Re: [EM] Re to Kristof M
David L Wetzell wrote: On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 3:20 PM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com mailto:wetze...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a bunch of responses dlw: SL may be more proportional than LR Hare, but since I'm advocating for the use of a mix of single-winner and multi-winner election rules, I have no problems with the former being biased towards bigger parties and the latter being biased somewhat towards smaller parties. For there's no need to nail PR if PR itself does not nail what we really want PP, proportionality in power. This is also part of why I prefer small-numbered PR rules (less proportional) that increase the no. of competitive elections and maintain the legislator-constituent relationship. Proportionality in power is quite well approximated by proportionality in representation, however. The degree of fit depends on strategy and coordination: if every member of the assembly votes for himself, it's near-perfect (within per-issue variance that gets evened out); if everybody colludes into one or two superparties, then it may diverge greatly. At that point, the question is how far you should take PR. From my own observation, PR as approximation of PP has problems in certain edge cases (kingmaker parties), but these are rare. Therefore I think that as long as you patch up the edge cases or make them unlikely - say, by an explicit threshold or an implicit one such as STV's - you can optimize for PR within those bounds. Even if you don't think PR approximates PP, you can use the same advanced PR method to give seats fairly according to PP instead. Poland has proposed something like this be done in the Council of the EU, the proposal saying that each country should have a weight proportional to the square root of the number of people in the country. My preference for integrating single-winner and multiwinner (if you're going to do both in the same context) is then that whatever you decide to apportion on (power or votes), the single-winner method can take it into account. It knows about it, and so you play it a bit more safe. If the multiwinner rule is bad, the single-winner rule can compensate, and if the single-winner rule is bad, the multiwinner rule can compensate. If you're risk averse, as you said you might be, that's a good property! The flipside is that you won't get the optimal result if it turns out that the real thing you should optimize is whatever either the single-winner or multiwinner method optimizes. If that is the case, then the multiwinner or single-winner method (respectively) will only be a burden and pull you away from your goal. KM:You might be able to get something more easily understood yet retaining some of the compensation part of the first version, by doing something like this: first elect the single winner/s. Then start STV with the single winner/s marked as elected (and thus with vote transfers already done). dlw:The rub here is the desirability of guaranteeing that the Condorcet winner is elected. In more local elections that attract less attention, I put less emph on the usefulness of rankings and thereby the Condorcet winner. The single-winner doesn't *have* to be the CW (although I would prefer the system to ensure it is). Even if you for some reason thought the Plurality winner was the best one, and wanted to design the integration accordingly, you could do STV with the Plurality winner already elected. dlw: 1. While all forms of PR fall short of proportionality in representation, the best predictor of proportionality is the number of contested seats. KM:The Hix-Johnston-MacLean document states that these effects are weak. To quote: Turnout is usually higher at elections in countries with PR than in countries without, It also tends to be even higher in PR systems with smaller multi-member constituencies, and also tends to be higher where citizens can express preferential votes between individual politicians from the same political party rather than simply choosing between pre-ordered party lists. In general, the more choice electors are offered, the greater the likelihood that they will turn out and exercise it. However these effects are not particularly strong, there is some evidence that highly complex electoral systems suppress turnout, and turnout levels may partly reflect influences other than the electoral system, for instance in some countries voting is compulsory. So I don't think you can necessarily draw that conclusion. The apparent competitiveness between seats may be lesser (because of what I mentioned above in that single-member districts are much more win-all/lose-all), but that doesn't mean the real change in voter opinion from term to term is any greater in SMD countries. dlw: I interpret what they're saying is that other factors also come into play that impact the competitiveness of elections. So my
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
We're still hitting the same disagreements. I say look at the others, you say this time it'll be different, I say Condorcet IRV, you say marketing differences are great while in practice, there's no difference between Condorcet and IRV large enough to make a difference. Thus, let me do some asking, because we're not getting anywhere. Consider in your mind: what kind of data could I show that would change your mind about whether IRV is stronger in the hegemonic direction than PR is in the enabling-contesting-parties direction? Furthermore: On what do you base that reality is: 0 Plurality 0.7 IRV 0.72 Condorcet rather than: 0 Plurality 0.25 IRV 0.72 Condorcet? You keep saying that X_Condorcet - X_IRV is small. Is that just a belief, or do you have something on which to support it? Some replies below. David L Wetzell wrote: KM:If the cost of campaigning is high enough that only the two major parties can play the game, then money (what you call $peech) will still have serious influence. dlw:My understanding/political theory is that $peech is inevitable and all modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and kleptocracy/plutocracy. To bolster the former, we must accept the inevitability of the latter. This is part of why I accept a two-party dominated system and seek to balance the use of single-seat/multi-seat elections and am an anti-perfectionist on the details of getting the best single/multi-seat election. Deep down, I am skeptical of whether a multi-party system improves things that much or would do so in my country. The mode of corruption you have in the US, where monied interests openly give the organizations that participate in the political process power by which to be seen, seems to be a particular thing to the US itself. To my knowledge, there's no Canadian OpenSecrets, nor, for that matter, a New Zealand one. In more corrupt nations, corruption usually happens within the context of the state itself, and on all levels: you might be stopped by a police officer who wants some money to not claim your car has a problem -- or parties might pay the electoral commission not to rig the vote as heavily. In other first-world nations, the parties may be given money, but such is usually tightly regulated. Thus, the corruption is less overt - corporations may collude to fix prices in a state bid, for instance, or try to convince appointed officials or mid-level bureaucrats that it's better if they do it their way. Now, you could say that just supports your conclusion: if the US is different, then multiparty won't help it where it helped other nations. But you could also turn this the other way, and say that the difference between US and the other nations is that the US has two effective parties both by EFNPP as measured by seats and votes - i.e. that the reinforcing process of Plurality has gone so far that people are resigned to two parties alone. If so, to reverse the corruption, you should let other parties but the big two grow -- and other parties but the big two be seen as having a chance. dlw: It is counterbalanced by the fact that in a system with more competitive elections, intere$t$ would need to hedge between the two major parties and consequently accept a lower, more variable return on their $peech and that there'd be turnover wrt which two parties are the major parties so it'd be a contested duopoly. A hedge among ten is better at that than a hedge among two. It is also counterbalanced by political cultural ways to move the political center. Political ways that will be hampered because other parties on the ascent to meaningful opposition to the big two will have to do a tightrope walk between appealing to the center (get more votes) and not appealing to the center (or they'll be center squeezed). dlw:Burlington's two major parties would not be the same as the two nat'l major parties. Republicans would vote Democrat in Burlington mayoral elections. This would add to the ferment of the system as a whole being a contested duopoly or contribute to a shift to a new duopoly between Prog-Dems and Dem-Pubs. Is it really worth the marketing advantage to burden people with having to vote strategically, or the parties to have to keep that in mind when they position themselves? dlw:It should be emphasized here that more more local elections would tend to be multi-winner/PR. This permits LTPs to win seats without having to move too much close to the de facto center. This gives them the chance to move the center and/or possibly center squeeze the two local major parties in single-winner elections. I agree this could get complicated, but I believe that the potential to center-squeeze is what makes the center tend to become more dynamic. And the unpredictability is not unlike a similar undpredictability due to the nonexistence of a Condorcet winner when there are 3 strong parties.
Re: [EM] Re to Kristof M
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:35 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: David L Wetzell wrote: On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 3:20 PM, David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.commailto: wetze...@gmail.com wrote: Here's a bunch of responses dlw: SL may be more proportional than LR Hare, but since I'm advocating for the use of a mix of single-winner and multi-winner election rules, I have no problems with the former being biased towards bigger parties and the latter being biased somewhat towards smaller parties. For there's no need to nail PR if PR itself does not nail what we really want PP, proportionality in power. This is also part of why I prefer small-numbered PR rules (less proportional) that increase the no. of competitive elections and maintain the legislator-constituent relationship. Proportionality in power is quite well approximated by proportionality in representation, however. The degree of fit depends on strategy and coordination: if every member of the assembly votes for himself, it's near-perfect (within per-issue variance that gets evened out); if everybody colludes into one or two superparties, then it may diverge greatly. dlw: My view is that collusion is inevitable in the struggle to capture control of the state's monopoly on the use of legit violence or its threat... At that point, the question is how far you should take PR. From my own observation, PR as approximation of PP has problems in certain edge cases (kingmaker parties), but these are rare. Therefore I think that as long as you patch up the edge cases or make them unlikely - say, by an explicit threshold or an implicit one such as STV's - you can optimize for PR within those bounds. Even if you don't think PR approximates PP, you can use the same advanced PR method to give seats fairly according to PP instead. Poland has proposed something like this be done in the Council of the EU, the proposal saying that each country should have a weight proportional to the square root of the number of people in the country. dlw: I had not heard of that. Why the square root? My preference for integrating single-winner and multiwinner (if you're going to do both in the same context) is then that whatever you decide to apportion on (power or votes), the single-winner method can take it into account. It knows about it, and so you play it a bit more safe. If the multiwinner rule is bad, the single-winner rule can compensate, and if the single-winner rule is bad, the multiwinner rule can compensate. If you're risk averse, as you said you might be, that's a good property! The flipside is that you won't get the optimal result if it turns out that the real thing you should optimize is whatever either the single-winner or multiwinner method optimizes. If that is the case, then the multiwinner or single-winner method (respectively) will only be a burden and pull you away from your goal. dlw:I guess the need to value the values associated with both single-winner and multi-winner makes it difficult to optimize according to either. I've come to the view that multi-winner solves a concrete problem of non-competitive elections in more local elections that doesn't exist so much in less local elections. KM:You might be able to get something more easily understood yet retaining some of the compensation part of the first version, by doing something like this: first elect the single winner/s. Then start STV with the single winner/s marked as elected (and thus with vote transfers already done). dlw:The rub here is the desirability of guaranteeing that the Condorcet winner is elected. In more local elections that attract less attention, I put less emph on the usefulness of rankings and thereby the Condorcet winner. The single-winner doesn't *have* to be the CW (although I would prefer the system to ensure it is). Even if you for some reason thought the Plurality winner was the best one, and wanted to design the integration accordingly, you could do STV with the Plurality winner already elected. dlw: Sure. You do understand why I don't trust rankings so much in more local elections, r ight? GIGO dlw: 1. While all forms of PR fall short of proportionality in representation, the best predictor of proportionality is the number of contested seats. KM:The Hix-Johnston-MacLean document states that these effects are weak. To quote: Turnout is usually higher at elections in countries with PR than in countries without, It also tends to be even higher in PR systems with smaller multi-member constituencies, and also tends to be higher where citizens can express preferential votes between individual politicians from the same political party rather than simply choosing between pre-ordered party lists. In general, the more choice electors are offered, the greater the likelihood that they will turn out and exercise it.
[EM] IRV3/AV3
The third rank in IRV3/AV3 is essentially only useful for turkey-raising. For instance, imagine the 2000 election with two Nader clones, Bush/Gore/Nader1/Nader2. Bush voters could vote BushNader2Nader1, and possibly eliminate Gore from the IRV3 round. (Or with honest voting, Gore could be center-squeezed; but that's a separate possibility). Allowing equal rankings and/or having only one runoff round (IRV3/AV2) would help with other problems, but they would if anything make the turkey-raising problem worse. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
-- Forwarded message -- From: robert bristow-johnson r...@audioimagination.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:18:32 -0500 Subject: Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage. On 12/1/11 5:14 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: KM:If the cost of campaigning is high enough that only the two major parties can play the game, then money (what you call $peech) will still have serious influence. dlw:My understanding/political theory is that $peech is inevitable and all modern democracies are unstable mixtures of popular democracy and kleptocracy/plutocracy. To bolster the former, we must accept the inevitability of the latter. This is part of why I accept a two-party dominated system and seek to balance the use of single-seat/multi-seat elections and am an anti-perfectionist on the details of getting the best single/multi-seat election. Deep down, I am skeptical of whether a multi-party system improves things that much or would do so in my country. RBJ:i am thoroughly convinced that a multi-party (and viable independent) system improves things over the two-party system. besides the money thing, dlw: It might improve things over our current two-party system, but is there really no choice C? Ie, 2 major parties, an indefinite number of minor parties trying to become or merge with a major party, and a whole lot of LTPs who specialize in contesting more local elections and o.w. move the political center thru voting strategically together in less local elections and engaging in civil disobedience actions. RBJ: i just cannot believe that exhausting our social choice to between Dumb and Dumber is the lot that a democratic society must be forced to accept. what was so frustrating during Town Meeting Day in 2010 (when the IRV repeal vote was up), it was another choice between Dumb and Dumber. and, as usual, Dumber prevailed in that choice. nobody seems to get it (present company excluded). added to the result of the 2000 prez election and, even more so, the 2004 result, the aggregate evidence is that American voters are stupid. incredibly stupid. and a large portion of Burlington Democrats were stupid to join with the GOPpers, the latter who were acting simply in their self-interest to repeal IRV. and the Progs were dumb to continue to blather IRV happy talk as if it worked just fine in 2009. dlw: It wd have worked just fine if it was continued. It's failure to elect the CW was a byproduct of how IRV does not end the tendency twds 2 party domination. But it does make it so that the top 2 must be responsive. dlw:Burlington's two major parties would not be the same as the two nat'l major parties. RBJ:David, we don't have two major parties. we have three. the Dems may be the least of the three, but they're centrist and preferable to the GOP than are the Progs and preferable to the Progs than are the GOP. but they are literally center squeezed. that is precisely the term. dlw: I'm speaking in future tense. If we got 2 dynamic major parties then we don't need a centrist party, cuz the center will be too dynamic to be the basis for a party platform. RBJ: Republicans would vote Democrat in Burlington mayoral elections. if forced to. but they would like to give their own guy their primary support. IRV promised them that they could vote for their guy and, by doing so, not elect the candidate they hated the most. and in 2009, IRV precisely failed that promise. dlw: You can't make a melding pot without breaking some vases. IRV tends to do that, it doesn't do it all the time, especially when there's a transition to a new set of two major parties around the new political center. RBJ:it not a tug-of-war with a single rope and the centrists have to decide whether they get on the side of the GOP or the side of the Progs. the idea of having a viable multi-party election and a decent method to measure voter preference is a joined, three-way rope going off in directions 120 degrees apart. Progs get to be Progs, Dems get to be Dems, and GOP get to be dicks (errr, Repubs). we know, because the ballots are public record, that the outcome that would have caused the least amount of collective disappointment is not the winner that the IRV algorithms picked, given the voter preference information available and weighting that equally for each voter. dlw:change is hard but it also is crucial.. KM:So why would IRV improve things enough over Plurality? That verdict, too, has to come from somewhere. dlw: more votes get counted in the final round than with FPTP. Thus, the de facto center is closer to the true center RBJ:i dunno what you mean by de facto or true center, but neither was elected in the Burlington 2009 example. (but, again, favoring the center more than the wings is not why Condorcet is better than IRV. it is because of the negative consequences of electing a
[EM] irv3/av3
From: Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com To: EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 10:17:52 -0600 Subject: [EM] IRV3/AV3 The third rank in IRV3/AV3 is essentially only useful for turkey-raising. For instance, imagine the 2000 election with two Nader clones, Bush/Gore/Nader1/Nader2. Bush voters could vote BushNader2Nader1, and possibly eliminate Gore from the IRV3 round. (Or with honest voting, Gore could be center-squeezed; but that's a separate possibility). Allowing equal rankings and/or having only one runoff round (IRV3/AV2) would help with other problems, but they would if anything make the turkey-raising problem worse. Jameson dlw: only useful is strong language. ... Let's consider that... Say R-voters are 40%, D-voters are 45% and ND1 and ND2 split the rest... R-voters all vote stragetically B-ND2-ND1 and B-ND1-ND2(50-50) (though one voter refuses to vote strategically) D-voters all vote D. (why would they be worried about their first-rank being disqualfied?) ND1-supporters vote ND1-ND2-D ND2-supporters vote ND2-ND1-D. then D gets 55% of teh vote R gets 40%, ND1 and ND2 both get 40+15% - one vote. So D, ND1 and ND2 go to the 2nd round, where D gets 45, ND1 gets 27.5- one vote and ND2 gets 27.5 - one vote and it's a cointoss. Then the votes get transferred to the other Nader clone and (s)he would win, but only because of the dumb voting strategy of the Republicans. But can the Rs really engineer such a massive strategic voting and would they want to if it might elect a ND clone? The bigger point is that the Dem party machine is very strong. They'd have little need to encourage their supporters to vote for 3rd party candidates as their 2nd/3rd choices and so the Rs wd need to do a lot of strategic voting to make a diff, and could very well end up shooting themselves in the foot. As for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: We're still hitting the same disagreements. I say look at the others, you say this time it'll be different, I say Condorcet IRV, you say marketing differences are great while in practice, there's no difference between Condorcet and IRV large enough to make a difference. Thus, let me do some asking, because we're not getting anywhere. Consider in your mind: what kind of data could I show that would change your mind about whether IRV is stronger in the hegemonic direction than PR is in the enabling-contesting-parties direction? Furthermore: On what do you base that reality is: 0 Plurality 0.7 IRV 0.72 Condorcet rather than: 0 Plurality 0.25 IRV 0.72 Condorcet? You keep saying that X_Condorcet - X_IRV is small. Is that just a belief, or do you have something on which to support it? Here's an 'AV faith article that looks at how the use of IRV would have changed outcomes in UK MP elections. http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2011/04/seats-party-election-majority For a heuristic, we could consider the Bayesian Regret measures with only 4 candidates, instead of the 7 candidates typically used. Condorcet doesn't do best in this procedure, but FPTP and purely random voting do a lot better with only 4 serious candidates, as is more realistic for single-winner/member elections. Thus, if the worse election rule does considerably better under more realistic assumptions, it stands to reason that the diffs among all of the election rules will be lowered considerably. Let's say that in a close 3-way election that it's .25 IRV and .75 Cond. Let's say that in other elections that it's .70 IRV and .72 Cond then the appropos question is how often are there 3-way close elections? In the US, not very often and that is the context that I am presuming. So the weighted average is going to be closer to .7 IRV and .72 Cond. Moreover, the biases from IRV will get averaged out over time and place and a bias against centrists won't matter so much if the biases to the right and left cancel... This makes the X_IRV closer to X_other alts to FPTP. I'll reply to the below later. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] MMT repaired. MTAOC simplified. Alternative definition of voting x over y.
It's natural to look for a method based on the Mutual Majority Criterion (MMC). I posted one about a week ago. It wasn't written right. In this post, I propose a different wording of MMT. It's only slightly different from my initial wording, modified to meet FBC. This new wording is now what I mean by MMT: MMT: For any set of candidates who are all voted equal to or over everyone outside that set, by each member of the same majority of voters, the winner must come from that set. If there is such a set, the winner is the most top-rated member of that set. If there is not such a set then the winner is just the most top-rated candidate in the election. [end of MMT definition] MMT is a very briefly-worded method that meets the criteria that I want, and seems to avoid the (not-valid) criticisms of MMPO and MDDTR. MTAOC simplification: I feel that, for most people, the option to mark some of one's top-rated candidates as coalition-sufficient is too much of a complication. Just one too many complication can be enough to put someone off, and cause hir to dismiss the method as too complicated. Additionally, if you are top-rating some compromise candidates, it's for a good reason. It's important to you to elect them instead of someone who is unacceptable. Therefore, there is little if any reason to expect that someone wouldn't want all of hir top-rated candidates to be available for coalition. So then, in this revised MTAOC, all of a voter's top-rated candidates are coalition-sufficient, and so there is no need for the distinction that I've called coalition-sufficient. So, in both places in the pseudocode where if sufficient(b,x) = yes appears, it should be replaced by: if top(b,x) = yes. Likewise, where coalition-sufficient appears in the comments, and in the initial description of the 3 program sections, it should be replaced by top-rated. Alternative definition of voting x over y: You're voting x over y is switching the names of x and y on your ballot could change the winner from x to y, but could not change the winner from y to x. [end of alternative definition of voting x over y] This avoids the probably or the phrase consistent with more configurations of other voters' ballots. It's simpler and neater. Either definition would do. Of course by this #2 definition, in IRV you never really know whether you're voting x over y or y over x. No problem. My criteria still apply to IRV. A criterion-failure-example-writer can always make up a monotonic example for hir failure example. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] typo
In my alternative definition of voting x over y, in the first sentence, I accidentally wrote is when I meant if. Here is the posting written correctly: Alternative definition of voting x over y: You're voting x over y if switching the names of x and y on your ballot could change the winner from x to y, but could not change the winner from y to x. [end of alternative definition of voting x over y] This avoids the probably or the phrase consistent with more configurations of other voters' ballots. It's simpler and neater. Either definition would do. Of course by this #2 definition, in IRV you never really know whether you're voting x over y or y over x. No problem. My criteria still apply to IRV. A criterion-failure-example-writer can always make up a monotonic example for hir failure example. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
-- Forwarded message -- From: MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com To: election-meth...@electorama.com Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:19:28 + Subject: [EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] MO: Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. dlw: David is saying, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party dominated system in US] and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of others around American forms of PR + IRV] and the wisdom to tell the difference between a dysfunctional two-party system and one that would work. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
There is a fundamental difference between two-party dominance, which will probably not change any time soon, and a two-party duopoly. 45%, 40%, 8%, 5%... is dominance; 51% 47% 1%... is duopoly. Any system which gives bad enough results when there are more than two parties will be a two party duopoly; and it seems highly possible that that includes IRV. And I think that many of the current problems, including the outsized power of $peech, are inevitable consequences of a monopoly. David, you believe differently. But your guesses about how things would work are just that. You can't point to a real-world example. And so, as you've essentially admitted, we're not likely to believe you until you do have evidence. Nor, in my opinion, should we. In other words: You could be right. So stop arguing about this and go out there and prove it. Jameson 2011/12/2 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com -- Forwarded message -- From: MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com To: election-meth...@electorama.com Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:19:28 + Subject: [EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] MO: Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. dlw: David is saying, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party dominated system in US] and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of others around American forms of PR + IRV] and the wisdom to tell the difference between a dysfunctional two-party system and one that would work. dlw 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] Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting in San Francisco
Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting By SHANE SHIFFLETT Published: December 2, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/analysis-finds-incorrect-use-of-ranked-choice-voting.html The results are in: San Francisco voters have trouble with ranked-choice elections. Despite a $300,000 educational campaign leading up to last month’s elections, including a new smiley-face mascot, publicity events, and advertising on buses and in newspapers, only one-third of voters on Nov. 8 filled out all three choices in all three races, according to an analysis released this week by the University of San Francisco. Under the city’s system, voters were asked to rank their top three choices for mayor, sheriff and district attorney. Perhaps the analysis’ most troubling finding is that 9 percent of voters, mostly in Chinatown and southeastern neighborhoods like the Bayview, marked only one choice for each office, either because they considered only one candidate suitable or because they did not know how to fill out their ballot correctly. “Some people just prefer to rank one,” said Corey Cook, a political science professor at the university who wrote the report with David Latterman. “But the geographic component suggests it’s more systematic.” Although Edwin M. Lee did not receive a majority of first-place votes, he became the city’s first elected Chinese-American mayor based on the ranked-choice system, which was first used in San Francisco in 2004. Mr. Latterman, an associate director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at U.S.F., said voters in neighborhoods with large black or Asian populations tended to vote for different candidates than residents in other parts of the city. But the Nov. 8 election was the first time researchers saw a geographic or perhaps ethnic difference in how people used ranked-choice voting. The findings indicate one of two things, Mr. Latterman said: Either campaigns tried to manipulate the results by focusing on specific groups of people or there is not a clear understanding of how to use the system. A recent Bay Citizen analysis revealed that 16 percent of ballots in the mayoral race — those of more than 31,500 people — were filled out correctly but were discarded when all of their chosen candidates were eliminated from the race. San Francisco does not allow voters to rank all the candidates on the ballot. In June, a voting task force created by the Board of Supervisors recommended that the Department of Elections consider allowing voters to rank all the candidates to avoid this issue. The panel urged the department to work with city supervisors to increase voter education. Hence the mascot. “We made the conscious decision to have an image of a correctly marked ballot and to have a smiley face to draw people’s attention,” said John Arntz, the director of the Department of Elections. When asked whether ranked-choice voting has worked well for San Francisco, Mr. Arntz said, “I guess it depends if your candidate wins or not.” sshiffl...@baycitizen.org A version of this article appeared in print on December 2, 2011, on page A25A of the National edition with the headline: Analysis Finds Incorrect Use Of Ranked-Choice Voting. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: There is a fundamental difference between two-party dominance, which will probably not change any time soon, and a two-party duopoly. 45%, 40%, 8%, 5%... is dominance; 51% 47% 1%... is duopoly. Any system which gives bad enough results when there are more than two parties will be a two party duopoly; and it seems highly possible that that includes IRV. And I think that many of the current problems, including the outsized power of $peech, are inevitable consequences of a monopoly. duopoly you mean? David, you believe differently. But your guesses about how things would work are just that. You can't point to a real-world example. And so, as you've essentially admitted, we're not likely to believe you until you do have evidence. Nor, in my opinion, should we. I can offer the history of the US prior to the past 40 years as evidence that a 2-party duopolized system can work. It is not a coincidence that from 1870-1980 that in one of the economically most important states of the US, IL, the competition between the two major parties was handicapped by the use of 3-seat quasi-PR state rep election rule. This enabled other states who were economically more dependent on IL to be politically independent of IL. They experimented and a lot of those experiments spilled over to foster critical changes in the rest of the USA. All of this while FPTP was still being used... So why do you claim I don't have evidence? The US doesn't need an EU-system to reinvigorate its democracy. It needs to draw from its own history and to trust that local activism will have a trickle-up effect on national and international outcomes. In other words: You could be right. So stop arguing about this and go out there and prove it. will do. dlw Jameson 2011/12/2 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com -- Forwarded message -- From: MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com To: election-meth...@electorama.com Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:19:28 + Subject: [EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] MO: Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. dlw: David is saying, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party dominated system in US] and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of others around American forms of PR + IRV] and the wisdom to tell the difference between a dysfunctional two-party system and one that would work. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
On 02 Dec 2011 13:05:04 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com wrote: There is a fundamental difference between two-party dominance, which will probably not change any time soon, and a two-party duopoly. 45%, 40%, 8%, 5%... is dominance; 51% 47% 1%... is duopoly. Any system which gives bad enough results when there are more than two parties will be a two party duopoly; and it seems highly possible that that includes IRV. And I think that many of the current problems, including the outsized power of $peech, are inevitable consequences of a monopoly. duopoly you mean? David, you believe differently. But your guesses about how things would work are just that. You can't point to a real-world example. And so, as you've essentially admitted, we're not likely to believe you until you do have evidence. Nor, in my opinion, should we. I can offer the history of the US prior to the past 40 years as evidence that a 2-party duopolized system can work. ?? Monarchies can work: See Darius's arguments to the Persians [from Herodotus]. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/herodotus-persdemo.asp (section III.82) And Henry II's good government of England in the 12th century laid the groundwork of expectation of fairness that led to the Magna Carta in the 13th. Whether a system works is no argument. The question is whether it is consistent with the goals that the country has set out for itself. It is not a coincidence that from 1870-1980 that in one of the economically most important states of the US, IL, the competition between the two major parties was handicapped by the use of 3-seat quasi-PR state rep election rule. ??This enabled other states who were economically more dependent on IL to be politically independent of IL. ??They experimented and a lot of those experiments spilled over to foster critical changes in the rest of the USA. ?? All of this while FPTP was still being used... Your argument is mixing apples and oranges and is therefore pointless. A semi-PR method (CV) was used for Illinois representatives, while FPTP was used for other offices. As I'm sure you're aware, the type of representation one wishes to achieve in legislatures is different than the type one wants for executive office. In legislatures, PR leads to diversity, while for executives, we want a centrist-biased method to apply selection pressure, in the fairest way possible, to the diverse voices of the legislature. So why do you claim I don't have evidence? ??The US doesn't need an EU-system to reinvigorate its democracy. ??It needs to draw from its own history and to trust that local activism will have a trickle-up effect on national and international outcomes. ?? There are also strong examples from its own history that the system can lead to systemic corruption that can only be resisted by overwhelming public support. In other words, instead of designing things to work correctly, we tend to let things go on until they break and then we put in a fix. Ted In other words: You could be right. So stop arguing about this and go out there and prove it. will do. dlw?? Jameson 2011/12/2 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com -- Forwarded message -- From:??MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com To:??election-meth...@electorama.com Date:??Fri, 2 Dec 2011 19:19:28 + Subject:??[EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] MO: Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. dlw: David is saying, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change [two-party dominated system in US] and the courage to change the things I can change [rallying support of others around American forms of PR + IRV] and the wisdom to tell the difference between a dysfunctional two-party system and one that would work. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info -- araucaria dot araucana at gmail dot com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] more anti-IRV propaganda...
-- Forwarded message -- From: Ralph Suter rlsu...@aol.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com, Range Voting rangevot...@yahoogroups.com Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:02:22 -0500 Subject: [EM] Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting in San Francisco Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting By SHANE SHIFFLETT Published: December 2, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/**12/02/us/analysis-finds-** incorrect-use-of-ranked-**choice-voting.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/us/analysis-finds-incorrect-use-of-ranked-choice-voting.html The results are in: San Francisco voters have trouble with ranked-choice elections. dlw: The US media, vanguard of the common man, has trouble with IRV. Despite a $300,000 educational campaign leading up to last month’s elections, including a new smiley-face mascot, publicity events, and advertising on buses and in newspapers, only one-third of voters on Nov. 8 filled out all three choices in all three races, according to an analysis released this week by the University of San Francisco. And only 9% ranked one candidate so that means more than half of the voters ranked two candidates, more than they would have been able to do with a FPTP Under the city’s system, voters were asked to rank their top three choices for mayor, sheriff and district attorney. Perhaps the analysis’ most troubling finding is that 9 percent of voters, mostly in Chinatown and southeastern neighborhoods like the Bayview, marked only one choice for each office, either because they considered only one candidate suitable or because they did not know how to fill out their ballot correctly. “Some people just prefer to rank one,” said Corey Cook, a political science professor at the university who wrote the report with David Latterman. “But the geographic component suggests it’s more systematic.” dlw: people who don't speak/read english or have been failed by a bad public education system in high-poverty areas are less likely to learn how to use IRV? Clearly, the advocates of IRV hate democracy. Although Edwin M. Lee did not receive a majority of first-place votes, he became the city’s first elected Chinese-American mayor based on the ranked-choice system, which was first used in San Francisco in 2004. wow, a minority gets elected. IRV is terrible. The findings indicate one of two things, Mr. Latterman said: Either campaigns tried to manipulate the results by focusing on specific groups of people or there is not a clear understanding of how to use the system. just 2 things? 1. all campaigns target voters who are more likely to vote for them. With IRV, this tends to be a broader set of voters and minorities are more likely to be key swing voters. 2. Or they don't want to rank more than one or two candidates? A recent Bay Citizen analysis revealed that 16 percent of ballots in the mayoral race — those of more than 31,500 people — were filled out correctly but were discarded when all of their chosen candidates were eliminated from the race. San Francisco does not allow voters to rank all the candidates on the ballot. dlw: Hmm, maybe there were lots and lots of candidates for a single-winner election? When you force people to rank all of them the number of permutations rises very fast, even more so when you permit ties. When people get more used to IRV and start ranking 3 candidates, this number will go down. In June, a voting task force created by the Board of Supervisors recommended that the Department of Elections consider allowing voters to rank all the candidates to avoid this issue. The panel urged the department to work with city supervisors to increase voter education. dlw: Look, if most peeople didn't want to rank 3 candidates, why do we need to let them rank umpteen candidates? Hence the mascot. “We made the conscious decision to have an image of a correctly marked ballot and to have a smiley face to draw people’s attention,” said John Arntz, the director of the Department of Elections. When asked whether ranked-choice voting has worked well for San Francisco, Mr. Arntz said, “I guess it depends if your candidate wins or not.” How did the election fare in terms of turnout and other indicators relative to a CA election that does not use IRV or uses FPTP? This is crap! dlw -- Forwarded message -- From: Ted Stern araucaria.arauc...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:26:42 -0800 Subject: Re: [EM] EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system On 02 Dec 2011 13:05:04 -0800, David L. Wetzell wrote: On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com wrote: There is a fundamental difference between two-party dominance, which will probably not change any time soon, and a two-party duopoly. 45%, 40%, 8%, 5%... is dominance; 51% 47% 1%... is duopoly. Any system
[EM] This might be the method we've been looking for:
Here’s a method that seems to have the important properties that we have been worrying about lately: (1) For each ballot beta, construct two matrices M1 and M2: In row X and column Y of matrix M1, enter a one if ballot beta rates X above Y or if beta gives a top rating to X. Otherwise enter a zero. IN row X and column y of matrix M2, enter a 1 if y is rated strictly above x on beta. Otherwise enter a zero. (2) Sum the matrices M1 and M2 over all ballots beta. (3) Let M be the difference of these respective sums . (4) Elect the candidate who has the (algebraically) greatest minimum row value in matrix M. Consider the scenario 49 C 27 AB 24 BA Since there are no equal top ratings, the method elects the same candidate A as minmax margins would. In the case 49 C 27 AB 24 B There are no equal top ratings, so the method gives the same result as minmax margins, namely C wins (by the tie breaking rule based on second lowest row value between B and C). Now for 49 C 27 A=B 24 B In this case B wins, so the A supporters have a way of stopping C from being elected when they know that the B voters really are indifferent between A and C. The equal top rule for matrix M1 essentially transforms minmax into a method satisfying the FBC. Thoughts? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Approval vs IRV
Mike, Someone said that IRV lets you vote more preferences than Approval does. But what good does that do, if it doesn't count them? The term count here can be a bit vague and propagandistic. Also you imply that it is always better to count preferences (no matter how) than to not. Also you seem to imply that all the voters care nothing about anything except affecting (positively from their perspective) the result and perhaps how their vote will do it. I reject that. A lot of voters want to know details of the result besides just who won, and want to see how some or all the candidates went, perhaps with the perspective of thinking about their voting strategy in the next election. And some people get some satisfaction from giving their full ranking of the candidates, even though most of that information will be ignored by the voting method algorithm. As a thought experiment, consider this method: voters strictly rank from the top however many candidates they like and also give an approval cut-off, the winner is the most approved candidate, exact ties resolved by random ballot (doesn't matter if drawn ballot doesn't show approval for any of the tied candidates). After the election each candidates' top rankings scores (and preferably other voted preference information) is made known along with their approval scores. I as a voter would happier with this than plain Approval. But I think after a while, say if the published results showed a failure of Majority Favourite, some voters might wonder why they have to gamble or use guess work in deciding where to put their approval cut-off and why the voting method can't use some algorithm that usefully uses more of the information on the ballots To say that IRV fails FBC is an understatement. IRV fails FBC with a vengeance. IRV thereby makes a joke any election in which it is used. That is an exaggeration. Regarding the proper version of IRV I earlier defined (that allows voters to strictly rank from the top however many candidates they want), most of the time none of the voters wouldn't even notice any FBC failure (and so incentive to use the Compromise strategy). As I've already said, all it takes is for favoriteness-support to taper moderately gradually away from the middle, something that is hardly unusual. Eliminations from the extremes will send transfers inward to feed the candidates flanking a middle CW, resulting in hir elimination. Yes, but if the wing voters' pairwise preference for the middle CW over their opposite wing's candidate is weak, then arguably that doesn't matter much. Also, even though Approval has a strong centrist bias, it is possible that Approval will fail to elect a CW that IRV would have. After all, IRV meets Mutual Dominant Third and Condorcet Loser. (So for your example to work, the middle CW has to be solidly supported by fewer than a third of the voters). That said, though Approval or MTA is incomparably better than Plurality, and would be completely adequate, I'd prefer, if electorally-attainable, a method that meets LNHa. I like MTA and IBIFA (preferably with 4-slot ballots), and some of the Condorcet methods. I wouldn't say that Approval would be completely adequate (but of course a big improvement on FPP). Chris Benham Mike Ossipoff wrote (1 Dec 2011): Someone said that IRV lets you vote more preferences than Approval does. But what good does that do, if it doesn't count them? Approval counts every preference that you vote. Since Approval doesn't let you vote all of your preferences, it doesn't count all of your preferences. But, unlike IRV, you can choose which of your preferences will be counted. You can divide the candidate-set into two parts in any way you choose. You, and only you, choose among which two sets of candidates your preferences will be counted. As I've said, our elections have completely unacceptable candidates. Under those conditions, most methods reduce to Approval anyway. When, in Approval, you approve all of the acceptable candidates and none of the unacceptable candidates, you're doing all that you'd want to do anyway. - Yes, Approval has the ABE problem, the co-operation/defection problem. We've discussed two solutions for that problem that could be used in Approval: 1. Your faction makes it known that they will, from principle, refuse to support some inadequate alleged lesser-evil compromise. The other greater-evil-opposers including the supporters of that lesser-evil will understand that, if they need the votes of a more principled faction, and aren't going to get their votes, then they had better approve that faction's candidates if they don't want a greater evil to win. Of course, no one who prefers your faction's policies to those of that lesser-evil would have any pragmatic reason to approve the lesser-evil but not
Re: [EM] Analysis Finds Incorrect Use of Ranked-Choice Voting in San, Francisco
It's no more crap than your cranky knee-jerk comments, which are clearly based on your speculative (and therefore dubious) negative assumptions about the intent of the article's author and the people who conducted the university study. The article only briefly describes that study (which runs to 23 pages) and also refers to a separate study done by the news organization the author writes for (the Bay Citizen). In fact, an earlier article by the same author describing the Bay Citizen study sympathetically and at some length quotes two well-known long time supporters of RCV, Rob Richie and Steven Hill. A strong opponent of RCV, Terry Reilly, is also quoted, but at much less length. Both the university study (titled a preliminary RCV analysis) and the earlier Bay Citizen article are posted on the web. You should read them before posting any more comments about them or defending your initial ones. earlier Bay Citizen article: http://www.baycitizen.org/sf-mayoral-race/story/how-ranked-choice-voting-silenced-voters/ University of San Francisco study: http://www.baycitizen.org/documents/usf-rcv-ballot-analysis/ OR http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/269123/usf-rcv-ballot-analysis.pdf On 12/2/2011 7:12 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: This is crap! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV's adequacy depends on a two-party system
Just the subject line on this is the most amusing thing I've read on this list in a while. Well said, sir! On Dec 2, 2011, at 2:19 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: David Wetzel said: s for center-squeezing, that's not really a problem in the US as a whole... Third parties are too small and scattered. [endquote] Ok, so David is saying that IRV is adequate adequate only in a two-party system. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
