On Apr 21, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
At 01:30 AM 4/20/2010, Dave Ketchum wrote:On Apr 19, 2010, at 11:48 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:Or other advanced method. What is often overlooked in the discussion of voting methods, due to the emphasis on deterministic methods that always find a winner with one ballot, is that runoff voting provides the voters with an opportunity to gain information and use it in the runoff. If runoffs are special elections, the voters will tend to be more informed. Runoffs make FPTP work much better, because, obviously, if a majority, just voting for one, vote for a single candidate, that's a deserving winner! (Sure, there are possible exceptions, but that doesn't break the general rule. It just means that there might be room for improvement.)Plurality has been the major method in the US.Yes. And the reasons for this should be thoroughly understood if we want to improve the system. The second most common method used is top two runoff, with or without write-in votes being allowed in the runoff. If they are not allowed in the runoff, the runoff becomes a kind of appendage of the first election instead of an independent election. In theory, a runoff with write-ins allowed is really repeated ballot, limited to two ballots, not pure runoff voting. I.e., it's closer to what Robert's Rules of Order actually recommends. The difference is the "suggested votes" in the runoff. Note that with Robert's Rules standard voting, there are no names printed on ballots.... It's all write-in.
It is misleading to call TTR an election method - it is not prepared to be useful as such, especially with more than two candidates.
TTR is properly a recovery method designed to recover when there is suspicion that the deserved winner came in second in vote count. Fine for this use, but cannot help if the deserved winner came in neither first nor second - more ammunition for retiring Plurality.
Abd and I aim in opposite directions:I see a campaign season in which voters prepare for and then vote their interests in a single election, with runoffs only rarely needed. Abd wants more runoffs, for which I see two campaign seasons split by the main election. Need to consider runoff methods since there will be more need for multiple candidates in the runoff.
It gets in trouble with multiple candidates and none getting a majority - so do TTR runoffs. TTR gets in trouble if the best candidate did not get enough votes to go to TTR (two others got more, even though not truly better).Yup. In this way, TTR (neglecting the runoff option, which does sometimes fix this) is like IRV.It gets in trouble with clones and almost-clones. This problem gets reduced a bit, though not cured, by parties doing primary elections.Which then makes the general election a "runoff" between the nominees of two major parties. The problem arises when there is a third party that preferentially draws off votes from one party; this is typically a more extreme party, so it will suck votes from the closer party. There is another effect if a centrist minor party arises (or a major party becomes minor or close to minor because of a major extremist party). This leads to the "center squeeze" effect, which is similar to but different from vote-splitting with a major and minor party.
Many of us WANT third parties to have some success (when they earn such) - and must think of this when designing election methods.
My words about clones relate to Plurality - just one of the reasons for retiring Plurality
Anyway, the aim was to do the major campaigning before the "main" election. Abd would do more runoffs, leaning toward doing the major campaigning then. I choke because I still see need for campaigning before the main election to get the "right" leaders to the runoff.Well, no, I would not do "more runoffs," not in places that already have runoffs. I'd do fewer runoffs, by using a method more likely to detect when a runoff is not necessary in order to gain majority approval of a result. Bucklin. IRV as a method of reducing the need for repeated process (which is the only way that Robert's Rules recommends it) basically doesn't work in real elections, it avoids very few runoffs. Bucklin would probably eliminate more than half of them. Real Bucklin elections did, in fact, find majorities, even "multiple majorities," at least initially, I suspect that this effect would fade and majority failure would become more common, and that it would settle down at about half.
IRV? Hopefully disposed of elsewhere. Condorcet - its simplicity gets mentioned below.Bucklin - while ranked much like Condorcet, its complexity gets described below.
How many runoffs? Please sort out what we write. Majority? This needs more thought for other than Plurality.
Again, Condorcet is not IRV, nor is it Bucklin - though some ballots could have the same ranking with the same intent, while others could differ in intent and detail due to the differences in how they get counted.At some point, possibly with cooperating researchers looking up local election records, we should have a thorough study of the rise, use, and fall of Bucklin voting in the U.S. At one point it was, according to the sources, in use in about 90 jurisdictions. What the hell happened? This is far, far more penetration than IRV has gotten, ever, in the U.S.I would go to Condorcet: Forget primaries - Condorcet can tolerate clones and voters should be able to learn related voting. I would do less runoffs - voters can more completely express their desires.The big problem is going to be truncation. You can take the IRV ballots where there is data and analyze them to find Condorcet winners, you will find some, but frequently with no majority voting for them. Robert's Rules explains the value of repeated ballot, and it is about far more than simple amalgamation.
Truncation? Perhaps Abd sees some in IRV that would not be appropriate in Condorcet.
Dave Ketchum
Bucklin? I see its way of handling ranking as not worth voters havingto learn and use those rules. Note that Condorcet only asks for ordering of ranks per voter desires.Eh? Bucklin uses a ranked ballot. Same as RCV. Sure, it interprets the votes differently than RCV (IRV?) but it is very simple to understand. Bucklin was very, very popular, which makes its disappearance quite mysterious. It worked. Now, yes, with time, voters will "realize" that if they add a second preference vote, they can cause this candidate to win, it's possible that they will contribute by to their candidate losing. But, in reality, if the election comes down to their favorite vs someone else, adding a vote for someone else only ends up abstaining in that pairwise race. They don't actually *cause their favorite to lose*. They merely allow the rest of the voters to make that choice, in that case. This is normal human compromise process. We say, "okay, if the rest of you feel that way, I'll accept it."If you wouldn't accept it, don't add the extra vote! This gets very clear if runoffs are required when there is majority failure, but that was never tried. Yes. With runoffs in the case of majority failure, more voters will bullet vote. If they don't mind runoffs! If they want to avoid a runoff, then they will look to see if there is a compromise candidate possible, and cast a vote, which can be in second or third rank. (Note that a full ranked ballot can be used for Bucklin, the method is sequential approval, going down the ranks, seeking a majority. It really is Approval voting with a tweak that fixes the Majority Criterion failure of Approval. If voters set the optimal approval cutoff, the majority failure isn't an actual failure, but there's the rub: there is no way for voters to know where to set their approval cutoff optimally; with Bucklin, there are natural forces that will do it.To my mind, ordinary Bucklin strategy is very, very simple. First of all, my favorite goes in first rank, period, I don't need to worry about that. I can also add, if I want, any other candidate who is so closely approved by me to my favorite that I don't really care which is elected, I'll be quite happy with both. Original Bucklin did not allow equal ranking in first and second rank. But Duluth Bucklin did allow it in third rank. I'd allow it in all ranks, because voters should be *allowed* to equal rank, it shouldn't be prohibited, and it can be a more accurate expression of preference than required ranking distinguishing the candidates.First rank is all I really need to consider deeply. If I have no preference among the rest of the candidates, I'm done, unless it happens that I do prefer seeing one of them elected over the regret of later recognizing that I didn't cast my vote in a way that would have improved the outcome.That's the standard for ranking lower than first rank, to me: first of all, have I ranked a frontrunner? If not, I'm probably wasting my vote. So I want to be sure to rank at least one frontrunner. It is the same as Approval strategy and Range strategy, and, in fact, my operating hypothesis is that a Bucklin ballot is a Range 4 ballot, with ratings of 4, 3, 2, and 0. 2 represents approval cutoff, bare minimum approval. If it is in a runoff environment, i.e., if a runoff is held if a majority is not found, then a rank/rating of 2 means "I prefer electing this candidate to a runoff being held." That is very simple. We can expect that many or most voters will, in fact, not have such a preference, and that's why majority failure will take place.Where to rank? Well, if there is only one alternative to my favorite that I'm willing to rank, I'd suggest ranking in third rank, if it is three-rank Bucklin. Minimum Approval. That gives my vote maximum power, under the assumption that multiple majorities are unlikely (which it will be in stable usage). I'd only use the middle rank (rating of 3) if I wanted to approve more than two candidates, and I had a preference between them worth expressing.If I'm correct about optimal strategy, A Bucklin-ER ballot is a Range ballot. Which points to a possible improvement, adding a rating of 1, which means "I don't approve of this candidate, but this candidate is better than the worst, I'm willing to express that." What would this be used for? Probably to make better runoff choices. Probably not to determine a winner in the primary, but it might cause, sometimes, a winner *not* to be chosen. How? Well, what if there is a Condorcet winner, but Bucklin is about to declare someone else the winner? That's a situation calling for a runoff. What if there is a Range winner, based on the full counting of the votes at fractional values, i.e., 1.00, 0.75, 0.50, 0.25, 0, who is likewise different from the straight Bucklin winner? If Bucklin is used in the runoff, in fact, it can accomodate three or more candidates, i.e., in the extreme, the first-round Bucklin winner, a Condorcet winner, a Range winner, and a write-in. That's four candidates, which can be fully ranked with a three-rank Bucklin ballot. And this would be very rare, because the norm, by far, would be that all three of the named candidates would be the same candidate.Bucklin-ER voting involves categorizing candidates into as many as four categories: Favorite, Good, Barely Acceptable, Disapproved. A fifth category can be added: Disapproved, but better than the worst.That is not a difficult task, particularly if voters realize that approving someone they have no knowledge of is probably a bad idea. But if a voter really wants to vote "Anybody but Adolf," they can do it with Bucklin, it's very simple: Vote the favorite in first rank, vote for someone considered acceptable, and then vote for everyone else in third rank, but Adolf. If a majority is required, though, simply not voting for a candidate exercises maximum power against the election of that candidate, so one would only cast a ballot like this in the runoff round.There is no more new content below the next quoted material, but since Dave thought it interesting, I'll leave it in. Yes, Asset is *very* interesting, it would radically reform the system while allowing, if that's what was wanted, the use of vote-for-one ballots. It would truly empower voters, far more than a system which tries to extract from them a complex set of largely uninformed preferences, an effort that is doomed to failure and that probably would not make particularly good choices even if it succeeds. I can be fooled by media appearances. Hey, what's Obama really like? I like his media image, very much. Is it real or is it fake? How would I know? Tell you what, in an Asset election for President, even though I like Obama, I'll vote for an elector who can actually meet Obama, see him face-to-face at the meeting of the Electoral College. Sure, I'll vote for an elector who thinks more or less like me, or whom I otherwise trust, so I'm effectively voting for Obama, but with a difference. My elector can change his or her mind.Electoral College? Isn't that what we have already? Yup! And this is a bit more like it was conceived to be, but the Constitutional Convention punted and left the method of election of the College to the state legislatures, and the process was then co-opted by the political party system which did not exist, particularly, when the Constitution was put together. Asset Voting is much closer to that system than any later method. All candidates in Asset become Electors who can then determine the winner. It is so simple that it is amazing to me that I only know of one actual asset election. Possibly the reason is that with repeated ballot, where democracy is really practiced, someone who gets a lot of votes in the first round may decide to endorse another candidate in the second, exercising influence, which ends up having a similar effect. Asset collapses that to one ballot, and, if Asset were used for single-winner elections, I'd certainly require a majority. No majority, I'd require a real runoff. The voters screwed up in the first ballot and didn't vote for people who would properly compromise, and that will be quite visible in what happened, since the Electors vote publically. The voters can then fix this!Asset can be used to avoid runoff elections with any primary method, though. All voting systems are likely to produce initial majority failure, because the information needed to compromise can depend on the outcome of the first ballot. Asset with IRV would be powerful (and that was the original design by Dodgson). Asset with Bucklin would likewise work quite well (the Asset provisions would be used if there was no majority winner, and I'd have the votes revert back to first rank only, if equal rating, the vote is split.) Asset is thus a general principle, not so much a specific voting method. It is a device for finding a "virtual majority," possibly avoiding a runoff.Below Abd talks of Asset - interesting.However, Dodgson realized, and published in 1883 or so, a very simple fact: most ordinary voters, working people, busy people with families, etc., would often not know much more than a single favorite candidate. With STV, which he was working on, these voters are effectively disenfranchised, to a degree, unless they can identify candidates by party or use voting guides or the like, which then gives special power to political parties and leads away from electing independent representatives who might be closer to the people. So he invented Asset Voting, with an idea that is so simple that when I first heard about Single Transferable Vote, I thought it would be this: an exhausted ballot (or excess votes) would become "the property" of the candidate receiving them. (I presume that if the ballot wasn't a bullet vote, that it would go to the candidate in first position, since that candidate would clearly best represent the voter.) To my knowledge, only one Asset election has ever been held, the election of the steering committee for the Election Science Foundation. It was, to me, quite interesting, and confirmed, more than I expected, that Asset is a powerful techique for obtaining full representation. There were 17 voters electing a three-member committee, and the election settled in about a week. The rules weren't well nailed down, but the power of Asset was such that this didn't matter. In the end, there was unanimity on the result, i.e., all agreed it was fair (except for one person whose objections were a little unclear, at least to me, and it has to be said that he did vote for someone who did produce the result.)We should produce a standard set of rules for Asset election for on- line use, as through a mailing list with some provision for voting.The election was secret ballot; this is possible with Asset and is perhaps more difficult with delegable proxy. DP, of course, can be used to create an Asset Assembly with any desired number of representatives, the principles are similar. Asset is generally designed to create a peer assembly, where every member has the same voting power. I don't recommend DP for actual election, but for negotiation of election, if you can see the difference.... Asset, though, could be used immediately and raises no particular security issues beyond what are already issues with secret ballot.
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