Thanks for the pointers to books on voting systems; I'll look into them. BTW, you are correct that PV means "plurality voting," not "preferential voting." Personally, I call it "tribal voting" because it tends to segregate people into tribes (liberals versus conservatives, etc.), with each tribe pushing their headman forward, and the election essentially becoming a census to determine which tribe has the largest population. In some places, such as African nations, the tribes are actually ethnic groups in the traditional sense of the term "tribe."
The voting paradoxes that you mentioned seem to arise mostly in the more complicated systems where the voters rank their preferences; I don't think that this is a concern in AV (approval voting). The more important criticism of AV is that it tends to elect bland and uninspiring candidates --- those whose best accomplishment is having avoided offending anybody. I can see this becoming a problem. In our last election using PV we elected Barrack Obama. He would have likely been elected using AV too. His campaign was based entirely on vague meaningless words such as "hope" and "change." None of that means anything! I didn't bother to buy his book because it wasn't worth the money, but I did read the chapter on the Constitution when I was in the bookstore. All he really said was that he had read the document. Who hasn't? Why is he more qualified to be President than I am? In regard to the Second Amendment, he said that it was a contentious issue. Well, we can all agree on that. Does this mean that he is going to crack down on gun ownership or focus on prosecuting crimes that have victims? He didn't say. He is a complete unknown. With AV our elections could devolve into a circus of the bland, in which every candidate strives only to avoid saying anything that could possibly cause any voter to disapprove of him. On the subject of our new leader, here is an interesting article: http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama's_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf I was going to upload the voting simulation program (votsim) this weekend, but it will likely be next weekend when I do. It is going to be pretty simple. It won't take into account what Brams refers to as "strategic voting," but will only consider "sincere voting." For example, imagine an election where the early results show that the Republican is a certain winner. Republicans who haven't voted yet may decide to vote for Ralph Nader rather than the Republican candidate. The idea is that the Republican is going to win anyway and doesn't need the vote. Voting for Ralph Nader encourages him to keep running. Perhaps the next election will be closer and Nader's presence will steal votes from the Democrat and tip the scales to the Republican. This kind of strategic voting can't really be incorporated into simulation software. As for a test of fairness, I am just going to compare the results to the Condorcet winner to see if they are the same. > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 12:17:26 -0500 > From: Justin DeVries <sheaf...@gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [Factor-talk] voting-system simulation > To: factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net > Message-ID: <74513ba5-3b63-4706-a81b-18d26f33a...@gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes > > I don't know about voting simulations, but for the mathematics of > voting I can recommend a few good books. > > "Geometry of Voting" and "Basic Geometry of Voting" by Donald Saari > cover the basic theory (the books are similar, but both cover some > different things; one is aimed at a graduate-level audience, but I > can't remember which. Neither uses very heavy math, but they are > definitely math books). > > "Voting Paradoxes and How to Deal with Them" by Hannu Nurmi talks > about various fairness criteria, how they fail, and what that means > for voting. > > This may be getting off-topic, but you'll find that approval voting > isn't a panacea. Since it contains plurality and anti-plurality voting > as a subset it is still subject to many of the problems of both > systems. One in particular is the "reversal paradox" where a candidate > is elected even though a majority of the voters disapprove of that > candidate. > > I'd find it interesting to have various vote counting systems > implemented in Factor. Perhaps one could do some sort of automated > test of fairness criteria. > > Cheers, > Justin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Register Now for Creativity and Technology (CaT), June 3rd, NYC. CaT is a gathering of tech-side developers & brand creativity professionals. Meet the minds behind Google Creative Lab, Visual Complexity, Processing, & iPhoneDevCamp as they present alongside digital heavyweights like Barbarian Group, R/GA, & Big Spaceship. http://p.sf.net/sfu/creativitycat-com _______________________________________________ Factor-talk mailing list Factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/factor-talk
