Re: [EM] Majority-Judgement using adjectives versus alphabetical scales versus numerical ranges.
On 07 Dec 2012 08:13:09 -0800, Jameson Quinn wrote: I tend to favor letter grades for MJ. Since the MJ (or CMJ) tiebreaker itself assigns plusses and minuses, you can simply use the letters A,B,C,D,F. That's only 5 categories; if you wanted 6, you could add an explicit A+ option, because without that the tiebreaker could never assign a + to the highest grade. Hi Jameson, Balinski and Laraki make a very clear argument about why Majority Judgment should use named grades instead of letters or numbers: they are trying to avoid implicit ranking. The only way we know how to avoid Arrow's Paradox of irrelevant choices is to use an evaluative method. Once you start comparing one candidate against another, you swerve into Arrow's territory. Also, as noted many times before (for at least 15 years), median rating methods can fail dramatically when there are too many scales. However, with a moderately compressed scale, there is still room for expression. In my mind, the key advantage of median rating is that it reveals the electorate's aggregated approval threshold as an emergent property, without forcing voters to make the choice for themselves. I understand Andy's grade inflation criticism of using the school grading system. However, I don't think it's a problem, for a couple of reasons. For one, if you're starting from a two-party system, people will have enough time to get used to a common social understanding of what the grades mean for voting, before there are enough parties for mistakes to make much of a difference. For another, a moderate amount of grade inflation is actually a good thing. I personally have never seen a president whom I'd rate above a D+ or C- on an absolute scale (or at best poor in verbal terms), and never seen even a third-party candidate whom I'd give more than a B- (fair), but I still think it would be in my interest to give out A's and B's. And as a society, it's even more in our interest that people don't fall too easily into giving exsessive F's in a chicken dilemma situation. Also, using single letters makes ballot design significantly easierhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sample_ballot_for_Majority_Judgment_(SF).png . So I support letter grades, but I certainly don't want to fight about it. Whatever option has more support, I'm with that one. If you're after simplicity, you can combine the two approaches: At the top of the ballot, BL encourage voters to give their sincere rating, on an absolute scale. Then you show how to evaluate each candidate on a scale, explicitly defining the letter grades. For example: AA = Excellent A = Very Good B = Good C = Fair (or Adequate) D = Poor (or Inadequate) F = Reject (AKA Don't Know or Don't Want) Then you can use the shortened letter grades instead of the full descriptions. Ted Jameson 2012/12/6 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com I'm in the U.S. Even here, where the standard educational scale is alphabetical, I much prefer actual adjectives for the grades: Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor, Reject MJ works best when the voters, as much as possible, have a shared understanding of the actual meaning of the grades. With grading curves and grade inflation, I feel that the A-F scale is not good enough as a common language across our culture anymore. ~ Andy On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 2:54 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com wrote: ¡Hello! ¿How fare you? Yesterday, I noted that Majority-Judgements does not work if we have too many adjectives because we have only so many adjectives and voters might confuse adjectives too close in meaning.. ¿Would an alphabetical scale be acceptable?: In the United States of America, we grade students using letters: A+ A A- B+ B B- C+ C C- D+ D D- F+ F F- I have 2 questions grading candidates on this scale. 1 question is for people not in the United States of America. The other question is for everyone: People outside the United States of America: ¿Do you Understand this Scale? For everyone: ¿Is this scale acceptable to you? Followup question: If this scale is not acceptable to you, ¿why is it not acceptable to you? With 15 grades, this scale is not very different from the numerical ranges of 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9. This raises the question: ¿Why not just use the ranges 0 to 9 or negative -9 to positive +9 instead? ¡Peace! -- “⸘Ŭalabio‽” wala...@macosx.com Skype: Walabio An IntactWiki: http://circleaks.org/ “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” —— Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan Election-Methods mailing list - see
Re: [EM] Losing Votes (ERABW)
On 16 Nov 2012 07:29:52 -0800, Chris Benham wrote: It isn't a big deal if Ranked Pairs or River are used instead of Schulze. Losing Votes means that the pairwise results are weighed purely by the number of votes on the losing side. The weakest defeats are those with the most votes on the losing side, and of course conversely the strongest victories are those with the fewest votes on the losing side. Hi Chris, Just so I understand this correctly: You're saying that the pairwise contest A:3 B:1 should be weighted more strongly than C:3,000,001 D:2,999,999? Even though only 4 people care to vote in the A vs. B contest? Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] 3 or more choices - Condorcet
Hi Chris, You discuss Winning Votes vs. Margins below. What do you think about using the Cardinal-Weighted Pairwise array in conjunction with the traditional Condorcet array? In other words, either WV or Margins is used to decide whether there is a defeat, but the CWP array is used to determine the defeat strength, in either Ranked Pairs or Schulze. To recap for those not familiar with the technique (due to James Green-Armytage in 2004), a ratings ballot is used: give a score of a_i to candidate i. Ranks are inferred: candidate i receives one Condorcet vote over candidate j if a_i a_j. Whenever that Condorcet vote is recorded into the standard A_ij array, you also tally the difference (a_i - a_j) into the corresponding CWP_ij location. Ted On 08 Nov 2012 08:55:24 -0800, Chris Benham wrote: Robert Bristow-Johnson wrote (1 Oct 2012): my spin is similar. Ranked Pairs simply says that some elections (or runoffs) speak more loudly than others. those with higher margins are more definitive in expressing the will of the electorate than elections with small margins. of course, a margin of zero is a tie and this says *nothing* regarding the will of the electorate, since it can go either way. the reason i like margins over winning votes is that the margin, in vote count, is the product of the margin as a percent (that would be a measure of the decisiveness of the electorate) times the total number of votes (which is a measure of how important the election is). so the margin in votes is the product of salience of the race times how decisive the decision is. 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? So how do you (Robert or whoever the cap fits) justify to the A voters (and any fair-minded person not infatuated with the Margins pairwise algorithm) that the new Margins winner is B?? The pairwise comparisons: BC 48-3, CA 51-49, AB 49-48. Ranked Pairs(Margins) gives the order BCA. I am happy with either A or C winning, but a win for C might look odd to people accustomed to FPP and/or IRV. *If* we insist on a Condorcet method that uses only information contained in the pairwise matrix (and so ignoring all positional or approval information) then *maybe* Losing Votes is the best way to weigh the pairwise results. (So the strongest pairwise results are those where the loser has the fewest votes and, put the other way, the weakest results are those where the loser gets the most votes). In the example Losing Votes elects A. Winning Votes elects C which I'm fine with, but I don't like Winning Votes for other reasons. Chris Benham Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- PO Box 3707 MC 0R-JF (Google Voice) 206-552-9611 Seattle, WA 98124-2207 (Fax) 425-717-3652 http://directorysearch.web.boeing.com/bps/details.asp?bemsid=1660261 --- Frango ut patefaciam -- I break so that I may reveal --- -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] MJ SFR (preliminary). Score vs Approval, based on considerations discussed.
On 11 Sep 2012 13:18:23 -0700, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Ted: You said: Majority Judgment (MJ) and Continuous Majority Judgment (CMJ) are both Median Ratings methods. No sh*t ! :-)...But wait, isn't that explicit in their definition? As is ER-Bucklin(whole). You're probably most familiar with the latter, so let me start there. I will put ER-Bucklin into the same formulation as MJ and CMJ Ok. I've heard the claim that MJ is ER-Bucklin. Maybe it's true. Here is where you go off track: I don't think this has ever been claimed, and certainly not by myself. MJ would probably be much easier to count than ER-Bucklin. The tabulation is essentially the same. I don't see that this is relevant. But what would their equivalence (if valid) There is no equivalence. mean, in practical terms? Your question is meaningless, because they are not equivalent. There aren't many people advocating ER-Bucklin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum So the equivalence, if valid, isn't a powerful argument for MJ. It isn't valid. Your statement is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies#Straw_man so you understand the terms, I assure you that it isn't hard to make terms understandable. All that's necessary is to define them clearly. Apparently I have not been clear enough. You seem to contradict yourself, saying at one point that MJ is ER-Bucklin, I believe you will find that you are contradicting yourself. I never stated that. and, at another point, that MJ will often give the same result as ER-Bucklin. Voting methods can frequently agree on the same winner. That doesn't mean the methods are identical. Instead, it should increase confidence in the strength of the result. You've supplied additional confirmation for the conclusion that MJ's (and CMJ's) tiebreaking bylaws are elaborate, complicated, and wordy. My goal, which I *thought* I had stated clearly, was to help you avoid misinterpretations by being explicit. I wasn't attempting to make a persuasive argument about the merits of Majority Judgment. As you should be well aware, being unambiguous and explicit can lead to elaborate constructions. On a playing field of good will and common understanding, it is possible to use much simpler and more persuasive language. I don't think we have come to that place yet. MJ and CMJ are so elaborately, wordily, defined that few people would be willing to listen to their definitions. I think we can conclude only that you yourself are unwilling to listen to their definitions. In many cases, MJ, CMJ and ER-Bucklin will choose the same winner. Whoa. You earlier said that MJ _is_ ER-Bucklin. See above. (Mis-)Proof by repetition. Which is it? Is MJ the same as (equivalent to) ER-Bucklin, or is it something different from ER-Bucklin that will, in many cases (but not always), choose the same answer? The latter. The former is clearly nonsensical, as you have asserted repeatedly. But, in any case, what does it matter, since few advocate Bucklin anyway? A: There is a reasonable interpretation. B: You choose to ignore it, again using argumentum ad populum. C: Even your argumentum ad populum is incorrect. The problem with the term Bucklin is that it has been applied to several different methods over a century. ER-Bucklin has relaxed conditions that avoid some of the problems of other formulations. It is still not a perfect method. However, since most people cite more limited versions of Bucklin, the popular understanding is mostly used for negative contrast with the citer's preferred method. Balinski and Laracki have sought to make a mathematically rigorous argument to support a particular form of median ratings. They appear to be winning a much larger audience, in part because of large scale studies that support their conclusions. If you want to compare the merits of MJ to that of Score, then compare what MJ does to what Score does. Compare the strategy situation in MJ to that in Score. That's what the previous discussion has been about. I was not discussing the merits of Majority Judgment. I merely intended to clarify the algorithm for you. I seem to have failed. Please continue your discussions re merits with the other MJ advocates. [... Here Ossipoff elides the entirety of section 2 from his first method in this thread that my next quote refers to ...] My only comment about this is that, since your quoting style is non-standard, In the posting to which you were replying, I quoted in the standard style, using and for previous text. I think you will find that in the message I replied to, there were no quotations at all. I really wish you'd provide a glossary of abbreviations somewhere in your message, either inline, using standard first-reference style, or at the end of your message. For example, which Chris are you referring to (Benham?) Good guess! Is there another Chris who has been a regular poster here, at any
Re: [EM] Gerrymandering solutions.
Michael, you are stepping naively into an area that has been very well studied. I include a couple of points below you may want to consider. On 04 Jun 2012 22:18:06 -0700, Michael Ossipoff wrote: About gerrymanmdering; PR would be a solution to gerrymandering, but certainly not the only one: 1. Proxy Direct Democracy wouldn't have a gerrymandering problem either. If Proxy DD can be made count-fraud-secure, then it would make PR obsolete. 2. Whatever can be accomplished by PR can be accomplished by an at-large single winner election, because every single winner method can output a ranking of candidates instead of just one winner: Elect the winner. Then delete the winner from the ballots and count them again. That will elect the rank 2 winner. Then eliminate the rank 2 winner too, and count the ballots again. Each time, delete every previous winner before counting to determine the next winner. So you can elect N winners at large in a state, or nationally, for a body such as Congress (or its separate houses, if you want to keep them) or a state legislature. Of course, with Approval, it only requires one count, and you elect the N candidates with the most approvals. Can you prove that the ranking from a single-winner election is proportional? I think not. At the very least, you should remove ballots, in some fractional way, when a ballot has achieved some portion of its preference. Single Transferable Vote (STV) is one way, of course, but there is also Reweighted Range Voting, and a Bucklin variant proposed by Jameson Quinn as AT-TV a year ago. My simplified version of JQ's method is Graded Approval Transferable Vote (GATV) and can be found here: https://github.com/dodecatheon/graded-approval-transferable-vote 3. But districting needn't have a gerrymandering problem, even if single-member districts are kept. Who said that districts have to be arbitrary and freehand-drawn?? Where did we get that silly assumption? Draw the district lines by some simple rule that doesn't leave any human discretion or choice. It would be completely automated, but it would be so simple that it would be very easy for anyone to check. For example: You could divide the country (or state) into N1 latitudinal bands such that each has the same population/average longitudinal width. Then divide each latitudinal band into longitudinal sections, in such a way as to give each section the same population, and so that there are the right number of such sections overall. But of course you wouldn't have to use latitude and longitude if you don't want to. On a map, on any projection, that you choose, use a rectangular grid of lines, drawn similarly to the way described above. If you use a gnomonic projection, then all of your district lines will be straight lines on the Earth (great circles). If you use a cylindrical projection, then it will be as described in the previous paragraph. But it could be any projection you like. I'd suggest that gnomonic and cylindrical (using parallels and meridians as described in the previous paragraph) would be the main two choices. Districts divided by parallels and meridians, or by straight lines (great circles). The point is that it could be done by a simple rule that would have no human input, no human choice. What if it divides a county or a city? So what? No problem. The rule could be that houses would be all counted on whichever side of a line most of the house's area lies. It could be automated of course, but the result could easily be checked by anyone. Brian Olson has one automated method, with examples from the 2010 census, located here: http://bdistricting.com/2010/ There is also the shortest splitline algorithm, discussed here: http://rangevoting.org/GerryExamples.html http://rangevoting.org/GerryExec.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUS9uvYyn3A Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com To change the subject a little, I'd like to bring up another geographical government suggestion, while I'm at it: Partition. It doesn't make any sense for people to have to live under a government that they don't like, with people whom they don't agree with or don't like. So why not just divide the country up into separate countries, according to what kind of government people like? It's ridiculous to make everyone share the same county, when they want different kinds of country. It would be like a PR election, except that it would be for square miles instead of for seats. Though, like districting, the partitioning of the country could be (1) by an automatic rule, with those same rectangles (I like that), or (2) it could also be done by national negotiation in a PR negotiating body, or maybe by a proxy DD negotiation. I like the quick simplicity of (1). But (2) could _maybe_ be done in such a way as to ensure that each new partition-country has, to the best extent possible by
Re: [EM] Election layering effect (or why election-method reform is important)
On 27 Apr 2012 12:26:11 -0700, Richard Fobes wrote: Recently I realized that in our Declaration, and in our discussions, we have failed to explain and explore the amplification effect that occurs as a result of, for a lack of a better term at the moment, layering. Here is how I explained it in the proposal I referred to earlier: Winning an election with less than half the votes might seem like a small unfairness, but the effect is huge because of a layering effect. Although each Congressman typically got a ballot mark from about one out of two voters in the general election, he or she got a ballot mark from only about one out of four voters (based on cross-party counting) if the Congressman competed against a strong candidate in the primary election. Another layer occurs because only slightly more than half the members of Congress need to vote in favor of a new law to get it passed, so just those Congressmen got ballot marks from only about one out of eight U.S. voters, which is about 12% of U.S. voters. Yet even more layers are involved because most Congressmen first serve as state-level officials, and the state-level election process similarly filters out the problem-solving leaders that most voters want. Adding in two more layers to account for mainstream-media influence and low voter turnout easily accounts for how each law passed in Congress represents the desires of only 1% of the U.S. population. (The full proposal is at: http://www.the99declaration.org/4408/ban_single_mark_ballots_from_congressional_elections?recruiter_id=4408 ) I'm interested in any ideas for how this concept can be explained more clearly, especially if someone can think of an appropriate analogy or metaphor or diagram. Here's an analogy: The task is to approximate the number 0.4445 to the nearest integer. If you start by rounding to the nearest thousandth, you get 0.445. If you then round to the nearest hundredth, you get 0.45. If you then round to the nearest tenth, you then get 0.5. Then if you round to the nearest integer, you get 1. But 0.4445 is closer to zero than one, so you end up being wrong by more than one-half. Ted Richard Fobes Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IIDA: IIA and SODA delegation
It is my impression that the only situations in which IIAC fails is when there is no majority. Would it be possible to get around IIAC by adding a two-candidate runoff? Ted On 29 Mar 2012 05:35:47 -0700, Jameson Quinn wrote: The Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives criterion (IIA, also sometimes abbreviated IIAC) is a bit of a silly criterion. Arguably, no system really passes it. For any ranked system, just take a simple ABCA 3-candidate Condorcet cycle, and then remove the irrelevant candidate who loses to the winner; any system which reduces to plurality in the 2-candidate case must now fail IIA. Rated systems can pass, but that means assuming that people will vote silly ballots. For example, in approval, ballots with all candidates approved or all candidates disapproved; or in range, non-normalized ballots. (Majority Judgment is the only commonly-discussed system where a non-normalized ballot might not be strategically stupid; but even there, voting all candidates at the same grade seems pretty dumb.) But of course, because of its role in Arrow's theorem, and because of the simplicity of definition, it's not a criterion we can entirely ignore. For instance, it's always going to be a part of the comparison table in wikipedia. (Which has gotten some updates recently; check it out) When it comes to delegated systems like SODA, it becomes even crazier. Is a candidate irrelevant even though their use of the votes delegated to them was what swung the election? So, just as Condorcet advocates have defined Independence of Smith-Dominated Alternatives (ISDA), I'd like to define Independence of Delegation-Irrelevant Alternatives (IIDA). A system is IIDA if, on adding a new candidate, the winner either stays the same, changes to the new candidate, or changes to a candidate whom the new candidate prefers over the previous winner. Unfortunately, SODA isn't actually 100% IIDA. The scenario where it fails is a chicken dilemma where the new candidate pulls enough votes from one of the??two near-clone chicken candidates??to shift their delegation order. But it does meet this criterion for three candidates; that is, a third candidate does not shift the balance of power between the first two unless they choose to. And I suspect that you could define a SODA-like system which would meet IIDA, if you didn't mind adding complications. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] My Bucklin multiwinner method turned more sequential
Hi Kristofer,
I am very interested in PR multiwinner methods, especially those that
use ER-Bucklin.
However, I have a hard time following your logic.
Would it be possible to work out a relatively simple example using a 3
winner election, a Droop-like quota of 25% (just to make things easy),
and two factions, one with 3 candidates and 55% of the vote (thus
winning two seats), and another with two candidates and 45% of the
vote (thus winning one seat)?
Alternatively, you could use Warren Smith's 'real world' example with
9 seats and an 'Easy' Droop-like quota of 4 votes (10% of 39 votes =
3.9, plus 10% of one vote), to compare to other methods that can work
with range ballots.
http://rangevoting.org/June2011RealWorldRRVvotes.txt
My implementation of Bucklin Transferable Vote finds the following
winners for that example:
{106,102,109,101,103,108,105,110,116}
Ted
On 10 Feb 2012 14:05:36 -0800, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 02/10/2012 11:02 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
We can add a candidate C_k to PC if there exists a subset (coalition)
that supports at least k+1 candidates, where k is the cardinality of the
intersection of PC and that coalition, and that coalition also contains
C_k.
Oops, seems I reused a letter there. This should be:
We can add a candidate C_i to PC if there exists a subset (coalition)
that supports at least k+1 candidates, where k is the cardinality of
the intersection of PC and that coalition, and that coalition also
contains C_i.
I.e. the k in C_k had nothing to do with the cardinality of the
intersection.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
--
araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Gaming the Vote
On 30 Jan 2012 23:51:56 -0800, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 01/31/2012 01:48 AM, Ted Stern wrote: I've been thinking that one way to spread information about alternative voting systems might be to gamify one or more systems. [...] Has anyone out there in the EM communities thought about this? I saw someone made a game out of gerrymandering. Did it work to raise awareness of the problem of gerrymandering? I don't know, but its results might give more information of whether doing something like that with voting would work. One reason I thought that a voting game had promise was this article: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_cowclicker/all/1 If a silly game about clicking a cow can gain a following, wouldn't something real have a chance? Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Majority-Judgement. Condorcet.
On 03 Feb 2012 16:07:59 -0800, Kevin Venzke wrote: 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. Can anyone explain how Majority Judgment differs in practice from Bucklin with equal ratings allowed? AKA Fallback Approval? Or one of the many versions of Majority Choice Approval (another vague name, IMO)? 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. And you can delete even more code if it is just ER-Bucklin. Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] proposal for posting style
I have a simple request for those posting to this list: If you use abbreviations for voting methods, please include a small glossary at the end of your message. For example, ... here I'm saying something about DMC, GATV, and IBIFA ... [... rest of text ...] Glossary: DMC: Definitive Majority Choice (a Condorcet method) GATV: Graded Approval Transferable Vote (quota-based PR method based on ER-Bucklin) IBIFA: Irrelevant Ballot Independent Fallback Approval (Chris Benham single-winner method based on ER-Bucklin) If you make a file containing your usual terms, you can just include it at the end of your message. Okay, maybe that isn't such a simple request ;-), but it would really help, especially when certain posters use a whirlwind of initialisms that I didn't pay attention to when they introduced them in 20 separate messages 28 months ago ... Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Gaming the Vote
I've been thinking that one way to spread information about alternative voting systems might be to gamify one or more systems. Wikipedia explains gamification better than I could: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification Basically, it's a form of crowd-sourcing where you give game-like points and rewards to get masses of people to engage in large social interactions. On Facebook, for example, one could set up a ranking site to enable users to do their own version of Oscar voting, political favorites, etc, and award prizes for things we might be interested in (like criteria satisfaction). A site like FB would also have the advantage of ID-checking to limit vote-stuffing. Has anyone out there in the EM communities thought about this? Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The list of ballotings didn't post well. So I'm re-posting it here
On 17 Jan 2012 10:35:25 -0800, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: These are the ballotings in the poll. If you participate, try to vote a ballot for each of these ballotings.It won't take long,due to the small number of parties nominated. But if there isn't sufficient time to vote all 6 of the ballotings,then vote whichever ones you want to. 1. Approval without other voting options 2. Approval with other voting options 3. Score-Voting (0-99) 4. 3-Slot rankings Could you clarify that 3-slot means something like Prefer, Accept, Reject? That is, two approved rankings and one disapproved. Thanks, Ted 5. Unlimited rankings 6. IRV3/AV3 Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Clarifying Enhanced DMC (AKA SPARR Voting)
Consider Enhanced DMC as defined in this message from Forest Simmons,
dated July 12, 2011:
http://old.nabble.com/-EM--Enhanced-DMC-td32048790.html
I prefer the name Strong Preference Approval Round Robin (SPARR),
following from the idea that this is a form of Condorcet (Instant
Round Robin) that looks for the highest-approved candidate who is most
strongly preferred, in some sense.
Here's my restatement of the algorithm:
Find P, the set of all candidates who are not defeated pairwise by any
other higher-approved candidates. Number the p candidates in this set
in order of approval from lowest, X_1, to highest, X_p.
If there is only one candidate in P, the SPARR winner is that
candidate, X_1.
Otherwise, initialize the Strong set U to P.
Remove P-member-covered candidates from U:
For i from 1 to p-1,
For j from i+1 to p,
If all of X_j's defeats are defeated by X_i, remove X_j from U.
When finished, the Strong set U contains only those members of P who are
uncovered by other members of P.
The Strong set U always has at least one member, the DMC winner (X_1), because
by definition X_1 can never be defeated pairwise by other members of P. The
highest approved member of U is the SPARR winner.
* End of algorithm
Motivation:
The motivation for the SPARR method is, as Forest stated 6 months ago,
that the winner should come from the set P of candidates who are not
defeated by higher-approved candidates, which includes the Approval
winner, but should not necessarily be the least-approved member of P
just because that candidate defeats all other P-set members pairwise.
If the Approval winner X were chosen, another P-set candidate Y could
have grounds to object if Y covers X. Hey, I defeat you pairwise,
and everyone else you beat too! I'm a stronger candidate than you
are.
Therefore we consider as 'strong' members of P only those candidates
who are not covered by other members of P.
The highest-approved strong candidate is the SPARR winner.
* End of motivation
Questions:
What happens if the SPARR winner X is covered by another candidate Y
*outside* the P set? And not only that, but the *only* reason Y is
not in P is that Y is pairwise-defeated by another non-P-member with
higher approval. So Forest's statements about Y being defeated by Z
in P would not apply.
Here's an example of that situation: A Smith set of 6 candidates,
lettered in descending order of approval as A through F, with
the P set = {A,B,C}.
Fifteen defeats:
A D,
B A, B F B uncovered by C, = B is SPARR winner
C A, C B, C D C covers A, eliminating A from strong set
D B, D E
E A, E B, E C, E F E covers B, defeated only by non-P-member D
F A, F C, F D B's beatpath to E goes through F
B is the highest approved uncovered P-member and is the SPARR winner.
I don't think this could be considered a version of Ranked Pairs,
because even if you affirm all the High-low defeats first, you still
can't eliminate the E B defeat by first affirming B F D B,
because D has higher approval than F.
Could there be a beatpath strength formulation that applies to SPARR?
Ted
--
araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com
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Re: [EM] I now propose a mock 2012 presidential election, by parties instead of candidates.
Hi Mike, May I suggest that you also include a 3-slot ballot option? I.e., Preferred, Acceptable, Reject. You could call it a Fallback Approval ballot if you like. Many methods (e.g., most Condorcet methods, ER-Bucklin) that don't meet the Participation criterion will do so when restricted to 3-slots. It would be interesting to compare behavior with that level of compression. Ted On 06 Jan 2012 13:56:54 -0800, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: I've long advocated that you can't adequately discuss the relative merits or desirability of voting systems without actually using them. ...without actually trying them out. For that, it's absolutely essential to do polling, simulated political elections, using the methods that are proposed at EM. You don't know the problems of methods that you consider best, until you use them in an election, even if a simulated election. Therefore, I propose a simulated presidential election. Mainly because we don't know who the 2012 nominations will be yet, I suggest that the voting be by party, instead of by candidate. In some ways, that's more meaningful anyway, because policy platforms are, or should be, the basis of political voting. Some have claimed that we should do polling at external websites, automated websites. The main problem with that is flexibility: EM polls have nearly always included balloting by Approval, Score Voting, and ranking. And they always should, because all of those balloting modes are used by some of the various methods proposed on EM. My poll includes all three of those balloting modes...three separate ballots: Approval, Score, and rank. Another problem with automated polling websites is ballot-stuffing. Even though polling websites usually register voters by their e-mail, that only reduces, but doesn't eliminate the possibility of ballot-stuffing. Of course that problem isn't as important in a poll whose only purpose is to demonstrate what it's like to use the various voting systems. But, arguably, it still matters, for the purpose of such polls, that the observed result reliably reflect the 1-per-voter ballots. This poll could be criticized because EM's membership is international, and I'm proposing a simulated U.S. election. I invite non-U.S. members to vote in this poll, because its purpose is merely to demonstrate the use of the proposed voting systems. If poll-participants identify themselves, in parenthesis as international or U.S., then separate election results can be determined, one of which would indicate what kind of a party is the EM international winner, and the other of which would indicate which kind of party would win in the U.S. if EM members are typical. ...And EM members are more typical than some might believe, in terms of their sincere preferences. I'd suggest that EM members differ from the general public mostly in that they aren't Republocrat lesser-of-2-evils voters. Even if some EM members actually prefer the Republicans or Democrats, none will favor one of those parties only as a lesser-evil. Strategy? I suggest that any strategy used in this simulated election be appropriate to the EM electorate. If you perceive any difference between the EM electorate and the general population, then base your strategy on the EM electorate. It makes a poll more realistic if voting is based on the conditions in the poll. Should Score voting be sincere, or should it be however you'd vote it in an actual public political election? I suggest the latter. Sure, with an Approval balloting, it could be argued that there's no need for Approval strategy in Score voting, so the Score voting should be sincere, regardless of whether you'd rate sincerely in an actual election. I and others have made that suggestion in previous EM polls. But I don't think that's best in this poll. The purpose of this poll is to try out the various methods, not to determine the sincere Score winner among the EM electorate. So I suggest voting the Score ballot exactly as you would if it were an actual public political election, in which Score voting were the only kind in use. Unless Warren argues for suggesting sincere ratings on the Score ballot, I suggest voting the same ratings you'd vote in an actual public political Score election. Because we want to simulate an actual election. As you know, I advocate, as options in an Approval balloting, the following ways of voting: Approval, MTA, MCA, ABucklin, AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, and AOCBucklin. I'll define these ways of voting in a subsequent posting. But I'll briefly outline their definitions here: You know what Approval, MTA and MCA are. AOC is Approval, with the option to make some approvals conditional upon mutuality, as defined by the MTAOC pseudocode program that I posted here. MTAOC and MCAOC are MTA and MCA with that conditionality option. AOCBucklin is ABucklin with that option at each rank position.
Re: [EM] Does Bucklin 2-level satisfy Participation (mono-add-top)?
On 03 Jan 2012 16:38:56 -0800, Jameson Quinn wrote: It depends on the tiebreaker used when there is are multiple majorities at second level. If the tiebreaker is that the most second-level votes wins, then I believe that the method meets participation. Otherwise, AB votes can cause B A (instead of just A) to pass the second-level threshold and trigger the tiebreaker; and B could win the tiebreaker. I have never heard of an ER-Bucklin method that did not use highest total threshold-level approval to pick the winner. I.e., if there is more than one candidate that has a total threshold-level approval above the quota, the highest total wins. If A wins with the first N votes, A could win either in the first level or second level round. If x AB votes are added, then if A had won the pre-x vote in the first round, A would still win. If A had won the pre-x count only after dropping the threshold to the second level, then the addition of x AB votes would be equivalent to adding the same number of A and B approvals to the second-level approval totals. Therefore if A had won pre-x, A would still win post-x. To answer Kristofer's point: in a two-level ER-Bucklin method, mono-add-top is the same as Participation, because there is no way to add A B rankings without A having the maximum rating. Okay, thanks to both of you! That is encouraging ... that means that 2-level ER-Bucklin gets Steven Brams's seal of approval :-). Ted Jameson 2012/1/3 Ted Stern araucaria.arauc...@gmail.com I've seen examples in which Bucklin (with equal ratings) fails the Participation criterion, AKA Woodall's mono-add-top criterion for deterministic methods: ??the participation criterion says that the addition of a ballot, ??where candidate A is strictly preferred to candidate B, to an ??existing tally of votes should not change the winner from candidate ??A to candidate B. (from Wikipedia) In a Bucklin single-winner election with 3 or more levels, it is possible that in an election in which the quota is not met at the first or second level threshold, candidate A may be selected after the threshold has dropped to the third level, but after adding some number of A B ballots, B then has enough votes to exceed the quota at the second threshold, thus failing Participation. ??So the extra A B voters might as well have not shown up. However, if there are only two approval levels in the Bucklin election, it appears that this problem could not occur, and the no-show paradox would be avoided. ??The failure above hinges on the fact that lower-ranked B fails to make quota at the 2nd level before the new ballots are cast, but exceeds the quota afterward. ??With levels compressed to two instead of three, B would exceed the quota at the second level threshold initially. [Chris Benham has made me aware that ER-Bucklin 2-level still fails the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, but that is a different situation.] Does anyone know of any 2-level ER-Bucklin Participation failures? Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Does Bucklin 2-level satisfy Participation (mono-add-top)?
I've seen examples in which Bucklin (with equal ratings) fails the Participation criterion, AKA Woodall's mono-add-top criterion for deterministic methods: the participation criterion says that the addition of a ballot, where candidate A is strictly preferred to candidate B, to an existing tally of votes should not change the winner from candidate A to candidate B. (from Wikipedia) In a Bucklin single-winner election with 3 or more levels, it is possible that in an election in which the quota is not met at the first or second level threshold, candidate A may be selected after the threshold has dropped to the third level, but after adding some number of A B ballots, B then has enough votes to exceed the quota at the second threshold, thus failing Participation. So the extra A B voters might as well have not shown up. However, if there are only two approval levels in the Bucklin election, it appears that this problem could not occur, and the no-show paradox would be avoided. The failure above hinges on the fact that lower-ranked B fails to make quota at the 2nd level before the new ballots are cast, but exceeds the quota afterward. With levels compressed to two instead of three, B would exceed the quota at the second level threshold initially. [Chris Benham has made me aware that ER-Bucklin 2-level still fails the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, but that is a different situation.] Does anyone know of any 2-level ER-Bucklin Participation failures? Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Chicken or Egg re: Kathy Dopp
On 16 Dec 2011 13:29:30 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: -- Forwarded message -- From: Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Cc: Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:11:11 -0500 Subject: Re: [EM] Egg or Chicken. Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:59:14 -0600 From: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com if we push hard for the use of American Proportional Representation it'll give third parties a better chance to win seats and they will prove great labs for experimentation with electoral reform. This is also a good reason to strategically support IRV, since we can trust that with changes, there'll be more scope for experimentation and consideration of multiple alternatives to FPTP. This is precisely the kind of game theory that leads to the two party problem with FPTP: we need to coalesce behind the strongest contender in order to have some kind of voice, be it only a compromise. So no, I don't think it is a good reason. KD: Actually, if we support the adoption of proportional representation, it is a good reason to strongly oppose IRV and STV which will sour the public on any notions of changing US electoral systems for decades and greatly hinder any progress towards proportional systems. dlw: That is what is in dispute. KD:We've already seen this occur in jurisdictions where IRV has been tried and rejected when it was noticed how overly complex, transparency eviscerating, and fundamentally unfair IRV methods are. Right now there is a push to get rid of it in San Franscisco. IRV was tried decades ago in NYC and stopped progress there for decades. dlw: Unfair? Why because it emulates the workings of a caucus by considering only one vote per voter at a time? Yes, precisely. The traditional Robert's Rules method of taking only a single vote at a time is at fault. It produces a suboptimal result by segmenting the problem too much. It is similar to the less optimal result you get from dividing space by partitioning in each dimension separately to get bricks, instead of hexagons in 2D or truncated octagons in 3D. dlw: If a 2-stage approach is used then it's less complex and the results can be tabulated at the precinct level. dlw: I'm sure the Cold War red scare stopped progress in NYC and elsewhere a lot more than IRV KD: IRV/STV methods introduce problems plurality does not have and do not solve any of plurality's problems, so it's a great way to convince people not to implement any new electoral method and show people how deviously dishonest the proponents of alternative electoral methods can be. (Fair Vote lied to people by convincing them that IRV finds majority winners and solves the spoiler problem, would save money, and on and on...) dlw: It's called marketing. FairVote wisely simplified the benefits of IRV. IRV does find majority winners a lot more often than FPTP and it reduces the spoiler problem considerably. It does save money compared with a two round approach and its' problems are easy to fix. That is debatable. I happen to think that the goal/object of IRV is different from what one wants to achieve in a single winner election. If you model your government on a natural system (and the US Founders based their arguments by appealing to Natural Law), then you do best when you create a diverse and representational set of options (hence PR for legislatures) and only then apply selective pressure using a centrist single winner method. IRV is not based on centrism. As the single-winner limit of STV, it is better (not best) at finding a representative of the majority, not the best representative of the entire population. As for STV, one can keep patching to deal with its many problems, but at its core it also make a number of false choices: * why can't a voter say that they prefer several candidates equally? * why must choices be ranked? * why do candidates have to be eliminated? * why can't lower rankings be considered? Ted dlw Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Renewable energy is homeland security. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fwd: how goes American PR?
The simplest PR system: open list Approval Transferable Vote. ATF for multiwinner elections: Quota (easy): Q = (Nballots + 1)/(Nseats + 1) A voter may approve any number of candidates. Each ballot is initially weighted as 1.0. Count weighted approval totals. At same time, count weighted approvals coming from truncated ballots (only one standing candidate remaining on the ballot). In each round, seat the candidate with the highest weighted approval total (T). The truncated approval total for that candidate is denoted by L. The amount of vote used up on each ballot that votes for that candidate is U = max(Q - L, 0.0) / max(max(T,Q) - L, eps), where eps is a small number 0, say 1.e-9. This is just (Q - L) / (T - L), restricted to lie between 0.0 and 1.0. Since truncated ballots will lose their vote completely (and thus the U factor is irrelevant for those ballots), the truncation factor adjustment lets untruncated ballots transfer more of their strength. The rescale factor on each ballot voting for the last seated candidate is thus F = 1.0 - U Advantages: ATF is monotonic and Droop-proportional. Approval ballot is the simplest format. With multiple winners, Approval strategy for the approval cutoff is less important. Voters can simply approve of all candidates that they feel best represent their positions. Each round is summable (though the overall election is not), and there are only Nseats rounds, unlike STV. The Truncation sum, L, reduces the vote loss that is usually associated with STV. In fact, the truncation transfer factor adjustment could be applied to any quota-based PR method that is subject to truncated ballot vote loss. ATF may not be the most ideal PR , but it would be the simplest to implement quickly. Ted On 03 Dec 2011 14:31:16 -0800, Jameson Quinn wrote: I left out one of the most important advantages of PAL voting: that it's dead simple for voters. Though you can vote a more-expressive ballot if you want to, a simple bullet vote is enough to give good, proportional but not party-centric, results. Jameson 2011/12/3 Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com Does American PR have a specific meaning yet? I'm sure I'll be in favor of it, whatever PR variant it is; but while I'm still ignorant, let me guess a little. I doubt it's a mixed-member system. They're good, but the US, despite (or perhaps because of) being one of the most partisan countries around, has too much suspicion of party machines for that to catch on. So that leaves ... I guess the most-probable options are global STV or STV in small multimember districts (3-5 members). Again, these are both quite good systems I'd support. But if it's not too late to offer a suggestion... I'd strongly encourage you to consider something like PAL representation. It's certainly not the simplest system there is, but then no PR system is really simple. And as advantages you get: -- High potential for 100% continuity (if the statewide gerrymander was fairly proportional, and if third parties don't pick up any seats). This is a HUGE advantage when selling to incumbents. I mean, seriously, tremendous. -- Voters and/or peers have the real power to remove even the most well-encrusted incumbent if they sour on him or her. That is, it's voter-centric, not party-centric -- Almost every voter gets their own local representative WHOM THEY VOTED FOR. This is absolutely something that would resonate with US voters, raised on tales of No taxation without representation.?? Check it out. (And yes, I think that we can work together over PR, even if we don't see eye-to-eye on single winner systems.) Jameson 2011/12/3 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com American PR is a coming. ??You must decide if you want to keep quibbling over the best single-winner election rule or push hard for a better mix of multi and single-winner election rules in the US. dlw -- Forwarded message -- From: Rob Richie r...@fairvote.org Date: Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 11:05 AM Subject: Re: how goes American PR? To: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com A little slow in getting our American PR-like plans drawn, but we'll have them done for hte whole country in early 2012 and heat up in our outreach... getting some related opeds. Next year should be a good one for the idea -- ??lots of chances to talk about it. Rob On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:26 PM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if tea-partiers unhappy w. the Republican party might get in on it? dlw -- ~
Re: [EM] Fwd: how goes American PR?
On 05 Dec 2011 12:46:41 -0800, Ted Stern wrote: The simplest PR system: open list Approval Transferable Vote. ATF for multiwinner elections: Correction, ATV. Blame it on Monday ... -- Ted Quota (easy): Q = (Nballots + 1)/(Nseats + 1) A voter may approve any number of candidates. Each ballot is initially weighted as 1.0. Count weighted approval totals. At same time, count weighted approvals coming from truncated ballots (only one standing candidate remaining on the ballot). In each round, seat the candidate with the highest weighted approval total (T). The truncated approval total for that candidate is denoted by L. The amount of vote used up on each ballot that votes for that candidate is U = max(Q - L, 0.0) / max(max(T,Q) - L, eps), where eps is a small number 0, say 1.e-9. This is just (Q - L) / (T - L), restricted to lie between 0.0 and 1.0. Since truncated ballots will lose their vote completely (and thus the U factor is irrelevant for those ballots), the truncation factor adjustment lets untruncated ballots transfer more of their strength. The rescale factor on each ballot voting for the last seated candidate is thus F = 1.0 - U Advantages: ATF is monotonic and Droop-proportional. Approval ballot is the simplest format. With multiple winners, Approval strategy for the approval cutoff is less important. Voters can simply approve of all candidates that they feel best represent their positions. Each round is summable (though the overall election is not), and there are only Nseats rounds, unlike STV. The Truncation sum, L, reduces the vote loss that is usually associated with STV. In fact, the truncation transfer factor adjustment could be applied to any quota-based PR method that is subject to truncated ballot vote loss. ATF may not be the most ideal PR , but it would be the simplest to implement quickly. Ted On 03 Dec 2011 14:31:16 -0800, Jameson Quinn wrote: I left out one of the most important advantages of PAL voting: that it's dead simple for voters. Though you can vote a more-expressive ballot if you want to, a simple bullet vote is enough to give good, proportional but not party-centric, results. Jameson 2011/12/3 Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com Does American PR have a specific meaning yet? I'm sure I'll be in favor of it, whatever PR variant it is; but while I'm still ignorant, let me guess a little. I doubt it's a mixed-member system. They're good, but the US, despite (or perhaps because of) being one of the most partisan countries around, has too much suspicion of party machines for that to catch on. So that leaves ... I guess the most-probable options are global STV or STV in small multimember districts (3-5 members). Again, these are both quite good systems I'd support. But if it's not too late to offer a suggestion... I'd strongly encourage you to consider something like PAL representation. It's certainly not the simplest system there is, but then no PR system is really simple. And as advantages you get: -- High potential for 100% continuity (if the statewide gerrymander was fairly proportional, and if third parties don't pick up any seats). This is a HUGE advantage when selling to incumbents. I mean, seriously, tremendous. -- Voters and/or peers have the real power to remove even the most well-encrusted incumbent if they sour on him or her. That is, it's voter-centric, not party-centric -- Almost every voter gets their own local representative WHOM THEY VOTED FOR. This is absolutely something that would resonate with US voters, raised on tales of No taxation without representation.?? Check it out. (And yes, I think that we can work together over PR, even if we don't see eye-to-eye on single winner systems.) Jameson 2011/12/3 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com American PR is a coming. ??You must decide if you want to keep quibbling over the best single-winner election rule or push hard for a better mix of multi and single-winner election rules in the US. dlw -- Forwarded message -- From: Rob Richie r...@fairvote.org Date: Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 11:05 AM Subject: Re: how goes American PR? To: David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com A little slow in getting our American PR-like plans drawn, but we'll have them done for hte whole country in early 2012 and heat up in our outreach... getting some related opeds. Next year should be a good one for the idea -- ??lots of chances to talk about it. Rob On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:26 PM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if tea-partiers unhappy w
Re: [EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
On 02 Dec 2011 13:05:04 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com wrote: There is a fundamental difference between two-party dominance, which will probably not change any time soon, and a two-party duopoly. 45%, 40%, 8%, 5%... is dominance; 51% 47% 1%... is duopoly. Any system which gives bad enough results when there are more than two parties will be a two party duopoly; and it seems highly possible that that includes IRV. And I think that many of the current problems, including the outsized power of $peech, are inevitable consequences of a monopoly. duopoly you mean? David, you believe differently. But your guesses about how things would work are just that. You can't point to a real-world example. And so, as you've essentially admitted, we're not likely to believe you until you do have evidence. Nor, in my opinion, should we. I can offer the history of the US prior to the past 40 years as evidence that a 2-party duopolized system can work. ?? Monarchies can work: See Darius's arguments to the Persians [from Herodotus]. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/herodotus-persdemo.asp (section III.82) And Henry II's good government of England in the 12th century laid the groundwork of expectation of fairness that led to the Magna Carta in the 13th. Whether a system works is no argument. The question is whether it is consistent with the goals that the country has set out for itself. It is not a coincidence that from 1870-1980 that in one of the economically most important states of the US, IL, the competition between the two major parties was handicapped by the use of 3-seat quasi-PR state rep election rule. ??This enabled other states who were economically more dependent on IL to be politically independent of IL. ??They experimented and a lot of those experiments spilled over to foster critical changes in the rest of the USA. ?? All of this while FPTP was still being used... Your argument is mixing apples and oranges and is therefore pointless. A semi-PR method (CV) was used for Illinois representatives, while FPTP was used for other offices. As I'm sure you're aware, the type of representation one wishes to achieve in legislatures is different than the type one wants for executive office. In legislatures, PR leads to diversity, while for executives, we want a centrist-biased method to apply selection pressure, in the fairest way possible, to the diverse voices of the legislature. So why do you claim I don't have evidence? ??The US doesn't need an EU-system to reinvigorate its democracy. ??It needs to draw from its own history and to trust that local activism will have a trickle-up effect on national and international outcomes. ?? There are also strong examples from its own history that the system can lead to systemic corruption that can only be resisted by overwhelming public support. In other words, instead of designing things to work correctly, we tend to let things go on until they break and then we put in a fix. Ted In other words: You could be right. So stop arguing about this and go out there and prove it. will do. dlw?? Jameson 2011/12/2 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com -- Forwarded message -- From:??MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com To:??election-meth...@electorama.com Date:??Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:19:28 + Subject:??[EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] MO: Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. dlw: David is saying, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party dominated system in US] and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of others around American forms of PR + IRV] and the wisdom to tell the difference between a dysfunctional two-party system and one that would work. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Approval vs. IRV (hopefully tidier re-send)
On 28 Nov 2011 20:24:37 -0800, Chris Benham wrote: Matt Welland wrote (26 Nov 2011): Also, do folks generally see approval as better than or worse than IRV? To me Approval seems to solve the spoiler problem without introducing any unstable weirdness and it is much simpler and cheaper to do than IRV. If we are talking about the classic version of IRV known as the Alternative Vote in the UK and Optional Preferential Voting in Australia, then I see IRV on balance as being better than Approval. The version of IRV I'm referring to: *Voters strictly rank from the top however many or few candidates they wish. Until one candidate remains, one-at-a time eliminate eliminate the candidate that (among remaining candidates) is highest-ranked on the fewest ballots.* The unstable weirdness of Approval is in the strategy games among the rival factions of voters, rather than anything visible in the method's algorithm. Approval is more vulnerable to disinformation campaigns. Suppose that those with plenty of money and control of the mass media know from their polling that the likely outcome of an upcoming election is A 52%, B 48% and they much prefer B. In Approval they can sponsor and promote a third candidate C, one that the A supporters find much worse than B, and then publish false polls that give C some real chance of winning. If they can frighten/bluff some of A's supporters into approving B (as well as A) their strategy can succeed. 47: A 05: AB (sincere is AB) 41: B 07: BC Approvals: B53, A52, C7 I find this example contrived. * If mass polling is available, many people will be aware of the 52/48 split between A and B ahead of time. * Corruption is a separate issue. With proper election funding control, support for C would be restricted. Approval is certainly the bang for buck champion, and voters never have any incentive to vote their sincere favourites below equal-top. But to me the ballots are insufficiently expressive by comparison with the strict ranking ballots used by IRV. I agree. Approval-Bucklin (AKA ER-Bucklin) has the advantage in your contrived example of allowing the A B voters to add B at a lower rank, which would not count unless neither A nor B achieves a majority. In many cases, it would not be necessary to rate candidates at the second (or lower) choice option, but having that option increases the available nuance of the vote. IRV has some Compromise incentive, but it is vastly less than in FPP. Supposing we assume that there are 3 candidates and that you the voter want (maybe for some emotional or long-term reason) to vote your sincere favourite F top even if you think (or know) that F can't win provided you don't thereby pay too high a strategic penalty, i.e. that the chance is small that by doing that you will lose some (from your perspective positive) effect you might otherwise have had on the result. However IRV does impose a false choice -- that you must rank your preferences separately, no equal ranks allowed. In FPP, to be persuaded to Compromise (i.e.vote for your compromise might win candidate C instead of your sincere favourite F) you only have to be convinced that F won't be one of the top two first-preference place getters. In IRV if you are convinced of that you have no compelling reason to compromise because you can expect F to be eliminated and your vote transferred to C. No, to have a good reason to compromise you must be convinced that F *will* be one of the top 2 (thanks to your vote) displacing C, but will nonetheless lose when C would have won if you'd top-voted C. In my opinion IRV is one of the reasonable algorithms to use with ranked ballots, and the best for those who prefer things like Later-no-Harm and Invulnerability to Burial to either the Condorcet or FBC criteria. But are these the criteria we really want to achieve in a single-winner election? To say that LNH is the most important criterion is, at its most basic level, an emotional argument. While effective in persuading the electorate, I think what we really want to look for is a method that does a good job of finding the candidate closest to the center of the electorate, while resisting strategic manipulation. Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] MMCWPO (minimize maximum cardinal weighted pairwise opposition) satisfies the FBC and solves the ABE problem.
On 23 Nov 2011 17:51:45 -0800, Forest Simmons wrote: MMCWPO is the method that elects the candidate whose maximal weighted pairwise opposition is minimal. It solves the ABE problem as well as the FBC. To clarify, MMCWPO is MinMax (MMPO) combined with James Green-Armytage's Cardinal Weighted Pairwise method. That is, one accumulates two pairwise matrices. The first is the standard pairwise array, with position (A, B) containing the number of ballots ranking A over B. The second array stores cardinal weighted preferences: in those cases where a ballot prefers candidate A to candidate B, save A-score minus B-score into position (A, B). Applying this to MMPO: instead of using winning votes, determine the pairwise opposition for a defeat by the CW(A,B) score-difference sum instead of P(A,B) winning votes. Ted I'm being shut down on this computer. More after T day. Forest Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Help requested: rankings corresponding to pairwise array
Hi, Say I have a pairwise array that looks like | A | B | C | D | ===+=+=+=+=+ A | 60 | 45 | 46 | 60 | ---+-+-+-+-+ B | 55 | 55 | 55 | 49 | ---+-+-+-+-+ C | 54 | 45 | 54 | 52 | ---+-+-+-+-+ D | 40 | 51 | 48 | 51 | ---+-+-+-+-+ For this example, I assume that a tie between candidates is counted as one vote for each candidate, and the diagonal entry is equal to the maximum non-diagonal entry on that row. This is a way to extract Approval from the pairwise array. The exact numbers are not important. What really matters to me is that the candidates in descending order of approval are A, B, C, D, and the pairwise outcomes look like | A | B | C | D | ===+=+=+=+=+ A | - | L | L | W | ---+-+-+-+-+ B | W | - | W | L | ---+-+-+-+-+ C | W | L | - | W | ---+-+-+-+-+ D | L | W | L | - | ---+-+-+-+-+ The reason I'm looking for a set of ranked ballots that lead to this outcome is that I believe it might be a counterexample to Forest Simmons' Enhanced DMC proposal. If there is a set of rankings that lead to this array, then B would be the winner under Schulze, Ranked Pairs, River and DMC, but Enhanced DMC would pick either A or C. Ted -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] PR approval voting
On 03 Oct 2011 12:23:10 -0700, Toby Pereira wrote:
I noticed on your page that you suspect that all multi-winner
methods fail participation. I don't think that's the case. I would
suggest that Forest Simmons's Proportional Approval Voting passes
it. Also I think my versions of Proportional Approval Voting and
Proportional Range Voting pass.
Since I wrote that, I have come to believe (but still haven't proved)
that Approval-based methods will generally pass participation and
IIAC.
A range based method will pass participation, at least in
single-winner, if it doesn't adjust ratings.
In many cases my version of Range Transferable Vote will elect winners
without having to raise ratings to meet quota. It only fails
participation in those cases where the quota is not met, which most
often happens on the last or penultimate seat.
Is your PRV method quota-based? If so, does it pass Droop
proportionality? If so, how do you deal with elevating preferences if
no candidate achieves a quota?
Ted
From: Ted Stern araucaria.arauc...@gmail.com
To: Election Methods election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Cc: Ted Stern araucaria.arauc...@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, 3 October 2011, 19:45
Subject: Re: [EM] PR approval voting
I'd like to stick my oar in here, to point out that I have an
implementation of Range Transferable Vote, which can be used with
Droop or other quotas, that implements PR.
Code for it is located here:
https://github.com/dodecatheon/range-transferable-vote
It reduces to Approval Transferable Vote in the case of range(0,1).
I had to make one change to it recently to fulfill the Droop
proportionality criterion, which states that if a faction distributes
its votes among L candidates, and has enough votes to elect K = L
quotas, then the method will elect K candidates from the set of L
candidates.
For RTV, this meant that I had to find a way to elevate range
preferences in the event that no candidate achieves a quota.
The way I implement this is to increase non-zero ratings incrementally
(up to maximum score) until at least one candidate makes quota.
This pushes RTV into the territory of Bucklin-style methods, and
therefore it does not satisfy the Independence from Irrelevant
Alternatives criterion, even in the single-winner case.
Ted
On 01 Oct 2011 09:25:45 -0700, Toby Pereira wrote:
Presumably this could also be used for range voting with a fairly
simple modification. It would just set a limit on the fraction of
someone's vote that could be used for each candidate. If you scored
a candidate 3 out of 10, then no more than 0.3 of your vote could go
to that candidate, regardless of whether the rest remained unused.
From: Ross Hyman rahy...@sbcglobal.net
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Sent: Saturday, 1 October 2011, 5:07
Subject: [EM] PR approval voting
The following PR approval voting procedure is an approval limit of Schulze
STV
A score for each candidate set is determined in the following way: ?? The
vote of each ballot is distributed amongst the ballot's approved candidates in
the candidate set.? The score for each candidate set is the largest possible
vote for the candidate in the set with the smallest vote.? The candidate set
with the highest score wins the election.
example: 2 seats
approval voting profile
10 a
? 6 a b
? 2 b
? 5 a b c
? 4 c
The possible candidate sets are: {a b}, {a c}, and {b c}.
score for {a b} determined from
10 a
?11 a b
? 2 b
score for {a b} = 11.5
score for {a c} determined from
16 a
? 5 a c
? 4 c
score for {a c} = 9
score for {b c} determined from
?8 b
?5 b c
?4 c
score for {b c} = 8.5
set {a b} wins.
Schulze uses a maximum flow algorithm to distribute the votes optimally on
each ballot for each candidate set.? Here is another algorithm.
v_i,a is the vote assigned to candidate a from the ith ballot.? The optimal
v_i,a is determined iteratively.
1) Initially, the vote for each ballot is distributed equally between all the
candidates in the candidate set that are approved by that ballot.?
2) The total vote for a candidate in the set is determined from v_a = sum_i
v_i,a.? The lowest vote is a lower bound for the candidate score.
3) Form the adjusted vote w_i,a =? v_i,a/v_a.?
4) The adjusted vote for each ballot is w_i = sum_a w_i,a.
5) The new v_i,a = w_i,a / w_i.? Proceed to step 2.
?? ? ? ??
?
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