Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
Kathy Dopp wrote: James, Your formulas below are only correct in the case that voters are allowed to rank all the candidates who run for an election contest. That may be true in Australia, but is not true in the US where typically voters are allowed to rank up to only three candidates. As a note: some methods (most discussed here, actually) also permit both truncation and equal-ranking. If one takes that into account, the formulas become more complex still. Yet, on another level, this may not really matter. On the one hand, if there'll ever just be a few candidates, the amount of information to transmit is managable. On the other, setting a hard limit to, say, no more than 5 candidates may participate in this election is rather inelegant, and I would say, unfair, and if the potential number of candidates can grow to any number, it doesn't matter what formula is being used as long as it's superpolynomial (and so the values grow very large very quickly). Truncation or no truncation, equal rank or not, the number of unique orderings grow in that manner. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
At 09:52 PM 1/22/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: now remember in the case we're discussing here, there is only two candidates. again, what consequence to the outcome of the election (that is, who of A or B wins) occurs whether a ballot is marked A (and B is last by default) or is marked AB? there is none. If there are only two possible choices, that's the case. However, in fully democratic elections, the only case where there are only two choices is election by motion. The question is of the form of Resolved: that A be elected to the office. Yes/No. I will be putting together a document that compiles relevant rules and discussion from Robert's Rules of Order as it relates to voting, elections, ballots, and particularly preferential voting, because I consider an understanding of deliberative election process as essential to understanding voting system optimization. It is far more sophisticated than any voting system on the table, and the only problem is one of efficiency. While it is a method of election, in the general sense, it has been neglected because it is very difficult to study. It is not deterministic from a single set of preference profiles, even if they include preference strength information. In public elections where write-in votes are allowed (which is so much the norm in the U.S. that it is preposterous to neglect it, and sometimes write-in candidates win), there are actually a practically unlimited number of optional votes. That *normally* write-in votes are largely irrelevant does not change this. The methods must allow for the possibility. So, as a compromise, canvassing methods may neglect the possible variety of write-in votes, and canvass them as if for a single candidate. But, then, if the number of votes for the single write-in candidate, were they all one candidate, possibly affect the result, it becomes necessary to count and report those individual write-in votes. I have not detailed how this would be done, and it is possible that, depending on conditions, it could be made more efficient than simply reporting every vote. But in some cases, reporting every vote might be necessary! i'm not going to discuss this any more with Abd, because he's not a straight shooter, but James, if you want to get into this, it's pretty much cut and dried from the POV of Information Theory (a.la. Claude Shannon). This conclusion depends on understanding the situation to which the theory is being applied. That's what Robert misses. He makes simplifying assumptions without being aware that these assumptions are not applicable in the general case, but he does not specify the assumptions, nor does he take note of them when they are specified by others, including me, he merely concludes that I'm not a straight shooter, which would imply some deceptive intent, but he has adduced no evidence of that, merely his idea that I am wrong, which he has repeated over and over as if that would establish it as a fact, rather than a detailed examination of the evidence and arguments. His privilege, here. 1. there are three eligible candidates, A, B, and C. 2. a particular voter has A as his/her first preference. 3. the same voter has B as the second preference. 4. the same voter has C as the last preference. The question is whether or not the vote ABC is different from AB, whether or not the difference is worth reporting, or, stronger, necessary to report. And that depends on details of the rules, which Robert has neither stated nor accepted, and he has denied, without evidence, comments that did specify exceptions to the rules he proposes, -- not made-up, but real-world exceptions. I'll give the most notable: if a majority is required for election, and according to accepted parliamentary procedure, majority means more than half of all non-black ballots cast. Whether or not a candidate is eligible or not is irrelevant! Robert has adduced a preference profile, but has not specified one critical piece of information, in determining the relevance of an ABC vote compared to AB. Is the voter willing to accept the result of the election of C, or would the voter prefer that the election fail? In short, does the voter approve of the election of C? We cannot tell that from the raw preference profile without approval information. I gave examples -- and analyzed Robert's examples -- where the two votes are different in consequence. Now, let's narrow the question, being aware that we are now more narrowly specifying it. If the election is election by plurality, does the third preference vote make a practical difference? Not in determining the result, but it is still important in assessing election quality, and examples could be shown where this is important as public information. There are rarely IRV elections which are by plurality, where, if the counting is continued one more step, the election would be by a majority. Even though this is
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
robert bristow-johnson Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 12:25 AM On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:05 PM, James Gilmour wrote: N Unique Preference Profiles 2 4 3 15 ... then your calculation is mistaken. the fact that you ostensibly need 4 piles when there are only two candidates should serve as a clue. If there are two candidates, A and B, then the possible unique preference profiles are: A B AB BA what, on a ballot, is the consequential difference in meaning between A and AB? what effect does a ballot marked AB have over one marked just A (or vise versa) in *any* election method that uses ranked ballots? In terms of preference profiles the question is completely irrelevant. A and AB are two different preference profiles. So the possible numbers of preference profiles for given numbers of candidates are, I think, correctly stated in the table in my earlier post. How the STV counting rules handle the two preference profiles A and AB is a different matter. Some STV counting rules handle these two profiles identically. But for some other STV counting rules the profiles A and AB are handled differently. This second set of rules are those that prescribe the transfer of votes to the bitter end, i.e. even after the winners have all been determined. Under this rule a ballot marked A would be treated differently from a ballot marked AB: at the last possible transfer, the A ballot would become 'non-transferable (exhausted)', but the AB ballot would be transferred to A. This second rule is, of course, a stupid rule but that does not mean it has not been implemented in some jurisdictions, including, sadly, Scotland. It is also a highly undesirable rule because it means that my vote could, in some circumstances, be transferred to the candidate I deliberately ranked last in the lowest possible place, e.g. 12th out of 12 candidates. Following on from the concept of 'Later No Harm' (which underpins the whole of contingency voting, as in IRV and STV-PR), it is very important to be able to give a voter the absolutely assurance that under no circumstances will her vote ever be transferred to the candidate she has ranked 12th out of 12. Sadly, the stupid transfer to the bitter end rule undermines this. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.730 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2637 - Release Date: 01/21/10 19:34:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
Kathy I think my post made clear that I was referring only to preference profiles. I was not dealing with the situation where some artificial, and highly undesirable, restriction had been placed on the numbers of rankings the voters could mark. I think my comments about the counting procedure adopted in Minneapolis should have indicated that I am well aware of the restrictions that can be imposed. But note that in Minneapolis the restriction was an artificial one imposed by the certified counting machines available for use in the precincts. There is nothing in the Minneapolis Election Ordinance that imposes such a restriction. So when Minneapolis can obtain certified counting machines that can deal with fully ranked ballots, there will be no such restriction in practice. James Behalf Of Kathy Dopp Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 12:43 AM Subject: Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy) James, Your formulas below are only correct in the case that voters are allowed to rank all the candidates who run for an election contest. That may be true in Australia, but is not true in the US where typically voters are allowed to rank up to only three candidates. I put the general formula that applies to *all* cases with n candidates and with r rankings allowed in my paper on IRV that I wrote a year or two ago: Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantR unoffVotingFlaws.pdf Because it's hard to write a summation, fraction formula, etc. here I'll let you look it up. It's on page 6 of the doc linked above. Cheers, Kathy From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk I do not intend to comment on your formula, but I calculate the numbers of possible unique preference profiles for increasing numbers of candidates (N) as follows: N Unique Preference Profiles 2 4 3 15 4 64 5 325 6 1,956 7 13,699 8 109,600 9 986,409 10 9,864,100 11 108,505,111 12 1,302,061,344 13 16,926,797,485 14 236,975,164,804 15 3,554,627,472,075 16 56,874,039,553,216 17 966,858,672,404,689 18 17,403,456,103,284,400 19 330,665,665,962,404,000 20 6,613,313,319,248,080,000 Where there are large numbers of candidates, the maximum possible number of unique preference profiles will be limited by the number of voters. Thus if there are 10,000 valid votes and 12 candidates, the maximum possible number of preference profiles would be 10,000 and not 1,302,061,344. In practice the actual number of preference profiles would be even lower, as significant numbers of voters would record identical patterns of preferences. Thus in the Meath constituency for the D?il ?ireann election in 2002 with 14 candidates (236,975,164,804 possibilities), there were 64,081 valid votes, but only 25,101 unique preference profiles. The Minneapolis STV (RCV) ballots were all hand sorted to unique preference profiles for each precinct and hand counted. This was unnecessary but feasible as the voters could not record more than three preferences (rankings), no matter the numbers of candidates. I understand the full preference profiles, probably at precinct level, will be published on the City website, but they are not there yet. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.730 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2637 - Release Date: 01/21/10 19:34:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
OK James. As I said before, I agree with you that you were giving the total number of profiles *if* voters were allowed to rank all candidates, which they were not allowed to do in Minneapolis or elsewhere in the US public elections if I am right. Further, I think that Robert is correct, that one could collapse the last N profiles into prior profiles if that is the system that is used (allowing ranking all candidates), although I do not think that gives any advantage, practically, to the counting process and may even complicate it. My formula provides the more practical number of how many profiles are allowed to be cast by voters and how many profiles are needed if one wants to count the number of votes cast for each profile and make IRV precinct-summable for an actual election. Obviously Condorcet counting methods are much simpler to make precinct-summable than IRV, requiring far fewer number of sums per precinct as the number of candidates increases. I think one thing that some election methods experts sometimes fail to consider are the election administration practicalities that are crucial to whether or not a method is functionally practical to provide public oversight over. I am fully aware that it is voting system technology, costs, and the increasing impracticality of manually auditing the election if the full range of preference profiles is allowed, if one is making an attempt to use paper ballots, that limits the number of choices a voter may fill out. I've studied this issue for 7 years now. Cheers, Kathy On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 4:08 AM, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: Kathy I think my post made clear that I was referring only to preference profiles. I was not dealing with the situation where some artificial, and highly undesirable, restriction had been placed on the numbers of rankings the voters could mark. I think my comments about the counting procedure adopted in Minneapolis should have indicated that I am well aware of the restrictions that can be imposed. But note that in Minneapolis the restriction was an artificial one imposed by the certified counting machines available for use in the precincts. There is nothing in the Minneapolis Election Ordinance that imposes such a restriction. So when Minneapolis can obtain certified counting machines that can deal with fully ranked ballots, there will be no such restriction in practice. James Behalf Of Kathy Dopp Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 12:43 AM Subject: Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy) James, Your formulas below are only correct in the case that voters are allowed to rank all the candidates who run for an election contest. That may be true in Australia, but is not true in the US where typically voters are allowed to rank up to only three candidates. I put the general formula that applies to *all* cases with n candidates and with r rankings allowed in my paper on IRV that I wrote a year or two ago: Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantR unoffVotingFlaws.pdf Because it's hard to write a summation, fraction formula, etc. here I'll let you look it up. It's on page 6 of the doc linked above. Cheers, Kathy From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk I do not intend to comment on your formula, but I calculate the numbers of possible unique preference profiles for increasing numbers of candidates (N) as follows: N Unique Preference Profiles 2 4 3 15 4 64 5 325 6 1,956 7 13,699 8 109,600 9 986,409 10 9,864,100 11 108,505,111 12 1,302,061,344 13 16,926,797,485 14 236,975,164,804 15 3,554,627,472,075 16 56,874,039,553,216 17 966,858,672,404,689 18 17,403,456,103,284,400 19 330,665,665,962,404,000 20 6,613,313,319,248,080,000 Where there are large numbers of candidates, the maximum possible number of unique preference profiles will be limited by the number of voters. Thus if there are 10,000 valid votes and 12 candidates, the maximum possible number of preference profiles would be 10,000 and not 1,302,061,344. In practice the actual number of preference profiles would be even lower, as significant numbers of voters would record identical patterns of preferences. Thus in the Meath constituency for the D?il ?ireann election in 2002 with 14 candidates (236,975,164,804 possibilities), there were 64,081 valid votes, but only 25,101 unique preference profiles. The Minneapolis STV (RCV) ballots were all hand sorted to unique preference profiles for each precinct and hand counted. This was unnecessary but feasible as the voters could not record more than three preferences (rankings), no matter the numbers of candidates. I understand the full preference profiles, probably
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
Kathy Dopp Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 1:42 PM OK James. As I said before, I agree with you that you were giving the total number of profiles *if* voters were allowed to rank all candidates, which they were not allowed to do in Minneapolis or elsewhere in the US public elections if I am right. In STV elections (STV, IRV, RCV) there should be NO restrictions of any kind on the number of rankings each voter may mark, up to the limit of the number of candidates. The voters should be completely free to mark as many or as few rankings as each wishes. Further, I think that Robert is correct, that one could collapse the last N profiles into prior profiles if that is the system that is used (allowing ranking all candidates), although I do not think that gives any advantage, practically, to the counting process and may even complicate it. As I explained in my earlier post, whether or not you can do that depends on the version of the STV counting rules you have to use. My formula provides the more practical number of how many profiles are allowed to be cast by voters and how many profiles are needed if one wants to count the number of votes cast for each profile and make IRV precinct-summable for an actual election. But if you do not report the complete preference profiles, down the last preference position (whether or not it is relevant to the count), you reduce the transparency of the process. The full ballot data should be published as soon as possible after the election. To provide complete information in the smallest size, the STV ballot data should be published as preference profiles, i.e. COMPLETE preference profiles. The BLT format is convenient for this. The full ballot data from the 2007 STV-PR local government elections in the City of Glasgow (Scotland) were published on the City Council's website as very soon after the count closed on the day after polling. They are still all there for inspection. Obviously Condorcet counting methods are much simpler to make precinct-summable than IRV, requiring far fewer number of sums per precinct as the number of candidates increases. If you are going to do a manual sort of the ballots, then making three piles for each pair-wise comparison (AB, BA, neither ranked) would involve less work than sorting to complete preference profiles. But if you have sensible processing equipment that task is trivial and the difference irrelevant. I think one thing that some election methods experts sometimes fail to consider are the election administration practicalities that are crucial to whether or not a method is functionally practical to provide public oversight over. The practicalities of election administration are extremely important and as a returning officer for some elections, I am well aware of that. But electoral administration must not be allowed to put artificial or convenient limitations on the democratic process. I am fully aware that it is voting system technology, costs, and the increasing impracticality of manually auditing the election if the full range of preference profiles is allowed, if one is making an attempt to use paper ballots, that limits the number of choices a voter may fill out. I've studied this issue for 7 years now. We have absolutely no problems with any of this in our STV public elections in the UK. We always take all our paper ballots to one counting centre for each electoral district. In Northern Ireland, the ballots are sorted and counted manually, under scrutiny. In Scotland in 2007 we used optical scanning equipment and OCR to produce the vote vector for each ballot and the vote vectors were then consolidated into preference profiles for the STV counting program. All the ballot handling was done under scrutiny. There are always some who are unhappy with the results (defeated candidates and their supporters!), but the process has not been challenged. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.730 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2637 - Release Date: 01/21/10 19:34:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:10 AM, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: Kathy Dopp Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 1:42 PM My formula provides the more practical number of how many profiles are allowed to be cast by voters and how many profiles are needed if one wants to count the number of votes cast for each profile and make IRV precinct-summable for an actual election. But if you do not report the complete preference profiles, down the last preference position (whether or not it is relevant to the count), you reduce the transparency of the process. The full ballot data should be published as soon as possible after the election. To provide complete information in the smallest size, the STV ballot data should be published as preference profiles, i.e. COMPLETE preference profiles. The BLT format is convenient for this. The full ballot data from the 2007 STV-PR local government elections in the City of Glasgow (Scotland) were published on the City Council's website as very soon after the count closed on the day after polling. They are still all there for inspection. James, you are using a straw man argument with me, setting up a false premise that I said something I never did, rather than responding to my formula which is more broad and general than yours. I.e. your formula is a subset of mine where r, the number of candidates voters may rank is equal to the number of candidates. Recall it was Robert who suggested collapsing and not reporting all of the exact preferences specified by voters, not myself, although I agree with Robert that if the number of candidates equals the number of rankings allowed, it could be collapsed for any IRV counting method I've heard of, although you say that there are methods I've never heard of where it could not be collapsed. To require, as you suggest that all election be administered in a way that allows all voters to fully rank all candidates may sounds nice and would eliminate one of the problems with IRV, but with so many election contests on one ballot here in the US, it would be costly and possibly impractical unless you insist on using inauditable, easily hacked, electronic ballots and touchscreen devices rather than auditable voter marked paper ballots. As I said earlier, if paper ballots are required, the length of the paper ballot must be unlimited if the number of candidates who can run for office is unlimited and you want voters to be able to fully rank (not that most voters would want to.) Dealing with practical election administration issues seem to be very low down on the totem pole for most electoral methods people it seems. Obviously Condorcet counting methods are much simpler to make precinct-summable than IRV, requiring far fewer number of sums per precinct as the number of candidates increases. If you are going to do a manual sort of the ballots, then making three piles for each pair-wise comparison (AB, BA, neither ranked) would involve less work than sorting to complete preference profiles. But if you have sensible processing equipment that task is trivial and the difference irrelevant. Sorting ballots is not a logically coherent method of counting Condorcet ballots James, so I'm not sure what you mean. Also, of course three piles only works for the first round of sorting for an IRV-type of count in the special case where there are three candidates running for office, not for the general case of IRV and not for Condorcet, so I have no idea what you're thinking about. If you reread one of my recent emails, I describe the two methods for handcounting IRV and the two methods for counting Condorcet. The only methods they have in common is to begin by sorting into all the unique votes. Sorting ballots into piles and confusing subpiles only works for IRV and does not work for STV, except if there are no transferrable votes or you want to cut up pieces of ballots or xerox copies of ballots (what a confusing mess that would be.) I think one thing that some election methods experts sometimes fail to consider are the election administration practicalities that are crucial to whether or not a method is functionally practical to provide public oversight over. The practicalities of election administration are extremely important and as a returning officer for some elections, I am well aware of that. But electoral administration must not be allowed to put artificial or convenient limitations on the democratic process. Except in the case of such methods as IRV when the method is not only wholly inconvenient and costly and virtually impossible to hand count understandably and quickly and is also unfair and produces awful outcomes. A simpler method to administer is always preferable, other things being equal, to a complex costly method such as IRV, but IRV does not even provide any reason to use it since it fails more fairness criteria than plurality, takes us backwards in election fairness
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 22, 2010, at 8:54 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote: As I said earlier, if paper ballots are required, the length of the paper ballot must be unlimited if the number of candidates who can run for office is unlimited and you want voters to be able to fully rank (not that most voters would want to.) What point are you making here? If the number of candidates is unlimited, then so is the length of the ballot, but that's true for any method that lists the candidates, including fptp and Condorcet methods. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
At 03:57 AM 1/22/2010, James Gilmour wrote: This second set of rules are those that prescribe the transfer of votes to the bitter end, i.e. even after the winners have all been determined. Under this rule a ballot marked A would be treated differently from a ballot marked AB: at the last possible transfer, the A ballot would become 'non-transferable (exhausted)', but the AB ballot would be transferred to A. You mean transferred to B, of course. This second rule is, of course, a stupid rule but that does not mean it has not been implemented in some jurisdictions, including, sadly, Scotland. Not stupid, precisely because of the difference between AB and A. The former is an acceptance of the last listed preference, the latter is not. It makes a difference if a majority is required. Not if it is not, though it might make a difference with some methods. But not IRV. It is also a highly undesirable rule because it means that my vote could, in some circumstances, be transferred to the candidate I deliberately ranked last in the lowest possible place, e.g. 12th out of 12 candidates. Basically, if there are as many ranks as candidates, don't vote for that last one! That's your choice, unless full ranking is required, in which case you *can't* vote the truncated vote and it is irrelevant if it's counted or not. Following on from the concept of 'Later No Harm' (which underpins the whole of contingency voting, as in IRV and STV-PR), it is very important to be able to give a voter the absolutely assurance that under no circumstances will her vote ever be transferred to the candidate she has ranked 12th out of 12. Sadly, the stupid transfer to the bitter end rule undermines this. Only because of voter ignorance, an ignorance which has sometimes been encouraged by activists. The ballot instructions should state that one should not rank any candidate one is not willing to support over alternatives. If there are twelve candidates on the ballot, and write-in votes are not allowed (is that the truth there)?, and a majority is not required, there should only be eleven ranks, not twelve. Otherwise the ballot encourages the behavior you don't like. But with write-in votes allowed, you need twelve ranks to cover a single allowed write-in. So that's thirteen candidates. And then the ballot instruction is important, because otherwise voters will imagine they are voting maximally against a candidate with a ranking of 12th. Instead, in these conditions, it's a vote for a candidate as against any possible write-in, including one the voter might well have preferred if aware that a write-in candidate had a prayer. You are right, there is a problem, but it isn't with the rule that continues to the end, it's with voter education. If a majority is not required, though, it's moot. But with better preferential voting methods than IRV, there is indeed a difference between AB and A. I'm not at all convinced that full ranking provides useful information beyond the first few ranks. With Bucklin, three ranks are pretty obviously enough. In reality, in Bucklin elections, udner some conditions, only a bit over 10% of voters even used additional ranks. It's not about later-no-harm, it's about how much information the voters have. If they have a strong preference for a frontrunner over all others, truncating is a perfectly sensible vote. It gets even more sensible if it's a runoff system. If your voting method does indeed require a majority, why in the world do you add that 12th preference? By adding it, you are contributing to the community acceptance of the result, by withholding it, you are asking for a possible second chance for your favorite. If a majority is required, the absolute Later No Harm promise of IRV is false. That's been missed by focus on the method as deterministic. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
Kathy Dopp Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 4:54 PM James, you are using a straw man argument with me, setting up a false premise that I said something I never did, Kathy, I was not setting up any straw man argument with you or anyone else. I simply stated what a preference profile is and the possible numbers of such profiles. Anything else is not a preference profile and is irrelevant. Of course, no-one in their right mind (or not under legal restraint) would do a manual count of STV ballots by sorting to preference profiles. It is completely unnecessary and would extend time taken for the count very greatly. Sorting STV ballots to preference profiles makes sense only in computerised counting. To require, as you suggest that all election be administered in a way that allows all voters to fully rank all candidates may sounds nice No, Kathy it is not something that sounds nice - it is an essential requirement for the proper implementation of democratic choice. Any artificiality imposed constraint on that is a restriction of that democratic choice. But I am aware that factors of administrative convenience outweigh such considerations in some jurisdictions - it must be so, else they would never be tolerated. and would eliminate one of the problems with IRV, but with so many election contests on one ballot here in the US, it would be costly and possibly impractical unless you insist on using inauditable, easily hacked, electronic ballots and touchscreen devices rather than auditable voter marked paper ballots. No, Kathy, here in the UK we do NOT use any easily hacked, electronic ballots and touchscreen devices. We use good old-fashioned paper ballots which we mark with a stubby pencil secured to the polling booth by a short length of string! It is very old technology, but it works, and it is extremely flexible in that this voting method (paper and pencil) can be adapted to any voting system (and we use five different voting systems for public elections in Scotland). And of course, where electronic counting is employed, we always have the original paper ballots should anyone demand an audit. As I said earlier, if paper ballots are required, the length of the paper ballot must be unlimited if the number of candidates who can run for office is unlimited and you want voters to be able to fully rank (not that most voters would want to.) Length has not been a problem. Dealing with practical election administration issues seem to be very low down on the totem pole for most electoral methods people it seems. I cannot speak for any other EM member, but practical election administration is an important priority for me, especially as I am the returning officer for some elections and the supervising officer for some others. CUT Sorting ballots into piles and confusing subpiles only works for IRV and does not work for STV, except if there are no transferrable votes or you want to cut up pieces of ballots or xerox copies of ballots (what a confusing mess that would be.) If by STV you mean STV-PR (a multi-seat election), this statement is nonsense. IF you are sorting ballots into unique preference profiles, that is as easily done for STV-PR as it is for IRV. Of course, as I have already said, it makes no sense to do that in a manual count of any IRV or STV-PR election. And when it comes to the practical transfer of ballots in an STV-PR election there is no problem at all, whether you are dealing with whole vote transfers on an exclusion or fractional transfers of a surplus. The practicalities of election administration are extremely important and as a returning officer for some elections, I am well aware of that. But electoral administration must not be allowed to put artificial or convenient limitations on the democratic process. Except in the case of such methods as IRV when the method is not only wholly inconvenient and costly and virtually impossible to hand count understandably and quickly and is also unfair and produces awful outcomes. IRV and STV-PR are quite easy to count by hand and the procedures and the outcomes are widely understood. They have been doing just that in Ireland and Malta since 1920, and in Northern Ireland again since 1973. The multi-seat count may take longer than one plurality count, but that one multi-seat count replaces several plurality counts. And of course, there is no comparison at all in what is achieved in terms of fair and democratic representation of the voters - which should always be the deciding factor. A simpler method to administer is always preferable, other things being equal, to a complex costly method such as IRV, But of course, other thing are not equal. And there are higher priorities in achieving democratic representation than cost and complexity. but IRV does not even provide any reason to use it since it fails more fairness criteria
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
At 09:33 PM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:42 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
James,
Your formulas below are only correct in the case that voters are
allowed to rank all the candidates who run for an election contest.
James didn't put forth any formulae. but he did put forth a table ,
which appears to be consistent with
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
he, appears to miss the same point as Abd and you do.
Okay, now, three missing Robert's point against Robert's superior
opinion, as he insists, that totally ignores the substantial and
thorough arguments and evidence presented and focuses on alleged
errors in details.
That may be true in Australia, but is not true in the US where
typically voters are allowed to rank up to only three candidates.
where do you get your information, Kathy? that is *not* at all the
case in the IRV election in Burlington VT.
or is Burlington untypical?
Yes, it is. Most IRV elections in the U.S. are Ranked Choice
Voting, typically referring to a three-rank ballot, even if there
are more than two candidates plus the write-in option.
Burlington allowed ranking of all candidates on the ballot. There
were six slots and six candidates on the ballot. This allows full
ranking, however, it is misleading a bit, because it encourages a
voter to rank all the candidates, including the lowest preference,
imagining that this last ranking is a vote against the candidate,
when, in fact, it is a vote for the candidate under some conditions,
a vote against every write-in, unless the voter explicitly ranks the
write-in, which then *is* a vote against the unranked candidate.
Imagine that there is some write-in campaign that brings up a real
possibility with, say, a three-rank ballot. With that 6-rank ballot,
almost impossible for the candidate to win, because of the knee-jerk
full ranking that some voters will do. If voters truncate, fine.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 5:53 PM At 03:57 AM 1/22/2010, James Gilmour wrote: This second set of rules are those that prescribe the transfer of votes to the bitter end, i.e. even after the winners have all been determined. Under this rule a ballot marked A would be treated differently from a ballot marked AB: at the last possible transfer, the A ballot would become 'non-transferable (exhausted)', but the AB ballot would be transferred to A. You mean transferred to B, of course. Apologies - my example was incomplete. To illustrate this stupid rule properly, I should have posited two candidates, A and B, (or just two left after all others have been eliminated), with A the winner. Then consider two ballots, one marked B and the other marked BA. In the last round of a count under the to the bitter end transfer rule, the ballot marked B would be 'non-transferrable (exhausted)', but the vote on the BA ballot would be transferred to A. It is illogical to treat these ballots differently in an STV (contingency choice) election and it offends the underlying concepts of 'Later No Harm' to transfer the BA ballot to A. This second rule is, of course, a stupid rule but that does not mean it has not been implemented in some jurisdictions, including, sadly, Scotland. Not stupid, precisely because of the difference between AB and A. The former is an acceptance of the last listed preference, the latter is not. It makes a difference if a majority is required. Not if it is not, though it might make a difference with some methods. But not IRV. But my comments were exclusively in the context of STV elections (IRV, STV-PR, RCV). It is also a highly undesirable rule because it means that my vote could, in some circumstances, be transferred to the candidate I deliberately ranked last in the lowest possible place, e.g. 12th out of 12 candidates. Basically, if there are as many ranks as candidates, don't vote for that last one! That's your choice, unless full ranking is required, in which case you *can't* vote the truncated vote and it is irrelevant if it's counted or not. That's why when running an STV election where we can use write in boxes for all preferences, I always provide one fewer preference box than the number of candidates (as I see you recommended in a later part of your post). But all of our ballots for public elections have the candidates names printed on them. Following on from the concept of 'Later No Harm' (which underpins the whole of contingency voting, as in IRV and STV-PR), it is very important to be able to give a voter the absolutely assurance that under no circumstances will her vote ever be transferred to the candidate she has ranked 12th out of 12. Sadly, the stupid transfer to the bitter end rule undermines this. Only because of voter ignorance, an ignorance which has sometimes been encouraged by activists. No, not at all. This is a piece of nonsense that some have introduced into STV counting, especially since electronic counting became available. It does not feature in any of the long-established versions of STV counting rules promoted in the UK. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.730 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2637 - Release Date: 01/21/10 19:34:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:54 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:17 PM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: and i believe that it is perfectly practical when the number of *credible* candidates is small. doesn't matter what the voting system is. IRV, or whatever. Yes. But how small? Don't use the bogus numbers that aren't at all realistic given real-world election rules, lotsa blather deleted and left unresponded being 54 and having voted in every prez election since Carter-Ford (and aware of the 1968 election with Wallace-Nixon-Humphery), i have never once seen a presidential election in the US that had more than two candidates with any chance of winning, and no more than three candidates of national salience. so my bogus number is 3, maybe 4 at the most. individual precincts could total 40 different virtual piles. doesn't matter what the counting method is, those precinct summable pile tallies are sufficient to completely describe the election for those 4. for 3 candidates, that number is 9. Okay, three candidates, A, B, C, the ballot possibilities are, to be complete, much more than 9. I'll assume that write-ins are illegal and void the ballot. Some of the possibilities are legally equivalent to others, and in actual IRV ballot imaging, they are collapsed and reported the same, to the displeasure of voting security people who do want to know the error rate, which includes overvoting and exact overvoting patterns. So-called ballot images are not, generally. They are processed data reducing a ballot to legally equivalent votes. The reduced set is this: A B C AB AC BA BC CA CB Note that this assumes a 2-rank ballot. no, it can be a 3-rank ballot where the voter declines to rate their last choice. 3rd choice is left unmarked. I meant something a little different. I address the possibility of a 3-rank ballot in the next section. The basic issue here is whether or not the third rank is irrelevant or not. If it's irrelevant, I claim, it's not really a three-rank ballot, it's got two relevant ranks and one that means nothing. Why was it even there? blather. you said absolutely nothing of substance. It also assumes that majority vote isn't important. bullshit. it (the number of consequential ballot permutations) has nothing to do with it (whether or not majority vote is important). This is, in fact, serious ignorance. Bullshit, properly used, allows things to grow. Consider where the growth lies here. If a majority is required, there is a difference in meaning between BCA and BC. I will assume the counting method described by Robert's Rules of Order for preferential voting. 3 candidates Situation with truncated B vote: 35 AB 34 BC 31 C C eliminated, votes become 35 AB 34 B Majority basis is 100. 51 votes are required to win. No majority, B eliminated. I would guess that Robert doesn't consider this step because he is used to thinking of plurality IRV, no majority required, and the counting can stop with the last two in that case. A would win. 35 AB. A is plurality winner, no majority, election fails. Who would be the runoff candidates? Under Robert's Rules, the question is unanswerable and undeterminable from the first round results. It's a new election. Under top two runoff rules, the rules were not designed for a preferential ballot, but I'd suggest considering *every IRV vote* as an approval, then pick the top two in that. so you're making up rules to prove a point. chapter 13, section 45 of RONR (regarding preferential voting) have *no* consequential difference between marking the last preference last or deducing the same preference is last because it is the *only* one remaining unmarked. there is no consequential difference between. 35 AB 34 BC 31 C and 35 AB 34 BCA 31 C or 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 C end of discussion. Pay attention, Robert, there is far more here than you imagine. the problem for you is that i *am* paying attention. you're wrong and, by examination, that fact that you're wrong becomes manifest. the rest of the blather is deleted without comment. people need to warned that, although you fancy yourself an expert, you are not. you make things up. they should just ignore you. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 22, 2010, at 3:57 AM, James Gilmour wrote:
robert bristow-johnson Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 12:25 AM
On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:05 PM, James Gilmour wrote:
N Unique Preference Profiles
2 4
3 15
...
then your calculation is mistaken. the fact that you
ostensibly need
4 piles when there are only two candidates should serve as a clue.
If there are two candidates, A and B, then the possible unique
preference profiles are:
A
B
AB
BA
what, on a ballot, is the consequential difference in meaning between
A and AB? what effect does a ballot marked AB have over one
marked just A (or vise versa) in *any* election method that uses
ranked ballots?
In terms of preference profiles the question is completely
irrelevant. A and AB are two different preference profiles. So
the possible numbers of preference profiles for given numbers of
candidates are, I think, correctly stated in the table in my
earlier post.
How the STV counting rules handle the two preference profiles A
and AB is a different matter. Some STV counting rules handle
these two profiles identically. But for some other STV counting
rules the profiles A and AB are handled differently. This
second set of rules are those that prescribe the transfer of votes
to the bitter end, i.e. even after the winners have all been
determined.
so what consequential difference is that?
Under this rule a ballot marked A would be treated differently
from a ballot marked AB: at the last possible
transfer, the A ballot would become 'non-transferable
(exhausted)', but the AB ballot would be transferred to A.
now remember in the case we're discussing here, there is only two
candidates. again, what consequence to the outcome of the election
(that is, who of A or B wins) occurs whether a ballot is marked
A (and B is last by default) or is marked AB?
there is none.
i'm not going to discuss this any more with Abd, because he's not a
straight shooter, but James, if you want to get into this, it's
pretty much cut and dried from the POV of Information Theory (a.la.
Claude Shannon). it's a discipline within my purview (being an
electrical engineer that does signal processing), but the fundamental
fact comes early. for information to be transmitted from one
location (the voter and his ballot) to another location (the ballot
counters), it is necessary that such information does not exist at
the destination prior. Information Theory is about the measure of
how much information is contained in a message and how many bits one
bests commit to a message.
the first three statements following provide a non-zero amount of
information (providing the destination was originally ignorant of the
same). the fourth statement (given the first three) has a measure of
information of precisely zero (which means that it is inconsequential
whether the message is transmitted or not).
1. there are three eligible candidates, A, B, and C.
2. a particular voter has A as his/her first preference.
3. the same voter has B as the second preference.
4. the same voter has C as the last preference.
when i taught Information Theory (just once, almost two decades ago),
i was sorta enamored of some of George Carlin's humor and found an
interesting example i used to illustrate a similar point. Consider a
weather forecast (say on TV). If it were to say tonight's forecast:
snow, that would have some real information and the number of bits
needed to encode it is greater than zero. But now consider Carlin's
Hippie-Dippie Weatherman, Al Sleet: Tonight's forecast: Dark.
Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-
scattered light towards morning. If you're not considering Joshua in
the Old Testament, how much information is in that forecast?
in general, the number of bits inherent to a particular message,
given the probability of occurrence of the message, is:
I(m) = -log2( p(m) )(base 2 log and p(m) is the probability)
if p(m)=1, there is no information content in the message.
committing bits or words or time to saying it is redundant.
again, the number of piles *necessary* (for recording and
transmitting the information) when there are precisely N distinct
candidates is
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=1
not
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
the latter redundantly (and unnecessarily) divides N! piles into
twice that number with no difference of information between the two
piles of each pair.
this is not social science. it's not politics. it's not opinion.
it's just math.
i think i am now going to bow out of this.
it's similar to the alien abduction controversy. no matter how many
people claim to be abducted by extra-terrestials and can provide
vivid and detailed information of they're alleged abduction (and even
scars, where they stuck the needles in),
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
At 01:55 PM 1/22/2010, James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 5:53 PM At 03:57 AM 1/22/2010, James Gilmour wrote: This second set of rules are those that prescribe the transfer of votes to the bitter end, i.e. even after the winners have all been determined. Under this rule a ballot marked A would be treated differently from a ballot marked AB: at the last possible transfer, the A ballot would become 'non-transferable (exhausted)', but the AB ballot would be transferred to A. You mean transferred to B, of course. Apologies - my example was incomplete. To illustrate this stupid rule properly, I should have posited two candidates, A and B, (or just two left after all others have been eliminated), with A the winner. Then consider two ballots, one marked B and the other marked BA. In the last round of a count under the to the bitter end transfer rule, the ballot marked B would be 'non-transferrable (exhausted)', but the vote on the BA ballot would be transferred to A. It is illogical to treat these ballots differently in an STV (contingency choice) election and it offends the underlying concepts of 'Later No Harm' to transfer the BA ballot to A. If truncation is allowed, there is a difference, as you know. However, if a plurality of ballots is sufficient for victory, it's irrelevant to the result. The real difference shows up when a true majority is required. In Australia, they use the term absolute majority as the quota that must be reached, but that is with mandatory full ranking. So there is never majority failure, absent a tie, and a majority is always found when there are only two candidates still standing. Where truncation is permitted, which is in a few places in Australia, they change the quota to a majority of votes for candidates not eliminated. That, too, never requires that last counting step. But we have been discussing the general case, and that case most notably includes elections as described in Robert's Rules of Order, Newly Revised, RRONR 10th edition, where a single-transferable vote method is described for single-winner (and a multiwinner variation is also described, a detail I won't address). RRONR never permits election without a majority unless a special bylaw has been passed allowing election by plurality. Which is strongly discouraged. FairVote managed to confuse nearly everyone with their description of what is in Robert's Rules. They have slightly modified their rhetoric since I started nailing them on this, so that generally they aren't actually lying any more, but they still cherry-pick and create deceptive implications. If a majority is sought, and full ranking is optional, and the ballots are ones on which the voter writes candidates in order of preference, going to the last elimination is quite proper, for one has thereby found all the ballots containing a vote for the leader. If that is not a majority of all ballots, the election fails. And, yes, this violates Later No Harm. If only a plurality is required, Later No Harm is not violated. LNH is incompatible with a majority requirement, unless voters are coerced or misled, that is one of the dirty little secrets of IRV. In RRONR elections, the voters are not constrained to a list of candidates. In the normal procedure, the ballots are blank, and the voter writes down the names of candidates, ranking them. The voter may vote for *anyone*, including ineligible candidates or Donald Duck, or, more importantly, Mr. None of the Above. Why does RRONR even propose the STV method? Good question! They propose it in cases where repeated balloting is not considered practical. But they think of it as a way to find a majority, and they advise the voters to rank all the candidates, cautioning that if they don't, it is possible that no candidate will get a majority, thus requiring the election to be repeated. Now, this is what I've found in studying U.S. elections with IRV. In partisan elections, IRV sometimes works and finds a better winner, clearly more democratic, than FPTP or Plurality. In nonpartisan elections, however, at least in these public elections studied, IRV simply reproduces the results of Plurality. There is enough evidence to come to the conclusion that exceptions would be rare and typically close elections. We have been discussing the election in Burlington, Vermont. There, a naive impression can be created that Plurality would have elected Wright, the Republican, he did get the most first preference votes. However, prior to IRV being adopted there, they used top two runoff, with a 40% requirement for election, otherwise a runoff was held between the top two. The runoff would have been between Kiss and Wright. Likely result would have been the same as with IRV. The problem is that, while Kiss was a better winner than Wright, the eliminated Democrat, Montroll, was a beats-all winner, based on the
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
WARNING: this is a metacommunication, about the communication process here and elsewhere in voting system advocacy, not about voting methods, per se. At 01:48 AM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:23 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Variation on previous post. Silly time! At 02:31 PM 1/16/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 16, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Robert, your slip is showing. what slip? i don't have nuttin' under me kilt. We already knew that. you do? you keep saying that you can see it. Yes, I said that. Slip is showing is a metaphor, stating that something relatively unmentionable is visible. I can see something. Others can see something. Do you see or know what we see? Perhaps you do, but you are defending yourself as if you cannot see it. Others who do see it might respond differently. This is meta talk, it's about the communication, not election methods. I will therefore limit it to what's relevant to the *extended* purposes of this list, which include voting system advocacy, not merely theory. If you are going to be a public advocate, you will be much more effective if you know how your actions and words will be seen, and if you can learn as much as possible about debate tactics and strategy. Silly hat, Off. Robert, if you want to be effective in public debate, what makes you think i'm not effective? do you actually think you were effective? 1. I suspect you are less effective than you can be. You get caught, easily, in irrelevancies, distracting from the central points to be conveyed. As a public activist, to be effective, you must use polemic and all the skills of advocacy, which is different from discussion. Here, we discuss, and no collective decisions are actually made here. However, I inferred from behavior here what might happen in a public debate. If, in fact, some of this behavior carries over to public debate, you could get creamed. Unnecessarily. That is, over your own style and personality, not over the issue you are advocating. 2. Was I effective? In what? I'm engaged only in a diffuse kind of advocacy here. However, I've also repeated ideas that I've expressed here many times, and this is part of my own learning and polishing process. This is of benefit to those who find it useful to follow my discussions, to explore these topics repeatedly so that they become familiar, and so that deeper understanding spreads. It's my method and approach, and it certainly is not for everyone. Were I to do in a public forum, not a specialized forum like this, what I do here, I'd almost completely fail. (3.) I have, however, come to the point that I'm sufficiently familiar with the issues that I'd engage, if invited, in public debate. I'm an effective speaker, making clear and direct contact with the audience. We'll see if that happens. I have made blog posts in public fora on these issues, they are far briefer, in general. The effort per word and per message is much higher for them. i won't slap on the argumentum verbosium and explode the debate about a single testable issue (like how many piles one needs if there are 3 candidates) into pages and pages, that when i responded, my post was rejected by the list server as too large. Oh, we are crushed at the loss actually, usually it isn't exactly rejected, it is held for moderator approval, which can take some time. Depends. I'd suggest avoiding setting up an immediate victory by the other side by feeding him or her lines like that. you're the one feeding lines. Sure. Like a debate opponent might. Your slip is showing is a metacommunication to the audience, calling attention very briefly to the opponent's behavior, or sometimes to an issue of substance (possibly). As an ad hominem argument, it's irrelevant, but in real debate, it could be very important. People respond to the person, usually, more than to the substance. They judge the substance by the person. Only in careful deliberative process is this effect reduced much. who brought up the slip showing in the first place? Me. A stand-in for your debate opponent. However, it wasn't intended as a debate tactic, but as personal advice, which you could take or leave. You took it, in fact, but as if it were bait in a debate, and you also took, therefore, the hook and the line. And in so doing, you got jerked out of the water. My judgement. Yours might be different, but if you really want to know, ask someone neutral. how does one respond when facing: Your slip is showing, now onto a verbose response that does not speak to the core factual issues at all. How? It's actually terminally easy. No response at all is probably the most efficient. A quick joke, though, may be even more efficient. Learn to think on your feet, if you have to puzzle over this, no response is better. Robert, your slip is showing was very efficient for me, it took,
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 21, 2010, at 3:24 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: WARNING: this is a metacommunication, about the communication process here and elsewhere in voting system advocacy, not about voting methods, per se. At 01:48 AM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:23 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Variation on previous post. Silly time! At 02:31 PM 1/16/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 16, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Robert, your slip is showing. what slip? i don't have nuttin' under me kilt. We already knew that. you do? you keep saying that you can see it. Yes, I said that. Slip is showing is a metaphor, stating that something relatively unmentionable is visible. I can see something. Others can see something. Do you see or know what we see? Perhaps you do, but you are defending yourself as if you cannot see it. Others who do see it might respond differently. better say what it is right now, or you're just blowing smoke (to make use of another metaphor). 1. I suspect you are less effective than you can be. You get caught, easily, in irrelevancies, distracting from the central points to be conveyed. it wasn't me that amplified the length of text by a factor of 10. i was trying to keep it focused and my mistake was responding to your asides. As a public activist, to be effective, you must use polemic and all the skills of advocacy, which is different from discussion. Here, we discuss, and no collective decisions are actually made here. However, I inferred from behavior here what might happen in a public debate. If, in fact, some of this behavior carries over to public debate, you could get creamed. Unnecessarily. That is, over your own style and personality, not over the issue you are advocating. blather. (quoting Warren Smith.) 2. Was I effective? In what? I'm engaged only in a diffuse kind of advocacy here. However, I've also repeated ideas that I've expressed here many times, and this is part of my own learning and polishing process. This is of benefit to those who find it useful to follow my discussions, to explore these topics repeatedly so that they become familiar, and so that deeper understanding spreads. It's my method and approach, and it certainly is not for everyone. Were I to do in a public forum, not a specialized forum like this, what I do here, I'd almost completely fail. more blather. (3.) I have, however, come to the point that I'm sufficiently familiar with the issues that I'd engage, if invited, in public debate. I'm an effective speaker, making clear and direct contact with the audience. We'll see if that happens. I have made blog posts in public fora on these issues, they are far briefer, in general. The effort per word and per message is much higher for them. sometimes effective public speakers are successful not because of their efforts to focus the issue, but because of their efforts to distract. e.g. Sarah Palin. i won't slap on the argumentum verbosium and explode the debate about a single testable issue (like how many piles one needs if there are 3 candidates) into pages and pages, that when i responded, my post was rejected by the list server as too large. Oh, we are crushed at the loss actually, usually it isn't exactly rejected, it is held for moderator approval, which can take some time. Depends. i'm not messing with it further. i just ask that you don't amplify the quantity of responses by a factor of 10 and bring your post to 40K so that if anyone actually bothers to read through it and respond to most or all of the points, their effort goes into the trash can. since your name was in the To: header, you got that response, but no one else did. what i have learned from that is to not play your argumentum verbosium game. from now on, i must pick and choose, respond to only one point, delete all the other blather, and keep the issue focussed. thus i am deleting and not bothering to engage in the other text. care to discuss how many piles one needs (for precinct summability) when there are N candidates? or N credible candidates? that's what the issue was before it was buried in blather. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
People, please. This is not a debate class, and even if it were, no, I won is really useless even if true. Please take this discussion off list, if you find it important enough not to stop. There's practically no voting system content left. As for what is left: we all know that the number of piles is large, that full ballots can be transmitted, and we can work out the implications to our own perhaps-incorrect satisfaction. Respectfully to you both, but tired of this wordy debate, Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
i just want to settle the issue about how many piles one needs to be precinct summable when there are N candidates. Kathy was pointing to Abd ul as the qualified actor who refuted the falsifiable assertion that i made that you needed only 9 piles for 3 candidates. She repeated labeled (without any justification other than citing Abd ul's blather) the math that i clearly presented as illogical. Abd ul did nothing to support Kathy's assertion. Kathy, fancying herself as an election security expert, continues to try to taint IRV as being insecure because it's not precinct summable. and that is a demonstrably false claim. i'll leave it to the experts here to judge who was trying to stay on topic and who was decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio with unnecessary text (with aim to distract from the core issue and to denigrate the other side). r b-j On Jan 21, 2010, at 3:56 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: People, please. This is not a debate class, and even if it were, no, I won is really useless even if true. Please take this discussion off list, if you find it important enough not to stop. There's practically no voting system content left. As for what is left: we all know that the number of piles is large, that full ballots can be transmitted, and we can work out the implications to our own perhaps-incorrect satisfaction. Respectfully to you both, but tired of this wordy debate, Jameson -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
At 01:48 AM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: the fact is, transmitting the content (to a central counting location) of *every ballot* is the transfer of a finite amount of information. that is even *more* general than sorting to piles and transmitting the tallies for piles. Yes, of course. And this is an equivalent to carrying all the ballots to a central location, merely, if done, say, over the internet, faster. But ... it raises some security issues. And with central counting there are other issues. This is a red herring, because we are talking about precinct summability, and when the number of candidates is very small, precinct summability isn't relevant, because the raw ballot data may be transmitted. So, back to the real question: is precinct summability an important practical criterion to be applied to voting systems? A related question is the sensitivity of the method to small variations in votes. Noise, if you will. That can be seen with Yee diagrams, in the presence of chaotic regions in issue space, with IRV. But I won't address that here, beyond noting that IRV multiples the probability of ties, and many of the ties will drastically flip the overall result. With most other methods, there is only one relevant tie possible (beyond extraordinarily rare three-way ties) and when this happens, a coin flip doesn't change the expected voter satisfaction much, if at all. With IRV, the effect can be enormous, because the tie can affect a candidate elimination before all the votes for that candidate have been counted. but breaking it down to piles regarding every conceivable permutation of candidate preference is *still* breaking it down to a finite number of piles. Sure. Finite. I'll point out that a google is finite. With computers, this can be done even with moderately large numbers of candidates. It's still a problem with voting security, though. I've argued for Public Ballot Imaging, which would make available actual ballot images, transmitted from polling places, perhaps by fax or more likely through digital camera images -- no touching of ballots necessary except by election officers, all visible openly --, independently by voting watchdog organization through election observers, so that anyone can verify the count in a precinct or as many as they care, or can even just check one serialized ballot (serialized before counting) and mark it as reviewed, in a system that collects and displays such reviews. Many details omitted here! for 3 candidates, that number is 9. Okay, three candidates, A, B, C, the ballot possibilities are, to be complete, much more than 9. I'll assume that write-ins are illegal and void the ballot. Some of the possibilities are legally equivalent to others, and in actual IRV ballot imaging, they are collapsed and reported the same, to the displeasure of voting security people who do want to know the error rate, which includes overvoting and exact overvoting patterns. So-called ballot images are not, generally. They are processed data reducing a ballot to legally equivalent votes. The reduced set is this: A B C AB AC BA BC CA CB Note that this assumes a 2-rank ballot. It also assumes that majority vote isn't important. If it's important, as it would be in an IRV election under Robert's Rules, we have some more possibilities. They are all the three-rank permutations. ABC ACB BAC BCA CAB CBA Each of these is equivalent, for the purposes of finding a plurality winner, to a two-candidate combination. if you or Kathy say it's 15, then you're wrong (and it's your slip that's showing). Well, I won't speak about Kathy, but in terms of practical elections in the U.S., she's right. You did not state enough information to establish your reduced count, and you actually added language that indicated that a larger total would be necessary. You used the qualifier credible to indicate that there might be candidates not credible, and you did not take care to define this. What you have asserted is true under two qualifications: there are only three candidates legally eligible to receive votes. And there are only two ranks on the ballot. If there are three ranks on the ballot, we have a poor situation, an invitation to voters to cast an irrelevant vote, if, in fact, that third rank has any effect on outcome, which, in the general case, it can. If it can affect outcome in some way, the piles must be reported separately. for 4 candidates the number of necessary piles is 40. Under the restricted conditions, perhaps. I haven't checked the math. I distrust formulas compared to exhaustive enumeration, they take more work and there is more room for error. My lists, which I provided before, showed what is shown above, though it may be better explained this time. The slip is an assumption that one's analysis is more complete than that of another, when it may be, instead, ignorant of some of the
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 21, 2010, at 4:26 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
But ... it raises some security issues. And with central counting
there are other issues. This is a red herring, because we are
talking about precinct summability, and when the number of
candidates is very small, precinct summability isn't relevant,
because the raw ballot data may be transmitted.
no, the problem is that the raw ballot data may be the only practical
information to transmitt if the number of candidates is *large*, not
very small. when the number of candidates is very small, then it
makes sense to transmit the tallies for piles because the number of
piles, which are precinct summable, is manageable.
So, back to the real question: is precinct summability an important
practical criterion to be applied to voting systems?
i would ask instead if precinct summability is important for
security? i believe that it is. and i believe that it is perfectly
practical when the number of *credible* candidates is small. doesn't
matter what the voting system is. IRV, or whatever.
for 3 candidates, that number is 9.
Okay, three candidates, A, B, C, the ballot possibilities are, to
be complete, much more than 9. I'll assume that write-ins are
illegal and void the ballot. Some of the possibilities are legally
equivalent to others, and in actual IRV ballot imaging, they are
collapsed and reported the same, to the displeasure of voting
security people who do want to know the error rate, which
includes overvoting and exact overvoting patterns. So-called ballot
images are not, generally. They are processed data reducing a
ballot to legally equivalent votes. The reduced set is this:
A
B
C
AB
AC
BA
BC
CA
CB
Note that this assumes a 2-rank ballot.
no, it can be a 3-rank ballot where the voter declines to rate their
last choice. 3rd choice is left unmarked.
It also assumes that majority vote isn't important.
bullshit. it (the number of consequential ballot permutations) has
nothing to do with it (whether or not majority vote is important).
If it's important, as it would be in an IRV election under Robert's
Rules, we have some more possibilities. They are all the three-rank
permutations.
ABC
ACB
BAC
BCA
CAB
CBA
Each of these is equivalent, for the purposes of finding a
plurality winner, to a two-candidate combination.
it's equivalent for the purposes of IRV or Condorcet or *any* method
that relies solely on the relative rank of candidates. those 6
markings are equivalent to the corresponding 6 above.
if you or
Kathy say it's 15, then you're wrong (and it's your slip that's
showing).
Well, I won't speak about Kathy, but in terms of practical
elections in the U.S., she's right. You did not state enough
information to establish your reduced count, ...
yes i did state enough information. may i remind you? i said that
there is *no* consequential difference in these two marked ballots
(in the case of N=3). there is no consequential difference between a
ballot marked AB to one marked ABC . there is no election
scenario, whether it's IRV, Condorcet, Borda or any other method
using ranked ballots that will count those two ballots differently.
there is no need to separate the AB and ABC into two piles.
for N candidates, the number of piles necessary, P(N) is
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=1
not
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
which is appears to be the formula you and Kathy continue to insist
is correct.
Which it is under some conditions and yours is correct under some
conditions. I assume. I haven't checked them because it's more work
than I can put in now.
want me to spell it out. it's a simple application of combinatorial
analysis, what is the first chapter of my introductory probability
textbook (of a course i took more than 3 decades ago). you're doing
it already for the specific case of 3 candidates A, B, and C. if you
want to look it up, look for language that says something like: how
many unique ways can a group of n items be selected from a pool of N
items when the order of selection is relevant? and the answer to
that is N!/n! . but there is one more fact that you need to toss
in. and that fact is that all candidates unmarked or unranked are
tied for last place. if there is only one candidate left unmarked,
we know how all N candidates are ranked, including the unmarked
candidate.
everything else between is deleted without comment
A vote of ABC, is that the same as AB? Robert assumes, yes. But
what about write-ins? ABC is equivalent to ABCW.
that's not 3 candidates. that's four. you just changed the
premise. that's an official logical fallacy. a form of straw man.
if the write-ins are insignificant (usually the case) we can sweep
them all into a single insignificant candidate and we have 4
candidates and 40 piles. but we'll see that
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
robert bristow-johnson Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 6:49 AM
but breaking it down to piles regarding every conceivable permutation
of candidate preference is *still* breaking it down to a finite
number of piles. for 3 candidates, that number is 9. if you or
Kathy say it's 15, then you're wrong (and it's your slip that's
showing). for 4 candidates the number of necessary piles is
40.
for N candidates, the number of piles necessary, P(N) is
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=1
not
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
I do not intend to comment on your formula, but I calculate the numbers of
possible unique preference profiles for increasing
numbers of candidates (N) as follows:
N Unique Preference Profiles
2 4
3 15
4 64
5 325
6 1,956
7 13,699
8 109,600
9 986,409
10 9,864,100
11 108,505,111
12 1,302,061,344
13 16,926,797,485
14 236,975,164,804
15 3,554,627,472,075
16 56,874,039,553,216
17 966,858,672,404,689
18 17,403,456,103,284,400
19 330,665,665,962,404,000
20 6,613,313,319,248,080,000
Where there are large numbers of candidates, the maximum possible number of
unique preference profiles will be limited by the number
of voters. Thus if there are 10,000 valid votes and 12 candidates, the maximum
possible number of preference profiles would be
10,000 and not 1,302,061,344.
In practice the actual number of preference profiles would be even lower, as
significant numbers of voters would record identical
patterns of preferences. Thus in the Meath constituency for the Dáil Éireann
election in 2002 with 14 candidates (236,975,164,804
possibilities), there were 64,081 valid votes, but only 25,101 unique
preference profiles.
The Minneapolis STV (RCV) ballots were all hand sorted to unique preference
profiles for each precinct and hand counted. This was
unnecessary but feasible as the voters could not record more than three
preferences (rankings), no matter the numbers of candidates.
I understand the full preference profiles, probably at precinct level, will be
published on the City website, but they are not there
yet.
James Gilmour
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.730 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2636 - Release Date: 01/21/10
07:34:00
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 21, 2010, at 6:30 PM, James Gilmour wrote:
robert bristow-johnson Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 6:49 AM
but breaking it down to piles regarding every conceivable permutation
of candidate preference is *still* breaking it down to a finite
number of piles. for 3 candidates, that number is 9. if you or
Kathy say it's 15, then you're wrong (and it's your slip that's
showing). for 4 candidates the number of necessary piles is
40.
for N candidates, the number of piles necessary, P(N) is
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=1
not
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
I do not intend to comment on your formula, but I calculate the
numbers of possible unique preference profiles for increasing
numbers of candidates (N) as follows:
N Unique Preference Profiles
2 4
3 15
...
then your calculation is mistaken. the fact that you ostensibly need
4 piles when there are only two candidates should serve as a clue.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
N Unique Preference Profiles 2 4 3 15 ... then your calculation is mistaken. the fact that you ostensibly need 4 piles when there are only two candidates should serve as a clue. If there are two candidates, A and B, then the possible unique preference profiles are: A B A B B A Anything that does not conform to this is an incorrect use of the term preference profile. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.730 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2636 - Release Date: 01/21/10 07:34:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:05 PM, James Gilmour wrote: N Unique Preference Profiles 2 4 3 15 ... then your calculation is mistaken. the fact that you ostensibly need 4 piles when there are only two candidates should serve as a clue. If there are two candidates, A and B, then the possible unique preference profiles are: A B AB BA what, on a ballot, is the consequential difference in meaning between A and AB? what effect does a ballot marked AB have over one marked just A (or vise versa) in *any* election method that uses ranked ballots? -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
ballot to legally equivalent votes. The reduced set is this: A B C AB AC BA BC CA CB Note that this assumes a 2-rank ballot. no, it can be a 3-rank ballot where the voter declines to rate their last choice. 3rd choice is left unmarked. It also assumes that majority vote isn't important. bullshit. it (the number of consequential ballot permutations) has nothing to do with it (whether or not majority vote is important). If it's important, as it would be in an IRV election under Robert's Rules, we have some more possibilities. They are all the three-rank permutations. ABC ACB BAC BCA CAB CBA Well, I won't speak about Kathy, but in terms of practical elections in the U.S., she's right. You did not state enough information to establish your reduced count, ... yes i did state enough information. may i remind you? i said that there is *no* consequential difference in these two marked ballots (in the case of N=3). there is no consequential difference between a ballot marked AB to one marked ABC . there is no election scenario, whether it's IRV, Condorcet, Borda or any other method using ranked ballots that will count those two ballots differently. there is no need to separate the AB and ABC into two piles. OK. I understand now why you are confused Robert: 1. on the formula for the number of possible unique candidate orderings for any rank choice voting method you incorrectly assume that the number of possible ballot rankings that a voter may fill out is always equal to the number of candidates running for office and so you can collapse N of the rankings, but this simply is not the case in US IRV elections and it would just be unnecessarily confusing to collapse rankings for the special (and unusual) case when there are three candidates and three rankings, when a more general formula that always applies to all situations regardless of the number of candidates and allowed rankings could be used; and 2. on the fact that IRV and Condorcet must be reported similarly and counted similarly, because there are different methods available to count each one. With Condorcet, you can easily count it with an NxN matrix and you cannot count IRV that way at all generally (although I wouldn't put it past you to find an unusual special case where you could). With IRV, you can count it (albeit not easily depending on the number of candidates) with sorting into piles, but you cannot count Condorcet method that way. You can count either Condorcet or IRV by sorting into unique vote orderings, as I gave you the general formula for that works in all cases earlier. However that would be a very difficult and time-consuming way to count Condorcet since Condorcet is precinct-summable in the far simpler n x n matrix. It is the only way to make IRV precinct summable using the formulas I gave you earlier or you can look them up in my IRV report, unless you want to publicly report all voters' individual choices. Minneapolis chose to use the first method. I.e. The counting methods available and ideally used for Condorcet and IRV are different. -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
James, Your formulas below are only correct in the case that voters are allowed to rank all the candidates who run for an election contest. That may be true in Australia, but is not true in the US where typically voters are allowed to rank up to only three candidates. I put the general formula that applies to *all* cases with n candidates and with r rankings allowed in my paper on IRV that I wrote a year or two ago: Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Because it's hard to write a summation, fraction formula, etc. here I'll let you look it up. It's on page 6 of the doc linked above. Cheers, Kathy From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk I do not intend to comment on your formula, but I calculate the numbers of possible unique preference profiles for increasing numbers of candidates (N) as follows: N Unique Preference Profiles 2 4 3 15 4 64 5 325 6 1,956 7 13,699 8 109,600 9 986,409 10 9,864,100 11 108,505,111 12 1,302,061,344 13 16,926,797,485 14 236,975,164,804 15 3,554,627,472,075 16 56,874,039,553,216 17 966,858,672,404,689 18 17,403,456,103,284,400 19 330,665,665,962,404,000 20 6,613,313,319,248,080,000 Where there are large numbers of candidates, the maximum possible number of unique preference profiles will be limited by the number of voters. Thus if there are 10,000 valid votes and 12 candidates, the maximum possible number of preference profiles would be 10,000 and not 1,302,061,344. In practice the actual number of preference profiles would be even lower, as significant numbers of voters would record identical patterns of preferences. Thus in the Meath constituency for the D?il ?ireann election in 2002 with 14 candidates (236,975,164,804 possibilities), there were 64,081 valid votes, but only 25,101 unique preference profiles. The Minneapolis STV (RCV) ballots were all hand sorted to unique preference profiles for each precinct and hand counted. This was unnecessary but feasible as the voters could not record more than three preferences (rankings), no matter the numbers of candidates. I understand the full preference profiles, probably at precinct level, will be published on the City website, but they are not there yet. James Gilmour -- Kathy Dopp Town of Colonie, NY 12304 phone 518-952-4030 cell 518-505-0220 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 21, 2010, at 7:42 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
James,
Your formulas below are only correct in the case that voters are
allowed to rank all the candidates who run for an election contest.
James didn't put forth any formulae. but he did put forth a table
which appears to be consistent with
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
he, appears to miss the same point as Abd and you do.
That may be true in Australia, but is not true in the US where
typically voters are allowed to rank up to only three candidates.
where do you get your information, Kathy? that is *not* at all the
case in the IRV election in Burlington VT.
or is Burlington untypical?
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
At 05:17 PM 1/21/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 21, 2010, at 4:26 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: But ... it raises some security issues. And with central counting there are other issues. This is a red herring, because we are talking about precinct summability, and when the number of candidates is very small, precinct summability isn't relevant, because the raw ballot data may be transmitted. no, the problem is that the raw ballot data may be the only practical information to transmitt if the number of candidates is *large*, not very small. when the number of candidates is very small, then it makes sense to transmit the tallies for piles because the number of piles, which are precinct summable, is manageable. This is correct. I actually stated it oppositely, slip of the pen, so to speak. It's still a red herring, because the topic is precinct summability and the general use of precinct sums. The only precinct sum that can be used with IRV is the relevant-ballot-pattern summary, which becomes extremely large very rapidly. Forget about it with manual ballots and more than a quite small number of candidates. Remember, as well, that preferential voting, like top-two runoff, encourages lots of candidates to run, since they can do so with relative safety and get a payoff: some first rank votes that show support. They can turn that into cash in the next election when they are seeking the office again, or in other ways. So, back to the real question: is precinct summability an important practical criterion to be applied to voting systems? i would ask instead if precinct summability is important for security? i believe that it is. Good. So do I. Or was that a slip? and i believe that it is perfectly practical when the number of *credible* candidates is small. doesn't matter what the voting system is. IRV, or whatever. Yes. But how small? Don't use the bogus numbers that aren't at all realistic given real-world election rules, and since we are talking about the U.S., there must be accomodation for every ballot candidate that gets any votes at all in the precinct, plus a write-in provision at a minimum, and God help the election officials if there are a *lot* of write-in candidates, with the sum being more than enough to alter the elimination sequence for the remaining candidate. Write-ins, in all the actual election reported counts, are counted as a category and then dropped when the total for all of them was insufficient to do other then batch-eliminate them, possibly with other candidates as I've seen. I.e., one assumes the simplest case, that all the write-in votes are for the same candidate. Now, if it turns out that the write-ins are relevant, suppose that we set up some rule to lump all candidates with only one vote and report all the others explicitly. But the problem rapidly gets hairy. One has to report another candidate as relevant in addition to all the write-ins. For voting system security issues, one must be able to count the votes manually, as part of an audit. I'm sure that Kathy could explain audit process, but, again, it gets very hairy rapidly with IRV, because vote samples aren't enough, given the sensitivity of the method to many small differences in vote patterns. What is actually being done? Only ballot images, with machines that collect and report them, in toto, from the precinct. In other words, the only solution in actual usage that doesn't involve toting all the ballots to a central location involves reporting ballot images. But this is precisely a system that is quite vulnerable to hacking and some very real voting security issues. If there are no paper ballots or at least bulletproof paper records that the voter personally verified, it's impossible to verify that there were no shenanigans. Precinct summable methods are not nearly as sensitive to manipulation as are IRV totals, it appears. It can only take a very small shift in voting patterns to shift an IRV result, under some conditions, and this isn't merely a very close election in terms of overall support for a candidate, it gets down to exact preference order and how it interacts with elimination sequence, which is determined sometimes at many places in the election process. And, note: if it's ballot images, these images don't include, generally, the actual write-in votes. If it turns out that write-ins need to be counted, only manual counting can do it, the name was hand written on a record, if I'm correct. for 3 candidates, that number is 9. Okay, three candidates, A, B, C, the ballot possibilities are, to be complete, much more than 9. I'll assume that write-ins are illegal and void the ballot. Some of the possibilities are legally equivalent to others, and in actual IRV ballot imaging, they are collapsed and reported the same, to the displeasure of voting security people who do want to know the error rate, which includes overvoting and
Re: [EM] IRV vs Plurality (back to the pile count controversy)
On Jan 20, 2010, at 11:23 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Variation on previous post. Silly time!
At 02:31 PM 1/16/2010, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On Jan 16, 2010, at 12:05 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Robert, your slip is showing.
what slip? i don't have nuttin' under me kilt.
We already knew that.
you do? you keep saying that you can see it.
Silly hat, Off.
Robert, if you want to be effective in public debate,
what makes you think i'm not effective? do you actually think you
were effective?
i won't slap on the argumentum verbosium and explode the debate
about a single testable issue (like how many piles one needs if there
are 3 candidates) into pages and pages, that when i responded, my
post was rejected by the list server as too large.
I'd suggest avoiding setting up an immediate victory by the other
side by feeding him or her lines like that.
you're the one feeding lines. who brought up the slip showing in
the first place? how does one respond when facing: Your slip is
showing, now onto a verbose response that does not speak to the core
factual issues at all.
you and Kathy had no victory (if that is the way you like looking
at it). where it is about fact (derived or historically supported)
regarding the focussed issue, you haven't done anything to touch it.
the fact is, transmitting the content (to a central counting
location) of *every ballot* is the transfer of a finite amount of
information. that is even *more* general than sorting to piles and
transmitting the tallies for piles.
but breaking it down to piles regarding every conceivable permutation
of candidate preference is *still* breaking it down to a finite
number of piles. for 3 candidates, that number is 9. if you or
Kathy say it's 15, then you're wrong (and it's your slip that's
showing). for 4 candidates the number of necessary piles is 40. for
N candidates, the number of piles necessary, P(N) is
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=1
not
N-1
P(N) = SUM{ N!/n! }
n=0
which is appears to be the formula you and Kathy continue to insist
is correct. and whether Kathy has an MS in Mathematics or not,
whether you do or not, this error is demonstrable. you and Kathy
continue to insist that there is a consequential difference between
ranking all candidates and ranking all but 1 and leaving one
candidate unranked and i continue to say there is no consequential
difference. this is a difference of falsifiable claims that form a
dichotomy.we can test which claim is correct.
In person, face-to-face, people would fall over laughing, and
whatever value there was in your position would be lost.
you've never used humor to make a point? or to make clear the
lameness of an irrelevant reference?
whether one responds to an irrelevant distraction with humor or not
changes nothing regarding the core issues.
certainly if a ridiculously large number of candidates are on the
ballot, manually separating ballots into piles (without grouping
together minor or non-credible candidates) is not practical. even
with 4 salient candidates, 40 piles gets pretty nasty for sorting by
*hand*. but 40 is still a pretty small number for a computer and a
modern network.
a national election with 3 credible candidates can easily be
precinct summable with 9 salient piles and 31 less important
piles. it doesn't matter if it is IRV, Condorcet, Borda or what.
the issue of summing pile count is not dependent on what tabulation
method is used (and what, *i* think, should be what the debate is
about).
neither you nor Kathy have shown *any* problem of precinct
summability regarding IRV or any other ranked-ballot method.
not that i am a defender of IRV. but, you haven't laid a hand on it
regarding precinct summability. IRV has a few pathologies, which i
think i understand better than either you or Kathy, simply from the
lame and partisan arguments (and wholly verbose) i read coming from
that direction.
even though *now* Kathy seems to be paying some attention to
Condorcet, before this last week, i haven't noticed any such
attention about that from her. it was always just how bad IRV is,
and that it's worse than any other method, including FPTP. and when
she (or you) says that, then i am convinced that she (or you) are
simply anti-IRV partisans that don't really consider what the
*commonly* *known* problems are that associated with the traditional
FPTP (or even 2-round with runoff) methods for which motivated us to
adopt IRV in the first place.
so, before pointing out that someone's slip is showing, it might be
safer to adjust where one's own fig leaf is hanging.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
