Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
Regrettably James is making an incorrect analysis of the problem. Agreed that there have been some expensive disasters associated with computers and voting. ASSUMING computers were as unreliable as James' sources imply, we had best retreat from our computer-based civilization, much of which depends on computers reliably doing their part. BETTER to accept that computers are truly as dependable as their successful use elsewhere demonstrates, study how we stumbled into our election disasters, and plan to do better in the future. DWK On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:57:39 +0100 James Gilmour wrote: Dancing on E-voting’s grave http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/?p=1227&tag=nl.e019 Election loser: touch-screen voting http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/story/1185482.html JG -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:16:53 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines Regrettably James is making an incorrect analysis of the problem. I believe that is a mischaracterization because James' prior email simply cited some recent articles. And James says so now. Still, it was easy to assume his references implied agreement with their obvious position. The references that you provided below seemed to have the same slant as his. BETTER to accept that computers are truly as dependable as their successful use elsewhere demonstrates, So since computers work well for problems like banking where errors are easily detected and corrected due to a lack of anonymity and paper receipts and banking statements, then we should use computers for anonymously deposited e-ballots where errors can be virtually impossible to detect and even more impossible (if that were possible) to correct? Not good logic unless you think that we should anonymously deposit our money into banks without any receipts or bank statements and *trust* bankers blindly too. Except for the anonymity that we properly provide for voters, you have it backwards: That anonymity is not a license to produce election equipment: Without attention to getting the details right, including minimizing likelihood of trouble from human errors. Including deliberate falsification of results. Nor is it a license to purchase such without attention to the quality being supplied. Here are some recent articles on this topic (all these articles were I believe published in August 2008): ... Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
On Mon, 1 Sep 2008 10:53:24 -0700 rob brown wrote: > On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 3:20 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Consider Condorcet. One of the greater problems with plurality is > vote-splitting, which favors minorities since it destroys a center > that many think is good but only a few think is great. Thus, > adopting Condorcet would help the majority, not minorities at the > expense of the majority, ... > I do not see Condorcet favoring minorities or majorities. Condorcet does help voters express their desires. Big example of this is near twins getting nominated, mattering not whether they are majority or minority. In Plurality voters approving their shared positions cannot vote for both, so the two together likely get as many votes as either would have received alone. In Condorcet such voters could vote for both, giving each their deserved votes. Another Condorcet advantage is the publishable array of voting results. This does not necessarily make minority candidates win, but it can help minority positions get adopted. If the ballot counts show candidates backing position X tending to do better than their opponents, more parties will consider backing this position. DWK > > First, I think you are misusing the words "majority" and "minority" here > (as is common). Personally I think they have no meaning unless there > are only two candidates (and there were never any other potential > candidates). > > I would argue that Condorcet (vs. plurality) helps "minorities", or > rather, people on the extremes. > > Say you have a dozen candidates, spread equally along the continuum from > "right" to "left". A block of voters on the extreme left might, under > plurality, vote for an extreme left candidate. Their votes are > effectively wasted. > > That same block of voters under Condorcet would likely change the > outcome in their favortrue, they wouldn?t elect an extreme left > candidate, but their votes may well cause a "more left" candidate to be > elected. In other words, it will pull it in their direction by an > appropriate amount. > > Although real elections are not one dimensional like that*, I would > suggest that the the effect holds true. > > * (unless the vote happens to be for a number, such as a budgetin > which case selecting the median preferred value is roughly equivalent to > holding a Condorcet vote on an infinite number of "candidate values") -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what'
Michael Allen started this thread on 9/06, about having an alternative electoral system, in parallel, to do better on "the 'who' and the 'what'". It would avoid restriction to party candidates. That detail puzzles, since I see Plurality used with non-party candidates running and sometimes winning. Having both a standard system and an alternative system in use at the same time puzzles and turns me off. Now Condorcet gets mentioned, as if a party. At this point I argue for making Condorcet the electoral system in use. Quoting Rapf: "Once the condorcet winner can credibilly claim to be one of the top-2, then the condorcet primary almost becomes the final election." Certainly both party and non-party candidates would be permitted in Condorcet. If primaries were also used, parties would nominate only primary winners. This would not prevent primary losers from running as non-party candidates. Note that proper campaign emphasis is different in Condorcet: NOT: Look at all the horns on my competitors - please vote for me instead of them. SAY: I do not object to your voting for those of my competitors who have some good points - please just rank me higher because my good points deserve that. On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:25:37 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On 9/26/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: It seems this system would be more stable than I originally thought. Third parties could run as parts of the Condorcet party without running much of a risk, since they would otherwise get no votes at all. The defection danger surfaces when the third parties have become sufficiently large from using that parallel electoral system. Then a party that would win a plurality vote but who isn't a Condorcet winner has an incentive to defect. If the condorcet party winner can realistically claim to be one of the top-2, then it doesn't matter as he will defeat any challeger. Both the 2 main parties would have to defect. The question is at what level of support does this becomes self-reinforcing. A desire to defect can always happen, but when except as part of hurting someone else - who would object to such? One of the strongest arguments I have heard against using Condorcet in the election and doing away with primaries, is a party desire to use primaries to decide who to back in the election. Following that kind of reasoning, it would appear that conventional parties have very little to lose by running Condorcet primaries instead of Plurality primaries, more so if there's an open primary. (So why don't they?) As to open, either: Party wants the primary to pick one if its members to be backed. Party wants its members to do the selecting of who to back. The current parties don't want to elect a condorcet winner, they want to elect a winner that is biased towards them. The 2 candidates in a 2 party system have to balance support of their party with defeating the other candidate. In the single issue case with voters ranging from 0 to 100, the 2 parties pick at 25 and 75, but the condorcet winner is at 50. The final result might be 2 candidates at say 40 and 60 as they have to balance the 2 requirements. This can be seen as candidates switch the focus of their campaign once they have won nomination. Anyway, I would agree that an open primary would be key for the condorcet party. In states with a closed primary can a party allow non-party members to vote if it wishes? Would this block those voters from voting in their 'real' party? Another problem is actually getting the main candidates to participate. I assume it would be legal to add them to the ballot without their permission? Finally, turnout at the condorcet primary matters. If only a small number of people vote, then it is much less evidence that the winner is the real condorcet winner. One option would be to re-weight votes so that the result is representative. If the consequences of the result of the vote is not massive, then there is little point in bothering to vote. So, there needs to be some kind of boot-strap. Once the condorcet winner can credibilly claim to be one of the top-2, then the condorcet primary almost becomes the final election. Certainly, winning the condorcet primary would be a major boost to any candidate. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what'
My goal is using Condorcet, but recognizing that everything costs money, wo we need to be careful as to expenses. Thus I see: Condorcet as the election method. But then see no value in a "condorcet party". Also then see no value in primaries, but know parties see value in such. And no value in runoffs - Plurality needs runoffs because of the way voters cannot express their thoughts - but Condorcet has no similar problem. On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:28:55 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 4:57 AM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Certainly both party and non-party candidates would be permitted in Condorcet. If primaries were also used, parties would nominate only primary winners. This would not prevent primary losers from running as non-party candidates. Well the "primary" was that the "condorcet party" would hold a condorcet election. By calling it a primary, it might get State support. What value might the state see as reason for paying for such? What value might voters see in this? One of the strongest arguments I have heard against using Condorcet in the election and doing away with primaries, is a party desire to use primaries to decide who to back in the election. This is true, however, I don't see it as a major issue. They could either hold a primary anyway, or just pick a candidate. Who does the "just pick" since voters can claim ownership of the right? Who justifies paying expense of a primary here? Following that kind of reasoning, it would appear that conventional parties have very little to lose by running Condorcet primaries instead of Plurality primaries, more so if there's an open primary. (So why don't they?) As to open, either: Party wants the primary to pick one if its members to be backed. Party wants its members to do the selecting of who to back. Well, they wouldn't need a primary if the leadership just picked a candidate. I guess the parties could still put up the 40 and 60 candidates. However, I wonder if they would prefer the other party to win rather than a compromise candidate. Now we are back to "who decides". Part of all this is desire for a fair chance to win. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what'
On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:08:19 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 3:25 AM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: My goal is using Condorcet, but recognizing that everything costs money, wo we need to be careful as to expenses. Thus I see: Condorcet as the election method. But then see no value in a "condorcet party". Also then see no value in primaries, but know parties see value in such. And no value in runoffs - Plurality needs runoffs because of the way voters cannot express their thoughts - but Condorcet has no similar problem. Well, the advantage is that it might be a way to effectively get condorcet without the need to first switch away from plurality. I do not see your logic, but anything that gets exposure to true Condorcet has possibilities. What value might the state see as reason for paying for such? Don't the states currently part fund the party primaries? State funds exist, but question here is justification for spending more. What value might voters see in this? No that much. One advantage is that they don't have to fully switch to a new voting system. They get to see how it works first. Who does the "just pick" since voters can claim ownership of the right? Would depend on the party, they would need to have rules for doing the selection. "just pick" are your words - party rules likely forbid this. Who justifies paying expense of a primary here? The party gets to claim that it respects the opinion of the voters, and also picking a more popular candidate increases the chance of winning. I guess the parties could still put up the 40 and 60 candidates. However, I wonder if they would prefer the other party to win rather than a compromise candidate. Now we are back to "who decides". Each party decides. I meant that even if there was condorcet, the 2 parties would still pick candidates somehow, so there would be 2 major candidate, neither of which would be a condorcet winner based purely on policies. Looking out the window I see Obama and Clinton. In a Condorcet world the Democrats might find it best to let both run against McCain, etc. Part of all this is desire for a fair chance to win. The parties are always going to be able to help their candidate win. Back to Obama and Clinton. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:05:28 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: My goal is using Condorcet, but recognizing that everything costs money, wo we need to be careful as to expenses. Thus I see: Condorcet as the election method. But then see no value in a "condorcet party". Also then see no value in primaries, but know parties see value in such. The idea of having a Condorcet party is to gradually transform Plurality elections into Condorcet elections. Disturbing existing elections by marrying in something from Condorcet seems very destructive considering possible benefits, so how about: Run a phantom Condorcet election with current candidates before the existing voting. Candidates can drop out if they choose: Third party candidates have little to lose. Major party candidates risk static as to why they did not dare. Those who choose to, vote via internet. Thus we have ballots to count and report on as a sort of poll. And no value in runoffs - Plurality needs runoffs because of the way voters cannot express their thoughts - but Condorcet has no similar problem. Runoffs are not perfection even in Plurality - look at the recent French election for which voters thought of rioting when neither runoff contender was popular. With Condorcet they offer little possible value - every voter could rank A>B, A=B, or B>A at the same time as doing any other desired ranking. Also, if there is no CW there are at least three candidates in a near tie - want to put the N candidates in a "runoff"? Condorcet runoffs may have value if the people decide to play dirty and always use strategy. Since the runoff must be honest (with only two candidates, the optimal strategy is honesty), it hedges the risk since the best of the two will always win. How much strategy need concern us with Condorcet? The plotters need an accurate picture of their starting point. The plotting is complex because of the tournament counting. Then they must advertise their plot to their friends while keeping that a secret from their enemies. I think the best way would be to have two Condorcet methods, one that produces very good results, and one that produces worse results but is near-unaffected by strategy. Then if there's a CW, he wins, otherwise the winner of one method faces the winner of the other. That would be extremely complex, though, and it's likely that people aren't going to be so conniving that something like that would be required. How bad can you get, and still be a flavor of Condorcet to brag about? -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 03:24:37 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 12:51 AM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The idea of having a Condorcet party is to gradually transform Plurality elections into Condorcet elections. Disturbing existing elections by marrying in something from Condorcet seems very destructive considering possible benefits, so how about: Run a phantom Condorcet election with current candidates before the existing voting. Right that is what I was thinking. It was that a party would hold a condorcet primary. This phantom election would be run by the Condorcet promoters WITHOUT marrying it in to the regular election - its purpose is to encourage thought about Condorcet WITHOUT the thousand headaches that marriage would produce. It would likely do better as a phantom election than as a phantom primary. Candidates can drop out if they choose: Third party candidates have little to lose. Major party candidates risk static as to why they did not dare. Also, I wonder if they could be put on the ballot anyway. Would that be legal? Permitting dropouts is less destructive than demanding unwilling participation. BTW - write-ins SHOULD be permitted, as would be in a proper election. Those who choose to, vote via internet. This generates massive participation biases. You need some way to cancel them out. Tolerating and admitting, without attempts at cancellation of bias, sounds best to me - we are doing a demonstration rather than a true election. Do need defense against one voter submitting multiple ballots - needs thought. Thus we have ballots to count and report on as a sort of poll. The trick is to make it so that voters don't just see it as another poll. We are getting voters to practice doing Condorcet voting - should matter little that the results are a poll rather than claiming the right to be counted as true electing. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:57:01 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: > On 9/29/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Quoting Michael Allan: = > We've coded something like that already, for a similar purpose. I'm > not sure our voting mechanism always selects the Condorcet winner (?). > But is this roughly what you are thinking? > > http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht > > (The code is open source. So the voting UI and count engine could be > modified to support any flavour of Condorcet.) == When there is a CW, with no cycles, I claim there should be a defensible claim that this is true Condorcet, including permission for voters to do a write-in on the ballot. When there is a cycle (3 or more in a near tie) there could be demos of whatever resolution procedures please someone. And, of course, the counting arrays must be correct and visible. >>its purpose is to encourage thought >>about Condorcet WITHOUT the thousand headaches that marriage would produce. >>It would likely do better as a phantom election than as a phantom primary. > > > It would be a real primary. Also, as I said, depending on the rules, > maybe the State would help fund it. > > However, I guess for State funding, you need to meet some support > threshold first? > I stay with phantoms - go for more and you never get past the headaches. So I see no reason why this election has to be a primary. Being a phantom it could be either primary or general - general being closer to what you seem to be thinking. Being internet and of a votorola sort, outside aid such as state seems non-essential - though always nice. > >> Permitting dropouts is less destructive than demanding unwilling >>participation. > > > You are just adding their name to the ballot. You are measuring popularity. While I think they SHOULD not choke, seems safer to let any drop out without complaining. With write-ins permitted they can get voted for anyway (though not clear whether one ballot can include more than one write-in - I think not). > > >> BTW - write-ins SHOULD be permitted, as would be in a proper election. > > > Ok, in fact, adding names could be described as an assistance for > voters who would have wrote them in. NOT an assistance - simply normal voting. > > Also, if it is an internet poll, you could have a rule that popular > write-ins are added to the ballot on the fly. > I think NO such modification to ballots - simply count as write-ins. > >> Tolerating and admitting, without attempts at cancellation of bias, sounds >>best to me - we are doing a demonstration rather than a true election. > > > Maybe give both results. > No - see above. > >> Do need defense against one voter submitting multiple ballots - needs >>thought. > > > This is the bane of all internet polls. The normal block is to allow > each IP to vote once. > > However, this doesn't really help as most home users don't have a fixed IP. > > You could try pre-registration. If you had enough money, you could > send out invites to random people on the voting register. > > Once they are registered, you then have a set of people who are > verified and they could change their vote online at will. > > This gives you a continuous election during the entire campaign. > So think, and do what is practical. > >>>The trick is to make it so that voters don't just see it as another poll. >>> >> >> We are getting voters to practice doing Condorcet voting - should matter >>little that the results are a poll rather than claiming the right to be >>counted as true electing. > > > Ok. > > However, if enough participate, the winner would be able to argue that > he is at least one of the top-2. This is probably the second stage > and for it to work some participation bias elimination would be > needed. > Cannot stop such, but dangerous to be seen encouraging it. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again, again
On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:45:14 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: For some reason, I didn't receive Dave Ketchum's reply to my post about the Condorcet party. So let's try this again, indeed. Dave Ketchum wrote: On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:05:28 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: My goal is using Condorcet, but recognizing that everything costs money, wo we need to be careful as to expenses. Thus I see: Condorcet as the election method. But then see no value in a "condorcet party". Also then see no value in primaries, but know parties see value in such. The idea of having a Condorcet party is to gradually transform Plurality elections into Condorcet elections. Disturbing existing elections by marrying in something from Condorcet seems very destructive considering possible benefits, so how about: Run a phantom Condorcet election with current candidates before the existing voting. Candidates can drop out if they choose: Third party candidates have little to lose. Major party candidates risk static as to why they did not dare. Those who choose to, vote via internet. Thus we have ballots to count and report on as a sort of poll. I was demonstrating Condorcet so: Get NEAR a real election, as something to discus. Do REAL Condorcet, since that is what is being sold. But DO NOT marry into the real election, for that makes more headaches grab I expect to be worth the pain. Thus a poll, which is something to do fitting the above. Do not worry about biases - just admit they likely exist in the way the poll is done (though Condorcet actually used as a method would be concerned with such). If you're going to have a poll, you don't need the Plurality shell; that's true enough. But if you're a third party and you're seeing your rate go to close to zero, then uniting with other third parties under a Condorcet "party" could improve your chances, because at least the third parties aren't splitting the votes among themselves anymore. For polling, I would advocate "ordinary" polling, because internet polls would be colored by the effect that those who have good internet equipment would affect the results in a disproportionate manner. So could foreigners or hacked computers, although in reality those probably wouldn't be much of a problem. "Ordinary"? I picked internet because I thought I saw usability and value at affordable expense. Perhaps internet voting biases could be fixed by having a "vote by party" adjustment like real polling organizations do. That is, if 53% of the people are Democratic, then all Democrat-first voters count for 53% of the voting power in the poll, and so on. But that faces another problem, because many of those "Yes, I like Democrats" replies (that were used to derive the 53%) may be a result of the strategic vote nature that Plurality encourages. I duck adjustments because I do not want voters thinking of such unless they are into an election method where such actually need to be attended to. And no value in runoffs - Plurality needs runoffs because of the way voters cannot express their thoughts - but Condorcet has no similar problem. Runoffs are not perfection even in Plurality - look at the recent French election for which voters thought of rioting when neither runoff contender was popular. You're replying to yourself, but I'll agree with you here. Plurality plus runoff is not perfect, but it's much better than Plurality without runoff. To make a general observation, runoff weakens strategy, and Plurality is filled with strategy (least of two evils). Runoff doesn't eliminate the strategy, but then it can't, no matter what voting system it is paired with. With Condorcet they offer little possible value - every voter could rank A>B, A=B, or B>A at the same time as doing any other desired ranking. For public elections I think it's likely that candidates won't strategize enough to necessitate further hardening against strategy. Not everybody agrees, and I'm simply saying that I can see how someone would argue in the favor of having a runoff even with a Condorcet method. Also, if there is no CW there are at least three candidates in a near tie - want to put the N candidates in a "runoff"? I don't know - is that the case for Plurality ties with Plurality+runoff? Go back to the French election - because multiple "good" candidates divvied up the "good" votes, a couple oddballs graduated to the runoff. Here the voters can more completely express their desires, meaning we are closer to perfection without runoffs. Also, how many contenders permitted in the runoff? A cycle can describe three or more in a near tie. Condorcet runoffs may have value if the people decide to play dirty and always use
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:19:52 -0400 Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: When there is a cycle (3 or more in a near tie) there could be demos of whatever resolution procedures please someone. I was never concerned with a final decision. I doubt these are in your ballpark: I see the Condorcet phantom as going thru the same motions as a real primary or general election, but letting the real elections do the nominating and pay no official attention to results of the phantom. a) Time. Votes are shiftable. If electorate wants to be decisive, they'll pull themselves into a consensus. That the phantom votes would be shiftable because current counts should be displayed during the voting/polling period does not make consensus exciting to me. I mentioned cycles because their resolution formulas are a hot topic and a variety of examples could help thinking. b) Principal election as the Condorcet completion (but I think Raph or Kristofer has already suggested this) And, of course, the counting arrays must be correct and visible. They are visible in current alpha release of Votorola, but it's not easy to verify their correctness. The plan is to support verification in the beta, by disclosing raw electoral data and providing tools for recounting. Do need defense against one voter submitting multiple ballots - needs thought. Raph Frank wrote: > You could try pre-registration. If you had enough money, you could > send out invites to random people on the voting register... So think, and do what is practical. My thinking is that registrants can cross-authenticate using a trust network. The downside is disclosure of residential addresses in public. It'll be a slow grow, and biased at first. (Not sure it's practical. Doing preliminary tests in Toronto, over the next few months.) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
Michael is into cascade voting. I joined this thread because Condorcet got
mentioned, and will stay with that detail
On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 13:56:36 -0400 Michael Allan wrote:
Dave Ketchum wrote:
I see the Condorcet phantom as going thru the same motions as a real
primary or general election, but letting the real elections do the
nominating and pay no official attention to results of the phantom.
I see a phantom that will nevertheless have real effects (ghost in the
machine). You see a test bed or proving grounds for an election
method (machine in the ghost). Same ghost, different machines.
(But I've interrupted your discussions.)
That the phantom votes would be shiftable because current counts should be
displayed during the voting/polling period does not make consensus exciting
to me.
I mentioned cycles because their resolution formulas are a hot topic and a
variety of examples could help thinking.
Maybe decision rings could help. The resolution is slow (depends on
vote shifting), but maybe someone can improve that. (I needed a slow
and thoughtful process to solve a real world problem, external to the
counting mechanism.) Just to illustrate, here's a "Condorcet
resolution" by a decision ring:
0. A clear Condorcet winner (null case).
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/_/decision-0-stable.png
No need for a resolution with that result. All 58 voters are in
agreement.
1. A Condorcet cycle.
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/_/decision-1-vacuum.png
Call that a "Condorcet cycle" because it's (as you say) a "near tie".
Say the tie includes all those receiving 5+ votes apiece (but ignore
the fiver on the bottom, pretend she's a four).
Clarification:
39A>38B and 38A>37C and ?B ? ?C makes A the CW for winning over
each other candidate., for which B vs C matters not.
5A>4B and 5B>4C and 5C>3A is a cycle with no CW (I emphasize 'near
tie' because that is descriptive and I believe encourages useful thinking).
Two problems with above i) it's not apparent to the voters that
there's a cycle (tie), and ii) if we make it clear and turn up the
decision heat ("hurry up, we're picking the winner now") they may
behave chaotically. They may pile up on the winner or something, so
the end result is overly sensitive to initial vote shifts.
Cycles happen, and perhaps should be reported, but are NOT a reason for he
system to do anything special beyond normal analysis and reporting.
Of course reporting should e based on total voting, thus updated as soon as
practical after any vote. Big point is that cycles happen and nothing gets
done to encourage or discourage their existence.
2. A decision ring.
Cascade discussion deleted.
(All of this applies only to cascade voting. There are other methods,
and I'm afraid I interrupted your discussion of them. Please
resume...)
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
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Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 19:52:31 -0400 Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Cycles happen, and perhaps should be reported, but are NOT a reason for he system to do anything special beyond normal analysis and reporting. Of course reporting should e based on total voting, thus updated as soon as practical after any vote. Big point is that cycles happen and nothing gets done to encourage or discourage their existence. Assume the ideal Condorcet resolution is no resolution at all. If reality intervenes and you would have a resolution, the closest to the ideal is a hands-off method. I do not understand 'no resolution': By time N1 there have been 10 votes in the poll - to analyze as a complete Condorcet election. By time N2 there have been 2 more, for a total of 12 to analyze as if a complete election. Any such election may produce a CW. Those that do not produce a CW result in a cycle. I suggest at least the ability to implement multiple cycle resolution formulas, to support comparison of the resolutions provided by various formulas. If it is a hands-off method, it ought to be transparent to other hands-off methods. No need to restrict to a single one. Allow multiple parallel resolutions and approach even closer to the ideal (Condorcet, phantom, and test bed or proving grounds) of no resolution at all. In terms of technical supports, Votorola's core is a continuous medium. It never reports a winner at all. So it meets the ideal. But the design allows for parallel analyses and massaging of the raw data stream. So external sites can report their own resolutions in more-or-less real time. (But this might not be implemented till the production release, depending on need.) Here I see Votorola offering a useful, though incomplete, service. What I see desirable for Condorcet is an external site using that service. In terms of my own interest, I want a rough understanding of how external signals will cross with other events in the real world, and influence the ideal (core, Condorcet, phantom). This discussion has me thinking that cascade decision rings are not a resolution mechanism after all, but some kind of defence formation (wagon circle) or protective response against (at least in part) external pressures. Possible values of such as wagon circles seem minimal to me for the current discussion. I do see external pressures possibly influencing later votes based on earlier results - all a human loop. These polls vary from real elections: Current content of polls can be analyzed while voting continues. Real elections do not get analyzed until after voting ends. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 04:12:21 -0400 Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: I do not understand 'no resolution': By time N1 there have been 10 votes in the poll - to analyze as a complete Condorcet election. By time N2 there have been 2 more, for a total of 12 to analyze as if a complete election. Any such election may produce a CW. Those that do not produce a CW result in a cycle... Meaning indecision? Maybe it's best to leave it at that. To "resolve" it and report it as a decision is to report a fabrication. (I was taking your preference for a hands-off resolution to the extreme. When faced with cycles, meaning indecisions, "nothing gets done to encourage or discourage their existence." Let the indecision be. "Let be be finale of seem... Let the lamp affix its beam.") Or meaning the Condorcet count is unable to "see" the decision? Then: Condorcet CAN see - perhaps each formula can be described as representing view via different glasses. Perhaps three groups of voters have come to SOLID decisions as to their preferences, but their decisions conflict - A>B, B>C, and C>A. ... I suggest at least the ability to implement multiple cycle resolution formulas, to support comparison of the resolutions provided by various formulas. And maybe combine their resolving power? Where a telescope is unable to resolve a faint star, an array of telescopes can do better. We want to see which telescope does best - we are far from the point where merging the conflicting results would help us toward truth. Here I see Votorola offering a useful, though incomplete, service. What I see desirable for Condorcet is an external site using that service. I guess it depends on where you're aiming. You can test resolution mechanisms under simulation in vitro. Why test them in vivo? Good question. Trying: In simulation there is value, and sometimes excessive temptation, in tailoring test cases to favor a desired result. In vivo, as I proposed, you get all kinds of test cases exposed to multiple formulas, but not necessarily a good variety of test cases. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
ANYTHING cam get tampered with if enough doors are left ajar, including paper ballots (such as discarding, editing, or replacing some). Perhaps some classification would help the thinking: What is simple for most anyone to do? What requires skill in prying the doors open? DWK On Thu, 2 Oct 2008 22:58:37 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote: James, Nice sales piece for electronic ballot rigging machines that fails to mention that it is impossible to ensure that e-votes are not tampered with. Here is a great film done by graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara in their Computer Security Group who show how easy it is to rig elections with any e-ballot voting machines - in four different ways that would subvert any post-election audits - because even the voter verifiable paper ballot records are easily rigged to match fraudulent vote totals: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/ The graduate students' film is easy for any lay person to understand. It requires no computer expertise to follow. It is amazing the utter cr-- that voting machine vendors and election officials continue to put out to the press that is contrary to all fact and common sense. Cheers, Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 11:45:16 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 11:26 AM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ANYTHING cam get tampered with if enough doors are left ajar, including paper ballots (such as discarding, editing, or replacing some). True, but paper ballots must be tampered with one at a time and it takes many many more persons to affect any election by tampering with paper ballots. Whereas electronic ballots can be tampered with en masse by one rogue programmer who can fraudulently alter an entire county's or an entire state's election outcomes. Paper ballots can be discarded a handful or a boxful at a time. Rogue programmers SHOULD NOT be invited in, and the real programmers should provide for noticing if such sneak in. The risk is far greater for electronic fraud which is also much more difficult to detect and secure against. Paper ballots are much easier to secure in a way that is understandable and transparent to citizens and far more difficult (would take a far larger conspiracy) to tamper with. Agreed that unprotected electronic ballots can suffer major theft beyond what can happen to paper ballots. More complete defenses are possible with electronics. Mixed into this, Plurality is easily done with paper; better systems, such as Condorcet, are difficult with paper, but easily handled with electronics. Watch this film for an education. It's great. http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/ Cheers, Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
THANK YOU, Terry & James. Plurality does fine with two candidates, or with one obvious winner over others. It is unable, even with top-two Runoffs, to satisfy voter needs to identify: Best - hoped for winner. Next - hoped for if best loses. Remainder - not as good as above. French voters, a few years ago, talked of rioting when they saw what Plurality offered to Runoff. Look at the this year's competition between Obama and Clinton - something more practically attended to in November, given a capable election method. DWK On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 09:29:54 -0400 Terry Bouricius wrote: To put a different slant on James Gilmour's message bout fraud vs. wasted votes under plurality voting... I'm sure Kathy Dopp (on this list for a few months now) will note that "high level" fraud is possible without detection on current voting technology, which is why systems should be universally subject to manual audits. On the other hand, current plurality voting doesn't just "waste" votes, it often elects the "wrong" candidate even WITHOUT any fraud. Under Plurality voting rules, a candidate can be declared elected who would lose in every possible one-on-one match up with each of the other candidates (the Condorcet Loser). This "winner" would also be outside the mutual-majority set (those candidates that a solid majority of all voters prefer over this plurality "winner"). The point is, that even with ZERO FRAUD, the current U.S. voting system regularly elects candidates that the majority of voters believe are the wrong ones. Some election integrity activists have taken the mistaken stance that no improvement in voting methods should be pursued until the fraud issue is perfectly fixed. But in the mean time "honest" elections, using our defective plurality voting method, regularly elect the wrong candidate. A bit like obsessing on fixing the rotten clapboard on the back of the barn, while ignoring that the barn door is wide open and the cows are leaving. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: "James Gilmour" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'Dave Ketchum'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 7:41 AM Subject: Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines Dave Ketchum wrote: Mixed into this, Plurality is easily done with paper; better systems, such as Condorcet, are difficult with paper, but easily handled with electronics. Kathy Dopp > Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 1:24 AM Well that is a very good reason to avoid implementing them - because if they can't be easily done with paper ballots, then they cannot be assured to be counted accurately. This raises a very interesting point - how to balance the risk of failing to detect a low level of fraud against the known wasting of very large numbers of votes by the plurality voting system. (I say "low level of fraud", because any high level should be readily detectable.) Of course, we don't want any fraud, and we don't want any fraud to go undetected, and we don't want the outcome of any election determined by fraud, no matter how low the level of that fraud may be. But to use the ease of detecting fraud as the sole criterion for selecting a voting system is almost certainly to lose sight of the much larger "losses of votes" that occur in every plurality election. In the UK, Canada and in most countries using plurality (except USA), the voting system discards the votes of around half of those who vote - sometimes a little more than half, sometimes a little less. In some plurality elections large numbers of the elected members are elected with only a minority of the votes cast in the single-member districts. The evidence on this is abundant and worldwide. The exception is the USA, where, for example, in elections to the House of Representatives, only one-third of the votes are wasted in this way. The reason is probably related to successful incumbent gerrymandering of the district boundaries and to the effects of holding primary elections. But even in the USA, around one-third of the votes are wasted by the plurality voting system. So to look at the overall picture with a voting system like plurality, should we reject any move to a voting system that would give effect to more of the votes actually cast because it might be more difficult to detect a low level of fraud in such a voting system? James -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the 'who' and the 'what' - trying again
On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 01:56:01 -0400 Michael Allan wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: In simulation there is value, and sometimes excessive temptation, in tailoring test cases to favor a desired result. Maybe try an open simulator. Make the "electorate engine" pluggable so experimenters can try different voting behaviours. That should protect against bias. I was proposing a poll, so bias is expectable. Only whatever behavior he poll takers offer together. I was proposing multiple formulas for cycles, all to be done to let users compare formulas. In vivo, as I proposed, you get all kinds of test cases exposed to multiple formulas, but not necessarily a good variety of test cases. It's nice to go live, but the up front costs will be high. The many current polls imply costs can be tolerable. It's risky too because you have to follow the crowd. Sites will offer alternative voting methods and electors will vote with their feet. There's no telling where they'll be attracted, or whether it'll jive with the test plans. My plans are for them to see Condorcet as a desirable method, and back one of the best cycle formulas for use with it. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Fri, 3 Oct 2008 18:24:09 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote: On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: More complete defenses are possible with electronics. Totally FALSE statement. Sad that we cannot look at the same reality! Conceded that rogue programmers can do all kinds of destruction if permitted, we need to evict the rogues and proceed carefully. In fact there has never been even a theoretical design for an electronic voting system or even electronic paper ballot vote counting system that does not have known security leaks. This is not proof that quality is impossible. In fact some computer scientists just recently mathematically PROVED that it is impossible to even verify that the certified software is actually running on a voting machine. Tell us more, a bit more convincingly as to fact behind this opinion - assuming proper defenses. You are showing a lack of knowledge in the field of computer science by making such an obviously false, already disproven statement. Luckily most people disagree with your incorrect opinion and another state, KY just joined the list of states planning to scrap unauditable e-ballot voting systems, joining, TN, IA, FL, CA, MD, and a few other states and a lot of other counties that don't immediately come to mind now. Sad that we have been afflicted with such a surplus of failures, complicated by fact that many of them could and should have been recognized as such, and disposed of earlier in their life. Mixed into this, Plurality is easily done with paper; better systems, such as Condorcet, are difficult with paper, but easily handled with electronics. Well that is a very good reason to avoid implementing them - because if they can't be easily done with paper ballots, then they cannot be assured to be counted accurately. Mixed in with this is Plurality's inability to accurately measure and count voters' true desires - a reason for looking for a more accurate method, even if it may be more difficult to perform. Watch this film for an education. It's great. http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/ They truly did look for, and found, bunches of flaws. Cheers, Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Sat, 4 Oct 2008 23:59:51 +0100 James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 7:37 PM Plurality does fine with two candidates, or with one obvious winner over others. I am horrified to read this statement on this list. It is completely and utterly untrue. Plurality fails on almost every count even when there are only two candidates in each electoral district and even when only two parties contest the elections. We have to be doing different topics. PROVIDED there are only two candidates, all there is to do is pick one - and many methods can manage this with about equal effort. I promote Condorcet BECAUSE I like what it does with more candidates. Other methods have value in their environments. No, plurality is a rotten voting system and it is a pernicious myth that it works OK when there are only two parties or only two contesting candidates in each electoral district. We British who spread this appalling voting system around the world owe the electors of many countries an almighty apology for this dreadful legacy!! James -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:34:51 -0700 Bob Richard wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: > We have to be doing different topics. I'm afraid that Dave and James Gilmour are indeed "doing different topics". I gather that, for Dave, it is taken for granted that elections are held to fill a single seat (or executive branch office). The choice between winner-take-all in single-member districts and PR just isn't part of this discussion. I'm afraid that's true of an awful lot of discussions held within the framework of social choice theory. For James, I suspect that the choice between winner-take-all and PR is fundamental. It's definitely fundamental for me. Interesting that this exchange started in a post where I began with "Plurality does fine with two candidates, or with one obvious winner over others. It is unable...". I was arguing against Plurality and for Condorcet, but it seems like method matters little when, for whatever reason, there are either: Only two candidates to pick one from or One candidate expects a strong majority of the votes. I admit to spending little effort on PR, partly because I cannot now vote in such elections - but see need to try to improve single seat, as in electing a mayor. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 12:22:37 +0100 James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 1:16 AM We have to be doing different topics. Actually we seem together on topics, but you reacted to what you took as a cue statement without noticing what I was saying. Perhaps the following wording would get my actual thoughts noticed by more: While many methods, including Plurality, have no trouble correctly picking the winner when there are only two candidates, Plurality restricts voters unacceptably when there are more than two candidates and many voters want to show more than one as better than the remainder - which happens often. To clarify, assume this voter wants Tom but, knowing that Tom may not win, wants to show preference for Dick over the remaining lemons. Yes, we must indeed be doing different topics. If you are electing the City Mayor or the State Governor and there are only two candidates, plurality is as good as it gets. If there are more than two candidates you can do better with a different voting system - some favour a Condorcet approach, some IRV, and some promote a variety of other voting systems. But the context in which my comment was set was much broader, following on from the general suggestion that we should not move from plurality (with single-member districts implied) to more complex voting systems because the possibility of detecting electoral fraud might thereby be reduced. That proposition was not specific to single-office elections, but was relevant to the discussion of more general electoral reform on this list and under this topic (with some non-USA examples), a discussion that is taking place in both the USA and Canada that could see city councils and state legislatures (and perhaps even the US House of Representatives and the Senate!!) elected by voting systems that would give more representative results than the present plurality. My problem with the statement "Plurality does fine with two candidates ..." is that I have heard it so many times over the years, mainly from those who are opposed to any reform that would make our various assemblies more representative, but sadly also from some who support reform of the voting system but say it would not need any change if there were only two parties. That extrapolation from single-office elections to assembly elections is not valid. In my experience the statement is unhelpful and hinders the cause of reform - hence my reaction to it. Given such a statement, might be useful to emphasize that there are often more than two candidates and therefore voters need ability to identify which two or more are best liked - which Plurality cannot support. James -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Sun, 5 Oct 2008 14:16:39 -0600 Kathy Dopp wrote: On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: In fact some computer scientists just recently mathematically PROVED that it is impossible to even verify that the certified software is actually running on a voting machine. Tell us more, a bit more convincingly as to fact behind this opinion - assuming proper defenses. Here is the info. I have not read the proof yet myself: "In 'An Undetectable Computer Virus,' David Chess and Steven White show that you can always create a vote changing program (called virus there) that no "verification software" can ever detect. Gives headaches trying to sort out their details, but I quote one sentence: "This paper's title, then, is deliberately somewhat provocative: while the viruses that we present here are undetectable in the strict formal sense of the term, there is no reason to think that it is impossible to write a program that would detect them sufficiently well for all practical purposes." If this was not enough, I think of: Build a master fox computer with special effort to keep rogue programmers out. Foxes ere smart enough to verify that all of them are identical with the masters that are carefully protected, while working foxes may risk harm. Working foxes also verify that other computers of interest remain virus-free - or failures get detected. --- It seems to me that most of the persons on this list would rather have votes fraudulently counted using some alternative voting scheme that requires an unverifiable unauditable electronic voting system, than accurately counted using the plurality election method. As said elsewhere, most of us are willing to endure some pain if this is what it takes to successfully escape the Plurality world. Curious. Cheers, Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Mon, 6 Oct 2008 08:30:29 -0700 AllAbout Voting wrote: Kathy Dopp wrote: It seems to me that most of the persons on this list would rather have votes fraudulently counted using some alternative voting scheme that requires an unverifiable unauditable electronic voting system, than accurately counted using the plurality election method. Some have that attitude. I'm not one of them. I think that plurality is a lousy voting method *and* that our current voting system is wide-open to fraud. In my view both can and should be addressed. For the most part the means of addressing them are orthogonal. That said, voting methods that are not countable in precincts (eg. IRV) pose a very large challenge to providing for election integrity. This, in addition to other significant faults of IRV, causes me to oppose IRV.. I notice that some supporters of Condorcet voting (Dave Ketchum in particular) directly argue that improving the plurality system should be done even if it sacrifices election integrity. Ouch - anyway I am for integrity and am certain it can be done without Plurality - though i am with you as to opposing IRV, So I will ask a pair of constructive questions: 1. Can Condorcet voting be compatible with precinct level optical scan systems? (which many election integrity advocates consider to be pretty good) A Plurality ballot needs only one indicator as to which candidate is voted for, plus candidate name for a write-in. A Condorcet ballot has the same need for ability to handle a write-in name, plus a rank number for each of the one or more candidates voted for. DESIRABLE for the precinct to fill in and forward the NxN array as a summary of all the ballots counted. If anything is forwarded as to individual ballots, this is for verification purposes. 2. Can Condorcet voting be compatible with end-to-end verifiable election integrity systems such as punchscan, 3-ballot, etc...? My initial reaction is that the information for verification exists, but a systems designed for other purposes might need modification to fit Condorcet needs. Note that any ballot acceptable by IRV rules fits in a subset of what Condorcet permits. The counting being different makes Condorcet countable in precincts. I suspect that the answers to both questions is 'yes' which would make Ketchum's dangerous arguments that software can be blindly trusted irrelevant. That DOES NOT sound like a true description of what I have said, Anyway, there certainly should be better verification of the software used than some vendors have offered. Further, I am sure optical scan involves computer programs with the same questions as to trusting as for others. -Greg Wolfe -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines
On Tue, 7 Oct 2008 01:03:47 -0400 Brian Olson wrote: On Oct 6, 2008, at 11:30 AM, AllAbout Voting wrote: So I will ask a pair of constructive questions: 1. Can Condorcet voting be compatible with precinct level optical scan systems? (which many election integrity advocates consider to be pretty good) Yes. 2. Can Condorcet voting be compatible with end-to-end verifiable election integrity systems such as punchscan, 3-ballot, etc...? Aside from the NxNx3 adaption of 3-ballot to condorcet information, I think it was suggested on this list a while ago that 3-ballot can be adapted to 0-100 range voting by scaling up its three ballots of 0-1 voting and requiring sums of 100-200 for a valid vote instead of sums of 1 or 2. If that sort of system was used, rankings for condorcet counting could be extracted from the ratings votes, or a more advanced ratings-aware system could be used. Actually, that sounds pretty messy. NxNx3 is probably better. For Condorcet, N*N*3 for 3-ballot sounds like time for something more affordable space-wise. Since all there is to record for one ballot is Y vs N, N is absence of Y, and positions for the Ys had to be calculated from the ballot, how many positions need recording? Considering that C, the number of candidates voted for, is often one or two, not many. There are LESS THAN N"C positions to record (while this N, the number of candidates, can be many). Most of these methods require automatic ballot construction or specially clueful voters. I'd expect 99% of voters to never bother verifying that the election was actually done right if they had the certificates with which to check it. I think probably the best defense against electoral malfeasance is probably through the political and legal processes, and through the vigilance of the citizenry. We'll never make a system so mathematically perfect that we don't still need those other things. Now it becomes MORE important to record for read back what the system thinks the voter voted, rather than some foreign construction such as the 3-ballot array. Not mentioned above is ability for those up to it to analyze the system programming in whatever detail they see as valuable. Brian Olson http://bolson.org/ -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
I suggest a two-step resolution: Agree to a truce between Condorcet and Range, while they dispose of IRV as being less capable than Condorcet. Then go back to the war between Condorcet and Range. Condorcet uses essentially the same ballot as IRV, with essentially the same meaning: Any IRV ballot would be acceptable to Condorcet. Condorcet also accepts such as A=B. IRV often demands that voters vote for more than one candidate; Condorcet accepts as few or many as the voter offers. IRV gives extra credit for ranking a candidate first, while Condorcet cares only which is most liked. The following example shows this: IRV starts by discarding B for least first-place votes, and then solves A vs C. Condorcet sees that B is liked better than A and B better than C, so B wins. Condorcet is better for validation: All that is said by a collection of Condorcet voters, such as a precinct, can be recorded in an NxN array. These arrays can be summed for whole counties, states, etc. When the first name on an IRV ballot loses, such as B in the example, the next name on that ballot must be known and substituted. An example: 42: C>B 39: A>B 10: B>A 4: B 5: B>C B is the Condorcet winner, and also the first loser discarded by IRV. Actually, IRV and Condorcet usually agree as to winner: If most ballots agree as to top rank, that candidate wins. Ditto agreement on most other ballots. If there is a near tie among three or more, they often disagree but usually get one of the leaders - matters little since the leaders were about equally deserving. IRV discarding the truly best liked, as in the example, is a strong argument for discarding IRV. My 2-cents as to Condorcet vs Range: Consider A good, B soso, and C bad: In Condorcet I rank A>B>C, expressing my basic opinion. In Range I rate A high and C low. Then I have a headache as to B - the higher I rate B, the more danger of B beating A; the lower I rate B, the more danger of C beating B. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 15:18:50 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On 10/9/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: If there is a near tie among three or more, they often disagree but usually get one of the leaders - matters little since the leaders were about equally deserving. This was part of my argument that Condorcet is better than IRV. If Condorcet sees a cycle, A>B and B>C and C>A, we know that each got a bunch of approval and we tear our hair awarding winner, while knowing that other candidates are clear losers. If IRV awards a different winner among these three it is nothing to get excited about (of course, we throw rocks if IRV awards a win to what Condorcet sees as clear losers). It matters because IRV reinforces the 2 party system. A dangerous topic: Plurality pretty clearly does - and we also have to contend with those who like the 2 party system. I claim Condorcet does not, for voters can rank multiple candidates, having ability to vote for a 2 party candidate, especially when they expect such will win, and others they wish to back. But IRV uses the same ballot. I wonder whet might be different in Australia. Score does ratings instead of ranks - what would their excuse for claiming superiority on this topic be? it would be interesting to know what would be the effect of electing a parliament by condorcet voting from single seat districts. It is possible that it would also result in a 2 party system. Election method can matter, but so can other environment details. However, based on certain assumptions, IRV is 2 party reinforcing. Also, Australia gives "experimental" evidence that IRV leads to a 2 party system. Condorcet wouldn't necessarily, so that is a good reason to at least try it. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
I started this thread to compare IRV vs Condorcet, believing that IRV is provably less capable and deserves discarding. To make room to concentrate on this I call for a truce between Condorcet and Range, though ready to claim that Condorcet meets voter needs better than Range. Approval is a side issue, though anything expressible there is also expressible, easily, in Condorcet. DWK On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 16:37:05 -0400 (EDT) Stephen Unger wrote: Steve Stephen H. Unger Professor (retired) Computer Science Department Columbia University On Wed, 8 Oct 2008, Dave Ketchum wrote: I suggest a two-step resolution: Agree to a truce between Condorcet and Range, while they dispose of IRV as being less capable than Condorcet. Then go back to the war between Condorcet and Range. Condorcet uses essentially the same ballot as IRV, with essentially the same meaning: Any IRV ballot would be acceptable to Condorcet. Condorcet also accepts such as A=B. IRV often demands that voters vote for more than one candidate; Condorcet accepts as few or many as the voter offers. IRV gives extra credit for ranking a candidate first, while Condorcet cares only which is most liked. The following example shows this: IRV starts by discarding B for least first-place votes, and then solves A vs C. Condorcet sees that B is liked better than A and B better than C, so B wins. Condorcet is better for validation: All that is said by a collection of Condorcet voters, such as a precinct, can be recorded in an NxN array. These arrays can be summed for whole counties, states, etc. When the first name on an IRV ballot loses, such as B in the example, the next name on that ballot must be known and substituted. An example: 42: C>B 39: A>B 10: B>A 4: B 5: B>C B is the Condorcet winner, and also the first loser discarded by IRV. Actually, IRV and Condorcet usually agree as to winner: If most ballots agree as to top rank, that candidate wins. Ditto agreement on most other ballots. If there is a near tie among three or more, they often disagree but usually get one of the leaders - matters little since the leaders were about equally deserving. IRV discarding the truly best liked, as in the example, is a strong argument for discarding IRV. * Good arguments for Condorcet over IRV. *** My 2-cents as to Condorcet vs Range: Consider A good, B soso, and C bad: In Condorcet I rank A>B>C, expressing my basic opinion. In Range I rate A high and C low. Then I have a headache as to B - the higher I rate B, the more danger of B beating A; the lower I rate B, the more danger of C beating B. Good point, but I think we need to look closer. The basic weakness of Condorcet (or any other ranking scheme) compared with range is that the vote A>B>C could mean "I think A is fine, B is almost as good, and C is terrible" OR it could mean "I think A is fine, B is very bad, and C is even worse". OR it could mean anything in between. There is NO way for a voter to cast different votes that distinguish among these cases. In one sense a Condorcet weakness. In another sense Range has a weakness of demanding that voters successfully understand and productively use Range ratings. This has the interesting consequence that the Condorcet voter is never in a quandary in such a situation. The vote A>B>C is the best that can be done to support A against all other candidates, and, at the same time it does the best job of supporting B over C. But the Range voter DOES have a problem when the polls indicate that A, B, and C each have a chance to win. After giving A the maximum score and C the minimum score, the problem for the voter who ranks the candidates A>B>C is that giving B anything but the minimum score might help B beat A, while giving B anything but the maximum score might help C beat B, which would be bad if A's score is lower than both the B- and C-scores. If most of the voters consider B to be roughly midway between A and C in acceptability, then it is tough to decide how to score B. But this might be considered as a real problem having to do with the relative merits (in the eyes of voters) of the candidates. It is not a problem for Condorcet voters simply because their options are more restricted. On the other hand, an RV election can produce a winner that is more satisfying overall. Consider the following example, where X>>Y indicates a very strong preference of X over Y. 4 A>>B>C 3 C>>B>A 2 B>A>C 1 B>C>A In a Condorcet election, B would win (beats A 6-4 and C 7-3). But, in an RV election (range 0-5), a plausible vote expressing the same views would be: A B C 4 5 1 0 3 0 1 5 2 3 5 0 1 0 5 3 The winner here is A (26-22-18). And this makes more sense, since 70% of the voters think B is very bad. Fo
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
Took a while to decipher what you meant. Others seem to realize my topic is Condorcet vs IRV, both almost twin rank methods. While I do have preferences among methods, this thread is into those two without considering what else I might prefer. DWK On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 21:59:11 -0700 (PDT) Chris Benham wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: I started this thread to compare IRV vs Condorcet, believing that IRV is provably less capable and deserves discarding. Dave, Comparing a decisive method with a criterion is a bit like comparing a person with "virtue". As soon as you tell us which *decisive method* you support I will be happy to discuss its comparison with IRV. Or failing that, perhaps you could give us some clue as to what method you support by telling us some other criteria besides the Condorcet Criterion that you think a method should meet. Chris Benham -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
Let's see: A Condorcet method finds the candidate which would beat each other candidate in a run-off election, assuming such a candidate exists. Thus such a method meets the Condorcet criterion. Having copied such from Wikipedia, don't seem like I grabbed much. Having no such candidate, we have a cycle of three or more leaders in a near tie and debate how to pick from them. Perhaps Chris is into this debate, which I agree is important but am trying to keep out of this thread, whose business is IRV vs non-IRV. Perhaps there are other exceptions. DWK On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:26:55 -0400 Terry Bouricius wrote: Dave, You are using the term "Condorcet" in a way that is increasingly common, but confusing to election method theorists, to mean a ranked voting method that is easiest to explain by imagining a series of one-on-one comparisons using a ranked ballot. What Chris B. was getting at is that Condorcet is a CRITERION (in fact there is also a Condorcet-loser criterion, which I think is more useful), which is used in evaluating voting methods, rather than an actual voting method itself. There are probably a dozen different voting methods that are Condorcet compliant, and many others that aren't (complying with other criteria that some believe are more crucial). The issue separating the various Condorcet methods is how you find a winner when there is no Condorcet winner. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: "Dave Ketchum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "EM" Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 1:02 PM Subject: Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score Took a while to decipher what you meant. Others seem to realize my topic is Condorcet vs IRV, both almost twin rank methods. While I do have preferences among methods, this thread is into those two without considering what else I might prefer. DWK On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 21:59:11 -0700 (PDT) Chris Benham wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: I started this thread to compare IRV vs Condorcet, believing that IRV is provably less capable and deserves discarding. Dave, Comparing a decisive method with a criterion is a bit like comparing a person with "virtue". As soon as you tell us which *decisive method* you support I will be happy to discuss its comparison with IRV. Or failing that, perhaps you could give us some clue as to what method you support by telling us some other criteria besides the Condorcet Criterion that you think a method should meet. Chris Benham -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
Hopefully we are picking a method that will: See the CW if one exists and thus elect that one. See the cycle if there is no CW, and elect the best member of the cycle. Identifying the best member of a cycle is difficult and method must be defined as part of choosing the method. On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:42:48 -0700 (PDT) Aaron Armitage wrote: Condorcet methods are the application of majority rule to elections which have more than two candidates and which cannot sequester the electorate for however many rounds it takes to produce a majority first-preference winner. If we consider majoritarianism an irreducible part of democracy, then any method which fails to elect the CW if one exists is unacceptable. The strategic voting is tricky, and, if wanted, might be better used to cause a chosen candidate to become CW. To cause a profitable cycle is a bigger project: Estimate the expectable vote counts without your strategy. Calculate the changes needed to get to the intended cycle without creating a different cycle or unwanted CW. Get cooperative voters to know and do desired voting. But avoid others finding out and doing votes in response that back their desires. Which particular method is chosen depends on what you want it to do. For example, if we at to make it difficult to change the outcome with strategic voting Smith/IRV would be best, because most strategic voting will be burying a potential CW to create an artificial cycle in the hopes that a more-preferred candidate will be chosen by the completion method. A completion method which is also vulnerable to burial makes this worse, but Smith/IRV isn't because it breaks the cycle in a way the ignores all non-first rankings. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
On Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:49:41 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Raph Frank wrote: On 10/9/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: If there is a near tie among three or more, they often disagree but usually get one of the leaders - matters little since the leaders were about equally deserving. It matters because IRV reinforces the 2 party system. it would be interesting to know what would be the effect of electing a parliament by condorcet voting from single seat districts. It is possible that it would also result in a 2 party system. Since Condorcet is a majoritarian method (as it needs to be in order to be a good single-winner method), the resulting parliament would also be majoritarian. This means that a party whose candidates consistently got low support in all districts would find none of those elected. But Condorcet is also a better single-winner method than Plurality, so the candidates would be better representatives of the majority. They would probably be good compromise candidates, so the parliament would be less party-based than one elected by PR methods. This might not be all that good for traditional parliaments; I don't know if the majoritarian nature would lessen competition (except in dominant-party states, where using Condorcet would be an improvement on Plurality in that respect), but it would reduce the voice of the minority. I claim the arguments here as to 2 party domination are overdone - and sometimes in a way to inspire undesirable resistance by those parties. I would rather emphasize the positive aspects: With Condorcet EVERY voter can vote preference between the two major parties, no matter what the voter's primary interest may be. With Condorcet EVERY voter can also express whatever interest may be felt as to other candidates. Note that these abilities do not conflict, though voters can emphasize whichever they choose as most important to them. With Condorcet's N*N arrays all candidates and their backers have a recording of voter interests and can and should adjust based on what they can learn of voter desires from the N*N reports as to pairs of candidates. It might be a good choice for an upper house decided to be a moderating counterweight to a populist lower house. However, based on certain assumptions, IRV is 2 party reinforcing. Also, Australia gives "experimental" evidence that IRV leads to a 2 party system. How much of that is due to election method, and how much as to other aspects of politics and elections? Condorcet wouldn't necessarily, so that is a good reason to at least try it. It's possible that IRV is a bad single-winner method precisely because STV is a good PR method (with many seats). In STV, one doesn't need to find a candidate that covers a large area of opinion space, since other candidates can be used to cover those areas, but in IRV there are no other positions to be used in such a manner. I'm not sure if this is the reason, but it would fit well with my simulation results that "majoritarian IRV" (eliminate until only k remains for council size k) is a surprisingly good PR method, at least in absence of strategy. Of course simulations can help but, too often, they are affected by biases of the simulator. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
These majorities, as described, seem close to identical twins, with little, if any, ability for individual thinking. Plurality promotes closeness for two major factions. Voters have painful decisions which can result in real, if painful, party strength - they cannot both back party choices and back other candidates. Condorcet is an example of providing flexibility. Voters can back whatever combination of home party/faction and other candidates they choose. Backing home party helps it continue its power. Backing others helps change, and how this is or is not progressing is partly reported in the N*N arrays from Condorcet elections. With Condorcet there is more opportunity for controlled change and parties/factions can see from the N*N reports what the voting suggests they had better change for continued success. What follows inspired my thoughts. DWK On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:58:10 +0200 Jobst Heitzig wrote: Dear Raph, you wrote: The thing is that in such a case, it isn't really a single 'demos'. It is two groups voting as one. Do you mean to say democracy is only for societies which are sufficiently homogeneous? That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. You can still have compromises. Only if the majority for some reason prefers to elect the compromise than their favourite. But in that it seems the "favourite" was just not the true favourite of the majority but the compromise was. So, still the minority has no influence on the decision but can only hope that the majority is nice enough to decide for the compromise. In fact, it can be helpful if multiple issues are voted as a single unit. This allows negotiation between factions in order to make up the majority. This common behavious is a pretty artificial construct to overcome the discussed drawbacks of majoritarian rules. A faction can make compromises on issues that it doesn't care about in order to get things that it does. This requires there is no solid bloc though. And when both factions care about both issues? A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Sounds reasonable, the problem is that a) people don't like random methods b) it will result in certain outlier elements in society getting some power. a) FAWRB is not a random but a very specific and quite sophisticated method. It only uses a certain amount of chance, just as many things in our life do. Chance should not be mixed up with arbitrariness. Used in a rational way, FAWRB will usually elect good compromise options with near certainty, not leading to significant amounts of randomness. Perhaps a threshold could be set before a candidate can participate. Yes, I agree. The version I just proposed to Terry incorporates such a threshold. Also, the citizens of the US didn't get to vote on the restrictions of civil rights directly. It was handled by Congress. Using majority rule? That someone was me. Sorry, Greg didn't include your name in his post (or I couldn't find it). No need to be sorry. Yours, Jobst -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
I argue for Condorcet, include Range, Approval, and IRV in my discussion, ad claim it to be the best for single winners. For all these I talk of Best, Soso, Worst, and other unnamed candidates. Pick the one or more candidates you would like to vote for. Proceed by method: Approval: You are giving them equal indication of desirability. B is obvious. S is questionable - including it would be doing your best to elect either B or S, though you want S ONLY if you cannot get B. Range: With ratings you can rate B as best and S as less desirable. Deciding on ratings gets tricky if you vote for several. Condorcet: Scoring ballots as in a tournament. It's ranks have neither the power of ratings, nor the pain of trying to use them. Here you rank candidates according to how well you like them, including equals if you like two equally well. IRV: Almost the same ballot as Condorcet, except no equals. Its way of counting sometimes awards the win to someone most would agree is not deserving. Back to scoring Condorcet. If 5 rank A>C and 6 rank C>A, C is on the way to winning - and will win if outranking each other candidate. As in sports tournaments, there can be headaches such as A>C, C>E, and E>A, and no clear winner. These have to be provided for but do not have to be studied in detail to understand the method. DWK On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:11:47 -0700 Greg Nisbet wrote: > As I?m sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting > system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they > will either: > a) say they don't understand it > b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV > c) say that the current system will never be changed > > Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take > the least amount of convincing for the greatest gain? > > I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that > it is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote > for whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their > vote. You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably > better than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of > passing. It breaks two party domination reasonably well and people > understand it. It isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important > stuff done. > > Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem > to think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if > someone else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice, > according to them. > > Range I have actually managed to do. > > I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a > Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make > it sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c). > > Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable? > -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV vs Condorcet vs Range/Score
On Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:08:32 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: I suggest a two-step resolution: Agree to a truce between Condorcet and Range, while they dispose of IRV as being less capable than Condorcet. Then go back to the war between Condorcet and Range. I think the problem, or at least a part of it, is that if we (the election-methods members) were to advocate a method, to be effective, it would have to be the same method. Otherwise, we would "split the vote", as it were, against the status quo. Therefore, both Condorcet and Range groups would prefer their own method to "win". If that's true, then one way of uniting without running into that would be to show how IRV is bad, rather than how Condorcet or Range is better. If there's to be unity (or a truce) in that respect, those examples would focus on the properties where both Range and Condorcet, or for that matter, most methods, are better than IRV, such as in being monotonic, reversal symmetric, etc. First, IRV will slay us all if we do not attend to it - it is getting USED. Range and Condorcet are among the leaders and ask two different conflicting thought processes and expressions of the voters: Condorcet ranks per better vs worse, but asks not for detailed thought: A>B>C ranks A as best of these three. Range easily rates A-100 and C-0. Same thought as for Condorcet would rate B between them, but deciding exactly where can be a headache. Each of these has its backers, but we cannot devote full time to this battle while we need to defend our turf against IRV. I suggest concentrating on Condorcet disposing of IRV because both use almost identical rank ballots and usually agree as to winner. They look at different aspects: Condorcet looks only at comparative ranking. When they matter, we ask only whether A>B or B>A is voted by more voters. IRV cares only what candidate ranks first on a ballot, though it looks at next remaining candidate after discarding first ranked as a loser. Sample partial election: 9 A>E 9 B>A 18 C>A 20 D>A A is WELL LIKED HERE and would win in Condorcet. Count one last voter for IRV: A - B and C lose, and D loses to A. B - A, E, and B lose, and C loses to D. C or D - D wins. What Condorcet calls cycles inspire much debate. Optimum handling does deserve thought, but could be directed more as to how to resolve them. Real topic is that comparing rankings can show three or more of the best candidates are close enough to ties to require extra analysis. I claim this is a comparatively good thing - the worst candidates end up outside the cycles and it is, at least, no worse than random choice to award the win to what is seen as the best of them. Having election results in understandable format is valuable for many purposes: Condorcet records all that it cares about for any district, such as precinct, in an N*N array. These arrays can be summed for larger districts such as county or state. Also they can be published, in hopefully understandable form, for all interested. Range has less information to make available. IRV talks of recounting ballots as it steps thru discarding losers - at any rate not as convenient as Condorcet. An expected response is that these properties don't matter because they happen so rarely. To reply to that, I can think of two strategies. The first would be to count failures in simulations close to how voters would be expected to act, perhaps with a reasoning of "we don't know what strategy would be like, but the results would be worse than for honesty, so these provide a lower bound". The second would be to point to real uses, like Australia's two-party domination with IRV, or Abd's argument that TTR states who switched to IRV have results much more consistent with Plurality than what used to be the case. Condorcet has no interest in being like Plurality. Its big plus over Plurality is letting voters rank those candidates they want to rank as best, etc., and using this data. Simulations are tricky - when can we honestly claim expected matches reality? -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse
orrect. Anyway, maybe the Libertarians should pick a state and focus all their national effort on getting a Libertarian elected to the House of Representatives in that State. Once they achieve that, they can move on to getting a second one elected from the State. Ofc, their seat would likely be gerrymandered away since their Representative wouldn't be a member of one of the two parties. We probably should organize ourselves. That's a good idea. Maybe the reason that 3rd parties are more viable in the UK and Canada is that there is more independence in setting the boundaries. This means that they can't be gerrymandered out of existence if they manage to get one seat. That certainly sounds reasonable. > 9) Elections on Tuesday > > why not make election day a holiday? or hold it on weekends? I thought they were held over multiple days with 'early voting', or was that changed? Doing the election on Tuesdays made more sense 200 years ago, with primitive transportation. Letting voters vote ahead of election day is done in some states for necessary absentees, or generally, but complicates all of the protections against fraud. I think you need to prove you have some 'valid reason' to vote early. Anyway, I know there are some restrictions that make it inconvenient otherwise who would show up at the polls? -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse
On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:33:13 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 8:54 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: In FPTP parties NEED primaries - a party cannot afford to divide its members' votes among multiple candidates. Well, in the UK, the party leadership decides who the candidates are. Ministers are generally assigned to safe seats for example. A DISASTER! Mechanics become difficult. Voters cannot learn enough of all to sort them out. Etc. A party with sufficient voters can reasonably nominate a candidate. Makes sense for a reasonable sized group of voters to nominate a candidate without formally getting involved in parties for this. As to losers - they chose to try for party backing and got rejected - not the same as someone who only got approval outside the parties. Well, there is a balance between having hundreds of candidates and having only two. The ballot access laws should allow sincere candidates to stand. How do we measure 'sincere'? In most places in the US N backers place a candidate on a party primary ballot, and N2 (usually a larger number) directly on the general election ballot. Also voters can usually vote for others via write-in. N and N2 NEED to be based on the number of potential nominators and getting a 'reasonable' quantity of candidates. Party leadership may also place candidates on the primary ballot (no need for primary election if only one candidate, though voters can demand a primary to provide for possible write-ins). Intent is to prevent large states from swamping small states. Having two houses is a standard thought - single houses too easily wander into stupid thoughts. Right, and also, it is recommended that they are elected in different manners. If both Houses use the same electorate and method, then they are copies of each other. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] About Condorcet//Approval (RF)
Given a Condorcet cycle, how does anyone justify awarding a winner outside? True that deciding the winner among cycle members can be a challenge. BUT, we know that every candidate outside the cycle has been voted as a loser to each member of the cycle. DWK On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:46:11 + (GMT) Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Raph, --- En date de : Sam 18.10.08, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 5:48 PM, Diego Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Because Smith is more complex to explain, my current favorite election method is Condorcet//Approval. We don't need complex algorithms to find a winner. What's the difference? The Copeland winner wins, and approval is used as the tie-break? The difference is that in C//A you do not have to be in the Smith set to win. Kevin Venzke -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse
On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 02:14:29 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 1:44 AM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: How do we measure 'sincere'? In most places in the US N backers place a candidate on a party primary ballot, and N2 (usually a larger number) directly on the general election ballot. Also voters can usually vote for others via write-in. N and N2 NEED to be based on the number of potential nominators and getting a 'reasonable' quantity of candidates. Maybe the best plan would be to say that the X candidates who receive the most signatures are placed on the ballot. There might also be a minimum number of signatures allowed. I said to have X as a goal, but making it a rigid requirement has problems: Can include candidates with unreasonably weak 'sincerity'. Can exclude truly 'sincere' candidates (perhaps a limit somewhere, but making N large enough can make excess candidates difficult). Note that having ONE candidate for a primary is reasonable - even one for a general election can be adequate, given one GOOD one. Probably the 2 major parties would be exempted (for practical reasons). This makes no sense, though the N could, and probably should, be based on party membership. Also, write-ins should be allowed. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] About Condorcet//Approval (RF)
On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:20:07 -0300 Diego Santos wrote: > > 2008/10/18 Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > > Given a Condorcet cycle, how does anyone justify awarding a winner > outside? > > True that deciding the winner among cycle members can be a challenge. > > BUT, we know that every candidate outside the cycle has been voted > as a loser to each member of the cycle. > > DWK > > > Dave, I think approval winner outside Condorcet cycle is too rare in > real elections. > So why permit it? I should not be the only one asking questions here. Apologies - I did not pay enough attention when you started this, but now get suspicious. > > > On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:46:11 + (GMT) Kevin Venzke wrote: > > Hi Raph, > > --- En date de : Sam 18.10.08, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> a écrit : > > On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 5:48 PM, Diego Santos > <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > Because Smith is more complex to explain, my current > > > favorite election > > method is Condorcet//Approval. We don?t need > > > complex algorithms to find a > > winner. > > > What's the difference? The Copeland winner wins, and > approval is used > as the tie-break? > > > > The difference is that in C//A you do not have to be in the > Smith set to > win. > > Kevin Venzke > Diego Renato dos Santos > Mestrando em Ciência da Computação > COPIN - UFCG -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting Theory and Populism
Diego Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Sorry, my computer objects to something you wrote. What strategy is it designed to protect against? Improved Approval Runoff is a trying to fix Two-round runoff, to avoid cases like 2002 French presidential election. You can approve your favourite candidate with low chances of winning, and other satisfactory frontrunner. The French voted on equivalent of m1, m2, m3, m4, or, and ol. or and ol got to the runoff and the French thought of rioting because none of the m's got to the runoff. Agreed they need something better than FPTP, but Approval does not help. Backers of the various m's would gladly vote preference for all m's over the o's - but they want to show preference among the ms, the same thought that made them distribute their votes among the m's. Condorcet ranking would let them express their desires. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Wilson-Pakula - an odd New York law
Parties could not tolerate voters making THEIR OWN choices - but it took three strikes to fire Vito! Original Message Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 23:32:59 -0400 From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> This law had what seems like a simple purpose - Republicans and Democrats were DESPERATE to end the embarrassment of having a Congressman from NY from the American Labor Party (some called him a Communist). When I read of him I see a DEDICATED servant of his district and others. A COMPLETE failure as to the law's original purpose. So - why do we not let it die - or at least let it rest in peace? Because minor parties find a use - and now even major parties join in. Vito Marcantonio was WELL LIKED. Therefore when he expressed an interest in becoming a Congressman it happened. Consider: His own party nominated him. Some of East Harlem was Republican - they could not do less. Some of East Harlem was Democrat - they could not do less. 1947 - Republicans and Democrats pass Wilson-Pakula 1948 - Will not matter if voters sign petitions to nominate a candidate from outside the party unless party committees approve - which Rep and Dem committees dare not do for Vito. But American Labor Party voters still have the right to place Vito on their line - and voters from all parties can and do vote for him so he gets reelected. 1950 - Republicans and Democrats join with the Liberal Party to place one replacement for Vito on three lines, so Vito was out after serving 14 years. Couple quotes about Vito: http://users.rcn.com/redpost/life.html Vito Marcantonio: His Life and Milieu Marcantonio's connection with the Communist movement released a firestorm of opposition. The press campaign intended to discredit Marcantonio, in its scope and the extent of its vilification, has perhaps been unequaled in the entire history of New York City politics. In 1944 his district was gerrymandered to include Yorkville, an area south of East Harlem whose major ethic groups.expressed hostility to left politics. The Wilson-Pakula Act of 1947 prevented him from entering the major-party primaries, thereby necessitating his running solely on the American Labor Party line at a time when it was almost universally identified as Communist controlled. And ultimately in 1950, he was defeated by the "gang up," a coalition candidate of the Democratic, Republican and Liberal Parties. Only the "gang up" could allow Marcantonio's relatively poor showing in Yorkville to overcome the undying loyalty of his East Harlem bastions. Aside from Public School 50 located in El Barrio, which was named for him, no other memorial to date has been raised in memory of this politician who when he died had an estate worth less than $10,000, and who in 1950 when faced with almost inevitable defeat could rise to his feet and declare in the House of Representatives: "I have stood by the fundamental principles which I have always advocated, I have not trimmed. I have not retreated, I do not apologize, and I am not compromising." -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] About Condorcet//Approval (RF)
Your suggested possibilities had best have STRONG arguments to overpower known facts: EVERY member of the cycle has been compared with each candidate outside, with the cycle members being voted better liked by the voters in EVERY such comparison. DWK On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:39:15 + (GMT) Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Dave, --- En date de : Sam 18.10.08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : Given a Condorcet cycle, how does anyone justify awarding a winner outside? Two possibilities: 1. to simplify the definition of the method 2. to satisfy other strategy criteria. Kevin Venzke -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse - parties/primaries
This topic has inspired an ocean of words - too many to respond to in detaii. I will respond based on my memory of New York State law - I believe close enough to be useful. Elections in which the voter can only name one candidate, such as FPTP, desperately need primaries to help each party submit only one to the general election. They still have headaches from similar candidates outside the party. Elections permitting more complete expression of voter desires, such as Range and Condorcet, may still desire primaries, but their need is less desperate. Elections need to support all of: Groups of voters taking part as organized parties. The most sincere wannabe candidates taking part. Keep the size within reason for those running the election. Keep the size within reason for understanding and intelligent participation by voters. I am sending out a Wilson-Pakula writeup - shows how desperate parties can get to try to control voters. Let's look at a ballot for governor. Ten lines, but Tom is on three of them: Rep and Dem because voters from those parties petitioned - legal, but not likely that party leadership would tolerate (and they do not have to if Tom is not a member of their party). Tom's - because his friends petitioned him as an independent for a few extra votes - thus a better chance for the three counts getting him elected governor. Ten lines could mean ten parties each owning a ballot line for the next four years (takes X votes to win such). Rep and Dem are established parties, probably get X and thus continue. Tom's 'party" is just Tom but if it gets X he has the right to expand it into a real party (though he can choose not to). Note that there are two classes of nomination petitions: For primary, signatures must come from party members. Note that, besides petitioning, party leadership can do nominating for primaries. Independent for general election takes more because any voter can sign. For either the rules must look for a balance: Not so easy that the election gets swamped with candidates. Not so hard that there are no candidates. After losing in the primary, can a candidate run independent in the general election? Perhaps, with proper petition signatures. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] NPV vs Condorcet
Was: Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse Is the Electoral College recognized as having lived ot its useful life? If so, perhaps we could do up a worthwhile constitutional amendment. Should we not desperately try to get FPTP out of this? I suggest three parts for the heart of this: Like NPV we want to count a national election. FPTP deserves burial - USE Condorcet. Some states may not be up to Condorcet instantly. Let them stay with FPTP until they are ready to move up. Just as a Condorcet voter can choose to rank only a single candidate, for a state full of such the counters can translate FPTP results into an N*N array. DWK On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:27:50 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Jonathan Lundell wrote: All of this would be finessed by the National Popular Vote idea: http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ It'd effectively result in a national FPTP plurality election, hardly ideal, but definitely an improvement. The Electoral College is, btw, a good example of a case in which an election method has a profound and obvious effect on the nature of the campaign. US presidential candidates have no motivation to campaign in California, New York, Texas, and many other states (they show up for fundraising events, but that's about it). If California is close, Obama has surely lost the election, and similarly Texas and McCain. The states in play vary somewhat over time, but I rather imagine contain a minority of the electorate. Could the national popular vote lead to a similar effect, only opposite? The candidates would have an incentive to visit the cities, because they could reach many voters in little time; and thus the effect would move from being biased away from cities (in the large states) to being biased towards them. Better might be a weighted vote (but who'd set the weights?). -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] NPV vs Condorcet
On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:51:55 -0700 Bob Richard wrote: > Some states may not be up to Condorcet instantly. Let them stay with FPTP > until they are ready to move up. Just as a Condorcet voter can choose to rank > only a single candidate, for a state full of such the counters can translate FPTP > results into an N*N array. What would enforcing the truncation of rankings (to a single ranking) for part of the electorate -- but not the rest -- do to the formal (social choice theoretic) properties of any given Condorcet method? Would the effect be the same for all Condorcet-compliant voting methods? It is not a truncation. It is interpreting FPTP ballots as if used by Condorcet voters. Should result in pressure on all states to conform ASAP. I am ONLY considering FPTP and Condorcet The exact Condorcet method cold be stated in the amendment. Note that this is only a single national election, though there would be extreme pressure on other government uses of Condorcet to conform. In fact, would this arrangement be valid for any ranked or cardinal voting method? Arguably, in the U.S. your opponents could take this to court as a violation of one-person-one-vote. We claim Condorcet offers all voters equal power - even if we have to demand some reinterpretation from the courts - and some updating of laws if that gets involved. If you are referring to laggard states not offering their voters the full ability that is offered and that voters in compliant states get - go beat on the laggard states. The intent is to expedite full compliance without demanding such. DWK --Bob Dave Ketchum wrote: Was: Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse Is the Electoral College recognized as having lived ot its useful life? If so, perhaps we could do up a worthwhile constitutional amendment. Should we not desperately try to get FPTP out of this? I suggest three parts for the heart of this: Like NPV we want to count a national election. FPTP deserves burial - USE Condorcet. Some states may not be up to Condorcet instantly. Let them stay with FPTP until they are ready to move up. Just as a Condorcet voter can choose to rank only a single candidate, for a state full of such the counters can translate FPTP results into an N*N array. DWK -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] NPV vs Condorcet
It may be difficult, but useless to claim impossible. Could start the thinking by considering weighting the votes from the small states, consistent with the advantage they get via the Electoral College. DWK On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:15:45 -0500 Paul Kislanko wrote: Re: Is the Electoral College recognized as having lived ot its useful life? If so, perhaps we could do up a worthwhile constitutional amendment. For the same reason we have an Electoral College there's no way to get a Constitutional Amendmendt on the ballot - such a suggestion would have to pass the Senate, wherein even the smallest state has two representatives who would be against the idea. For the same reason the EC is bad, it can't ever be changed - it gives an inordinate amount of authority to the "small" states, and those states, now that they have it, are not likely to give it up. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] NPV vs Condorcet
Actually NPV has some value - it gets us toward all presidential votes having the same value from all states. FPTP is a problem that should be addressed. I am simply looking for a way to actually make some progress. On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:52:00 -0800 Bob Richard wrote: > It is not a truncation. It is interpreting FPTP ballots as if used by Condorcet voters. I'm having trouble viewing the ballots from the states that continue to use FPTP any other way except as ranked ballots truncated to one ranking. What am I missing here? I suggest different viewing. While Condorcet voters CAN rank more than one candidate, they CAN choose to rank only one. In the latter case they have offered exactly the same information as an FPTP voter would. > We claim Condorcet offers all voters equal power - even if we have to demand > some reinterpretation from the courts - and some updating of laws if that gets involved. I'm afraid that this comment completely misunderstands my post. See below. > If you are referring to laggard states not offering their voters the full ability that is > offered and that voters in compliant states get - go beat on the laggard states. This is exactly what I'm referring to. I was specifically *not* saying that Condorcet-compliant methods themselves could violate one-person-one-vote. That's not the case. --Bob Dave Ketchum wrote: On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:51:55 -0700 Bob Richard wrote: > Some states may not be up to Condorcet instantly. Let them stay with FPTP > until they are ready to move up. Just as a Condorcet voter can choose to rank > only a single candidate, for a state full of such the counters can translate FPTP > results into an N*N array. What would enforcing the truncation of rankings (to a single ranking) for part of the electorate -- but not the rest -- do to the formal (social choice theoretic) properties of any given Condorcet method? Would the effect be the same for all Condorcet-compliant voting methods? It is not a truncation. It is interpreting FPTP ballots as if used by Condorcet voters. Should result in pressure on all states to conform ASAP. I am ONLY considering FPTP and Condorcet The exact Condorcet method cold be stated in the amendment. Note that this is only a single national election, though there would be extreme pressure on other government uses of Condorcet to conform. In fact, would this arrangement be valid for any ranked or cardinal voting method? Arguably, in the U.S. your opponents could take this to court as a violation of one-person-one-vote. We claim Condorcet offers all voters equal power - even if we have to demand some reinterpretation from the courts - and some updating of laws if that gets involved. If you are referring to laggard states not offering their voters the full ability that is offered and that voters in compliant states get - go beat on the laggard states. The intent is to expedite full compliance without demanding such. DWK --Bob Dave Ketchum wrote: Was: Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse Is the Electoral College recognized as having lived ot its useful life? If so, perhaps we could do up a worthwhile constitutional amendment. Should we not desperately try to get FPTP out of this? I suggest three parts for the heart of this: Like NPV we want to count a national election. FPTP deserves burial - USE Condorcet. Some states may not be up to Condorcet instantly. Let them stay with FPTP until they are ready to move up. Just as a Condorcet voter can choose to rank only a single candidate, for a state full of such the counters can translate FPTP results into an N*N array. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Wilson-Pakula - an odd New York law
Basing the following on NY law. Each voter, who chooses to, enrolls in ONE party (state keeps registration records, so one voter cannot be enrolled in multiple parties). Votes in the election for governor determine which parties shall be recognized as such and each own a line on the ballot for the next four years. At primary election, voters of each party elect: Members of their state and county committees. Candidates to be on their line at general election. Members of the party in the county containing East Harlem elected a county committee. That committee may have assigned this task to a sub-committee since the county contains many districts. Groups of at least 5% of party members in a district can each designate a candidate for primary election (lower limits when they deserve an exception in the law to the standard need). For one office no voter can designate more than one. Has no effect on who may designate for other offices. Assuming 1000 party members in Vito's district, a designating petition would have required 50 signatures. Before Wilson-Pakula that is all it took. Considering the 1000 members, others COULD HAVE SIGNED competing designating petitions. Considering Vito's popularity, questionable whether 50 signers could have been found for such - or that such could have beat Vito for primary votes if it came to that. With Wilson-Pakula the party committee could reject outsiders such as Vito. In general this makes sense (and gets used by most parties to reject unwanted outsiders) - if the outsider deserves electing let them: Get nominated by their own party if their party has a ballot line. Get independent nomination by petition - though that takes more signatures since all voters are available for signing. On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:25:27 -0400 Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Dave Thank you for the Vito Marcantonio story. The story is not unique, but it is a good example of how political parties make rules and enact laws that give them a stranglehold on our political infrastructure. Parties are institutions of humans. They function precisely as a thoughtful person should expect them to function; they put their interest ahead of the public interest ... always. It is amazing so few people recognize (or are willing to acknowledge) that political parties are profoundly anti-democratic. Where might the public interest reside? The 1940s was not a good time for claiming electing a Communist qualified as such. Parties and their organization are products of the humans who create them. Remember that EACH member of a party has a RIGHT (at least in NY) to ask other members to designate them as candidates for county committee. A bit of history from my county: County committee chair in one party got enough committee members to let him substitute for them to be able to hold committee meetings in a telephone booth if he chose to. When his doings created enough unhappiness, some members accepted responsibility for running for county committee office, got themselves elected, and the now ex-chair lost interest in the committee. How about YOUR county - could and should YOU take responsibility for attending to your party's needs? For the most part, the commentary on this site concerns itself with gaining some form of representation for purportedly under-represented partisans. I suspect that effort is driven by the quest for power by those who feel they are disenfranchised by the present system. We would be better served if they sought the benefit of society rather than some subset of it. It is unwise to continue to ignore the very obvious fact that parties, themselves, are the problem. In the United States, we have just watched, helpless, as our elected representatives placed an enormous burden on us and our progeny, not because of conviction it was necessary to do so, but because they were given 100 billion of our dollars as bribes. How can sane men watch such travesties and not realize that the pursuit of self-interest, which is a very natural and important trait in each of us, is the force we must learn to harness? The notion that our government can be improved by forming additional centers of oligarchical power is ludicrous. We can not, and should not, deny our own tendency toward partisanship. Instead, we must devise an independent process that includes all of us and harnesses our natural tendency to seek our own interest. We must make self-interest a tool in our arsenal rather than leaving it for others to wield against us. Fred -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] NPV vs Condorcet
If a Condorcet voter bullet votes, that is voting for one candidate. An FPTP voter's only capability is to vote for one candidate. We have exactly the same information from these two votes. Take it from the FPTP count and recount it into the N*N array by Condorcet rules and you have exactly the same result from these two voters. Not all Condorcet voters bullet vote, but this gives FPTP voters a chance to participate until their states move up to Condorcet. I thought, momentarily, about combining in other methods such as Range, and do not see anything practical for such. DWK On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:36:46 -0700 Bob Richard wrote: Please provide a simple example of a Condorcet matrix synthesized out of an FPTP ranking. Apparently I'm not understanding this at all -- maybe there *is* a way to look at this that doesn't involve truncation. But I'm very sceptical of any proposal that involves aggregating different voting methods in various subjurisdictions into a single result. Thanks in advance. --Bob -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] NPV vs Condorcet
Context is my proposal to do away with Electoral College and NPV, and elect president via Condorcet. On Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:51:21 +0100 Raph Frank wrote: If some States only use FPTP, then the condorcet winner is going to be one of the 2 major parties, right? NOT necessarily: Voters in Condorcet states will know they have Condorcet freedom. Voters in FPTP states will know of the above freedom, though they do not personally possess such - and should realize that it is less destructive than it had been to vote as they desire, within FPTP. Any 3rd party candidate would be considered ranked lower than either of the top 2 candidates in all States that only allow FPTP. Would it ever be worth voting for a 3rd party in FPTP States? I guess with a condordcet tie, it might have some effect. It has the advantage that it allows the States to use different methods. Approval could also be incorporated into a NPV-condorcet summation. Wile an Approval ballot could be recorded as if a Condorcet ballot, its information could not be reconstructed from state total election counts (this topic was part of noting that FPTP counts are different). If States with 40-50 EC votes (and a reasonable balance of Rep/Dem States) joined, they would swing every election, unless it was a landslide. I doubt a non-condorcet winner would be able to landslide, so it should not be a major disadvantage for anyone. ??? On the amendment, calling a convention could be used to prompt Congress. Dangerous - you might succeed. Threatening to call a convention could be productive. The small States problem is much harder. 13 States are need to veto an amendment. Nebraska has the 13th lowest population at 1.775 million (0.58% of the population) and gets 5 EC votes (1.85%). Take two states, each having three EC votes, and one with six. Latter state has twice as many voters as the other two. Double the vote counts from the smaller states and they will have the same strength in a vote count world. This is NOT a proposal - just a thought as one way to let small states keep the extra strength the EC has given them. Note that such scaling could be applied to the contents of N*N arrays. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] NPV vs Condorcet
The first N*N matrix below is what I was talking about - it takes the information from the FPTP votes and records that as if bullet votes. Note that this example matrix is complete only for only three candidates. If there were seven candidates the matrix would be bigger, showing A, B, and C ranking over the other four. On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 18:18:00 +0200 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Bob Richard wrote: I'm obviously missing something really, really basic here. Can someone explain to me what it is? > Take it from the FPTP count and recount it > into the N*N array by Condorcet rules ... I still have no idea what this means. Here's an example: Plurality result: Able: 45 Baker: 40 Charlie: 15 Here's a (very naive) NxN matrix (fixed-width font required): Able BakerCharlie --- --- --- Able-- 45 45 Baker 40 -- 40 Charlie 15 15 -- But it's not a Condorcet count because we have, for example, no idea how many of the Able voters prefer Baker to Charlie and how many prefer Charlie to Baker. As a result, the pairs of cells above and below the diagonal don't add up to 100. I still don't see how we can "recount it into the NxN matrix by Condorcet rules". It IS a Condorcet count. Bullet voting Condorcet voters chose not to provide more information such as what the Able voters thought as to Baker vs Charlie. FPTP voters could have had similar thoughts, but had no way to express them. Someone please show me the NxN matrix that Dave Ketchum would use to combine these votes with the other votes that had been cast on ranked ballots. Condorcet N*N matrices are simply added together, element by element. Gets a bit complicated, but is doable, to prepare such as the 3*3 matrix above for summing with a 4*4, 7*7, or any other (need is only to prepare, not to have to know how big the biggest other matrices may be). If we consider the votes as bullet votes, then we can expand to: 45: Able > Baker = Charlie 40: Baker > Able = Charlie 15: Charlie > Able = Baker which produces the matrix you gave above. That's the "consider bullet voters" idea. The other one is to count the plurality vote locally, so you get: 100: Able > Baker > Charlie BUT, the FPTP voters could not express such thoughts. ... -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Bullet voting/truncation in Condorcet elections (was Re: NPV vs Condorcet)
Perhaps somebody else can find an example, say for Ranked pairs as compared to MAM? (Both use the same fundamental method, but ranked pairs is margins, and MAM is wv, although some times "ranked pairs" is used on this list to describe MAM) (3) Going back to Dave Ketchum's original proposal that different voting methods can be used in different subjurisdictions (e.g. states in the case of NPV) and the matrices added together, could the method of representing tied rankings ever affect the outcome in the jurisdiction as a whole? I haven't tried to work this out, but intuitively it seems to me that the answer is yes. Yes, and mixing margins and wv explicitly would cause a mess. Therefore, it's better to have one format for the Condorcet matrix itself, and just translate it into the appropriate victory matrix according to what method you're using. (4) I gather that Kristofer's procedure is the one most frequently used in discussions of Condorcet. Is that true, and what is the history or reasoning behind this? Once you've decoupled the condorcet matrix from the wv/margins choice, it makes sense that "my" way of counting the Condorcet matrix would be used. As for whether wv or margins is most common, I think wv is, and that the reason is that it's less vulnerable to strategy (order reversal and favorite betrayal). Also, Schulze(wv) meet some criteria that Schulze(margins) do not, so the Schulze method's defined to use wv (as far as I know). -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Wilson-Pakula - an odd New York law
On Thu, 23 Oct 2008 08:27:27 -0400 Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Morning, Dave re: "A bit of history from my county: County committee chair in one party got enough committee members to let him substitute for them to be able to hold committee meetings in a telephone booth if he chose to. When his doings created enough unhappiness, some members accepted responsibility for running for county committee office, got themselves elected, and the now ex-chair lost interest in the committee." Do you offer this as an example of how a well-ordered community should interact politically? I do not find it so. It fails to address the fundamental question: "By what right, constitutional or natural, does a 'party committee' usurp the right to make political decisions for a community?" I did not write what you seem to have thought that I wrote. I said nothing as to what powers a party county committee might have. They do have some power and responsibilities as to who gets to be candidates on the ballot line owned by the party. NY Election law provides for committee members being elected at primary election every two years. A committee member can permit another committee member to act for them. I am sure this is a committee rules topic - perhaps the rule should limit haw many other members one can act for - less than what this chair possessed. ... Fred -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Methods for Senators, governors, etc.
There is much discussion of proposed complex methods. Fine, except I claim that many elections need to be kept simple for intelligent participation by our least capable voters. Needs: Ala Plurality, voter can rank a single candidate. Ala Approval, voter can rank two candidates as equally liked. Voter can rank two candidates as one liked better than the other. Voter can combine the above thoughts to rank up to all candidates on the ballot. In the above, voter can write=in a candidate in addition to those on the ballot. Voter participates in ONE use of a ballot: Voter must be able to learn of the candidates. While activity such as polling can be useful, learning as much as some claim about expectable voting seems, and should be, undoable (with possible useless exceptions). Perhaps there is a primary election - but ONLY by some value offered - this shall not be an essential component. As ONE activity at ONE time the voter votes. After the voting the votes are counted and the winner announced. NO reruns or other voter action. True ties resolved by honest random choice. A few thoughts: Plurality or Approval cannot fill need. IRV uses about the same ballot as Condorcet - but deserves rejection for its method of counting. Condorcet can - but I am trying to word this to also accept other methods that satisfy need. Range does much the same, but needs better words than I have seen as to how, simply, to rate SoSo when ranking would be Good>SoSo>Bad. Method needs to be understandable by voters (I read compaints about handling of Condorcet cycles - I claim that they do not need to be ubderstood in detail - mostly that discussing frequency and effect should satisfy most). The methods that inspired this missive claim to offer some, possible valuable, benefits - at a cost that may be prohibitive - leave them to audiences who agree the benefits are worth the cost. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods for Senators, governors, etc.
The named methods get to me, so trying: Ala Schulze, find the innermost unbeaten set. If all set members are true ties with each other, pick one via truly random selection. This will often result in a single winner, and should be doable from the N*N matrix by most voters (matrix BETTER be available to all interested). Else we have a cycle and room for debate in completing the rules among such as wv vs margins. Simplicity remains desirable. BTW - since the voters have better opportunity to express their desires than with such as Plurality, there is no need for such complications as runoffs. DWK On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 09:00:56 -0300 Diego Santos wrote: > > 2008/11/2 Kristofer Munsterhjelm <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> > > Dave Ketchum wrote: > > A few thoughts: > Plurality or Approval cannot fill need. > IRV uses about the same ballot as Condorcet - but deserves > rejection for its method of counting. > Condorcet can - but I am trying to word this to also accept > other methods that satisfy need. > Range does much the same, but needs better words than I have > seen as to how, simply, to rate SoSo when ranking would be > Good>SoSo>Bad. > Method needs to be understandable by voters (I read > compaints about handling of Condorcet cycles - I claim that they > do not need to be ubderstood in detail - mostly that discussing > frequency and effect should satisfy most). > The methods that inspired this missive claim to offer some, > possible valuable, benefits - at a cost that may be prohibitive > - leave them to audiences who agree the benefits are worth the cost. > > > If Schulze's too complex, use MAM (Ranked Pairs) or River. These are > at least easy to explain. If people are very concerned about FBC, > then perhaps MDDA - though I don't know it does with respect to the > advanced criteria (like clone resistance). > > Schulze does have the advantage of wide use, at least compared to > the two other methods here. While I don't know if potential > legislators would lend any weight to its use in computer related > organizations, the others haven't much of a record at all. > > One other thing to note is that some multiwinner elections in New > Zealand uses Meek STV. Not exactly the simplest to understand of > methods, so it may still be possible to get complex methods through. > > The only criterion people are concerned is to find a majority winner. > This is the reason of the wide use of two-round system outside the USA > and the adoption of IRV in some local elections in this country. > Unfortunately, TRS and IRV winners are apparent majority winners, and > the true majority exists only for the Condorcet winner. > > Condorcet cycles are a problem. I think that sincere cycles would be > rare, but manipulation would bring to frequent cycles. > Condorcet//Approval is a simple cycle resolution method with stable > counterstragies to tactical voting, if explicit approval cutoffs are > used, or discourage burying if approval is implicit. There is no need to > explain beatpaths, winning votes, or defeat strength. > > -- > > Diego Renato dos Santos -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
ZERO defense here - it is time to be rid of the EC! First a detail that scares many before they seriously consider change: The EC is packaged such that each 100 voters in state X have as much power as 120 in CA or NY. Could simply multiply state X counts by 120%. I am NOT promoting this way of continuing small state advantage - simply noting that it is not a reason to give up on needed change. Those tempted to try to steal a Presidential election now must ply their trade in swing states. With changes such as NPV all states become equally attractive targets. Either way, what has happened many places is a sin that should not be tolerated: True that errors can happen in any activity. But some represent incompetence, deserving more effort to end. And some we read about in elections should be recognized as, and punished as, the criminal acts which they are. With the EC it seems standard to do Plurality - a method with weaknesses most of us in EM recognize. Let's do a Constitutional amendment to move up. I propose Condorcet. One advantage is that states could move up to use it as soon as ready. States, and even districts within states, could remain with Plurality until able to move up - with their votes counted as if they did bullet voting with Condorcet. Approval voting would be permitted the same way. To clarify, the US would be a single district, while vote counts could be published for states and other contained districts, as might be useful. DWK On Thu, 6 Nov 2008 15:57:50 + Raph Frank wrote: On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 2:58 PM, Steve Eppley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: One widespread argument against the EC is that presidential candidates ignore the voters in states where a candidate has a big lead. I don't accept that. It seems more reasonable that the candidate with the big lead has it because s/he has NOT ignored the preferences of the voters in that state. There are 2 kinds of preference, policy preference and 'pork' preferences. A state which is solidly behind a candidate's policy ends up with less 'pork'. Furthermore, the interests of voters in the close states are similar to the interests of the voters supposedly being ignored. Only on the policy axis. A national popular vote would exacerbate polarization, since candidates could/would focus on voter turnout of their "base" instead of having to appeal to swing voters in a few close states. Hmm, it would make every vote count. In a NPV election, the swing voters would still likely hold balance of power. Your base would vote for you (almost) no matter what and you need to get the swing voters on side to actually win. A national popular vote would exacerbate the candidates' need for campaign money, since they would not be able to focus on the few states that are close. That would make them more beholden to wealthy special interests. This may be true. Alternatively, they may just spread the money they have more evenly. NPV would certainly be harder on the candidates. A national popular vote would make for a nightmare when recounting a close election. The recounting wouldn't be confined to a few close states. This is a reasonable issue. One option here would be to allocate the EC votes proportionally rather than actually using NPV. This would almost certainly give the same result anyway. However, most states wouldn't be near the cutoff points. If a State has 10 seats, then it would on average require a 2.5% swing for a candidate to get another EC vote. For recounting in close states to affect the outcome, the leader's share of the EC (prior to recounts) would need to be very very close to half of the EC. If a State has 10 seats, then it would be 0.2% per seat. However, I would agree, in most cases, there wouldn't be an issue, as it would require 2 things to happen at once. First, there would need to be an extremely close national election and also an extremely close State vote. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:58:30 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: With the EC it seems standard to do Plurality - a method with weaknesses most of us in EM recognize. Let's do a Constitutional amendment to move up. I propose Condorcet. One advantage is that states could move up to use it as soon as ready. States, and even districts within states, could remain with Plurality until able to move up - with their votes counted as if they did bullet voting with Condorcet. Approval voting would be permitted the same way. To clarify, the US would be a single district, while vote counts could be published for states and other contained districts, as might be useful. I think an NPV-style gradual change would have a greater chance of succeeding than would a constitutional amendment. The constitutional amendment requires a supermajority, and would thus be blocked by the very same small states that benefit from the current Electoral College. An NPV style change MIGHT have a greater chance than an amendment but: It would be incomplete. Small states could resist for the same reason. Note that small states could retain their advantage with an amendment -- as I proposed. What might all states compromise on? As for the system of such a compact, we've discussed that earlier. I think the idea of basing it on a Condorcet matrix would be a good one. That is, states produce their own Condorcet matrices, and then these are weighted and added together to produce a national Condorcet matrix, which is run through an agreed-upon Condorcet method. How do we tolerate either weight or not weight without formal agreement (amendment)? If all states use Plurality, well, the results are as in Plurality. If some use Condorcet, those have an advantage, and if some want to use cardinal weighted pairwise, they can do so. Yet it's technically possible to use any method that produces a social ordering (by submitting, if there are n voters and the social ordering is A>B>C, the Condorcet matrix corresponding to "n: A>B>C"). While imperfect, and possibly worse than Plurality-to-Condorcet or simple Condorcet matrix addition, the option would be there, and would be better than nothing. Actually each state does only the first step of Condorcet - the NxN array: If a state does Condorcet, that is exact. If a state does Plurality, conversion as if voters did bullet voting in Condorcet is exact. If a state does something else, it has to be their responsibility to produce the NxN array. States have differing collections of candidates: In theory, could demand there be a single national list. More practical to permit present nomination process, in case states desire such. Thus states should be required to prepare their NxN arrays in a manner that permits exact merging with other NxN arrays, without having to know what candidates may be in the other arrays. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending non-Monotonic voting methods & IRV/STV
Topic below is monotonicity, which seems discardable as a side issue. Of more importance is IRV's NOT CARING whether more voters indicate preferring A>B or B>A - can even declare A the winner when a majority of voters prefer B of this pair. Example: 20 A>B 15 C>B>A 10 D>B>A Here a majority prefer B>A, but C and D have a special attraction for some some minorities. DWK On Thu, 6 Nov 2008 11:23:39 -0700 Kathy Dopp wrote: FYI, Defendants in the MN Case (who are promoting IRV and STV methods) have just released new affidavits to the court that discuss Arrow's theorem as supporting the case for IRV/STV and dismissing the importance of IRV's nonmonotonicity. I posted three of these most recent affidavits of the defendants of Instant Runoff Voting and STV here: http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/ The first two docs listed are by Fair Vote's new expert witness. The third doc is by the Minneapolis, MN City attorney. The defendants characterize Arrow's theorem as proving that "there exists no unequivocally satisfactory, or normatively appealing, voting rule." and claim the "possibility of nonmonotonic results plagues ALL potential democratic voting systems with 3 or more candidates unless a dictatorial voting rule is adopted." I would appreciate it if any of you have time to read some of the above three docs, particularly the third document by the attorney, and give me your responses. FYI, the plaintiff's characterizes Arrow's theorem on p. 3 of this doc: http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/11SuplementaryReplyMemoinSupportofMotionforSummaryJudgment.pdf Thank you. Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:09:51 +0100 Markus Schulze wrote: Hallo, in my opinion, the electoral college has two advantages to the popular vote. ... Second: It makes it possible that the elections are run by the governments of the individual states and don't have to be run by the central government. These are topics to consider when drafting an amendment. [Currently, to guarantee that the Equal Protection Clause is fulfilled, it is only necessary to guarantee that all the voters within the same state are treated equally. A popular vote would make it necessary that also all the voters across the USA are treated equally. This would mean that also the regulations on eligibility, absentee ballots, early voting, voting machines, opening hours of the polling stations etc. would have to be harmonized across the USA.] * In section 8 of the current version (3 November 2008) of my paper, I explain how the electoral college should be combined with Condorcet voting: I would not combine, but would try for the best we could with an amendment. Markus Schulze -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending non-Monotonic voting methods & IRV/STV
Perhaps this could get some useful muscle by adding such as: 9 B>A Now we have 34 voting B>A. Enough that they can expect to win and may have as strong a preference between these two as might happen anywhere. C and D represent issues many feel strongly about - and can want to assert to encourage action by B, the expected winner. If ONE voter had voted B>A rather than D>B>A, IRV would have declared B the winner. Note that Condorcet would have declared B the winner any time the B>A count exceeded the A>B count (unless C or D got many more votes). DWK On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 14:05:03 -0700 Kathy Dopp wrote: Dave, I agree with you -that is important too, but the attorneys and judge(s) have their own criteria for judging importance as compared to existing laws. Your example IMO does show unequal treatment of voters, so perhaps I'll include it as one of many ways to show how IRV unequally treats voters and see if the attorneys use it or not. Thanks. Kathy On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Topic below is monotonicity, which seems discardable as a side issue. Of more importance is IRV's NOT CARING whether more voters indicate preferring A>B or B>A - can even declare A the winner when a majority of voters prefer B of this pair. Example: 20 A>B 15 C>B>A 10 D>B>A Here a majority prefer B>A, but C and D have a special attraction for some some minorities. DWK On Thu, 6 Nov 2008 11:23:39 -0700 Kathy Dopp wrote: FYI, Defendants in the MN Case (who are promoting IRV and STV methods) have just released new affidavits to the court that discuss Arrow's theorem as supporting the case for IRV/STV and dismissing the importance of IRV's nonmonotonicity. I posted three of these most recent affidavits of the defendants of Instant Runoff Voting and STV here: http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/ The first two docs listed are by Fair Vote's new expert witness. The third doc is by the Minneapolis, MN City attorney. The defendants characterize Arrow's theorem as proving that "there exists no unequivocally satisfactory, or normatively appealing, voting rule." and claim the "possibility of nonmonotonic results plagues ALL potential democratic voting systems with 3 or more candidates unless a dictatorial voting rule is adopted." I would appreciate it if any of you have time to read some of the above three docs, particularly the third document by the attorney, and give me your responses. FYI, the plaintiff's characterizes Arrow's theorem on p. 3 of this doc: http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/11SuplementaryReplyMemoinSupportofMotionforSummaryJudgment.pdf Thank you. Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending non-Monotonic voting methods & IRV/STV
I have been against IRV's way of 'counting' ballots since the first time I heard of such, long before IRV or EM were born. So, if the ammunition I supplied has an effect I will be delighted, and have nothing against others' similar efforts. DWK On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 21:40:41 -0800 (PST) Chris Benham wrote: Dave, Are you really comfortable supporting and supplying ammunition to a group of avowed FPP supporters in their effort to have IRV declared unconstitutional? Will have any complaint when in future they are trying to do the same thing to some Condorcet method you like and IRV supporters help them on grounds like it fails Later-no-Harm, Later-no-Help, and probably mono-add-top? Chris Benham Dave Ketchum wrote (Fri.Nov.7): Perhaps this could get some useful muscle by adding such as: 9 B>A Now we have 34 voting B>A. Enough that they can expect to win and may have as strong a preference between these two as might happen anywhere. C and D represent issues many feel strongly about - and can want to assert to encourage action by B, the expected winner. If ONE voter had voted B>A rather than D>B>A, IRV would have declared B the winner. Note that Condorcet would have declared B the winner any time the B>A count exceeded the A>B count (unless C or D got many more votes). DWK On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 14:05:03 -0700 Kathy Dopp wrote: > Dave, > > I agree with you -that is important too, but the attorneys and > judge(s) have their own criteria for judging importance as compared to > existing laws. > > Your example IMO does show unequal treatment of voters, so perhaps > I'll include it as one of many ways to show how IRV unequally treats > voters and see if the attorneys use it or not. > > Thanks. > > Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending non-Monotonic voting methods & IRV/STV
Trivia: B gets at least 9 votes with Plurality, more if voters recognize the method and adjust their voting. Agreed that Plurality and Two-round runoffs should lose against any good system - as should IRV. If the court cannot do better, perhaps they should throw the case out for weakness in arguments - I see either side winning producing nothing but trouble. DWK On Sat, 8 Nov 2008 10:02:15 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: But Dave Ketchum's example is about how IRV can fail to elect a Condorcet winner. This candidate gets zero votes under plurality rules and is immediately eliminated under two-round runoff rules as well. Plurality and Two-round runoffs are the two systems the plaintiffs are seeking to preserve, while "constitutionally" prohibiting Condorcet (as well as IRV). Terry Bouricius - Original Message ----- From: "Dave Ketchum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 10:09 PM Subject: Re: [EM] New MN court affidavits by those defending non-Monotonic voting methods & IRV/STV Perhaps this could get some useful muscle by adding such as: 9 B>A Now we have 34 voting B>A. Enough that they can expect to win and may have as strong a preference between these two as might happen anywhere. C and D represent issues many feel strongly about - and can want to assert to encourage action by B, the expected winner. If ONE voter had voted B>A rather than D>B>A, IRV would have declared B the winner. Note that Condorcet would have declared B the winner any time the B>A count exceeded the A>B count (unless C or D got many more votes). DWK On Fri, 7 Nov 2008 14:05:03 -0700 Kathy Dopp wrote: Dave, I agree with you -that is important too, but the attorneys and judge(s) have their own criteria for judging importance as compared to existing laws. Your example IMO does show unequal treatment of voters, so perhaps I'll include it as one of many ways to show how IRV unequally treats voters and see if the attorneys use it or not. Thanks. Kathy On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Topic below is monotonicity, which seems discardable as a side issue. Of more importance is IRV's NOT CARING whether more voters indicate preferring A>B or B>A - can even declare A the winner when a majority of voters prefer B of this pair. Example: 20 A>B 15 C>B>A 10 D>B>A Here a majority prefer B>A, but C and D have a special attraction for some some minorities. DWK On Thu, 6 Nov 2008 11:23:39 -0700 Kathy Dopp wrote: FYI, Defendants in the MN Case (who are promoting IRV and STV methods) have just released new affidavits to the court that discuss Arrow's theorem as supporting the case for IRV/STV and dismissing the importance of IRV's nonmonotonicity. I posted three of these most recent affidavits of the defendants of Instant Runoff Voting and STV here: http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/ The first two docs listed are by Fair Vote's new expert witness. The third doc is by the Minneapolis, MN City attorney. The defendants characterize Arrow's theorem as proving that "there exists no unequivocally satisfactory, or normatively appealing, voting rule." and claim the "possibility of nonmonotonic results plagues ALL potential democratic voting systems with 3 or more candidates unless a dictatorial voting rule is adopted." I would appreciate it if any of you have time to read some of the above three docs, particularly the third document by the attorney, and give me your responses. FYI, the plaintiff's characterizes Arrow's theorem on p. 3 of this doc: http://electionmathematics.org/em-IRV/DefendantsDocs/11SuplementaryReplyMemoinSupportofMotionforSummaryJudgment.pdf Thank you. Kathy -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:45:38 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: On Fri, 07 Nov 2008 09:58:30 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: I think an NPV-style gradual change would have a greater chance of succeeding than would a constitutional amendment. The constitutional amendment requires a supermajority, and would thus be blocked by the very same small states that benefit from the current Electoral College. An NPV style change MIGHT have a greater chance than an amendment but: It would be incomplete. Small states could resist for the same reason. If the small states resist, the large and middle sized states will attain a majority, and thus through the compact/agreement overrule the others. At that point, it'll be in the interest of the small states to join since their share of power by staying outside the system is effectively zero. If you wander outside the law you can end up in court - a path available to the small states if the large states do that - or whoever felt hurt by the NPV agreement. Note that small states could retain their advantage with an amendment -- as I proposed. What might all states compromise on? That would depend on the nature of the agreement. Either it would be straight NPV (all states weighted by population) or it would be according to current (EC) weighting. For an amendment, it's possible that small states would oppose the amendment if it's population-normalized, whereas large states would oppose it if it was electoral-college-normalized. Which means, as in many disagreements, a compromise would make sense. As for the system of such a compact, we've discussed that earlier. I think the idea of basing it on a Condorcet matrix would be a good one. That is, states produce their own Condorcet matrices, and then these are weighted and added together to produce a national Condorcet matrix, which is run through an agreed-upon Condorcet method. How do we tolerate either weight or not weight without formal agreement (amendment)? I imagine a clause like: "The maximum power of a state shall be its population, as a fraction of the population of all states within the compact. Call this power p. The state shall be free to pick an x so that the weighting for this state is p * x, 0 <= x <= 1". That's for the closest thing to NPV. For a continuous electoral college, the first sentence would be "The maximum power of a state shall be the sum of its number of representatives and senators, divided by the sum of the number of representatives and senators for all states within the compact". There's no reason to have x < 1 but for future agreements to mutually diminish power (to turn an EC compact into a population-normalized one or vice versa). I'll add that this phrasing would give states the same power no matter the relative turnout. If that's not desired, it could be rephrased differently, but giving states the same power is closer to the current state of things. The continuous electoral college variant does not take into account the 23rd Amendment, either. Ugh. If all states use Plurality, well, the results are as in Plurality. If some use Condorcet, those have an advantage, and if some want to use cardinal weighted pairwise, they can do so. Yet it's technically possible to use any method that produces a social ordering (by submitting, if there are n voters and the social ordering is A>B>C, the Condorcet matrix corresponding to "n: A>B>C"). While imperfect, and possibly worse than Plurality-to-Condorcet or simple Condorcet matrix addition, the option would be there, and would be better than nothing. Actually each state does only the first step of Condorcet - the NxN array: If a state does Condorcet, that is exact. If a state does Plurality, conversion as if voters did bullet voting in Condorcet is exact. If a state does something else, it has to be their responsibility to produce the NxN array. Yes. What I'm saying is that it's theoretically possible to incorporate any voting method into this; however, the results might be suboptimal if you try to aggregate, say, IRV results this way, since you'd get both the disadvantages of IRV and Condorcet (nonmonotonicity for the former and LNH* failure for the latter, for instance). IRV is a distraction since such ballots could and should be counted as Condorcet. Should be a method that at least tries for a result based on comparative strength of candidates. States have differing collections of candidates: In theory, could demand there be a single national list. More practical to permit present nomination process, in case states desire such. Thus states should be required to prepare their NxN arrays in a manner that permits exact merging with other NxN arrays, without having to know what can
Re: [EM] (no subject)
I have not inspected the affidavits for completeness or correctness. I am only comparing the methods. Assuming IRV's rules result in declaring A or B winner, it would not care or look at what this voter may have said about C or D. Condorcet looks at all that the voters say, and uses all of that in deciding on a winner - as to C and D the possibilities are: C>D D>C C=D = the voter indicates equal liking by giving them the same rank or by ranking neither. DWK On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 18:54:27 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 6:02 PM James seems to be stretching his interpretation a bit far. Agreed that, while the voter can choose to rank all candidates, the voter is permitted to omit those least desired. In Condorcet every ballot is counted. For each the counter considers EVERY pair of candidates, such as A and B. If the voter has indicated preferring A>B, that is recorded toward A winning; likewise for B>A. As to IRV, while using the same ballot, it only looks at enough to satisfy it purpose - which DOES NOT INCLUDE knowing whether the voters like A better than B. I am not stretching my interpretation too far. In elections to be counted by IRV or Condorcet rules voters will not mark preferences for candidates among whom they have no preferences. Thus in a four-candidate election, a ballot paper marked "A, B" indicates that this voter prefers "A" over "B" and prefers both "A" and "B" over both "C" and "D", and it tells the Returning Officer that this voter has no preference between "C" and "D". In contrast, a ballot paper marked "A, B, C, D" has given the Returning Officer information about all possible preference comparisons. It is clear from the affidavits that ONE of the objections to IRV is that the ballot paper marked "A, B" will be treated differently from the ballot paper marked "A, B, C, D", and hence the voting system will treat the two respective voters differently (and to such an extent as to be "unconstitutional"). In a Condorcet count these two ballot papers (and hence the respective voters) would also be treated differently, because the voter who marked the "A, B" ballot paper could not contribute a vote to the "C, D" pair-wise contest that is an essential part of determining which candidate should be elected. My question was simply that if the effect of THIS difference in an IRV count is sufficient to make IRV counting "unconstitutional", why would the effect of THIS difference in a Condorcet count not be sufficient to make Condorcet counting also "unconstitutional"? I could easily see how, on THIS ground, IRV counting and Condorcet counting could both be considered "constitutional" or could both be considered "unconstitutional", but I have some difficulty is seeing how, on THIS ground, one could be considered "constitutional" and the other "unconstitutional". James Gilmour On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 16:20:10 - James Gilmour wrote: Kathy Dopp > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 2:17 AM Your statement oversimplifies and ignores details/differences between IRV and Condorcet. IRV proponents may pretend not to know that Condorcet methods do not exhibit most of the flaws of IRV counting methods. For example, Condorcet, to my knowledge treats all voters ballots equally, considers all choices on all ballots, If I have understood the various submissions correctly, the principal objection to IRV on THIS ground, is that the ballot papers of voters who express different numbers of preferences are thereby treated differently, and in such a way and to such an extent that these differences should render the IRV voting system "unconstitutional". It is correct that Condorcet counting considers all the preferences marked on the ballot papers, in a sequence of pair-wise contests. However, Condorcet counting has no option but to treat differently the ballot papers of voters who have expressed different numbers of preferences, because such voters will be excluded from some of the pair-wise counts. If this difference in the treatment of ballot papers with different numbers of preferences would be a "fatal" flaw in IRV, would it not also be a "fatal" flaw in Condorcet counting, and indeed in any other voting system where voters may express different numbers of preferences? James Gilmour -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] (no subject)
On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 23:28:01 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 10:59 PM I have not inspected the affidavits for completeness or correctness. I am only comparing the methods. Assuming IRV's rules result in declaring A or B winner, it would not care or look at what this voter may have said about C or D. Condorcet looks at all that the voters say, and uses all of that in deciding on a winner - as to C and D the possibilities are: C>D D>C C=D = the voter indicates equal liking by giving them the same rank or by ranking neither. There is only one legitimate interpretation of the "A>B" ballot paper in a Condorcet count with regard to the "C" vs. "D" pair-wise contest - the voter has given the Returning Officer no information. No-one is entitled make any supposition - that voter has expressed no preference at all as between "C" and "D". Disagreed, for Condorcet will see that the voter has assigned equal rank. However, all of this is totally irrelevant to what is in the affidavits and what my question was about. In the affidavits it is asserted that because IRV would treat differently the ballot papers marked "A>B>C>D" and "A>B", this is ONE of the reasons why IRV counting should be declared "unconstitutional". However, some of those who have taken this position, have in posts to this list, indicated that they would accept Condorcet counting. But Condorcet counting would also treat these two ballot papers differently. Now we are into adequacy of affidavits. If IRV assigns A or B as winner it will treat the ballots as identical, without caring what might be said about C or D. After assigning both A and B to be losers the remainder of the ballots will be considered: A>B - all that this voter chose to say has been processed. >C>D - this voter's additional data will be considered. Leaves me voting for constitutionality - both voters were allowed to say as much as they chose to. That IRV's rules do not require using all data provided by voters is interesting, but the rules do not provide any way to use more. That leaves me genuinely puzzled as to how one such difference could be "unconstitutional" but the other not. This is a very important question because if IRV is held to be "unconstitutional" on THIS ground, then a whole raft of other voting systems, including Condorcet counting, would also have to be considered "unconstitutional". James Gilmour -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Three rounds
How do your thoughts compare with Condorcet as a competitor? It: Normally is defined as not doing runoffs. Has no problem with voters offering whatever quantity of ranks they choose, including doing bullet voting. DWK On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:05:16 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: FYI. Finland used to have three rounds in the presidential elections. Since 1994 a typical direct two round method has been used. Before that (in most elections) the voters first elected 300 (or 301) electors who then voted in three rounds (two candidates at the last round). Reasons behind moving to the direct two round system included assumed general popularity of a direct election, some problems with heavy trading and planning of votes by the electors, possibility of black horses and other voting patterns that are not based on the citizens' votes. Maybe three rounds / three election days in a direct election would have been too expensive and too tiring. - - - - - One somewhat related method: I sometimes played with the idea that in IRV one would not totally eliminate the least popular (first place) candidates but would use some softer means and would allow the "eliminated" candidates to win later if they turn out to be the favourites of many voters (after their first preference candidates have lost all chances to win). One could e.g. force supporters of the "eliminated" candidates to approve more than one candidate (at least one of the "remaining" candidates) (instead of just bullet voting their second preference). On possible way to terminate the algorithm would be to stop when someone has reached >50% approval level. Also in "non-instant" runoffs one could e.g. force the voters to approve at least one on the "remaining" candidates. (One could eliminate more than one candidate at different rounds.) Juho -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:37:35 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: On Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:45:38 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: ... States have differing collections of candidates: In theory, could demand there be a single national list. More practical to permit present nomination process, in case states desire such. Thus states should be required to prepare their NxN arrays in a manner that permits exact merging with other NxN arrays, without having to know what candidates may be in the other arrays. The easiest way to do this is probably to have the candidates sorted (by name or some other property, doesn't really matter). When two matrices with different entries are joined, expand the result matrix as appropriate. Since the candidate indices are sorted, there'll be no ambiguity when joining (unless two candidates have the same names, but that's unlikely). Two candidates with the same name is a problem to solve regardless of method. Sorting could be part of the joining, but I demand the results be exactly the same as if the ballots had been counted into the final matrix. Doable, but takes a bit of planning. A possible tiebreaker for same names would be to prepend (or append) the state of origin to each candidate name. In case two have the same name in the same state, the state decides who gets to be "number one" and "number two". These corner cases would be extremely unlikely, but it doesn't hurt to specify them. My point was that this is a problem affecting ANY election method, thus not needing special attention for Condorcet. The results should be the same with a plain merge as with a single count, since a Condorcet matrix entry cm[a][b] just lists how many voters ranked A > B. Consider voters that couldn't vote on a given candidate as if they had no effective preference regarding that candidate. Then, by including the results of some other Condorcet matrix, if A and B wasn't on that other matrix, cm[a][b] won't change. Not being sure what you mean by "simple merge", I will repeat my demand. For example, assume A is a write-in which CANNOT be planned on but must be adjusted for when counting the ballots. The national NxN array must include A reflecting proper counts for all votes in the US. True that such an A is unlikely, but to be expected more if you assume it will never happen. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] (no subject)
James seems to be stretching his interpretation a bit far. Agreed that, while the voter can choose to rank all candidates, the voter is permitted to omit those least desired. In Condorcet every ballot is counted. For each the counter considers EVERY pair of candidates, such as A and B. If the voter has indicated preferring A>B, that is recorded toward A winning; likewise for B>A. As to IRV, while using the same ballot, it only looks at enough to satisfy it purpose - which DOES NOT INCLUDE knowing whether the voters like A better than B. DWK On Sun, 9 Nov 2008 16:20:10 - James Gilmour wrote: Kathy Dopp > Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 2:17 AM Your statement oversimplifies and ignores details/differences between IRV and Condorcet. IRV proponents may pretend not to know that Condorcet methods do not exhibit most of the flaws of IRV counting methods. For example, Condorcet, to my knowledge treats all voters ballots equally, considers all choices on all ballots, If I have understood the various submissions correctly, the principal objection to IRV on THIS ground, is that the ballot papers of voters who express different numbers of preferences are thereby treated differently, and in such a way and to such an extent that these differences should render the IRV voting system "unconstitutional". It is correct that Condorcet counting considers all the preferences marked on the ballot papers, in a sequence of pair-wise contests. However, Condorcet counting has no option but to treat differently the ballot papers of voters who have expressed different numbers of preferences, because such voters will be excluded from some of the pair-wise counts. If this difference in the treatment of ballot papers with different numbers of preferences would be a "fatal" flaw in IRV, would it not also be a "fatal" flaw in Condorcet counting, and indeed in any other voting system where voters may express different numbers of preferences? James Gilmour -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Three rounds
If I understand you 'sequential elimination' is IRV and not Condorcet. DWK On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:01:36 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: The sequential elimination processes tends to introduce additional problems. Most Condorcet methods don't have this problem. Condorcet may have some other problems that the sequential elimination based approach may avoid, but especially in large public elections with independent voter decision making and without too accurate knowledge about the behaviour of other voters the performance of Condorcet methods is very good. (Just checking how one could eliminate some of the problems of sequential elimination (e.g. by using approval and avoid losing the "eliminated" candidates).) Juho --- On Mon, 10/11/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Three rounds To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Monday, 10 November, 2008, 8:10 PM How do your thoughts compare with Condorcet as a competitor? It: Normally is defined as not doing runoffs. Has no problem with voters offering whatever quantity of ranks they choose, including doing bullet voting. DWK On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:05:16 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: FYI. Finland used to have three rounds in the presidential elections. Since 1994 a typical direct two round method has been used. Before that (in most elections) the voters first elected 300 (or 301) electors who then voted in three rounds (two candidates at the last round). Reasons behind moving to the direct two round system included assumed general popularity of a direct election, some problems with heavy trading and planning of votes by the electors, possibility of black horses and other voting patterns that are not based on the citizens' votes. Maybe three rounds / three election days in a direct election would have been too expensive and too tiring. - - - - - One somewhat related method: I sometimes played with the idea that in IRV one would not totally eliminate the least popular (first place) candidates but would use some softer means and would allow the "eliminated" candidates to win later if they turn out to be the favourites of many voters (after their first preference candidates have lost all chances to win). One could e.g. force supporters of the "eliminated" candidates to approve more than one candidate (at least one of the "remaining" candidates) (instead of just bullet voting their second preference). On possible way to terminate the algorithm would be to stop when someone has reached >50% approval level. Also in "non-instant" runoffs one could e.g. force the voters to approve at least one on the "remaining" candidates. (One could eliminate more than one candidate at different rounds.) Juho -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Three rounds
Not clear to me what you meant. While ballots are almost identical, such that Condorcet can accept what voters have done by IRV rules, their processing is entirely different. IRV is interested in first choices. If it decides that A is a loser it must go back to the ballots that ranked A top and reclassify them by next rank of each. Condorcet is interested in which candidate is best liked. For this it needs an NxN array summing all the ballots. If it is convenient to count the ballots in multiple locations this is fine - create an NxN array at each location and sum them together in one final location for analysis. DWK On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:39:53 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: Yes, IRV is a good example. Most Condorcet methods do the comparisons/evaluation just once (when all the candidates are in the same situation). Juho --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Three rounds To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Tuesday, 11 November, 2008, 2:47 AM If I understand you 'sequential elimination' is IRV and not Condorcet. DWK On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:01:36 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: The sequential elimination processes tends to introduce additional problems. Most Condorcet methods don't have this problem. Condorcet may have some other problems that the sequential elimination based approach may avoid, but especially in large public elections with independent voter decision making and without too accurate knowledge about the behaviour of other voters the performance of Condorcet methods is very good. (Just checking how one could eliminate some of the problems of sequential elimination (e.g. by using approval and avoid losing the "eliminated" candidates).) Juho --- On Mon, 10/11/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Three rounds To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Monday, 10 November, 2008, 8:10 PM How do your thoughts compare with Condorcet as a competitor? It: Normally is defined as not doing runoffs. Has no problem with voters offering whatever quantity of ranks they choose, including doing bullet voting. DWK On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:05:16 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: FYI. Finland used to have three rounds in the presidential elections. Since 1994 a typical direct two round method has been used. Before that (in most elections) the voters first elected 300 (or 301) electors who then voted in three rounds (two candidates at the last round). Reasons behind moving to the direct two round system included assumed general popularity of a direct election, some problems with heavy trading and planning of votes by the electors, possibility of black horses and other voting patterns that are not based on the citizens' votes. Maybe three rounds / three election days in a direct election would have been too expensive and too tiring. - - - - - One somewhat related method: I sometimes played with the idea that in IRV one would not totally eliminate the least popular (first place) candidates but would use some softer means and would allow the "eliminated" candidates to win later if they turn out to be the favourites of many voters (after their first preference candidates have lost all chances to win). One could e.g. force supporters of the "eliminated" candidates to approve more than one candidate (at least one of the "remaining" candidates) (instead of just bullet voting their second preference). On possible way to terminate the algorithm would be to stop when someone has reached >50% approval level. Also in "non-instant" runoffs one could e.g. force the voters to approve at least one on the "remaining" candidates. (One could eliminate more than one candidate at different rounds.) Juho -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:16:55 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: A possible tiebreaker for same names would be to prepend (or append) the state of origin to each candidate name. In case two have the same name in the same state, the state decides who gets to be "number one" and "number two". These corner cases would be extremely unlikely, but it doesn't hurt to specify them. My point was that this is a problem affecting ANY election method, thus not needing special attention for Condorcet. Again, the method does not matter. If the name Bush turns up from two different sources it is essential to determine whether it is: One candidate, for whom the votes must be summed or Two candidates, competing separately, that must somehow be identified as such. That's true, but for methods that only need an array (like Plurality, or a weighted positional method where the method was agreed upon in advance), this happens more or less informally. States don't pass around explicit arrays with candidates in specific orders when tallying Presidential votes, they just say "Bush got this many, Gore got that many". The other side of the coin is that non-summable methods would be in real trouble. Any compact solution defaulting to a method that isn't summable would somehow have to set up an infrastructure (either in counting or in communication), wherein a central unit coordinates. The results should be the same with a plain merge as with a single count, since a Condorcet matrix entry cm[a][b] just lists how many voters ranked A > B. Consider voters that couldn't vote on a given candidate as if they had no effective preference regarding that candidate. Then, by including the results of some other Condorcet matrix, if A and B wasn't on that other matrix, cm[a][b] won't change. Not being sure what you mean by "simple merge", I will repeat my demand. For example, assume A is a write-in which CANNOT be planned on but must be adjusted for when counting the ballots. The national NxN array must include A reflecting proper counts for all votes in the US. True that such an A is unlikely, but to be expected more if you assume it will never happen. A simple merge sorts the arrays by name (and tie-breaking info, like name of state of origin). Then it merges the data, summing cells if the candidate in question exists in both matrices, otherwise inserting the relevant rows and colums in the right place so that the result (merged) matrix is still sorted. For instance, consider these matrices: x A B A -- 30 B 35 -- and x A C A -- 100 C 25 -- Assuming that this represents 100 votes for A then 100 A>C is represented. If B was also in the matrix there would be 100 A>B. This last 100 fails to show up below: The result is x A B C A -- 30 100 B 35 -- 0 C 25 0 -- and the expanded matrix stays sorted. Individual write-ins can be handled by considering each voter's ballot as a Condorcet matrix, then merging that in as above. In extreme case (each voter names a different write-in), that would make the matrix expand by a lot, but if that's a concern, sparse representation formats can be used. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Three rounds
On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:18:55 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: I just referred to the basic property of IRV that it makes final irreversible decisions (eliminates candidates) before even reading the later preferences in each ballot. Agreed. (Some really strong compromise candidates may be eliminated early. And on the other hand also candidates with not much first place support may be elected.) True that well liked candidates can lose if short on first place votes. Possible, though difficult, to win with only a few first place votes - they must have more than the least as each least gets discarded. DWK Juho --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Three rounds To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Tuesday, 11 November, 2008, 6:43 PM Not clear to me what you meant. While ballots are almost identical, such that Condorcet can accept what voters have done by IRV rules, their processing is entirely different. IRV is interested in first choices. If it decides that A is a loser it must go back to the ballots that ranked A top and reclassify them by next rank of each. Condorcet is interested in which candidate is best liked. For this it needs an NxN array summing all the ballots. If it is convenient to count the ballots in multiple locations this is fine - create an NxN array at each location and sum them together in one final location for analysis. DWK On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 06:39:53 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: Yes, IRV is a good example. Most Condorcet methods do the comparisons/evaluation just once (when all the candidates are in the same situation). Juho --- On Tue, 11/11/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Three rounds To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Tuesday, 11 November, 2008, 2:47 AM If I understand you 'sequential elimination' is IRV and not Condorcet. DWK On Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:01:36 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: The sequential elimination processes tends to introduce additional problems. Most Condorcet methods don't have this problem. Condorcet may have some other problems that the sequential elimination based approach may avoid, but especially in large public elections with independent voter decision making and without too accurate knowledge about the behaviour of other voters the performance of Condorcet methods is very good. (Just checking how one could eliminate some of the problems of sequential elimination (e.g. by using approval and avoid losing the "eliminated" candidates).) Juho --- On Mon, 10/11/08, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [EM] Three rounds To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Monday, 10 November, 2008, 8:10 PM How do your thoughts compare with Condorcet as a competitor? It: Normally is defined as not doing runoffs. Has no problem with voters offering whatever quantity of ranks they choose, including doing bullet voting. DWK On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:05:16 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: FYI. Finland used to have three rounds in the presidential elections. Since 1994 a typical direct two round method has been used. Before that (in most elections) the voters first elected 300 (or 301) electors who then voted in three rounds (two candidates at the last round). Reasons behind moving to the direct two round system included assumed general popularity of a direct election, some problems with heavy trading and planning of votes by the electors, possibility of black horses and other voting patterns that are not based on the citizens' votes. Maybe three rounds / three election days in a direct election would have been too expensive and too tiring. - - - - - One somewhat related method: I sometimes played with the idea that in IRV one would not totally eliminate the least popular (first place) candidates but would use some softer means and would allow the "eliminated" candidates to win later if they turn out to be the favourites of many voters (after their first preference candidates have lost all chances to win). One could e.g. force supporters of the "eliminated" candidates to approve more than one candidate (at least one of the "remaining" candidates) (instead of just bullet voting their second preference). On possible way to terminate the algorithm would be to stop when someone has reached 50% approval level. Also in "non-instant" runoff
Re: [EM] In defense of the Electoral College (was Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse)
On Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:50:22 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: ... Assuming that this represents 100 votes for A then 100 A>C is represented. If B was also in the matrix there would be 100 A>B. This last 100 fails to show up below: Oops. Yes, that's true. Still, you get the point: the method (when properly implemented) takes two sorted matrices and produces a sorted matrix, possibly larger in size, but still a valid input for later merges. A proper implementation would be to identify a seed candidate who never gets voted for. Any time there is need to add a candidate to the NxN array, as in preparation for a merge, that candidate starts with a copy of seed for its values. I just read of a race with 200 candidates - meaning likely many with few, if any, votes. If such were done with Condorcet it could make sense to include only candidates with votes in the NxN array. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Why I Prefer Condorcet] to IRV
ot more important than looking for and trying to do what is best. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Top Two Runoff versus Instant Top To Runoff
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:04:09 - James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2008 4:11 PM I'm not Kevin, but I think I can comment. In any method that's [some base method] + runoff, where the runoff candidates are picked from the social ordering of the base method, the existence of the second round would increase the incentive to strategize. With 2/3 of the voters agreed they will vote left, they could have made out much better with Condorcet. Even if all voted the indicated first choice it would not have taken many second choice Jospin votes for him to win. Some others also were possibilities with Condorcet. Debatable whether a runoff would have been appropriate with Condorcet. Unlike Plurality, it permits voters to more completely express their desires. DWK So what happened to the incentive to strategize in the first round of the 2002 French Presidential election? First Round Results Jacques Chirac Rally for France (RPF) 19.83% Jean-Marie Le Pen National Front (FN) 16.91% Lionel Jospin Socialist Party (PS) 16.14% François Bayrou Union for French Democracy (UDF) 6.84% Arlette Laguiller Workers' Struggle (LO) 5.73% Jean-Pierre Chevènement Citizens' Movement (MC) 5.33% Noël Mamère Greens (Vert) 5.24% Olivier Besancenot Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) 4.26% Jean Saint-Josse Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions (CPNT) 4.25% Alain Madelin Liberal Democracy (DL) 3.92% Robert Hue Communist Party (PCF) 3.38% Bruno Mégret National Republican Movement (MNR) 2.35% Christiane Taubira Radical Left Party 2.32% Corinne Lepage Citizenship, Action, Participation Movement (MCAP) 1.88% Christine Boutin Social Republican Forum (FRS) 1.19% Daniel Gluckstein Workers' Party (PT) 0.47% ELECTORATE: 40,320,334 TURNOUT: 29,149,143 The second round of this TTRO election was a choice between one candidate from the centre-right and one candidate from the extreme right, despite two-thirds of the voters supporting candidates from the left. Jacques Chirac received 25,316,647 votes (82.14%) and Jean-Marie Le Pen received 5,502,314 (17.85%). Around 4% of votes were spoilt in protest and 20% of the electorate did not vote. I am convinced that had this been an exhaustive ballot (multi-round run-off), IRV or Condorcet election, the result would have been quite different. Certainly the final "top two" choice would have been very different. The effects of TTRO are well known, but this is what real political parties do in real TTRO elections (in terms of nominating candidates), and is what real voters do in real TTRO elections (in terms of scattering their votes around), and the results are disastrous - and not just for the French in this case - we all had to live with the political consequences of this election. James Gilmour -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
On Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:34:01 -0500 Fred Gohlke wrote: COMMENTS ON AMERICAN POLITICAL PARTIES ... OLIGARCHIC PARTY STRUCTURE The political parties that control all political activity in the United States are in no sense democratic. The American people do not elect those who control the parties. In fact, most Americans don't even know who they are. They are appointed by their party and serve at the party's pleasure. We, the people the parties are supposed to represent, have no control over who these people are, how long they serve, or the deals they make to raise the immense amounts of money they use to keep their party in power. They constitute a ruling elite above and beyond the reach of the American people. This may be true in some states. New York has laws governing parties with ballot status (the state conducts primary elections for each such party). Their state and county committees do have some power, and members of such are elected for two-year terms at those primary elections. The committees can designate candidates for the primaries, which often gets such candidates nominated as the party candidate for the general election via winning the primary. Party members can also designate candidates for the primary election. And, voters can nominate candidates for the general election via petition. Not perfect. In Tioga County, where I live, a county chair got dictatorial powers via enough proxies to be able to hold meetings in a telephone booth. When that annoyed enough members, new people got elected to the committee and the now ex-chair left. When we allow those who control our political parties to usurp the power of governing our nation, it is foolish to imagine that we retain the power bestowed on us by our Constitution. It is a tragedy that so few of us recognize (or are willing to acknowledge) that we have relinquished our right to govern ourselves to unknown people who proclaim themselves our agents. ... Fred -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] language/framing quibble
While I see value in parties, the purpose of my post was to describe what happens in New York State - parties here are not permitted the power you had described - or do describe below. The Greens are, in one sense, a world wide party. A few years ago they owned no elective power in NY - though, like any voters in NY, they could nominate independent candidates by petition. So, they nominated a candidate for governor, who got the magic 50,000 votes - making them a party with ballot status. Looking at them a couple years later: They own a line on the ballot for their party candidates. Voters can enroll as Greens. State conducts a primary election for them, just as it does for every party with ballot status. Their county and state committees get elected to two-year terms in primary election. These committees can designate candidates for primary election. Likewise, groups of party members can designate candidates by petition. Winning the primary election nominates anyone as the Green candidate for the general election. Later their candidate for governor failed to get the 50,000 votes, so forget ballot status. Greens still get together and keep BY active in the national Greens organization, but with no special status in NY elections. DWK On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:55:21 -0500 Fred Gohlke wrote: Good Afternoon, Dave I fear there is a great difference in our views. You seem to feel parties have a rightful place in our political infrastructure. I don't. I have no objection to the existence of parties. I consider them a vital part of society. However, I deny, vehemently, that they have a right to arrogate to themselves control of our government. Democracy means that each of us have a right to participate in governing ourselves, to the extent of our interest and ability. Nothing in the concept of democracy, or in the Constitution on which our nation was founded, grants the right of governance to self-interested groups of power-seekers who have turned themselves into conduits for corruption, pandering to vested interest and operating to the detriment of the humans among us. Fred -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
On Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:45:00 -0800 Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Nov 25, 2008, at 11:25 AM, Markus Schulze wrote: Dear Jonathan Lundell, Greg Dennis wrote (25 Nov 2008): I've studied every IRV election for public office ever held in the United States, most of which have their full ranking data publicly available, and every single time IRV elected the Condorcet winner, something I consider to be a good, though not perfect, rule of thumb for determining the "right" winner. There have not been many IRV elections in the US. For most elections the method does not matter much - even Plurality usually gets it right. The ranking that IRV and Condorcet share matters. Though they look for different aspects, they will usually agree since assuming that A>B, that is exactly what Condorcet counts, and that will encourage A toward A being a first choice, which is what IRV looks for. Then look at the French election that made voters think of riots - runoffs were UNABLE to offer acceptable choices. IRV can fail in the same way. Even though it cannot be expected often it will be most likely in an election fought bitterly by a bunch of candidates. Couple minor notes about Condorcet's NxN arrays: They help toward verifying the counting being correct. Publishable, they help see comparative liking of the candidates. I wrote (25 Nov 2008): If I remember correctly, Abd wrote that, in every IRV election for public office ever held in the USA, the IRV winner was identical to the plurality winner. Doesn't that mean that -- when we apply your logic -- plurality voting always elects the right winner? It encourages the dream - but certainly does not make the dream true. DWK You wrote (25 Nov 2008): Plurality failed in Florida 2000, so we can conclude that "plurality voting always elects the right winner" is false. And when you apply Abd's claim to your conclusion (that the statement "plurality voting always elects the right winner" is false), what can you conclude about Greg's claim? Greg concludes that IRV, in practice, tends to elect the Condorcet winner. Does he conclude that it must always be so? I don't think so. Abd says that the IRV winner in these cases was also the plurality winner. Again, no claim of necessity. We might equally well conclude that plurality usually elects the Condorcet winner, and that it fails infrequently enough that we don't have examples of IRV correcting a plurality error. (Florida 2000 is an example of a plurality error that IRV would most likely have corrected.) My own view is first that we're talking about marginal differences here, and that PR vs single-winner elections is of much, much greater interest, and second that the interesting difference between plurality, IRV and other ranked methods is not in how they count any particular profile, but rather in how they influence candidate and voter behavior. In the IRV examples that Greg and Abd adduce, we don't actually know what the ballots would have looked like if the elections had used plurality. The set of candidates might well have been different, the nature of the campaigns different, and voter strategies different. Given an IRV election, the question "how would this election have turned out if plurality had been used" cannot be answered by counting the IRV first choices. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
A good summary. If we only cared about the easy ones Plurality would be good enough. DWK On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:43:42 -0500 Brian Olson wrote: On Nov 26, 2008, at 5:53 AM, Greg wrote: Oh, and actually it _is_ likely to be bad. See that first graph? See how over thousands of simulated elections it gets lower social satisfaction? Brian, you're graphs are computer-generated elections that you made up. They aren't actual elections that took place in practice, which show a high unlikelihood of being bad. When your theory is a poor predictor of the data, it's time to change the theory, not insist the data must be different from what they are. Given the substantial lack of data (pretty little real world rankings ballot data available), I think the simulations are still valid and interesting. The simulations explore a specific and small portion of the problem space in detail. I'm looking at races of N choices which are similarly valued by all the voters. It's a tight race. Actual elections haven't been that tight. But tight races are the interesting ones. When it's crunch time, those are the ones that matter. Almost any method can correctly determine the winner of a race that isn't tight. So, IRV has demonstrated in the real world that it can solve easy problems. So what? Why wait until it gets the wrong answer in a real election to admit that IRV can get the wrong answer? In matters of public safety that would be called a 'tombstone mentality'. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
Topic is IRV vs Condorcet. My point last time was that easy races are no challenge to either. Now I concede that not all hard races are a challenge, but the few that IRV has handled do not guarantee that it will do all well, considering the opportunity for failure. DWK On Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:48:38 -0500 Greg wrote: That is incorrect. There have been tight (not "easy") elections where IRV chose the Condorcet winner. The recent Pierce County Executive and Assessor-Recorder races are two examples. Also, there's actually a decent amount of real world ranking data available. IRV data from San Francisco, Burlington, and Pierce County. STV data from Cambridge and Ireland. Preferential presidential polls from Ireland. And more. I'm in the process of making it all available online in a uniform format. Greg On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: A good summary. If we only cared about the easy ones Plurality would be good enough. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Favoring a frontrunner
Favored frontrunner? Trying to add some thought. Agreed to "first rate a favorite and the worst". Then the standard thought is "the voter rates the frontrunners". This needs careful thought. It is likely that one of the frontruners will win. This voter has two obvious approaches to select from: IF this voter has a preference, proceed as Abd and others suggest. BUT if this voter sees them as equally desirable or undesirable, it is proper to treat them as such. DWK Per Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 1 On Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:23:12 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Further, in real elections, with real voting strategy, the most common, I assume, the voter will first rate a favorite and the worst. That's usually fairly easy! (At least among those the candidate recognizes.) Then the voter rates the frontrunners. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Favoring a frontrunner
My point was ONLY that the voter could have equal feeling as to the frontrunners. Here Abd offers some thought on that topic. DWK On Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:53:09 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:31 PM 12/4/2008, Dave Ketchum wrote: Favored frontrunner? Trying to add some thought. Agreed to "first rate a favorite and the worst". Then the standard thought is "the voter rates the frontrunners". This needs careful thought. It is likely that one of the frontruners will win. This voter has two obvious approaches to select from: IF this voter has a preference, proceed as Abd and others suggest. BUT if this voter sees them as equally desirable or undesirable, it is proper to treat them as such. It's "proper" and it improves the results overall, but it is an abstention with regard to the realistic election pair. That's fine. But if the voter has a significant preference -- suppose those were the only two candidates on the ballot, would you bother voting? -- I'd not suggest voting that way. Make a choice, if it matters. If not, sure, stand aside and let people who care make the decision. With your vote equating them, you can express, still, whether you accept them or not. That can be important if a majority is required (the Range method then must have an explicit method of indicating that the voter will accept the election of each candidate, easy to do, probably the easiest is that the voter rates the candidate above midrange -- or maybe at midrange.) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] FairVote on Robert's Rules of Order and IRV
when we are dealing with published > rankings, we need only collect those votes en masse, and then applying > them to a Condorcet matrix would be simple. > > However, politically, it's, shall we say, a step. Count All the Votes is > a small step, *and* cheap. And quite surprisingly powerful, considering. > Bucklin has been used, and this might make it easier to bring it back. > > The behavior of Published Rankings is unknown. There are a *lot* of > questions, some of them quite difficult to answer. I'd prefer pure > Asset; candidates could certainly publish their own Range ballots > regarding other candidates, but I suggest that encouraging voters to > select for trustworthiness, which covers a lot, is the best way to > proceed to reform elections, and Asset has legs. It should be able to > walk, one step at a time, all the way to full, highly accurate > proportional representation, continuous democracy (no fixed terms of > office, but, naturally, regular elections for electors). > >> It would be worthwhile, I think, to reach out to recognized experts in >> Robert's Rules and teach them about better voting methods, and then >> see what they recommend. > > > It's an error to assume they don't know. They are not voting systems > theorists, they put together a manual of actual practice. It's quite > possible that in the next manual, there will be some description of > Approval, for example, because there are some major organizational > implementations. > >> Another deception by the IRVings is their widespread claim that IRV >> eliminates spoiling. It's an even bigger deception, much more >> important. A variation of IRV that permits candidates to withdraw >> from contention after the votes are published, before the votes are >> tallied, would be much better at eliminating spoiling and electing the >> best compromise. > > > Sure. IRV eliminates, to a degree, the lower-order spoiler effect. I.e., > minor party, no chance of winning, draws votes away from one major > candidate, resulting in an election unsatisfactory to a majority. That, > by the way, is an assumption. Nader, in 2000, claimed that voters who > preferred him should vote for him because the majors were Tweedledum and > Tweedledee, both shills for the corporations. If they believed him, then > why would we think that they would add votes under IRV? However, in > fact, voters are a bit more sophsticated and uncontrollable. Some of > those who voted for Nader would have added ranked votes or additional > Approvals for Gore. > > Bucklin is what I recommend, as a first reform, beyond Count All the > Votes (Open Voting or Approval). It addresses the big problem that most > people give as an objection to Approval, but it is very much like > Approval. It's roughly as efficient as Condorcet methods with social > utility. > > Ultimately, I prefer Range with explicit Approval cutoff, and pairwise > analysis, and a runoff in the case of majority approval failure or a > candidate who beats the Range winner by pairwise analysis. It's my > contention, by the way, that a genuine, sincere Range winner would > likely prevail in a direct runoff against a true Condorcet winner. And > if you don't know why, ask! > > When I first proposed this, some thought it preposterous, a result of > single-ballot, deterministic thinking that the whole field of voting > systems fell into. -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:19:02 - James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax > Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 12:42 AM I don't have time to read any of the extended essays that now feature on this list, but these two remarks in a recent post caught my eye and I could not let them pass. Responding to one thought for IRV vs C (Condorcet): Reflecting the diversity of voters' views is, of course, impossible when a single winner is required in a single-office election (e.g. city mayor, state governor). In this situation there MAY be a case for suggesting that one of the purposes of the public election should be to simulate compromise. However, even then, most of our voters would expect the winner to be the candidate who has a majority of the first preferences even if some other candidate had greater overall "compromise" support, i.e. they would expect LNH to apply and operate. When there is no majority winner they may well be prepared to take a compromising view, but there are some very real difficulties in putting that into effect for public elections. Given that a majority of first preferences name Joe, IRV and C will agree that Joe wins. Given four others each getting 1/4 of first preferences, and Joe getting a majority of second preferences: IRV will award one of the 4, for it only looks at first preferences in deciding which is a possible winner. C will award one of the 5. Any of them could win, but Joe is stronger any outside the 5. James Gilmour -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:39:31 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:51 AM Responding to one thought for IRV vs C (Condorcet): My comments were not specific to "IRV versus Condorcet". JG had written When there is no majority winner they may well be prepared to take a compromising view, but there are some very real difficulties in putting that into effect for public elections. Given that a majority of first preferences name Joe, IRV and C will agree that Joe wins. Given four others each getting 1/4 of first preferences, and Joe getting a majority of second preferences: IRV will award one of the 4, for it only looks at first preferences in deciding which is a possible winner. C will award one of the 5. Any of them could win, but Joe is stronger any outside the 5. The "problem" cases I had in mind were much less extreme. When there is a strong Condorcet winner, I think the idea would be sellable to ordinary electors (but there are remaining problems about covering the rare event of cycles). What I think would be completely unsellable would be the weak Condorcet winner. That winner would, of course, truly be the Condorcet winner - no question, but that does not mean the result would be politically acceptable to the electorate. Such a weak winner would also be considered politically weak once in office. It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! Such a weak Condorcet winner would also be unlikely. Second preferences? That 5% would have to avoid the two strong candidates. The other two have to avoid voting for each other - likely, for they are likely enemies of each other. The other two could elect the 5%er - getting the 5% makes this seem possible. Could elect a candidate who got no first preference votes? Seems unlikely. I see the three each as possibles via first and second preferences - and acceptable even with only 5% first - likely a compromise candidate. Any other unlikely to be a winner. What were you thinking of as weak winner? James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. As to my "no first preferences" example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. DWK On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:18:34 - James Gilmour wrote: James Gilmour had written: It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! Dave Ketchum > Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 4:24 AM Such a weak Condorcet winner would also be unlikely. Second preferences? That 5% would have to avoid the two strong candidates. The other two have to avoid voting for each other - likely, for they are likely enemies of each other. The other two could elect the 5%er - getting the 5% makes this seem possible. Could elect a candidate who got no first preference votes? Seems unlikely. I see the three each as possibles via first and second preferences - and acceptable even with only 5% first - likely a compromise candidate. Any other unlikely to be a winner. What were you thinking of as weak winner? I'm afraid I don't understand your examples at all. The "no first preferences" example is so extreme I would not consider it realistic. But, of course, if it were possible to elect a "no first preferences" candidate as the Condorcet winner, such a result would completely unacceptable politically and the consequences would be disastrous. The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; "centrist" candidate M Election 1 35% D>M; 33% R>M; 32% M Election 2 48% D>M; 47% R>M; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political consequences of the two results would be very different. My own view is that the result of the first election would be acceptable, but the result of the second election would be unacceptable to the electorate as well as to the partisan politicians (who cannot be ignored completely!). If such an outcome is possible with a particular voting system (as it is with Condorcet), that voting system will not be adopted for public elections. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Seems the thoughts can be split. The examples under discussion were a very limited subset of what is possible: A majority preferred M>R, and another majority preferred M>D (knowing this much, comparing R vs D does not matter). Other elections could have had more interesting rankings, and perhaps have required more complex thoughts as to majorities - such as you write of. Stretched thought: "In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last." Look at the ranking of such a CW - hard to get to be liked better than the opposition when the opposition often ranks higher: x>CW - counted for every voter for every candidate ranked above CW. x=CW - not counted (mostly for pairs where a voter did not rank either). CW>x - counted where a voter ranked x below CW, or did not rank x. DWK On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:56:03 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: Dave, I think you make a common semantic manipulation about the nature of a Condorcet winner (particularly in a "weak" CW example) by using the term "wins by a majority." In fact, each of the separate and distinct pairwise "majorities" may consist largely of different voters, rather than any solid majority. This is why I think the Mutual-Majority Criterion is a more useful criterion. In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. The phrase "wins by a majority" creates the image in the reader's mind of a happy satisfied group of voters (that is more than half of the electors), who would feel gratified by this election outcome. In fact, in a weak CW situation, every single voter could feel the outcome was horrible if the CW is declared elected. Using a phrase like "wins by a majority" creates the false impression that a majority of voters favor this candidate OVER THE FIELD of other candidates AS A WHOLE, whereas NO SUCH MAJORITY necessarily exist for there to be a Condorcet winner. The concept of Condorcet constructs many distinct majorities, who may be at odds, and none of which actually need to like this Condorcet winner. I am not arguing that the concept of "Condorcet winner" is not a legitimate criterion, just that its normative value is artificially heightened by saying the candidate "wins by a majority" when no such actual solid majority needs to exist. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: "Dave Ketchum" To: Cc: Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 7:23 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. As to my "no first preferences" example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. DWK On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:18:34 - James Gilmour wrote: James Gilmour had written: It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! Dave Ketchum > Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 4:24 AM Such a weak Condorcet winner would also be unlikely. Second preferences? That 5% would have to avoid the two strong candidates. The other two have to avoid voting for each other - likely, for they are likely enemies of each other. The other two could elect the 5%er - getting the 5% makes this seem possible. Could elect a candidate who got no first preference votes? Seems unlikely. I see the three each as possibles via first and second preferences - and acceptable even with only 5% first - likely a compromise candidate. Any other unlikely to be a winner. What were you thinking of as weak winner? I'm afraid I don't understand your examples at all. The "no first preferences" example is so extreme I would not consider it realistic. But, of course, if it were possible to elect a "no first preferences" candidate as the Condorcet winner, such a result would completely unacceptable politically and the consequences would be disastrous. The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; "centrist" candidate M Election 1 35% D>M; 33% R>M; 32% M Election 2 48% D>M; 47% R>M; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political co
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:02:09 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:23 AM Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. Ok, I did not say it clearly. Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are salable. Take the one about a Condorcet winner with no first preferences. Ugly thought, but how do you get there? Perhaps with three incompatible positions that share equally all the first preferences, while a neutral candidate gets all the second preferences. Assume it will never happen, so do not provide for such? As I suggested before, somehow, if you assume such fate will, somehow, prove you wrong. Provide a fence, forbidding getting too close to such? Where do you put the fence without doing more harm than good? Leave it legal, while assuring electors they should not worry about it ever occurring? I see this as proper - it is unlikely, yet not a true disaster if it does manage to occur. The primary battle between Clinton and Obama here presents a strong argument for getting rid of Plurality elections - better for them both to go to the general election fighting against their shared foe, McCain. Actually, the Electoral College complicates this discussion for presidential elections but it does apply to others. DWK Dave, I never said that I would find that result objectionable. What I did say was that I thought such a result would be POLITICALLY unacceptable to the ELECTORS - certainly in the UK, and perhaps also in the USA as there are SOME similarities in the political culture. It goes almost without saying that such a result would be politically unacceptable to the two main parties I had in mind. Political acceptability is extremely important if you want to achieve practical reform of the voting system. The Electoral Reform Society has been campaigning for such reform for more that 100 years (since 1884), but it has still not achieved it main objective - to reform the FPTP voting system used to elected MPs to the UK House of Commons. The obstacles to that reform are not to do with theoretical or technical aspects of the voting systems - they are simply political. It was for political reasons that the Hansard Society's Commission on Electoral Reform came up with its dreadful version of MMP in 1976 and for political reasons that the Jenkins Commission proposed the equally dreadful AV+ in 1998. Jenkins' AV+ was a (slight) move towards PR, but it was deliberately designed so that the two main parties would be over-represented in relation to their shares of the votes and that one or other of two main parties would have a manufactured majority of the seats so that it could form a single-party majority government even though it had only a minority of the votes. It is sometimes possible to marginalise the politicians and the political parties in a campaign if you can mobilise enough of the ordinary electors to express a view, but our experience in the UK is that constitutional reform and reform of the voting system are very rarely issues on which ordinary electors will "take up arms" (metaphorically, of course). In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. Leaving aside the debate about the meaning of "majority", it is clear to me that M is the Condorcet winner - no question. But, as explained above, it is MY view that such an outcome would not be acceptable to our electors. I base my view of UK electors' likely reaction on nearly five decades of campaigning for practical reform of the voting systems we use in our public elections. As to my "no first preferences" example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. I'm not sure what this statement is really mean to say.. I understand that a Condorcet winner could, indeed, have no first preferences at all. But in political terms, such a possibility is not just unacceptable, it's a complete non-starter. James -- da...@clarityconnect.com people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:05:56 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:54 PM Ok, I did not say it clearly. Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are salable. Take the one about a Condorcet winner with no first preferences. Ugly thought, but how do you get there? Perhaps with three incompatible positions that share equally all the first preferences, while a neutral candidate gets all the second preferences. Assume it will never happen, so do not provide for such? As I suggested before, somehow, if you assume such fate will, somehow, prove you wrong. Provide a fence, forbidding getting too close to such? Where do you put the fence without doing more harm than good? Leave it legal, while assuring electors they should not worry about it ever occurring? I see this as proper - it is unlikely, yet not a true disaster if it does manage to occur. Interesting points, but I don't think any of them address the problem I identified. It is no answer at all to say "Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are saleable.". The ordinary electors will just not buy it when a weak Condorcet winner is a real likely outcome. Does "real likely" fit the facts? Some thought: Assuming 5 serious contenders they will average 3rd rank with CW doing better (for 3, 2nd). Point is that while some voters may rank the CW low, to be CW it has to average toward first rank to beat the competition. Or, look at the other description of CW - to be CW it won all counts comparing it with other candidates - for each the CW had to rank above the other more often than the other ranked above the CW (cycles describe nt having a CW). I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of "politically unacceptable". I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to "the good old ways". I said in an earlier post that I thought a strong third-placed Condorcet winner could be politically acceptable, and thus the voting system could be saleable if that was always the only likely outcome. So I have been asked before where I thought the tipping point might be, between acceptable and unacceptable. I don't know the answer to that question because no work has been done on that - certainly not in the UK where Condorcet is not on the voting reform agenda at all. In some ways the answer is irrelevant because the Condorcet voting system will never get off the ground so long as a 5% FP Condorcet winner is a realistic scenario, as it is when the current (pre-reform) political system is so dominated by two big political parties. So long as the domination stays, Condorcet does not affect their being winners. It helps electors both vote per the two party competition AND vote as they choose for third party candidates. Only when (and if) the two parties weaken and lose their domination would the third party votes do any electing. The primary battle between Clinton and Obama here presents a strong argument for getting rid of Plurality elections - better for them both to go to the general election fighting against their shared foe, McCain. This represents a VERY idealistic view of politics - at least, it would be so far as the UK is concerned. NO major party is going into any single-office single-winner election with more than one party candidate, no matter what the voting system. Having more than one candidate causes problems for the party and it certainly causes problems for the voters. And there is another important intuitive reaction on the part of the electors - they don't like parties that appear to be divided. They like the party to sort all that internally and to present one candidate with a common front in the public election for the office. But maybe my views are somewhat coloured by my lack of enthusiasm for public primary elections. So long as the general election would be Plurality, the parties DESPERATELY needed to offer only single candidates there. Thus the Democrats had to have a single candidate. Clinton and Obama invested enormous sums in the needed primary - apparently the Democrats were unable to optimize this effort. If the general election was Condorcet the Democrats could have considered a truce in this internal battle and invested all that money in making sure McCain lost. Per your enthusiasm note, we see primaries as a normal way to decide on a single candidate for each party in t
[EM] R/G/B/Y
We have many yes/no issues for which letting a compromise candidate win is preferable to battling for yes or no to win. Hare I am going artificial - three dedicated incompatible positions (Red/Green/Blue), and a neutral compromise candidate, Yellow. Thus we get, with Condorcet: 33 R>Y>G=B 34 G>Y>B=R 35 B>Y>R=G With the above intentions, voters can get the same result by each ranking just the first two. I see Y as CW - 33R>Y 69Y>R 34G>Y 68Y>G 35B>Y 67Y>B 33R>G 34G>R 34G>B 35B>G 35B>R 33R>B Yellow, with zero first preferences, would be welcomed if R/G/B hold indicated equal strengths. These voters feel they MUST back their position with their first preference. Then they all back Yellow as an acceptable compromise with their second preference - tHey will be MOST HAPPY if Yellow gets elected rather than either of the enemy candidates. On Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:58:31 -0500 Per [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:18 AM 12/22/2008, James Gilmour wrote: But, of course, if it were possible to elect a "no first preferences" candidate as the Condorcet winner, such a result would completely unacceptable politically and the consequences would be disastrous. It would be disastrous if something other than what the voters actually said. With Condorcet they could and did express this as their desires. The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; "centrist" candidate M Election 1 35% D>M; 33% R>M; 32% M Election 2 48% D>M; 47% R>M; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political consequences of the two results would be very different. I see no reason for rejecting what the voters have said - that all consider M acceptable, and liked best, better than D or R. You are standing in a relatively isolated position, James. Robert's Rules of Order considers this failure to find a compromise winner a serious argument against sequential elimination ranked methods. My own view is that the result of the first election would be acceptable, but the result of the second election would be unacceptable to the electorate as well as to the partisan politicians (who cannot be ignored completely!). Actually, partisan politicians voiced strong objections to preferential voting systems when they "won" the first preference vote, but lost when voluntary additional preferences were added in (Bucklin) or were substituted in (IRV). The electorate, however, was undisturbed, except for minorities supporting those politicians. Thus in Ann Arbor, MI, the Republicans arranged a repeal of IRV, scheduled when many of the students who supported the Human Rights Party and Democratic candidate were out of town. They won, with low participation in the repeal. There is no substitute for the majority being organized! Which organization must reach across party lines. If such an outcome is possible with a particular voting system (as it is with Condorcet), that voting system will not be adopted for public elections. Worse can and do get adopted. Seems that Condorcet deserves better understanding. Someone has written here against Condorcet that a candidate ranked "next to last" by all voters could win. True for special cases such as only two candidates ranked, but not really useful. When compared with each other candidate the CW wins more than half of these comparisons. For example, with 5 serious contenders the CW has to average above third rank. If a cycle, each member has to qualify as a CW relative to each candidate outside the cycle. -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:55:23 - James Gilmour wrote: Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision for "write-ins" at all in public elections. If I am not prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why anyone should take me seriously. If my "friends" think I would be the best person to do the job, they should come and tell me and persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to get me elected. Worth some thought: I think "nominate" has been thoroughly defined, and should not be changed as part of this debate. Something such as "authorized for write-in" could be developed: Approved by candidate BEFORE the election. This would outlaw some of the present nonsense. Perhaps James could offer useful thought. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:25:09 - James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax > Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 5:39 PM With a Condorcet method, the votes all count. Yes, all the marked preferences will allow the voter's one vote to be used in as many pair-wise comparisons as the voter wishes to participate in. Voter "wishes" do not matter. Voter explicit ranking does count: No count for equal ranking, whether voter assigned equal ranking, or ranked neither. Count every pair with different ranks, whether one or both are ranked by voter. Think of it as IRV with a different method of deciding whom to eliminate. Condorcet does not really eliminate - it is only looking for the CW. Looking at any pair of candidates the leader is either the CW, or on the path to the CW. Of course a cycle is possible, so you watch out for chasing your tail. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
We have a nominee list with much of the formality you describe. Then we have write-ins, with very little formality. James frowns on such, saying that the UK properly demands more formality in dealing with the needed exceptions to normal nomination. I agree that present write-ins are too informal, nominations are too formal to cover all needs, and UK thoughts might help us with doing something to fill the gap. DWK On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 10:56:22 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: One approach that is used in practice and that to some extent avoids the problems of - "few random votes to random people" - difficulty to identify to whom the votes actually are meant - votes to people that do not want to be candidates - having too many candidates is to require people to collect an agreed number of names of supporters (and candidate's agreement) to get their candidate on the candidate list. Juho --- On Fri, 26/12/08, Dave Ketchum wrote: On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:55:23 - James Gilmour wrote: Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision for "write-ins" at all in public elections. If I am not prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why anyone should take me seriously. If my "friends" think I would be the best person to do the job, they should come and tell me and persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to get me elected. Worth some thought: I think "nominate" has been thoroughly defined, and should not be changed as part of this debate. Something such as "authorized for write-in" could be developed: Approved by candidate BEFORE the election. This would outlaw some of the present nonsense. Perhaps James could offer useful thought. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Write-in Candidate Rules
Fact that the label we are discussing, "write-ins", has been used for a CA purpose should not be allowed to interfere with our trying for something usable throughout the US. The CA document is worth studying for useful thought - but deserves care to avoid what they say that does not fit our needs. DWK On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:40:35 - James Gilmour wrote: Subject changed: was > Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Jonathan Lundell > Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 5:58 PM California write-in rules lie somewhere in that gap. Here's a sample: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/cand_qual_wi.pdf These requirements must be met in order for write-in votes to be counted. Having read quickly through these rules, I don't see clearly how a "write-in candidate" is different from a "nominated candidate". Both must formally register their candidacy by the due date, all the information is public before the election, both must keep proper registered accounts of their election expenses. There is nothing informal about this process. Maybe the rules on "write-ins" are quite different in other States? James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Write-in Candidate Rules
Number of signatures needs to be very modest - think of signers available: Few voters in district for a village mayor. Some unwilling to approve; time to collect; willingness of potential candidate to work at this. CA law was very detailed - how much worth copying? Abd referred to interesting NY data: Mostly how to cope with voting machines, rather than imposed restrictions. For president voting for a nominated candidate will include associated VP and elector candidates, so comparable information is required for a write-in candidate. DWK On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:19:53 - James Gilmour wrote: > Jonathan Lundell > Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 1:50 AM > >>In California, I see a couple of significant differences. There's no >>filing fee (or signatures in lieu of fee) for a write-in candidate, >>and a write-in candidate can bypass the party primary. > > > No filing fee - OK, but the statement about signatures puzzles me. > In the "Summary of Qualifications and Requirements for Write-In Candidates" to which you provided a link, it says: > D. Nomination Papers > 1. The required number of signers to a write-in candidate’s nomination paper for the respective offices are as follows: > a. United State Senator: 65-100 > b. Member of House of Representatives, State Legislative Office: Not less than 40 nor more than 60. > So there would appear to be a requirement for a very modest number of signatures. Or have I misunderstood something? > James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
My memory says you described procedures used in the UK when something was needed to add new candidates after nomination deadlines. I cannot find such tonight, so proceed for US needs without assuming such. DWK In Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:38:50 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum > Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 5:47 PM I agree that present write-ins are too informal, nominations are too formal to cover all needs, and UK thoughts might help us with doing something to fill the gap. Dave, I'm surprised you should think any UK experience could help with this one (as you've suggested in a couple of posts), because our systems for public elections are all based on completely formal nomination. The details differ, for example, as between local government elections (local authority councils) and parliamentary elections (at various levels), and as might be expected, there are fewer barriers for the former (no fees and no subscribers required). But since you've asked . ... So you see, our system is very rigid compared to the "write-in" provisions that are common in many parts of the USA. ALL candidates must be formally nominated, both party candidates and independents, and the names of ALL candidates will be printed on the relevant ballot papers. There is NO provision for a "write-in" of any kind and no provision for "None of the above". (That, of course, does not stop some of the voters from expressing their opinions very clearly on the ballot papers!!) Most UK organisations, large and small, from national trade unions to local badminton clubs, would follow essentially the same procedures, particularly with regard to making no provision for "write-ins" and requiring written confirmation by each candidate of consent to nomination. So there you have it - but I don't think it provides many (any ?) useful pointers for a robust "write-in" procedure. "Write-ins" are just not part of our political culture, but I do understand and do appreciate that, in their various forms, they are very much part of the political culture in the USA. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
I side with Abd over Terry on this one. Topic is what activity should be counted as a vote in determining what percentage of the votes were for the leader (was it a majority?). Agreed that overvotes count - the voter clearly intended to vote, though the result was defective. Agreed that blanks do not count - the voter avoided any attempt to vote. But what of a vote for C which is for a loser aince A and B each got more votes (assume that all three were nominees for this discussion)? Terry would exclude these as abstentions since they dropped oujt of the counting before the final step. Abd and I would count them with A and B as part of total votes - C voters, like A and B voters, were expressing their desires. To me abstention is simply refusal to vote - blank fits where the ballot provides for several races and a voter, while submitting the ballot, leaves the field for this race blank. What we suggest makes achieving a majority more difficult. I say I am going for truth, but suggest a debate as to whether demanding a majority is appropriate here. Note that a majority makes more sense for Plurality elections - there voters can not completely express their desires and C voters could vote for A or B in a runoff. In IRV or Score or Condorcet, desires can be more completely expressed - so that possible value for a runoff is little to none. DWK On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:48:02 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: Abd wrote: The term "majority" as applied to elections has some very well-established meanings. If we say that a candidate got a majority in an election, we mean that a majority of those voting supported that candidate. There are quibbles around the edges. What about ballots with marks on them but the clerk can't figure out what the marks mean? Robert's Rules are clear: that's a vote, part of the basis for a majority. I guess a little rehashing is needed to correct Abd's miss-stating of Robert's Rules of Order on the basis for determining a majority. Abd seems to be relying on RRONR description in chapter XIII on Voting, on page 402 of how to deal with "illegal votes," such as over-votes, cast by legal voters -- they should be included in the denominator for calculating a majority. However, on page 387 RRONR states that "majority vote" means "more than half of the votes cast by persons legally entitled to vote, EXCLUDING BLANKS OR ABSTENTIONS..." [emphasis added]. The question is whether an exhausted ballot (one with no preference shown between the finalists) in an IRV election, is an abstention or an "illegal" vote. Since RRONR mentions "abstentions" rather than merely using the word "blanks," it can be interpreted that there may be some way of indicating abstention, other than with a blank ballot. I think this perfectly fits the concept of an exhausted ballot, where the voter has abstained and indicated no preference between remaining candidates, if the voters favored candidates cannot win. There is room here for reasonable people to disagree. Perhaps an organization could reasonably write bylaws to expressly include or exclude such exhausted ballots from the denominator in determining a majority threshold. If the organization wrote bylaws to include exhausted ballots in the denominator, then an election could fail, requiring some alternate procedure (or new election) to fill the office, or the bylaws could be written to exclude exhausted ballots so that the one election would be decisive using a reasonable definition of a "majority vote" (using RRONR's standard definition that EXCLUDES abstentions in determining a majority threshold.) Terry Bouricius ... -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect "majority winners?"
Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. They offer RRONR as ammunition in a war it was never intended for: Over 100 years ago General Robert had to chair a meeting. As an army general he should be able to handle such a task? After doing it he decided there better be batter directions put together for the future. The resulting rules continue to be used by many. RRONR has a few pages about elections. Unlike some of their directions for new meeting chairs, these are not designed for blind obedience. Their major direction is that whoever does serious elections had better decide carefully and formally agree as to how they will do such. Meaning of 'majority' is their big dispute. IRV documentation claims its found winner has a majority (with no attached statement of what this means) and Terry defends this usage. Abd claims this is deception, if not worse: Majority means more than half and, without qualification, means of the whole thing measured. Blanks are excludable - presumably their voters chose not to participate in deciding whatever is voted on. Exhausted ballots are not excludable - those voters certainly participated, though for other candidates. But IRV, claiming a majority, has to be excluding these since IRV only has a majority between the last two candidates considered. Therefore Abd complains since: Deciders can be sold IRV based on the Fairvote claim of majority. Anyone looking close will disagree due to failure of IRV to produce a true majority. On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:59:09 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: > I take offense at Abd repeatedly suggesting I am a liar or am engaging in > deception. We have a legitimate difference of opinion about the > appropriate use of the term "majority" and interpretation of RRONR. > ... > > - Original Message - > From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" > To: "Terry Bouricius" ; > ; > Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 11:55 PM > Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 > > > At 08:50 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: > >>Kathy Dopp wrote: >> >> >>since "abstentions or blanks" are from those who have not voted. >> >> >>I believe my interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order is correct. In >>order for a ballot being reviewed by a teller to be "blank," and thus >>excluded from the majority threshold calculation, as directed by Robert's >>Rule of order, the voter must certainly have submitted a ballot paper. > > > Bouricius, you are totally off, stretching, trying desperately to > find ways to interpret the words there to mean what you want them to mean. > ... > > And now the kicker: we have explained -- and I could cite word for > word, and have in many places -- the explicit language of Robert's > Rules of Order on this. Bouricius has just said the exact opposite of > the truth. What he is proposing as the meaning of "abstention," and > the basis for majority, is totally contrary to the plain language of > RRONR, not to mention the "usual interpretation." > > Usual interpretation by whom? By FairVote activists and those duped by > them? > > I'm saddened, to tell you the truth. This is the absolute worst > argument I've ever seen from Bouricius, it's word manipulation to try > to take a text and make it say the exact opposite of what it plainly says. > > I'd thought that he was above that, but, apparently not. > > The public will *not* be fooled when the issues are made plain and clear. -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect "majority winners?"
On Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:48:19 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Paul Kislanko wrote: ... In another respect, Condorcet is an efficient way to find majorities that support an alternative. If we (for the sake of simplicity) assume voters are sincere and runoffs have similar turnout as primaries, then if X pairwise beats Y, X would beat Y in a runoff. If X's a sincere CW, it win a runoff, no matter who it ran against. Your certainty inspires resistance: Those of us who bullet voted for Z could prefer Y over X, and thus surprise you. Still, X has good odds. BTW, I would not do runoffs with Condorcet, even with cycles - promise of no runoffs can encourage more careful preparation for the primary vote where Condorcet allows complete ranking. -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
