Re: [EM] good method ? was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 7:46 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: I seem to be one of the few people on this list who recognizes that I don't read voters' minds and cannot convert one vote-type to another for voters. Kathy, there was no reading of voter's minds. What was expressed was the votes themselves. Not the voter's internal, unexpressed preferences. For example, in the above example, by: 35:A Some voters if they chose to rank further might have meant: AB=C or they might have wanted: ACB or ABC Whether they wanted that or not, they did not vote that. It's like Plurality, with three candidates, A, B, and C: 35:A is exactly the same as 35:AB=C. It most certainly is **not** the same. Again if individual **voters** are allowed to describe what they really meant, the voters could have meant any of the following if they were forced to fully rank and I would bet that it would be a freakishly rare occurence for all voters to agree with your interpretation when voters could have ranked any of the following ways if forced to fully rank: AB=C or they might have wanted: ACB or ABC When someone votes simply A What they really mean is A over all other candidates running. I.e. voters mean A B and A C and AD etc. which may *not* certainly be the same thing at all as AB=C=D in the voters' minds. It changes the results, depending on the counting method if you assume that the voter meant 35:AB=C. rather than one of the other possibilities that can translate the voters' true meaning of A B and A C and AD etc. that may've been the voter's choices if they were forced to fully rank. I doubt that all voters understand how you are going to define their ballots, out of all the possible ways, in cases of voters not fully ranking. This seems to be yet another case of removing voters' rights to decide for them what they meant in some methods of counting RCVs. Kathy Which, of course could reflect an internal preference profile that is just that, or it could reflect on where the voter prefers B to C or the reverse. and the same for 33:C We disagree on whether or not you and other members' interpretations of how voters would alter their votes are self-evident or not. I did speculate on *possible* alterations, but nobody presented this as a self-evident interpretation of this. What was stated was just that in a three-candidate election, 35:A is the same vote as 35:AB=C. There is an exception to this. Suppose the method is two-rank Bucklin. The voter votes first rank, A. Second rank, B and C. This is indeed a literal vote of AB=C, and it can have a different effect, depending on conditions, than the bullet vote A. That's because it could be read as an implicit approval of both B and C, thus a runoff election might be avoided. But that was not the context being discussed, and it was about how a Condorcet method is -- I asserted -- a plurality method, that, unless there is some kind of majority requirement -- to be defined, to be sure -- it can elect without the explicit approval of a majority of voters. And all single-ballot methods that don't coerce voters are plurality methods, in this sense. Poll 100 voters, I doubt that the mind-reading abilities of persons on this list will hold uniformly for all of the voters you poll. Except, Kathy, there was no mind-reading. There were only two alternate ways of stating the same vote that simply expressed it with complete expressed preference profiles. Truncation is, in general, equal-ranking-bottom. It's possible to design methods where it means something different (for example, consider Approval voting, where the voter votes Yes or No on each candidate, but then doesn't vote on this question for some. It's an interesting method, in fact, but that's beyond the scope of this. It corresponds to the Average Range that is proposed by many Range advocates. I consider it to be probably politically impossible at this time, but it would be interesting to study. It *is* how multiple conflicting ballot questions are decided. The basis for majority approval is different for each question. We may disagree with the counting method that is applied when 35:A 32:BC 33:C occurs, but it seems very clear that the Condorcet winner in this case is C, as you seem to agree with me in this case. Yes. The A voters express no preference between B and C. A is the plurality winner. But only 35 voters support A, 65 oppose A by their votes. A beats B, 35:32. but C beats A, 65:35. That's because the B voters express their preference for C over A. B, on the other hand, gets no support from the C voters over A. The C voter *means* A=B, bottom ranked equal. In most voting methods, not voting for a candidate is quite equivalent to ranking the candidate bottom or voting *against* the candidate. This example was *not* an example of majority failure in a Condorcet method, which
Re: [EM] good method ? was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Feb 14, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: We may disagree with the counting method that is applied when 35:A 32:BC 33:C occurs, but it seems very clear that the Condorcet winner in this case is C, as you seem to agree with me in this case. Yes. The A voters express no preference between B and C. A is the plurality winner. But only 35 voters support A, 65 oppose A by their votes. We don't actually know that. Suppose the BC voters are saying, I love B, hate C, and have no idea who A is. Granted, in this limited example, they could easily have voted BAC to indicate something like that. But if there are a lot of candidates who may be unknown to many voters, it's asking a lot for them to list them all (whether or not we allow equality of preference). I've been thinking of the possibility of handling indifference differently. Suppose that '*' means all candidates not explicitly ranked. Then AB is interpreted as usual, implying AB* But A*B mean A is best, B is worst, and all the others are indifferent, without having to rank them explicitly between A B. Would it be possible to use something like Warren's quorum rule here, so that if a voter ranks AB but not ABC, then the B vs C and A vs C contest remains completely unaltered? I suppose so, but would it be any good? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] good method ? was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
Clearly there has been a lack of clarity in this thread. While others may have made the mess you joined in, seems like you might have stated your objections more clearly. From IRV ballot pile and previous discussion of such piles, the subject is IRV, a method that has rules. Then there was a post that assumed Condorcet, since the description of what happened fitted Condorcet rules, but that post said nothing about switching rules. Then you objected. Per the above you had cause, but your words about voters' minds led to continuing trouble. On Feb 15, 2010, at 11:35 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote: On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 7:46 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: I seem to be one of the few people on this list who recognizes that I don't read voters' minds and cannot convert one vote-type to another for voters. Kathy, there was no reading of voter's minds. What was expressed was the votes themselves. Not the voter's internal, unexpressed preferences. He was right about minds - the problem was ambiguity as to what rules applied - a detail that neither of you pointed at. For example, in the above example, by: 35:A Some voters if they chose to rank further might have meant: AB=C This is what they DID mean in Condorcet, assuming exactly three candidates. Adding D, similar thinking would lead to AB=C=D while AB=CD would mean the same as AB=C. Clearly we are not in IRV, which does not use =. or they might have wanted: ACB or ABC Whether they wanted that or not, they did not vote that. It's like Plurality, with three candidates, A, B, and C: 35:A is exactly the same as 35:AB=C. Except that this latter, while implied in Plurality, cannot be expressed that way in Plurality. It most certainly is **not** the same. Again if individual **voters** are allowed to describe what they really meant, the voters could have meant any of the following if they were forced to fully rank and I would bet that it would be a freakishly rare occurence for all voters to agree with your interpretation when voters could have ranked any of the following ways if forced to fully rank: AB=C or they might have wanted: ACB or ABC When someone votes simply A What they really mean is A over all other candidates running. I.e. voters mean A B and A C and AD etc. which may *not* certainly be the same thing at all as AB=C=D in the voters' minds. It changes the results, depending on the counting method if you assume that the voter meant 35:AB=C. rather than one of the other possibilities that can translate the voters' true meaning of A B and A C and AD etc. that may've been the voter's choices if they were forced to fully rank. I doubt that all voters understand how you are going to define their ballots, out of all the possible ways, in cases of voters not fully ranking. This seems to be yet another case of removing voters' rights to decide for them what they meant in some methods of counting RCVs. Kathy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] good method ? was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
At 01:59 PM 2/14/2010, Kathy Dopp wrote: From: Chris Benham cbenha...@yahoo.com.au 35:A 32:BC 33:C, by which I mean 35:AB=C 32:BCA 33:CA=B. Kathy doesn't seem to recognize this, or maybe she does, but the two statements are equivalent. By not ranking B and C, the voter equal-ranks them bottom. That is the exact effect of the vote. I seem to be one of the few people on this list who recognizes that I don't read voters' minds and cannot convert one vote-type to another for voters. Kathy, there was no reading of voter's minds. What was expressed was the votes themselves. Not the voter's internal, unexpressed preferences. For example, in the above example, by: 35:A Some voters if they chose to rank further might have meant: AB=C or they might have wanted: ACB or ABC Whether they wanted that or not, they did not vote that. It's like Plurality, with three candidates, A, B, and C: 35:A is exactly the same as 35:AB=C. Which, of course could reflect an internal preference profile that is just that, or it could reflect on where the voter prefers B to C or the reverse. and the same for 33:C We disagree on whether or not you and other members' interpretations of how voters would alter their votes are self-evident or not. I did speculate on *possible* alterations, but nobody presented this as a self-evident interpretation of this. What was stated was just that in a three-candidate election, 35:A is the same vote as 35:AB=C. There is an exception to this. Suppose the method is two-rank Bucklin. The voter votes first rank, A. Second rank, B and C. This is indeed a literal vote of AB=C, and it can have a different effect, depending on conditions, than the bullet vote A. That's because it could be read as an implicit approval of both B and C, thus a runoff election might be avoided. But that was not the context being discussed, and it was about how a Condorcet method is -- I asserted -- a plurality method, that, unless there is some kind of majority requirement -- to be defined, to be sure -- it can elect without the explicit approval of a majority of voters. And all single-ballot methods that don't coerce voters are plurality methods, in this sense. Poll 100 voters, I doubt that the mind-reading abilities of persons on this list will hold uniformly for all of the voters you poll. Except, Kathy, there was no mind-reading. There were only two alternate ways of stating the same vote that simply expressed it with complete expressed preference profiles. Truncation is, in general, equal-ranking-bottom. It's possible to design methods where it means something different (for example, consider Approval voting, where the voter votes Yes or No on each candidate, but then doesn't vote on this question for some. It's an interesting method, in fact, but that's beyond the scope of this. It corresponds to the Average Range that is proposed by many Range advocates. I consider it to be probably politically impossible at this time, but it would be interesting to study. It *is* how multiple conflicting ballot questions are decided. The basis for majority approval is different for each question. We may disagree with the counting method that is applied when 35:A 32:BC 33:C occurs, but it seems very clear that the Condorcet winner in this case is C, as you seem to agree with me in this case. Yes. The A voters express no preference between B and C. A is the plurality winner. But only 35 voters support A, 65 oppose A by their votes. A beats B, 35:32. but C beats A, 65:35. That's because the B voters express their preference for C over A. B, on the other hand, gets no support from the C voters over A. The C voter *means* A=B, bottom ranked equal. In most voting methods, not voting for a candidate is quite equivalent to ranking the candidate bottom or voting *against* the candidate. This example was *not* an example of majority failure in a Condorcet method, which points out how, unless there is some approval cutoff specified, giving a candidate any rank above bottom can become a vote *for* the candidate (in any pairwise race with a lower-ranked candidate). Now, with approval cutoff expressed, one can do a different kind of analysis. Suppose there is a dummy candidate called Z. Ranking a candidate above Z means that one approves the candidate. The practical meaning of this is clear if a runoff is needed if a candidate doesn't gain a majority. So the B votes in the example above might be AZBC or ABZC. It's also possible that it could be ZABC, meaning I'd prefer to see a runoff in any case, I really don't like any of these candidates and maybe we could get some write-in campaign together or I can do more investigation and change my mind Or it could be ABCZ, meaning, I'd prefer any of the three to holding a runoff, there isn't that much difference between them, and the worst of them is still good enough.
Re: [EM] good method ? was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
On Feb 14, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: We may disagree with the counting method that is applied when 35:A 32:BC 33:C occurs, but it seems very clear that the Condorcet winner in this case is C, as you seem to agree with me in this case. Yes. The A voters express no preference between B and C. A is the plurality winner. But only 35 voters support A, 65 oppose A by their votes. We don't actually know that. Suppose the BC voters are saying, I love B, hate C, and have no idea who A is. Granted, in this limited example, they could easily have voted BAC to indicate something like that. But if there are a lot of candidates who may be unknown to many voters, it's asking a lot for them to list them all (whether or not we allow equality of preference). I've been thinking of the possibility of handling indifference differently. Suppose that '*' means all candidates not explicitly ranked. Then AB is interpreted as usual, implying AB* But A*B mean A is best, B is worst, and all the others are indifferent, without having to rank them explicitly between A B. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] good method ? , was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
From: Chris Benham cbenha...@yahoo.com.au To: EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Rob LeGrand wrote (11 Feb 2010): snip 35:A 32:BC 33:C, by which I mean 35:AB=C 32:BCA 33:CA=B. In this example, C is the Condorcet winner even though C does not have a majority over B.? I can see how this example could be seen as an embarrassment to the Condorcet criterion, in that a good method might not choose C as the winner. end quoted message I agree with Chris (below), If you require every winner to have a majority *over* ever other candidate, then there is no system that would give you any winners. Clearly above, C has 65 votes and B only has 35 votes, at least in scenario #1 above. Guessing as to what voters really mean, by assuming scenario #2 from scenario #1 -- you may have read the minds of all those voters who you believe all think exactly alike in each category, incorrectly. However, in scenario #2, I think A is the correct winner. I think election methods enthusiasts too often think they can read voters' minds and translate votes between between two different scenarios for voters. Kathy Rob, Well I can't. Electing A would be a violation of the Minmal Defense criterion, and electing B would violate Woodall's Plurality criterion and Condorcet Loser. What good method do you have in mind that might not elect C? And what's good about it? Chris Benham -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. 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 http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] good method ? , was IRV ballot pile count (proof of closed form)
Rob LeGrand wrote (11 Feb 2010): snip 35:A 32:BC 33:C, by which I mean 35:AB=C 32:BCA 33:CA=B. In this example, C is the Condorcet winner even though C does not have a majority over B. I can see how this example could be seen as an embarrassment to the Condorcet criterion, in that a good method might not choose C as the winner. end quoted message Rob, Well I can't. Electing A would be a violation of the Minmal Defense criterion, and electing B would violate Woodall's Plurality criterion and Condorcet Loser. What good method do you have in mind that might not elect C? And what's good about it? Chris Benham Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
