Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RE : Re: Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Jul 23, 2007, at 17:20 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >> Margins vs. winning votes is another long term discussion topic on >> this list. There have been many opinions and the final conclusions >> may be more difficult to draw than in the Range strategy question. > > I agree here. > >> 1) It can be debated if Condorcet methods are in practice (large >> scale public elections) vulnerable to strategies. If not, then both >> margins and winning votes are safe enough and other criteria can be >> used to pick one of them for use. > > It's possible that a coordinated strategy may not be feasible, but > that > is not the heart of the problem in my view. > > Referring again to this scenario: > 49 A > 24 B > 27 C>B > > Under margins the C voters have great favorite betrayal incentive > without > any other faction having to use a coordinated strategy. Sorry about some delay in answering. There certainly are many viewpoints to this scenario. I'll present one. Please point out if I missed some essential things that you thought I should answer. In this example a single C supporter can indeed change the winner (in the case of margins) to B by voting B>C instead of C>B. The strategy is very safe since C supporters can assume that C will not win the race in any case. The pattern that leads to this strategic option is a loop where - A wins C clearly - C wins B with a small margin (and low number of winning votes) - B wins A with an even smaller margin (but high number of winning votes) How about the weak spots then: - The outcome is not that bad since there is anyway a majority that would elect B instead of A, and C was beaten too badly to even try to win (winning votes actually elect B without requiring strategic votes) - This scenario assumes a natural loop (not very common, and this type of loop maybe even less common than loops in general) - It is difficult to find a real world model that would lead to this kind of votes (what is the reason why voters voted as they did? do you have a story that would explain this election?) - Some of the strategic votes could be natural in the sense that if the numbers above are the outcome of an opinion poll few days before the election, then some C supporters might give up voting C as their first option since C seems to be "a sure loser" But of course the fact remains that in this scenario margins are more vulnerable to and encourage strategic voting. The weakest spot of this scenario is that it seems that it is not very likely to occur in real life. Maybe there are some variants with more credible "real life" numbers. This problem is margins specific but so far I couldn't find the reasons why this would make margins generally fail (worse and with higher probability than winning votes) in real life (large scale public) elections. I gave some links to the winning votes problems cases. They (for example) seemed more probable in real life to me than this scenario. But I have not done a complete enough analysis to claim that margins would definitely beat winning votes and that the probability of this scenario would be low enough not to be a threat. >> 2) There are as well cases where winning votes are more vulnerable to >> strategies than margins. So the question is not one-sided. > > However, it is pretty clear that margins has a worse FBC problem than > WV does. Simulations have shown this, but it can be argued > logically as > well. May be so. Is there some reason why FBC would be a key criterion in this case? I made some time ago some simulations on margins and winning votes on if some certain random voter group or any of the voter groups could (from their point of view) improve the outcome of the (sincere) election by voting strategically (in whatever way). The simulation gave margins somewhat better results than to winning votes. Maybe the results depend a bit on what one simulates. > If margins outperforms WV in some respect, I'd like to be able to > state > exactly how. - to me the choices that margins make with sincere votes seem (not necessarily perfect for all needs but) clearly more sensible than the choices of winning votes - some of the scenarios where winning votes have strategic problems appear to be more probable in real life than the problem scenarios of margins (this feeling is however based on only a limited number of cases and not a thorough analysis) - margins are easy to explain and understand and justify to the voters/citizens => "least number of additional votes needed to win all the other candidates" (no need to talk about breaking loops and about complex algorithms) Sorry about not providing any more exact answe
Re: [Election-Methods] Juho--WV vs Margins
On Jul 26, 2007, at 12:33 , Michael Ossipoff wrote: > I pointed out on EM > that, with Margins, sometimes the only outcomes in which a CW is > elected at > Nash equilibrium are ones in which defensive order-reversal is used. > > In other words, in some situations, the election of a CW without > defensive > order-reversal has to be a Nash disequilibrium, an unstable outcome. > > In contradistinction, with WV Condorcet, and with Approval (and > RV), when > there's a CW, there is always at least one Nash equilibrium in > which the CW > wins without any order-reversal. > > But some Margies are die-hards. Different Condorcet completion methods have different characteristics and none of them are without problems. A good argumentation on why these described benefits/problems are crucial in practical (large scale public) elections would be nice. Stability is something positive but elections are typically arranged as one shot events, and ranking based methods generally may have preference loops. => Do we expect some strategy planning rounds where these properties would be needed? In short, a practical example of a situation where the methods have problems in real life would help estimating which threats/characteristics are needed in real life. > Juho says that Margins does better when voters are sincere. But > I've posted, > for Juho, examples in which innoncent, nonstrategic truncation can > result in > a violation of majority rule, and create a defensive strategy > problem of a > magnitude that doesn't happen in WV. Does that mean that there are examples where margins have problems but you don't deny that margins generally elects better candidates with sincere votes than winning votes does :-)? I btw assume that here "innoncent, nonstrategic truncation" means that there is some deviation from the sincere opinion of the voter. I gave some links to cases where winning votes have problems. There are some where margins have more problems. Sorry but so far I haven't found the winning vote benefits important enough to justify taking in its problems. In case of a tie in performance with strategic votes I'd favour margins because of its more natural choices with sincere votes. I don't think the differences are really fatal since in most regular elections the differences between the methods may not be very big. I don't have any new additional arguments right now but the interested readers can find lots of discussion in the EM archives (I already gave some links to cover the margins side too). Juho ___ Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RE : Re: Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
Forgot to say, the simulations used minmax and in usually had three candidates. (different voter groups sizes, e.g. 10% or less or more; different probabilities of ties in preferences) Juho On Jul 27, 2007, at 2:22 , Juho wrote: > On Jul 23, 2007, at 17:20 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > >> Juho, >> >> --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >>> Margins vs. winning votes is another long term discussion topic on >>> this list. There have been many opinions and the final conclusions >>> may be more difficult to draw than in the Range strategy question. >> >> I agree here. >> >>> 1) It can be debated if Condorcet methods are in practice (large >>> scale public elections) vulnerable to strategies. If not, then both >>> margins and winning votes are safe enough and other criteria can be >>> used to pick one of them for use. >> >> It's possible that a coordinated strategy may not be feasible, but >> that >> is not the heart of the problem in my view. >> >> Referring again to this scenario: >> 49 A >> 24 B >> 27 C>B >> >> Under margins the C voters have great favorite betrayal incentive >> without >> any other faction having to use a coordinated strategy. > > Sorry about some delay in answering. > > There certainly are many viewpoints to this scenario. I'll present > one. Please point out if I missed some essential things that you > thought I should answer. > > In this example a single C supporter can indeed change the winner (in > the case of margins) to B by voting B>C instead of C>B. The strategy > is very safe since C supporters can assume that C will not win the > race in any case. > > The pattern that leads to this strategic option is a loop where > - A wins C clearly > - C wins B with a small margin (and low number of winning votes) > - B wins A with an even smaller margin (but high number of winning > votes) > > How about the weak spots then: > - The outcome is not that bad since there is anyway a majority that > would elect B instead of A, and C was beaten too badly to even try to > win (winning votes actually elect B without requiring strategic votes) > - This scenario assumes a natural loop (not very common, and this > type of loop maybe even less common than loops in general) > - It is difficult to find a real world model that would lead to this > kind of votes (what is the reason why voters voted as they did? do > you have a story that would explain this election?) > - Some of the strategic votes could be natural in the sense that if > the numbers above are the outcome of an opinion poll few days before > the election, then some C supporters might give up voting C as their > first option since C seems to be "a sure loser" > > But of course the fact remains that in this scenario margins are more > vulnerable to and encourage strategic voting. The weakest spot of > this scenario is that it seems that it is not very likely to occur in > real life. Maybe there are some variants with more credible "real > life" numbers. > > This problem is margins specific but so far I couldn't find the > reasons why this would make margins generally fail (worse and with > higher probability than winning votes) in real life (large scale > public) elections. I gave some links to the winning votes problems > cases. They (for example) seemed more probable in real life to me > than this scenario. But I have not done a complete enough analysis to > claim that margins would definitely beat winning votes and that the > probability of this scenario would be low enough not to be a threat. > >>> 2) There are as well cases where winning votes are more >>> vulnerable to >>> strategies than margins. So the question is not one-sided. >> >> However, it is pretty clear that margins has a worse FBC problem than >> WV does. Simulations have shown this, but it can be argued >> logically as >> well. > > May be so. Is there some reason why FBC would be a key criterion in > this case? I made some time ago some simulations on margins and > winning votes on if some certain random voter group or any of the > voter groups could (from their point of view) improve the outcome of > the (sincere) election by voting strategically (in whatever way). The > simulation gave margins somewhat better results than to winning > votes. Maybe the results depend a bit on what one simulates. > >> If margins outperforms WV in some respect, I'd like to be able to >> state >> exactly how. > > - to me the choices that margins make with sincere votes seem (not > necessarily perfect for al
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Jul 27, 2007, at 11:51 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >>> It's possible that a coordinated strategy may not be feasible, but >>> that >>> is not the heart of the problem in my view. >>> >>> Referring again to this scenario: >>> 49 A >>> 24 B >>> 27 C>B >>> >>> Under margins the C voters have great favorite betrayal incentive >>> without >>> any other faction having to use a coordinated strategy. >> >> Sorry about some delay in answering. >> >> There certainly are many viewpoints to this scenario. I'll present >> one. Please point out if I missed some essential things that you >> thought I should answer. >> >> In this example a single C supporter can indeed change the winner (in >> the case of margins) to B by voting B>C instead of C>B. The strategy >> is very safe since C supporters can assume that C will not win the >> race in any case. > > Yes the strategy is safe, but it shouldn't be necessary. Why would we > bother to use a Condorcet method if voters will still need to vote for > one of the frontrunners? Yes, I'd recommend Condorcet for environments where strategic voting stays marginal (or is inefficient). I hope most environments meet this criterion, especially typical large scale public electuons. >> The pattern that leads to this strategic option is a loop where >> - A wins C clearly >> - C wins B with a small margin (and low number of winning votes) >> - B wins A with an even smaller margin (but high number of winning >> votes) >> >> How about the weak spots then: >> - The outcome is not that bad since there is anyway a majority that >> would elect B instead of A, and C was beaten too badly to even try to >> win (winning votes actually elect B without requiring strategic >> votes) > > Exactly. I'm not saying C should win. > >> - This scenario assumes a natural loop (not very common, and this >> type of loop maybe even less common than loops in general) > > I don't understand why you say it assumes a "natural loop" or what > other > loops you believe exist if you call this one "natural." I guess you > just > mean that there is a voted cycle without strategic voting (other than > truncation). In which case I guess you feel that cycles resulting from > strategic voting (as in offensive strategies) are more common than > this?? Yes, cycle without strategic voting. I didn't assume the truncation to be strategic either. Frequency of strategic and "natural" cycles depends heavily on the environment. I believe strong natural (sincere) cycles are not impossible but not very common. In real life I expect sincere cycles to be mostly weak (preferences that form the loop are typically weak). >> - It is difficult to find a real world model that would lead to this >> kind of votes (what is the reason why voters voted as they did? do >> you have a story that would explain this election?) > > I totally disagree. As for a story, say that A is a left-wing > candidate > and B and C are on the right-wing. C may be more or less extreme > than B, > but is less well-established somehow. Ok, A is the left wing, B and C are the right wing, C is not as well known as B. C got more first place votes than B, so C can not be very unknown. > C voters definitely hold B as a second choice. In this case I'd expect many B voters to support C as their second choice. C can't be so unknown that B supporters would not be aware of C being the second (or actually first) right wing candidate. > A voters do not give a > second preference to B because under margins it gives the win to B, > and > under WV it's generally just bad advice to rank the other frontrunner. I assumed that the votes were sincere. Could you describe the sincere opinions and strategic votes separately. I can understand that left wing voters may not be interested in the right wing internal battle. I'd however expect some of the "A" voters vote "A>B" and some "A>C" (both new opinions would get votes since in this scenario C was "more or less extreme than B", not clearly wanted or unwanted by left wing). > B voters do not list A as a second preference for the same reason. B > voters do not list C as a second preference for some of these reasons: > 1. C is not actually their second choice > 2. If ultimately C>B, the C second preference gives the win to C. > Condorcet invariably requires that. > 3. If C is more extreme than B, then if B can't win it wo
Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RV comments
On Jul 22, 2007, at 6:58 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 08:17 AM 7/21/2007, Juho wrote: >> I also think that Range is a good method in non-contentions polls and >> elections. But in the statement above a competitive election was of >> course the assumption. > > Why? > > *Assumptions should be stated.* Election methods are used in all > kinds of situations. If there is an ideal election method for use > where it would be expected that people will vote sincerely, > shouldn't we know it? Yes, it is good to state the assumptions. I however do assume election scenarios to be competitive unless other assumptions are explicitly stated. Especially with Range it makes a big difference to me if one plans to use it in a non-competitive or competitive set-up. > And *then* we could look at what happens when some people don't > vote sincerely? It's clear that there is harm done, under some > circumstances, but how much harm and who is harmed the most? Is it > the sincere voters? Or is it those who did not provide accurate > information to the voting method, so it can't possibly optimize > their satisfaction? Unfortunately with Range my understanding is that in a situation where we have several "parties"/"groupings", some of which vote strategically and some not, Range is too rewarding to the strategic groupings. > I don't find the answers to these questions obvious. Apparently > some do. I think the main rules for Range are quite straight forward. There are some special cases that raise interesting second thoughts, but as a main rule I'd say that if some "bigger than marginal" group of voters is strategic, then Range tends to become "Approval with option to cast weakened votes". >> And there are some minor things in the description, e.g. Range is >> typically defined as having only a fixed number of possible ratings, >> not any value between 0 and 1. > > A completely general definition of Range would be that votes are > allowed anywhere in a Range of real numbers, and the votes are > summed or averaged (it makes a difference, depending on how blanks > are handled, and there are proposals one way and proposals another). > >> But isn't t so that the description above is a quite valid >> description as a main rule for competitive elections (where we want >> all voters to cast votes of similar strength). > > No. Who is "we"? I don't want all voters to cast votes of equal > strength in all pairwise elections, because it patently damages the > function of any election method to do so. What Approval style > voting amounts to is only allowing the voter to vote in certain > pairwise elections, with full strength, while totally abstaining > from others. Range simply allows the voter an expanded range of > intermediate possibilities. In my terms you are interested also in elections that non- competitive. That's good. Let's just make it clear when we talk about competitive and when about non-competitive or less competitive cases => Assumptions to be stated. (Term "we want" is just passive "one wants".) > Approval is a constricted Range method. > > Lost in all this is the fact that the general consensus among Range > advocates is that Approval is an excellent first step. It's cheap, > it's simple, it's easy to understand. And it *is* Range, just the > maximally constricted version. First step to what? I that would be e.g. the U.S. election reform, then the second step might be difficult since it may require that the competitive elections first evolve into more non-competitive (to make Range really useful). I'm not very optimistic, I think the U.S. elections are currently quite competitive. > Then, we suggest, there will start to be pressure for refinements. > Those refinements can go in two directions: ranking or rating. > Approval, because of the restriction to Yes/No on each candidate, > can also be considered a ranked method with only two ranks. And, > so, another rank could be added, and the vote analyzed pairwise as > a truncated Condorcet method, or analyzed in Range style, perhaps > as sum of votes. > > Taking the first step of Approval does not prejudice us with regard > to the next step, which could go in the ranked method direction or > the higher-resolution Range direction. I *am* a Range advocate, > which means that I have, so far, concluded that Range is generally > a better method than ranked methods, but it should be noted that I > don't consider Range the be-all and end-all of election methods, > not simple, single-step Range. > > And, in fact,
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Jul 29, 2007, at 2:51 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > Thanks for forwarding your old messages. I will comment on these > first. > > In the first two posts you discuss scenarios where equally-sized > factions > vote according to a mentality of "never mind the candidates of other > parties except that they are worse than the candidates of my own > party." > You note that under WV a single additional voter has at least some > way of > voting that can change the winner into any candidate. You ask for an > explanation of the WV philosophy that all the candidates are > roughly equal > prior to the single voter. > > The first scenario is 1000 A>B, 1000 C>D. In MinMax(WV) it is a > four-way > tie; in MinMax(m) it is an AC tie. If a D>B vote is added, under WV > this > becomes a D win. Under margins it is still an AC tie. Note that D > does not > win under either if the vote is just for D. > > I don't see first of all why this is very interesting. Not only is > this > not a realistic scenario, but your argument here is just that the > behavior > doesn't seem reasonable to you. I agree that this example is not realistic since it is too extreme to ever happen in real life. But I don't agree with the word "just". I mean that voters/citizens would probably be quite unhappy with their election method if this happened in real life. This example is intended to demonstrate that winning votes seems to put too little weight on some very clear opinions expressed by the voters. In an election with many candidates and many parties the voters may be happy to rank only the best candidates from their point of view and truncate many that they consider less good. Some of these truncated candidates might be potential winners, and something close to the described scenario might happen. This is not a strategy related problem but a problem of possibly making unwanted decisions already with sincere votes. I wouldn't say that is less important than the problems with strategic voting. Here's another version of the example - longer, but now the numbers could be from real life. There seems to be a consensus (within both of the two parties, "AB" and "CD") that A is better than B and C is better than D. Some voters (32%) truncate the candidates of the other party but all rank their own candidates. One additional vote (e.g. B>D) can lift B and/or D to the same level with A and C. The point is that this threat exists also when votes are more balanced than in the first (extreme but easy to catch) scenario. This may quite well happen in real life elections. 10 A>B 12 A>B>C 9 A>B>D 6 B>A 8 B>A>C 5 B>A>D 10 C>D 12 C>D>A 9 C>D>B 6 D>C 8 D>C>A 5 D>C>B > For an explanation I can see a couple. One is based on the concept of > approval. This is Condorcet and we are looking for a compromise > candidate. > The candidates who received the most votes (of any type) are D and > B. By > this concept one of these two should win. Yes, approval could be added. But that'd be another voting method. Voters should be informed about that. They could btw still vote A>B>C=D instead of A>B>truncate and spoil the election. One solution would be to make it mandatory to rank all the candidates. (This would also solve the margins vs. winning votes debate :-).) > The other principle is that of unambiguous defeats, where more than > half of > > the voters voted some way on a given issue. D is the only candidate > not on > the losing end of one of these. Sounds like a "very strong majority requirement". Preference 51-49 (out of the citizens that voted) is considered stronger than preference 49-0. (Note that also margins could be criticized of saying that 3-0 is a stronger preference than 51-49 (it depends on interpretation if this is considered bad or not), but I think the problems of winning votes are worse here.) > In practical terms I can't see how the C voters could feel cheated > that D > wins. If the C voters had not voted for D, then C would still lose > due to > the pairwise loss to B. I think you are assuming the approval cutoff to be present in the votes at the end of the listed candidates here. A more straight forward (and a more "ranking oriented") interpretation might be that they unanimously said that C is better than D. > In the second scenario you suppose equally-sized factions voting > A>B>C>D, > E>F>G, H>I, J. (Again, this is not a realistic scenario.) Under WV > a single > > additional voter has at least some way to vote that can turn any > one of > these candidates into the
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
> 49 A > 24 B > 27 C>B The numbers of this example are so unlikely to occur in real life that I modified the example a bit to get values that would be more probable. This was the first one that I found to be close enough to be realistic (maybe not yet fully realistic, maybe there are others that serve the strategic needs better). 30 A 9 A>B 6 A>C 14 B 8 B>C 2 B>A 25 C>B 5 C 1 C>A Vulnerability to the margins strategy was kept => similar cycle with appropriate differing strengths with margins and with winning votes. One C>B voter can change the result by voting B>C. I tried to keep the original number of first place supporters of each candidate. => 49/24/27. But I had to assume that some C supporters will truncate (since some B voters did so too) and as a result the number of A supporters had to be dropped to 43. In order to make C win B I donated these votes to C. => 45/24/31. It looks to me that B must be more centric than C. I expect A voters to truncate since they are not interested in the right wing internal battle. B voters truncate since many of them are so close to the left wing that A and C are about equal in preference to them. C voters do not truncate much since for them the other right wing candidate B is clearly better than A. The most unrealistic point in this (one step more realistic) scenario is maybe the fact that so few A supporters find B better than C (although as I said, B appears to be closer to the centre than C). But let's go forward. These votes are sincere. I used ties only at the end of the ballot (=> truncation). The difference to the original scenario is that the thresholds to all kind of changes are in this type of more realistic scenarios smaller than in the original example. In this case it seems that the strategic opportunity would not exist if any of the voter groups would gain or lose 1 to 4 votes (with the exception of "B>A" voters who can not lose more than 2 votes and that is not yet enough, and there would have to be 5-6 more "C" voters for the strategy to become void). C has now also a considerable chance of winning the election. If e.g. there would be 3 less "A>B" voters or three more "C>B" voters in the actual election C would win. Applying the original strategy would eliminate this possibility. C supporters would thus voluntarily give up the chance of winning. Opinion polls are unreliable and the opinions will change by the elections day. That makes the situation more balanced from C's point of view. Should one try to win with the help of strategic voting or by promoting one's own candidate. Note that recommending strategic voting may also turn some voters against the plotting candidate. There are many possibilities of changes in the voting behaviour, many different types of changes are likely to occur before the election day, and they are quite difficult to analyze and guess. It may be difficult for the C supporters to give up the idea of C winning the election. Throwing one's favourite candidate out without even really participating the election (where the candidate is close to winning the race) doesn't sound very tempting (to humans with optimistic and self-confident attitudes :-). The point of this modified example is that in real life the situation is likely to be much less clear due to multiple opinion groups, more balanced (less extreme) votes of large elections, inaccurate polls, changes in opinions between the poll and the election, possible other strategies etc. In this situation the C supporters might as well conclude that even though some polls show that strategic voting could be possible it may be a better bet to vote sincerely and concentrate on promoting C instead. (maybe even to state that sincere voting is recommended even if some strategists would recommend strategic voting) This kind of observations apply to many strategic examples, not only this margins based strategy. The vulnerability of Condorcet methods to strategic voting is a fact but in most cases the vulnerabilities are quite marginal and seldom (or in some cases practically never) occur in real life. If the voters do not (maybe mistakenly) trust the method and/or if the society finds strategic voting natural and recommendable the risks are higher than in situations where voters already trust the method and find strategic voting unpleasant (this does not require that the voters would not be very competitive). Juho On Jul 27, 2007, at 11:51 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >>> It's possible that a coordinated strategy may not be feasible, but >>> that >>> is not the heart of the problem in my view. >>> >>> Referring again to t
Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RV comments
On Jul 29, 2007, at 21:17 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 01:51 AM 7/29/2007, Juho wrote: On Jul 22, 2007, at 6:58 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 08:17 AM 7/21/2007, Juho wrote: >> I also think that Range is a good method in non-contentions polls and >> elections. But in the statement above a competitive election was of >> course the assumption. > > Why? > > *Assumptions should be stated.* Election methods are used in all > kinds of situations. If there is an ideal election method for use > where it would be expected that people will vote sincerely, > shouldn't we know it? Yes, it is good to state the assumptions. I however do assume election scenarios to be competitive unless other assumptions are explicitly stated. Especially with Range it makes a big difference to me if one plans to use it in a non-competitive or competitive set-up. Let me point to something a little deeper. "Non-competitive" means what? I'd take it as meaning that the electorate wants to cooperate, to find the best solution for all, and it is assumed that it is not a zero-sum game. It is often not necessary that *anyone* "lose." One possible definition of non-competitiveness is that voters strongly want such an alternative to win that the society considers best, not the one that they personally consider best. Practical examples on elections that may be non-competitive are voting on which cloud on the sky is the prettiest, or voting on which flavour of ice cream is the best flavour (everyone will buy their preferred flavour after the election, they are thus not forced to buy and eat the winning flavour ice cream), or what movie is the best ever (I believe www.imdb.com has used some Range like method). In "competitive" elections, there are winners and losers. While the game may not be zero-sum, it tends toward it, so voters are polarized. Which group will get its way, which group will lose and be disappointed? By limiting ourselves to "competitive elections," we are limiting ourselves, actually, to dysfunctional societies. We need to know that. You are quite ambitious. Making the societies non-competitive is a huge task. The market economy is for example currently strongly based on competition (harnessing competition to provide good results for all). And we don't need to go any further than to this mailing list to see strong competitive attitudes (on e.g. which method is best). And there is a conclusion we can make. If we care about improving the function of society, we should worry that an election method that works beautifully in a dysfunctional society might actually inhibit a return to function. If the election method encourages polarization and competition, it may prevent the society from healing. So, I'd suggest, we should incline toward election methods that will make good choices in a cooperative environment, and that will not make bad ones in a competitive environment. It's possible that the ideal election method is not so good in the competitive environment, but if it produces better results when people cooperate toward the common welfare, it is superior to a method maximized toward function under conditions of competition. I think Warren Schudy already pointed out that there is a risk that changing the voting method with good intentions may in some cases lead to worse results, not better. The equation is of course complex (and changes in the spirit of the society are often (but not necessarily) slow). However, it looks like we have methods that work best in a cooperative environment -- and Majority Criterion and Condorcet Criterion methods can spectacularly fail in this -- and that still perform as well, approximately, as the best "competitive" methods. Range is a candidate for this, and Range with runoffs under certain specified conditions is, arguably, even better. As discussed many times the strategy problems of Range may be too bad to be overcome. We should keep seeking for better methods all the time of course. In a cooperative environment, where we may assume a much higher percentage of sincere votes, the Range winner is optimal (though there is even then, because of the normalization problem, better result from Range+2), and the runoff rules might even eventually be discarded, perhaps to be triggered again if signs appear of serious competition. In a competitive environment, the runoff rules guarantee what I consider the bare minimum of democracy, which is majority consent. So let's be careful! > And *then* we could look at what happens when some people don't > vote sincerely? It's clear that there is harm done, under some > circumstances, but how much harm and who is harmed the most? Is it > the sincere voters? Or is it those w
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Jul 29, 2007, at 20:09 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 02:46 AM 7/29/2007, Juho wrote: >> > 49 A >> > 24 B >> > 27 C>B >> >> The numbers of this example are so unlikely to occur in real life >> that I modified the example a bit to get values that would be more >> probable. This was the first one that I found to be close enough to >> be realistic (maybe not yet fully realistic, maybe there are others >> that serve the strategic needs better). > > It's a bit difficult to judge what is "realistic" without looking > at real election data, and we are short of real data even from > polls, since most polls are asking the question "Who's your favorite?" > > I'm not familiar with what *is* known about real voting behavior, > beyond a few points. Real voters vote many different kinds of > ballots. In a large real election, there will be ballots that are > totally blank, and ballots with all choices filled in. Even if the > rules prohibit overvoting, there will be overvotes, and some of > them will be deliberate, either due to a misunderstanding of the > rules or a deliberate voiding of the vote. Faster than running back > and getting another ballot, and voters can be in a hurry to get > back to work or whatever. An absentee voter marks the ballot wrong > and, oops! Can't get another so easily Yes, in normal public elections people will vote in many ways, including ways that others may not even consider rational. > > Like many election examples, the imagined data has itself been > truncated. If we are showing actual vote counts, we are showing a > very small election, and small elections have different > characteristics than large ones. The possibility of ties or near- > ties is increased, for example, and this affects strategy. The > voters and candidates tend to know each other, and there is less > polarization. > > And if we are showing percentages in a large election, they'd > better not add up to 100% unless we are including all the > reasonable cases we would see. The first example is oversimplified, > for sure. Let's look at how Juho has extended it. > > I'm going to take Juho's example and edit it to add the complete > preferences, he omitted the equalities and I like to be explicit. > Truncating is the same as rating all the other candidates equal > last. I'm also spreading out the fields and putting them in columns > so that rank is clearly indicated > >> 30 A > B=C >> 9 A > B > C >> 6 A > C > B >> 14 B > A=C >> 8 B > C > A >> 2 B > A > C >> 25 C > B > A >> 5 C > A=B >> 1 C > A > B > > I'm now quoting Juho out of sequence. > >> I tried to keep the original number of first place supporters of each >> candidate. => 49/24/27. But I had to assume that some C supporters >> will truncate (since some B voters did so too) and as a result the >> number of A supporters had to be dropped to 43. In order to make C >> win B I donated these votes to C. => 45/24/31. > > What is truly odd about this is the high number of truncations from > B supporters. It's the third most common vote. > > Let's assume that the candidates are on some single axis. In major > elections, this is likely to be true, it is a simplifying first > assumption. In reality, there is more than one axis, and so > candidates who are, for an individual voter, close on one axis may > be far on another, and how the voter votes may thus seem > inconsistent. A otherwise-liberal who is morally opposed to > abortion, for example, may neglect the abortion axis except within > pairs where the candidates have the same position, in which case > the liberal-conservative axis comes into play. Yes, a more detailed analysis should not rely on one axis only. > > Nevertheless, barging ahead with a single-axis assumption, who is > the centrist? > > Aside from sheer laziness -- and we've already selected out much of > that since truly lazy voters don't vote except where it is illegal > to not vote (a concept I detest, since not voting can be presumed > to be a vote equating all candidates, and there are non-coercive > methods of making sure that this is truly the case) -- truncation > indicates a strong preference between the marked candidate and the > other two, with a weak preference between them. > > I've been contending for some time that in order to understand > election methods, even if they do not collect preference strength > information, we should posit
Re: [Election-Methods] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 37, Issue 47
On Jul 30, 2007, at 2:08 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED]: >> Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 14:17:29 -0400 >> From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RV comments > >> By limiting ourselves to "competitive elections," we are limiting >> ourselves, actually, to dysfunctional societies. We need to know >> that. >> >> And there is a conclusion we can make. If we care about improving the >> function of society, we should worry that an election method that >> works beautifully in a dysfunctional society might actually inhibit a >> return to function. If the election method encourages polarization >> and competition, it may prevent the society from healing. > > Nice point, but I'm afraid that moving society to be functional is > too much to > hope for. > > Selfishness leading to socially suboptimal results is pervasive. > The famous > "tragedy of the commons" happens at all scales, from village > commons to fishing > stocks to global warming. Anecdotally, small communities seem to > often keep > selfishness under control, but big communities have a much harder > time at it. > Does anyone know of any societies of more than a million people > that are > functional in this sense? This is interesting and relevant. But the definition is still so flexible that I'm unable to give examples on any combination of big/ small, selfish/non-selfish. Some interesting factors are "facelessness", ability to relate to", "ability to understand", "ability to influence, "trust on the society's functionality", "personal links" etc. A well organized society (in many senses) may be able to push the numeric population threshold higher (= from families to villages and tribes and states). > >> Essentially, trying to maximize my personal gain in a Range election >> by voting Approval style is short-sighted. If everyone does it, >> everyone loses, on average. > > I agree with that statement. > > If a *random* subset of voters choose to vote strategically, I > agree that range > is better than approval. What scares me about range is what happens > if there's > a correlation between what people's opinions about the candidates > and their > sincerity. What happens if functional and cooperative people vote > sincerely > while dysfunctional and selfish people vote strategically? The > result would be > society run by the most competitive people! I see several problems > with this: > > 1) I think that if we had a choice we'd give extra power to > cooperative people > and less power to selfish people. But range does the opposite, > giving less > power to the people who have society's long-term interests at heart! > > 2) Suppose the country is polarized about some issue and one side > does a better > job of convincing its voters to vote strategically and therefore > wins. The other > side will naturally be tempted to do more polarizing rhetoric next > time, thereby > encouraging more strategic votes. So I think that by forcing people > to *act* in > a polarized fashion (approval), you ironically reduce the need for > polarizing > rhetoric! > > Summary: I believe it's better to force everyone to vote strategically > (approval) than to give power to the candidate whose supporters > have the most > black and white, polarized view of the world. > > > > General comment to everyone: remember that it is possible to > conduct a poll > using a method that is different from the one used on election day. > So a range > or Condorcet method can be used in a poll to guide approval towards > a good > equilibrium. I agree very much with the the mail. Here's one question though. Does this last paragraph intend to say that Approval would be more usable than Condorcet in real elections? Juho > > > > > > This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___ Yahoo! Messenger - with free PC-PC calling and photo sharing. http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
I was a bit puzzled when answering this mail. Our terminologies did not yet quite match. There is also still some confusion with what the sincere votes were in your original example (49 A, 24 B, 27 C>B) (see below). And I'm still wondering if you felt that D was the rightful winner in the basic example where sincere opinions were 1000 A>B, 1000 C>D, 1 D>B (or 1000 A>B>C=D, 1000 C>D>A=B, 1 D>B>A=B). The rest of the reactions/comments are embedded below in the mail. Juho On Jul 31, 2007, at 7:36 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >> On Jul 29, 2007, at 2:51 , Kevin Venzke wrote: >> >>> Juho, >>> >>> Thanks for forwarding your old messages. I will comment on these >>> first. >>> >>> In the first two posts you discuss scenarios where equally-sized >>> factions >>> vote according to a mentality of "never mind the candidates of other >>> parties except that they are worse than the candidates of my own >>> party." >>> You note that under WV a single additional voter has at least some >>> way of >>> voting that can change the winner into any candidate. You ask for an >>> explanation of the WV philosophy that all the candidates are >>> roughly equal >>> prior to the single voter. >>> >>> The first scenario is 1000 A>B, 1000 C>D. In MinMax(WV) it is a >>> four-way >>> tie; in MinMax(m) it is an AC tie. If a D>B vote is added, under WV >>> this >>> becomes a D win. Under margins it is still an AC tie. Note that D >>> does not >>> win under either if the vote is just for D. >>> >>> I don't see first of all why this is very interesting. Not only is >>> this >>> not a realistic scenario, but your argument here is just that the >>> behavior >>> doesn't seem reasonable to you. >> >> I agree that this example is not realistic since it is too extreme to >> ever happen in real life. But I don't agree with the word "just". I >> mean that voters/citizens would probably be quite unhappy with their >> election method if this happened in real life. This example is >> intended to demonstrate that winning votes seems to put too little >> weight on some very clear opinions expressed by the voters. In an >> election with many candidates and many parties the voters may be >> happy to rank only the best candidates from their point of view and >> truncate many that they consider less good. Some of these truncated >> candidates might be potential winners, and something close to the >> described scenario might happen. This is not a strategy related >> problem but a problem of possibly making unwanted decisions already >> with sincere votes. I wouldn't say that is less important than the >> problems with strategic voting. > > But you haven't come any closer to explaining what the problem is. > You seem to basically admit it is just an aesthetic issue. > >> Here's another version of the example - longer, but now the numbers >> could be from real life. There seems to be a consensus (within both >> of the two parties, "AB" and "CD") that A is better than B and C is >> better than D. Some voters (32%) truncate the candidates of the other >> party but all rank their own candidates. One additional vote (e.g. >> B>D) can lift B and/or D to the same level with A and C. The point is >> that this threat exists also when votes are more balanced than in the >> first (extreme but easy to catch) scenario. This may quite well >> happen in real life elections. > > This is why I keep pointing out that this is a Condorcet method and > we're > trying to find the best compromise. I really think you are overly > impressed with first preferences, and that is why I keep bringing > up IRV. > C>D voters are not going to thank you for preventing D from winning, > unless C wins instead. I don't think I have any interest in the first preferences here. I'm basically interested only in the pairwise matrix that is neutral to where the preferences come from. I didn't understand why IRV is relevant here - I think the C>D voters are not going to thank me for changing the voter from X to Y in any system if they prefer X to Y. In the latter example I changed a two way AB tie to a four way tie (either by adding the last vote in wv or by changing the method from margins to wv). If people think in the margins way I might get more thanks than blames. But if people feel that wv is the natural me
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Jul 31, 2007, at 2:52 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:35 PM 7/30/2007, Juho wrote: Yes, a more detailed analysis should not rely on one axis only. I'm not sure how many Warren's simulations use, but the simulator doesn't just do even random distributions, which are unrealistic, though interesting. The additional (utility/preference strength related) information that range style ballots provide is excellent information. The only problem is that we don't have a voting method that would both take that information properly into account and be resistant to strategic voting at the same time. I've suggested one. Why not consider it? I have given it some consideration. I think I have also commented this type of methods few times. Condorcet votes are relatively expressive (less than Range but more than most) and at the same time they are relatively resistant to strategic voting. That's why they are interesting and why they may be a good or the optimal method for many uses. Problem is, they can make spectacularly bad decisions with people voting sincerely! It's inherent in the Codorcet Criterion, which utterly neglects preference strength, turning a fly's weight of preference into something equivalent to life or death. (I.e., both preferences are considered equally.) Could you present the concrete example where this happens. I actually just posted one example in my recent mails where the winning votes pick a candidate that doesn't seem to be a reasonable choice. But maybe you see the world from the Range perspective and refer to some example where Condorcet picks a candidate with low sum of utilities. Range is an excellent method for use in small groups as a poll, to suggest a nominee. You wouldn't use Condorcet for that, not if you know what is good for your group! You are going to ratify the result anyway, small groups have the luxury of that, so the result *must*, with good procedure, satisfy the *ultimate* Condorcet Criterion. Note that I don't consider the Condorcet criterion to be the ultimate criterion (and I have told this to you about 5 times :-). In non- competitive elections I'd be happy to use Range and allow a candidate that is not a Condorcet winner (the one that would beat all others in pairwise plurality elections) to win. Condorcet criterion is a good rule for competitive elections though. The Condorcet Criterion is problematic also because it can award victory based on a small percentage of the electorate, the Majority Criterion is much stronger. It's advisable, in my opinion, to never award elections based on a plurality, period. The safest way to do it is with a ratification, and we we really start to design election methods both for efficiency and accuracy, we'll consider that. A "small percentage" example would make thing clearer to me. It appears that most discussion on Condorcet and competitive elections focuses on making the Condorcet completion methods (or Condorcet related but not Condorcet compliant methods) strategy proof. There is too little discussion on which candidate would be the best to elect. Concerning combinations of ratings and rankings I still feel that in competitive situations ratings can provide useful additional information and guidance but including the rating info in the selection algorithm is quite complex. One interesting example on how to use ratings in Condorcet completion is in http://fc.antioch.edu/ ~james_green-armytage/cwp13.htm. Theoretically, in a two party system the opinions of the two parties should change in time so that the average voter opinion would lie approximately between the two parties. Median, not average That's the theory. However, it can go spectacularly wrong. Median is more correct. I was obviously thinking in terms of binary opinions that are typical in the two-party voting process. In politics many things can go wrong. Let's continue improving the mechanisms. They may provide some help. Juho ___ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of [EMAIL PROTECTED]@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 1, 2007, at 5:37 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 04:48 PM 7/31/2007, Juho wrote: > >>>> The additional (utility/preference strength related) information >>>> that >>>> range style ballots provide is excellent information. The only >>>> problem is that we don't have a voting method that would both take >>>> that information properly into account and be resistant to >>>> strategic >>>> voting at the same time. >>> >>> I've suggested one. Why not consider it? >> >> I have given it some consideration. I think I have also commented >> this type of methods few times. > > Juho, this is less than helpful. What do I search for, "it," > "methods," "commented" and "few times"? True, but there was no specific question so I didn't know what to say :-). Maybe my comments below cover some of this. > >>> Problem is, they can make spectacularly bad decisions with people >>> voting sincerely! It's inherent in the Codorcet Criterion, which >>> utterly neglects preference strength, turning a fly's weight of >>> preference into something equivalent to life or death. (I.e., both >>> preferences are considered equally.) >> >> Could you present the concrete example where this happens. > > The pizza election. If you don't like pizzas, think about them as > political candidates, only more useful. Ok, strength of utilities ignored. That is typical to Condorcet / ranked ballots. There is no intention to make bad decisions. Id say we are talking about the recognition of the fact that opinion strengths are too hard to measure reliably in competitive elections and therefore they had to be left out. > >> I actually >> just posted one example in my recent mails where the winning votes >> pick a candidate that doesn't seem to be a reasonable choice. > > If I'm correct the information about the election is ranked votes. > While you may be correct about this particular pattern of ranked > votes, ranked votes convey very limited and quirky information, it > can be good and it can be terrible. In the pizza election, let them > vote ranked. > > 2: A>B>C > 1: B>C>A > > How much does this tell you? > > Make it a range election: > > 2: A, 100, B, 99, C, 0 > 1: A, 0, B, 100, C, 50 > > (In real pizza elections, it would be common that the bottom would > not be normalized, except that in this one, the single voter, > without normalization would still rate A as 0 because that voter > cannot eat pepperoni, period.) > > You can take the second set of ballot data and make it into the > first. Look, it's obvious. A Range ballot collects more > information, if the resolution is sufficient (Range 2 is like a 3- > rank ballot, which is fairly limited, which simply means more > equalities, Approval style.) Yes, as noted many times, Condorcet ignores preference strengths, and the best explanation is that it does no because they are too difficult to measure (or actually - to take into use) reliably in a competitive election. (My example had a different viewpoint to Condorcet failures => making wrong decisions when basing the decisions purely on the given rankings.) > >> But >> maybe you see the world from the Range perspective and refer to some >> example where Condorcet picks a candidate with low sum of utilities. > > No. I see the world. It is not Black and White. Everything is in > shades, degrees. Artificial control systems can be black and white, > it's primitive design. And sometimes Yes/No is very good, but only > under certain conditions, where choices have been boiled to do Do > This, or Don't Do This. As soon as you try to use binary choice for > two candidates for action, you are really using trinary choice: > Elect A, Elect B, or Don't Elect Anybody. Artificially, some > systems exclude the third choice, which is quite clearly > undemocratic. It is the past binding the present. > > And for trinary choices, if you must make them all at once, summing > utilities is the method of choice. This is for individuals as well > as societies. We often reduce it by pairwise comparison, and, > *usually* this is adequate, but it is far better to use a summation > method first, use it to make a nomination, and make a Yes/No > comparison on that. In other words, we might very well put A > against B, but then vote Yes or No on the winner. > > Anything else is a shortcut, and shortcuts are used for efficiency, > they lose accuracy. And, unfortunately, the consequences ca
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
I just commented in another mail that 100% of the people who voted did evaluate all the candidates. I think this holds if there are only so many candidates that all voters surely have had the chance to consider all of them. If there are e.g. 100 candidates, then the results may be more random and a new vote among the strongest candidates could be in place. The biggest problem to me in this scenario is of course the fact that there are so many people who clearly say that C better than D and so few who have the opposite opinion. The 1000 C>D votes don't weigh much. These people could say "didn't you hear what we said". ((Note also that majority can be measured in numerous ways. It can be majority of the citizens, majority of the people with right to vote, majority of the people who voted, majority of the ballots that were approved, majority of the ballots that were not empty, majority of the votes that mentioned the to be winner, majority of the votes that did not rank the to be winner tied at bottom, majority of the votes that took position on x vs. Y, majority of the votes that raked both X and Y above the bottom (Y could be the worst opponent of X or...).)) Juho On Aug 1, 2007, at 2:27 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 04:11 PM 7/31/2007, Juho wrote: >> I'm still wondering if you felt that D was the rightful >> winner in the basic example where sincere opinions were 1000 A>B, >> 1000 C>D, 1 D>B (or 1000 A>B>C=D, 1000 C>D>A=B, 1 D>B>A=B). > > I'm not getting into the main discussion here, but wanted to answer > the question implied. > > There is no rightful winner in the situation described. There is > only a rightful winner, properly, when a majority have expressed > consent to that choice. We often infer this from votes, but, here, > there is no adequate information, so I'd consider this a failed > election. Both A and C fell short of a majority, and D>B does not > indicate acceptance of D, but only rejection of B in comparison. > > I would resolve it by assigning 1000 votes to A, 1000 votes to C, 1 > vote to D, and putting them in a room and not giving them food or > water until they agree. If they could not agree within necessary > time limits, I'd hold the election again. I'd be tempted to > disqualify A and C, but they did have 1000 supporters each. > > And the new election would be plurality with the two candidates. > > Just joking about the food and water part. Sort of. ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RV comments
ch normalization where at least one frontrunner gets min and one gets max (or something close to that). (Note btw that normalization also destroys the otherwise nice behaviour of Range in the pizza example. If the sincere opinions of three pizza lovers are [A=100,B=99], [A=100,B=99] and [B=100,A=0] (the third voter is allergic to pizza A) the normalization changes the selection to pizza A.) Juho On Jul 31, 2007, at 2:45 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 05:35 PM 7/30/2007, Juho wrote: >> One possible definition of non-competitiveness is that voters >> strongly want such an alternative to win that the society considers >> best, not the one that they personally consider best. > > Here is the problem. In a healthy society, people do want what is > best for the whole society, but they also want what is best for > themselves. With Range Voting, we suggest, they tell us what they > want and how much they want it. > > It's possible to set up Range Voting with bids, where you are > effectively bidding your rating for the candidate. It is sometimes > argued that this would be plutocracy, *but* in most societies, the > bulk of the wealth and discretionary spending power is *not* with > the wealthy, it is distributed widely. The problem is that the > spending power of the poor and middle income people is not > organized, whereas the spending power of the wealthy is available > for rapid allocation. This is why the wealthy are considered more > powerful. Now, in some places, the concentration of power and > wealth into the hands of the few may be different than this, but I > don't think this is the case in what are called the western > democracies, and in quite a few other places as well. > > The distributed wealth of even the poor is enormous in some places. > But organizing it, that is another story. This is why FA/DP is so > important. It's a method of organizing poor people! It's one that > won't run away with their power and use it for narrow purposes. It > does this by leaving with power with them, and merely advising, and > it does the advising in such a way as to make it trustworthy. The > advice does not descend like manna from the top. Rather it filters > down through the proxy network from trusted proxy to client, each > link dependent upon the *maintenance* of trust. > > Consider you are a middle-level proxy in such a system. Your high- > level proxy, someone you have known for a long time, you talk > frequently, suddenly starts giving you advise that doesn't make > sense to you. You ask about it, and the answers aren't clear. Now, > do you > (1) change your proxy. > (2) complain and see how the proxy responds > (3) pass down different advice that was given to you > (4) pass down no advice > (5) pass down the advice that you don't understand, knowing that > your clients trust you. Of course, you may have the same problem as > them. > > The structure is a filter, an intelligent filter, with no outside > control. > >> Practical >> examples on elections that may be non-competitive are voting on which >> cloud on the sky is the prettiest, or voting on which flavour of ice >> cream is the best flavour (everyone will buy their preferred flavour >> after the election, they are thus not forced to buy and eat the >> winning flavour ice cream), or what movie is the best ever (I believe >> www.imdb.com has used some Range like method). > > Those are examples of non-competitive "elections," really, as > described, they are not elections at all, they are polls. > > What if a community has various options for how to spend a fund > that became available. The various options are presented in a Range > election. > > Now, would I recommend this? No. I'd recommend a Range poll, > followed by standard deliberative process in a Town Meeting or the > like. And it would still be a recommendation, perhaps, not a > control, upon a Council or whatever governmental body the town has > with the authority to make spending decisions. > > I recommend Range for public elections, even though I would much > rather see better process even than Range, but the latter processes > involve more significant structural changes. The arguments about > Range apply to Approval as well. What if some people are sincere so > they approve more candidates, others are "narrow and selfish" so > they only approve their favorite. The same arguments can be made. > > But they are specious. Implementing, Approval, Range 1, will not > give special power to the selfish. Nor will higher resolution > Range. It's a theory often stated,
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 2, 2007, at 2:52 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: >> Yes, as noted many times, Condorcet ignores preference strengths, and >> the best explanation is that it does no because they are too >> difficult to measure (or actually - to take into use) reliably in a >> competitive election. > > But it's easy to collect the voters stated preferences and > strengths, it is not difficult at all. Nor is it difficult to use > the information; Juho's argument is circular. > > We take voters word as to their preferences, why not their > preference strengths? > > Please, I haven't seen one argument for doing this here. The > argument I've seen is that voters who vote intermediate votes are > stupid, and that cunning Approval style voters will take advantage > of them. The votres' "stated preferences" are easy to collect but in a competitive environment voters tend to exaggerate. I guess the basic problem is the feeling you get when Bush wins Gore and you have voter G=100, B=80 and your neighbour has voted B=100, G=0. Intermediate votes may not do harm in some cases but as a main rule competitive voters are likely to use mins and maxes as efficiently as they can. > But in two stages, you can have your Condorcet cake and optimize > satisfaction as well. Some guidance for reading my comments. I tend to split the cases in two categories. Sincere elections => Range ok. COmpetitive elections => better to go for Condorcet or Approval or some other strategy resistant but more coarse methods. Trying to put these (opinion strength measurements and competitiveness) in one package causes me confusion. If you can prove that some such system works I'll include that method in my favourite methods list. > You get people to vote sincerely by trusting what they say and > giving it to them! There is some truth in this. I'm however afraid than in many cases the competitive instincts and fear of others using strategies will take over. > You have an election between Al Gore, G W Bush, and Osama Bin > Laden, I'll pick the current Bete Noir, he deserves the > approbation in my opinion. If I thought that there was a real risk > that Bin Laden would win the election, it wasn't just a joke, I > would seriously consider, in Range, voting max for both Bush and > Gore. And I think Bush is pretty bad! Note that Condorcet / ranked ballots would be good here. Ballot Gore>Bush>Osama says Gore>Bush with maximum strength, Gore>Osama with maximum strength, and Bush>Osama with maximum strength. > The basic rule (in the absence of strategies) in Range is to > express one's sincere opinions. Correct. The only problem is that the strategies can be applied so often. In Condorcet the strategic opportunities can at least be claimed to be rare. Juho ___ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 2, 2007, at 16:26 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 02:04 AM 8/2/2007, Juho wrote: >> The votres' "stated preferences" are easy to collect but in a >> competitive environment voters tend to exaggerate. I guess the basic >> problem is the feeling you get when Bush wins Gore and you have voter >> G=100, B=80 and your neighbour has voted B=100, G=0. > > But your neighbor cared more than you. Look, the kind of example > you cited is very common. In this election, you actually have very > little motive to vote (of those are the frontrunners). > > You cared very little, your neighbor cared enough to vote as the > neighbor did. If there were two people making the decision, which > one would be right? > > "I prefer Gore, but Bush is fine with me." > "I prefer Bush, and Gore is awful." > > Which one is the choice that makes that neighborhood a nicer place > to live? Sincere and positive attitudes are good in the society. In election methods it is a problem, as recently often stated, to give more voting power to the most extreme opinions (that may not be sincere but exaggerated). Your words btw now give the impression that voters who care should vote in Approval style. > The assumption is that voters don't vote their *true* preferences, > and then are upset about the result. If you'd be upset, your true > preference is not 100/80. Why in the world did you vote that way if > Bush was not acceptable to you? I thought me and my neighbour both had a 100/80 opinion (but in reverse directions). The neighbour just exaggerated. Maybe there were also other candidates who really were worth 0 (80 points worse than Bush) and therefore Rating Bush at 0 would have falsified my opinions. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 2, 2007, at 2:52 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Range is not as good as full deliberative process, but it is much closer. I'm not convinced that pushing Range voting when the society in question is still in "competitive mode" automatically leads to improvements in the society. I think use of Range as a poll (rather than directly as a voting method) could be more efficient in making the varying and rich opinion of people visible and thereby feeding the deliberative process. I mean that if Range is used fully or partly in Approval style, the information it carries through is leaner and maybe coloured with strategic considerations. Poll type Range of the other hand can be used for argumentation in the deliberative discussions. Rating based ballots that are used to derive ranking based ballots is one option that may have additional value in a society that aims at developing the deliberative process in new ways. Also the second round where decision between Range and Condorcet winner is made may add some value. In a competitive environment the majority may just vote just as in the first round and typically not change the end result. But the additional round of thinking and deliberation may be useful anyway. Btw it may be as good or better to use Range+Condorcet also at the second round. Picking two alternatives for the second round may be limiting. And use of the same method shows the results of the deliberative process. If you want to have a decisive vote at the end, the theoretically cleanest approach might be to vote potentially after every round if the outcome of that round should be considered final (Range or Condorcet winner or even someone else as derived from the votes or as proposed by the chairman) or if the deliberative process should still continue (for one or more rounds in election technical terms). Juho ___ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of [EMAIL PROTECTED]@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[Election-Methods] Voter strategic opportunity (/regret) simulations (was: Re: Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section)
I reply to an old mail since I now checked my archives to see what my old simulator (that I mentioned) did and what kind of results it gave. I'll list the numeric results here, but please note that this was a rather quick coding exercise and the results have not been double checked. Don't assume the numbers to be correct until they are confirmed by someone. Maybe some of you will do something similar and confirm or challenge the numbers. The simulation set-up was as follows. - I wanted to see how often some voters / voter groups will benefit of strategic voting - I divided the voters into n groups of similar size - In each group all the voter opinions were similar - Each group acted as one strategic unit in the sense that the simulation checked if this group could change the end result by voting strategically - All different strategies were covered, which means that all alternative possible ways to vote were checked - Voter group opinions were generated so that each candidate first got a random utility value, and then the ballot was generated using this information as a basis - (The size of the group is not defined (could be one or whatever number)) - The utility values were taken from a given limited range of utility values - Probability of ties depended on the used range of utility values (small number of alternatives => more ties in opinions) - Two voter strategic opportunity values could be measured: (or "regret" values if we think the voters are strategic by nature :-)) 1) Probability of one of the groups being able to improve the results by voting strategically 2) Probability of any of the groups being able to improve the results by voting strategically - Note that due to the random votes the elections are very close and therefore startegic opportunities are more common than in real life where candidates and votes typically have clearer trends (instead of being purely random) - Counter strategies, simultaneous strategies by more than one group, exact number of strategic voters required, probability of success of the strategy, etc. etc. were not analysed Here is one set of results for you. - Range of utilities = 100 - Number of candidates = 3 - Number of groups = 11 (odd number gives less ties and strategies therefore work better) - Number of simulated elections = 5000 - Results are listed below as "result 1)" / "result 2)" - Plurality 8.2% / 42.4% - IRV 3.1% / 13.2% (in IRV all tied at bottom candidates were dropped at one time) - Condorcet Minmax(margins) 5.4% / 21.2% (Condorcet strategic alternative votes had no ties (also other methods may have similar limitations)) - Condorcet Minmax(winning votes) 5.4% / 21.9% - Range (2 values) 21.5% / 59.6% - Range (3 values) 26.7% / 58.4% - Range (10 values) 26.8% / 60.9% - Range (100 values) 26.5% / 62.4% - Normalised Range (2 values) 10.8% / 47.5% (=~Approval) - Normalised Range (3 values) 12.1% / 43.2% - Normalised Range (10 values) 9.1% / 35.7% - Normalised Range (100 values) 8.4% / 34.1% I did also some additional quick simulations to show some comparison points to the results above. Don't trust the results too much - 1000 elections may not give quite stable results yet. - 100 utility values, 3 candidates, 21 groups, 1000 elections - Condorcet Minmax(margins) 4.9% / 20.6% - Condorcet Minmax(winning votes) 5.0% / 21.2% - 100 utility values, 3 candidates, 3 groups, 1000 elections - Condorcet Minmax(margins) 5.6% / 13.3% - Condorcet Minmax(winning votes) 5.6% / 13.3% - 10 utility values, 3 candidates, 11 groups, 1000 elections - Condorcet Minmax(margins) 3.8% / 19.0% - Condorcet Minmax(winning votes) 5.1% / 26.4% - 100 utility values, 3 candidates, 5 groups, 1000 elections - Condorcet Minmax(margins) 6.9% / 20.9% - Condorcet Minmax(winning votes) 7.1% / 20.9% - 100 utility values, 5 candidates, 11 groups, 1000 elections - Condorcet Minmax(margins) 13.5% / 47.3% - Condorcet Minmax(winning votes) 15.0% / 49.9% - There may have been some more limitations/simplifications than the ones that I remembered and listed above - Please ask if I missed some essential parameters that are needed to define the simulation set-up Juho On Jul 27, 2007, at 11:51 , Kevin Venzke wrote: 2) There are as well cases where winning votes are more vulnerable to strategies than margins. So the question is not one-sided. However, it is pretty clear that margins has a worse FBC problem than WV does. Simulations have shown this, but it can be argued logically as well. May be so. Is there some reason why FBC would be a key criterion in this case? I made some time ago some simulations on margins and winning votes on if some certain random voter group or any of the voter groups could (from their point of view) improve the outcome of the (sincere) election by voting strategically (in whatever way). The simulation gave margins somewhat better results t
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 5, 2007, at 23:09 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >>>> 1000 A>B, 1000 C>D, 1 D>B >> >>> Yes, I do think D is the proper winner. >> >> I have many times said that it is possible to support different >> utility functions. An election method may then implement one of these >> utility functions as accurately as it can. I must thus say that using >> winning votes (or something like it) as the ideal utility function >> must also be ok, although maybe not my first preference. >> >> Do you have a verbal (natural language) explanation why D is better >> than A and C. This scenario could be an election in a school. One >> class has voted A>B (A and B are pupils of that class), another class >> has voted C>D, the teacher has voted D>B. What should the teacher >> tell the C>D voting class when they ask "didn't you count our votes"? >> Maybe this is clear to you. Unfortunately not as clear to me. The >> teacher vote seemed to be heavier than the pupils votes :-). > > The question doesn't make any sense from them, unless first>second > preferences are really worth so much more than other preferences. > The C>D > class didn't just vote C>D, they also voted D>A and D>B. They can > make the > same complaint just as easily as long as anybody wins except for C. > > And in this scenario you don't get a C win by "counting" C>D. Correct, C>D voters want C to win the others. I didn't understand your last sentence (in winning votes?). >>> You are saying that the election method should respect the C>D >>> voters' >>> nearly unanimous belief that C is better than D. If this is not for >>> the benefit of the C>D voters then for whose benefit is it? >> >> Yes, but this has nothing to do with the (IRV like or some other > > Even if so I still ask this question. Ok, this was for the benefit of the C>D voters. Were there some consequences? >>>> What's the "not catastrophic = OK" doctrine? What is considered >>>> noise? >>> >>> "Not catastrophic = OK" is the attitude you seem to present in >>> particular >>> in response to A winning given 7 A>B, 5 B, 8 C. Basically when a >>> candidate >>> loses an intuitively important pairwise contest only by a little, >>> it is >>> OK for that candidate to win anyway. >> >> I'd say this is a close race. > > I know you would. I don't feel this is a good excuse. Excuse to what? >> A wins in margins since it is only two >> votes short of being a Condorcet winner. That is one possible very >> sincere measure of who should win an election where the opinions are >> cyclic. The election of A may leave someone wondering if some >> strategic insincere moves could have changed (falsified) the outcome, >> but despite of this it is easy to claim that the algorithm picked the >> best winner. > > As long as you have a "possible measure" then it's easy to claim that > someone is the best winner. In this scenario I don't think this is > very > convincing logic; I think many or most people would immediately see an > issue with A winning. Would that be an issue if the votes would have been interpreted to be sincere? My current understanding is that with sincere votes your ideal winning candidate is the one that winning votes elect (or something close to that). My ideal selection is closer to margins. Ok to have different opinions here (and maybe different functions for different elections). >> (1000 A>B, 1000 C>D, 1 D>B) >>> If you agree that C>D voters want D to beat the other candidates, >>> then >>> they should be allowed to elect D. From *their* perspective it >>> makes no >>> sense to require that D must have some support against C to beat >>> other >>> candidates. >> >> Yes, the C>D voters want D to beat A and B. They would be happy if D >> would be elected instead of A or B (unconditionally without >> considering how people voted between D and C). But their next >> question after there is an agreement that D beats A and B would be if >> they could go even further and elect C instead of D. Their feelings >> are quite strong/unanimous here. > > And I have said repeatedly that in this scenario, you can't get a C > win > out of this. Would the C>D voters prefer an A-C coin toss to getting > their second choice? I doubt it. We can't know for sure.
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 6, 2007, at 1:28 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:41 PM 8/3/2007, Juho wrote: On Aug 2, 2007, at 16:38 , Warren Smith wrote: If range voters max and min the two perceived-frontrunner candidates, then they gain almost all the strategic advantages of approval voting, while still allowing quite a lot of honesty concerning other candidates. *2. So for example, if 49% voted Bush=99, Gore=0, Nader=53(avg), and 49% voted Gore=99, Bush=0, Nader=53(avg), and 2% voted Nader=99, Gore=20, Bush=0 then Nader would win. This structure is a realistic possibility that totally contradicts the assertion RV "gives power to the candidate whose supporters have the most black and white, polarized view of the world." In this case, Nader is winning despite a severe lack of polarized Nader supporters. How about other strategic opportunities like 10 Gore supporters giving Nader 0 points (instead of 53) and thereby making their favourite (Gore) the winner? That Range gives Nader an opportunity doesn't guarantee Nader a win? Should it? In this case, we have an *average* vote from the Bush and Gore supporters, both, of 53%. The Nader supporters voted quite strongly for Nader -- 20% for Gore is quite a weak vote, given how strongly both the Repubs and Dems supported Nader. Already. Note that the scenario described quite probably already has "10" Gore voters doing that. Probably quite a bit more than ten! I think Juho missed that the Nader votes were averages. Most election methods would give this election to Gore, period. Gore is the Condorcet winner. But Nader is arguably the best winner. In a situation like this, I'd trigger a runoff between Gore and Bush. This constant argument that Range gives too much power to extreme voters is truly bizarre. Bush and Gore have the same number of first preference votes and the voters are planning to give (maybe strategically) max and min votes to these candidates. Nader supporters however seem to prefer Gore to Bush, which makes the Gore position stronger. With the given numbers (that are maybe from a poll) this will be a very close race and therefore anything can happen at the election day. But if we assume that the given numbers will hold the Gore supporters have a strategic option to give Nader 0 points and win. Isn't this giving more power to Gore supporters if they are more extreme? I don't know if it is exactly true that "Range gives too much power to extreme voters" (since less extreme voters can also exaggerate if they consider that to be the normal recommended way to vote) but it often seems to encourage voters to give extreme/exaggerated/Approval like votes. (Condorcet btw seems to be closer to electing Nader.) Juho Rather, what has actually happened here is that the system gives Nader a chance. If enough voters vote against him, ranking him equal last, which is what was proposed, he's going to lose with either Range or a Condorcet method. However, if I had my 'druthers, with the winner, Gore, only getting 49% of the first place votes, a runoff might be a great idea. Who would win? You sure can't tell from the data for sure Unless we assume those are sincere and accurate expressions of relative utility, in which case Nader has a chance. Note that the Reps seem to prefer Nader, greatly, to Gore. So I'd predict Nader would win. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 7, 2007, at 23:13 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > Giving someone rating points is giving them votes. Range 100 is > like having 100 votes, to cast in an Approval election. If Range > gives some putative advantage to "strategic voters," so too does > Approval, to blocks of same. It is an imaginary objection to Range, > accusing it of fomenting what other methods *require*. Approval doesn't give the voters any other alternative but to use the min and max values. If one wants to describe Range in a way that avoids the problems of giving strategic/exaggerating voters more power then it is best to describe it like you did, as an Approval like election with option to use also less powerful values than the (generally used) min and max values are. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 8, 2007, at 3:42 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 05:44 PM 8/7/2007, Juho wrote: >> On Aug 7, 2007, at 23:13 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: >> > Giving someone rating points is giving them votes. Range 100 is >> > like having 100 votes, to cast in an Approval election. If Range >> > gives some putative advantage to "strategic voters," so too does >> > Approval, to blocks of same. It is an imaginary objection to Range, >> > accusing it of fomenting what other methods *require*. >> >> Approval doesn't give the voters any other alternative but to use the >> min and max values. If one wants to describe Range in a way that >> avoids the problems of giving strategic/exaggerating voters more >> power then it is best to describe it like you did, as an Approval >> like election with option to use also less powerful values than the >> (generally used) min and max values are. > > But that is what Range is! > > Does the method change based on how we describe it? In some sense yes. In practice the situation is much more complex but in theory one could say that: 1) Strategic voters will study the method in detail and they will find the most efficient strategic way to vote irrespective of how the method is described. 2) Sincere voters will vote in the way they were told to vote. In Range this means that if you present Range as a method that elects the candidate with best utility sum after the voters have marked their personal utilities in the ballots, then sincere voters have been advised in a way that makes them vote differently than what the strategists will do. If you present range as a method where the votes are expected to promote the candidates with either min or max values, or with intermediate values if they don't want to use their full voting power for some reason, then strategic and sincere votes are closer to each others (some additional but more complex strategic options that sincere voters might not use may still remain). (A third quite common way to describe Range is to use normalised values.) > Absolutely, someone could describe Range, on a ballot, in a way > that would encourage voters to waste their vote. Consider it an > intelligence test. If you see through this defective advice, your > vote will count for more! Yes. This is something I would not like to happen. It is better to try to give all voters the same power, irrespective if they are less strategic or less analytical. > But I would never support such a description being on a ballot. Yes, it is too late to try to educate voters using the ballot. They should know beforehand. > The description should inform the voter how the voter's marks will > be used. One of the descriptions that has been suggested (by me?) > is precisely that "You have 10 votes, and you may cast as many of > them as you like for a given candidate, without any restriction on > how many you cast for another candidate. The winner will be the > candidate with the most votes. For each candidate, mark the > position on the ballot corresponding to the number of votes you > wish to cast for that candidate." Maybe some example votes would clarify to the voters what the typical voting patterns are. This description may still lead to different interpretations by them. > That's Range 10. (This naming policy btw has the problem that nowadays I don't know what method people are talking about when they say "Range 2". You could mean the ability to give from zero to two votes or the ability to give two different kind of values.) Juho > ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
cere opinions were: >>>> 49 A>B=C >>>> 24 B>C>A >>>> 27 C>B>A > I > keep pointing out that WV consistently avoids favorite betrayal > incentive in these situations, and in response you point out that in > margins, one faction here shouldn't have truncation incentive. If > margins > consistently has that quality then sure, that would be noteworthy. I think all the vulnerabilities are equal. >> Do I read this right. "Condorcet with widespread truncation is better >> than Approval, and Condorcet can't do better than this"? > > It sounds ok, but I'm not sure what you mean by "this." "This" just referred to the discussion before. > If voters under Condorcet don't use offensive strategies > (specifically, > burial of rival frontrunners below worse candidates) and don't use > favorite betrayal, then even if these voters truncate at the same rank > they would under Approval, I believe Condorcet would be far better > than > Approval. > > I do not believe you can design a Condorcet method where filling out a > complete ranking is generally a good strategy. (If that is what you > are > asking here.) And as I've said, even if you managed to design one I > think > you would have an extremely difficult time convincing many voters > to take > advantage of it. Yes, I meant sincere voting in Condorcet. I don't believe I can provide you a method that would be immune to strategic voting, but I do believe that in some environments most people would vote sincerely anyway. This is because on average sincere voting can be claimed to bring them the best results. Hunting for the not so common and not so certain strategic opportunities and then taking part in such "plots" may not be tempting to them. I have seen relatively sincere behaviour in two-round runoff too, so why not in Condorcet. The strategies are a bit different but maybe not that much different. > I don't especially want to promote other methods here, but it seems > reasonable to note that my ICA method precisely intends to bring as > much Condorcet efficiency to Approval as possible, without inviting > favorite betrayal or much offensive burial. > > Using approval to solve cycles isn't as sophisticated as determining > defeat strength, but approval does have in common with WV that > candidates > or contests are considered more important when more people are > involved > in voting for them. Ok, you are preparing for the highly strategic environment. That may be good for the strategic environments. Obviously I'm more relaxed with the risk of Condorcet becoming highly strategical. I note that in addition to discussing the vulnerability of margins vs. winning votes and their other weaknesses and strengths we now have also the environments with wide spread strategic voting and marginal strategic voting on the table. Answers to the first question in these two environments may be somewhat different. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 8, 2007, at 20:52 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > The description should inform the voter how the voter's marks will > be used. One of the descriptions that has been suggested (by me?) > is precisely that "You have 10 votes, and you may cast as many of > them as you like for a given candidate, without any restriction on > how many you cast for another candidate. The winner will be the > candidate with the most votes. For each candidate, mark the > position on the ballot corresponding to the number of votes you > wish to cast for that candidate." Maybe some example votes would clarify to the voters what the typical voting patterns are. This description may still lead to different interpretations by them. Like what? I'm just saying that the voters should know what they are doing in order not to lose their vote (partly). Maybe the official descriptions of the method are not that important since probably we can trust the media to do their job and explain the methods to the voters. The media could give also the examples. They could say e.g. that: If one wants to use the full strength of one's vote one should normally use the min and max points. If you believe the winner will be either A or B and you prefer A don't vote A=100, B=90 but vote A=100, B=0 instead. If this kind of discussion is repeated often enough voters will learn and then use the method in a way that they find most appropriate for them. Nobody will be "cheated" to cast weak votes. If they do so, they will do that for some reason. (Also the people that make decisions on what voting methods to use should get all this information.) Juho ___ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of [EMAIL PROTECTED]@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 9, 2007, at 6:41 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: In any case, simple Range N is exactly like having N votes to cast, in an Approval election, and the one with the most votes wins. There is nothing in this about "utilities" or "ratings." It happens, however, that you can think about Range that way if you want. It can be used to maximize social utility, and it does a pretty good job even if most voters vote the extremes. Maximizing social utility refers to giving sincere utilities in the ballots. You seem to be recommending the voters to primarily do so, and in addition to that accept the Approval style voting as a secondary less good option. With this I think we are back in the original claim that Range may create a mess if some voters vote sincerely (and maybe are guided to do so) and some strategically. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
Kevin Venzke wrote: > We could also adjust it to e.g. 49 A, 5 B, 46 C>B, with a significant > number of the 49 voting A>B. > > My issue is not simply that C voters have strategic incentive here. > It's > that the incentive is to abandon candidates who aren't frontrunners; > that it is practically risk-free; and that if the C voters don't use > the strategy, their sincere votes confuse margins into picking the > wrong > winner. Some comments to this example as requested: It seems that you have corrected the previous example (49 A, 24 B, 27 C>B) so that it doesn't require all the A supporters to be strategic to introduce the vulnerabilities. I again assume that the intended sincere opinions follow the typical (extreme) left-centre-right pattern, giving sincere opinions 49 A>B>C, 5 B>A=C, 46 C>B>A. Now the strategic pattern emerges if 11 A supporters truncate (or 10 for a tie). In this example the biggest problem is maybe the fact that the A supporters take a big risk when they do not indicate their support to their compromise candidate B. If their strategic calculations are not exactly right, and there is a one vote shift in preference away from the A faction and towards the C faction, then C will win. Note that this risk hits them sooner (with smaller number of strategic voters) than the benefits. Note also that if there is a two vote shift towards the A faction strategic voting is not needed since A faction has majority anyway. Note also that if the A party recommends strategic voting to take the victory away from B the B supporters might turn against A and give their (secondary) support to C, which would again easily make C the winner. It may not be sensible to the A voters to risk and possibly make C the winner by ignoring their compromise candidate. The A party might as well try to make sure that all their supporters will vote A>B to eliminate the risk of C winning (also B supporters might like that and give them some additional support). Maybe you'll find another better set of numbers. Sorry for commenting the problems one by one. I don't have a complete theory and analysis available to present. Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 9, 2007, at 20:14 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > I've been over and over this point, there is little in this post > that is new. I'd suggest reading it carefully. In this discussion I'm quite sensitive to different wordings that are used when describing Range. > And if you wish to continue asserting that Range can "cause a mess" > when voters vote a mixture of "sincere" voting and Approval-style > voting, please define "sincere" in a manner that we could agree > upon, define what a sincere Range vote is, and how, and *how much* > the voters are harmed by voting sincerely, and what effect this has > on society as a whole. I used term "sincere" roughly to refer to voters marking their personal candidate utility values in the ballots. Or if you don't like the word "utility" then we can just talk about putting candidates on the value axis without putting any special emphasis on the min and max values. The voters could be harmed considerably in some cases. There have been several examples. One could e.g. translate utility values 1 A=90, B=80 and 1 B=90, A=70 to actual votes 1 A=100, B=0 and 1 B=90, A=70. The effect on the society could be e.g. bad election results (e.g. worse candidate A elected due to strategic voting) or Range becoming Approval in practice. I think we have covered all this before. Let's try to avoid repeating the cycle. > "Insincere" refers to reversing a preference; That's one option. In natural language I'd include also other cases. (sincere votes) >> You seem to be recommending the voters to primarily do so, > > I do recommend not reversing preferences. As to the expression of > so-called sincere ratings -- what is that? Defined above. (I didn't refer to reversals specifically.) > -- I suggest normalization, for starters, in nearly all > circumstances. In some, what I call the "first normalization" would > remain proper, not the second. > > (The first normalization: the voter considers *all* possible > candidates, not just those on the ballot. The voter assigns 100% to > the best of these and 0% to the worst. This is pretty much what > Warren does with his simulations, to generate "sincere" and "not > normalized" utilities. But by assuming that all voters have the > same internal scale, there is a normalization. Other utilities are > proportional. An assumption is made that they are linear, though > various distributions of utilities are used.) > > (The second normalization: the voter considers all candidates on > the ballot, including a write-in, if any. The voter assigns 100% to > the favorite and 0% to the worst. Another variation of this would > not include any write-ins. Again, other utilities would be presumed > to fall in the middle somewhere, but that is actually a separate > issue.) > > (And how are so-called sincere internal utilities translated to > Range Votes, when they are not at the extremes? There is no fixed > standard. Approval-style voting could be, in ordinary usage of the > term, "sincere." That is, the voter is saying, "I'll be about as > happy with either of these, and about as unhappy with either of > those." This does *not* necessarily mean that the voter has no > measurable preference, if only given the choice of two. It does > mean that the voter is more likely, perhaps, to stay home in a > runoff, but that is not guaranteed.) It seems you recommend not to normalize the estimated frontrunners to min and max. >> With this I think we are back in the >> original claim that Range may create a mess if some voters vote >> sincerely (and maybe are guided to do so) and some strategically. > > No such mess has been alleged specifically. Rather, Juho and others > continue to claim that a mess is created, but not *specific* > scenario that deserves the name is mentioned. There have been examples. See e.g. the example I gave above. > Suppose we have a pizza election. Two friends are choosing a pizza, > using Range Voting. They express, with their votes, not only what > they prefer, but how strongly. Certainly, the person who votes > Approval style is more likely to get what he wants -- indeed it is > guaranteed -- than the one who votes "sincerely." This is quite > like two friends having a discussion about it. One says, I like > Artichoke, but Mushroom is okay with me. The other says, wow! I > *love* Mushroom and I *hate* Artichoke. > > Which pizza do they choose? Routinely, in ordinary human > interaction, we give precedence to strongly expressed preferences. > Do we question the sincerity
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
e > result better, it's not as important. Etc. Ok, vulnerabilities are not equal if the threat level, probability, damage etc. are different, but the name of the vulnerability type doesn't matter if te other parameters are "at the same level". >> Yes, I meant sincere voting in Condorcet. I don't believe I can >> provide you a method that would be immune to strategic voting, but I >> do believe that in some environments most people would vote sincerely >> anyway. This is because on average sincere voting can be claimed to >> bring them the best results. > > This is not really true with respect to votes for candidates that > you do > not think can win. True for candidates that have no chances. Giving few additional votes to some (non-winning) candidate might however have some impact in the next elections. >> Hunting for the not so common and not so >> certain strategic opportunities and then taking part in such "plots" >> may not be tempting to them. I have seen relatively sincere behaviour >> in two-round runoff too, so why not in Condorcet. The strategies are >> a bit different but maybe not that much different. > > Two rounds. If you split a Condorcet method into two rounds I think > you > will get more sincerity, since more candidates could be considered > viable, and voters have a chance to adjust for mistakes that they > otherwise couldn't react to. *** Having two rounds doesn't sound dramatically different to me. Many voters will anyway vote according to the preference order that they used already at the first round. >> I note that in addition to discussing the vulnerability of margins >> vs. winning votes and their other weaknesses and strengths we now >> have also the environments with wide spread strategic voting and >> marginal strategic voting on the table. Answers to the first question >> in these two environments may be somewhat different. > > If you assume sincere voting then you just don't have to deal with > arguments about negative incentives. I meant predominantly sincere. Strategic voting may emerge if there are some good reasons for that, but in the absence of any clear reasons to vote strategically people would tend to vote sincerely. I think we would need more real life use cases to see how strategically people will behave in real life and in different types of political systems. The two-round runoff cases may give some indication but the do not yet guarantee that people would behave the same way with Condorcet. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] [EM] RV comments
I think we have by now covered most of the stuff and are now to some extent repeating things. Let's try to cut that out. On Aug 10, 2007, at 1:22 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > That all voters from one party would vote "sincerely" and all from > another party "approval style" is preposterous. It is not a requirement that all would be "sincere" or "approval style". >> Range may however provide worse results than Approval if >> there is a mixture of Approval like and sincere opinion like votes >> (and those votes are not evenly spread among the candidates). > > Asserted, over and over, without any proof at all, or even > reasonable evidence. Apply the statement just made to the above > example. And define "worse" without using utility analysis. If you > can. In any election/example, if your competitors use non-exaggerated votes and you use fully exaggerated votes, you have higher chances of winning. Term "worse" refers to the Range promoters' use of the term when explaining why Range is better than other methods. Easy to define as sum of or average utilities but also other formulations are ok with me. >> 50% D=100, R1=80, R2=70, 30% R1=100, R2=90, D=70, 20% >> R1=100, R2=0, D=0. The "bad" Republican wins. In real life this is >> however not likely to happen since probably the D and R1 supporters >> will understand what's going on and will exaggerate too. Many R1 >> supporters might take one step back and give more points (maybe max) >> to R2 too. > > For starters, any method can elect a "bad" candidate, if voters > don't use the method intelligently! The above example was, I think, > misstated, I'm modifying it here so that it makes sense. > > D R1 R2 > 50: 100 80 70 > 30: 70 100 90 > 20: 0 0 100 > - > 710070008200 > > What is going on here? 80% of the voters don't care much about who > wins the election! And they vote that way. So the 20% who care -- > Ron Paul supporters, of course -- vote as if they care, and they win. I didn't assume anything on how much the voters want to win. I assumed only that some voted strategically and some gave their sincere opinion. It is possible to rate a candidate at 100 but not care too much about who wins. > Let me point out, first of all, that the R2 supporters are clearly > not Republicans, period. They were intended to be strategic/exaggerating republicans whose sincere opinion could have been e.g. R2=100, R1=90, D=70. > Now, is R2 a "no-good" outcome? Why would Juho claim so? R2 represented the smaller segment of the Republican party. It won because its supporters exaggerated. > What is "sincere opinion based Range"? How are votes defined in it? For the purposes of these examples: "votes that use all values instead of focusing in use of min and max". >> I think you should refer to such normalization where at least one >> frontrunner gets min and one gets max (or something close to that). > > This is how most advice on Range Voting does it. Have you seen > anything different from a Range supporter? Yes, at least "summing up the voter utilities to a society utility" and some other normalisation schemes. Juho ___ Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 10, 2007, at 6:08 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 04:09 PM 8/9/2007, Juho wrote: >> I used term "sincere" roughly to refer to voters marking their >> personal candidate utility values in the ballots. Or if you don't >> like the word "utility" then we can just talk about putting >> candidates on the value axis without putting any special emphasis on >> the min and max values. > So what do I come up with as so-called "sincere" non-normalized > Range Votes? Range 100, 50.25% for Gore. Bush is below 50% by five > times as much as Gore is above it, so Bush is 48.75%. Rounding off > for Range 100, it is Gore 50%, Bush 49%. My sincere votes. > > If this is not what "sincere" vote means, please explain what is! In the light of this example it doesn't matter how the "sincere" votes are derived or where they come from. Any method and logic is ok. It could be based on terms "sincere" and "utilities", or not. The only criterion is technical by nature, i.e. that the voter uses the values in some other way than using mostly min and max values. > So how is this a "bad result"? In the example the idea of Range electing the candidate that has best utility from the society point of view failed. In the example the votes were 50% - 50% but Range could ignore also a clear majority opinion. Juho ___ Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[Election-Methods] Two replies
Here are some remaining comments and responses to the questions. No new material, just confirming the presented viewpoints. On Aug 11, 2007, at 4:37 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 05:03 PM 8/10/2007, Juho wrote: >> In the light of this example it doesn't matter how the "sincere" >> votes are derived or where they come from. Any method and logic is >> ok. It could be based on terms "sincere" and "utilities", or not. The >> only criterion is technical by nature, i.e. that the voter uses the >> values in some other way than using mostly min and max values. > > In other words, even if your vote of max for one and min for > another, and no intermediate values for anyone (maybe they are also > max or min, or you left them blank) is an accurate reflection of > your preferences, i.e., it is sincere, then your vote is "strategic." I don't want to define/redefine "strategic". The technical properties of the votes are enough. I wrote: >> Range could ignore also a clear majority >> opinion. I should have written "a clear majority and utility opinion as a result of strategic voting". > > One could e.g. translate utility values 1 > >A=90, B=80 and 1 B=90, A=70 to actual votes 1 A=100, B=0 and 1 B=90, > >A=70. > > So this is two voters. Thus it is 50-50 as far as first preference > is concerned. (And we can imagine that this is two whole sets of > voters voting identically.) Fine. If I'm correct, Juho is asserting > that, if the votes are translated as stated, the outcome is "bad." > > Yet what method is going to do better than Range in this example? Range changes the winner depending on the level of strategic voting. Most other methods would give a tie. --- On Aug 11, 2007, at 5:50 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: >> > D R1 R2 >> > 50: 100 80 70 >> > 30: 70 100 90 >> > 20: 0 0 100 >> > - >> > 710070008200 > In any case, what is "bad" about this scenario? The success of the strategic voters. >> They were intended to be strategic/exaggerating republicans whose >> sincere opinion could have been e.g. R2=100, R1=90, D=70. > These are not normalized utilities, on what basis are they made > commensurable? The problems rose from some voters normalizing or exaggerating and some not. > So on what basis does Juho assume utilities as he did. Why is the > worst candidate in the set a "70"? > > He is postulating circumstances that are unreal. Any reasons and votes that give other than min and max values will do. > A major contradiction in Juho's argument is that he assumes that > voters would vote a weak vote in Range but that they would > accurately predict which form of Approval vote would serve them > best, and they would not vote a weak vote in Approval. I don't want to claim anything about Approval or Approval like strategies. > If the Ds considered R2 a poor choice, why did they rate him at 70? > *That is a high rating.* They didn't consider R2 to be a poor choice (although R2 was to them the worst choice). > Who would be a better winner? R1 and D based on social utilities (and according to the choices of many methods). Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Two replies
On Aug 12, 2007, at 6:40 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > The extension of "strategic" to include votes which involve > expressing an equal rating for candidates when the voter actually > has a preference is, in my view, properly controversial. I'm ok with any stable definition. > Now, in a real election, this voting pattern is extremely unlikely. Yes, the voting pattern in the example is exaggerated. Casting "weak" votes is possible in practically any set-up and they may influence the outcome in many. > Juho has asserted that these are sincere utilities, but he has > totally avoided the question of what they mean. What *kind* of > sincere utilities? I'm ok with any kind. > He is not explicit about what he is comparing the method with. Bad > compared to what? Or just *absolutely* bad? I compared use of weak and strong votes within Range. > Juho did not provide us a basis for concluding that R1 and D are > better winners. To conclude that, we would have to know how to > compare the utilities of the D, R1, and R2 winners. The utilities > he stated are "half-normalized." That's odd. In order to compare > and sum S.U., the ranges of utilities need to be tied to each other > in some way, so that they are commensurable, so that summing them > has meaning. > > I discussed this at some length, but it seems it sailed past Juho. Your scenarios are ok to me. I accept any way of determining utilities. > No election has had a "bad" outcome if all the voters consider it a > good one! And Juho ackowledged above that the Ds considered R2 "not > a poor choice." > > Not a poor choice is, quite simply, not a "bad" choice. Yes, and R2 had the worst in S.U. in this example. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Two replies
On Aug 12, 2007, at 18:07 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > Yet he thinks he can judge whether or not a particular vote is > "strategic" by looking only at the vote. No intention to do that. I gave the voter opinions as well as actual votes cast as part of the example definition. (I just spent some time in another mail stream on this list trying to promote the idea that one needs to clearly state the voter opinions and actual votes and avoid leaving that unclear.) Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 12, 2007, at 20:04 , Kevin Venzke wrote: >>> I think margins does give a clear reason to not vote for weak >>> candidates, >>> especially if there's a chance they're strong enough to get a >>> pairwise >>> win. >> >> I still miss the concrete waterproof example. (Sorry if I should have >> known which one it is.) > > Another example? The 49 24 27 scenario shows that margins can do this. Yes, that scenario shows that in some situations some strategies work in margins but not in winning votes. Sorry about my unclear expression. I'm trying to find examples that would be damaging to margins in the sense that they would occur often in typical elections, would be risk free to strategists, easy to implement, tolerable to measurement errors etc. And I tried to pinpoint weaknesses in the presented scenarios (why they would no be as big a threat as the extreme/theoretical cases first seem to indicate.) > If you believe your favorite candidate is strong enough to beat the > better frontrunner but not strong enough to win, you shouldn't vote > for > him. It's not even safe enough to rank them equally, since you might > need to compensate for voters with the same preferences you have > but who > are choosing to vote sincerely. I'll try to find some (more) problem free set of votes for such a situation. (Success not guaranteed.) > You frequently say that conditions are so uncertain that who can say > whether a strategy is good to use. But surely voters will at least > believe > they can gauge whether their favorite candidate is likely to win. Often that may be the case, but it is also quite typical to elections that the winner and/or #2 are not known beforehand. And individual voters often have different understanding, and all the candidates claim to be close to winning. It is also possible that voters vote against "pre-declared" winners. > The WV strategy proposal didn't involve bullet voting. The whole point > is that it didn't involve bullet voting. Didn't quite get this. I used bullet voting as a synonym to truncation in a three candidate race. >>>> Yes, I meant sincere voting in Condorcet. I don't believe I can >>>> provide you a method that would be immune to strategic voting, >>>> but I >>>> do believe that in some environments most people would vote >>>> sincerely >>>> anyway. This is because on average sincere voting can be claimed to >>>> bring them the best results. >>> >>> This is not really true with respect to votes for candidates that >>> you do >>> not think can win. >> >> True for candidates that have no chances. > > And this is a problem. Voters shouldn't have to weed weak > candidates out > of their ranking before they vote. The method should just ignore those > candidates. Planning to analyse this with "realistic" votes. > With Condorcet there is a big difference that candidates you're better > off truncating when there's only one round, are *perfectly safe* to > vote > for if there's a second round with just two contenders. Ok, the first and second rounds are different and different strategies may apply - both in two-round runoff and "two-stage Condorcet". Also here I don't want to throw in a generic judgement that would cover all cases but plan to approach the threat level of the scenarios (that exist) via concrete and hopefully realistic examples. > In the first round you vote FOR one candidate. You also vote > AGAINST one > candidate. If someone has more than half of the FOR votes, they are > elected. If someone has more than half of the AGAINST votes, they are > disqualified. Then the second round is between the two candidates with > the most FOR votes who have not been disqualified. I'm always a bit careful with the "against" votes. If there are e.g. three strong parties the supporters of the other parties might vote the candidate of one party out. In this situation it is also possible that some unknown candidate or a candidate that nobody expected to win and that therefore didn't get too many negative votes would win. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 14, 2007, at 4:23 , Kevin Venzke wrote: >> I'm trying to find examples that would be damaging to >> margins in the sense that they would occur often in typical >> elections, > > Is it not pretty damaging if voters don't trust the method to deal > with > votes for weak candidates? It is not good if the voters don't trust the method, for whatever reason. I'm not yet convinced that that particular case would become an issue to the voters in real life. I already commented the 49 24 27 scenario but I may come back when I have some new material. >> I'll try to find some (more) problem free set of votes for such a >> situation. (Success not guaranteed.) > > I don't understand what you're saying. What good can it do to show a > scenario where there *isn't* a problem? I referred to credibility problems in the presented scenarios, not to problems to the voters/election. > It doesn't matter if voters have different understandings; it only > matters > that a voter believes their own understanding is close enough. > > It's a rather moot point in any case since just because a voter may > not realize they should use favorite betrayal doesn't mean that they > didn't *need* to. The sum of all this matters and has impact on where strategies are a problem and where not. >> Planning to analyse this with "realistic" votes. > > What good is it. Voters can't foresee whether an election is going to > turn out "realistic." Didn't get the point. I think real-life elections typically have realistic votes. If not, then people might call that a miracle. And they might base their strategic fears on that. But I guess you didn't mean this. >>> In the first round you vote FOR one candidate. You also vote >>> AGAINST one >>> candidate. If someone has more than half of the FOR votes, they are >>> elected. If someone has more than half of the AGAINST votes, they >>> are >>> disqualified. Then the second round is between the two candidates >>> with >>> the most FOR votes who have not been disqualified. >> >> I'm always a bit careful with the "against" votes. If there are e.g. >> three strong parties the supporters of the other parties might vote >> the candidate of one party out. > > ??? My comment was indeed quite confusing. I guess I was in a hurry to reach the end of the mail. This method doesn't seem to be as bad with negative votes as some other methods are but there are some risks e.g. in the following example. There are three candidates with first place support 40 A, 30 B, 30 C. Later preferences are not strong. B supporters notice that if the final round will be between B and A it looks quite probable that A would win. Therefore they give their AGAINST vote to A. C supporters follow the same logic. A gets >50% AGAINST votes. The problem is that the AGAINST votes were strategic and not sincere (many of them at least). A could have been the best candidate (with 40% support). Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
If the ballots are considered to hold both approval and ranking information (maybe even giving higher weight to approval) then also I have some sympathy towards D. But if we compare this kind of combined ballots to pure ranking ballots then probably also the votes would be different. I mean e.g. that since the 1000 A>B voters seemed to have a uniform and therefore maybe strong opinion A>B that might mean that if they were told to give votes where also approval would be counted then the vote could have been closer to (but maybe not all the way) 1000 A, 1000 B, 1 D>B. I read you comments so that winning votes was not very good. Combining approval and margins would be better. And pure margins would be worse than approval + margins. I assumed also that D would be a good winner with approval + margins but I'm not sure you stated anything on if D should win if the ballots were purely ranking based (1000 A>B>C=D>E, 1000 C>D>A=B>E, 1 D>B>A=C>E to "fool" your method :-). The comparison is of course a bit tricky since approval + margins has more data available, although it also limits the expressiveness somewhat since the approval cutoff is at a fixed position. A free cutoff location would allow the voter to express also preferences between the non-approved candidates. Maybe you didn't allow that for some strategy resistance reasons (as usual :-). Juho On Aug 15, 2007, at 1:10 , Chris Benham wrote: Juho wrote: On Aug 2, 2007, at 6:44 , Kevin Venzke wrote: 1000 A>B, 1000 C>D, 1 D>B Yes, I do think D is the proper winner. Do you have a verbal (natural language) explanation why D is better than A and C. This scenario could be an election in a school. One class has voted A>B (A and B are pupils of that class), another class has voted C>D, the teacher has voted D>B. What should the teacher tell the C>D voting class when they ask "didn't you count our votes"? Maybe this is clear to you. Unfortunately not as clear to me. The teacher vote seemed to be heavier than the pupils votes :-). I agree with Kevin that D is the proper winner, but Winning Votes isn't my favourite algorithm. If we are sticking with Condorcet "immune" methods and so are only focussing on how to compare (measure) defeat strengths, then I like Approval Margins (Ranking) if we are using plain ranking ballots. So interpreting ranking (above bottom or equal-bottom) as approval, we get these approval scores: D1001, B1001, A1000, C1000 All the candidates have at least one pairwise defeat, and by AM the weakest is D's single defeat, C>D by an AM of -1. I also like Approval-Sorted Margins(Ranking), which is probably equivalent to AM. The initial approval order is D=B>A=C. The smallest approval gaps (zero) are between D and B, and A and C. A pairwise ties with C but D pairwise beats B, so our first modification of the order is D>B>A=C. A pairwise beats B, so the second modification is D>A>B=C. B pairwise beats C, so the third modified order is D>A>B>C. This order accords with the pairwise comparisons so is the final order and D wins. I also like eliminating (and dropping from the ballots) the candidate lowest in this order and then repeating the whole process until one remains. In this case that would give the same winner, with the elimination order just being the reverse of the ASM(R) order. The only candidate with any sort of claim versus D is C, and C is pairwise beaten by a more approved candidate (B) so C is outside the "Definite Majority (Ranking)" set. Chris Benham ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 15, 2007, at 15:49 , Chris Benham wrote: > (But shouldn't your "1000B" read *1000C*?) Yes. > Perhaps my favourite method using this type of ballot is a version > ASM Elimination where at each stage ballots that specify > some approval distinction among remaining candidates are > "interpreted" as approving that way, but ballots that don't make > any explicit approval distinction among remaining candidates > are interpreted as approving the remain g candidates they rank > (among remaining candidates) above bottom or equal-bottom. Last October I wrote about ranked preferences, i.e. ballots like A>>B>C>D>>>E. That allows the voter in a way to define different approval like divisions. I think the concept is theoretically pretty but I'm not sure if the full set of capabilities is ever needed in practice and if the complexity can be justified with the achieved benefits. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
In the last October case also equal ranking was allowed in addition to the other strengths of preference. Juho On Aug 16, 2007, at 7:24 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > At 03:24 PM 8/15/2007, Juho wrote: > >> Last October I wrote about ranked preferences, i.e. ballots like >> A>>B>C>D>>>E. That allows the voter in a way to define different >> approval like divisions. I think the concept is theoretically pretty >> but I'm not sure if the full set of capabilities is ever needed in >> practice and if the complexity can be justified with the achieved >> benefits. > > Ranked ballots that allow equal ranking are vastly superior in > performance to those that prohibit it, for a number of reasons, one > of which can be addressed with automated voting equipment, others > can't. > > And, of course, there are reasons to avoid "automated voting > equipment," generally. > > Three reasons are: > > (1) If you prohibit overvoting at a rank, you will see an increased > number of spoiled ballots, for various reasons. Some of them are > purely errors, others are deliberate. Voters don't always > understand the rules, and I've never seen a ballot that said, "Vote > for more than one and your ballot will be invalidated." (Sometimes > the rules, as I have seen with IRV rules, only discard votes at the > equal ranked level or below.) Allowing equal ranking preserves more > of voter intent than discarding the overvotes. > > (Generally. Consider Florida 2000; due to misleading ballot design, > there were many Gore/Buchanan overvotes. Counting the votes would > have given some extra votes to Buchanan, which would have been > harmless. Almost certainly, these were votes intended for Gore. > Now, it could be argued that they were intended for Buchanan -- > though that's very unlikely in the case -- and thus that it would > be unfair to give the votes to Gore. However, by presuming that the > voter erred and that we cannot therefore discern the voter's > intent, we discard what the voter has actually expressed. Other > votes, for example, may have been cast for Buchanan and the voter > did not realize that the ballot was misleading. We should take the > ballots as writ.) > > (2) Forced ranking introduces noise. > > (3) Allowing equal ranking brings the method closer in S.U. > maximization to Range. Generally, ranked methods force a single > preference step; except at the bottom, no other preference > distinction is permitted. Allowing equal preference turns a ranked > method into Approval, should a voter decide to only use the first > rank. Or into Approval at any lower rank. I.e., this is my > Favorite, but if not this one, then any of these would be > acceptable. This could fix center squeeze in IRV. > ___ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy inCondorcet" section
July 29th I drafted also one example that was intended to be more realistic than the 1000 1000 1 scenario. Juho --excerpt--- Here's another version of the example - longer, but now the numbers could be from real life. There seems to be a consensus (within both of the two parties, "AB" and "CD") that A is better than B and C is better than D. Some voters (32%) truncate the candidates of the other party but all rank their own candidates. One additional vote (e.g. B>D) can lift B and/or D to the same level with A and C. The point is that this threat exists also when votes are more balanced than in the first (extreme but easy to catch) scenario. This may quite well happen in real life elections. 10 A>B 12 A>B>C 9 A>B>D 6 B>A 8 B>A>C 5 B>A>D 10 C>D 12 C>D>A 9 C>D>B 6 D>C 8 D>C>A 5 D>C>B --end of excerpt--- On Aug 17, 2007, at 19:41 , Dave Ketchum wrote: Paul's words are tempting, for this exchange has little to do with desirability of Condorcet, or of margins vs WV. Looking closer, the votes are: 1000 A>B>C=D 1000 C>D>A=B 1 D>B>A=C 2000 voters rate A vs C as a tie, only agreed that B and D should lose. The one vote agrees to the A vs C tie, but mostly muddies the water. So, a not believable election tally gets debated for weeks. True that margins vs WV is an important topic, but each can offer believable examples in their favor - serious thought would be based on more believable examples than debated here. DWK On Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:25:57 -0500 Paul Kislanko wrote: This is enough to convince me that approval is an appropriate method. - --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Chris Benham Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 5:11 PM To: Juho Cc: Forest W Simmons; Election Methods Mailing List Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy inCondorcet" section Juho wrote: On Aug 2, 2007, at 6:44 , Kevin Venzke wrote: 1000 A>B, 1000 C>D, 1 D>B Yes, I do think D is the proper winner. Do you have a verbal (natural language) explanation why D is better than A and C. This scenario could be an election in a school. One class has voted A>B (A and B are pupils of that class), another class has voted C>D, the teacher has voted D>B. What should the teacher tell the C>D voting class when they ask "didn't you count our votes"? Maybe this is clear to you. Unfortunately not as clear to me. The teacher vote seemed to be heavier than the pupils votes :-). I agree with Kevin that D is the proper winner, but Winning Votes isn't my favourite algorithm. If we are sticking with Condorcet "immune" methods and so are only focussing on how to compare (measure) defeat strengths, then I like Approval Margins (Ranking) if we are using plain ranking ballots. So interpreting ranking (above bottom or equal-bottom) as approval, we get these approval scores: D1001, B1001, A1000, C1000 All the candidates have at least one pairwise defeat, and by AM the weakest is D's single defeat, C>D by an AM of -1. I also like Approval-Sorted Margins(Ranking), which is probably equivalent to AM. The initial approval order is D=B>A=C. The smallest approval gaps (zero) are between D and B, and A and C. A pairwise ties with C but D pairwise beats B, so our first modification of the order is D>B>A=C. A pairwise beats B, so the second modification is D>A>B=C. B pairwise beats C, so the third modified order is D>A>B>C. This order accords with the pairwise comparisons so is the final order and D wins. I also like eliminating (and dropping from the ballots) the candidate lowest in this order and then repeating the whole process until one remains. In this case that would give the same winner, with the elimination order just being the reverse of the ASM(R) order. The only candidate with any sort of claim versus D is C, and C is pairwise beaten by a more approved candidate (B) so C is outside the "Definite Majority (Ranking)" set. Chris Benham -- [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. ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
On Aug 15, 2007, at 15:49 , Chris Benham wrote: > I agree that the Margins algorithm idea is more intuitive, and I > like the fact that in common with IRV > the best zero-info strategy is to simply rank sincerely regardless > of ratings. I like methods that are either like this or have 0- > info incentive to truncate disapproved > candidates (for voters with a big gap in their sincere ratings). I > don't WV's random-fill incentive. I forgot to mention this special case that doesn't touch the main theme of this mail stream but is maybe worth noting anyway. An example with two parties, ABC and DEF. The voters have zero information. But the strategy of the DEF party pays off and they will win. Not an easy strategy to implement but it sometimes works. 30 A=B=C>D=E=F 10 D=E=F>A>B>C 10 D=E=F>B>C>A 10 D=E=F>C>A>B Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Challenge: Elect the compromise when there're only 2 factions
Here's my first attempt. Let's use modified Borda. The points can be "balanced" e.g. by using square root. X>Y>Z => (2, 1, 0) => (1.4, 1, 0) X>Y=Z => (2, 1, 1) => (1.4, 1, 1) 55 A>C>B 45 B>C>A A = 55 * 1.4 + 45 * 0.0 = 77.8 B = 55 * 0.0 + 45 * 1.4 = 63.6 C = 55 * 1.0 + 45 * 1.0 = 100.0 Juho P.S. You didn't tell what the method should do with 55: A 100, C 20, B 0, 45: B 100, C 20, A 0 :-) On Aug 22, 2007, at 9:55 , Jobst Heitzig wrote: A common situation: 2 factions & 1 good compromise. The goal: Make sure the compromise wins. The problem: One of the 2 factions has a majority. A concrete example: true ratings are 55 voters: A 100, C 80, B 0 45 voters: B 100, C 80, A 0 THE CHALLENGE: FIND A METHOD THAT WILL ELECT THE COMPROMISE (C)! The fine-print: voters are selfish and will vote strategically... Good luck & have fun :-) Jobst __ ___ In 5 Schritten zur eigenen Homepage. Jetzt Domain sichern und gestalten! Nur 3,99 EUR/Monat! http://www.maildomain.web.de/?mc=021114 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Elect the Compromise
On Aug 27, 2007, at 23:15 , Jobst Heitzig wrote: > Think about Borda using scores 0, 1, and 2, without equal rankings > allowed: The A voters can give A at most a score of 55*2=110 and > have to give either B or C at least a score of 28. Hence whatever > the A voters do, they cannot be sure to have A elected since the B > voters could advance B or C to at least a score of 118 by giving it > a score of 45*2=90. From this one can see easily that there is no > group strategy equilibrium electing A or B. All group strategy > equilibria elect C, for example the one in which everbody puts C > first and her favourite second. The drawback is only that these > equilibria are not globally attractive, since there are starting > points (e.g. sincere rankings) from which the process of repeatedly > replacing the strategies by optimal respond strategies to the > current strategies will not eventually lead to an equilibrium but > may get stuck in a cycle. How about the weighted Borda that I described earlier? Square root weights would give 0, 1 and 1.4 points instead of 0, 1 and 2. In line with what Forest wrote I'm not advocating these methods, except as challenges on this list. The most obvious problem is clones, e.g. one candidate from the Democrats and two from the Republicans. From this point of view one could require that votes 55 A>>C>B 45 B>C>>A and 55 A>>C>B 45 C>B>>A will not elect C. Juho ___ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Elect the Compromise
On Aug 30, 2007, at 2:30 , Jobst Heitzig wrote: > Dear Juho! > >> How about the weighted Borda that I described earlier? Square root >> weights would give 0, 1 and 1.4 points instead of 0, 1 and 2. > > I'm totally sorry -- I just have forgotten that you proposed this. It > will probably work, too, but I'm not sure whether those scores make it > easier or more difficult... Yes, same results, but with different style. At that point I didn't yet consider the equilibrium possibilities, just electing C already with the sincere votes, and therefore needing the square root modification (or something similar giving the compromise more points than just the average of min and max). Juho >> In line with what Forest wrote I'm not advocating these methods, >> except as challenges on this list. The most obvious problem is >> clones, e.g. one candidate from the Democrats and two from the >> Republicans. From this point of view one could require that votes 55 >> A>>C>B 45 B>C>>A and 55 A>>C>B 45 C>B>>A will not elect C. > > Right. Neither am I advocating them. It was just an observation that > Borda deals better in this particular situation. We should improve > upon > that! > > Yours, Jobst ___ Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Elect the Compromise (correction)
There are deterministic method related tracks that have not been discussed so far. It is possible to use the uncertainty involved in the polls. The votes need not be exactly 55% and 45% but there can be some uncertainty on which one of the two groups is bigger. The A supporters may vote "A>C>>B" instead of "A>>C>B" to increase the probability of electing C in the case that the A group will not have majority. (The method could use e.g. approval cutoff, different preference strengths, ratings.) I think this works also with the "near perfect information" assumption. Probabilities depend on the level of "nearness". Juho P.S. I assume the challenge is now to elect only "good" compromise candidates On Aug 30, 2007, at 16:37 , Howard Swerdfeger wrote: Forest W Simmons wrote: Below where I said "unlike Borda" I should have said "unlike D2MAC." Neither the Borda solution nor the reverse plurality solution requires anything other than the ordinal preferences. So the deterministic solutions that do not depend on some form of vote trading are insensitive to whether or not the voters are inclined to approve C. Perhaps we could refine the challenge to ask for methods that elect C with near certainty when the two factions are 55 A 100 C 80 B 0 45 B 100 C 80 B 0 but almost surely do not elect C with when the two factions are 55 A 100 C 20 B 0 45 B 100 C 20 B 0 assuming throughout optimal strategical voting under near perfect information. It seems to me that vote trading and/or randomness are needed to solve this challenge. I am inclined to agree with you. however, I am not willing to give up hope on a third type of method yet. I would say that on a lower level you need" "A method that makes it optimal for an individual voter to vote with true preference." the 3 methods I have noticed identified so far are vote trading, randomized ballots, and hiding information from the voter. your assumption of "near perfect information" obviously eliminates the last one. Both of the methods that are left reduce to giving the voters good reason to vote the truth. I think it is a good idea to keep that in mind when devising future systems. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Measuring power in a multi winner election
Some random observations on the theme. "Seats != power" seems to assume that there is a hard party discipline (=all party representatives will/must vote as told by the party). Or alternatively representatives could have different weights (different number of votes each). You skipped the "normal" rule of proportional systems where votes = seats quite quickly. It has its problems but I guess also possible power measurement based methods would have some problems. Let's say there is a rule that one can modify the constitution with 75% of the votes. There are three parties: 45%, 45% and 10%. Should we now give the smallest party more power by allowing it to modify the constitution together with one large party in some cases (with only 55% of the votes)? With 50% limit and parties 30%, 30%, 30%, 10%, should we allow minority decisions in some cases to allow the small party to decide in some cases? One alternative approach would be to require higher percentage of votes in some cases, e.g. after decisions have been made with lower percentages for few times. In this case 30%+30% would not be enough any more in some cases but the the approval limit would go up from 50% e.g. to 65% at some point. Note that if the parties will make majority decisions that then require all the party representatives to vote as decided this means that some of the party representatives may have to vote against their will. The party is allowed to wield power but part of the representatives will wild the power against themselves. The party has power but the representatives and supporters would in some cases be hurt by this power (maybe the alternative that lost had majority support among (all) the representatives and voters). The party "won" but maybe not all of its representatives and supporters. I guess the basic idea behind party discipline is that this way the party is able to reach a better negotiation position. A party that is internally split 50%-50% on some question can still do horse trading and agree with some other party to support that party in this vote if that party will support this this party in some future vote. The power of the parties now follows the power measurement schemes instead of "votes = power". But in principle parties that together have sufficient majority may take a dictator role. It is hard to design systems that would eliminate the possibility of this kind of party negotiation level voting discipline (if one party can do this, why not a group of parties too). Voting methods that would take the power measurement aspects into account may give more power to the small parties in order to allow them to decide more than they would otherwise be allowed to. This could lead to a strategic for the big parties to split at least formally but still after the elections use strong party discipline that would now cover all the party fragments. How about using the more traditional votes = seats method and discouraging the use of the party discipline? That could be just a recommendation, or maybe a rule that would ban disciplinary actions towards representatives that have voted against the party majority opinion. One approach would be to introduce more structure in the party structure. I have few times promoted the idea of allowing a tree like structure within the parties (and between them too). That would make it easier to the right or green wing of a party to vote differently than the rest of the party (they could feel close to being required to do so in some "right" or "green" situations). Also methods that do not rely on the party structure (e.g. STV) are more likely to lead to a having representatives that will make independent decisions, maybe sometimes working together with other right wing representatives, sometimes together with other greenish representatives etc. I'm not aware of methods that would take some of the power measurement formula into account. I welcome multi-winner discussions. No need and no reason to limit the discussions to the single-winner theme. (What would be the reason to do so? Often single-winner and multi-winner systems are alternatives to each others => both needed to cover the field properly.) Juho On Sep 21, 2007, at 18:22 , Howard Swerdfeger wrote: I know that this list is primarily single winner elections but I thought given the low volume as of late a slight change of topic would be welcome. with that, I was wondering about multi winner elections. specifically the parliamentary kind typical of most former British colonies. Do to the inadequacies of the FPTP system in creating a government many of these countries are looking at alternative systems, New Zealand moved to MMP, Scotland as well, BC tried to once, and will try again move to STV, Ontario is looking at
[Election-Methods] Fwd: Measuring power in a multi winner election
Second try Begin forwarded message: > From: Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: September 22, 2007 1:23:31 GMT+03:00 > To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com > Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Measuring power in a multi winner > election > > Some random observations on the theme. > > "Seats != power" seems to assume that there is a hard party > discipline (=all party representatives will/must vote as told by > the party). Or alternatively representatives could have different > weights (different number of votes each). > > You skipped the "normal" rule of proportional systems where votes = > seats quite quickly. It has its problems but I guess also possible > power measurement based methods would have some problems. Let's say > there is a rule that one can modify the constitution with 75% of > the votes. There are three parties: 45%, 45% and 10%. Should we now > give the smallest party more power by allowing it to modify the > constitution together with one large party in some cases (with only > 55% of the votes)? > > With 50% limit and parties 30%, 30%, 30%, 10%, should we allow > minority decisions in some cases to allow the small party to decide > in some cases? > > One alternative approach would be to require higher percentage of > votes in some cases, e.g. after decisions have been made with lower > percentages for few times. In this case 30%+30% would not be enough > any more in some cases but the the approval limit would go up from > 50% e.g. to 65% at some point. > > Note that if the parties will make majority decisions that then > require all the party representatives to vote as decided this means > that some of the party representatives may have to vote against > their will. The party is allowed to wield power but part of the > representatives will wild the power against themselves. The party > has power but the representatives and supporters would in some > cases be hurt by this power (maybe the alternative that lost had > majority support among (all) the representatives and voters). The > party "won" but maybe not all of its representatives and supporters. > > I guess the basic idea behind party discipline is that this way the > party is able to reach a better negotiation position. A party that > is internally split 50%-50% on some question can still do horse > trading and agree with some other party to support that party in > this vote if that party will support this this party in some future > vote. The power of the parties now follows the power measurement > schemes instead of "votes = power". But in principle parties that > together have sufficient majority may take a dictator role. It is > hard to design systems that would eliminate the possibility of this > kind of party negotiation level voting discipline (if one party can > do this, why not a group of parties too). > > Voting methods that would take the power measurement aspects into > account may give more power to the small parties in order to allow > them to decide more than they would otherwise be allowed to. This > could lead to a strategic for the big parties to split at least > formally but still after the elections use strong party discipline > that would now cover all the party fragments. > > How about using the more traditional votes = seats method and > discouraging the use of the party discipline? That could be just a > recommendation, or maybe a rule that would ban disciplinary actions > towards representatives that have voted against the party majority > opinion. One approach would be to introduce more structure in the > party structure. I have few times promoted the idea of allowing a > tree like structure within the parties (and between them too). That > would make it easier to the right or green wing of a party to vote > differently than the rest of the party (they could feel close to > being required to do so in some "right" or "green" situations). > > Also methods that do not rely on the party structure (e.g. STV) are > more likely to lead to a having representatives that will make > independent decisions, maybe sometimes working together with other > right wing representatives, sometimes together with other greenish > representatives etc. > > I'm not aware of methods that would take some of the power > measurement formula into account. > > I welcome multi-winner discussions. No need and no reason to limit > the discussions to the single-winner theme. (What would be the > reason to do so? Often single-winner and multi-winner systems are > alternatives to each others =>
Re: [Election-Methods] Measuring power in a multi winner election
On Sep 24, 2007, at 23:03 , Howard Swerdfeger wrote: >> One alternative approach would be to require higher percentage of >> votes >> in some cases, e.g. after decisions have been made with lower >> percentages for few times. In this case 30%+30% would not be >> enough any >> more in some cases but the the approval limit would go up from 50% >> e.g. >> to 65% at some point. > > Good point, I ran my numbers with a threshold of 50% of the seats, > rounded up. > the threshold could be altered, and it is unknown how this would > effect > the power index. > My guess would be that as the threshold was raised to 100% of the > seats > it would Slowly equalize the power between the parties. One more approach would be to give the parties some "veto votes" that they can use as they wish during the period between elections. If some party in on the losing side in some vote by 5% margin it could still veto and use 5 of its veto votes to do that (maybe all losing parties would use some of their veto votes). Juho ___ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Corrected "strategy in Condorcet" section
t; the plotters) etc. > > You are talking like it's a positive thing if the C>B voters decide > not > to use a betrayal strategy. It's not positive; it's the other side > of a > bad coin. Whether they betray C now or just remember to do it in the > future, an incentive is or will be apparent. One of my key targets is to seek the limit above which Condocet methods would be generally strategy free. Both concerning strategies and counter strategies. The confused situation and numerous options contribute in this direction. That maybe already became obvious towards the end of this mail. - - - - - I'll now approach your old example from a somewhat new angle, taking also the sincere opinions into account. Maybe this approach explains a bit better what I'm after. The idea is that strategic voting with margins and winning votes is a sword that has two edges. I now understand your original (exaggerated) example (49 A, 24 B, 27 C>B) to be a result of strategic considerations in a typical left-centre- right set-up. The original (intended, exaggerated) sincere opinions could have been: 49 A>B>C 12 B>A>C 12 B>C>A 27 C>B>A Both margins and winning votes would elect B with sincere votes. In this situation the A and B supporters decide to vote (counter) strategically and truncate (with more or less valid reasons). (The end result / actual votes are exaggerated, but more realistic votes can be discussed later if needed.) 49 A 24 B 27 C>B Margins will elect A and winning votes will elect B. Your opinion seemed to be that winning votes is better since with margins C supporters would be tempted to vote B>C and thereby make B the winner. (Note that with these numbers at least 48 out of the 49 A supporters would have to vote strategically to generate the temptation for the C supporters to vote strategically.) An alternative explanation to these actual votes could be that the sincere opinions were: 49 A>B=C 24 B>C>A 27 C>B>A This is a typical (exaggerated) left-right-right set-up. Both margins and winning votes would elect C with sincere votes. In this alternative the B supporters vote strategically and truncate. The actual votes are exactly the same as in the first case - this is thus just an alternative explanation to them. Now the fact that winning votes elects B makes it possible for the B supporters to apply the strategy while margins do not encourage strategic voting. It is thus difficult to avoid all the strategic voting scenarios whichever preference strength measurement function one uses (margins or winning votes). It is possible to try to defend against one kind of threat and open doors to others while doing so (the two edges in a small space) . What choice should the election method do if there are problems in whatever choice one makes? In principle one needs to evaluate all possible cases and then estimate which function is better. And of course one has to add to the final election method evaluation also the other factors (e.g. performance with sincere votes, ref. the 1000 A>B, 1000 B>C, 1 D>B example). (A third explanation to the actual votes would btw be that the actual votes are actually sincere. The election method of course has to elect a good candidate also in this case. I will not talk about this line further now since the actual votes hat were used above don't look like a typical set of sincere opinions.) (Now my feeling is that you were quite happy with voters regularly applying the defensive strategies (truncation). I'd be happier to conclude that such voting patterns are generally not needed. Real life elections are not as extreme and clear, and controlling strategic voting is difficult, opinion polls may vary etc. etc. DOes this make Condorcet methods strategy free in practice or should we prepare for wide spread strategic voting? Is Condorcet better than other methods if strategic voting is widespread?) Juho ___ Yahoo! Messenger - with free PC-PC calling and photo sharing. http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 2, 2007, at 16:38 , Warren Smith wrote: W.Schudy: Summary: I believe it's better to force everyone to vote strategically (approval) than to give power to the candidate whose supporters have the most black and white, polarized view of the world. If range voters max and min the two perceived-frontrunner candidates, then they gain almost all the strategic advantages of approval voting, while still allowing quite a lot of honesty concerning other candidates. *2. So for example, if 49% voted Bush=99, Gore=0, Nader=53(avg), and 49% voted Gore=99, Bush=0, Nader=53(avg), and 2% voted Nader=99, Gore=20, Bush=0 then Nader would win. This structure is a realistic possibility that totally contradicts the assertion RV "gives power to the candidate whose supporters have the most black and white, polarized view of the world." In this case, Nader is winning despite a severe lack of polarized Nader supporters. How about other strategic opportunities like 10 Gore supporters giving Nader 0 points (instead of 53) and thereby making their favourite (Gore) the winner? Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
On Oct 9, 2007, at 4:00 , Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> On Oct 8, 2007, at 5:45 PM, Gervase Lam wrote:
>
>>> Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 17:34:10 -0700
>>> From: Jonathan Lundell
>>> Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
>>
>>> On Oct 7, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>>>
>>>> At 11:53 AM 10/7/2007, Brian Olson wrote:
>>
>>>>> http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/10/07/
>>>>> ballot_query_to_bullet_or_not_to_bullet
>>
>>> It may be worth noting (it goes without saying in the US) that the
>>> article is referring to n-seat plurality elections ("vote for no
>>> more
>>> than n" and top n win).
>>
>>> We should have another name for it.
>>
>> This the plurality version of Bloc (or Block) Voting:
>
> I meant: another name for "insincere" voting.
>
>>
>> <http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Bloc_vote>
>>
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_voting>
"Insincere" is good, at least for scientific purposes. Term
"strategic" that you picked up is good as well. For me the difference
is maybe that that sincerity assumes that the voters have been asked
to vote in some way (maybe in order to guarantee that the method will
provide the intended result) but they will not. Term "strategic"
assumes only consideration of different voting alternatives.
It is also possible that they are asked to consider their strategic
options and then vote strategically. In this case the two terms can
differ a bit. One could say that the voters are now sincere but
strategic.
Juho
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Re: [Election-Methods] Best electoral system under real circumstances
I'll compare the Brazilian open list method to a somewhat corresponding case, open list based parliamentary election in Finland and the plans to improve it. In Finland the smallest districts have now 6 seats. That is considered a problem since having both districts with lots of seats (max 32) and small ones means that it does not make sense to vote for the smallest parties in the small districts (they may get some seats in the 32 seat district but in districts of 6 all seats go to big parties (and votes to small parties are in a way lost)). One of your possible solutions is to reduce the district size. Reducing district size would make the system less proportional. Maybe the intention is to eliminate some of the smallest parties this way. That would work (there are also other ways to go in that direction) but I don't know if that is the intention (and if reducing proportionality is a target). In Finland the discussion has been rather to make all the districts close to same size. The aim is to achieve this by combining small districts to bigger ones rather than to split big ones to smaller districts (bit more complex than this but that's the overall direction). You mentioned excessive district magnitude and that leading to high number of candidates. You mention also the possibility of limiting the number of candidates by party. Why is it a problem to have a high number of candidates? I assume the method gives each party a proportional part of the seats (based on the sum of votes of the candidates of the party). In Finland people roughly (in theory) first pick their party and then vote someone on that party's list. No problem if other parties have an excessive number of candidates. (Do you maybe have lots of work and large ballot papers because of the numerous candidates. In Finland the ballot is very simple, just a small white paper with a circle where you can write the number of your candidate.) Can you explain how the surpluses are transferred. Why unpredictable? Is the transfer algorithm somehow not working? You mentioned STV. That is an option (quite ok) but this method leads to a considerably different political system. Is such a system what people want in Brazil? The parties may not like this idea since the end result may be a "less party based" system, so the battle may be an uphill battle (good luck to you though if you want this change). Closed lists: Typically gives the power of deciding which individuals will be elected from voters to the parties. Is that what Brazil wants? (I don't yet.) Single member: Does this mean a dual party system based on single seat districts? Is that what Brazil wants? (I don't yet.) MMP: More complex than open list. What is the rationale? Maybe interest to have local single seat districts to elect very local (small district) representatives? Is this what Brazil wants? Isn't basic (open list based) proportional representation in bigger districts enough? Top-two runoff (for single winner elections): Yes, in many cases good enough but has also some clear problems and can be improved. I don't think ranked methods (e.g. Condorcet that is a more "compromise candidate oriented" (good or bad) and that is better from strategic voting point of view) would be too difficult. At least if the number of candidates is not large (7 candidates in the last presidential elections according to wiki) then also the ballots can be e.g. some simple ticking exercises. (The method should tolerate/allow some ticking errors to avoid losing the votes of people who are not that familiar with using the method.) Juho Laatu On Nov 19, 2007, at 20:50 , Diego Renato wrote: > I've read in this list that possibly the worst electoral system > used is Brazilian open list PR. In this year, Brazilian Congress > discuted the change of electoral law to closed lists, single member > plurality or MMP. > > Presidents, Governors and Mayors are elected by top-two runoff. I > think this method is sufficiently good. Maybe ranked methods are > not suitable for Brazilian voters' degree of skill, and for voting > machines. > > Federal, State and Muncipal representatives are elected according > open lists. The main problem of this method is the excessive > district magnitude (8 in least populated states up to 70 in São > Paulo) and resulting high number of candidates. Transfers of > surpluses are unpredictable. My suggestions for improvements of > this system are: > > - reduce district size to 3, 4 or 5; > - limit number of candidates by party. Candidates should be > nominated by primary elections. > - prohibit surplus transfers among different parties. > - adoption of STV in the future. > > Do you agree with these measures? > >
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Best electoral system under real circumstances
On Nov 20, 2007, at 2:30 , Diego Santos wrote: 2007/11/19, Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: I don't remember that it is possible for surplus transfers to go to different parties. According Brazilian law, parties of same coalition are counted as a single party. After elections, is not rare these parties to separate to opposite political sides. This problem exists in the Finnish system too. The system slightly favours large parties. Especially in the smallest districts the only way for small parties to get seats is to form coalitions. The election method allows coalitions and sees these coalitions as single parties. The allocation of the seats within the coalition is based on which individuals get the highest number of votes. This breaks the proportionality by allocating the seats in a rather random fashion. Small parties try to guarantee the seat(s) to themselves by naming only a small number of candidates (e.g. 1) and thereby focusing all their votes to this individual. One solution to solve this problem would be simply to count the votes hierarchically per party also within the coalition. The seats would thus be given proportionally to different parties within the coalition. This could work slightly against the smallest parties since if the coalition would get one seat it would more typically go to the largest member of the coalition. In order to increase the level of proportionality from this the number of seats per party could be counted proportionally based on the votes that the party gets within the whole country. Seat allocation within the districts would be counted only after this. This kind of methods would lead to some "rounding errors" at the district level seat allocation. But it seems that people often (typically?) value absolute proportionality between parties highly. It is thus possible to guarantee very exact country wide proportionality between parties and between districts, and push the "rounding errors" to district level seat allocations. (I'll skip the algorithms here.) One more rather simple technique to solve this problem is simply to ban the coalitions (this is under discussion in Finland). This change could be accompanied by increasing the size of the (smallest) districts in order to keep also the current smallest parties alive in those areas. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Is this Condorcet method reasonable?
On Nov 30, 2007, at 19:33 , Diego Santos wrote: > I think that cloneproof violation is not severe when a method meets > Smith. Probably near all majority rule cycles in contetions > elections will be caused by burying. Then, additional resistance to > this strategy will be desirable for a Condorcet method. If clone > independence is desirable too, "Smith,IRV" is an alternative. Why do you expect burying to be the main reason to cycles? Does this apply to exceptionally contentious elections only or to all typical elections? The cycles may also be caused also by "random like" variation in opinions in close races. Also natural cycles where the voter opinions really are cyclic are quite possible. Factors that may reduce the probability of strategic cycles are e.g. changing opinion poll results before the elections and inability of the voters to use the strategies in the strategically optimal way. In general I tend to think that Condorcet methods are at their best when strategic voting is not widespread or is not well organized (=hopefully reduces to just noise). I really wouldn't like to see general public use all the various Condorcet strategies that are discussed on this list. In most cases Condorcet based methods are maybe immune enough to strategic voting (especially when compared to other commonly used methods). If this is the case then the best method may be the one that performs best with sincere votes (possibly slightly random and marginally strategic). Juho ___ Does your mail provider give you FREE antivirus protection? Get Yahoo! Mail http://uk.mail.yahoo.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Is this Condorcet method reasonable?
The withdrawal option could encourage sincere voting in Condorcet style elections. If so, that would again put more weight on evaluating (the rest of) the method based on how it behaves with sincere votes. I hope there would not be need to use the withdrawal option often. Withdrawal option has both positive and negative impact. The positive side was already discussed. On the negative side there are problems like candidates deciding the outcome of the election instead of the voters and risk of corruption. Also in the case of a natural loop there is the possibility to buy the withdrawal of one of the candidates. Sometimes it also makes sense for one candidate (in a sincere loop) to withdraw to avoid electing (from his/her point of view) some reasonably good candidate instead of a bad candidate. One option to reduce the problems would be to require a court decision on if strategic manipulation of the election outcome was likely (or a possibility), and only then allow candidates to withdraw. Of course the decision would still be very difficult, and in some cases one would not know if independent individuals decided to vote strategically (e.g. based of reading the EM list). Having such a "court decision" rule could make at least public recommendations to vote strategically less tempting. I also note that strategic voting and recommendations to vote strategically appear to be quite rare in current systems like top two runoff (based on my personal relatively limited visibility to them). Good morale, uncertainty of the opinions, heterogeneous voters and the difficulty of controlling the voters may often be enough to keep strategic voting at low levels although there could be some strategic options open (theoretically). Juho On Dec 3, 2007, at 17:43 , Steve Eppley wrote: Perhaps I failed to emphasize, when I mentioned the withdrawal option a few days ago, that it sharply reduces the incentive to vote strategically? A candidate strategically raised over the sincere winner could withdraw if necessary to elect the sincere winner, and typically would have strong incentives to do so, so why would voters bother organizing to misrepresent their preferences? If it is agreed that the withdrawal option sharply reduces the voters' incentive to vote strategically, then it makes little sense to choose a voting method based on comparisons only of methods that don't permit withdrawal, and then graft withdrawal onto the chosen method. It makes more sense to include methods that permit withdrawal in the set of methods being compared, and choose a method from this larger set. --Steve --- Juho wrote: On Nov 30, 2007, at 19:33 , Diego Santos wrote: I think that cloneproof violation is not severe when a method meets Smith. Probably near all majority rule cycles in contetions elections will be caused by burying. Then, additional resistance to this strategy will be desirable for a Condorcet method. If clone independence is desirable too, "Smith,IRV" is an alternative. Why do you expect burying to be the main reason to cycles? Does this apply to exceptionally contentious elections only or to all typical elections? The cycles may also be caused also by "random like" variation in opinions in close races. Also natural cycles where the voter opinions really are cyclic are quite possible. Factors that may reduce the probability of strategic cycles are e.g. changing opinion poll results before the elections and inability of the voters to use the strategies in the strategically optimal way. In general I tend to think that Condorcet methods are at their best when strategic voting is not widespread or is not well organized (=hopefully reduces to just noise). I really wouldn't like to see general public use all the various Condorcet strategies that are discussed on this list. In most cases Condorcet based methods are maybe immune enough to strategic voting (especially when compared to other commonly used methods). If this is the case then the best method may be the one that performs best with sincere votes (possibly slightly random and marginally strategic). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Is this Condorcet method reasonable?
On Dec 5, 2007, at 5:24 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > If someone can buy a candidate's withdrawal, they could presumably > also buy the candidate if the candidate wins, and the latter is > actually more dangerous! Buying the withdrawal of a losing candidate is probably cheaper. > Consider an asset system where the electors maintain the right of > recall -- essentially vote reassignment. This kind of systems would keep the voters in touch and in charge of what is happening in politics. The inability of voters to change their opinion in midterm can also be intentional. This kind of an arrangement guarantees the representatives a more steady basis for work and makes it possible to make decisions that are not very popular among the voters (e.g. taxes) (but that might be better understood among them by the next election). Juho ___ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Is this Condorcet method reasonable?
On Dec 10, 2007, at 16:40 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 01:12 AM 12/5/2007, Juho wrote: On Dec 5, 2007, at 5:24 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: If someone can buy a candidate's withdrawal, they could presumably also buy the candidate if the candidate wins, and the latter is actually more dangerous! Buying the withdrawal of a losing candidate is probably cheaper. Cheaper and less effective. Essentially, one is buying fewer votes. Now, how is the winner going to know that he should be grateful to Mr. Bigpockets for the bribe? Tell him, it might backfire. (Either the winner is ethical and reports the attempt to align him with Mr. Bigpocket's desires, or he is not and, of course, wants more money, and what was paid to the loser isn't of any benefit to him he *might* think it was, and *might* go along, but it's risky for Bigpockets. Buy the winner and you have control over the process of legislation. Buy a loser, you merely gain a shaky opportunity. The deal could be e.g. such that there are three looped candidates A>B>C>A. A has the smallest defeat and is about to win before the "withdrawal rounds". Candidate B can now withdraw and make C the winner. C offers B some nice position to B for a withdrawal (C will be the winner so he can arrange this). B may also actually prefer C to A and will withdraw from that reason since based on the results B>C>A was probably a common opinion among the C supporters, and maybe B's personal opinion too. B might claim that the reason for his withdrawal is the high number of strategic votes that made A unjustly the winner. We have no way of knowing if that is the truth. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Is this Condorcet method reasonable?
> R. I > would expect the candidates' and parties' preference intensities > regarding the C candidates to be small too. Ok, the cycle is likely to be weak then. > Assume C1 > C2 > C3 > C1 (where '>' means "is ranked by a majority > over") and that C1 wins if no one withdraws. It has been suggested > that > C3 may pay C2 to withdraw. If so, why care? You didn't expect any strategic or otherwise insincere voting to be present. If so, maybe C1 should win. > Elections are crude > instruments for making social choices. Furthermore, C1 has the moral > high ground and could offer to pay C2 not to withdraw or could > offer to > pay C3 to not pay C2. > > Note the similarity between withdrawal and parliamentary coalition > formation. When parties form a coalition to select the executive > cabinet officers (in particular, the prime minister) they are not > bound > by the votes of the recent election. Who knows what deals they will > make? At least with withdrawal, all a candidate can do is step out of > the way of their supporters' next choice. I accept the ideas of representative democracy (representative will decide instead of citizens deciding directly) and allowing the representatives the luxury to work in the way they wish until the next elections. It is more problematic to me to allow the candidates to decide who will be elected. Some more discussion on the example above: The example could be extended a bit by assuming that the C1 supporters voted strategically and this way were able to make C1 win. In Condorcet elections this could mean that the sincere preference of the strategists was C1>C3>C2 but they voted C1>C2>C3 and successfully buried C3, and that C3 would have been the winner with sincere votes. Now C2 would have some moral reasons to withdraw and change the winner from C1 to C3. C2 and majority of his/her supporters could also prefer C3 to C1. There are however problems like deciding who will withdraw. Also others may have voted strategically, or at least often people are tempted to explain their losses that way. This could lead to closed negotiations between C1, C2 and C3 right after the election. The voters would need to wait for some time for C1, C2 and C3 or their parties to decide who will be allowed to win. This setting doesn't sound very positive to me. If two of the three cyclic candidates are from the same party (C2, C3), then that party could decide that one of the two candidates should withdraw (C2) (and voters would maybe accept that). One problem is that C3 lost to C2 but now wins. On the other hand C3 won C1, so he is a good winner from that point of view. But as already said, I'd prefer this dilemma to be solved in the basic method without withdrawal. (Well, maybe allowing a party member to withdraw to make another party member win would be an option that would be less problematic than a free withdrawal option. I prefer deterministic voter decisions though.) I'm still missing an example where the withdrawal option would bring clear improvements (on problems that are likely to appear in elections) and would not introduce many problems itself. One big problem is also the quite possible perception of the voters that the candidates/politicians ignored the opinion of the citizens and decided otherwise. In the case of withdrawal multiple explanations to the withdrawals are likely to exist (=no clear well justified explanation of defending against strategic voting). Juho ___ Yahoo! Messenger - with free PC-PC calling and photo sharing. http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: RE : Re: Is the Condorcet winner always the best?
On Dec 12, 2007, at 17:44 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > the thing that isn't obvious is that implementing an > approval cutoff would result in people using it in a sincere way > rather > than as a strategic tool. > --- Diego Santos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >> >> A "approval quorum" rule will avoid low utility CW to win. And, >> opposit >> to >> Jonanthan argument, an approval cuttoff does not add too much >> complexity: >> it >> is like a hypothetical candidate NOTB (none of the below). > > This makes me repeat my comment: Why desire voters to rank among > the NOTB > candidates if the whole purpose of specifying NOTB is to allow us > to ignore > those rankings? The approval cutoff would probably add some more complexity than just marking the NOTB limit in the ranking. That is because the optimal strategy in marking the NOTB limit is probably not to mark it according to one's sincere opinion. At least in basic Approval that is the case. In basic Condorcet (with pure rankings only) the typical optimal strategy is to vote sincerely (the remaining strategic cases can be seen as exceptions to this main rule). I don't fully agree that "the whole purpose of specifying NOTB is to allow us to ignore those rankings". It think in this case it is good to allow a voter to say "I don't support A and B but in the case that one of them will be elected I prefer A to B". Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: Is the Condorcet winner always the best?
Yes, if the method is such that it ignores everything said behind then NOTB limit, in that case it would be not good to let the voter believe that those markings would impact the outcome of the election (=better that only poll data). I guess most "Condorcet+Approval" methods do take also the "tail preferences" somehow into account. Juho On Dec 13, 2007, at 4:59 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >> I don't fully agree that "the whole purpose of specifying NOTB is to >> allow us to ignore those rankings". It think in this case it is good >> to allow a voter to say "I don't support A and B but in the case that >> one of them will be elected I prefer A to B". > > "In this case"? Doesn't it matter what you do with the information? > I'm not > a fan of letting voters provide more data if the method won't do > anything > with it. > > Kevin Venzke > > > > __ > ___ > Ne gardez plus qu'une seule adresse mail ! Copiez vos mails vers > Yahoo! Mail http://mail.yahoo.fr > > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: Primary Elections using a "Top 2/Single Transferable Voting Method"
On Dec 18, 2007, at 16:38 , Brian Olson wrote: > On Dec 17, 2007, at 9:33 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote: > >> --- Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >>> My own opinion is that state parties should directly elect >>> delegates, >>> not Presidential candidates. Then the delegates make the choice, at >>> the convention. They can actually *deliberate*. What a concept! >> >> I'm skeptical that it would be feasible to be elected as delegate >> without >> being willing to commit to voting for a specific presidential >> candidate. > > I think people just like a taste of direct democracy sometimes (err, > more-direct, since it's voting for the guy who does the democracy, but > at least it's not voting for the guy who votes for the guy who does > the democracy). There are lots of reasons to have a deeper hierarchy > of actions, but those systems may yet just be unsatisfying in various > ways. > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info Some quick notes on opportunities and threats that different political structures offer: Direct democracy or democracy with immediate feedback (=ability to cancel support) + voter opinions rule + politicians must remember and fulfil their promises all the time + unwanted political games will be cut short + political direction can be changed when needed / ability to react to events - populist and non-expert opinions rule - only tax cuts and more benefits to people Indirect / representative democracy (with no continuous feedback) + representatives have some time to prove their point before the next election (also tax raises etc. possible) + decisions will be made by the most competent citizens (based on their own independent thinking) - it is easy to make promises and be nice only before the elections Multiple layer hierarchy + less voters per representative => closer contacts and feedback + responsibility and contact between top and bottom layers lost in the multiple steps - vote opinions may be lost in the multiple steps - civil servant / politician centric thinking concentrates step by step Low hierarchy + direct relationship between the voter and his/her representative - inability to maintain contact to all the numerous direct voters Parties (in elections and in everyday work) + clear political agendas + representatives can be connected to some known agenda + not so easy for representatives to continuously change opinion depending on current winds - individual representatives may be forced to follow party leaders - limited number of options to choose from - puppets (instead of individual thinkers) No parties + less hidden cabinet decisions + free opinions + also minority opinions present +/- less group power (coordinated voting according to majority opinion of the party) - more populism - candidates may tell different stories to different potential voters - different stories in different elections Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: Primary Elections using a "Top 2/Single Transferable Voting Method"
My use of term "populism" is maybe not quite proper English. The intention is to refer to behaviour where the politician expresses views that easily get the support of large (maybe not so educated/ knowledgeable) masses (but are not typically that much appreciated by the best experts / responsible leaders). Typical extreme themes might be e.g. "if I'll be elected the taxes of low and mid class will be cut to half", "if I'll be elected there will be no more unemployment in 6 months". What would be a good term for this kind of political behaviour (benefiting of popular but not so sensible themes)? Juho On Dec 18, 2007, at 22:41 , Jonathan Lundell wrote: > On Dec 18, 2007, at 10:58 AM, Juho wrote: > >> No parties >> + less hidden cabinet decisions >> + free opinions >> + also minority opinions present >> +/- less group power (coordinated voting according to majority >> opinion of the party) >> - more populism >> - candidates may tell different stories to different potential voters >> - different stories in different elections > > + more populism > > To quote my local dictionary (Oxford American), > > populist > > a member or adherent of a political party seeking to represent the > interests of ordinary people. > > • a person who holds, or who is concerned with, the views of > ordinary people. > • ( Populist) a member of the Populist Party, a U.S. political > party formed in 1891 that advocated the interests of labor and > farmers, free coinage of silver, a graduated income tax, and > government control of monopolies. ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: RE : Re: Primary Elections using a "Top 2/Single Transferable Voting Method"
On Dec 19, 2007, at 3:51 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > If a lack of parties really did lead to an explosion of populism, I > think > on the whole that would be a bad thing. > > I don't think that would happen though. I don't see parties (or > stronger > party discipline) as likely to moderate candidates. Just the opposite > actually. I don't think that, if candidates were free to advocate > whatever > they wanted, it would actually be a viable strategy most of the > time to run > on a "populist" platform. I agree that "populism"/"demagogism" is more evenly spread between party-based and non-party-based political systems (than what impression putting that attribute only on one side gave). There are also typically "populist"/"demagogic" parties, at least typically in the multi-party systems. One more observation that I forgot from the list is: No parties - numerous candidates (unstructured mass) to wade through in order to pick the best of them Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: RE : Re: Primary Elections using a "Top 2/Single Transferable Voting Method"
On Dec 19, 2007, at 16:38 , Kevin Venzke wrote: I guess by "no parties" we mean that party affiliation is not the overwhelming consideration of voters, and the party leadership's decisions are not the overwhelming consideration of those candidates who are elected. It's basically a state of very weak party discipline. The "discipline" and "understandability" properties of the party structure are often in sync but not always. It is possible to have a very clear party structure (understandable and one that clearly maps the candidates to ideologies) but a weak discipline. The party structure could be e.g. hierarchical. The social democratic party could have well announced left and right wings, a green section etc. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: Primary Elections using a "Top 2/Single Transferable Voting Method"
On Dec 19, 2007, at 7:17 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > What is not well-known -- or even > known at all -- is what the following would be, if done in the kind > of way we have been proposing (Asset Voting, with the electors > remaining active with voting rights in an assembly if they choose to > use them -- otherwise the representative they have seated effectively > votes for them): This could be categorized as "flexible transitions between representative and direct democracy". One can make the choice even case by case and day by day. Also most of the benefits and problems are a mixture of those of the representative and direct models (not straight forward average though). >> Multiple layer hierarchy >> + less voters per representative => closer contacts and feedback >> + responsibility and contact between top and bottom layers lost in >> the multiple steps >> - vote opinions may be lost in the multiple steps >> - civil servant / politician centric thinking concentrates step by >> step > > The second point is totally speculative. An elector would not have > "responsibility and contact lost" over the current system, rather > these would both be increased. I think both low and high hierarchies have problems but of different nature. The strength of them can be debated. One example of a long path related problem. The representative tells the voter that he agrees with the voter but that he has some problems with the next level representative. The discussions between the first and second representative may not reflect the discussions with the voter. > the proxies are > bidirectional filters, preventing proxies above from being > overwhelmed with input from below, and, likewise, preventing > base-level clients from being overwhelmed with information from the > center. In an ideal situation this could be a benefit of the long hierarchy model. Discussion topics would change according to the needs in the chain. This kind of behaviour is not guaranteed though (also unwanted filtering could occur and filtering could pass information that is more marketing/bluff than what the receiver would want). > DP and Asset Voting are not dependent upon parties One could use also e.g. STV without parties. Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
I think there is no single definition of democracy in the sense that
it would determine which voting method is the best (for all
elections). Majority, Condorcet and random ballot are good answers
but maybe for different questions (in some special cases even Range
could be a correct answer).
One basic example is electing a (giant) pizza for a group that often
eats out together. The correct answer might be to use random ballot
and eat 49% of the times pizza A and 51% of the times pizza B. But
when electing a political leader (with a strong mandate) to a country
random ballot may not be the correct answer. If the support is e.g.
45% Bush, 45% Clinton, 10% Hitler it may be better to just use a
method where one elects randomly either Bush or Clinton (instead of
electing Hitler with 10% probability). Even when we have 55% Bush,
45% Hitler it may be better to just pick the majority favourite.
There are also other possible criteria. In some elections we may want
to elect the alternative that people like a lot. In other elections
we may want to elect the alternative that people dislike as little as
possible. In the leader example above I obviously wanted (roughly) to
elect a compromise that is ok to most of the citizens and that is a
compromise rather than an extremist.
Sometimes there is no method that would meet the (possibly very well
defined) needs e.g. due to problems with strategic voting and one has
to pick a method that is closest to what one wants.
In short, different methods for different needs. Some methods are
good for many types of elections but not necessarily for all.
Juho
On Dec 20, 2007, at 22:37 , Jobst Heitzig wrote:
Dear Rob!
As you may expect, I am not at all of the opinion that majority
rule is
perfect, no matter how few options there are. The reason is simple: no
majoritarian method can ever be democratic because it allows 51% of
the
electorate to consistently keep the other 49% of the electorate from
having any power at all, whereas a democratic method required
everybody
to have the same amount of power. In this sense, majority vote is far
from being "fair".
The simplest democratic method in the two-options case, as with more
options, is random ballot. In those unfortunate situations in which it
cannot be guaranteed that both options are constitutional, random
ballot
should perhaps be modied in a way which ensures that only an option
with
at least, say, 5% support may win. (With more than two options, random
ballot is of course not optimal since it does not encourage voter
cooperation to elect good compromise options but rather elects polar
options. D2MAC solves this problem while still being democratic.)
Yours, Jobst
rob brown schrieb:
My understanding has been that in a simple two candidate election,
there isn't any need for alternative election methods, and all the
issues that condorcet/approval/range etc attempt to solve simply
disappear. A plain old majority vote is "perfect", as long as there
really are only two candidates. There is no conflict between
strategy
vs. sincerity, and there is a single Nash equilibrium -- which is
simply that everyone picks the candidate they prefer.
Is this controversial? For instance, could a two candidate election
be improved by, say, collecting information about how *much* each
voter likes or dislikes the candidates in question? Assuming at
least
some honest voters, this approach might be able to improve the
"maximum net tangible utility" ("tangible" meaning we are only
counting the happiness with the results themselves, and ignoring such
less-measurable utility such as "feeling of fairness" or "elimination
of resentment" or "long term satisfaction with the election process
itself").
My own opinion has always been that the (perceived?) fairness of
"everyone's vote counts the same" outweighs any desire for "maximum
net tangible utility." I'd even go so far as to say that this would
be true even if we knew all votes were honest (say we put everyone on
a perfectly accurate lie detector).
So, I am quite happy with plain old majority vote for a two candidate
election. But I am encountering those who seem to disagree with
this,
and who don't seem to have the same concept of "fairness" as I do.
I'm curious if people here see this as a legitimately controversial
issue.
Thanks,
-rob
various voting related stuff at karmatics.com:
http://karmatics.com/voting/movienite.html
http://karmatics.com/voting/bargraphs.html
http://karmatics.com/voting/bars-demo.html
http://karmatics.com/voting/rank.html
http://karmatics.com/docs/collective-self-interest-fallacy.html
http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-and-wisdom-of-crowds.html
Election-Methods mailing list - see http
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 21, 2007, at 3:24 , rob brown wrote: > Let's say it is a vote for a number, > for instance we have a club, and we want to have vote on how much our > monthly dues will be. We decide to have everyone write down their > preferred number, and then select the median value. (you could do the > interpolated median or smoothed median [ > http://karmatics.com/voting/median2.gif ] if you wish to reduce the > "aliasing" artifacts of conventional median) Median is often a nice way to pick the best best value, but as discussed in other mails it is not always possible to set a numeric value to solve a question. Here's one example where numeric values may bring some additional value to an election that is a choice between two exclusive alternatives. There is an election between two alternatives, A and B. Alternative A is given value 0 and candidate B is 100. Voters may pick any value in range 0..100. Vote 0 means "I prefer A and don't like B at all". Vote 51 means "I prefer B but A is almost as good". If we now count the median we will get the winner and in addition we will get the strength and distribution of the opinions. Note that the "conventional median" avoids the problem of not electing the majority winner (49 votes "0", 51 votes "51"). If the median is 50, the median of the non-50 votes can be used to solve the tie. Let's say that alternative A is supported by 60% of the voters. The median could be anything between 0 and 49 (or 50). One could use it as an informative value or even to automatically determine some further questions after the election. In principle one could develop this method further by using multiple numeric values in the case of multiple (discrete, not linearly related) alternatives. It is also possible to use methods where candidates would put themselves somewhere in a map of various numerical "coordinates" (we might find quite many centrists though ;-). Juho ___ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 21, 2007, at 9:59 , rob brown wrote: > I'm trying, really hard, > to understand where Range Voting fans are coming from. Maybe idealism. Maybe just defending something they find positive. I'm not one so I can't really tell. Or in some sense I am. Range is cool, but I don't claim it would be very suitable for typical contentious elections. > Sorry if it just confused people. No confusion (no more than what is normal in email discussions). Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Borda-elimination, a Condorcet method for public elections?
(margins) have a connection to these explanations.) > I would have > thought that the main reason why you would want a monotonic rule is > so that > people would accept it as valid. This does not appear to be an > issue as IRV > is non-monotonic, and is well liked. There are some possible issues > regarding additional sussepability to strategy, but I'm not sure > how serious > those would be. Also, like all condorcet methods, Borda-elimination is > monotonic if there is a Condorcet winner. > > local IIa and independence of clones are not passes, and this is an > inferiority. but at least it passes them when there is a Condorcet > winner. I > seriously doubt that clones would be a big problem outside FPP, where > vote-splitting is rampant. > > So guess I'd ask if the minor theoretical deficiencies are not made > up for > by the additional simplicity in populations that would have difficulty > understanding beat-path? Why do you think that no Condorcet method > has been > adopted by any government? I hope I managed to explain my opinions on this question clearly enough already above. Juho > > > Ian > http://thefell.googlepages.com > > > > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of > Markus Schulze > Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 1:47 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Borda-elimination, a Condorcet method > for public elections? > > > Dear Ian Fellows, > > the Nanson method and the Baldwin method violate > monotonicity and independence of clones. They also > violate the desideratum that candidates, who are not > in the Smith set, should not have any impact on the > result of the elections. > > When you try to get a Condorcet method adopted somewhere, > you will not only be attacked by the FPP supporters and > the IRV supporters. You will also be attacked by the > supporters of all kinds of election methods. Therefore, > it will not be sufficient that you argue that the > proposed method is better than FPP and IRV; you will > rather have to argue that the proposed method is the > best of all methods. Therefore, it is useful to propose > a Condorcet method that satisfies a large number of > criteria. > > Furthermore, I don't think that it makes much sense to > try to find a Condorcet method that looks as much as > possible like IRV or as much as possible like Borda. > The best method according to IRV's underlying heuristic > will always be IRV; the best method according to the > underlying heuristic of the Borda method will always > be the Borda method. It makes more sense to propose > a Condorcet method that stands on its own legs. > > Markus Schulze > > > > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info > > > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Borda-elimination, a Condorcet method for public elections?
One more thought on adaptation of the Condorcet methods.
If one wants to promote the Condorcet methods I think the most
effective way would be to establish a group (maybe with a web page)
that would concentrate simply on saying that the Condorcet methods
are generally considered to be the best methods for typical political
single winner elections. Limiting the scope of the group to promoting
(or just presenting) methods that meet the Condorcet criterion could
be a quite natural choice. Different Condorcet variants would not be
presented as competitors to each others but as methods that all meet
the Condorcet criterion, that perform well (better than practically
all systems today) in typical large scale public elections, and out
of which users may freely pick their favourite. The strategies would
also be handled, basically stating that they exist but are not
serious in typical elections (large scale, public, without strong
tendency to vote as told by some strategy planners). Some steady
would should eventually pay off.
Juho
On Dec 22, 2007, at 8:22 , Juho wrote:
> On Dec 22, 2007, at 1:05 , Ian Fellows wrote:
>
>> Markus,
>>
>> Thank you for your insight. I certainly agree with you that only
>> the best
>> method should be used, but I would pose to you the question: Why is
>> it that
>> the best method isn't used?
>>
>> You and I (though not some others) would agree that the condorcet
>> criterion
>> is the correct one when determining the outcome of single winner
>> elections,
>> and yet they are not used in any public election anywhere in the
>> world.
>> Though the current best methods (Yours, and Ranked Pairs), are
>> relatively
>> new, Condorcet methods have been around for quite a long time. So the
>> newness of the methodology can't be the reason. The difficulty in
>> changing
>> an electoral system once it has been started certainly plays a
>> part, but IRV
>> seems to be making significant inroads in this area whereas Condorcet
>> methods are not.
>
> Some reasons why Condorcet metods are not as popular as one could
> assume, and reasons why IRV seems to make progress.
> - the Condorcet strategy problems exist and can be used against it,
> and it is possible to create dramatical looking examples
> - IRV favours large parties (it is natural that if the current large
> party members identify this feature they are likely to like the idea)
> (in some cases IRV can be seen as a clear reform but with minimal
> changes to the existing power balance)
> - there are many different Condorcet methods and no clear consensus
> among the experts on which one to recommend for use
> - for some, maybe related reason there is no very active Condorcet
> campaign around
> - Condorcet tends to require computer calculation (no roots in the
> pre-computer age)
> - in many Condorcet methods it is difficult to say who was second,
> why was the first first etc.
> - people find the existing methods (e.g. two-round runoff) "not too
> bad" and are complacent
> - IRV may get some additional interest due to its interesting ("good
> TV series like") tournament like elimination of competitors one after
> anoher
>
>> I think the answer lies in looking at the organizations that have
>> adopted
>> the Schulze method.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method
>>
>> 44 organizations, and almost all of them are technically oriented.
>>
>> The answer seems to me to be clear, complexity. Though beat-path is
>> the best
>> methodology, and the one that I would use in any professional
>> organization
>> that I was a part of, it violates a principle of democracy. For an
>> election
>> method to be "of the people" the people must be able to understand
>> its
>> implementation. They must be able to understand why one leader was
>> picked,
>> and not another, and further, how their ballot played a part in that
>> decision.
>>
>> This begs that question of whether there is a Condorcet method
>> simple enough
>> for everyone to understand, and yet having the greatest number of
>> desirable
>> properties.
>
> I have often talked in favour of the very basic minmax(margins)
> Condorcet method. I think it is much better than usually assumed (on
> this list). It directly implements one clear and simple definition/
> explanation, "number of additional votes required to win all other
> candidates". Among the Condorcet methods it may be the easiest to
> explain, and it also allows very clear comparison of results after
> and during the election (how many votes needed to gain lead). An
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 23, 2007, at 3:39 , rob brown wrote: > Say you've got an election for two candidates. > Let's further assume that there are a large enough number of voters > that we can assume that most don't know one another. This isn't a > pizza party or a local club, but a large scale vote. Also assume > that while some people are somewhat on the fence, a lot of others > have very strong feelings about it on one side or the other. And > assume anyone is welcome to abstain from voting. > > So once again, the question is this: > > In this case, do you consider a majority vote optimum? The election seems to be a typical competitive election where people want to win or defend what they think is best for them or for some others or for all. Under these typical circumstances majority based methods may well be the recommended systems to use. I wouldn't say that majority vote is "the optimum". It may well be that the minority favourite (that may have e.g. better average utility) would be the ideal alternative to elect. Sometimes it may also be optimal (from one point of view) to elect the majority favourite instead of the the one with best utility - just to respect the majority opinion and to avoid further fighting that could occur if the best utility alternative would be chosen. Majority vote is a good and well working tool (works in competitive and strategic environments too) if one wants to give one equal vote to everyone (a rather good democratic principle). Now bak to the question. Majority vote may often not yield the optimum outcome (from some chosen high level theoretical viewpoint) but majority vote may well be considered to be the best practical method for competitive two candidate elections. Juho P.S. There are also circumstances where methods like Range work well, but that is not typical e.g. in the competitive political environment. One could try to give also an opportunity to the alternative with best average utility to win. One could e.g. first arrange a Range vote and after that a majority vote between the majority winner of the first election and the utility winner (if they differ). At the second round the majority would thus be offered an opportunity to donate the victory to the best (Range style) utility alternative (now they know how popular that alternative is). In many circumstances also the informative Range votes could however be strategic (many voters would feel no need to weaken the position of their favourite and thereby invite others to pick the (Range style) utility winner at the second round). ___ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 23, 2007, at 22:52 , rob brown wrote: On Dec 23, 2007 10:49 AM, Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Now bak to the question. Majority vote may often not yield the optimum outcome (from some chosen high level theoretical viewpoint) but majority vote may well be considered to be the best practical method for competitive two candidate elections. Yeah, well that is pretty much my opinion. With the exception that the "high level theoretical viewpoint" that supports Range (whether in 2 candidate elections or ones with 3 or more), by ignoring the competitive nature of elections, makes it a pretty non-useful theory for elections held among human beings, who have a history of being rather competitive by nature ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ War ). It works pretty good for predicting how non-competive eusocial animals such as bees might want to hold elections, however. ( http://rangevoting.org/ApisMellifera.html , http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality ) Works with humans too. Three friends living in different places might agree to meet at a place that has equal distance to all three homes. Or they might select a place that minimizes the sum of the distances (maybe they will share the travelling costs). Parents could agree to watch a Disney movie with their child although they might like a war movie more themselves. In that case they are maybe seeking a solution that maximizes the worst of the three personal utilities. There are many functions that can be used in determining the optimum outcome. But in politics / competitive situations rules of course tend to be different. And the election methods should be chosen accordingly. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 24, 2007, at 1:16 , rob brown wrote:
On Dec 23, 2007 2:00 PM, Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Works with humans too. Three friends living in different places
might agree to meet at a place that has equal distance to all three
homes. Or they might select a place that minimizes the sum of the
distances (maybe they will share the travelling costs).
What you are describing is very different from what happens with
eusocial animals.
A situation where a small number of people can work things out, and
where reciprocity plays into it (i.e . "you got your way last
time", etc) is completely, totally different from the type of
situation where voting is needed, such as a large scale election
where most of the voters don't know one another.
I don't think be hives and human families are that different. Human
families are smaller. Humans have "hives" of 50'000 individuals,
called cities, and in such environment humans tend to become less co-
operative and altruistic than bees, but that is only a difference in
size. Bee hives have members that are not reproductive, which gives
them more incentive to wok for the common interest. I didn't include
the time component ("you got your way last time") in my examples.
That component (proportionality in time) is obviously very weak among
the bees.
Humans can also make "voting scale" decisions in bee/utility/rating
style. For example http://www.imdb.com/ uses user ratings and they
work ok. The key of course is to use such methods in areas that are
not competitive. Polls are one type of (often) non-competitive
elections.
I think the basic rules are the same but the scale and style are
different.
What you describe isn't eusociality, which is the complete lack of
self interest found in animals that don't reproduce directly. A
100% rational, self-interested person may wish to allow someone
else to get their way when preference strengths differ, with the
expectation that it will be reciprocated when the preference
strengths are reversed. But a large election has no mechanism for
reciprocity.
Ok, also reciprocity is a concept that bees probably don't use much
(due to limited conceptual thinking capabilities).
The non-reproducing worker bees are probably not completely non-
selfish. I'm sure they push the next worker bee aside when they want
to perform some important task within the hive. We could also say
that humans are non-selfish and their only task is to work for their
genes and to pass them on to the next generations (pushing other
human beings aside when doing so can be said to be just for the
benefit of the genes). My examples are quite wide spread, but the
idea is just to demonstrate that although bees have some special
characteristics, that need not put them into some totally different
behavioural category.
I could imagine a voting system that might address this issue for
larger groups, but it isn't Range.
One could have elections that take into account e.g. proportionality
in time (that could be called one kind of reciprocity) (favour a
republican after a democrat, favour other pizzas after pepperoni).
Range is useful in some cases too, e.g. in "poll like" elections.
Parents could agree to watch a Disney movie with their child
although they might like a war movie more themselves.
Parents and children are, from a Darwinian perspective pretty much
the same as eusocial animals, motivation-wise. The children's
interests are almost completely aligned with the interests of the
parents, since the children are the vector for the parents getting
their genes into future generations. In my view, all motivation can
be traced back to the attempt to get genes into future generations.
I wrote above "in favour of the genes", but I would say only that
genes are one way to explain motivations and the way the world works,
not necessarily the only correct one (maybe you didn't say so either).
Juho
But in politics / competitive situations rules of course tend to be
different. And the election methods should be chosen accordingly.
I'm with you there.
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Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 24, 2007, at 17:34 , rob brown wrote:
It's easy to apply your intuition about human behavior to other
animals, but if you apply it to non-reproducing bees, you are
making a big mistake. It just doesn't apply.
I try to map human concepts to bees and bee concepts to humans and
generic scientific concepts to both. I don't like the idea of trying
to see animals as if they would have human like intentions etc. Also
talking about the (human like) intention of genes to do something
(e.g. selfish genes trying to multiply) is an interesting but
theoretically not the best possible style to explain their role in life.
When a bee stings, it kills the bee. Do you know of anything like
that in an animal that reproduces directly?
Yes, unfortunately at the very moment many soldiers at their best
reproducing age give their lives for their country. Worker bees are
likely to die when they sting a soft skinned large animal. Humans are
not that radical - in most war situations individual soldiers have a
reasonable probability to stay alive. But often sacrificing one's own
life in order to protect others is praised and thereby encouraged,
and happens in real life.
Note also that worker bees can produce drones if needed (not totally
different animals from that point of view). They can also be said to
be in the state of rage when they attack (driven to attack by a
smell). Rage with its possibly fatal consequences is also a known
phenomenon among (typically male, maybe less important from
reproduction point of view) humans.
There is a fundamental difference between eusocial animals and non-
eusocial animals.
I still tend to rather see the differences to be in scale and style.
Surely colonies where majority of the members are (usually) non-
reproductive has somewhat different rules and outcome than humans.
Maybe my basic approach is simply "some characteristics of a group of
animals tends to keep that population alive". No big difference if
some behaviour pattern leads to high mortality rate ("unpremeditated/
unplanned suicides") (among a subset of the population) or not.
Altruism in humans can be explained by reciprocity and similar
things, but (with the exception of parent-child) kin selection
hardly plays into it. Kin selection is EVERYTHING in worker bees.
Humans form also extended families, clans, tribes and nations,
concepts that are to some extent based on genetic similarity.
I wrote above "in favour of the genes", but I would say only that
genes are one way to explain motivations and the way the world
works, not necessarily the only correct one (maybe you didn't say
so either).
I'd like to hear another.
Survival of one's children is the more traditional alternative to
genes. A bit more different path is cultural evolution. Nations also
fight for survival, why not ideologies too. Referring to my earlier
definition above, it is interesting to study any property that either
stays or disappears in time (no need to always explain them with
attributes like selfishness and biological survival instincts).
(for what it's worth, I'm actually working on an article on this
stuff, independent from voting theory. Bees, and understanding the
difference between their motivations and more typical animal
motivations, is what inspired my interest in evolution, game theory
and related fields as a kid, so it is core to my thinking on all this)
Go for it. Don't listen too much to the current popular trends, and
avoid humanization of the story (well, humanization sells better ;-).
Juho
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Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 25, 2007, at 0:28 , rob brown wrote: > In the case of the stinger, I was asking if you knew of any > morphological (not behavioral) feature of a non-eusocial animal > that kills the animal when used. The only ones I can think of are > part of the reproductive process ( i.e. male spider dies when it > mates, etc). I don't have any very good additional examples. Salmons also reproduce first and then die. Humans are driven by behavioural, not by morphological drivers. That maybe makes them even a more extreme example. They even know that they may or will die but still they continue. One potentially interesting example is insects that taste bad. A young bird might eat (or harm) one of them but then learns its lesson and saves the rest. One insect in a way took the risk when it did not hide and saved many others. > the behavior I see 1000 times as powerful in humans is one of self > preservation. Eusocial animals only have a self preservation > instinct as far as it preserves the colony. Period. Saving the individual makes sense also in situations where the individual does not reproduce and is part of a colony. Saving the individual itself correlates with saving the colony. Self preservation is instinctive to humans and can be claimed to be stronger than its altruistic features, but also altruistic behaviour exists in many ways. We could also say that humans have the self preservation instinct just to preserve its "colony" (the individuals themselves will die anyway sooner or later while the "colony" continues to live). This line of discussion plays with the art of humanizing the natural phenomena. Not very good. It would be better to just say that certain features tend to maintain certain characteristics in the chain of events in nature. A mother defends her genes when defending her child. A worker bee defends her genes when defending her mother. For humans it doesn't make sense to the mother to die easily since human children need long time parental support, but taking risks may be worth it. > So what percentage of humans do you think voluntarily give their > lives for someone else that isn't direct offspring? 1 in 10 million? Humans are complex creatures and it is not easy to give absolute rules on their behaviour. I'll use the soldier example again. In many countries large part of the male population says they would be ready to fight for their country if need arises. I can't estimate what percentage of bees dies as a result of their suicidal attacks against mammals. To some extent they are playing a mutual destruction threat game (known to humans too) where the big threat they can present turns many mammals away without a fight (and without losses on the bee side). Even during the last century quite a number of humans has died in war like conflicts (defending the society as a whole) (maybe more than in individual level conflicts). > I know it's all touchy feely and warms the heart to think the best > of humans, but my observation of human behaviour aligns quite well > with what I would expect based on how they reproduce. Altruism > obviously existswhen there is a chance of reciprocation or > where convincing others that being altruistic has value in itself. > In a secret ballot situation, I'm just not seeing it. Yes, humans have even developed theories on how competition between individuals is for the best of the society as a whole. > Regardless, it just strikes me as an incredible, irresponsible cop- > out for voting reform advocates to suggest a method that expects > voters to just play nice. It is to me the equivalent of a > computer security professional suggesting that studies of > psychology show that people generally don't want to hack computers. Yes. Of course this should not stop people promoting better behaviour in their societies. In smaller circles like families behaviour is often based on trust that all members work for the benefit of all the members and will take also their viewpoint into account as needed. Having lots of trust among different players may also be a competitive advantage at national level. But of course there is no point in using voting methods that don't work (for the purpose and environment in question). Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Simple two candidate election
On Dec 25, 2007, at 17:55 , Jobst Heitzig wrote: > Dear Juho! > > You wrote: > >> I could imagine a voting system that might address this issue for >> larger groups, but it isn't Range. >> >> One could have elections that take into account e.g. >> proportionality in time (that could be called one kind of >> reciprocity) (favour a republican after a democrat, favour other >> pizzas after pepperoni). > > Try D2MAC! It does precisely that in the long run :-) > > Yours, Jobst Yes, random methods typically aim at the same target. Maybe the target can be said to be proportionality here. All single winner methods of course need not aim at proportionality. I was thinking mainly about methods where all unused quota would be inherited to the next election. Proportionality is more deterministic than with random methods. Inheritance also causes problems when compared to randomness (e.g. changes in party structure, clear changes in opinions). Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] a story for christmas
Maybe the new proposal of the locksmith would have been to install new apartment specific locks on the inner doors of the vestibules. That would leave the vestibules open for more balanced and more voluntary social trials. :-) Juho On Dec 26, 2007, at 8:35 , rob brown wrote: > I decided to write a little story to share with the voting geeks on > Christmas. Enjoy and Merry Christmas! > > -rob > > A large housing complex was under construction, and a locksmith was > hired to install the locks on all the apartments. He suggested > that they key all the locks to use the same key. There are many > advantages, the most obvious being cost, he suggests. The landlord > doesn't need to keep hundreds of keys, and if anyone loses their > key, they can just borrow a key from a neighbor to get into their > apartment. > > The owner of the complex doesn't understand. "But any resident can > simply walk into any other apartment and take what they want! That > seems like a supremely bad idea." > > "Not to worry," says Warren, the locksmith. "Look, it should be > obvious that what we are after here is maximum net utility, right? > That is, the most happiness for all" > > "Umm, well sure" says the owner. "Happiness is a good thing. > I'm having trouble seeing where you are going with this, though" > > "I can prove that everyone having the same key results in greater > net utility. More happiness all around. I've done polls as to > whether people will take items from each other, and based on those > results, I've simulated the situation on my computer. The net > utilities are always greater if everyone's lock has the same key." > > He goes on to show how, if everyone was to honestly rate the > utilities afforded by each thing they own or might want to own, > that taking others' property, on average, causes an net increase in > utility. Typically those taking other people's things are less > wealthy than those they are taking them from, so they usually will > value the item they take more than the original owner did...meaning > an increase in net utility! > > Furthermore, he has polled people, and the great majority of them > have said they wouldn't take stuff from their neighbors even if > they could. But even if everyone *were* to take others' things, > that situation is *still* better than having locks, from a net > utilities perspective -- since those taking stuff probably want the > item more. If it turns out the original owner wants the item more, > well, he can take such an item from another neighbor. > > The owner thinks about it. "Well, that may increase happiness, but > it doesn't seem fair to those who don't take property". > > "Nope," says the locksmith. "The system is perfectly fair. > Everyone has equal opportunity to take other people's property, so > no one is at a disadvantage. Anywayfairness schmairness. If > people are happy who cares about fairness?" > > Finally Warren shows, as support for this working, that honeybees > have been shown to freely share property with colony-mates this way > for one hundred million years, and they are no worse off for it. > If it didn't work for them, natural selection would have eliminated > it long ago. > > He shows the polling data. He shows the math. He shows the > computer simulations. He talks about bees. It all makes sense. > And the owner just can't find a good argument otherwise. > > They do it, and it works great. Well, for a while. > > At first, only a few people take other people's stuff, and when > they do, it is just little stuff, like grabbing a beer out of their > neighbor's fridge. One resident gets fired from his job because he > calls in sick too much, and he realizes he can just take a low > paying part time job, since he can just tap into his neighbors > groceries and such. Eventually those that previously didn't want > to take their neighbor's stuff start to resent that they are doing > more than their share of purchasing, and they decide to start > taking things from their neighbors. > > After a few years, some people have lost their desire to work hard > and work overtime and get raises, since they can live with an equal > lifestyle to those who earn more than them. This means the total > amount of property within the housing complex is less, so the > utility has gone down -- way down -- even though Warren the > locksmith's calculations had shown otherwise. > > The
Re: [Election-Methods] a story for christmas
Ok, probably the guild was right in maintaining citizens' trust on the system. People may do whatever they wish with their apartments but locksmiths should gain trust by staying neutral. Juho On Dec 26, 2007, at 22:48 , rob brown wrote: On Dec 26, 2007 12:03 PM, Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Maybe the new proposal of the locksmith would have been to install new apartment specific locks on the inner doors of the vestibules. That would leave the vestibules open for more balanced and more voluntary social trials. :-) Sadly that won't be possible, as the locksmith was dismissed from the locksmiths guild and forbidden to practice. Turns out that according to their bylaws, the number one rule of locksmithing is "never attempt to make the case that the concept of private property is overrated." Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Top 5 Primary
On Dec 27, 2007, at 22:39 , Don&Cathy Hoffard wrote: In this example I will uses the 2008 US Presidential Election only to illustrate a point - you could assume a state Governor or Senators race We currently have about 25 candidates running for President of the United States. 9 Democrats 9 Republicans 3 (assumed) Green 2 (assumed) Libertarian 2 (assumed Constitution Bases on the current election laws we will have 5 candidates in the General Election. 1 Democrat 1 Republican 1 Green 1 Libertarian 1 Constitution Voters will be asked the vote for one of these candidates. Why do we have to choose among the following preferences (using head-to-head match ups – i.e. Condorcet) among the 25 candidates running? 4 most preferred (Democrat Party/Clinton-Plurality winner) 5 most preferred (Republican Party/Giuliani-Plurality winner) 15-19 most preferred (Green Party - assume Nader) 21 most preferred (Libertarian Party -unknown) 23 most preferred (Constitution Party -unknown) If we have to have 5 candidate in the general election why not have the TOP 5 (based on the Condorcet method) Is the plan is to first arrange a Condorcet election between all candidates and then between the top 5 candidates? In that case if the voters have not changed opinion between the two elections (and the voters vote sincerely) then the results of the second round should usually be a copy of the results at the first round. In that sense the results of the first round could be considered also final. But if the law requires to arrange an election between 5, why not then. Too many candidates in an election may be a problem since that makes voting tedious. One option would be to allow large parties to have e.g. 2 candidates each and small parties to have only one candidate. In this case also republicans would have a say on which one of the democrats will win (assuming that democrats will have majority). I'm not sure if democrats want that or if they prefer to first elect the "best democrat" among the democrats and name only that candidate in the final election. Having several candidates in the final election may make the probability of electing some of them higher. My point is just that running primaries and the number of candidates each party wants to nominate and the maximum number of candidates in the final election do have impact on how the system works. Condorcet should work ok in all phases (I don't expect strategic votes to be a major problem). Juho Laatu They would be the following (assuming the Primary Election matches the Dec. Polls): Edwards (would beat all Republicans and Democrats based on Condorcet rankings see below) (tie) McCain (tie) Obama Clinton Giuliani We could then chose the winner (and next president) using the Condorcet method (or use range, approval, or IRV methods) If the General Election voting matched to polls then Edwards would be elected President I’m not necessarily voting for him, this is only the Voters Preferred President. Thanks Don Hoffard Poll results: Margins of Victory (based on Dec. Polls) Vs. Giuliani Romney Huckabee McCain Thompson Average Clinton 6 11 10 -2 13 7.6 Obama 7 13 15 0 12 9.4 Edwards 9 22 25 8 14 15.6 Average 7.3 15.3 16.7 2.0 13.0 10.9 Condorcet ranking (assumed based on margins and averages) 1 Edwards 2 tie Obama 2 tie McCain 4 Clinton 5 Giuliani 6 Thompson 7 Romney 8 Huckabee Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] pizza and consensus
On Dec 28, 2007, at 18:51 , Jonathan Lundell wrote:
With the pizza example surfacing again (and again and again...), it
struck me that what bothers me about this example is that, in real
life, deciding on a pizza is one of the few places where just about
everybody would use informal consensus.
(For an introduction to formal consensus: http://www.consensus.net/)
I've come over the years to the regretful conclusion that formal
consensus is not workable for most organizations, at least not unless
some fairly stringent preconditions are met (some are described by
Butler at the site above; they include fairly explicit agreement on
group goals, along with a lot of time an patience).
But for pizza decisions, consensus rules. In particular, we try to
accommodate singleton minorities with strong negative preferences
("concerns" in consensus-speak): anchovy-haters, the allergy-ridden.
It doesn't matter that sausage and pepperoni is the Condorcet or
majority winner if there's a vegetarian in the group; we'll find some
consensus choice (fresh tomatoes and pesto, anyone?), given a little
time, good will, and discussion.
(That points up another problem with the pizza example: nobody ever
seems to go to a pizza parlor with individual portions, or
heterogeneous pizzas. But that's another problem.)
I wonder if there isn't a better simple example out there in which
voting is a better strategy than the alternatives.
Yes, sometimes behaviour in the pizza examples and real life do not
match. Example environments with better match between real life and
the discussed concepts would be helpful.
The pizza examples have some properties like possibility of someone
being a vegetarian or allergic, and the possibility to stretch the
examples over meals of several days.
To generalize this, when evaliuation different election methods I
often miss clear description of 1) the purpose/intent and 2) the
environment. If nothing is stated my basic assumption is that people
refer to typical country level political elections.
"Purpose" refers to the sought after behaviour of the election
method. The pizza examples often pay special attention to voters that
get an unacceptably bad result (e.g. the vegetarian voter). Methods
that give different winning probability to the candidates
proportional to their support serve a totally different intent than
methods that aim at electing a compromise winner. Different purposes
favour different methods.
"Environment" is mostly relevant for evaluating the strategic risks.
The requirements are different for large scale public elections with
independent voter decision making, and for opinion poll like
elections where voters have no direct interest to strongly push their
own favourite alternative, and for elections of few voters with well
known opinions and strong fighting tradition.
"Environment" is also relevant when discussing the level of support
some method is expected to have. Proposals may look quite different
e.g. in countries with a two-party tradition and in countries with
multi-party tradition. One should also very carefully evaluate the
reactions of the incumbent politicians and the atmosphere among the
voters and other interest groups.
Use of descriptive real life like example environments would also
clarify the different purpose/intent and environment cases listed above.
It would be also good if people would more often indicate the
intended purpose and environment when they make comments on this list.
I'll come back if I find some example scenarios that would be more
natural and useful than the pizza examples and other regular stuff.
Juho
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Re: [Election-Methods] Fwd: FYI - FairVote MN Responds to LawsuitAgainst IRV
On Dec 28, 2007, at 1:16 , rob brown wrote: I think a smart strategic move, on the part of both IRV and Condorcet fans, is to publicly back "Ranked Choice Voting", a generic term that is inclusive of both Condorcet and IRV. Yes, quite a lot of whining about why other than the good methods are used and promoted and less cooperative spirit to promote e.g. Condorcet methods or ranked methods. :-) I'm certainly not one of the most active promoters myself but I support the idea of using a positive and constructive approach in promoting whatever good methods. It would also do good to the experts to be forced to agree what joint targets to promote. Juho ___ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of [EMAIL PROTECTED]@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] rcv ala tournament
On Dec 29, 2007, at 10:53 , CLAY SHENTRUP wrote: >> Seems like Rob Brown gave us a start on moving ahead. > > the best way to move ahead is to dump ordinal voting methods for > cardinal ones. approval voting is vastly simpler than all ranked > methods. > > i don't know why we're still talking about ranked methods in this > day and age. Simply since many if not most experts seem to feel that they are good if not best (for typical political single-winner elections). This mail stream is about joining forces in defending all the good methods. I have no problem in forming also a joint team for supporting both rating and ranking based methods. But in this case I'd like to make it clear for what purpose and environment each method is good for. In order to reach consensus on what Range is good for one could also approach it from two different angles. We could define it as two different methods. Range(ratings) is a method where (most) voters are expected to give their sincere rankings. This wonderful method is at its best in non- competitive environments. Range(ratings) could in theory also work in utopias where the current political arenas are replaced with some new softer ones. In real life some areas in life might also lose their competitive nature e.g. as a result of people becoming richer (no need to fight on some basic cheap stuff any more, just interest in picking the best candidate left), but these cases may be quite marginal. Range(approval) is a method where voters are expected to vote as in Approval. Additionally voters are allowed to cast weak votes. This wonderful method works quite well also in competitive environments. In (competitive) Range(approval) I would not recommend voters to cast weak votes unless they know what they are doing. It is not good if voters with less strong feelings cast weaker votes than voters that feel that they are always right and want to drive their opinions strongly. It is not good if "altruistic and cooperative" voters have less weight than the selfish ones. As a general rule I'd recommend all voters to use votes of same strength (one man one vote is a good basic rule in competitive democratic decision making). Making a clear difference between Range(ratings) and Range(approval) is important when discussing the benefits of each. Too often I have seen approaches where people pick e.g. only the best parts of both approaches (and forget the non-working cases) and assume that they all are valid simultaneously. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] rcv ala tournament
On Dec 30, 2007, at 3:23 , CLAY SHENTRUP wrote:
>> This mail stream is about joining forces in defending all the good
>> methods.
>
> well, "good" is relative. combining utility efficiency with
> simplicity/practicality, range and approval are unparalled. so why
> would we want to spend time defending worse and/or more complex
> methods?
Ok, ranked methods are obviously not included in the list of methods
that you find acceptable.
>> Range(approval) is a method where voters are expected to vote as in
>> Approval. Additionally voters are allowed to cast weak votes. This
>> wonderful method works quite well also in competitive environments.
>
> well, it's the same voting method as range(ratings), except with the
> explicit declaration that people should vote strategically. but
> that's wrong. the more people who vote honestly, the better. we do
> _not_ want to encourage people to vote approval-style.
Ok, you seem to promote Range(ratings) and not Range(approval).
>> In (competitive) Range(approval) I would not recommend voters to cast
>> weak votes unless they know what they are doing.
>
> then you are malevolent. it is good for voters to cast sincere
> ("weak") votes, as it increases social utility.
Let's assume there is a tight 50%-50% battle between Democrats and
Republicans. Initially all plan to vote strategically in approval style.
One of the Democrats considers changing from approval to ratings style:
- overall ("absolute"/"idealistic") social utility could go up or
down or stay the same (depending on which party is "right")
- personal utility would go down
- overall utility as this voter sees it would go down if this voter
wants to improve social utility
- overall utility as this voter sees it would go up if this voter
wants to vote for the alternative that decreases social utility (for
selfish reasons)
The dynamics don't work. Only the last bullet above seemed to clearly
drive the social utility up, but this was exactly against what this
particular voter wanted.
If all would vote in (non-normalized) ratings style the (average
personal) social utility could be better, but for individual voters'
decisions on how to vote (or for groups) it doesn't make much sense
to switch to ratings style.
People also tend to have their own understanding on what is best for
the society. Actually all depend on that and nobody knows the
"absolute"/"idealistic" social utility. (This makes my first bullet
point above quite irrelevant from individual decision maker point of
view.)
Juho
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Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: rcv ala tournament
On Dec 30, 2007, at 2:00 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Rob, > > --- rob brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >> Approval is simple only if you find it convenient to ignore such >> questions >> as "how should a voter vote to best >> pursue his interests?" If you happen to include such things in the >> equation, Approval mind-blowingly complex. > > I can't think of any (serious) method with more straight-forward > strategy > than Approval. > > This weekend I'm trying to design a simulation to examine strategy > under > two-round runoff methods and am finding it very tricky. > > Kevin Venzke What if we look at Condorcet at the same level of recommending a strategy that works well in most cases. The recommended strategy could be: "list the candidates in the order of preference". That is quite simple and understandable and works in most situations for the benefit of the voter. So, is Condorcet strategy more straight forward than Approval strategy? Approval strategy (e.g. "vote one of the frontrunners and candidates that are better") requires the voters to estimate the opinions of other voters while the described Condorcet strategy does not. Juho ___ The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: RE : Re: rcv ala tournament
Yes, I'm to some extent comparing apples to oranges, but I think the Approval strategies are also not quite "complete" since they rely on some estimate on how others are going to vote and that estimate is in real life always unreliable and incomplete. The Approval strategies that regular voters use will probably also rely on generalizations like identifying who are the "frontrunners" and making one's decision based on this. So, I was trying to compare an incomplete Condorcet strategy to an incomplete Approval strategy. Juho On Dec 30, 2007, at 16:44 , Kevin Venzke wrote: > Juho, > > --- Juho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : >>>> Approval is simple only if you find it convenient to ignore such >>>> questions >>>> as "how should a voter vote to best >>>> pursue his interests?" If you happen to include such things in the >>>> equation, Approval mind-blowingly complex. >>> >>> I can't think of any (serious) method with more straight-forward >>> strategy >>> than Approval. >> >> What if we look at Condorcet at the same level of recommending a >> strategy that works well in most cases. The recommended strategy >> could be: "list the candidates in the order of preference". That is >> quite simple and understandable and works in most situations for the >> benefit of the voter. >> >> So, is Condorcet strategy more straight forward than Approval >> strategy? Approval strategy (e.g. "vote one of the frontrunners and >> candidates that are better") requires the voters to estimate the >> opinions of other voters while the described Condorcet strategy does >> not. > > I certainly concede that Condorcet more frequently offers a useful > strategy > that doesn't require much thought, but to my mind that's not the > issue I > was considering. If you wanted to specify the "complete" Condorcet > strategy > on the same level that we can describe optimal Approval strategy, I > guess > the result would be extremely complex. > > Kevin Venzke > > > > __ > ___ > Ne gardez plus qu'une seule adresse mail ! Copiez vos mails vers > Yahoo! Mail http://mail.yahoo.fr > > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: Re: rcv ala tournament
Kevin Venzke replied to Rob Brown: > You say you don't see much point in discussing various Condorcet > methods. > The ones that I don't like have the quality that sometimes when the > quantity of voters who rank candidate A, and don't rank candidate B > at all, > is larger than the quantity of voters who rank B at all, B can > still win. > > Here is a simple example: > 7 B>C > 5 C > 8 A > > What do you think? Is there good evidence and logic available for a > method > to decide that B is the best candidate to win? Kevin, you maybe already know/guess my answer. B is only 2 votes short of being a Condorcet winner. C would need 3 and A 5 votes. In your comments I note that you may think that listing a candidate (higher than default bottom) has a special meaning. If there is something like an implicit approval cutoff after the listed candidates (=> 7 B>C>>A, 5 C>>A=B, 8 A>>B=C) then that should be explicitly mentioned. The used method could in this case count both the pairwise preferences and the approvals (A and C would be more approved than B), and the result could be something different than with pure ranking based ballots. Although I have some opinions on Condorcet completion I agree with Rob that too much energy is spent on the Condorcet completion debates. All methods that are Condorcet compliant are already quite good methods. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] RE : Re: RE : Re: Re: rcv ala tournament
On Dec 31, 2007, at 9:51 , Dan Bishop wrote: > Kevin Venzke wrote: >> To my mind, the theory behind WV is that a contest is more >> decisive the >> more people that participate in it. Only you mustn't count the >> voters on >> the losing side, because they could then regret expressing their >> opinion >> rather than indifference. >> > This is where we disagree. In my view, a unanimous contest with 30% > turnout is more decisive than a 51%-49% contest with 60% turnout, > despite the fact that the latter had more votes for the winner. I also find the margins approach to be closer to ideal. The "theories behind" margins are typically more sincere voting oriented (e.g. "votes needed to become Condorcet winner") while WV theories tend to refer to reducing strategic voting. A good method both 1) elects a good winner with sincere votes and 2) is not too vulnerable to strategies and does not encourage strategic voting. Condorcet methods are in general not very vulnerable to strategic voting. As a result one can put more weight on behaviour with sincere votes. Both margins and WV have some vulnerabilities to strategic voting but in typical large scale elections with independent decision making strategic voting may well be marginal and does not work. My point is just that at some point the performance with sincere votes as well as ability to explain and visualize the results become more important than trying to find all the remaining theoretical strategic cases and trying to find treatment for them. At this point the changes may cause more harm (in other areas) than benefit (in the intended areas). Juho ___ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 42, Issue 72
re complex to game? i know it sounds elitist, but it's a legitimate question. I'd hope this to be true, or at least the more probable case. Unfortunately there are also educated and clever people that use their talent to serve their selfish needs. One approach is to hope that the society continuously grows (from the laws of jungle) in that direction (and that all people will learn from the best innovators/ leaders in this respect). What if we look at Condorcet at the same level of recommending a strategy that works well in most cases. The recommended strategy could be: "list the candidates in the order of preference". That is quite simple and understandable and works in most situations for the benefit of the voter. that's not the strategy. the gist of the strategy is to start with that ordering, then bury your favorite front-runner's strongest opponents. Do you say that in Condorcet elections the best strategy for A supporters would be to vote A>X>Y>Z>B if they believe that A is the strongest candidate and B is the second strongest candidate? So, is Condorcet strategy more straight forward than Approval strategy? Approval strategy (e.g. "vote one of the frontrunners and candidates that are better") requires the voters to estimate the opinions of other voters while the described Condorcet strategy does not. that's because you described honest condorcet voting and strategic approval voting. apples and oranges. you could rectify that by going back and either describing the burial aspect of condorcet, or by describing the approval voting strategy as "vote for every candidate you like more than average", which requires no knowledge of the opinions of others voters. c'mon juho...you know better than this. I just picked two strategies that have been often recommended and that are simple. Similar comparisons can be done between any other strategies you want to pick. The idea was thus to pick some strategies that are known to be about equally good and reliable to the voters and then see which one of them is the easiest to understand and apply. Many Condorcet strategies are not easy to understand and apply ((many of them are not very efficient and safe either)) and are therefore not good candidates for this comparison. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 42, Issue 72
I wrote: > Greater social utility means greater average social utility per > voter but that does not mean greater average _personal_ utility nor > that this voter would achieve better personal utility. This was a bit confusing since if the overall social utility is defined as the average of personal utilities then the statement is not correct. It is valid if the overall social utility is seen as a theoretical ideal. And if we talk about the personal _understanding_ of the overall utility. Juho ___ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 42, Issue 76
On Dec 31, 2007, at 15:34 , CLAY SHENTRUP wrote: >> Although I have some opinions on Condorcet completion I agree with >> Rob that too much energy is spent on the Condorcet completion >> debates. All methods that are Condorcet compliant are already quite >> good methods. > > well, you don't know what you're talking about. I could agree that you think that I don't know what I'm talking about ;-). Your examples (below) seem to be from a Range voting promotion site (that explains something). I have read them (or some predecessors of them) also earlier. Some quick comments follow (I didn't reread the articles carefully now, but you may correct if I missed something). > http://rangevoting.org/DH3.html I don't know what the A supporters are doing. They obviously know that D has practically no support. They should know that their A>D>B>C votes will have no impact alone. And they should know that if others join the game then D could be elected with some probability. The chances that they would hit their target and make A (or B) win are slim. In this kind of close race I'd rather advertise A as a good compromise candidate rather than presenting him as a bully whose supporters want to use whatever means to steal the victory from others. That might give better results in a tight race like this. With the given numbers it also seems that the C voters need not do anything more than just ignore the whole issue. They will win that way even if all A and B supporters (extremely improbable in large elections) would rank D second. > http://rangevoting.org/AppCW.html Condorcet yields Condorcet winners automatically. No reason to use Approval to approximate that. > http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.html I guess this is again a simulation where the distribution of strategic voters is assumed to be equal at both sides. What will happen if one party is more strategic than the other? Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 42, Issue 80
On Dec 31, 2007, at 16:38 , CLAY SHENTRUP wrote: the point is that with range voting, that voter will have a better expected happiness than with other methods - especially if the other voters are strategic! which is precisely the opposite point to what it seems that you perceived me to imply. Could you give an example where strategic voting of voters with competing opinions increases one's happiness? Yes, in many situations Range would indeed provide good results. The problem is that in competitive situations it may not do so. no! warren's utility figures tested the full range of 0% strategic voters to 100% strategic voters, and found that range voting was superior to the other common methods. in fact, range voting's superiority over rivals such as condorcet and borda actually _increases_ the more "competitive" the election becomes. http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.html how is this not more well-known in a discussion list of this sort? I already addressed this in my previous mail. In some of the Warren's simulations it appears that the problematic cases from Range are hidden because even distribution of strategic voters is assumed. Range typically has problems in cases where one party is more strategic than the other parties. Different elections have also different needs => maximizing the average utility is not always what we want. name an example. that sounds preposterous. utility is _by definition_ the measure of what voters want. One example from the Range world: When five friends go out to eat pizza result 50,50,50,50,50 may be considered better than result 70,70,70,70,0. Do you say that in Condorcet elections the best strategy for A supporters would be to vote A>X>Y>Z>B if they believe that A is the strongest candidate and B is the second strongest candidate? yes! it may be a little more nuanced than that, but that's the gist. warren can explain it better i'm sure. I'm reasonably sure he can't explain that to be a general rule ;-). and whether it's a good idea or not, a lot of people will just intuitively do it, because it "feels" like they are pushing B down more strongly. That may be the first reaction of some people. I think these questions should be discussed before the first election to provide sufficient understanding of the method to all voters. I just picked two strategies that have been often recommended and that are simple. what you described for condorcet was not a "strategy" -- it was a sincerity! :D That's the good part in Condorcet. Sincerity is actually a pretty good strategy, maybe the best in most situations. Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[Election-Methods] Free withdrawal vs. agreed structure/rules (was: Smith + mono-add-top?)
ould be good enough. If the risks are considered real and a threat
then there may be a need for strong enough countermeasures that
eliminate these problems. The up to binary tree level defensive
alliance system would be one efficient method to cut down many of the
threats. It may not be possible to agree the structure down to binary
three level between the parties/candidates but at least they had the
option.
What do you think of this? Is it a good approach to use this type of
means to reduce the strategic threats in Condorcet based systems? Can
they offer an adjustable level defence mechanism against strategic
environments/elections?
Juho
On Jan 1, 2008, at 17:24 , Steve Eppley wrote:
> I think the method Diego Santos is considering can elect outside the
> Smith set (a.k.a. top cycle), depending on the tie-breaker. Here's an
> example with 21 voters and 4 candidates:
>
> 444333
>--- --- --- --- --- ---
> ABCDDD
> BCAABC
> CABBCA
> DDDCAB
>
> {A,B,C} is a set of clones in a "vicious" cycle. (By vicious, I
> mean all
> margins in the cycle are large. I think Mike Ossipoff may have been
> first to use the term, many years ago.) What makes this scenario very
> rare (assuming many voters) is that the margins in the vicious
> cycle are
> equal:
>
>A over B by (4+4+3+3) - (4+3) = 7
>B over C by (4+4+3+3) - (4+3) = 7
>C over A by (4+4+3+3) - (4+3) = 7
>
> The Smith set is {A,B,C}. Can D win? If I understand Diego's
> definition, D is not eliminated since the margin in D's pairwise
> defeats
> is smallest (12 - 9 = 3). I think A and B and C are also not
> eliminated
> since there's a tie in their cycle's margins. Thus the set of
> non-eliminated candidates is {A,B,C,D}. Among {A,B,C,D} there is no
> Condorcet winner. So, a tiebreaker must select from {A,B,C,D}. If
> the
> tiebreaker can select outside the Smith set, D can be elected.
> Typical
> tiebreakers (Random, Random Voter's Ballot, Chairperson's Choice) can
> select outside the Smith set.
>
> D would win given plain MinMax even if the margins in the vicious
> cycle
> are unequal. Thus, given plain MinMax the elite political actors
> might
> limit competition, to eliminate the chance of a vicious cycle among
> their faction. A consequence of limiting competition is increased
> corruption, for instance by the use of primary elections which require
> large amounts of money to win nomination. That's unfortunate, since
> MinMax might be relatively simple to sell: "Elect the candidate that
> minimizes the number of voters who prefer someone else." (I believe
> Diego's method is too complicated to be adopted in public elections
> for
> the foreseeable future.) However, MinMax + CandidateWithdrawal
> would be
> a very good method, thanks to its simplicity, the incentive it would
> give candidates to try to be the best compromise, and the full-bore
> competition it would facilitate. Even Instant Runoff +
> CandidateWithdrawal would be a decent method, and considering the
> progress Instant Runoff has been making, it makes sense to propose
> patching it with CandidateWithdrawal. Please take some time to do
> that.
>
> --Steve Eppley
> --
> Diego Santos wrote:
>> Happy new year to all!
>>
>> Perhaps my previous definition was not enough clear, for the possible
>> confusion between "potential winner" and "winner" on its final.
>> Then, I
>> reformulated it:
>>
>> "Some candidate X is eliminated if a) exists Y that beats X and b)
>> the
>> margin of Y against X is greater than the greatest margin of another
>> candidate against Y. The winner is the Condorcet winner among non-
>> eliminated
>> candidates".
>>
>> An example (from http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE6/P4.HTM):
>>
>> 5:a>d>c>b
>> 5:b>c>a>d
>> 8:c>a>b>d
>> 4:d>a>b>c
>> 8:d>b>c>a
>>
>> Notation:
>> Candidate X(minimax score of X): Candidate Y(margin of Y against
>> X, minmax
>> score of Y):
>>
>> a(12): c(12,4) eliminated
>> b(4): a(4,12), d(4,6)
>> c(4): b(4,4), d(4,6)
>> d(6): a(6,12)
>>
>> d beats either b and c, then d is elected.
>>
>> Another example (from Markus' paper):
>>
>> 3:a>d>e>b>c>f
>> 3:b>f>e>c>d>a
>> 4:c>a>b>f>d>e
>> 1:d>b>c>e>f>a
&
Re: [Election-Methods] Smith + mono-add-top?
Yes, this approach nicely follows the original idea of the method.
Just make small random differences if there are none.
Juho
On Jan 1, 2008, at 19:43 , Diego Santos wrote:
2008/1/1, Steve Eppley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
I think the method Diego Santos is considering can elect outside the
Smith set (a.k.a. top cycle), depending on the tie-breaker. Here's an
example with 21 voters and 4 candidates:
444333
--- --- --- --- --- ---
ABCDDD
BCAABC
CABBCA
DDDCAB
{A,B,C} is a set of clones in a "vicious" cycle. (By vicious, I
mean all
margins in the cycle are large. I think Mike Ossipoff may have been
first to use the term, many years ago.) What makes this scenario very
rare (assuming many voters) is that the margins in the vicious
cycle are
equal:
A over B by (4+4+3+3) - (4+3) = 7
B over C by (4+4+3+3) - (4+3) = 7
C over A by (4+4+3+3) - (4+3) = 7
The Smith set is {A,B,C}. Can D win? If I understand Diego's
definition, D is not eliminated since the margin in D's pairwise
defeats
is smallest (12 - 9 = 3). I think A and B and C are also not
eliminated
since there's a tie in their cycle's margins. Thus the set of
non-eliminated candidates is {A,B,C,D}. Among {A,B,C,D} there is no
Condorcet winner. So, a tiebreaker must select from {A,B,C,D}. If
the
tiebreaker can select outside the Smith set, D can be elected.
Typical
tiebreakers (Random, Random Voter's Ballot, Chairperson's Choice) can
select outside the Smith set.
A possible tiebraker can be: "if no Condorcet Winner exists among
non-eliminated candidates, reuse this method with one of equal
margins 'pseudo-augmented'" selected at random.
In Steve's example, we can select, for instance, B win over C as
"pseudo-augmented" (marked with an asterisk):
A(7): C(7,7*)
B(7): A(7,7)
C(7*): B(7*,7)eliminated
D(3): A(3,7), B(3,7), C(3,7*)
Then a member of the "vicious circle" is disqualified.
New set: {A, B, D}, and A wins. But uses of this tiebraker would be
too rare.
Diego Renato dos Santos
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for
list info
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Re: [Election-Methods] Why monotonicity? (was: Smith +mono-add-top?)
Good discussion. In general I think a strict criterion fulfillment based evaluation of the election methods is not sufficient. Monotonicity can be seen as a property that is always positive but that need not necessarily be always met. It is enough if in the given environment voters need not worry about their vote potentially being non-monotonic (so much that they should consider voting another way). Also many other criteria have similar properties. There are actually very few that would be fully strict. Condorcet criterion seems to be one that is widely accepted and recommended for competitive compromise seeking elections (excluding Range supporters ;-) (IRV supporters are maybe not seeking for a compromise candidate). I'm inclined towards evaluating methods based on the worst real life examples that can be generated (for the environment in question). It would be good to complement also listed failures of different formal criteria with examples on what will happen when they are not met. Practical examples are good in checking that the assumed threats/ problems are also practical in the sense that they can be implemented/ have influence in real life (with incomplete information and incomplete control of the voters). Juho On Jan 2, 2008, at 17:58 , James Gilmour wrote: > Jobst had written: >>> Also, it seems difficult to sell a method when you must admit that >>> advancing an option X may actually reduce X's winning probability... >>> > Steve replied: >> That doesn't seem to be a problem for the Instant Runoff >> campaign. ;-) >> Do you recall an example where it was difficult to sell a method >> due to >> its non-monotonicity? > > This should be no surprise because, at least in public elections > with hundreds, thousands or ten-of-thousands of voters in each > electoral district, non-monotonicity cannot be exploited either by > the candidates or by the voters. It could be very different in > successive elections by IRV or STV-PR where the whole electorate > was a small committee of, say, ten members - then it MIGHT be > possible for some voters to change their preference patterns to > exploit the non-monotonicity to the benefit of their preferred > candidates. But monotonicity is a completely irrelevant criterion > so far as public elections are concerned. > > James Gilmour > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.17.13/1206 - Release Date: > 01/01/2008 12:09 > > > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Closed or open primary elections? (was: Why monotonicity?)
ates per party. Influencing primaries that elect multiple candidates for the final election seems to be less efficient as influencing election of one single candidate for the final election. One more simple approach is to collect poll data about the popularity of the candidates of one's own party and make the results well known to the voters of the closed primary. This would encourage electing candidates that get wide support also from other parties. Also any registrations that force the voters to somehow "show colour" publicly could limit the number of voters that do not want to show this particular colour. One general observation. In theory primaries can make the outcome of the election worse than it would be without them since the election criteria in the primaries are different from the actual election. Primaries may well eliminate candidate that would have won the final election. This is maybe one additional reason for supporting methods that can handle numerous candidates. (Having too many candidates may however also make the election worse since then it is more confusing and based on less good analysis of the candidates by the voters. Allowing e.g. two candidates from the major parties and one from some smaller ones (and maybe few independents too) could be one way to go.) Juho On Jan 4, 2008, at 6:33 , Dave Ketchum wrote: > On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:42:30 -0800 Steve Eppley wrote privately. > If you > reply, >> please address it to the maillist.] >> >> You wrote: >> >>> As to "closed" primary elections: >>> They make sense to me for Plurality general elections. >> >> >> Why do you think so? > > In a closed primary election party members properly get to choose who > shall be the party's candidate in the general election: >For a major party it matters little, for it is hard to round up > enough outsiders to outvote party members. >For a minor party there are lots of outsiders, who could easily > outvote party members. >Assuming there are enough interested outsiders, they should > be able > to nominate the candidate they wish to elect, without interfering > with a > party's nomination task. > > I did specify Plurality. With some other methods, such as > Condorcet, more > candidates can be allowed in the general election without destructive > interference. >> >> Regards, >> Steve Eppley > -- > [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 ___ Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Why monotonicity? (was: Smith + mono-add-top?)
One does not need to meet the different criteria fully. One could say that it may be enough if it is better to vote as if some criterion was true. It could be e.g. that even if monotonicity would be guaranteed only with 51% probability voters would vote as if the method was monotonic. In practice there are cases where one gan guarantee some property with 95% probability and that may be enough. Even though there is no election method that would meet all the wanted criteria there may be one that meets all those criteria well enough. There are also criteria that should be respected in most situations but not necessarily in all. Then meeting some criterion in 99% of the cases is actually the target. There are e.g. cases where it could be better not to meet Smith set, Condorcet loser and independence of clones. This of course depends on what kind of social utility function one wants to implement with the election method. (Example: Ranked votes where three candidates form a strong loop and some fourth candidate loses only very little to all the three looped candidates (that are possibly but not necessarily clones). The last candidate could well be the best (for some needs). This situation is very exceptional and may never happen in real elections. But if this happens it could be good not to respect the three mentioned criteria.) In summary, often it is enough to respect some criteria only in most cases, and sometimes this can be even what one wants. Juho On Jan 10, 2008, at 5:09 , daniel radetsky wrote: On Jan 1, 2008 1:15 PM, Steve Eppley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Are monotonic methods less manipulable than non-monotonic methods? I've never heard any evidence of that. I'm going to assume that you are not asking something like "For all possible voting methods and some reasonable manipulability metric, is the average manipulability of the monotonic methods lower than the average manipulability of the non-monotonic methods?" For if a method is non-monotonic, this means that there is a way to manipulate it. If you are asking whether given the choice between (say) a monotonic, non-clone-independent method and a non- monotonic, clone-independent method, all else being equal, then perhaps as you suggest, clone-independence is more important. However, I was under the impression that one of the goals of studying voting methods was to avoid having to make this choice. In any case, resistance to manipulability is not the only reason to desire a particular property for a voting system. Another important quality is transparency: does casting a vote do what the voter thinks it does? A voter thinks that when he increases his vote for X (whatever "increases" means in the system in question), he is helping X win. In a non-monotonic system, he's wrong, or at least not guaranteed to be right. This is bad. Right? Daniel Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[Election-Methods] Social preference ordering (was: Why monotonicity?)
On Jan 11, 2008, at 6:04 , daniel radetsky wrote: On Jan 10, 2008 7:46 PM, Kevin Venzke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I doubt there's good reason to be optimistic about getting around many of these incompatibilities by changing the ballot type. I think you're out to lunch. Cardinal ballot methods get around Arrow and Gibbard, which had been interpreted as meaning "No voting method is fair." If that's not a good reason to be optimistic, I don't know what could be. I think Arrow initially sudied social preference ordering. Loops (e.g. A>B, B>C, C>A) in the social preference ordering are independent of the voting methods, and they exist in the background and may impact voting behaviour in all methods. I don't know exactly what your targets are and how good (/"perfect") the method should be but although cardinal methods have some interesting characteristics my guess is that they will not offer any clear shortcuts. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Using range ballots as an extension of ranked ballot voting
Check also James Green-Armytage's cardinal-weighted pairwise comparison method if you haven't don that yet. => http:// fc.antioch.edu/~james_green-armytage/cwp13.htm Can you also clarify a bit how step 3 is counted when some candidate X is beaten by two other candidates (Y and Z). I find the proposed method interesting since it seems to aim at electing good winners (using a function minimizes the problems caused to the voters, from one point of view). Juho On Mar 2, 2008, at 22:20 , <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Just an addendum from previous post (Minimum Distance Condorcet Completion). I'm curious about voting methods that take ranked ballot methods and adapt them to range ballots. For example, with Baldwin's method, you take drop the candidate with the lowest Borda score, recalculate, and so on. A range variant might drop the candidate with the lowest range score, normalize the remaining scores, and repeat. It should still give the Condorcet winner (if any) but it might fit different election criteria than standard Baldwin. Likewise, a range generalization of the Kemeny-Young order might be interesting. I figure Warren Smith would know the names of range variants, but I'm sure others would as well. Anything with pretty graphs involved is also cool. (grin) And as always, I probably saw something like this a year ago and just forgot. A lot of time these things sit in my mind, and then something triggers the interest. Michael Rouse Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Partisan Politics
On Mar 2, 2008, at 17:45 , Fred Gohlke wrote: SEEKING IMPROVEMENT We do not need partisanship, which sets one person against another; we need independent representatives who will think for themselves and reach intelligent decisions on matters of public concern. In other words, to improve our government, we must change the way we select our representatives. This sounds like you would be happy with something like STV. Parties do cause problems but also the other extreme where the representatives are all totally independent has some problems. I'd expect the totally independent representatives to associate themselves with some known groupings or ideologies to clarify their position. And this is not that far from having a new party structure. Another approach to expressing how the political system (of USA and many other countries too) should change is to say that the party behaviour and rules of behaviour should be improved. (Parties need not be tyrants and nests of evil but just free groupings of people with similar opinions.) Typical problems are having individual representatives that have no own power but that need to follow the policies set by the party leaders. Another might be too strong connections to some interest groups. Third one might be lack of contact to the voters and their true needs/interests. And fourth one use of cheap propaganda instead of open discussion. Any system has some tendency to corrupt in time. Political parties and the political system are no exceptions. One needs to stay awake and not let the system slide into something less good than what it was or what people expect it to be or become. One could also start by seeking the problems from the voters. There is a saying that citizens will get as good government as they deserve. I mean the voters that are well educated and that are offered good information on the state and plans and actions of the society throughout the election period may be capable of making wiser decisions in the elections than those who are just briefly targets of the marketing campaigns before the elections. Political systems are always an embodiment of human nature. Until we learn to harness our own nature, we can improve neither our politics nor our society. Yes. One viewpoint to the evolution of our societies is that we are on a journey from the laws of jungle towards societies that take the human needs better into account. There is no reason to believe that the current systems would be perfect. We have taken many steps from the pure "laws of jungle" model but certainly also further improving steps are possible. Such changes occur slowly. Ought we not start to consider the methods by which they can be accomplished? Yes. I do believe that many of the shortcomings of politics do have strong links and may be traced back to the incumbent political parties and the way they operate. But that doesn't necessarily mean that parties would be evil as such, or that political systems without parties would automatically perform better. Thorough understanding of the dynamics of the political system is needed to make its operation better (in small or large steps). Juho ___ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Ballots with cycles
On Mar 5, 2008, at 14:54 , Andrew Myers wrote: > Suppose that in a Condorcet system, we allow people to submit a > ballot that has an arbitrary preference relation, so any two > alternative A and B can have either AB. There can > therefore be cycles in the graph of preferences, like A > One reason why we might want to set up the system this way is that we > can protect voter privacy better by separating different preferences > during the tallying process. I don't think this makes much difference. It is also ok to separate a regular linear opinion A>B>C to three separate binary preferences A>B, A>C and B>C. And in both cases the typical way to carry the results forward from the first place where the votes are locally counted is in a form of a pairwise matrix, so the ballots can be packed, sealed and stored locally if needed. Normally we assume that voters are rational in the sense that they can set a personal preference order to the candidates. With this assumption the possibility of giving arbitrary preference relations is of no use to sincere voters. > The question is whether this creates new strategic voting > opportunities. I have not been able to construct a scenario where it > makes strategic voting more powerful. Is this worse than burying > with ordinary ranked ballots? This makes it a bit easier to intentionally generate a loop among say three candidates (A,B,C) of the competing party. My vote could be X>A, X>B, X>C, A>B, B>C, C>A, where X is my own party candidate. If many X supporters vote systematically this way there is a chance that the candidates of the competing party will all lose to each others, and that might make X the winner in some Condorcet methods like minmax if the race is otherwise very tight between the two parties. Use of arbitrary preferences is interesting but rather theoretical, and the changes in the outcome might be marginal (at least in typical public elections). Any more reasons why it should be allowed? (In regular public elections also the complexity of the ballots might be a show stopper.) (If different ballots have different complexity that might be a risk to voter privacy (you would cast a complex vote while most other votes would be simpler).) Juho > -- Andrew > > Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for > list info ___ Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
