Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue

[robert bristow-johnson]

On Aug 4, 2011, at 3:20 AM, bob wrote:


--- In rangevot...@yahoogroups.com, "thenewthirdparty" 
 wrote:


Guys and Gals,
I now see Range Voting as a very important component to getting 
third parties elected.  But I don't see how the Range Voting group 
will ever change the minds of the public in order for it to be a 
reality.


and they haven't changed my mind about it, even though i'm not opposed 
to election policy reform nor of moving past FPP.  i fully recognize why 
the simple vote-for-one ballot (either FPP or delayed-top-two-runoff) 
disadvantages third-party and independent candidates.


this was a point i brought up during in Burlington IRV debate:  one of 
the vocal opponents to IRV was, 3 years previously, a minor candidate 
for mayor in Burlington Vermont.  i would almost say a non-serious 
candidate, but he got on the ballot (his name is Loyal Ploof).  now he 
lost to the Prog candidate who was elected in 2006 and he was a sorta 
anti-establishment rabble rouser (if he could get a rabble).


now (i told them this), suppose i'm standing in the rabble and Loyal 
says something that we all sorta know but the contending candidates 
aren't gonna bring up and i hear it and i say "yeah, right!  Loyal's 
right!"  maybe even he's a largely single-issue candidate, maybe not.  
but i want to send a message to city hall by voting for Loyal but the 
election between the real contenders might be close and my two-party 
contingency candidate may need my vote.  so Loyal doesn't get it, 
because even if i agree with him and *want* to vote for him, i dare not.


it's the typical Spoiler problem, that discourages voting for 
third-party or independent candidates.  if they can never sufficient 
vote (because the race between credible candidates may be close) third 
parties cannot get off the ground and become contenders.  but i was 
surprized that this guy who would directly benefit from a ranked ballot 
would be opposed to it.  (he didn't like the Prog mayor and essentially 
jumped in the boat with the other Prog-haters that believed, falsely, 
that IRV specifically favored the Progs in Burlington.)


that said, and to repeat that i also understand IRV to have *failed* in 
Burlington in 2009, i am not at all impressed with Range or Score voting 
for governmental elections (for certain Olympic sports, sure, but not 
for governmental elections).  one of the complaints we have against both 
FPP and IRV (as we found out in Burlington in 2009) is placing obvious 
burdens of tactical voting on the electorate.  we don't *like* having to 
forsake our favorite candidate in order to accomplish some other 
political imperative.  FPP discourages the Nader voters from voting for 
their favorite candidate in 2000 by punishing them when it became clear 
that their vote cause Bush to be elected.  and IRV discourages the GOP 
Prog-haters in Burlington from voting for their favorite candidate in 
2009 when they discover that marking their favorite as #1 on the ballot 
actually caused the Prog to win.


now, it's not the ranked ballot that failed these voters, it was the 
Hare-STV method of tabulating the vote. Condorcet would have taken the 
same ballot data and elected the candidate that was preferred by the 
electorate over any other specific candidate.  The GOP who lost the most 
in the election would neither have gotten punished for their sincere 
1st-choice vote (if IRV had survived, in 2012 these guys would be saying 
to themselves in the polls: "I gotta choose between Liberal and 
More-Liberal, because if I vote for the guy I really like, More-Liberal 
gets elected"), they would have been more satisfied with the Condorcet 
winner than with the IRV winner, who was their least favorite.  And the 
Progs would have been more satisfied with the Condorcet winner than with 
the apparent FPP winner (the GOP), but they would be unhappy with the 
result due to rivalry the Progs and Dems have for the common liberal 
voter in this town.


Ranked-choice voting requires less strategizing by the voter than Range 
because it requires less information.  with a ranked ballot, all the 
voter needs to decide is who, in every contingency that matters to the 
voter, who he or she would vote for.  they don't need to decide how much 
*more* they like Mother Teresa over Ghandi.  If they really want to bury 
a third candidate, Stalin, they have to sacrifice their preference 
between the two virtuous and the election might be decided between 
them.  Or maybe the election will turn out to be a battle between Stalin 
and Satan and they might rather live under Stalin than Satan, so they 
want to bump him up a little (leave Satan with a score of 0).  but what 
if Satan wins because not enough voters scored Stalin up enough?  or 
what if either Teresa or Ghandi lose to Stalin because too many voters 
scored Stalin too high (for fear of electing Satan)?


what to do?  what to do?

but a ranked ballot is easy:

  Teresa > Ghandi > Stalin > Satan

Re: [EM] [RangeVoting] Re: Range Voting As an Issue

[Dave Ketchum]

Here I talk of moving up from FPP to Range or Condorcet.  I do not get  
into other single-winner elections or into multi-winner elections -  
while such deserve considering, they distract from my primary goal,  
which is to promote moving upward without getting buried in details.


Voters should see advantages in moving up to a better method.

To vote for one, as in FPP:
. In Range, assign your choice a maximum rating.
. In Condorcet, simply rank your choice.

Voting for two is using more power than FPP offers.  Often there is a  
major pair of candidates for which you prefer one, and one other that  
you also want to vote for:  For your second choice you could give the  
same rank or rating, or lower:
. In Range you assign first choice maximum rating.  Unrated share  
minimum.  The farther you rate second below max, the stronger your  
vote for max over second.  BUT, the nearer you rate second to unrated,  
the weaker you rate second over unrated.

. In Condorcet, rank your first choice higher than your second.

Voting for more is doable:
. In Range your difference in rating between any two is how much  
you prefer the higher over the lower, and the sum of these differences  
decides which wins their race.

. In Condorcet they count how many rank A>B vs how many rank B>A.

Politicians may hesitate in moving up to more powerful methods.  Range  
or Condorcet can cost more, but getting a truer reading as to voter  
choices can be worth the pain.


Dave Ketchum

On Aug 4, 2011, at 3:20 AM, bob wrote:


--- In rangevot...@yahoogroups.com, "thenewthirdparty"  
 wrote:


Guys and Gals,
I now see Range Voting as a very important component to getting  
third parties elected.  But I don't see how the Range Voting group  
will ever change the minds of the public in order for it to be a  
reality.  Does someone have thoughts on how to get your Range  
Voting plan voted into action?  I would like to hear how Range  
Voting moves beyond more than just a good idea.




I think we need to start a PAC or even maybe a party that has the  
sole objective of getting rid of plurality voting.  We need to be  
able to communicate that competitive elections in which there is no  
vote splitting is the most important thing we can do to hold  
politicians accountable.  We also need to be willing to vote for  
candidates who support getting rid of plurality regardless of what  
other positions that candidate holds. We need to communicate that  
once we get over this hump, we will no longer have to worry about  
having to vote for the lesser of two evils ever again.


Another thing we can do is email and tweet news hosts like Rachael  
Maddow and ask them to do a segment on different voting systems.  If  
we organize to tweet pundits at the same time, maybe they'll get the  
message.





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Re: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/8/4 

> I want to thank Jameson for taking the ball and running with it on SODA.  I
> really appreciate his talented
> and energetic work on elaborating, explaining, and selling the method.
>

Thank you.

More stuff I've added to the SODA page recently:

-I tried to unify the terminology. Voters can "delegate" their votes;
Candidates receive "delegated votes" (not ballots), which they then "use" (I
had been using "assign", "exercise", or "share") by "approving" other
candidates, who in turn "receive" these "shared votes".

I'd be open to suggestions to improve any of those terms, though I think
consistency is more important than perfection.

-I revamped the section on Advantages, and added a section on Electoral
College compatibility. The latter contains proposed rules for using with the
EC, for which I'm open to refinements or suggestions.

Here are the sections as they stand:

Advantages

SODA has advantages for many groups. In fact, most of the advantages would
fit in more than one of the categories below, so the division is somewhat
arbitrary. Also, on the talk page (click "discussion" above) there are also
two "hard sell" SODA pitches for two different audiences, which restate
these advantages in more-opinionated terms.
 
[edit
]For voters

   1. SODA is extremely easy for the voters; in fact, *no voting system is
   simpler to vote*. (Plurality, by restricting you to only one vote, also
   makes it possible to mistakenly "overvote", spoiling your ballot. There is
   no such way to accidentally invalidate your ballot under SODA. Also, both
   Plurality and Approval require a conscientious voter to consider strategy
   and polling status; SODA allows a simple bullet vote to still be
   strategically as strong as possible, regardless of the candidate standings.)
   2. Under SODA, there is *no need for dishonesty* from individual voters.
   A voter can safely vote for any candidate that they honestly agree with,
   without fear of that vote being wasted; or safely vote an honest
   approval-style ballot, if they do not agree with any candidate's preference
   order. This is drastically different from plurality, where voters must
   dishonestly spurn "spoiler" candidates as a matter of course.
   3. SODA *does not require you to trust any politician*. Any vote
   delegation is both safe (you can see where your delegated vote will go) and
   entirely optional. Any voter who dislikes the idea of their vote being
   delegated in a "smoke-filled room", need not allow that to happen.

[edit
]For society (results)

   1. SODA is far *more likely to arrive at a majority result* than
   Plurality (or even IRV). Winners will thus have a clearer mandate.
   2. SODA may be *more likely to elect the Condorcet winner* (aka pairwise
   champion, the candidate who could beat all others one-on-one) than *any
   other system* (except SODA-DAC ).
   See the technical discussion in the prior section for the assumptions that
   would make this true.
   3. However, unexpected, relatively unknown or *unqualified winners will
   be as rare or rarer under SODA* than under Approval or a Condorcet
   system. In a polarized society, Condorcet can have such a strong tendency to
   elect centrists that even unqualified, largely-unknown centrists have an
   advantage over better-known candidates; SODA will not have such a tendency
   unless the stronger candidates consciously choose this as a compromise.

[edit
]For society (process)

   1. Leaders of *minority factions would have an appropriate voice for
   their concerns*, although power would ultimately reside with any majority
   coalition which exists. In fact, you could say that SODA combines the best
   of both worlds - the negotiated, everyone-gets-a-voice coalitions of
   parliamentary government, with the decisive, buck-stops-here clear winner of
   a US-style system.
   2. SODA would *reduce negative campaigns*. A negative attack against
   opponent A would often just shift votes to another opponent B who would end
   up sharing them back with A in the delegation round. Meanwhile, the
   candidate carrying out the attacks could also suffer with voters.
   3. Like many other voting reforms, SODA would *reduce the influence of
   money* in political campaigns. Plurality, with its overriding need to be
   a frontrunner, exaggerates the importance of money. SODA in particular, by
   encouraging meaningful campaigns and get-out-the-vote operations by minor
   candidates, while still ensuring that the extra turnout those generated
   would have an effective impact in deciding between the major candidates,
   would help substitute

[EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion

[fsimmons]

I want to thank Jameson for taking the ball and running with it on SODA.  I 
really appreciate his talented 
and energetic work on elaborating, explaining, and selling the method.

It's exciting to me to see the possibilities.

Here's more evidence of monotonicity:

With a three candidate cycle

x A>B>C
y B>C>A
z C>A>B

if x>y>z, then A plays first, but B wins the election.

If the B faction increases at the expense of the x faction so that  y>x>z, then 
B goes first, and still wins! 
(because ACB is opposite the cyclic order of the beat cycle)

The other nice thing about SODA and strong first play order is that it makes 
the game of chicken go 
away.



> Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 08:01:30 -0500
> From: Jameson Quinn 
> To: EM 
> Subject: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion
> Message-ID:
> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Here's the new text on the SODA
> page> Delegated_Approval#Criteria_Compliance>relatingto the Condorcet 
> criterion:
> It fails the Condorcet
> criterion,
> although the majority Condorcet winner over the ranking-
> augmented ballots is
> the unique strong, subgame-perfect equilibrium winner. That is 
> to say that,
> the method would in fact pass the *majority* Condorcet winner 
> criterion,assuming the following:
> 
> - *Candidates are honest* in their pre-election rankings. 
> This could be
> because they are innately unwilling to be dishonest, because 
> they are unable
> to calculate a useful dishonest strategy, or, most likely, 
> because they fear
> dishonesty would lose them delegated votes. That is, voters 
> who disagreed
> with the dishonest rankings might vote approval-style instead 
> of delegating,
> and voters who perceived the rankings as dishonest might 
> thereby value the
> candidate less.
> - *Candidates are rationally strategic* in assigning their 
> delegated vote. Since the assignments are sequential, game 
> theory states that there is
> always a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, which is always 
> unique except in
> some cases of tied preferences.
> - *Voters* are able to use the system to *express all relevant
> preferences*. That is to say, all voters fall into one of two 
> groups: those who agree with their favored candidate's 
> declared preference order and
> thus can fully express that by delegating their vote; or 
> those who disagree
> with their favored candidate's preferences, but are aware of 
> who the
> Condorcet winner is, and are able to use the approval-style 
> ballot to
> express their preference between the CW and all second-place 
> candidates. "Second place" means the Smith set if the 
> Condorcet winner were removed from
> the election; thus, for this assumption to hold, each voter 
> must prefer the
> CW to all members of this second-place Smith set or vice 
> versa. That's
> obviously always true if there is a single second-place CW.
> 
> The three assumptions above would probably not strictly hold 
> true in a
> real-life election, but they usually would be close enough to 
> ensure that
> the system does elect the CW.
> 
> SODA does even better than this if there are only 3 candidates, 
> or if the
> Condorcet winner goes first in the delegation assignment order, 
> or if there
> are 4 candidates and the CW goes second. In any of those 
> circumstances,under the assumptions above, it passes the 
> *Condorcet* criterion, not just
> the majority Condorcet criterion. The important difference 
> between the
> Condorcet criterion (beats all others pairwise) and the majority 
> Condorcetcriterion (beats all others pairwise by a strict 
> majority) is that the
> former is clone-proof while the latter is not. Thus, with few 
> enough strong
> candidates, SODA also passes the independence of clones
> criterion
> .
> 
> Note that, although the circumstances where SODA passes the Condorcet
> criterion are hemmed in by assumptions, when it does pass, it 
> does so in a
> perfectly strategy-proof sense. That is *not* true of any actual 
> Condorcetsystem (that is, any system which universally passes 
> the Condorcet
> criterion). Therefore, for rationally-strategic voters who 
> believe that the
> above assumptions are likely to hold, *SODA may in fact pass the 
> Condorcetcriterion more often than a Condorcet system*.
> -- next part --
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: > electorama.com/attachments/20110804/d8f85fc2/attachment-0001.htm>
> 

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Re: [EM] Amalgamation details, hijacking, and free-riding

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/8/4 

>
>
> - Original Message -
> From: Jameson Quinn
> Date: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 4:10 pm
> Subject: Re: Amalgamation details, hijacking, and free-riding
> To: fsimm...@pcc.edu
> Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
>
> > 2011/8/3
> >
> > > So if the true preferences are
> > >
> > > 20 A>B
> > > 45 C>?
> > > 35 (something else),
> > >
> > > the C supporters could spare 21 voters to vote A>C so that the
> > amalgamated> factions would become
> > >
> > > 41 A>C
> > > 24 C>?
> > > 35 (something else) .
> > >
> > > I can see where it is possible for such a move to payoff, but
> > it seems
> > > fairly innocuos compared to other
> > > strategy problems like burial, compromising, chicken, etc.
> > >
> >
> > Not to me. I would be livid to find out my vote had been
> > hijacked. All the
> > other strategies you mention at least use a voter's own vote.
> >
>
> "Highjacking" sounds bad, but it is just one form of "over-riding" votes.
>  At least it doesn't over-ride your
> first place preference like the compromising incentive twists your arm to
> do.  Every method eventually
> over-rides various preferences at some point in the process.  Compromising
> is a form of extortion that
> blackmails you into expressing a false preference. That's the most
> egregious form.
>
> In other words, compromising forces you to either lie or lose.  If somebody
> else highjacks, they lie to
> take advantage of you, but with much more risk than the liar who buries to
> take advantage of the CW
> supporters.
>
> For this kind of highjacking to work, the highjacking faction would have to
> have more than three times the
> support of  the highjacked faction, as can be seen from the above example
> (which lacking that much
> support in the hijacking faction gives an obvious first place advantage to
> A).  That kind of superiority is
> more than enough to over-ride pairwise wins in ranked pairs, river,
> beatpath, etc.
>

This is only true if you define the "hijacking faction" in terms of the
ultimate beneficiary, the winner. But a minor faction could hijack another
minor faction to shift the frontrunner.

I agree, it's unlikely. But the very possibility, to me, rankles more than
the average strategy. In fact, I suspect it would open the process to legal
challenges.

Anyway, I don't see why it's necessary. All it gains you is summability;
which is nice, but in the age of fast data pipelines it is not a necessity.

JQ

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Re: [EM] Amalgamation details, hijacking, and free-riding

[fsimmons]

- Original Message -
From: Jameson Quinn 
Date: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 4:10 pm
Subject: Re: Amalgamation details, hijacking, and free-riding
To: fsimm...@pcc.edu
Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com

> 2011/8/3 
> 
> > So if the true preferences are
> >
> > 20 A>B
> > 45 C>?
> > 35 (something else),
> >
> > the C supporters could spare 21 voters to vote A>C so that the 
> amalgamated> factions would become
> >
> > 41 A>C
> > 24 C>?
> > 35 (something else) .
> >
> > I can see where it is possible for such a move to payoff, but 
> it seems
> > fairly innocuos compared to other
> > strategy problems like burial, compromising, chicken, etc.
> >
> 
> Not to me. I would be livid to find out my vote had been 
> hijacked. All the
> other strategies you mention at least use a voter's own vote.
> 

"Highjacking" sounds bad, but it is just one form of "over-riding" votes.  At 
least it doesn't over-ride your 
first place preference like the compromising incentive twists your arm to do.  
Every method eventually 
over-rides various preferences at some point in the process.  Compromising is a 
form of extortion that 
blackmails you into expressing a false preference. That's the most egregious 
form.
 
In other words, compromising forces you to either lie or lose.  If somebody 
else highjacks, they lie to 
take advantage of you, but with much more risk than the liar who buries to take 
advantage of the CW 
supporters.
 
For this kind of highjacking to work, the highjacking faction would have to 
have more than three times the 
support of  the highjacked faction, as can be seen from the above example 
(which lacking that much 
support in the hijacking faction gives an obvious first place advantage to A).  
That kind of superiority is 
more than enough to over-ride pairwise wins in ranked pairs, river, beatpath, 
etc.

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Re: [EM] A DSV method inspired by SODA

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/8/4 

> Of course DSC and DAC are the same when rankings are complete.  I was only
> going to use it to determine the first player, and with amalgamated factions
> (almost surely) the rankings would be complete.
>

Yes, understood. I on the other hand was speaking of using this within SODA
itself, not within your SODA-inspired method. In SODA, tied candidate
preferences are legal.

I'd call the resulting method SODA-DAC. Plain SODA still uses the order
based on current approval total, for simplicity. The results are equivalent
for up to 3 candidates, and generally speaking as long as the CW makes a
strong initial showing (goes first, or goes second of 4, or )


>
> Of course there are many variations of this DSV idea [e.g. we could use
> chiastic approval to pick the first player], but the main contribution of
> SODA is the idea of sequential determination of the approval cutoffs.  That
> eliminates the need for mixed (i.e. probabilistic) strategies.  In other
> words, it makes the DSV method deterministic instead of stochastic.
>

Again, understood.


>   I think a deterministic DSV method is easier to sell than a stochastic
> one, even though personally I would be happy with "strategy A" applied to
> the ballots one by one in some random order.  In other words, the approval
> cutoff on the current ballot is next to the current approval winner on the
> side of the approval runnerup.  If there is no CW, then the winner depends
> on the random order of the ballot processing.  The public might have a hard
> time with that fact.
>

I agree. In particular, even I might have a hard time, if there weren't at
least a deterministic pseudorandom number generator with a pre-declared
seed. Even then, this process would be much more difficult to audit /
recount than a deterministic one. So I agree that the player-order idea for
making things deterministic is helpful.

JQ

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Re: [EM] A DSV method inspired by SODA

[fsimmons]

Of course DSC and DAC are the same when rankings are complete.  I was only 
going to use it to determine the first player, and with amalgamated factions 
(almost surely) the rankings would be complete.

Of course there are many variations of this DSV idea [e.g. we could use 
chiastic approval to pick the first player], but the main contribution of SODA 
is the idea of sequential determination of the approval cutoffs.  That 
eliminates the need for mixed (i.e. probabilistic) strategies.  In other words, 
it makes the DSV method deterministic instead of stochastic.  I think a 
deterministic DSV method is easier to sell than a stochastic one, even though 
personally I would be happy with "strategy A" applied to the ballots one by one 
in some random order.  In other words, the approval cutoff on the current 
ballot is next to the current approval winner on the side of the approval 
runnerup.  If there is no CW, then the winner depends on the random order of 
the ballot processing.  The public might have a hard time with that fact.

- Original Message -
From: Jameson Quinn 
Date: Thursday, August 4, 2011 7:41 am
Subject: Re: [EM] A DSV method inspired by SODA
To: fsimm...@pcc.edu
Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com

> I suspect that SODA would be Condorcet compliant (over ballots) 
> if the first
> player was, not the DSC winner, but the DAC winner (re-ordering 
> between each
> delegated assignment).
> 
> I'll see if I can work up a proof on this.
> 
> JQ
> 
> 2011/7/30 
> 
> > One of the features of SODA is a step where the candidates 
> decide what
> > their approval cutoffs will be.on
> > behalf of themselves and the voters for whom they are acting 
> as proxies.
> > One of the many novel features
> > is that instead of making these decisions simultaneously, the 
> candidates> make them sequentially with
> > full knowledge of the decisions of the candidates preceding 
> them in the
> > sequence.
> >
> > I wonder if anybody has ever tried a DSV (designated strategy 
> voting)> method based on these ideas.
> >
> > Here's one way it could go:
> >
> > Voters submit range ballots.
> >
> > Factions are amalgamated via weighted averages, so that each 
> candidate ends
> > up with one faction that
> > counts according to its total weight. For large electorates, 
> these faction
> > scores will almost surely yield
> > complete rankings of the candidates.
> >
> > From this point on, only these rankings will be used. The 
> ratings were
> > only needed for the purpose of
> > amalgamating the factions. If we had started with rankings, 
> we could have
> > converted them to ratings via
> > the method of my recent post under the subject "Borda Done 
> Right." In
> > either case, once we have the
> > rankings from the amalgamated factions we proceed as follows:
> >
> > Based on these rankings the DSC (descending solid coalitions) 
> winner D is
> > found. The D faction ranking
> > determines the sequential order of play. When it is candidate 
> X's turn in
> > the order of play, X's approval
> > cutoff decision is made automatically as follows:
> >
> > For each of the possible cutoffs, the winner is determined 
> recursively (by
> > running through the rest of the
> > DSV tentatively). The cutoff that yields the best (i.e. 
> highest ranked)
> > candidate according to X's faction's
> > ranking, is the cutoff that is applied to X's faction.
> >
> > After all of the cutoffs have been applied, the approval 
> winner (based on
> > those cutoffs) is elected.
> >
> > It would be too good to be true if this method turned out to 
> be monotone.
> > For that to be true moving up
> > one position in the sequence of play could not hurt the 
> winner. Although I
> > think that this is probably
> > usually true, I don't think that it is always true. Anybody 
> know any
> > different?
> > 
> > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em 
> for list info
> >
> 

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Re: [EM] Record activity on the EM list?

[Juho Laatu]

On 4.8.2011, at 14.21, James Gilmour wrote:

> There is only one real issue in elections: representation of the voters.
> 
> If in a single winner partisan election the voters vote 51% for A and 49% for 
> B, we have a major problem in representation.

Ok, 49% of the voters without representation.

If one uses single-member districts to elect multiple representatives, then 
this means also some randomness in the results. This is not really a problem of 
single-winner methods themselves but a problem in how they are used (as 
multi-winner methods).

> 
> But if the voters vote in the same way (51% to 49%) in a two-member election, 
> any sensible voting system will give one seat to A and
> one seat to B.
> 
> Compared to that difference in providing "representation of the voters", all 
> the other differences between single-winner and
> multi-winner elections are trivial.

>From this point of view single-winner methods are more "problematic" than 
>multi-winner methods (at least when used to elect multiple representatives 
>from single-member districts). This problem of single-winenr methods is quite 
>impossible to fix (most single-winner methods respect the will of the 
>majority).

The 51% vs. 49% problem is present also in accurately proportional 
representative bodies since also those bodies may make majority decisions. One 
way to alleviate this kind of narrow majority related problems is to seek 
compromise decisions. That is what in principle happens e.g. in coalition 
governments. Coalition governments may represent well over 50% of the voters. 
Let's assume that this is the case. The program of the government may contain 
multiple topics that would be 51% vs. 49% questions in the representative body 
or among the voters, but probably all coalition members will get more than they 
lose. Let's assume that the coalition is heterogeneous so that it does not 
agree on all the 51% vs. 49% decisions that is has to make. Maybe there are two 
51% vs. 49% topics that go the right way against every one such topic that goes 
wrong. In that way we don't have a narrow majority that always makes 51% 
decisions but a supermajority that has considerably higher support behind
  everything it does (although all parties of the coalition do not like all the 
decisions).

In two-party systems the balance is based more on two alternating policies. 
Often both parties have quite centrist policies since both try to meet the 
needs of the median voters. In some topics they may however have also clearly 
opposite positions. I guess the overall policy and results of two-party system 
governments are typically more 51% majority driven than in multi-party 
governments. (Coalition governments may however also have only narrow majority 
and the coalitions may be quite fixed, e.g. left vs. right, and as a result 
their decisions may follow the 51% majority style.)

My point is just that in addition to multi-winner methods and proper PR one may 
need "the art of compromise decisions" to get rid of the strongest 51% vs. 49% 
. This discussion went already quite far from the technical properties of the 
single-winner methods, but maybe this kind of compromise making related 
problems can be considered to be one key problem that the different methods and 
their use in societies should try to address (if the case that one wants to 
replace "the dictatorship of narrow majority" with "horse trading deals of 
larger majorities").

Juho




> 
> James
> 
>> -Original Message-
>> From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com 
>> [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On 
>> Behalf Of Juho Laatu
>> Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 7:07 AM
>> To: EM list
>> Subject: Re: [EM] Record activity on the EM list?
>> 
>> 
>> Yes, there are areas where single-winner methods are more 
>> challenging. For example multi-winner STV works better than 
>> single-winner STV, and it is easier to collect sincere 
>> ratings in multi-winner methods than in single-winner 
>> methods. On the other hand the field of study may be wider in 
>> multi-winenr methods (a bit like N is more complicated than 
>> 1). In multi-winner methods we may have some additional 
>> aspects to study and solve like proportionality, geographical 
>> proportionality and the computational complexity related 
>> problems tend to cause problems. Individual problems may thus 
>> be more numerous in multi-winner methods although some 
>> individual problems may be more challenging in single-winner methods.
>> 
>> Juho
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 3.8.2011, at 19.35, James Gilmour wrote:
>> 
>>> Juho Laatu  > Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 6:04 AM
 Multi-winner methods are, if possible, even more complicated
 than single-winner methods. 
>>> 
>>> I disagree.  It is much easier to obtain a "satisfactory" 
>>> (representative, acceptable) outcome for a multi-winner 
>> election than 
>>> it is to obtain a "satisfactory" (representative, 
>> acceptable) outcome 
>>> 

Re: [EM] A DSV method inspired by SODA

[Jameson Quinn]

I suspect that SODA would be Condorcet compliant (over ballots) if the first
player was, not the DSC winner, but the DAC winner (re-ordering between each
delegated assignment).

I'll see if I can work up a proof on this.

JQ

2011/7/30 

> One of the features of SODA is a step where the candidates decide what
> their approval cutoffs will be.on
> behalf of themselves and the voters for whom they are acting as proxies.
>  One of the many novel features
> is that instead of making these decisions simultaneously, the candidates
> make them sequentially with
> full knowledge of the decisions of the candidates preceding them in the
> sequence.
>
> I wonder if anybody has ever tried a DSV (designated strategy voting)
> method based on these ideas.
>
> Here's one way it could go:
>
> Voters submit range ballots.
>
> Factions are amalgamated via weighted averages, so that each candidate ends
> up with one faction that
> counts according to its total weight. For large electorates, these faction
> scores will almost surely yield
> complete rankings of the candidates.
>
> From this point on, only these rankings will be used.  The ratings were
> only needed for the purpose of
> amalgamating the factions.  If we had started with rankings, we could have
> converted them to ratings via
> the method of my recent post under the subject "Borda Done Right."  In
> either case, once we have the
> rankings from the amalgamated factions we proceed as follows:
>
> Based on these rankings the DSC (descending solid coalitions) winner D is
> found.  The D faction ranking
> determines the sequential order of play.  When it is candidate X's turn in
> the order of play, X's approval
> cutoff decision is made automatically as follows:
>
> For each of the possible cutoffs, the winner is determined recursively (by
> running through the rest of the
> DSV tentatively).  The cutoff that yields the best (i.e. highest ranked)
> candidate according to X's faction's
> ranking, is the cutoff that is applied to X's faction.
>
> After all of the cutoffs have been applied, the approval winner (based on
> those cutoffs) is elected.
>
> It would be too good to be true if this method turned out to be monotone.
>  For that to be true moving up
> one position in the sequence of play could not hurt the winner.  Although I
> think that this is probably
> usually true, I don't think that it is always true.  Anybody know any
> different?
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

[EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion

[Jameson Quinn]

Here's the new text on the SODA
pagerelating
to the Condorcet criterion:

It fails the Condorcet
criterion,
although the majority Condorcet winner over the ranking-augmented ballots is
the unique strong, subgame-perfect equilibrium winner. That is to say that,
the method would in fact pass the *majority* Condorcet winner criterion,
assuming the following:

   - *Candidates are honest* in their pre-election rankings. This could be
   because they are innately unwilling to be dishonest, because they are unable
   to calculate a useful dishonest strategy, or, most likely, because they fear
   dishonesty would lose them delegated votes. That is, voters who disagreed
   with the dishonest rankings might vote approval-style instead of delegating,
   and voters who perceived the rankings as dishonest might thereby value the
   candidate less.
   - *Candidates are rationally strategic* in assigning their delegated
   vote. Since the assignments are sequential, game theory states that there is
   always a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, which is always unique except in
   some cases of tied preferences.
   - *Voters* are able to use the system to *express all relevant
   preferences*. That is to say, all voters fall into one of two groups:
   those who agree with their favored candidate's declared preference order and
   thus can fully express that by delegating their vote; or those who disagree
   with their favored candidate's preferences, but are aware of who the
   Condorcet winner is, and are able to use the approval-style ballot to
   express their preference between the CW and all second-place candidates.
   "Second place" means the Smith set if the Condorcet winner were removed from
   the election; thus, for this assumption to hold, each voter must prefer the
   CW to all members of this second-place Smith set or vice versa. That's
   obviously always true if there is a single second-place CW.

The three assumptions above would probably not strictly hold true in a
real-life election, but they usually would be close enough to ensure that
the system does elect the CW.

SODA does even better than this if there are only 3 candidates, or if the
Condorcet winner goes first in the delegation assignment order, or if there
are 4 candidates and the CW goes second. In any of those circumstances,
under the assumptions above, it passes the *Condorcet* criterion, not just
the majority Condorcet criterion. The important difference between the
Condorcet criterion (beats all others pairwise) and the majority Condorcet
criterion (beats all others pairwise by a strict majority) is that the
former is clone-proof while the latter is not. Thus, with few enough strong
candidates, SODA also passes the independence of clones
criterion
.

Note that, although the circumstances where SODA passes the Condorcet
criterion are hemmed in by assumptions, when it does pass, it does so in a
perfectly strategy-proof sense. That is *not* true of any actual Condorcet
system (that is, any system which universally passes the Condorcet
criterion). Therefore, for rationally-strategic voters who believe that the
above assumptions are likely to hold, *SODA may in fact pass the Condorcet
criterion more often than a Condorcet system*.

Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

Re: [EM] Record activity on the EM list?

[James Gilmour]

There is only one real issue in elections: representation of the voters.

If in a single winner partisan election the voters vote 51% for A and 49% for 
B, we have a major problem in representation.

But if the voters vote in the same way (51% to 49%) in a two-member election, 
any sensible voting system will give one seat to A and
one seat to B.

Compared to that difference in providing "representation of the voters", all 
the other differences between single-winner and
multi-winner elections are trivial.

James

> -Original Message-
> From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com 
> [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On 
> Behalf Of Juho Laatu
> Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 7:07 AM
> To: EM list
> Subject: Re: [EM] Record activity on the EM list?
> 
> 
> Yes, there are areas where single-winner methods are more 
> challenging. For example multi-winner STV works better than 
> single-winner STV, and it is easier to collect sincere 
> ratings in multi-winner methods than in single-winner 
> methods. On the other hand the field of study may be wider in 
> multi-winenr methods (a bit like N is more complicated than 
> 1). In multi-winner methods we may have some additional 
> aspects to study and solve like proportionality, geographical 
> proportionality and the computational complexity related 
> problems tend to cause problems. Individual problems may thus 
> be more numerous in multi-winner methods although some 
> individual problems may be more challenging in single-winner methods.
> 
> Juho
> 
> 
> 
> On 3.8.2011, at 19.35, James Gilmour wrote:
> 
> > Juho Laatu  > Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2011 6:04 AM
> >> Multi-winner methods are, if possible, even more complicated
> >> than single-winner methods. 
> > 
> > I disagree.  It is much easier to obtain a "satisfactory" 
> > (representative, acceptable) outcome for a multi-winner 
> election than 
> > it is to obtain a "satisfactory" (representative, 
> acceptable) outcome 
> > for a single-winner election.  Choosing a method to elect the 
> > candidate who best represents the voters in a single-winner 
> election 
> > is the most difficult challenge in electoral science.  As 
> soon as you 
> > elect two or more candidates together, many of the problems 
> disappear.
> > 
> > James Gilmour
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Election-Methods mailing list - see 
> http://electorama.com/em for list 
> > info
> 
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em 
> for list info
> 


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