[EM] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method
Hallo, on 19 April 2013, the Associated Student Government at Northwestern University used the Schulze method to choose its President. With 3471 cast ballots, this was the largest Schulze election ever. See: https://asg.northwestern.edu/news/2013/04/announcing-2013-asg-executive-elections-results Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Current SODA not monotonic; fixable. (mono-voter-raise)
At 01:09 PM 4/19/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: Consider the following scenario in SODA: 1: A(CBD) 2: B,X 2: C(BAD) 1: D(ACB) 1: null Presume all ties are predictably broken for the alphabetically-first candidate (without this presumption, you'd need larger numbers, but you could still make a similar scenario). Under SODA with rational delegation assignment, C has a choice. If C does not approve B, they are giving A and D a choice between approving A and C so C wins, or only A so A wins; since both A and D will choose the latter, this is tantamount to electing A. If C does approve B, then B will win regardless of what A and D do. C prefers B, so B wins. Notice that SODA is, generally, an Asset Method, but, first of all, heavily restricted. It loses the most appealing and probably the most useful aspect of Asset, the creation of a *deliberative* body that can resolve an election. Instead, because of the rules, the votes of canididates are *predictable*, within the restrictions, and thus C is able to, in the scenario given, know how the others will vote, and to use that information for personal advantage. The vote that is allegedly non-monotonic is an odd one, and I've made this point about Asset many times: why would one vote for a candidate, who presumably will represent the voter in hundreds or thousands of decisions, if elected, but not trust that candidate to delegate? Which is what real representatives and executives do, a great deal of the time. Not having the skill and understanding to delegate rationally is a major shortcoming in any person heavily participating in executive or governmental decisions. Making poor choice in delegation has led to the downfall of many. But if the last null voter adds an undelegated approval for B, then if C approves nobody and D and A approve only A, the result shifts from A to B. Since C knows that A and D will prefer to give the win to C, now C can safely not approve B, and win. Essentially, the lone voter makes the world safe for C. B has apparently also not indicated delegations. Perhaps that's why the null voter didn't allow delegation. The *system* defanged B. C essentially betrays B (though we have no clue as to the depth of that betrayal, and since B did not declare delegations, we also don't know how B would have voted in the further process.) I've generally written that without knowing underlying utilities, we cannot understand the impact of a criterion failure. However, we can guess that the preference strength of the null voter for B over the others is weak. I don't know if the rules would have allowed B to vote the null voter's ballot if the vote had been delegable, given a lack of prestated delegations. SODA is *not* simple, as the name claims. Asset is simple, and we suggested, years, ago, FAAV, fractional approval asset voting, which would *allow* voters to vote for more than one, with the vote being divided if needed for completion. Most voters would presumaby vote for one only. So the ballot is a pure approval ballot, and there is *only one question* the voters need to address: whom do you trust most to represent you in the ensuing process? And such a vote is clearly monotonic, in itself. That is, it always increases the voting power of the candidate(s) voted for. However, in real life, in real decisions, it can occur in the process that an increase in power of a faction shifts the process in a way that ultimately is against the interest of that faction. That's a *basic problem*, not a voting system problem. It's rare, but simply not impossible. The most common situation would be overreach. I.e., a faction might have a position that will prevail, but if, believing that they have the power, they disregard and reject whatever compromises might be needed to complete implementation, they might eventually lose out. We see that excess power has defeated many movements, i.e., *too much success*. So then they act arrogantly, and create a counterrevolution or strengthen it. So an extra approval for B caused B to lose. So what happened? To review it: 1: A(CBD) 2: B,X 2: C(BAD) 1: D(ACB) 1: null Realize that the process described doesn't happen in the ballots. The voter voting for B gives B additional power in the process, just not enough to prevail without the cooperation of another. 1 vote short, in fact. I'd claim that the *voting* system was monotonic, but the additional vote shifted strategic considerations on the part of C. And SODA sets up pure, full-information strategic voting, and that is a major flaw. Without that extra B vote, the results are, without delegation, A: 1 B: 2 C: 2 D: 1 There are six voters (unless the null voter does count by having cast some ballot, perhaps with a write-in). Majority is 4. C can complete the election for B. Does C do so? Maybe. The assumption here is that C would, but that is an assumption based on no other votes being present.
[EM] a comment
If you're going to pit two election rules against each other by using them both and then have voters decide between the cases when they differ then you're going to have sample selection problems. For it's potentially more work, there might be a learning curve for many voters with some rules, which would muddy the evidence, and I find it hard for politicians to agree to such an experiment or not tamper the evidence by additional targeted campaigning if it did go into a face-off. Or what if there's been significant amounts of voter error in a close election(in one of the two) or even possibly selective tampering as a potential source of differing outcomes? C It sounds like a nice experiment, but it'd have a terrible marketing problem, apart from perhaps the internal elections of modestly-sized third parties committed to experimenting with different elections. I am fascinated with the scope for increased experimentation in the USA if the GOP civil war weakens the center-right-ish party so that it'd be in their interest to push for a less winner-take-all electoral system. But I think it's fair to focus on electoral reforms that won't end the tendency to 2-party domination, but rather end the tendency to single-party domination that currently exists in the US's political system and that makes it so hard for our leaders to get anything done... dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method
From: Markus Schulze markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de on 19 April 2013, the Associated Student Government at Northwestern University used the Schulze method to choose its President. With 3471 cast ballots, this was the largest Schulze election ever. See: https://asg.northwestern.edu/news/2013/04/announcing-2013-asg-executive-elections-results � since there was no cycle, any Condorcet compliant work have worked identically.� if it had a cycle, since there were only three candidate tickets, Schulze, Tideman, and MinMax would still have performed identically. Markus, do you think they counted the ballots by hand or with a scanner of some sort?� if by hand, they would just do the pairwise elections (there would be 3 different pairwise elections), record the winner and margin of each pair, any of these different methods would be executed on the margins.� do you think that's what they did (apply Schulze to the 3 pairwise results), or since a CW was immediately apparent, wouldn't they just quit at that point? just curious. bestest, � r b-j � � � Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] a comment
David, Which post are you commenting on? David L Wetzell said: If you're going to pit two election rules against each other by using them both and then have voters decide between the cases when they differ then you're going to have sample selection problems. For it's potentially more work, there might be a learning curve for many voters with some rules, which would muddy the evidence, and I find it hard for politicians to agree to such an experiment or not tamper the evidence by additional targeted campaigning if it did go into a face-off. Or what if there's been significant amounts of voter error in a close election(in one of the two) or even possibly selective tampering as a potential source of differing outcomes? C It sounds like a nice experiment, but it'd have a terrible marketing problem, apart from perhaps the internal elections of modestly-sized third parties committed to experimenting with different elections. I am fascinated with the scope for increased experimentation in the USA if the GOP civil war weakens the center-right-ish party so that it'd be in their interest to push for a less winner-take-all electoral system. But I think it's fair to focus on electoral reforms that won't end the tendency to 2-party domination, but rather end the tendency to single-party domination that currently exists in the US's political system and that makes it so hard for our leaders to get anything done... dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] a comment
At 12:20 PM 4/20/2013, David L Wetzell wrote: If you're going to pit two election rules against each other by using them both and then have voters decide between the cases when they differ then you're going to have sample selection problems. The comment seemed to assume public elections. Voting systems can be tried in NGOs, and that's where the future lies, my opinion. It's very unlikely that we will see major voting reforms take place in governmental election systems without them having seen usage in NGOs. Having said that, history isn't necessarily friendly to my idea. Bucklin voting was all the rage in the period 1910-1920 and a little later. Yet I never heard of it being used outside of public elections. It worked in public elections, no pathologies were asserted at the time other than that it allowed a runner-up in the first preference votes to win the election. That was considered horrifying to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which, effectively, interpreted the state constitution as *demanding* plurality. Very strange (FairVote later argued differently, but I'm quite sure they would have disallowed IRV just the same.) The only problem was that in nonpartisan elections -- party primaries, much later -- it frequently failed to find a majority at all. That wasn't Bucklin's fault; IRV would have failed even more. The real fix to that problem would have been a runoff, and what was *actually done* was to dump Bucklin and to use top-two, vote-for-one in the primary, with a runoff when no majority was found. If they had simply used a hybrid system, say a Bucklin primary, with a runoff when needed, history might be different. But Bucklin had been sold the same as IRV more recently: find a majority without expensive runoffs Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] a comment
Sure, I agree with NGOs/third-parties or intra-party elections as the natural places to experiment. Thanks for the history lesson. It seems that the prejudice of some in state supreme courts has contributed greatly to stunting the development of democracy by experiment. I think if we focus on experimental nature of democracy and use analytics more defensively, like in showing why some bad rules are easy to show as steps backwards(or sideways), then we'll help reignite Hope. dlw dlw On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.comwrote: At 12:20 PM 4/20/2013, David L Wetzell wrote: If you're going to pit two election rules against each other by using them both and then have voters decide between the cases when they differ then you're going to have sample selection problems. The comment seemed to assume public elections. Voting systems can be tried in NGOs, and that's where the future lies, my opinion. It's very unlikely that we will see major voting reforms take place in governmental election systems without them having seen usage in NGOs. Having said that, history isn't necessarily friendly to my idea. Bucklin voting was all the rage in the period 1910-1920 and a little later. Yet I never heard of it being used outside of public elections. It worked in public elections, no pathologies were asserted at the time other than that it allowed a runner-up in the first preference votes to win the election. That was considered horrifying to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which, effectively, interpreted the state constitution as *demanding* plurality. Very strange (FairVote later argued differently, but I'm quite sure they would have disallowed IRV just the same.) The only problem was that in nonpartisan elections -- party primaries, much later -- it frequently failed to find a majority at all. That wasn't Bucklin's fault; IRV would have failed even more. The real fix to that problem would have been a runoff, and what was *actually done* was to dump Bucklin and to use top-two, vote-for-one in the primary, with a runoff when no majority was found. If they had simply used a hybrid system, say a Bucklin primary, with a runoff when needed, history might be different. But Bucklin had been sold the same as IRV more recently: find a majority without expensive runoffs Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method
Hi, It's true that *with the ballots as cast* any Condorcet-compliant method would have worked identically. What you don't know until you try it, is whether voters would actually cast those ballots, given the incentives created by the method. That said, I don't see an obvious reason why Tideman or MinMax would have gone differently. Kevin De : r...@audioimagination.com r...@audioimagination.com À : election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Samedi 20 avril 2013 13h20 Objet : Re: [EM] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method since there was no cycle, any Condorcet compliant work have worked identically. if it had a cycle, since there were only three candidate tickets, Schulze, Tideman, and MinMax would still have performed identically. oops. i realize that there were 4 candidate tickets and then 6 pairwise elections. still doesn't change that, with a Condorcet winner, it made no difference. if there was a 4-way cycle, perhaps Schulze would choose a different winner than the other methods. also was going to mention that i had attended Northwestern during the Reagan years. was a PhD student but left ABD. r b-j 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] Associated Student Government at Northwestern University uses Schulze Method
From: Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr It's true that *with the ballots as cast* any Condorcet-compliant method would have worked identically. � including no specific Condorcet method, since there was a CW. � What you don't know until you try it, is whether voters would actually cast those ballots, given the incentives created by the method. � well, when at first i (mistakenly) thought that there were only 3 candidates (or candidate tickets, in this case), i could not see how there would be any different outcome at all because, even if there was a cycle, it would be a cycle with 3 in the Smith set. � That said, I don't see an obvious reason why Tideman or MinMax would have gone differently. � well, being that there were 4 candidate tickets, it's *possible* that a cycle with all 4 tickets in the Smith set occurs and then, i guess, the different methods: MinMax, Tideman, Schulze may have resulted in different outcomes. � i have since discovered that the voting was online and the results went into a Google spreadsheet doc.� i imagine they were able to program it to compute the winner and margin of each candidate pairing, but if a cycle had occurred, i really wonder what they would have done, because with all due respect to Markus (and i mean that, Markus, everyone says that Schulze method is the best Condorcet method or, at least, gets the best outcome in the hypothetical cases where it would be different from the others), i wonder if they would have some trouble going through the actual steps of the Schulze method. � r b-j � Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
