Re: [EM] MMPO(IAMPO) (was IA/MMPO)
Hi Forest, I should say, it seems I went too far in describing the potential approval winner set idea. That idea is only descriptive for the ordinary Plurality criterion that is based on strict first preferences (because you can assume that the approvals for those candidates would still be there under an Approval election). While the IA=MPO criterion is (I would say) sound, it is a bit harder to defend along the same lines, because the MPO could come from a candidate ranked relatively low. De : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu thanks for the insights and suggestions. It's kind of you to suggest my name, Jameson, but I would rather something more descriptive similar to the potential approval winner set of Chris and Kevin or more public relations friendly like the Democratically Acceptable Set. My original motivation (that eventually led to IA/MPO as an approximate solution) was to find a candidate most likely to win two approval elections in a row (going into the second election as front runner) without a change in sincere voter preferences, but with an opportunity to adjust their ballot approval cutoffs. And also maintain monotonocity and/or FBC, I suppose? Otherwise, it wouldn't be so hard. Personally, I still prefer IA-MPO over MMPO[IA=MPO] because of the superior participation properties, but I recognize the importance of the Majority Criterion in public proposals. Ironically, in reality Approval satisfies the ballot version of the Majority Criterion, while IA-MPO does not, yet in the face of disinformation or other common sources of uncertainty IA-MPO is at least as likely to elect the actual majority favorite as Appoval is. Well personally, I would want to keep the IAMPO name but apply it to MMPO[IA=MPO] since the latter is not pronounceable. Or else maybe a name for the set is really needed. It's up to you of course. But, I don't really like marketing-oriented names like DMC. I feel like you'll end up in situations where you have to answer e.g. what is DMC and why is it good while never using the D, the M, or the C in your answer because they're not really that relevant to the concept. Too bad, that appealing yet descriptive names are so hard to find. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] MMPO(IAMPO) (was IA/MMPO)
Hi Forest, I read your first message: At first glance I think the new method (elect the MMPO winner among those candidates whose IA=MPO) is good. It doesn't seem to gain SFC, which is actually reassuring, that this might be a substantially different method from others. It seems like it is mainly an MMPO tweak (since the MMPO winner usually will not be disqualified) with corrections for Plurality and SDSC/MD. Off the top of my head I can't see that anything is happening that would break FBC. De : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 12 octobre 2013 13h58 Objet : Re: MMPO(IAMPO) (was IA/MMPO) Kevin, In the first step of the variant method MMPO[IA = MPO] (which, as the name suggests, elects the MMPO candidate from among those having at least as much Implicit Approval as Max Pairwise Opposition) all candidates with greater MPO than IA are eliminated. I have already shown that this step does not eliminate the IA winner. Now I show that this step does not eliminate the Smith\\IA winner either: Let X be the Smith candidate with max Implicit Approval, IA(X), and let Y be a candidate that is ranked above X on MPO(X) ballots. There are two cases to consider (i) Y is also a member of Smith, and (ii) Y is not a member of Smith. In both cases we have MPO(X) is no greater than IA(Y), because Y is ranked on every ballot expressing opposition of Y over X. Additionally in the first case IA(Y) is no greater than IA(X) because X is the Smith\\IA winner. So in this case MPO(X) is no greater than IA(X) by the transitive property of no greater than. In the second case, X beats Y pairwise since X is in Smith but Y is not. This entails that X is ranked above Y on more ballots than Y is ranked above X. In other words, X is ranked on more ballots than MPO(X). Therefore IA(X) MPO(X), In sum, in neither case is the Smith\\IA winner X eliminated by the first step in the method MMPO[IA=MPO]. We see as a corollary that step one never eliminates a (ballot) Condorcet Winner. In particular, it does not eliminate a (ballot) majority winner. And since MMPO always elects a ballot majority unshared first place winner when there is one, and MMPO is the second and final step of the method under consideration, this method satisfies the Majority Criterion. Also worth pointing out is this: since step one eliminates neither the IA winner nor the Smith\\IA winner, if there is only one candidate that survives the first step, then the IA winner is a member of Smith, and the method elects this candidate. I think this is right, though the method as a whole doesn't satisfy Smith, which is probably damning for one who finds it crucial. Also in view of this result, I suggest a strengthening of the Plurality Criterion as a standard required of any method worthy of public proposal. A method (involving rankings or ratings) satisfies the Minimum Ranking Requirement MRR if it never elects a candidate whose max pairwise opposition is greater than the number of ballots on which it is rated above MinRange or (in the case of ordinal ballots) ranked above at least one other candidate. What do you think? You could. Chris and I discussed a pairwise Plurality criterion by which a winner can't have MPO exceeding their maximum votes for in some pairwise contest. In contexts where one uses pairwise considerations to make proofs regarding Plurality, SDSC, or SFC etc., you're basically using a stronger, pairwise-based criterion anyway. Pairwise Plurality implies both Plurality and SDSC. The motivation suggests to me a Potential Approval Winner criterion. Basically, the information on the cast ballots don't admit any interpretations by which the disqualified candidate(s) might have been the winner under Approval. Also we need a nice name for the set of candidates that is not eliminated by step one. Any suggestions? If not the set then at least the combined method. I'm not sure how many uses the set has. I'll give the method some more thought. Thanks. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] MMPO(IAMPO) (was IA/MMPO) correction
Mistake: - Mail original - De : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr À : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu; em election-meth...@electorama.com Cc : Envoyé le : Dimanche 13 octobre 2013 12h02 Objet : Re: [EM] MMPO(IAMPO) (was IA/MMPO) Hi Forest, I read your first message: At first glance I think the new method (elect the MMPO winner among those candidates whose IA=MPO) is good. It doesn't seem to gain SFC, which is actually reassuring, that this might be a substantially different method from others. Actually it does satisfy SFC. That's fine too, I guess? So really, the method is a more ranking-sensitive version of MAMPO. Suppose that SFC disqualifies B due to A. (There's an AB majority, but no majorities over A.) That means A's IA-MPO is positive. B's IA-MPO could be positive as well. But his MPO is 50% while A's is less. So, B won't win. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IA/MPO
Hi Forest, De : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: Hi Forest, Unfortunately, I realized that an SFC problem is possibly egregious: 51 AB 49 CB B would win easily, contrary to SFC (which disallows both B and C). But more alarmingly it's a majority favorite problem. So it is non-majoritarian in the same sense that Approval is. In this case the count is too close for approval voters to drop their second preferences, so B will be the Approval winner. Of course with perfect information, they would bullet, and A would win. Philosophically, in this situation I sympathize with electing the candidate broader support (the consensus candidate) over the mere majority favorite, which is why Approval's failure of (one version of) the Majority Criterion has never bothered me. Well, as an Approval scenario this is pretty inexplicable. It suggests to me that the pre-election polling is not working. There should generally be two frontrunners, but both A and C factions are voting as though their favorite is not one of the two. That's odd to the point that I don't know how to say who should win based purely on the ballots. In a rank ballot setting, where you can see the majority, I think there's a risk of that majority complaining about the outcome and asking for a different method to be adopted. Jobst and I have gone to a lot of trouble to contrive methods that make B the game theoretic winner in the face of such preferences. I'm sure you remember his challenge to find a method that makes B the perfect information game theoretic winner when utilities are given by (say) 60 A(100), B(70) 40 C(100), B(50) It seems that only lottery methods can solve this challenge in a satisfactory way. We co-authored a paper with the double entendre title of Some Chances for Consensus on this topic for the benefit of people who take the tyranny of the majority problem seriously. Yes, I read that paper. It was very interesting. It doesn't fit my perception of a proposable method, which is fine. It's just that IA/MPO, at first glance, seems pretty proposable. Not just the properties but the fact that the name is also the definition. In light of this fact I propose the following variation on our method: 1. Eliminate all candidates that have higher MPO than IA. 2. Elect the remaining candidate with the greatest difference between its IA and its MPO. I like differences better than ratios in this context, but I used ratios in IA/MPO because I worried about people who couldn't easily agree that (25 - 30) (72 - 90) , for example. But now that we know eliminating all of the negative differences is possible without eliminating all of the candidates, let's switch to differences. Well, if the elimination in step 1 recalculates MPO for step 2, you probably lose FBC. Hrm. MDDA's approach (i.e. for satisfying Majority Favorite, and SFC more broadly) is that if your MPO .5 then you mostly can't win. MAMPO's approach is that if your IA is .5 then only your MPO is considered, not your IA. I wonder if there are any other options. Both of these approaches are kind of drastic, and I don't think a method needs to completely satisfy SFC. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IA/MPO
Hi Forest, De : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 9 octobre 2013 19h51 Objet : Re: [EM] IA/MPO Kevin, thanks for working on the property compliances. I agree that this method does satisfy the FBC, is monotone, and is at least marginally clone independent, like Score and ratings based Bucklin and MMPO. I am not as expert as you in the various defense criteria. My main focus so far is that the method seems to remedy some of the problems of Approval and some of the problems of MMPO. Unfortunately, I realized that an SFC problem is possibly egregious: 51 AB 49 CB B would win easily, contrary to SFC (which disallows both B and C). But more alarmingly it's a majority favorite problem. Approval has a problem with this (true preferences) scenario: 30 A 3 AC 15 CA 4 C 15 CB 3 BC 30 C Of course, (under Approval voting) the two 15 member factions should, and would bullet C, if they were sure of the numbers, but it is more likely that due to disinformation from the A and B parties (and other sources of uncertainty) they would not truncate their second preferences, so A and B would be tied for most approval. Yes, Approval can't easily adjust on election day if polls were inaccurate or there is a sudden change of sentiment. It tends to settle on two frontrunners, and when it doesn't, the outcome is fairly arbitrary (which isn't better in my opinion). However, IA/MPO robustly elects C. Our friend MMPO has a problem with 19 ABC 18 BCA 18 CAB 15 DAB 15 DBC 15 DCA electing the Condorcet Loser D, (unless some preferences are strategically collapsed). But IA/MPO elects the right winner A, with no need to collapse preferences among members of the ABC clone set.. Can you think of any other examples where one or the other of IA or MMPO is by itself inadequate? Does IA/MPO always improve the outcome in such cases? Well, implicit approval as a method on its own wouldn't be proposable, I don't think, due to the majority favorite issue. MMPO isn't fantastic at deterring burial, so I was hoping the IA might address that as in implicit Condorcet//Approval (though plain C//A is not great wrt FBC). Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IA/MPO
Hi Forest, De : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mardi 8 octobre 2013 16h59 Objet : [EM] IA/MPO Kevin, I'm afraid that IA/MPO does fail Plurality: 33 A 17:A=C 17:B=C 33 B The IA/MPO ratio for both A and B is 50/50 = 1, while the ratio for C is 34/33, which is greater than 1. But this is about the worst violation posssible, and it doesn't seem too bad to me. If equal top ranking were not allowed, then Plurality would not be violated. Or (in other words) the method satisfies a weaker version of Plurality that says if C is ranked on fewer ballots than X is ranked top but not equal to) C, then C cannot win. I don't know if that is helpful. Actually, we are OK here because Plurality only counts strict first preferences. This aspect is useful when trying to make proofs about it. In this particular case, I say that if Plurality disqualifies some candidate X to due another candidate Y, I know that pairwise opposition to X exceeds X's approval, so X's score is below 100%. (And the same sentence is true if you swap in SDSC/MD for Plurality.) Since we know somebody will have =100% as a score, X won't win. I think the question for methods like this is how far away you can get from the ideal strategy resembling approval strategy. I feel optimistic because the role given to MPO is large. In MDDA and MAMPO majority threshold rules are hard-coded and key to seeing any ranking sensitivity. They satisfy SFC (basically a weak LNHarm) but I think IA/MPO is awfully close to satisfying that as well. Basically: Let a be the approval of candidate X Let b be the approval of candidate Y and also Y's opposition to X Let c be the maximum opposition to Y Then IA/MPO violates SFC when a/b b/c and a b 0.5 c. Possible to do, but it would hardly ever happen, I think. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Try this method on your favorite election scenario
Hi Forest, De : Forest Simmons fsimm...@pcc.edu À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 6 octobre 2013 17h21 Objet : [EM] Try this method on your favorite election scenario Ballots are ranked or rated. If ranked, then equal ranking and truncation are allowed. Let IA stand for Implicit Approval, which for any candidate X is the number of ballots on which X is ranked or rated above bottom, i.e. neither truncated nor rated at zero. Let MPO stand for maximum pairwise opposition, which (for candidate X) is the maximum (as Y varies over the other candidates) of the number of ballots on which a strict preference of Y over X is indicated. The winner of this method (IA/MPO) is the candidate with the highest ratio of IA to MPO. Example 45 AB 35 BC 20 C For A IA is 45 and MPO is 55, so IA/MPO is 45/55 or 9/11. For B IA is 80 and MPO is 45, so IA/MPO is 80/45 or 16/9. For C IA is 55 and MPO is 80, so IA/MPO is 55/80 or 11/16. The IA/MPO winner is B. If, instead, the A faction votes 45 A, then the ratios become ... For A (the same) 9/11. For B IA is 35 and MPO is still 45, so the ratio is 7/9. For C IA is still 55 and MPO is 45, so the ratio is 11/9. This time C wins. IA/MPO seems like a pretty good method. It seems to be guaranteed that at least one candidate will have a score = 100%. That's elegant. With that assumption it seems easy to demonstrate that the method satisfies Plurality and SDSC/Minimal Defense. My guess is that it must satisfy FBC since the component scores each do, and the only processing is taking the ratio. I suspect that we have lost SFC compared to MMPO (Strategy-Free: roughly, if A has a majority over B and there is no majority over A, B can't win), but it might be hard to contrive a failure scenario. If it's right that IA/MPO satisfies FBC, MD, and Plurality, it's not in a crowded space... Though MAMPO satisfies those as well as SFC, it's probably less sensitive to the rankings. (MDDA has SFC but can fail Plurality.) I should get my simulations running again. I seem to recall being disappointed with the performance of MDDA and MAMPO. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi, (Benjamin wrote:) On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: Regarding the plurality criterion: The Plurality Criterion is: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. It is NOT worthy of respect. Consider the following 2-candidate SV election. #votes C1 C2 51 9 8 49 0 9 C1 should win according to the Plurality Criterion, but obviously C2 is the people's choice. One of the advantages of SV is that it properly handles cases like this. Woodall (the inventor of the criterion) used a model in which all methods are rank methods (and optionally have the concept of truncation). If you want to use the criteria in other environments you just have to be consistent about how you extend it. I would interpret 0 ratings as truncation and translate the above scenario to say: 51: C1C2 49: C2 (C1 has no votes) So it is no violation of Plurality to elect C2, only a violation of Majority Favorite. But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated OK, SV=Score Voting, right? Score voting doesn't have places, does it, as it is not a ranked based system? I agree with you that in the above election C2 should win, of course - although some would not. I dunno, maybe I don't under this, or maybe the Plurality is better defined without referring to first place or any place. I guess that's my next question: is the Plurality relevant to non ranked systems? Is the Criterion used by experts (like you guys) to refer to C2 winning about as failing the Plurality Criterion? Or is it only about things like Bucklin and IRV? Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi Benn, De : Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 11h45 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated Kevin A little confused again. What voting system are we using above? Lost track of that. My assumption was that we were talking about Range, with blank ratings counting as zero. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi Benn, De : Benjamin Grant panjakr...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 12h11 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #8922] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 12:50 PM, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: But you can change the scenario so that Plurality would be failed: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated Kevin A little confused again. What voting system are we using above? Lost track of that. My assumption was that we were talking about Range, with blank ratings counting as zero. Kevin If we are talking about Range and counting blank rating as zero, then this: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 unrated 49: C2 rated 10, C1 unrated is really no different than this: 51: C1 rated 5, C2 rated 0 49: C2 rated 10, C1 rated 0 And I think, since plurality says If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win, then X and Y have the same number of any place votes, i.e., Range voting can NEVER fail plurality. Again, I can't imagine a decent system that would. Woodall's framework involves a concept of voters explicitly acknowledging candidates on their ballots, and Plurality is based on this. It doesn't really matter whether being unrated or being rated 0 are treated the same by the method. Personally I think a 0 rating is about the same as not being acknowledged as having any value, but if instead we say that an explicit 0 rating counts as the acknowledgment, then Plurality failures can be avoided as long as the voters put 0s instead of leaving candidates unranked. Now if there was some functional difference between a 0 rating and no rating at all, we could examine that, I think. The functional difference for Plurality relates to the input, not the result. Consider why this criterion should be of any interest in the first place. You seem to agree that it is not good to fail it. In any case, with a Range/Score system that permits people to have a functionally different from zero no rating option, I still have an issue concluding the the Plurality criterion was failed. Did C1 have more first place votes than C2? I don't think so. ... What am I missing? Or have I screwed up somewhere? What first place votes means in the rank context is strictly ranked above all of the other candidates. Plurality is originally defined for rank methods. If you want to apply criteria for rank methods to some other kind of method, you have to explain how you can interpret the latter as a rank method. For ratings ballots I think it's easiest to say that you just extract the relative rankings from the ratings. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi, De : Benjamin Grant Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 17h53 Objet : Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? The only way to avoid this, I *think*, is with a system in which expressing a preference of A over B doesn't let C win - and such a system may well have worse flaws, possibly. Right, you are here so close to IIA that you'd be stuck with random ballot or similar. FBC is sort of a next best. It's very close in spirit, only you're guaranteed to be able to vote A top and equal to B, but not necessarily strictly higher. Otherwise, we might create conflicting entitlements. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method
Hi, It's true that *with the ballots as cast* any Condorcet-compliant method would have worked identically. What you don't know until you try it, is whether voters would actually cast those ballots, given the incentives created by the method. That said, I don't see an obvious reason why Tideman or MinMax would have gone differently. Kevin De : r...@audioimagination.com r...@audioimagination.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 20 avril 2013 13h20 Objet : Re: [EM] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method since there was no cycle, any Condorcet compliant work have worked identically. if it had a cycle, since there were only three candidate tickets, Schulze, Tideman, and MinMax would still have performed identically. oops. i realize that there were 4 candidate tickets and then 6 pairwise elections. still doesn't change that, with a Condorcet winner, it made no difference. if there was a 4-way cycle, perhaps Schulze would choose a different winner than the other methods. also was going to mention that i had attended Northwestern during the Reagan years. was a PhD student but left ABD. r b-j 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] The successful repeal of Approval by the Dartmouth Board of Trustees
Hi, De : Gervase Lam gervase@group.force9.co.uk À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 27 janvier 2013 16h49 Objet : [EM] The successful repeal of Approval by the Dartmouth Board of Trustees I was looking through the Approval Voting article and noticed that it mentioned that in 2009 the Dartmouth Board of Trustees had Approval successfully repealed. It quotes an article in the web saying: When the alumni electorate fails to take advantage of the approval voting process, the three required Alumni Council candidates tend to split the majority vote, giving petition candidates an advantage. I think that quote states the issue exactly. There is a link to the article. http://thedartmouth.com/2009/04/03/opinion/verbum/ Can anybody give any further background on this? The details in the article look a bit sparse. I think that the reason for the Approval failure was due to the three required Alumni Council candidates. But I don't really know. Can somebody comment in further detail on why Approval was unsuccessful in this case? I don't have any knowledge of this outside the article but it sounds like voters are either not adequately informed about candidate viability or weren't using ideal strategies. The fact that they had to nominate a minimum number of candidates should not pose a problem for Approval provided that voters are informed and use good strategy. To be more specific, it sounds like those not voting for petition candidates had no idea they needed to be concerned about them winning. If among the three nominated candidates nobody was even getting majority approval from among non-petition candidate voters then most likely that also reflects badly on the strategies voters used. But that depends on an issue space assumption (or something similar)... If there is no issue space and everyone just voted for their favorite, it could be bad information, but it could also simply be something that can happen under Approval, that nobody feels it's worth propping up one's second choice. It does sound like the Board of Trustees did not like the winners, but I certainly don't get the impression that the winners were good ones. If Approval doesn't work in some setting then I guess you have no choice but to not use it. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Symmetrical-IC-Beatpath(lv)?
Hi Mike, It's been quite awhile, but when I was trying to devise new FBC methods, I got a strong sense that any kind of path tracing wasn't going to prove compatible with FBC. The consequences of tracing effects through multiple candidates seem too unpredictable to offer the guarantee, that you will never want to position your favorite candidate insincerely. ICA and ICT are two-step methods where the second step obviously satisfies FBC, and the first step is just carefully excluding some candidates in a way that doesn't disrupt the FBC compliance. If the second step didn't satisfy FBC I don't think Improved Condorcet would mitigate the issue. IC just refrains from doing something harmful of its own. The other Condorcet or Condorcet-like FBC methods are based on MinMax, which doesn't use paths either. So, I'm pessimistic that it can be done. Kevin - Mail original - De : Michael Ossipoff email9648...@gmail.com À : election-meth...@electorama.com Cc : Envoyé le : Jeudi 27 décembre 2012 22h01 Objet : [EM] Symmetrical-IC-Beatpath(lv)? What if, in Symmetrical ICT, the top-count were replaced with Beatpath(lv)? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] 3 or more choices - Condorcet
Hi Juho, - Mail original - De : Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk Plurality is just a description that is convenient for discussion on the EM list. Ranking above last place isn't a concept that exists (until someone feels it would aid their position to bring it up). It just takes someone (could be an IRV advocate) to say this many voters ranked this candidate first and this candidate second, and didn't rank anyone else, etc. If this, without bringing up any criteria, doesn't raise an awful lot of eyebrows, then I'm wrong about Plurality. But if it does raise eyebrows, then it is up to the pro-margins crowd to explain to the public that their mistake is that they believe in implicit approval (without having ever heard of it) and that they should stop, because it (you will say) encourages harmful strategy. Ok, it seems that we are moving in the direction of marketability of the methods. I was always talking about that as I said it was DOA as a proposal. All methods can be attacked based on some of their properties. And in most cases voters are quite unaware of any of those properties, until someone builds such (usually negative) marketing messages and starts using them. Sometimes the marketing messages might be based on what actually happened in the election. In Burlington 2009 mayoral elections people were told that IRV failed to elect the Condorcet winner. But it seems that people didn't pay much attention to that failure. Sometimes the marketing stories are based just on what might happen in theory. It may be that we are talking more about the psychology of the politicians and lobbyists here, and less about the psychology of the actual voters, or the concerns of the election method experts. I claim the Plurality failure will be relatively easy to depict as damning since it doesn't need explanation. Your defense of margins (below) is apparently that the Plurality failure is justified because margins makes so much sense. I don't know how strong that is. And I want note again that virtually every proposed method satisfies Plurality aside from margins and MMPO. So if Plurality is the cause of some harmful strategy, your offered alternative must be something really fantastic. I guess Condorcet methods can't ever be successful since they fail such terrible criteria as favourite betrayal and burial. ;-) That example doesn't make sense. At least the FBC part doesn't. I mean that whatever method you want to promote, there are some nasty negative marketing pitches that you must be ready to answer. I'm not sure if Plurality is the most difficult one. One reason is that even experts need to read the definition twice before they properly understand what the idea is and what the implications of the criterion might be. That's why I said I don't believe the criterion needs to be introduced and the failure doesn't need to be explained. Only the scenario itself needs to be shown in my opinion. Ok. In the context of margins' proposability and Plurality I don't actually think it matters how people would vote under it. (Though I'm sure it would come up. Ahaha.) However, even without stategy and property discussions, some voters may be tempted to truncate just because they get the idea (maybe from their traditional voting methods) that marking some candidate on the ballot will give him some points. But that would be based on lack of understanding and not on the properties on the method in question. Right. And when you advocate margins you get the job of convincing everybody that they're wrong to think this way. (I do think they think this way, and I don't think anyone can change it.) Most ranked methods lose a considerable part of their benefits if people generally truncate. In the worst case the behaviour of the methods starts to resemble plurality. It is quite common that the opposite side will win, and then one's vote is wasted unless one tells which one of the opposite side candidates is best. I believe that many enough people will learn not to truncate, to make the results of the election meaningful and fair. You're writing this an example of what you would say to a skeptical public? Btw, I think that in some sense margins are easy to advocate. The reason is that there is one simple answer that, if you want, can be used to answer to most attacks against Minmax(margins). The idea is roughly that you thwart all attacks on detais by repeating that the method will elect the candidate who needs least additional votes to beat all others. That is a simple and quite understandable rule that makes sense, not a complex algorithm, and any deviation from that simple rule can be presented as violation of the basic principles of the election. We may thus accept that there are some theoretical cases of burial etc., but we can say that
Re: [EM] 3 or more choices - Condorcet
Hi Juho, - Mail original - De : Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk I don't believe the public needs to understand the terms plurality criterion or implicit approval or even strategy to find the scenario problematic. I guess people need to understand what ranking candidates in general or ranking them above the last place means, and that such an act is supposed to mean something when they vote, if they have an opinion on the Plurality criterion (or on examples that demonstrate the impact of the Plurality criterion). Or do you mean that the Plurality criterion example would be presented and explained to the public, but assuming that they don't understand what ranking or not ranking some candidate means? Plurality is just a description that is convenient for discussion on the EM list. Ranking above last place isn't a concept that exists (until someone feels it would aid their position to bring it up). It just takes someone (could be an IRV advocate) to say this many voters ranked this candidate first and this candidate second, and didn't rank anyone else, etc. If this, without bringing up any criteria, doesn't raise an awful lot of eyebrows, then I'm wrong about Plurality. But if it does raise eyebrows, then it is up to the pro-margins crowd to explain to the public that their mistake is that they believe in implicit approval (without having ever heard of it) and that they should stop, because it (you will say) encourages harmful strategy. And I want note again that virtually every proposed method satisfies Plurality aside from margins and MMPO. So if Plurality is the cause of some harmful strategy, your offered alternative must be something really fantastic. That's why I see it as such a show-stopper. I wonder if the voters should be told about the Plurality criterion or if that should be hidden from them (to avoid them rankig only those candidates that they approve / want to promote). In some startegies that information may be useful to them. But losing information because of truncation (in an election that has no meaningful strategy problems) is harmful. Do you think that if you permit IRV voters to know that IRV satisfies Plurality, they will truncate more often (assuming the rules allow them to)? Depends on how different properties are presented and advertised. If Plurality would be presented as an important feature of Condorcet methods, some people might take that seriously and vote accordingly (e.g. rank only those candidates that they approve). That could be relevant in IRV too, if someone would start merketing IRV using the Plurality criterion. I can't imagine that anyone would use Plurality to promote a method, since even FPP satisfies it. I can only see using it to oppose a method, and even then it seems unnecessary to put a name to the problem. But in general I lean in the direction that in most cases (e.g. in Burlington) people will use ranked methods in some quite sincere way and they do not worry about the details, like IRV strategies or Plurality criterion. Ok. In the context of margins' proposability and Plurality I don't actually think it matters how people would vote under it. (Though I'm sure it would come up. Ahaha.) However, even without stategy and property discussions, some voters may be tempted to truncate just because they get the idea (maybe from their traditional voting methods) that marking some candidate on the ballot will give him some points. But that would be based on lack of understanding and not on the properties on the method in question. Right. And when you advocate margins you get the job of convincing everybody that they're wrong to think this way. (I do think they think this way, and I don't think anyone can change it.) I think the correct message to voters in most ranked method based elections is to encourage them not to truncate but rank all ralevant (good and less good) candidates sincerely. I actually don't understand the meaning of this kind of statement. Who is in the position of sending messages to voters? I think the political players will tell their supporters whatever they think is most advantageous, and no one will consult the EM list. The thought that Plurality itself (satisfaction of it, or failures of it) can be exploited by voters is strange to me. Pluraity criterion can at least play a role in some strategies. Sincere rankings are 49:A, 48:BC, 3:CB. If the three C supporters truncate, Plurality criterion says that (former Condorcet winner) B can not win any more. Plurality criterion does not say that C must win, but if it does (as in some Condorcet methods), then those three CB voters have a working strategy. Ok. Also the wording and intent of Plurality criterion may lead people to think that by not ranking some candidates at all, they can decrease the chancs of those candidates to win
Re: [EM] 3 or more choices - Condorcet
Hi Juho, Kevin Venzke wrote: Margins, it seems to me, is DOA as a proposal due to the Plurality criterion. That 35 AB, 25 B, 40 C would elect A is too counter-intuitive. I agree. For those who don't know, the Plurality criterion says that if X is ranked strictly above all other candidates on more ballots than Y is ranked above any candidates, then Y must not win. Plurality criterion assumes implicit approval (given any preference) of ranked candidates (definitions above have some differences). In that sense it adds something extra to pure ranking. I don't believe the public needs to understand the terms plurality criterion or implicit approval or even strategy to find the scenario problematic. That's why I see it as such a show-stopper. I wonder if the voters should be told about the Plurality criterion or if that should be hidden from them (to avoid them rankig only those candidates that they approve / want to promote). In some startegies that information may be useful to them. But losing information because of truncation (in an election that has no meaningful strategy problems) is harmful. Do you think that if you permit IRV voters to know that IRV satisfies Plurality, they will truncate more often (assuming the rules allow them to)? The thought that Plurality itself (satisfaction of it, or failures of it) can be exploited by voters is strange to me. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] 3 or more choices - Condorcet
Hi Chris, De : Chris Benham cbenha...@yahoo.com.au Say there are 3 candidates and the voters have the option to fully rank them, but instead they all just choose to vote FPP-style thus: 49: A 48: B 03: C Of course the only possible winner is A. Now say the election is held again (with the same voters and candidates), and the B voters change to BC giving: 49: A 48: BC 03: C Now to my mind this change adds strength to no candidate other than C, so the winner should either stay the same or change to C. Does anyone disagree? I'm tempted to. I'm not sure Later-no-help is inherently valuable. But even if it is, many methods sacrifice it to accomplish something else. Margins, it seems to me, is DOA as a proposal due to the Plurality criterion. That 35 AB, 25 B, 40 C would elect A is too counter-intuitive. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] MJ rules expressed in Bucklin terminology
Hi Jameson, [1] In fact, there aren't too many well-defined methods among the median-based ones. Bucklin is really just an ill-defined soup. Why do you say that Bucklin is an ill-defined soup? Because there are several ways to treat (or not accept) equal rankings? Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Nontechnical words for cardinal and ordinal categories?
Hi Jameson, Why do I think new terms are worthwhile? I think that choosing the right term is an important part of activism. Neither pro-life nor pro-choice activists are satisfied with the more-descriptive anti-abortion or abortion rights. Similarly, Republicans made no headway against the inheritance tax until they termed it the death tax. And FairVote has done very well with instant runoff. Do you really want to advocate a ballot format, instead of a specific method? Or is it a tool to help advocate Range (which will be a seemingly redundant name once you've made the effort to separately explain what ratings ballots are) Cardinal/Ordinal: yes, I know that pretty much everyone learns these terms somewhere around 2nd grade. But then they don't really use them again. Imagine you didn't know anything about voting theory, and you heard just one of the terms; cardinal voting or ordinal voting, but not both. For me at least, these would be meaningless jargon. Cardinal, in isolation, is more likely to mean principal than on an absolute scale; and even ordinal, which has no other confusing meaning, takes some thought to relate to voting; you have to translate the adjective to a verb in your head. I never use cardinal/ordinal when talking to non-EM people. Only rankings and ratings. The only confusion I recall is when they are familiar with the idea of specifying numbers in order to indicate a ranking, and seem unsure that this isn't also rating. Ranked/rated: To me, these work fine as neutral terms. But they're not so good for activism. Again, if I heard the term rated voting for the first time, I'd have to think a bit to understand what it meant. Has the voting process itself been rated, or does it involve using ratings? What would it be like to use ratings to vote? None of these leap to mind; they must be explained. That's why I like evaluative/comparative. Just hearing the words already puts you into the process of casting a ballot. I find those names less descriptive than rank/rate of what you are actually doing. I think they could describe almost any method. I also don't like how evaluative seems to presuppose what one is using the ballot to do. But if the activist's goal is a specific method then I guess that makes sense. Comparative makes me think of comparing two options at a time. Because I'm familiar with pairwise matrices, that makes sense for ranking. Would it make any intuitive sense to someone familiar with IRV? I'm not too sure. I can't though, for the life of me, imagine Condorcet or IRV advocates thinking they will get an advantage out of using that term over, say, preferential. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 96, Issue 22
Hi, - Mail original - De : Nicholas Buckner nlbor...@gmail.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Cc : Envoyé le : Mercredi 13 juin 2012 3h39 Objet : Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 96, Issue 22 Actually, on a weird second thought, wouldn't a method that refused to identify a winner in a three-way tie (Condorcet paradox) be compatible with both? It would be I guess case 5 (A, B, C, D, no winner). It wouldn't be a very practical method, as we need our voting methods to decide ties, but isn't deciding the tie what breaks the Participation criterion? My voting method only made the mistake of picking a winner in the first place (a mistake I'd happily do again). Besides what Jameson said, criteria usually are (or should be) defined for some framework which includes a definition of what an election method is. I don't know of any use of a framework that allows no winner, as I suppose it becomes unclear how the criteria should work within it (related to Jameson's point). If you declare a massive tie and resolve it randomly, you will get the same problem, since Participation should at least say that the win odds of the favorite should not decrease, yet Condorcet demands 100% win odds for its winner. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Herve Moulin's proof not really a proof
Hi Nicholas, At no point is he adding simultaneously different groups of voters. He is reaching conclusions about one group and then modifying it to get the new group, but the modification is always relevant to Participation. Let me try to understand which stage exactly it is that you do not agree with. Again let me start with the idea that you believe that the winner of the first election (the one with four voting groups) can only be A, in order to satisfy Condorcet and Participation. Step 0: Assume A must win (everybody agrees nobody else is possible) Case 1: proved that D cannot win (you agree with this) Case 2: proved that B cannot win (you agree with this) Case 3: proved that C cannot win (you agree with this) Case 4: proved that either A or C must win in this election: 3 voters vote A D C B. 3 voters vote A D B C. 5 voters vote D B C A. 4 voters vote B C A D. 4 voters vote C A B D. Do you disagree with that? The new voters are CA voters so the new winner cannot be anybody worse than A, because we know that A was previously winning. I will wait to continue until you say whether you agree that the winner of that five-faction election must be A or C. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Herve Moulin's proof - maybe I see the thought
Mail original - De : Nicholas Buckner nlbor...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : Envoyé le : Lundi 11 juin 2012 16h47 Objet : Re: [EM] Herve Moulin's proof not really a proof No, it is a logical fallacy, since the original scenario is 3 voters vote A D C B. 3 voters vote A D B C. 5 voters vote D B C A. 4 voters vote B C A D. Only if adding votes here with A candidate X where X goes onto win would Moulin prove anything. He changes the electorate, the control group long before that though. Actually, I think maybe I see what you're seeing. You think he's trying to prove that A can't win in the original four- faction scenario. Actually, he never directly does that. Instead, he shows that *if* A wins in the original scenario, there will be an unsolvable problem. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Herve Moulin's proof not really a proof
Hi Nicholas, You seem to agree in your paper that Moulin's proof shows that in the original scenario, the winner can only be A. If that is granted, then we can simplify the proof by removing what we don't need. Initial scenario (from case 4): 3 voters vote A D C B. 3 voters vote A D B C. 5 voters vote D B C A. 4 voters vote B C A D. 4 voters vote C A B D. Either A or C is elected (we agree on this yes?) Step 2: Say that A wins in the initial scenario. Now add 6 voters for A C B D. Now C would be the Condorcet winner, do you agree? So A cannot be the winner in the original scenario. Step 3: Say instead that C wins in the initial scenario. Now add 4 voters for C B A D. Now B would be the Condorcet winner, do you agree? So C can't be the winner in the original scenario, either. No design can make it work. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled
Hi Nicholas, - Mail original - De : Nicholas Buckner nlbor...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 9 juin 2012 20h23 Objet : Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled T hank you for the article, as it was informative. It is very true that Elimination methods tend to eliminate candidates who could go onto become winners. That's not what I'm saying; I'm saying elimination of candidates helps and hurts the non-eliminated candidates in unpredictable ways. QLTD doesn't have a single loser to eliminate (it doesn't mention losers much either). In fact I worn against first-past-the-post methods (vanilla QLTD) (that's why I go with the converse way--the elimination way), as they are susceptible to Burying mentioned here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting When you add elimination to a method, it often makes it better, but it also tends to break some criteria. what I think the original article (http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE6/P4.HTM) tries to show is QLTD has a problem with a subset criterion to monotocity he called mono-add-top (which is very close to the Participation criterion). My method doesn't have that problem. Let me use his example (though I have some mild problems with the Droop Quota now, I'll still use it for these calculations). I am sure it does have that problem. Say that the candidates are X Y Z and X is eliminated and then Z wins. It seems quite possible that you could add ZX ballots that cause Y to be eliminated instead of X, in which case Z will still be elected only if he beats Y head-to-head as well as X. That's the unpredictability I'm talking about: The ZX voter would want Z to continue to win, but the method may use the voter's X preference to eliminate Y instead of X, causing Z to lose. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled
Hi Nicholas, I think that your basic method (page 2 of html version) is the same as QLTD: http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE6/P4.HTM I say this because the multiplier is expressed in terms of ranking slots and a candidate is allowed to win with only part of a subsequent slot instead of only in increments of entire slots. So your full method is what I would call QLTD elimination because you repeatedly eliminate the QLTD loser. (Hopefully I haven't misunderstood the definition.) Elimination+Recalculation methods are bad for monotonicity because the way information can be used for or against candidates is usually not predictable. It would need to be quite clear how other candidates will fare when another candidate is eliminated. Participation is satisfied by simple point scoring methods. I doubt it is compatible with elimination+recalculations. The problem is that you need to guarantee each voter that information will only work in certain ways, but eliminations tend to have chaotic results. __ De : Nicholas Buckner nlbor...@gmail.com À : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com Cc : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 9 juin 2012 4h04 Objet : Re: [EM] Throwing my hat into the ring, possibly to get trampled Thank you for that information. I thought IIA referred to adding of irrelevant alternatives, not removing them. As a consequence I didn't look as strongly at criterions I thought were incompatible, from the Condorcet criterion group. Basically adding them is a problem if removing them is. If there are only two candidates A and B and you add a new candidate C, and change the winner from A to B, then you could also take the new situation, and remove C from it, and thereby change the winner from B to A. You wrote originally I developed an alternative method that takes the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives path over the Condorcet path. Do you know that we don't have *any* serious rank methods that satisfy IIA? For example, STV doesn't satisfy it either. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] FBC vs Condorcet's Criterion
Hi Kristofer, De : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com À : Michael Ossipoff email9648...@gmail.com Cc : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 9 mai 2012 9h54 Objet : Re: [EM] FBC vs Condorcet's Criterion On 05/08/2012 08:46 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Since Richard wants to make a which one wins comparison between FBC and Condorcet's Criterion (CC), then I'll remind him that, when FBC failure sufficiently makes its problem, CC compiance becomes quite meaningless and valueless. And there is good reason to believe, as described in my previous post, that Condorcet's FBC failure _will_ fully make its problem in our public elections. I'll get to your larger post later, but it seems what need isn't FBC as such, but rather u/a FBC. Here's a Condorcet method I think meets u/a FBC: Each voter submits a ranked ballot with an Approval cutoff. The most Approved candidate in the Smith set wins. If everybody ranks Approval style, then this becomes Approval. So let's see if there's any reason to favorite betray instead of ranking Approval style. If there is no cycle, then you can't make an acceptable have a greater chance of winning over an unacceptable by ranking Compromise over Favorite versus ranking Favorite over Compromise. If there's a cycle and Favorite is in the Smith set, but Compromise is not, then the only reason for getting Compromise into the Smith set would be to defend against an unacceptable candidate winning. However, you can do that by just voting Approval style. Since Smith set members are only beaten by other Smith set members, Favorite vs Compromise doesn't enter into it as long as you put both above the cutoff and all the unacceptables below it. If there's a cycle and Compromise is in the Smith set, but Favorite is not, then because this is an u/a election, it doesn't matter. You'll still get an acceptable. If there's a cycle and neither Compromise nor Favorite is in the Smith set, then voting Approval style will make Compromise and Favorite both maximally work to push the unacceptables out of the Smith set. Hence it seems that the method above meets u/a FBC. By the time people get past u/a, they'll no longer be overcompromising and so proper FBC failure doesn't matter. So Condorcet can meet u/a FBC. I'm not saying Smith,Approval is necessarily a good method, but I only have to show a single method to disprove that u/a FBC and Condorcet is incompatible. Did you cover the scenario where both Favorite and Compromise are in the Smith set? If not, is there some reason for u/a FBC (whose definition I don't actually know) why this scenario doesn't matter? In general the way C//A methods fail FBC is by creating incentive to make Compromise beat Favorite because Worst will win the approval tiebreaker. Thanks. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] ICT definition. Presumed Kemeny definition.
Hi Mike, ICT definition: (as described by Chris Benham, unless I've made an error) Iff the number of voters ranking X over Y, plus the number of voters equal-top-rating X and Y, is greater than the number of voters ranking Y over X, then X beats Y. Of course that's a very weak meaning for beat, and it's possible for X and Y to both beat eachother in that sense. Of course, when I say beat (with or without the quotes), I mean it in the above-defined sense. If there's exactly one beats-all candidate (candidate who beats all of the others), then s/he wins. If not, then the winner is the beats-all candidatate who is ranked in 1st place on the most ballots. [end of ICT definition] As I said, ICT meets FBC, and is defection resistant. Maybe so defection-resistant as to be called defection-proof. If Kevin /or Chis are listening right now, I have a question: What if, instead of defining beat as above, I said: X is unbeaten by Y iff the number of voters ranking X over Y, plus the number of voters equal-top-ranking X and Y, is at least equal to the number of voters ranking Y over X. If there is exactly one candidate not beaten by anyone, then s/he wins. Otherwise, the winner is the unbeaten candidate who is ranked in 1st place on the most ballots [end of questioned alternative definition of ICT] Would that still meet FBC and be defection-resistant? Would it lack some other desirable property, or acquire some undesirable property? I haven't looked at ICT really. But your revised wording is how ICA is worded. It directs you to look for a single unbeaten candidate. I think it sounds better to say you're picking the winner from among the undefeated candidates, than from among the candidates who defeated everybody including each other. I'm pretty sure your definitions are identical... Unless I'm missing something really obvious. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] ICT definition. Presumed Kemeny definition.
Hi Kristofer, De : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com À : Michael Ossipoff email9648...@gmail.com Cc : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 23 avril 2012 16h00 Objet : Re: [EM] ICT definition. Presumed Kemeny definition. On 04/23/2012 10:32 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: ICT: Kevin Venzke proposed ICA. Improved-Condorcet-Approval. ICA passes FBC. The part of ICA that ICT uses is the Improved Condorcet part. But instead of completing IC with Approval, it completes it by electing the IC winner ranked top on the most ballots. ICT was introduced by Chris Benham. He gave it a longer name with longer abbreviation-initials. I'm calling it ICT, consistent with Keven Venzke's naming of ICA. What's the advantage of ICT over ICA? I'm pretty sure Mike judges ICT to be defection-resistant while ICA isn't. Maybe predictably, I am a bit afraid of ICT because I don't think it's good for voters to be able to thwart another candidate's CW status, by ranking candidate Z over him, without the voter having to support Z in some sense during the cycle-breaker. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Newbie to the list here
Hi Peter, 3. I think that plurality is the worst possible of the voting systems that do not involve randomness, except for antiplurality voting. Nice, I got as far as I think that plurality is the worst possible... before thinking to myself I have antiplurality performing worse, and what do you know, you thought of that. And random methods are a pretty good exception too. 4. I have been checking in the electowiki archives once in a blue moon for some time, and finally decided to subscribe. 7. I have not seen any (not that I have looked for it all that studiously) FAQ being reposted. What is the best way of knowing whether a topic has been flogged to death before one posts on it yet again? Since it seems that you know about the archives I don't think there is anything else you can consult. There is no gospel truth on this list... We have total agreement on very little. It would be interesting to come up with a FAQ that outlines the various positions people take on age old issues. But I guess a lot of perspectives could be attributed to exactly one person each. And I'm not sure a collaborative approach would ever complete a version that everybody would be happy with... Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff.
Hi, De : Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr; election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 10 mars 2012 8h30 Objet : Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff. While discussion of strategies whereby a political party might attempt to manipulate Bucklin/runoff is interesting, we should be careful not to treat these hazards as if they were facts, unless there are facts to back them. I'm assuming the question is more is this a method that would be good to spend effort advocating not is this a good method if we can magically just have it implemented. It is a fact that the method's logic makes no effort to pick a representative final pairing. It's quite possible for the final round to be meaningless to most voters. In the method's defense one can speculate that it would probably never be an issue. But the thing is that I don't think that's a very strong defense, particularly considering that (as far as I can see) there's no strong reason to use this specific method. It sounds like you somehow view this as a free reform. If you know how to enact this method for free then by all means, give it a try. Personally I don't care for it because it doesn't seem anyone knows what it would be, or is supposed to be. I understand that in theory you're taking standard Approval and adding a step to the end. But in practice that isn't what you have, because the first round of the runoff doesn't have the same incentives as Approval. The incentive to get it as right as possible in one round doesn't necessarily exist. That's the incentive that drives Approval's outcomes towards the center. I'm concerned that the runoff, similar to a standard runoff, will pick its finalists too arbitrarily. This is *not* a major problem in real elections. Ties occur for other reasons, i.e., factions in the electorate are divided. It's the opposite of cloning. It's not a major problem because political forces don't favor it. True clones will have the same set of supporters, largely, and those supporters will select one of them. If the clones fight each other and don't cooperate, then they aren't clones, and the supporters will take one side or another. (And weaken the faction's power. This narrow selfishness has natural consequences.) The political forces favor complete cooperation, and it won't be done by fielding both candidates in the public election, when that choice can be made much more efficiently and effectively within the faction. In real elections we generally have the sense not to enact methods that encourage cloning. I agree there are some inherent disadvantages to deliberate cloning, but I wouldn't assume that these disadvantages will outweigh any other incentive we can come up with. For instance, I don't think a Borda proposal will ever get off the ground. Number three. The strategy assumes that there will be no rivalry between the two candidates. Even if they are in cahoots, their supporters may not be. You'd pick a second candidate who doesn't have supporters. Who therefore doesn't have a prayer. Put them on the ballot, supporters will appear. The original candidate, through this silly strategy, has split his own party. Brilliant. Next case. Number four. Who gets the campaign funds? It's a single campaign, so it doesn't matter. Presumably the serious nominee gets them. Single campaign? No, there are two candidates. Sure, they could share ads. I'm running for dogcatcher, but I'd also like to recommend my friend, here, Ralph. Ralph, would you like to say a few words about how we are equally qualified for the job, and would you like to ask the public to vote for both of us? As a voter, I'd think, these guys are nutty. If they are both equally qualified, why didn't they just decide which one of them should run. Toss a coin or something, and spare us the election process. Remember, if both these guys make it into the runoff, they have wasted the city's money on a useless runoff election. Sorry, this strategy is a blatantly losing one. Political suicide, like a lot of theoretical methods of manipulating voting systems. The main candidate doesn't attempt to claim that his companion is also running for the job. He says vote for us so that I can win, in place of risking losing in a runoff. His companion doesn't claim to be trying to win. You speculate put them on the ballot, supporters will appear. Well, I do believe that e.g. Huntsman and Perry received a few votes in Ohio recently, but at least they had hoped to win in the past. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff.
Hi, De : Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr; election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 9 mars 2012 17h04 Objet : Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff. At 07:36 PM 3/8/2012, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Mike, I don't think Approval-Runoff can get off the ground since it's too apparent that a party could nominate two candidates (signaling that one is just a pawn to aid the other) and try to win by grabbing both of the finalist positions. If this happened regularly it would be just an expensive version of FPP. Number one. This objection does not apply to nonpartisan elections. Not sure why it couldn't. You just wouldn't have a party, as such, executing the strategy. Number two. The strongest factor in elections is positive name recognition. That's become obvious. By running two candidates, you are diluting name recognition. If you have one, you might win. With two, quite possibly not. Risky strategy. Possibly true. Number three. The strategy assumes that there will be no rivalry between the two candidates. Even if they are in cahoots, their supporters may not be. You'd pick a second candidate who doesn't have supporters. Number four. Who gets the campaign funds? It's a single campaign, so it doesn't matter. Presumably the serious nominee gets them. Number five. Others can play the same game, if it's a real strategy. I don't think it is. I was actually assuming everybody (at least major candidates) would play the same game. The problem is that the second round doesn't play the role it was supposed to if this happens. Number six. If this is a partisan election, who gets the party slot? The strategy could badly backfire, as supporters of the non-party candidate decide not to support the official party candidate, after all, the party made a bad choice. No, the tradition is strong, and there are strong reasons for it, that a party unites on a candidate. It's more powerful. This seems to be the same as number three. Number seven. If both candidates make it into the runoff, very good chance one of them would win anyway. This means that they are top two, really. If this is nonpartisan, very difficult to reverse that. The intention of the first round is to pick two finalists who are likely to be the best winner. So if one finalist gets both positions by running a weak clone, his odds of being the one who would have won anyway are probably better than half, yes. The criticism is that the second round serves little purpose if that's what is happening. Number eight. You might be able to figure out a scenario where this makes some sense. Now, compare that scenario with the real and known hazard of center squeeze. And where should that lead me? You know that nobody is backed into a corner where they have to advocate either an approval runoff or nothing. Besides, once we are Counting All the Votes, a ranked version of approval becomes far better. My simulations do often find that specific rank/approval hybrids are the best wrt minimizing insincerity and electing sincere CWs and utility maximizers. It depends on the scenario, but JGA's Approval-Weighted Pairwise is often the best Condorcet method and my various Single Contest methods are usually the best non-Condorcet ones (especially wrt sincerity). Single Contest methods are actually like an instant approval runoff, except the finalists are the two candidates who together minimize the number of voters who approved neither of them. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff.
Hi Mike, I don't think Approval-Runoff can get off the ground since it's too apparent that a party could nominate two candidates (signaling that one is just a pawn to aid the other) and try to win by grabbing both of the finalist positions. If this happened regularly it would be just an expensive version of FPP. SODA actually does allow you to not delegate via checking a box. But a version that required delegation might be interesting because it wouldn't require an approval plus checkbox ballot, it would just need a vote-for-one ballot. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] correction
De : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr À : election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 8 mars 2012 18h36 Objet : Re: [EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff. Hi Mike, I don't think Approval-Runoff can get off the ground since it's too apparent that a party could nominate two candidates (signaling that one is just a pawn to aid the other) and try to win by grabbing both of the finalist positions. If this happened regularly it would be just an expensive version of FPP. Actually, it would be an expensive version of Approval. Still, I am not sure why it would be any easier to propose an approval runoff vs. plain approval. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Kevin: FBC deleted from electowiki?
Hi Mike, De : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com À : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 5 mars 2012 15h19 Objet : [EM] Kevin: FBC deleted from electowiki? Kevin: You wrote: Did they use a special term for this property?We used to have an FBC page on Wikipedia, based on content from Russ' site I believe, but eventually this was removed [endquote] Yes, that's why I don't have much use for electowiki. Something that I put up can later be modified or deleted by anyone. I'm referring to Wikipedia itself, not the Electowiki. An article surely is still available on Electowiki. You continued: since the notability is unclear. [endquote] What is notability? On Wikipedia they remove articles if you can't show sources to argue that the topic is important enough to have an article. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Kevin: My failure scenario was erroneous for ABucklin
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com Cc : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 2 mars 2012 13h13 Objet : Re: [EM] Kevin: My failure scenario was erroneous for ABucklin Also, since ABucklin is in all significant regards identical to MJ, Balinski and Laraki's proof that MJ meets FBC works verbatim for ABucklin. Jameson Did they use a special term for this property? We used to have an FBC page on Wikipedia, based on content from Russ' site I believe, but eventually this was removed since the notability is unclear. The big difference between ABucklin and MJ is that in the former, raising and lowering a candidate can alter the stage at which other candidates attain majority. It occurred to me that it could happen that if you change ABCDE to A=DBCE This could probably move the win from B to C or E. But then you could just top-rank B to prevent it. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Better Approval-voting option? Could ABucklin fail FBC?
Hi Mike, De : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com À : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 1 mars 2012 15h55 Objet : [EM] Better Approval-voting option? Could ABucklin fail FBC? But could this happen?: If you rank your favorite, F, in 1st place, s/he gets a majority, even though s/he doesn't win, because someone else has a higher majority. A number of people rank F, and, if you help F get a majority, then they won't give a vote to their next choice. That's regrettable, because their next choice could win with those votes, while F can't win. And when their next choice doesn't win, someone worse than s/he (as judged by you) wins. You got a worse result because you didn't favorite-bury. So maybe, even if that scenario is merely possible, I shouldn't propose Stepwise-to-Majority unless it turns out that the FBC-failure scenario can't happen. But more worrying is the fact that one could tell that same story about ABucklin (the ER-Bucklin defined at electowiki). Of course a vague verbal scenario like the above might not have an actual numerical example that can carry it out. There might be some reason why such an example couldn't work. Still, it's worrying. Does anyone know if there's actually a proof that ER-Bucklin meets FBC? Can it be shown that the verbal FBC-Failure scenario described above couldn't really happen? Might ABucklin fail FBC? I want to help but I'm not sure I understand the failure scenario you described. With three candidates ER-Bucklin(whole) gives the same results as MCA. There can't be much doubt that MCA satisfies FBC. But maybe you have in mind a scenario with more than three candidates? Off the top of my head I would argue that ERBW satisfies FBC because when you raise your favorite to equal-top, this can only delay the reception of votes for candidates that you like less than your top candidates (because it's only on your own ballot that this has an effect). You aren't doing anything to delay acquisition of votes by your top-ranked compromise choice from other voters. Any thoughts? Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] An interesting scenario (spoilers, utility)
Hello, I have been adding some code to help investigate cases where Approval shows greater perception of spoiler than, say, IRV. To make the scenarios easier to visualize I just allocated six voting factions proportionately along 1D, positions ranging from -1 to 1. I found an interesting case with the candidate positions: .939, 0.333, -.06 (call them A, B, C) Approval showed perception of spoiler as 27%, whereas IRV, TTR, and FPP showed none. So I checked to see if it was consistent and what was happening. With six blocs the scenario looks roughly like this (with the pipe indicating the location of average utility for the bloc): ~3 CB | A ~1 BC | A ~1 BA | C ~1 A | BC Under IRV, all votes were sincere. Under FPP and TTR, the lone A bloc was compromising and voting for B. The result was that the sincere CW (either C or B) was always winning and no one perceived spoilers. Under Approval, the CB voters bullet-voted, the two B blocs voted for their top two candidates, and the A bloc bullet-voted. (A much rarer outcome had the BC faction bullet-voting, with the BA and A factions voting for both A and B, giving the same result as the other three methods. I think it's clear that this outcome was rarer because the BC voters are happier with settling for C than the A voters are with settling for B.) The result of this is that Approval was only electing the sincere CW half the time. Instead of alternating between C and B winning, C won by far the most often. B or A won rarely (and, I'd say, largely thanks to the AI confusion that results from one candidate winning most of the time). Note that C is easily the closest candidate to the median. Even when B has a majority win over C, B is still not likely to be the utility maximizer. Approval's success rate at electing the utility maximizer was thus nearly perfect (instead of 50%). I'm not sure what I think of this personally. I'm sure this scenario isn't any kind of general rule for Approval, but suppose that it was? Would it be a viable trade-off, to elect the utility maximizer more often, in exchange for more complaints about spoiled elections? Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The oldest bad-example trick in the book
Hi Mike, Personally I don't think anyone is wronged in the MMPO example. I just don't think voters would accept it, and it would be difficult to advocate. People will ask how the outcome can possibly make sense and I don't think you can reassure them by asking who's wronged. The issue isn't really favoriteness but the near lack of any votes at all. Most people expect winning candidates to have their own positive support, not just lack of opposition. That said, the voters could see themselves as wronged if they felt it was strategically advisable under the method to truncate. You suggest that if the A voters really preferred B (the other big candidate) to C (tiny candidate) then they should have voted for A and B? I for one can't see myself doing that. The apparent front- runners are A and B and I wouldn't vote for the worse frontrunner under MMPO. It makes more sense to try to deter burial attempts than to defend against an extremely unlikely C victory. But I don't want to discourage you from supporting MMPO. The first method I ever invented was in effect MMPO on approval ballots. I have a soft spot for this mechanic. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] C/D is persistent. Another Approval C/D mitigation. IRV and sincerity.
Hi Mike, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com Cc : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mardi 28 février 2012 15h29 Objet : Re: [EM] C/D is persistent. Another Approval C/D mitigation. IRV and sincerity. (Though I'd still really appreciate it if you made quick electowiki pages for all of that, because I'd bet that nobody but you actually knows what every one of those means, and it would be considerate of you not to ask us to continually look up all the definitions and redefinitions in the archives). Jameson 2012/2/28 MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com The methods that I've been suggesting, to get rid of the C/D problem--I'll refer to those as defection-resistant methods. They include AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin, AC, MTAC, MCAC, ACBudklin, MMT, GMAT, and ICT. Also, if any good ones need to be tested for FBC compliance, my sim is pretty accurate at finding this via its percentage of voters deciding to compromise statistic. FBC methods tend to show zero. It doesn't provide anything that could be used as a proof though. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Kevin V, Richard F., Raph F
Hi David, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 20 février 2012 13h18 Objet : Re: [EM] Kevin V, Richard F., Raph F From: Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr To: election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Cc: Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:01:06 + (GMT) Subject: Re: [EM] Kevin V. Hi David, KV:The similarity is that with SODA, you (and like-minded candidates) get a benefit even if you don't win. Under normal methods you have the inherent pressure against running clones (that I think we both agree exists) with little possible benefit in nominating them. dlw: What is the benefit? You might get lucky? There'd be pressure in real life against clones running regardless and so the strength of the effect is still an empirical question. The benefits are 1. to the candidate: still gets to influence the result even if he loses 2. to the voter: greater chance of having somebody palatable to vote for without wasting the vote 3. to the candidate's party: the candidate can attract voters that might not have bothered voting if there had only been one nominee. dlw: If it's really a clone then 2 seem like a stretch. For 1 and 3, why not just hire more campaign staff to GOTV? They're clones in the sense that they come from the same party and are expected to transfer votes to each other once they lose. I don't understand how you're responding to 1. That point is saying that even if I only get 5% of the vote I still have some influence in who will win. Regarding 3: This is related to 2. If the voter likes Cain and hates Gingrich you can't simply hire more staff to make him like Gingrich instead. The main factor working against nominating clones in most methods is that it risks dividing up the voters such that they refuse to vote for all the like-minded candidates. If voters actually delegate power to a candidate (which is a little uncertain) the risk of this is reduced. dlw: It also imposes higher costs on voters in terms of getting to know the candidates and figuring out that so-and-so are clones... Yes, under most methods it does, because the voters would have to list all the clones for it to count. By difficult to tabulate I was talking about IRV itself. But no matter: dlw: Maybe that's why I'm pushing IRV+??? Ok, maybe I should take that literally, that you want to use an approval filter because it makes IRV easier to tabulate. I don't know what else the lack of example scenarios could mean. My motivation is pragmatic, or problem-solving driven, rather than based on stylized hypotheticals.. Ok. In reference to the approval component I can believe that. KV:Ok, so you are married to IRV or variants because of its first mover status. Then my question switches to how the approval rule helps it. Do you have a scenario on-hand that shows your method doing something preferable to what IRV normally would do? I can't think of what the expected difference would be, except when somehow the second-place (on first preferences) candidate isn't among the top three approved. Are you thinking of a Chirac/Jospin/Le Pen scenario (2002 French presidential election)? Though that would not even have happened under IRV. dlw: Speeding up the election and simplifying the use of IRV are enuf to justify the use of IRV+ over IRV, especially for bigger elections. It doesn't matter how often it'd get a different outcome. There'd be no recursion in the explanation of how it'd work and that'd be one less arg that opponents of electoral reform could use against it. Plus, almost all of the args used by advocates of Approval Voting against IRV would get watered down..., cuz the simple fact of the matter is that IRV works best with only 3 candidates. I don't buy that second paragraph at all. Contrived IRV bad examples usually don't need more than three. Do you know one that requires four? dlw: Well, it's the least important for me personally of the args, hence why it's listed last. It's easiest to give bad egs with 3 candidates. That doesn't mean they don't also exist for more than 3. If you know of examples where order of elimination matters in a cascading fashion then that'd make a great example for IRV+. As for IRV working best with only 3 candidates, the pathological examples emerge only in the relatively rare case of competitive 3 way elections and those are relatively rare and not stable so the use of less ranking info by IRV relative to Condorcet methods would be less important w. only 3 candidates and so on... Ok. I'm not too sure what else can be said, if you're mainly trying to simplify a method that you see yourself as forced to pick. I don't think that any parties so at odds with the Democrats or Republicans that they can't run under those labels, are the parties we are looking for. I think that if, under whatever rules were in place
Re: [EM] Conditionality-by-top-count probably violates FBC
Does anyone understand why the DH3 concept exists? Why envision three major blocs, instead of two major blocs plus the small bloc belonging to the pawn candidate? That doesn't require four candidates and more closely resembles how burial problems are usually considered... Kevin De : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com À : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com Cc : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com; election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 19 février 2012 7h48 Objet : Re: [EM] Conditionality-by-top-count probably violates FBC On 02/15/2012 06:08 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: But conditionality-by-mutuality violates later-no-help, and as such, raises the spectre of a DH3 http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/DH3-like scenario. I think you can have burial in methods that pass LNHelp too, unless the method also passes LNHarm. LNHelp-complying methods could still reward a move from, say, ABC to ACB (where the point would be to keep B from winning more than to get A to win). See, for instance, Kevin Venzke's post: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-February/027098.html , or James Green-Armytage's: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-February/027091.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and Richard Fobes.
Hi David, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 18 février 2012 16h58 Objet : Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and Richard Fobes. That doesn't make much sense to me. The election method is a part of the system and it has an obvious effect on how many candidates could run. dlw: It depends on the size of the effect of the election method. There still are cost-benefit rationales that would keep the number of serious candidates down, depending of course on the size and importance of the election. Ceteris paribus, to have a party institution behind you will make a difference regardless of what election method gets used. Well, in SODA's case, I think the size of the effect is probably massive. It reminds me of the open party list in Brazil. dlw: Aye, but that's multi-winner. Multi-winner vs single-winner is a major effect. We were talking amongst single-winner election rules. The similarity is that with SODA, you (and like-minded candidates) get a benefit even if you don't win. Under normal methods you have the inherent pressure against running clones (that I think we both agree exists) with little possible benefit in nominating them. and so what relative advantages there are of SODA over IRV will be less, which then makes the first-mover marketing problem more significant, especially if IRV can be souped up with the seemingly slight modification of the use of a limited form of approval voting in the first stage. dlw If I remember correctly your idea is to use approval to pick finalists. I don't think this is a good idea because it breaks clone independence, which is an IRV selling point. But does it break it strongly? Let there be A, B, and C. Let BB be a B clone. The field is split 30.1-40-29.9. Normally B wins. If BB enters then either B or BB gets eliminated in the first round but then their votes transfer to whoever remains and so the outcome wouldn't change. You'd need to have a crowded field so that an original finalist and their clone would both get eliminated. If either the original winner and clone(s) got eliminated, which would be harder, in all likelihood, or you might change the order of elimination in the 2nd round so that there'd be a different winner. I don't think you get the concern. It's not clone-winner, it's clone-loser. Suppose the original winner was 3rd place on approval. Then clone one of the other two candidates to shut out the original winner. [sarcasm]That sounds realistic.[/sarcasm] You realize that the approval votes are just the number of (up to 3) rankings a candidate receives? How often do you think you can clone one of the other 2 and thereby shutout the winner? I'd love to see an example of that. If the winner is preferred to the top-2 ranked-vote getters then if they were cloned, it'd not be the eventual winner who'd lose out on approval votes. I didn't know you could only have three rankings. I agree it is difficult to construct the scenario where it actually works. They don't even need to know whether 3rd place was going to win, it should just be the standard nomination strategy. If you nominate three, you could even win the entire race just on approval. There's some risk to this strategy (voters may not agree to approve everyone their party wants), but if a party so much as tries to use this strategy the method will look dumb. You should be really clear on what you're trying to do if you want to tell people to use a mechanic that looks manipulable. If you can give me a robust example of this, ie one that's not on a knife edge, I will abandon the idea. JQ tried to do this a while back for a slightly different matter and it was very hard to do and he eventually agreed that it worked, except for how it tended to reenforce the 2-party domination thing that he believes (along with others) is the bane of democracy. Well, I don't understand how you see it aiding anything. If you place third or worse on first preferences you will almost certainly lose. It doesn't really matter if every voter approved you. For me, I think there are real world safeguards against clones in politics and so to be 100% clone independence is not important. I kind of agree with that, but only for cloning winners. I'm not worried about cloning non-winners. In your method or in general?? I don't see how it can be denied that parties would nominate many candidates for a single seat if that was the best strategy for winning. We can find examples of parties using the electoral method in unexpected ways (Taiwan and Italy occur to me), and we also have the open party list tactic of nominating more candidates than there are even seats to be won. If your goal is to e.g. not elect Condorcet winners who place third, I don't think my goal is not to elect CW's who get 3rd amount of top
Re: [EM] Conditionality-by-top-count probably violates FBC
Hi, De : Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 19 février 2012 15h28 Objet : Re: [EM] Conditionality-by-top-count probably violates FBC On 02/19/2012 09:37 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote: Does anyone understand why the DH3 concept exists? Why envision three major blocs, instead of two major blocs plus the small bloc belonging to the pawn candidate? That doesn't require four candidates and more closely resembles how burial problems are usually considered... If there are just two blocs, then the DH3 scenario never gets off the ground. Say you have a nobody, Z, and two viable candidates (A and B). Then say the honest ballots are something like: 53: A B Z 46: B A Z 1: Z A = B Then the B-supporters can't get the ball rolling, at least not in Condorcet, by burying A. Even if they do so, A will win by first preferences alone. Technically speaking, it takes three viables to make a cycle, and you need cycle-making/turning strategy to make DH3 work in Condorcet. In Borda, you could do a sort of DH3 with only two blocs, but that's because Borda doesn't satisfy Majority. Yes, I don't understand why it would be viewed this way. I.e. why would one assume that two major blocs means one bloc is a majority. I think a pawn could have 10% or even more of the votes. It's as though one wants to be sure to be able to say that absolutely nobody likes the pawn. I think that if DH3 could ever actually happen it would be better news than bad, just because it would mean we are able to have three blocs like that! Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] élection de trois élection de trois
They are quirky because of IIA. The papers on this are from the 1970's. Quote Wikipedia: The Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem, named after Allan Gibbard and Mark Satterthwaite, is a result about the deterministic voting systems that choose a single winner using only the preferences of the voters, where each voter ranks all candidates in order of preference. The Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem states that, for three or more candidates, one of the following three things must hold for every voting rule: 1. The rule is dictatorial (i.e., there is a single individual who can choose the winner), or 2. There is some candidate who can never win, under the rule, or 3. The rule is susceptible to tactical voting, in the sense that there are conditions under which a voter with full knowledge of how the other voters are to vote and of the rule being used would have an incentive to vote in a manner that does not reflect his preferences. I do wish we only posted in text. If I quote an html email as text I don't get any symbols anymore to mark what the other person said. And if I quote it as html, I have to supply my own indentation and still don't get any marker next to the quoted text. Kevin De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com Cc : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 19 février 2012 19h53 Objet : [EM] élection de trois élection de trois It seems quite a few election rules get quirky in one way or the other with a 3-way competitive election. That might be a point worth considering in the abstract in a paper or something why are 3-way single-winner elections quirky? dlw On Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 5:31 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com wrote: ..., cuz the simple fact of the matter is that IRV works best with only 3 candidates. 2.5, actually. Jameson 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] (Kevin Venzke) and Richard Fobes.
(I've figured out how to quote since my last comment on that. I have no idea why quoting a message is merely an option...) - Mail original - (Richard wrote) Unfortunately none of the third parties in the U.S. are understanding this opportunity. The leaders at the top of those third parties are more concerned about maintaining their control than representing frustrated voters. I don't think that any parties so at odds with the Democrats or Republicans that they can't run under those labels, are the parties we are looking for. I think that if, under whatever rules were in place, there were room for three contenders in an election, you would find not-too-unfamiliar-looking candidates taking the third spot and trying to beat the Ds and Rs. With this situation, it is at least possible that a general viewpoint (about as coherent as those of the Ds and Rs) would come together and allow a third party including a label for it. It isn't obvious that a three-way race will still fight over the center though. I am interested to study this, but it seems very hard to study voter strategy and nomination strategy at the same time. If party discipline were strengthened (though I can't imagine how that would happen) I expect it would force some current Ds and Rs to leave and form new minor parties. But I don't think this in itself would benefit voters much. I think it would mean for many that there is even less of a real choice. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and James Gilmour.
Hi David, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 18 février 2012 14h10 Objet : Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and James Gilmour. You are supposed to get the EM list to agree first, before writing Soros directly. If there were such a pot at the end of the rainbow then maybe the EM list would have an incentive to agree. I like to think we don't agree because we think other people are mistaken. But if there were incentive to compromise I could see writing more posts on the subject of reaching one. But in the context of a 2-party dominated system, there aren't as many serious candidates That doesn't make much sense to me. The election method is a part of the system and it has an obvious effect on how many candidates could run. dlw: It depends on the size of the effect of the election method. There still are cost-benefit rationales that would keep the number of serious candidates down, depending of course on the size and importance of the election. Ceteris paribus, to have a party institution behind you will make a difference regardless of what election method gets used. Well, in SODA's case, I think the size of the effect is probably massive. It reminds me of the open party list in Brazil. and so what relative advantages there are of SODA over IRV will be less, which then makes the first-mover marketing problem more significant, especially if IRV can be souped up with the seemingly slight modification of the use of a limited form of approval voting in the first stage. dlw If I remember correctly your idea is to use approval to pick finalists. I don't think this is a good idea because it breaks clone independence, which is an IRV selling point. But does it break it strongly? Let there be A, B, and C. Let BB be a B clone. The field is split 30.1-40-29.9. Normally B wins. If BB enters then either B or BB gets eliminated in the first round but then their votes transfer to whoever remains and so the outcome wouldn't change. You'd need to have a crowded field so that an original finalist and their clone would both get eliminated. If either the original winner and clone(s) got eliminated, which would be harder, in all likelihood, or you might change the order of elimination in the 2nd round so that there'd be a different winner. I don't think you get the concern. It's not clone-winner, it's clone-loser. Suppose the original winner was 3rd place on approval. Then clone one of the other two candidates to shut out the original winner. They don't even need to know whether 3rd place was going to win, it should just be the standard nomination strategy. If you nominate three, you could even win the entire race just on approval. There's some risk to this strategy (voters may not agree to approve everyone their party wants), but if a party so much as tries to use this strategy the method will look dumb. You should be really clear on what you're trying to do if you want to tell people to use a mechanic that looks manipulable. For me, I think there are real world safeguards against clones in politics and so to be 100% clone independence is not important. I kind of agree with that, but only for cloning winners. If your goal is to e.g. not elect Condorcet winners who place third, I don't think my goal is not to elect CW's who get 3rd amount of top-rankings among the three finalists. I think the goal is to reduce the distance between the de facto center and the true center, while allowing that we don't know the true changing center and don't want to chase it too easily. That's a pretty unusual goal that I still don't quite get. (Why do you pick the terms de facto and true? Wouldn't it be anticipated vs. actual or something? If the true changing center is the actual location of the median voter, how on earth does de facto contrast with this?) I think you should use the Approval-IRV hybrid that eliminates the least approved candidate until there is a majority favorite. I call it AER... I think Woodall called it Approval AV. dlw: IRV+ is easy to tabulate at the precinct level. One could get the 3 finalists on election night. The next day the votes can be sorted into 10 categories, once again at the precinct level, and the results used to find the winner. This is more important than clone independence, cuz the true winner(for normal irv) would be more immune to the existence of clones than other finalists. I wish I understood what you feel makes IRV good and how you are trying to improve it. I'm pretty sure that if those were nailed down, you could find something easier and better. Using approval you are already discarding the LNHarm guarantee. Why stick to something relatively difficult to tabulate? I don't think you can ride IRV's coattails if you won't keep the (demonstrable) properties of it. And picking finalists
Re: [EM] STV vs Party-list PR, could context matter?
Hi Richard, De : Richard Fobes electionmeth...@votefair.org À : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 18 février 2012 14h47 Objet : Re: [EM] STV vs Party-list PR, could context matter? I do favor having more than two parties, but I don't see how three (or more) strong parties can be accommodated until after Congress and state legislatures use voting methods that are compatible with more than two parties. Do you have real world examples in mind here? Have you looked at assemblies, to which no executive is responsible, that are elected by party list or that for some other reason have multiple parties? I have trouble imagining that this is a major issue. Congressional rules based on the assumptions of there being two parties aren't in the U.S. constitution. They can be changed. But they definitely won't see revisions until there is a need to revise them! I think I might agree with you to some extent, in that I don't really care how many party labels there are. Whether there are two, three, ten, or zero, doesn't tell me much of anything by itself. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Question about Schulze beatpath method
Hi Robert, Suppose there are four candidates ABCD. B beats A with strength of 10. C beats D with strength of 20. With strength of 30, A beats C, B beats C, D beats A, and D beats B. Then every candidate has a path to every other candidate, and the best path from A to B or from B to A involves traversing the CD win (which is the weakest link in those paths). Kevin De : robert bristow-johnson r...@audioimagination.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 17 février 2012 12h56 Objet : Re: [EM] Question about Schulze beatpath method On 2/17/12 1:27 PM, Markus Schulze wrote: it can happen that the weakest link in the strongest path from candidate A to candidate B and the weakest link in the strongest path from candidate B to candidate A is the same link, say CD. how can that be? since a path is a *defeat* path. you only traverse a beatpath from a candidate who beats the next candidate in the path. is it that candidates C and D are exactly tied? other than that, i cannot understand how the weakest link from A to B can be the same as *any* link from B to A. -- 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] JQ wrt SODA
Hi David, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 17 février 2012 13h37 Objet : Re: [EM] JQ wrt SODA IRV's got a first mover advantage over SODA and to catch up you need to convince someone like Soros to help you market it. It wouldn't matter if you got the whole EM list to agree with you that it was hunky-dory. You are supposed to get the EM list to agree first, before writing Soros directly. But in the context of a 2-party dominated system, there aren't as many serious candidates That doesn't make much sense to me. The election method is a part of the system and it has an obvious effect on how many candidates could run. and so what relative advantages there are of SODA over IRV will be less, which then makes the first-mover marketing problem more significant, especially if IRV can be souped up with the seemingly slight modification of the use of a limited form of approval voting in the first stage. dlw If I remember correctly your idea is to use approval to pick finalists. I don't think this is a good idea because it breaks clone independence, which is an IRV selling point. If your goal is to e.g. not elect Condorcet winners who place third, I think you should use the Approval-IRV hybrid that eliminates the least approved candidate until there is a majority favorite. I call it AER... I think Woodall called it Approval AV. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
Hi Jameson, Just a few thoughts. De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com; electionsciencefoundation electionscie...@googlegroups.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 17 février 2012 9h20 Objet : [EM] SODA arguments For those who feel that Bayesian Regret is the be-all-and-end-all measure of voting system quality, that SODA's BR for 100% strategic voters will beat all other systems, including Range/Approval. I guess you will have a hard time arguing this, especially if you have multiple audiences. For instance, whether Range/Approval are even all that great is controversial. But if you're an anti-majoritarian type or think it's unfair/unrealistic to propose that voters are strategic, I guess that SODA looks like a step down. Didn't you post an example where SODA declined to elect a weak CW that you said was actually a good thing? If that's true, I guess some people won't agree with that. It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? (I have a simple rule for cutting down the number of candidates. I don't think I've ever mentioned it because I know how idealistic you all are. Just say that the first-preference winner auto-wins if he has more first preferences than second and third place combined. This can make it risky even to compete for third place. The idea is that voters should definitely then realize which candidates are the top three in their race, which could amount to a viability/visibility boost for #3. My rule assumes there's no equal-ranking, but I bet something could be devised for other ballots.) Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 17 février 2012 19h53 Objet : Re: [EM] SODA arguments For those who feel that Bayesian Regret is the be-all-and-end-all measure of voting system quality, that SODA's BR for 100% strategic voters will beat all other systems, including Range/Approval. I guess you will have a hard time arguing this, especially if you have multiple audiences. For instance, whether Range/Approval are even all that great is controversial. But if you're an anti-majoritarian type or think it's unfair/unrealistic to propose that voters are strategic, I guess that SODA looks like a step down. I'm not sure that's true. Clay and Warren are the most hard-core BR advocates, and probably I should let them speak for themselves, but... I think their attitude is not that strategy is evil or Range voters will be 100% honest, but rather, Some fraction of voters will be honest under range, and that's good, so why not use range and let them? In that case, the fact that range voting is strictly better (by BR, and for a pre-chosen arbitrary strategic percentage) than [IRV, Condorcet, MJ, etc], is an important foundation of their argument. Finding a system which, while it is worse than range for 100% honest, is actually better than it in some cases (100% strategy, and presumably 99%, who knows where it stops), is an important qualitative difference in the situation. Alright. I guess I'll let them make their own arguments if they are so inclined. Didn't you post an example where SODA declined to elect a weak CW that you said was actually a good thing? If that's true, I guess some people won't agree with that. Yes. The basic setup is two major candidates and a weak centrist. The weaker of the two majors gets to decide which of the other two wins. So if the weak CW is truly a CW, they will be preferred by the weaker major, and thus win; but if they are more weak than CW, then the weaker major would rather allow the stronger major to win than stake their reputation on electing the weak CW. So in the end, it's more a question of giving a last chance to realize that someone isn't really the CW, rather than not electing someone who is the CW. Concerns me a little. I'm not sure candidates would do the thing their supporters would want (or even that they themselves feel is best) due to pressures like staking their reputation. For instance, I can see a moderate liberal giving his votes to a more extreme liberal even when he himself prefers a moderate conservative. A voter whose personal ranking crosses the line like that might want to avoid delegating. It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? Well, there is the 5% cutoff, below which your votes are automatically assigned for you. That's not really a punishment though. The candidate will probably get what they would've done anyway. I really think this is an issue that might need a rule of some kind. Why nominate one when you can nominate five? Anybody who appeals to some segment of the electorate could help bring in votes. Can you imagine if, for example, the Republicans were able to nominate every single one of their hopefuls for the presidency, with the knowledge that in the end all their votes would probably pool together? You don't have to like Gingrich, you can vote for Cain. And maybe your vote will end up with Gingrich, but without Cain you might not have cast it at all. (I have a simple rule for cutting down the number of candidates. I don't think I've ever mentioned it because I know how idealistic you all are. Just say that the first-preference winner auto-wins if he has more first preferences than second and third place combined. This can make it risky even to compete for third place. The idea is that voters should definitely then realize which candidates are the top three in their race, which could amount to a viability/visibility boost for #3. My rule assumes there's no equal-ranking, but I bet something could be devised for other ballots.) That rule doesn't sound too bad to me. Most of the time, there'd be no risk of it applying; but I think it would still be a gentle pressure in the intended direction. Still, I think it should be considered separately from SODA per se. Maybe it would be gentle if you expect a lot of candidates but in general I don't think it is very gentle. For example, this election: 49 A 44 B 4 CB 3 DB Would qualify, and auto-elect A. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] i don't get why mixed member rules use FPTP???
Hi David, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 13 février 2012 20h41 Objet : [EM] i don't get why mixed member rules use FPTP??? It seems like the awesomeness of using PR for part of the seats somehow makes up for the lousiness of FPTP for the rest of the seats. But why not use IRV+ for the rest? I mean it's not unlike FPTP in how it tends to favor bigger parties. According toGeorge Eaton, it still lets there popular parties get a disproportionately large portion of the seats, but only when they're truly popular. So why couldn't Germany replace FPTP for its single-member seats with IRV? I got on this rant because I learned of the DPR approach to foster multi-party system in the UK. I don't see any reason why 4-seat super districts that use 3-seat LR Hare and IRV+ wouldn't suffice? Maybe the use of PR might get more folks excited about the electoral reform this time... dlw I don't think there is much to be gained from doing that in Germany. My understanding is that in practice voters vote the single-winner ballot according to party, and then the PR part basically overrules anomalies as well. What I mean is, suppose you used Condorcet and some minor party won a ton of single-winner races. Despite this, the PR would adjust it so that the relative winnings are proportional to the party list vote. So the unexpected results on the single-winner ballot result in almost nothing. I think this would probably still be a problem in a setting with weak party discipline... Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet
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. (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.) 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. 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. 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] Kevin V
Hi David, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : step...@yahoo.fr; EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mardi 7 février 2012 16h17 Objet : Re: Kevin V dlw: I argue that the strength of the US presidency and regular presidential elections has the effect of building up our two-party system. This is why I take as a given that there tend to be 2 bigger major parties and not as many serious candidates in single-winner elections. This in turn tends to reduce the import of the diffs among the wide variety of single-winner elections. I think it works like this: President isn't responsible to or chosen by Congress - There is not that much prize for having a majority of a house - Weak party discipline (because of less focus on party: a candidate can get reelected even if his peers are unhappy) - If you are a viable candidate, there is no need for you to carve out a new party. There is only room for two contenders per race (under FPP), and there are two parties that will take you as long as you can win for them. dlw: Aye, but the prez election itself and its potential for coat-tails and the reward from capturing one or both of the US legislatures does build up the parties who can afford to run a serious prez election race. I think some of the weak party discipline is also due to the restrictions on donations to parties in the 1974 FEC act. Our system wd function better if there was more intra-party discipline and the donations flowed thru the relatively transparent venue of the party. Personally I prefer weak party discipline. I like candidates to have independence, with the decision-making power less concentrated. And I'm suspicious of what party policies designed at the national level would look like. KV: I think we could have three parties (if not a much greater variety of viewpoints) with the right method. I wouldn't care if they are actually parties or just a higher number of real choices, on average, in a race. dlw:Would it make a diff if our two major parties became two different major parties, bridging the gap between the de facto center and the true center? If American forms of PR were adopted so that there'd still be 2 major parties per area, they wouldn't be the same 2 parties for all regions, which would then enable minor parties to contest the duopoly. And if this got complemented by a host of LTPs(with coalitions) that specialized in contesting more local elections and voting strategically together in less local elections, along with other acts that hold elected officials accountable to their promises then we'd have better quality choices, even if the quantity is less than we'd prefer. Yes, I think it would be useful if we could increase the incentive to stand at the median, even if two parties maintained their grip on things. I don't find PR very interesting personally. It can be its own goal, but it doesn't seem useful for the things I'm concerned about. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet
Hi Robert, I would +1 to Bryan Mills' post. in the two-candidate case, you would have to assume unequal treatment for voters Yes, utility inherently does this. It's trying to maximize happiness which is a different ideal from giving everyone equal weight (e.g. even people who don't have a strong opinion). but when Clay says that Score or Approval is better at picking the Condorcet winner than is a Condorcet-compliant method, *that* is no tautology is obviously controversial, since it says that there is a number closer to 3 than the number 3 itself. What Clay means is that score/Approval are better at picking the *sincere* Condorcet winner. Yes, that's obviously controversial. 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. if it isn't 0 (for when you don't get who you voted for) and 1 (for when your candidate is elected), then some voter is diluting their utilities and i think it's pretty useless and in bad taste to ask voters to do that explicitly with a Score ballot. Utilities refers to what voters actually feel, not what they are putting on the ballot. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet
Hi Robert, I think that the basic claim of Condorcet doesn't necessarily pick the option whom the elecotorate prefers (in terms of total utility) won't be too controversial. Any kind of model usually assumes internal utilities (such as based on distances in issue space) because we need these to figure out how voters prioritize. One could try to assume that some set of internal utilities might have some absolute, aggregable value. In that case it is really easy to produce a scenario where the majority favorite isn't the utility winner. All you need is one case and you get Clay's not necessarily. You ask how we can decide, then, not to elect voted majority favorites. Assuming voters are strategic I don't know of a good answer to this. You suggest a model where there are only two candidates and the voter-for-candidate utilities are all either 0 or 1. If that's an accurate model then Clay's claim doesn't work. But with virtually any other model it will be true sometimes that the voted majority favorite isn't the utility maximizer. Kevin De : robert bristow-johnson r...@audioimagination.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 6 février 2012 21h31 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet one thing i forgot to mention... On 2/5/12 5:07 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 02/04/2012 06:14 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: ... that is not well defined. given Abd's example: 2: Pepperoni (0.61), Cheese (0.5), Mushroom (0.4) 1: Cheese (0.8), Mushroom (0.7), Pepperoni (0) who says that for that 1 voter that the utility of Cheese is 0.8? The voter does. In this thought experiment, one simply assumes the 1-voter's utility of Cheese is 0.8 so as to show the point. The point is that there may be situations where utilitarian optimization and majority rule differs. so my question, when running simulations or trying to construct a quantitative case of maximizing utility, it depends of course on how utility is quantitatively defined. and we understand that the aggregate utility is some combination of every voter's individual utility, and, for the sake of argument (and because it sounds reasonable), we'll say that the metric of aggregate utility is equal to the sum of the individual metrics of utility. so maximizing the sum is the same as maximizing the mean. but there is still no model of individual utility other than one simply assumes. how can Clay build a proof where he claims that it's a proven mathematical fact that the Condorcet winner is not necessarily the option whom the electorate prefers? if he is making a utilitarian argument, he needs to define how the individual metrics of utility are define and that's just guessing. when you guess at a model that is part of your proof, it doesn't make for a very rigorous proof. a *real* proof is that the Devil hands you the model (that's within the domain of possible models) and you make your proof work anyway. *you* don't get to cook up heuristics like the utility to voter X that Candidate A is elected is equal to 0.8. now, with the simple two-candidate or two-choice election that is (remember all those conditions i attached?) Governmental with reasonably high stakes, Competitive, and Equality of franchise, you *do* have a reasonable assumption of what the individual metric of utility is for a voter. if the candidate that some voter supports is elected, the utility to that voter is 1. if the other candidate is elected, the utility to that voter is 0. (it could be any two numbers as long as the utility of electing my candidate exceeds the utility of not electing who i voted for. it's a linear and monotonic mapping that changes nothing.) all voters have equal franchise, which means that the utility of each voter has equal weight in combining into an overall utility for the electorate. that simply means that the maximum utility is obtained by electing the candidate who had the most votes which, because there are only two candidates, is also the majority candidate. if Clay or any others are disputing that electing the majority candidate (as opposed to electing the minority candidate) does not maximize the utility, can you please spell out the model and the assumptions you are making to get to your conclusion? sorry that i am belaboring what i would have thought were simple axioms, but i can't tell that they are widely accepted and i want to probe how they are not widely accepted. how can it be that when Candidate A gets more votes than Candidate B (and they are the only choices) that anyone would advocate awarding office to Candidate B? something has to be anomalous to come to such a conclusion. perhaps the votes for Candidate B count more than the votes for Candidate A (violating one person, one vote). perhaps we introduce a goofy rule such as tossing in a random variable (like draw two non-negative random integers within some given
Re: [EM] Re Raph Frank wrt 3-seat LR Hare and RV for US Senators by proxy.
Hi, De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com; EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mardi 7 février 2012 13h20 Objet : Re: [EM] Re Raph Frank wrt 3-seat LR Hare and RV for US Senators by proxy. dlw: I argue that the strength of the US presidency and regular presidential elections has the effect of building up our two-party system. This is why I take as a given that there tend to be 2 bigger major parties and not as many serious candidates in single-winner elections. This in turn tends to reduce the import of the diffs among the wide variety of single-winner elections. I think it works like this: President isn't responsible to or chosen by Congress - There is not that much prize for having a majority of a house - Weak party discipline (because of less focus on party: a candidate can get reelected even if his peers are unhappy) - If you are a viable candidate, there is no need for you to carve out a new party. There is only room for two contenders per race (under FPP), and there are two parties that will take you as long as you can win for them. I think we could have three parties (if not a much greater variety of viewpoints) with the right method. I wouldn't care if they are actually parties or just a higher number of real choices, on average, in a race. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet
De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : electionscie...@googlegroups.com Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 3 février 2012 22h06 Objet : Re: [EM] [CES #4445] Re: Looking at Condorcet 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. No, he's saying that when the CW and the true, honest utility winner differ, the latter is better. I agree, but it's not an argument worth making, because most people who don't already agree will think it's a stupid one. From my perspective the trouble with the top statement is that sincere Condorcet efficiency and utility performance seem to be correlated. I don't know any way to design a method to specifically perform better at utility, assuming strategic voters. Note that, if you try to take this issue back to Warren's sims, strategically-voted Condorcet methods within his framework have not just bad utility but bad sincere Condorcet efficiency as well. (I don't know the numbers but it's impossible to believe they are any good.) So I don't know where one could look to argue that maximizing sincere Condorcet efficiency vs. utility performance can be done. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Sparring over AV vs IRV at Least of All Evils...
Hi David, I'm trying to make sense of this as an anti-Approval argument, since you say we don't want people to pursue the center too doggedly. Did you explain what bad consequence follows from pursuing the center doggedly, though? I thought I understood your post as an IRV is not so bad argument, until I reached this line. Kevin De : David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 2 février 2012 22h12 Objet : [EM] Sparring over AV vs IRV at Least of All Evils... http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7696446405100112491postID=7962761243854932802 Dale Sheldon Hess has provoked me to explain my views about IRV wrt to a 1-d politics game. Here's what I wrote, DSH:Place a party directly in the center. Now, if I can place two more parties, I can always make your centrist lose. ALWAYS. And you can't move more-centrally to do anything about it (I can actually make it so that you can still win by moving AWAY from the center; how's that for perverse incentives!) dlw: Ah, but in this example, the two biggest parties are in fact close to the center(as I predicted)... and so the fact that the most centrist party doesn't win is relatively small potatoes. And as for the 3rd party candidate winning by going way from the center, that's a curiosity due to the uniform dist'n of voter preferences. That isn't realistic... I've played with Yee's voteline thingy. The issue is with the uncertainty as to what is the center, since it's something that's dynamic. That's why I downplay the import of center squeeze. The center can't be cordoned off by anyone and so to pick a rule based on how it pins down the center is like chasing after the wind. With both IRV and FPP, there's pressure to move twds the center by the biggest parties, it's stronger with IRV. Thus, the de facto center ends up becoming more closely tied to the true center. Let's say a shift in voter preferences has D and R at the 70 and 71 penny marks and G sets up shop at 35. G wd win with both FPP and IRV, but both D and R get to move again. But there are rigidities that prevent them from moving too much too fast. And so the D's move to 55 and the R's to 56. And then G still wins if it's FPP, but with IRV then R wins. But what if D moves and R (perhaps stuck in FPP thinking) doesn't move, so the positions are 35, 55 and 70? In that case, G would win. Tragedy, right? But it can be expected that the next election will change things further so that the G's must move to the right(or merge w. the Ds) and the R must move to the L or merge with the Ds. The moral of the story is that parties are like the people groping around in the dark in Socrates' cave. They cannot choose exactly where on the spectrum they will be. But IRV helps us to adjust and makes the outcome closer to the center than o.w. with FPP. If Approval Voting had been used then D would have won by moving to 64. In fact all the parties wd be strongly encouraged to beeline for whatever the center seemed to be and with a shifting center, they'd all stumble and bump together in the dark. Whereas, the Gs by taking a stand at 35 at least they succeed in moving things to the left or maybe they'll get lucky... It's not an exact science, which is what it should be. We want people to pursue the center, but not too doggedly... Sorry if that's fuzzy, but I think that's closer to real life... dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Majority-Judgement. Condorcet.
Personally I don't understand why one would want to spend time on a method that you have to defend by saying it might work anyway, even if as built the incentives are wrong. I like the idea of being able to test things, so I may be biased here. It's taking a shot in the dark. How fantastic must this method be, for that to seem like a good idea? It's hard to believe one couldn't go back and work out something that more reliably does whatever you were going for. Also, if MJ is a serious proposal it should be called median rating and use the Bucklin tiebreaker. You'd have a name that means something and a tiebreaker that isn't a pain to solve.At the top rating (the one we all agree might matter) the rules aren't even different. The name is so bad. Imagine you hear that on the news and are trying to figure out what it means. Majority doesn't tell you that much (IRV already does majorities and they didn't even need to put it in the name) and judgment refers to what? The voting. They're calling it judgment though. Puke. So dramatic and it doesn't even say anything. The tie-breaker is the same thing really. It sounds neat and fair to pull out median votes one by one, but in practice that isn't the methodology, you really should use math. Try coding MJ and then see how much code you could delete, how much less thought it would've taken you, if you just wanted the Bucklin tiebreaker instead. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 1 février 2012 18h35 Objet : Re: [EM] SODA criteria In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Oh, I missed that the voter can't rank at all. So you are good with FBC. But I don't regard Approval as satisfying what I call MF and Woodall's Majority. It's possible to say it satisfies MF, but I prefer Woodall's treatment. (The criteria framework I use doesn't have any way to say that Approval satisfies MMC. You can equate approval with equal-top, above-bottom, or call it something external, but I can't say that voters stick to a limited number of slots. I understand the meaning of two-slot MMC or voted MMC but I see these as inferior versions.) In response to your last line, if the majority set involves more than one candidate, the delegating voters are never part of it and are unnecessary in getting one of these candidates elected. (I'm using your treatment that voters only have two rank levels.) If you don't agree, I'd like to hear how you are interpreting MMC, because I can't think of how else it would work. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 2 février 2012 11h35 Objet : Re: [EM] SODA criteria In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Oh, I missed that the voter can't rank at all. So you are good with FBC. But I don't regard Approval as satisfying what I call MF and Woodall's Majority. It's possible to say it satisfies MF, but I prefer Woodall's treatment. I don't know what MF stands for. I agree that it fails Woodall's majority, though not in the unique strong Nash equilibrium. (The criteria framework I use doesn't have any way to say that Approval satisfies MMC. You can equate approval with equal-top, above-bottom, or call it something external, but I can't say that voters stick to a limited number of slots. I understand the meaning of two-slot MMC or voted MMC but I see these as inferior versions.) voted, because delegation means there's sometimes effectively more than two slots. In response to your last line, if the majority set involves more than one candidate, the delegating voters are never part of it and are unnecessary in getting one of these candidates elected. (I'm using your treatment that voters only have two rank levels.) If you don't agree, I'd like to hear how you are interpreting MMC, because I can't think of how else it would work. 10: A(BC?...) 10: B(CA?...) 10: C(AB?...) 21: ABC 49: One of A, B, or C must win. MF is Majority Favorite. If I understand you correctly, you're treating voters as casting either an approval ballot, or else one of the predeclared preference orders. I guess that makes sense though it's quite tricky to analyze. If a voter is counted as voting ABC, it's not possible to raise C above only B. But when I analyze this, it has to result in something consistent with the desired ranking unless that's completely impossible. I guess that could only be A, AC, or ACB approval ballots. I think that would result in some criteria problems. For instance, suppose that ABC elects C, but A=C=B elects B. Since I look at how the voter wanted to rank, and not the options the method made available, I would call that a Mono-raise failure. You might think that's unfair, but I don't know what framework you can suggest that will be more apparent and also allow you to fairly evaluate something like Mono-raise. Personally I think it would be easier to assume voters have no idea what candidates predeclare. In that case MMC doesn't apply in your scenario above. Granted, this might make it hard for criteria that are supposed to deal with optimal strategy assumptions or equilibrium. I just don't worry about those criteria because I don't know how to evaluate them. I also wanted to note, here instead of in a separate post, that I wonder about the FBC. I was thinking it must satisfy it because you could cast an approval ballot, but that's not good reasoning (see: any Condorcet method). What if it is possible to get a superior result by delegating your vote to someone other than your favorite? It's not clear to me that this is impossible. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
Hi Jameson, I expect that unpredictability (whatever there may be) of candidates' decisions can only hurt criteria compliance. At least with criteria that are generally defined on votes, because with such criteria you usually have to assume the worst about any other influences incorporated into the method. So I wonder, can you suggest a deterministic version of SODA, where the negotiations of SODA are instead calculated directly from the pre-announced preferences of the candidates? And if so, does it satisfy the same criteria in your view? I can say I would be skeptical of how a criterion is being applied, or how clearly it is being defined, if the satisfaction of it *depends* on the fact that candidates have post-voting decisions to make. Kevin De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mardi 31 janvier 2012 20h50 Objet : [EM] SODA criteria SODA passes: Majority MMC (as voted) Condorcet (as voted, and in a strong Nash equilibrium as honest) Condorcet loser (ditto) Monotone Participation (with the fix that delegation can be any fraction) IIA (delegated version - that is, if a new candidate is added, the winner is either the same, or someone higher on the new candidate's delegation order.) Cloneproof Polytime (there is no guarantee that optimal delegated assignment strategy is polytime calculable, but it will be in any real case, and anyway, candidates can just choose some near-optimal strategy.) Resolvable Summable Allows equal rankings FBC So, of the criteria in the wikipedia voting systems table, the only ones it out-and-out fails are: Consistency (though it comes damn close) Later-no-harm and later-no-help (though it does satisfy LNHarm for the one (two) candidate(s?) with the most voted approvals, and for other candidates, adding later preferences is probably strategically forced; so I'd say it fulfills the spirit of both of these. Similarly, it satisfies LNHelp for the last-to-delegate candidate, and nearly so for other late-delegating candidates, and the point of LNHelp is to prevent a weak candidate from winning through clever bottom filling, so again it satisfies the spirit.) Allows later preferences (though delegation substitutes for this affordance in some cases.) If we could just get some wikipedia-notable mention of SODA, we could put it in the table, and I think it would graphically stand out as the most criteria-compliant method there. I'm working on an academic article on SODA, which would not be focused on these criteria or even on SODA, but would quickly state the above. But if anyone can make an article happen in a wikipedia reliable source, that would be great. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : Majority Judgement
Hi Mike, In my simulations MJ and Bucklinesque methods usually show similar strategy patterns to Approval. (Though so does Range.) If there are three candidates, you can rank them ABC and get protection for A from the B preference if you believe that A's viability depends on A having a top-slot majority. If you think that A could still win with, say, a 49% plurality, it doesn't make a lot of sense to give a preference to B (unless B is about as good). In constructed scenarios it's not hard to imagine situations where this could be a useful guarantee. You can easily make a situation where if A only gets 49%, it must be that opposing candidates and voters made up the rest, in which case it's safe to give the second preference, because A definitely lost. But in real elections I would be concerned by the fact that a narrow majority can be thwarted just by adding in a few ballots for non-contenders. If you go lower in the rankings (e.g. consider safety of 2nd preference from the specified 3rd preference) I think the numbers just get more and more unclear as to whether you stand to gain anything for the risk you definitely take. By the way, I agree that AERLO methods probably violate FBC. The effects are too unpredictable. Kevin De : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com À : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 30 janvier 2012 15h09 Objet : [EM] Majority Judgement Does anyone here know the strategy of MJ? Does anyone here know what valid strategic claims can be made for it? How would one maximize one’s utility in an election with acceptable and completely unacceptable candidates who could win? How about in an election without completely unacceptable candidates who could win? And no, I don't mean refer to a website. The question is do YOU, as an MJ advocate, know what MJ's strategy is? Of course, if anyone here advocates MJ, then they, themselves, should know MJ’s strategy, and its advantages and disadvantages, and be able to state them here. I’m just guessing, but isn’t MJ’s strategy the same as that of RV? (Maximum rating for candidates you’d vote for in Approval, and minimum points for candidates you wouldn’t vote for in Approval). And surely the u/a strategy of MJ is to max-rate the acceptables and min-rate the unacceptables. But of course MJ differs from RV in the following way: In RV, if you rate x higher than y, you’re reliably, unquestionably, helping x against y. In MJ, of course that isn’t so. In fact, if you like x and y highly, and at all similarly, and rate sincerely, then you’re unlikely to help one against the other, at all. Another difference is that, in MJ, even if you correctly guess that you’re raising a candidate’s median, you can’t know by how much. Suppose x is your favorite. y is almost as good. Say the rating range is 0-100. You sincerely give 100 to x, and 90 to y. Say I prefer y to x, and, as do you, I consider their merit about the same. If I rated sincerely, I’d give y 100 and x 90. But, unlike you, I don’t vote sincerely. Because x is a rival to y, and maybe also because I expect you to rate sincerely, I take advantage of your sincerity by giving y 100, and giving x zero. Because different people have different favorites and near-favorites, your high rating of x and y is probably above those candidates’ median ratings. So you’re raising the medians of both candidates, with no particular reason to believe that you’re raising one’s median more than that of the other. In our above-described example, that’s what you’re doing: Raising the medians of x and y. Probably by about the same amount. I, however, am raising y's median and lowering x's median. You’re raising my candidate’s median, and I’m lowering your candidate’s median. You aren’t helping x against y. I’m helping y against x. You’ve been had. At least in RV, you’d have reliably somewhat helped x against y. There's something familiar about that strategy situation :-) MJ fully has the co-operation/defection problem. Discussion of a method’s strategy shouldn’t have to come from someone who doesn’t advocate that method. A tip: Don’t have confidence in a method whose advocates evidently don’t know its strategy. Another thing: Just as one example, try MJ on the Approval bad-example. What you thereby find out is that, to be usable, MJ needs bylaws and patches, such as to make it too wordy and elaborate (and arbitrary?) to be publicly proposable. 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] An ABE solution
Mike, De : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com À : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 26 Novembre 2011 13h39 Objet : [EM] An ABE solution This was answered in the first part of the paragraph that you're quoting. What Woodall calls a preferential election rule is by definition a rank method. Kevin Kevin said: By definition an election method doesn't use approval ballots. [endquote] Whose definition? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Re : An ABE solution
Hi Jameson, My perspective is the following: 1. Most real-world elections will have a sincere CW, although that might not be visible from the ballots. 1a. Those elections without a sincere CW don't really have a wrong answer, so I don't worry as much about the pathologies in that case. 2. Therefore, we can divide FBC-violating strategies into two (overlapping) classes: those which work when there is not a CW among the other voters, which I will call offensive strategies, and which usually work by creating a false cycle; and those which work when there is no CW among the other voters, which I will call defensive. 3. I consider that a method with no offensive FBC violations is good enough. That's why I've used those labels: why would defensive strategies be a problem if offensive ones weren't? Having some problems understanding where you're coming from. A defensive FBC-violating strategy isn't likely going to be provoked by an offensive FBC-violating strategy. I would expect it to be provoked by the truncation of other voters. If you want to say that it's enough for methods to not be suspectible to strategies that would necessitiate defensive compromise from other voters, then I might agree, but that is almost the same thing, in practice, as saying the method should satisfy FBC. Kevin, I suspect that you're probably closer to the truth than I am on this, because you have more experience twiddling the knobs on your simulator. But your brief assertions here don't really give me enough fodder for me to understand why I'm wrong, if I am. Do you agree with me that lack of a sincere CW will be rare? Do you agree with me that some methods have strategic possibilities which are irrelevant as long as there is a sincere CW who is known as such by most voters? Do you agree that some FBC violations fall into that category? Apparently you do not agree that all FBC violations which start from a non-CW scenario fall into that category; and apparently this is because non-FBC-violating truncation strategies could cause the non-CW scenario. If I've read you correctly on this, you may well be right, but I don't follow all the logic. But even if I have and you are, the questions in the preceding paragraph are more important for the big picture. Jameson I suspect I don't understand you more than that I think you are wrong. My best guess as to what you are saying involves trying to interpret the thought behind your rhetorical question (why would defensive strategies be a problem if offensive ones weren't) which seems to me to assume that defensive FBC-violating strategies depend on there being offensive FBC-violating strategies. Let's grant that we only care about the situation that there is a sincere CW. I'm not sure how to answer your other questions in the second paragraph. Maybe I'll understand their importance after another exchange. I would like to understand what you are referring to when you talk about an offensive FBC-violating strategy. You say this strategy usually creates a false cycle. Does this strategy also directly betray one's favorite? Or what do you mean by FBC-violating here? If it does betray the favorite, then you seem to be describing a strategy where some voters bury their favorite in order to create a false cycle (probably by creating a pairwise defeat over that favorite, or something comparable in effect) that achieves something preferable. But if this was creating a cycle then I have to wonder who was the preexisting winner? Surely it would have been the favorite? I hope you see where I am coming from. As far as I can understand, the offensive FBC-violating strategy is a strange idea, so I can hardly see it as the obvious thing to blame for provoking defensive FBC-violating strategies. My impression of what provokes defensive FBC-violating strategies is not based on sims. It's just based on asking the question, if there is a sincere CW but not a voted one, what kind of inaccuracies might exist on the cast votes? It could be many things besides offensive compromise. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : An ABE solution
Hi Chris, De : Chris Benham cbenha...@yahoo.com.au À : fsimm...@pcc.edu fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 23 Novembre 2011 7h08 Objet : [EM] An ABE solution It is certainly a clear proof of the incompatibilty of the Condorcet criterion and Kevin's later suggested variation of the FBC, Sincere Favorite: Suppose a subset of the ballots, all identical, rank every candidate in S (where S contains at least two candidates) equal to each other, and above every other candidate. Then, arbitrarily lowering some candidate X from S on these ballots must not increase the probability that the winner comes from S. A simpler way to word this would be: You should never be able to help your favorites by lowering one of them. http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/#critfbc I can't see any real difference between this and regular FBC, which probably partly explains why it didn't catch on. Sincere Favorite is supposed to be a votes-only translation of FBC. It should clarify what I am doing when I check whether a method satisfies FBC. It's possible that a method can satisfy FBC without satisfying Sincere Favorite, but it would be hard to design a method to do so, I think. Besides the issue you mention, there are also the facts that I rarely use the sincere favorite name myself and that the SF acronym would be confusing given the Strategy-Free criterion with the same initials. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : An ABE solution
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Chris Benham cbenha...@yahoo.com.au Cc : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com; fsimm...@pcc.edu fsimm...@pcc.edu; em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 23 Novembre 2011 4h18 Objet : Re: [EM] An ABE solution My perspective is the following: 1. Most real-world elections will have a sincere CW, although that might not be visible from the ballots. 1a. Those elections without a sincere CW don't really have a wrong answer, so I don't worry as much about the pathologies in that case. 2. Therefore, we can divide FBC-violating strategies into two (overlapping) classes: those which work when there is not a CW among the other voters, which I will call offensive strategies, and which usually work by creating a false cycle; and those which work when there is no CW among the other voters, which I will call defensive. 3. I consider that a method with no offensive FBC violations is good enough. That's why I've used those labels: why would defensive strategies be a problem if offensive ones weren't? Having some problems understanding where you're coming from. A defensive FBC-violating strategy isn't likely going to be provoked by an offensive FBC-violating strategy. I would expect it to be provoked by the truncation of other voters. If you want to say that it's enough for methods to not be suspectible to strategies that would necessitiate defensive compromise from other voters, then I might agree, but that is almost the same thing, in practice, as saying the method should satisfy FBC. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Re : Votes-only criteria vs preference criteria. IRV squeeze-effect. Divulge IRV election specifics?
Jameson/Mike, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 17 Novembre 2011 12h48 Objet : Re: [EM] Re : Votes-only criteria vs preference criteria. IRV squeeze-effect. Divulge IRV election specifics? 2011/11/17 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr ..In practice [preference-mentioning criteria] usually have to be translated into votes-only criteria in order to figure out how to use or test them. Yes, this is another (better?) way of putting what I said about Criteria which apply to ballots and mention preferences. Jameson Well, in my mind a votes-only criterion is independent. Usually the two versions aren't quite equivalent or can't be easily proven to be equivalent. I think part of the disagreement on this issue is based on who the audience is. On this list we don't generally have problems with most people using an implied Woodall-ish conception of methods and criteria. If someone wanted to argue that FPP actually does satisfy Condorcet we would just tell them they're doing it wrong and shrug them off, no big deal. Mike seems to be paranoid about people understanding criteria contrary to their original intention. The inconvenient thing about e.g. SDSC is mostly the should have a way of voting wording. In practice this way of voting is almost always truncation (which definitely is possible to define within Mike's scheme, as he doesn't consider truncation of two candidates to be voting them equal). Mike's wording does allow a method to satisfy the criterion alternatively using an explicit approval cutoff or something. So I recognize that he is getting something additional, that is not useless, from his choice of wording. I wonder if SDSC can really be seamlessly applied to any ballot format though. Mike seems to assume it is unambiguous what it means to vote a candidate above or equal to or below another candidate. If he has a definition for these I imagine it's based on some very specific test that wouldn't necessarily reflect general method behavior. For example, what if under some method the majority preferring A to B can make B lose by ranking B top? One could say (see definition below) that this is no good, because B is being ranked over A. But how do we know whether that's over? Based on this one very counterintuitive result, it doesn't look like over. What if voters can vote cycles? What if they put candidates in color-coded buckets and the outcome is determined by even vs. odd vote counts? I think at some point, any criterion scheme has to say use your head, you know what I'm trying to say, and where it says that is mostly a matter of taste. For reference, this is SDSC: If a majority of all the voters prefer A to B, then they should have a way of voting that will ensure that B won't win, without any member of that majority voting a less-liked candidate equal to or over a more-liked candidate. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : Votes-only criteria vs preference criteria. IRV squeeze-effect. Divulge IRV election specifics?
Hi Mike, De : MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com À : election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 16 Novembre 2011 11h32 Objet : [EM] Votes-only criteria vs preference criteria. IRV squeeze-effect. Divulge IRV election specifics? I don't object to such criteria. I just prefer not to use them. In practice they usually have to be translated into votes-only criteria in order to figure out how to use or test them. You say it is inelegant to specify assumptions about methods to which criteria apply. But your alternative is criteria that have to discuss not just sincere preferences but also the degree to which voting may be insincere. And you need to define these concepts in a universal way, irrespective of ballot format. I don't feel this is more elegant. Possibly better-defined (if done well), but not more elegant. Kevin Votes-only criteria vs preference criteria: Kevin, you objected to my preference-mentioning criteria on the grounds that no one knows what the voters' true preferences really are. But so what? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : [Off Topic] Banning those Me-Tooing like brain-dead AOLers [/Off Topic]
De : ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 9 Novembre 2011 22h10 Objet : [EM] [Off Topic] Banning those Me-Tooing like brain-dead AOLers [/Off Topic] ¡Hello! ¿How fare you? Lately, some unnamed members have been metooing like brain-dead AOLers. Some others have complained about this. Although I have not complained, it irks me. I have a simple solution: If someone metoos like a brain-dead AOLers, direct the pffender to read this primer about posting protocol: http://web.archive.org/web/20080113211450/http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html If the offenders continues to metoo like a brain-dead AOLer, an admin should banner the offenders immediately. If an offender tries to rejoin under a different name, I see no alternative other than summoning “Weird Al” Yankovic for permanently dealing with the trouble maker: “¡And postin’, ‘¡Me Too!’, like some brain-dead AOL-er!” “¡I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller!” “¡You’re just about as useless as JPEGs to Hellen Keller!” This is a pretty stupid post. Worse than the one where you suggested some readers should kill themselves. I couldn't even tell what this one was talking about until I followed the link. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : Re : Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 9 Novembre 2011 2h06 Objet : Re: [EM] Re : Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model 2011/11/8 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Speaking of quoting messages, I have to admit I don't understand how it is even supposed to be done under Yahoo. I can indent the message, and I used to be able to correctly quote plain text messages. But usually when I try to quote an html message I just end up destroying the formatting somehow. Anyway, to Jameson: De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : kathy.d...@gmail.com Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 6 Novembre 2011 20h23 Objet : Re: [EM] Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model 3. It is therefore reasonable to hope for a voting system that tends to elect centrists, but slightly less so than a Condorcet system. Why would utility be considered more important than centrist? Or would it? Utility is the goal, almost tautologically. I mean yeah, there's plenty of ways you could criticize the model, or even the idea that the votes have anything at all to do with the utility that the voters will gain from a given candidate winning; but until someone comes up with something better, for democracy at least, utility is the best paradigm we have. I don't think I agree. Utilities are everpresent in simulations because they are a convenient way to represent the priorities of the voters. They can easily be generated from distances in space. But, it's not obvious that these priorities need to be aggregable (we could use a system where the addition of different voters' priorities isn't even a straightforward task) and it's not obvious that maximizing the aggregation should even be a goal. You don't need to do it. I know there are proofs for a single agent that something equivalent to utility is the only way to have consistent priorities and avoid being money pumped. (You have A? OK, will you trade that and $1 for B? Now will you trade that and $1 for C? OK, now will you trade that and $1 for A? Heh heh heh, you just gave me $3 for nothing, fool.) I suspect you could prove something similar for aggregate agents (societies). Basically, utilities are the only way to avoid the Condorcet paradox. I understand what you're saying about being money pumped, though I don't see how a similar thing would work for societies. Utility does give you a result when Condorcet doesn't, but I'm not sure this is a huge problem unless your scenario is mostly generating scenarios where Condorcet or say Schwartz isn't making any distinctions. I do not think that this means that utilities are somehow real. I do think that it is a pretty good argument for using a utility-based model. I've said before that I prefer to look at sincere Condorcet efficiency and strategic incentives. While I'm advocating using utilities, I must say that we could do a lot worse than your plan. In particular, as I've said elsewhere, using utilities is no substitute for looking at strategic incentives. So you don't get one clean number from me, sorry. But I think it may be less artificial than aggregated utility. Furthermore I doubt that aggregate utility is likely to get you anywhere unique. Electorates in practice try to get sincere CWs elected. If someone ever pointed to a simulation and a scenario and a rule and said, here is a concrete method by which we can favor higher utility candidates over sincere Condorcet efficiency my intuition would be that their tools are underestimating the voters. When the sincere CW loses, it represents an error from the standpoint of what the electorate was trying to do. I think it would take some genius work to capitalize consistently on such errors, and gain more than is lost. I suspect that Majority Judgment does exactly that. My evidence? B+L's study that shows that MJ is the only system which does not elect almost solely centrists nor almost solely extremists, in a model based on 2007 France. That is to say, where Condorcet elected centrists, MJ sometimes elected extremists. And in my toy model, that is sometimes the right answer. Well, I believe you that you have read this study and that's what it said. That result of the study doesn't make a lot of sense to me though. As I suggested, I would guess that if I read what their model was, I would feel that it's underestimating the voters' motivation or ability to strategize. All that said, I would be interested to hear if someone has made an argument that majority rule, as a sensible principle, depends on some other more fundamental principle. OK, here goes: utility is happiness and is the true goal. Majority rule is just the most strategy-proof principle which tends to agree with maximum utility. That wasn't too hard. Well, for this to work your
[EM] Re : (no subject)
Hi Mike,
{quote}
Kevin--
You wrote:
ER-IRV(whole) doesn't satisfy FBC. You may need to demote your favorite in order
to get a preferable elimination order.
[endquote]
How? Say that there's a particular candidate whom you need to have win.
You can give him a vote by downrating your favorite in order to get hir
eliminated soon,
so that your ballot will give a vote to the compromise. But you could also just
give the
compromise an immediate vote, by ranking hir in 1st place. Why would you need
to do otherwise
in order to help hir win?
{end quote}
Because your compromise's ability to win may depend on which candidates were
eliminated and when. By downranking your favorite you can affect that.
{quote}
What do you mean when you say even when the scenario isn't S? If S
represents a scenario
meeting the stipulations of the criterion's premise, then the criterion only
makes a requirement
when those stipulations are met. It says nothing about any other scenario.
That's true of all
criteria, not just mine.
No criterion, including mine, says anything about what should happen when the
scenario described
by its premise-stipulagions doesn't happen.
{end quote}
This is a difference of theory and practice. In theory a criterion only
addresses the sincere
scenarios in mentions. In practice it will have broader implications. That's
all it is.
{quote}
You _weren't_ right Bucklin(= whole simultaneous)
not meeting FBC, because you were thinking that FBC requires that no one need
to
vote someone equal to their favorite. Actually, FBC requires only that
no one need to vote someone _over_ their favorite.
{end quote}
I erroneously claimed ERBucklin(whole) failed monotonocity, because I
misunderstood how
the method worked. I don't remember ever saying ERBW failed FBC.
{quote}
Yes, SFC protects sincere CWs. Do SFC complying methods protect other
candidates who don't
have a majority defeat (and, in that way look like sincere CWs)? Sure. What's
the problem
with that?
{end quote}
There's no problem with that. It's just an observation that a criterion like
SFC may have
implications beyond the scenarios it purports to deal with.
Kevin
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re : Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model
Speaking of quoting messages, I have to admit I don't understand how it is even supposed to be done under Yahoo. I can indent the message, and I used to be able to correctly quote plain text messages. But usually when I try to quote an html message I just end up destroying the formatting somehow. Anyway, to Jameson: De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : kathy.d...@gmail.com Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Dimanche 6 Novembre 2011 20h23 Objet : Re: [EM] Toy election model: 2D IQ (ideology/quality) model 3. It is therefore reasonable to hope for a voting system that tends to elect centrists, but slightly less so than a Condorcet system. Why would utility be considered more important than centrist? Or would it? Utility is the goal, almost tautologically. I mean yeah, there's plenty of ways you could criticize the model, or even the idea that the votes have anything at all to do with the utility that the voters will gain from a given candidate winning; but until someone comes up with something better, for democracy at least, utility is the best paradigm we have. I don't think I agree. Utilities are everpresent in simulations because they are a convenient way to represent the priorities of the voters. They can easily be generated from distances in space. But, it's not obvious that these priorities need to be aggregable (we could use a system where the addition of different voters' priorities isn't even a straightforward task) and it's not obvious that maximizing the aggregation should even be a goal. You don't need to do it. I've said before that I prefer to look at sincere Condorcet efficiency and strategic incentives. So you don't get one clean number from me, sorry. But I think it may be less artificial than aggregated utility. Furthermore I doubt that aggregate utility is likely to get you anywhere unique. Electorates in practice try to get sincere CWs elected. If someone ever pointed to a simulation and a scenario and a rule and said, here is a concrete method by which we can favor higher utility candidates over sincere Condorcet efficiency my intuition would be that their tools are underestimating the voters. When the sincere CW loses, it represents an error from the standpoint of what the electorate was trying to do. I think it would take some genius work to capitalize consistently on such errors, and gain more than is lost. All that said, I would be interested to hear if someone has made an argument that majority rule, as a sensible principle, depends on some other more fundamental principle. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Strategy and Bayesian Regret
Hi Jameson, I am a little short on time, to read this as carefully as I would like, but if you have a moment to answer in the meantime: --- En date de : Ven 28.10.11, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com a écrit : voting is best. But how do you deal with strategy? Figuring out what strategies are sensible is the relatively easy part; whether it's first-order rational strategies (as James Green-Armytage has worked out) or n-order strategies under uncertainty (as Kevin Venzke does) 3. Try to use some rational or cognitive model of voters to figure out how much strategy real people will use under each method. This is hard work and involves a lot of assumptions, but it's probably the best we can do today. As you might have guessed, I'm arguing here for method 3. Kevin Venzke has done work in this direction, but his assumptions --- that voters will look for first-order strategies in an environment of highly volatile polling data --- while very useful for making a computable model, are still obviously unrealistic. [end quotes] I am very curious if you could elaborate on my assumption that voters will look for first-order strategies in an environment of highly volatile polling data. I'm not totally sure what you mean by first-order vs. n-order strategies, and whether your criticism of unrealism is based on voters will look for... part or on the highly volatile polling data part. I wonder if this volatility is a matter of degree or a general question of approach. I want to note in case it's not clear that when I talk about what strategies voters are using, that is just a reporting mechanism that has awareness of the relationship between voters' sincere preferences and how they actually voted. The voters have no idea what they are doing in strategic or sincere terms. Thanks. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] New Criterion: The Co-operation/Defection Criterion
Hi Mike,
--- En date de : Lun 24.10.11, MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com a écrit :
You wrote:
Basically A will have a majority over B
endquote
Not necessarily. A will certainly have a pairwise win over
B. When the non {A,B}
candidates lose, and MMPO is applied to its A,B tie, that
pairwise win will mean
that B has a greater pairwise opposition than A does.
Thanks for the correction.
So, when I reduce this to pairwise terms (which I do for convenience)
I see this criterion in effect:
If some candidate A has simple pairwise wins over every candidate in
a set of candidates B and has no majority pairwise losses to any
candidate in a set of candidates C, and every candidate in the set
C has a majority pairwise loss to every candidate in set B, then
candidate A must win.
If it wasn't already clear, this definitely won't be compatible with
the Plurality criterion. I know that won't bother you though.
As far as methods that will satisfy it, we at least have some clumsy
ones. Any Condorcet method used to complete majority-defeat-
disqualification or CDTT (i.e. Schwartz set that replaces sub-majority
wins with ties) will do the trick. These methods would also satisfy
SDSC fully.
I am not sure that MMPO as you propose it actually does the trick.
It seems to depend on the A-B tied score which I'm not sure is
guaranteed. Particularly if C is multiple candidates.
Kevin
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Let MMPO solve its ties. It elects A in the example. The simplest is the best
Hi Mike, --- En date de : Sam 22.10.11, MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com a écrit : De: MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com Objet: [EM] Let MMPO solve its ties. It elects A in the example. The simplest is the best À: election-meth...@electorama.com Date: Samedi 22 octobre 2011, 15h42 Kevin-- You wrote: What do you make of this example under MMPO: 49 A 24 B 27 CB There is no CW. Standard MMPO returns a tie between B and C. If you remove A, C is both the CW and MMPO winner. Do you think this can be accepted? [end quote] Yes. Because, as I define it, MMPO chooses C. I define MMPO as solving its own ties. I suggest that MMPO's ties be solved by MMPO. Yes, but what will you say when someone asks how it can possibly be that C is a better winner than A? A has more first preferences, and neither has any lower preferences. The only difference is that C voters listed a second preference. Is it better to elect a weak candidate, over a majority-defeated one? (I call C weak because C apparently could never win the Approval version of this election.) Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Let MMPO solve its ties. It elects A in the example. The simplest is the best.
Hi Mike, What do you make of this example under MMPO: 49 A 24 B 27 CB There is no CW. Standard MMPO returns a tie between B and C. If you remove A, C is both the CW and MMPO winner. Do you think this can be accepted? Thanks. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods
Hi Mike, --- En date de : Dim 16.10.11, MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com a écrit : I had several FBC-complying methods that I liked very much, with such names as MMC, MAMPO, MDDB, SR...etc. I haven't been able to find what MDDB and SR were. Or MAMPO either. Can anyone tell me, or tell me where I can look it up? I proposed MDDA and MAMPO as methods that satisfy FBC, SDSC, and SFC. MDDB was a variant you made, but I don't remember how it was defined. With MDDA you will eliminate all candidates with a majority pairwise loss, unless that would eliminate everyone. Of remaining candidates, elect the approval winner. With MAMPO you elect the approval winner unless more than one candidate has majority approval. In that situation, among those candidates elect the one with the best MMPO score. But no eliminations are done: Pairwise opposition from sub-majority- approved candidates may be decisive. MDDA can violate Plurality. That means it is possible for X to be elected when X's total preference count is less than some other candidate Y's first preference count. I hope that's helpful... Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Single-winner method with strong winners (was: Poll for favorite single winner voting system with OpaVote)
Hi Juho, Sorry in advance if I didn't read your message carefully enough, but I think I probably did: --- En date de : Dim 16.10.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : Use a Condorcet method to elect the winner among the most approved candidate pair and those who are at least as approved as the less approved of those two. - a pair of candidates is approved by a voter if she approves at least one of those candidates This method is summable. One should sum up information about pairwise comparisons, pair approvals and individual approvals. 20: A1 A2 15: A2 A1 33: B C 32: C B In this example we have three major parties, A, B and C. Or alternatively we have four parties. In that case parties A1 and A2 are ideologically close to each others. This method elects B since pair A1, B (or A2, B) is the most approved pair (approved by 68 voters), A2 is more approved than B, and B beats both A1 and A2 in pairwise comparison. Use of approvals typically requires a (sincere) strategy. In this method the voters should try to impact on which two candidates will be at least as approved as the most approved pair of candidates. That means that it would make sense to approve at least one candidate with reasonable chances to be among the most approved candidates (and not to approve too many of the candidates). Does this method work well enough? Are this kind of methods useful methods in general? I think that your method is similar to my single contest method. I believe you determine the critical pair of candidates in exactly the same way. However, while my method just has an instant runoff between those two candidates, you are possibly letting in some other candidates. I don't think there is a big problem on paper... It's quite likely that I tested in my sim some methods very similar to your proposal, and didn't report on them just because I found them to be less than the best. What I found to be of interest, of course, is that very little strategy remained on the ranking side of the method, since its main purpose was to resolve a two-way race. Your method will compromise on that a bit... Do you have majority favorite covered...? Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods
Hi, --- En date de : Dim 16.10.11, matt welland m...@kiatoa.com a écrit : It has been shown, here, and in journal articles, that Approval will soon home in on the CW. After a few elecions. But a few elections can be a decade or more. We'd like better results before that, and so Does this prediction of a few elections account for polls typically done over and over prior to the election also being done with approval? My hunch is that Approval would have an immediate disruptive (in a good way) impact if the accompanying polls were also approval. I completely agree with that. Swap a few elections with a few polling iterations and you should be where you wanted. Approval's weakness is that it has to decide where the main contest is prior to the vote. If there are few good options (i.e. any pair of frontrunners leaves a large percentage of voters approving neither) or too many good options (i.e. several likely candidates for sincere CW) a rank method, with its higher resolution, may be able to fish out a better result. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Comments on the declaration and on a few voting systems
Hi Mike, Nice to see you back. --- En date de : Ven 14.10.11, MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com a écrit : Venzke's MMPO example A B = C 1 A = C B 1 B = C A B A = C . and C wins. That seems quite counterintuitive. . . Yes. C is the Condorcet loser. But is Kevin sure that C wins in that example? MMPO isn't usually defined as a Condorcet method, though it is very nearly one. From the criteria standpoint, MMPO was attractive because it satisfied weak FBC as well as Later-no-harm. It also satisfies SFC, and in the three-candidate case, it won't fail SDSC. I think there are two main bad things about the basic method: 1. The Plurality criterion failure (which is on display above) 2. Although it satisfies LNHarm, the defensive truncation strategy is still viable and recommended (by me, anyway). Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Comments on the declaration 2
Juho, Truthfully my damning MMPO scenario is meant to show a Plurality failure, so the last-preference rankings that Kristofer lists as equal are meant to be truncated. In other words, candidate C receives acknowledgement from TWO voters. The appalling thing is not meant to be that the winner primarily has lower preferences. We would be able to choose from very few methods if that were the problem. Kevin --- En date de : Ven 14.10.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : De: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk Objet: Re: [EM] Comments on the declaration and on a few voting systems À: Election Methods election-meth...@electorama.com Date: Vendredi 14 octobre 2011, 15h11 If that one example set of votes is bad enough for MMPO, then how about this example for PC(wv)? 49 A 48 B C 03 C Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3845] condorcet range voting -- which one yields more condorcet winners?
Hi Jameson, --- En date de : Mer 12.10.11, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com a écrit : Maybe you should do sims first, emit flames second. That's a fair criticism, and one I continue to violate in this message. I wonder if Kevin Venzke has any sims which speak to this question. Thanks for remembering me. The question is sincere Condorcet efficiency between Range and something like MCA? I have three scenarios on-hand (two 1D, one spectrumless, all three-candidate) and MCA is a bit better than (four-slot) Range in all three. But it is rare that either method has the efficiency of a Condorcet method. My sims use 100% strategic voters and polling by the way. A few comparisons. Spectrumless (blocs have random preferences): IRV 92.2% (of trials with a CW) WV 91.7% MCA 90.6% Range 90.3% Approval 88.4% (note that Range doesn't quite become Approval due to the voters being divided into a fairly small number of strategizing blocs) FPP 84.8% 1D with random candidate positions: WV 99.1% IRV 98.4% MCA 97.9% Range 97.6% Approval 96.5% FPP 84.0% 1D with random candidate positions but distance from center halved (center-heavy): WV 97.8% IRV 97.3% MCA 96.9% Range 95.7% Approval 93.2% FPP 76.6% Note that the voters have the ability to get what they want a high percentage of the time no matter the method. But they may have to compromise or use other strategies in order to do it. For instance... Here are the percentage of elections in which at least a quarter of the voters ended up compromising (favorite betrayal). The three figures follow the order of the scenarios above. WV 0.4%, .02%, 0% of elections IRV 9.3%, 4.6%, 5.7% MCA 0%, 0%, 0% Range 0%, 0%, 0% Approval 0%, 0%, 0% FPP 17.4%, 17.3%, 18.7% I could have produced other figures as well, such as the rather alarming burial rate under WV. But the point is just that the Condorcet efficiency with strategic voters, this single figure, doesn't tell a complete story. Another point is that I'm not using one cookie-cutter strategy for all methods here. The voters' strategy is deduced by AI, not by me. I do realize I need to get around to making more of my work available. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] condorcet range voting -- which one yields more condorcet winners?
Hi, --- En date de : Mar 11.10.11, Warren Smith warren@gmail.com a écrit : I've done sim experiments indicating that range voting finds honest-voter Condorcet winners more often than Condorcet methods do, if the voters are strategic. Though you have to be careful what you mean by strategic. My own recent sims use an apples-to-apples method to determine strategic voting under each method (with all voters being strategic). I don't find Range/Approval/MCA/whatever to be relatively strong at sincere Condorcet efficiency most of the time. It's not that I don't find strategic voting to varying degrees under rank methods. (Although I see extremely few disaster scenarios, as voters, observing polls, seem to have no qualms about compromising to avert them.) It is probably due to this difference: In a left/right/center scenario it is completely possible that on election day, any one of those three candidates could be the sincere Condorcet Winner and be correctly elected under Condorcet or some other methods. But Approval, at least experimentally, can't handle three frontrunners on a spectrum. Either left or right is likely to lose their exclusive supporters, so that only two of the three candidates can actually win on election day. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #3834] condorcet range voting -- JQ
Hi Jameson, --- En date de : Mar 11.10.11, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com a écrit : Note that the more Condorcet-like than Condorcet is only true for Range if voters are strategic and somewhat knowledgeable about the polls. I'm curious whether you believe the more Condorcet-like than Condorcet claim based on Warren's IEVS work, or for some other reason. Because in IEVS, the polls, if we call them polls, provide arbitrary data. Nobody is actually polled. What do you say happens if Range voters are strategic but *not* knowledgeable? Does that mean they place their approval cutoffs potentially arbitrarily? If so, I think that would still beat all the rank methods with strategic but not- knowledgeable voters. In that situation every ballot's first preference could be nearly arbitrary, because in IEVS strategic rank voters *always* use compromise. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Viewable Interim results with permitted vote changing
Hi Toby, --- En date de : Dim 25.9.11, Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : De: Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk Objet: [EM] Viewable Interim results with permitted vote changing À: electorama list election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Dimanche 25 septembre 2011, 12h13 This may well have been discussed before, and it wouldn't really be practical for parliamentary elections, but could be used in other situations. You allow a certain period for voting to take place (say a week), and when you cast your vote (logging into a computer with a password), it tells you the current result. Votes can be changed as many times as you want until the voting deadline. This would possibly be a little bit like SODA except that voters aren't putting delegation in the hands of the candidates, but do it all themselves. I think it would potentially remove problems where weak winners get in - candidates that people rank/rate highly thinking that they will never get in, perhaps to put a gap between theit favourite and their perceived nearest rival. As for what sort of ballot you'd use with this, I would suggest something simple. First Past the Post probably wouldn't be too horrific with this sort of voting, but I would suggest probably Approval. This is basically what pre-election polling is supposed to do. With FPP you will have the same problem that once you have two frontrunners, the winner will almost certainly be one of those two, with little likelihood of the frontrunners changing. You might prevent some spoiled outcomes though. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
Hi, It seems to me all Warren is saying is that a more practical definition of meaning would be a practical one. Arrow doesn't care about whether the definition is practical, and as you'd then expect it doesn't happen to be all that practical. The Arrow/Tideman view doesn't even care what the election method is. With the minimal assumption of top = good you can aggregate the data on claimed relative preferences. When you have data that can't be interpreted even across two ballots (beyond they chose to vote like this), and it is proposed to use that data to pick the winner, that feels unpleasant. I'd be the first to say that every election method is basically just a game. But if it comes in a box with plastic pieces and a spinner, the electorate may not be willing to try it. The will of the people, and democratic legitimacy, is serious business. Everybody's right, basically. I'd note though that I've never seen a simulation or estimation of utility that attempted to incorporate any factor other than how happy people were with the winner. So even if we agree with the primacy of BR as an EM criterion, we don't really know what this advises us to do. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue
Hi Jameson, Just passing through at the moment. I read this though and wanted to comment. --- En date de : Ven 5.8.11, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com a écrit : In the end, I definitely sympathize with Warren that BR is the best measure of results ... I am finding myself looking at utility less because it doesn't appear to me that any methods are very good at maximizing it, or differ all that much in this respect. In that case perhaps one would do better to focus on something that methods do differ at, which seems to have a clear value, instead of fighting for the last tiny scrap of utility in the odd belief that simulated utility numbers will take anything else of worth into account! Even if that's theoretically true, we're nowhere near to possessing such numbers. I haven't seen BR results for MJ, but based on its similarity to Range and MCA, I'd suspect MJ clearly beats Condorcet by this measure. If BR means shortfall from the best outcome that was possible then I want to note, that in 1D simulations, I find all of the Approval-ish methods to be rather poor. But again, the difference is so small, it may not matter. It is hard to gauge what one unit of regret means. In the sims I'm looking at at the moment, the top method (of over 50) had 25% less regret than Approval, which was the 3rd worst method. How can I tell if 25% is a lot, and something to be concerned about? The two methods' rates of electing the utility maximizer were 89% to 87%. Now it doesn't seem like that much of a difference, does it...? Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Correction on BPW cyclebreaker (Stensholt's method)
Hi, The BPW (= Beats Plurality Winner) method is a cyclebreaker proposed by Eivind Stensholt that he found to be resistant to burial. When there is a cycle among three candidates, you elect the one who defeats the first preference winner. (It's unknown how to define the method for more than three.) I coded it (incorrectly) and probably commented that I wasn't impressed. However, having fixed the error, I feel the need to say I was wrong and that it is quite good at what it does. I tried it in three scenarios (aspectral, 1D, and center-heavy-nomination 1D) and in all three it either had the lowest burial rate for a Condorcet method, or (in one case) was beaten slightly by Condorcet//King of the Hill. The compromise and truncation incentives are pretty mediocre (i.e. highish) though. There's also a little pushover incentive. (I didn't allow compression due to the nature of the method.) I'm planning to compile some stats from my sim to put in an Excel file that people can download and look through on their own... That way I won't have to type everything up and people can sort as they wish and such. There is probably also a need to distribute method source code so that if I have implemented a method incorrectly (as in this case) it may be spotted someday... Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Single Contest Method
Hi Forest, --- En date de : Mer 27.7.11, fsimm...@pcc.edu fsimm...@pcc.edu a écrit : Andy's chiastic method is a way of utilizing range ballots that has a much more mild incentive than Range itself to inflate ratings. He locates the method in a class of methods each of which is based on a different increasing function f from the interval [0,1 ] into the same interval: Elect the candidate with the highest fraction q such that at least the fraction f(q) of the ballots rate the candidate at fraction q of the maxRange value (assuming that minRange is zero). Hmmm. So, noting that I cannot test more than 4 slots due to the design of the simulation, I want to take each candidate and ask: Did 100% of the voters rate him 3/3? Or else did 67+% of the voters rate him 2/3 or higher? Or else did 33+% of the voters rate him 1/3 or higher? And then the last possible question is trivial. That I believe is if f(q)=q. So what I want is this: f(q)=q/2, and f(q)=(q+1)/2, So the first one asks: 50% rated 3? 33.3% rated a 2+? 16.7% rated a 1+? It is curious to me that the 50% figure should decrease. I'm not really sure how to interpret the second one. I was interpreting the range of q to be 0-100%. I guess I will interpret (q+1) for a four-slot ballot to mean 133.3%. So then I get: 66.7% rated 3? 50% rated 2? 33.3% rated 1+? I must not have this correct, because isn't the first test strictly harder than the second? What is an example where you win on the first method but not the second? Thanks. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Single Contest Method, never mind
Er... --- En date de : Mer 27.7.11, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr a écrit : So the first one asks: 50% rated 3? 33.3% rated a 2+? 16.7% rated a 1+? four-slot ballot to mean 133.3%. So then I get: 66.7% rated 3? 50% rated 2? 33.3% rated 1+? I must not have this correct, because isn't the first test strictly harder than the second? What is an example where you win on the first method but not the second? What I was thinking when I asked this was that if you got 33.3%+ 2+ ratings, you also necessarily got 33.3% 1+ ratings. So, if I understand things, the way to not win on the second method is if somebody else has fewer 2+ ratings than you but more 1+ ratings than you. So the combined method is something like identifying the ambiguity between two Bucklin-like levels and having a pairwise contest to resolve it. Honestly I don't how well that is going to work... It seems to me it's the better bet to try to avoid having the pairwise contest. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Automated Approval methods (was Single Contest)
Hi Rob, --- En date de : Lun 25.7.11, Rob LeGrand honky1...@yahoo.com a écrit : Yes, but if it were strategy-free somehow, I think it would be worth it. Real life isn't monotone. I don't imagine that all the prettier Yee diagrams would really look like that if voters were using information and strategy! I may be missing something, but I don't see how you can have a nonmonotonic method that is strategy-free. Well, there aren't technically any (serious) strategy-free methods. I'm referring more to a method not having obvious strategic incentives, or at least not having a lot of a single type of strategic incentive, so that everybody knows that in method X you should use Y strategy all the time etc. For any example of nonmonotonicity, you should be able to find a single voter that triggers it--say, if that focal voter votes ABXC, then X wins, but if they vote AXBC, then X loses. Whoever wins when X loses, manipulability pops up: Yes, I don't disagree with that. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] PR for USA or UK
Hi Toby, --- En date de : Lun 25.7.11, Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : But to summarise a possibility - everyone submits their range ballots. Then the computer calculates what would be the winning set of candidates under these votes. Then each ballot is looked at again by the computer and it works out the optimum vote for each voter on the basis of what everyone else has done. These new votes are then submitted. Obviously everyone's changes at once so the goalposts move. But they could be recalculated a few times, and it might approach some form of equilibrium. But I'm not entirely sure at the moment how you would decide the optimum vote for someone based on the current situation. I'll think about it though. Actually we are discussing this sort of thing in the automated approval posts. The problem (if it is a problem) is that if this method does a good job, you will (in the single-winner case) get a Condorcet method, or very close. Because, even if you only like a candidate 3/10, if that is the best candidate you can hope for, the method will still decide that you should get behind that candidate and help him win. Really, I think Approval and Range work this way anyway, just without a computer. What I like about the range ballot here is that it sets out in advance each voter's preference for whole sets of candidates. It would work on the basis that how a voter rates a set of candidates is realted to their total score given to them. So if there are two to be elected then two candidates they give 5 out of 10 to is the same as a 10 and a 0. I would set that out as how the scores are essentially defined. With ranks I don't know if 1st and 4th is better or worse than 2nd and 3rd. Yes, that's nice. There are Condorcet methods that use this data to resolve cycles and deter certain strategies. But I don't know of a method that uses this data, in an effective way, to elect candidates who are somehow different in quality from Condorcet winners. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Automated Approval methods (was Single Contest)
Hi Kristofer, --- En date de : Dim 24.7.11, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com a écrit : I also tried implementing the most obvious (I suppose) method: Take the ratings and conduct simulated approval polling, either for some determined or semi-random number of iterations, or until someone wins twice in a row. This doesn't test as well as I thought it would though. What Approval strategy do you use? I always use better than expectation when it is allowed to assume the voters know the method is approval. (Which is just to say that the main sim, when during pure Approval, can't use better than expectation.) I put a tiny amount of average utility of all candidates into the expectation just to try to avoid the situation where your favorite won all the polls so therefore you don't approve him. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] PR for USA or UK
Hi Toby, --- En date de : Dim 24.7.11, Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : Strategy-resistant systems do have certain advantages as you say, but in the single-winner case it would end up reducing range to a Condorcet method, which arguably isn't as good, and ends up pushing out a better-liked candidate for one that strictly more people prefer. And this is what I like about range - it's not just about which candidates you prefer to which other ones, but by how much. I think the Range method itself is pretty incapable of this, but you could do it either with rated ballots or with a rank ballot that has truncation incentive. And as long as strategy isn't performed better by voters of some candidates than others, the fact that there would still be some honest voters would mean that the advantages of range would still remain to an extent, meaning that overall better-liked candidates stand a better chance, and it therefore reflects better the overall preferences of the electorate! That paragraph makes sense if you're comparing Range to Approval, but not Range to anything else. If large numbers of voters use strategy in Range (and I'm pretty sure they would be encouraged to; personally I wouldn't need any encouraging) this will destroy so much information that the only way Range will win out is if the rank methods you compare it to contain even more destructive incentives than Range has. [begin quote] On my website I give an example where party A has 68% of the support and party B 32%. There are two seats and so each party fields two Of course party A voters could coordinate themselves and split into two factions of 34% to take both seats, but this would be very hard for them to achieve. STV (Droop quota anyway) would transfer the votes above the quota accordingly so that party A would win both seats, and give what I would regard as the less fair result. Ok, but it's not obvious that it is less fair. You are according a privilege to the weaker party just because it is a different party. I'm not according them a privilege because they are a different party, but because I would see it as logical and fair that 75% is a reasonable cut-off. If a system made the cut-off at 80%, I'd argue that it was unfair in favour of the smaller party. [end quote] Can you explain your position without saying party? Because if you didn't see the parties, and only saw voters, it would be indefensible to give a seat to the 32%. There would be nothing special about that group. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] PR for USA or UK
Hi Toby, --- En date de : Dim 24.7.11, Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : [begin quote] Strategy-resistant systems do have certain advantages as you say, but in the single-winner case it would end up reducing range to a Condorcet method, which arguably isn't as good, and ends up pushing out a better-liked candidate for one that strictly more people prefer. And this is what I like about range - it's not just about which candidates you prefer to which other ones, but by how much. I think the Range method itself is pretty incapable of this, but you could do it either with rated ballots or with a rank ballot that has truncation incentive. Is a range ballot not a rated ballot? [end quote] Sorry, I mean, I don't believe it is hopeless to try doing what you want with a rated ballot. Range does use a rated ballot. Off the top of my head I don't have any really great method suggestions here, because it seems to me to be extremely difficult to design a method so that it maximizes utility. If the method is strategy-proof, it will tend to elect the sincere Condorcet winner. If it's not strategy-proof, you can't fully trust the information you collect. Something in-between seems to be needed, but I would bet nobody will feel very happy with whatever is invented. [begin quote] And as long as strategy isn't performed better by voters of some candidates than others, the fact that there would still be some honest voters would mean that the advantages of range would still remain to an extent, meaning that overall better-liked candidates stand a better chance, and it therefore reflects better the overall preferences of the electorate! That paragraph makes sense if you're comparing Range to Approval, but not Range to anything else. If large numbers of voters use strategy in Range (and I'm pretty sure they would be encouraged to; personally I wouldn't need any encouraging) this will destroy so much information that the only way Range will win out is if the rank methods you compare it to contain even more destructive incentives than Range has. With a single-winner election, the full strategy option is to vote approval style, but I'm not sure if this is as clear for PR. [end quote] No, I have no comment on any PR versions. I wouldn't assume any similarity. You say you wouldn't need any encouraging to vote strategically - I wouldn't either to be honest - but what is the optimal strategy? I have heard and tend to agree with approve everyone better than what you expect on average the outcome to be. If there are two frontrunners with perceived-to-be equal odds of winning, that would mean approving every candidate better than the average of the two. Experimentally there usually are two frontrunners that emerge from pre-election polling. In my own simulations, the ideal strategy is determined by the voters within the specific situation they find themselves in. So it's not easy to describe what strategy they are choosing, but it must be something close. In any case, if range does turn out to be problematic, proportional approval voting would be my next choice. I don't like ranked ballots because you don't know how much the voter actually likes each candidate or whether they like them at all. Generally I have liked rank methods where voters are not thought to be supposed to rank candidates they don't really like. This may start to turn it into Approval, but with some ranking information retained. Can you explain your position without saying party? Because if you didn't see the parties, and only saw voters, it would be indefensible to give a seat to the 32%. There would be nothing special about that group. Candidates A and B are both fairly similar and 68% of voters vote for both of these approval-style and no-one else. Candidates C and D are also similar to each other and 32% of voters vote for both of these approval style and no-one else. That's the example set out without parties. Ok. It sounds like you want to represent more types of voters. The 68% cannot have both seats because they're the same type. If they were different types then it would be OK. Kevin Venzke 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,
Hi, --- En date de : Dim 24.7.11, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com a écrit : De: Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com Objet: Re: [EM] [COVoterChoice] RB gives an equal chance of winning to not just all parties, but all combinations of programs, À: electionscience Foundation electionscie...@googlegroups.com Cc: preferentiality preferential...@gmail.com, EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Dimanche 24 juillet 2011, 19h42 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. I have trouble finding any description in the post. I wonder if RB is intended to mean Random Ballot (RB) as the message subject would almost make sense in that case. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Automated Approval methods (was Single Contest)
Hi Forest, --- En date de : Dim 24.7.11, fsimm...@pcc.edu fsimm...@pcc.edu a écrit : This kind of approach has been experimented with for a long time by Rob LeGrand, and there doesn't seem to be any good way to make it monotone. Yes, but if it were strategy-free somehow, I think it would be worth it. Real life isn't monotone. I don't imagine that all the prettier Yee diagrams would really look like that if voters were using information and strategy! No time to say more... Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
