Re: [EM] Monetized score voting
On 06/17/2013 03:10 AM, Warren D Smith wrote: 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 The first thing that comes to mind, and you probably said so already, is that the mere fact that people are voting in large public elections in the first place implies that the voters are not voting simply to increase expected return by changing who is in power. The probability of a single vote making a difference is just too low. Perhaps monetized voting systems could be used to make different types of prediction markets. I know little about the subject, though; it's just another idea that came to mind, since the players in such a market would act to try to maximize their profits. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Deconstructing the Majority Criterion
Thanks for your reply, lets see what I can grasp on this pass, shall we? ;) From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 10:36 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria 2013/6/16 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com 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. Sorry. Sometimes I tend to try to say things too succinctly, and end up leaving my meaning a bit locked up in jargon or terminology. If you have any specific questions about the history lesson I'd be happy to expand. No problem, I may return to that. 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. Lets say out of 1000 people 550 give candidate A scores of 100. Then lets say that 700 people give candidate B scores of 80 each. Lets also say that everyone else falls short of either of those totals. A gets 55,000 total, B gets 56,000. B wins. Right. 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. That would be stretching the criterion to the point of meaninglessness. The majority criterion speaks of voters, and Range doesn't pass, but Bucklin systems do. The more controversial case for this criterion is approval. Some try to define the criterion so that an internal preference which doesn't fit on the ballot is enough to constitute a majority; others prefer to define it so that a majority only means anything in terms of the ballots themselves. I tend to side with the latter as a matter of definition, but I certainly understand that as a practical matter approval's passing of the majority criterion leaves much to be desired. So my takeaway I think is that vis-à-vis voting systems, there are 3 kinds of voting systems with regard to the Majority criterion: systems that fulfil the criterion, systems that fail it, and systems in which majority makes no sense. I would say that First Past the Post would be an example of the 1st it is easy to see that FPTP fulfils Majority, as if over 50% of the votes cast are for A, then A wins, always. An (admittedly lame) example of the 2nd a system that fails the Majority Criterion, is the following: Of all candidates on the ballot, the one that gets the least votes, wins. Call this LPTP (Last Past the Post) However, lets look at Score Voting again which I *think* can work like this: each voter gives each candidate a score from 0 to 9 on their ballot, with empty spots being treated as 0. Then add up all the scores for each candidate, the one with the highest total score wins. Now lets look at the following election being run that way: 45 votes give Candidate A a score of 9, Candidate B a score of 6, Candidate C a score of 0, and Candidate D a score of 3 20 votes give A:0, B:6, C:9, and D:3 20 votes give A:0 B:6 C:3 D:9 15 votes give A:6 B:9 C:3 D:0 The totals are A:495 B:645 C:285 D:375 so B wins. My thought is that perhaps in the context of this vote, the concept of majority as applied in the first two example (FPTP and LPTP) doesnt work here. I also think that changing the definition of majority so that it is intelligible here will make it less understandable in the context of FPTP/LPTP. Maybe what I am wondering is, is the context of some of these voting system so different that *some* concepts like majority do not make sense in all contexts, and that trying to alter the definition to make it fit better in one context makes it fit worse in others? As originally written, I think, the Majority criterion states that: if one candidate is preferred by a majority (more than 50%) of voters, then that candidate must win Well, in the above Score Voting system context, the concept of preference as an all or nothing trait makes no sense. You could has scores of A:9 B:6 C:3 D:1 and be said to in some sense express some amount of preference for each of them. The only way in which the criterion would make sense is if we mutated the criterion somewhat like this: if one candidate is preferred (at the highest score or ranking, where such exists) by a majority (more than 50%) of voters, then that candidate must win OK, lets create a new Score Voting election, four candidates, 100 voters, 0-9 scores: 51 votes: A:9 B:7 C:4 D:0 29 votes: A:0 B:5 C:6 D:9 11 votes: A:1
[EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
It occurred to me that the reason we are failing the Participation Criteria with Bucklin in the below example: 49: X:1st Y:4th 50: X:5th Y:4th Y wins. Now we add two votes: 2: X:3rd Y:2nd X wins. is because we are letting people skip grades/places. Or to put another way, if we asked the voters under Bucklin to fill out each ballot more strictly, ranking 1st through Nth where there are N candidates - I know that several do not like this approach, *but* my question is this - does *strictly ranked* Bucklin fail Participation?? 49: X:1st Y:2nd 50: X:2nd Y:1st Y wins on 1st round. Now we add two votes: 2: X:2nd Y:1st Y still wins on first round. In other words, I *think* what's bringing in the issues with Participation is the gaps in the ranking the first approach permits. Is it? If so, it may be that Bucklin can be quite Participation compliant, so long as you take certain steps like mandating a ranked order among your choices on the ballot. -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
OK, now on to the questions and responses on the other Criteria: From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 10:36 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria 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? OK, that's several questions. When would participation failure ever be a good thing? It wouldn't. But in voting theory, tradeoffs are common. A system which had other desirable features could fail a reasonable-sounding criterion, and if that failure is minor and/or rare enough, that could still be a good system. I'd argue that that's the case for Bucklin systems and the participation criterion. Though there are certainly many people here who would argue with me on that specific point, the fact is that choosing any system involves making tradeoffs. So, how does Bucklin fail participation? Imagine you had the following votes, giving candidates X and Y grades A-F 49: X:A Y:D 50: X:F Y:D The bloc of 50 voters is a majority, so they set the median. Or in Bucklin terms, Y reaches a majority at grade D, while X doesn't until grade F, so Y wins. Now add 2 votes with X:C Y:B. Now, X reaches a majority at grade B, while Y still doesn't until grade D. So now X wins, even though those votes favored the prior winner Y. I find this specific example implausible for multiple reasons, and think that actual cases of participation failure would be very rare. For instance, those last two voters could have voted X:F Y:B, and honestly expressed their preference without changing the result. OK, first of all, my brain does not seem to be able to handle letters on both sides of the colon (:), so with your permission, let me alter the typography of your example, hopefully functionally changing nothing: 49: X:1st Y:4th 50: X:5th Y:4th So if I understand this right, under Bucklin, we look at all 1st place votes (we need at least 50), and see if we have over half - we don't, so now we look at all 2nd, still no, all 3rd, still no, and only when we consider 4th place do we finally have enough votes for candidate Y to have enough to win. Now we add two votes: 2: X:3rd Y:2nd Now we repeat the process, not enough 1st place votes (we need at least 51), not enough 2nd place votes, and adding in 3rd place we now have 51, precisely what we need for X to win. OK I think I see what
Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria
On 06/16/2013 06:55 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: 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? No problem :-) *Name*: *_Plurality_* *Description*: If A gets more “first preference” ballots than B, A must not lose to B. Be careful not to mistake Plurality, the criterion, from Plurality the method. Plurality, the criterion, says: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. The Plurality criterion is only relevant when the voters may truncate their ballots. In it, there's an assumption that listed candidates are ranked higher than non-listed ones - a sort of Approval assumption, if you will. To show a concrete example: say a voter votes A first, B second, and leaves C off the ballot. Furthermore say nobody actually ranks C. Then C shouldn't win, because A has more first-place votes than C has any-place votes. *Name: _Majority_* *Description*: If one candidate is preferred by an absolute majority of voters, then that candidate must win. That's right. More specifically, if a candidate has a majority of the first place votes, he should win. There's also a setwise version (mutual majority) where the criterion goes if a group of candidates is listed ahead of candidates not in that group, on a majority of the ballots, then a candidate in that group should 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?? There are usually two arguments against the Majority criterion from those that like cardinal methods. First, there's the pizza example: say three people are deciding on what piza to get. Two of them prefer pepperoni to everything else, but the last person absolutely can't have pepperoni. Then, the argument goes, it would be unreasonable and unflexible to pick the pepperoni pizza just because a majority wanted it. Second, there's the redistribution argument. Consider a public election where a candidate wants to confiscate everything a certain minority owns and then distribute the loot to the majority. If the electorate is simple enough, a majority might vote for that candidate, but the choice would not be a good one. Briefly: the argument against Majority is tyranny of majority. But ranked methods can't know whether any given election is a tyranny-of-majority one, and between erring in favor of the majority and in favor of a minority (which might not be a good minority at all), the former's better. Condorcet's jury theorem is one way of formalizing that. Rated methods could distinguish between tyranny-of-majority cases, were all the voters honest, but being subject to Gibbard and Satterthwaite just like ranked methods, they too can be gamed. There's usually a way for a majority to force a win if they absolutely want to, too[1]. *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. Welcome to the unintuitive world of voting methods :-) Arrow's theorem says you can't have unanimity (if everybody agrees that AB, B does not win), IIA (as you mention below) and non-dictatorship. Since one can't give up the latter two and have anything like a good ranked voting method, that means every method must fail IIA. The trade-off with Participation is similar. It is impossible, for instance, to have a method that passes both Participation and Condorcet, so one has to choose which is more important. Similarly,
Re: [EM] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: So I think we should have a poll with various options (using the system itself to rate the options, of course). I'll start out with some proposals and my votes: -IRAV: B -Descending Approval Threshold (DAT) Voting: A -Descending Approval Threshold Adjudgment (DATA voting): B -Majority Approval Threshold (MAT; note that the M could also be backronymmed to Median): A -Bucklin: F (not that we shouldn't say that this system is a Bucklin system, just that that shouldn't be our only name for it) -Bucklin-ER or ER-Bucklin: D (has already been used for other systems, not a descriptive name) -Graded Approval Threshold (GAT): C (Not bad, but not great) -Majority Assignment of Grades (MAG): C (ditto) -Graded Majority Approval (GMA): B (this one seems simple and descriptive) Okay, I've bounced my head against the names a few times. Are we talking about the name for us to use or a name for public branding? I don't think the former matters too much, so I'm thinking about the latter. -IRAV: C -Descending Approval Threshold (DAT) Voting: C -Descending Approval Threshold Adjudgment (DATA voting): F -Majority Approval Threshold (MAT; note that the M could also be backronymmed to Median): B -Bucklin: F -Bucklin-ER or ER-Bucklin: F -Graded Approval Threshold (GAT): D -Majority Assignment of Grades (MAG): F -Graded Majority Approval (GMA): D Frankly, I'm not getting used to any of them. I've imagined myself introducing the system to people, even smart people, and I don't think we get three words. I think we only get two (voting at the end doesn't count). I only gave a B to MAT because I think threshold at the end would fall off. Here are some more suggestions: -Majority Approval Voting: A -Delayed Approval Voting: C -Approval Level Voting: B -Delayed Support Voting: C -Majority Support Voting: A -Support Level Voting: B (only if all the grade labels use the word support) -Gradual Support Voting: D -Gradual Approval Voting: D Perhaps we could call it Majority Approval Threshold for a while and then, if we still really like it, we can drop the threshold. In addition to my friend's concerns with the word majority that I mentioned earlier, I have another one: I think percentiles other than the 50th will be appropriate. Obviously, it's the only thing that's appropriate for political elections, but it's pretty blatant about ignoring half the electorate. In friendlier situations (choosing a restaurant or something), I would want the outcome that gets to 75% approval first. Or 90%. Yet I still gave the best grades to labels with the word majority in them, so I think I'm admitting that there's nothing we can do about this. If we call it majority approval, then in situations where you're going for 75 percent you would call it 75th-percentile approval or something like that. ~ Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria
-Original Message- From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm [mailto:km_el...@lavabit.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 12:09 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria On 06/16/2013 06:55 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: *Name*: *_Plurality_* *Description*: If A gets more first preference ballots than B, A must not lose to B. Be careful not to mistake Plurality, the criterion, from Plurality the method. Plurality, the criterion, says: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. The Plurality criterion is only relevant when the voters may truncate their ballots. In it, there's an assumption that listed candidates are ranked higher than non-listed ones - a sort of Approval assumption, if you will. To show a concrete example: say a voter votes A first, B second, and leaves C off the ballot. Furthermore say nobody actually ranks C. Then C shouldn't win, because A has more first-place votes than C has any-place votes. OK, that makes sense. *Name: _Majority_* *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?? There are usually two arguments against the Majority criterion from those that like cardinal methods. First, there's the pizza example: say three people are deciding on what piza to get. Two of them prefer pepperoni to everything else, but the last person absolutely can't have pepperoni. Then, the argument goes, it would be unreasonable and unflexible to pick the pepperoni pizza just because a majority wanted it. Second, there's the redistribution argument. Consider a public election where a candidate wants to confiscate everything a certain minority owns and then distribute the loot to the majority. If the electorate is simple enough, a majority might vote for that candidate, but the choice would not be a good one. Briefly: the argument against Majority is tyranny of majority. But ranked methods can't know whether any given election is a tyranny-of-majority one, and between erring in favor of the majority and in favor of a minority (which might not be a good minority at all), the former's better. Condorcet's jury theorem is one way of formalizing that. In my (limited) experience, every instance where there has been an allegation of tyranny of the majority, the reverse choice is something even worse, tyranny of the minority. While ultimately certain things, like human rights, shouldn't be a matter for voting at all, if something deserves a vote it probably deserves to serve the greatest good for the greatest number. To take your pizza analogy, if the two people *only* want pepperoni, it would be selfish of the third to expect the majority to bend to his desires. On the other hand, if the two people are already fine with *either* pepperoni or plain, then they will say so. Ultimately, the only time I find when people complain about the tyranny of the majority is when they are in a minority that doesn't want what the majority truly does - and that's just the downside of not being a dictator. So I guess I would say this - whenever you hear the phrase tyranny of the majority, you can probably indentify the speaker is *usually* someone who wants more power over the selection process than they ought to have. *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. Welcome to the unintuitive world of voting methods :-) Arrow's theorem says you can't have unanimity (if everybody agrees that AB, B does not win), IIA (as you mention below) and non-dictatorship. Since one can't give up the latter two and have anything like a good ranked voting method, that means every method must fail IIA. Wow. I am just starting to get exposed to this stuff, but it is being a bitter pill to swallow that it is
Re: [EM] Voting Criteria 101, Four Criteria
2013/6/17 Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com On 06/16/2013 06:55 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: 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? No problem :-) *Name*: *_Plurality_* *Description*: If A gets more “first preference” ballots than B, A must not lose to B. Be careful not to mistake Plurality, the criterion, from Plurality the method. Plurality, the criterion, says: If there are two candidates X and Y so that X has more first place votes than Y has any place votes, then Y shouldn't win. The Plurality criterion is only relevant when the voters may truncate their ballots. In it, there's an assumption that listed candidates are ranked higher than non-listed ones - a sort of Approval assumption, if you will. To show a concrete example: say a voter votes A first, B second, and leaves C off the ballot. Furthermore say nobody actually ranks C. Then C shouldn't win, because A has more first-place votes than C has any-place votes. Right. Kristofer's response here is better than mine was. *Name: _Majority_* *Description*: If one candidate is preferred by an absolute majority of voters, then that candidate must win. That's right. More specifically, if a candidate has a majority of the first place votes, he should win. There's also a setwise version (mutual majority) where the criterion goes if a group of candidates is listed ahead of candidates not in that group, on a majority of the ballots, then a candidate in that group should win. Kristofer gives the ranked version of Mutual Majority. The rated version is: If a group of candidates is listed at or above a certain rating, and those not in the group below that rating, on a majority of ballots, then a candidate in that group should win. This criterion, in at least one of its versions, is a prerequisite for IoC. I prefer the rated version, but those like Kristofer who are working within the Arrovian paradigm prefer the ranked one. (Note that the mere fact that the rated paradigm is newer than the Arrovian one does not necessarily make it better. Saari's ranked-symmetry paradigm is newer than Arrow's, and also in my opinion worse. So in this debate between people like me and people like Kristofer, there is no short cut to evaluating each side's arguments on their merits. I of course think I'm right, but Kristofer is a very smart guy, and you would be unwise to ignore his side.) *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?? There are usually two arguments against the Majority criterion from those that like cardinal methods. First, there's the pizza example: say three people are deciding on what piza to get. Two of them prefer pepperoni to everything else, but the last person absolutely can't have pepperoni. Then, the argument goes, it would be unreasonable and unflexible to pick the pepperoni pizza just because a majority wanted it. Second, there's the redistribution argument. Consider a public election where a candidate wants to confiscate everything a certain minority owns and then distribute the loot to the majority. If the electorate is simple enough, a majority might vote for that candidate, but the choice would not be a good one. Briefly: the argument against Majority is tyranny of majority. But ranked methods can't know whether any given election is a tyranny-of-majority one, and between erring in favor of the majority and in favor of a minority (which might not be a good minority at all), the former's better. Condorcet's jury theorem is one way of formalizing that. Rated methods could distinguish between tyranny-of-majority cases, were all the voters honest, but being subject to Gibbard and Satterthwaite just like ranked methods, they too can be gamed. There's usually a way for a majority to force a win if they absolutely want to, too[1]. I agree 100% with what Kristofer has said here. *Name: _Participation_* *Description*: If a ballot is added which
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 12:15 PM Subject: Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com is because we are letting people skip grades/places. Or to put another way, if we asked the voters under Bucklin to fill out each ballot more strictly, ranking 1st through Nth where there are N candidates - I know that several do not like this approach, *but* my question is this - does *strictly ranked* Bucklin fail Participation?? Yes. Just add 500 other candidates, and fill in the gaps with randomly-selected candidates from the 500. Obviously, you could probably get by with a lot less than 500 - at a rough guess, I'd expect that 8 would be plenty without changing the numbers here, and probably around 4-6 would be enough to make a similar example with smaller gaps work, but my point is that with enough extra candidates who cluster at the bottom of most ballots, you can turn any rated scenario into a ranked scenario. You are being tempted by a mirage here. The first lesson of voting school kindergarten is that most problems don't have a perfect solution. That doesn't mean you stop looking for ways to improve things, but it does mean that when you imagine a fix, you do your best to shoot holes in your own idea. 95% of the time you'll succeed, but the other 5% still makes it worth it. Jameson Oh. That's disappointing. I have to see it with my own eyes, although I am sure you know what you are talking about, my brain won't let me move on until I see the disproof. So I will try to create one - a situation where in using strictly ranked Bucklin, adding a new ballot in which A is ranked higher than B, this new ballot somehow switches the winner from A to B. The challenge is that its intuitively seems like such an impossible task, I am worried that should such an example be possible (and you say it is, and I believe you) I might never find it in my blind spot! So if anyone *has* a handy example of this, I would be grateful for it being brought to my attention, otherwise, I am going to have to try to create it on my own in my own blind spot. 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
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
Two points: 1. I chatted with Rob Brown about the upper Bucklin naming question. His votes were: IRAV: F DAT: B Median Ranking: A Median Rating: A Median Grade: A Cumulative Best Approval (CBA): B I myself would give those latter four options C, C, B, and A respectively. Here are my votes on Andy's proposals. I think his point about two words is well-taken, but I'm not going to change my existing votes. Also, I think an appropriate enough acronym could allow 3 letters/words. -Majority Approval Voting: A -Delayed Approval Voting: D -Approval Level Voting: D -Delayed Support Voting: C -Majority Support Voting: B -Support Level Voting: F -Gradual Support Voting: C -Gradual Approval Voting: B In the spirit of his two-level-only dictum, here are a few more ideas: -Cumulative Approval Voting: A -Cumulative Support Voting: A -Cumulative Majority Voting: B (But CMV rings a bell, and I don't think it's just for cytomegalovirus; is there already a CMV voting system proposal?) -As above, but replace Cumulative with additive: 1 grade lower. -ABC (Approval-Based Cumulative) voting: C (I like the acronym, especially if we're using letter grades; but I am not satisfied with this backronym. Anyone else have ideas? Approval, additive; building, based, best, biggest; cumulative, cutoff, classify... ) So currently Descending Approval Threshold (DAT) is in the lead with a median of B. Please add your votes before Wednesday; until then, I'll just use my favorite of whatever terms currently lead, but wrap it in ¿? question marks. 2. I was thinking about how to give a GMJ-like single number for reporting a candidate's results under ¿DAT?, and I realized that the GMJ formula itself could work with some adjustments. The formula is: Median + (V - V) / (2 * V=) Where V, V, and V= are votes above, below, and at the median. ¿DAT? can use the same formula as long as you replace V with some number that's constant across candidates for a given election and median, and replace V= with (Vtot - (V + V)). (It could also in principle work for a constant V= if that was large enough, but I don't like that idea as much.) So what should we use for the fake V for reporting? Using the average (or even better, geometric mean) of the real V numbers for that election and median would give the most-realistic numbers. But even a simple constant, like 1/(2*number of grades)=10% wouldn't be too bad. Anyway, the point is that you could pretty clearly find a way to report ¿DAT? results using one number per candidate, which removes one of my last good reasons to prefer GMJ. And that way comes from GMJ, so my work on GMJ isn't a total loss, which removes one of my last bad reasons to prefer GMJ :). So, pending naming, I think ¿DAT? is the future of Bucklin systems. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
A humorous (but utterly non-serious) thought just occurred to me: What voting method are you guys going to use to elect a name for this new system? Kidding! :) -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Jameson Quinn Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 1:10 PM To: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Cc: electionscie...@googlegroups.com; election-methods Subject: Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding) Two points: 1. I chatted with Rob Brown about the upper Bucklin naming question. His votes were: IRAV: F DAT: B Median Ranking: A Median Rating: A Median Grade: A Cumulative Best Approval (CBA): B I myself would give those latter four options C, C, B, and A respectively. Here are my votes on Andy's proposals. I think his point about two words is well-taken, but I'm not going to change my existing votes. Also, I think an appropriate enough acronym could allow 3 letters/words. -Majority Approval Voting: A -Delayed Approval Voting: D -Approval Level Voting: D -Delayed Support Voting: C -Majority Support Voting: B -Support Level Voting: F -Gradual Support Voting: C -Gradual Approval Voting: B In the spirit of his two-level-only dictum, here are a few more ideas: -Cumulative Approval Voting: A -Cumulative Support Voting: A -Cumulative Majority Voting: B (But CMV rings a bell, and I don't think it's just for cytomegalovirus; is there already a CMV voting system proposal?) -As above, but replace Cumulative with additive: 1 grade lower. -ABC (Approval-Based Cumulative) voting: C (I like the acronym, especially if we're using letter grades; but I am not satisfied with this backronym. Anyone else have ideas? Approval, additive; building, based, best, biggest; cumulative, cutoff, classify... ) So currently Descending Approval Threshold (DAT) is in the lead with a median of B. Please add your votes before Wednesday; until then, I'll just use my favorite of whatever terms currently lead, but wrap it in ¿? question marks. 2. I was thinking about how to give a GMJ-like single number for reporting a candidate's results under ¿DAT?, and I realized that the GMJ formula itself could work with some adjustments. The formula is: Median + (V - V) / (2 * V=) Where V, V, and V= are votes above, below, and at the median. ¿DAT? can use the same formula as long as you replace V with some number that's constant across candidates for a given election and median, and replace V= with (Vtot - (V + V)). (It could also in principle work for a constant V= if that was large enough, but I don't like that idea as much.) So what should we use for the fake V for reporting? Using the average (or even better, geometric mean) of the real V numbers for that election and median would give the most-realistic numbers. But even a simple constant, like 1/(2*number of grades)=10% wouldn't be too bad. Anyway, the point is that you could pretty clearly find a way to report ¿DAT? results using one number per candidate, which removes one of my last good reasons to prefer GMJ. And that way comes from GMJ, so my work on GMJ isn't a total loss, which removes one of my last bad reasons to prefer GMJ :). So, pending naming, I think ¿DAT? is the future of Bucklin systems. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
Previously we had: ** 49: X:1st Y:4th 50: X:5th Y:4th Y wins. ** ** Now we add two votes: 2: X:3rd Y:2nd X wins. So to make a ranked example: 49: XpqYrstuabcdef 49: XutYsrpqfedcba 50: abcYXdefpqrstu 50: fedYXcbautsrpq Add 4 votes: 4: aXYbcdefpqrstu Now I added 12 candidates there, but I'm sure with a little work I could get it down to somewhere in the range of just 4-8 extra candidates. But the point is made. Jameson 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com ** ** *From:* Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 17, 2013 12:15 PM *Subject:* Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? ** ** 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com is because we are letting people skip grades/places. Or to put another way, if we asked the voters under Bucklin to fill out each ballot more strictly, ranking 1st through Nth where there are N candidates – I know that several do not like this approach, **but** my question is this – does **strictly ranked** Bucklin fail Participation?? ** ** Yes. Just add 500 other candidates, and fill in the gaps with randomly-selected candidates from the 500. Obviously, you could probably get by with a lot less than 500 — at a rough guess, I'd expect that 8 would be plenty without changing the numbers here, and probably around 4-6 would be enough to make a similar example with smaller gaps work, but my point is that with enough extra candidates who cluster at the bottom of most ballots, you can turn any rated scenario into a ranked scenario. ** ** You are being tempted by a mirage here. The first lesson of voting school kindergarten is that most problems don't have a perfect solution. That doesn't mean you stop looking for ways to improve things, but it does mean that when you imagine a fix, you do your best to shoot holes in your own idea. 95% of the time you'll succeed, but the other 5% still makes it worth it. ** ** Jameson ** ** Oh. That’s disappointing. I have to see it with my own eyes, although I am sure you know what you are talking about, my brain won’t let me move on until I see the disproof. So I will try to create one – a situation where in using strictly ranked Bucklin, adding a new ballot in which A is ranked higher than B, this new ballot somehow switches the winner from A to B.*** * ** ** The challenge is that its intuitively seems like such an impossible task, I am worried that should such an example be possible (and you say it is, and I believe you) I might never find it in my blind spot! ** ** So if anyone **has** a handy example of this, I would be grateful for it being brought to my attention, otherwise, I am going to have to try to create it on my own in my own blind spot. ** ** Thanks. J ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com A humorous (but utterly non-serious) thought just occurred to me: ** ** What voting method are you guys going to use to elect a name for this new system? The system itself, of course. So what do you vote? It's fine if you leave out any vote under C. And if you don't fully understand the system, all the better, because in that respect you're more like the average voter than I am. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
You just scared me, asking me how I vote, I don't feel qualified to have an opinion, I haven't even focused on the conversation enough to know the precise system you are talking about, so I was mostly just trying to stay out of the way and let me elders do their business. :) If for some reason I can't explain you really want my opinion on this, then I would unfortunately have to ask two questions that were probably answered earlier when I was paying attention to other things: How does the unnamed system work, and what are the naming choices again? But again, please know that I mostly am just trying to stay out of everyone's way while I am trying to get up to speed, which I am guessing for me will be long and slow. ;) -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 1:28 PM To: Benjamin Grant Cc: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax; electionscie...@googlegroups.com; election-methods Subject: Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding) 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com A humorous (but utterly non-serious) thought just occurred to me: What voting method are you guys going to use to elect a name for this new system? The system itself, of course. So what do you vote? It's fine if you leave out any vote under C. And if you don't fully understand the system, all the better, because in that respect you're more like the average voter than I am. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
Wrapping my brain around it now, sorry if I am slow on the uptake, will post later. :) -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 1:25 PM To: Benjamin Grant Cc: EM Subject: Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? Previously we had: 49: X:1st Y:4th 50: X:5th Y:4th Y wins. Now we add two votes: 2: X:3rd Y:2nd X wins. So to make a ranked example: 49: XpqYrstuabcdef 49: XutYsrpqfedcba 50: abcYXdefpqrstu 50: fedYXcbautsrpq Add 4 votes: 4: aXYbcdefpqrstu Now I added 12 candidates there, but I'm sure with a little work I could get it down to somewhere in the range of just 4-8 extra candidates. But the point is made. Jameson 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com ] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 12:15 PM Subject: Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com mailto:b...@4efix.com is because we are letting people skip grades/places. Or to put another way, if we asked the voters under Bucklin to fill out each ballot more strictly, ranking 1st through Nth where there are N candidates - I know that several do not like this approach, *but* my question is this - does *strictly ranked* Bucklin fail Participation?? Yes. Just add 500 other candidates, and fill in the gaps with randomly-selected candidates from the 500. Obviously, you could probably get by with a lot less than 500 - at a rough guess, I'd expect that 8 would be plenty without changing the numbers here, and probably around 4-6 would be enough to make a similar example with smaller gaps work, but my point is that with enough extra candidates who cluster at the bottom of most ballots, you can turn any rated scenario into a ranked scenario. You are being tempted by a mirage here. The first lesson of voting school kindergarten is that most problems don't have a perfect solution. That doesn't mean you stop looking for ways to improve things, but it does mean that when you imagine a fix, you do your best to shoot holes in your own idea. 95% of the time you'll succeed, but the other 5% still makes it worth it. Jameson Oh. That's disappointing. I have to see it with my own eyes, although I am sure you know what you are talking about, my brain won't let me move on until I see the disproof. So I will try to create one - a situation where in using strictly ranked Bucklin, adding a new ballot in which A is ranked higher than B, this new ballot somehow switches the winner from A to B. The challenge is that its intuitively seems like such an impossible task, I am worried that should such an example be possible (and you say it is, and I believe you) I might never find it in my blind spot! So if anyone *has* a handy example of this, I would be grateful for it being brought to my attention, otherwise, I am going to have to try to create it on my own in my own blind spot. 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
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 1:25 PM Subject: Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? So to make a ranked example: 49: XpqYrstuabcdef 49: XutYsrpqfedcba 50: abcYXdefpqrstu 50: fedYXcbautsrpq OK, Y wins this one. Add 4 votes: 4: aXYbcdefpqrstu And now X wins this one. BUT I'm am still confused, Participation Criterion says: Adding one or more ballots that vote X over Y should never change the winner from X to Y In this case the winner was NOT changed from X to Y, but from Y to X, so this is NOT an example of failing the Participation Criteria, is it? Am I missing something here? -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] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com *From:* Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 17, 2013 1:25 PM *Subject:* Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? ** ** So to make a ranked example: ** ** 49: XpqYrstuabcdef 49: XutYsrpqfedcba 50: abcYXdefpqrstu 50: fedYXcbautsrpq ** ** OK, Y wins this one. ** ** Add 4 votes: 4: aXYbcdefpqrstu ** ** And now X wins this one. ** ** BUT I’m am still confused, Participation Criterion says: “*Adding one or more ballots that vote X over Y should never change the winner from X to Y *” In this case the winner was NOT changed from X to Y, but from Y to X, so this is NOT an example of failing the Participation Criteria, is it?*** * ** ** Am I missing something here? ** Oops, typo on my part. The additional 4 votes should be aYXbcdefpqrstu. Jameson ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com You just scared me, asking me how I vote, I don’t feel qualified to have an opinion, I haven’t even focused on the conversation enough to know the precise system you are talking about, so I was mostly just trying to stay out of the way and let me elders do their business. J The point of this vote is to get the opinions of people who aren't neck-deep in the technical details. So you're absolutely qualified to vote. ** ** If for some reason I can’t explain you really want my opinion on this, then I would unfortunately have to ask two questions that were probably answered earlier when I was paying attention to other things: ** ** How does the unnamed system work, and what are the naming choices again? Here's the description of the unnamed system as Abd gave it: Count the votes at 1st Choice for each candidate. If a single candidate has a majority, this canditate wins. If not, add in lower choices, one at a time, until a candidate or candidates gains a majority. If two or more candidates reach a majority at a stage, then whichever candidate has the most votes above that stage wins. If this is 1st Choice, or if all the choices have been amalgamated, and no candidate has a majority, then the candidate with the most votes wins. The naming choices with significant support are (current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ) Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C) Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C) Majority Approval Voting: (A/?/C/A) Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A) Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/?) Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/?) Assuming question marks as F's, DAT is currently leading, but I think the last two are promising. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com Is **this** an example of Bucklin failing Participation? ** ** 5: ABC 4: BCA ** ** A wins Right ** ** But add these in: 2: CAB ** ** B wins. Yes, with your tiebreaker. Good job. But for other Bucklin tiebreakers, you might have to change this scenario some. For instance, in ranked ¿DAT?, this example doesn't work, as A still wins after the added votes. However, ranked ¿DAT? still fails participation in the more-complex scenario I gave earlier. Jameson ** ** If I didn’t make any mistakes, is this the failing of strictly ranked Bucklin versus Participation? ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 2:20 PM Subject: Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding) Here's the description of the unnamed system as Abd gave it: Count the votes at 1st Choice for each candidate. If a single candidate has a majority, this canditate wins. If not, add in lower choices, one at a time, until a candidate or candidates gains a majority. If two or more candidates reach a majority at a stage, then whichever candidate has the most votes above that stage wins. If this is 1st Choice, or if all the choices have been amalgamated, and no candidate has a majority, then the candidate with the most votes wins. The naming choices with significant support are (current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ) Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C) Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C) Majority Approval Voting: (A/?/C/A) Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A) Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/?) Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/?) Assuming question marks as F's, DAT is currently leading, but I think the last two are promising. Jameson Well, that sounds a lot like the system we have be talking about in the other thread. DAT sounds confusing to me in this context. One of the Cumulatives makes the most sense instinctually to me as (if I understand this correctly) we keep adding in more ranks until we get enough to answer the question. IRAV makes it seem like a flavor of IRV, which in my full lack of experience seems wrong (Buckley seems unlike IRV), so I guess I would vote something like this: Instant Runoff Approval Voting: F Descending Approval Threshold Voting: F Majority Approval Voting: D Majority Support Voting: D Cumulative Approval Voting: A Cumulative Support Voting: C Unless I have to rank them in order and not use the same rank twice, in which case I would do: Cumulative Approval Voting: 1st Cumulative Support Voting: 2nd Majority Support Voting: 3rd Majority Approval Voting: 4th Descending Approval Threshold Voting: 5th Instant Runoff Approval Voting: 6th And just for giggles, here's my ScoreVoting (0-100) ballot: Cumulative Approval Voting: 100 Cumulative Support Voting: 80 Majority Support Voting: 60 Majority Approval Voting: 50 Descending Approval Threshold Voting: 35 Instant Runoff Approval Voting: 0 I tried to answer all the above as sincerely and non-strategically as possible. Hope this helps. If any of the above is dumb, chuck it, please. ;) -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] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
OK, let's assume that as defined, Bucklin fails Participation. Let me specify a new criteria, which already either has its own name that I do not know, or which I can call Prime Participation: Adding one or more ballots that vote X as a highest preference should never change the winner from X to Y In other words, expressing a first place/greatest magnitude preference for X, if X was already winning, cannot make X not win. This may be another one so basic that few or maybe no real voting systems fail it? -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] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
New running tally. Current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ/DSH/BG. Note the new option for Additive Approval Voting, which could be a winner if Abd, Andy, and Ben like it enough. Current contenders for best are in bold. Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C/F/F) Median C/F. Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C/C/F) Median B-/C. *Majority Approval Voting*: (A/?/C/A/A/D) Median A/C Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A/C/D) Median C Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/?/D/A) Median B/D *Additive Approval Voting*: (B/?/B/?/B/?) Median B/? Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/?/F/C) Median C/? Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
Unfortunately, Bucklin systems fail that one too. However, it passes Adding one more ballot that votes X as highest preference, and a ballot (either the same one or a second one) that votes Y as lowest preference, should never change the winner from X to Y. You can change highest to above the winning median and lowest to below the second-place median and this passage still holds, although then the criterion is meaningless for a non-median system. Basically, Bucklin systems can fail participation if the added ballot(s) rate both X and Y above, or both below, the winning median; it cannot fail if the added ballot(s) span the median with X and Y. Thus if voters know beforehand the winning median and the two frontrunners, they can make sure that their ballot will not violate participation. And in a partisan environment with two clear frontrunners, most people's ballots will honestly meet that criterion without even a need for strategy. Jameson 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant b...@4efix.com OK, let’s assume that as defined, Bucklin fails Participation. ** ** Let me specify a new criteria, which already either has its own name that I do not know, or which I can call Prime Participation: ** ** “*Adding one or more ballots that vote X as a highest preference should never change the winner from X to Y*” ** ** In other words, expressing a first place/greatest magnitude preference for X, if X was already winning, cannot make X not win. ** ** This may be another one so basic that few or maybe no real voting systems fail it? ** ** -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 ** ** Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
I guess (assuming I am allowed to duplicate ratings) I would call Additive Approval Voting an E (if we are using ABCDEF) - I like it better than DAT and IRAV, but less well than all the others. If E is not allowed, I guess flip a coin as to whether it gets a D or F. On a side note, it's interesting how having this vote makes me more directly aware of the voting system than thinking abstractly about it. -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:b...@4efix.com b...@4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 3:04 PM To: Benjamin Grant Cc: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax; electionscie...@googlegroups.com; election-methods Subject: Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding) New running tally. Current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ/DSH/BG. Note the new option for Additive Approval Voting, which could be a winner if Abd, Andy, and Ben like it enough. Current contenders for best are in bold. Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C/F/F) Median C/F. Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C/C/F) Median B-/C. Majority Approval Voting: (A/?/C/A/A/D) Median A/C Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A/C/D) Median C Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/?/D/A) Median B/D Additive Approval Voting: (B/?/B/?/B/?) Median B/? Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/?/F/C) Median C/? Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Deconstructing the Majority Criterion
On 17.6.2013, at 18.26, Benjamin Grant wrote: Majority Criterion My definition of Majority Criterion is simply something like if more than 50% of the voters prefer candidate A to all other candidates, then A shall win. There are methods that aim at respecting the wishes of the majority (majority oriented). Range/Score is not one of them. It rather aims at electing the candidate that has the highest sum of utility among the voters. This is a different need than the idea of letting the majority decide. Majority oriented methods can give poor results from the range point of view. For example sincere votes 51: A=10, B=9, C=9 ; 26: B=10, C=9, A=0 ; 25 C=10, B=9, A=0 tell us that B and C have clearly higher average utility among the voters than A, although majority of the voters consider A to be the best candidate. A would not be a good winner according to the Range philosophy. One could say that majority oriented methods are typically used in competitive environments since majority rule seems to make sense in environments where we expect voters to take position strictly in favour of their own candidate and against the other candidates and vote accordingly. In Range such thinking may lead to exaggeration. Maybe we will get votes like 51: A=10, B=0, C=0 ; 26: B=10, C=0, A=0 ; 25 C=10, B=0, A=0 although the sincere preferences are as above, With this kind of maximally exaggerated votes Range will also respect the majority rule (but it loses its expressiveness and its ability to elect the candidate that has highest sum of utility among the voters). In summary, Range is not a majority oriented method, and not really a method for competitive environments (since it may become just approval with fractional votes). It should not follow the majority rule since that would ruin its intended other good properties. Majority oriented methods are often good for competitive environments. Range is good when the election organizer and the voters sincerely want to elect the candidate with highest sum of utility. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
At 01:23 PM 6/17/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant mailto:b...@4efix.comb...@4efix.com Is *this* an example of Bucklin failing Participation? 5: ABC 4: BCA A wins Right But add these in: 2: CAB B wins. Yes, with your tiebreaker. This is not participation failure. Adding ballots ranking C highest did not cause C to lose. By the way, an oddity about this example. Bucklin is ranked approval. Did all the voters approve all candidates? Round 1. Majority is 5 A wins in round 1. Adding the2 voters, majority is now 6. First round: A: 5 B: 4 C: 2 no majority, go to next round. Second round: A: 7 B: 4 C: 6 A still wins. B does *not* win. Bucklin terminates when a majority is found. Participation criterion from previous post: Adding one or more ballots that vote X over Y should never change the winner from X to Y Showing the third preferences is confusing and irrelevant. I do not know why Jameson approved B wins. But even if B had won, it would not have shown participation failure. The vote must change the result away from C to another winner. One fact that should be understood about Bucklin: first of all, Bucklin votes are *approvals*. Every explicit Bucklin vote is voting *for* the candidate under the condition that the rank has been reached in the amalgamation process. Secondly, a Bucklin ballot is a *Range* ballot, covering the approved range only. So ranks may be left empty. Bucklin is *not* a pure ranked system. So if a voter has ABC, the voter will *not* vote for all three, unless there is some other worse candidates, or the voter really does want to completely stand aside from the election. And that doesn't work with respect to write-in candidates So if the voter has preferences ABC, the voter may vote, in the form of Bucklin we generally are working with, called Bucklin-ER (equal ranking), these votes, and all could be sincere: A AB A.B (blank second rank) A=B This *assumes* that there is a third candidate, C, that is least preferred. If there are four candidates (or more), the voter can have *many more sincere voting patterns*. Each pattern has implications about *preference strength*. That is part of why I say that Bucklin uses a Range ballot. Suppose that the voter *really prefers* a candidate not on the ballot, and wants to vote for that candidate, we'll call W. W WA WAB WA=B W.A W.A=B W=AB W=A.B W=A=B Just to make this clear. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
I got votes from Bruce Gilson (BRG). New running tally. Current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ/DSH/BG/BRG. Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C/F/F/C) Median C. Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C/C/F/A) Median B-; votes above B, 2. *Majority Approval Voting*: (A/?/C/A/A/D/B) Median: B, votes above: 3. PROBABLE WINNER. Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A/C/D/B) Median C Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/?/D/A/F) Median D Additive Approval Voting: (B/?/B/?/B/E/B) Median: B, votes above: 0 Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/?/F/C/F) Median ? We are still missing votes from Abd and others, but it's pretty clear that MAV is going to win. So from now on, unless there's an upset, I'll be calling this system MAV with no ¿?. Thanks to everyone who voted, and sorry for being a bit of a pest about it. Abd: I am interested in seeking consensus, but as the system designer I personally lean strongly in favor of using letter grades (ABCDF) with some kind of descriptive labels involving support or approval. If you have another proposal, please make it. If it's just your preferences versus mine I'll listen to your arguments but I may call designer's privilege. But if you find someone else to take your side, I'll probably cede the point. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
2013/6/17 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com At 01:23 PM 6/17/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant mailto:b...@4efix.combenn@**4efix.comb...@4efix.com Is *this* an example of Bucklin failing Participation? 5: ABC 4: BCA A wins Right But add these in: 2: CAB B wins. Yes, with your tiebreaker. This is not participation failure. Adding ballots ranking C highest did not cause C to lose. Abd, you're wrong. Adding BA ballots caused A to lose; that is a participation failure. By the way, an oddity about this example. Bucklin is ranked approval. Did all the voters approve all candidates? You would prefer it if he had left the third candidate off for each voter group. A less obtuse way to say that would be to say I would have written this scenario as ... because Round 1. Majority is 5 A wins in round 1. Adding the2 voters, majority is now 6. First round: A: 5 B: 4 C: 2 no majority, go to next round. Second round: A: 7 B: 4 C: 6 No. B:9. If you are going to claim that 2 others are wrong, please check your work before sending it out. A still wins. B does *not* win. Bucklin terminates when a majority is found. Participation criterion from previous post: Adding one or more ballots that vote X over Y should never change the winner from X to Y Showing the third preferences is confusing and irrelevant. I do not know why Jameson approved B wins. But even if B had won, it would not have shown participation failure. The vote must change the result away from C to another winner. One fact that should be understood about Bucklin: first of all, Bucklin votes are *approvals*. Every explicit Bucklin vote is voting *for* the candidate under the condition that the rank has been reached in the amalgamation process. Secondly, a Bucklin ballot is a *Range* ballot, covering the approved range only. So ranks may be left empty. Bucklin is *not* a pure ranked system. So if a voter has ABC, the voter will *not* vote for all three, unless there is some other worse candidates, or the voter really does want to completely stand aside from the election. And that doesn't work with respect to write-in candidates So if the voter has preferences ABC, the voter may vote, in the form of Bucklin we generally are working with, called Bucklin-ER (equal ranking), these votes, and all could be sincere: A AB A.B (blank second rank) A=B This *assumes* that there is a third candidate, C, that is least preferred. If there are four candidates (or more), the voter can have *many more sincere voting patterns*. Each pattern has implications about *preference strength*. That is part of why I say that Bucklin uses a Range ballot. Suppose that the voter *really prefers* a candidate not on the ballot, and wants to vote for that candidate, we'll call W. W WA WAB WA=B W.A W.A=B W=AB W=A.B W=A=B Just to make this clear. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
Benjamin, The criterion (criteria is the plural) you suggest is not new. It is called Mono-add-Top, and comes from Douglas Woodall. It is met by IRV and MinMax(Margins) but is failed by Bucklin. In my opinion IRV is the best of the methods that meet it. 26: AYX 25: BYX 17: CDX 17: EFX 17: GHX The majority threshold is 51 and X wins in the third round. But if we add anywhere between 3 and 100 XY ballots then Y wins in the second round. You'll find some interesting stuff on Kevin Venzke's old page: http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/ Notice that your version (in an earlier post) of the Plurality criterion is wrong. Chris Benham Benjamin Grant wrote (17 June 2013): OK, let's assume that as defined, Bucklin fails Participation. Let me specify a new criteria, which already either has its own name that I do not know, or which I can call Prime Participation: Adding one or more ballots that vote X as a highest preference should never change the winner from X to Y In other words, expressing a first place/greatest magnitude preference for X, if X was already winning, cannot make X not win. This may be another one so basic that few or maybe no real voting systems fail it? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting mailto:benn at 4efix.com benn at 4efix.com 603.283.6601 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8791] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
At 01:51 PM 6/17/2013, Benjamin Grant wrote: Well, that sounds a lot like the system we have be talking about in the other thread. DAT sounds confusing to me in this context. One of the Cumulatives makes the most sense instinctually to me as (if I understand this correctly) we keep adding in more ranks until we get enough to answer the question. IRAV makes it seem like a flavor of IRV, which in my full lack of experience seems wrong (Buckley seems unlike IRV), so I guess I would vote something like this: Some facts should be known. First of all, the system as described is *almost* identical to the system called Bucklin that was widely used in the U.S. That traditional system was different in two ways (as generally implemented, there were variations): 1. It only allowed equal ranking in the third rank. With our modern perspective, we see little reason to require exclusive ranking at the top rank, and less reason to require it in the second rank. It merely makes the system less flexible for the voter. First rank exclusion *might* be required because of ballot placement rules and public campaign funding, but there are better ways to handle this, we could suspect. (The basic cost of requiring exclusive ranking is that some votes will be spoiled and some voters who have low preference strength will be *forced to choose.* Even if that is difficult.) 2. The method *is* instant runoff approval. That is, it simulates a series of repeated approval elections. In the earlier elections, voters may bullet vote, just for their favorite. But as it becomes obvious that this will not complete the election, voters will start to add approvals. They will do this according to an internal descending approval cutoff. With a series of elections, this is a powerful method. The single Bucklin ballot really does simulate a short series, essentially three such elections with three-rank Approval. In a more sophisticated version, the Bucklin ballot is the first poll in a repeated election, and my theory is that this can find a *true majority* almost always in two ballots. The second ballot has the *huge advantage* that the voters get another look, more motivate voters may show up to vote, and, if the elimination involved in listing candidates on the second ballot is fair, there is less that voters need to look at. IRV does simulate runoff voting, but a different kind of runoff voting, called sequential elimination, where the candidate with the least votes is eliminated from the ballot with each round. It's also called exhaustive runoff. So the name instant runoff is fair for both methods, but IRV is instant runoff plurality, whereas this method is instant runoff approval. The behavior is *far better,* because the behavior of approval is better than that of plurality. The name could be IRA, instead of IRAV, i.e., instant runoff approval. IRA actually should do, better, what IRV pretends to do, find majorities. When if fails, IRA is *honest about the failure,* it does not pretend to find a majority by setting aside and not counting all those ballots with votes only *against* the top two remaining. So, yes, IRA might bring up negative associations with IRV, but there are also a lot of positive associations, and runoff voting is the most common advanced voting system in use, and Bucklin balloting and amalgamation *improves* runoff voting instead of trying to kill it. It should *reduce* runoffs. How much it will do that, we are not certain. But it is a cheap method to amalgamate, it's just the sum of votes in each rank, and those can be added up precinct by precinct. (IRV gets *very complicated*, and a single mistake in some precinct can require recounting *all the other precincts.*) So, without being thoroughly aware of these conditions, Benjamin, your opinions are still valuable as to first impressions. The name of Approval voting we have already decided to promote, and it's been on the table for many years as a major proposal, with some implementations in organizations. The Bucklin method is also very old, in fact, going back to Condorcet himself, around 1800. Bucklin is named after James Bucklin, who promoted and saw applied his method in Grand Junction, Colorado, in 1909, and it became all the rage, seeing something like ninety implementations around the U.S. The method described is being considered as a suggested *second reform*, after approval is adopted. This may well already be in a runoff environment. Under some conditions, it might be a first reform. It *is* an old method. I was tried and it worked, and it was not ended because it did not work. A proper study of why Bucklin was disadopted has never been done, but it's obvious from my research. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] [CES #8816] Upper-Bucklin naming (was: Median systems, branding....)
Additive Approval Voting is a reasonable name, but ... it misses the powerful and real associations with runoff voting, and we may find that the most powerful and ready application of the method is *in an existing runoff system.* We could also call it Runoff Approval Voting to dump the instant, which was a false promise. RAV. or ARV. At 02:03 PM 6/17/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: New running tally. Current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ/DSH/BG. Note the new option for Additive Approval Voting, which could be a winner if Abd, Andy, and Ben like it enough. Current contenders for best are in bold. Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C/F/F) Median C/F. Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C/C/F) Median B-/C. Majority Approval Voting: (A/?/C/A/A/D) Median A/C Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A/C/D) Median C Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/?/D/A) Median B/D Additive Approval Voting: (B/?/B/?/B/?) Median B/? Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/?/F/C) Median C/? Jameson -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups The Center for Election Science group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to electionscience+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_outhttps://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Shout out of thanks
I just wanted to thank everyone for being so helpful and guiding me in learning this stuff. You are all quite generous with your time, and I appreciate it. I am especially looking forward to the response on the concept of fragility or extreme sensitivity with regard to voting systems, as I developed in my other post. Thanks everyone! This is a very tough and tricky subject, and without all of your help, I would be in deep trouble. -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] List issues?
I have noticed a few times, now, over the last several days where I have sent something to the list, and I don't receive a copy of my own email back from the list. Most of the time, I do - but on at least 2 or 3 occasions I have written something to the list - and I can see it at least made it to the archive here: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-J une/thread.html BUT I never get a copy of it in my inbox as I am supposed to. Is this a known issue with this list, that sometimes you don't get copies of the stuff you send? Is it worse than that, do you sometimes not get copies of the stuff *other* people send too? -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] Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all?
From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.qu...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 3:14 PM Subject: Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? Unfortunately, Bucklin systems fail that one too. Hold on a sec. Let me think this through. If we are using a Bucklin system, perhaps a strictly ranked one, and X is currently winning. Adding a single ballot that has X ranked as the highest does two things: it changes the threshold, and it awards one more vote to X. The only way it can hurt X - ie, cause X not to win, is if the harm in changing the threshold is greater than the benefit of getting another first place vote. That's the key to why Buckley keep failing Participation!! I think I finally grasped the essential Participation flaw with Buckley!! Each added ballot changes the threshold. Changing the threshold will either have NO effect, or it will change how deep we have to go to find a winner. In this case, even if we know ALL the ballot we are adding have X at the top, adding even a single on if it changes the threshold enough will suddenly bring into your totals all the next place rankings for the existing ballots. In other words, Buckley fails Participation because it is not a smooth curve, it is a fragile one that can leap and lurch, if you see what I am saying. In its own way, Buckley is as unpredictable as IRV. Both have fractal moments where a very small change can completely swamp the system and produce a very different result. Any system as - what's the right word, jagged? sensitive? fragile? is going to have one or more issues with appealing to our common sense, because each has a point in which a tiny change can cause a system wide shift. Am I right? I don't know what this kind of trait is called, this oversensitivity, this ability to suddenly shift from condition One to Condition Two with no smooth transition points in between - but I think these kinds of systems will suffer from problems like these. Now, for all I know ALL voting systems have this kind of issue - we'll see. -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
