Re: [EM] A design flaw in the electoral system
I thought / think that - voluntary participation in whatever clubs, with possibility to influence others, and with possibility to vote in line with the club discussions or even agree to vote that way does not limit one's liberty to do whatever one wants - one limitation to liberty could be the fact that one has to co-operate or there must be people that think the same way, but that is just the realization of the fact that one is not a dictator - secret ballots (that hide the fact which party and/or person you voted) support liberty to vote the way one wants - I can't say that I agree with the conclusions of the thesis because I don't know what they are - 1/N is maybe a better (although not perfect) estimate of the power that one voter holds than 0 Juho On 21.10.2011, at 0.48, Michael Allan wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: 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. Michael Allan wrote: 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. ... One can do this also without tying oneself in one of the clubs. And one may have informal groups like a mailing list or a web site. This still keeps the freedom of the my way path. Only at the cost of power, and thus again liberty. I think my reply did answer you here. I went on to say, 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. [1] 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. [2] For these reasons, I see no political liberty in either of the approaches you suggest. I see only an abandondment of electoral power in a small club, itself powerless against a mass party; or the siezure of power at the expense of others through such a party - approaches therefore more likely to lead to bondage than to liberty. The constitution already allows for support of political liberty in the form of an electoral vote that formalizes a share of power and concomitant equality. Why abandon that support so lightly? [3] Also many electoral systems do their best in trying to hide the opinion of one voter from the others, and thereby support independent decision making. Really? I think the system provides no such support, because voting comes at the end of the decision process. The decider is separated from the means of decision, which is precisely the design flaw. Even the humble worker bee has decision support *while* the decision process unfolds, and not after. If she were not free to change her vote while visiting other locations as suggested by her co-workers *through their votes*, then the colony as a whole would fail to make a good decision. If honey bees had a decision system as flawed as ours, then we'd have no honey bees. [4] Our flawed electoral system witholds its decision support from the electors till the very end of the decision process. This is precisely why the vote is powerless and probably how it came to pass that the organized parties make the decisions and exercise the electoral power and political freedom that were intended for the citizens. You admit to seeing no flaw in this thesis; you will therefore also admit that the conclusion (unpleasant as it is) seems to be true? [5] (If one strongly wants to find even better ways to influence with more than 1/N times the electorate power one can become active in politics and become a candidate and maybe a representative.) Recall that we already discussed the power of one's vote. Didn't we measure it at zero, not 1/N? The vote has no effect on the political outcome of the election, therefore it has no power. [6] [1] http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-October/028690.html [2] The social contract, or principles of political right. 1762. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/r/rousseau/jean_jacques/r864s/book1.html [3] This reminds me of a scene from this Robert Bolt screenplay: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Man_for_All_Seasons_%281966_film%29 Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that! More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that
Re: [EM] Redistricting Paper w/ New Population Density Fairness (PDF) measure
Thanks Warren for composing the counterexamples. You are right. That is the vestiges of a logic error I made earlier and thought I had removed, but had not. The paper still offers several valuable new insights including: 1. a new population density fairness measure that helps to judge the proportional fairness of representation of a plan, and 2. debunks the validity of 11 proposed area compactness measures that are unfortunately still in use today. I'll read your page on the topic and revise my paper. Kathy From: Warren Smith warren@gmail.com Legislative Redistricting - Area and Population Compactness and Population Density Distribution Measures http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1945879 Dopp (in internet post advertising above paper in her abstract): This article argues that area compactness is reliably measured using any of the area-to-square-of-perimeter measures (or their reciprocals or square roots) because ALL SUCH MEASURES RANK ANY TWO REDISTRICTING PLANS IN EXACTLY THE SAME ORDER. (emphasis mine.) --they do? Let X_k = A_k / P_k^2 be the area / perimsquared measure for district k. If the measure for an entire multidistrict plan is sum_k X_k then I claim that will rank plans in a different order than sum_k squareroot(X_k) and in a different order than sum_k 1/X_k, in general. For example: say plan #1 has these X's for its three districts: X1 = 10, X2 = 11, X3 = 12 while plan #2 has these X's for its three districts: X1 = 6, X2 = 11, X3 = 17 then the goal of maximizing sum X_k says that plan #2 is better since 3433 contradicting the goal of maximizing sum squareroot(X_k) which says plan #1 is better since 9.943 9.889. (You also can scale all numbers in this 2-plan example by any constant factor.) If plan #3 has X1 = 5, X2 = 11, X3 = 18 then the goal of maximizing sum X_k says plan #3 is better than plan #1, contradicting the goal of minimizing sum 1/X_k which says plan #1 is better than plan #3. (Again you also can scale all numbers in this 2-plan example by any constant factor.) In view of these counterexamples, I suggest Dopp either rephrase the capitalized sentence, or perhaps much more alteration is needed than merely 1 sentence, like her whole paper is busted. I'm not saying the latter; I'm saying the true amount of repairing needed lies somewhere between those two extremes. I think the truth is the the isoperimetric quotient indeed is a good idea, but it is not obvious to me what is the best way (from among the many inequivalent possibilities) to combine all the district values, to get a value for the entire multidistrict plan. My web page on this topic is here: http://rangevoting.org/TheorDistrict.html -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org? -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Renewable energy is homeland security. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Redistricting Paper w/ New Population Density Fairness
Jameson, After further reflection, I think your claim #1 below is misleading because if a plan was chosen with population density fairness (PDF) value of nearly one (1), it would tend to have far fewer safe districts than a plan with PDF value near two which was gerrymandered to give a disproportionate number of legislative seats to the minority party. Also, if a plan with PDF about one (1), thus a proportionately fair plan, was chosen, it depends on the overall proportion of various partisans within the state whether or not it would produce fewer or more safe districts than a plan with PDF value near zero where the majority got all the seats in the legislature. I.e. I disagree with your claim #1 re. my PDF value, because it only seems to be true in one case, when judged against plans with PDF values near zero. I still have a headache. Your other claims may make perfect sense. Upon reflecting upon your excellent observation about being able to use a similar measure to evaluate proportionate fairness for diverse ethnic groups, yes, that is very true. Great observation. FYI, everyone, I've made some quick revisions to respond to Warren's comments and reposted the paper, which I shall continue to revise as I have time. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1945879 Thanks for your comments, which I shall eventually add in some form to the paper and credit you in the acknowledgements section. Kathy 3. Re: Redistricting Paper w/ New Population Density Fairness From: Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com I like your PDF a lot. You could also use the same idea to measure minority/majority fairness for a given ethnicity (but probably not more than one, without getting into the problem of optimizing on too many dimensions). The problems I see: 1. If the measure being equalized (population density or minority status) was too highly correlated with partisan status, it would tend make too many uncompetitive safe seats. This could in principle be mitigated by statewide rules which reduced the advantage of incumbency in the party primaries... but I don't trust that to happen. Still, safe seats are on the whole less of a problem, in my view, than nonproportional gerrymandering; so I'd be willing to accept this price. 2. If the partisan/population density relationship was not linear, a clever gerrymander could take advantage of that fact. I doubt this would be possible without ruining compactness, though, so again, not too huge a problem. 3. It's not as good as a good proportional representation system. But it's a far less radical change which doesn't pretend to be. So this is not really a criticism; more just a comment. Jameson Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Renewable energy is homeland security. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Proposed experiment
I'd be interested in running an behavioral-economics-type experiment on voting behavior. I imagine a game matrix of 9 voters and 3 candidates, with each candidate having a known payout for each player. For each condition, we'd have a separate group of experimental subjects. We'd run two non-binding pre-election polls and one election, and then pay real money for the payout. I could put up the money, create the experimental protocol, and program a web app to run the elections, but I'd like help actually getting diverse sets of subjects. I imagine three payoff matrices (positive, zero, and negative sum; see below) and up to six voting systems (approval, range, MJ, SODA, condorcet for negative sum, and IRV for positive sum), for a total of 11 conditions. The payoff matrices would be as follows: Group Size Candidate Scenario 1 (zero-sum) A B C a 4 4 1 0 b 2 0 3 2 c 3 0 2 4 Total payout 16 16 16 Scenario 2 (positive-sum CW) A B C a 4 3 1 0 b 2 0 3 1.5 c 3 0 2 3 Total payout 12 16 12 Scenario 3 (negative-sum CW) A B C a 4 4 0.5 0 b 2 0 3 2 c 3 0 1 4 Total payout 16 11 16 These scenarios present both a chicken dilemma between candidates B and C, and a contrast between a strong (for positive sum) or weak (for negative sum) Condorcet winner (candidate B). To save money and subjects, the four voters of voter group A could be represented by 2 actual experimental subjects with double-weighted votes. Thus, the total subjects necessary for a full set of 14 experimental conditions would be 98. Ideally, we'd run at least one scenario for each of the voting methods twice; thus we could also use up to 140 subjects. For 98 subjects, the total payout would be at most 234 monetary units, but probably under 200. Here in Guatemala, for a 30-minute experiment like this, those monetary units could probably be 1-2 quetzales ($0.13-$0.26); in the US, they would have to be $1-2, for a total payout cost of up to $400. Again, I'd put up that money. If you're interested, we'd have to talk about creative ways to get subjects and space. The best would be if there were someone here who is an undergraduate (at an undergrad-focused college) or a graduate student (at a university), who could get access to a pool of psych-101 student guinea pigs. Obviously, even then, getting a hundred subjects is not just a matter of asking for them; but with some coordination, I think we could manage it. Once the experiment was done, we could write it into a paper, including also mathematical discussion and proofs, simulations, and historical analysis; and I'm confident that we could get published. Yes, the statistics would be weak, perhaps too weak to really discern behavioral differences between Approval, Range, and MJ even if such differences exist; but I'm sure that no matter what happens, the results would advance our knowledge. I don't care whether I am counted as the primary author on that paper. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proposed experiment
One note. I said below/earlier that the scenarios present a chicken dilemma. I should have noted that, like most real-world chicken dilemmas, this one is not perfect, as voter group a is not perfectly indifferent between candidates B and C. 2011/10/21 Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com I'd be interested in running an behavioral-economics-type experiment on voting behavior. I imagine a game matrix of 9 voters and 3 candidates, with each candidate having a known payout for each player. For each condition, we'd have a separate group of experimental subjects. We'd run two non-binding pre-election polls and one election, and then pay real money for the payout. I could put up the money, create the experimental protocol, and program a web app to run the elections, but I'd like help actually getting diverse sets of subjects. I imagine three payoff matrices (positive, zero, and negative sum; see below) and up to six voting systems (approval, range, MJ, SODA, condorcet for negative sum, and IRV for positive sum), for a total of 11 conditions. The payoff matrices would be as follows: Group Size Candidate Scenario 1 (zero-sum) A B C a 4 4 1 0 b 2 0 3 2 c 3 0 2 4 Total payout 16 16 16 Scenario 2 (positive-sum CW) A B C a 4 3 1 0 b 2 0 3 1.5 c 3 0 2 3 Total payout 12 16 12 Scenario 3 (negative-sum CW) A B C a 4 4 0.5 0 b 2 0 3 2 c 3 0 1 4 Total payout 16 11 16 These scenarios present both a chicken dilemma between candidates B and C, and a contrast between a strong (for positive sum) or weak (for negative sum) Condorcet winner (candidate B). To save money and subjects, the four voters of voter group A could be represented by 2 actual experimental subjects with double-weighted votes. Thus, the total subjects necessary for a full set of 14 experimental conditions would be 98. Ideally, we'd run at least one scenario for each of the voting methods twice; thus we could also use up to 140 subjects. For 98 subjects, the total payout would be at most 234 monetary units, but probably under 200. Here in Guatemala, for a 30-minute experiment like this, those monetary units could probably be 1-2 quetzales ($0.13-$0.26); in the US, they would have to be $1-2, for a total payout cost of up to $400. Again, I'd put up that money. If you're interested, we'd have to talk about creative ways to get subjects and space. The best would be if there were someone here who is an undergraduate (at an undergrad-focused college) or a graduate student (at a university), who could get access to a pool of psych-101 student guinea pigs. Obviously, even then, getting a hundred subjects is not just a matter of asking for them; but with some coordination, I think we could manage it. Once the experiment was done, we could write it into a paper, including also mathematical discussion and proofs, simulations, and historical analysis; and I'm confident that we could get published. Yes, the statistics would be weak, perhaps too weak to really discern behavioral differences between Approval, Range, and MJ even if such differences exist; but I'm sure that no matter what happens, the results would advance our knowledge. I don't care whether I am counted as the primary author on that paper. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Proposed experiment
Jameson's email actually came through fine for me. But I have definitely seen enough mangled emails to agree that fixed-width can be problematic. On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Warren Smith warren@gmail.com wrote: I suspect you intended some careful formatting which the web posting has obliterated, rendering this proposal essentially unreadable. You can use dots to.make...sure things...are...aligned at least if reader uses a constant width font. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
