Re: [EM] Methods
On Wed, 2011-10-19 at 00:51 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > > > Matt-- > > You're a bit unfair to rank methods. You said that it's difficult to > figure out the right strategy. Hmmm... I'm not sure I said that it is difficult to figure out the right strategy. One thing that I did say was that "rank methods hide or lose information". I still think that is true but of course rank methods are all over the map and are a mathematicians wet dream. so if you say they can convey the same info then I'll have to agree to disagree. > Approval voting is easiest when some candidates are acceptable and > some are entirely unacceptable: Just vote for the acceptables. I think approval voting is always very easy, but yes, it is trivial to decide in the case of highly polarised candidates. > If you have no information about winnability, then the strategy is > simply to vote for all the above-average candidates. > > But if there aren't "unacceptables", and if there is winnability > information of some kind, then Approval is inherently a strategic > method. > > Approval voting is strategic then. As I said, a good strategy is to > just vote for all candidates who are better than what you expect > from the election. Voters may be ill-informed but they are not stupid. I'm pretty sure 99.999% of the voters will have no trouble mastering the trivial "strategy" needed by approval in some races. > Bucklin has Approval-like strategy, with, as I said, 3 > protection-levels instead of two. If it's clear who belongs in each > protection category, > > then the strategy isn't difficult. Other than that, I don't think > Bucklin's strategy is known, to the extent that Approval's simpler > strategy > > is known. But, knowing who you'd vote for in Approval can inform your > Bucklin voting, because Bucklin lets you rank people you wouldn't vote > for in Approval, safe in the knowledge that you've equally top-ranked > the best set of candidates. > > Condorcet(wv), MDDA & MAMPO can be more free of strategy if no one > falsifies preferences, due to their SFC compliance. > > But, if some voters are likely to use burying strategy, then it's > desirable to thwart them, and enforce the methods' SFC benefit, > > by refusing to rank the candidates of the likely reversers. If that > sounds complicated, it isn't really. Just use some judgement about > how far down you rank. Don't rank the really odious candidates, or the > ones who (or their supporters) are antagonistic to your > candidate. > > Additionally, of course, the buriers intended victims have the same > polling information as do the buriers. And it isn't possible to > organize a large scale burial strategy without it leaking to the > intended victims. Burial only works against people who are trying to > help you. > > And, finally, what if the burial succeeded, this time. What about > subsequent elections. Do you think that party will get ranked in the > victims' rankings again? > > Oh, one more thing, in the above-listed methods, as I said, to steal > the election for a candidate by burial requires that a large fraction > of his favorite-supporters do burial. And thwarting and penalizing the > burial requires only a small fraction of the intended victims to > truncate the buriers' candidate. > I don't agree that rankings are awkward or painful to vote. I know > whom I like better than whom. But I'll agree with you on this: > > I consider our elections to consist of acceptables and unacceptables. > That kind of election is _made for_ Approval. Bucklin, however, > can let you rank among the acceptables, while still giving them full > SDSC protection from the unacceptables, if they have majority > support. And if they don't have majority support, not method can save > them. > > Likewise, MDDA and MAMPO make the same thing possible. > > And no one needs to vote 50 times in succession. Of course not, that misses the point. A proponent of any of these systems is going to be blind to the costs of the system. I've done the exercise of casting a ballot using different systems many times in succession. My original hypothesis was that I just wasn't used to it. After a dozen times I knew that the mental energy in ranking was *much* higher than for approval or plurality. By casting a ballot in each system fifty times in a row I think people will get a more balanced sense of just what a pain ranking is. For the exercise to be meaningful the candidates need to be presented randomly for each iteration. I'd add ranking to my (bitrot aflicted) approvalvote site for folks to do side-by-side comparison but unfortunately easy-to-do ranking is too hard to implement :) . Can anyone recommend a side-by-side approval and ranking site? I guess I could implement it similar to how St. Paul has implemented paper ballots: http://www.minnpost.com/twocities/2011/10/17/32440/st_paul_ready_to_give_ranked_voting_its_first_try > Someone quoted James Green-Armytage as saying that Approval is > "v
Re: [EM] Methods
Hi Matt, Writing very quickly, apologies in advance. --- En date de : Dim 16.10.11, matt welland a écrit : > > Approval's weakness is that it has to decide where the > main contest is > > prior to the vote. If there are few good options (i.e. > any pair of > > frontrunners leaves a large percentage of voters > approving neither) or > > too many good options (i.e. several likely candidates > for sincere CW) a > > rank method, with its "higher resolution," may be able > to fish out a > > better result. > > Hmmm... It seems to me that both those scenarios actually > say something > useful and even possibly important about the election > results that would > be lost in a ranked election. I'm not sure I would dispute that, but even if they say something useful that doesn't mean it helps to pick the best winner. > Assuming that a) decent information about the candidates > has been > available via news, web and debates and b) reasonable > quality approval > polls have been conducted prior to the election then: > > In the case where there are too few good options then > clearly the > candidates do not represent a good cross section of the > values and > criteria considered important to the people or the people > are are too > diverse to be easily represented. This is not a problem > that can be > solved by an election system. True, but... > All a ranked system would do > is hide the > issue and choose some candidate that clearly a large > portion of the > population would not be happy with. Yes, but it has a better chance of being the sincere CW than if you use Approval. If people cannot rally around two candidates under Approval, there is a serious danger of having an almost arbitrary outcome. I believe this could happen not just if none of the candidates are very good, but also if sincere preferences are cyclic so that the polls cannot stabilize anywhere. > In the case where there are many good options then approval > is exposing > that fact. That might be true when you look at the results, sure, but it's not clear anything can be learned from it or that the failure to elect the actual CW on election day could have been avoided. > It is true that this scenario makes strategic > voting more > important but since we are assuming that decent information > and prior > polling is available I think voters can apply a pretty > simple strategy > to decide if it is safe to not vote for the front runner > they don't > really like. Assuming a party or conservative/liberal > philosophical > split then if the candidate they do like is ahead of the > leading > candidate in the opposing camp then they can safely not > vote for the > front runner in their camp they don't like. Hard to explain > but trivial > once understood. Yes, if there's left/right/center and Right looks relatively weak, the votes you end up with will most likely give right no exclusive approvals. Right supporters, seeing the same polls as everyone else, will add support for Center. Left supporters won't. The result is that whatever odds Right had of being the sincere CW get translated into Center wins. > Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the > ranked > systems actually lose or hide information relative to > approval in both > these cases. In the second case I wouldn't agree with that. But see lower as I don't think we're talking about the same situation. > Note that in the first case the results and impact of a > ranked system > are actually worse than the results of approval. As far as the results of a single election, I wouldn't agree with that. This is Approval's worst case scenario in my view. As far as the ongoing effects of Approval, you may be right. I am not sure. Off-center candidates are less likely to be viable under Approval, but this is true even when on election day they would be the actual CW. It might be something like a "do you want to win each battle" vs "do you want to win the war" type of choice. I can see that it is possible to argue that it could be better to fail to elect sincere CWs sometimes if in the long run the candidates are superior. > The > political pressure > to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under > approval > than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system > only makes > sense in the context of all the other things going on in a > society. The > pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the > people is a > massively important factor and ranked systems appear to > wash out some of > that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. Understood... > In the second case a ranked system *might* select a "more > preferred" > candidate but if you have several candidates all getting > 75% approval > then really, do you (pragmatically speaking) care which one > gets chosen? Well, I'm not envisioning the scenario where everybody gets 75% approval. It's the scenario where several candidates could be the sincere CW on election day. That's more like
Re: [EM] Single-winner method with strong winners (was: Poll for favorite single winner voting system with OpaVote)
Hi Juho, Firing off quick responses, sorry: --- En date de : Lun 17.10.11, Juho Laatu a écrit : I think that your method is similar to my single contest method. I believe you determine the critical pair of candidates in exactly the same way. However, while my method just has an instant runoff between those two candidates, you are possibly letting in some other candidates. That is essential. Those "additional" candidates and extra round with some Condorcet method (= a good single winner method) are needed to make it work in the intended way (= according to the requirements in the requirements section). I don't think there is a big problem on paper... It's quite likely that I tested in my sim some methods very similar to your proposal, and didn't report on them just because I found them to be . What would you expect to be the problems in this category of methods? Why are they less than the best? I considered them (i.e. your type, bringing in more candidates) less than the best for my purposes at the time because there is more strategy in the rank component of the ballot. It may be, and I hope I once noted, that transferring all the strategy to the approval component, so that said strategy can't be given clear pejorative names, may just be a magic trick. But I'm fond of tricks if they're good. Note also that the target of the method is somewhat different that the regular requirements for single winner methods (i.e. elect the strongest, not the compromise candidate). It is planned for a "few-party system" that should be an improved version of a plurality based "two-party system". But I guess strategic vulnerabilities should be treated pretty much the same way as with other methods. What I found to be of interest, of course, is that very little strategy remained on the ranking side of the method, since its main purpose was to resolve a two-way race. Your method will compromise on that a bit... What do you mean with a two-way race? And what is the compromise? Since my method only allows two finalists, there is only a two-way race to be decided using the rankings. The compromise your method makes is that more strategy will be possible on the rank component. The idea is to pick the winner among those candidates that can be considered to be at least equal in strength with "what single candidates of traditional two leading parties would be". Those candidates were picked by comparing their strength (= their level of approval) to the strength of the members of the most liked "proportional" pair. Yes, I get that. Do you have majority favorite covered...? What do you mean with this? I'm simply asking whether your method satisfies majority favorite. My method has a rule tacked on to make sure it satisfies it. It's ugly and contrary to my stated goals for the method, but seems to be better than the alternative. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods
Quoting Mike Ossipoff: 'to me, our current public political elections don't require any strategy decisions, other than "vote for acceptable candidates and don't vote for the entirely unacceptable ones."' In the discussions of Approval and ranking, below, Mke's thought applies to both. In the extreme, when this leaves no one to vote for, simply vote for none (or, if forced, do whatever forced to do for one candidate). In Approval we have a count of how many considered each candidate acceptable; with ranking we have counts in an x*x matrix as to how many preferred each candidate over each other candidate. On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:28 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: matt welland wrote: On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: matt welland wrote: Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both these cases. In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between "everybody's equally good" and "everybody's equally bad". Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often be pointed in the right direction. A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all have very high approval). While it is agreed that counts in Approval show the above, it needs seeing that the x*x matrix can be read in the same way for ranking. Neither does strategic Approval. In Approval, the best simple strategy (if I remember correctly) is to approve the perceived frontrunner you prefer, as well as every candidate who you like better. In a Stalin election, if people were perfectly rational, the left-wingers would approve Stalin if the other frontrunner was Hitler. Well, perhaps people aren't perfectly rational. However, to the degree they are honest, Approval can get into a contending third- party problem. If you have a parallel universe where Nader is nearly as popular as Gore, liberals would have to seriously (and strategically) think about whether they should approve of Gore or not - if too many approve of Gore *and* Nader, Nader has no chance of winning; but if too many approve of only Nader, Bush might win. Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a "favorite" but the truth might be that none of the candidates are acceptable. See above. Some ranked methods can give scores, not just rankings. As a simple example, the Borda count gives scores - the number of points each candidate gets - as a result of the way it works. The Borda count isn't very good, but it is possible to make other, better methods give scores as well; and if you do so, an "equally good/equally bad" situation will show as one where every candidate gets nearly the same score. As for distinguishing "equally bad" from "equally good", there are two ways you could do so within ranked votes. You could do it implicitly, by assuming that the voters approve of the candidates they rank and disapprove of those they don't; or you can do it explicitly by adding a "against all" (re-open nominations, none of the below, etc) virtual candidate. Adding a virtual candidate is making trouble for voters UNLESS its good justifies its pain. Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback. A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that none are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate that one of them is the "condorcet" winner giving no indication that none are acceptable. Again, x*x is
[EM] Methods
I'd like to say a few more things about the methods, correcting at least one error of mine, and then I'd like to briefly reply to a few statements in posts in the "Methods" thread. First, my comments: When I said that MDDA wasn't looking as good as PC, that was before I re-found-out that the wv methods fail FBC. At that time, I was asking what I'd liked so much about MDDA. Of course now I realize that it was FBC compliance. So I retract what I recently said about liking PC better. With its compliance with FBC and SFC, MDDA is one of the top rank methods. One of the top methods, period. I don't know enough about the criterion compliances of other methods, such as DMC. But, for their simplicity, and from the fact that I know them to meet FBC and SFC, MDDA and MAMPO, along with ER-Bucklin(whole) are the rank methods that now look to me like the most likely best choices for proposing or polling about. ...because, before dealing with public proposal, one would have to have more information than I now have about the methods' criterion compliances and properties. I appreciate the information that I've received so far here, regarding that subject, and of course any additional information that I can get. Of course I'll have to look for it too. Even for polling people on alternative voting systems, which I intend to do, I'd need to have a good idea, based in info regarding lots of methods, which few rank methods would be the ones to ask about. A poll must only include a few of the best alternatives. Right now, I guess my poll will include Approval, Bucklin, MDDA, and MAMPO. MDDA and MAMPO almost count as just one method, for the purpose of how much I'm asking people to choose between, because of course they're symmetrical use of the same two standards. Of course if everyone rejects those, I might try Range Voting. Matt-- You're a bit unfair to rank methods. You said that it's difficult to figure out the right strategy. Approval voting is easiest when some candidates are acceptable and some are entirely unacceptable: Just vote for the acceptables. If you have no information about winnability, then the strategy is simply to vote for all the above-average candidates. But if there aren't "unacceptables", and if there is winnability information of some kind, then Approval is inherently a strategic method. Approval voting is strategic then. As I said, a good strategy is to just vote for all candidates who are better than what you expect from the election. Bucklin has Approval-like strategy, with, as I said, 3 protection-levels instead of two. If it's clear who belongs in each protection category, then the strategy isn't difficult. Other than that, I don't think Bucklin's strategy is known, to the extent that Approval's simpler strategy is known. But, knowing who you'd vote for in Approval can inform your Bucklin voting, because Bucklin lets you rank people you wouldn't vote for in Approval, safe in the knowledge that you've equally top-ranked the best set of candidates. Condorcet(wv), MDDA & MAMPO can be more free of strategy if no one falsifies preferences, due to their SFC compliance. But, if some voters are likely to use burying strategy, then it's desirable to thwart them, and enforce the methods' SFC benefit, by refusing to rank the candidates of the likely reversers. If that sounds complicated, it isn't really. Just use some judgement about how far down you rank. Don't rank the really odious candidates, or the ones who (or their supporters) are antagonistic to your candidate. Additionally, of course, the buriers intended victims have the same polling information as do the buriers. And it isn't possible to organize a large scale burial strategy without it leaking to the intended victims. Burial only works against people who are trying to help you. And, finally, what if the burial succeeded, this time. What about subsequent elections. Do you think that party will get ranked in the victims' rankings again? Oh, one more thing, in the above-listed methods, as I said, to steal the election for a candidate by burial requires that a large fraction of his favorite-supporters do burial. And thwarting and penalizing the burial requires only a small fraction of the intended victims to truncate the buriers' candidate. I don't agree that rankings are awkward or painful to vote. I know whom I like better than whom. But I'll agree with you on this: I consider our elections to consist of acceptables and unacceptables. That kind of election is _made for_ Approval. Bucklin, however, can let you rank among the acceptables, while still giving them full SDSC protection from the unacceptables, if they have majority support. And if they don't have majority support, not method can save them. Likewise, MDDA and MAMPO make the same thing possible. And no one needs to vote 50 times in succession. Someon
Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
Juho Laatu wrote: > Yes, also I have not found any actual flaws [in the thesis], but > what we need, I think, is a common terminology. There is a paradox > here, and agreed terms should be available to manage this situation, > e.g. to separate concepts "vote has influence" and "[v]ote has no > influence" that may be true at the same time (if one uses terms in > some no good way as I did here). The thesis would be invalid if it were expressing a paradox. But I see no paradox; only a situation that's difficult to accept on the one hand, and difficult to reject on the other. It looks more like a dilemma. This might be expected with a centuries old flaw that's woven into the fabric of society; it's a part of us in some sense. > I think there actually is a vacuum, and many voters don't vote > because of that. Some voters may actually think that the power that > they have is too small to bother to vote. Some may indeed think that > probably their vote will not be a decisive vote. Some voters may > think that politicians will never change which ever one of them is > in power. Some have lost their trust in fellow voters. New better > concepts and better understanding of the process might help. The better I understand the process the more failures I see. I have to suppress a tendency to exaggerate, because the failures aren't total and unqualified, and they do appear to originate in that one, simple flaw. It's not the "crooked timber of humanity" or anything that we have to learn to live with. It's just an error in the design of an electoral system that dates back to the 1700s, a design that no responsible engineer would sign off on, today. After understanding it, therefore, I think we must fix it. > > 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its > > outcome (P). How did it affect the politicians? > > 2. Subtract your vote from that election. > > 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). > > 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. > > 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. > > Your vote never affected any politicians. > > My vote never did, but maybe the threat that I and some others might > vote "wrong" maybe did. Yes, or even many others. The politician wants any and all votes, but never just a single vote. That's no help to him, of course. Only the individual voter cares about that single vote. Again, this disconnect of concerns is just one more expression of the basic design flaw. It seems to have penetrated all aspects of modern politics. > But maybe if you form a small club (or a large club (=party)) that > discusses and finds an agreement on how to vote. Then maybe you get > the power that you want. Only at the cost of political liberty. To allow a flaw in the electoral system to rule my actions would be to surrender to a contingency and immediately lose my freedom. My subsequent actions in the party would be more likely to confirm and consolidate that loss, than to redeem it. Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. * We teach our children that a vote formalizes both power and equality, having learned ourselves that these are the two preconditions of political liberty. In abandoning my vote, I therefore abandon my fellow citizens and the one structural support of political liberty that the constitution guarantees. For lack of that support, any power I now aquire for myself in the party is liable to come at the expense of others, and serve only to make me a fitter instrument of the contingency that binds us all. My entire political career will be nothing but the expression of a poor technical design, a flaw still waiting to be corrected. I think we have to fix that flaw, not work around it. The failures we witness in society are themselves the work arounds. * The social contract, or principles of political right. 1762. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/book1.html -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/ Juho Laatu wrote: > On 18.10.2011, at 5.57, Michael Allan wrote: > > > Hi Juho, > > > > Thanks for giving me a chance to explain. It's a difficult thesis to > > summarize. Nobody has admitted to being convinced by it yet. At the > > same time, no serious flaws have been found. > > Yes, also I have not found any actual flaws, but what we need, I think, is a > common terminology. There is a paradox here, and agreed terms should be > available to manage this situation, e.g. to separate concepts "vote has > influence" and "note has no influence" that may be true at the same time (if > one uses terms in some no good way as I did here). > > > > >> If we assume that the whole election had an impact (1 or N), but no > >> single vote was decisive, then who had the power? > > > > (You're right of course. The power to turn over the government is > > something
Re: [EM] Declaration Status
> 2011/10/18 Andy Jennings wrote: > > So the declaration is all done, right? Ready to send out to > everyone we think might be interested? I think we should freeze the Declaration wording as it is now. Of course if there is any further wording refinement that anyone(!) might want made, let's refine that wording now. If not, let's freeze the wording. Remember that signers can express in their signature their preference. As an extreme example, an IRV advocate can write "Supports IRV as better than any of the officially supported methods, but agrees that plurality voting must end". Remember that the declaration does not oppose IRV. Then we can post the Declaration where it can be viewed without logging in. > I have a bunch of people I want to notify, but for some reason I > don't feel like sending them to either the Google Doc or to > Richard's page (http://www.votefair.org/declaration.html). > Niether seems appropriate for a first impression. I too do not want my copy of the Declaration (at VoteFair.org) to continue to be used. It's just a temporary place to view it (that doesn't require logging in) until we find a home for it. I think the official copy should reside on a locked page on the Electorama wiki -- unless someone else has a better idea. Who can/should do that? On 10/18/2011 7:16 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: > I am still contacting high profile people who we'd like to sign it. > Personally, I'd avoid calling it "done" quite yet so that we can make > minor changes if these people request it. But if people feel otherwise, > I'd be willing to freeze it in its current state. The reason I am anxious to finalize the wording is because there is an "army" of frustrated voters who are ready to fight U.S. government (Congress) in a direct showdown -- i.e. Occupy Wall Street and the "We are the 99%" movement -- and we need to point to election-method reform as the most fruitful reform (because that cuts the puppet strings that now control politicians). I looked on the Occupy Wall Street website where they are voting on what to demand, and currently election reform is not a popular choice. We need to essentially step up and say "we have done the math" and "single-mark ballots are the enemy". Also, when people step forward to give public presentations (and make online-posted videos of those presentations) to educate voters about what has really been going on, they can use the Declaration (with a significant number of signatures) as meaningful evidence. As we gather signatures, I suggest that we create two lists. One list -- the one we have now -- includes credentials -- which can be academic or anything relevant (including just having an interest in election methods). The second list would not list credentials and instead would just have the person's name and location -- by nation and possibly province/state, with a city name being optional. Each signature would be added to the appropriate list based on what information they supply in their signature. After the wording is finalized and I find the time, I may create a Facebook page to expose the Declaration to young people (who are the ones who will push hardest for election-method reform) and hopefully to collect signatures (or at least "friend" support) from frustrated voters. (The suggestion of using Facebook came from a door-to-door political-petition signature gatherer.) That copy would be the one I would want to take the time to format more nicely than the temporary copy I've created at VoteFair.org. I think it's time to turn the Declaration over to the world. They need it. Now. Richard Fobes On 10/18/2011 7:16 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I am still contacting high profile people who we'd like to sign it. Personally, I'd avoid calling it "done" quite yet so that we can make minor changes if these people request it. But if people feel otherwise, I'd be willing to freeze it in its current state. Here's the status of my efforts * I'm pursuing an introduction to Kenneth Arrow through a mutual friend. This should bear fruit in a couple of months (due to travel). Personally, I think it's worth the wait. * I don't have a contact for Maurice Duverger. Any help there would be good. He's 94 but apparently still going strong; he had an editorial in Le Monde just a year ago. * I could contact James Buchanan, but first I'd like to see if anyone here has some connection, so that he'd be more inclined to view us favorably. * I've written to Tony Downs. He's a second-tier name, but if he is interested, he would be a good person to introduce us to Buchanan. * I've talked with Steven Brams, Michel Balinski, and Rida Laraki. They all wish us luck, but refuse to sign because of some (in my view minor) issue they have with one of the systems we support. Brams has not definitively shut the door on signing.
Re: [EM] Methods
matt welland wrote: On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: matt welland wrote: Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both these cases. In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between "everybody's equally good" and "everybody's equally bad". Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often be pointed in the right direction. A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all have very high approval). Neither does strategic Approval. In Approval, the best simple strategy (if I remember correctly) is to approve the perceived frontrunner you prefer, as well as every candidate who you like better. In a Stalin election, if people were perfectly rational, the left-wingers would approve Stalin if the other frontrunner was Hitler. Well, perhaps people aren't perfectly rational. However, to the degree they are honest, Approval can get into a contending third-party problem. If you have a parallel universe where Nader is nearly as popular as Gore, liberals would have to seriously (and strategically) think about whether they should approve of Gore or not - if too many approve of Gore *and* Nader, Nader has no chance of winning; but if too many approve of only Nader, Bush might win. Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a "favorite" but the truth might be that none of the candidates are acceptable. Some ranked methods can give scores, not just rankings. As a simple example, the Borda count gives scores - the number of points each candidate gets - as a result of the way it works. The Borda count isn't very good, but it is possible to make other, better methods give scores as well; and if you do so, an "equally good/equally bad" situation will show as one where every candidate gets nearly the same score. As for distinguishing "equally bad" from "equally good", there are two ways you could do so within ranked votes. You could do it implicitly, by assuming that the voters approve of the candidates they rank and disapprove of those they don't; or you can do it explicitly by adding a "against all" (re-open nominations, none of the below, etc) virtual candidate. Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback. A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that none are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate that one of them is the "condorcet" winner giving no indication that none are acceptable. Here, an implicit solution would record heaps of blank votes, and an explicit one would show the virtual candidate to be the CW. I think any sane voting system *must* meet this requirement. The ability for the electorate to unambiguously communicate that none of the candidates are worthy of the post under contest. I don't know how to prove it but my hunch is that approval would be more resistant to manipulation by the so-called "one percenter" elites than ranked systems. James Green-Armytage's paper seems to show Approval as one of the rules more vulnerable to strategic voting (see http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~armytage/svn2010.pdf ). Whether or not that would translate into one-percenter manipulation, however, I don't know. I suspect that most of the rules (e.g. various Condorcet methods, Approval, Majority Judgement) would be sufficiently resistant. Even top-two seems to do well enough to break Duverger's law. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list i
Re: [EM] Declaration Status
I am still contacting high profile people who we'd like to sign it. Personally, I'd avoid calling it "done" quite yet so that we can make minor changes if these people request it. But if people feel otherwise, I'd be willing to freeze it in its current state. Here's the status of my efforts - I'm pursuing an introduction to Kenneth Arrow through a mutual friend. This should bear fruit in a couple of months (due to travel). Personally, I think it's worth the wait. - I don't have a contact for Maurice Duverger. Any help there would be good. He's 94 but apparently still going strong; he had an editorial in Le Monde just a year ago. - I could contact James Buchanan, but first I'd like to see if anyone here has some connection, so that he'd be more inclined to view us favorably. - I've written to Tony Downs. He's a second-tier name, but if he is interested, he would be a good person to introduce us to Buchanan. - I've talked with Steven Brams, Michel Balinski, and Rida Laraki. They all wish us luck, but refuse to sign because of some (in my view minor) issue they have with one of the systems we support. Brams has not definitively shut the door on signing. - Markus Schulze hasn't signed because we support too many systems, which in his view weakens the impact. - I have recently emailed James Green-Armytage, who is probably reading this mail here. No response yet. - I haven't contacted Nicholas Tideman. He may be reading this too, but if he's not, I would like to get as many high-powered names such as those above to sign on before we talk to him. - If we had a big-name author, I have a contact with the editor of * Science*, so we might be able to get an editorial published. - As you can see on the declaration, Warren Smith has already signed. Meanwhile, I agree that a good css stylesheet would dramatically improve the look of the declaration on http://www.votefair.org/declaration.html. Jameson 2011/10/18 Andy Jennings > So the declaration is all done, right? Ready to send out to everyone we > think might be interested? > > I have a bunch of people I want to notify, but for some reason I don't feel > like sending them to either the Google Doc or to Richard's page ( > http://www.votefair.org/declaration.html). Niether seems appropriate for > a first impression. > > Anyone else feel the same way? > > ~ Andy > > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Declaration Status
So the declaration is all done, right? Ready to send out to everyone we think might be interested? I have a bunch of people I want to notify, but for some reason I don't feel like sending them to either the Google Doc or to Richard's page ( http://www.votefair.org/declaration.html). Niether seems appropriate for a first impression. Anyone else feel the same way? ~ Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods
On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, matt welland wrote: A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all have very high approval) Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback. I disagree. To collect this information, all you have to do is introduce a choice "approved" and let voters rank relative to that choice. You can also add a choice "disapproved" to identify the candidates that most voters really hate. I have found that in practice using CIVS that it has been helpful to add choices like these. If nothing else it adds confidence that people are comfortable with the winning candidate. If you want to avoid introducing an artificial ranking among equally hated candidates, just let them be ranked identically. -- Andrew <> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
On 18.10.2011, at 5.57, Michael Allan wrote: > Hi Juho, > > Thanks for giving me a chance to explain. It's a difficult thesis to > summarize. Nobody has admitted to being convinced by it yet. At the > same time, no serious flaws have been found. Yes, also I have not found any actual flaws, but what we need, I think, is a common terminology. There is a paradox here, and agreed terms should be available to manage this situation, e.g. to separate concepts "vote has influence" and "note has no influence" that may be true at the same time (if one uses terms in some no good way as I did here). > >> If we assume that the whole election had an impact (1 or N), but no >> single vote was decisive, then who had the power? > > (You're right of course. The power to turn over the government is > something on the order of 1 in this algebra, and not N as I said.) If > the answer were "nobody", then it would mean a massive power vacuum. > Imagine all the political parties are disbanded by a heavenly decree > and an election is called. That election would proceed in something > of a power vacuum owing to the zero power ballots. > > The historical part of my thesis (if original) will argue that "the > sum of these [zero power ballots] across the population amounts to a > power vacuum, which, in mid to late Victorian times, led to the > effective collapse of the electoral system and the rise of a mass > party system. Today, the organized parties make the decisions and > exercise the political freedom that was intended for the individual > citizens." > > That's just a hypothesis. We don't know with any certainty who is > holding the electoral power, or how it's distributed. This is perhaps > the most serious failure, however, because we should know for certain. > We should know it's the electors and nobody else. I think there actually is a vacuum, and many voters don't vote because of that. Some voters may actually think that the power that they have is too small to bother to vote. Some may indeed think that probably their vote will not be a decisive vote. Some voters may think that politicians will never change which ever one of them is in power. Some have lost their trust in fellow voters. New better concepts and better understanding of the process might help. > >>> Politicians won't be concerned about an individual vote, of course, >>> because it makes no difference. >> >> Do you mean that since no individual vote makes a difference the >> politicians should stay home and not spend time and money in the >> campaigns (shaking my hand and promising me things)? > > Your vote never helped them and it's unlikely to help them in future. > To measure the effect of your vote, I think we must do the experiment: > > 1. Take the last election in which you voted, and look at its > outcome (P). How did it affect the politicians? > 2. Subtract your vote from that election. > 3. Recalculate the outcome without your vote (Q). > 4. Look at the difference between P and Q. > 5. Repeat for all the elections you ever participated in. > Your vote never affected any politicians. My vote never did, but maybe the threat that I and some others might vote "wrong" maybe did. > > We just had an election here in Ontario. My member of parliament came > and knocked at my door and asked for my vote. I told him he had it. > He thanked me and shook my hand, then proceeded to my neighbour's. > The next day I voted for him. That night, he was re-elected by a > margin of 5,000 votes. My own vote had no effect, of course. (Only > 49% voted in that election, which is a record low for Ontario.) Maybe he didn't actually visit 5,000 persons, so maybe also he fought his campaign in vain :-). > >> My best explanation is however still to think in terms of "how can >> we influence" and not "how can I influence", when we consider >> whether we should vote in the next election or not. Also the fact >> that we vote is important since it keeps the politicians alert. > > I agree, I think a citizen has a responsibility to vote. Voting is a > precious right, won by sacrifices. But experts have a responsibility > too. The electoral system is compromised by a design flaw so severe > that a citizen's vote is rendered meaningless, and we cannot say with > any certainty who is making the electoral decisions. But maybe if you form a small club (or a large club (=party)) that discusses and finds an agreement on how to vote. Then maybe you get the power that you want. Juho > > -- > Michael Allan > > Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 > http://zelea.com/ > > > Juho Laatu wrote: >> On 17.10.2011, at 23.33, Michael Allan wrote: >> >>> Juho Laatu wrote: True. My vote has probably not made any difference in any of the (large) elections that I have ever participated. ... >>> >>> You are not really in doubt, are you? You would remember if your vote >>> made a difference. >> >> Most elections that I have participat
