Re: [EM] Absolutely new here
On 06/16/2013 05:26 AM, Benjamin Grant wrote: I just started trying to wrap my brain around all the ins and outs about voting methods, and I wanted to check two things with my elders (on this subject): 1)As far as I can see, the reason IRV has some strange/unusual results is because it is absolutely critical what order you eliminate candidates. So an election where Voting Bloc 1 has a 13% share of the ballots and Voting Bloc 2 has a 16% share of the ballots can utterly flip around using IRV if VB1 goes up two points and VB2 goes down 2. Because with IRV, the order of elimination is really the first-most deciding factor in who wins. [snip] A few percent either way on the last line changes **everything**. This seems to be a flaw with IRV, yes? It is “too sensitive” on small changes because they can change the order of elimination. Yes. Like a chaotic process such as a fractal, it exhibits sensitivity to initial conditions. Reiterating an IRV round can draw similar points very far away from one another, and on some level, it feels similar to the kind of effects you get by say, reiterating the Henon function on two close points until they're no longer close at all. You can see some visualization of this phenomenon here: http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/ 2)I haven’t seen a voting system like this – what are the issues with it? Upsides and downsides? A)Each voter ranks their choices on their ballots, first through last place. B)If one candidate got a majority of 1^st place votes, they win. If not, the second place votes are added. If still no majority he third place votes are added, and so on, until one candidate has a majority. Would the above system work? That's Bucklin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucklin_voting . It's one of the few ranked methods that have been used in political elections in the United States, and it has a connection to median rating (which elects the candidate with highest median rating or grade). It would work, but the rating variant is better. In the context of ranking, Bucklin fails Condorcet, for instance. It also has some bullet-voting incentive. Say that you support candidate A. You're reasonably sure it will get quite a number of second-place votes. Then even though you might prefer B to A, it's strategically an advantage to rank A first, because then the method will detect a majority for A sooner. One of the points of the graded/rated variants is to encourage the voters to think in absolute terms (is this candidate good enough to deserve an A) rather than relative terms (is this candidate better than that candidate). If they do, then the method becomes more robust. Thanks, very new to all these considerations, still trying to learn the names of the different methods as well as the names and meaning of the different criteria like Condorcet, Later No Harm, etc. Alright. If you have more questions, just ask! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] A better 2-round method that uses approval ballots
On 06/14/2013 09:06 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 12:44 AM 6/14/2013, Chris Benham wrote: My suggested 2-round method using Approval ballots is to elect the most approved first-round candidate A if A is approved on more than half the ballots, otherwise elect the winner of a runoff between A and the candidate that is most approved on ballots that don't show approval for A. Yeah. My general position is that runoff voting can be *vastly improved* by some fairly simple tweaks, or by using an advanced voting system, in the primary and maybe in the runoff. Approval is an advanced voting system *and* a tweak on Plurality. Parties fielding 2 candidates is a disempowering move, in general, weakening campaigning. I'm generally opposed to open primaries in partisan elections. A unified primary makes sense in a non-partisan election. Couldn't open primaries weaken party leadership and so encourage the transition from Duverger-style two party rule into multipartyism? As long as the primary/runoff method can handle multiple candidates, that is. Or do you think the leadership would instead say that we need to stick together or the other party, that keeps party discipline, will divide and conquer us with much stronger focused campaigning? And we need to understand something about nonpartisan elections. They are *very different* as to voter behavior from partisan elections. What seems to be, from the behavior of nonpartisan IRV, is that voters vote on name recognition and affect. It is the kind of thing that is heavily influenced by public exposure of the candidates, and it has little to do with political position on a spectrum. Voters do not appear to be voting as if there is this spectrum, with second preferences then being predictable from spectrum position of the candidates and the voter. It'd be interesting to run some kind of SVD on cardinal polls in such elections to confirm whether that's the case, but I trust you :-) You certainly know more about non-partisan elections than I do, since pretty much every election here is partisan. It's a consequence of the party list method we use. (However, I do note that in one of the few cities that have direct mayoral elections, a candidate from a very left-wing party was elected. This party has about 2-3% national support, and I get the impression he was elected on nonpartisan grounds - by character and quality rather than by political affiliation.) I would conceptualize Chris's system this way. It's a 2-winner approval method, designed to maximize *representation* on the runoff ballot. Voters who approve A are already represented, so, it makes sense to only consider ballots not approving of A in determining the other runoff candidate. Yes, and it probably does so to a greater degree than a PR method would. Consider a case where we have a candidate that's preferred nearly unanimously, and then another candidate preferred by the slight minority that remains. Assuming Chris's method doesn't have a threshold similar to the greater than majority support and he wins threshold of TTR, the method would pick both candidates mentioned above for the runoff. On the other hand, if the majority is sufficiently large, a PR method could pick two candidates preferred by the near-unanimous majority. I don't think that would make much of a difference in a runoff, though. If candidate A is preferred (approved) by a near-unanimous group, meaning that candidate is considered to be vastly superior to everybody else, then that group will have the power to make him win in the runoff. The issue is more whether a runoff should aim towards maximizing representation (as Chris's method, as well as minmax Approval, tries to do), common center focus (as top-n Approval would do absent deliberate clones) or some combination of both (as PR methods would do). However, limiting the runoff or general election ballot to two candidates is an unnecessary restriction. It is only a false majority that is created when candidates are eliminated, and, as we know, the pathologies of elimination systems are rooted in that elimination. As a compromise, up to three candidates can be permitted on the runoff ballot, using an advanced voting system that can handle three candidates well, and the selection can include much better criteria that mere top two. If a ranked ballot with sufficient ranks is used, condorect winners can be identified and placed in the runoff, thus making the overall method condorcet compliant, i.e., a persistent Condorcet winner would be identified as such -- publically known -- and would win *unless voter preferences change or turnout shows that the condorcet preference strength is low.* One possible way of doing that would be to use a combinatorial PR method where you force-include the winner from the other type of system. For instance, you might render cardinal ballots into ordinal ballots and then run Schulze STV on them - but force
Re: [EM] Absolutely new here
At 02:02 AM 6/16/2013, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: It would work, but the rating variant is better. In the context of ranking, Bucklin fails Condorcet, for instance. Straight Bucklin does fail Condorcet, of course, as do straight Range and Approval. However, we can tell from the fact that Range fails Condorcet that there is a problem with the Condorcet Criterion, one of the simplest and most intuitively correct of the voting systems criteria. The problem also applies to the Majority Criterion. Those criteria do not consider preference strength. Practical, small-scale, choice systems do, routinely. They do it through deliberative process and repeated elections, vote-for-one, seeking a majority. And then, a process that can even review a majority choice and reverse it, where preference strength justifies it. Thus a deterministic single-poll method that optimizes social utility, and that collects information allowing that, *must* violate the criteria. And that's a problem, because this is a fundamental principle of democracy: no binding choice is made without the consent of a majority of those voting on the issue. Some are aware of the tyranny of the majority, but solutions to *that* cannot be found in deciding *against* the preference of the majority, *without their consent.* The result is minority rule, not broader consensus. So there is a solution: repeated election. Over the years of considering this problem, I've concluded that with the use of advanced voting systems, such as Range methods, and good ballot analysis in a first round, with a runoff where a majority decision is not clear, such that a Condorcet winner in a primary will *always* make it into a runoff, in addition to one or more social utility maximizers, it is possible to 1. Find a majority choice, almost always, in two ballots, with the exceptions being harmless. 2. Satisfy the Majority and Condorcet criteria. 3. Optimize social utility. These have been considered opposing goals. That is because 1. Voting systems study has neglected repeated ballot. 2. Voter turnout has been neglected. 3. The electorate has been assumed, where runoffs have even been considered, to be the same electorate with the same opinions. Neither is real. It also has some bullet-voting incentive. Say that you support candidate A. You're reasonably sure it will get quite a number of second-place votes. Then even though you might prefer B to A, it's strategically an advantage to rank A first, because then the method will detect a majority for A sooner. This is somehow assumed to be bad. That incentive exists if there is significant preference strength. Thus bullet voting is a measure of preference strength, i.e., is useful in measuring social utility. There is, however, another cause for bullet voting: voter ignorance (which is natural and normal). A voter simply may not know enough about another candidate to vote for the candidate. And this is probably the major cause of bullet voting, historically, with Bucklin, combined with high preference strength. The ignorance problem is addressed with runoffs when they are needed. One of the points of the graded/rated variants is to encourage the voters to think in absolute terms (is this candidate good enough to deserve an A) rather than relative terms (is this candidate better than that candidate). If they do, then the method becomes more robust. If somehow we could extract absolute utilities from the voters, sure. However, real-world, people make choices based on relative utility, not absolute utility. Imagining a voting system as becoming more robust, if voters behave utterly unrealistically, depends on a rather strange idea of robust. We *are* machines, but we are programmed to optimize among *choices*. Our very assessment mechanisms are relative to what is espected as realistic possibilities. What Kristofer has referred to is called the Later-no-Harm criterion. Any system that efficiently arranges for social-utility maximizing process *must* violate Later-no-Harm. I.e, the expression of a lower preference *must* harm the chance of the favorite winning. The key word here is efficient. There can be an LnH-compliant system which exhaustively determines that candidates cannot win, and those are then eliminated, but it's extraordinarily inefficient, requiring many ballots. When it is done in a single ballot, it *must*, then, eliminate, on occasion, the ideal winner. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Absolutely new here
Let me put forth (better, I hope) a more complete thought (which is probably one of those Bucklin Variants, as it turns out.) The ballot has every candidate on it. In order to be considered valid, each voter must rank each and every one of them. So with five candidates, a valid ballot might look like: 1st:B/2nd:D/3rd:A/4th:E/5th:C No duplicates, no skipping. Then we create a threshold of just over 50% of the number of votes. If 100 people vote, then 51 is the threshold. We then look at only the 1st place votes. If anyone hit the threshold, they win if they are the only one. If more than one candidate hit the threshold, the one that surpasses the threshold by more wins. If no one yet hits the threshold, add in all the 2nd place votes, and check again. If still no one hits the threshold, add in the 3rd place votes, and so on. It was a thought experiment I was doing, I'm not at all sure, for example, that it might not be better to permit duplicates or skipping. I obviously need to go deeper. I think my next task is to put a pause in the pursuit of different voting systems to focus on understanding better the various criteria (later no harm, Condorcet, etc), in much more depth, ie, what they are each about, what it means that a system fulfills of fails one, etc. I will post more about that shortly - let me know if I am dragging this group to far into voting theory kindergarten, but I really want to get all this. Thanks. -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 11:20 AM To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Cc: Benjamin Grant; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Absolutely new here As one of the principal advocates for Bucklin systems on this list, I thought I'd expand a bit on Kristofer's excellent response. 2013/6/16 Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com mailto:km_el...@lavabit.com On 06/16/2013 05:26 AM, Benjamin Grant wrote: [...IRV discussion...] [...good response...] 2)I haven't seen a voting system like this - what are the issues with it? Upsides and downsides? A)Each voter ranks their choices on their ballots, first through last place. B)If one candidate got a majority of 1^st place votes, they win. If not, the second place votes are added. If still no majority he third place votes are added, and so on, until one candidate has a majority. Would the above system work? That's Bucklin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucklin_voting . It's one of the few ranked methods that have been used in political elections in the United States, and it has a connection to median rating (which elects the candidate with highest median rating or grade). It would work, but the rating variant is better. In the context of ranking, Bucklin fails Condorcet, for instance. In case it wasn't clear, by rating, Kristofer means a system with a fixed number of levels of support/opposition (typically 3-7), where voters can any number (including 0) of candidates at a given level. Ranking means that voters must give a strict ordering of candidates, with no ties or skipped ranks. It also has some bullet-voting incentive. In this case, It refers to the ranked version only. Say that you support candidate A. You're reasonably sure it will get quite a number of second-place votes. Then even though you might prefer B to A, it's strategically an advantage to rank A first, because then the method will detect a majority for A sooner. One of the points of the graded/rated variants is to encourage the voters to think in absolute terms (is this candidate good enough to deserve an A) rather than relative terms (is this candidate better than that candidate). If they do, then the method becomes more robust. Thanks. One think Kristofer didn't mention is that your definition wasn't quite complete. What happens if two candidates attain a majority at the same rank, or (in rated versions or due to truncation) no candidate attains a majority without including the bottom support level? Resolving this issue requires a Bucklin completion method, just as resolving cyclical preferences in Condorcet requires a Condorcet completion method. Colloquially, Bucklin completion methods are often called Bucklin tiebreakers. Thus, there are many possible Bucklin systems, including ER-Bucklin (which majority is highest?), Majority Judgment (remove an equal number of ballots at the pivotal/median rating for each candidate until one of them gets a majority at a higher or lower rating), Graduated Majority Judgment (find the candidate who needs the lowest percentage of their ballots at the pivotal/median rating to attain a majority; also expressable as a simple algebraic formula that gives a non-integer score to each candidate), and the as-yet-unnamed method currently being discussed (for instance) here
Re: [EM] A better 2-round method that uses approval ballots
At 07:36 AM 6/16/2013, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 06/14/2013 09:06 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 12:44 AM 6/14/2013, Chris Benham wrote: My suggested 2-round method using Approval ballots is to elect the most approved first-round candidate A if A is approved on more than half the ballots, otherwise elect the winner of a runoff between A and the candidate that is most approved on ballots that don't show approval for A. Yeah. My general position is that runoff voting can be *vastly improved* by some fairly simple tweaks, or by using an advanced voting system, in the primary and maybe in the runoff. Approval is an advanced voting system *and* a tweak on Plurality. Parties fielding 2 candidates is a disempowering move, in general, weakening campaigning. I'm generally opposed to open primaries in partisan elections. A unified primary makes sense in a non-partisan election. Couldn't open primaries weaken party leadership and so encourage the transition from Duverger-style two party rule into multipartyism? As long as the primary/runoff method can handle multiple candidates, that is. Or do you think the leadership would instead say that we need to stick together or the other party, that keeps party discipline, will divide and conquer us with much stronger focused campaigning? Open primaries attack the underlying principle of parties as voluntary organizations. The first chip in this principle occurred when major political parties allowed their nomination process to be handled at public expense, instead of organizing it independently. Open primaries allow candidates to declare as affiliated with a party without *any* recognition from the party. And how would a party designated a candidate for an open primary? That would require their own selection process! When a political party has a leadership that is not responsive to the membership, that party can be predicted, long-term, to lose support. And that's exactly how it should be. I don't know what the effect will be of open primaries. However, if you want to look at a pathological example, look at Lizard v. Wizard. That was an open primary. The *biggest* problem with open primaries is when they are vote-for-one. This, then, can easily lead to serious vote-splitting, with the true most-widely-supported candidate losing. And in those primaries, the party stands by, helpless, it might seem, because candidates simply claim to be affiliated with the party. If it's a *party primary,* that's different. *Hosts* of problems arise, though, when there are *public elections* that create binding results for party nominations. Bottom line, they are no longer party nominations. They are something else. A majority of party members may be against them. Tough. And we need to understand something about nonpartisan elections. They are *very different* as to voter behavior from partisan elections. What seems to be, from the behavior of nonpartisan IRV, is that voters vote on name recognition and affect. It is the kind of thing that is heavily influenced by public exposure of the candidates, and it has little to do with political position on a spectrum. Voters do not appear to be voting as if there is this spectrum, with second preferences then being predictable from spectrum position of the candidates and the voter. It'd be interesting to run some kind of SVD on cardinal polls in such elections to confirm whether that's the case, but I trust you :-) You certainly know more about non-partisan elections than I do, since pretty much every election here is partisan. It's a consequence of the party list method we use. Right. With party list you are voting for the party. Short of Asset, great system. The place to look for nonpartisan elections in such a system is in how the parties themselves determine their party list. Is that list determined democratically by party members? If it is, that's a nonpartisan election. If it is determined by leadership, it may be something else. How does the leadership make decisions? (However, I do note that in one of the few cities that have direct mayoral elections, a candidate from a very left-wing party was elected. This party has about 2-3% national support, and I get the impression he was elected on nonpartisan grounds - by character and quality rather than by political affiliation.) That happens, even in partisan elections. Was his party listed on the ballot? If so, that was what we call a partisan election. Open primaries here follow a fairly new innovation: party name on the ballot *without any approval from the party.* Yet candidates are only allowed to use a recognized party name. Specifically, this is a party with ballot recognition. All others are unaffiliated or the like. I would conceptualize Chris's system this way. It's a 2-winner approval method, designed to maximize *representation* on the runoff ballot. Voters who approve A are already represented,
[EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria
With your kind indulgence, I would like some assistance in understanding and hopefully mastering the various voting criteria, so that I can more intelligently and accurately understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different voting systems. So, if it's alright, I would like to explain what I understand about some of these voting criteria, a few at a time, perhaps, and perhaps the group would be willing to check my math as it were and see if I actually understand these, one by one? I'll start with what seem to be the simpler ones. (For what it's worth, my understanding comes from various websites that do not always agree with each other. Also, I have the fundamental belief that one cannot consider oneself to have mastered something until and unless one has the ability to understand it well enough to explain it to someone else - which is what I will try to do below, re-explain these criteria as a test to see if I really get them.) Name: Plurality Description: If A gets more first preference ballots than B, A must not lose to B. Thoughts: If I understand this correctly, this is not a critical criteria to my way of thinking. Consider an election with 10 candidates. A gets 13% of the first place votes, more than any other single candidate. And yet B gets 8% of the first place votes, and 46% of the second place votes. It seems obvious to me that B ought to win. And yet, in this circumstance, this violates the above Plurality Criterion. Therefor is seems to be that the Plurality Criterion is not useful, to my way of thinking. Name: Majority Description: If one candidate is preferred by an absolute majority of voters, then that candidate must win. Thoughts: I might be missing something here, but this seems like a no-brainer. If over 50% of the voters want someone, they should get him, any other approach would seem to create minority rule? I guess a challenge to this criteria might be the following: using Range Voting, A gets a 90 range vote from 60 out of 100 voters, while B gets an 80 from 80 out of 100 voters. A's net is 5400, but B's net is 6400, so B would win (everyone else got less). Does this fail the Majority Criterion, because A got a higher vote from over half, or does it fulfill Majority because B's net was greater than A's net?? Name: Participation Description: If a ballot is added which prefers A to B, the addition of the ballot must not change the winner from A to B Thoughts: This seems to make sense. If we do not require this, then we permit voting systems where trying to vote sincerely harms your interests. Also, any voting system that would fail Participation would be I think fragile and react in not always predictable ways - like IRV. SO this seems to me to be a solid requirement, that I can't imagine a system that failed this Criterion to have some other benefit so wonderful to make failing Participation worth overlooking - I cannot imagine it. Name: Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA) Description: Adding a new candidate B to an election that previously A would have won must not cause anyone apart from A or B to win. That is, If A would have won before B was added to the ballot, C must not win now. Thoughts: This also seems fairly non-controversial. This I think is the repudiation of the spoiler effect - that just because Nader enters the race shouldn't disadvantage the candidate that would have won before that happened. This would seem (to me) to also be a good Criterion to hold to in order to encourage more than just two Candidates/Parties always dominating the scene. I wonder what the downside would be to strongly embracing this criteria? Question: It seems to me that another criterion I have heard of - Independence of Clones(IoC) - is a subset of IIA, that if a system satisfies IIA, it would have to satisfy the Independence of Clones criterion as well - is that correct? If not, what system what satisfy IoC but *not* satisfy IIA? Question: it seems like the two above criteria - Participation and IIA - would be related. Is it possible to fail one and not the other? Or does either wind up mandate the other - for example, a system with IIA must also fulfill Participation, or vice versa? So let me stop there for now - I know there are other Criteria, but let me pause so you guys can tell me what I am getting right and what I am getting wrong. Thanks. -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Re to Ben Grant's first post.
Hi Ben, I've pushed at EM a minor adjustment to IRV that solves the problem you posed. The idea is to require voters to vote for only 3 candidates and then count the number of times each candidate is ranked to determine 3 finalists and then use a ranked vote to determine the winner. In each of the cases below, assuming the top 3 get ranked, C wd be eliminated first by virtue of how none of the 40% voters ranked C. In that case, the second group would consistently rank B as their top candidate in the second stage and B would consistently win the second and final stage. So IRV is easy to tweak to solve your dilemma. This fix also makes the vote summarizable at the precinct level in a faster manner and it encourages voters to rank multiple candidates since lower-rankings will be more likely to make a diff in the first stage to determine the final three and it's much simpler than Bucklin or other voting rules. dlw Message: 1 Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:26:25 -0400 From: Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: [EM] Absolutely new here Message-ID: 004a01ce6a41$4989a8e0$dc9cfaa0$@4efix.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I just started trying to wrap my brain around all the ins and outs about voting methods, and I wanted to check two things with my elders (on this subject): 1) As far as I can see, the reason IRV has some strange/unusual results is because it is absolutely critical what order you eliminate candidates. So an election where Voting Bloc 1 has a 13% share of the ballots and Voting Bloc 2 has a 16% share of the ballots can utterly flip around using IRV if VB1 goes up two points and VB2 goes down 2. Because with IRV, the order of elimination is really the first-most deciding factor in who wins. For example, here are three different scenarios: 40%A B D C 25 C B D A 20 D B C A 15 B A C D WINNER: A (the topline means of course that 40% put candidate A first, B second, D third, and C last.) 40%A B D C 25 C B D A 26 D B C A 9 B A C D WINNER: D 40%A B D C 25 C B D A 17 D B C A 18 B A C D WINNER: B A few percent either way on the last line changes *everything*. This seems to be a flaw with IRV, yes? It is too sensitive on small changes because they can change the order of elimination. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Absolutely new here
2013/6/16 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com Let me put forth (better, I hope) a more complete thought (which is probably one of those Bucklin Variants, as it turns out.) ** ** The ballot has every candidate on it. In order to be considered valid, each voter must rank each and every one of them. So with five candidates, a valid ballot might look like: 1st:B/2nd:D/3rd:A/4th:E/5th:C No duplicates, no skipping. ** ** Then we create a threshold of just over 50% of the number of votes. If 100 people vote, then 51 is the threshold. ** ** We then look at only the 1st place votes. If anyone hit the threshold, they win if they are the only one. If more than one candidate hit the threshold, the one that surpasses the threshold by more wins. ** ** If no one yet hits the threshold, add in all the 2nd place votes, and check again. If still no one hits the threshold, add in the 3rd place votes, and so on. What you're describing is a basically generic ranked Bucklin method. The completion method (tiebreaker) you've described is the one used by most implementations of Bucklin in the progressive era; though most (or all?) of them were less hard-nosed in requiring full, strict ranking. A minor point: since some modern Bucklin systems use the letters A-F for grades, it's probably less confusing to pull candidate designations from the end of the alphabet (eg V-Z in your case). ** ** It was a thought experiment I was doing, I’m not at all sure, for example, that it might not be better to permit duplicates or skipping. I obviously need to go deeper. As far as I know, everyone who seriously advocates a Bucklin-type method today has reached that conclusion: that duplicates and skipping (that is, a rated or graded rather than ranked method) are a good idea. It allows the voter to think in more absolute rather than comparative terms, which is computationally / cognitively simpler; and as a purely practical matter, it would reduce the incidence of spoiled ballots. ** ** I think my next task is to put a pause in the pursuit of different voting systems to focus on understanding better the various criteria (later no harm, Condorcet, etc), in much more depth, ie, what they are each about, what it means that a system fulfills of fails one, etc. ** ** I will post more about that shortly – let me know if I am dragging this group to far into “voting theory kindergarten”, but I really want to “get” all this. By no means is it a problem. On the contrary, it's healthy for the list to go over the basics once in a while. Thanks, Jameson ** ** Thanks. ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** *From:* Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] *Sent:* Sunday, June 16, 2013 11:20 AM *To:* Kristofer Munsterhjelm *Cc:* Benjamin Grant; election-methods@lists.electorama.com *Subject:* Re: [EM] Absolutely new here ** ** As one of the principal advocates for Bucklin systems on this list, I thought I'd expand a bit on Kristofer's excellent response. 2013/6/16 Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com On 06/16/2013 05:26 AM, Benjamin Grant wrote: [...IRV discussion...] [...good response...] 2)I haven’t seen a voting system like this – what are the issues with it? Upsides and downsides? A)Each voter ranks their choices on their ballots, first through last place. B)If one candidate got a majority of 1^st place votes, they win. If not,** ** the second place votes are added. If still no majority he third place votes are added, and so on, until one candidate has a majority. Would the above system work? That's Bucklin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucklin_voting . It's one of the few ranked methods that have been used in political elections in the United States, and it has a connection to median rating (which elects the candidate with highest median rating or grade). It would work, but the rating variant is better. In the context of ranking, Bucklin fails Condorcet, for instance. ** ** In case it wasn't clear, by rating, Kristofer means a system with a fixed number of levels of support/opposition (typically 3-7), where voters can any number (including 0) of candidates at a given level. Ranking means that voters must give a strict ordering of candidates, with no ties or skipped ranks. It also has some bullet-voting incentive. ** ** In this case, It refers to the ranked version only. Say that you support candidate A. You're reasonably sure it will get quite a number of second-place votes. Then even though you might prefer B to A, it's strategically an advantage to rank A first, because then the method will detect a majority for A sooner. One of the points of the graded/rated variants is to encourage the voters to think in absolute terms (is this candidate good enough to
Re: [EM] Absolutely new here
On 6/16/2013 8:58 AM, Benjamin Grant wrote: ... I think my next task is to put a pause in the pursuit of different voting systems to focus on understanding better the various criteria (later no harm, Condorcet, etc), in much more depth, ie, what they are each about, what it means that a system fulfills of fails one, etc. I will post more about that shortly – let me know if I am dragging this group to far into “voting theory kindergarten”, but I really want to “get” all this. The Wikipedia article Voting System is the most concise explanation of voting-method criteria that I've seen. The comparison table summarizes which methods pass or fail each criteria, it is preceded by brief descriptions of the criteria, and you can click on the links in the table headings to take you to details about a specific criteria. Also you can sort the table according to any criteria. You are not dragging this group into “voting theory kindergarten”. We welcome anyone who makes an effort to learn about voting methods (and who does not behave like a troll). After all, our goal is to educate ourselves and others about what we should be doing when voters finally wake up to the need for better voting methods, and people like you will help us get there sooner. Richard Fobes Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] A dissent for Ben
I am an apologist for the (at least) strategic support of IRV in the USA by progressives/centrists, as pushed by FairVote as the leading alternative to FPTP and what is to be taught to the low-info voters of the USA whose interest in electoral analytics is significantly bounded. I believe that the diffs among the infinite number of alternatives to FPTP are often over-stated in a world where economies of scale in campaigning in important single-member/winner elections plus cognitive short-cuts commonly used by voters reduces the number of competitive candidates. This is a major diff between my view and most of the others on this list. They believe that when the right single-winner election rule is adopted that the natural number of competitive candidates will grow so that there'll be a need for the right single-winner election rule. I have a different prior that is more conservative in how much the number of competitive candidates will increase and that cares more about the increased quality vs quantity of candidates. I also am of the view that the way of wisdom in a 2-party-dominated system that tends to tilt to effective single-party-domination is to push for election rule changes that won't end 2-party domination but will subvert the tilt and change the nature of the 2-party domination, making it contested and open for small local third-parties who specialize in contesting more local elections and vote strategically togetehr in less local elections to proliferate. This is why I also emph American forms of Proportional Representation, or low-grade forms of proportional represetnation for more local elections that o.w. tend to be chronically non-competitive. There are feedbacks between different elections and so the increased plurality caused by the use of Am forms of PR in more local elections can make the single-winner election rules in less-local elections be more competitive, since the rivalry between the two major parties wd be handicapped. Think of it as like how there's ad-revenue-sharing in professional foot-ball but not baseball and so there's more turnaround as to whose the top team in the latter than the former and a higher percent of competitive, and thereby interesting games. IOW, we don't need to figure out the best single-winner election rule, a souped-up version of IRV wd suffice to make things work a lot better. We need to persuade the US that we need a mix of single-winner and multi-winner elections and that such can and has been done in a manner consistent with our political traditions. As such, I am apt to believe that the first-mover marketing edge of IRV and the way our system currently winnows down options, makes it wise to hold off on pushing for other alternatives to FPTP or (top two primary). This view is, of course, anathema to many of those who've invested a lot of time, etc. into the array of electoral alternatives. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] List question
I submitted a post I was hoping for feedback on called [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria at around 1PM EST today. Now it's about 4:30PM EST and I never got a copy of my own post in my mailbox - and I have been getting copies of all my other posts. When I go to the archive site for the list: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-J une/thread.html it is listed there, but I am confused about whether it actually went out to the list or not. If not, I would like to resend it, as I very much want feedback, but I also don't want to spam the list with duplicates - but since I never got a copy of it in my inbox, I am thinking that maybe no one else did either? Whassup? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria
2013/6/16 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com ...I would like to explain what I understand about some of these voting criteria, a few at a time... Thanks for doing this, and again, welcome. *Name*: *Plurality* *Description*: If A gets more “first preference” ballots than B, A must not lose to B. *Thoughts*: If I understand this correctly, this is not a critical criteria to my way of thinking. Consider an election with 10 candidates. A gets 13% of the first place votes, more than any other single candidate. And yet B gets 8% of the first place votes, and 46% of the second place votes. It seems obvious to me that B “ought” to win. And yet, in this circumstance, this violates the above Plurality Criterion. Therefor is seems to be that the Plurality Criterion is not useful, to my way of thinking. I think that most here would agree with what you've said. ** ** *Name: Majority* *Description*: If one candidate is preferred by an absolute majority of voters, then that candidate must win. Presumably, by preferred, you mean preferred over all others. This definition is actually a bit controversial. I'll explain, but I have to go back a bit. Note that all that follows is my personal opinion; it's far too opinionated to pass muster at Wikipedia, and though I suspect that some here would agree with most of it, I'm also sure that others will chime in to debate me on some points. The modern science of voting theory begins with Kenneth Arrow in the 1950s. I happen to be reading Kuhn (*The Structure of Scientific Revolutions*) at the moment, so I'll use his terms. Before Arrow, the study of single-winner voting systems was disorganized and unscientific; though figures such as Maurice Duverger and Duncan Black had important insights into the incentives of plurality on parties and voters, they could offer little guidance as to how to improve the situation. Arrow offered the first paradigm for the field. The Arrovian paradigm is essentially preferential, and it tends to lead toward Condorcet systems as being best. From its very beginning, Arrow's own theorem marked sharp limits to how far you could go within his paradigm. Nonetheless, as Kuhn quotes from Bacon, error leads to truth more quickly than confusion; that is, even a flawed paradigm is immensely more productive than prescientific disorganization. For instance, the important Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem on strategy followed close on the heels of Arrow's result. Since Arrow, there have been other paradigms advanced. Around 1980, Steven Brams suggested Approval Voting, a simple idea which prior to that had been used but never theorized. This was clearly a step out of the Arrovian paradigm, but it didn't quite yet offer an alternative basis for further research and refinement. Donald Saari then reacted against approval by advancing a paradigm based on ordinal ballots and mathematical symmetry (and thus, Borda voting); in my opinion, his willful ignorance of strategic issues makes his way of thinking ultimately counterproductive, though some of the tools he created are useful. So the first person to offer a truly fertile alternative to the Arrovian paradigm was, in my opinion, Warren Smith (active on this list), with his 1999 paper on Range Voting. This system, now mostly called Score Voting, goes beyond approval to allow fractional ratings. The division between Arrovian, preferential systems, and Score-like systems has been expressed using multiple terms: ranked versus rated (with rated systems sometimes further subdivided into rated or graded); ordinal versus cardinal; preferential versus ???; and my own favorite terms, comparative versus evaluative. Since Smith, there has also been work in yet another paradigm, that of delegation. The DemoEx party in Sweden, the study of Asset voting, liquid democracy, delegable proxy, delegated yes-no (DYN), the revival of interest in Dodgson's 19th-century proposal for delegated proportional representation, and most recently my own proposal Simple Optionally-delegated Approval (SODA) all lie in this line of inquiry. Still, as always, there are some who continue to mine the vein of the old Arrovian paradigm, and it can't be said that that vein is entirely played out. The new paradigms also remain much less well-established academically; for instance, Smith's seminal paper has never been published in a peer-reviewed journal. So all of that history is a backdrop for the debate over how to apply the definitions of such criteria as Majority and Mutual Majority to evaluative systems. Your definition of Majority uses the word preferred, which inevitably biases it towards ranked thinking. An advocate for evaluative systems, like myself, would argue that it would be better to say voted as favorably as possible. This distinction makes no difference at all for a comparative system — a candidate who is preferred over all others is, by definition, at the very top of any purely comparative ballot
Re: [EM] List question
I have no idea what happened with your mailbox, but I got your message, and indeed just sent a somewhat lengthy response. Jameson 2013/6/16 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com I submitted a post I was hoping for feedback on called “[EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria” at around 1PM EST today. Now it’s about 4:30PM EST and I never got a copy of my own post in my mailbox – and I have been getting copies of all my other posts. ** ** When I go to the archive site for the list: ** ** http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-June/thread.html ** ** it is listed there, but I am confused about whether it actually went out to the list or not. If not, I would like to resend it, as I very much want feedback, but I also don’t want to spam the list with duplicates – but since I never got a copy of it in my inbox, I am thinking that maybe no one else did either? ** ** Whassup? ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** 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] List question
Excellent - I just now got both the email below and your lengthy response - will dive into it now - thanks! :) -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 4:45 PM To: Benjamin Grant Cc: EM Subject: Re: [EM] List question I have no idea what happened with your mailbox, but I got your message, and indeed just sent a somewhat lengthy response. Jameson 2013/6/16 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com I submitted a post I was hoping for feedback on called [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria at around 1PM EST today. Now it's about 4:30PM EST and I never got a copy of my own post in my mailbox - and I have been getting copies of all my other posts. When I go to the archive site for the list: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-J une/thread.html it is listed there, but I am confused about whether it actually went out to the list or not. If not, I would like to resend it, as I very much want feedback, but I also don't want to spam the list with duplicates - but since I never got a copy of it in my inbox, I am thinking that maybe no one else did either? Whassup? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 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] A dissent for Ben
I respect David's position and am happy to let him express it, but I would like to point out one moment when he steers close to building a straw man out of the rest of us: 2013/6/16 David L Wetzell wetze...@gmail.com ...we don't need to figure out the best single-winner election rule... Those of us on this list who are more-or-less skeptical of IRV are mostly not engaged in only the best is good enough thinking. For instance, there is a broad movement for consensus activism behind the simplest possible improvement, approval voting, even though approval activists would often differ substantially on what the best system is or what the next step after approval should be. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Jameson
Even if Approval Voting were the consensus, it faces marketing and organizational hurdles not faced by IRV/FairVote. I'd rather push for using a limited form of approval voting in the first stage of IRV (and Am forms of PR) and trusting that once IRV becomes the standard for single-winner elections that there'd be an easier time for more alternatives to the new status quo to get a much more fair hearing. dlw Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria
Re: Majority Criteria: To be honest, I am worried that some (or all) of your history lesson regarding Arrow might not have landed as well as it should in my brain. I can say that one of the things I may need help on is the wording of the criteria, so if preferred is not the right word, then we should use something else. However, I *think* the base idea is the idea that if over 50% of a group want a candidate to win, they should get that candidate. What is more murky to me - and perhaps more than me - is how you decide whether or not that is being violated in systems that are more complex. I guess I would say at a minimum, that if one is using Range Voting (which I think you are saying is called Score Voting by the list; freely assign a score of 0 to the maximum amount to each candidate (say 100), the candidate with the greatest aggregate score wins) let me see how this might fail. Let's say out of 1000 people 550 give candidate A scores of 100. Then let's say that 700 people give candidate B scores of 80 each. Let's also say that everyone else falls short of either of those totals. A gets 55,000 total, B gets 56,000. B wins. On the one hand, one could say in one sense this violates Majority, but in another sense one could perhaps with even more justification claim that B actually has the larger majority. Or maybe to put another way, Majority criteria only applies to voters when the system is one person, 1 vote - others perhaps Majority criteria applies to *votes*, not voters. In other words, maybe Majority criteria should be worded thusly: If one candidate is preferred by an absolute majority of *votes*, then that candidate must win. In which case it (I think) becomes even more obvious and pointless as a criteria (as any system that gave the victory to people who get less votes, however we are counting and measuring votes, would make no sense, I think.) Name: Participation Description: If a ballot is added which prefers A to B, the addition of the ballot must not change the winner from A to B Thoughts: This seems to make sense. If we do not require this, then we permit voting systems where trying to vote sincerely harms your interests. Also, any voting system that would fail Participation would be I think fragile and react in not always predictable ways - like IRV. SO this seems to me to be a solid requirement, that I can't imagine a system that failed this Criterion to have some other benefit so wonderful to make failing Participation worth overlooking - I cannot imagine it. You have fairly described the participation criterion. I would ask you to consider that this criterion focuses only on the direction of preference, not its strength; and so it is inevitably biased towards preferential systems, and dooms you to live within the limits set by Arrow's theorem. My two favorite systems - SODA voting and the as-yet-unnamed version of Bucklin - both fail this criterion, though I would argue they do so in relatively rare and minor ways, and both satisfy some weakened version of the criterion. I don't understand how a bias exists here. In every case I can currently imagine, if an election as it stands has A winning, and one more ballot is added which still prefers A to B, why should that ever cause the winner to change to B? Range/Score Voting: If A is winning, and the following ballot was added (A:90, B:89) A would still be winning. If IRV is being used and the following ballot is added (D first place, A second place, B third place) we wouldn't want B to suddenly be beating A. (Although in IRV I guess it could happen, but the point is that we wouldn't want it to, right?) This seems to be a serious issue. Whatever the voting method, if A is currently winning, and one more ballot gets added that happens to favor A with relation to B, how could it EVER be a good thing if B somehow becomes the winner through the addition of that ballot? I don't understand what bias has to do with the answer to that question? Also, how could Bucklin (as I understand it) *ever* fail this one? Because a ballot added that favors A to B under Bucklin would at minimum increase A by the same amount as B, possibly more, but would *never* increase B more than A, else the ballot could not be said to prefer A over B, right? IIA, on the other hand, strongly favors evaluative systems, because in comparative systems the entry of a new candidate can inevitably change the absolute ranking levels of existing candidates. I think that IIA is certainly a nice thing to pass, \ but I'd hesitate to make it a sine qua non. Independence of Irrelevant Alternative (IIA): Adding a new candidate B to an election that previously A would have won must not cause anyone apart from A or B to win. That is, if A would have won before B was added to the ballot, C must not win now. Again, I seem to be missing something here. If you are running an election with whatever method,
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
At 09:57 PM 6/15/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2013/6/15 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax mailto:a...@lomaxdesign.coma...@lomaxdesign.com At 07:52 PM 6/14/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: So. Abd and I now agree that a Bucklin system which uses just the above-median votes to break ties is probably the best first step towards median voting. Let's stop saying it that way. I'd be happy to. What do you propose, in 8 words or less? A few more words, probably, particularly since you used more. Bucklin is a ranked approval system, where approvals are categories into ranks in order of preference. In a modern Bucklin system, voters may categorize as many candidates in each rank as they choose, may skip ranks, and candidates not voted for explicitly are considered not approved for election. Votes are amalgamated by canvassing the first rank, checking for a majority, and then proceeding to add in the next ranked votes, in sequence, until a majority is found or the ranks are exhausted. This system can produce a multiple majority, and a concern when this occurs is that voters may ahve over-enthusiastically added additional approvals, not realizing that they were in the majority as to their higher preference. Fear of this can discourage adding additional approvals, and thus encourage majority failure. Hence, with this proposed Bucklin variant, if a multiple majority is found, below the first rank, the votes from that rank are removed from the totals and the win is awarded to the majority-approved candidate with the most votes in the previous-canvassed rank. (If a majority is found in the first rank, to be explicit, the win goes to the candidate with the most votes.) However, I'm not *entirely* on board this. It violates long-standing traditions about multiple majorities. I am willing to *consider* it, under the limitation of a deterministic method. I've suggested we need more data. Both ties and median introduce concepts which are either complex or unfamiliar. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Monetized score voting
is my name for an idea advanced in atrocious work by several economists (2012-2013) and improved/corrected/examined by me. The idea is by paying to cast your score voting ballot according to certain carefully designed price formulas, you will become inspired by the profit motive to vote honestly. Unfortunately this disregards some massive real world problems, but perhaps might be ok in some corporate votes and also (if the whole max-profit-motive-theorem is abandoned instead merely seeking to discourage exaggeration in range voting) as modified by us even perhaps in governmental ones. Analysis here: http://rangevoting.org/MonetizedRV.html -- 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
Re: [EM] Electorama wiki requires login to view????
On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 7:46 AM, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: Regarding spam, here are the settings for the wiki I administer: http://zelea.com/w/Wiki:Main_page http://zelea.com/system/host/obsidian/var/www/localhost/htdocs/mediawiki-c/LocalSettings.php See spam protections, particularly the escalating countermeasures A.1, A.2, ... But I've found that A.1 (captcha) is sufficient to stop all bot registrations and bot spam, provided the captcha is good: ## (A.1) captcha: uncomment ConfirmEdit extension at bottom The one I use is perhaps the simplest of all: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:QuestyCaptcha Yup, this is what I was running for the last couple of years or so. The wiki became overrun with user accounts, though. I could rotate questions, but I don't feel like being that active in managing this. What I have done is made it so that anyone should be able to approve someone who has requested an account. The link: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Special:ConfirmAccounts I may still put QuestyCaptcha back in, but let's try this out for a bit. The nice thing about this system is that it creates a web of trust. People who have a pattern of letting in spammers can get their accounts revoked. Additionally, I've cleaned up all of the inactive accounts except for a couple that appeared valid (I recognized the name and email address), and I've also pruned the Recent Changes so that a lot of the bulk operations are gone. Let me know if the changes today introduce new problems. Thanks Rob Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
