[EM] Issues with the Majority Criterion
What is the meaning of the +? =should have been +1 =I did not hit the 1 key hard enough I would say it is that if X is ranked/rated strictly first by more than half of the voters, then X should win. =What would co-first candidates imply? If the method doesn't satisfy FBC, how can this be regarding as a good thing, isn't it just making a massive compromising incentive? It is not regarded as a good thing to fail FBC. =I have to make the antecedents of my pronouns more clear... I meant that FBC failure seems to seriously hurt the majority criterion because it is plausible for a compromise candidate to gain a majority from insincere candidates. I am asking, absent FBC, how valuable is majority compliance? I don't understand why you say massive. Methods vary widely with respect to how much compromise incentive they provide. =FBC compliant methods have less compromising incentive than non-FBC compliant ones, in general. I called it massive because I perceived it to be noticeably different from FBC compliant ones. FBC compliant methos such as Range may suffer from compression to some extent, but Offensive Order Reversal will not occur. = I regard it as massive because of the Offensive Order Reveral thing. Does a method count as majoritarian if a majority can impose its will, but doesn't necessarily have to? I don't think the term majoritarian has an agreed-upon meaning. The way I define the term, it is not directly related to the majority criterion. =Hmm... good point. To some extent I was probing the meaning of the term majoritarian that I have heard in previous discussions. I guess what I meant is, how valuable is allowing a majority to force its will if it so chooses as opposed to always having it get its way? But the term majoritarian would be almost meaningless if it meant that a majority always has some method to make their first preference win. =The only methods that would violate it would be silly ones like Antiplurality and Borda. I agree. But if, in reality, the distinction isn't all that meaningful, is it really worth mentioning as a flaw of a particular system. Also, how do you define membership in a majority. It depends on the criterion. For the majority criterion simply, membership in the majority is determined by you strictly supporting the same first preference. Let's pretend Alice votes Candidate X = 100 Candidate Y = 60 With respect to the majority criterion, does she belong in Camp X, or 100% in Camp X and 60% in Camp Y? I don't know any definition of the criterion that doesn't refer to first preferences. Even your definition refers to first preferences. =Exactly. Is it best to regard 60% as 60% of a 'first preference' or as not a 'first preference' at all? Rankedisms don't translate perfectly to Range Voting. Gregory Nisbet Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Worst Voting Method
I don't see antiplurality as much worse than FPP. Antiplurality (vote against one, candidate with fewest votes wins) meets Majority Loser and Strong Favourite Betrayal. Very bad is the Supplementary Vote used to elect some mayors in the UK. It is like the Contingent Vote (one trip to the polls TTR) except voters are only allowed to rank 2 candidates. Borda Voting is also very bad. It fails Majority Favourite and Rich Party (meaning that it fails Clone-Loser in a way that advantages factions who field more candidates). Chris Benham Greg Nisbet wrote: What is the worst voting method of all time? I suggest methods already made up I suggest antiplurality, if that doesn't count, then... hmmm... North Carolina's weird version of IRV. http://www.fairvote.org/irv/?page=21articlemode=showspecificshowarticle=2229 40% to win? 40%?! WHY? Make the switch to the world#39;s best email. Get Yahoo!7 Mail! http://au.yahoo.com/y7mail Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Range versus Condorcet
--- En date de?: Mer 15.10.08, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] a ?crit?: On the topic of whether there is a method that satisfies both Condorcet and FBC. There is not. I believe I have demonstrated this in the past, by modifying a Woodall proof that shows Condorcet to be incompatible with LNHarm. http://osdir.com/ml/politics.election-methods/2002-11/msg00020.html claims that any majority method will violate FBC. Note the term *strong* FBC. When FBC is mentioned usually only the weak form is discussed because the strong form is almost impossible to satisfy. =what is strong FBC, no incentive to make equal either? Which methods do satisfy strong FBC? I saw this article about a variant of ER-Bucklin that appear to satisfy it, but I couldn't follow it. Think of it this way, any majority method without equal rankings will always encourage betrayal so that a compromise candidate will get the majoirty thereby sparing you potenial loss. Yes. Anything with equal rankings cannot be a majority method b/c simultaneous majorities will form and only one will win, hence allowing a candidate with a majority to in fact lose. This is avoided by defining the majority criterion to refer to strict first preferences. =There are three possible ways to handle indecisive voters like this. 1) Ignore them entirely for the purposes of majority 2) Give 1/n to each n candidates that share the first position 3) Do not have them count for any particular candidate, but still count them in the sense that the total against which majority is tested is incremented. Example 3: AC 2: BC 16: A=BC Under definition 1 A has a majority 3/5 Under definition 2 A has a majoirty 3 + 8 = 11/21 Under definition 3 A does not have a majority 3/21 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Dear Greg, I will focus on the question of majoritarianism in this message. First my working definition of majoritarian method: A method is majoritarian if for every option X and every group G consisting of more than half of the voters, there is a way of voting for G which makes sure X wins regardless of how the voters outside G vote. In other words: Any majority can overrule the rest if that majority votes in a certain way. Now for the discussion. I said: That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less than 100% of the people (the demos in greek). Often, about 60% of the people can consistently impose their will on the other 40% without the latter being given any means at all by the majoritarian method to influence the decision. Of course, this is a problem of most popular election methods, but that does not mean the problem cannot be solved. Democratic decisions are possible but not with majoritarian methods. To which you replied: Interesting point. I would argue that a compromise candidate is better than a polarizing but barely passing candidate (like FPTP with primaries tends to produce). I'd say this isn't a voting-issues question, but a civil rights question. A nice constitution will help protect you from tyranny of the majority. While of course civil rights are very important to make sure that no-one's basic *rights* are violated, they cannot make sure that everybody's *preferences* are have a fair chance of influencing decisions that are made *within* the limits the civil rights pose. Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority decision making is intrinsically undemocratic. I wonder how they do so. It's as simple as that: When any group of people, be it a single person (dictatorship) or a small group (oligarchy) or a large group (majoritarianism) can overrule the rest, that's not democratic since democracy in its main sense requires that *all* people must have a means to influence decisions. If democracy is restricted by a constitution which cannot be changed by a simple majority decision then yesterday's majority is being given more weight than today's; We may later discuss shifting majorities, but please let us first continue discussing a single decision since that is complicated enough. You continue to ask: ... if not the majority, then who decides? Simple answer, contained in the definition of democracy: It's not a subgroup of the voters which decides but its *all* voters who decide. I guess your real question is not who decides but how they do it. If you delegate the responsibility to some group (even yourself) to judge what is best for society, then you are imposing your will on people. Right. That would be much worse. But essentially majoritarianism *does* delegate the decision to some group (the majority that finally overrules the rest). The only difference is that it does not prescribe who belongs to this group. Rather, any willing majority can establish itself as this deciding group. But this is not much better because some group overrules the rest anyway. The whole point of democracy is that *no* group can overrule the rest, neither a predefined group nor a group that establishes itself as a majority. Arguments both for and against majoritarianism both tend to boil down to rights. Do you have the right to non-interference from the majority? Does the majority have the right to non-interference from you? Please don't shift the focus. The question is not whether some group can intefere but whether some group can overrule. So, the right everyone should have is the right not to be overruled by a majority without my preferences having any chance to influence the result. Probably you still think, how on earth could this be achieved? But it is very easy to see that real democratic decisions are possible. Just imagine everyone marks their favourite option and then a ballot is drawn at random to decide the winner. Of course I don't suggest to use this method called Random Ballot. It is only to illustrate that the requirement of democracy can be met. The real task now is to find methods which are not only democratic but also satisfy other criteria (like anonymity, neutrality, monotonicity, clone-proofness etc.) and are efficient in electing good compromise options. This is achieved by the methods D2MAC and FAWRB for example - you make look them up in the archives. Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Issues with the Majority Criterion
Greg, I am not sure if it is you email tool, but your posts don't seem to be threading correctly for me. On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would say it is that if X is ranked/rated strictly first by more than half of the voters, then X should win. =What would co-first candidates imply? I would suggest a modification: if X is ranked first by more than half of the voters and the winner is not also ranked first by more than half of the voters, X must win. This would in theory allow a candidate with 51% approval to beat a candidate with 99% approval. In instant top-2 runoff, that might get a little complex :). If I voter approved: A,B Ranked: CAB(rest) Who is first ? Ofc, the above vote is unlikely to be an optimal vote. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fixing Range Voting
On Oct 15, 2008, at 1:59 PM, Peter Barath wrote: I'm not sure I would vote honestly in such circumstance. Let my honest rangings be: 100 percent for my favourite but almost chanceless Robin Hood 20 percent for the frontrunner Cinderella 0 percent for the other frontrunner Ugly Duckling I think I would vote: 100 Robin Hood; 99 Cinderella; 0 Ugly Duckling If I'm really sure that the race decides between Cinderella and Ugly Duckling, why care too much for poor Robin Hood? And what, if I'm not really sure, because that's the situation which multi-candidate voting is really about? If I lower Cinderella's 99 to her honest 20, I make Robin Hood a little bit more hopeful not to drop first. But more hopeful against whom? Cinderella, of course, because I didn't change Robin and Ugly's obvious rangings. So I made more probable a situation in which more than 50 percent is the probability that the worst candidate wins. This is a doubtful advantage. On the other side, there is the effect that by rising Cinderella's points from the honest 20 to 99 I made more probable the similarly unlikely but positively desirable effect of Ugly dropping first instead of her. So, which does have more weigh? The doubtful little hope for Robin Hood, or the clear little hope against Ugly Duckling? I think the latter. Maybe at some point, let's say Cinderella's 5 percent, I like Robin so much more that I chose the first one. In that case I probably would vote 100-1-0 These voting are not the honest although by one percent honer than the simple Approval voting. But I would be open for persuasion. If you vote (100,20,0), (100,99,0) or (100,1,0), if your 100 hero loses in the first round, your vote in the second round is (x,100,0). So, what are the various consequences in the first round vote, in case it makes a difference there? I think the normalization comes into why you want to vote differently. (100,20,0) = (98.1,19.6,0) (100,99,0) = (71.1,70.4,0) (100,1,0) = (99.995,0.5,0) I think the tradeoff is that in a many-candidate race your lower preferences might contribute to runoff-disqualification order. You can put the vast majority of your vote on your favorite, and that's ok and your vote will get transferred to the remaining candidates if you don't get that favorite, but your lower rated choices might still be affecting which choices are disqualified or remaining at that time. The 100,99 vote looks tempting because it normalizes to a lot of absolute value, but that does come at the price of losing some weight on your favorite and making your 2nd choice a bunch more likely to win. I think it's this tradeoff that will squeeze people towards voting honest ratings. I could see honest voting want any of these three votes. Wanting A or B vastly more than C, wanting A vastly more than B or C, or some more gradual falloff. Does IRNR not do the right thing for those three voters? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Multiwinner Voting Methods Request
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 5:02 AM, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: PBV Proportional Borda Voting (n!) I see no reason why it wouldn't work. PCV Proportional Condorcet Voting (n!) same comment as PBV How do they work? Also, do they meet the Droop proportionality criteron (or proportional under solid coalition (k+1) criteron)? Btw, IMO, CPO-STV and Schulze STV are proportional condorcet methods. IIRC, both collapse to condorcet in the single winner case. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fixing Range Voting
2008/10/16 Brian Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Oct 15, 2008, at 1:59 PM, Peter Barath wrote:
I'm not sure I would vote honestly in such circumstance.
Let my honest rangings be:
100 percent for my favourite but almost chanceless Robin Hood
20 percent for the frontrunner Cinderella
0 percent for the other frontrunner Ugly Duckling
I think I would vote: 100 Robin Hood; 99 Cinderella; 0 Ugly Duckling
If I'm really sure that the race decides between Cinderella and
Ugly Duckling, why care too much for poor Robin Hood?
And what, if I'm not really sure, because that's the situation which
multi-candidate voting is really about?
If I lower Cinderella's 99 to her honest 20, I make Robin Hood a
little bit more hopeful not to drop first. But more hopeful against
whom? Cinderella, of course, because I didn't change Robin and Ugly's
obvious rangings. So I made more probable a situation in which more
than 50 percent is the probability that the worst candidate wins.
This is a doubtful advantage.
On the other side, there is the effect that by rising Cinderella's
points from the honest 20 to 99 I made more probable the similarly
unlikely but positively desirable effect of Ugly dropping first
instead of her.
So, which does have more weigh? The doubtful little hope for
Robin Hood, or the clear little hope against Ugly Duckling?
I think the latter. Maybe at some point, let's say Cinderella's
5 percent, I like Robin so much more that I chose the first one.
In that case I probably would vote 100-1-0
These voting are not the honest although by one percent honer
than the simple Approval voting.
But I would be open for persuasion.
If you vote (100,20,0), (100,99,0) or (100,1,0), if your 100 hero loses in
the first round, your vote in the second round is (x,100,0). So, what are
the various consequences in the first round vote, in case it makes a
difference there?
I think the normalization comes into why you want to vote differently.
(100,20,0) = (98.1,19.6,0)
(100,99,0) = (71.1,70.4,0)
(100,1,0) = (99.995,0.5,0)
I think the tradeoff is that in a many-candidate race your lower
preferences might contribute to runoff-disqualification order. You can put
the vast majority of your vote on your favorite, and that's ok and your vote
will get transferred to the remaining candidates if you don't get that
favorite, but your lower rated choices might still be affecting which
choices are disqualified or remaining at that time.
The 100,99 vote looks tempting because it normalizes to a lot of absolute
value, but that does come at the price of losing some weight on your
favorite and making your 2nd choice a bunch more likely to win.
I think it's this tradeoff that will squeeze people towards voting honest
ratings.
I could see honest voting want any of these three votes. Wanting A or B
vastly more than C, wanting A vastly more than B or C, or some more gradual
falloff. Does IRNR not do the right thing for those three voters?
A few months ago I thought a Condocret variation of INRN:
1. Calculate the Smith set using range ballots.
2. Eliminate candidates outside the Smith set
3. Rescale the votes. For example, if some vote was: A:100, B: 70, C:30, D:
10, E:0, and Smith = {D, C, D}, the rescaled vote would be: B: 100, C: 33.3,
D: 0
4. Elect the candidate with the highest sum.
Because Smith implies local IIA, this problem would be arguably reduced.
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
--
Diego Renato dos Santos
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Strategic Voting and Simulating It
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:23 AM, Kevin Venzke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Each voter's sincere utilities are determined randomly and independently, which is problematic because it does not produce realistic scenarios. It would be better to combine voters into factions, although it would be no easier to reach consensus regarding what simulation is realistic. I think Warren has some simulations where the voters are spread over 1-2 axes. (He can comment). My understanding is that there are lots of different distributions. Two frontrunner candidates are determined essentially at random, and this information will be used by the strategic voters. This is problematic because usually when a candidate is called a frontrunner this means there is a perception that this candidate is likely to win, before any strategy is used. When the frontrunners are determined randomly, this is not realistic unless you hold a very pessimistic view about how a candidate becomes a frontrunner in real life. In plurality, it is self reinforcing. The top-2 are front runners because they are supported by the party, and thus are likely to win. Party support makes them likely front runners and that then makes them actual front runners. In such a situation, random doesn't seem entirely unrealistic, electing 2 candidates via honest PR-STV might better simulate the primary system. The strategic voters, in any rank ballot method, will simultaneously use favorite betrayal compromise strategy and also burial strategy. There is no calculation, or awareness of the specific election rule. The strategic voters seem schizophrenic in that they are sufficiently paranoid about losing their compromise choice that they will abandon any actually preferred candidate, but at the same time they are sufficiently reckless that they will rank the worse frontrunner dead last even though in methods where this can be an effective strategy, it also creates a major risk that the winner will be a candidate that nobody likes. It is a problem that strategy has to be based on assumptions of the simulator. However, maybe my suggestion in the other thread would help. No other strategies or information sources are simulated. Equality of preference and truncation are not implemented, so that many popular methods cannot even be tested without ignoring their capabilities. Nomination (dis)incentives can't be examined either. True. It might be possible to test nomination strategy directly. For example, the 2nd place candidate might be cloned with a slight offset in utilities and the election ran again. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Dear Raph, you replied to me: That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less than 100% of the people (the demos in greek). They do have an equal vote. The move the median in their direction. First, what does an equal vote help when the other group (the majority) can elect whomever they want regardless of what you do? Nothing. And, the median claim is plain wrong: When you're already on one side of a median, moving further away from it does never change that median. Basic statistics. However, you do get degenerate societies where there is a majority that is a bloc. In Northern Ireland, for example, the Unionists have a majority. This led to discrimination of the Nationalist minority. That's exactly my point. There are lots of such examples which all show clearly that majoritarianism is not democratic. The problem with this majority is that it is solid and unchanging. Ideally, majority should just mean the group of more than 50% on a particular issue. Every person should sometimes be part of the majority and sometimes part of the minority. That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. If a certain group of people are always part of the minority, then this leads to a poorly functioning society. A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Germany has 'eternal' provisions. Some amendment proposals can be blocked by their Constitutional Court. This I think is undemocratic. The eternal provisions relate to fundamental rights, which is their reasoning. The reason why we have such should be obvious from history. It saves us for example from such restrictions of civil rights our American fellows experience since 9/11. Someone wrote: Then let me challenge you right away: I don't understand at all what those numbers a range-ballot asks me for are supposed to mean. They are not explained but instead it is simply assumed naively that each voter will be able to assign meaningful numbers to options. That someone was me. Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 1:42 AM, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was attempting to make a distinction between an active and a passive majority. Any active majority (one unwilling to make any compromises whatsoever, voting every non-them candidate the lowest possible score) will win. A passive majority (clear majority opinion, but makes compromises) will not necessarily win. I argue this isn't a fault because if a majority is passive then they can arguably be considered to support another candidate the percentage that they voted for him. E.g. their partial vote could be used to form a majority per se. Also, they have agreed to give up their power. That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less than 100% of the people (the demos in greek). They do have an equal vote. The move the median in their direction. However, you do get degenerate societies where there is a majority that is a bloc. In Northern Ireland, for example, the Unionists have a majority. This led to discrimination of the Nationalist minority. The problem with this majority is that it is solid and unchanging. Ideally, majority should just mean the group of more than 50% on a particular issue. Every person should sometimes be part of the majority and sometimes part of the minority. If a certain group of people are always part of the minority, then this leads to a poorly functioning society. Decisions are not made on the basis of what is best, but are made on the basis of who the proposer was. Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority decision making is intrinsically undemocratic. If democracy is restricted by a constitution which cannot be changed by a simple majority decision then yesterday's majority is being given more weight than today's; True, constitutions cannot defend themselves and it is paternalistic to not allow them to be changed. Ofc, in a federation, it is a little different. It consists of two levels of demos(es?). Should a majority of the federation be allowed to change the constitution. Perhaps, it would be allowed, but if there is a change, there would be a process for States to withdraw. In Ireland, the constitution can be changed by a majority. Calling the referendum requires a majority in the Dail (PR House). A majority in the Seanad (not proportional) speeds up the process but isn't technically required. Once the referendum is called a simple majority is sufficient for the amendment to pass. Germany has 'eternal' provisions. Some amendment proposals can be blocked by their Constitutional Court. This I think is undemocratic. The eternal provisions relate to fundamental rights, which is their reasoning. --- 'someone' wrote: Then let me challenge you right away: I don't understand at all what those numbers a range-ballot asks me for are supposed to mean. They are not explained but instead it is simply assumed naively that each voter will be able to assign meaningful numbers to options. This is true. I think after the first election people will get the message to approval vote at least the top 2. Let's look to Australia and Ireland for evidence of the impact of IRV, particularly Ireland. You might have seen pictures of campaign posters advocating a certain person for spot #1 and others for #2 or #3. Or one could observe the preference-swapping agreements in Australia. This is a direct consequence of later no harm. The parties THEMSELVES share power with each other. (In spite of this, both countries have two party systems). For the President (IRV), Ireland pretty much has a 1 party system. Labour won once, and FF won all the other times. Though the Dail (PR-STV) doesn't have a two party system. The seat totals are FF: 77 FG: 51 Lab: 20 Green: 6 SF: 4 PD: 2 Ind: 1 Ind: 1 Ind: 1 Ind: 1 Ind: 1 CC: 1 (chairman) The effective number of parties is: 3.06 Assuming that the independents are a single party give 3.05 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_number_of_parties My best guess regarding Condorcet/Range's impact is this: the parties will be campaigning in the same areas more and more, trying to improve their own position in the same demographic. Campaigns will be less negative because you have more than one opponent. Attacking that opponent will help your rivals as well, so it's a waste of your effort. Explicit preference swapping agreements will be rarer under Condorcet and nonexistent under Range, but they will be campaigning in other parties' turf when they think they can improve that group's opinion of them just a little. The same arguement can be applied to PR-STV as transfers are essential. However, you also need to 'lock-down' your personal supporters, so some attacking is necessary. Election-Methods mailing
Re: [EM] Simulation of Duverger's Law
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 6:46 AM, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Why doesn't France's Two Round System lead to the same result? It could be argued that the first round is somewhat random. Also, parties can combine temporarily without formally combining. Pretend you have a ballot consisting of rank ordering and a separate FPTP checkbox, would this similarly avoid two party domination? I assume you mean that you simulate top 2 runoff. The top 2 plurality winners are then 'run-off' using the ranked ballots. This is sometimes called instant top 2 runoff. I think some postal ballots, in some State with top 2 runoff, work that way. One disadvantage is that the campaign between the top 2 never happens. This gives voters the abiltity to make a better decision between the top 2. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:38 PM, Jobst Heitzig [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, you do get degenerate societies where there is a majority that is a bloc. That's exactly my point. There are lots of such examples which all show clearly that majoritarianism is not democratic. The thing is that in such a case, it isn't really a single 'demos'. It is two groups voting as one. That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. You can still have compromises. In fact, it can be helpful if multiple issues are voted as a single unit. This allows negotiation between factions in order to make up the majority. A faction can make compromises on issues that it doesn't care about in order to get things that it does. This requires there is no solid bloc though. For example, assuming there are 3 parties and 2 issues 45) A(+20) B(+10) 10) A(+1), B(-100) 45) A(-20) B(+10) The middle group don't really care about policy A, but will be hurt alot by policy B. Policy A is supported by 55 to 45, so is passed. Policy B is supported by 90 to 10, so is passed The result is 45) +30 10) -99 45) -10 Total: -79 However, if the two policies are considered as one Option 1: Pass A and B 45: +30 10: -99 45: -10 Option 2:Pass B, but not A 45: +10 10: -100 45: +10 Option 3: Pass A, but not B 45: 20 10: +1 45: -20 Option 4: Pass neither 45: 0 10: 0 45: 0 The best case scenario for the the 10 group is option 3. They could say to the top 45 that they will support policy A in exchange for policy B being defeated. If the top 45 refuse, then they can go to the the bottom 45 and say they will vote against policy A in exchange for policy B being defeated. It is in the best interests of both to agree. It isn't entirely stable though. A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Sounds reasonable, the problem is that a) people don't like random methods b) it will result in certain outlier elements in society getting some power. Perhaps a threshold could be set before a candidate can participate. Each voter would be allowed to approve/disapprove the candidates and then also cast their main vote (for the random system). Any candidate below 1/3 approval would be eliminated. Alternatively, it might be a two stage system. The first round would reduce the candidate pool to those who have 1/3 approval. Germany has 'eternal' provisions. Some amendment proposals can be blocked by their Constitutional Court. This I think is undemocratic. The eternal provisions relate to fundamental rights, which is their reasoning. The reason why we have such should be obvious from history. It saves us for example from such restrictions of civil rights our American fellows experience since 9/11. It doesn't have to be easy to change, but it should be changable. For example, it might be required to pass 3 referenda with at least 5 years between any 2 and if any fail, it has to start from the beginning again. This means that it takes 10 years minimum to change. Also, the citizens of the US didn't get to vote on the restrictions of civil rights directly. It was handled by Congress. That someone was me. Sorry, Greg didn't include your name in his post (or I couldn't find it). Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Hi Terry, although FAWRB can be found in the lists archives, I use the opportunity to give the current definition of ... My favourite version of FAWRB (Favourite or Approval Winner Random Ballot) -- 1. Each voter rates each option as either harmful, not agreeable, agreeable, good compromise or favourite, the default being agreeable. Only one option may be marked favourite. 2. Those options which are rated harmful by more than, say, 90% of voters get excluded. (This security provision is only necessary when there is danger of really harmful options which are not already excluded by other mechanisms) 3. That options which is rated agreeable or better on the largest number of ballots is the nominated option. 4. A die is tossed. If it shows a six, 15 ballots are drawn at random, otherwise only 3 ballots. 5. If the nominated option is rated good compromise or better on all those ballots, it wins. Otherwise wins the option rated favourite on the first of the drawn ballots. (Some unimportant details for tie breaking need to be added) Although this seems pretty much randomness, my claim is that in practise, it will actually not be very random since opposing factions will cooperate in electing good compromise options with very high probability. In my 55/45-example of 55% of voters having A 100 C 80 B 0 and 45% of voters having B 100 C 80 A 0, the strategic equilibrium under FAWRB is when the first 55% vote A favourite, C good compromise, B bad and the other 45% vote B favourite, C good compromise, A bad in which case C is the sure winner without any randomness involved. This is because no voter gains anything in rating C lower. If you want to try FAWRB, you can use this demo which even adds a delegable proxy component to it: http://62.75.149.22/groucho_fawrb_dp.php Yours, Jobst Terry Bouricius schrieb: What does FAWRB stand for? Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Jobst Heitzig [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Raph Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:38 AM Subject: Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet) Dear Raph, you replied to me: That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less than 100% of the people (the demos in greek). They do have an equal vote. The move the median in their direction. First, what does an equal vote help when the other group (the majority) can elect whomever they want regardless of what you do? Nothing. And, the median claim is plain wrong: When you're already on one side of a median, moving further away from it does never change that median. Basic statistics. However, you do get degenerate societies where there is a majority that is a bloc. In Northern Ireland, for example, the Unionists have a majority. This led to discrimination of the Nationalist minority. That's exactly my point. There are lots of such examples which all show clearly that majoritarianism is not democratic. The problem with this majority is that it is solid and unchanging. Ideally, majority should just mean the group of more than 50% on a particular issue. Every person should sometimes be part of the majority and sometimes part of the minority. That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. If a certain group of people are always part of the minority, then this leads to a poorly functioning society. A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Germany has 'eternal' provisions. Some amendment proposals can be blocked by their Constitutional Court. This I think is undemocratic. The eternal provisions relate to fundamental rights, which is their reasoning. The reason why we have such should be obvious from history. It saves us for example from such restrictions of civil rights our American fellows experience since 9/11. Someone wrote: Then let me challenge you right away: I don't understand at all what those numbers a range-ballot asks me for are supposed to mean. They are not explained
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Dear Raph, you wrote: The thing is that in such a case, it isn't really a single 'demos'. It is two groups voting as one. Do you mean to say democracy is only for societies which are sufficiently homogeneous? That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. You can still have compromises. Only if the majority for some reason prefers to elect the compromise than their favourite. But in that it seems the favourite was just not the true favourite of the majority but the compromise was. So, still the minority has no influence on the decision but can only hope that the majority is nice enough to decide for the compromise. In fact, it can be helpful if multiple issues are voted as a single unit. This allows negotiation between factions in order to make up the majority. This common behavious is a pretty artificial construct to overcome the discussed drawbacks of majoritarian rules. A faction can make compromises on issues that it doesn't care about in order to get things that it does. This requires there is no solid bloc though. And when both factions care about both issues? A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Sounds reasonable, the problem is that a) people don't like random methods b) it will result in certain outlier elements in society getting some power. a) FAWRB is not a random but a very specific and quite sophisticated method. It only uses a certain amount of chance, just as many things in our life do. Chance should not be mixed up with arbitrariness. Used in a rational way, FAWRB will usually elect good compromise options with near certainty, not leading to significant amounts of randomness. Perhaps a threshold could be set before a candidate can participate. Yes, I agree. The version I just proposed to Terry incorporates such a threshold. Also, the citizens of the US didn't get to vote on the restrictions of civil rights directly. It was handled by Congress. Using majority rule? That someone was me. Sorry, Greg didn't include your name in his post (or I couldn't find it). No need to be sorry. Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Jobst, 2008/10/16 Jobst Heitzig [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dear Raph, you wrote: The thing is that in such a case, it isn't really a single 'demos'. It is two groups voting as one. Do you mean to say democracy is only for societies which are sufficiently homogeneous? That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. You can still have compromises. Only if the majority for some reason prefers to elect the compromise than their favourite. But in that it seems the favourite was just not the true favourite of the majority but the compromise was. So, still the minority has no influence on the decision but can only hope that the majority is nice enough to decide for the compromise. In fact, it can be helpful if multiple issues are voted as a single unit. This allows negotiation between factions in order to make up the majority. This common behavious is a pretty artificial construct to overcome the discussed drawbacks of majoritarian rules. A faction can make compromises on issues that it doesn't care about in order to get things that it does. This requires there is no solid bloc though. And when both factions care about both issues? A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Sounds reasonable, the problem is that a) people don't like random methods b) it will result in certain outlier elements in society getting some power. a) FAWRB is not a random but a very specific and quite sophisticated method. It only uses a certain amount of chance, just as many things in our life do. Chance should not be mixed up with arbitrariness. Used in a rational way, FAWRB will usually elect good compromise options with near certainty, not leading to significant amounts of randomness. But randomness of FAWRB can cause institutional conflicts, especially if the minority faction leader was the winner. My suggestion if your scenario exists is: 1. Perform simultaneously an approval election and a PR election for an electoral college 2. If the approval winner has approval higher than a threshold (e.g. 2/3), s(he) is elected. 3. Otherwise the electoral college performs a multi-round approval election until some candidate has a score higher than the threshold. Communication and cooperation are easier in a small electoral college than in a large electorate. Perhaps a threshold could be set before a candidate can participate. Yes, I agree. The version I just proposed to Terry incorporates such a threshold. Also, the citizens of the US didn't get to vote on the restrictions of civil rights directly. It was handled by Congress. Using majority rule? That someone was me. Sorry, Greg didn't include your name in his post (or I couldn't find it). No need to be sorry. Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- Diego Renato dos Santos Mestrando em Ciência da Computação COPIN - UFCG Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Multiwinner Method Yardstick (Gregory Nisbet)
Greg Nisbet wrote: Proportional Approval Voting http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Proportional-approval-voting Brief summary of this method: there are O(c!) (candidates factorial) many pseudocandidates consisting of all the possible combinations of candidates. Let's say we have a voter named Alice and a three person pseudocandidate composed of real candidates X,Y, and Z. If Alice approves of one of them, the score for XYZ += 1 two , += (1 + 1/2) three/all ,+= (1 + 1/2 + 1/3) This way Alice approving of X and Bob approving of X is worth 2 pts whereas Alice approving of X and Y and Bob approving of neither is only worth 1.5 pts. The procedure isn't iterative hence the failure of RRV http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html to satisfy the multimember equivalent of the participation criterion is sidestepped. In other words, voting for a candidate cannot hurt you because PAV does not use an elect-candidate-then-punish-supporters iteration to achieve its result. However great PAV may be its O(c!cv) (candidates factorial * candidates * voters) time complexity is enough to make me think twice before seriously considering it. Perhaps one could use branch-and-bound methods to wrangle this down to something more managable (with high probability or in the case of realistic ballots). One option, if that's impossible, is to reduce the ballots to a tree (to thwart fingerprint attacks), make the tree public, and then have anybody who wants to submit their proposed council. The council with the best score then wins. If there's a PTAS for this problem, that might serve as a default. One could also have a Sainte-Laguë variant of this. In it, the score for got one candidate would be 1, got two candidates 1 + 1/3, got three candidates 1 + 1/3 + 1/5, and so on. Multiwinner Method Yardstick PAV is the basis of the multiwinner analogue of Bayesian regret. Think of it this way. PAV gives us a nice formula for dealing with range values. Let's use the previous example of Alice and XYZ Let's pretend Alice votes X = 99, Y = 12, Z = 35 with PAV, the formula is (1+1/2+1/3...1/n) for the nth thing think of it as sorting the list for that candidate and THEN applying (1,1/2,1/3..1/n) to it. in the previous example if Alice approved X and Z (1,0,1) we sort the list (1,1,0) then multiply by the coefficients (1*1,1*1/2,0*1/3) and add 1.5 apply the same thing to the current example 99,12,35 == 99,35,12 and multiply... 99*1,35*1/2,12*1/3 and add... 120.5 there, the score for XYZ from Alice is 120.5 Thus the procedure for evaluating various multiwinner methods is simple: create some fake voters (make their preferences between 0 and n, distributed however you like) I'd recommend NOT using negative numbers because I have no idea how they will interact with the sorting and tabulating procedure. This works *if* PAV is the ultimate solution. That is, if what PAV produces is the best of the best, then your scores will give you an idea of how good a multiwinner method is, because you can calculate the PAV score given any proposed council. But is that the case? It doesn't seem to readily follow. One may ask, even if we have a single universal standard independent of external information (as candidates' opinions), is PAV the best possible standard? Why not, for instance, Sainte-Laguë PAV? Or, for that matter, Warren's Logarithmic Penalty Voting defined in his paper #91? As long as it's true that approving an additional candidate can only improve your satisfication, they should all pass your multiwinner equivalent of participation. I'm in the process of programming something to actually test this. If anyone has a program for STV, CPO-STV, or some other multiwinner something or rather, I would really appreciate it. Even if it's just a description of a method; it's better than nothing. (no party-based or asset voting related methods please.) I made a program to test multiwinner methods based on a metric one may call opinion fidelity. The simulation consists of many rounds, and for each round there are a certain number of binary opinions, voters, and candidates. Each voter (a candidate is also a voter) is assigned a random boolean vector of length equal to the number of opinions. Then the simulation counts how many have true (aye) for each opinion, and constructs rank ballots for each voter, where the voter ranks those who agree with him (lower Hamming distance on the opinion vector) ahead of those who don't. Then it sums the ayes for each opinion on the council produced by a multiwinner method, and the closer these are (by RMSE, Webster measure, Gini .. any measure), the better the multiwinner system in question. This program has multiwinner method objects which may be of interest for your tests. It implements STV (Meek or ordinary), D'Hondt
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Dear Diego, But randomness of FAWRB can cause institutional conflicts, especially if the minority faction leader was the winner. My focus has always been to decide issues, not to elect people. My suggestion if your scenario exists is: 1. Perform simultaneously an approval election and a PR election for an electoral college 2. If the approval winner has approval higher than a threshold (e.g. 2/3), s(he) is elected. 3. Otherwise the electoral college performs a multi-round approval election until some candidate has a score higher than the threshold. OK, we need a game-theoretic analysis of this. My guess is that because of the multi-round provision there is the danger of not getting a decision in any predetermined fixed time. Also, there are probably a number of strategic equilibria and it so the impact of my vote will be difficult to foresee. And, what is most important: It does not solve the problem at all, it only shifts the threshold for overruling the minority from 1/2 to 2/3. That's still not nearly democratic. You may suggest a much higher threshold, but then I guess no decision will be made at all... Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Worst Voting Method
Hi Chris, --- En date de : Jeu 16.10.08, Chris Benham [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : De: Chris Benham [EMAIL PROTECTED] Objet: [EM] Worst Voting Method À: EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Jeudi 16 Octobre 2008, 1h45 I don't see antiplurality as much worse than FPP. Antiplurality (vote against one, candidate with fewest votes wins) meets Majority Loser and Strong Favourite Betrayal. Antiplurality is just a race to nominate as many candidates as possible so that none of them get any votes. Very bad is the Supplementary Vote used to elect some mayors in the UK. It is like the Contingent Vote (one trip to the polls TTR) except voters are only allowed to rank 2 candidates. I don't see how this is very bad. I could see how you might think it is easily improved. But is this method better or worse than Approval? Is it better or worse than FPP? Borda Voting is also very bad. It fails Majority Favourite and Rich Party (meaning that it fails Clone-Loser in a way that advantages factions who field more candidates). Just like Antiplurality. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Simulation of Duverger's Law
Hi Greg, --- En date de : Jeu 16.10.08, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : Complete non-sequitur but still a point I don't entirely understand: IRV, FPTP and Contingent Vote all lead to two party domination according to Duverger's law. I don't think Duverger's law suggests this regarding IRV. I think what we need to see, are IRV elections to a chamber that is not parliamentary (i.e. there is no particular prize for one party getting the most seats). Perhaps in that situation IRV could support more than two parties. Why doesn't France's Two Round System lead to the same result? Pretend you have a ballot consisting of rank ordering and a separate FPTP checkbox, would this similarly avoid two party domination? No, the second chance nature of the two rounds is essential to altering the incentives so that there is not so much at stake in the first round. There is always at least some choice the voters can still make, in the second round. But this means more candidates can be nominated. And that means that it may be somewhat arbitrary which candidates end up as the finalists. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Issues with the Majority Criterion
Hi Greg, --- En date de : Jeu 16.10.08, Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : I would say it is that if X is ranked/rated strictly first by more than half of the voters, then X should win. =What would co-first candidates imply? Neither of such candidates would be ranked/rated strictly first by a voter that tied them at the top. That is what strictly means. If the method doesn't satisfy FBC, how can this be regarding as a good thing, isn't it just making a massive compromising incentive? It is not regarded as a good thing to fail FBC. =I have to make the antecedents of my pronouns more clear... I meant that FBC failure seems to seriously hurt the majority criterion because it is plausible for a compromise candidate to gain a majority from insincere candidates. I am asking, absent FBC, how valuable is majority compliance? I would say it depends on how badly FBC is failed. But also, in a method where it's possible to notice a majority's favorite, I don't think it will be publicly acceptable to fail majority. I don't understand why you say massive. Methods vary widely with respect to how much compromise incentive they provide. =FBC compliant methods have less compromising incentive than non-FBC compliant ones, in general. I called it massive because I perceived it to be noticeably different from FBC compliant ones. FBC compliant methos such as Range may suffer from compression to some extent, but Offensive Order Reversal will not occur. = I regard it as massive because of the Offensive Order Reveral thing. You mean defensive order reversal, not offensive. Offensive means burial strategy. Does a method count as majoritarian if a majority can impose its will, but doesn't necessarily have to? I don't think the term majoritarian has an agreed-upon meaning. The way I define the term, it is not directly related to the majority criterion. =Hmm... good point. To some extent I was probing the meaning of the term majoritarian that I have heard in previous discussions. I guess what I meant is, how valuable is allowing a majority to force its will if it so chooses as opposed to always having it get its way? It's a partial assurance that you won't regret listing compromise choices. You don't even have to know whether you're in a majority: The method counts the votes first, and if you're in the majority, the rest of your preferences are not regarded. It's doing work for you and letting you simply say how you really feel. It seems to me you're asking about the difference in value between one guarantee (the majority criterion) and no guarantee at all. If a majority has merely the ability to come up with some way to vote that gets their favorite result, this is more like the method not being utterly broken, than a useful guarantee. But the term majoritarian would be almost meaningless if it meant that a majority always has some method to make their first preference win. =The only methods that would violate it would be silly ones like Antiplurality and Borda. I agree. But if, in reality, the distinction isn't all that meaningful, is it really worth mentioning as a flaw of a particular system. The flaw of methods that fail the majority criterion perhaps isn't the failure of that particular criterion, but the general absence of guarantees about how lower preferences will be used. That does seem like a pretty big deal, whether you want to use the majority criterion or some other mechanism to address it. Also, how do you define membership in a majority. It depends on the criterion. For the majority criterion simply, membership in the majority is determined by you strictly supporting the same first preference. Let's pretend Alice votes Candidate X = 100 Candidate Y = 60 With respect to the majority criterion, does she belong in Camp X, or 100% in Camp X and 60% in Camp Y? I don't know any definition of the criterion that doesn't refer to first preferences. Even your definition refers to first preferences. =Exactly. Is it best to regard 60% as 60% of a 'first preference' or as not a 'first preference' at all? Rankedisms don't translate perfectly to Range Voting. It seems to me that first preference means the same thing whether you use rankings or ratings. Especially if you try to discuss voters' sincere sentiments and not just how they vote. However: Suppose the Range voter doesn't normalize his rating and his top preference only receives a 60%. Does that mean his top preference is only 60% of a first preference? Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Strategic Voting and Simulating It
Hi Raph, --- En date de : Jeu 16.10.08, Raph Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : De: Raph Frank [EMAIL PROTECTED] Objet: Re: [EM] Strategic Voting and Simulating It À: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Jeudi 16 Octobre 2008, 4h55 On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 2:23 AM, Kevin Venzke [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Each voter's sincere utilities are determined randomly and independently, which is problematic because it does not produce realistic scenarios. It would be better to combine voters into factions, although it would be no easier to reach consensus regarding what simulation is realistic. I think Warren has some simulations where the voters are spread over 1-2 axes. (He can comment). My understanding is that there are lots of different distributions. Ok. That is better. But you still have the problem that it's open to endless debate, what exactly the realistic simulation method is. Two frontrunner candidates are determined essentially at random, and this information will be used by the strategic voters. This is problematic because usually when a candidate is called a frontrunner this means there is a perception that this candidate is likely to win, before any strategy is used. When the frontrunners are determined randomly, this is not realistic unless you hold a very pessimistic view about how a candidate becomes a frontrunner in real life. In plurality, it is self reinforcing. The top-2 are front runners because they are supported by the party, and thus are likely to win. Party support makes them likely front runners and that then makes them actual front runners. But this ignores the fact that parties still want to try to win the election. If they back candidates at random, they could conceivably hold on to frontrunner positions, but they wouldn't generally win, so they don't do this. In such a situation, random doesn't seem entirely unrealistic, electing 2 candidates via honest PR-STV might better simulate the primary system. It is still a problem to take this interpretation of FPP as a starting principle to measure *all* rank ballot methods. The strategic voters, in any rank ballot method, will simultaneously use favorite betrayal compromise strategy and also burial strategy. There is no calculation, or awareness of the specific election rule. The strategic voters seem schizophrenic in that they are sufficiently paranoid about losing their compromise choice that they will abandon any actually preferred candidate, but at the same time they are sufficiently reckless that they will rank the worse frontrunner dead last even though in methods where this can be an effective strategy, it also creates a major risk that the winner will be a candidate that nobody likes. It is a problem that strategy has to be based on assumptions of the simulator. However, maybe my suggestion in the other thread would help. I am not sure I've seen the other thread but I'll look for it. Nomination (dis)incentives can't be examined either. True. It might be possible to test nomination strategy directly. For example, the 2nd place candidate might be cloned with a slight offset in utilities and the election ran again. Perhaps... I've never written a simulation to study nomination incentive specifically, but I have written e.g. a FPP simulation, in which voters stop voting for a candidate (in the polls leading up to the election) when the calculated benefit to the vote disappears. And in FPP there is no way for the benefit to come back (in contrast to, say, Approval, which in my simulations of the same sort had the potential to never arrive at stability). Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Warren D. Smith completes part II of best voting systems paper...
I previously wrote a long math paper The Best Rank-Order Voting System versus Range Voting http://rangevoting.org/BestVrange.html and I am now making it be a two-part sequence of papers. The 2nd part is now done: Best voting systems in D-dimensional politics models http://rangevoting.org/BestVot2.html Actually neither part is *really* done and comments will be appreciated. (I still have not processed many of the comments I received on part I, though...) The main things that bother me about part I (besides it being horrendously long) are my failure to really produce a lot of the closed formulas I proved could be got, and the fact I only did most of it for 3 candidates. Perhaps I can extend it to do 4 candidates also and to produce the missing closed formulas. Both look feasible. Part II is thankfully a lot shorter. Part I although long is concisely summarized in a table and plot. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
Dear Jobst, I will focus on the question of majoritarianism in this message. First my working definition of majoritarian method: A method is majoritarian if for every option X and every group G consisting of more than half of the voters, there is a way of voting for G which makes sure X wins regardless of how the voters outside G vote. In other words: Any majority can overrule the rest if that majority votes in a certain way. Group membership is difficult to define. With ranked ballots it's simple, but in the majority criterion debate, I argue that a score of 60% represents 60% of a first preference, not the preference between 59% and 61%. Range is also majoritarian in the sense that a majority can impose its will on people. This is not true of, say, Borda. So in short, the majority criterion as most people define it is not even applicable to Range Voting, as we have not settled the issue of simultaneous majorities. This might seem overly technical and missing the point, but as long as we are arguing about whether it satisfies the nominal property and the value of that, such it will remain. Now for the discussion. I said: That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less than 100% of the people (the demos in greek). Often, about 60% of the people can consistently impose their will on the other 40% without the latter being given any means at all by the majoritarian method to influence the decision. Of course, this is a problem of most popular election methods, but that does not mean the problem cannot be solved. Democratic decisions are possible but not with majoritarian methods. To which you replied: Interesting point. I would argue that a compromise candidate is better than a polarizing but barely passing candidate (like FPTP with primaries tends to produce). I'd say this isn't a voting-issues question, but a civil rights question. A nice constitution will help protect you from tyranny of the majority. While of course civil rights are very important to make sure that no-one's basic *rights* are violated, they cannot make sure that everybody's *preferences* are have a fair chance of influencing decisions that are made *within* the limits the civil rights pose. Let me explain my point. I set the bar fairly high for tyranny of majority i.e. it must constitute actually oppressing me and not merely annoying or inconveniencing me to be labelled tyranny. Belligerence of the majority is another issue entirely. You may say where do you draw the line, but just hear me out. You talk about the destruction of democracy. That democracy is an all-or-nothing type thing. I am arguing that a good constitution will prevent a majority from acting in such a way that democracy itself is subverted. If you argue instead that suboptimal results come about, yes I agree with you. I advocate Range Voting after all. I too find belligerence of the majority annoying and unhelpful. As for the fair shot argument, I have no idea what fair shot actually means. It is possible, with minimal computation, to determine a Range ballot that will achieve a specific purpose given necessary information. It is significantly more challenging/sometimes impossible for the same to be done with something like IRV (or other iterative methods). Again, you speak about actively preventing the majority from doing something that violates the rights of minority. Such cannot be prevented by any voting method! You speak of comparing utility in this case, voting methods at best can only simulate this. Preventing tyranny must include some immutable principles lest the principles that prevent tyranny be abolished. That isn't democratic. It's useful, very useful, but not democratic. Voting methods differ in their ability to elect winners best for society, but I guess you already know that. Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority decision making is intrinsically undemocratic. I wonder how they do so. It's as simple as that: When any group of people, be it a single person (dictatorship) or a small group (oligarchy) or a large group (majoritarianism) can overrule the rest, that's not democratic since democracy in its main sense requires that *all* people must have a means to influence decisions. This discussion of what democracy is and is not does not appear to be leading anywhere. I'll answer this claim by saying that the majority is not disenfranchising the rest of the people. It means that majority opinion is the most reliable barometer of utility. I disagree, but don't misunderstand the point. The current majority is the current optimal result is the point. If democracy is restricted by a constitution which cannot be changed by a simple majority decision
[EM] Fwd: Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
-- Forwarded message -- From: Greg Nisbet [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 6:51 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet) To: Jobst Heitzig [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Dear Jobst, I will focus on the question of majoritarianism in this message. First my working definition of majoritarian method: A method is majoritarian if for every option X and every group G consisting of more than half of the voters, there is a way of voting for G which makes sure X wins regardless of how the voters outside G vote. In other words: Any majority can overrule the rest if that majority votes in a certain way. Group membership is difficult to define. With ranked ballots it's simple, but in the majority criterion debate, I argue that a score of 60% represents 60% of a first preference, not the preference between 59% and 61%. Range is also majoritarian in the sense that a majority can impose its will on people. This is not true of, say, Borda. So in short, the majority criterion as most people define it is not even applicable to Range Voting, as we have not settled the issue of simultaneous majorities. This might seem overly technical and missing the point, but as long as we are arguing about whether it satisfies the nominal property and the value of that, such it will remain. Now for the discussion. I said: That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less than 100% of the people (the demos in greek). Often, about 60% of the people can consistently impose their will on the other 40% without the latter being given any means at all by the majoritarian method to influence the decision. Of course, this is a problem of most popular election methods, but that does not mean the problem cannot be solved. Democratic decisions are possible but not with majoritarian methods. To which you replied: Interesting point. I would argue that a compromise candidate is better than a polarizing but barely passing candidate (like FPTP with primaries tends to produce). I'd say this isn't a voting-issues question, but a civil rights question. A nice constitution will help protect you from tyranny of the majority. While of course civil rights are very important to make sure that no-one's basic *rights* are violated, they cannot make sure that everybody's *preferences* are have a fair chance of influencing decisions that are made *within* the limits the civil rights pose. Let me explain my point. I set the bar fairly high for tyranny of majority i.e. it must constitute actually oppressing me and not merely annoying or inconveniencing me to be labelled tyranny. Belligerence of the majority is another issue entirely. You may say where do you draw the line, but just hear me out. You talk about the destruction of democracy. That democracy is an all-or-nothing type thing. I am arguing that a good constitution will prevent a majority from acting in such a way that democracy itself is subverted. If you argue instead that suboptimal results come about, yes I agree with you. I advocate Range Voting after all. I too find belligerence of the majority annoying and unhelpful. As for the fair shot argument, I have no idea what fair shot actually means. It is possible, with minimal computation, to determine a Range ballot that will achieve a specific purpose given necessary information. It is significantly more challenging/sometimes impossible for the same to be done with something like IRV (or other iterative methods). Again, you speak about actively preventing the majority from doing something that violates the rights of minority. Such cannot be prevented by any voting method! You speak of comparing utility in this case, voting methods at best can only simulate this. Preventing tyranny must include some immutable principles lest the principles that prevent tyranny be abolished. That isn't democratic. It's useful, very useful, but not democratic. Voting methods differ in their ability to elect winners best for society, but I guess you already know that. Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority decision making is intrinsically undemocratic. I wonder how they do so. It's as simple as that: When any group of people, be it a single person (dictatorship) or a small group (oligarchy) or a large group (majoritarianism) can overrule the rest, that's not democratic since democracy in its main sense requires that *all* people must have a means to influence decisions. This discussion of what democracy is and is not does not appear to be leading anywhere. I'll answer this claim by saying that the majority is not disenfranchising the rest of the people. It means that majority opinion is the most
Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
These majorities, as described, seem close to identical twins, with little, if any, ability for individual thinking. Plurality promotes closeness for two major factions. Voters have painful decisions which can result in real, if painful, party strength - they cannot both back party choices and back other candidates. Condorcet is an example of providing flexibility. Voters can back whatever combination of home party/faction and other candidates they choose. Backing home party helps it continue its power. Backing others helps change, and how this is or is not progressing is partly reported in the N*N arrays from Condorcet elections. With Condorcet there is more opportunity for controlled change and parties/factions can see from the N*N reports what the voting suggests they had better change for continued success. What follows inspired my thoughts. DWK On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:58:10 +0200 Jobst Heitzig wrote: Dear Raph, you wrote: The thing is that in such a case, it isn't really a single 'demos'. It is two groups voting as one. Do you mean to say democracy is only for societies which are sufficiently homogeneous? That doesn't help because then the majority on issue A will still overrule the rest in every single decision on that issue. So a compromise option for that issue will have no chance. You can still have compromises. Only if the majority for some reason prefers to elect the compromise than their favourite. But in that it seems the favourite was just not the true favourite of the majority but the compromise was. So, still the minority has no influence on the decision but can only hope that the majority is nice enough to decide for the compromise. In fact, it can be helpful if multiple issues are voted as a single unit. This allows negotiation between factions in order to make up the majority. This common behavious is a pretty artificial construct to overcome the discussed drawbacks of majoritarian rules. A faction can make compromises on issues that it doesn't care about in order to get things that it does. This requires there is no solid bloc though. And when both factions care about both issues? A split society will only function poorly when a majoritarian method is used. When they use a method like FAWRB instead, they will function well because then they will care what the other faction wants, will try to devise good compromise options, and will vote in a way which makes sure the good compromises are elected instead of the random ballot result. This is possible *precisely* because with a non-majoritarian method the majority cannot simply ignore the minority but has to figure out how to get them to approve a compromise that is sufficiently near to their favourite. Non-majoritarian methods encourage discourse and cooperation. Sounds reasonable, the problem is that a) people don't like random methods b) it will result in certain outlier elements in society getting some power. a) FAWRB is not a random but a very specific and quite sophisticated method. It only uses a certain amount of chance, just as many things in our life do. Chance should not be mixed up with arbitrariness. Used in a rational way, FAWRB will usually elect good compromise options with near certainty, not leading to significant amounts of randomness. Perhaps a threshold could be set before a candidate can participate. Yes, I agree. The version I just proposed to Terry incorporates such a threshold. Also, the citizens of the US didn't get to vote on the restrictions of civil rights directly. It was handled by Congress. Using majority rule? That someone was me. Sorry, Greg didn't include your name in his post (or I couldn't find it). No need to be sorry. Yours, Jobst -- [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] Populism and Voting Theory
As I'm sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they will either: a) say they don't understand it b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV c) say that the current system will never be changed Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take the least amount of convincing for the greatest gain? I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that it is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote for whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their vote. You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably better than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of passing. It breaks two party domination reasonably well and people understand it. It isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important stuff done. Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem to think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if someone else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice, according to them. Range I have actually managed to do. I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make it sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c). Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
I argue for Condorcet, include Range, Approval, and IRV in my discussion, ad claim it to be the best for single winners. For all these I talk of Best, Soso, Worst, and other unnamed candidates. Pick the one or more candidates you would like to vote for. Proceed by method: Approval: You are giving them equal indication of desirability. B is obvious. S is questionable - including it would be doing your best to elect either B or S, though you want S ONLY if you cannot get B. Range: With ratings you can rate B as best and S as less desirable. Deciding on ratings gets tricky if you vote for several. Condorcet: Scoring ballots as in a tournament. It's ranks have neither the power of ratings, nor the pain of trying to use them. Here you rank candidates according to how well you like them, including equals if you like two equally well. IRV: Almost the same ballot as Condorcet, except no equals. Its way of counting sometimes awards the win to someone most would agree is not deserving. Back to scoring Condorcet. If 5 rank AC and 6 rank CA, C is on the way to winning - and will win if outranking each other candidate. As in sports tournaments, there can be headaches such as AC, CE, and EA, and no clear winner. These have to be provided for but do not have to be studied in detail to understand the method. DWK On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:11:47 -0700 Greg Nisbet wrote: As I?m sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they will either: a) say they don't understand it b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV c) say that the current system will never be changed Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take the least amount of convincing for the greatest gain? I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that it is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote for whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their vote. You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably better than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of passing. It breaks two party domination reasonably well and people understand it. It isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important stuff done. Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem to think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if someone else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice, according to them. Range I have actually managed to do. I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make it sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c). Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable? -- [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
Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
Interesting. What I meant was what is the best method that actually has some reasonable chance of being implemented. IRV has been implemented in some cities and both Obama and McCain have stated that they support it, I would say that qualifies as a reasonable chance. However, if you think that Condorcet methods have a reasonable chance of being implemented, think again! Given the public as it is, would you suggest that Condorcet would actually be implemented? Condorcet is a reasonable system, far better than FPTP or TRS, but I think the public would demonstrtate considerable aversion to it. The nice thing about TRS is, you don't have to convince anyone about anything they do not already believe. On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Dave Ketchum [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I argue for Condorcet, include Range, Approval, and IRV in my discussion, ad claim it to be the best for single winners. For all these I talk of Best, Soso, Worst, and other unnamed candidates. Pick the one or more candidates you would like to vote for. Proceed by method: Approval: You are giving them equal indication of desirability. B is obvious. S is questionable - including it would be doing your best to elect either B or S, though you want S ONLY if you cannot get B. Range: With ratings you can rate B as best and S as less desirable. Deciding on ratings gets tricky if you vote for several. Condorcet: Scoring ballots as in a tournament. It's ranks have neither the power of ratings, nor the pain of trying to use them. Here you rank candidates according to how well you like them, including equals if you like two equally well. IRV: Almost the same ballot as Condorcet, except no equals. Its way of counting sometimes awards the win to someone most would agree is not deserving. Back to scoring Condorcet. If 5 rank AC and 6 rank CA, C is on the way to winning - and will win if outranking each other candidate. As in sports tournaments, there can be headaches such as AC, CE, and EA, and no clear winner. These have to be provided for but do not have to be studied in detail to understand the method. DWK On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:11:47 -0700 Greg Nisbet wrote: As I?m sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they will either: a) say they don't understand it b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV c) say that the current system will never be changed Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take the least amount of convincing for the greatest gain? I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that it is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote for whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their vote. You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably better than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of passing. It breaks two party domination reasonably well and people understand it. It isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important stuff done. Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem to think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if someone else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice, according to them. Range I have actually managed to do. I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make it sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c). Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable? -- [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] Effect of Voting Systems on Parties and Candidates
Let's hypothesize about the impact various methods would have on society. FPTP: If you live in the U.S., you see it every day. Two party domination is fairly complete. Although this could be written off to the fact that America started with a two-party system and that opposition is gerrymandered out of existence. There are also annoying ballot access laws and sore loser laws and whatnot that contribute to this. It isn't just our horrible voting system. Anyway, main impact of this: two strong parties, a polarized electorate and parties that only campaign in certain, rare competitive regions. IRV/STV: Two party domination too. It doesn't appear quite as bad because parties in Australia at least appeaer to cooperate with each other through vote swapping agreements. Full preferences and later-no-harm allow voters to express these opinions without penalty, although their value is dubious. Borda: Used in Kiribati, Nauru, and Slovenia at one point in history. (Slovenia still uses it for their 2 minority members.) I couldn't get a hold of anything for Slovenia's contests (oh well), but Social Choice in the South Seas http://rangevoting.org/ReillySCSS.pdf explains the impact fairly well in Kiribati. The most popular candidates were eliminated by political maneuvering and inhabitants were annoyed (the country backslid to FPTP). It is naive to think it will encourage candidates to cooperate at all, collude yes, cooperate no. It will lead to one party domination probably as rich parties use their momentum to crush any second parties. Condorcet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Use_of_the_Schulze_method These people use Schulze... but I'm not certain how it has impacted them. Even though they don't satisfy later-no-harm, it seems pretty clear that Schulze would encourage candidates to cooperate. You have to give your second choice vote to someone, and it isn't likely to cause you lose if you give it to a particular candidate (unlike Borda), so Condorcet politics would probably form broad coalitions of parties that cooperate on various things. Range: It is a positional method, but candidates can both benefit if they support each other. E.g. if A and B agree to vote each other fairly highly and attack C, both A and B benefit. I regard it as less likely to foster as much competition as Condorcet, but it probably would have more overlapping campaigning. With multiple parties, each could gain something from campaigning in exactly the same area. Approval: similar to Range, but less dramatic. Bucklin: It's been done. Bullet voting galore. Massive backsliding. Voters giving a second preference shot themselves in the foot. Contingent Vote: It's been done in Sri Lanka and London Mayoral elections. I'm not quite sure what the impact is, but I don't anticipate much difference from FPTP. People probably won't waste their precious vote if they use a truncated version of contingent vote. If the full version is used, I anticipate better results, similar to TRS. It probably will encourage cooperation, later-no-harm and all. TRS: Doesn't lead to two party politics. It can produce very weird behavior like Chirac vs Le Pen instead of Chirac vs Jospin. If you check the Range Voting archive of weird behavior, TRS indeed has its problems. However, it doesn't discourage the growth of new parties and the Range voting website does claim that it does produce some positive effects in media coverage relative to IRV. TRS obeys later-no-harm, so it will probably encourage cooperation. Candidates will ally the top two finalists and campaign for them, probably. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
