[EM] Lomax: Approval

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Abd:

I'd said:

>Certainly ordinary Approval should be the first proposal. And if 
>options are not
>later added to it, and ordinary Approval remains the method in use, 
>that would be fine.

You replied:

Well, not entirely "fine," but we don't need to go there at this 
point.

[endquote]

Exactly. What might be even better than Approval, and how important it is to 
propose something
else later, are issues that needn't be addressed yet. 

Right now, the important thing is to achieve what can be achieved now. The
SodaHead discussion and poll is an example of what can be done as a start. If 
all
of us who want voting-system reform were to give our voting-system efforts to
this most immediately-feasible reform, then maybe things would start happening 
faster.

It's important to remind the SodaHead discussants that a lot rides on the 
voting system,
and that it would be best to consider the question carefully before posting, 
best to actually
listen to the arguments on both sides of the question.

Objection to Approval has to include a claim that it might be worse than 
Plurality.

So we should ask: "Ok then, how could it be worse than Plurality? What will 
Approval do wrong that
Plurality doesn't do wrong?"

I like the verb "support" instead of "vote for" (which carries the Plurality 
connotation). Better
yet, I like "Mark as acceptable". That doesn't mean that the candidates you 
don't mark are
entirely unacceptable. It is (as you spoke of) an action, not a feeling. I give 
a candidate acceptance,
an "acceptable" rating. Not "acceptable" in a psychological sense. "Acceptable" 
in a procedural
sense. I'm willing to accept that candidate, and I so indicate by marking that 
candidate on my ballot.

As someone pointed out, it's genuinely 1-person-1-vote (1p1v) in the matter of 
giving an acceptable
mark to some particular candidate.

Plurality is supposed to find out which candidate is favorite to the most. 
Plurality fails dismally at that.
In Plurality, people vote for a _guessed_ needed compromise, pretending that 
s/he is their favorite. For one thing
you don't really know what candidate is the best you can get by compromise. For 
another thing, it's necessary
to somehow come together on the same candidate. How can all the 
Republican-dislikers know which candidate
to combine votes on? Guess, that's how. It's been the Democrat for so long that 
people keep making that guess.

That's a serious problem of Plurality. 

Why not let people just mark candidates as "acceptable for compromise". Then 
you don't have to know the best
that you can get. Then you don't have to somehow know what candidate everyone 
is going to unite on.

The result? The election of the candidate marked as "acceptable" by the most. 
We could do a lot worse than that.

If you object to giving "acceptable" to a number of candidates instead of 
helping your favorite, then there's
nothing stopping you from only marking your favorite. You don't have to give an 
acceptable mark to compromises,
unless you think you might need one. 

There's something very wrong when millions of voters say that they have to hold 
their nose and vote
for someone that they don't really like or want, because it's the only way of 
defeating someone who is
even worse.

It's healthy for society when people can indicate what they really want. When 
they can support what/whom they
really want. When they can at least mark "acceptable" what/whom they really 
want.

Someone said Approval is complicated? Approval's strategy is the simplest there 
is. Plurality's strategy is
far more complicated (I made some errors when describing it yesterday--I will 
correct them).

Mark as acceptable your favorite and the candidates you might need for 
compromise (if any).

If some candidates are completely unacceptable, then mark the others (only).

If not, and if you have no predictive information, mark the above-average 
candidates.

If neither of the 2 above statements obtains, then mark the candidates who are 
better than what
you expect from the election.

You do so directly if you mark a candidate if you'd rather appoint hir to 
office instead of holding the election.

you mark a candidate if your feeling of hir threat to your more-liked is less 
than your feeling of hir
hope against less-liked.

You do so indirectly if you mark a candidate if your feeling of hir threat to 
your more-liked is less than your feeling of hir
hope against less-liked, of if you mark the better of your perceived 
frontrunners, and everyone better. But do 
not let anyone tell you who the frontrunners are. The frontrunner strategy 
encourages people to rely on
unreliable frontrunner information. I don't encourage it.

If that sounds complicated, then compare it to Plurality strategy. You only use 
one of those strategies,
depending on what your information or feeling is.

Approval's strategy is interesting, not prohibitively difficult like that of 
Plurality.

Approval's strategy is the easiest there is, 

Re: [EM] SodaHead online Approval Voting poll

[Michael Rouse]

I pointed out on SodaHead that the "thumbs-up" on the upper right of 
each post was an example of Approval voting, and those who think 
Approval is too complicated or undemocratic were free to restrict their 
votes to a single post. :)


Mike

On 3/21/2012 6:09 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
What strikes me most about the comments is how many of them are 
positively proud of their loudmouth know-nothingism. The same people 
who think it's a liberal plot seem to enjoy showing off their 
closed-mindedness. That is, they see it not as a rational argument, 
but as a tribal counting-coup on those egghead liberals.


Finding better rational arguments is not going to change such people's 
minds. I'm not really sure what would. It seems that they make up 
their minds pretty quickly and reflexively. Now I know that such 
blowhards are overrepresented on the internet, but the truth is they 
tend to make more than their share of noise in any context, so it's 
important to have some strategy to deal with them.


... Separately, I think your point about the demographics is a good 
one. Obviously, the sample sizes are small and so basically none of it 
is reliable (statistically significant), but still, it can give some 
clues. As far as I can see states on that map which have the 
most-significant (not largest) advantages for "Yes, approval" are New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, South Carolina, Oregon, and Florida. 
Smaller states would be unlikely to show significance even if there 
were an advantage, but the small New England states might be promising 
too.


Jameson

2012/3/21 Kristofer Munsterhjelm >


On 03/20/2012 01:51 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:

I know that online polls are silly. But thousands of people
see them,
and if they see that the idea actually has support, some of
them will be
more open to consider if it has merit.


While the poll has comments of low quality, and the users seem to
be against Approval at the moment, I do think even those
low-quality comments can be useful.

Namely, they give us insight into the objections, fair or not, to
Approval itself. There are partisan arguments ("this is a liberal
plot to deny conservatives their voting power"), what can be done
about them? Can we point out places where conservatives are being
hurt by vote-splitting? Can we point at Ron Paul when responding
to a libertarian?
Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused
about what the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the
voters vote for a single candidate many times" type of posts.
Others think it violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that
up? Perhaps by rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If
each voter gets ten options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or
not (don't approve), then the voting power is the same for each.
Maybe that is a better phrasing than approve/not in any case, and
maybe it's a better format, too, because it clears up the
confusion between "haven't made a choice about X" (no approval)
and "have voted, but didn't like X" (also no approval).

And so on...

The demographics, if representative, may also give some idea as to
where it will be hard to sell. What kinds of people like Approval
the least? Why?

I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken dilemma
situations. If there are barriers to Approval being adopted, that
isn't it - at least not yet. Though one could of course say that
the reason nobody objects using the chicken dilemma is that they
haven't studied the thing enough to know there actually *is* a
chicken dilemma problem.





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Re: [EM] SodaHead online Approval Voting poll

[Jameson Quinn]

What strikes me most about the comments is how many of them are positively
proud of their loudmouth know-nothingism. The same people who think it's a
liberal plot seem to enjoy showing off their closed-mindedness. That is,
they see it not as a rational argument, but as a tribal counting-coup on
those egghead liberals.

Finding better rational arguments is not going to change such people's
minds. I'm not really sure what would. It seems that they make up their
minds pretty quickly and reflexively. Now I know that such blowhards are
overrepresented on the internet, but the truth is they tend to make more
than their share of noise in any context, so it's important to have some
strategy to deal with them.

... Separately, I think your point about the demographics is a good one.
Obviously, the sample sizes are small and so basically none of it is
reliable (statistically significant), but still, it can give some clues. As
far as I can see states on that map which have the most-significant (not
largest) advantages for "Yes, approval" are New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Minnesota, South Carolina, Oregon, and Florida. Smaller states would be
unlikely to show significance even if there were an advantage, but the
small New England states might be promising too.

Jameson

2012/3/21 Kristofer Munsterhjelm 

> On 03/20/2012 01:51 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>
>> I know that online polls are silly. But thousands of people see them,
>> and if they see that the idea actually has support, some of them will be
>> more open to consider if it has merit.
>>
>
> While the poll has comments of low quality, and the users seem to be
> against Approval at the moment, I do think even those low-quality comments
> can be useful.
>
> Namely, they give us insight into the objections, fair or not, to Approval
> itself. There are partisan arguments ("this is a liberal plot to deny
> conservatives their voting power"), what can be done about them? Can we
> point out places where conservatives are being hurt by vote-splitting? Can
> we point at Ron Paul when responding to a libertarian?
> Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about what
> the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the voters vote for a
> single candidate many times" type of posts. Others think it violates
> one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by rephrasing it in
> terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten options to either do
> thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then the voting power is the
> same for each. Maybe that is a better phrasing than approve/not in any
> case, and maybe it's a better format, too, because it clears up the
> confusion between "haven't made a choice about X" (no approval) and "have
> voted, but didn't like X" (also no approval).
>
> And so on...
>
> The demographics, if representative, may also give some idea as to where
> it will be hard to sell. What kinds of people like Approval the least? Why?
>
> I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken dilemma
> situations. If there are barriers to Approval being adopted, that isn't it
> - at least not yet. Though one could of course say that the reason nobody
> objects using the chicken dilemma is that they haven't studied the thing
> enough to know there actually *is* a chicken dilemma problem.
>
>

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Re: [EM] SodaHead online Approval Voting poll

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 03/20/2012 01:51 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:

I know that online polls are silly. But thousands of people see them,
and if they see that the idea actually has support, some of them will be
more open to consider if it has merit.


While the poll has comments of low quality, and the users seem to be 
against Approval at the moment, I do think even those low-quality 
comments can be useful.


Namely, they give us insight into the objections, fair or not, to 
Approval itself. There are partisan arguments ("this is a liberal plot 
to deny conservatives their voting power"), what can be done about them? 
Can we point out places where conservatives are being hurt by 
vote-splitting? Can we point at Ron Paul when responding to a libertarian?
Then there are method centric arguments. Some are just confused about 
what the thing means, as one can see by the "oh, and let the voters vote 
for a single candidate many times" type of posts. Others think it 
violates one-man one-vote. How can we clear that up? Perhaps by 
rephrasing it in terms of thumbs-up/thumbs-down? If each voter gets ten 
options to either do thumbs-up (approve) or not (don't approve), then 
the voting power is the same for each. Maybe that is a better phrasing 
than approve/not in any case, and maybe it's a better format, too, 
because it clears up the confusion between "haven't made a choice about 
X" (no approval) and "have voted, but didn't like X" (also no approval).


And so on...

The demographics, if representative, may also give some idea as to where 
it will be hard to sell. What kinds of people like Approval the least? Why?


I do note that there are very few arguments about chicken dilemma 
situations. If there are barriers to Approval being adopted, that isn't 
it - at least not yet. Though one could of course say that the reason 
nobody objects using the chicken dilemma is that they haven't studied 
the thing enough to know there actually *is* a chicken dilemma problem.



Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

Re: [EM] Societal ranking from incomplete pairwise information. (Pinewood derby.)

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 03/19/2012 02:39 PM, Peter Gustafsson wrote:

To all readers:


When I have been posting, I see my own posts as one very long line, with
no line breaks despite the fact that I have used them when I composed
the message. If it looks like that to you also, please advise me of that
unfortunate fact and, is possible, tell me how I shall format my
responses so that they look good on this board. Strangely enough, I have
not had that problem on any other board that I post on.


Perhaps it is caused by Hotmail sending your mail as HTML? In HTML, 
plain line breaks don't count, just like more than one space in a row 
doesn't count.


I'm not sure how you would go about setting Hotmail to use plain text 
instead of HTML, as I have not used Hotmail myself. You could, if you 
don't find it too much trouble, use a dedicated mail program and connect 
it to Hotmail's POP3 server. I use Thunderbird, myself. As an additional 
advantage, the dedicated mail programs usually support EM's quotation 
style (with greater-than symbols and your own response immediately after 
the relevant quoted text, instead of all at top or all at bottom) better.



What you are describing is quite similar to the Monrad system used in
chess tournaments, with the simplification that you do not have to worry
about black or white. However, Monrad works partly because chess players
generally only play one game per day in most competitions, so the
organizers have ample time to calculate the matchups between days.
However, in your competition, that is not the case. You need an
algorithm that is fast, and transparent to the competitors - and their
parents.


From reading about the Swiss system on Wikipedia, it seems that it 
gives a clear idea of who the winners and losers are, but not so much 
the middle. Is that true of your suggestion, too?


That might be an interesting question to make more general, actually. If 
we have transitivity (no rock-paper-scissors setting), then how many 
matchups do we need to get a social ordering? But we already know that. 
It's O(n log n) to find the ranking and O(n) to find the winner, because 
the problems are equivalent to sorting and selecting from an unordered 
list, respectively.


But with noise or intransitivity, it's harder to tell. I'm not sure how 
to formalize the problem of selection/ranking under noisy conditions. If 
one can't decide which matchups will be done, the best approach is 
probably something like Kemeny. If one /can/, on the other hand...



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