Re: [EM] Absolutely new here

2013-06-16 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm

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

2013-06-16 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm

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

2013-06-16 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

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

2013-06-16 Thread Benjamin Grant
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

2013-06-16 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

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

2013-06-16 Thread Benjamin Grant
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.

2013-06-16 Thread David L Wetzell
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

2013-06-16 Thread Jameson Quinn
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

2013-06-16 Thread Richard Fobes

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

2013-06-16 Thread David L Wetzell
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

2013-06-16 Thread Benjamin Grant
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

2013-06-16 Thread Jameson Quinn
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

2013-06-16 Thread Jameson Quinn
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

2013-06-16 Thread Benjamin Grant
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

2013-06-16 Thread Jameson Quinn
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

2013-06-16 Thread David L Wetzell
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

2013-06-16 Thread Benjamin Grant
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....)

2013-06-16 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

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.



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[EM] Monetized score voting

2013-06-16 Thread Warren D Smith
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)

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Re: [EM] Electorama wiki requires login to view????

2013-06-16 Thread Rob Lanphier
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

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