballot, counting which candidate is preferred for each pair of candidates, and then note which is the CW. * Is more expressive, which is valuable for the 10% or more of voters who will choose to be expressive rather than tactical. Score ratings are numbers to show how much each candidate is liked - questionable how accurate as to matching true liking. Condorcet ranking only asks which candidate is better liked in each pair - a simpler question. Condorcet systems fundamentally try to maximize the wrong thing. They try to maximize the odds of electing the Condorcet winner, even though it's a proven mathematical fact that the Condorcet winner is not necessarily the option whom the electorate prefers. Trouble is that the ballots ARE the voters' statements as to which candidate IS the CW. The above paragraph seems to be based on the ballots sometimes not truly representing the thoughts of the voters voting them. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4429] Looking at Condorcet
Ranking more than ten candidates? Condorcet does NOT require such. However, if too many are running, you need to look for sanity: . You may have preferences among those most likely to win - pick those you see as the best few of these. . Also pick among the few you would prefer, regardless of their chances. This voting will help them get encouraging vote counts even if there is no chance of their winning. . Do not waste your energy on others. Now do your ranking among these, hopefully having time to rank properly according to desirability, not caring, for the moment, as to winnability. Dave Ketchum On Feb 3, 2012, at 2:45 PM, Andy Jennings wrote: On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Richard Fobes electionmeth...@votefair.org wrote: On 2/2/2012 11:07 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 02/02/2012 05:28 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I honestly think that honest rating is easier than honest ranking. ... As a contrast, to me, ranking is easier than rating. ... I too find ranking easier than rating. As do I. I go back and forth on this, myself. Some thoughts: - If I had to rank more than ten candidates, I think it would be difficult unless I put them into three or four tiers first. Then, perhaps I would choose to rank the candidates within the tiers or perhaps I would leave them all tied if I didn't really care that much. Thus, for me, honest rating with just a few buckets is more basic than ranking. - If someone built a computer program that presented me pairs of candidates at a time as Kristofer suggested, that would make it somewhat easier. I think I would still prefer to divide them into tiers first, but if I divided them into tiers first, I might not need the pairwise comparison hand-holding. Also, suppose that I analyzed the candidates in three different policy dimensions that I consider equally important and I found that my policy preferences were: Foreign Policy: ABC Domestic Social Issues: BCA Domestic Economic Issues: CAB Now I prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. A cycle among my own personal preferences when I compare them pairwise. Then my output ranking would depend on the order in which the pairwise questions were asked. ??!? ... - If a real election were being tabulated with Condorcet, I would vote honestly. - If a real election were being tabulated with IRV, I would warn people not to vote for minor candidates. There is no harm in minor candidates getting the few votes they deserve in IRV. However, if the vote counters, as they work, see the deserving winner as momentarily having the fewest votes, this candidate will have lost. Let me admit that a crucial point for me is that the only way to gain Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives is to tell the voters to evaluate each candidate independently and vote honestly, which may make me biased towards rating methods. FBC is very important to me and I'm still skeptical of the FBC-compliant ranked-ballot methods recently proposed. ~ Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Looking at Condorcet
Mike offers serious thinking about Approval. I step up to Condorcet as being better and nearly as simple for the voter. Voter can vote as in: . FPTP, ranking the single candidate liked best, and treating all others as equally liked less or disliked. . Approval, ranking those equally liked best, and treating all others as equally liked less or disliked. . IRV, giving each voted for a different rank, with higher ranks for those liked best, and realizing that IRV vote counters would read only as many of the higher rankings as needed to make their decisions. . Condorcet, ranking the one or more liked, using higher ranks for those liked best, and ranking equally when more than one are liked equally. Condorcet is little, if any, more difficult for voters than FPTP and Approval. . For many elections, voting as with them is good and as easy. .. When a voter likes A and B but prefers A - Approval cannot say this, but it is trivial to vote with Condorcet's ranking. In Condorcet the counters consider each pair of candidates as competing with each other. Usually one candidate, being best liked, proves this by winning in every one of its pairs. Unlike IRV (which requires going back to the ballots as part of the counting), counting here can be done in multiple batches of votes, and the data from the batches summed into one summary batch for analysis. There can be cycles in Condorcet, such as AB, BC, and CA, with these winning against all others. This requires a closer look to decide on the true winner, normally one of the cycle members. . Here the counters see the cycle, rather than a CW - and how to pick a winner from a cycle is a reason for the dispute as to what is best. Range/score ratings have their own way of showing more/less desire. Truly more power than Condorcet ranking - AND more difficult to decide on rating values to best interact with what other voters may do. Write-ins? Some would do away with such. I say they should be allowed for the cases in which something needs doing too late to attend to with normal nominations. True that voters may do some write- ins when there is no real need - and I have no sympathy for such voters - this needs thought. Dave Ketchum On Jan 28, 2012, at 3:13 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote Re: [EM] Propose plain Approval first. Option enhancements can be later proposals.: The enhancement consisting of voting options in an Approval election should only be mentioned when there’s plenty of time to talk, and when talking to someone who is patient or interested enough to hear that much. And the enhancements should only be mentioned as possibilities, when speaking to someone to whom the whole notion of voting-system reform is new. Maybe that goes for SODA as well. Don’t propose too much change, when talking to someone new to the subject. So the method to propose first is ordinary Approval. If, in some particular community, there is a committee of people interested in working on a voting-system reform proposal, then, though the enhancements might be mentioned to that committee, the suggestion to include them in a public proposal should come only from other members of the committee, people new to voting systems. That’s a measure of their enactment-feasibility in that community. For AOC, MTAOC, etc., I’ve spoken of two kinds of conditionality :conditionality by mutuality, and conditionality by top-count. In an Approval election in which the conditional methods are offered as optional ways of voting, any particular voter could choose which of those two kinds of conditionality s/he intends to use for any particular conditional vote for any particular candidate. There’s no reason why a voter couldn’t specify different kinds of conditionality for conditional votes for different candidates. In the count, the conditionality by top-count should be done first, and then, when those conditional votes are established, the calculation for conditionality by mutuality, as described in the MTAOC pseudocode, should be done. Of course, if SODA’s delegation is also an option in the same election, then after the entire count is completed (including AERLO’s 2nd count if AERLO is offered), then the work of the delegates would begin, just as it would if SODA’s delegation were the only option enhancement in the election. Of course, for SODA to work as needed, mutual approval agreements among candidate-delegates, whether made before or after the pre-delegate-work count(s), should be public, officially-recorded, and binding. Of course, one would expect that there would be no need for delegates to make agreements before the pre-delegate-work count(s). Since the current poll’s voting period doesn’t end till zero hours, one minute, on February 1st (Wednesday), GMT (UT), or, in other-words, at a minute after midnight, Tuesday night, GMT (UT), which is 4
Re: [EM] SODA posting with run-on lines (hopefully) fixed.
Looks like your new system is teaching you properly. I tried printing with smaller characters - and each line filled out properly. I tried making the page wider or narrower - still properly got as many words on each line as would fit. On Jan 22, 2012, at 10:30 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: This is a test, to find out if I can get rid of the run-on lines by re-typing the posting with automatic linebreaks at the right margin instead of using the carriage-return. But does that mean that if I try to make a paragraph division, I'll instead end up with an endless line? Sorry, but I'm having difficulty sending readable e- mail wth my new computer system. Now let's try a paragraph and find out if that works: I'm copying the posting here, and will then rewrite it without the carriage-returns. What is sent will be the verion without the carriage-returns.(except for new paragraphs). One problem is that the zoom scale keeps changing, which could make nonsense of the automatic linebreaks. SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it acceptable. You're specifying the rules in too much detail. The initiative street-descrliption needn't be legal language, though that should be available upon request. Likewise, for the computer program of MTAOC, MCAOC and AOC. So here's how I described SODA to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you can optionally check a box indicating that you want that candidate to be able to add approval votes to your ballot on your behalf if s/he doesn't win. S/he will have previously published a ranking of candidates to indicate the order in which s/he would give such designated approvals. That's it. That brief descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is non-delegation. If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box. I'd better send this before the system finds a way to mess it up more, or freeze the computer, etc. (more when I can fix the remaining run-on lines in the posting) Mike Ossipoff. more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-return characters.) Mike Ossipoff 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] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp
On Dec 16, 2011, at 6:16 PM, Ted Stern wrote: On 16 Dec 2011 13:29:30 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Cc: Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: Re: [EM] Egg or Chicken. Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:59:14 -0600 From: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform. This is also a good reason to strategically support IRV, since we can trust that with changes, there'll be more scope for experimentation and consideration of multiple alternatives to FPTP. This is precisely the kind of game theory that leads to the two party problem with FPTP: we need to coalesce behind the strongest contender in order to have some kind of voice, be it only a compromise. So no, I don't think it is a good reason. While IRV offers ranked choice voting - a big improvement over FPTP, It fails to have a defendable way to count the votes - and, by that incompleteness, can reject the true choice of a majority of voters - see Burlington as a widely heard example. See Condorcet, a method that is a good reason for dumping IRV - by accepting the same votes as IRV, but then actually reading what the voters vote, Condorcet is a major improvement. KD: Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation, it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems. dlw: That is what is in dispute. PR makes sense for legislatures - but is no help for electing such as governors or mayors. KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been tried and rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades. dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by considering only one vote per voter at a time? Yes, precisely. The traditional Robert's Rules method of taking only a single vote at a time is at fault. It produces a suboptimal result by segmenting the problem too much. IRV does allow the voters to make a complete statement of their desires, with no segmentation, which means no information from other voters (as would happen in a caucus) as to what the other voters are doing in what is called above a single vote. IRV does segment the vote counters' work by restricting their reading of each ballot to what is, for the moment, the top rank. It is similar to the less optimal result you get from dividing space by partitioning in each dimension separately to get bricks, instead of hexagons in 2D or truncated octagons in 3D. dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the results can be tabulated at the precinct level. Could he be thinking of Condorcet, which tabulates the same ballots intelligently at precinct level? dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and elsewhere a lot more than IRV KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not solve any of plurality's problems, so it's a great way to convince people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods can be. (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and on and on...) dlw: It's called marketing. FairVote wisely simplified the benefits of IRV. IRV does find majority winners a lot more often than FPTP and it reduces the spoiler problem considerably. It does save money compared with a two round approach and its' problems are easy to fix. But when marketers lie and get caught, potential customers get suspicious as to future marketing. I do not understand the above claim about majority winners - true that FPTP voters cannot completely express their desires, but the counters can, accurately, read what they say with their votes. Dave Ketchum That is debatable. I happen to think that the goal/object of IRV is different from what one wants to achieve in a single winner election. If you model your government on a natural system (and the US Founders based their arguments by appealing to Natural Law), then you do best when you create a diverse and representational set of options (hence PR for legislatures) and only then apply selective pressure using a centrist single winner method. IRV is not based on centrism. As the single-winner limit of STV, it is better (not best) at finding a representative
[EM] The Occupy Movement: A Ray of Hope -- in Politics
Thanks to Mike for adding some thought. This subject is offering some thought toward Occupy getting something workable in 2012 - a year in which new and usable thoughts are needed quickly. One complication is that our target is composed of 50 states with differing laws and differing collections of political parties. Dave Ketchum On Dec 12, 2011, at 4:18 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote per: Dave: Re: The Occupy-Movement: Dave: You wrote; If there is truth in what I read, the US desperately needs better attention to public safety, including officers, and those directing them, behaving better. The Occupy Movement needs to see this as an important reason to see to such [endquote] Sure, but usually emotionally-charged movements like this consist only of letting-off-steam, and their members never apply their anger or reform-desire to their voting. If they did, they'd all combine to elect non-Republocrats to all offices. Don't necessarily expect that. At least don't expect it to happen spontaneously, without lots of encouragement. On the other hand, of course the electoral possiblity should be pointed out to Occupy participants. If there's any chance that they _might_ direct their energy and anger toward voting Republocrats out of office, then that solution should certainly be suggested to them. You continued: , along with the many other problems to improve on, getting improved via politics. [endquote] I should have included that clause in the text that I replied to above. What I said there of course applies to this last clause as well. Comments on Stephen Unger's e-mail, quoted in Dave's posting: Stephen Unger has thought seriously in the following email, plus the article referred to at its ending. I would not agree to all, but add to that: . 2012 is an important election year - now time to consider what is now doable. [endquote] Yes. That's why I suggest that we must, right now, use correctly the voting system that we already have, Plurality. Plurality with Condorcet polling can be equivalent to Condorcet. So that's why I've been suggesting that we do Condorcet polling of candidates for the 2012 presidential election of the U.S. But we could even get useful information from Pluality polls. By using obvious assumptions about political-spectrum-order, we could look for the voter-median candidate. But, either way, we should report the CW or voter-median candidate to the political parties, progressive media, and progressive organizations. Ask all progressives to come together by voting for that candidate (whom I expect to be a progressive candidate). Unger continued: . Not clear whether a new party, working with the Greens or Libertarians, or working within the Republicans or Democrats, is best [endquote] Working within the Democrats or Republicans is not best. If there's one thing we should learn from decades of experience, it's that. Work with progressive voters. Show them (from polling) that they have the power to elect a progressive instead of a Republocrat. Tell them about Nader's consistent wins in Internet polling. Show them the results of our 2012 presidential polls too (We must do those polls). Greens or Libertarians, sure. Greens and Libertarians agree on much. I won't go into details, since this mailing list isn't for political promotion. I'll just suggest that a compromise between Greens and Libertarians should include policies advocated by both, without those policies objectionable to one or the other. You know which policies those are. But, relevant to coalition between Greens and Libertarians, one can't avoid mentioning the Boston Tea Party (not to be confused with the Republican-policy- promotion The Party Movement). Look at the Boston Tea Party's platform. It looks like the compromise between Greens and Libertarians. Well, I don't know if they have any policies that would be unacceptable to Greens, but it would be worth checking out. Regarding the Greens, the U.S. has two Greens organizations: 1. The original Greens (G/GPUSA) 2. The replacement Greens.(GPUS) Read their platforms. The replacment Greens are a much bigger party, due to their heavily mainstream character. They have some good suggestions (a subset of the original Green' suggestions), of course, and would be ok for a coalition, if they can bring themselves to accept one. Unger continued: - studying all the possibilities is a proper beginning, and laws in various states affect what is practical. . Starting competing efforts makes sense but, when they start to compete in electing, time to drop the excess. [endquote] That's where pre-election polling is essential--to determine which progressive candidate is the one that all progressives should support. Divisiveness is a really big problem among progressives, including the replacement Greens. The other quoted writer said: Forming a new party (or building up
Re: [EM] The Occupy Movement: A Ray of Hope -- in Politics
I am delighted to hear of this valuable activity. A couple notes: . local, state, federal and global levels are Open_voting_network topics. All except global are important in the US in 2012 as a year in which serious activity is possible - within the framework of current laws, but without depending on instantly changing the laws.. . primary is a word used here. It is different from the primary elections used in the US - they are used by parties to cope with the needs of plurality voting. . Among the possibilities would be such as destructive competition between Occupy-backing candidates in the Green and Libertarian parties - if they split the votes of Occupy backers and thus each lost. On Dec 11, 2011, at 1:42 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Write-ins can be effective. I hold up proof this year. For a supervisor race: 111 Rep - Joe - on the ballot from winning primary, though not campaigning. 346 Con - Darlene - running as Con though unable to run as Rep+Con. 540 Write-in - Bob - who gets the votes with his campaign starting 18 days before election day. We're floating the idea within Occupy of a primary voting network that might help by giving independents a leg up. It would extend not only across and beyond parties, but also across any number of voting methods and service providers: (see also the discussion tab here) https://wiki.occupy.net/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/RFC/ Open_voting_network It's not easy to summarize, but maybe easier from the voter's POV: We won't endorse any single provider (monopoly) of primary voting and consensus making services. Instead we'll maintain an open voting network (counter-monopoly) in which: (1) no person is excluded from participating in the development of alternative technologies and methodologies of consensus making; (2) no toolset, platform or practice is excluded; and (3) each person may freely choose a provider, toolset and practices based on personal needs and preferences without thereby becoming isolated from participants who make different choices. None of this is especially difficult (not technically), but it's hard to imagine how it could ever get started without Occupy. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] The Occupy Movement: A Ray of Hope -- inPolitics
On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com wrote per this subject - see at end below. Leon Smith added reference to http://reformact.org/ - by a group that offers extensive references and thoughts - worth exploring. On Dec 11, 2011, at 6:06 PM, James Gilmour wrote: the following about what Leon offered - worthy, but not about the entire current subject. The trouble with this group, judging by their website, is that, like many other electoral reformers in the USA, they recognise only part of the problem: First Past the Post Voting is Obviously Flawed - most definitely. But they fail to see the bigger picture (representation of voters) and show almost no appreciation of where the real solution might lie (some system of proportional representation). Issues concerning ballot access and recounts are trivial in comparison with the distortion of representation of the voters - i.e. the relationship between votes cast and seats won. Of course, there are some major challenges in improving the election of officials to single-office positions by single-winner elections. But the bigger picture concerns the representative assemblies - the city councils and boards, the state legislatures and both Houses of the Federal Congress. No improvement of the voting system used to elect these members from single-member districts is going to deliver real improvement of the representation of the voters. James Gilmour -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Leon Smith Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 8:29 PM To: electionscie...@googlegroups.com Cc: politics_currentevents_gr...@yahoogroups.com; nygr...@yahoogroups.com; rangevot...@yahoogroups.com; EM; mike+dated+1324017722.00c...@zelea.com Subject: Re: [EM] [CES #4194] Re: The Occupy Movement: A Ray of Hope -- inPolitics I suppose the existence of this group is worth noting: http://reformact.org/ They were a little naive about election methods at first, advocating Instant Runoff, but they have been receptive and are now open for debate, though they seem to be tentatively arguing for Condorcet. And they take a comprehensive look at electoral reform, not just method. Best, Leon On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com wrote: I am delighted to hear of this valuable activity. A couple notes: . local, state, federal and global levels are Open_voting_network topics. All except global are important in the US in 2012 as a year in which serious activity is possible - within the framework of current laws, but without depending on instantly changing the laws.. . primary is a word used here. It is different from the primary elections used in the US - they are used by parties to cope with the needs of plurality voting. . Among the possibilities would be such as destructive competition between Occupy-backing candidates in the Green and Libertarian parties - if they split the votes of Occupy backers and thus each lost. On Dec 11, 2011, at 1:42 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Write-ins can be effective. I hold up proof this year. For a supervisor race: 111 Rep - Joe - on the ballot from winning primary, though not campaigning. 346 Con - Darlene - running as Con though unable to run as Rep+Con. 540 Write-in - Bob - who gets the votes with his campaign starting 18 days before election day. We're floating the idea within Occupy of a primary voting network that might help by giving independents a leg up. It would extend not only across and beyond parties, but also across any number of voting methods and service providers: (see also the discussion tab here) https://wiki.occupy.net/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/RFC/ Open_voting_networ k It's not easy to summarize, but maybe easier from the voter's POV: We won't endorse any single provider (monopoly) of primary voting and consensus making services. Instead we'll maintain an open voting network (counter-monopoly) in which: (1) no person is excluded from participating in the development of alternative technologies and methodologies of consensus making; (2) no toolset, platform or practice is excluded; and (3) each person may freely choose a provider, toolset and practices based on personal needs and preferences without thereby becoming isolated from participants who make different choices. None of this is especially difficult (not technically), but it's hard to imagine how it could ever get started without Occupy. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com
[EM] The Occupy Movement: A Ray of Hope -- in Politics
the role of money in politics) should be pursued in parallel with the fight for a decent new party, as each depends on the other. More detailed arguments can be found in http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/twoParty.html http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/%7Eunger/articles/twoParty.html Steve Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
and theorists to agree that a set of systems are all better than plurality. 4. Other single-winner reforms haven't been implemented much. 5. Therefore, there is little evidence of what would happen after they were implemented, although we can theorize. (?) D. Evidence about PR says: It cannot do its thing without electing multiple officers, as for a legislature. There it competes with single-member. 1. PR can end two-party domination. 2. With PR, there can still be fewer competitive elections and more safe seats than voters would like to see. (?) 3. When combined with a parliamentary system, PR can lead to instability. 3a. But there are reasons to believe that those problems would not generalize to a presidential system. (?) 4. PR is a more-radical change than single-winner reform. 4a. It may be harder to promote to an American audience. 4b. It may be harder to sell to politicians who have won in the status quo. 5. PR systems can be tuned to optimize various advantages, but it's hard to find a system which is perfect in all ways (simple, local, voter-centric, doesn't require ranking dozens of candidates) (?) There's plenty of reasons for pessimism in the above. David seems to find his optimism by emphasizing points B1a, C1, C4, D1, and D5, and giving (plausible) counterarguments for points B1b, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, C2a (though he backed off from a bet), D4a, and D4b. That's 9 points he's trying to overcome (though since B4 is little more than B2+B3, I guess it may be more like 8 than 9). I on the other hand think that the path of least resistance is to emphasize C3 as a way to overcome C1, C2, and C4. I think that it's better to fight reality on 2-3 points than on 8-9, no matter how plausible the arguments that the 8 or 9 battles are winnable. One specific response: JQ: 3. Some other organization pushes some other system(s), and reaches a tipping point. dlw:IOW, they need to reinvent what FairVote's been working hard to build up for some time... Yep. It's a lot of work. If voting reform were an easy task, we (and I include Fairvote in that we) would have won already. JQ Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
Trying one more time to start a sales pitch for switching from IRV to Condorcet. On Dec 1, 2011, at 10:18 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On 12/1/11 5:14 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: KM:If the cost of campaigning is high enough that only the two major parties can play the game, then money (what you call $peech) will still have serious influence. dlw:My understanding/political theory is that $peech is inevitable and all modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and kleptocracy/plutocracy. To bolster the former, we must accept the inevitability of the latter. This is part of why I accept a two-party dominated system and seek to balance the use of single-seat/multi-seat elections and am an anti-perfectionist on the details of getting the best single/multi-seat election. Deep down, I am skeptical of whether a multi-party system improves things that much or would do so in my country. i am thoroughly convinced that a multi-party (and viable independent) system improves things over the two-party system. besides the money thing, i just cannot believe that exhausting our social choice to between Dumb and Dumber is the lot that a democratic society must be forced to accept. what was so frustrating during Town Meeting Day in 2010 (when the IRV repeal vote was up), it was another choice between Dumb and Dumber. and, as usual, Dumber prevailed in that choice. nobody seems to get it (present company excluded). added to the result of the 2000 prez election and, even more so, the 2004 result, the aggregate evidence is that American voters are stupid. incredibly stupid. and a large portion of Burlington Democrats were stupid to join with the GOPpers, the latter who were acting simply in their self-interest to repeal IRV. and the Progs were dumb to continue to blather IRV happy talk as if it worked just fine in 2009. Voters know ranking from IRV (except equal ranks are permitted). Voters can rank as many as they approve of (and SHOULD get told they are not required to rank any others they would not want to have win). BIG deal is ability to rank both choice among likely winners, and own best choice, and use strongest ranking for the one you like best. Big difference from IRV is that counters read all that the voters rank. From this the counters produce the x*x matrix that anyone can learn to read and see how close any third parties are getting to becoming winners. When there are one or more strong third parties such can win, or become part of a cycle among the strongest candidates. Not likely to happen often but cycle members were each close to winning. There are multiple Condorcet methods to support the various ways cycles may get resolved. dlw:Burlington's two major parties would not be the same as the two nat'l major parties. David, we don't have two major parties. we have three. the Dems may be the least of the three, but they're centrist and preferable to the GOP than are the Progs and preferable to the Progs than are the GOP. but they are literally center squeezed. that is precisely the term. Republicans would vote Democrat in Burlington mayoral elections. if forced to. but they would like to give their own guy their primary support. IRV promised them that they could vote for their guy and, by doing so, not elect the candidate they hated the most. and in 2009, IRV precisely failed that promise. it not a tug-of-war with a single rope and the centrists have to decide whether they get on the side of the GOP or the side of the Progs. the idea of having a viable multi-party election and a decent method to measure voter preference is a joined, three-way rope going off in directions 120 degrees apart. Progs get to be Progs, Dems get to be Dems, and GOP get to be dicks (errr, Repubs). we know, because the ballots are public record, that the outcome that would have caused the least amount of collective disappointment is not the winner that the IRV algorithms picked, given the voter preference information available and weighting that equally for each voter. KM:So why would IRV improve things enough over Plurality? That verdict, too, has to come from somewhere. dlw: more votes get counted in the final round than with FPTP. Thus, the de facto center is closer to the true center i dunno what you mean by de facto or true center, but neither was elected in the Burlington 2009 example. (but, again, favoring the center more than the wings is not why Condorcet is better than IRV. it is because of the negative consequences of electing a candidate when a majority of voters prefer an different specific candidate and mark their ballots so.) and third party candidates can speak out their dissents and force the major party candidates to take them seriously. well, here the third party won, against the expressed wishes of a majority
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
Condorcet is easy for voters to move to for it is a strong, but simple, step up from FPTP and: 1. Ranking means ability indicate order of varying desires of liking candidates. 2. But ranking is much less of a task than Score's rating where you have to calculate the difference in value of A vs B, and express this difference as a number. 3. More detail below. Not against PR here - PR is not suitable for electing a single-winner. On Nov 26, 2011, at 10:31 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On 11/26/11 6:58 PM, matt welland wrote: On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 16:56 -0500, robert bristow-johnson wrote: The next two are related, though not directly quoted. On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 1:39 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Sat, 2011-11-24 at 10:47 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Initial topic is IRV. the counterexample, again, is Burlington Vermont. Dems haven't sat in the mayor's chair for decades. Is this due to a split of the liberal vote by progressives or other liberal blocs? Or is it due to a truly Republican leaning demographic? Burlington is, for the U.S., a very very liberal town with a well- educated and activist populace. it's the origin of Ben Jerry's and now these two guys are starting a movement ( http://movetoamend.org/ ) to get a constitutional amendment to reverse the obscene Citizens United ruling of the Supreme Court. the far north end of Burlington (called the New North End, also where i live) is a little more suburban in appearance and here is where the GOP hangs in this town. the mayors have been Progs with an occasional GOP. it is precisely the center squeeze syndrome and IRV didn't solve that problem. and without getting Condorcet adopted, i am not sure how it will be reversed. Also, do folks generally see approval as better than or worse than IRV? they don't know anything about Approval (or Score or Borda or Bucklin or Condorcet) despite some effort by me to illustrate it regarding the state senate race in our county. to attain some measure of proportional representation w.r.t. geography, state senate districts are either divided ( http://www.leg.state.vt.us/lms/legdir/districts.asp?Body=S ) or, in the case of our county, have an unusually large number, 6, of state senators all elected at large. this means that besides running against Progs and GOP, the Dems are running against each other. as a consequence, even though we are allowed to vote for as many as 6, everyone that i know (bullet) votes for 1 or 2 or maybe 3. effectively, it is no different than Approval voting. but the only voting methods folks generally see here are FPTP, FPTP with a delayed runoff, and IRV. and, thanks to FairVote, nearly everyone are ignorant of other methods to tabulate the ranked ballot than the STV method in IRV. To me Approval seems to solve the spoiler problem without introducing any unstable weirdness and it is much simpler and cheaper to do than IRV. unless one were to bullet vote (which would make Approval degenerate to FPTP), there is no way to express one's favorite over other candidates that one approves of. it forces a burden of tactical voting onto voters who have to decide whether or not they will vote for their 2nd favorite candidate. i've repeated this over and over and over again on this list. while Score voting demands too much reflection and information from voters, Approval voting extracts too little information from voters. both saddle voters with the need for calculation (and strategy) that the ranked ballot does not. both Score and Approval are non-starters, because of the nature of the ballot. but a ranked ballot is not a non-starter, even if we lost it recently here in Burlington. we just need to unlearn what FairVote did and decouple the concept of ranked-choice voting from IRV. Back to promoting Condorcet: It is easier to understand the basics the voter needs to know: 1. Voting is the same as for IRV, except equal ranking is also permitted. 2. A voter familiar with FPTP can express the same thoughts, with the same definitions and power, by approving of a single candidate and ranking only that candidate. Often few will want to approve more than one for offices such as Clerk or Coroner (but makes sense for ballots to permit ranking for the rare incidents of more controversy in even such offices). 3. To emphasize point 2, a voter satisfied with FPTP voting is not seriously handicapped by not instantly learning Condorcet details - what is already known is enough to pick and rank a single candidate. 4. Condorcet counting, unlike IRV's, requires reading all that the voters vote in one pass at each reading station and then combining the readings at one location to determine results. 5. Do not have FPTP's need for primaries. 6. Do not have FPTP's need for runoffs - because voters can express themselves more completely, the leader is deserving
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
On Nov 24, 2011, at 3:50 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On 11/24/11 2:20 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: Let me start off by saying that I'm thankful for this list-serve of people passionate about electoral reform and that you put together a working consensus statement. I'm trying to work it some more... My belief is that the US's system makes it necessary to frame electoral reform simply and to limit the options proffered. but they should be *good* options. limiting the proffered options to IRV is proven by our experience in Vermont to eventually fail. That justifies promoting Condorcet - see below. Others deserve arguing against: FPTP- can only vote for one - why we are considering what to promote. Approval - can vote for more, but does not support expressing unequal liking. Range/score - demands expressing (in an amount understandable) how much better one candidate is than another. IRV or IRV3 - good voting, but counting does not promise to be complete (see Burlington). PR - that deserves promoting for such as legislators - but here we are thinking of electing single officers such as mayors and governors. This is what FairVote does and they do it well. no they don't. FairVote sells ranked-choice voting and the IRV/STV method of tabulating the ranked ballots as if they are the same thing. i.e., once they convince voters, city councilors, and legislators that ranked-choice voting is a good thing (by accurately pointing out what is wrong with FPTP in a multiparty context and/or viable independent candidates), they present IRV as it is the only solution. that backfired BIG TIME here in Burlington Vermont. If you're going to undercut their marketing strategy then ethically the burden of proof is on you wrt providing a clear-cut alternative to IRV3. Condorcet. which Condorcet method i am not so particular about, but simplicity is good. Schulze may be the best from a functional POV (resistance to strategy) but, while i have a lot of respect for Markus, the Schulze method appears complicated and will be a hard sell. i also do not think that cycles will be common in governmental elections and am convinced that when a cycle rarely occurs, it will never involve more than 3 candidates in the Smith set. given a bunch of Condorcet-compliant methods that all pick the same winner in the 3- candidate Smith set, the simplest method should be the one marketed to the public and to legislators. The ranking offers a bit of power that is easy to express - rank as many candidates as you approve of, showing for each pair whether you see them as AB, A=B, or AB, but no need to assign a value as to how much the better exceeds the weaker (note that ranking a candidate you do not approve of risks helping that reject win). It is in ranking multiple candidates that we lead to voting for more than two parties for we can vote among those parties plus our true desire. The voting is much like IRV's, except also permitting A=B. The vote counting, unlike IRV's, considers all the ranking you vote. While you can use as many ranks as the ballot permits, you are not required to do more than express your desires - ranking one as in FPTP, or more as equal as in Approval, is fine if that expresses your thoughts (especially if you only wish the leader to win or lose). To get a cycle you have to have three or more near tied candidates in which each beats at least one of its competitors. Resolving such requires a bit of fairness, but requires little more than that, since we got there by being near to ties. Dave Ketchum -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Kristofer: MMPO bad-example
On Nov 19, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: MTA? CD? 1CM? Also, although I happen to understand them, FBC, LNHa, SFC, 3P, ABE, and RCW. Cut-and-pastes from old email messages are fine. I've done 4 or 5 abbreviation pages , at least 2 of which I've never used myself, so I think it's fair to start asking the people who are relying on the abbreviations to do the work themselves. It would help if, when continuing a conversation, talkers would help readers connect the parts by the subject staying the same or, at least, having the previous subject referenced in the body. Passing out abbreviation pages would help if their subject made them findable. Note that one detail in this conversation is sorting out the meaning of the various identifiers such as ABE. Dave Ketchum Jameson 2011/11/19 MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com You wrote: You could of course argue that if I gave it to B, A would have been just as unhappy, and if I gave it to A, B would have been just as unhappy, so I dare you to show me the particular group that has been wronged by this. I still think that you can say that you wronged the two groups as a whole [endquote] Ok, sure. You may have wronged them collectively, by electing someone over whom no one in either group prefers anyone other than their favorite. The question is, how badly does that wrong them? Badly enough to give up FBC, SFC, LNHa, CD, and Mono-Add-Plump? The ABE problem might be a peculiarly American problem. I don't expect others to recognize it as a problem. We have the Republocrats, and, additionally, lots of small factions who are terribly mutually antagonistic, jealous, and rivalry-inclined; but which, together, might add up to a majority. When the method in use meets LNHa and CD, you can middle-rate lesser- evils if you want to, instead of not rating them. You can do that completely freely, with no strategic hesitation. That would make all the difference in the U.S. You wrote: Pleasing the two A=C and B=C voters is not worth votes. [endquote] I've emphasized that I don't justify MMPO's result by saying that it's for those two voters. MMPO's rule's purpose is to meet FBC, SFC or SFC3, Later-No-Harm, CD, and Mono-Add-Plump. And the cost of those big advantages is...what? The election of someone that over whom no one prefers anyone other than their favorite? You replied: So to be more precise, you're pleasing the two voters at the cost of the others so that you can pass the criteria above. ]endquote] I explicitly said that it isn't for those two voters. But yes, it's in order to gain those criterion-compliances. Whether electing C, over whom no one prefers anyone other than their favorite, wrongs someone too badly, is a matter for individual judgment, a judgement that depends on whether, in your country, FBC, LNHa and CD are necessary. FBC is absolutely necessary here. LNHa and CD are very desirable, for the reason stated above. You wrote: If you highly value the FBC, I can see that the criteria could outweigh the bizarre result. In my particular case, I don't consider FBC very important. [endquote] Of course you don't. You aren't in the U.S., England or Australia, where FBC is necessary to avoid large-scale favorite-burial. Anyway, the electoral systems of most European countries are probably fine as-is. You continued: But even if you like the FBC, couldn't you use one of the other methods that pass FBC? I don't think any of these have such serious instances of getting it wrong as Kevin's example shows MMPO does. (Though if you consider it important that a method should pass all the criteria above, and do so more than you think MMPO gets it wrong in Kevin's scenario, then sure.) [endquote] Quite so. That's why I consider MTA a good proposal, maybe the best. Of the methods I've described to people new to voting systems, MTA is by far the most popular. It's simple, obvious and natural. It meets FBC, 1CM, 3P, and avoids the possible public-relations problems of failing Mono-Add-Plump or Kevin's MMPO bad-example. If there is one method I'd propose, it's MTA. But, when there's opportunity for discussion, to find out if something better still is ask-able, I'd advocate such methods as MMPO, MDDTR, and RCW (if I find that people don't consider RCW too complicated). ..because, for the reasons that I've told elsewhere, I consider the ABE to be a serious problem in this country. ABE failure can be dealt with, as I mentioned before. The A voters can say: If we were all co-operative and amicable, we could all vote for all of our candidates. We all know that isn't so. Our faction is the largest non-C candidate, and the one who will have the most top ratings (or votes in Approval). Therefore, we're going to vote only for A. At such time as the B faction is larger than ours, then we will vote for B, just as we're now asking you to vote
Re: [EM] Election Day causes stress
Really a trivial question, and brings us back to looking closer at Condorcet. IRV also does ranking, but has a different order of looking at ballots: Vote for minor candidate? Likely discarded when seen, thus of little effect. Vote for third party before major? May prevent major being seen when most effective. Vote for major before third party? This could be the day this third party needs seeing quicker to win. Ranking methods only require deciding which candidate is better, while range also asks how much and for voter to be understood when expressing that much. Dave Ketchum On Nov 13, 2011, at 8:46 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Ted Stern wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/08/science/voters-experience-stress-on-election-day-study-finds.html I remember hearing about other studies showing that making difficult decisions uses up the energy and neurotransmitters required for will power. So to bring this back on topic, I think we should be looking for methods that make voting decisions easier for the voter, because it will lead to better, less stressful decisions. The question then is what is easier?. Myself, I find ranking easier than rating because I don't have to care about anchoring the ratings properly (i.e. what does a 10 *mean* in comparison to a 0? Does Stalin get a 0? Does Satan get a 0, and if both are on the ballot, does Stalin still get a 0, or does he get a 1 for being better than Satan?). However, I've heard that others think that rating is easier and more intuitive than ranking. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Electoral Pluralism
On Nov 9, 2011, at 6:26 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: In light of the #OWS statement on electoral reform. http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/11/people-before-parties-electoral-reforms.html My Thoughts about an alternative possible consensus statement for non-electoral analytical types. 1. Democracy is a never-ending experiment. It also is like a garden that can go to seed. We need to join the rest of the world in experimenting with better ways to tend our democracy. This entails changes in election rules, not just changing who is in power. 2. The most important change is to use both single-winner and multi- winner (or Proportional Representation) election rules. Single-winner elections give us leadership who can be held accountable. Multi-winner elections give us pluralism and protection for minority rights. We need both of these values. A common sense way to combine them is to use more multi-winner elections for more local elections that otherwise are rarely competitive, while continuing to use mainly single-winner elections for less local elections. Single-winner makes sense for single-person tasks such as mayor, sheriff, or governor. We should agree that this class of tasks should be left to this type of electing. Proportional representation makes sense for multi-person tasks such as councils or senates. These tasks have often been elected via single- winner mode - if so, change to multi-person should be done only when/ if value is seen in this by groups involved.. 3. We need to realize that election rules are like screwdrivers. One election rule does not work well with all elections. As such, we need to consider alternatives to our current election rule, First-Past-the-Post. Most election rule alternatives like (.short list with links to brief descriptions.), but not the top two primary used in (...) or the plurality at large voting used in (), would improve things. Agreed FPTP is a loser from a simpler time. Need to allow voters to vote for more-than-one, although some voters, some of the time, will see no need for this. Need to allow voters, when voting for more-than-one, to indicate relative preference among these. Primaries were an invention to help with FPTP pain. Methods that satisfy the above needs see little, or no, value in primaries with their expense. Runoffs were another aid for FPTP pain. As with primaries, possible value of runoffs decreases with methods that do better in the main election. Approval, while fixing the first above problem at little cost, fails to help with the second. Methods list: Need to be understandable to, at least, most voters. If to be usable over county and state districts, must NOT have to retrieve local data as IRV does. Should (must?) tolerate write-ins. Must tolerate several candidates running in a race and report their relative strength. This means that a weak candidate will be visible, with this helping progress to be visible, up or down. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Electoral Pluralism
Agreed I strayed beyond consensus statement. You gave me room to work on some details that need considering in the overall task. On Nov 9, 2011, at 9:24 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: DLW wrote: In light of the #OWS statement on electoral reform. http://anewkindofparty.blogspot.com/2011/11/people-before-parties-electoral-reforms.html My Thoughts about an alternative possible consensus statement for non-electoral analytical types. 1. Democracy is a never-ending experiment. It also is like a garden that can go to seed. We need to join the rest of the world in experimenting with better ways to tend our democracy. This entails changes in election rules, not just changing who is in power. 2. The most important change is to use both single-winner and multi- winner (or Proportional Representation) election rules. Single-winner elections give us leadership who can be held accountable. Multi-winner elections give us pluralism and protection for minority rights. We need both of these values. A common sense way to combine them is to use more multi-winner elections for more local elections that otherwise are rarely competitive, while continuing to use mainly single-winner elections for less local elections. [endquote] DK: Single-winner makes sense for single-person tasks such as mayor, sheriff, or governor. We should agree that this class of tasks should be left to this type of electing. Proportional representation makes sense for multi-person tasks such as councils or senates. These tasks have often been elected via single-winner mode - if so, change to multi-person should be done only when/if value is seen in this by groups involved.. [/endquote] dlw:I doubt those elected by single-winner to such posts will ever see the value of switching to a multi-seat election. But I would not classify the Senator races in the US as rarely competitive. The US and state congressional and city council elections would be much more natural options. And we wouldn't need to make all of them multi-seat winners either. The statement only calls for more more local elections to be decided with multi-seat elections. So in a parliamentary system like Great Britain, one could switch from FPTP single-seat elections to super-districts with 4 seats each, which would be allocated by a 3-seat form of PR and a single-seat (possible alternative to FPTP) election. We care not whether everyone sees the value - someone successful with FPTP could get told to see the light or lose even with FPTP. My being in NY's 52nd Senate district made it easy to use that label - but, use something else please, since some states do not have senates. I do have trouble with your more local. The House of Representatives in DC normally includes members elected as multi-seat winners. Both governors and village clerks are normally single-winner. 3. We need to realize that election rules are like screwdrivers. One election rule does not work well with all elections. As such, we need to consider alternatives to our current election rule, First-Past-the-Post. Most election rule alternatives like (.short list with links to brief descriptions.), but not the top two primary used in (...) or the plurality at large voting used in (), would improve things. [endquote] DK:Agreed FPTP is a loser from a simpler time. Need to allow voters to vote for more-than-one, although some voters, some of the time, will see no need for this. [endquote] The point here is to call for electoral pluralism, rather than to attack FPTP. This way when our opponents defend FPTP in some way that obfuscates the matter, we can reply that we are calling for the use of more than one election, since FPTP is not the right election rule for all elections. They'll have a harder time arguing against that! Perhaps trim this a bit, but this and the next need should be about universal, leaving FPTP at the bottom of the heap. DK: Need to allow voters, when voting for more-than-one, to indicate relative preference among these. Primaries were an invention to help with FPTP pain. Methods that satisfy the above needs see little, or no, value in primaries with their expense. Runoffs were another aid for FPTP pain. As with primaries, possible value of runoffs decreases with methods that do better in the main election. Approval, while fixing the first above problem at little cost, fails to help with the second. [endquote] dlw: You're missing the point. Yes, there's lots of things one can do, but the key thing is to frame the need to experiment and to use more than just FPTP. Because I would argue that it's the near exclusive use of FPTP which is the worst thing of all, we can compensate for its continued use in some elections... Methods list: Need to be understandable to, at least, most voters. If to be usable over county and state
Re: [EM] Methods
On Oct 18, 2011, at 10:13 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Quoting Mike Ossipoff: 'to me, our current public political elections don't require any strategy decisions, other than vote for acceptable candidates and don't vote for the entirely unacceptable ones.' In the discussions of Approval and ranking, below, Mke's thought applies to both. In the extreme, when this leaves no one to vote for, simply vote for none (or, if forced, do whatever forced to do for one candidate). In Approval we have a count of how many considered each candidate acceptable; with ranking we have counts in an x*x matrix as to how many preferred each candidate over each other candidate. Some write later as if not understanding what I have written, so I will try emphasizing: Being acceptable for electing by me means approvable via Approving or ranking, and not acceptable means I should not approve via either method, for I will not want to be part of getting lemons elected either way. Thus the minimum of what can be done with ranking is the same as the ability of Approval, and no less, while ranking has additional abilities normally used. More can be and normally is done with the abilities ranking offers, but this is not the lack some seem to see - the x*x matrix, used as part of counting in most ranking methods, is an informative summary as to ranking details. Dave Ketchum On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote0 matt welland wrote: On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: matt welland wrote: Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both these cases. In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between everybody's equally good and everybody's equally bad. Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often be pointed in the right direction. A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all have very high approval). While it is agreed that counts in Approval show the above, it needs seeing that the x*x matrix can be read in the same way for ranking. Neither does strategic Approval. In Approval, the best simple strategy (if I remember correctly) is to approve the perceived frontrunner you prefer, as well as every candidate who you like better. In a Stalin election, if people were perfectly rational, the left-wingers would approve Stalin if the other frontrunner was Hitler. Well, perhaps people aren't perfectly rational. However, to the degree they are honest, Approval can get into a contending third- party problem. If you have a parallel universe where Nader is nearly as popular as Gore, liberals would have to seriously (and strategically) think about whether they should approve of Gore or not - if too many approve of Gore *and* Nader, Nader has no chance of winning; but if too many approve of only Nader, Bush might win. Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a favorite but the truth might be that none of the candidates are acceptable. See above. Some ranked methods can give scores, not just rankings. As a simple example, the Borda count gives scores - the number of points each candidate gets - as a result of the way it works. The Borda count isn't very good, but it is possible to make other, better methods give scores as well; and if you do so, an equally good/equally bad situation will show as one where every candidate gets nearly the same score. As for distinguishing equally bad from equally good, there are two ways you could do so within ranked votes. You could do it implicitly, by assuming that the voters approve of the candidates they rank and disapprove of those they don't; or you can do it explicitly
Re: [EM] Methods
Quoting Mike Ossipoff: 'to me, our current public political elections don't require any strategy decisions, other than vote for acceptable candidates and don't vote for the entirely unacceptable ones.' In the discussions of Approval and ranking, below, Mke's thought applies to both. In the extreme, when this leaves no one to vote for, simply vote for none (or, if forced, do whatever forced to do for one candidate). In Approval we have a count of how many considered each candidate acceptable; with ranking we have counts in an x*x matrix as to how many preferred each candidate over each other candidate. On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: matt welland wrote: On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: matt welland wrote: Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both these cases. In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between everybody's equally good and everybody's equally bad. Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often be pointed in the right direction. A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all have very high approval). While it is agreed that counts in Approval show the above, it needs seeing that the x*x matrix can be read in the same way for ranking. Neither does strategic Approval. In Approval, the best simple strategy (if I remember correctly) is to approve the perceived frontrunner you prefer, as well as every candidate who you like better. In a Stalin election, if people were perfectly rational, the left-wingers would approve Stalin if the other frontrunner was Hitler. Well, perhaps people aren't perfectly rational. However, to the degree they are honest, Approval can get into a contending third- party problem. If you have a parallel universe where Nader is nearly as popular as Gore, liberals would have to seriously (and strategically) think about whether they should approve of Gore or not - if too many approve of Gore *and* Nader, Nader has no chance of winning; but if too many approve of only Nader, Bush might win. Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a favorite but the truth might be that none of the candidates are acceptable. See above. Some ranked methods can give scores, not just rankings. As a simple example, the Borda count gives scores - the number of points each candidate gets - as a result of the way it works. The Borda count isn't very good, but it is possible to make other, better methods give scores as well; and if you do so, an equally good/equally bad situation will show as one where every candidate gets nearly the same score. As for distinguishing equally bad from equally good, there are two ways you could do so within ranked votes. You could do it implicitly, by assuming that the voters approve of the candidates they rank and disapprove of those they don't; or you can do it explicitly by adding a against all (re-open nominations, none of the below, etc) virtual candidate. Adding a virtual candidate is making trouble for voters UNLESS its good justifies its pain. Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback. A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that none are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate that one of them is the condorcet winner giving no indication that none are acceptable. Again, x*x is useful and
Re: [EM] Methods
Kristofer offers a bit of thought, but we are still missing too much of the basic needs. Voter NEEDs to be able to vote for candidates preferred (plural). Approval offers this much, at little cost, but nothing more. Voter NEEDs to be able to indicate relative preference among those voted for. Start with one or more first choices. Then add in less liked, wanted only if first choices lose. For example, vote for the most tolerable of the expected leaders, wanted only if better cannot get elected. Condorcet ranking is one way to offer this. Voters NEED to have the desires they express counted. IRV is the most visible failure of this type - accepting Condorcet style ranking, but then making decisions based only on what are, for the moment, top ranks. Voting and counting rules need to be kept simple to help with understanding. I admit to preference for Condorcet, but demand of others comparable quality. Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Declaration wording refinement
I like the label Advocates since, while being an enthused backer, I do not want to start a debate as to whether I qualify as an expert. What brings us here is strong agreement that Plurality voting ABSOLUTELY should NOT be backed for serious use in our elections. While in many elections many voters desire nothing beyond Plurality's ability to vote for a single candidate, there is often a desire to vote for more than one candidate, with the voter able to indicate equal desire for or unequal desire for those the voter chooses to back. While the desire to change brings us together, we do not agree as to the best destination to change to, and agree to leave agreeing as to destination to our future, though we can agree as to some details: . We certainly leave the Plurality weakness that got us together in our past. . We reject weaknesses (such as IRV's willingness to ignore much of the ranking, thus ignoring true desires). (I apologize, wanting to submit this, yet being unable to do better tonight. The voting patterns that result in IRV and similar methods ignoring voters' true desires via incomplete counting of votes should cause rejection of such methods. Burlington was an example of IRV failing to read true voter desires.) Dave Ketchum On Oct 12, 2011, at 8:57 PM, Richard Fobes wrote: To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm I believe that you imply, in your message copied below, that you like the following words in the older version of the recently edited paragraph (of the Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates): ... we would not hesitate to support any of these methods over plurality voting Unfortunately it is becoming clear that the words support and any are problematic. Does support mean just being willing to vote for any one of them if a referendum is offered? Or does it mean that every time one of us advocates the adoption of our favorite method that we must also mention, and express support for, all the other declaration- supported methods? And if one of us supports a non-favorite method in some circumstances but not in other circumstances, would our commitment to the declaration be violated if we expressed opposition to that non-favorite method being adopted in a situation for which we think is not appropriate? Very significantly, does signing the declaration mean that none of us can collect signatures for a different declaration that supports only our favorite method? This issue already arose when Warren Smith posted a petition expressing support for range voting, with added support for an additional method (Approval?), without mentioning Condorcet methods. I think that such actions should not be disallowed. Although I too would like to express strong cooperation among election-method experts, I think it is more important that our signatures represent solid backing for every sentence in the declaration (except perhaps the sentences in the method-specific advantage paragraphs, which are clearly qualified as being from each method's advocates). Looking farther into the future, I presume we will be getting signatures from non-experts, and I think we can get more signatures if we do not try to falsely imply unity that isn't really among us, and isn't among the non-experts (especially keeping in mind that IRV advocates may want to sign it). Our real purpose, as I see it, is to express opposition against plurality voting and single-mark ballots, and do so based on our credibility as expert mathematicians (and social-choice experts, etc.). That is what on-the-ground and in-the-streets election- method reform advocates -- the ones who are willing to attract media attention and take leadership roles for such reforms -- need as ammunition in their fight against plurality voting. Remember that they, not we, will be choosing which election methods will become adopted, and where. If there is additional support from other election-method experts for the previous/older wording, then we may be able to find a compromise wording. Otherwise I think we need to keep the new wording. Yet, as I've expressed before, we are striving to reach consensus, so at this point we have just two votes from Jameson Quinn and I for the new wording and one vote for the older wording. This ballot box is still open for further opinions. Richard Fobes On 10/11/2011 8:55 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Richard Fobes wrote: If you have already signed the declaration and do not like the new wording, please say so. If necessary we can remove your signature, but hopefully we can resolve any objection (which is likely to be an issue for others as well). If you like the new wording and have already signed, no reply is needed. If this wording refinement is now enticing you to sign this declaration, please supply your signature in the previously shown format. (A semicolon
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts: final stretch
Noise, but possibly worth a response. In writing about a Condorcet race the standard format seems to be AXY. For voting the ballot format seems to be to be able to assign rank numbers to as many of the candidates as the voter chooses. In reporting election results the n*n matrix has findable values for each pair of candidates. Robert calls the format he has seen for the matrix silly, and suggests another format. The reporting is a human readable copy of what is being computed - with the computing almost certainly done by computer if many candidates. Therefore a reporting format such as Robert's would be usable if humans could agree - or even have selectable choices of formats if enough desire. Dave Ketchum On Sep 7, 2011, at 1:12 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: still not sure of the efficacy of trying to persuade voters (or their elected representatives) to try out different ballot formats than ranked choice but... ... The n*n matrix used in Condorcet has information useful to those wanting to learn more about relationship of candidates. ... why, oh why, are all of you election method experts stuck on that silly n x n matrix geometry (where the main diagonal has no information you have to associate one number on the lower left with another number on the upper right, and it isn't obvious which number goes with which candidate) instead of grouping the pairwise totals *in* *pairs*??? like A 56 B 44 A 88 B 65 C 12 C 35 A 90 B 82 C 55 D 10 D 18 D 45 THAT format is where you have useful information about the relationships between candidates at a glance. if we're gonna tell people about Condorcet, why are we putting it in a stupid rectangular array where it is difficult to tell who beat who? it only makes it harder to sell this to skeptics. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. 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] Purpose of Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
Trying again as to what we are doing: There can be democratic need in an election effort to make a decision. Selecting a collection of voters and a collection of candidates to do this is a complex task and important, but not part of this effort. We are debating among: . Plurality - which we want to dispose of for inadequacy. . IRV - pleases some, but many want to discard for failures we have seen. . Approval - most agree that it is a slight improvement, and most would rather do better. . Condorcet/score/etc - most agree that moving to one of these is worth it, and debate which is best. Most of us agree that this is a worthy Election Method effort. Fred wants something more, which he calls an Electoral Methods effort. I agree there is plenty of work to do as to such as voters selecting candidates, but making our effort much bigger could make it fail from overweight. Dave Ketchum On Sep 5, 2011, at 6:53 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Fred Gohlke wrote: I think it's important for people proposing Electoral Methods to know (and agree upon) the prize they seek - and not lose sight of it. I fear I've failed to make that point. I have no problem with the 'Declaration'. I simply fear the purpose of reforming electoral methods is lost in the verbiage engulfing the reforms. ... Richard Fobes wrote: I don't know what that [last] sentence means. Fred is saying that the declaration does not state its purpose in terms of an ultimate goal, one that the non-expert reader might relate to and orient by. He was wondering if you think the goal is too lofty, as some think Heaven is. He quoted Bunyan: John Bunyan. The heavenly footman; or, a description of the man that gets to Heaven; together with the way he runs in, the marks he goes by; also, some directions how to run so as to obtain. 1698. The declaration speaks only of the technical means of electoral reform, the way, marks and directions. Fred is saying that the reader cannot see through this technical language to the unwritten goal, which is therefore lost to sight. Where the end is obscure, it is hard to judge the means and know that each step recommended ... is a move toward greater democracy. -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Richard Fobes wrote: On 9/4/2011 1:26 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: ... I'd like to know that each step recommended on the Electoral Methods site is a move toward greater democracy, but I'm not sure others agree. There seems to be greater interest in solidifying the role of political parties in the electoral infrastructure than in improving public participation in the political process. ... The Declaration loosens, rather than tightens, the grip that political parties now have on politics. Completely releasing that grip comes later. (One step at a time...) I agree that aspiring to lofty goals is, for lack of a better way to say it, a good goal. It's what I've always tried to do. As for promoting direct public participation in the political process, first we have to develop election-method tools that support such participation. I've done a prototype of an early kind of such a tool at www.NegotiationTool.com, although first the approach needs to be learned in smaller groups before it can be scaled up to reach the long-term goal of direct, citizen-based participation in government. Surely that's a lofty goal. ... I simply fear the purpose of reforming electoral methods is lost in the verbiage engulfing the reforms. ... I don't know what that sentence means. ... However much I'd like to see movement toward more democratic electoral systems, I recognize that progress must be slow and incremental. ... I disagree. We don't have to move slowly. And the Declaration will dramatically speed up movement toward more democratic electoral systems. Speeding things up is what will enable us to sooner reach our shared lofty goal of eventual direct-participation democracy -- without the currently necessary evil of political parties. We agree that we need to take one step at a time, yet I see no reason that we have to take those steps sssooo ssslllooowwwlllyyy. This is the year 2011 and we're still using plurality voting in U.S. elections? Richard Fobes On 9/4/2011 1:26 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Richard I absolutely agree - we must crawl before we can walk. However, since we are not babies, perhaps our position is more analogous to wriggling out of a cesspool. To do that, it's best to have an idea of where we want to go so we don't flounder around in it longer than necessary. In thinking about how to respond to your note, I kept coming back to a thought that seemed important, so I looked it up: Keep thine eye upon the prize; be sure that thy eyes be continually upon the profit thou art like to get. The reason why men are so apt to faint in their race for heaven, it lieth chiefly in either
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts: final stretch
I finally got around to a bit. I see both Judgment and Judgement - can one be a typo? Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts Contents When there is a list of items, some taking more than one line, something, such as indentation, should show start of each item. I see Enthusiasts here - Should also go with Experts below. Introduction It is time to change our voting system. We, the undersigned election-method experts and enthusiasts from around the world, unanimously denounce the use of plurality voting in elections in which there are more than two candidates. In this declaration we offer several ready-to-adopt replacement election methods that we agree will reliably produce much fairer results. Proper question is whether there MAY be more than two candidates: . There will never be more than two - so election method does not matter. . When there are more, voters can wish to vote against the worst by voting for more than one - impossible with plurality. . We cannot be bothered with this need - how bad this is depends on value of the election. Part of selling against plurality: . Wherever current experience is that runoffs are rarely needed and there is very little voting for other than the two main candidates, deciders may feel that there is no need for preparing for what has never happened to them. . Even with that normality, there can be times when voting for others happens in significant numbers. We need to alert deciders that this can happen in any district and this is what needs preparing for even if they are used to things staying simpler. Better ballots With better information from the voters, we can find better winners. Approval gives nothing but ability to vote for more than one. All the others provide for voters indicating which of the candidates they vote for are also their most preferred. Also, while Condorcet ranking unconditionally says that higher ranks are better than lower, there is nothing requiring or permitting saying how much higher. The other methods, depending on statements as to how much higher a ranked candidate may be, require that the voter indicate magnitude in the vote. Fairer counting methods Condorcet: . It is an approach to a tie that CAN result in those leading candidates needing some extra analysis to decide on a winner. . The n*n matrix used in Condorcet has information useful to those wanting to learn more about relationship of candidates. There are three Condorcet methods that identify the Condorcet winner (when there is one) without explicitly looking for the Condorcet winner, and they are, in alphabetical order: I claim that, if there is one, the CW should be found and, at our distance, we do not need to check on how the method goes about that. Even if there is no CW, the n*n matrix used to look for the CW is the obvious source for deciding on a winner - which points toward using n*n for this analysis. I have not chased down the innards of using IRV here, but wonder if, as used here, it is immune to the problems that afflicted IRV in Burlington. Anyway, I ask that IRV discussion stay out of the Condorcet discussion - seems like there were, earlier, better words about IRV than I see here. Also, seems like SODA should be kept away from Condorcet. In Using the fairer methods in organizations Private organizations are a great place to start voting reform. One particularly relevant example of a “private” election is the nomination process of a political party. It is true that our supported methods make this process less important, because, unlike plurality, they do not break down when more than one candidate from a party is running. Still, we expect that many parties would still want to have a formal nomination (“primary election”) process so as to focus their efforts on one or two candidates per office. We believe that any party using a superior voting system internally will see immediate benefits. A primary process with increased turnout, with fewer negative attacks, and with a more-democratic result will result in a stronger nominee who is better-prepared to win in the general election. This presumably is true in some states. In New York parties do not do elections. Primaries, done by government for the parties, handle both primary elections AND electing party officers. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
I look at this and shake my head. I am not used to parties having the kind of control implied here - let alone evil control. But the evil control could exist in other states. Then I look at what has been written in our declaration. I see nothing for: . Who can be a voter - most any adult. . Who can be a candidate - most any voter. . What about primary elections? Nothing said inconsistent with voters joining a party, seeing to candidates for primaries and voting in primaries. Why do we have primaries? With FPTP, multiple candidates from a party in the main election could be a disaster. If parties had the power some imply, they could attend to this by preventing multiple party candidates from being in the main election. We talk of proportional-representation, that could involve party control - but I do not remember the Declaration getting into that yet. Via http://public.leginfo.state.ny.us/menuf.cgi I looked up NY election law (ELN). It gets deeply involved in voters nominating candidates by petition - voters who do not spend all their time at this complex task - but nothing glaring about party control. Dave Ketchum On Sep 3, 2011, at 1:38 PM, Richard Fobes wrote: To: Fred Gohlke I agree that our Declaration only reduces, and does not completely eliminate, control of politics by political parties and political- party leaders. Yet, as you have pointed out in other messages, we need to take one step at a time. After we have disseminated this Declaration we can move on to attempting to find some kind of consensus for proportional- representation methods, and then write and disseminate a separate Declaration on that topic, and that PR-based Declaration (if followed) will further reduce control by political-party leaders (and their followers). Then, presumably years from now, we can move on to developing, and reaching consensus about, voting methods that fully bypass party politics. As you have correctly pointed out, we need to take one step at a time. Richard Fobes On 9/2/2011 1:25 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Mr. Fobes re: I think that the listed benefits (of election-method reform) cover most of your participation principle ... The declaration presumes the right of political parties to select the candidates for public office, thereby preventing meaningful participation by the public. Over two hundred years experience with party politics (should) have taught us that political parties transcend the will of the people. Parties are important for the principals: the party leaders, contributors, candidates and elected officials, but the significance diminishes rapidly as the distance from the center of power grows. Most people are on the periphery, remote from the center of power. As outsiders, they have little incentive to participate in the political process. The flaws in party politics are disastrous and we ought not blind ourselves to the political causes of the devastation we're enduring, right now. If the only purpose of the declaration is to break the hold of plurality it may be effective, but it offers no roadmap for those countries seeking an electoral method that gives their people meaningful participation in the political process. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
Seems to me Fred is wandering on this one. Our declaration gets big enough without tackling: . Who gets to be a candidate. . Who gets to be a voter. I know New York law gets plenty of complexity while tackling these two - much of it in trying to be fair and reasonable while getting it all done in a reasonable number of days. party nomination relates to primary,, independent nomination relates to independence ignoring party, and designating petition relates to primary - are all used in our law on this. Dave Ketchum On Sep 2, 2011, at 4:25 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Mr. Fobes re: I think that the listed benefits (of election-method reform) cover most of your participation principle ... The declaration presumes the right of political parties to select the candidates for public office, thereby preventing meaningful participation by the public. Over two hundred years experience with party politics (should) have taught us that political parties transcend the will of the people. Parties are important for the principals: the party leaders, contributors, candidates and elected officials, but the significance diminishes rapidly as the distance from the center of power grows. Most people are on the periphery, remote from the center of power. As outsiders, they have little incentive to participate in the political process. The flaws in party politics are disastrous and we ought not blind ourselves to the political causes of the devastation we're enduring, right now. If the only purpose of the declaration is to break the hold of plurality it may be effective, but it offers no roadmap for those countries seeking an electoral method that gives their people meaningful participation in the political process. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
Thanks to both of you for worthy effort. On Sep 1, 2011, at 12:38 AM, Richard Fobes wrote: OK, this is going to be controversial, but Jameson Quinn and I are attempting to write one advantage for each of the four election methods supported in our Declaration. Below are the versions each of us have written. What does everyone else prefer? We know that the final result will be different from what either of us have written, so please suggest improvements -- either as better wordings or as requests for what to change. If we cannot agree on this content, we can leave out these paragraphs and let the readers investigate each method without us offering any high-level perspective. --- A voter's view by Dave Ketchum --- Mark on a ruler those you would be willing to promote toward winning, assuming those that you prefer drop out for some reason (in deciding on a value, consider what would be meaningful in the election method to be used). Then consider the four systems of voting that might be in place: * Approval - vote for all that you have marked, perhaps excluding the least-liked, for you are giving equal backing to all that you vote for. * Condorcet system - rank all that you have marked, according to their positions on the ruler, noting that this makes high-ranked preferred over any lesser. * Majority Judgment - rate those you would rank for Condorcet. Also rate the least-liked to help vote counters see how you scale strength. * Range - same as MJ. - version from Jameson Quinn: - Some examples of advantages claimed for each system are: * Approval is the simplest of the systems, and thus, in places where voters are wary of complexity, may have the best chance of passing. Even at an academic conference on social choice theory, where few argued that Approval was the overall-best system, it still received the widest support. It also is a step towards any of the other systems; any of the systems, if used with an approval ballot, ends up being equivalent to approval. Therefore, after seeing what issues arose under approval, we might be able to make a better-informed choice of which other system to move on to. * Condorcet systems give the best possible guarantee that the result would be consistent with a two-way race. When there is a “Condorcet winner” --- a single candidate who could beat any other candidate one-on-one --- most people’s sense of fairness and democracy say that such a candidate should win. two-way means? * Majority Judgment allows a score ballot, the most expressive ballot type because it can show the strength of preferences. The advocates of this system claim that it gives relatively little incentive for dishonest, strategic votes. Also, by focusing on the absolute quality of a candidate, rather than their quality relative to other options, it may help avoid a situation where a polarized electorate elects an unqualified compromise candidate just because both sides prefer such a nonentity to seeing the other side win. * Range also uses the expressive score ballot. This system has been shown in simulations to give the results which best-satisfy the voters. It gives the best results in this sense with any predetermined fractions of honest and strategic voters. It is not known if these simulations accurately reflect real voters, who might use strategy in different amounts under different voting systems or in different factions. - version from Richard Fobes: - Although we disagree about various characteristics of the four supported methods, most of us agree that: * Approval voting is the easiest election method in terms of collecting preferences (either on ballots or verbally) and in terms of counting. * Condorcet methods provide the fairest results in the many cases in which one candidate – the Condorcet winner – is pairwise preferred over every other candidate. When there is no single winner, the vote counting must decide among those best approaching winning. * Majority judgment uses score ballots (which collect the fullest preference information) in a way that reduces the effect of strategic voting. * Score voting may provide the mathematically defined best overall (optimum) results if voters vote sincerely instead of strategically. - end - Thanks! (We are getting close to having the next, and possibly final, version ready to review in full.) Richard Fobes Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
On Aug 31, 2011, at 11:11 PM, Richard Fobes wrote: Thank you Dave Ketchum and Peter Zbornik for your excellent responses to my first draft of the multiple rounds of voting section! I have tried to incorporate your requested improvements, while attempting to keep it short. Here is what I've got now for this section: -- Multiple rounds of voting -- Current elections commonly use multiple rounds of voting in an attempt to overcome the weaknesses of plurality voting. When any of our supported election methods are used, just one round of voting may be sufficient. Although our supported election methods could eliminate the need for primary elections (in which political parties choose just one candidate each to progress to the main election), we support the continued use of primary elections because they foster political dialogue and the resolution of intra-party differences. I claim we should promote careful thought as to whether primaries are worth the expense since some methods, such as Condorcet, have no problem with clones or near-clones participating. With an activity changing from essential to useful, there should be consideration as to other possible ways to attend to its usage. In situations that are highly controversial, we support the use of two voting rounds so that voters can focus attention on the most popular candidates during the second round, without distractions from less-popular candidates. When multiple voting rounds are used, every round should use one of our supported election methods. In these cases it is not necessary to limit the runoff election (the second round) to only two candidates, because that limit is only needed to accommodate plurality voting. Runoffs are essential in FPTP, for FPTP can fail to have any candidate get a majority. Runoffs should not be needed for this more than very infrequently with our better methods (and they are EXPENSIVE - thus hard to justify). . A thought: If runoffs are not expected, voters had best prepare well for the main election. If expected, why should the lazy among the voters bother to prepare well before the main election? We WANT voters to do well with minimum of effort, so rounds should be minimized except where they may truly justify their expense. Also we agree that open primary elections are not fair. In this approach, the supposedly most-popular candidates, regardless of political-party affiliation, progress to the runoff (main) election. This approach fails to consider that a near-majority of voters can end up with only getting to choose between the two candidates who are preferred by the majority. Expressed another way, the designation of most popular is ambiguous in the context of choosing which candidates deserve to progress to the main election. Why must we touch this topic (open vs closed) primaries? Seems like it is separate from our emphasis on voting methods. When choosing which candidates deserve to progress to a runoff election, we do not offer specific recommendations for interpreting results -- beyond obviously including the most popular candidate. There are various possibilities for how to choose the second, third, and additional candidates, and the best approach would depend on which of our supported methods is used (in the earlier round), and other details. This complexity overlaps with the complexity of choosing a best method to increase proportional representation. Therefore, in this declaration, we are not expressing support for any specific way to choose which other candidates (besides the most popular), and how many candidates, deserve to progress to the runoff election. Fortunately, in the runoff round, any of our supported methods can produce fair results with three, four, or more candidates -- in contrast to plurality voting which can handle only two. Huh? There can be a near tie amongst three and some could wish for all such to get included even in the FPTP world. -- end -- Richard Fobes Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts
Too late this night for fancy words, but hopefully I can express some useful thoughts. On Aug 30, 2011, at 4:52 PM, Richard Fobes wrote: Here is what I've just written for the new section titled Multiple rounds of voting: --- begin In highly competitive elections, multiple rounds of voting are needed to eliminate the weakest candidates so that attention can be focused on electing one of the most popular candidates. Our supported election methods work as described for two rounds of voting if the first round of voting elects a single winner from each political party, and the second round chooses from among those winners. FPTP has a serious problem because it cannot let a voter vote for more than one candidate - and voters can want to vote for more than one - and to say which are liked better than others. Methods we are promoting, such as Score and Condorcet, give the voter needed power. With such methods rounds become less needed since voters can better express their desires in the main election. Likewise, when there are to be rounds, more of the weakest can be discarded before the round since we know better which of the weakest might believably win. The last sentence above is about primaries. FPTP desperately needed such to avoid multiple candidates from a party competing in an election. Once voters understand they can vote for more, and indicate their preference via rating or ranking, primaries will lose much of their backing - thus, possibly getting discarded with FPTP. Note that parties could have a single candidate and not have need for a primary, even in FPTP days. However, different counting methods are needed if the same voters vote in both rounds. There are election methods that handle such cases, and they use the better ballots we support. However, we have not yet analyzed this category of counting methods sufficiently to express support for any specific methods. Assuming primaries still exist, I see no need for that round being unlike the main election, even noting that some voters would be voting in both. We do strongly agree that single-mark ballots must not be used in any round of voting. More specifically, just as the candidate with the most first-choice votes is not necessarily the most popular, and the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is not necessarily the least popular, the candidate with the second-most first-choice votes is not necessarily second-most popular, and the candidate with the second-fewest votes is not necessarily the second-least popular. Whatever makes single-mark evil needs explaining. As a Condorcet backer I have to choke. As an example assume that everyone considers V acceptable, and A, B, and C are each first choice for 1/3 of the voters, If they all rank V as second choice then, for each of the three groups, V will get twice as many Vx as x gets of xV. for being liked better than V. Also we agree that open primary elections are not fair. In this approach, the candidates who are identified as most popular, regardless of political-party affiliation, progress to the next round. This approach fails to consider that the majority of voters who support the most-popular candidate are likely to be the same majority of voters who support the second-most popular candidate -- unless the counting method specifically compensates for this redundant influence. The remaining voters, who may almost be a majority, can end up with only getting to choose between the two candidates who are preferred by the majority. Expressed another way, the words most popular are ambiguous in the context of choosing which candidates deserve to progress to another round of voting. If I cannot kill having primaries I would vote against open. --- end I'm sure I'm missing some important additional considerations, but they aren't coming to me at the moment, so I'll tap into your brains to help refine this section. Of course we aren't offering a fair way to handle French presidential (?) first-round elections (in terms of which two candidates should move on to the final runoff election), but we have nothing specific we would agree on, right? Richard Fobes Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
On Aug 28, 2011, at 4:32 AM, Michael Allan wrote: Matt and Dave, Matt Welland wrote: The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and pointless to discuss. ... The individual vote itself is irrelevant? We know that the vote is the formal expression of what a person thinks in regard to an electoral issue. Do you mean: (a) What the person thinks is irrelevant in reality? Or, (b) What the person thinks is irrelevant to the election method? ... If a barge can carry 10 tons of sand then of course at any point in time while loading the barge no single grain of sand matters ... (But an election is not a barge and a voter is not a grain of sand to be shipped around in bulk, or otherwise manipulated. A voter is a person, and that makes all the difference.) ... but will *you* get on that barge for a 300 mile journey across lake Superior if it is loaded with 10.1 tons of sand? Probably not. Votes in any election with millions of voters are like this, individually irrelevant, but very meaningful as an aggregate. If there are ten thousand people who share your values and will vote as you vote then together you have a shot at influencing the outcome of the election with 20 thousand voters. The election method cannot tell you, there are ten thousand people who share your values and will vote as you vote. The election method exposes no vote dispositions until after the election. By then it is woefully late for any attempt at mutual understanding, or rational reflection. Some methods do expose partial counts - especially when most have voted and some have not yet voted. If the final count is 99000D to 9R, the elected governor better understand that D opinions are too strong to dare ignoring such. ... An individual's vote can have no useful effect on the outcome of the election, or on anything else in the objective world. Again it follows: (a) What the individual voter thinks is of no importance; or (b) The election method is flawed. Which of these statements is true? I think it must be (b). Dave Ketchum wrote: Agreed that a is not true though, as you point out, one voter, alone, changing a vote cannot be certain of changing the results. To be sure, the point is stronger: the voter can be certain of having no effect on the results whatsoever. NOT true, for the vote, without the voter's vote, could be a tie - and the voter's vote mattering. I do not see you proving that b is true. Flawed requires the method failing to provide the results it promises. Well, an election method rarely makes explicit promises. We can only judge by people's expectations of it. Your's for instance. You had the expectation that an individual voter might have some influence over the outcome of the election, at least under certain conditions. Maybe you still do? (You gave examples, but I don't understand the jargon.) I still do not see a proof in your words. Warren Smith and Fred Gohlke had similar expectations. Warren began with the hope of attaching some meaning to an individual vote based on its contribution to the outcome. That turns out to be impossible because the contribution is zero. You, Warren and Fred are all experts in one capacity or another, yet each of you had expectations of the election method that it could not meet. What about the expectations of the voter? Suppose we explained the alternatives to her (or him): (a) What you think is of no importance; or (b) The election method is flawed. She's going to pick (b). She expects her vote to matter in some small way. She expects it to *possibly* make a difference. These are reasonable expectations, and I think any election method that fails to meet them is flawed. Further, the flaw is deep and extensive. It may be working to systematically distort the results, even to the point of electing candidates who could not otherwise be elected. Huh? -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: On Aug 27, 2011, at 9:23 PM, Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Conditions surrounding elections vary but, picking on a simple example, suppose that, without your vote, there are exactly nR and nD votes. If that is the total vote you get to decide the election by creating a majority with your vote. What do nR and nD stand for? ANY topic for which voters can choose among two goals. Or, suppose a count of nPoor, 1Fair, and nGood and thus Fair being the median before you and a twin vote. If such twins vote Poor, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Poor. If such twins vote Good, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Good. This example speaks of two votes, but the rules grant me only one. I am interested in the effects of that vote, and any meaning we can derive from them. I say there is none. Ok, so you vote alone. To work with that, whenever median is not an integer, subtract .5 to make
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring version
I question adding this collection of paragraphs to the major declaration, which seems more aimed at improving public elections. On Aug 28, 2011, at 2:22 AM, Richard Fobes wrote: Here are some additional paragraphs that can be added to our declaration. I've written them to cover some important concepts that are currently not explained. --- begin new paragraphs -- Roberts Rules of Order contain rules about voting, so any organization that has formally adopted these rules, and has not adopted additional overriding rules about voting, must ensure compatibility with these rules. Roberts Rules of Order wisely require that when an officer is elected, the winning candidate must receive a majority of votes. If none of the candidates receives a majority on the first round of voting, these rules require additional rounds of voting until one of the candidates receives a majority. Very significantly the rules specify that the candidate with the fewest votes must not be asked to withdraw. This means that instant-runoff voting is not compatible with Roberts Rules of Order. Also notice that Roberts Rules of Order oppose the use of plurality voting. In situations that require compatibility with Roberts Rules of Order, all of us support the use of any of our supported election methods as a way to identify which candidate or candidates should be encouraged to withdraw. (Before withdrawing the candidate deserves to be given an opportunity to express support for a remaining candidate.) In this case the supported election method is being used to identify the least popular candidates instead of the most popular candidate. Therefore all the available counts and calculated rankings produced by the supported method must be shared. This information gives the candidates, and their supporters, clear evidence as to which candidates should withdraw. The final round of voting typically would involve either two or three candidates, and the final round must use single-mark ballots, and the winning candidate must receive a majority of votes. I question two or three - there is no need to dump losers - we care about winners. Dave Ketchum Almost all of us signing this declaration recommend that an organization formally adopt a rule that specifies that one of our supported election methods will be used to elect the organization's officers. If there is uncertainly about which supported method to choose, the adopted rule can specify that any of the election methods supported by this declaration are acceptable for electing the organization's officers, and that the current organization's officers can choose which of our supported methods will be used in the next election. ... Here is another way to summarize what we support, and what we oppose. If voters only indicate a single, first choice on their ballot, then the candidate with the most first-choice votes is not necessarily the most popular, and the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is not necessarily the least popular. A source of confusion for some people is the similarity between getting the most votes and getting a majority of votes. Although it is true that getting a majority of votes also means getting the most votes, it is not true that getting the most votes also implies getting a majority of votes. Expressed another way, when there are three or more candidates and the candidate with the most first- choice votes does not receive a majority of votes, then that means that a majority of voters oppose this candidate (as their first choice). To resolve this situation fairly, additional preference information must be considered. --- end new paragraphs -- If anyone is putting together the pieces I've written, please let me know. Otherwise I'll create a new draft that contains what I've written, plus some refinements to accommodate the request that the different Condorcet methods be explained separately (not within the main list), plus some paragraphs to accommodate the request for statements about multiple rounds of voting. Richard Fobes On 8/23/2011 9:38 PM, Ralph Suter wrote: ... 5. Finally, I think the statement could be greatly improved and made more interesting, relevant, and compelling to a wider range of readers by explaining that alternative voting and representation methods can also be beneficially used for a large variety of purposes other than general political elections and that different methods are often more suitable for some kinds of purposes than for other purposes. Some example of other purposes are: US-style primary elections; party convention votes; decisions in legislative bodies and committees; decisions by informal groups; decisions in meetings of different kinds and sizes; uncritical or relatively minor decisions vs. major, critically important decisions; opinion polling
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
On Aug 27, 2011, at 4:22 PM, Michael Allan wrote: But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? Dave Ketchum wrote: TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. Please relate this to an election. Take an election for a US state governor, for example. Suppose I am eligible to vote. I say my vote cannot possibly affect the outcome of the election. You say it can, under certain conditions. Under what conditions exactly? Conditions surrounding elections vary but, picking on a simple example, suppose that, without your vote, there are exactly nR and nD votes. If that is the total vote you get to decide the election by creating a majority with your vote. Or, suppose a count of nPoor, 1Fair, and nGood and thus Fair being the median before you and a twin vote. If such twins vote Poor, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Poor. If such twins vote Good, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Good. Note that single voters get no useful power in an election for governor, but a majority voting together do have the power (by combining their votes) to decide the election. Dave Ketchum Note my critique of Warren's proof in the other sub-thread: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-August/028266.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Dave Ketchum wrote: A SAD weakness about what is being said. On Aug 24, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Michael Allan wrote: But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. To which Warren Smith responded: --no. A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes. Proof: simply change ballots one by one until the outcome changes. At the moment it changes, that single ballot changed an election outcome. QED. BUT there could be many previous ballots of which none made any change. Since, as stated, A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. and This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes., why would a voter prefer a new electoral method over the existing plurality method? From the voter's perspective, (s)he is already familiar with plurality, so , if the new method produces the same result, why change? Truly no reason PROVIDED the new method provides the same result, given the same input. Cui bono? Obviously, not the voter. When considering the 'meaning' of a vote, it is more important to examine the question of what the voter is voting for or against. Voting, of the type used in plurality contests, is profoundly undemocratic, not because of the vote-counting method, but because the people can only vote for or against candidates and issues chosen by those who control the political parties - the people Robert Michels' described as oligarchs. If the object of changing the electoral method is to build a more just and democratic government, the proposed methods must give the people a way to influence the choice of candidates and the issues on which they vote. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
On Aug 27, 2011, at 9:23 PM, Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Conditions surrounding elections vary but, picking on a simple example, suppose that, without your vote, there are exactly nR and nD votes. If that is the total vote you get to decide the election by creating a majority with your vote. What do nR and nD stand for? ANY topic for which voters can choose among two goals. Or, suppose a count of nPoor, 1Fair, and nGood and thus Fair being the median before you and a twin vote. If such twins vote Poor, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Poor. If such twins vote Good, that and total count go up by 2, median goes up by 1 and is now Good. This example speaks of two votes, but the rules grant me only one. I am interested in the effects of that vote, and any meaning we can derive from them. I say there is none. Ok, so you vote alone. To work with that, whenever median is not an integer, subtract .5 to make it an integer. If you vote Poor, that and total count go up by 1, median is unchanged and is now Poor. If you vote Good, that and total count go up by 1, median is unchanged and remains Fair. Note that single voters get no useful power in an election for governor, but a majority voting together do have the power (by combining their votes) to decide the election. I believe that is true for all elections that are conducted by conventional methods, regardless of the ballot used - Plurality, Range, Condorcet or Approval. An individual's vote can have no useful effect on the outcome of the election, or on anything else in the objective world. Again it follows: (a) What the individual voter thinks is of no importance; or (b) The election method is flawed. Which of these statements is true? I think it must be (b). Agreed that a is not true though, as you point out, one voter, alone, changing a vote cannot be certain of changing the results. I do not see you proving that b is true. Flawed requires the method failing to provide the results it promises. Dave Ketchum -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ On Aug 27, 2011, at 4:22 PM, Michael Allan wrote: But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? Dave Ketchum wrote: TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. Please relate this to an election. Take an election for a US state governor, for example. Suppose I am eligible to vote. I say my vote cannot possibly affect the outcome of the election. You say it can, under certain conditions. Under what conditions exactly? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring version
On Aug 25, 2011, at 2:29 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote: Hi, I aggree it would be good to make a separate statement for proportional election methods. Agreed. Need something brief here that some of us promote such for such as legislatures and are working on a separate effort for this. Some other comments for the record: Looking at single-winner elections 1) What about multiple round single-winner methods? For instance the Brittish conservatives vote on who to eliminate each round . The candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated, using only bullet voting. So far, as I have understood, the only disadvantage with such an election system is many election rounds. Only need a few words here, if any - seems like this might be done with Approval, whatever may get done for other elections. Primary elections should be workable with whatever is done for the main election (minimize related costs - or perhaps with something simpler). Still, how much need for primaries if main election can tolerate multiple candidates from any one party. 2) All of the endorsed methods could be improved by simply letting the top two contenders meet in a second round. Tactical voting might lead to changes in preference orderings between the rounds and thus to improved results by introducting a second round. Plurality needs to have a second round since its voters sometimes need to, but cannot, vote for more than one in the main election. With better voting methods second rounds are less needed, and ARE an expense for all, including the voters. Agreed that making second rounds standard could have improved results - unless it cost too much and voters react in a less than useful way. 3) what about the option None of the above, the blank vote, are we neutral to this option? I certainly think this option is good and important. When is this a useful addition? Argue again that Condorcet should be considered a single method here - and something said about such as cycles existing, though not necessarily what to do about them. Claim that what I wrote about simplifying Condorcet voting August 24, 2011 3:05:19 PM EDT needs to be seen by more at this point. Dave Ketchum Looking at proportional elections: 4) Aren't we in a position to a) recommend Meek's method ahead of IRV-STV, when it comes to a better proportional representation? b) recommend IRV-STV (scottish STV) for its simplicity and relative ease of being explained c) recommend fractional vote transfer in STV? I cannot endorse random vote transfer in STV. d) fractional quotas instead of integer quotas? I cannot endorse integer quotas. e) be able to recommend at least one Condorcet-STV method, which is used somewhere? f) endorse that the majority rule should be fulfilled, i.e.that a majority of voters get a majority of the seats? I would not like to endorse proportional election methods violating the majority rule, like IRV-STV and the Hare quota. The Hare quota with Meek's method might however satisfy the majority criterion, as the only STV method (have seen no proof though). 6) proportional election methods are most certainly not only appropriate for elections to state legislative, but also for elections in any organisation, the statement limits the scope of consideration to public elections, especially to parliamentary bodies. 7) I do not think that it is a good idea to recommend proportional methods outside the statement, i.e. at the time of signature. Well normally, i.e. in our party, alternative proposals are voted upon. If the proposals are supported, then they are included in the final text. Sometimes a qualified majority is needed (like two thirds). As this is an expert opinion, it is important that almost all experts agree, ofherwise it is not an expert opinion. So the qualified majority quota could be higher, maybe 80 percent or five sixths (used in Sweden for some constitutional changes). Then the other question is who is an expert. Someone who has published at least one paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Well that's how policy is made in politics. I think noone has come up with something better, except for enlightened dictatorship :o) In any case, it is great a statement is being made and I hope the people on this list will be able to agree on a final wording. Best regards Peter Zborník On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: Peter Zbornik wrote: Dear all, please consider including a list of endorsed election methods for proportional elections, just as you have done for single winner elections. Otherwise the bold statement will just cover one special case in election theory - single winner elections. Furthermore you might consider covering the issues of (i) proportional rank orders. For instance when electing the party list in primaries, in countries where closed lists are used. (ii
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
A SAD weakness about what is being said. On Aug 24, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote: Michael Allan wrote: But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree? TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect. IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will: . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz. . Cause overflow if flask already full. In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the limit would be far away. To which Warren Smith responded: --no. A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes. Proof: simply change ballots one by one until the outcome changes. At the moment it changes, that single ballot changed an election outcome. QED. BUT there could be many previous ballots of which none made any change. Since, as stated, A single ballot can change the outcome of an election. and This is true in any election method which is capable of having at least two outcomes., why would a voter prefer a new electoral method over the existing plurality method? From the voter's perspective, (s)he is already familiar with plurality, so , if the new method produces the same result, why change? Truly no reason PROVIDED the new method provides the same result, given the same input. Cui bono? Obviously, not the voter. When considering the 'meaning' of a vote, it is more important to examine the question of what the voter is voting for or against. Voting, of the type used in plurality contests, is profoundly undemocratic, not because of the vote-counting method, but because the people can only vote for or against candidates and issues chosen by those who control the political parties - the people Robert Michels' described as oligarchs. If the object of changing the electoral method is to build a more just and democratic government, the proposed methods must give the people a way to influence the choice of candidates and the issues on which they vote. Fred Gohlke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring, version
Why not agree to a shared Condorcet method definition to compete here with Range, etc. Condorct ballot has rank level (unranked is bottom, don't care if voter skips levels (only care when comparing two whether /=/), properly attend to CW. Have to attend to cycles, but differences here not counted as method differences. Dave Ketchum On Aug 24, 2011, at 5:34 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/8/24 Markus Schulze markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de Hallo, I wrote (24 Aug 2011): In my opinion, the Voting Reform Statement endorses too many alternative election methods. Opponents will argue that this long list demonstrates that even we don't have a clue which election method should be adopted. Jameson Quinn wrote (24 Aug 2011): Is that worse than what happens if we can't agree? Well, one of the most frequently used arguments against Condorcet methods is that there are too many Condorcet methods and that there is no agreement on the best one. Yes. And will not agreeing on a consensus statement help that situation? What I'm saying is: yes, it would be ideal if we could reduce the list and all unite behind one system. But we as voting theorists should be able to find a way to keep this apparently-unattainable ideal from getting in the way of whatever agreement is actually possible. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring version
On Aug 23, 2011, at 9:06 PM, Richard Fobes wrote: I very much agree with Jameson Quinn that the time has come to write, sign, and widely distribute a formal statement of the election-method principles that we agree upon. Yet instead of just providing a checklist of what we approve, I suggest we take advantage of this opportunity to ... * ... inspire(!) policymakers, politically active citizens, and frustrated voters to take action, and ... * ... give them a clearly explained declaration they can use as ammunition in their battles to implement election-method reforms. To serve these purposes, I'm boldly suggesting an entirely new wording. Keep in mind that one of my professions has been to work as a technical writer specializing in translating especially complex technology into clear English, and I also have experience writing marketing materials. This version incorporates the suggestions and refinements already discussed, so the revision work already done is not being wasted. Previously I too was thinking that the other version was too long. Ironically this version is even longer. I now realize that the other version went into too much detail about subtle issues, and that's what made it seem long. In contrast, this version uses the extra words to clearly explain fundamental voting concepts that most people do not already understand, and to serve the above-listed purposes. Also I think (or at least hope) that this version better identifies our real areas of agreement. My hope is that either this version, or a merging of this version with other versions, will produce a declaration that we can sign with much more enthusiasm. - The Declaration of Election-Method Experts - ** Unanimously we agree that the kind of ballot used in plurality voting is not appropriate when there are more than two choices. Its deficiency is that it does not collect enough preference information from the voters in order to always correctly identify the most popular candidate when there are more than two candidates. The mention of two choices confuses. The kind of ballot to be used must be decided, in at least most cases, before one can be certain how many candidates will be chosen from. If nothing else, write-in candidates can mean the possibility of more choices. Unanimously we agree that there are three kinds of ballots that collect enough preference information to always, or almost always, correctly identify the most popular candidate. The names and descriptions of these ballot types are, in alphabetical order: * Approval ballot, on which a voter marks each candidate who the voter approves as an acceptable choice, and leaves unmarked the candidates who are not acceptable * Ranked ballots (or 1-2-3 ballots), on which a voter indicates a first choice, and optionally indicates a second choice, and optionally indicates additional choices at lower preference levels * Score ballots, on which a voter assigns a number for each candidate, with the most familiar versions of such voting being to rate something with 1 to 5 stars or rate a choice with a number from 1 to 10, but any range of numbers can be used The type of ballot used in plurality voting does not have an academically recognized name, but the term single-mark ballot can be used to refer to this primitive ballot type. Why is the unfairness of plurality voting not better known? Single- mark ballots do not collect enough information to reveal the actual preferences of voters in elections that have three or more reasonably popular candidates. This lack of full preference information makes it nearly impossible for anyone to produce clear proof, or even evidence, of unfair election results. The Approval ballot allows selecting one or more, but does not allow indicating preference among them. When this same ballot was used in plurality it worked because the voter was only allowed to select one. Perhaps the target of this discussion is desire to indicate more than one AND which are more or less desired. ** In addition to the four supported methods listed above, we also support some combined methods. Specifically we support the use of the Condorcet method to identify a Condorcet winner (who is pairwise-preferred over all the other candidates) and then, if there is no Condorcet winner, we support using either instant-runoff voting (IRV) or approval voting to resolve the ambiguity and identify a single winner. Most, if not all, Condorcet methods use the same way to find the CW and, if found, declare that to be the winner. If not found, different methods have their own way to find a winner. I question involving IRV here. Seems like, unless defending against such, that it would have its home problem of wrong choices. Note that each member of the cycle would be the CW if all other cycle members were excluded. Note
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement
On Aug 16, 2011, at 9:16 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I understand your arguments, though you've neglected MJ and SODA. But as I keep arguing, this statement isn't about finding the right answer, it's about finding the best answer that we can all agree on. JQ 2011/8/15 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com Strategy thoughts: Assuming as candidates, Good, Soso, and lice: My preference is G but S is better than any lice. Thus I desire to vote for both G and S with G preferred. While a voter can often identify one target for all their attention, or more which share being best liked, I see my description of G and S as identifying a common other major desire. SODA? If, when a voter lists multiple candidates, they are treated as in approval, I see SODA as grouping with approval. MJ? J am not sure what this is - would it, like many, fit among what I have described? For example there are many flavors of Condorcet of varying quality, though not worth mentioning in the current effort (yet I see IRV as different enough to deserve mention). Dave Ketchum Plurality - can not vote for both. On days when I expect G to certainly lose I vote for S to protect, as best I can, against lice. Approval - can vote for both but this can cause G to lose. Simple rules and a bit better than plurality. IRV - can vote for both. Vote counting is both much labor and can fail to elect G even though best liked, if this is not seen by the way the counters look at the ballots. Range - can vote for both. After giving G top rating, S has a strategy headache: Rate S high and risk S winning over G; rate S low and risk S losing to lice. Condorcet - can vote for both and show clear preference for G over S. On Aug 15, 2011, at 9:20 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/8/15 Jonathan Lundell jlund...@pobox.com On Aug 15, 2011, at 11:58 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: It's true that I might agree to a statement if all it said were We believe that approval is marginally superior to plurality (thought to the extent that I agreed, I don't think it's enough better to merit any energy in advocating it). But that's not what you're proposing. Is it? No. I'm proposing saying that, in different words, along with a number of other things with which you haven't disagreed. Including that we believe that approval is a step towards systems which we see as significantly superior to plurality. (Remember - just as approval is 2-level Range, approval is also 2-level Schulze or what have you, and also no-intercandidate-preference SODA, etc.) So, either propose some specific change in the language relating to approval, or bring some other objection, or both. The statement says, in effect, Range is good, IRV is bad. I disagree. Perhaps I'm the only one, in which case it's inconsequential that I'm not aboard. (What Schulze are we talking about? I associate the name with a Condorcet-cycle-breaking method.) It doesn't say that. It says, we can agree that range is at least marginally better than plurality, we cannot agree on that for IRV. I would happily sign a separate statement saying IRV is better than plurality, but I think including that here would lose too many. Schulze is just my default example of a complex but good Condorcet tiebreaker. And if you run it with only two-level ballots, it is equivalent to approval. If you want to suggest rewording to make it clear that you're only giving the weakest possible endorsement to Range, then go ahead. But remember, any amount you weaken the these are good systems section, weakens it for all of the listed systems. Because we are not going to get many people to sign on to a statement that makes distinctions between those systems. Or say clearly that you can't sign the statement in any form, and we'll stop worrying about you. I want this to get as much support as possible, but I know that I'll never get everyone. Again, I personally agree with much of what you are saying. Approval does force strategic thinking on the voter, more than many other options. (That's also true of Range, but not of MJ, so you shouldn't generalize to rating systems.) But this is not about just me. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting reform statement
Strategy thoughts: Assuming as candidates, Good, Soso, and lice: My preference is G but S is better than any lice. Thus I desire to vote for both G and S with G preferred. Plurality - can not vote for both. On days when I expect G to certainly lose I vote for S to protect, as best I can, against lice. Approval - can vote for both but this can cause G to lose. Simple rules and a bit better than plurality. IRV - can vote for both. Vote counting is both much labor and can fail to elect G even though best liked, if this is not seen by the way the counters look at the ballots. Range - can vote for both. After giving G top rating, S has a strategy headache: Rate S high and risk S winning over G; rate S low and risk S losing to lice. Condorcet - can vote for both and show clear preference for G over S. On Aug 15, 2011, at 9:20 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/8/15 Jonathan Lundell jlund...@pobox.com On Aug 15, 2011, at 11:58 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: It's true that I might agree to a statement if all it said were We believe that approval is marginally superior to plurality (thought to the extent that I agreed, I don't think it's enough better to merit any energy in advocating it). But that's not what you're proposing. Is it? No. I'm proposing saying that, in different words, along with a number of other things with which you haven't disagreed. Including that we believe that approval is a step towards systems which we see as significantly superior to plurality. (Remember - just as approval is 2-level Range, approval is also 2-level Schulze or what have you, and also no-intercandidate-preference SODA, etc.) So, either propose some specific change in the language relating to approval, or bring some other objection, or both. The statement says, in effect, Range is good, IRV is bad. I disagree. Perhaps I'm the only one, in which case it's inconsequential that I'm not aboard. (What Schulze are we talking about? I associate the name with a Condorcet-cycle-breaking method.) It doesn't say that. It says, we can agree that range is at least marginally better than plurality, we cannot agree on that for IRV. I would happily sign a separate statement saying IRV is better than plurality, but I think including that here would lose too many. Schulze is just my default example of a complex but good Condorcet tiebreaker. And if you run it with only two-level ballots, it is equivalent to approval. If you want to suggest rewording to make it clear that you're only giving the weakest possible endorsement to Range, then go ahead. But remember, any amount you weaken the these are good systems section, weakens it for all of the listed systems. Because we are not going to get many people to sign on to a statement that makes distinctions between those systems. Or say clearly that you can't sign the statement in any form, and we'll stop worrying about you. I want this to get as much support as possible, but I know that I'll never get everyone. Again, I personally agree with much of what you are saying. Approval does force strategic thinking on the voter, more than many other options. (That's also true of Range, but not of MJ, so you shouldn't generalize to rating systems.) But this is not about just me. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal
On Aug 13, 2011, at 11:31 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote: On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com wrote: Glad to see thinking, though we part company on some details. On Aug 13, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote: All current forms of party list proportional representation have each voter cast a vote for a single party. I say this is inadequate since a small party can be eliminated and hence denied any representation (this is particularly relevant if the legislature has a threshold). However, votes for a party that doesn't have sufficient support to win any seats in the legislature are simply wasted. Thus I propose an alternative method. That some party may get zero seats, that does NOT make their attempt a pure waste: .If they are growing, they are on the way - and a warning to other parties that their apparent goals deserve more attention - perhaps to be honored by those who do get seats. Under this system, we would in fact see greater support for small parties since it is less of a gamble. Even IF my first choice (probably a niche party) does not get a seat, my vote will be eventually transferred to a party that *does* have a seat. This means that I'm more likely to support my first choice to begin with. (This isn't fool proof though in the original formulation ... ranking other parties at all increases their weight which helps them compete against my preferred niche party, I don't think this is a huge vulnerability though and it can be solved by allowing greater flexibility in rankings). I read this as following the IRV approach that requires going back and rereading ballots to do such transfers. MANY of us se this as failing too often. We argue for the Condorcet approach that reads ballots, ONE time, into an N*N matrix for analysis. Since parts of a district such as precincts can be read into matrices, then to be summed together, there is more opportunity for encouraging, and checking on, quality of counting. Looking closer, winners do not have to be first choice - they simply need to be ranked above enough of their competition. I would base the voting and counting on the ranking we do in Condorcet for single seats - same N*N matrix and whoever would be CW be first elected, with next the one who would be CW if the first CW was excluded. . If the above could elect too many from any one party, exclude remaining candidates from that party on reaching the limit. . Note that the N*N matrix has value that does not often get mentioned - it is worth studying as to pairs of candidates, besides its base value of deciding the election. I'm sure I don't have to remind you a Condorcet Winner does not always exist. I don't completely understand your description of your method. How does it work with parties? Condorcet methods accept that three or more candidates may be a cycle rather than one being a CW - and have to accept responsibility for deciding which cycle member shall be, effectively, CW. Seemed simple to treat parties, rather than persons, as candidates. I thought of parties being allowed to fill more than one seat and, for this, wanting to have multiple candidates such as G1, G2, and G3. Even with this, seems like voters would want to identify the person holding a seat even if the seat's existence was identified with the party. Each voter votes for as many parties as they wish in a defined order. My vote might be democratgreenlibertarianrepublican or something like that. Anyway, first we calculate each party's weight. Weight is calculated simply by counting the number of times the party appears on a voter's ballot in any position (this should be reminiscent of approval voting). Each party also has a status hopeful, elected, or disqualified. Next, pick your favorite allocation method. D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, Largest Remainder, anything else you can think of, with or without a threshold. We then use this allocation method to determine each party's mandate if everyone voted for their first preference. If every hopeful party has at least one seat, then all the hopeful parties are declared elected. If at least one hopeful party has no seats at all, the party with the lowest weight is disqualified, its votes are redistributed, and the allocation is done again with the new list of hopeful parties. I see first preference and think of avoiding IRV's problems - which the above ranking attends to. I am assuming candidates identified with their parties, and parties getting seats via their candidates getting seats. Thus, once all the seats get filled, remaining parties - due to their lack of strong candidates - get no seats. My system does not have voters voting for candidates at all. In fact, candidates needn't even exist (theoretically of course) for my method to be well-defined. Instead people simply vote for parties
Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal
Why transfers? At least, when I said do a CW type search for the strongest remaining candidate, I thought of this as adequate without transfers. I do think of quitting if the remainder are too weak: . Anyway, quit after filling the limit of seats to fill. . Quit anyway if remainder are too weak to deserve a seat. Dave Ketchum On Aug 14, 2011, at 4:24 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote: Message: 2 Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:31:55 +0100 From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal Message-ID: E31F77F9E803443CA831CC02610CD525@u2amd Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Greg Nisbet Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 4:31 AM My system does not have voters voting for candidates at all. In fact, candidates needn't even exist (theoretically of course) for my method to be well-defined. Instead people simply vote for parties, with parties that can't get any seats dropped from the lowest weight first. Making the system more candidate-centric could be done, but my algorithm (or class of algorithms) is supposed to be a minimal, easily analyzable change from non-preferential party list methods. But this is not what the majority of electors want, at least not in polities like USA, Canada and UK. Electors in some continental European countries do seem to be happy with party list PR without any voter choice of candidates, but I would suggest, that would not be acceptable in our political culture. For the UK, that opinion is based on various public opinion polls; for the USA and Canada it is based on my reading of local media and blogs. James Gilmour I'm for candidate-centric voting methods as much as anyone else is, and indeed, my proposal can be modified to allow that. Parties could have an internal ballot pool that initially consists of just the ballots of the voters with that party as their first preference. As parties get eliminated and votes are transferred, the internal ballot pool will grow. If party are allowed to have a maximum size and transfers are allowed, then this could get more complicated because a party's internal ballot pool could contain ballots with fractional weights. Nevertheless, the method I propose can be modified to meet your criticism. My method can be modified fairly trivially to allow parties with a maximum size, e.g. an independent candidate would be a party with a maximum size of one, and simply allow surpluses to be transferred. Even the relatively naive Gregory transfer method might work well, I'm not sure how to adapt Meek or a more complicated transfer rule to this method or if the benefits are worth the cost. Allowing transfers might place some kind of restriction on what sorts of classical allocation methods that the Preferential Party List Method could use, but I doubt these would be particularly severe. -- next part -- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal
After reading the ballots into the N*N matrix, look for the strongest candidate - the CW or what is found in the cycle when there is no CW. This fills the first seat. Then amend the matrix to exclude this CW and look in the matrix for whoever would be CW in the remainder. In each step the search is for the strongest remaining candidate in the amended matrix. On Aug 14, 2011, at 10:03 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Aug 14, 2011, at 6:51 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Why transfers? At least, when I said do a CW type search for the strongest remaining candidate, I thought of this as adequate without transfers. I do think of quitting if the remainder are too weak: . Anyway, quit after filling the limit of seats to fill. . Quit anyway if remainder are too weak to deserve a seat. I'm not really following what you mean by strongest remaining candidate. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue
and a Condorcet winner exists. and, if a CW exists, the result is perfectly consistent, in every contingency, with the simple-majority, two candidate, one-person-one-vote election that everyone is familiar with. Does someone have thoughts on how to get your Range Voting plan voted into action? I would like to hear how Range Voting moves beyond more than just a good idea. how does it move beyond good idea when it hasn't advanced to that square? (sorry Warren, i *really* have a lot of respect for you and your scholarship and your Burlington IRV page at your website, but you're still not convincing regarding Range. a little more convincing regarding Approval, but i would still not support that for political office, maybe the judiciary or some boards, but not executive nor legislative.) listen, everybody agrees with how a simple 2-candidate election should be decided: person with the most votes wins and every voters vote is of equal value. simple majority and one-person-one-vote. wouldn't it make a lot more sense, since IRV is discredited, and FPP is clearly flawed, to put your energy into educating people about what goes wrong and *has* gone wrong in those elections and present an alternative with ballot no more complicated than with IRV and truer to the hypothetical 2-person race, whether the spoiler runs or not? I think we need to start a PAC or even maybe a party that has the sole objective of getting rid of plurality voting. doesn't one exist? why not team up with FairVote? We need to be able to communicate that competitive elections in which there is no vote splitting is the most important thing we can do to hold politicians accountable. sure, and how does Condorcet cause vote splitting? you don't need Range to address the problem of splitting the majority vote. We also need to be willing to vote for candidates who support getting rid of plurality regardless of what other positions that candidate holds. oooh, i dunno if i can handle that. weirder things have happened than that of Michelle Bachmann supporting ranked-choice voting. i wouldn't vote for her even if she *loved* Condorcet. We need to communicate that once we get over this hump, we will no longer have to worry about having to vote for the lesser of two evils ever again. Another thing we can do is email and tweet news hosts like Rachael Maddow and ask them to do a segment on different voting systems. If we organize to tweet pundits at the same time, maybe they'll get the message. dunno who Rachel Maddow is. guess i better google her. how about Chris Matthews? On 8/4/11 9:16 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Here I talk of moving up from FPP to Range or Condorcet. I do not get into other single-winner elections or into multi-winner elections - while such deserve considering, they distract from my primary goal, which is to promote moving upward without getting buried in details. Voters should see advantages in moving up to a better method. To vote for one, as in FPP: . In Range, assign your choice a maximum rating. . In Condorcet, simply rank your choice. which is simpler? Voting for two is using more power than FPP offers. Often there is a major pair of candidates for which you prefer one, and one other that you also want to vote for: For your second choice you could give the same rank or rating, or lower: . In Range you assign first choice maximum rating. Unrated share minimum. The farther you rate second below max, the stronger your vote for max over second. BUT, the nearer you rate second to unrated, the weaker you rate second over unrated. . In Condorcet, rank your first choice higher than your second. ditto. Voting for more is doable: . In Range your difference in rating between any two is how much you prefer the higher over the lower, and the sum of these differences decides which wins their race. . In Condorcet they count how many rank AB vs how many rank BA. which meaning complies more with equal weighting of each voter's vote (what we normally mean by one-person-one-vote)? Politicians may hesitate in moving up to more powerful methods. Range or Condorcet can cost more, but getting a truer reading as to voter choices can be worth the pain. i'm sorry, guys. i'm really sorry, Warren, but between Condorcet and Range, it just ain't close. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue
On Aug 5, 2011, at 10:22 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/8/5 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com Brought out for special thought: rating is easier than ranking. You can express this computationally, by saying that ranking requires O(n²) pairwise comparisons of candidates (or perhaps for some autistic savants who heap-sort in their head, O[n log(n)]), while rating requires O(n) comparisons of candidates against an absolute scale. You can express it empirically; this has been confirmed by ballot spoilage rates, speed, and self-report in study after study. This somehow does not fit as to rating vs ranking. I look at A and B, doing comparisons as needed, and assign each a value to use: . For ranking the values can show which exist: AB, A=B, or AB, and can be used as is unless they need to be converted to whatever format may be acceptable. I'm sorry, I don't understand this sentence. The ballot counter, seeing A and B each ranked, is going to step a count for AB or AB if A is less than B or A is greater than B - which difference exists matters but the magnitude of the differences is of no interest. Dave Ketchum . For rating the values need to be scaled. There is no need to scale rating values for MJ. In fact, it is not the intention. A vote of Nader=Poor, Gore=Good, Bush=Fair is perfectly valid and probably fully strategic even on a ballot which includes Unacceptable, Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent. Thus what needs doing is a trivial bit of extra effort for rating. The comparison effort was shared. Ballot spoilage rates also puzzle. Where can I find what magic lets non-Condorcet have less such than Condorcet, for I do not believe such magic exists, unless Condorcet is given undeserved problems. Right, I was thinking of strict ranking when I wrote that part. On Aug 5, 2011, at 8:57 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue
On Aug 5, 2011, at 11:13 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/8/5 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com On Aug 5, 2011, at 10:22 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/8/5 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com Brought out for special thought: rating is easier than ranking. You can express this computationally, by saying that ranking requires O(n²) pairwise comparisons of candidates (or perhaps for some autistic savants who heap-sort in their head, O[n log(n)]), while rating requires O(n) comparisons of candidates against an absolute scale. You can express it empirically; this has been confirmed by ballot spoilage rates, speed, and self-report in study after study. This somehow does not fit as to rating vs ranking. I look at A and B, doing comparisons as needed, and assign each a value to use: . For ranking the values can show which exist: AB, A=B, or AB, and can be used as is unless they need to be converted to whatever format may be acceptable. I'm sorry, I don't understand this sentence. The ballot counter, seeing A and B each ranked, is going to step a count for AB or AB if A is less than B or A is greater than B - which difference exists matters but the magnitude of the differences is of no interest. Dave Ketchum I'm sorry. You're talking about during the counting phase. I was talking about the algorithm going on in the voter's head. Assuming that how good is candidate X on this absolute scale? is an atomic operation, and is X better than Y is another one. good and better are not clear to me. How important fits better as the reason the voter is assigning a higher rank. . For rating the values need to be scaled. There is no need to scale rating values for MJ. In fact, it is not the intention. A vote of Nader=Poor, Gore=Good, Bush=Fair is perfectly valid and probably fully strategic even on a ballot which includes Unacceptable, Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent. Thus what needs doing is a trivial bit of extra effort for rating. The comparison effort was shared. Ballot spoilage rates also puzzle. Where can I find what magic lets non-Condorcet have less such than Condorcet, for I do not believe such magic exists, unless Condorcet is given undeserved problems. Right, I was thinking of strict ranking when I wrote that part. On Aug 5, 2011, at 8:57 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue
Here I talk of moving up from FPP to Range or Condorcet. I do not get into other single-winner elections or into multi-winner elections - while such deserve considering, they distract from my primary goal, which is to promote moving upward without getting buried in details. Voters should see advantages in moving up to a better method. To vote for one, as in FPP: . In Range, assign your choice a maximum rating. . In Condorcet, simply rank your choice. Voting for two is using more power than FPP offers. Often there is a major pair of candidates for which you prefer one, and one other that you also want to vote for: For your second choice you could give the same rank or rating, or lower: . In Range you assign first choice maximum rating. Unrated share minimum. The farther you rate second below max, the stronger your vote for max over second. BUT, the nearer you rate second to unrated, the weaker you rate second over unrated. . In Condorcet, rank your first choice higher than your second. Voting for more is doable: . In Range your difference in rating between any two is how much you prefer the higher over the lower, and the sum of these differences decides which wins their race. . In Condorcet they count how many rank AB vs how many rank BA. Politicians may hesitate in moving up to more powerful methods. Range or Condorcet can cost more, but getting a truer reading as to voter choices can be worth the pain. Dave Ketchum On Aug 4, 2011, at 3:20 AM, bob wrote: --- In rangevot...@yahoogroups.com, thenewthirdparty thenewthirdparty@... wrote: Guys and Gals, I now see Range Voting as a very important component to getting third parties elected. But I don't see how the Range Voting group will ever change the minds of the public in order for it to be a reality. Does someone have thoughts on how to get your Range Voting plan voted into action? I would like to hear how Range Voting moves beyond more than just a good idea. I think we need to start a PAC or even maybe a party that has the sole objective of getting rid of plurality voting. We need to be able to communicate that competitive elections in which there is no vote splitting is the most important thing we can do to hold politicians accountable. We also need to be willing to vote for candidates who support getting rid of plurality regardless of what other positions that candidate holds. We need to communicate that once we get over this hump, we will no longer have to worry about having to vote for the lesser of two evils ever again. Another thing we can do is email and tweet news hosts like Rachael Maddow and ask them to do a segment on different voting systems. If we organize to tweet pundits at the same time, maybe they'll get the message. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [COVoterChoice] RB gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs,
I assume this is from Colorado, and have no idea who else has seen it. I see it as worth considering the thinking, although I AM NOT signing on as backing any of it. On Jul 23, 2011, at 11:32 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Knowing of IRV and Condorcet methods of counting ballots, the first paragraph below makes me wonder how valid the the author's claims may be. The very last few lines help. . STV - not used here - THANKS . Condorcet - also not used here - think more whether this is better. On Jul 23, 2011, at 3:59 PM, preferentiality wrote: Ranked Ballot (voters ranking candidates in order of preference) will give us (PRACTICABLE!) Instant TRUE Democracy for ALL the World, even put an end to all war forever. Because it gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs, “RB” is the only thing that’s truly both just free. Because it always elects the candidate most exactly in the middle of all voting, RB is top-dead-center counter extremist, thus more anti-terrorist than all the many recent retrenchments combined thus will even disallow the tendency of (virtually two- party) parliamentary systems to give the top to the biggest gang on the block, sometimes with violently extremist results. Worth reading more - I am not buying the author's claims of achieving perfection. There are many topics for which more than two possible choices seem worth debating possible value. Dave Ketchum RB is the sole unchangeable plank bylaw of a Ranked Ballot Party, the only practicable third party.) We imagine running on the single issue of RB, promising a citizens’ advisory board based on Organized Communications, “OC”, small randomly assigned discussion groups electing reps to higher higher randomly assigned levels, by means of RB, ‘til one small group, most exactly in the middle of all voting, remains at the top, to guide us in the rest, which group by its merest invitation to speak inevitably names the perfect compromise next winner That’s the instant part. You do the same, from the most local on up. By the power of its example alone, RB will give us practicable instant worldwide true democracy. Virtually no democracy has ever been attacked by another. In a world of only democracies, there would no longer be need of the counter-productive wastefulness of armies, war or the preparation for war. RB will bring us that all else: a real solution to terror, a perfect marriage of Freedom Justice, Tradition Modernity, Palestinian Jew, Free Market Communalism, all the fairness, payback make-up one could wish for, clean back to the Cro- Magnons, ecologically sustainable politics, what’s best for all workers, instant global women’s liberation, world-wide luxury, a rationalization of the drug wars, human unity, the Freedom of Justice the Justice of Freedom, perhaps the only possible solution to the world’s only real problem, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (once they both are made to have to adopt RB), even integrity. RB is to the horse buggy two-party system as shopping in the Mall of America is to shopping in Soviet Russia. The majority of the problems we face are due to the heavy-footedness of the two party system. RB lessens the power of the extremes, whether authoritarian, economic or sectarian, except through what they can gain by persuasion, which is only what’s just. While it would be equally useful for all else, RB’s real power is perhaps most clearly shown in the case of Iraq. Unless its Parliament comes to select the Prime Minister by means of RB, it may not hold the country, region world will be in danger of going to war over some ancient grudge, oil well, multi-ethnic city, or sabotaged pipeline. While the new constitution does call for the selection of the President by a 2/3 vote in the first round (even if only by the parliament not the people) (who may then decide who will form the new government) then by a run-off between the top two vote getters in the second round, if that fails to move all three tribes to nominate centrists, then the resulting handful of old men in a back room will fall far short of RB’s ultimate retail politics. RB would be equally useful for all electoral systems (parliamentary or presidential, the parliaments choosing their PMs by RB from among their members, lest they produce another Hitler or other extreme) coops, collective leaderships, tribal groupings, religious confessions, political parties, associations or, even cabals. Whoever gets there first wins. For leaders to best represent their country, or district, whether chosen at large or by a representative body, they must be the perfect compromise, most exactly in the middle, as is given by RB. Yet because it gives minorities a real say in which member of the plurality/majority gets chosen, RB is the only thing that will lead Iraqis, or anyone else, to support any plan more than inadequate
Re: [EM] Learning from IRV's success
On Jul 8, 2011, at 10:43 AM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 8.7.2011, at 17.16, Andy Jennings wrote: Also, I think IRV's seemingly intuitive nature has something to do with it. For those who *did* investigate more deeply, IRV seemed sensible, too: instead of holding a bunch of expensive runoffs, collect all the required information at once and then act as if there were runoffs. That fails to account for the dynamics between the rounds, but that's a subtle detail and might easily be missed. I, too, must admit that IRV has a natural feeling to it. I had a friend who described to me a system he thought of on his own and he ended up describing IRV. And MANY of us asking for Condorcet probably see it as fitting the above description - for the voter. It is when we notice that IRV counting can stray FAR from awarding to the CW, that our attention can turn to Condorcet which: . Has counting that awards to deserving candidates. . Can easily handle equal ranking. . Can learn to award to write-ins (when they are deserving). Dave Ketchum I agree with that (as one reason). It is a bit like natural selection, or a like fight of strong men where the weakest ones must leave the arena first. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?
What I see: .. Condorcet - without mixing in Approval. . SODA - for trying, but seems too complex. . Reject Approval - too weak to compete. Dave Ketchum On Jul 8, 2011, at 6:56 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: First, I'd ask people on this list to please stop discussing tax policy here. It's not the place for it. (What happened to that idea of finding a compromise method that everybody on EM could support? Did the idea get sidetracked by SODA?) More or less. My impression was that we had agreed that a statement should explain and support no more than two simple methods, and mention as good a broad range - as many as could get broad acceptance. For the simple methods, it seemed that people were leaning towards (Condorcet//Approval or Minimax/WV) plus (Approval or SODA). For the generally agreed as improvements, I think we could get consensus that the aforementioned ones plus MJ, Range, and a catch-all condorcet methods (since in practice they are unlikely to differ), would all be improvements over plurality. So, I guess the question is: is there anyone who would support Approval but not SODA? Respond in text. Also, I made a poll on betterpolls - go vote. http://betterpolls.com/v/1425 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?
On Jul 8, 2011, at 12:47 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I'm sorry, but aarrhh. I think that people on this list are smart, but this is pathetic. I don't mean to be hard on Dave in particular. But why is it impossible to get any two of us to agree on anything? I want to make a list of systems which are 1. Commonly agreed to be better than approval. We pretty much agree that approval is a step up from plurality - but most of us agree that we want a bigger step - but have trouble agreeing how to do that. 2. Commonly agreed to be simple for an average voter to feel that they understand what's going on. Voters should understand, but not necessarily be ready to do for themselves - leave that to whoever gets assigned to build the system. I am not asking each person who responds to choose the best or simplest system according to them. I'm asking everyone to vote in the poll and approve (rate higher than 0) all systems which meet those two very low bars. Hopefully, the result will be a consensus. It will almost certainly not be the two best, simplest systems by any individual's personal reckoning. As to the specific comments: 2011/7/8 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com What I see: . Condorcet - without mixing in Approval. You need some cycle-breaker. Implicit approval is the only order-N tiebreaker I know; fundamentally simpler than any order-N² tiebreaker like minimax. You don't have to call it approval if you don't like the name. When you look close: . If approval thinking could get involved when there is a cycle, we must consider whether this will affect voters' thinking. . Will not the approval thinking affect what is extracted from the ballots. While there are many methods for resolving cycles, might we agree on: . Each cycle member would be CW if the other cycle members were set aside - why not demand that the x*x matrix that decided there was a cycle be THE source for deciding on which cycle member should be winner. . Remember that, when we are electing such as a senator or governor, retrieving new information from the ballots is a complication. . SODA - for trying, but seems too complex. I disagree, but I'm biased. I feel that approve any number of candidates or let your favorite candidate do it for you; most approvals wins is easy to understand. But I can understand if people disagree, so I'm not criticizing this logic. Your favorite candidate for, hopefully, getting elected is not necessarily one you would trust toward getting a good substitute elected. . Reject Approval - too weak to compete. Worse than plurality No - but we should be trying for something better. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?
On Jul 7, 2011, at 3:54 PM, Russ Paielli wrote: Let me just elaborate on my concerns about complexity. Most of you probably know most of this already, but let me just try to summ it up and put things in perspective. Some of the participants on this list are advanced mathematicians, and they have been discussing these matters for years. As you all know, the topic of election methods and voting systems can get very complicated. As far as I know, there is still no consensus even on this list on what is the best system. If there is no consensus here, how can you expect to get a consensus among the general public? Because we, hopefully, honor the different rules that make sense when we are voting for the public, rather than what you properly complain about. But let's suppose a consensus is reached here on the EM list. What happens next? You need to generate public awareness, which is a major task. As far as the general public is concerned, there is no problem with the voting system per se. Voters vote, and the votes are counted. The candidate with the most votes wins. What else do you need? Need to start, before listening to your words, with how to let the voters express their desires - something some of them realize need of already. So let's say we somehow manage to get widespread public awareness of the deficiencies of the current plurality system. Then what? Eventually, and actual change has to go through Congress. Try to imagine Senator Blowhard grilling the experts on the proposed rules of their favorite system. It would certainly be good for one thing: fodder for Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert! Congress is important for later - need to start with more lolcal targets. Also, consider the fierce opposition that would develop from any group that thinks they would suffer. And who might that be? How about the two major parties! Do you think they would have the power to stop it? For starters, they would probably claim that any complicated vote transfer algorithm cannot be used because it is not in the Constitution. Constitution? Anyway, need to have a plan to have some idea about who might agree/oppose. I realize that IRV has garnered considerable support and success. I suppose that's a tribute to the open-mindedness of ultra-leftist enclaves such as SF and Berkeley. On the other hand, it just goes to show that a fundamentally flawed system can be sold in such enclaves. Above you said selling would be undoable; here you say what should never get bought has demonstrated possibility of selling such? Dave Ketchum Sorry if I'm coming across as negative. I'm just trying to be realistic. I am a Republican, and I got interested again in the whole EM thing because of what I see happening in the Republican primary, with so many candidates to split the vote and so many potential voters seemingly oblivious to the problem. I wish there were a good, viable solution, but I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future. --Russ P. On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com wrote: Russ and Andrew each offer important thoughts. Russ is right that overly complex methods will likely get rejected - and I agree they deserve such, though Approval is not near to a reasonable limit. And Andrew is right that voters can accept something beyond Approval. Reviewing the steps as voters might think of them: . Approval is simply being able to voye for more than one, as if equals - easy to vote and easy to implement, but makes you wish for more. . Condorcet adds ranking, so you can vote for unequals such as Good that you truly like and Soso as second choice for being better than Bad, that you would happily forget. . Reasonable part of the ranking is ranking two or more as equally ranked. So I looked for what Andrew was referring to as CIVS - seems like it deserves more bragging than I have heard. Voters can easily get invited and vote via Internet in the flexibility doable that way. Read more at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/civs.html Seems like CIVS would be good to use as is in many places where voting via Internet makes sense - and shows using Condorcet - something adaptable to the way we normally do elections. Dave Ketchum On Jul 6, 2011, at 1:48 PM, Andrew Myers wrote: On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Russ Paielli wrote: ...I eventually realized I was kidding myself to think that those schemes will ever see the light of day in major public elections. What is the limit of complexity that the general public will accept on a large scale? I don't know, but I have my doubts that anything beyond simple Approval will ever pass muster -- and even that will be a hard sell. My experience with CIVS suggests that ranking choices is perfectly comprehensible to ordinary people. There have been more than 3,000 elections run using CIVS, and more than
Re: [EM] New tryIRV free IRV survey website online
Ouch! . As Kristofer just wrote, Condorcet is a much better method than IRV for what you are promising - Interesting that Condorcet offers (more than) the same voter ranking capabilities as IRV, but does much better counting. . CIVS offers, available now, what you seem to be trying. Recommend you study this description of CIVS and consider what it offers: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/civs.html Dave Ketchum On Jul 7, 2011, at 10:25 AM, Sand W wrote: I hope everyone is interested in a new online survey site intended to prove how much better IRV-enabled surveys are than traditional one choice or approval surveys. http://TryIRV.us is the current url, and we are still correcting it and adding features. It is based on Demochoice code. The goal is that people invited to vote in a survey will be more likely to vote in multiple surveys (created by different authors) than they do using http://Demochoice.org polls, so it will evolved into service for useful for taking IRV surveys of the general web- surfing public, and ranked voting will more rapidly catch on. We're doing a little web publicity this week so that it will already be going a little bit when the wider publicity starts next week, so it would be great if you can help it get started by checking every once in a while and voting the first new surveys created to motivate IRV newbies. By next week you will be able to easily embed hot links within the surveys, sot it will be easy to have a survey about best ranked voting system and link each survey choice to a site explaining each system. Thanks. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] New tryIRV free IRV survey website online
Downright curious how we skip over what is presented between our eyes!!! I recommended paying more attention to Condorcet Internet Voting Service. Less than a dozen lines after reading my reference to CIVS below, Robert wished for exactly that! 0n Jul 7, 2011, at 9:50 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jul 7, 2011, at 7:26 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Ouch! i missed it. . As Kristofer just wrote, Condorcet is a much better method than IRV for what you are promising - Interesting that Condorcet offers (more than) the same voter ranking capabilities as IRV, but does much better counting. i think the major argument for Condorcet is that it is the most consistent with the binary election of any pair. isn't that sorta what Pareto efficiency is about? Can help that, while we find fault with IRV, voters can be learning via IRV how they would interface with Condorcet. we all agree how an election between only two candidates should be evaluated given equal weight between voters (that is the true meaning of One person, one vote and i'm still appalled that this slogan was used by the IRV-repeal people). it should be no different if a third candidate is added unless that third candidate beats both A and B. there is no justification for why this third candidate should reverse the preference of the electorate regarding A and B. if it's Condorcet compliant and if there is a Condorcet winner, then the outcome is no different than it would be if the CW runs against any of the other candidates. the electorate, when asked and given equal weight to voters, say that they prefer this candidate over every other candidate. . CIVS offers, available now, what you seem to be trying. Recommend you study this description of CIVS and consider what it offers: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/civs.html Dave Ketchum On Jul 7, 2011, at 10:25 AM, Sand W wrote: I hope everyone is interested in a new online survey site intended to prove how much better IRV-enabled surveys are than traditional one choice or approval surveys. can you provide a ranked-choice survey that is Condorcet compliant rather than IRV? if your survey page has the ranked ballot that IRV uses, you can evaluate the survey by different methods. why not give the users a choice? some might pick Borda (cough, cough). hey, this would actually be useful information for academic study. make the tools available (like in the website that performs the surveys) and the choice of several election methods, including traditional vote-for-one/plurality, Approval, ranked-choice (whatever Condorcet, IRV, Borda, Bucklin), and Score voting. find out which ones are more preferred by users of the survey tools. Actually, studying their preferences for others, by users of such tools, may be a bit much. We need to talk to average voters, and to the politicians that are willing to help the voters a bit, SO LONG AS it does not hurt themselves too much. just an idea. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Learning from IRV's success
On Jul 7, 2011, at 7:40 PM, Bob Richard wrote: It turns that real live voters (including real live politicians) care a lot about the later-no-harm criterion, even if they don't know what it's called. They need to learn that Condorcet offers less painful response than what IRV is offering. Dave Ketchum --Bob Richard On 7/7/2011 3:43 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: I actually already touched this question in another mail. And the argument was that (in two-party countries) IRV is not as risky risky from the two leading parties' point of view as methods that are more compromise candidate oriented (instead of being first preference oriented). I think that is one reason, but it is hard to estimate how important. Juho On 7.7.2011, at 23.56, Jameson Quinn wrote: Russ's message about simplicity is well-taken. But the most successful voting reform is IRV - which is far from being the simplest reform. Why has IRV been successful? I want to leave this as an open question for others before I try to answer it myself. The one answer which wouldn't be useful would be Because CVD (now FairVote) was looking for a single-winner version of STV. There's a bit of truth there, but it's a long way from the whole truth, and we want to find lessons we can learn from moving forward, not useless historical accidents. JQ -- Bob Richard Executive Vice President Californians for Electoral Reform PO Box 235 Kentfield, CA 94914-0235 415-256-9393 http://www.cfer.org Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3089] Re: Theoretical Issues In Districting
A bit of thinking, and a bit of personal history. I see no value in splitline. . It happily mixes city and rural and suburbs - city and rural each should be kept together, as should suburbs, though suburbs fit with either of the first two. . It happily mixes new collections of people, giving them little opportunity to get together and work together. 1990 - NY-28 includes Kimgston on the Hudson, Ithaca on the Finger Lakes, and Owego where I live. FAR from compact. 1992 - NY-26 inherits above NY-28 description. Assemblyman Hinchey from near Kingston is completing 18 years in Albany and gets elected to Congress. 2002 - NY-22 inherits above NY-28 description. How tightly can a waist be bound? Near Nichols NY-22 northern boundary, on the Susquehanna River, is less than 5 miles from PA. . Congressman Hinchey, completing 10 years, is reelected. 2012 - Hinchey is completing 20 years. NY will have two less congressmen. NY's habit is to keep current districts, amended as needed for census results, so what to do? . NYC area needs to lose one and a scandal leaves nothing to save in NY-9 - so dump that one. . NY-26 is having a special election, so that seems like a good prospect. Hochul's win makes her deserve a full term, so look elsewhere. Dave Ketchum On Jun 14, 2011, at 10:33 AM, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org ) wrote: I think Justin Levitt's view of optimal districting, is basically this. (Although perhaps this is a caricature? I'm not trying to caricature, I'm just trying to present just an honest picture of what, as far as I can tell JL thinks -- but I'm only going by his emails, not his paper weighing the potential of citizen redistricting which he emailed me the pdf of 2 times, but both times my computer refused to open it claiming file was invalid/corrupted etc. Can anybody else obtain/read that paper? Perhaps if you can convert it to postscript it'd fix it?) Justin Levitt's view as described by WDS: There should be some committee of beneficent people, unbiased by party politics, who draw the districts in such a way as to help everybody, because they have beneficent purposes in mind. These people should not care about how the map looks, they should care about what purposes it accomplishes. (JL made the analogy of Susan Boyle, a singer who, he claimed, did not have a very good visual appearance, but sung well, and, JL said, that proves appearance does not matter, what matters is results.) JL disparages mathematical approaches, because with them the human element is sacrificed, and because they concentrate on appearance, not -- what really matters -- results. These beneficent people need to cluster people with common interests into common districts, so that their representatives will be able to know what they represent. But what exactly is a common interest? What qualifies, and what does not? Does lovers of feathered animals who also like mining gravel count as a common interest? Does likes reality TV shows count? And what if you are BOTH Black, AND a Commie Sympathizer (2 interests simultaneously) but can only be located in one district? Then what? Well, the beneficent people will decide those things. They're kind of like your big brother, helping everybody to overcome those annoying real-world problems to get good results. What will be the net effect of this? Well, it will be essentially this. That committee will decide (a) what are the top issues of the day and (b) who wins on each issue. But they will not have total power on (b) because gerrymandering is only capable of making a 26% minority win a 2-way choice, not a 24% minority. So subject to those limitations they'll effectively BE the government. So then the question arises: how are they to be elected, or appointed, or randomly chosen, or what? It's a bit difficult to elect them, because almost all people do not even know who even a single such committee member is, and also do not know what each one did and how each one affected the district maps, and even with maximum possible effort to make the process transparent (which, as far as I know, has never happened in the prior history of the universe, but I suppose it could) it would still be very hard for Joe Voter to understand+know that. They could be appointed, in which case you can be damn sure the appointer will have a pretty good idea how each appointee will behave, and now this appointer will effectively be the government. Of course the committee-candidates could try to overcome that by lying to him. Finally, they could be randomly chosen, in which case the main decisions made by our government will basically be decided by dice rolls. Perhaps the best such system would be something like the way juries are selected -- random selection followed by a deterministic winnowing conducted by the legislature. In that case I daresay the committee would be biased to try to help some
Re: [EM] Best use of two bit ballots?
On Jun 15, 2011, at 5:12 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: - Original Message - From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 1:41 pm Subject: Re: [EM] Best use of two bit ballots? To: fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: So far SODA seems to be the best use of one bit ballots, i.e. the Plurality style ballots which have just one bubble to the right of each name. What is the best way to use two bit ballots, i.e. ballots that have two bubbles to the right of each name? Two-bit ballots can distinguish between three levels plus one bottom-ranked level. Thus, they can do ranked ballots for three candidates (with equal rank and truncation), so it's hard to say. Knowing whether to use these 2^2 levels for rank or for Range- style rating depends on what method you think is the best. It could also be used for n-slot methods with n = 4. Which interpretation would be least confusing for the voter? Suppose, for example we have [name] (1) (2) What is the most natural interpretation for the voter that doesn't read the instructions? No natural here, so better guide: Ace (1) wins over deuce (2). Two (2) is a higher number than one (1). Three (1+2) is fine, but needs guidance as to permisability. Four has no slot ability, for a blank is simply nonnvoting - perhaps seen as truncation. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] C//A (was: Remember Toby)
On Jun 15, 2011, at 2:05 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 15.6.2011, at 14.46, Kevin Venzke wrote: It's better if explaining the method's rules is enough (or close) to understand the strategy. ... No, I am (almost) saying that if you have to explain the strategy separately then that's bad. I think people will want to understand the strategy in the sense that they can understand *how* they come to that conclusion. Ok, my thinking was that in some cases it is enough to tell how to vote sincerely (=never mind the vote counting process, it is good enough to do the job). The next level would be to tell how the method works (and let people draw whatever simple conclusions they need to draw from that). The third level would be to teach them also how to vote strategically. The fourth level could be to tell them to vote as told by the trusted strategy experts that plan optimal strategy for their party. Truncation (to equal last position) of unknown and irrelevant candidates could be a natural thing to do to most sincere voters if the number of candidates is high. I see number of candidates not mattering. You properly quit after: . Running out of known and relevant candidates. How well the ballot counting may be effected leads you for or against voting more. If you're going to say that last sentence then your idea that truncation shouldn't mean more than a split vote makes no sense to me. If voters that you consider *sincere* may use truncation for a special reason, why can't that phenomenon be reflected in the method? Just due to the simplicity of the explanation when it isn't reflected? My thinking was the the voters may well have some preferences between the remaining 100 candidates but they are so small and those candidates are so likely not to win that filling the ballot with complete rankings would be a too big task when compared to the expected benefits. For similar reasons voters might use equal ranking also elsewhere in the ballot. So, in this case the voters were approximately / very close to sincere. Using truncation for some explicit strategic purpose would be different. But on the other hand, if truncation has an agreed sincere meaning, then voters could use also truncation in that meaning (e.g. approval) (losing rankings of the remaining candidates could be seen as just the way that the method works, and voters would thus rank sincerely only those candidates that they approve). (I remind that in my terminology here sincere refers to use of some natural language description on what the ballot means and how one should vote (without voters having to worry about how the vote counting process works), and strategic means casting an efficient vote based on knowledge on how the vote counting process will work.) Well, I see what you are saying, that Smith tends to be justified using clone independence. And clone independence is normally justified due to problems with candidate nominations. But I wonder whether there is any room to use the clone concept to argue that clones are comparably good to elect Importance of cones is inherited from Plurality, where existence of clones reduced their likelihood of being elected. In Condorcet they can be assigned the same rank by any voters seeing them as clones of each other. I don't know why clones would be better than others, No no. I'm saying, can we propose that if candidate A is 86% good to elect, then his clones are also about 86% good, and when Smith allows us to satisfy clone independence, we are getting something good more often than we are losing something? I think clones are about as good and therefore should typically be about as far from being elected. There are however different kind of clones. If all clones are ranked equal with each others then they are very much like one candidate, and their distance from being elected should be the same. But if those clones form a strong cycle, then we could assume that opinions within that clone cycle must be weak (since the clones are anyway close to equal), or we could assume that those clones are no good because there is so much controversy among them. If one of them would be elected, voters would be unhappy. They would strongly feel that another one of the clones should have been elected. From this latter point of view independence of clones is not a positive feature. Of course in a ranked ballot based method it is difficult to tell which indicated preferences between the clones were strong and which ones just flips of a coin. MinMax can be said to follow the latter philosophy, and therefore it does not protect clones that are badly cyclic (being so cyclic that someone outside of the clone set will be elected is a very rare situation, but possible, and in some sense indicates what the philosophy of the methods is). I'm thinking this is something you might be able to argue either way. If they are
Re: [EM] C//A
What is wrong with what I wrote here? I am addressing voters used to Plurality voters who may have never voted per Condorcet. I do not talk of bubbles, but this detail depends on design of the ballot. I do not talk of such as if Y covers X, then Y beats X - just the basics of assigning higher numbers to candidates liked best. Or ranked pairs which will matter only when the voter gets a lot of sophistication. I do not talk of strategy because it is a big topic and I am covering only the basics. On Jun 12, 2011, at 8:56 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote: Somehow this drifted away from being usable for someone with literacy weakness. On Jun 12, 2011, at 5:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Kristofer, I think the following complete description is simpler than anything possible for ranked pairs: 1. Next to each candidate name are the bubbles (4) (2) (1). The voter rates a candidate on a scale from zero to seven by darkening the bubbles of the digits that add up to the desired rating. You can vote for one or more: 1. Start by ranking the best by marking it with the highest number. 2. If there are other candidates you like equally well, rank them the same. 3. If there remain other candidates you wish to vote for, though liking them a bit less, rank the best of them with a slightly smaller number, and go back to step 2. The ballots are read as if in a race between each pair of candidates, with your ranking deciding which member of each pair wins a point. 2. We say that candidate Y beats candidate Z pairwise iff Y is rated above Z on more ballots than not. 3. We say that candidate Y covers candidate X iff Y pairwise beats every candidate that X pairwise beats or ties. [Note that this definition implies that if Y covers X, then Y beats X pairwise, since X ties X pairwise.] Motivational comment: If a method winner X is covered, then the supporters of the candidate Y that covers X have a strong argument that Y should have won instead. Now that we have the basic concepts that we need, and assuming that the ballots have been marked and collected, here's the method of picking the winner: Counting better have less literacy problems. For starters, what does positive rating mean? I still like the X*X matrix. BTW, while some races may be in a single precinct, the district for a race for senate or governor is a whole state. 4. Initialize the variable X with (the name of) the candidate that has a positive rating on the greatest number of ballots. Consider X to be the current champion. 5. While X is covered, of all the candidates that cover X, choose the one that has the greatest number of positive ratings to become the new champion X. 6. Elect the final champion X. 7. If in step 4 or 5 two candidates are tied for the number of positive ratings, give preference (among the tied) to the one that has the greatest number of ratings above level one. If still tied, give preference (among the tied) to the one with the greatest number of ratings above the level two. Etc. Can anybody do a simpler description of any other Clone Independent Condorcet method? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] C//A
Somehow this drifted away from being usable for someone with literacy weakness. On Jun 12, 2011, at 5:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Kristofer, I think the following complete description is simpler than anything possible for ranked pairs: 1. Next to each candidate name are the bubbles (4) (2) (1). The voter rates a candidate on a scale from zero to seven by darkening the bubbles of the digits that add up to the desired rating. You can vote for one or more: 1. Start by ranking the best by marking it with the highest number. 2. If there are other candidates you like equally well, rank them the same. 3. If there remain other candidates you wish to vote for, though liking them a bit less, rank the best of them with a slightly smaller number, and go back to step 2. The ballots are read as if in a race between each pair of candidates, with your ranking deciding which member of each pair wins a point. 2. We say that candidate Y beats candidate Z pairwise iff Y is rated above Z on more ballots than not. 3. We say that candidate Y covers candidate X iff Y pairwise beats every candidate that X pairwise beats or ties. [Note that this definition implies that if Y covers X, then Y beats X pairwise, since X ties X pairwise.] Motivational comment: If a method winner X is covered, then the supporters of the candidate Y that covers X have a strong argument that Y should have won instead. Now that we have the basic concepts that we need, and assuming that the ballots have been marked and collected, here's the method of picking the winner: Counting better have less literacy problems. For starters, what does positive rating mean? I still like the X*X matrix. BTW, while some races may be in a single precinct, the district for a race for senate or governor is a whole state. 4. Initialize the variable X with (the name of) the candidate that has a positive rating on the greatest number of ballots. Consider X to be the current champion. 5. While X is covered, of all the candidates that cover X, choose the one that has the greatest number of positive ratings to become the new champion X. 6. Elect the final champion X. 7. If in step 4 or 5 two candidates are tied for the number of positive ratings, give preference (among the tied) to the one that has the greatest number of ratings above level one. If still tied, give preference (among the tied) to the one with the greatest number of ratings above the level two. Etc. Can anybody do a simpler description of any other Clone Independent Condorcet method? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
. when they know that otherwise the worst alternative will win). But how can they know (based on the limited available information) that sincere voting will not help them? Do they know for certain that some strategy is more likely to help (and not harm) them? I'm talking about voting for a sincere favorite who is not believed to be a contender. If that candidate can't win, and could be a liability, then you could logically decide to dump him. Ok, with favourite candidates that have no chance of winning one can usually do pretty much whatever one wants. That typically does not make the results of this election better nor worse. It should also be a *design goal* that this does not make the results of the election better or worse. whatever one wants is true for such a favorite. You still have a chance to affect who wins. Often it makes however sense to make the result as favourable to this favourite candidate as possible since there are also secondary targets like helping this candidate win in the next elections or just showing how much support this line of thinking has among the electorate. Yes, it's possible. I don't see a way to incorporate that experimentally. This is polling class data for such secondary targets. So I expect that methods with greater burial incentive will just have more (voted) majority favorites I didn't quite get this expression. Would this be bullet voting by majority or what? , and candidate withdrawals Does this mean having only few candidates or ability to withdraw after the election and thereby influence the counting process or...? What I'm saying is that methods with greater burial incentive will probably see supporters of pawn candidates stop voting for those candidates, and those pawn candidates would probably drop out of the race more often. (I think that compromise incentive and nomination disincentive go hand-in-hand.) Ok, if there were such threats. Hopefully from my first comments of this mail it's clearer what kind of threat I have in mind. This is as opposed to the theory that methods with great burial incentive will see a larger number of train wreck outcomes as voters play chicken with each other. I didn't quite catch what the impact of this to the usefulness of the reduced poll information based defensive strategy would be. Could you clarify. Did you say that already very rough information on which candidates are the frontrunners would give sufficient information to the strategists to cast a working (=likely to bring more benefits than harm) strategic vote (in Condorcet methods in general or in some of them)? The relevance is more to the question of defensive strategy under Condorcet methods, than to your proposal. Note that I proposed a preemptive defensive strategy to be applied instead of concrete ones. I don't really like the idea that people would start falsifying their preferences in the actual election in order to defend against actual or imagined strategic threats. Haha. Every method has this problem to some extent, nothing to do with burial even. Truncation is one typical strategic defence in some Condorcet methods. I prefer poll level preemptive defence to this since that way we can avoid e.g. Condorcet becoming more plurality like. If it works, sure, but if it doesn't, I would guess margins is the more plurality like in the sense that the winner's first preference count will probably be greater. Truncation is often useful, apart from possibly being called a defense. Dave Ketchum I do believe that rough information on the frontrunners is enough to tell you *who* to bury, if you were going to Yes, there is no point in burying anyone else but those that are ahead of one's own favourite. The information on which candidates are about to beat one's favourite should however be correct with good probability. I hope we are fortunate enough to have such a concern. , and also who might consider compromising to avoid a risk. I'm afraid this information is already quite difficult to collect and may not be very accurate and reliable. This refers to the supporters of pawn candidates, so to my mind it is almost just the inverse of who are the frontrunners. I am mostly concerned about burial in methods that seem to encourage it without voters even having a specific plan. I wonder where the accurate line goes on which Condorcet methods are vulnerable to burial and which ones are not :-). I do not know, but I have an interest in the question. I'm afraid that in Condorcet methods there might be many voters that rank their worst competitor last in the (not very well founded) hope of improving the results from their point of view :-). More seriously, maybe some concrete written rules to voters on how to bury in Condorcet elections (on in some Condorcet version) would demonstrate that poll information can indeed be efficiently used by regular
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On Jun 8, 2011, at 1:32 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 8.6.2011, at 16.15, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/6/8 Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk Here are some random observations about the SODA method. There should be a full definition of the method somewhere. I've posted a full definition. However, this definition included my additional step of recounting the top two without mutually- delegated votes. In further off-list conversation with Forest, I've realized that this addition, while it may be marginally helpful, does not fundamentally change the dynamics of the situation, and so is not worth the extra complexity. Here's the full definition without it: 1. Before the election, candidates (including declared write-ins) submit full rankings of other candidates. Equality and truncation (equal-bottom) is allowed in these rankings. These rankings are made public. I'm just wondering what the difference between a declared write-in and a regular candidate is. Maybe declared write-ins are candidates that have failed to meet some of the nomination criteria and that therefore will not get their own row in the ballot sheet or will not get a candidate number of their own (depends on what kind of ballots are in use, but the point is that voter must write their full name in the ballot). These declared write-ins must probably register themselves anyway as candidates in order to officially declare their preferences. Maybe votes to write-ins that have not officially declared their preferences are not allowed in the election at all. Or maybe votes to them are just always non-delegated approval votes. Write-ins are a standard ability for voters in the US - simply supply candidate name on the ballot - sufficient for such write-ins to even win elections. Among the reasons for using this ability are that the candidate was prevented from being nominated, without good reason for such. SODA is permitting something similar to a partial nomination for its particular needs. 2. Voters submit approval ballots, with up to two write-ins. Do not delegate is a valid write-in. Your definition seems to define also the used ballot format. That's ok although often the formal descriptions of methods don't cover this. Note that most countries of the world don't use the write-in option. Is this a recommendation that if they start using SODA they should support write-ins in general or that they should have a write- in slot to support the do not delegate feature? Nothing said here of ballot format except for being Approval and capable of two write-ins. Do not delegate is a command entered as if a write-in. 3. All approvals are counted for each candidate. Bullet votes for each candidate are also counted. These totals are made public. 4. After a brief period (probably a couple of weeks) for analyzing and discussing these first-round results, all candidates, in a simultaneous and temporarily-secret ballot, decide how many rank levels (from their initial ranking in step 1) to delegate to. They may not delegate to candidates they ranked at the bottom (since this is strategically identical to delegating to nobody and withdrawing from the race). If A delegates to B, a number equal to A's bullet votes is added to B's approval total. I note that - candidates must delegate all or no votes, and all to the same level If X, in step 1, agreed to delegate to ABC and X received 7 bullet votes, and the negotiating calls for X to delegate to 2; then 2 candidates, AB, will each get 7 votes delegated. Note that the voters knew of X delegating for 3 candidates - voters could not know of the later decision to delegate to only 2. - couple of weeks is a long time to wait for the results - those couple of weeks probably include lost of negotiations, maybe to the level of agreeing how every candidate delegates (or at least a group that has power enough to agree what the outcome is) - I guess temporarily-secret means that the final vote of each candidate will be published afterwards - these rules assume one round of voting (i.e. not e.g. approvals that could be extended step by step) - empty votes are not allowed (maybe not necessary to ban, and many candidates could effectively cast an empty vote anyway, e.g. by not approving anyone else but themselves) 5. The candidate with the highest approval total after step 4 wins. Depending on the environment the winner could be agreed already before the second round, or alternatively all candidates would just, one by one, cast the vote that they consider best, and the end result could be a surprise. I now fall back to SODA being Approval with a minor complication option: . Voter votes for those approved of. . Candidates each provide a list of those they will vote for and voter votes for candidate whose list attracts. Dave Ketchum Election-Methods mailing list - see http
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
Having flunked on a detail Saturday, I will try to do better tonight. This SODA is a possibility for improving Approval. I remain a Condorcet backer: . What it offers is valuable to voters seeing the value of ranking in voting. . Approval voting is doable within Condorcet (and having full value within its capability) for those preferring to avoid actual ranking. On Jun 6, 2011, at 2:51 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/6/6 fsimm...@pcc.edu - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn 2011/6/5 Dave Ketchum I see this as Approval with a complication - that Jameson calls SODA. It gets a lot of thought here, including claimed Condorcet compliance. I offer what I claim is a true summary of what I would call smart Approval. What I see: . Candidates each offer draft Approval votes which voters can know in making their decisions. You are close, but apparently Forest and I haven't explained the system well enough. Candidates offer full or truncated rankings of other candidates. . Vote by Approval rules. . If there is no winner, then each candidate gets to vote above draft once for each ballot that bullet voted for that candidate. Exactly what the candidates may/shall do is a topic for later design. It starts with: . Before the election the candidates define what voting they will do if lack of winner gives them the opportunity/duty. . Voters know of these promises and either do Approval voting or do bullet voting to have the voted for candidate vote as promised. . If no winner these extra votes hopefully will see to deciding on a winner. Candidates may vote any approval ballot consistent with the ranking above once for each ballot. They do so simultaneously, once, after the full results and all candidate's rankings have been published. Consistent with means that they simply set an approval cutoff - a lowest approved candidate - and all candidates above that in their ranking are approved. . If a voter is thinking bullet voting, but wants to avoid the above - voting also for an unreal write-in will avoid giving the candidate a draft vote. Instead of an unreal write-in it could be a virtual candidate whose name is No proxy for me meaning I do not delegate my approvals to any candidate. Yes. You've left out one extra check on this system, wherein the top two approval candidates are recounted in a virtual runoff without any delegated approvals between those two. I do not see the claimed compliance, for voters do not get to do ranking. ... Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
