Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
Bob Richard wrote: On 11/15/2010 4:58 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: When majority rules, a 51 percent majority can have their way in election after election. But what other possible standard is there for democracy and fairness besides majority rule? For seats in legislative bodies, proportional representation. One answer is that every sector of the population ought to have a chance at being in charge, and that chance should be in rough proportion to the size of the sector of the population. What does being in charge mean? If it means making the rules, see my response above. If it means implementing/administering/enforcing the rules, then I think any form of lottery would lead to chaos and possibly rebellion during the occasional terms in office of officials representing small minorities. Sortition is very feasible for specific kinds of legislative assemblies, specifically those whose purpose is to propose measures to be voted on in referenda. I don't think it can work for deciding who gets to run the executive branch. Do you think sortition could work for a representative legislature? Say that you fill the democratic/representative chamber by lot, and say that it's relatively large - 400 or so - that sampling artifacts are rare. If it vacillates, use rules closer to consensus, either methods like Forest's or simply raising the majority needed from 50%+1 to 60% or so. If it does, would it work for a parliament? In such a system, the sortition-based legislature would select the government. I agree that using sortition to pick the executive itself wouldn't work, because the executive is much too small and so the luck of the draw would have an inordinately large effect. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] My Favorite Deterministic Condorcet Efficient Method: TACC
Forest wrote (13 Nov. 2010): snip I'm not a die hard Condorcet supporter. In fact my truly favorite methods are neither Condorcet efficient nor deterministic; hence the title of this thread is intended to connote a deliberate restriction of attention to lesser evil methods that might be acceptable to Condorcet enthusiasts. So far most Condorcet supporters seem to think that we have to have cycles, and therefore.the important thing is how to deal with them rather than how to prevent them. Nor am I a die-hard Condoret supporter, but I'm intolerant of methods that aren't deterministic. I have sympathy for the philosophical view that the winner must come from the Smith or Schwartz set., but not for the view that there aren't other desirable representative criteria regarding which member of that set we elect. 25: AB 06: AC 32: BC 27: CA 10: C TACC's election of A here is unacceptably silly because C is so dominant over A. I consider not electing C here somewhat embarrassing, but I have defended a couple of methods that elect B: IRV and Smith,IRV. But IRV is completely invulnerable to Burial strategy, and Smith,IRV is a Condorcet method that keeps some of that IRV quality: Mutual Dominant Third candidates are invulnerable to Burial. In the example above we can see that C could be a sincere DMT candidate that has been successfully buried by the 25 AB voters (sincere may be A or AC) in TACC. I think that if for the sake of defensive strategy and/or higher Social Utility we encourage voters to truncate, then it is better to dump the Condorcet criterion in favour of the Favourite Betrayal criterion (while making do with other representative criteria compliances.) So I certainly prefer IBIFA (my favourite FBC method) to TACC and Winning Votes and Margins. Chris Benham Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
On Nov 16, 2010, at 8:57 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Nov 15, 2010, at 8:40 PM, Bob Richard wrote: On 11/15/2010 4:58 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: When majority rules, a 51 percent majority can have their way in election after election. But what other possible standard is there for democracy and fairness besides majority rule? For seats in legislative bodies, proportional representation. for which STV or a more Condorcet-like ordering (what would the name of that be? Kristofer Munsterhjelm had a Schulze ordering for Oakland) does well. here in Vermont we just had an election where for my state senate district, we voted for 6 out of about 15 and the top 6 vote getters win seats, but that method sorta sucks. Condorcet doesn't give proportional representation. If you have an example like: 51: D1 D2 D3 D4 49: R1 R2 R3 R4 and pick the first four, all the Ds will win. good point. maybe STV would be better for proportionality. for me, if it's a single winner: If a majority of voters select Candidate A over Candidate B then, if at all possible, Candidate B should not be elected is the only sensible rule, because of the converse is so clearly contrary to the concept of the will of the majority. Any method that cannot be guaranteed to accomplish that risks the question: e.g. Why should Bob Kiss be the mayor of Burlington when 587 more voters expressed on their ballots that they thought Andy Montroll was a better choice?. i think you can argue that Condorcet compliant is always preferable out of point by contradiction. if there is a CW and you elect someone else, that is always a failure. I think counterarguments would make use of that the majorities are not necessarily the same. Those who see no point in Condorcet would say: if the leftists prefer A to B and the right-wingers prefer A to C, that's still short of majority rule. so let's pick B or C even though a majority of voters (neither specifically left or right) vote that A is the better choice over either B or C. the reason why Condorcet (assuming a CW exists) is the democratic choice has nothing to do with left or right political alignment. the problem with electing someone other than the CW is that we, the voters, by a majority have expressed that we want the CW. otherwise, why not use random chance, or just give the election to the *minority* candidate? here's a fundamental philosophical question: why is it better, even in a two-candidate race, to elect the majority winner? why not have rules that we elect the minority candidate? (i have my own answers, but i would be interested in reading some others.) -- 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] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
At 08:57 AM 11/16/2010, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Condorcet doesn't give proportional representation. If you have an example like: 51: D1 D2 D3 D4 49: R1 R2 R3 R4 and pick the first four, all the Ds will win. Just for fun, suppose this is STV, to elect 5 seats. Accurate proportionality is not possible, but it can get close. I will assume acccurate vote transfers. As an exercise, I will use the Hare quota, 20 votes, and then look at what Asset would do. This turns, below, into a general discussion of Asset Voting, which was originally proposed as a tweak on STV, in 1883, by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). The seats chosen are: 1. D1. 2. R1 3. D2 4. R2 leaving 11: D3 D4 9: R3 R4 Nobody has a quota for the fifth seat. This is why the Droop quota is used in most implementations of STV. But let's go back to Dodgson's idea. D1 now owns 11 votes that remain, and R1 owns 9. If they can agree, they can elect a seat. If they cannot agree, my proposal for the rules is that the seat is vacant until they do, or until a special election is held. I think that leaving the seat open may be superior to a special election, but if a special election is held, it should be one that would find a compromise candidate. It should not be IRV! It should not be a partisan election, party affiliation should not be on the ballot, my opinion. Note this: generally it requires an assembly majority to elect a chair, and the chair has a tiebreaker vote, only votes if there is a tie. To elect a chair, the members must agree, at least one person from one faction must agree with both from the other. It is, in fact, very precise proportional representation, given the full rules involved. They can agree on a fifth seat, creating someone perceived as fair and neutral, who can break ties, or they can elect a chair who will do the same. The best course, overall, is to do both, because, then, if a member is missing for some reason, tiebreaking by a fair and neutral chair remains. Effectively, they elect two persons perceived as neutral or moderate to help them when they are deadlocked. STV with a Hare quota, as described, is rigorously proportional. With the Droop quota, we end up 3:2 in the assembly, which is substantially more power for the Ds than the votes represented. Full-on asset voting is even better, and can be accurate no matter what the number of voters and seats to be elected is. If direct voting by electors is allowed, it can be effectively proportional even if only two or three seats are elected! What is the difference between asset voting, with direct elector voting allowed, and direct democracy or pure delegable proxy, open meeting? It's the election of seats that have full participation rights, so the assembly can be small enough for practical deliberation. In other words, Asset, even if direct voting by electors is allowed, retains the necessary value of representative democracy. Electors, I assume, under assembly rules, would not be able to introduce motions or to debate them. But they could still vote, if they care to. They would not ordinarily vote, I believe, because it would mostly be a waste of time. But not a waste because it would have no value, but because, usually, their position would be represented well enough by those they elected, already. The direct voting allows for exceptions. Once Asset is in place, even as a tweak to STV/Hare, voters will come to realize that they can vote for *anyone* who makes themselves available for the ballot, and is allowed on the ballot. (Or write-ins, if allowed.) The process will become far less predictable, and, in this case, that's good. The people can actually and effectively speak, through chosen representatives, chosen without opposition. STV/Droop would also work with Asset. It is important to keep the quota fixed. I.e., the counting process should seek the PR equivalent of an absolute majority, not a majority of unexhausted votes. If all candidates have been ranked -- as Australia requires -- then the election will complete. It is also possible that full-ranking ballots from all candidates could be collected before the election, and used to determine the last seat(s), that would be part of being a candidate, and would be published before the election. That has an interesting consequence. Voters can just vote for their candidate, and know exactly how their vote will be treated. But if they disagree with their favorite, they can modify the sequence. Their vote will count either way, it gives them absolute freedom. In full-on, open ballot Asset, I'd require registration of candidates in any case. There will be huge numbers of them, eventually. In essence, anyone can become an elector, a public voter, by registering, which should be cheap, the registration fee should cover listing of the name in a pamphlet available to voters, giving names, minimal information about the
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
On Nov 16, 2010, at 5:57 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: I suspect that one can't have both quota proportionality and monotonicity, so I've been considering divisor-based proportional methods, but it's not clear how to generalize something like Webster to ranked ballots. I did try (with my M-Set Webster method), and it is, to my knowledge, monotone, but it's not very good in the single-winner instance. Woodall in 2003 formalized a method he called Quota-Preferential by Quotient (QPQ), based on a suggestion by Olli Salmi on this list. Woodall demonstrates that it satisfies DPC, but doesn't say much about other criteria. http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE17/I17P1.PDF (The URL in the paper for Salmi's message is obsolete; I think it might be this: http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2002-September/008616.html) I've written an implementation of QPQ as a module in my Droop STV counter: http://code.google.com/p/droop/ I'm not 100% sure it's correct, but it count's Woodall's examples correctly. A plug for Droop: it's a general-purpose STV counter (well, and QPQ) whose claim to fame is that a rule can be modularly implemented on its own terms in a manner that can be seen to follow the formal description of the rule. If you have a look at the QPQ, Scottish STV and Minneapolis STV rule modules, for example, you can see how the implementation is interleaved with the legislative description of the rule. As a side benefit, Droop supports exact (rational) arithmetic, as well as a somewhat more efficient guarded arithmetic, which is conditionally exact. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Nov 16, 2010, at 8:57 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Nov 15, 2010, at 8:40 PM, Bob Richard wrote: On 11/15/2010 4:58 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: When majority rules, a 51 percent majority can have their way in election after election. But what other possible standard is there for democracy and fairness besides majority rule? For seats in legislative bodies, proportional representation. for which STV or a more Condorcet-like ordering (what would the name of that be? Kristofer Munsterhjelm had a Schulze ordering for Oakland) does well. here in Vermont we just had an election where for my state senate district, we voted for 6 out of about 15 and the top 6 vote getters win seats, but that method sorta sucks. Condorcet doesn't give proportional representation. If you have an example like: 51: D1 D2 D3 D4 49: R1 R2 R3 R4 and pick the first four, all the Ds will win. good point. maybe STV would be better for proportionality. STV would be better since it meets the Droop proportionality criterion and Condorcet does not. I think counterarguments would make use of that the majorities are not necessarily the same. Those who see no point in Condorcet would say: if the leftists prefer A to B and the right-wingers prefer A to C, that's still short of majority rule. so let's pick B or C even though a majority of voters (neither specifically left or right) vote that A is the better choice over either B or C. the reason why Condorcet (assuming a CW exists) is the democratic choice has nothing to do with left or right political alignment. the problem with electing someone other than the CW is that we, the voters, by a majority have expressed that we want the CW. otherwise, why not use random chance, or just give the election to the *minority* candidate? I used left and right as examples. The argument would be so, different majority factions wanted someone else, but they're not the same majority. I don't agree with it (I would say something like but assume you want X - then you can make a majority more happier by choosing Y instead if there's a majority that prefers XY). here's a fundamental philosophical question: why is it better, even in a two-candidate race, to elect the majority winner? why not have rules that we elect the minority candidate? (i have my own answers, but i would be interested in reading some others.) I would give a practical and a theoretical answer to why one would use majority instead of a minority. The practical answer would apply to all methods contrived to give the vote to a minority. Consider a method of the form that the candidate that's ranked last most often wins. Since you're asking the voters for their input, the voters would quickly find out that it's in their best interest (whenever a majority exists) to rank the preferred candidate last. Thus minority becomes majority - you can't ask the electorate to give the answer they'd like the least, because then they'll lie. Relying on theory, there's the Condorcet jury theorem. If a group wants to vote on a yes/no issue, and one (say yes) is the right answer, then: if each member has a probability greater than half of getting the answer right, then under majority rule, the probability that the group makes the correct decision goes to certainty as the group size increases, if each member has a probability less than half of getting the answer right, then under majority rule, the probability that the group makes the wrong decision goes to certainty as the group size increases. Thus, if the voters are smart enough and the group is large enough, you'll get the right answer by majority rule and the wrong answer without it. If the voters aren't smart enough, then the optimum is an enlightened dictator. If you can appoint enlightened dictators in a robust manner, then you don't need voting, and if you can't, the same logic holds for the question of whether the voters are smart enough to pick the dictator by majority vote. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
At 08:40 PM 11/15/2010, Bob Richard wrote: On 11/15/2010 4:58 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: When majority rules, a 51 percent majority can have their way in election after election. But what other possible standard is there for democracy and fairness besides majority rule? For seats in legislative bodies, proportional representation. One answer is that every sector of the population ought to have a chance at being in charge, and that chance should be in rough proportion to the size of the sector of the population. What does being in charge mean? If it means making the rules, see my response above. If it means implementing/administering/enforcing the rules, then I think any form of lottery would lead to chaos and possibly rebellion during the occasional terms in office of officials representing small minorities. Sortition is very feasible for specific kinds of legislative assemblies, specifically those whose purpose is to propose measures to be voted on in referenda. I don't think it can work for deciding who gets to run the executive branch. Simmons is a voting systems expert, but falls into the trap of assuming that decision-making can be compartmentalized into sectors, i.e., factions that think alike, so it is enough that the sectors are represented fairly. But true representation isn't compartmentalized. Suppose we have political parties, and I'm affiliated with one. How are the candidates for the parties chosen? Ultimately, it's a compromise, and I might end up, on some issue thatis important to me, unrepresented. It could be argued that the majority are often unrepresented; they are represented only by compromises according to the majority in the faction, and those compromises lose the subtlety of individual positions. If I'm represented, I want to know exactly who represents me! Of all the systems I've seen, only Asset allows this, by creating a public trail between my vote and the election of seats. The problem of electing a single executive is rather easily resolved, and it is so resolved in practice in not only many governments, but also in the vast majority of organizations that hold elections among members (or shareholders). Officers are chosen by the representative body, and so they do not have fixed terms. The U.S. descended from a royalist background, and it desired to have an elected King. That opened it up to all kinds of abuses it was superior to having a hereditary King, at least in enough ways to make it more successful, but not superior to true democracy, which is always the democracy of the present, not of last year or a few years ago. We can change our minds based on new evidence or thinking. And so can any deliberative body. The U.S. system wanted to avoid giving too much power to the people, and it actually set up an imbalance *against* the people, since two of the three branches were highly conservative, in theory. Only one was relatively representative, and even that suffered badly from the single-winner representative concept, which is what leaves most people, in fact, unrepresented (they may imagine that they are represented, simply because they have nothing to compare it with). Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
At 07:58 PM 11/15/2010, Forest Simmons wrote: When majority rules, a 51 percent majority can have their way in election after election. But what other possible standard is there for democracy and fairness besides majority rule? One answer is that every sector of the population ought to have a chance at being in charge, and that chance should be in rough proportion to the size of the sector of the population. A simple baseline method for accomplishing this goal is the random ballot method. The goal is undesirable, and here is why: Suppose that a population is evenly divided into two factions, the Compromise and the Selfish. The Compromise faction believes that a rising tide raises all boats, and that solutions should be found that will benefit all citizens, to the maximum extent possible. The Selfish faction believes that it is right, and that what is good for the Selfish is good for society, since the Selfish party members are the most important part of the population. the rest being no-good, lazy parasites who are, of course, only selfish and will wreck things if given power. If the decision-making power is given to the Compromise faction, decision-making will be the compromise that benefits all citizens, at least insofar as the faction can attain. It will consider the views of the Selfish faction, and attempt to maximize their benefit as well. But if the decision-making power is given to the Selfish faction, only the Selfish faction benefit will be maximized. The random ballot method damages, and could damage seriously, social utility of decisions, and overall satisfaction with decisions. Let's supposed that 80% of the Compromise faction decisions are satisfactory to the Selfish faction. And let's suppose that only 40% of the Selfish faction decisions are satisfactory to the Compromise faction. It could be worse than that! If they share decision-making equally, as the random ballot method would propose, the average satisfaction level regarding decisions is 60%, instead of the 80% that would be obtained if the Compromise faction always has power. The goal of good systems is to maximize the power of the Compromise faction, which, of course, is not a real faction, it is, in real practice, an operating process where factions, selfish and otherwise, participate in decision-making, adovcating their own interests, and sometimees the collective interest. Random ballot does nothing to encourage compromise! The goal of government is not to be fair, per se, but to maximize social welfare. Some people are going to believe that they are almost totally excluded from decision-making, and others are going to be grateful that this is true for those people! Democracy begins with majority rule. It does not end there, but random ballot discards majority rule, which leads to, inevitably, minority rule, at least part of the time. And the damage from that can be enormous. Suppose 10% of the population believes that using nuclear weapons to get rid of enemies is a fine idea. Would we, to provide this faction with a fair opportunity to exercise decision-making power, give them the button 10% of the time? Roughly, if this is a presidential election, once every forty years? I don't think so. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 08:57 AM 11/16/2010, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Condorcet doesn't give proportional representation. If you have an example like: 51: D1 D2 D3 D4 49: R1 R2 R3 R4 and pick the first four, all the Ds will win. Just for fun, suppose this is STV, to elect 5 seats. Accurate proportionality is not possible, but it can get close. I will assume acccurate vote transfers. As an exercise, I will use the Hare quota, 20 votes, and then look at what Asset would do. This turns, below, into a general discussion of Asset Voting, which was originally proposed as a tweak on STV, in 1883, by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson). The seats chosen are: 1. D1. 2. R1 3. D2 4. R2 leaving 11: D3 D4 9: R3 R4 Nobody has a quota for the fifth seat. This is why the Droop quota is used in most implementations of STV. But let's go back to Dodgson's idea. Perhaps one could augment STV by starting at Hare and going towards Droop until it finds a quota that all candidates meet. I'm not sure what criteria such a method would pass, but it would be interesting. In the case above, it would still give a 3:2 result, though. D1 now owns 11 votes that remain, and R1 owns 9. If they can agree, they can elect a seat. If they cannot agree, my proposal for the rules is that the seat is vacant until they do, or until a special election is held. I think that leaving the seat open may be superior to a special election, but if a special election is held, it should be one that would find a compromise candidate. It should not be IRV! It should not be a partisan election, party affiliation should not be on the ballot, my opinion. That's also a good thing to think about. If the ballots were somewhat more complex, you'd want to perform a single-winner election for that remaining seat, but with power redistributed so that those who already have it get less. In STV, that single-winner election is IRV. A good proportional method should here act more like Condorcet (or Range, or your favorite method) with power-equalized ballots. I suppose Asset works by retaining the power that could not be cleanly assigned to candidates, and then having the candidates who could have won decide how to collect the numerous almost-seats into fewer (compromise) seats. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
At 12:51 PM 11/16/2010, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: I suppose Asset works by retaining the power that could not be cleanly assigned to candidates, and then having the candidates who could have won decide how to collect the numerous almost-seats into fewer (compromise) seats. Yes. In the simple example, of course, there was only one such seat. Actually, those candidates have already won, themselves. What they are doing is advocating for all the voting power that wasn't represented in the choices already made. Using the Hare quota leads to the interesting result that a balanced assembly has a motive to choose a chair who is neutral, and neither faction can elect a chair unilaterally. The same thing happens with representation. There would be electors remaining who have, collectively, enough votes to elect a seat. If they must cooperate to elect the seat, they are highly incentivized to pick someone perceived by both sides as fair and neutral. A moderate. It is possible to set a quota for the last seat that is somewhere between majority (Droop quota, effectively) and full agreement (Hare quota), to deal with truly extreme voting positions that will refuse compromise. I have not worked out all the details. I've assumed that it is simple enough to normally leave one seat vacant in the assembly. I.e., the assembly might normally elect N seats, but theoretically could elect more than that. A couple of extra members does no harm. It's also possible, with asset to elect, using the Droop quota, that last seat, with reduced voting power according to actual support. The basic Asset concept is extremely powerful and spreading the concept should not depend on the details of implementation. Asset worked, spectacularly, in the only known usage -- which was quite informal and without clear specification of rules, but it *was* asset and functioned like it -- to elect a three-member steering committee for the Election Science Foundation, from five candidates and 17 voters. It was, effectively, a unanimous election, but you could not -- at all -- tell that from the actual votes without looking at what the electors subsequently did. Asset deserves far more attention than it's gotten. It's extremely simple to use. In this case, it was vote-for-one, and it works well enough with vote-for-one that I'm not sure it's worth the complication of using ranked ballots. All a ranked ballot does is to say, effectively, I trust A to make actual organizational decisions, but not to vote on who else makes decisions. Which is a pretty weak kind of trust! In fact, one of the primary functions of representative bodies is to delegate authority. You want people on those bodies who can be trusted to do this well, so it's a bit of an oxymoron to vote first rank for someone, once you are totally free in this coice, and then not trust them to ... delegate (voting) authority! However, Asset is an obvious tweak to STV, to deal with exhausted ballots, which was the original idea, Dodgson having realized that most voters simply did not have enough information to rank the remaining candidates, other than their favorite. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Nov 16, 2010, at 5:57 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: I suspect that one can't have both quota proportionality and monotonicity, so I've been considering divisor-based proportional methods, but it's not clear how to generalize something like Webster to ranked ballots. I did try (with my M-Set Webster method), and it is, to my knowledge, monotone, but it's not very good in the single-winner instance. Woodall in 2003 formalized a method he called Quota-Preferential by Quotient (QPQ), based on a suggestion by Olli Salmi on this list. Woodall demonstrates that it satisfies DPC, but doesn't say much about other criteria. I know about QPQ, but I don't think it's monotone. The kind of ranked divisor method I'm thinking about would probably need another criterion. The reason I suspect this (like I suspect the incompatibility of monotonicity with the DPC) is based on party list apportionment methods. For apportionment methods, no method can meet both population-pair monotonicity (moving votes from one party to another won't lead the former to gain seats and the latter to lose them) and quota. Divisor methods can meet population-pair monotonicity, but they do so by some times failing quota, with Webster failing quota the least. If one can link ranked vote monotonicity and population-pair monotonicity, and quota and DPC, then that would suggest that: 1. you can't have both monotonicity and the DPC. 2. divisor methods can be monotone, but they will fail the DPC. This might be doable by emulating party list PR inside a ranked ballot method by having every voter vote only for the candidates of some party, in a predetermined order, with different voters in the electorate voting for different parties that way. I think STV reduces to largest-remainder with a Droop quota if you do that, but I am not sure. I think it would be harder to link population-pair monotonicity to ballot-based monotonicity than quota to the DPC. The quota restriction would be stricter than the DPC: even if you had, say, a Imperiali quota criterion, you couldn't have both it and monotonicity -- if you can link the criteria in the way I mentioned. My M-Set Webster method replaces the DPC with a constraint set that every solid coalition of k candidates preferred by v voters should be entitled to at least min(k, round(v/q)) of the seats, where q is set to the least value where the combined constraints thus produced can all be met. It seems to work (there's also a margins phase to make monotonicity work in certain ambiguous cases), but it's very specific and, as the single-winner version shows, not very good at finding compromises. A full description can be found at http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2010-March/025641.html if you're interested. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Who is your representative under Asset Voting?
On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: If I'm represented, I want to know exactly who represents me! Abd, I've heard you say that several times over the years. Why is that important to you? Of all the systems I've seen, only Asset allows this, by creating a public trail between my vote and the election of seats. I would note that: - If you vote for someone who gets more than the quota, then the excess votes get passed on to help elect other candidates. So who did you elect? Who is your representative? - If you vote for someone who gets less than the quota and has to pass on his votes, he may split those votes among more than one other candidate. Again, who did you elect? - If you vote by secret ballot, then _you_ might know where your vote went (subject to the above uncertainties), but your representative won't have any way of knowing if he was elected in part by your vote. - Suppose you are a Libertarian, but there are not enough Libertarian voters to elect a Libertarian candidate. Your vote eventually elects a Democrat or a Republican. Does that candidate represent you? I would say no, or at least, not very well. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
Dear Rob, you wrote: here's a fundamental philosophical question: why is it better, even in a two-candidate race, to elect the majority winner? I think the question is ill-posed in at least two ways: First, you say better but not better than what. Second, after you settled for an alternative, you should not ask why is it better? but is is better?. My answer: The alternatives here are not only elect the majority candidate or elect the minority candidate but also elect both with just probabilities reflecting their share of the vote. And the latter is obviously the only democratic of the three since otherwise one part of the electorate can easily oppress the rest. Athenians knew why they filled offices by lot in their democracy... Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
How did this thread get side tracked to Proportional Representation? Proportional Representation only works for multi-winner elections. Of course, everybody knows that PR is the way to go in multi-winner elections. And why is that? Because it solves the tyranny of the majority problem in that setting. So why cannot we see that this same problem exists in single winner elections? I suggest that the analogous remedy in the single winner setting is proportional probability. The simplest method that accomplishes this is random ballot. But, as I suggested, there are better stochastic methods that yield probability distributions with less entropy while still solving the tyranny of the majority problem.. Jobst's original challenge was something like this (numbers in parentheses are sincere range values): 60 A(100) , B(80), C(0) 40 C(100), B(80), A(0) Assuming rational voters and a complete information environment, any deterministic method including range or approval would elect A even though B is the sincere range/approval winner, and the clear consensus candidate. On the other hand, (still assuming rational voters with perfect information) any decent, proportional probability, stochastic method would elect B with 100% probability. Sometimes only a stochastic method can reliably elect the sincere range/approval winner. Note that random ballot is not adequate; it would give alternative A three to two odds of winning over C, and B would have zero probability of winning. So when I say decent stochastic method, I'm talking about something more sophisticated than random ballot. Jobst has invented a number of such methods. The one I mentioned in the first post in this thread is a method I designed to handle several factions with multiple local consensus opportunities, for example: 20 A1C!C3 25 A2C1C3 30 B1C2C3 25 B2C2. Depending on the relative utilities of the various C's, the best solution could be (among other possibilities) either (1) the random ballot lottery 20%A1+25%A2+30%B1+25%B2, or (2) 45%C1+55%C2, or (3) 75%C3+25%B2. A decent proportional probability stochastic method will make insincere ballots backfire, and will automatically assign the appropriate probabilities in all such cases. I hope there is some interest in the original intent of this thread. If not, at least we had a good talk about PR:) Forest Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Fair and Democratic versus Majority Rules
Dear Abd ul-Rahman, some short remarks to your claims: Random ballot does nothing to encourage compromise! Perfectly true. That's why nobody suggests it to be used for decisions. We suggest to use it instead as a benchmark any reasonable method must improve upon. More precisely, we want that the actually used decision process is preferred to the Random Ballot lottery by all voters. Majoritarian methods do not produce outcomes that everyone prefers to the Random Ballot lottery. Our methods do. The goal of government is not to be fair, per se, but to maximize social welfare. Nice try. So we're back to the problem of deciding what we mean by social welfare. Most definitions would agree that in this very simple and common situation, C maximizes social welfare: 55 voters assign utilities A 100, C 80, B 0, and 45 voters have B 100, C 80, A 0. That was my challenge back in 2007. Obviously, majoritarian methods spectacularly fail to maximize social welfare. Our consensus methods choose C in this example. Democracy begins with majority rule. Democracy begins with Athenian Democracy in which offices were filled by lot, which is essentially equivalent to Random Ballot. Majority rule has nothing to do with democracy, its pleocracy. It does not end there, but random ballot discards majority rule, which leads to, inevitably, minority rule, at least part of the time. Nope. What you don't seem to understand is that neither the majority nor the minority need to rule. Ruling means you can be sure your choice will be realized. In our consensus method, no group that is smaller than 100% can guarantee that their favourite wins, so there is no ruling but rather the cooperative choice of a consensus. And the damage from that can be enormous. Suppose 10% of the population believes that using nuclear weapons to get rid of enemies is a fine idea. Would we, to provide this faction with a fair opportunity to exercise decision-making power, give them the button 10% of the time? No we wouldn't. We are well-advised to prevent such options from being considered at all in the first place since they might easily be approved by large majorities as well (Examples: death penalty, Rwanda, Hitler, near-extinction of native Americans, etc.). For this reason it makes no sense to repeat bringing up ridiculous examples with extreme options. Our goal is to find good methods to decide between feasible not infeasible options. The latter can only be safely excluded legally in a constitution. Yours, Jobst Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
