Re: [EM] Survey of Multiwinner Methods

[Greg Nisbet]

I don't doubt that Asset has some desirable properties, but trying to
compare it to "conservative" methods like STV is difficult. In particular,
conservative multiwinner methods are more amenable to Bayesian Regret-type
simulations than methods with districts, parties, or candidates capable of
making decisions as well as to more traditional analyses with specific
criteria that a given method either passes or fails. It's hard to apply
either approach to comparing such different methods against each other,
even though it's relatively easy to compare methods within a class (e.g.
methods with parties, methods with agent-like candidates).


On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 
wrote:

> At 03:24 AM 1/8/2013, Greg Nisbet wrote:
>
>> There's some definite motivation for writing the list of criteria to
>> exclude parties, districts, and relying on candidates making decisions.
>> These sorts of mechanisms are not always available (for instance, picking
>> pizza toppings or locations or something of that nature). That's not to say
>> that these methods are never useful or not "competitive" with party-less,
>> district-less, candidate-decision-less methods in some sense ... it's just
>> harder to compare their merits in some sort of "universal" sense without
>> considering very specific factors about the community associated with the
>> election. In that sense, limiting focus to methods that don't impose these
>> sorts of additional structure or requirements on the candidates or voters
>> helps to simplify things rather dramatically.
>>
>
> Sure. It *also* can be expected to produce results that are less than
> optimal.
>
> "Relying on candidates" to make decisions is a narrow view of Asset
> Voting. Rather, Asset Voting delegates decision-making, not to
> "candidates," per se, but electors. Because we are so accustomed to voting
> for "candidates," we overlook this when we think of Asset.
>
> In the Pizza election, obviously the Pizza doesn't decide (but that
> Mushroom-Olive pizza makes a mean argument!). But one could perfectly well,
> in a complex multiple-choice "election," choose, not the result, but who or
> what process makes the choice.
>
> However, there is a classic method for doing this that works perfectly
> well, and it is simply supermajority rule, even consensus process. (If the
> majority feels that the group is taking too long, "We're hungry, dammit!"
> the majority can simply make its own decision, and invite others to join, o
> not.) The real point is that classic decision-making process is
> *interative*. It is not a simple one-shot amalgamation. In classic process,
> someone may say, "Let's get a Pepperon Pizze!" and the group shouts "Yes."
> Supermajority. But then someone says, "I really can't eat that!" And the
> majority will, in a functional social group, back up.
>
> Range voting can be used to speed this up, but the "speed up" only will
> occur with fairly large groups, and especially groups that cannot meet in
> person. In person, Approval is the departure from traditional formal
> process that makes sense. The final key to showing a decent decision is a
> *ratification,* if there is any doubt. I've seen an apparent 97% A, 70% B,
> under Approval, turn into 100% A, no exceptions, when presented for
> ratification, but this was in person. This whole process can take less time
> than setting up and adding up the votes for a Range poll.
>
> Asset can pick a result that would be *completely* unexpected, something
> entirely outside of initial consideration. Asset can be understood very
> simply: instead of making decisions only from ballots, delegate the final
> decision process to representatives, for efficiency. With the pizza
> election suppose that it develops that all but one member of the group
> *really wants* pepperoni, and one can't eat pepperoni. The problem with
> buying separate pizzas is that a smaller pizza, or by the slice, is more
> expensive. However, the group, if it wants to accomodate the minority
> person, could in fact, decide to by two pizzas, one small, and could
> present the contribution to be put in to be sufficient to buy both pizzas
> (if we assume equal contributions, say). Or someone could decide to
> contribute a bit more. Balancing all this, discussing it, etc, could be
> difficult, but if two people end up discussing what to do, it's quite
> possible that 100% consensus could be obtained on a result. Everyone would
> agree that the result is fair.
>
> The universe of possible "candidates" is large!
>
> The comple

Re: [EM] Survey of Multiwinner Methods

[Greg Nisbet]

There's some definite motivation for writing the list of criteria to
exclude parties, districts, and relying on candidates making decisions.
These sorts of mechanisms are not always available (for instance, picking
pizza toppings or locations or something of that nature). That's not to say
that these methods are never useful or not "competitive" with party-less,
district-less, candidate-decision-less methods in some sense ... it's just
harder to compare their merits in some sort of "universal" sense without
considering very specific factors about the community associated with the
election. In that sense, limiting focus to methods that don't impose these
sorts of additional structure or requirements on the candidates or voters
helps to simplify things rather dramatically.

I'd like to point out that this still leads plenty of room for creativity /
is perhaps not restrictive enough a requirement to really create a fair
comparison.

For instance consider a form of Cumulative Voting where each voter receives
n votes to use in each of m rounds with the results being published at each
intermediate stage and voters each allowed to cast n votes again while
knowing a little bit more about the outcome.

How would one compare this method to STV or List PR or districted [Favorite
Single-Winner Method Here]? It's hard to say and may depend very much on
what sort of assumptions you make about people and their behavior.


On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 9:55 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽  wrote:

> 2013-01-07T01:04:52Z, “Greg Nisbet” :
>
> >   Hey, I'd like to get a sense of what sorts of multiwinner methods
> are currently known that are reasonably good and don't require districts,
> parties, or candidates that are capable of making decisions (I'm looking at
> you, asset voting).
>
> ¡KISS!:
> ¡Keep It Simple, Oh Stupid!
>
> I would stick with Asset-Voting.  It is a good thing that you look
> at Asset-Voting already.

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[EM] Survey of Multiwinner Methods

[Greg Nisbet]

Hey, I'd like to get a sense of what sorts of multiwinner methods are
currently known that are reasonably good and don't require districts,
parties, or candidates that are capable of making decisions (I'm looking at
you, asset voting).

I had an idea for a variant of STV where the "elimination order" for
candidates is the reverse of how often they are approved (i.e. given a rank
on the ballot instead of no rank). This method may already have been
proposed some time ago, but I think it warrants attention regardless. This
somewhat changes the interpretation of an STV ballot because a truncated
ballot is no longer strictly less powerful than a non-truncated one. Since
the elimination order is fixed from the beginning and doesn't depend on
subsequent decisions, I suspect this modification to STV would at least
reduce non-monotonic behavior (however one might quantify degree of
monotonicity).

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[EM] Fwd: election code

[Greg Nisbet]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Brian Olson 
Date: Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 2:39 PM
Subject: election code
To: gregory.nis...@gmail.com


I'm in a weird read-only situation on the email where I read the
election methods list, but I wanted to point out my libraries which I
think are good quality implementations of several election methods in
C and Java.
http://code.google.com/p/voteutil/

The C library could potentially become fast a plugin to interpreters
like Python (but a pure python implementation is probably fine too).
The pure-Java implementations have good unit testing, and I have a
variety of tests generating random election data and making sure Java
and C agree.

http://code.google.com/p/voteutil/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk

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Re: [EM] Election Methods Code Repository Proposal

[Greg Nisbet]

First off, I meant to say "Python and Ruby, respectively". I had
written that, but later changed the wording of the paragraph beneath
it, mangled the text I originally had written, and forgot to
proofread, my bad.

The reference implementation is the important part. I'm comfortable
enough with Python and with Perl to contribute, so I'd vote for those
for ease and familiarity. I think the adoption of a common coding
style / agreement on which preexisting libraries to use is also
important, perhaps more so than the choice of which language to use. I
guess that's another point in Python's favor. The language is
opinionated and consistent enough maintaining uniformity of code
written by different authors is that much easier.

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 1:39 PM, Jameson Quinn  wrote:
> I'd also vote for python (which is not the same as ruby). Python also has
> "fast" version cython, which for this kind of thing should not be too hard
> to port to/from.
> (There's also some similar "parallel" python environments, not so much
> separate versions, but really to use them you need a ground-up rewrite, so
> it's mostly irrelevant. Or you can sometimes write from the start to use
> math packages like Sage, which generally have bigger primitives which can be
> parralelized after the fact more easily... but probably that would only work
> for a few voting methods.)
> JQ
>
> 2011/9/12 Andy Jennings 
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 9:15 PM, Greg Nisbet 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Anyway, IEVS is in C, RubyVote and PythonVote are obviously in Python,
>>> and my old code is in Java. If the community could settle on a single
>>> language for reference implementations (speed being less important
>>> here than clarity and familiarity) of various voting methods and maybe
>>> a quick language such as C, C++, D, or Java when additional speed is
>>> required, and possibly an efficiently parallelizable language (e.g.
>>> Erlang, Haskell) to allow for distributed computation and greater
>>> scalability.
>>
>> I definitely agree on the "reference implementation" part.  I vote for
>> Python, but maybe someone should set up an approval-style poll.
>> As for a "fast language implementation" and a "parallel language
>> implementation", that's not a bad idea, but I don't know that we're ready to
>> maintain three different code repositories, yet.
>> ~ Andy
>> 
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>>
>
>

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[EM] Election Methods Code Repository Proposal

[Greg Nisbet]

Description of methods on the wiki do not currently contain computer
programs so much as high-level algorithmic descriptions. These
descriptions, although well-written and accompanied by examples, do
not contain code. The addition of actual code would serve two
purposes,

1) it serves as an alternative, guaranteed unambiguous explanation of
the method itself, which may be more tractable to some readers than
English description

2) code, even if written in a slow language, is of practical value to
those conducting research

3) even new voting methods are seldom completely novel, a standard set
of primitives could allow for quicker and easier description of new
proposals.

I've come across a few instances of collections of voting method
implementations in various programming languages. I'm uncertain about
the use restrictions of these.

rangevoting.org/IEVS/IEVS.c

http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyvote

https://github.com/bradbeattie/python-vote-core

etc.

This is just some old java code a friend and I wrote a long time ago
http://www.mediafire.com/?hcizfsw37wuaquy

Anyway, IEVS is in C, RubyVote and PythonVote are obviously in Python,
and my old code is in Java. If the community could settle on a single
language for reference implementations (speed being less important
here than clarity and familiarity) of various voting methods and maybe
a quick language such as C, C++, D, or Java when additional speed is
required, and possibly an efficiently parallelizable language (e.g.
Erlang, Haskell) to allow for distributed computation and greater
scalability.

The point being, a lot of people have spent time writing code and some
have reinvented the wheel in a slightly different form or in another
language. It'd be nice to have code all in one place and establish a
set of conventions for how new algorithms are to be represented.

Thanks.

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Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal

[Greg Nisbet]

>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 09:31:55 +0100
> From: "James Gilmour" 
> To: 
> Subject: Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Greg Nisbet   Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 4:31 AM
> My system does not have voters voting for candidates at all. In fact,
> candidates needn't even exist (theoretically of course) for my
> method to be well-defined. Instead people simply vote for parties, with
> parties that can't get any seats dropped from the lowest
> weight first. Making the system more candidate-centric could be done, but
> my algorithm (or class of algorithms) is supposed to be a
> minimal, easily analyzable change from non-preferential party list methods.
>
> But this is not what the majority of electors want, at least not in
> polities like USA, Canada and UK.  Electors in some continental
> European countries do seem to be happy with party list PR without any voter
> choice of candidates, but I would suggest, that would
> not be acceptable in our political culture.   For the UK, that opinion is
> based on various public opinion polls; for the USA and
> Canada it is based on my reading of local media and blogs.
>
> James Gilmour
>
>
> I'm for candidate-centric voting methods as much as anyone else is, and
indeed, my proposal can be modified to allow that. Parties could have an
"internal ballot pool" that initially consists of just the ballots of the
voters with that party as their first preference. As parties get eliminated
and votes are transferred, the internal ballot pool will grow. If party are
allowed to have a maximum size and transfers are allowed, then this could
get more complicated because a party's internal ballot pool could contain
ballots with fractional weights. Nevertheless, the method I propose can be
modified to meet your criticism.

My method can be modified fairly trivially to allow parties with a maximum
size, e.g. an independent candidate would be a party with a maximum size of
one, and simply allow surpluses to be transferred. Even the relatively naive
Gregory transfer method might work well, I'm not sure how to adapt Meek or a
more complicated transfer rule to this method or if the benefits are worth
the cost. Allowing transfers might place some kind of restriction on what
sorts of classical allocation methods that the Preferential Party List
Method could use, but I doubt these would be particularly severe.

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Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal

[Greg Nisbet]

> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:32:14 +0100
> From: "James Gilmour" 
> To: 
> Subject: Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal
> Message-ID: <1E8F1DC34EB34C50A49239C7C1BA6CCB@u2amd>
> Content-Type: text/plain;   charset="us-ascii"
>
> Greg Nisbet  > Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2011 10:25 PM
> > All current forms of party list proportional representation
> > have each voter cast a vote for a single party. I say this is
> > inadequate since a small party can be eliminated and hence
> > denied any representation (this is particularly relevant if
> > the legislature has a threshold). However, votes for a party
> > that doesn't have sufficient support to win any seats in the
> > legislature are simply wasted.
>
> Not necessarily so.  See "apparentement".  Parties can "chain" their votes
> so that fewer votes are wasted in the seat allocation
> calculations.
>
> James Gilmour
>

Apparentement as it were (or even panachage, as the Swiss allow), still are
not the same type of method as the type I propose. Apparentement, as I am
now aware exists, is solely at the discretion of the parties, and thus
doesn't reflect the wishes of the voters directly, and as such cannot
truthfully be called a "preferential allocation method" since it does not
allow the expression of arbitrary preferences and panachage is too
candidate-centric and not flexible enough to be a method of the same ilk as
the one I propose. I thank you for educating me on this matter, but believe
I am nevertheless technically correct (at least by a reasonable definition
of "preferential method").

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Re: [EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 6:21 PM, Dave Ketchum wrote:

> Glad to see thinking, though we part company on some details.
>
>
> On Aug 13, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote:
>
>  All current forms of party list proportional representation have each
>> voter cast a vote for a single party. I say this is inadequate since a small
>> party can be eliminated and hence denied any representation (this is
>> particularly relevant if the legislature has a threshold). However, votes
>> for a party that doesn't have sufficient support to win any seats in the
>> legislature are simply wasted. Thus I propose an alternative method.
>>
>
> That some party may get zero seats, that does NOT make their attempt a pure
> waste:
> .If they are growing, they are on the way - and a warning to other
> parties that their apparent goals deserve more attention - perhaps to be
> honored by those who do get seats.
>

Under this system, we would in fact see greater support for small parties
since it is less of a gamble. Even IF my first choice (probably a niche
party) does not get a seat, my vote will be eventually transferred to a
party that *does* have a seat. This means that I'm more likely to support my
first choice to begin with. (This isn't fool proof though in the original
formulation ... ranking other parties at all increases their weight which
helps them compete against my preferred niche party, I don't think this is a
huge vulnerability though and it can be solved by allowing greater
flexibility in rankings).

>
> I would base the voting and counting on the ranking we do in Condorcet for
> single seats - same N*N matrix and whoever would be CW be first elected,
> with next the one who would be CW if the first CW was excluded.
> . If the above could elect too many from any one party, exclude
> remaining candidates from that party on reaching the limit.
> . Note that the N*N matrix has value that does not often get mentioned
> - it is worth studying as to pairs of candidates, besides its base value of
> deciding the election.
>
>
I'm sure I don't have to remind you a Condorcet Winner does not always
exist. I don't completely understand your description of your method. How
does it work with parties?

>
>> Each voter votes for as many parties as they wish in a defined order. My
>> vote might be democrat>green>libertarian>**republican or something like
>> that.
>>
>> Anyway, first we calculate each party's "weight". Weight is calculated
>> simply by counting the number of times the party appears on a voter's ballot
>> in any position (this should be reminiscent of approval voting). Each party
>> also has a status "hopeful", "elected", or "disqualified".
>>
>> Next, pick your favorite allocation method. D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, Largest
>> Remainder, anything else you can think of, with or without a threshold.
>>
>> We then use this allocation method to determine each party's mandate if
>> everyone voted for their first preference. If every hopeful party has at
>> least one seat, then all the hopeful parties are declared elected. If at
>> least one hopeful party has no seats at all, the party with the lowest
>> weight is disqualified, its votes are redistributed, and the allocation is
>> done again with the new list of hopeful parties.
>>
>
> I see "first preference" and think of avoiding IRV's problems - which the
> above ranking attends to.
>
> I am assuming candidates identified with their parties, and parties getting
> seats via their candidates getting seats.  Thus, once all the seats get
> filled, remaining parties - due to their lack of strong candidates - get no
> seats.


My system does not have voters voting for candidates at all. In fact,
candidates needn't even exist (theoretically of course) for my method to be
well-defined. Instead people simply vote for parties, with parties that
can't get any seats dropped from the lowest weight first. Making the system
more candidate-centric could be done, but my algorithm (or class of
algorithms) is supposed to be a minimal, easily analyzable change from
non-preferential party list methods.

>
>
>> This method has some advantages over traditional systems. People would not
>> be motivated to betray their favorite party for fear that it will lack
>> enough support to win any seats in the legislature and hence their vote
>> would be wasted. This method can also be slightly modified into a cardinal
>> method, with a voter's first choice being defined as the highest rated party
>> on their ballot remaining and weight being calculated by the arithmetic mean
>> of a party's rating à la Range Voting. This class of voting method is
>> probably compatible with MMP, but I haven't yet worked out the details of
>> how that would work.
>>
>
>
>

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[EM] Preferential Party List Method Proposal

[Greg Nisbet]

All current forms of party list proportional representation have each voter
cast a vote for a single party. I say this is inadequate since a small party
can be eliminated and hence denied any representation (this is particularly
relevant if the legislature has a threshold). However, votes for a party
that doesn't have sufficient support to win any seats in the legislature are
simply wasted. Thus I propose an alternative method.

Each voter votes for as many parties as they wish in a defined order. My
vote might be democrat>green>libertarian>republican or something like that.

Anyway, first we calculate each party's "weight". Weight is calculated
simply by counting the number of times the party appears on a voter's ballot
in any position (this should be reminiscent of approval voting). Each party
also has a status "hopeful", "elected", or "disqualified".

Next, pick your favorite allocation method. D'Hondt, Sainte-Laguë, Largest
Remainder, anything else you can think of, with or without a threshold.

We then use this allocation method to determine each party's mandate if
everyone voted for their first preference. If every hopeful party has at
least one seat, then all the hopeful parties are declared elected. If at
least one hopeful party has no seats at all, the party with the lowest
weight is disqualified, its votes are redistributed, and the allocation is
done again with the new list of hopeful parties.

This method has some advantages over traditional systems. People would not
be motivated to betray their favorite party for fear that it will lack
enough support to win any seats in the legislature and hence their vote
would be wasted. This method can also be slightly modified into a cardinal
method, with a voter's first choice being defined as the highest rated party
on their ballot remaining and weight being calculated by the arithmetic mean
of a party's rating à la Range Voting. This class of voting method is
probably compatible with MMP, but I haven't yet worked out the details of
how that would work.

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Re: [EM] Condorcet Jury Theorem

[Greg Nisbet]

my premise, poorly articulated, but my premise nonetheless is that an
"adaptive" voting method that takes into account voters' previous behavior
may be able to outperform OMOV in the long run on average.

P=NP is only meant to evoke the relevant properties of objective truth i.e.
that it is true or false and that people don't know for certain what it is.
It is also meant to illustrate how people are NOT Condorcet jurors
themselves. We are NOT objective truth with some noise thrown in. In fact,
even in the P=NP problem, we would only distrust putting it to a public vote
because we have so much additional information about the problem. In
retrospect, using it as an example was a mistake. A system of the ilk I am
proposing doesn't know anything about the "content" of the issues, simply
what different people believe.

Nevertheless, I believe that we can simulate a Condorcet jury by weighting
people differently based on past behavior. This would make the resulting
voting methods adaptive rather than memory-less. The current methods that I
believe have been proposed thus far are all memory-less. The result of the
n+1st election can't depend on the nth election, indeed the results of any
elections are independent of the order in which they are conducted.

However, I would argue that this ignores important information that we have
in real life. We know something about the structure of non-randomness in
people's opinions and can account for it. Assuming people are honest, I
believe it is possible for an adaptive voting method to outperform methods
that enforce OMOV for the very limited goal I set forward in my first post…
to attempt to determine the truth of propositions, not to make any type of
normative decision.


"I'm pretty sure that "P = NP?" is a question for which the average person
of the public's chance of getting the answer right is much lower than 50%.
So we don't ask the public (and if we had to, the jury theorem says we
should ask just a single person instead of averaging opinions).
Similar arguments have been made against democracy in general, even back to
the ancient Greek times, to the effect that statecraft is a skill and the
public isn't skilled. The jury theorem still works: you don't need to assume
people being wrong in non-random ways for the theorem to tell you it's not a
good idea to predict P = NP by vote."

You absolutely do need people to be wrong in non-random ways. If p<.5 for
people, but we were still Condorcet Jurors, you would ask as many people as
possible and then negate the answer. That clearly doesn't work; therefore,
we are not Condorcet Jurors. I'm not claiming that jury theorem doesn't work
or is inapplicable, far from it. I'm claiming that if we have more
information on voters and their past behavior, we should be able to devise
an algorithm that will outperform OMOV.*

*assuming honest voters. I don't want to have to worry about strategic
voters yet.

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[EM] Condorcet Jury Theorem

[Greg Nisbet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_jury_theorem

Let's pretend for the moment that we are attempting to determine the
truth of propositions rather than deciding on policy (this matters,
since policy decisions can't be objectively right or wrong and alters
what the "credibility" function would be, as I will describe later)

now the condorcet jury theorem has a bunch of assumptions, but two of
them are relevant for the question I wish to pose to the community
today

1) objective truth exists. A jury's decision is either correct or
incorrect and by the condorcet jury theorem this probability
approaches one as teh jury size approaches infinity.

2) the condorcet jury theorem assumes that all the jury members vote
completely independently of each other.

now for the purposes of democracy (1) doesn't hold true as stated.
there's no such thing as a "correct" policy decision. I suppose we
could modify our notion of correct to mean "correct according to the
correct utility function" but that ultimately doesn't get us anywhere
... so I'll just pretend that we're voting on propositions rather than
policy decisions.

now (2) obviously does not hold in real life. voter's guesses are not
independent of each other. That's why we don't expect to be able to
guess difficult math problems like "P = NP" or the like by proposing
them to the general population and seeing what most people vote on.
Ignorance has patterns to it... people are wrong in non-random ways.

so then let's say that this jury is voting on many propositions. Let's
also assume that they all vote honestly so that you game theorists
don't yell at me. Now that we have that covered, the independence
assumption becomes easier to fulfill.

we can identify non-independence experimentally, more or less, by
identifying correlation between individual jury members and adjusting
their weight according to how "independent" or "not clone-y" their
opinions are.

I posit that they weight of an individual jury member should be
f(c(m))/c(m) with m being the member in question

with f being the "credibility function" as I shall define below and c
being the "expected number of clones" as I shall define below.

the definition of the credibility function is f is as follows. f tells
you how the "effective credibility" of the the opinions of a group of
clones depend on the group size. In the case of democracy f(n) = n. If
two million people believe p, that is considered "twice as credible"
as 1 million people believing p. However, intuitively, this feels
wrong. Most of the earth's population believes in the existence of a
deity, yet that does not make the proposition more credible (the
proposition being that at least one powerful interventionist deity
exists)... Each marginal person believing the truth of the proposition
does not contribute as much to the probability that it is correct, I
argue, as the last person did. the choice of credibility function is
exogenous to the problem.

we also need to define the "expected number of clones". the expected
number of clones is at least one, since each person is a clone of
themselves... and this helps us firmly establish a maximum weight of 1
for each individual jury member. yay. Now the choice of definition of
c(m) is also exogenous. it depends on what you consider to be likely
indicators that two people are in fact "clones" ... or more
accurately, the likely *extent* to which they are clones of each
other.

for a democracy, I would argue the credibility function is f(n) = n.
this has some nice consequences, each person has an equal weight (1)
... and whether or not a particular voter votes identically to another
voter has no impact at all on how much either of their opinions
influence the outcome...

however for this question, we aren't dealing with a pure democracy...
we're attempting to determine the truth of propositions given
individual predictors that are fallible in non-independent ways. in my
view, this justifies a credibility function that isn't f(n) = n

a jury is usually small enough that a credibility function of f(n) =
(n>0) is good... i.e. if two voters have the same exact opinions on
all propositions considered so far, they will each have a weight of
1/2. so, in effect, it does not matter how many individuals represent
a given belief set, the effective credibility will not be altered.

now we need to define the "expected number of clones" or c(m)... we
need a model for how clones work... i.e. how they agree or disagree
with each other and how likely different forms of error are given that
they really are clones. there is some variation regarding what c(m)
could be, but I don't suspect that it makes a huge amount of
difference provided that the expected number of clones function is
reasonable to begin with.

so yeah, that's what I am wondering about at the moment. Just as a
disclaimer, I'm very drunk right now, so that might be to blame if I
explain something badly or fail to articulate the idea I thought of in
a reaso

[EM] Multiwinner Election Algorithm

[Greg Nisbet]

Reweighted Range Voting http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html does not check every
possible combination of candidates. However there may be a way to determine
the optimal candidate quickly.

Set X and set Y are adjacent if it is possible to create one group by
changing a single candidate in the other. …in other words, all the members
are identical but one.

Set X is a local maximum if the utility of every adjacent set is less than
Set X’s utility.

The utility function is rather simple.


for each voter, the utility is ln(1+score_sum/max)

 with score_sum being the score they gave each candidate individually and
max being the maximum rating allowable for a single candidate.

This is taken from the D'hondt divisors 1+1/2+1/3..., but integrated rather
than summed.

presumably ln(1+2*score_sum/max) would work as well.


>From a few tests I’ve run, it seems as if there’s never more than one local
maximum. Naturally, this single local maximum would be the optimal candidate
set.

This suggests that a simple iterative procedure will determine the optimal
candidate set without examining all of them. (Perhaps using Reweighted Range
Voting or Naive Multiwinner Range as a starting point)

I, however, lack the expertise to prove whether it is possible for multiple
local maxima to occur. I was wondering if anyone could.

This method is called Proportional Range Voting due to its resemblance to
Proportional Approval Voting
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Proportional_approval_voting/

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[EM] Auction-type Iteration

[Greg Nisbet]

I think I should explain this a bit further and add more examples and
possible methods.

For the moment, just focus on the naive Overvote and DIE method Naive
Auction Range. I am not quite sure of the time complexity of this, but
two conditions would allow it to terminate its loop early:

1) if the result of the post-killing overvoters election is exactly
the same or if no overvotes are found --exceeding unlikely, but still
a good point  to mention.

To be perfectly honest, I haven't done much initial testing on this,
but I will have a program for it ready by about err some time
tomorrow, maybe. I am too tired to program *YAWN*

More on this issue:

as you can probably guess, many improvements can be made to overvote
and die. One of them I suggested was aallowing ballots to be reduced.
Another one is falling back to a different type of ballot. ONe decreed
to be a non-overvote. Like an SNTV ballot, an STV ballot, a CV ballot,
a PBV ballot etc.

This type of iteration (I think) achieves relatively good clone
immunity. Granted, it isn't perfect. However, the Reweighted Overvote
and Die method would allow this to some extent. You could probably do
one better by incorporating a cardinal type element in it That way, if
you overvote, you can drop candidates such that you are not overvoting
anymore. This could also be achieved by having multiple ballots. When
one ballot is deemed illegal due to overvoting, you would switch over
to the highest ranked working ballot. One could also allow some level
of overvote forgiveness... or one could make overvote elimination
probabilistic. In a later, more structured email, I will have about a
dozen or so variants.

Greg Nisbet
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated
in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A
recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains
26,911 words. – The Atlanta Journal

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[EM] Auctions

[Greg Nisbet]

Voting by auction-- morally repugnant but strategy free!

The simple, humble Clarke tax method does seem a bituh unfair to me.
There are various ways to remedy this problem like having it be based
on the log of your income or making it based on how much income you
have left as a means of judging how much you have contributed. There
is a near endless number of ways to tweak this in order to amount to
something useful.

Here is my question:

Let's say voters have this imaginary currency. It is a multiwinner
race and they can distribute as much as they want to each candidate.
Let's say you take the (relatively) extreme measure of determining the
winners according to (what essentially amounts to...) naive Range
voting. Now go back and eliminate any ballot that overvoted.. Or
instead of elimination for overvoting, you could use some other method
of reallocation, the point is simple:

The methods will be based on naive Range. You determine the first set
of winners this way. (You could conceivably use naive approval or
naive something else, but what is the point...) ; )

auction-type methods rely on weakening overvotes rather than the more
traditional elect one candidate and then punish the supporters.

As a starting point, let me explain what I mean by Naive Auction Range
before before proposing more complicated methods. Here is how it
works.

1) Voters fill out a range ballot. An ordinary Range ballot

2) The Naive Range winners are calculated.

3) you go back and eliminate any ballots that have voted more than
whatever the individual maximum score was (in this case 99)

4) go to 2

We can make an improvement to this: Naive Reweighted Auction Range

instead of eliminating overvoting ballots, change their weight such
that they are no longer overvoting.

You could make arule that once it gets to one tenth or some arbitrary
number it is no longer counted to prevent infinite loops.

You could also make an "eliinated" ballot simply become a Cumulative
Vote ballot instead.

To my knowledge, acution type iteration hasn't really been discussed.

Disclaimer: it is about 1 AM and I ate way too much candy. I also
didn't look very hard for previous mentions of a similar topic.

Greg Nisbet
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated
in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A
recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains
26,911 words. – The Atlanta Journal

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[EM] Will to Compromise

[Greg Nisbet]

Nondeterminism is a delightful way of skirting the
Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. All parties can be coaxed into exposing
their true opinions by resorting or the threat of resorting to chance.

I don't dispute that. The nondeterminsitc methods I have seen appear
to be designed to tease out a compromise because a majority cannot
throw its weight around.

The abilities of nondeterministic methods to generate compromises is
formidable, but since we speak of utility, I would like to point
something out.

1) Using Bayesian utility, randomness is worse than FPTP.

This is a pretty powerful indict, depending on how often the method
has to resort to random ballot.

2) False compromises are damaging

The reduced power of a majority means that at any choice with a
greater-than-random-ballot average utility is a "good compromise"
Notice how lousy the Bayesian utility of random ballot is and you
begin to see my point.

The fallback method produces crappy candidates.
People are encouraged to compromise for crappy candidates.

Also note that the method for determining the compromise is
majoritarian (to the extent that approval is) so the intermediate
compromise procedure is a red herring that produces some nasty
side-effects. The compromise is determined to be the most-supported
at-least-above-average candidate. How does this avoid the original
criticism of majoritarian methods?

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[EM] Nondeterminism in Multiwinner Methods

[Greg Nisbet]

For the record, I am against nondeterminism in single winner methods,
but that is another ball of wax that I want to keep separate.

Anyway, the single winner methods can be divided into a few basic types:

1) slow (these take O(candidates!) time. They are non-iterative)
2) fast (these rely on iterations. Usually a kind of elect and punish
cycle (think RRV or STV).)
3) party-based
4) nondeterministic (this includes your collusion-based methods (Asset
Voting) and random ones (e.g. random ballot))
5) naive (without making any changes, use a single winner method)
6) plurality-based (CV, Block vote, Preferential Block etc...)

(1)s tend to become unwieldy.
(2)s suffer bizarre paradoxes
(3)s require parties
(4)s produce lower quality winners on average
(5)s do not produce proportional results...
(6)s are kinda unimpressive

Just a bit of multiwinner voting theory: I suspect it would be
relatively uncontroversial to declare (1) to be best if execution time
weren't an issue. However, it is. What do you do about it?

There are various shortcuts to help a reasonable solution be found
quickly. You could resort to iteration, randomness, parties, or give
up.

Of course, various elements of these can be combined. It would be
possible to have a party-based method with various other methods
inside of it.

Nondeterministic elements do seem to be useful in the case of
multiwinner methods.

It is unlikely that a nondeterminstic solution would be perfect, of course.

However, I suspect that it can deliver at least some of the benefits
of group (1) without incurring factorial execution time.

Any thoughts on the matter?

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Re: [EM] Quotas

[Greg Nisbet]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 11:46 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Greg Nisbet wrote:
>>
>> You will be represented whether you like it or not...
>>
>> Some countries have women's quotas, racial quotas, geographical quotas
>> etc.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on these?
>>
>> I think it is generally a bad idea to impose this sort of requirement
>> on the people. Manipulation of the will of the people "for their own
>> good" isn't right. The government, however enlightened it considers
>> itself, should not subvert the will of the people. It is important
>> that the legislature be accountable and completely under the control
>> of the people.
>>
>> If electoral intervention bad is not a good enough argument... try this.
>>
>> Who decides which groups are worthy of representation and which are
>> excluded from protection?
>>
>> Wouldn't this procedure elect a suboptimal candidate? There is no
>> guarantee that the people's choice would be replaced by someone with
>> similar issues. This would prevent representation in cases where the
>> candidate mandated by the quota replaced a dissimilar candidate.
>>
>> Does this help or hinder actual social change?
>>
>> This is an important argument. It is not clear to me that women's
>> quotas make society less sexist, racial quotas less racist, or
>> geographical quotas less balkanized. Looking to the example of
>> geographical quotas that we have in the Untied States, it has fostered
>> regionalism, in fact. Pork barrel spending is at an all-time high and
>> congressmen bicker over policies based on which state they help or
>> hurt.
>
> I'll reply to this quickly as I'm about to leave this computer for a while.
> I think that such quotas may be of use in the short term, to get the system
> on the right track, but ideally, the election method should be based just on
> the voters. Thus it would be a way of jumping from a local optimum to a
> better local optimum, if you see it in system terms, or of incorporating
> groups so that they can lift themselves up afterwards. Of course, this
> relies on very powerful checks so that those who get superproportional voice
> don't decide they like it that way and stop the quota from being phased out
> later. Also, the maintainers would be sufficiently wise to know when to
> phase it out - not too early and not too late.

To what extent is this the right track if the voters are not doing it
themselves? If it requires so much good judgment on behalf of the
government to phase it in and phase it out correctly then is it really
right to trust them with this power. I mean even if the goals are
egalitarian and such does it actually catalyze representativeness and
is this actually useful. Look for instance at regional quotas for
Congress (not usually defined as such but that IS what they are), has
this made politics more inclusive... uh no... it has in fact divided
the country further. Notice, for instance, red state blue state
politics. It has at least preserved excessive regionalism and probably
exacerbated it. It would be much worse if politics between members of
different races, sexes, religions, income whatever became so
formalized.

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Re: [EM] Buying Votes

[Greg Nisbet]

n two possible worlds:

A-world and B-world

A-world is 10% more likely to occur, however they share remarkable similarities.

In both worlds >=45% of the people had no say whatsoever.

Now, you're reasoning apppears to stem from a simple observation...
"If A achieves one more vote, its chance of victory increases, hence
everyone has a say!"

That reasoning, while correct, leads to a flawed conclusion.

The average number of wasted votes or the people who, for a particular
election, had no impact on the election is HIGHER.

The only difference is that adding one more vote causes the
probability to increase. It isn't that any of the results are more
fair (A-world and B-world are still equally as good and bad,
respectively), it's just that the illusion of choice exists.

You simply changed the definition of majority from deterministic to
probabilistic.

This isn't an improvement.





>
>> I will expand this slightly.
>>
>> Democracy and individual rights are inconsistent.
>
> At least democracy is not inconsistent with the individual right to have
> equal power in decisions (this is what FAWRB proves). Rather, democracy is
> just *about* that particular individual right!

Let me explain please. Any non-consensus method enables a particular
group to victimized at the whim of a larger faction. FAWRB allows
this, it is simply probabilistic so the victims feel like they have a
shot.
>
>> Being from California, I am from the west and thus am guilty of
>> equating majority rule and democracy.
>
> Nobody saves you from erring even in the presence of better evidence which I
> won't repeat again :-)

OK... my counterevidence is near the top of this email.
>
>> By democracy I meant
>> non-dictatorship non-perfect-consensus.
>
> To me it makes no essential difference whether the dictator is one person or
> a group of persons. So, in principle, majoritarianism qualifies as
> dictatorship, too.

By that logic, anything that makes a decision is a dictatorship.
>
>> Democracy will only last until people realize they can just vote
>> themselves the money. Mutual distrust keeps them from realizing this.
>
> It is Majoritarianism what will only last that long. In many countries
> around the globe, majority populations *have* realized that they can just
> vote themselves the money of the rest. That's a main reason why so many
> minorities want to separate themselves from the respective majority, which
> they often can only be prevented from by using violence.

Would FAWRB stop this? FAWRB means an idea doesn't even have to be
popular; it can just be lucky.

Greg Nisbet

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[EM] Quotas

[Greg Nisbet]

You will be represented whether you like it or not...

Some countries have women's quotas, racial quotas, geographical quotas etc.

What are your thoughts on these?

I think it is generally a bad idea to impose this sort of requirement
on the people. Manipulation of the will of the people "for their own
good" isn't right. The government, however enlightened it considers
itself, should not subvert the will of the people. It is important
that the legislature be accountable and completely under the control
of the people.

If electoral intervention bad is not a good enough argument... try this.

Who decides which groups are worthy of representation and which are
excluded from protection?

Wouldn't this procedure elect a suboptimal candidate? There is no
guarantee that the people's choice would be replaced by someone with
similar issues. This would prevent representation in cases where the
candidate mandated by the quota replaced a dissimilar candidate.

Does this help or hinder actual social change?

This is an important argument. It is not clear to me that women's
quotas make society less sexist, racial quotas less racist, or
geographical quotas less balkanized. Looking to the example of
geographical quotas that we have in the Untied States, it has fostered
regionalism, in fact. Pork barrel spending is at an all-time high and
congressmen bicker over policies based on which state they help or
hurt.

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[EM] Vote Buying

[Greg Nisbet]

Good [insert correct time of day], Fred!

=I'll respond to your email now.

There were several points in your message that caught my attention but,
to avoid opening too many topics, I will only address one:

re: "This all comes down to the very nature of voting and
 democracy.

 As I have attempted to explain, voting is the exact opposite
 of individual rights ..."

=I think I attempted to explain that in You Can't Have it Both Ways.
Both Ways referred to individual liberty and democracy. Oh well. My
explanations are rarely clear, but it's something I'm working on.

I have not seen that sentiment expressed before.  It is worthy of
further comment:

=Glad you approve : )

The reason voting is the opposite of individual rights is that our
ability to participate in the political process is limited to approving
or disapproving choices made by others.  Nothing in our present practice
allows us to influence the selection of the people or issues for which
we vote.  That right is reserved to subsets of our society and denied to
the rest of us.  Thus, our political system is oligarchical, rather than
democratic, in nature.

=Good point. Mine was that shifting around the benefit and cost in a
democracy can lead quite easily to violation of private property etc.
E.g. I give the majority $1 and take $300 from the minority and
structure the policy this way. I proceed to pocket the difference made
by manipulating voters.

=You are correct that restrictive ballot access (I think that is what
this is.). You are correct that democracy does to some extent consist
of voters rubber stamping the decisions of some politicians. Whether
an issue is considered is far from democratic.

Voting under such circumstances violates our natural right to govern
ourselves.

=That is correct. Any arrangement of society sacrifices some
distortion. With democracy it is the pandering to a majority problem
and with inviolable property rights also leads to suboptimal outcomes.
I'd argue that democracy fails better because, assuming votes are
secret and unverifiable, relatively little abuse occurs. Under a
perfectly allodial society, an elite would gather strength and life
would suck. However, democracy at least provides a way out of whatever
torment it creates : ).

=Have a nice day,

=Greg Nisbet
=High school student with too much free time.

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Re: [EM] Buying Votes

[Greg Nisbet]

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Jobst Heitzig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear Greg,
>
> this was really an interesting posting...
>
> You wrote:
>>
>> As I have attempted to explain, voting is the exact opposite of
>> individual rights and consensus.
>
> I must admit I did not read everything you wrote in the last days, but this
> seems rather far-fetched to me.
>
> The most we could say is that many forms of voting (that is, *certain
> methods*) are *incompatible* with certain individual rights (in particular,
> the right to be able to influence decisions) and/or with consensus.
>
> However, as I tried to make clear again and again, there *are* methods in
> which every voter has some influence on the decision and in which some kind
> of consensus can be reached out of pure self-interest.
>
> Many problems vanish when we drop the misguided requirement of
> majoritarianism.

I'm not speaking about majoritarianism in this case, although you are
correct that it alleviates many of the problems. What I meant was
there is the potential for vote buying under any voting method where
voting is verifiable and non-unanimity can pass a policy.
>
>> All of you know what democracy does, but let me put it in the context
>> of commodification.
>
> Well, we certainly know what systems currently termed "democratic" by most
> people sometimes do. And I hope we also know what "democracy" *should* do:
> give each voter the same power to influence decisions and protect her from
> being overruled by any group of voters.

Right. Democracies assumes a given series of weights for all people's
decisions (usually 0 (children/felons/non-citizens) or 1 (people
eligible to vote)). And proceed to crunch the numbers.
They do this in a way distinct from absolute consensus.

>
>> In every reasonable voting method (remember democracy is distinct from
>> consensus), ...
>
> I can only remember what I believe to be true. This claim is not!

democracy is distinct from consensus? Of course it is! I can win under
any reasonable voting method by pleasing less-than-everyone. In some
methods this need only be a majority, in others it may not be a fixed
amount of support. There is no definitive number of people I must
please to win a Borda election, for instance, the actual number
depends on a wide range of other factors.
>
>> ... it is possible for me to gain power by pleasing some
>> subset of society (so long as that subset is sufficiently large).
>>
>> The people whom I must convince to support my decision can be
>> different than the ones who will bear its cost.
>
> This is mostly true for majoritarian methods, the majority being the group I
> must convince, the minority being the ones who will bear its cost. For
> non-majoritarian methods like FAWRB, this need not be true, since then the
> minority retains their fair share of the decision power and must thus be
> involved in the quest for a good compromise if that compromise is to be
> elected with certainty.

Again. The vote-buying criticism applies to all non-consensus methods.
You are correct that non-majoritarian stuff makes this slightly better
by removing belligerence of the majority. I attempted to explain in
You Can't Have it Both Ways that a voting system cannot and should not
be designed to protect rights... but I digress.

None of this has anything to do with a "fair share". ANY verifiable
non-consensus method will lead to this.

>
>> I'll call this the Separation of Recipients. Elections divorce benefit
>> and cost.
>
> Majoritarian elections, yes. Using FAWRB will make this much less likely.

I have never seen any method lauded so much for disobeying a criterion. ; )
>
>> Normally, I cannot buy something and defer the cost to
>> someone else without their consent.
>
> You're totally right. This is the best motivation for giving each voter the
> same voting power instead of giving some majority all of the power. Then the
> majority has something to "trade". In order to get my proposed option
> elected, I need their cooperation which I must "buy" by taking their
> preferences into account in my proposal.

I don't follow. If I reward a majority, then that does nothing to
prevent future majorities from forming. Majoritarianism isn't some
complete shift of power to whoever can muster 51%...
Every voter has the same capacity to influence the election. OMOV and
majority are not in conflict. No rules says that a majority method is
automatically non-OMOV.

I don't think that non-majoritarian methods are intrinsically better.

>
>> This is always present in any democratic society.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_paradox
>
> At the end of that article, some ways out of the "paradox" are mentioned.
> The second of these suggests to sign a "contract" to overcome the underlying
> prisoners' dilemma. In the voting context where secrecy is required, binding
> contracts can only be reached if they are somehow brokered by the method.
> This is effectively done in FAWRB by giving voters th

Re: [EM] Buying Votes

[Greg Nisbet]

It's more damaging. A precondition for this sort of behavior is
verifiability. If a politician knew who voted for him and could reward
them, then you would see more policies like that. It happens in real
life. Congressional voting records are public. If it weren't so,
lobbyists wouldn't try.

You are also correct. Individually I do not have to give up much in
order to get money. With everyone thinking this way, the policy would
probably pass.

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think the issue is that the probability of your voting mattering is low.
>
> Let's say there is a vote on the motion:
>
> "Take $50 from everyone and give it to X"
>
> Presumably, you wouldn't support that vote.
>
> Now, what if X offered you $20 to vote for it?  The odds of your vote
> mattering is very low  (esp if there are lots of voters), so you might
> as well take the $20.
>
> p = odds that your vote swings it
>
> Gain of to voting: p*$50 (i.e. your vote defeats the motion)
> Gain of selling your vote: $30
>
> The effect is that you will vote for a motion that isn't in your best 
> interests.
>
> This is why vote buying is much worse than a politician promising to
> do something if elected.
>
> Gain of supporting him: p*(benefit of his policy)
> Gain of not supporting him: -p*(cost of his policy)
>
> Thus both the gain and the loss are multiplied by p, so it doesn't
> favour one or the other.
>

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[EM] Buying Votes

[Greg Nisbet]

As I mentioned a thread ago, commodification of voting is dangerous.

In the coming message, I will explain the negative externalities
associated with this.

This all comes down to the very nature of voting and democracy.

As I have attempted to explain, voting is the exact opposite of
individual rights and concensus.

All of you know what democracy does, but let me put it in the context
of commodification.

In every reasonable voting method (remember democracy is distinct from
concensus), it is possible for me to gain power by pleasing some
subset of society (so long as that subset is sufficiently large).

The people whom I must convince to support my decision can be
different than the ones who will bear its cost.

I'll call this the Separation of Recipients. Elections divorce benefit
and cost. Normally, I cannot buy something and defer the cost to
someone else without their consent.

This is always present in any democratic society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_paradox

Majority rule and individual rights are inconsistent.

Let me explain why commodification of votes is particularly damning.

The entire system of democracy comes crashing down if some majority
votes itself into autocracy. Thankfully, people are bad at
cooperating. Unless votes are verifiable. Think about it, lobbying
exists because lobbyists can see how Congresspeople vote. Such blatant
absues do not occur at voter-level.

Vote verifiability and hence commodification make it possible for me
to trade someone else's well-being for my own. If I act selfishly, I
vote for whichever action brings me the slightest increase in my
well-being whatever the cost to some external party so long as I can
be compensated for the difficulty of voting and loss of the old
winner. I will vote my pocketbook.

This is not to say that democracy is bad.

It is unstable and inefficient, but also peaceful, prosperous,
utilitarian, and the champion of human rights. It will continue to
work so long as voters can cheat their solicitors.

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[EM] Utopian Parliament

[Greg Nisbet]

What is the best design for a legislature?

Parliaments come in several flavors:
1. districted single winner contests
2. party-based systems
3. mutlwinner methods
4. delegation

My friend and I were debating Largest Rem + Referendum (2) vs Delegation (4).

My argument was essentially this:

LRRef creates two entities: parliament and the public

I argued that this division of labor benefits society. Parliament
would represent society arbitrarily well. Assembling all of parliament
is trivial. Largest Rem avoids the disadvantage of the long tail of
Delegation parliament and putting legislation on the ballot allows
LRRef to access the complete representation that Delegation advocates
claim. Perhaps there is something to be said for eliminating the
distinction between the rulers and the ruled, but I'd say that the
danger of the commodification of voting is more dangerous.

So yeah, if there is some design for a legislature you consider
superior to all others, do not hesitate to list it.

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[EM] Fwd: Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 5:04 PM
Subject: Re: Making a Bad Thing Worse
To: Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:34 PM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> =Potential competition is also relevant. Primaries are unlikely to put
>> forward unpopular candidates if a popular loser could potentially
>> shoot them in the foot. This would give primaries more incentive to
>> pick someone favorable to the entire electorate, rather than the
>> faction that chose to participate in their primary.
>
> Well there is some tactics involved.  However, the person who receives
> the party's nomination has a massive advantage.  There is a large
> number of voters who will vote based purely on the party nomination.
> Thus, in order not to split the votes, the rest of the party's
> supporters would need to vote for that candidate too.

Do we at least agree that the primary system will be weakened? My
point is that primary winners will tend to be more popular. If the
winner was too centrist, another individual would bypass the primary
and start campaigning like crazy for the voters for whom the centrist
candidate was unsatisfactory. On the either hand, if the primary
winner was too extremist, significant portions of the party would be
alienated, thus allowing a different candidate to scoop up supporters.
Either way, the equilbrium in the primary system would be shifted
towards candidates with greater popular support.
>
>> =How do the parties nominate individuals in the UK?
>
> It is decided by the central/national party leadership and there is
> some consultation with the local party members.

I see... no primaries at all...

>
>> =Why can't a represent myself with an IRV ballot? It isn't a big
>> stretch of the imagination for me to delegate my vote to a program,
>> essentially. Or should I be limited to casting a vote for someone who
>> can actually win the election?
>
> You could probably vote for someone who has declared how they intend
> to transfer.

That is a bit inconvenient, why can't I transfer it to an IRV ballot?
Also, am I allowed to do this or do I have to vote for a person?
>
> The idea with Asset is that you are delegating to someone who has a
> mind, rather than a set of rules.
>
Right. I can if I want to.

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[EM] Maintenance Elections

[Greg Nisbet]

Maintenance election is a neologism for elections outside of the
normal cycle used to fill vacancies

This came up as a possible use for the Electoral College in Making a
Bad Thing Worse.

This thus begs the question:
How do you deal with vacancies in the legislature due to death,
illness, conviction, resignation etc. ?
Do you do anything at all, or just have a legislation minus one person.

Thus I pose two questions:

How are maintenance elections dealt with in your country?

How should vacancies be filled, if at all?

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[EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:44 AM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ah. A candidate would run if they were legally allowed to. A candidate
> who isn't a diehard loyalist to his party probably wouldn't see much
> point in stepping down graciously and letting the winner of the
> primary slide into spot 1.5th place.

However, without the party logo beside his name, he will lose (unless
he is exceptional in some way).  Candidates won't bother to run if
they are certain to lose and party supporters won't vote for a
non-party member unless there is a really good reason to.

=Potential competition is also relevant. Primaries are unlikely to put
forward unpopular candidates if a popular loser could potentially
shoot them in the foot. This would give primaries more incentive to
pick someone favorable to the entire electorate, rather than the
faction that chose to participate in their primary.

Ballot access is pretty open in the UK, and you don't see lots of
former party members running.

=How do the parties nominate individuals in the UK?

> anyway, this isn't quite as powerful as pure asset voting. It is like
> contingent vote vs IRV.

You are right, but it isn't like a ranked ballot.  The negotiations
happen at the party level after the number of seats per party are
known.

Under IRV, the transfers happen based on ballot changes.

> I am most near to myself. By any sensible definition, my distance from
> myself is always zero. I know exactly what I want, why can't I be my
> own elector instead of delegating the tasks to people wih increasingly
> vaguer connections to me?
>

So, vote for yourself.  The problem with doing that is that then you
have to make a trip to the State capital to participate in the
negotiations.

=Why can't a represent myself with an IRV ballot? It isn't a big
stretch of the imagination for me to delegate my vote to a program,
essentially. Or should I be limited to casting a vote for someone who
can actually win the election?

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Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Because they cannot even run otherwise. I know it isn't the same as a
>> gun to your head, but it wouldn't even occur if they didn't have an
>> artificial monopoly on power.
>
> Do you consider making them legally compulsory (sore loser laws) and
> practically compulsory (via plurality) to be the same thing.

No. I think that primaries would be less important if they were not
legally compulsory. I think they would be used less frequently
>
> When you say making them voluntary, you meant by changing the voting system?

Not necessarily. By eliminating dumb ballot access and sore-loser
laws. What incentive would candidates have to participate in
primaries? If they did it for press coverage alone you might have more
than two primaries that compete for candidates or something.
>
>> There would be more competition at least.
>
> Why?  There would still only be one per major party.

The set of candidates who have a reasonable shot at winning but would
probably lose a primary under the dem or repub system would probably
make their own primary as a way of generating attention.
>
>>> I think you underestimate the value of having a major party nomination
>>> in FPTP.  No matter how it works, the nomination of one of the two
>>> major parties is almost essential to winning.  The only people who
>>> might be able to get around it are previous winners/incumbents.
>>
>> I think you underestimate the ego of candidates. They probably would
>> run if they could.
>
> I think you need to define 'could' in this case.
>
> I mean legally allowed, but you seem to mean practically allowed.

Ah. A candidate would run if they were legally allowed to. A candidate
who isn't a diehard loyalist to his party probably wouldn't see much
point in stepping down graciously and letting the winner of the
primary slide into spot 1.5th place.

>
>> There's the anti-faithless elector law... but that isn't a transfer.
>> It's an insincere vote. You only get one shot at making your vote if
>> you are an elector. That makes it far inferior to even single winner
>> asset voting.
>
> I mean that the process would be

Ok... but you only get one shot. It has a potential to transfer once.
At best that makes it contingent vote.
>
> - Some Green Party members are elected as Electors
> - Greens Electors have balance of power
> - Greens + Republicans make a deal
> - Greens tell their electors to vote Republican
> - Green electors do as 'recommended' by their party leadership

perhaps this belongs on the asset voting thread.

anyway, this isn't quite as powerful as pure asset voting. It is like
contingent vote vs IRV.

cross-apply my asset voting arguments here.
>
>
>> No, it makes strategy the norm.
>
> Not for the voters, you just pick someone who you agree with and is
> good at negotiating.

the good at negotiating part is strategy, it does not matter if you
delegate it. Somewhere along the process strategic voting becomes
vastly more common. It has simply become so normal, so fundamental to
the system that not much is thought of it.
>
>> That would arguably make it easier, in fact incredibly simple, to vote
>> strategically, but do you actually want that to happen?
>
> The ideal voting system is one where you just tell it what you want
> and it picks the highest utility (or honest condorcet winner) and that
> there is no strategic incentive to lie.

They don't exist, sadly.
>
> This isn't possible to do except by a random method.
Yep.
>
>> Trusting voters is part of democracy. Why force them to trust candidates 
>> more?
>
> Well, the more electors that there are, the 'nearer' you can be to the
> elector and thus the more likely you can find someone who is
> trustworthy.

I am most near to myself. By any sensible definition, my distance from
myself is always zero. I know exactly what I want, why can't I be my
own elector instead of delegating the tasks to people wih increasingly
vaguer connections to me?

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Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 52, Issue 63

[Greg Nisbet]

Hello Michael,

Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:28:43 -0400
From: Michael Allan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [EM] You Can't Have it Both Ways - the Voters Can
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Hello Greg,

(I already agree with your arguments.  I'm rolling them at another
question.)

Greg Nisbet wrote:
> As a brief overview, I was more criticizing the motives of people than
> suggesting a particular plan. Any plan that some person touts changing
> society in manner X shouldn't really be trusted.

(Blind trust is naive, but blind dismissal is imprudent.  The best we
can do is rational discussion and critique.)  Your critique of motives
for electoral reform had this point:

=I think my dismissal is warranted. I trust society to represent its
own interests more than some external source would. I am not saying
dismiss every method that does so, but count involuntary changes to
society against it.

> > > To what extent is it legitimate to design an electoral method to
> > > change voter behavior/opinions rather than respond to it?

I'm replying with the counterpoint that this criterion of legitimacy
is recursive.  It applies equally to the design and implementation of
the electoral method itself.  So I ask:

 To what extent is an electoral method legitimate if it is not the
 choice of the electors?

=Good point. I'm not a dictator however. I want electoral methods
publicized so the public can make an informed decision. It is pretty
clear they are ignorant about it now. I don't think anyone here would
want to take the enlightened despot stance and just force a method on
the public through lobbying or something.

We think we know best, and we may be right; but that's beside the
point.

> >  1. What reform can free the electors of external manipulation?
>
> 1. Pretty much all of the methods that people advocate here would do the
> trick. Various Condorcet Methods, Range Voting, IRNR etc. The actual method
> itself isn't that big an issue. As I mentioned in "Making a Bad Thing
> Worse", the main problem here is how we decide who is most deserving of
> votes or what restrictions to place on them. I'd say that as long as the
> voting system is reasonably independent of clones and everyone's vote is
> counted equally, the specifc electoral method is of little consequence. What
> is of consequence is the myriad laws that accompany it, none of them
> improving voters' ability to influence their government. The "Making a Bad
> Thing Worse" discussion mentions some of the things that damage this. For
> the United States, at least, getting rid of these silly laws would go a long
> way toward the deregulation of politics.

We could expand the general argument to questions of law (What is the
legitimacy of a law without popular assent?), or of norms in general,
or decisions in general (c, below).

For now, I'd just expand my counterpoint slightly, so it also covers
the assemblies (legislatures and councils) where laws and bylaws are
voted, as well as the electoral systems (primary and general) where
the officials are voted.  So:

 To what extent is a voting system legitimate if it is not the choice
 of the voters?

> >  2. Through what plan of action can we implement the reform?
>
> 2. I'm not entirely sure. I'd really have to think about it. I'd say
> that http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ is a pretty good idea.

(A lobby.)

> >  3. In the act of implementing the reform, what assurance do we have
> > that we ourselves are not manipulating the electors?
>
> 3. I'd say that the methods here for the large part don't do this. Most of
> the arguments here are about which method represents the voters the best,
> not which changes society in way X. I'd say as long as it doesn't lead to 2
> party domination, is independent of clones, and allows reasonable voter
> expressiveness, it won't lead to government manipulation of politics.

You see my point, however.  The technical merits of a solution are not
the criteria of legitimacy.  The perfect voting system (the best for
the voters) is *wrong* if the voters themselves do not approve it;
while the worst possible system (allows all sorts of abuse, and does
harm to the voters) is *right* if they approve it.  The only criterion
that matters is their approval.  It's their system.

=How do you know whether the voters approve of it if they are using a
voting system like FPTP. You can see the bind you are in. If voters,
using system X, appear to disapprove of system X, how do you deal with
that? I suppose you could offer them binary decisions until something
sticks. All reasonable 2-candidate electoral methods are exactly the
same.

=You make some very goo

Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 11:52 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 7:32 PM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Well, it depends on how popular the candidate is.  There would be some
>>> candidates who can disregard primary results and some who can't.  It
>>> only works for very popular candidates.  A reasonable number of
>>> candidates wouldn't be able to pull it off.
>>
>> Just because they can't pull it off won't stop them from trying. I
>> think the only reason candidate accept the results of primaries is
>> because they are forced to. The obstacles facing an independent
>> candidate are formidable. They aren't prevented from running for want
>> of trying.
>
> Right, but there is a difference between being prevented due to
> logistical problems and it being illegal.
>
>> What I am saying is, without legal force, primaries would be very
>> different. I was trying to say that my earlier criticism of primaries
>> does not apply to this because it candidates are not coerced into
>> participating in the primary.
>
> Candidates aren't coerced into participating in the primaries, they do
> it because the want the party nomination.

Because they cannot even run otherwise. I know it isn't the same as a
gun to your head, but it wouldn't even occur if they didn't have an
artificial monopoly on power.
>
> If the parties ran their own private primaries, then they candidates
> would still have to participate if they want the nomination.

There would be more competition at least.
>
>> They can run without participating at
>> all in the world absent the add-ons to FPTP.
>
> I think you underestimate the value of having a major party nomination
> in FPTP.  No matter how it works, the nomination of one of the two
> major parties is almost essential to winning.  The only people who
> might be able to get around it are previous winners/incumbents.

I think you underestimate the ego of candidates. They probably would
run if they could.
>
>> I said this because I don't see it accomplishing anything. First of
>> all the current system does not allow transfers, so that is pretty
>> much out of the question. Second I don't think it's going to give so
>> much power to people who weren't elected by name in the first place.
>
> It does allow transfers.  If you were elected as an Elector for the
> Green party, you are perfectly allowed to vote for the Republican
> candidate and can accept instructions based on the outcome of the
> Green-Republican negotiations.  Ofc, in some states, that would be
> illegal.

There's the anti-faithless elector law... but that isn't a transfer.
It's an insincere vote. You only get one shot at making your vote if
you are an elector. That makes it far inferior to even single winner
asset voting.
>
>> I'm not sure that any modfication to asset voting is sufficient to
>> solve your problem. I think the faults that plague IRV plague Asset
>> Voting as well (albeit to a lesser extent because of the restrictions
>> placed on who you can vote for).
>
> Some of the benefits are that the votes are transferred based on
> intelligence/tactics, this makes it potentially more resistant to
> strategy.

No, it makes strategy the norm.
>
> Think of it like declared strategy voting, except you pick a person to
> implement your strategy.

That would arguably make it easier, in fact incredibly simple, to vote
strategically, but do you actually want that to happen?
>
>> Compared to FPTP, it is about as expressive except you haven't a clue
>> how your vote will transfer in the future.
>
> If you vote for one of the expected top-2, you would probably be sure
> that he would keep your vote.

Which would ruin the point of asset-voting to begin with.
>
> Trusting elected officials is part of representative democracy.

Trusting voters is part of democracy. Why force them to trust candidates more?

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Re: [EM] Asset Voting

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:40 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Iterative systems are based on "conditional" votes, meaning their
>> relative values change with regard to what has "happened". For
>> example, your vote shifting to a less preferred candidate in IRV is a
>> result of a more preferred candidate being permanently excluded from
>> victory.
>>
>> The consequences of this are dire.
>
> No candidate is permanently excluded in standard Asset.  However, some
> variants (the more transparent ones) do emulate a PR-STV like
> elimination scheme.

This is true. I do not think, however, that it dodges the criticism
because of this. A conditional ballot is simply in response to some
change. Under asset, that simply consists of transferring the votes
however the candidate wishes.
>
>> Let's put this in perspective.
>>
>> Asset Voting is equivalent to STV with one large difference: only
>> O(candidates) ballots are possible as opposed to O(candidates!) with
>> STV.
>
> The trick with Asset is that there should be more candidates.  The
> idea is to find a candidate who has the same viewpoint as you.  The
> lack of expressiveness is offset by a greater number of candidate
> choices.

Interesting point...

Will there be factorial as many candidates?

Since the voters have less power now, is it better to switch power
over to the candidates?

>
> Under asset, there are 2 types of candidates, the only who want to be
> elected, and the ones who only intend to be electors.

If that is the case, then under STV every voter is an elector. There
are still more "electors" in STV than in Asset.
>
> In fact, you could have a situation where people who stand in the
> election are prohibited to be nominated.
>
>> Even worse, these are not even revealed on the ballot. The voter
>> gets no control over reallocation, the candidates are not bound to
>> anything. I argue that restricting the domain of expression is not the
>> best way to go about representing the will of the voters. Voters
>> should be allowed to pick and choose among the candidates at will.
>
> I think a hybrid PR-STV/Asset system would be superior to pure Asset.
>
> In this the voters can rank their choices, but also name a candidate
> who will handle their exhausted ballots.
>
That sounds interesting.

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Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:30 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 6:55 AM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> My thoughts on primaries were challenged. Let me explain:
>>
>> Primaries may be the rational response to FPTP. It doesn't matter.
>> Without Draconian sore loser, candidate oppression laws the parties
>> would have no way of stopping popular primary rejects from running.
>
> Well, it depends on how popular the candidate is.  There would be some
> candidates who can disregard primary results and some who can't.  It
> only works for very popular candidates.  A reasonable number of
> candidates wouldn't be able to pull it off.

Just because they can't pull it off won't stop them from trying. I
think the only reason candidate accept the results of primaries is
because they are forced to. The obstacles facing an independent
candidate are formidable. They aren't prevented from running for want
of trying.

>
> You have to convince all the supporters of the party that you are the
> one who is going to win and not the one with your (old) party's label.
>  You also have to convince them that setting aside the primary
> (democratic) result is acceptable and also deflect accusation that you
> will end up splitting the vote.
>
> If 80% of candidates have to accept primary results, then they serve
> some function.
>
>> At the point where they are
>> strictly voluntary vote pooling agreements, I argue they break so much
>> continuity with the current system as not to be regarded as the same
>> thing.
>
> You mean, it would be a completely different system?  I am not sure it
> would be that much different if they were voluntary ... except that
> they possibly wouldn't happen.

What I am saying is, without legal force, primaries would be very
different. I was trying to say that my earlier criticism of primaries
does not apply to this because it candidates are not coerced into
participating in the primary. They can run without participating at
all in the world absent the add-ons to FPTP.
>
>> The Electoral College:
>>
>> Asset voting as a single winner voting
>> method makes no sense.
>
> Sure it does, think of it like IRV but with intelligent vote
> transfers.  This helps solve some of the defects.

I said this because I don't see it accomplishing anything. First of
all the current system does not allow transfers, so that is pretty
much out of the question. Second I don't think it's going to give so
much power to people who weren't elected by name in the first place.
>
> I am not entirely in favour of asset voting in this case, but it isn't
> completely unreasonable.
>
> My problem is that there are conflicts of interest.  For example,
> let's say there are 3 candidates and the supporters have utilities of:
>
> 45: A(100)>B(70)>C(0)
> 10: B>A=C
> 45: C(100)>B(70)>A(0)
>
> B is the condorcet winner.
>
> Both A's and C's supporters would rather have B elected than a 50%
> chance of their favourite being elected (70 utility vs (50/50 chance
> between 100 and 0) ).
>
> However, since the electors are likely to be much more partisan, the
> makeup of the electors is likely to be something like
>
> 45: A(100)>B(10)>C(0)
> 10: B>A=C
> 45: C(100)>B(10)>A(0)
>
> In this instance, both A's and C's electors would be willing to hold
> out.  The end result is that B's supporters must pick one or other of
> them.
>
> One possible tactic for B's supporters would be to flick a coin in
> public and say that they will 100% support the winner of the coin
> toss, unless the loser agrees to support B.
>
> Ofc, that can be countered by A and C committing to their candidate
> publicly too.  Who would break first :p.
>

That is one of the many problems I have with asset voting. In the
single winner case its faults are more obvious.

I'm not sure that any modfication to asset voting is sufficient to
solve your problem. I think the faults that plague IRV plague Asset
Voting as well (albeit to a lesser extent because of the restrictions
placed on who you can vote for).

>> First of all, this violates unrestricted domain. Voters
>> should not have arbitrary limits placed on what they are able to vote
>> for.
>
> What limits?  Surely, the same applies to Congress, you are picking a
> group of people to act on your behalf.

That is correct. I was comparing single winner asset voting to a
competitor like IRV or some Condorcet method. It is definitely more
restrictive than either IRV or Condorcet.

Compared to FPTP, it is about as expressive except you haven't a clue
how your vote w

[EM] Range vs Condorcet

[Greg Nisbet]

The stalemate continues. In the meantime here is a pro-range argument.

I'm not going to bother to quote ones from CRV. Those have probably
all been discussed ad infinitum.

Impacts of strategic voting:

Ballot compression is less worrisome than offensive order reversal.
There scenarios under which reversing Range Voting pseudopreferences
is strategic are few and far between. This could conceivably occur if
two sets of clones are competing, you don't know who is winning but
you prefer one member of each set to the other member of that set. In
that rare case, it may well be worth your while. This is hardly normal
behvaior of the system though so let me suffice it to say that for the
most part the direction of the comparisons on a Range ballot are
sincere. This means that the information transmitted by strategic
range voters might be more vague but is rarely dishonest. Next, this
will only occur if voters have a strong X is much better than all
non-X mentality. If they do have such a mentality it is probably not
best that they be forced to compromise. Condorcet method strategizing,
I would argue, is more destructive. The closest thing to backfiring
under normal Range scenarios is losing the opportunity to pick between
the other candidates. In Condorcet backfiring is more catastrophic as
fodder candidates used to bury a popular rival can be elected directly
by your vote. The distinction is important because in Condorcet your
vote is more likely to actually cause harm if strategic voting is
attempted as opposed to merely forfeiting one's opportunity to select
among rival candidates.

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[EM] Voting Theory and Populism

[Greg Nisbet]

I question what the behavior of AT2R has to do with the original
topic, but here's my two cents.

With regards to clones:

8 A
7 B
6 C


 The A vs B faceoff is correct. Moving on...

8 A
8 A*
7 B
6 C

A vs A* faceoff is also correct here is why.

What you accuse of being clone-positivity is in fact clone-neutrality.

You cloned the best candidate in the election. How is it unreasonable
that it should face off against itself? For one of the A's (which
one?) to be kicked off, the method would have to be clone negative.

The Half Reweight on the surface might appear to be a reasonable idea
to correct this, but I think that it creates more problems than it
solves. It means that voters can shoot themselves in the foot by
voting for a popular candidate. This effectively means that voters
must decide between voting for a candidate that is likely to win thus
hindering their chances for getting a second place candidate nominated
or if they don't approve them, someone worse may win. I'd argue that
the Half Reweight causes more dilemmas than it fixes.

I'd say that regular approval voting is better than approval runoff or IAR.

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[EM] Voting Requirements

[Greg Nisbet]

Breaking a bit with voting methods, I would like to bring up another
issue regarding one's ability to influence politics: suffrage.

As the only one here not legally qualified to vote, I must express
dissatisfaction with the status quo.

There were several historical requirements for being able to vote:

1. Citizenship
2. Residency
3. Age
4. Criminal Record
5. Sex
6. Race
7. Class (arbitrary non-race inherited characteristics)
8. Wealth

Half of these requirements are gone, only the first four remain.

I disagree with 3 and 4 (and to a lesser extent 1 and 2).

Here is why:

A felony is simply a 'serious' crime. Who defines serious? What stops
the government from making dissent a felony and disenfranchising
political opponents? If that is too extreme, how do we know the
government's definition of a felony is reasonable? There is no
external judge and the penalty is inability to influence the system.
Hence those affected by the system really cannot contest it. In
addition the laws vary by state creating weird discrepancies.

Preventing children from voting is IMHO wrong. My argument is simply
going to be one of paternalism because I am quite fond of making
anti-paternalism arguments. Very few people would argue that 5-8
should be reinstated. Yet 8 might arguably lead to 'better' results.
Wealthier people tend to be more educated and if you have educated
people making decisions you end up with 'better' decisions. Most
people would reject this argument on the grounds of civil rights. Let
me put this in perspective. By extending the right to vote to all
adults, anyone who does not support some sort of education requirement
for voting is conceding that it is not justifiable to disenfranchise
on the grounds that you will pollute the ballot pool due to ignorance.
I say it simply doesn't make sense that children can be compelled by
the government to do various things yet there is no check on its
power. We are smart enough to commit crimes, but stupid enough to
endanger the already threadbare fabric of American democracy.

1 and 2 are slightly less serious, but I think their role should be changed.

I say let noncitizens vote in local elections. They live there and pay
their taxes, I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to vote on
matters concerning their community. At higher levels, I would argue
that the government needs to protect itself from outside interests
messing with its politics. So it's more of a national security
argument than anything else. Still, America is far too stingy with
citizenship. It ought to be kinder to resident aliens. They mean us no
harm; they are only trying to make a living. Ius Solis places strong
restrictions on those without the privelidge of being born here.

This issue is relatively important. Maybe not quite so much as getting
FPTP removed, but still pretty high up there.
What are your thoughts on disenfranchisement and the like?

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[EM] IRNR question

[Greg Nisbet]

Would Brian's IRNR benefit from an addditional level of recursion?

The current way to eject candidates is to compare range scores, what
if you modify that slightly?

Instead of kicking out the person with the lowest range score you
replace that with:

Kick out the person with the highest range score, shift the ratings
and do the same thing again. You are left with one candidate.

Kick this candidate out from the main system and repeat the above step.

Just as a broader question, do methods such as IRV, Nanson, Baldwin,
IRNR generally perform better or worse as additional levels of
recursion are added?

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[EM] Asset Voting

[Greg Nisbet]

Is asset voting a good thing? Let's review.

The CRV supports it on the basis of obeying all sorts of wonderful properties.

http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/multisurv.pdf

My intitial response to this is that Asset Voting is only able to
achieve such compliance through poverty of expression.

Asset Voting is no more expressive than SNTV.

Iterative systems are based on "conditional" votes, meaning their
relative values change with regard to what has "happened". For
example, your vote shifting to a less preferred candidate in IRV is a
result of a more preferred candidate being permanently excluded from
victory.

The consequences of this are dire. Let's put this in perspective.

Asset Voting is equivalent to STV with one large difference: only
O(candidates) ballots are possible as opposed to O(candidates!) with
STV. Even worse, these are not even revealed on the ballot. The voter
gets no control over reallocation, the candidates are not bound to
anything. I argue that restricting the domain of expression is not the
best way to go about representing the will of the voters. Voters
should be allowed to pick and choose among the candidates at will.

I looked through the arguments made in favor of asset voting and their
does not appear to be one concerning this point.

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[EM] Multiwinner Methods Request

[Greg Nisbet]

So far the following multiwinner methods have been suggested or I know of:

CPOSTV

Schulze STV

QBS (this is what I meant by Proportional Borda, sorry!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quota_Borda_system

QanythingS (look at the description of QBS, it effectively allows a
black box single winner method to be used in place of Borda Count).

Naive Adaptations -- you can do this with just about anything. Not
proportional at all but enh.

STV various ballot transfer rules

IRNRSTV (**)

BordaSTV (**)

Sainte-Lague (and the 1.4 divisor variant)

Largest Rem (various quotas)

D'hondt

All party-flavored methods can be made with open/closed/free lists too
so its great.

SNTV

Limited vote

Block vote

Preferential Block

RRV

PAV

PRV

Cumulative vote

Districted crap

MMP (combination of districted crap and some party alloc.)

Asset Voting (*)

Forest Simmons' methods:
http://www.rangevoting.org/cgi-bin/DoPassword.cgi (I'll include a copy
of the page at the bottom if you don't feel like joining CRV)

===

I do need some single winner methods as well to test for QanythingS,
districted crap, and naive crap. I'm not suggesting all [insert large
number] that we have ever discussed. FPTP and Range make the list.
Schulze too. Any other suggestions? (I'd like to limit it to about ten
if that's OK).

===



Puzzle #15 (open �C multiwinner EP & PR voting systems):
Puzzle statement: The goal of a "multiwinner voting system" is to,
from the "votes," determine W winners from C candidates where 0http://rangevoting.org/PuzzlePage.html Warren D. Smith
had posed the open problem of whether there could be a multiwinner
voting method which both

enjoyed provable "proportionality"
was "countable in precincts" which only had to pass on "subtotals" to
central tabulation, i.e. a much smaller amount of info than passing
along all ballots.
There had been methods (like Hare/Droop reweighted STV, and reweighted
range voting RRV) satisfying #1, and there also were methods (like
multiwinner plurality voting) satisfying #2, but nothing satisfying
both.

Well, Forest Simmons in a rather hard-to-decipher email to me solving
my puzzle 15 (but I did decipher it!) invented a new class of methods
which enjoy both properties at the same time. Hot. And furthermore,
they, at least at first glance, look damn good. I will describe two
Simmons methods below. The first is an analogue of STV and is based on
rank-order ballots. It looks at least at first glance to be better
than STV. The other is an analogue of reweighted-range-voting and is
based on range-type ballots. It looks at first glance to be better
than RRV. One can then also make plenty of other Simmons-type methods
once one sees his basic ideas.

SIMMONS-BORDA METHOD:

**Voters:**
1. Let there be C candidates and V voters.
2. Each voter submits a strict-rank-order ballot ranking all C
candidates in order.
**Precincts:**
3. Reinterpret each ballot as a C-vector of the Borda score
it implies for each candidate K in entry K.
That is, if the ballot ranks the Kth candidate Rth, then
entry K of the vector is C-R.
4. For each candidate X:
vector-sum all the ballots that rank X top, and let the
resulting sum-vector be the Xth row of a CxC matrix M.
5. Transmit the matrix M to central tabulation. This is CxC
no matter how many voters there are in that precinct.
**Central tabulation:**
6. Sum all the matries M you receive from all precincts, to get
a summed-matrix S.
7. Reinterpret each C-vector row of S as a rank-order ballot
(ordering the candidates in order of decreasing vectr-entry)
but a WEIGHTED rank order ballot.  That is, each such ballot
not only gives a rank-ordering of the C candidates, but
also comes with a real number weight.  (The weight is the largest
entry in the vector.)
8. So we now have (in the view of central tabulation) C weighted
rank order ballots, in a C-candidate election. Use a PR-STV
method to handle this election. (Note: PR-STV methods can
accept weighted ballots not just ballots. They reweight as they
proceed.) It now computes and announces the winners as usual.

SIMMONS-RANGE METHOD:

**Voters:**
1. Let there be C candidates and V voters.
2. Each voter submits a range-type C-vector ballot scoring all C
candidates within some fixed allowable score range such as [0,99].
**Precincts:**
3. For each candidate X:
Let the Xth row of a matrix M be the sum, over all ballots
which rank X top or co-equal top, of
  BallotVector / (# of coequal-topranked candidates in that ballot)
Also keep track, for each row of M, of its "weight" which is the sum
over all ballots used to make that row, of
  1 / (# of coequal-topranked candidates in that ballot).
4. Transmit the matrix M and th row weights to central tabulation. This is a
CxC matrix and a C-vector of weights no matter how many voters there
are in that
precinct.
**Central tabulation:**
5. Sum all the matries M you receive from all precincts, to get
a summed-matrix S.
6. Reinterpre

[EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

My thoughts on primaries were challenged. Let me explain:

Primaries may be the rational response to FPTP. It doesn't matter.
Without Draconian sore loser, candidate oppression laws the parties
would have no way of stopping popular primary rejects from running.
These laws make primaries what they are. Primaries with legal force
are bad. Voluntary primaries are not. At the point where they are
strictly voluntary vote pooling agreements, I argue they break so much
continuity with the current system as not to be regarded as the same
thing.

The Electoral College:

This is generally regarded as a bad thing. No one really appears to
support it except as an adhoc version of asset voting. Let me explain
why this is bad/undesirable. Asset voting as a single winner voting
method makes no sense. My point is simple here: all the deliberation
in the world is a crappy replacement for an expressive ballot in the
first place! First of all, this violates unrestricted domain. Voters
should not have arbitrary limits placed on what they are able to vote
for. Unrestricted domain is a key feature of democracy. Also do people
really vote for electors by name or even know who the electors are.
The average person is simply voting for some anonymous entity defined
only by the behavior it is supposed to perform. At the point where
this is case and it is simpler to vote on the matter at hand than form
another bureaucracy to do the task, do not use the bureaucracy.

The Senate:

The United States' heritage as a federation has no impact whatsoever
on the legitimacy of bending the will of the people. See You Can't
Have it Both Ways.

The House:

Yeah! We all pretty much agree. Gerrymandering does as much as
anything to ruin America. Some gerrymandering is better than others.
I'd say localized gerrymandering is far superior to national level
gerrymandering. At least it isn't creating undeserved majorities in
one direction alone.

Two Parties:

I think we pretty much agree that the Democrats and Republicans
actively prevent competition through silly laws and their perpetual
monopoly on power. I say monopoly because they are both relatively
centrist. At least that is the impression I get.

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[EM] Condorcet//Approval

[Greg Nisbet]

I just had an idea for a combination of these methods.
There is still an approval portion and a ranked portion and a pairwise
matrix is still generated, this is followed by an RP procedure, but
with the following difference:
the priority of X vs Y is either
X.wv+X.approval_score-Y.approval_score or just X.wv+X.approval_score
(I haven't decided yet)

Then just RP this. Use the absolute approval scores as a tiebreaker.

I'll use the example from Rob LeGrand's calculator.
http://userfs.cec.wustl.edu/~rhl1/rbvote/calc.html
98:   Abby > Cora | Erin > Dave > Brad
64:  Brad > Abby | Erin > Cora > Dave
12:  Brad | Abby > Erin > Dave > Cora
98:  Brad > Erin | Abby > Cora > Dave
13:  Brad > Erin > Abby | Dave > Cora
125: Brad | Erin > Dave > Abby > Cora
124: Cora | Abby > Erin > Dave > Brad
76:  Cora > Erin | Abby > Dave > Brad
21:  Dave > Abby | Brad > Erin > Cora
30:  Dave | Brad > Abby > Erin > Cora
98:  Dave | Brad > Erin > Cora > Abby
139: Dave > Cora | Abby > Brad > Erin
23:  Dave > Cora | Brad > Abby > Erin

Approval Scores:

Abby - 196
Brad - 312
Cora - 362
Erin - 187
Dave - 311

The tiebreaking ballot: Cora > Brad > Dave > Abby > Erin
what other methods chose:

winner method(s)
Abby Baldwin
Abby Black
Abby Borda
Abby Coombs
Abby Copeland*
Abby Raynaud
Abby Schulze
Brad Nanson
Brad Small
Brad Tideman*
Cora Dodgson
Cora Simpson
Cora Approval
Dave Carey
Dave Hare
Erin Bucklin


Pairwise Matrix:

The pairwise matrix:


  Abby Brad Cora Dave Erin
Abby   458   461  485   511
Brad   463461  312   623
Cora   460460  460   460
Dave   436   609   461   311
Erin410298  461   610

X.wv+X.approval_score

654 657 681 707
775 773 624 935
822 822 822 822
623 796 648 498
721 609 772 921 

X.wv+X.approval_score-Y.approval_score

342 295 494 396
579 411 437 624
626 510 635 511
427 484 286 187
525 297 410 734 

Ok so first with X.wv+X.approval_score

Brad > Erin 935
Erin > Dave 921
Cora > Everyone Else 822

Cora wins.

Next with X.wv+X.approval_score-Y.approval_score

Cora wins again as the winner of this Condorcet matrix with approval.

Cora did have a 50 voter lead in the approval section, that is what
won the election.

There might be a few bugs with this. I haven't tested it thoroughly yet.

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[EM] Generic Plea for Help

[Greg Nisbet]

I keep getting this:

Database error
>From Electowiki
Jump to: navigation, search
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in
the software. The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "OutputPage::addCategoryLinks". MySQL returned
error "1146: Table 'electowiki.ew_page_props' doesn't exist
(wikidb.electorama.com)".

Does anyone know where another resource is that describes all the
obscure voting systems we are talking about?

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[EM] You Can't Have it Both Ways

[Greg Nisbet]

Hello Kevin,

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:38:09 + (GMT)
From: Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] You Can't Have it Both Ways
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

--- En date de?: Sam 18.10.08, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a
?crit?:
> Is it right for the
> government to be
> able to design how we voice our opinions to advance their
> goals of social
> engineering?

In my opinion there is no alternative. Any election method, any kind of
political system, has consequences and implications for how political
players and voters will behave. I'd rather have someone thinking about
what those consequences are, than not.

I was more criticizing a mindset than anything else. What your saying is
true, anything we do will affect how voters organize themselves. I'll refine
my stance slightly. I am contrasting two approaches: there is a will of the
people as they express it (p for preference) and what is actually good for
the people (u for utility). (u) is unknowable, but you have some guesses.
When you perceive (u) and (p) do be in conflict, what do you do? I say
default to (p). The examples I cited earlier were governments attempting to
engineer the voting system specifically to restrict expression of (p) when
they perceived it to be in conflict with (u). E.g. preventing
race/ethnicity/caste/religion/language/whatever-based politics from emerging
in South Africa and India (part of the point of that example was that they
took opposite approaches to achieve the same thing.) Now this is actively
modifying (p) so that it does not contradict what the government perceives
(u) to be. A racist party would have a more difficult time coming to power
in South Africa than an equipopular (why not make up a new word?) non-racist
party due to obstacles set up by the electoral method. I think an electoral
method that actively attempts to subvert certain types of (p) is evil, bad,
paternalistic, statist etc. That is not to say I am against this things
being prohibited or discouraged. Simply do so with a constitution instead of
designing an electoral method that accomplishes the task for you. Preventing
the expression of ideas through an electoral method is NOT the way to go.

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Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 2:56 AM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > 1) Primaries are anti-utilitarian.
>
> Without primaries, then the result of a plurality election is either
> random, or more likely decided by the 2 party leaderships.


With primaries, the result of a plurality election is random.

>
>
> > 2) The Government enforcing any way for parties to operate is bad.
>
> Agreed, but even without government rules, I think that it is in the
> best interests of parties to have primaries.


That really isn't our concern. They can if they wish, but they should be
neither penalized nor rewarded (by the voting system) for doing so.

>
>
> > The second point I don't agee with because Median Voter would suggest
> that
> > candidates would be more centrist on average if primaries didn't exist. I
> > like moderates better than Democrats or Republicans and I think they are
> > better for the country...
>
> I don't think so.  It really depends on the selection process for the
> Republican and Democrat candidates.


Think of it this way. Median Voter says that there is a general tendency
for the two FPTP parties to become more alike in order to gather more votes.
Thus the FPTP winner (if two candidates compete) is likely to the one
closest to the center.

Democrats and Republicans vote in their own primaries. Therefore the winner
of the Democratic primary will be a mid-Democrat. This isn't the same as a
centrist, far from it.

>
>
> It is possible that the men 'in smoky rooms' would pick candidates who
> are more centrist.  If not, then you get the same type of candidates
> picked.
>

The alternative is no primaries at all, not this.

>
>
> > If you let anyone who wants to be on the ballot be on the ballot, how bad
> > would that really be?
>
> Right, I think we agree here.


Yep.

>
>
> > I think an average voter would not get confused by large numbers of
> > candidates. If they were organizes reasonably, the voter strictly
> benefits
> > because they could always vote against unknown candidates as a matter of
> > principle. Most do, so I don't see what people are whining about.
>
> There is a balance here.  If the rule is too easy, then you get people
> registering 100 names just for the fun of it.


Hmm perhaps. Or we could do without this entirely and just have EVERY
candidate be a write-in.

>
>
> The 2000 signature rule means that it requires to much effort for the
> joke to be worth it.


I suppose.

>
>
> In Ireland, there is a deposit.  You get your deposit back if you are
> supported by enough voters.  I think it is around 25% of a quota.


Actually, that isn't such a bad idea. If you can give enough money to the
government to compensate for wasting people's time with a silly candidacy, I
say go for it.

>
>
> >> It is a good idea.  But it seems like it was broken from the start.
> >> The Electoral College should meet and then make its decision.
> >
> > I have to disagree with you on that one. I do not see it doing anything
> > useful. It either corrects the people's will (in which case it is
> > paternalistic and evil) or it does nothing making it a giant waste of
> > resources.
>
> It is like asset voting.  Your representative negotiates on your
> behalf until a majority is achieved.


They don't actually meet and discuss it. They just cast their vote and are
done with it (sometimes honestly, sometimes not). It would be great if they
did discuss it. That might actually make the Electoral College worthwhile.

>
>
> As with most things, it would benefit a lot from PR.


agreed

>
>
> It might also be worth using the Electoral College to fill a vacancy
> in the VP position, without needing Senate approval.  Ofc, that is
> moving in the direction of a parliamentary system.


I like parliamentary systems. They appear to be less corrupt on average.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
That would be a legitimate function of an Electoral College. Performing
"maintenance elections" when someone dies, is kicked out etc.
I would say just use the next best guy from the previous election, but
whatever.

>
>
> >> Well, in theory, the US is a federation, not a democracy.  In any
> >> case, that requires 100% of the States to agree for it to be changed.
> > Umm federation and democracy are not mutually exclusive.
>
> Well, to a certain extent.  I guess I mean that the US is not unitary,
> it is a federation.
>
> It comes down to sovereignty.  In a unitary democracy, a majority of
> all the citizens is the fin

[EM] You Can't Have it Both Ways

[Greg Nisbet]

Hello Michael,


They ought to be guided soley by their own communications.  So how can
we help?  Specifically:

 1. What reform can free the electors of external manipulation?

 2. Through what plan of action can we implement the reform?

 3. In the act of implementing the reform, what assurance do we have
that we ourselves are not manipulating the electors?

--
Michael Allan
Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht


As a brief overview, I was more criticizing the motives of people than
suggesting a particular plan. Any plan that some person touts changing
society in manner X shouldn't really be trusted.

1. Pretty much all of the methods that people advocate here would do the
trick. Various Condorcet Methods, Range Voting, IRNR etc. The actual method
itself isn't that big an issue. As I mentioned in "Making a Bad Thing
Worse", the main problem here is how we decide who is most deserving of
votes or what restrictions to place on them. I'd say that as long as the
voting system is reasonably independent of clones and everyone's vote is
counted equally, the specifc electoral method is of little consequence. What
is of consequence is the myriad laws that accompany it, none of them
improving voters' ability to influence their government. The "Making a Bad
Thing Worse" discussion mentions some of the things that damage this. For
the United States, at least, getting rid of these silly laws would go a long
way toward the deregulation of politics.

2. I'm not entirely sure. I'd really have to think about it. I'd say that
http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ is a pretty good idea.

3. I'd say that the methods here for the large part don't do this. Most of
the arguments here are about which method represents the voters the best,
not which changes society in way X. I'd say as long as it doesn't lead to 2
party domination, is independent of clones, and allows reasonable voter
expressiveness, it won't lead to government manipulation of politics.

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Re: [EM] You Can't Have it Both Ways

[Greg Nisbet]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > Or one could look right here to America. The Connecticut Compromise
> intended
> > to preserve state sovereignty by establishing the Senate so that large
> > states could not force small states to comply unless it truly was in the
> > best interest of the nation.
>
> The US is (was?) a federation.  This is separate from deciding how you
> should make decisions without a single State/country/nation.
>
> More to the point, would you support World majority rule?  Do you
> accept that there is more than one 'nation' in the world?


Yep exactly that is the point. The will of the people is not strictly
preserved because a large majority can still lose if it isn't spread out
right. Think of Congress as a simplification of everyone voting on
legislation.

Being a federation is fine. It simply means that power is constitutionally
dervied from the constituent entities of the nation rather than from the
national/federal government. The mere fact that federations often have equal
representation for their entities in some chamber of their legislative
assembly does not mean that all federations do/have to/should.

It distorts the will of the people for the purpose of protecting them from
themselves. That is the kind of thing I am skeptical of.

>
>
> > South Africa has been successful. Parties have demonstrated more
> willingness
> > to put forth a diverse roster of candidates than perhaps the public would
> if
> > FPTP was used. India has been less successful, there is still a myriad of
> > parties. America is a coin toss. Anyway here is my point:
> >
> > To what extent is it legitimate to design an electoral method to change
> > voter behavior/opinions rather than respond to it?
>
> It is reasonably legitimate, as long as the majority can change the
> voting method via constitutional amendment.


That is exactly my point! People will definitely be voting, directly or
indirectly, for or against the constitutional amendment. If the government
was allowed to tailor it to their liking in the first place then
a distortion-free way to determine if people really want the constitution
changed does not exist.

>
>
> Ofc, it can be hard to change the constitution, so power imbalances can
> persist.


Yep. Pretty much all government is biased towards the status quo.

>
>
> >
> > Allow me to clarify:
> >
> > Indian voters would not necessarily have wanted strong regional parties.
> > South Africans perhaps not an ethnically diverse legislature.
>
> > Americans perhaps not such an emphasis on states' rights.
>
> However, 'Americans' don't exist except as citizens of a federation.
> Perhaps, this is not as significant for non-founder states,
> California, for example, only existed as part of the US.


Alright, that's ok. I'll define Americans: the people living in the United
States of America. They do exist as a unit. It really doesn't matter if the
government doesn't say that group's collective opinion is unimportant, they
represent a defined group of people living beneath a common government and
their opinion exists. Anyway, I think its clear that the opinion of the
majority would in certain cases be overturned. When they do this

>
>
> > Through overt manipulation
> > of the electoral method. The designers of these democracies sought to
> change
> > voter opinion from what it otherwise would be. This effectively
> subsidized
> > some candidates and burdened others. Is it right for the government to be
> > able to design how we voice our opinions to advance their goals of social
> > engineering?
>
> Hmm, well no matter what system you pick, there will be winners and losers.


Who they are is of utmost importance. I am saying that encouraging
"favorable" but not necessarily democratic outcomes is to be mistrusted.
Anyone controlling the voting system possesses formidable powers.

>
>
> > I don't like paternalism. Part of it is because I'm a libertarian, but
> I'd
> > say it's more fundamental than that. As was mentioned in the Range vs.
> > Condorcet debate, I believe that protecting minority rights is the
> function
> > of a constitution not an electoral method.
>
> You mean a bill of rights?


sure. It doesn't really where matter so long as individual freedoms are
protected in a way that cannot be randomly reneged. I meant a constitution
in the sense of a collection of laws that no further laws can controvert. I
wasn't referring to any nation's constitution or type of constitution in
part

[EM] You Can't Have it Both Ways

[Greg Nisbet]

I have seen several instances of advocating some sort of method in order to
encourage some sort of behavior.

Take India for example. From what I've read, it appear that there was
intense debate over the electoral method the newly independent country would
use. They eventually settled on FPTP because of its tendency to create large
parties with broad support.

Or South Africa. When they instituted closed list PR the intent was to
enable parties to put forward lists of ethnically diverse candidates and
prevent race based politics from coming back.

Or one could look right here to America. The Connecticut Compromise intended
to preserve state sovereignty by establishing the Senate so that large
states could not force small states to comply unless it truly was in the
best interest of the nation.

South Africa has been successful. Parties have demonstrated more willingness
to put forth a diverse roster of candidates than perhaps the public would if
FPTP was used. India has been less successful, there is still a myriad of
parties. America is a coin toss. Anyway here is my point:

To what extent is it legitimate to design an electoral method to change
voter behavior/opinions rather than respond to it?

Allow me to clarify:

Indian voters would not necessarily have wanted strong regional parties.
South Africans perhaps not an ethnically diverse legislature. Americans
perhaps not such an emphasis on states' rights. Through overt manipulation
of the electoral method. The designers of these democracies sought to change
voter opinion from what it otherwise would be. This effectively subsidized
some candidates and burdened others. Is it right for the government to be
able to design how we voice our opinions to advance their goals of social
engineering?

My position:

I don't like paternalism. Part of it is because I'm a libertarian, but I'd
say it's more fundamental than that. As was mentioned in the Range vs.
Condorcet debate, I believe that protecting minority rights is the function
of a constitution not an electoral method. I think that the electoral system
should be free of political manipulation because such is tantamount to
tyranny. I'd say the purpose of electoral reform is to free voters from
manipulation of their opinions by those already in power. The government
ceases to be the servant of the people if it can control what they ask it to
do.

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

Re: [EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Raph Frank <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > The United States uses FPTP, surprise surprise. However how bad would
> FPTP
> > really be if you remove some of the stupidity?
> >
> > 1) Primaries
> >
> > Especially the presidential primaries. Why Iowa and New Hampshire I ask
> you?
> > The Republican winner-takes-state primaries are especially bad. The will
> of
> > the people is distorted. And the winners of primaries get legal
> protection.
>
> This shouldn't be an issue at all.  Parties should be allowed to pick
> whoever they want, however they want.
>
> I think, if you are going to have plurality, then it's probably better
> to have them than not.


Thanks for bringing this up, it is a perfectly valid criticism. I don't
disagree with this point, but it technically isn't in conflict with what I
said. First of all I argue two things, I didn't state them initially.

1) Primaries are anti-utilitarian.
2) The Government enforcing any way for parties to operate is bad.

It's sort of catch-22 I know. But think of it this way, we allow people to
conduct elections based on FPTP. None of us advocated banning private FPTP
elections. However, that does not stop us from criticizing their choice of
method.

The second point I don't agee with because Median Voter would suggest that
candidates would be more centrist on average if primaries didn't exist. I
like moderates better than Democrats or Republicans and I think they are
better for the country...

>
>
> > 2) Sore loser laws
> >
> > If you lose a primary, you can't even run in some areas. The state will
> > attempt to prevent you from stealing votes away from your party.
>
> Yeah, that is bad, candidates should be allowed to run if they want.


If you let anyone who wants to be on the ballot be on the ballot, how bad
would that really be?

>
>
> > 3) Really bad ballot access laws.
> >
> > If people can't even run... it doesn't matter what voting method you are
> > using.
>
> Agreed.  Apparently, a federal law that allowed anyone with 2000
> signature automatic ballot access to any given race would be unlikely
> to result in more than 10 or so on any given ballot.  Would anyone
> bother to collect 100k signatures in order to put 50 names on the
> ballot?
>

I think an average voter would not get confused by large numbers of
candidates. If they were organizes reasonably, the voter strictly benefits
because they could always voter against unknown candidates as a matter of
principle. Most do, so I don't see what people are whining about.

>
> Also, there are some criminal laws linked to this, so collecting
> signatures could put you at risk.
>
> > 4) The Electoral College
> >
> > Someone explain to me how this makes sense. We elect a group of 538
> people
> > who will then elect one person. Umm... why elect these people? They
> aren't
> > doing anything complicated, they are just signing their name and the name
> of
> > a candidate. Electing Congress makes sense, how else would you handle the
> > loads of legislation that they create every so often?
>
> It is a good idea.  But it seems like it was broken from the start.
> The Electoral College should meet and then make its decision.



I have to disagree with you on that one. I do not see it doing anything
useful. It either corrects the people's will (in which case it is
paternalistic and evil) or it does nothing making it a giant waste of
resources.

>
>
> This is compounded by the fact that all states have switched to winner
> takes all methods of selecting the electors, so it is double broken.
>
> > 5) The Senate
> >
> > States aren't represented by their population. This means rural bias etc.
> > How can their opinion be regarded as representing America's?
>
> Well, in theory, the US is a federation, not a democracy.  In any
> case, that requires 100% of the States to agree for it to be changed.
>

Umm federation and democracy are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, my opinion
might be biased because I live in California, the state most screwed over by
the system. I do not buy the whole prevent tyrannical regions from taking
over nonsense b/c preventing tyranny is a civil rights issue not a voting
system issue. Attempting to design some system to subvert the will of the
voters "for their own good" is not to be trusted.

>
> OTOH, if you want to be evil, you could strip the Senate of all its
> power, that would 'only' require 75% of the States.
>

> 6) The House
>
> Whose bright idea was it to 

[EM] Making a Bad Thing Worse

[Greg Nisbet]

The United States uses FPTP, surprise surprise. However how bad would FPTP
really be if you remove some of the stupidity?

1) Primaries

Especially the presidential primaries. Why Iowa and New Hampshire I ask you?
The Republican winner-takes-state primaries are especially bad. The will of
the people is distorted. And the winners of primaries get legal protection.

2) Sore loser laws

If you lose a primary, you can't even run in some areas. The state will
attempt to prevent you from stealing votes away from your party.

3) Really bad ballot access laws.

If people can't even run... it doesn't matter what voting method you are
using.

4) The Electoral College

Someone explain to me how this makes sense. We elect a group of 538 people
who will then elect one person. Umm... why elect these people? They aren't
doing anything complicated, they are just signing their name and the name of
a candidate. Electing Congress makes sense, how else would you handle the
loads of legislation that they create every so often?

5) The Senate

States aren't represented by their population. This means rural bias etc.
How can their opinion be regarded as representing America's?

6) The House

Whose bright idea was it to let the states decide how to redistrict
themselves? Seriously.

7) Gerrymandering

In addition to (6) and gerrymandering at the local level, the state
boundaries themselves were gerrymandered. It was mostly due to slavery, but
the vestiges of these funky decisions still remain. There are also a ton of
low-population states between California and the Mississippi River, whose
brilliant idea was that?

8) Two Parties

This might be a consequence of FPTP, but seriously. The Libertarian Party,
the third largest, is still TINY by comparison to the Democrats and
Republicans. It is no wonder we have so many independents in this country.
Many people dislike both parties but have no idea what to do. The UK and
Canada seem to manage more parties.

9) Elections on Tuesday

why not make election day a holiday? or hold it on weekends?

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

[EM] Voting Theory and Populism

[Greg Nisbet]

So yeah... let's assume you have some amount of political capital to get
this done. You cannot impose loads of reforms at once on people; it doesn't
work. If you had to choose only among the options that you think you could
get done, which would it be?

I support TRS. Minimal minimal effort and better for the people than
primaries!


Message: 5
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:09:16 -0400
From: Brian Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
To: Election Methods Mailing List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

On Oct 16, 2008, at 10:11 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote:

> Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable?

That's like asking the oft asked question, 'which candidate is
electable?' and I HATE that question.
It's like suggesting that we prematurely compromise and compress our
election reform advocacy down to a single method to push for when I'd
much rather say that I support: 1. IRNR, 2. Condorcet, 3. IRV, 4.
Approval. And sometimes I want a side of PR-STV, redistricting and
elimination of bad voting machines.

 = Uhh, sorry? I'm not trying to say that IRNR, some unspecified version of
Condorcet, IRV, or approval will never happen. I'm just asking you to weigh
the likelihood of public acceptance in addition to the merit of the method
itself. I am not proposing we end the discussion of which voting method is
best, far from it. I merely want to know which would be the best investment.

=If you object to this question this strongly, please don't respond to it.

In my few years of election reform advocacy, nearly everyone I've
talked to agrees that 'rankings ballots' or 'ranked choice voting' is
a good idea. Probably 80-90% of people I talk to I've been able to
convince that IRV is severely suboptimal (but better than nothing) and
that Condorcet methods are better. Maybe I should try to write down
the elevator pitches/stump speechs/good lines/patter that seem to work
and put together a pamphlet for election reform advocates.

=Go right ahead. In my, uh, few days of talking about this, I've noticed
that some voting methods have definitely fallen out of favor (IRV, Borda,
vanilla Bucklin…) as serious propositions among knowledgeable people.

= I would love a reference of the greatest voting rants of all time.

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:44:43 +0100
From: "Raph Frank" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
To: "Brian Olson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Election Methods Mailing
   List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-ID:
   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Brian Olson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That's like asking the oft asked question, 'which candidate is electable?'
> and I HATE that question.
> It's like suggesting that we prematurely compromise and compress our
> election reform advocacy down to a single method to push for when I'd much
> rather say that I support: 1. IRNR, 2. Condorcet, 3. IRV, 4. Approval. And
> sometimes I want a side of PR-STV, redistricting and elimination of bad
> voting machines.

That is a good point, for a group that all accepts plurality is bad,
it is still in effect used for polling purposes.

I would probably go

1: Approval (slightly ahead of condorcet)
1: Condorcet
2: IRNR
3. IRV

= Where would Range fit in, just out of curiosity? Of the things that are
listed, I completely agree with this.

I don't think IRNR is sufficiently examined to really know where to
put it though.  It might have serious strategy issues.

= I'd be skeptical of any iterative method. IRV, STV, Raynaud, Nanson,
Baldwin etc. all have flaws with them. Any method that relies on rejecting
candidates and recursively applying itself will run into problems. IRNR is
light years ahead of other iterative methods though.

Anyway, you would rank PR-STV behind single winner election methods?

I would rate PR-STV as one of, if not the best voting system (and
certainly one of the best system that is actually in use).  It also
has the added advantage that it is also a redistricting reform (or at
least makes redistricting less important).

CPO-STV (or maybe Schulze-STV) are obvious improvements, but with big
costs in complexity.  I do think that vote management is a weakness of
PR-STV (I wonder if Schulze STV would stop parties bothering to try).
Also, the district sizes need to be reasonable (say 5+).  In Ireland,
there are 3.86 seats per constituency on average, which I think is to
low.

=Why have constituencies at all?

Also, if you could make one change, would you implement IRNR or
redistricting ref

[EM] Effect of Voting Systems on Parties and Candidates

[Greg Nisbet]

Let's hypothesize about the impact various methods would have on society.

FPTP: If you live in the U.S., you see it every day. Two party domination is
fairly complete. Although this could be written off to the fact that America
started with a two-party system and that opposition is gerrymandered out of
existence. There are also annoying ballot access laws and sore loser laws
and whatnot that contribute to this. It isn't just our horrible voting
system. Anyway, main impact of this: two strong parties, a polarized
electorate and parties that only campaign in certain, rare competitive
regions.

IRV/STV: Two party domination too. It doesn't appear quite as bad because
parties in Australia at least appeaer to cooperate with each other through
vote swapping agreements. Full preferences and later-no-harm allow voters to
express these opinions without penalty, although their value is dubious.

Borda: Used in Kiribati, Nauru, and Slovenia at one point in history.
(Slovenia still uses it for their 2 minority members.) I couldn't get a hold
of anything for Slovenia's contests (oh well), but Social Choice in the
South Seas http://rangevoting.org/ReillySCSS.pdf explains the impact fairly
well in Kiribati. The most popular candidates were eliminated by political
maneuvering and inhabitants were annoyed (the country backslid to FPTP). It
is naive to think it will encourage candidates to cooperate at all, collude
yes, cooperate no. It will lead to one party domination probably as rich
parties use their "momentum" to crush any second parties.

Condorcet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Use_of_the_Schulze_method These
people use Schulze... but I'm not certain how it has impacted them. Even
though they don't satisfy later-no-harm, it seems pretty clear that Schulze
would encourage candidates to cooperate. You have to give your second choice
vote to someone, and it isn't likely to cause you lose if you give it to a
particular candidate (unlike Borda), so Condorcet politics would probably
form broad coalitions of parties that cooperate on various things.

Range: It is a positional method, but candidates can both benefit if they
support each other. E.g. if A and B agree to vote each other fairly highly
and attack C, both A and B benefit. I regard it as less likely to foster as
much competition as Condorcet, but it probably would have more overlapping
campaigning. With multiple parties, each could gain something from
campaigning in exactly the same area.

Approval: similar to Range, but less dramatic.

Bucklin: It's been done. Bullet voting galore. Massive backsliding. Voters
giving a second preference shot themselves in the foot.

Contingent Vote: It's been done in Sri Lanka and London Mayoral elections.
I'm not quite sure what the impact is, but I don't anticipate much
difference from FPTP. People probably won't waste their precious vote if
they use a truncated version of contingent vote. If the full version is
used, I anticipate better results, similar to TRS. It probably will
encourage cooperation, later-no-harm and all.

TRS: Doesn't lead to two party politics. It can produce very weird behavior
like Chirac vs Le Pen instead of Chirac vs Jospin. If you check the Range
Voting archive of weird behavior, TRS indeed has its problems. However, it
doesn't discourage the growth of new parties and the Range voting website
does claim that it does produce some positive effects in media coverage
relative to IRV. TRS obeys later-no-harm, so it will probably encourage
cooperation. Candidates will ally the top two finalists and campaign for
them, probably.

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Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory

[Greg Nisbet]

Interesting. What I meant was what is the best method that actually has
some reasonable chance of being implemented. IRV has been implemented in
some cities and both Obama and McCain have stated that they support it, I
would say that qualifies as a reasonable chance. However, if you think that
Condorcet methods have a reasonable chance of being implemented, think
again! Given the public as it is, would you suggest that Condorcet would
actually be implemented? Condorcet is a reasonable system, far better than
FPTP or TRS, but I think the public would demonstrtate considerable aversion
to it. The nice thing about TRS is, you don't have to convince anyone about
anything they do not already believe.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Dave Ketchum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

> I argue for Condorcet, include Range, Approval, and IRV in my discussion,
> ad claim it to be the best for single winners.
>
> For all these I talk of Best, Soso, Worst, and other unnamed candidates.
>
> Pick the one or more candidates you would like to vote for.
>
> Proceed by method:
> Approval:  You are giving them equal indication of desirability.  B is
> obvious.  S is questionable - including it would be doing your best to elect
> either B or S, though you want S ONLY if you cannot get B.
> Range:  With ratings you can rate B as best and  S as less desirable.
>  Deciding on ratings gets tricky if you vote for several.
> Condorcet:  Scoring ballots as in a tournament.  It's ranks have
> neither the power of ratings, nor the pain of trying to use them.  Here you
> rank candidates according to how well you like them, including equals if you
> like two equally well.
> IRV:   Almost the same ballot as Condorcet, except no equals.  Its way
> of counting sometimes awards the win to someone most would agree is not
> deserving.
>
> Back to scoring Condorcet.  If 5 rank A>C and 6 rank C>A, C is on the way
> to winning - and will win if outranking each other candidate.
> As in sports tournaments, there can be headaches such as A>C, C>E, and
> E>A, and no clear winner.  These have to be provided for but do not have to
> be studied in detail to understand the method.
>
> DWK
>
>
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:11:47 -0700 Greg Nisbet wrote:
> > As I?m sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting
> > system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they
> > will either:
> > a) say they don't understand it
> > b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV
> > c) say that the current system will never be changed
> >
> > Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take
> > the least amount of convincing for the greatest gain?
> >
> > I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that
> > it is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote
> > for whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their
> > vote. You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably
> > better than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of
> > passing. It breaks two party domination reasonably well and people
> > understand it. It isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important
> > stuff done.
> >
> > Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem
> > to think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if
> > someone else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice,
> > according to them.
> >
> > Range I have actually managed to do.
> >
> > I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a
> > Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make
> > it sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c).
> >
> > Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable?
> >
> --
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED]people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
>  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
>Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
>  If you want peace, work for justice.
>
>
>
>
>

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

[EM] Populism and Voting Theory

[Greg Nisbet]

As I'm sure all of you have noticed, if you attempt to explain a voting
system that is better than FPTP to some average person/non-nerd they will
either:
a) say they don't understand it
b) attack you with some flawed conception of OMOV
c) say that the current system will never be changed

Which system would be the most bang for the buck? What system would take the
least amount of convincing for the greatest gain?

I'd say the two round system. It is really easy to convince people that it
is better, simply say that they deserve the right to be able to vote for
whom they wish on the first go without having to fear wasting their vote.
You are not stepping on the FPTP is bad landmine. TRS is arguably better
than IRV and plurality and it has, IMO, the best chance of passing. It
breaks two party domination reasonably well and people understand it. It
isn't monotone (Oh well), but it gets the important stuff done.

Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem to
think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if someone
else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice, according to
them.

Range I have actually managed to do.

I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a
Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make it
sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c).

Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable?

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

[EM] Fwd: Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)
To: Jobst Heitzig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com


Dear Jobst,


> I will focus on the question of majoritarianism in this message.
>
> First my working definition of "majoritarian method": A method is
> majoritarian if for every option X and every group G consisting of more than
> half of the voters, there is a way of voting for G which makes sure X wins
> regardless of how the voters outside G vote. In other words: Any majority
> can overrule the rest if that majority votes in a certain way.



Group membership is difficult to define. With ranked ballots it's simple,
but in the majority criterion debate, I argue that a score of 60% represents
60% of a first preference, not the preference between 59% and 61%. Range is
also majoritarian in the sense that a majority can impose its will on
people. This is not true of, say, Borda. So in short, the majority criterion
as most people define it is not even applicable to Range Voting, as we have
not settled the issue of simultaneous majorities. This might seem overly
technical and missing the point, but as long as we are arguing about whether
it satisfies the nominal property and the value of that, such it will
remain.

>
>
> Now for the discussion. I said:
> > That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other
> > majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be
> > because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less
> > than 100% of the people (the "demos" in greek). Often, about 60% of
> > the people can consistently impose their will on the other 40%
> > without the latter being given any means at all by the majoritarian
> > method to influence the decision. Of course, this is a problem of
> > most popular election methods, but that does not mean the problem
> > cannot be solved. Democratic decisions are possible but not with
> > majoritarian methods.
>
> To which you replied:
> > Interesting point. I would argue that a compromise candidate is
> > better than a polarizing but barely passing candidate (like FPTP with
> > primaries tends to produce). I'd say this isn't a voting-issues
> > question, but a civil rights question. A nice constitution will help
> > protect you from tyranny of the majority.
>
> While of course civil rights are very important to make sure that no-one's
> basic *rights* are violated, they cannot make sure that everybody's
> *preferences* are have a fair chance of influencing decisions that are made
> *within* the limits the civil rights pose.
>
>
Let me explain my point. I set the bar fairly high for tyranny of majority
i.e. it must constitute actually oppressing me and not merely annoying or
inconveniencing me to be labelled tyranny. Belligerence of the majority is
another issue entirely. You may say where do you draw the line, but just
hear me out. You talk about the destruction of democracy. That democracy is
an all-or-nothing type thing. I am arguing that a good constitution will
prevent a majority from acting in such a way that democracy itself is
subverted. If you argue instead that suboptimal results come about, yes I
agree with you. I advocate Range Voting after all. I too find belligerence
of the majority annoying and unhelpful.

As for the fair shot argument, I have no idea what fair shot actually means.
It is possible, with minimal computation, to determine a Range ballot that
will achieve a specific purpose given necessary information. It is
significantly more challenging/sometimes impossible for the same to be done
with something like IRV (or other iterative methods).

Again, you speak about actively preventing the majority from doing something
that violates the rights of minority. Such cannot be prevented by any voting
method! You speak of comparing utility in this case, voting methods at best
can only simulate this. Preventing tyranny must include some immutable
principles lest the principles that prevent tyranny be abolished. That isn't
democratic. It's useful, very useful, but not democratic. Voting methods
differ in their ability to elect winners best for society, but I guess you
already know that.


>
> > "Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is
> > intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority
> > decision making is intrinsically undemocratic.
>
> I wonder how they do so. It's as simple as that: When any group of people,
> be it a single person (dictatorship) or a small group (oligarchy) or a large
> group (majoritarianism) can overrule the rest, that's not dem

Re: [EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

Dear Jobst,


> I will focus on the question of majoritarianism in this message.
>
> First my working definition of "majoritarian method": A method is
> majoritarian if for every option X and every group G consisting of more than
> half of the voters, there is a way of voting for G which makes sure X wins
> regardless of how the voters outside G vote. In other words: Any majority
> can overrule the rest if that majority votes in a certain way.



Group membership is difficult to define. With ranked ballots it's simple,
but in the majority criterion debate, I argue that a score of 60% represents
60% of a first preference, not the preference between 59% and 61%. Range is
also majoritarian in the sense that a majority can impose its will on
people. This is not true of, say, Borda. So in short, the majority criterion
as most people define it is not even applicable to Range Voting, as we have
not settled the issue of simultaneous majorities. This might seem overly
technical and missing the point, but as long as we are arguing about whether
it satisfies the nominal property and the value of that, such it will
remain.

>
>
> Now for the discussion. I said:
> > That leads me to the main problem with Range (as with any other
> > majoritarian method): It is simply not democratic. It cannot be
> > because every majoritarian method gives 100% of the power to less
> > than 100% of the people (the "demos" in greek). Often, about 60% of
> > the people can consistently impose their will on the other 40%
> > without the latter being given any means at all by the majoritarian
> > method to influence the decision. Of course, this is a problem of
> > most popular election methods, but that does not mean the problem
> > cannot be solved. Democratic decisions are possible but not with
> > majoritarian methods.
>
> To which you replied:
> > Interesting point. I would argue that a compromise candidate is
> > better than a polarizing but barely passing candidate (like FPTP with
> > primaries tends to produce). I'd say this isn't a voting-issues
> > question, but a civil rights question. A nice constitution will help
> > protect you from tyranny of the majority.
>
> While of course civil rights are very important to make sure that no-one's
> basic *rights* are violated, they cannot make sure that everybody's
> *preferences* are have a fair chance of influencing decisions that are made
> *within* the limits the civil rights pose.
>
>
Let me explain my point. I set the bar fairly high for tyranny of majority
i.e. it must constitute actually oppressing me and not merely annoying or
inconveniencing me to be labelled tyranny. Belligerence of the majority is
another issue entirely. You may say where do you draw the line, but just
hear me out. You talk about the destruction of democracy. That democracy is
an all-or-nothing type thing. I am arguing that a good constitution will
prevent a majority from acting in such a way that democracy itself is
subverted. If you argue instead that suboptimal results come about, yes I
agree with you. I advocate Range Voting after all. I too find belligerence
of the majority annoying and unhelpful.

As for the fair shot argument, I have no idea what fair shot actually means.
It is possible, with minimal computation, to determine a Range ballot that
will achieve a specific purpose given necessary information. It is
significantly more challenging/sometimes impossible for the same to be done
with something like IRV (or other iterative methods).

Again, you speak about actively preventing the majority from doing something
that violates the rights of minority. Such cannot be prevented by any voting
method! You speak of comparing utility in this case, voting methods at best
can only simulate this. Preventing tyranny must include some immutable
principles lest the principles that prevent tyranny be abolished. That isn't
democratic. It's useful, very useful, but not democratic. Voting methods
differ in their ability to elect winners best for society, but I guess you
already know that.


>
> > "Advocates of majoritarianism argue that majority decision making is
> > intrinsically democratic and that any restriction on majority
> > decision making is intrinsically undemocratic.
>
> I wonder how they do so. It's as simple as that: When any group of people,
> be it a single person (dictatorship) or a small group (oligarchy) or a large
> group (majoritarianism) can overrule the rest, that's not democratic since
> democracy in its main sense requires that *all* people must have a means to
> influence decisions.


This discussion of what democracy is and is not does not appear to be
leading anywhere. I'll answer this claim by saying that the majority is not
disenfranchising the rest of the people. It means that majority opinion is
the most reliable barometer of utility. I disagree, but don't misunderstand
the point. The current majority is the current optimal result is the point.

>
>
> > If democracy is
> > restricted by

[EM] Range versus Condorcet

[Greg Nisbet]

--- En date de?: Mer 15.10.08, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a
?crit?:
> On the topic of whether there is a method that
> satisfies both
> Condorcet and FBC.

There is not. I believe I have demonstrated this in the past, by modifying
a Woodall proof that shows Condorcet to be incompatible with LNHarm.

> http://osdir.com/ml/politics.election-methods/2002-11/msg00020.html
> claims
> that any majority method will violate FBC.
Note the term *strong* FBC. When FBC is mentioned usually only the weak
form is discussed because the strong form is almost impossible to satisfy.

=what is strong FBC, no incentive to make equal either? Which methods do
satisfy strong FBC? I saw this article about a variant of ER-Bucklin that
appear to satisfy it, but I couldn't follow it.

> Think of it this
> way, any
> majority method without equal rankings will always
> encourage betrayal so
> that a compromise candidate will get the majoirty thereby
> sparing you
> potenial loss.

Yes.

> Anything with equal rankings cannot be a
> majority method b/c
> simultaneous majorities will form and only one will win,
> hence allowing a
> candidate with a "majority" to in fact lose.
This is avoided by defining the majority criterion to refer to strict
first preferences.

=There are three possible ways to handle "indecisive" voters like this.
1) Ignore them entirely for the purposes of majority
2) Give 1/n to each n candidates that share the first position
3) Do not have them count for any particular candidate, but still count them
in the sense that the total against which majority is tested is incremented.

Example

3: A>C
2: B>C
16: A=B>C

Under definition 1 A has a majority 3/5
Under definition 2 A has a majoirty 3 + 8 = 11/21
Under definition 3 A does not have a majority 3/21

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[EM] Issues with the Majority Criterion

[Greg Nisbet]

What is the meaning of the +?

=should have been "+1"
=I did not hit the "1" key hard enough

I would say it is that if X is ranked/rated strictly first by more than
half of the voters, then X should win.

=What would co-first candidates imply?

> If the method doesn't satisfy FBC, how can this be
> regarding as a good
> thing, isn't it just making a massive compromising
> incentive?
It is not regarded as a good thing to fail FBC.

=I have to make the antecedents of my pronouns more clear... I meant that
FBC failure seems to seriously hurt the majority criterion because it is
plausible for a compromise candidate to gain a majority from insincere
candidates. I am asking, absent FBC, how valuable is majority compliance?

I don't understand why you say "massive." Methods vary widely with
respect to how much compromise incentive they provide.

=FBC compliant methods have less compromising incentive than non-FBC
compliant ones, in general. I called it massive because I perceived it to be
noticeably different from FBC compliant ones. FBC compliant methos such as
Range may suffer from compression to some extent, but Offensive Order
Reversal will not occur.

= I regard it as massive because of the Offensive Order Reveral thing.

> Does a method count as majoritarian if a majority can
> impose its will, but
> doesn't necessarily have to?
I don't think the term "majoritarian" has an agreed-upon meaning. The way
I define the term, it is not directly related to the majority criterion.

=Hmm... good point. To some extent I was probing the meaning of the term
"majoritarian" that I have heard in previous discussions. I guess what I
meant is, "how valuable is allowing a majority to force its will if it so
chooses as opposed to always having it get its way?"

But the term "majoritarian" would be almost meaningless if it meant that a
majority always has some method to make their first preference win.

=The only methods that would violate it would be silly ones like
Antiplurality and Borda. I agree. But if, in reality, the distinction isn't
all that meaningful, is it really worth mentioning as a flaw of a particular
system.

> Also, how do you define membership in a majority.
It depends on the criterion. For the majority criterion simply, membership
in the majority is determined by you strictly supporting the same first
preference.

> Let's pretend Alice votes Candidate X = 100 Candidate Y
> = 60
>
> With respect to the majority criterion, does she belong in
> Camp X, or 100%
> in Camp X and 60% in Camp Y?
I don't know any definition of the criterion that doesn't refer to first
preferences. Even your definition refers to first preferences.

=Exactly. Is it best to regard 60% as 60% of a 'first preference' or as not
a 'first preference' at all? Rankedisms don't translate perfectly to Range
Voting.

Gregory Nisbet

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[EM] Simulation of Duverger's Law

[Greg Nisbet]

I had an idea to test how much particular methods enforce two party
domination.

Start out with some voters, each of them has some utility for a certain
candidate. Utility = reproduction in this case. So voters with a positive
utility of the outcome will reproduce and voters with a negative utility of
the outcome will die off. The candidate generator will also be fairly cloney
so that clone positive methods don't take over. Each voter has a tag that is
heritable. You can measure the trend towards two party domination by
counting the number of voters with a particular tag and graphing it.

There are some things to be sorted out such as how to prevent population
explosion after two party domination and how to balance utilities so that
voters who like everything don't show up.

Complete non-sequitur but still a point I don't entirely understand:
IRV, FPTP and Contingent Vote all lead to two party domination according to
Duverger's law.

Why doesn't France's Two Round System lead to the same result? Pretend you
have a ballot consisting of rank ordering and a separate FPTP checkbox,
would this similarly avoid two party domination?

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[EM] Multiwinner Voting Methods Request

[Greg Nisbet]

There seems to be no shortage of single winner methods. I have learned
more single-winner voting methods than I can count on one finger since
Saturday.

Anyway, a large number of multiwinner methods are critical to the study,
so... these are the ones I know exist.

STV version of IRNR
Schulze STV
CPO STV (possibly n!, I don't remember)
STV (various counting procedures)
Contingent Vote can be made multiwinner
Cumulative Vote
Quota Borda System (n!) I think
SNTV
Block Vote
Preferential Block Vote
Limited Block Vote
Single winner methods naively made multiwinner: Approval, Borda, Range...
(There is no shortage of these)
RRV
PAV Proportional Approval Voting (n!)
PRV Proportional Range Voting (n!) still working out the bugs in this one.
PBV Proportional Borda Voting (n!) I see no reason why it wouldn't work.
PCV Proportional Condorcet Voting (n!) same comment as PBV

If anyone has more, please tell me.

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[EM] Worst Voting Method

[Greg Nisbet]

What is the worst voting method of all time?

I suggest methods already made up

I suggest antiplurality, if that doesn't count, then... hmmm... North
Carolina's weird version of IRV.
http://www.fairvote.org/irv/?page=21&articlemode=showspecific&showarticle=2229

40% to win? 40%?! WHY?

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[EM] Issues with the Majority Criterion

[Greg Nisbet]

This is my understanding of the majority criterion:
If X is supported by >=(floor(.5*number_of_voters)+) voters as their first
choice, then X should win.

If the method doesn't satisfy FBC, how can this be regarding as a good
thing, isn't it just making a massive compromising incentive?

Does a method count as majoritarian if a majority can impose its will, but
doesn't necessarily have to?

Also, how do you define membership in a majority.

Let's pretend Alice votes Candidate X = 100 Candidate Y = 60

With respect to the majority criterion, does she belong in Camp X, or 100%
in Camp X and 60% in Camp Y?

The answers to these problem are far from obvious, but I would like to at
least address the ambiguity.

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Re: [EM] Range > Condorcet (No idea who started this argument, sorry; I am Gregory Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Greg Nisbet wrote:
>
>> Reasons why Range is better and always will be.
>> I would like to end the truce.
>>  I'll be generous to the Condorcet camp and assume they suggest something
>> reasonable like RP, Schulze or River.
>>  Property Related:
>> favorite betrayal, participation and consistency.
>> Implications:
>> 1) It is always good to vote and it is always good to rate your favorite
>> candidate 100. The only Condorcet method to satisfy favorite betrayal is an
>> obscure variant of Minmax which I'll ignore because of its glaring flaws
>> (clone dependence *cough*)
>>
>
> MMPO's greatest flaw isn't clone dependence but indefensible Plurality
> failure. Consider this case (by Kevin Venzke):
>
>  A > B = C
>   1 A = C > B
>   1 B = C > A
>  B > A = C
>
> C wins.
>
> Also, MMPO isn't technically a Condorcet method, since it doesn't pass
> Condorcet. Here's another example, also by Venzke:
>
> 30 B>C=A
> 19 A=B>C
> 51 A=C>B
>
> The Condorcet Winner is C, but A wins in MMPO.
>
> If you like Range, this may be to your advantage, since you could say that
> instead of there being only one Condorcet method that satisfies FBC, there
> are none at all, or if there is, that this method must be very obscure
> indeed.
>

Before writing this, I knew there were about five versions of Minmax, all
possessing different properties. I think there is one version that satisfies
CW but not CLoser and various other weird combinations of properties such as
that. On the topic of whether there is a method that satisfies both
Condorcet and FBC.
http://osdir.com/ml/politics.election-methods/2002-11/msg00020.html claims
that any majority method will violate FBC. Think of it this way, any
majority method without equal rankings will always encourage betrayal so
that a compromise candidate will get the majoirty thereby sparing you
potenial loss. Anything with equal rankings cannot be a majority method b/c
simultaneous majorities will form and only one will win, hence allowing a
candidate with a "majority" to in fact lose. You are right. Until a few days
ago, I didn't know that much about MinMax, I just remembered hearing
something about a MinMax variation that obeyed FBC and later-no-harm. I
assumed it was a Condorcet method, incorrectly.

>
> 2) How does it make sense to be able to divide a region into two
>> constituencies each electing A if B is the actual winner? Condorcet methods
>> are not additive, this calls into question the actual meaning of being
>> elected by a Condorcet method.
>>
>
> I'd consider this problem similar to Simpson's paradox of the means, where
> one can have trends that go one way for the means of two separate groups,
> but where this trend reverses if the groups are aggregated. It's
> unintuitive, but doesn't invalidate the use of means in statistics.


ONE CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE: Simpsons paradox relies on comparing fractions with
different denominators to mask statistics. (I know it isn't necessarily
fractions, it is just different results compared against each other that are
weighted differently in the final average, but 'denominator' is easier to
say/explain than this sentence.)

Here is why that analogy fails:
We are not using different districts for each candidate.

Let's say I can divide country X two ways. Into Y1 and Y2 and into Z1 and Z2

The consistency criterion states that if I divide my country into Y1 and Y2
and both of them are a victory for candidate A and B wins this IS a
violation of the consistency criterion.

Now let's say that for candidate A I divide it into Y1 and Y2 and for
Candidate B I divide into Z1 and Z2. In addition to this division not making
sense, let's say A did manage to win twice (however that work work). B wins.
This DOES NOT constitute a violation of the consistency criterion. The
regions you are dividing the country into have exactly the same weight for
every single candidate.

The Simpson's paradox is impossible if I am always comparing data of like
weights.

>
>
> answers to potentital majority rule counterarguments:
>> 1) Range voting isn't a majority method.
>> answer: any majority can impose their will if they choose to exercise it.
>> concession: it is true that Condorcet methods solve the Burr Dilemma
>> fairly well because parties can simultaneously compete for majorities and
>> swap second place votes. Range Voting can at best allow voters to
>> differentiate between better and worse candidates by one point. So Range's
>> ability to emulate this behavior is competitive.
>>  I

[EM] Range vs Condorcet Overview

[Greg Nisbet]

Hi Greg,

--- En date de?: Dim 12.10.08, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a
?crit?:
> De: Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Objet: [EM] Range vs Condorcet Overview
> ?: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
> Date: Dimanche 12 Octobre 2008, 15h25
> I'll attempt to organize the Range Voting vs Condorcet
> debate somewhat.
>
> >From what I can see, the following methods have been
> proposed/have some
> argument defending them/are reasonably good representatives
> of the groups
> being considered:
>
> Range Voting:
>
> There are two types of arguments against this system:
>
> 1)  Ratings themselves are
> useless/unreasonable/illogical/not indicative
> of reality
>
> 2)  Nothing survives post-strategy, so any benefit of
> Range Voting is
> lost anyway as it reverts to approval. The zero-info
> strategy is approval.
The zero-info strategy is the same as the zero-info Approval strategy.
I think that is the same as what you meant.

= Yes. That is what I meant. Sorry if I phrased it badly.

> 3)  Range Voting isn't a majority method.
>
> My response typically is:
>
> 1)  The meaning of the vote is substantiated by the
> system. People vote
> to achieve a particular outcome. With Range Voting, the
> different scores
> have an at-least partway predictable impact on the election
> (same as any
> other system). People can tell what is good for the
> candidates and by how
> much. Every reasonable voting system preserves this
> important feature. As a
> consequence of the votes influence result effect, the
> different scores now
> have meaning.
This is true, but it would be nice if the scores could also reflect
something more psychological, as rankings usually do.

= Sure they do. Utility.

> a.   The concept of comparing candidates along a single
> dimension is
> more intuitive and hence more meaningful to voters than
> making O(n^2) binary
> decisions
Rank ballots do this anyway; intransitive rankings are usually not
allowed on them.

=I see what you are saying
=The only dimension is candidate quality. This is true, but allow me to
elaborate on my point.
=Numbers cannot be reasonably used to represent a ranked ballot with leading
to come strangeness.
=You could number them with integers for each position, but this isn't quite
the same as the integers cannot be used directly.
=i.e. (A = 3 B = 2 C = 1) could be a perfectly valid way to represent A>B>C,
but the integers cannot be used "as is" unless you advocate Borda, which no
one sane does.
=therefore what you are actually using resembles something like this:
=(A = 1 B = 0) (A = 1 C = 0) (B = 1 C = 0) Because this format is sufficient
to run any condorcet method.
= I might have explained my point badly, but think about it like this.
=A dimension has the following properties (a subset of numbers represent
positions along it) and (distance between points on the dimension is used
directly in the result of the voting methodl)
=I argue that minimizing the number of "dimensions" such as this is a good
measure of the relative complexity of something.
=My argument is simple. Ranked ballots are more complicated for the average
voter. Rated ballots are more simple because they do not involve such
ambiguity along the dimension.

> 2)  In order for this to be true, the utility gain from
> having one's
> favorite candidate in office must exceed the relative
> benefit of choosing
> between the competitors. To the extent which this is true
> in reality, the
> results will resemble approval.
Actually they will resemble FPP

=By favorite candidate I meant favorite candidate set. So, I apologize for
forgetting to add set there. EIther way a valid approval ballot is a valid
FPTP valid so my point is technically correct, but misleading and phrased
badly.
=I'm guessing that since my reasoning wasn't attacked that this conclusion
is sound.

> The real question here is:
> if each voter
> strongly prefers their favorite candidate set to the set of
> everyone else,
> would a non-approval style election really help?
I don't understand why you are discussing a "favorite candidate." You
don't have to settle on one favorite candidate.

=I apologize completely for that gaffe. I meant favorite candidate set.
Sorry.

> a.   Does zero-info in this case mean a) lack of info
> about of the
> behavior of other voters
This.

=I'm not making fun of you or anything, but I would like to see the rest of
this sentence. I'm curious.

> or b) (a) and lack of info about
> other candidates
> as well? Either way, if the problem can be ameliorated by
> adding info, then
> add info.
This is unrealistic unless you can reduce the number of voters to about
four.

=Adding info to a system is e

[EM] Range Voting vs Condorcet (Greg Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

% to the Alice
camp.

If that answer is unsatisfactory, this is the simplified version "You are
ignoring the magnitude of preferences, which ARE knowable in Range Voting
hence the criticism doesn't apply."

I also believe the later-no-harm criterion is of crucial importance, which
Range fails.

IRV, FPTP, and some obscure variant of Minmax are the only methods to
satisfy later-no-harm.

FPTP is just pathetic.

IRV is non-monotone and leads to perpetual two-party domination.

I do not know enough about the obscure variant of Minmax to criticize it
specifically.

Range is more prone to strategic voting manipulation than either IRV or
Condorcet (see analysis by James Green-Armytage in his doctoral paper  linked
on this list a couple of months ago).

Once I find the paper I will have some better arguments, but in the
meantime, here is this.

Range Voting manipulation is straightforward, exaggeration. Manipulation in
Condorcet and IRV involve intricate support of other candidates to lead to
favorable match-ups. Strategic Range is just equivalent to Approval, which
fares better than Condorcet and IRV in Bayesian Regret simulations. In Range
Voting, the exaggerations are at least partway honest, reducing the chance
of a vastly inferior dark horse from winning.

Essentially, even if Range Voting is more prone to this, that doesn't prove
the result of strategy in fact makes Range Voting an inferior method to
Condorcet and IRV.  It also doesn't address the damage when strategic voting
is attempted. I argue that Range will at least lead to semi-plausible
winners under this system.

Range is also more prone to spoiler scenarios than IRV or
Condorcet-compliant methods, because the score a voter assigns is dependent
on what other candidates are, or are not in the race to compare with.

First, um, independence of irrelevant alternatives…

Next, IRV spoiler scenario: http://rangevoting.org/IRV1519.html

Third, Condorcet methods fail IIA

Now to defend the behavior that has been called the spoiler effect. First of
all, the rough magnitudes of voter comparisons are stable, thus an
additional candidate should not alter the placement of current candidates
unless they are the new best or new worst. You exaggerate the additional
impact of new relative comparisons of old ones.



Beyond the realm of standard criteria, I am also concerned about the effect
different voting methods have on candidate campaign behavior, and resulting
voter information. Some voting methods discourage candidates from revealing
their true positions on controversial issues, if avoiding voter alienation
is more crucial than earning first-preference support (this can be true of
both Range and Condorcet).

Let's look to Australia and Ireland for evidence of the impact of IRV,
particularly Ireland. You might have seen pictures of campaign posters
advocating a certain person for spot #1 and others for #2 or #3. Or one
could observe the preference-swapping agreements in Australia. This is a
direct consequence of later no harm. The parties THEMSELVES share power with
each other. (In spite of this, both countries have two party systems).

My best guess regarding Condorcet/Range's impact is this: the parties will
be campaigning in the same areas more and more, trying to improve their own
position in the same demographic. Campaigns will be less negative because
you have more than one opponent. Attacking that opponent will help your
rivals as well, so it's a waste of your effort. Explicit preference swapping
agreements will be rarer under Condorcet and nonexistent under Range, but
they will be campaigning in other parties' turf when they think they can
improve that group's opinion of them just a little.



Thanks,

Greg Nisbet

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[EM] Schulze STV and beyond

[Greg Nisbet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_STV

definition:
minimal pair-- borrowing the term from linguistics, in this context it
means two sets of candidates that differ only by one member. E.g. [X,Y,Z] vs
[X,Y,A]

test candidate-- the candidate that is different in each element of the
minimal pair. E.g. Z and A in the above example.

>From what I can gather Schulze STV can be generalized into two procedures

1) some method of determining which element of a minimal pair is better

2) a beatpath method for comparing non-minimal pairs.

Under Schulze STV the first procedure consists of the following:

Comparing add up how many people uniquely prefer each combination of
elemtents of the set to the test candidate of the other set. Call this value
the strength of that set. Whichever set is stronger wins.

This could conceivably be replaced with a cardinal method.

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Re: [EM] Fixing Range Voting

[Greg Nisbet]

Instant Range-off Voting is an interesting idea. I thought about it once a
while ago too. I didn't renormalize the ballots though, I just set the
co-highest to 100 and the co-lowest to 0 for each ballot as a sanitation
measure. I eventually abadoned it due to nonmonotonicity, but I think the
discussion is a valid one.

There are some problems with Range Voting, and perhaps tweaking it or adding
some new features will fix them, perhaps not.

Most of the problems seem to involve voters being coerced into making
extreme ballots for fear of being outcompeted by strategic rivals. Assuming
people will be honest out of charity is naive. Some of them will, perhaps
many of them will, but unscrupulous individuals could manipulate an election
if there were enough of them. So, in the spirit of idiotproofing voting,
let's discuss Range Voting spinoffs.

so for there is:

IRNR (Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings)

Cardinal Condorcet http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/cwp13.htm

Various semi-proposed tweaking of Range Voting to include an elect majority
winner first or elect CW first clause.

All of these have the same goal and that goal is very simple. To either
encourage honest ratings or force more explicit ratings.

We walk a fine line here. If we flat out enforce normalized distribution, we
get Borda... A method so dismal, so appaling, so monumentally bad that it
may even be worse than FPTP.

If you were to make more score diverse ballots count more, it would suffer
from the DH3 pathology unless it exactly counteracted the weight of voting
honestly.

That being said, I think the most promising area of development here is
based around the concept of a "conditional vote" that came up a few threads
ago. The idea here being that individual ballots should "react" to a
particular candidate being kicked out of the hopeful group or something like
that.

Anyway, if anyone has any idea for multiwinner ranked/rated methods, those
are always appreciated for the study. IRNR STV looks interesting...

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[EM] Strategic Voting and Simulating It

[Greg Nisbet]

I would like to know what is currently wrong with the strategic voting
simulations.

In response to questions about my earlier simulation proposals... here it
is.

The reason that the voters vote in stages and are apparently more willing to
support front runners is this:

1) This way as time goes on the situation will hopefully approach
equilibrium and we can call it a day.

2) The weight of each pseudovoter grows exponentially in Vote By Result.
Therefore if they support a front runner and abandon their favorite, you can
be damn sure the favorite wasn't viable.
*I revise my earlier idea. Instead I think the population size should grow
linearly (so that, little by little, pseudovoters are forced to make
compromises). Either that or have the weight grow subexponentitally.

So the two things I have proposed are Vote By Result and Probability
Feedback Loop. I think that in the last thread or so I explained them, so
tell me if something needs touching up.

The main purpose of this message however, is just to request some general
ideas for what should be included in a strategic voting simulator.

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[EM] Request for Multiwinner Methods

[Greg Nisbet]

For the Intel Science Talent Search, Warren Smith and I are working on a
system to measure how representative the groups created by various
multiwinner electoral methods are. This shall be done by having the public
have opinions of various binary social issues and the candidates will have
stance on these. Then the group of winners will get together and vote (using
the only reasonable voting method with two options) and this will be the
basis for seeing how well the winners have "emulated" society.

Several things to note,
a) This represents a departure from the tradition concept of utility
somewhat. The candidates themselves won't have utility (they may have
something resembling it, but that comes much MUCH later) instead the net
opinions of parliament will.
b) In order to simulate strategic voting, either the Vote By Result system I
described earlier will be used or one based on assigning "victory
probabilities" to candidates in a massive feedback loop that will eventually
approach equilibrium. More on this later

Anyway, onto the main point.

If you have a multiwinner method of some sort, that would be great.
Party-related methods are great, but as we aren't exactly sure how to
emulate parties yet.. they are less useful now than they would be, say in a
month, that's no reason not to suggest a nice party method, but just sort of
keep that in mind.

Both ranked and rated ballot methods are appreciated. If you have some
variation of an existing method that is great too.

Single winner methods are also appreciated. We are going to attempt
districted single winner methods as well for the purposes of this thing. The
number of single winner methods tested won't be quite as generous as the
other Bayesian regret tests, but whatever.

The current multiwinner methods I can think of off the top of my head are:
CPO-STV
STV with various transfer rules (I don't anticipate TOO great a difference
here)
RRV
PAV (proportional approval voting)
PRV (  " "  range"" )
SNTV
MMP
Cumulative Voting
Sainte-Lague
Largest Rem
D'Hondt
Limited Vote
Block Vote
Sortition (Random Winner)

And, a special place of (dis)honor is reserved for distrticted FPTP. It is
the norm for Anglophone countries and a cause of political misery the world
over.

I know many of those methods listed are crappy, but I say some kind of
yardstick is called for.

Oh yeah, if your method is sufficiently obscure, please maybe give a brief
description of how it works or a hyperlink to one.

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[EM] Range vs Condorcet Overview

[Greg Nisbet]

I'll attempt to organize the Range Voting vs Condorcet debate somewhat.

>From what I can see, the following methods have been proposed/have some
argument defending them/are reasonably good representatives of the groups
being considered:

Range Voting:

There are two types of arguments against this system:

1)  Ratings themselves are useless/unreasonable/illogical/not indicative
of reality

2)  Nothing survives post-strategy, so any benefit of Range Voting is
lost anyway as it reverts to approval. The zero-info strategy is approval.

3)  Range Voting isn't a majority method.

My response typically is:

1)  The meaning of the vote is substantiated by the system. People vote
to achieve a particular outcome. With Range Voting, the different scores
have an at-least partway predictable impact on the election (same as any
other system). People can tell what is good for the candidates and by how
much. Every reasonable voting system preserves this important feature. As a
consequence of the votes influence result effect, the different scores now
have meaning.

a.   The concept of comparing candidates along a single dimension is
more intuitive and hence more meaningful to voters than making O(n^2) binary
decisions

2)  In order for this to be true, the utility gain from having one's
favorite candidate in office must exceed the relative benefit of choosing
between the competitors. To the extent which this is true in reality, the
results will resemble approval. The real question here is: if each voter
strongly prefers their favorite candidate set to the set of everyone else,
would a non-approval style election really help?

a.   Does zero-info in this case mean a) lack of info about of the
behavior of other voters or b) (a) and lack of info about other candidates
as well? Either way, if the problem can be ameliorated by adding info, then
add info.

3)  Any majority can impose its will.

a.   It is a majority method if you reject the ranked ballot conception
of what a majority is. If you regard someone who voted Alice 60% and Bob
100% as belonging 60% to the Alice camp and 100% to the Bob camp, then Range
Voting is a majority method. If you interpret the same data as meaning I
support Bob, failing Bob, I support Alice… then it isn't.

b.  Is this behavior even a good thing? If the majority isn't exercising
its influence and a compromise candidate is elected instead, do you really
want a polarizing candidate or a compromise one?

RP:

1)  This is a system I initially cited as an example of a reasonable
Condorcet method, it hasn't really been argued about.

Schulze:

1)  Same comment

River:

1)  Same comment

MMPO:

Seeing as Electorama is down and I can't find an actual
description of how this system works, I am stuck making generic arguments
against it. If someone could explain it to me, that would be great. From
what I can tell, it is a variant of Minmax that satisfies FBC, but neither
Clone nor Condorcet.  My best guess is that it takes the biggest loss for
each candidate, and picks the candidate with the smallest biggest loss. That
is what I have gathered from its name, MinMaxPairwiseOpposition.

If that is the case, then my responses to this are that the myopic view of
what is your biggest loss has profound impacts on strategic nomination.
Cloning becomes extremely powerful.  By nominating an additional candidate,
my biggest loss won't go down if my party is even slightly organized, but my
opponent's can. I'm not quite sure how this teaming incentive compares to,
say, Borda, but I imagine it to be fairly substantial nonetheless.

Condorcet-Approval:

Ok, so I inadvertently described this one. I assumed it was
more complicated than a simple two-step process.

My arguments against this system:

1)  The Bayesian Regret Data
http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.htmlsuggests the Condorcet winner
is usually good for society and that Range
selects the Condorcet winner more often than Condorcet efficient methods do.
If one compares Condorcet-Approval to just Approval, Approval chose the
utility-based Condorcet winner 655 more times. In fact, all of the
Condorcet-efficient methods selected the true CW winner 10342 times. This
suggests that obeying the nominal property can cause the system to elect
fewer actual CWs.

2)  Let's pretend there are two ballots here, one ranked and one rated.
Does the ranked ballot have any influence on the rated ballot or vice versa
or are they separate? E.g. would it be possible for me to disapprove of the
person I voted best in the Condorcet section or approve of the first and
third best but not the second best?

ICA:

Hmm so this is ICA:

*3e. ICA *:

   1. (Same as for MDDA.)
   2. Again as in MDDA, a voter implicitly *approves* every candidate whom
   he explicitly ranks.
   3. Let v[a,b] signify the number of voters ranking 

[EM] Strategic Voting and SImulating it.

[Greg Nisbet]

Thoughts on Strategy:

Voting strategy is susceptible to the Tinkerbell effect. Certain conditions
only exist because voters or their programmers "believe" them to.

Coming up with voter strategy piecemeal is not methodical enough. I propose
a fairly reasonable alternative to this. I call it Vote By Result.

I have a general purpose strategy idea.

Divide the voters into particular groups that vote early to late.

The earliest group would presumably vote honest (I recommend making it small
to minimize the impact of "false honesty")

The others would abandon their true favorite if they lacked the power to
independently make it reality.

Essentially after each group goes the results-so-far are updated.

Then each pseudovoter* in the new group votes.

The process continues

*  a pseudovoter is like a block of voters, but its vote is given more
weight  than an individual voter and agrees with itself completely so that
voters in later generations can counteract the "momentum" of previous
results. The result of this experiment would be fairly simple. The voters
would end up using simple strategy. Later pseudovoters would abandon their
true favorite if they do not possess the power to independently alter
results and instead to default to the best electable alternative.

I have no idea how the weight/number of pseudovoters should grow with
"time".

I suggest geometrically growing pseudovoter weights and a constant
population size.

This method is computationally intensive, so beware. Probably not as
intensive as generating theorems proving some strategy optimal for some
voting method however : - ).

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Re: [EM] Ways to Evaluate Multiwinner Contests (Greg Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

small correction:
On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 6:37 PM, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

>  So far some nice ideas have been proposed for measuring how effective a
> multiwinner method is.
> All of the ones proposed are based on n, let n be a list of utility scores
> for the candidates.
> 1. ln(2*sum(n)+a) we don't know what a is. It's probably pretty close to a
> constant, let's just call it 1.
>
> Note:
> values for the ln(2*sum(n)+a) can be computed exactly if you have time on
> your hands
> f(1) = 1
> f(2) = 1 + 1/2 => 1.5
> f(3) = 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 => 1.83
>
> 2. this iterative procedure:
> def sortpav(n):
> n.sort()
> n.reverse()
> ret = 0
> for y,x in enumerate(n):
> ret += x/float(y+1)
> return ret
> Of course these three procedures can be used for Range Voting, but it is
> not necessary to accept the validity and perfection of Range Voting to use
> these as metrics.
>
> Range Voting resembles utility summation with two fundamental differences
> 1) people vote strategically and 2) a ceiling
>
> So, now we move onto the multiwinner bayesian versions.
> Unlike single winner, the methods for measuring regret so far proposed have
> a floor, specifically 0. See, the ln of negative numbers includes pi*i. I do
> not know how to handle imaginary numbers with regard to voting methods, so I
> am going to outlaw negative numbers as the lazy solution to the problem.
>
> If anyone has a multiwinner method to suggest, a criticism to the metric or
> anything else before I run the simulation please let me know. I know better
> than to call a vote on which metric to use, so if you have an opinion on one
> of them please tell me.
>

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[EM] Ways to Evaluate Multiwinner Contests (Greg Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

So far some nice ideas have been proposed for measuring how effective a
multiwinner method is.
All of the ones proposed are based on n, let n be a list of utility scores
for the candidates.
1. ln(2*sum(n)+a) we don't know what a is. It's probably pretty close to a
constant, let's just call it 1.
2. sum(n)*ln(2*len(n)+a) same comment

Note:
values for the ln(2*sum(n)+a) can be computed exactly if you have time on
your hands
f(1) = 1
f(2) = 1 + 1/2 => 1.5
f(3) = 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 => 1.83

3. this iterative procedure:
def sortpav(n):
n.sort()
n.reverse()
ret = 0
for y,x in enumerate(n):
ret += x/float(y+1)
return ret
Of course these three procedures can be used for Range Voting, but it is not
necessary to accept the validity and perfection of Range Voting to use these
as metrics.

Range Voting resembles utility summation with two fundamental differences 1)
people vote strategically and 2) a ceiling

So, now we move onto the multiwinner bayesian versions.
Unlike single winner, the methods for measuring regret so far proposed have
a floor, specifically 0. See, the ln of negative numbers includes pi*i. I do
not know how to handle imaginary numbers with regard to voting methods, so I
am going to outlaw negative numbers as the lazy solution to the problem.

If anyone has a multiwinner method to suggest, a criticism to the metric or
anything else before I run the simulation please let me know. I know better
than to call a vote on which metric to use, so if you have an opinion on one
of them please tell me.

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[EM] Condorcet vs Range (Greg Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:29:48 + (GMT)
From: Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [EM] Range > Condorcet (No idea who started this
   argument,   sorry; I am Gregory Nisbet)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

Hello,

--- En date de?: Sam 11.10.08, Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a
?crit?:
> De: Greg Nisbet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Objet: [EM] Range > Condorcet (No idea who started this argument, sorry; I
am Gregory Nisbet)
> ?: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
> Date: Samedi 11 Octobre 2008, 2h01
> Reasons why Range is better and always will be.
> I would like to end the truce.
>
> I'll be generous to the Condorcet camp and assume they
> suggest something
> reasonable like RP, Schulze or River.

I suggest Condorcet//Approval with ranking among disapproved candidates
disallowed. Though apparently you are adamant about Clone-Winner
compliance.

I merely said that of the methods I am aware of, Schulze, River, and RP are
the best. Condorcet-Approval certainly sounds interesting though. I heard
about another hybrid today that also looks promising. Elect the Condorcet
winner if there is one otherwise default to approval. I think in practice
this would mostly result in the Approval winner being elected anyway. I
admit it. I completely overlooked Range-Condorcet hybrids. This one,
http://fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/cwp13.htm, also looks
interesting by the way. My response to these is largely the Bayesian Regret
argument. As near as I can tell, this preliminary procedure will reduce
overall Bayesian Regret scores.

I'm not entirely sure when the ranking of the disapproved candidates would
throw out the approval winner. (Which logically it must if it is to be
different.) I'll look for it though.


(I also suggest my FBC tweak of this method, but then we have exited 100%
Condorcet compliance.)

Interesting…


> Property Related:
> favorite betrayal, participation and consistency.
> Implications:
> 1) It is always good to vote and it is always good to rate
> your favorite
> candidate 100. The only Condorcet method to satisfy
> favorite betrayal is an
> obscure variant of Minmax which I'll ignore because of
> its glaring flaws (clone dependence *cough*)

MMPO fails clone independence rarely; the difficulty with it is its
potential to give absurd results failing Woodall's Plurality criterion
(is how I would describe it).



Wouldn't MMPO<http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg06261.html>be
susceptible to the other arguments as well? At first glance, it does
appear promising.

> 2) How does it make sense to be able to divide a region
> into two
> constituencies each electing A if B is the actual winner?

I would say it doesn't matter. I'd also say that in reality, Range isn't
better, even if technically it doesn't seem to have this problem. So
it's purely a theoretical concern.



It may be a theoretical concern, but saying it doesn't matter really isn't a
response. I was wondering how a method failing this could be considered to
truly represent the will of the people when considering them as several
independent groups would lead to unanimous support of a different candidate.
I did not link this argument back to the real world of voting; I
specifically asked for a theoretical justification.

> Condorcet methods
> are not additive, this calls into question the actual
> meaning of being
> elected by a Condorcet method.

It would, if one did not know what the meaning is. Of course the CW is
not selected on some additive reasoning.

This is my argument. Please defend the concept of a CW given its
non-additive properties.

> answers to potentital majority rule counterarguments:
> 1) Range voting isn't a majority method.
> answer: any majority can impose their will if they choose
> to exercise it.

The reason this is not a satisfying answer is that when a method is a
"majority method" this means that the majority does not have to get
together before the election, identify themselves as being a majority,
and settle on a singular goal.

Otherwise almost every method is a "majority method" in your sense.
Plurality is one too.

First of all, I wasn't suggesting this as an alternative definition of the
majority criterion. Also, in order for a method to escape your criticism it
would have to satisfy FBC and majority at the same time so that sincere
majorities can be identified and rewarded. Please identify a method that
does both of these.

My point is that a strategic majority will always be rewarded. The majority
does not have to organize itself before the election; they just have to
individually be unwilling to compromise.

For the point regarding FPTP, it is a majority method. It is not a good

[EM] Range > Condorcet (No idea who started this argument, sorry; I am Gregory Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

Reasons why Range is better and always will be.
I would like to end the truce.

I'll be generous to the Condorcet camp and assume they suggest something
reasonable like RP, Schulze or River.

Property Related:
favorite betrayal, participation and consistency.
Implications:
1) It is always good to vote and it is always good to rate your favorite
candidate 100. The only Condorcet method to satisfy favorite betrayal is an
obscure variant of Minmax which I'll ignore because of its glaring flaws
(clone dependence *cough*)
2) How does it make sense to be able to divide a region into two
constituencies each electing A if B is the actual winner? Condorcet methods
are not additive, this calls into question the actual meaning of being
elected by a Condorcet method.

answers to potentital majority rule counterarguments:
1) Range voting isn't a majority method.
answer: any majority can impose their will if they choose to exercise it.
concession: it is true that Condorcet methods solve the Burr Dilemma fairly
well because parties can simultaneously compete for majorities and swap
second place votes. Range Voting can at best allow voters to differentiate
between better and worse candidates by one point. So Range's ability to
emulate this behavior is competitive.

I am not aware of another anti-range voting property one could claim that is
applicable to cardinal methods.

Computational Complexity (time):
Range O(c*v)
RP O(c^2*v+c^3) #c^2*v = constucting matrix; c^3 finding local maximum or
generating implications c^2 many times.

Range Voting is more scalable.

Voter Experience:

Range Voting (based on the existence of Amazon product ratings, youtube
video ratings, hotornot.com, the number of movies rated out of stars.) I
cannot find a single instance of Condorcet methods besides elections in
various open source communities. It doesn't qualify as mainstream.

Understandability:

Range Voting (I dare anyone to challenge me on this)

Bayesian Regret:

Range Voting (same comment)

Ballot expressiveness:

For elections with less than 100 candidates Range voting is more
expressive
(If anyone thinks about advocating Condorcet for large numbers of
candidates, think again. Sorting candidates is an O(nlogn) problem. AND
that's only if you have O(logn) memory available, otherwise its O(n^2). In
short, you would need to be a genius or have large amounts of time on your
hands to do this properly. Range Voting does not have this problem)
 Expressing apathy: Okay Condorceties, you got me. voter ignorance in
Schulze and RP can be expressed with (somewhat) less bias than Range
Votings- X marks. For those of you who don't believe me, consider the
following thought experiment: I rate Candidate A 70 (which I consider a good
score) and express apathy about Candidate B. I may think 70 is a damn good
score, but this might hurt my cause. I'll call this apathy-participation
failure. In contrast, apathy in Schulze and RP is strictly worse (to the
extent that participation failure allows) than support over ANY candidate.
Think of it this way, let ~ be the apathy comparison; (A > B) > (A ~ B) > (A
< B) in RP and Schulze. Now, the argument could be made for Range Voting
that (A = 100 B = 0) > (A = X B = 0) > (A = 0 B = 100), but this neglects
some important points. In Schulze and RP I am expressing apathy about A
SINGLE COMPARISON. This means I can leave the choice of, say, the two best
members of my party to the members of my party. I can still vote them
superior to all others without bothering to make an internal ranking.
Strictly speaking, Range Voting also somewhat has this property: I could
vote both 100, but the comparison is less explicit and less isolatable and
hence less expressive in this sense.

e.g. A = 100, B = 80, C = X, D = 60, E = 0
If I like A more than B, like C less than B, but am apathetic about C vs D I
am out of luck. Depending on C's average so far, my ballot could influence
the result any number of ways. I need to anticipate in advance what the
average is LIKELY to be.

So... bottom line on apathy.

Bottom line:

Schulze and RP: Precise expression on what exactly it is that you are
apathetic about in such a way that it doesn't spill over into other
comparisons.

Range: You can express apathy, but you take your life in your hands. On the
other hand, your ballot is more expressive

Bottom Bottom line:
Range voting is better for expressiveness (taken as a whole)
Condorcet is better for isolating comparisons, but is less expressive with
each comparison.

Most of these arguments favor Range Voting, there are two (and only two)
that do not:
1) the result of apathy can be unpredicatble in RV
2) a passive majority (one that doesn't exercise its majoritarian might) is
not assured victory.

The rest of the arguments favor Range Voting. Range Voting is victorious.

 If I overlooked something or made an error, please tell me; I'm just a high
school student.

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[EM] Multiwinner Method Yardstick (Gregory Nisbet)

[Greg Nisbet]

Proportional Approval Voting
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Proportional-approval-voting
Brief summary of this method:
there are O(c!) (candidates factorial) many "pseudocandidates" consisting
of all the possible combinations of candidates.
Let's say we have a voter named Alice and a three person pseudocandidate
composed of real candidates X,Y, and Z.
If Alice approves of one of them, the score for XYZ += 1
"two " ,   += (1
+ 1/2)
"three/all  " ,+= (1
+ 1/2 + 1/3)

This way Alice approving of X and Bob approving of X is worth 2 pts whereas
Alice approving of X and Y and Bob approving of neither is only worth 1.5
pts. The procedure isn't iterative hence the failure of RRV
http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html
to satisfy the multimember equivalent of the participation criterion is
sidestepped. In other words, voting for a candidate cannot hurt you because
PAV does not use an elect-candidate-then-punish-supporters iteration to
achieve its result.

However great PAV may be its O(c!cv) (candidates factorial * candidates *
voters) time complexity is enough to make me think twice before seriously
considering it.

Multiwinner Method Yardstick

PAV is the basis of the multiwinner analogue of Bayesian regret. Think of it
this way.
PAV gives us a nice formula for dealing with range values.
Let's use the previous example of Alice and XYZ
Let's pretend Alice votes X = 99, Y = 12, Z = 35

with PAV, the formula is (1+1/2+1/3...1/n) for the nth thing
think of it as sorting the list for that candidate and THEN applying
(1,1/2,1/3..1/n) to it.
in the previous example if Alice approved X and Z (1,0,1)
we sort the list
(1,1,0)
then multiply by the coefficients
(1*1,1*1/2,0*1/3)
and add
1.5

apply the same thing to the current example

99,12,35 ==> 99,35,12

and multiply...

99*1,35*1/2,12*1/3

and add...

120.5

there, the score for XYZ from Alice is 120.5

Thus the procedure for evaluating various multiwinner methods is simple:

create some fake voters (make their preferences between 0 and n, distributed
however you like)
I'd recommend NOT using negative numbers because I have no idea how they
will interact with the sorting and tabulating procedure.

In fact, it isn't even necessary to calculate the BEST result in order to
compare multiwinner voting methods.

Just calculate each winner according to the multiwinner methods you are
testing, and then add the score of the winning group of candidates that
method selected to the method's tally. In the end, each method will have a
score that is equal to the utility it generated each round summed up. This
gives you a great starting point for comparing the multiwinner methods.

I'm in the process of programming something to actually test this. If anyone
has a program for STV, CPO-STV, or some other multiwinner something or
rather, I would really appreciate it.

Even if it's just a description of a method; it's better than nothing. (no
party-based or asset voting related methods please.)

If anyone notices a glaring error of some sort, please tell me; I'm just a
high school student.

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