Re: [EM] compulsory voting
--- Stephane Rouillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am against compulsory voting and compulsory full ranking. I am for compulsory voting, and against compulsory full ranking. > Not going to vote is the only way left to voters that want to say > all candidates are bad, No, you can write to a newspaper, tell your friends, harrass the financial backers of the no-good candidates. > except when a None option is provided I also support the "None" entry among the candidates. I see compulsory voting as a method for eliminating any bias in tendancy to vote among the voters. An example of a problem bias is this: Rich people in rich areas have nicer cars, nicer roads and nicer voting places making it easier for them to vote. Compulsory voting is a blunt solution, but it is a solution. By compulsory voting, I mean there is compulsion to attend a polling booth and stand in line like everyone else. How you complete your vote, or not, is a private matter. Anthony Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Movies: Check out the Latest Trailers, Premiere Photos and full Actor Database. http://au.movies.yahoo.com election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] full rankings, voter desire for
At 11:54 PM 10/15/2005, Chris Benham wrote: >Abd, >You wrote: > >>Note that if the method allows equal ranking, adding clones does >>not require additional ranks. >How on earth do you work that out? "Require" for what purpose? If a method does not allow equal ranking, and if full ranking is desired, adding clones adds additional ranks without improving the expected outcome for the voter. I was using "clone" to mean an additional candidate who matches an existing candidate in rank, such that the voter is equally happy (or unhappy) with the outcome if either of them wins. If full ranking is not provided and overvoting is not allowed, clones consume ranking space with no immprovement for the voter. This is a very strong argument for allowing overvoting, it improves ballot efficiency. (Most Condorcet proposals seem to allow overvoting, i.e., ranking candidates identically, equivalent to Approval voting). It's not important if full ranking is provided, but providing full ranking, if the candidate set becomes large is impractical. I've seen it argued here that elections are rare that have *many* candidates on the ballot, but the fact that it can happen means that public election methods must be able to deal with the situation. Practically speaking, there appears to be substantial resistance to election reforms that require *many* ranks. It is one of the obstacles to implementing IRV; so San Francisco only implemented a few ranks. I don't know if they allowed overvoting, but the failed IRV initiative in Washington specifically prohibited it (as I recall, the ballot was considered truncated at the overvoted rank.) >You seem to be assuming that it doesn't matter which member of a set >of clones wins, Yes, for anyone who considers them clones. > which is odd >because it is perfectly possible that the two rival front-runners >are members of the same set of clones. This is different usage of clones, unless I misunderstand: clones in this meaning are those candidates such that every voter ranks them the same relative to every other candidate. So if every voter ranks A>B>D and A>C>D, and there are no other candidates, then A and B are clones. This does not negate voters having preferences within the set B,C. But this is not what I meant by clone. election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Warren: MDDA vs RV, 10/16/05
Mike, You wrote: >There's only one way to count RV or Approval >ballots: Add them up. > In the case of RV ballots, there is also Average Rating and Median Rating and also rankings can be inferred and used. And there are probably other ways. On the RV list, someone mentioned the idea of "discarding outliers" as in Olympic scoring. Chris Benham > > election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] compulsory voting
Another way to address this: It is more labor (though some note more defense against counters changing votes) to make all the rotten lemons share the bottom rank. Can even randomly rank the lemons in separate ranks at the bottom - but this implies preference of some of them over the others. DWK Stephane Rouillon wrote: > I am against compulsory voting and compulsory full ranking. > > Not going to vote is the only way left to voters that want to say > all candidates are bad, except when a None option is provided > (which should always be the case so we could know the > level of approbation from the electorate in regard to the result). > > Truncation is an appropriate response that allows as much as candidates > that want to run without making voters lose their time in useless > comparisons > in their eye. It allows to maximize both the representation, by giving > more > choices, and voter social utility because a certain fraction (it depends > of > every case) find sometime more useful to spend time on someting else > than filling a ballot and some other voters don't. Everyone (lazy > voter, > compelled voter, losing from the start candidate and potential winner) > is free to maximize its personal goal within the respect of the freedom > of others. > > If antenna time during the election was provided proportional to > official surveys > and the election system would be an immune to cloning method (PR for > multiple winners), > we could finally reach a real democratic process... > > Steph -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Warren: MDDA vs RV, 10/16/05
Warren-- You wrote: See, Ossipoff has indicated he felt Range voting was best for the public, but privately he preferred MDDA. (I do not know if that is still his stance.) I reply: I believe that it's a sure thing that RV is the best public proposal. Approval would be a good one too, but it triggers the fallacious 1-person-1-vote objection. Maybe Approval could be presented in such a way as not to trigger that objection. Maybe introduce Approval as a point system, or as Set Voting, where each person has one vote for one set of candidates over another, by indicating his/her favorite set. But, even without the 1p1v misunderstanding, Approval is new. RV is well-known and popular, because we've all been asked to rate things up to 10. I suggest that 0 to 10 RV would be the best RV proposal for that reason, because of balloting difficulty for 0 to 100, and because 0 to 100 might seem like more work, or too elaborate. Still, if the 1p1v problem misunderstanding can be avoided, Approval has the advantage of being nothing other than Plurality done right. The most minimal change from Plurality. The change consists onliy of two new words on the ballot: Where it says "Vote for 1", it could say instead "Vote for 1 or more". So, though my best guess is that RV is the most winnable public proposal, there's a case for Approval too, maybe. And RV would probably give somewhat better results than Approval would, in our current public elections. So, RV or Approval would be the best methods to propose. Compred to Condorcet, MDDA is briefly-defined. But it's one of innumerable ways to count rank ballots, and that gives it a big acceptance disadvantage against RV or Approval. There's only one way to count RV or Approval ballots: Add them up. What about results, disregarding winnability? I don't know. Yes, maybe MDDA would give better results, due to more ways of voting, as compared to Approval or RV. Yes that's quite possible. I certainly wouldn't say that it's necessary to have MDDA instead of RV or Approval. Far from it. But MDDA might well give results that are somewhat better. As I said, I don't know. Maybe ranking can improve on RV and Approval. It's a question that should be looked at, and I'm going to discuss it more in a subsequent posting. I discuss the subject by asking the question and discussing it. Yes, each rank method has its own elaborate strategy considerations, and to find out if ranking can improve on Approval and RV, MDDA's strategy must be discussed. Mike Ossipoff _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/ election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Trying to define "Later-no-harm for viable candidates criterion" (Re: full rankings, voter desire for)
Rob, I'm responding just quickly: --- Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 22:47 +0200, Kevin Venzke wrote: > > I don't know of a way to weaken LNHarm which would still result in a > > guarantee > > that voters could "take to the bank." > > My hope would be that we can come up with a system where voters could > feel comfortable ranking all but one of the viable candidates. So, if > we end up in a situation like we were at one point in 1992, where > Clinton, Bush and Perot were all viable candidates, voters could feel > comfortable ranking two out of three of them, without worrying at all > about helping anyone defeat their first choice. For such a system, we > could then recommend that voters do not rank anyone below their least > favorite viable candidate (which would be a very minimal amount of > strategy to impose). > > So, the partial definition of Later-no-harm for viable candidates > criterion" (LNHarmVC) could be: > "Adding a /viable/ preference to a ballot must not decrease the > probability of election of any candidate ranked above the new > preference." > > The trick, of course, is to define "viable" in mathematical terms in > such a way that matches the popular view of viability. > > A simple, but probably incorrect, definition would be "any candidate who > is ranked on a majority of ballots". I would hope we could come up with > a less stringent definition, because that would potentially mean that a > candidate in a close, polarized three way race might not be "viable" by > the definition. An alternative definition might be "any candidate who > could win without violating Plurality". The problem I see with the latter is that it doesn't seem to get us much. The main phenomenon with LNHarm failures is that you list an additional candidate, and this causes this candidate to win instead of someone you liked better. Usually this isn't a *weak* candidate. Weak candidates can win under MMPO mainly because MMPO doesn't measure how *good* such candidates do, only how bad they're hit by other candidates. If MMPO measured weak candidates' performance against other candidates, we'd clearly have to fail LNHarm, because by listing this weak candidate as a lower preference, we would inherently be elevating him (i.e. not just above the unranked candidates). As far as the majority requirement... This seems to create a large class of situations in which the voters debate whether listing the new preference will cause that candidate to have a majority, in which case LNHarm isn't guaranteed to them. Actually, the Plurality requirement has the same issue: 48 A 25 B (>C) 27 C>B C is barred by Plurality, but the B voters can change this. I assume B must win when B voters don't give C the second preference. (Electing A or C seems very undesirable for most purposes.) In that case, it's not possible to give the B voters a LNHarm assurance, since the C voters would have the same claim to it. What do you think of this scenario? Kevin Venzke ___ Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger Téléchargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Trying to define "Later-no-harm for viable candidates criterion" (Re: full rankings, voter desire for)
On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 22:47 +0200, Kevin Venzke wrote: > I don't know of a way to weaken LNHarm which would still result in a guarantee > that voters could "take to the bank." My hope would be that we can come up with a system where voters could feel comfortable ranking all but one of the viable candidates. So, if we end up in a situation like we were at one point in 1992, where Clinton, Bush and Perot were all viable candidates, voters could feel comfortable ranking two out of three of them, without worrying at all about helping anyone defeat their first choice. For such a system, we could then recommend that voters do not rank anyone below their least favorite viable candidate (which would be a very minimal amount of strategy to impose). So, the partial definition of Later-no-harm for viable candidates criterion" (LNHarmVC) could be: "Adding a /viable/ preference to a ballot must not decrease the probability of election of any candidate ranked above the new preference." The trick, of course, is to define "viable" in mathematical terms in such a way that matches the popular view of viability. A simple, but probably incorrect, definition would be "any candidate who is ranked on a majority of ballots". I would hope we could come up with a less stringent definition, because that would potentially mean that a candidate in a close, polarized three way race might not be "viable" by the definition. An alternative definition might be "any candidate who could win without violating Plurality". I think working with the MMPO example you posted a while back may help to arrive at an answer: n A m A=C m B=C n B When n>2 and m=1, then C wins decisively, no matter how large n gets. The horrifying thing about this particular example is that it seems quite feasible for a fringe write-in candidate to win under this example. It's a gross Plurality violation, which is clearly unacceptable. More to my point above, a write-in candidate would very rarely be considered "viable", so violating LNHarm for this candidate is not a big concern. However, there's probably a threshold for m which that result doesn't look so bad. Clearly, when m>n, it's hard to argue that anyone but C should be the winner. Is there a lower value for m relative to n where the result is still defensible? Is there anything mathematically interesting about that threshold, that might lead us to a good definition of "viable"? Rob election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] full rankings, voter desire for
Rob, --- Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > > As Mike said, MMPO satisfies all three of these (and Sincere Favorite). > > But it fails SDSC (and minimal defense) and Plurality. > [...] > > Failing Plurality is > > probably not acceptable in a public election, since it makes the winner > > very hard to justify (i.e. you'd have to explain what positive incentives > > the method offers, to balance the counter-intuitive winner). > > No argument here. I'm assuming, though, that Plurality isn't mutually > exclusive of any of the other three (SFC, LNH, and FBC). Right. Schulze(wv) satisfies Plurality and SFC. IRV satisfies Plurality and LNHarm. Approval (and most of the FBC methods) satisfies Plurality and FBC. > As a thought exercise for purposes of this conversation, and not really > as a serious proposal, I'd like to propose "Plurality-patched MMPO". > The procedure would be as follows: > > 1. Eliminate all candidates whose selection would violate the Plurality > criterion > 2. Determine the MMPO winner from the remaining candidates. > > I'm going to play around with this myself, and try to understand its > properties and differences to plain MMPO. If something immediately > obvious that's bad about this strikes you, let me know. Well, it just breaks Later-no-harm. Here's the obvious example: 48 A 26 B 26 C>B MMPO returns a BC tie (another questionable thing about MMPO). Plurality- filtered MMPO elects B. But when the B votes are changed to B>C, we are back to a BC tie, so that LNHarm is violated. I view LNHarm a lot like FBC: Failing just a little bit isn't much better than failing by a mile, since the main point is to assure voters that certain kinds of incentives don't exist. > A simpler variant of this would be "Majority ranked MMPO": > 1. Eliminate all candidates who aren't ranked on a majority of ballots > 2. Determine the MMPO winner from the remaining candidates. > > I imagine that this filter causes a LNHarm failure, but I think it also > points to a slightly weaker variant of LNHarm that may be more useful > than pure LNHarm. This is very similar to MAMPO, which is on Electowiki. The definition is: 1. If fewer than one candidate is ranked on a majority of ballots, that candidate ranked on the most ballots is elected. 2. Disqualify all candidates who are not ranked by a majority. 3. Elect the remaining candidate whose MMPO score (with opposition counted from *all* candidates) is lowest. This satisfies FBC, SDSC, SFC, and Plurality. But in my opinion, it doesn't come very close to satisfying LNHarm. The methods that come closest to satisfying LNHarm while still satisfying SFC and SDSC are the CDTT+LNHarm combination methods: CDTT,MMPO, CDTT,FPP, CDTT,IRV, CDTT,DSC. These methods still fail Plurality pretty badly, but not as badly as MMPO, I don't think. They don't fail LNHarm very often. (For LNHarm failures, you need four candidates and a three-candidate majority-strength cycle.) At least in CDTT,MMPO, FBC failures should be very rare (MMPO itself satisfies FBC, and CDTT creates FBC failures basically as rarely as LNHarm failures). I don't know of a way to weaken LNHarm which would still result in a guarantee that voters could "take to the bank." Kevin Venzke ___ Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger Téléchargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] full rankings, voter desire for
Hi Kevin, Thanks for the reply. I'll have to think about some elements of your mail, but there are pieces I want to respond to right away. On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 05:55 +0200, Kevin Venzke wrote: > --- Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > > Here's a related set of questions I've been meaning to ask: > > > > 1. Are the Later No Harm (LNH) criterion and the Sincere Favorite > > Criterion (SFC) mutually incompatible? > > It seems I've caused some confusion. "Sincere Favorite" is my votes-only > attempt at FBC. I don't know of any method which satisfies one of FBC and > Sincere Favorite, but not the other, so there's not much need to discuss > these criteria separately. > > "SFC" stands for "Strategy-Free Criterion" as Mike said. Oops, that was a thinko on my part when I was spelling out the abbreviation. I meant "Strategy-Free Criterion". > > 3. Are LNH, SFC and FBC mutually incompatible? > > > > If the answer to #3 is "no", I'm very interested in figuring out a > > system that satisfies those three. > > As Mike said, MMPO satisfies all three of these (and Sincere Favorite). > But it fails SDSC (and minimal defense) and Plurality. [...] > Failing Plurality is > probably not acceptable in a public election, since it makes the winner > very hard to justify (i.e. you'd have to explain what positive incentives > the method offers, to balance the counter-intuitive winner). No argument here. I'm assuming, though, that Plurality isn't mutually exclusive of any of the other three (SFC, LNH, and FBC). > I don't believe SDSC and LNHarm to be compatible. > When SDSC is failed, this means that the method can elect the wrong one of > two frontrunners who have no overlapping support. I'll have to think about this some more. As a thought exercise for purposes of this conversation, and not really as a serious proposal, I'd like to propose "Plurality-patched MMPO". The procedure would be as follows: 1. Eliminate all candidates whose selection would violate the Plurality criterion 2. Determine the MMPO winner from the remaining candidates. I'm going to play around with this myself, and try to understand its properties and differences to plain MMPO. If something immediately obvious that's bad about this strikes you, let me know. A simpler variant of this would be "Majority ranked MMPO": 1. Eliminate all candidates who aren't ranked on a majority of ballots 2. Determine the MMPO winner from the remaining candidates. I imagine that this filter causes a LNHarm failure, but I think it also points to a slightly weaker variant of LNHarm that may be more useful than pure LNHarm. Rob election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
