[EM] Condorcet strategy and anti-strategy measures
James A. wrote:
And oh, Mike, my name is James Green-Armytage. "Green" isn't my middle name, but is rather a part of my surname. Hence "James A." is not an appropriate abbreviation for my name.
I repliy:
Sure it is. The purpose of an abbreviation is to briefly identify. "James A." does that just fine.
You continued:
If you feel the need to abbreviate it,...
I reply:
It's either that or write out the entire name every time I refer to you or speak to you.
You continued:
...I suggest "James G-A". There's nothing at all wrong with the name "James Armytage", except for the fact that it's not my name.
I reply:
James G.A. isn't your name either. An abbreviation for your name is something that isn't your name, but is briefer.
The trouble with James G.A. is that we already have a James G. "James G.A." unnecessarily resembles "James G."
The only part of your initials that distinguishes you from James Gilmour is the Armytage part. Hence there's no reason to represent any other part in the abbreviation, whose purpose is just to identify you, not to accurately name you.
Your letter, to which I'm posting a few reply comments now, has been very well replied-to by others already. So i'll only make a few comments.
I should point out that I'm repeating, probably nearly verbatim, what I said when I replied to these very same statements of yours before.
I'd said:
First, I don't believe that Condorcet wv has a serious strategy problem. We've often discussed the defensive truncation strategy. Here's how I
often word it: The only way you can steal the election from other voters is if they were trying to help you. Doesn't that make you proud of yourself?
I do believe that Condorcet wv had a serious strategy problem. While it is unknown how likely a successful execution of the burial strategy would be in a public election, I believe that if it did occur, it would produce an *extremely* negative reaction towards both the result and the election method itself. Imagine if Kerry beat Bush by a few hundred thousand votes, and yet Bush actually won the election because most of the Bush voters strategically ranked Nader second, creating a fake Nader > Kerry victory to knock Kerry out of the running.
I reply:
As I said at least twice when we were discussing this before, wv's problem when offensive order-reversal is being attempted is no worse than the problem that IRV has without anyone attempting offensive strategy.
You can call wv's offensive order-reversal problem a serious problem if you want to, but then you should also say that all the other voting systems have a more serious problem. A similar problem that exists all the time, instead of just when some voters attempt a very risky offensive strategy.
With IRV, you'll often need to bury your favorite in order to keep your last choice from winning instead of the CW. With Condorcet, the CW will win unless someone actively steals the election from hir. And attempting to do so is quite risky, requiring impossible predictive knowledge.
But if the offensive strategizers were sophisticated and well-informed enough to know when to try that, how do you justify an assumption that the other voters won't be sophisticated and well-informed enough to counter it?
And no, they don't have to know that the offensive order-reversal is being done. They can do the defensive truncation, and, without the offensive order-reversal, the defensivse truncation will have no effect, no harm.
If you feel that the electorate, or at least some segment of it, is so devious that you expect them to be inclined to order-reverse against your favorite, then have some representatives of your faction publicize that they'r e going to defensively truncate, not rank anyone whom they like better than their favorite, whom they believe to be the CW. And remember that their judgement and polling information availability is just as good as that of the would-be offensive order-reversers.
In fact, if I didn't like a candidate, I just wouldn't rank hir. That's out of principle, but it also protects against offensive order-reversal by hir voters. The candidates whom I don't like seem more likely to encourge their voters to offensively order-reverse, or to have voters inclined to offensively order-reverse.
And, as Adam pointed out when we discussed this here before, truncation is a much milder thing to do than order-reversal. Much easier and more likely to do spontaneously. Much easier to convince someone to do as a strategy.
And, as Adam pointed out, a successful offensive order-reversal, on a scale sufficient to change the outcome, really depends on some public organizing, which couldn't remain undetected by its intended victims. Why should they help the candidate whose voters are planning to try to steal the election from them? ? All they need do is not rank hir, and the offensive strategy will backfire badly.
That would be understood by the would-be offensive reversers.
In fact, the mere fact that, in a known devious electorate, many Democrat voters are likely to cautiously truncate the Republican, aside from any specific knowledge of a planned reversal, would, by itself, be enough reason for the Republicans to not try the reversal.
You say that offensive order-reversal would cause a scandal if it succeeded, and that people would blame the method. Half correct. It would cause a scandal. People wouldn't blame the method, because it would be understood that all method have strategy, and all simple methods have at least the potential for considerable defensive strategy need. And that all the other simple methods are worse in that regard.
The scandal would be directed at the perpetrators of the offensive order-reversal. If the Republicans did that to the Democrats, that would completely undermine and destroy the alliance between Democrat voters and the Republicans. Would it be worth it to the Republicans. The Democrats would know that the Republicans were able to steal the election from them because they tried to help the Republicans. I doubt that they'd rank the Republican candidate again.
You continued:
If this was a single-balloting wv Condorcet election, and Bush won (as above), there would be an enormous outrage, and it would be entirely justified.
I reply:
Quite so. Outrage by Democrat voters against the Republican voters, the Republican Party, and the Republican candidates, whom the Democrats wouldn't rank again.
At the very least, at their very most generoius, they'd use "Tit-For-Tat": Retaliate against the Republicans' in the next election. TFT says: Copy the other player's most recent play (co-operation or defection).
Even so simple a measure as TFT would discourage offensive order-reversal.
Someone also pointed out some interesting and effective ways of dealing with offensive order-reversal, measures that hadn't occurred to me--such as dividing the win between the winner and whoever would win if the winner were deleted from the rankings. Maybe, as that person said, give the vice-presidency to the one whom the winner pair-beats. Or maybe divide the presidency between them, time-wise. Or divide it between them by making the presidency a committee consisting of the winner and those whom he pair-beat.
Or divide victory between them probabilistically, which is really just as good. Or use Random Ballot to choose between the winner and the candidate who'd win if the winner were deleted from the ballots. So RB would be used to solve a tie between the winner and the candidate who'd win if the winner were deleted from the ballots.
Random Ballot (RB):
Randomly choose a ranking. Whichever member of the tie is ranked higher on that ballot is the winner. If 2 or more are ranked equally highest, among the tied candidate, they're the new tie, and so we randomly draw another ballot to solve that new tie...etc.
[end of RB definition]
All these solutions should be added to the list of wv enhancements:
If there's a circular tie in which everyone has someone else ranked over hir by a majority, then:
Divide the presidency (time-wise, probabilistically by RB, or as a committee) between the winner and the candidate who'd win if the winner were deleted from the ballots.
Or make the candidate(s) who'd win if the winner were delted from the ballots the vice-president.
So many 1-balloting enhancements have been described for wv, that it certainly isn't necessary to hold a 2nd balloting.
I suggest that, therefore, the benefit of a 2nd balloting is unlikely to justify the advantage of one.
And I wouldn't suggest RMDD as a 1st wv proposal, due to its drastic way of getting rid of the LO2E problem. Maybe I'd offer it as a later proposal, though. Ideally, I'd like RMDD, unless, due to people running an identical candidate and repeating their offensive order-reversal, RMDD went though many ballotings without a winner. The risk then would be that the elections would break down. An alternative would be to, after 1 or 2 extra ballotings, just use the solution described above, or do an Approval balloting. Then SSSC would only be met in the 1st ballotings. Of course if it were known that the reversers would run an identical candidate and reverse again and again, which will result in the eventual need to relax RMDD and let an existing candidate win at some point, then SSSC isn't being met in a practically meaningful sense, even in the 1st balloting.
So I know that RMDD has its problems, as does every method. But its offer of SSSC compliance justifies giving RMDD a try at some point, as we eventually try to further refine Condorcet wv, and look for more and more perfect voting systems.
James A. continued:
In that sort of situation, you would really want to hold a second balloting.
I reply:
That's one solution. Others include the ones suggested in reply to your posting, such as dividing the presidency between the winner and the candidate(s) who'd win if s/he were deleted from the ballots and the ballots recounted.
And I and others have suggested a number of other 1-balloting enhancements.
James A. continued:
In between ballotings Nader would be given the opportunity to drop out of the race, and hopefully he would do it
I reply:
Nader would not drop out of the race.
Nor will he do so this year.
Kerry has no ownership claim on the votes that I and many others would prefer to give to Nader.
That many don't want to vote for Kerry is no one's fault but Kerry's. Does it occur to you that if Kerery were honest, maybe we'd vote for him? It isn't because of Nader that we don't vote for Kerry--it's because of Kerry. I, for one, wouldn't vote for Kerry even if Kerry and Bush were the only candidates allowed in the race.
Nader is a candidate for people who have no use for sleaze, who will not be resigned to voting for bribetaking Republocrats. Nader won't drop out for you. Nader is a candidate for people who will onlly vote for someone who is honest.
You're of course going to vote for Kerry. Of course not because _you_ like Kerry better than Nader. No, it's someone else, most people, you say, who are going to vote for Kerry (It's always someone else), and so you're going to follow them. Except that they're probably doing so because they're following everyone, including you. You're like a herd of sheep or cattle following eachother into a slaughter house.
Who's splitting the vote? The people who will only vote for an honest candidate, who won't vote for a sleazy bribetaker? Or the people who instead vote insincerely for the bribetaker?
Also, you attribute all the the Bush administration is doing to Bush. You forget that the media and various corporations, and lots of Democrats, including Kerry, were right behind him with the Patriot Act and the obviously fraudulently-justified bloody war of conquest against the Iraquis. Kerry voted for the Patriot act and the invasiion of Iraq. He talks progressive now, because he knows that's what people want to hear. He knows that you're so desperate that you need and want to believe him. It's the same in every election. The Democrats are progressives in the campaign and Republicans in office, because they get their votes from one segment of the population and their money and instructions from another (smaller) segment of the population.
Returning to your topic, and replying to your summary: You exaggerate unenhanced 1-balloting wv's strategy problem when you ignore the worse strategy probems of all the other simple methods, including IRV and Plurality. And when you disregard all of the 1-balloting enhancements we've proposed.
You continued
Mike, in your analysis of Condorcet strategy, you seem to be assuming more coordination, more communication, and more time for people to respond to each other's strategies than what I think is necessarily realistic. In a previous e-mail on this topic, you made many statements similar to the following:
I reply:
As others have pointed out too, the offensive order-reversal will need a lot of public discussion and organizing to succeed. Whether it's official organizing, or just bar-room conversations, letters to the editor, bus-stop conversations, etc., the intended victims are going to hear about it, and they won't vote for the perpetrator's candidate, and the perpetrators will wish they didn't attempt the offensive strategy.
You're assuming that the perpetrators have much better judgement, sophistication, and polling inforamtion than the intended victims, and that the intended victims won't hear any of the discussion about the intended reversal.
I'd said:
To the extent that there's any perceived danger of offensive order-reversal, defensive truncation will be employed as a countermeasure.
The thing is, the people who would be employing the "countermeasure" will not know whether the strategy they are attempting to counter has taken place, until after the election!
I reply:
They'll have heard discussion about intent to offensively reverse. And if the intended victims won't know exactly what's going to happen, neither will the would-be reversers. That's the part that you're missing. They'll know that there might be counterstrategy, the simple counterstrategy of not ranking the reversers' candidate. You're assuming that the reversers have better information than the intended victims.
You continued:
As you know, there are various examples where if voters truncate against a strategic threat that in fact does not exist to begin with, it can result in the election of the car crash candidate in itself.
As Adam said, do you have an example? Assuming (excuse me while a I raise the tablecloth to puke) that Kerry is CW, can Nader win because the Kerry people didn't rank Bush?, if Kerry is CW and other people vote sincerely?
But sure, truncation can backfire in any method, because no method can help someone who doesn't vote for a compromise that s/he needs. Defensive strategy can hurt you in any method. The moreso in IRV or Plurality, for instance. I sometimes point out that Approval needs twice as many mistaken compromisers than IRV and Plurality need, to give away an election.
Look, the whole problem with voting strategy is that we don't haver perfect info. If we did, the CW would win every time, in any method. So then, let's not be criticizing wv for the consequences of not having perfect info, when those consequences are worse with other methods, such as IRV & Pluralilty.
You continued:
You seem to assume that a strategy of Dean voters to bury Kerry would involve someone in the Dean high command calling up various supporters and telling them to vote against their conscience. Then of course, the Kerry high command would find out about it, and call up the Dean high command and say "Hey! We know what you're up to! So if you don't tell your guys to vote sincerely, we'll tell our guys to truncate against Dean!" In which case it would be fairly cut and dry.
I reply:
As I said, successful reversal is very unlikely without discussion, and that discussion can't be kept from its intended victims. And yes there is communication, when the CW's people post on the Iternet, and write letters to the editor, and demonstrate in front of TV cameras that they're going to not rank Bush. And talk about it on streetcorner conversations, etc.
You continued:
What it may come down to is: To what extent do voters on each side have a propensity to gamble with burial strategies?
I reply:
Not much, when you consider the risks, which are arguably more than just risks, and are fairly llkely consequences.
You continued:
To what extent do voters on each side expect voters on the other side to engage in burial strategies.
I reply:
Obvioiusly that depends on the electorate. In our EM poll I didn't expect order-reversal, though I allowed for it by saying that after the results are announced, people have a week to truncate or promote candidates to 1st place.
If the electorate is known to be devious (and deviousness wouldn't stay unknown long), or if people overhear people in cafe's talking about insincerly downranking a likely CW, then or course they'll have reason to expect reversal. The reversers should know that and should know better than to go through with it. And no, when the would-be reversers decide not to reverse, that doesn't cause a penalty for defensive truncation or defensive equal ranking.
And additionally, all your talk about the game of chicken disregards the defensive equal ranking that Adam described.
The result of such a situation is unpredictable even if you know the sincere preference rankings, and that unpredictability is very dangerous.
I reply:
Without perfect information, that unpredictabiilty is present in all voting systems, including IRV & Plurality. It isn't the result of the voting system. But some voting systems suffer from it more than others do. IRV & Plurality suffer from it more than wv & Approval do.
You continued:
It is quite possible that successful burial will take place without anyone on the other side stopping it.
I reply:
Unlikely, for the reasons described. But it's perfectly possible that IRV will make you regret voting sincerely. That's what you should be worrying about. Yes, a 2nd balloting can improve wv. So can lots of 1-balloting enhancements that we've described. For a 1st wv proposal, the 2nd balloting's benefit therefore isn't worth its acceptance disadvantage. As Markus said, a big selling point of rank methods is that they don't need 2 ballotings.
It is also possible that a combination of mutual burial and mutual truncation (due to either aggressive or paranoid voting) could lead to the election of the car crash candidate.
I reply:
Mutual truncation won't do that. And, given a particular set of polling data, there won't be candidates who'd both try offensive order-reversal against eachother.
You continue:
Both possibilities are chaotic and fundamentally undemocratic.
I reply;
Again, you're holding wv up to a standard by which IRV & Plurality are much worse.
You continued:
I think that 2 balloting wv Condorcet (2nd balloting only in the event of a cycle
I reply:
Don't forget that 2nd balloting methods should only trigger a 2nd balloting when there' s a circular tie all of whose membes are _majority_ beaten. And don't just say "cycle". An election result can have a cycle without having a circular tie. It can have a BeatsAll candidate, and some losers who are in a cycle. So it's better to say "circular tie" or "top cycle" than just "cycle".
In your 2-balloing system, if the triggering conditions occurred, I'd be among those telling Nader not to drop out. Why just have bribetakers in the election?
And this discussion has been assuming that Kerry is CW. Let's remember that that is only an assumption for the sake of discussion. There's no particuar reason to believe that it's true, except for what your tv commentators have been drumming into you all this time.
They speak of "the middle", as a point somewhere between the Republicans and Democrats. No, there's no reason to believe that the voter median is there.
That's where the media "mainstream" is, sure.
You continued:
Going back to the two-ballot procedure, I still think that the second balloting should be a Condorcet balloting. I prefer a Condorcet balloting to an approval balloting here for all the reasons that I prefer Condorcet to approval in general.
I reply:
But the information from the 1st balloting would give people the information to deal with offensive order-reversal in an Approval vote. And Approval would never give us the conditions that call for another balloting. What if you use Condorcet for the 2nd balloting, and again there's a circular tie with all majorilty defeats?
Mike Ossipoff
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