Re: [EM] Condorcet How?
Hallo, here are some interesting videos on IRV in Burlington: http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/instant-runoff-voting-interviews http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/irv-or-down-instant-runoff-voting-debate I have the impression that there was no reasonable debate on IRV. Most anti-IRV arguments were ridiculous or simply false. The anti-IRV campaign was a pure anti-Kiss campaign. > in fact, if the election was decided with Condorcet > rules (doesn't matter which, since there was no cycle), > these same Republicans would have bitched all the more, > since the Condorcet candidate had only 23% and came > third in plurality. so the primary political motivation > behind the repeal was not due to that the Condorcet > winner was not elected. I agree that the Republicans would also have attacked Condorcet. But as Montroll was preferred to Wright with 56% against 44%, an anti-Condorcet/anti-Montroll campaign wouldn't have been successful. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Condorcet How?
On Mar 22, 2010, at 6:17 AM, Markus Schulze wrote:
here are some interesting videos on IRV in Burlington:
http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/instant-runoff-voting-interviews
http://www.cctv.org/watch-tv/programs/irv-or-down-instant-runoff-
voting-debate
i've seen them. if i had reacted more quickly, i would have appeared
in one of them. (i was one of the questioners in the debate, but
they "didn't understand [my] question" so neither side answered it.
it was very frustrating.)
I have the impression that there was no reasonable
debate on IRV.
there surely was little reasonable debate.
Most anti-IRV arguments were ridiculous or simply false.
they surely were either ridiculous or false. fueled by some good
analysis from Warren Smith, but they misused the result.
The anti-IRV campaign was a pure anti-Kiss campaign.
not purely, but the fact that Kiss is in so much trouble provided a
lot of fuel for the anti-IRV campaign.
in fact, if the election was decided with Condorcet
rules (doesn't matter which, since there was no cycle),
these same Republicans would have bitched all the more,
since the Condorcet candidate had only 23% and came
third in plurality. so the primary political motivation
behind the repeal was not due to that the Condorcet
winner was not elected.
I agree that the Republicans would also have attacked
Condorcet. But as Montroll was preferred to Wright with
56% against 44%, an anti-Condorcet/anti-Montroll campaign
wouldn't have been successful.
Markus, the main complaint (besides that Kiss, who was considered by
these Republicans to be such a bad mayor and he was elected via IRV)
was against the Ranked Ballot. their slogans were: "Keep Voting
Simple" and "One person, one vote". their main factual indictment
against IRV is that it elected someone whom 71% of the electorate
voted *against*. what would they say if it were Condorcet and the
candidate that 77% voted against was elected?
I don't know if an "anti-Condorcet/anti-Montroll campaign" would have
been successful or not, but I am not as confident that it would fail
as you Markus, and I live here in Burlington. I *do* know that the
oft cited pathologies noted by Smith (picked up locally by UVM Prof.
Anthony Gierzynsky) would not have applied, since there was
absolutely no cycle, all candidates were very well ordered from a
Condorcet POV.
I would like to think that if it were Condorcet from the very
beginning that Preferential Voting would survive, but these IRV
opponents were also rabid ranked-ballot opponents ("Keep Voting
Simple! One person, one vote! Keep Voting Simple! One person, one
vote!"). They believe that God Herself ordained the "traditional
ballot" (as well as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison) and that
changing from that is heresy in the religion of democracy.
--
r b-j r...@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proportional Representation Systems I'd Support
Upon cursory reflection and in response to my strong opposition to any nonmonotonic method and to any method that fail to treat all voters' votes equally, the only proportional method I know I would support for legislative representation would be the party list system where candidates appear only on one list, where parties can cross-endorse another party's list instead of presenting their own list for any particular contest. But I don't know how fractional left-over vote shares are handled when this system fails to initially elect all the seats with the required vote share per seat. Is that when two or more parties join forces to elect the rest of the seats and haggle over who fills them? Are there any other proportional methods besides the party list system that are monotonic and treat all voters' votes equally (unlike IRV and STV where some voters' votes rankings are counted when it would matter and some are not)? Kathy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proportional Representation Systems I'd Support
Kathy Dopp wrote: Upon cursory reflection and in response to my strong opposition to any nonmonotonic method and to any method that fail to treat all voters' votes equally, the only proportional method I know I would support for legislative representation would be the party list system where candidates appear only on one list, where parties can cross-endorse another party's list instead of presenting their own list for any particular contest. But I don't know how fractional left-over vote shares are handled when this system fails to initially elect all the seats with the required vote share per seat. Is that when two or more parties join forces to elect the rest of the seats and haggle over who fills them? Are there any other proportional methods besides the party list system that are monotonic and treat all voters' votes equally (unlike IRV and STV where some voters' votes rankings are counted when it would matter and some are not)? As far as I've understood it, what you'd like is a method that is: - proportional (fair) - monotone - summable (so it can be audited) and provides good results. This is very difficult. The only method I know of that passes all the criteria is party list PR. STV only passes proportionality, while my experimental method is monotone and proportional but not summable. Some methods that are only proportional under strategy can pass all of those criteria. SNTV is one: vote for a single candidate, and when you want to populate the council, pick the k with the greatest number of voters. A party that fields too few candidates will be worse off because they could have got more, while on that fields too many spreads itself too thin and so loses all. Therefore, each will have a number of candidates proportional to their estimated support. However, that is really just proportional by party and so a complex type of party list PR, and it requires central coordination (by the parties, to be absolutely certain no prospective candidates would wander off, become independents, and draw away votes). - I think your more complex party list PR (with cross endorsement) could work while still passing all three criteria. It's certainly summable and proportional, so the only difficulty would be in making it monotone. Simply distributing excess turns it STV-like. Perhaps something similar to my divisor trick could be used, but I'm not sure how. One simple method meeting all three criteria, after a fashion, would be a cumulative party list: each voter gives each party between one and ten points. Each ballot is normalized by dividing each rating by the sum of how many point the voter gave, so every ballot has the same power. Then simply sum them up. Here, voters can support more than one party. The problem is that there isn't any contingency mechanism, so voting for a minor party may still waste your vote (because less of your vote goes to the other parties). It's only proportional according to the normalized vote counts. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Condorcet How?
Dear Robert, are you the questioner at 00:42:00 -- 00:44:25? Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Proportionality-preference tradeoffs
After reading the post on measuring multiwinner goodness (and writing a reply to it), I started to think of how to determine how good the different multiwinner methods actually are. One way to do that is by criterion compliance. But there is another: while proportionality can't be expressed in terms of majoritarian quality (preference), we can still determine the Pareto front, given a way to measure proportionality and preference. There are many ways to do so - I have chosen one combination (normalized Sainte-Lague index and Bayesian regret). The results are here: http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/ May it be of interest! :-) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proportional Representation Systems I'd Support
Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 9:24 PM > I think your more complex party list PR (with cross endorsement) could > work while still passing all three criteria. It's certainly summable and > proportional, so the only difficulty would be in making it monotone. > Simply distributing excess turns it STV-like. Perhaps something similar > to my divisor trick could be used, but I'm not sure how. This principle is well-known in electoral science where it described by the French term "apparentenement". It has been used in party-list PR voting systems at different times in France, Italy and Switzerland. In France and Italy the "apparentenement" was determined by the parties. In the (much) more complicated Swiss system, the "apparentenement" is determined by each individual voter. The allocation of seats to parties is determined by applying either the d'Hondt formula or the Sainte-Laguë formula to the votes, summed over the "apparentenement" partner-parties as necessary. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.791 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2762 - Release Date: 03/21/10 19:33:00 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Condorcet How?
On Mar 22, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Markus Schulze wrote: Dear Robert, are you the questioner at 00:42:00 -- 00:44:25? it could be. i dunno if i wanna load the video again and figure that out. i was pointing out that the purpose we adopted IRV in the first place was to relieve the split majority the burden of strategic voting in the form of compromising. the liberal majority did not have to make a painful choice between Prog and Dem as they would with the "traditional" ballot. but that burden wasn't eliminated, but transferred to those that preferred Wright first, Kiss not at all, and Montroll somewhere in between. (i like to call them "GOP Prog- haters".) those folks actually caused the Prog to be elected purely by marking the GOP as their first choice. whether it's Nader in 2000 or Wright in 2009, we should be able to vote for our favorite without electing our least favorite. but this minority group wanted to just toss that burden back to the majority group and i wanted to know if the anti-IRVers understood that and how they thought that it's better to burden the majority. i was interrupted before i could frame the question and they said they didn't understand the question and didn't answer it. the thing that was very irritating to me was that the pro-IRV folks surely didn't come to this knife fight with their knives sharpened. i couldn't even tell that they brought their knives. there were so many dumb things the anti-IRV side said that should have been pounced on and was let go. Terry Bouricius is also a Burlington resident and is known in Burlington for being the primary promoter of IRV (i think that's right, ain't it Terry?). i didn't see him at the debate, but Rep. Mark Larson and someone from League of Women Voters were on the pro- IRV side and they didn't come fightin', in my opinion. and part of the problem is that *they* didn't really understand or acknowledge the cascade of anomalies that resulted when the IRV election fails to elect the Condorcet winner as it did in 2009. and, i'm not sure who, but someone introduced a measure in the state legislature to elected the governor by IRV (there is a perennial Prog candidate that doesn't get any traction because Vermont is not all like Burlington or Brattleboro). but we know (and Kathy won't let us forget) that IRV is not "precinct summable" and that would be a ridiculous mess for a statewide election (they would have to transmit via internet, individual ballot data to the capitol for tabulation and then securely bring up a disk or thumb drive (and the original paper ballots) with the ballot data up for verification on a later date. it's not so instant if the central counting location is distant. more so now (after the IRV repeal), but that bill had essentially zero chance of being passed by the legislature and the introduction of it was not well conceived. and that also should be a lesson to FairVote regarding where (and why) they should be marketing IRV. i'm still mostly bent outa shape that wherever Preferential Voting was introduced to some population for use in government, it is also introduced only with the STV method of tabulation (under whatever name: "IRV" "RCV"). what a sad mistake. i really think that FairVote and other IRV promoters should soberly assess the product that they are selling instead of continuing to focus on how they're gonna market it. IRV is bound to screw up again and will, by association, sully the ranked ballot. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
