At 06:37 PM 4/23/2007, Juho wrote:
>Another explanation to the emergence of Approval style strategic
>voting is that an individual voter might learn that, in a case where
>there are only two candidates that have chances of winning the
>election, voting A=9, B=0 instead of A=5, B=4 makes his/her vote 9
>times stronger.
The thinking is really stubborn. A voter "might learn this?" Why
didn't the voter know this from the start. *Of course* voting the
extremes is a strong vote. The question is why you'd cast a strong
vote if your preferences are weak. Why? Because you want to "win"?
First of all, we think that it will be common knowledge that if you
don't vote the extremes for at least one candidate on either side,
you are casting a weak vote. Nobody is recommending that truly weak
votes be cast. (But some people may want to cast them anyway, and
they should be able to. Consider it a partial abstention, and many
people abstain from this or that race now.)
If A was the favorite, why in the world would the voter vote A=5 in
the first place? I'll note that the same 1/9 vote relationship exists
between A=9 and B=8. If the voter cares strongly that A win over B,
the voter will *not* vote 9:8.
"Strategic" voting assumes a strong desire to affect the outcome in a
particular way. What is continually asserted here is that voters with
weak preferences will somehow decide to vote strategically. Why? To
please party bosses? They don't care a fig about them!
If voters have strong preferences, the kind that motivate people to
be "dishonest" in ranked systems, under Range they will vote Approval
style. Which expresses strong preferences. *It's honest!* What is
continually asserted, over and over and over again, is that voters
will turn their weak preferences (9 vs 8 in the original example Juho
posed) into strong expressions. In order to be motivated to do that,
they must have strong preferences! It is a total contradiction.
Look, if there is an election, and I sincerely rank A as 9 and B as 8
(and other candidates lower than that, let's say zero) and B wins,
I'm happy! That's an excellent outcome! The danger comes in quite the
opposite direction from what Juho proposes. Suppose I rate B as 8 and
C wins, with B being the runner-up. Close runner-up. I might regret
rating B at 8.
Realistically, though, it was only 1/9th of a vote that B lost on
account of me. Still, if the margin is close enough ....
For this reason, I prefer to have an extra voting position: Favorite.
With Approval, I call the method A+. It is Approval for the purposes
of determining the winner, but there is a method of indicating the
favorite. It could have significant usefulness. This could be done in
Range as well. In an environment where every vote or fraction of a
vote counts -- a close election -- the voter may want to give the max
rating to a second-favorite as well as the favorite. Allowing a plus
expression makes, we think, this less offensive.
> Similarly he/she could learn (maybe from experts)
>that in general voting in Approval style (as defined in the well
>known Approval strategies) in elections where there are several
>potential winners typically gives him/her the strongest voting power.
Of course it does. Voters don't need experts to tell them that! But
the question is whether and how voters will want to exercise their
power. If you vote Approval style, you fail to express your true
appreciation of the candidates, and this can backfire. Your Favorite,
say, loses to your second Favorite, and it turns out that the third
candidate you were worried about was a big dud, not really close.
Dag-nab-it! Why didn't I just express my honest feelings!
It is just as reasonable to consider that Range elections will move
*away* from Approval-style as that they will move toward it. I expect
that they will start out, actually, as close to Approval for many
voters. Smith thinks differently, and I really don't know which of us
is right. He's got reasons to think his way. We might both be right.
I.e., many voters, maybe most, will vote Approval style, and it will
be bullet voting. But there will be quite a few, from the start, who
do something different.
I say that we are not going to really know until we see real
elections using Range. The alleged devolution to Approval is not a
serious harm. It would only mean that some ballot space and a
counting effort had been wasted.
>I used this style of explanation since this explanation does not talk
>about parties, or voters belonging to them, or about the candidate
>set-up, but only about the strength of the vote of the individual voter.
>
> > Further, note that the PW candidate now gets zero from this group.
> > That's really not much different from the vote before. But it is
> > totally unnecessary. Why would these voters suddenly drop their
> > (small) support for the candidate with no chance to win?
>
>Rating the least preferred candidate at 0 reduces the probability of
>that candidate getting elected (and doesn't carry any risks with it).
But from the conditions of the problem, there was no risk of that.
No, I don't buy it. (By the way, none of us involved with Range would
recommend giving the "least preferred candidate" any other vote than
the minimum. I assumed that PW was being given a 1 because voters
somewhat liked him, there were *worse* candidates involved. If by
"voting Approval style" Juho means that votes will move to the
extremes, so that at least one candidate is given max rating and one
min, we already recommend that. The question, really, is what to do
with those in between. And what I say is that the answer to this
depends on how strongly you care. If there are three candidates, A,
B, and C, in order of your preference, and, let's say, there is no
risk of C winning, then even a relatively small preference of A over
may cause you to downrate B to zero. But if C is a contender, then
you must balance the risk of B losing to A with the risk of C defeating B.
So it really gets interesting when there are more than two serious
contenders. I'd suggest that in the three candidate election, you
would think of the various scenarios: *how much* do you care about
the two remaining pairwise elections? (We already know how you will
vote for A and for C.) If B winning over a is a minor annoyance and C
winning over B a major regret, then you would want to rate B closer
to A. And if you think B is better than C, but not much, and you
would *hate* for your vote to have elected B over A, then you would
rate B closer to C.
And if it was six of one and a half-dozen of the other, you would
rate B midrange. This is actually the optimum vote! (If you feel that way!)
Frankly, I think that most voters, with Range, will not beat their
heads against the problem. They will simply vote sincerely; the fact
is, that by the analysis I just made, a simple sincere set of ratings
(normalized to min and max range) is not only the easiest vote to
cast, it is the most likely to affect the outcome desirably.
In the two-party environment, Range strategy, like Approval, is
pretty simple. It's the three-way race which is trickier.
> > If you are going to propose that Range will *reduce* to Approval,
> > you will have to use reasonably likely scenarios.
>
>I think the vote strength argument that I presented above is quite
>generic and applies in all typical elections - assuming that we talk
>about competitive elections where the voter wants to do his/her best
>to make his/her favourite alternative win.
But this contradicts the assumed initial sincere vote! If you want
this, why would you vote A=9, B=8 in the first place? By voting this
way, you are saying that B winning is almost as satisfactory to you
as A winning!
> > And if it *does*, under some difficult-to-anticipate circumstance,
> > reduce to Approval, that isn't a bad outcome!
>
>Approval is not very bad. There are different ways of describing
>Range to the voters. I think a description that advices voters to
>indicate their sincere utility values of the candidates in the ballot
>is not a good description since that makes those voters that vote
>strategically (Approval style) and not as told more powerful than
>those that vote as told. Defining Range as "like Approval but with
>option to give only weaker fractional preferences" would be more fair.
I wouldn't describe Range, on the ballot, using terms like "sincere
utility values." That is a description of "sincere Range," and
indications are that if voters vote that way, election outcomes will
be maximally satisfactory. Yes, this means that some people will see
their favorites lose to someone who wasn't their favorite, but they
will also see someone they prefer, over someone they disliked, win. I
think that people can and will understand that democracy is often
about making compromises. It is *not* about crushing the opposition!
I would describe Range 11 as "You have a maximum of ten votes to cast
for each candidate. You may cast no vote for a candidate ("zero"),
which means you will be contributing nothing to the election of that
candidate, and you may cast up to 10 votes, 10 votes being the
maximum contribution you may make to a candidate's election. All the
votes will be totalled and the candidate with the most votes wins."
(I'm suggesting sum-of-votes Range, which is not the current
"official" Center for Range Voting proposal. But it looks like the
basic proposal is going to change to the simpler sum-of-votes method.
In sum-of-votes, abstentions are given a default value, zero in what
I described above.)
But I'd actually like to see Range start with Range 3, with the
ratings being -1, 0, +1. And the instructions would be quite simple:
"Vote -1 to vote against a candidate, vote +1 to vote for the
candidate, and vote zero or leave a candidate unrated to have an
intermediate effect. The candidate with the greatest sum of votes will win."
In this system, abstentions are midrange. They pull the vote toward midrange.
But I don't think we really know what form of Range is optimal. We
need experimentation.
[I suggested that there be a runoff between the Range winner and a
Condorcet winner, if they differ]
>Let's assume that a Condorcet winner exists. In this case this method
>could be said to be a method where the voters are given a second
>chance to think again if the Range winner could be seen as a "good
>compromise" even though the majority could easily vote as in the
>first round and elect the Condorcet winner.
Yes. That is, the original ballot analysis showed that this C. winner
was rated higher than the Range winner on a majority of ballots.
> I'm not sure this method
>would be a very practical method in real life large elections but in
>principle the idea of "recommending" the Range winner to the voters
>is a positive idea. Some strategies where people would try to
>influence who the Range winner will be could take place (i.e. the
>Range winner of the second round would not be the sincere range winner).
I think Juho means that the Range winner of the *first* round would
not be the sincere Range winner. If there is a second round, it is
not held as a Range election. It is a straight
which-of-these-two-shall-be-elected vote. Voters will know, this
time, if the first election was sincere, which candidate will be most
broadly acceptable. Which is more important to them, for their
preference to win or for the most broadly acceptable candidate to
win? Majority rule.
I'd suggest that if their preference was weak, the majority might
prefer the Range winner, on reflection. But if their preference was
strong, they might insist upon it.
My actual preferred election method is deliberative. Standard
Robert's Rules applied to an ordinary motion to elect so-and-so. With
a Range poll taken at some point in the process. I may be the first
person to point out that this standard process, followed with care,
will always select the Condorcet winner. (And maybe not! -- anyone
see this before?) But it is a Condorcet winner after a process which
informs the voters regarding all aspects of the election. Including
the social utility winner. Do we want to maximize social utility? Yes/No!
The runoff I mentioned above was originally suggested as a safeguard
against unanticipated election results. In particular, it was one
response to the possibility of using Average Range instead of
sum-of-votes. Average Range needs a "quorum rule," CRV calls it, to
deal with the problem that a relatively unknown candidate could get a
high average rating, the extreme being, of course, one vote at max
rating. The debate has been long over this among Range advocates....
my position is that Average Range introduces difficult issues that
could interfere with Range implementation. Sum-of-votes is far
simpler to completely explain.
I never have actually understood the significance of the present
proposed Quorum Rule.... it's rather arbitrary. So as a safeguard, a
runoff. And then the idea became a runoff between the Range winner
and the Condorcet winner, which, if it was part of the system, would
pull the rug out from under complaints that Range fails the Majority Criterion.
Range will usually choose the Condorcet winner, Warren's simulations
show that. But, of course, there are exceptions. We claim, generally,
that the Range winner is, under these conditions, a *better* winner
than the Condorcet winner. But I prefer to allow the electorate to
make that decision!
(In full deliberative process that is exactly what happens with every
aspect. The original motion is amended or not....)
Impractical in large groups, directly. But quite practical with
delegable proxy!
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