[EM] My shortened signature
Richard-- > Mike Ossipoff; nkklrp via hotmail; Founding member of election-methods > forum; Advocates Approval voting for its simplicity and "favorite > protection" That sounds fine to me, but I like this a little more: Mike Ossipoff; nkklrp via hotmail; Founding member of election-methods forum; Advocates Approval voting for full support for favorites [end of proposed signature] Is that good? I like that best. Either of the above two would be fine. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Rank methods, contd.
ore candidates attain a majority, then, instead of deleting all of the ballots that have already given a vote to a majority-possessing candidate, delete only the ones that give 1st rank position to a majority-possessing candidate. I think that ABucklin3 is better than ABucklin2. Either is an interpretation for how MTA2 could be generalized to unlimited rankings, but I now feel that ABucklin3 is more in the spirit of MTA2. It goes without saying that MCA is simpler than MTA, MTA2 or MTA/MCA; and that ABucklin is simpler than ABucklin2 or ABucklin3. I'd probably therefore mention MCA first, then, as a 3-slot method; and ABucklin first, before ABucklin2 or ABucklin3. When ABucklin2 and ABucklin3 use the rankings' approval-cutoff, someone could argue that a strategically-placed approval cutoff among the reduced set of majority-possessing candidates might be different from where it would be among the entire set of candidates. Yes, but not if it's a u/a election. And I feel that it's always really a u/a election. Mike Ossipoff www 've said seemingly contradictory things about IRV. It's particularly flagrant FBC failure makes it entirely inadequate for public political elections, more so than Condorcet, which, too, is inadequate due to FBC failure. And I also said that IRV would be a fine method, were it not for the public's inclination towards resigned, cowed overcompromise, and their very sad and disastrous lowering of standards for acceptability. "Vote for the least bad of the corrupt candidates, because they're the winnable ones". But how could IRV be alright, even with better voting? Wouldn't people wanting to maximize their expectation still favorite-bury sometimes? Sure. But if their judgement was at all reasonable, they wouldn't do so in a way that would bother me. It comes down to what one calls "acceptable". IRV's strategy in non-u/a elections would be especially complicated to describe, but it's a sure thing that it would often involve favorite-burial, to maximize a voter's expectation. Without knowing the details on how to vote (no method matches Approval's clearly-defined simple strategy, for any kind of election), voters would still do favorite-burial. As with Approval, and probably all methods, IRV's expectation-maximizing strategy is simpler in a u/a election. But that doesn't mean that it's simple enough for anyone to know what it is, exactly. IRV has two great advantages: It is, as I understand it, entirely defection-proof. And it meets the Mutual Majority Criterion. If we had the kind of electorate who could handle FBC failure, then we could discuss the relative desirability of Condorcet and IRV. But we needn't bother, because they both fail FBC, disqualifying both of them under existing conditions. Anyway, ICT has all of what I consider to be the most important properties. Regrettably, of course, it's almost surely too complicated to be considered as a first proposal. But, when the public are more informed and used to voting system reform, ICT would become a good proposal. ICT is probably the best, unless something much more complicated could improve on it. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Comments on some rank methods
Kristofer: You wrote: On 04/09/2012 11:31 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > I've said seemingly contradictory things about IRV. It's particularly > flagrant FBC failure makes it entirely inadequate for > public political elections, more so than Condorcet, which, too, is > inadequate due to FBC failure. You keep saying anything without FBC is automatically a no-go. How do you know that? [endquote] It is a country-specific observation, regarding the electorate of the U.S., where I reside. I don't know that about any other country, though there is evidence for it in various countries where people are used to Plurality voting. Yes this is "anecdotal", but I've personally observed favorite-burial in Condorcet voting. A safe and prudent rule is "Never underestimate the voter's inclination for resigned over-compromising give-away, if there's any chance that it could help a compromise against someone worse." You continued: Condorcet elections seem to work well where they're used: in the Pirate Parties, in Debian, on Wikimedia, and in smaller organizations (see the Wikipedia article on the Schulze method for more). [endquote] Of course. I said in my answers for Democracy Chronicles that Condorcet is fine for organizational elections, where the lesser-of-2-evils problem has nothing resembling the magnitude that it has in public political elections. You continued: IRV's compromise problem is particularly bad. [endquote] Most definitely. You continued: In a Burlington scenario, the voters (and/or parties) immediately know they didn't compromise well enough. In contrast, that doesn't happen in Condorcet, because it picks the CW. [endquote] Quite so. The FBC problem is _qualitatively_ worse in IRV than in Condorcet. But it's still present in Condorcet. If I had to choose between Condorcet and IRV, for our public political elections, with the electorate that we have, of course I'd choose Condorcet. But I'd rather have Approval, ABucklin, or ICT, to name a few better methods. I believe that ICT has tremendous promise. As I'm going to say in a separate posting, there's a sense in which Approval is the best method, due to its FBC-compliance, its unique optimizations, and its simple and clear strategy (things that I mentioned in my Declaration signature). But of course it depends on what you want, and you might want more expressivity, for a gradation of preference. I question the value of that, but I myself would use, in an Approval election, an option allowing that. So I certainly understand that goal. I suggest that ICT is the best, among the methods attempting that goal, due to its FBC compliance and its defection-resistance (actually nearly a defection-proofness). ICT deals with defection more neatly than do the conditional methods (but I still like them due to their usability as options in Approval). And defection in ICT can only help a candidate if s/he is the top-favorite among the undefeated candidates. For a method other than Approval, to improve preference-level expressiveness, I'd choose ICT. You continued: I suppose you could argue I'm making the same mistake as the IRVists. The IRVists say "oh, we need a way of not making small third parties get in the way of the major parties - here's a fix". You might argue I'm saying "oh, we need a way of the method not messing up when third parties get reasonably large - here's a fix, in the form of Condorcet compliance". But if I'm just proposing a fix and the fix isn't substantial, then we should be seeing backsliding from Condorcet where it's used, and I don't know of any such. [endquote] Condorcet is probably fine for most organizations. In that implementation, there won't be the intense "lesser-of-2-evils inclinations" that is necessary to induce favorite-burial in Condorcet. > And I also said that IRV would be a fine method, were it not for the > public's inclination towards resigned, cowed overcompromise, > and their very sad and disastrous lowering of standards for > acceptability. "Vote for the least bad of the corrupt candidates, > because they're the > winnable ones". I disagree. Look at Burlington with its center squeeze again. The Burlington voters didn't strategize (much or effectively). Yet instead of picking the candidate closest to the median voter, IRV threw that one away because it didn't have enough first-place votes and picked the largest wing instead. [endquote] Never choose IRV as a way to attain the voter median. For that, I recommend ICT for public political elections. Condorcet(wv), maybe Beatpath, would be ok for organizations. (But I remind you that it's been pointed out that Approval will result in a candidate configuration equilibriu
[EM] Credentialed signature-section
Hi Richard-- You wrote: Because you are not supplying your brief "signature" in the specified format, I (and presumably Jameson) must assume that you do not want your named moved to the credentialed section of the Declaration. (I don't understand your choice, but I respect your choice.) [endquote] I just was worried that, because I don't have a degree or a professional position, my inclusion could lower the credibility of the credentialed-signature section. If that isn't felt to be a concern, though, then I _would_ like to move my signature to that section, partly because it would mean that there will be an additional approvalist in that section. And, as for the impression made on people outside the voting-system reform community, it would count as another indication that people who have longtime experience in this subject agree that change is needed. So now I _would_ like to move my signature to the credentialed section. Feel free to shorten this signature as needed, leaving out, if necessary, whichever part seems least needed. ...Or otherwise modify it for length or appropriateness. I'd suggest, if something must be left out, to shorten the signature, then leave out the part "introducer of a popular family of voting systems". My signature: Mike Ossipoff; longtime participant in discussion of voting systems and their strategy & criteria; proposer of and a founding member of election-methods forum; introducer of a popular family of voting systems; advocates Approval, with its favorite-protection, unique result-optimizations and clear, simple strategy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Comments on some rank methods
I've said seemingly contradictory things about IRV. It's particularly flagrant FBC failure makes it entirely inadequate for public political elections, more so than Condorcet, which, too, is inadequate due to FBC failure. And I also said that IRV would be a fine method, were it not for the public's inclination towards resigned, cowed overcompromise, and their very sad and disastrous lowering of standards for acceptability. "Vote for the least bad of the corrupt candidates, because they're the winnable ones". But how could IRV be alright, even with better voting? Wouldn't people wanting to maximize their expectation still favorite-bury sometimes? Sure. But if their judgement was at all reasonable, they wouldn't do so in a way that would bother me. It comes down to what one calls "acceptable". IRV's strategy in non-u/a elections would be especially complicated to describe, but it's a sure thing that it would often involve favorite-burial, to maximize a voter's expectation. Without knowing the details on how to vote (no method matches Approval's clearly-defined simple strategy, for any kind of election), voters would still do favorite-burial. As with Approval, and probably all methods, IRV's expectation-maximizing strategy is simpler in a u/a election. But that doesn't mean that it's simple enough for anyone to know what it is, exactly. IRV has two great advantages: It is, as I understand it, entirely defection-proof. And it meets the Mutual Majority Criterion. If we had the kind of electorate who could handle FBC failure, then we could discuss the relative desirability of Condorcet and IRV. But we needn't bother, because they both fail FBC, disqualifying both of them under existing conditions. Anyway, ICT has all of what I consider to be the most important properties. Regrettably, of course, it's almost surely too complicated to be considered as a first proposal. But, when the public are more informed and used to voting system reform, ICT would become a good proposal. ICT is probably the best, unless something much more complicated could improve on it. to be continued Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] A few words about Approval & Condorcet strategy-need and voting experience
A. Answer to the claim that Approval requires strategy and Condorcet doesn't: 1. People keep saying that Approval requires tactical voting, but that Condorcet doesn't. Gibbard and Satterthwaite would be surprised to hear that. As I've mentioned, Condorcet fully shares Approval's biggest strategy problem: The co-operation/defection problem. No attempted improvement on Approval is worthwhile unless it is a method that is at least defection-resistant, as I've defined that term. A defection-resistant method gets rid of the co-operation/defection problem as it exists in a similar nonresistant method. I call that the primary C/D problem. There might (usually is) a _secondnary_ C/D problem, but it isn't as bad. Typically, defecting and causing that problem requires a very counterintuitive and unlikely kind of voting. Ordinary Approval, and Condorcet, are not defection-resistant. That C/D problem can be dealt with in Approval, in the ways that I've described, and so I don't consider it a serious problem. (Though I do claim that it's serious enough to be called Approval's main problem, and something that must be reduced in order to meaningfully improve on Approval). Surely the C/D problem can likewise be similarly dealt with in Condorcet. My point is that Condorcet retains Approval's worst problem, and therefore is not a significant or meaningful improvement over Approval. 2. Condorcet has a serious strategy problem that Approval doesn't have: FBC failure. I've said much about why that's important for our public political elections, and so I won't repeat that here. Condorcet is unsuitable and unsatisfactory for public elections, due to its FBC-Failure. 3. Let me just add that (I know I've recently said this) ITC avoids both of those criticisms: It passes FBC, and it is defection-resistant. B. Answer to the Condorcetists' agonizing about Approval stragtegy: I can't say "I feel your pain", because I must admit that I don't. Condorcetists and IRVists agonize about the dilemma of "Should I approve my 2nd choice???". I've recently posted, several times, suggested Approval strategies. Different approaches to Approval strategy, depending on 1) Whether there are unacceptable candidates who could win; and 2) What facts you have information about, or have a feel for. Apparently the Condorcetists and IRVists haven't read that, or heard about Approval strategies. So let me inform them now: There are easy and natural ways to choose whether or not to approve your 2nd choice (and any and every other candidate). Another thing that would help the agonizing Condorcetists and IRVists would be to actually try out Approval, and maybe Condorcet and IRV too, in actual voting, in staw-polls. We've done that much on EM. It was for that purpose that I proposed a poll, a few months ago, on EM. You didn't want to try using the methods in actual voting. Therefore, if you're a Condorcetist or an IRVist who wrings his hands about what it's like to vote in Approval, then I would politely point out to you that you don't know what it's like to vote in Approval. Or Condorcet or IRV. If you want to find out what it's like to vote in those methods, you might want to try it. If you don't want to, that's your choice. But then, don't tell us what it's like to vote in Approval. Mike Ossipoff. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jamson: Answers and declaration
After posting yesterday, I realized that the credentials are relevant to the declaration-signing, rather than to the answers for Democracy Chronicles. It [the declaration] recommends 4 methods. If for some reason you don't want to just read it, [endquote] I have no objection to reading it. In fact, I've been meaning to read it again. Thanks for the additional link, above. You continued: here's my summary: Approval Range or Score Voting Majority Judgement (median point totals) You missed Condorcet (does not specify which form) [endquote] Yes, I did, but I included Condorcet in my 2nd answers posting, the one for which I used the correct subject-line. You added: It also mentions 2 others: SODA (simple optionally delegated Approval) In the declaration, SODA is mentioned as "too soon to recommend but merits further study". The declaration mentions both advantages and disadvantages of IRV, and says that there are both signers who support and those who oppose the system. [endquote] Right, I remember that IRV was mentioned with a lower status than the others. I didn't remember that SODA wasn't recommended along with Approval, Range, and Median Totals (Majority-Judgement). I like it that the recommendations for public elections don't include the flagrantly FBC-failing IRV. As for SODA, I can understand their hesitation to recommend something new, and also very different, though I'm sure that SODA would be a fine enhancement option for Approval. I'm entirely pleased with the declaration's recommendations. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Credentials
I read that, if I might have any credentials, for the purpose of my Democracy Chronicles answers, then I should post them here: I'm a longtime participant in this election-methods mailing list. I was a founding member of this election-methods mailing list. In fact, it was I who first proposed the "Single-Winner-Committee" that was the basis for this election-methods mailing list. I can't say what someone else might have proposed sooner somewhere else, but, so far as I'm personally aware, I was the original proponent and advocate of Condorcet(wv). That's the winning-votes variety of Condorcet, in which the strength of a pairwise defeat is measured by the number of voters ranking the defeater over the defeated, for that pairwise defeat. I pointed out some strategic advantages of this form of Condorcet. (But I no longer consider Condorcet to be a good proposal for public elections, due to its FBC failure. However, it's a fine method for electorates, such as some committees, etc., that don't have the excessive timidity and over-compromise-proneness of our public-elections electorate.) I've been a longtime advocate of Approval, and I now consider it my favorite method, and unquestionably by far the best public proposal for voting-system reform. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Democracy Chronicles, answers to interview questions
(I'm re-posting this with the correct subject-line) Question 1. Your name and the city and country you work in. I answer: Miami, Florida, U.S. (originally California) Question 2. What is your Company or Organization? I answer: No company or organization, though I've been a regular participant at the Election Methods mailing list, at electowiki. Question 3. Any contact info you wish to give to be published with article for readers (for example your email or website.) I answer postings at the elecion-methods mailing list. The mailing list probably makes its participants' e-mail addresses available. Question 4. If you have signed the Declaration, is there any additional information, beyond what's in your signature, that you feel is important to mention? Question 5. If you have not signed the Declaration, why? My answer to questions 4 and 5: The only reason why I haven't yet signed the declaration is because I'd assumed that it was only for celebrities, dignitaries, academic authorities or other officially recognized authorities. If anyone can sign the declaration, then I intend to sign it as soon as possible. I thoroughly agree with the declaration's main statement: The statement that the currently-used Plurality voting system is either the worst, or nearly the worst possible voting system. It's effectively a points system that (inexplicably) only allows people to give a point to one candidate--forcing millions of voters to give it all away to an un-liked "lesser-evil", giving eachother the false impression that they like that lesser-evil better than their actual favorite(s). That will never happen with Approval. I also thoroughly support the declaration's favorable mention of the six methods that it lists. Condorcet and IRV would be fine methods if voters didn't have their serious tendency to over-compromise, burying their favorite to help a lesser-evil. That voter-attribute makes it necessary for a method to meet FBC, the Favorite Betrayal Criterion, guaranteeing that no one will ever have any incentive to vote someone over their favorite. IRV's FBC failure is blatant and extreme. Condorcet's is more subtle. But both fail. Given the existing electorate, neither method is satisfactory. Of the other four recommended methods, three effectively amount to Approval, my favorite method. The remaining method is an enhancement of Approval. Question 6. Briefly explain what characteristics you think are most important for a voting method to have? My answer: The worst problem of Plurality is that it causes voters to abandon their favorite(s) and vote someone less-liked over their favorite(s). I claim that a method should never give anyone incentive or reason to vote someone else over their favorite. That requirement is called the "Favorite-Betrayal-Criterion" (FBC). One could also regard FBC as standing for "Favorite-Burial-Criterion". Approval meets FBC. In fact, of the 5 methods mentioned in the recommendation, they all meet FBC, with the sole exception of IRV. FBC is the essential necessary criterion for a voting system. Question 7. What do you think is the most important election reform needed where you live (either locally or nationally)? Why is this reform important? My answer: Approval Voting. We need it nationally. Approval doesn't violate 1-person-1-vote, because every voter can give to each candidate an "Approved" or a "Not-Approved" rating. Marking a candidate's name on the ballot gives to him/her an "Approved" rating. The candidate approved by the most people wins. People who now vote for a lesser-evil would be able to approve him/her, but could and would also approve everyone whom they like better, including their favorite. The result: The winner would be someone more genuinely liked than the unliked lesser-evils who win now. People who now vote their favorite would be free to approve only him/her in Approval. Question 8. What is your opinion on other aspects of election reform such as reforming money's role in politics or redistricting (particularly in the US but very interested as well concerning election reforms internationally)? My answer: Approval does much to counteract the effect of contribution-bought advertising, when the election-results show how liked the candidates really are. The media and the advertising buyers would no longer be able to deceive voters about that. But I suggest that, ideally, all candidates and parties should receive media exposure, including airtime, etc., in proportion to their popularity, as measured by signatures or vote-totals. The media-share of the now-under-advertised candidates would of course start out small, but it would begin increasing, even with a small share of media time. It would soon reach its rightful equilibrium value, as people started hearing other
[EM] Corrected answers posting (Mike Ossipoff)
(Sorry, I neglected to answer question #6. I include #6 in this post) Question 1. Your name and the city and country you work in. I answer: Miami, Florida, U.S. (originally California) Question 2. What is your Company or Organization? I answer: No company or organization, though I've been a regular participant at the Election Methods mailing list, at electowiki. Question 3. Any contact info you wish to give to be published with article for readers (for example your email or website.) I answer postings at the elecion-methods mailing list. The mailing list probably makes its participants' e-mail addresses available. Question 4. If you have signed the Declaration, is there any additional information, beyond what's in your signature, that you feel is important to mention? Question 5. If you have not signed the Declaration, why? My answer to questions 4 and 5: The only reason why I haven't yet signed the declaration is because I'd assumed that it was only for celebrities, dignitaries, academic authorities or other officially recognized authorities. If anyone can sign the declaration, then I intend to sign it as soon as possible. I thoroughly agree with the declaration's main statement: The statement that the currently-used Plurality voting system is either the worst, or nearly the worst possible voting system. It's effectively a points system that (inexplicably) only allows people to give a point to one candidate--forcing millions of voters to give it all away to an un-liked "lesser-evil", giving eachother the false impression that they like that lesser-evil better than their actual favorite(s). That will never happen with Approval. I also thoroughly support the declaration's favorable mention of the five methods that it lists. Though I don't consider IRV to be a good idea, due to voters' seriouls tendency to overcompromise, it would be an alright method were it not for that problem. Of the other four recommended methods, three effectively amount to Approval, my favorite method. The remaining method is an enhancement of Approval. Question 6. Briefly explain what characteristics you think are most important for a voting method to have? My answer: The worst problem of Plurality is that it causes voters to abandon their favorite(s) and vote someone less-liked over their favorite(s). I claim that a method should never give anyone incentive or reason to vote someone else over their favorite. That requirement is called the "Favorite-Betrayal-Criterion" (FBC). One could also regard FBC as standing for "Favorite-Burial-Criterion". Approval meets FBC. In fact, of the 5 methods mentioned in the recommendation, they all meet FBC, with the sole exception of IRV. FBC is the essential necessary criterion for a voting system. Question 7. What do you think is the most important election reform needed where you live (either locally or nationally)? Why is this reform important? My answer: Approval Voting. We need it nationally. Approval doesn't violate 1-person-1-vote, because every voter can give to each candidate an "Approved" or a "Not-Approved" rating. Marking a candidate's name on the ballot gives to him/her an "Approved" rating. The candidate approved by the most people wins. People who now vote for a lesser-evil would be able to approve him/her, but could and would also approve everyone whom they like better, including their favorite. The result: The winner would be someone more genuinely liked than the unliked lesser-evils who win now. People who now vote their favorite would be free to approve only him/her in Approval. Question 8. What is your opinion on other aspects of election reform such as reforming money's role in politics or redistricting (particularly in the US but very interested as well concerning election reforms internationally)? My answer: Approval do much to counteract the effect of contribution-bought advertising, when the election-results show how liked the candidates really are. The media and the advertising buyers would no longer be able to deceive voters about that. But I suggest that, ideally, all candidates and parties should receive media exposure, including airtime, etc., in proportion to their popularity, as measured by signatures or vote-totals. The media-share of the now-under-advertised candidates would of course start out small, but it would begin increasing, even with a small share of media time. It would soon reach its rightful equilibrium value, as people started hearing other opinions and proposals, for the first time. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] My answers to the questions (Mike Ossipoff)
Question 1. Your name and the city and country you work in. I answer: Miami, Florida, U.S. (originally California) Question 2. What is your Company or Organization? I answer: No company or organization, though I've been a regular participant at the Election Methods mailing list, at electowiki. Question 3. Any contact info you wish to give to be published with article for readers (for example your email or website.) I answer postings at the elecion-methods mailing list. The mailing list probably makes its participants' e-mail addresses available. Question 4. If you have signed the Declaration, is there any additional information, beyond what's in your signature, that you feel is important to mention? Question 5. If you have not signed the Declaration, why? My answer to questions 4 and 5: The only reason why I haven't yet signed the declaration is because I'd assumed that it was only for celebrities, dignitaries, academic authorities or other officially recognized authorities. If anyone can sign the declaration, then I intend to sign it as soon as possible. I thoroughly agree with the declaration's main statement: The statement that the currently-used Plurality voting system is either the worst, or nearly the worst possible voting system. It's effectively a points system that (inexplicably) only allows people to give a point to one candidate--forcing millions of voters to give it all away to an un-liked "lesser-evil", giving eachother the false impression that they like that lesser-evil better than their actual favorite(s). That will never happen with Approval. I also thoroughly support the declaration's favorable mention of the five methods that it lists. Though I don't consider IRV to be a good idea, due to voters' seriouls tendency to overcompromise, it would be an alright method were it not for that problem. Of the other four recommended methods, three effectively amount to Approval, my favorite method. The remaining method is an enhancement of Approval. Question 6. Briefly explain what characteristics you think are most important for a voting method to have? Question 7. What do you think is the most important election reform needed where you live (either locally or nationally)? Why is this reform important? My answer: Approval Voting. We need it nationally. Approval doesn't violate 1-person-1-vote, because every voter can give to each candidate an "Approved" or a "Not-Approved" rating. Marking a candidate's name on the ballot gives to him/her an "Approved" rating. The candidate approved by the most people wins. People who now vote for a lesser-evil would be able to approve him/her, but could and would also approve everyone whom they like better, including their favorite. The result: The winner would be someone more genuinely liked than the unliked lesser-evils who win now. People who now vote their favorite would be free to approve only him/her in Approval. Question 8. What is your opinion on other aspects of election reform such as reforming money's role in politics or redistricting (particularly in the US but very interested as well concerning election reforms internationally)? My answer: Approval do much to counteract the effect of contribution-bought advertising, when the election-results show how liked the candidates really are. The media and the advertising buyers would no longer be able to deceive voters about that. But I suggest that, ideally, all candidates and parties should receive media exposure, including airtime, etc., in proportion to their popularity, as measured by signatures or vote-totals. The media-share of the now-under-advertised candidates would of course start out small, but it would begin increasing, even with a small share of media time. It would soon reach its rightful equilibrium value, as people started hearing other opinions and proposals, for the first time. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Who can sign the declaration?
The only reason why I haven't signed the declaration is because I've assumed that it's only for celebrities, dignitaries and offically-annointed authorities. is that so? If anyone can sign the declaration, then I'd like to. So, my 2nd question in this post is: If anyone can sign the declaration, then how does one sign it. Where does one e-mail to, or what website does one go to? The declaration, as I remember, favorably mentions or recommends 5 methods (with the understanding that there could be other good ones): Approval Range or Score Voting Majority Judgement (median point totals) SODA (simple optionally delegated Approval) IRV The 1st four of those really effectively amount to Approval, differently-implemented, or with an enhancement. IRV would be a perfectly ok method if voters weren't so timid and giveaway-resigned (but they are). So that set of recommendations is a quite good one, and I thoroughly support the declaration. So, can just anyone sign it, without being an officially-recognized authority, celebrity or dignitary? And, if so, how does one sign it? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Dave: Condorcet
e burial problem puts me off from Condorcet. But there will be tactical voting in Condorcet due to its FBC failure. Favorite-burial. A kind of tactical strategy that, quite obviously, can never be needed in Approval. However the necessary complexity is overstated above. Do need to count how many votes for each candidate as in Approval. Then what of the pairs? 00 - nothing if neither voted for. 01 or 10 - just count the one voted for in the later add. 11, but equal ranked - counting them both leaves a tie. 11, but unequal rank - adjust the loser while counting the ballot so that when the count is adjusted for the 11 the result will be correct. After counting all ballots, add each candidates vote count to each of that candidate's pairs. [endquote] I invite you to explain that to people when you propose Condorcet. Dave continued: Looking for winner. Look at any pair - the loser cannot be the CW so, with luck, N-1 comparisons will delete all the non-CWs. Cycles, etc. can complicate this a bit, but not enough to expect hundreds of compares for 20 candidates. [endquote] Yes, the labor of a Condorcet count might be somewhat reduced by judicious choices, as you describe above. Dave continued: Agreed that Approval is cheap enough to do for its small value. That does not stop something of more value being worth considering. [endquote] No, but Condorcet's complete novelty and its complexity make its acceptance and enactment very unlikely during the first half of this century. Condorcetists agonize about the strategy-need of Approval. I've described its strategy above in this reply, and have described it in more detail elsewhere. It isn't as difficult as some seem to think. Warren Smith has told why Approval will usually elect the sincere CW when there is one, given a few reasonable assumptions. Aside from that, Approval obviously elects the candidate to whom the most voters have given an approval. In an unacceptable/acceptable election, that's the candidate acceptable to the most people. Otherwise, if it's 0-info, it's the candidate above-mean for the most people. Otherwise, it's (as in the above cases too) the candidate who is better than expectation for the most people. As said, I've observed someone, in a Condorcet presidential poll, ranking all of the Democrat candidates above Nader, though she preferred Nader's policy proposals to those of the Democrats. Favorite-burial under Condorcet will be a fact. People will favorite-bury with Condorcet, but not with Approval. Earlier I suggested that Condorcet's alleged benefits won't count for much if it is never enacted, due to its complexity. Now I ask what good Condorcet's advantages will do when many voters are burying their favorites? How much will Condorcet's results mean then? > One other thing: I used to claim that burial strategy is well- > deterred in Condorcet. > But now I admit that I was only considering 3-candidate elections. > With more candidates > burial isn't well-deterred. If I can find a candidate who will be > sufficiently well-beaten, > then I and my faction can safely make hir soundly pair-beat the > sincere CW, without risk > of electing that candidate whom we're ranking over the sincere CW. Huh? If you do not risk your candidate getting elected you have no chance of more than annoying the CW. [endquote] I'm not saying that the burial-strategist doesn't risk the election of his own candidate. I'm saying that he doesn't risk the election of the loser whom he (and the rest of his faction) insincerely rank over the sincere CW. > ICT has some good protection against burial, because burial can only > work for a > candidate who is ranked #1 by more people than anyone else in the > cycle. ICT or ITC? [endquote] ICT. When I wrote "ITC" that was a typo. Your zillion titles are beyond understanding. [endquote] Kevin Venzke proposed a method which he named "ICA". That stands for "Improved Condorcet, with Approval". Chris Benham suggested that if, instead of completing improved Condorcet's by Approval, we instead do so by electing the most top-ranked member of the cycle, or other improved Condorcet winner-set, then the method will pass in the Approval bad example, and will be defection-resistant, as I've defined that term. Chris gave that method a rather long name, and a long set of initials. I called it "ICT", in keeping with Kevin's naming, and for the sake of simplicity. "Improved Condorcet" refers to a way of avoiding Condorcet's FBC failure. So ICT meets FBC, and is defection-resistant. It's a quite good method, and it would be great to have it enacted. But, as I said, it suffers from Condorcet's problem of complete novelty, and complexity, and the resulting above-described resulting enactment problem. And, by the way, Approval doesn't have the complete novelty that I've referred to in this post. It's a simple, direct and natural improvement on Plurality. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Correction for ABucklin2
It has occurred to me that, when, after the two deletions specified in my previous message and ABucklin2 definition, every remaining candidate has votes from a majority of the voters, the count can no longer be a matter of proceeding by Abucklin rules, which specify stopping as soon as someone gets a majority. So I suggest that, instead, when those two deletions have been done, every ballot that hasn't yet given a vote to a candidate currently possessing votes from a majority of the candidates, gives votes to all of the (undeleted) candidates above its Approval cutoff. Then the winner is the(un-deleted) candidate who has the most votes. So ABucklin2 balloting includes an Approval cutoff. So, my complete definition of ABucklin2: Same as Abucklin, except that: If, after any particular Bucklin vote-giving round, two or more candidates have votes from a majority of the voters, then: 1. Delete every candidate who doesn't have votes from a majority of the voters. 2. Delete every ballot that has given a vote to a candidate currently possessing votes from a majority of the voters. 3. Each undeleted ballot gives votes to the undeleted candidates above its Approval-cutoff. The candidate with the most votes wins. [end of ABucklin2 definition] I can't say for sure, at this point, if that's the best definition. But, unlike my previous definition, it makes sense. It's probably the best way to proceed in each voter's bests interest, and is most in the spirit of MTA2. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] ABucklin2--Unlimited-rankings generalization of MTA2.
ABucklin2: Same as ABucklin, except that: When any Bucklin vote-giving round results in 2 or more candidates having votes from a majority of the voters, then: 1. Delete from the ballots every candidate who doesn't have votes from a majority of the voters. 2. Delete every ballot that has given a vote to a candidate who has votes from a majority of the voters. 3. Procede as usual in Abucklin. As in ABucklin: 1. The ABucklin delay, when a ballot has several candidates at a rank position, is desirable, because it confers MMC compliance. 2. Conditionality, implemented as in AOC or GMAT or MMT, could be desirable because it confers defection-resistance. 3. The immediately-abovementioned two features #1 and #2 almost surely make the method handcount-infeasible. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] MTA2, better than MTA or MCA. Dave comment. 3-slot ICT. MTA2 strategy.
e rated candidate or trust hir voters. Otherwise, if you expect that it's more likely that a top-rated and a middle-rated candidate of yours will get top-majority, or if you like the middle rated candidate or distrust hir votes, then choose MCA. But, with MTA2, you needn't bother with such a choice. With a handcount, ABucklin would have to not use the delay that I've described here, because it makes too much count labor. Just as a matter of fact, I might add that, if automated counting were fraud-secure, the voter could choose for hirself whether s/he wants the delay to operate in hir ballot, if s/he uses the ABucklin option. Of course you might want to vote the same way in 3-slot RV. But it has more practical value in MTA2. MTA2 offers something genuinely (a little) more strategically varied and expressive than Approval. An opportunity to vote more expressively, and for that to have some practical meaning, more than it has in 3-slot RV. MTA2's provision could probably be somehow added to Chris's full-rankings generalization of MTA. MTA2 is probably the most deluxe method of its type that meets FBC and isn't conditional or defection-resistant. Of course MCA is 3-slot ABucklin. Though ICT is handcount infeasible, that probably isn't true of 3-slot ICT. It might be a good method. It would be worthwhile to compare its merits to those of MCA2. Mike Ossipoff Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Dave: Condorcet
Dave: You wrote: Which leaves me promoting Condorcet. It allows ranking but, unlike ABucklin or IRV, all that a voter ranks gets counted. Further, any voter able to match their desires to Plurality or Approval for a particular election, can vote by those rules and have them counted with the same power by Condorcet rules. [endquote] Several problems with Condorcet: 1. Any method at all more elaborate than Approval, and especially a method as different and elaborate as Condorcet is going to be much more suspect than Approval is, to the public. Opponents will be able to say, "We don't know enough about this voting system. It needs much study." Approval is unique among voting system reform proposals, in that it's so simple, and such a small modification of Plurality, that it's easy to show that it's an improvement on Plurality, and only an improvement. That's much more difficult for more complicated methods such as Condorcet. 2. For a handcount, Condorcet has much more count labor than does Approval. If there are N candidates, then there are N(N-1)/2 pairs of candidates. For each voter, a vote is counted among each pair of candidates. Now, in Approval, let's estimate that, on the average, a voter approves half of the candidates. N/2 approvals to be counted per voter. That means that Condorcet has (N-1) times more votes to be counted, as compared to Approval. Sure, the Condorcet handcount needn't take longer, if you hire more counters. But, for one thing, the count is equally more expensive, whether you hire more counters to work the same hours, or the same number of counters to work longer. Besides, the more count-work there is, the more opportunity and risk for count-fraud there is. 3. Condorcet fails FBC. Though it's unlikely, there are situations where you can only prevent a worse result by favorite-burial. No matter how rare those situations are, some, probably many, people will favorite-bury therefore, because , for many people, helping their "lesser-evil" is everything. With Approval, ABucklin, MCA, MTA, and their conditional versions, and also with ITC, it's possible to _guarantee_ that there can never be any reason to vote anyone over your favorite. Even if you only value reason #1, above, that alone is reason enough to only propose what is proposable, enactable _now_. Approval. One other thing: I used to claim that burial strategy is well-deterred in Condorcet. But now I admit that I was only considering 3-candidate elections. With more candidates burial isn't well-deterred. If I can find a candidate who will be sufficiently well-beaten, then I and my faction can safely make hir soundly pair-beat the sincere CW, without risk of electing that candidate whom we're ranking over the sincere CW. ICT has some good protection against burial, because burial can only work for a candidate who is ranked #1 by more people than anyone else in the cycle. ICT would be a better proposal than Condorcet, since it also meets FBC and CD (it's defection-resistant, unlike Condorcet). But ICT share's Condorcet's problems #1 snd #2, above. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Dave: Improvement on Approval
Dave: On Mar 24, 2012, at 3:49 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: Approval can't be improved upon, other than questionably and doubtfully. You wrote: This is a bit much, considering that there are many competing methods that offer various worthy capabilities. Looking at the ABucklin that you mention: Assuming that I wish to elect A, but want to have B considered ONLY if I cannot get A elected: . I cannot say this with Approval, where I must give equal approval to every candidate I approve. . With ABucklin I can give B a lower rank than I give A, to be considered only if A's rank does not decide on a winner. [endquote] Yes, and I don't deny that Abucklin's improvement can be desirable. In fact, if our voting system now were Approval with the options that I've been describing, I probably would use the MTA option, or, better, the MTAOC* option. The only reason why I wouldn't use ABucklin or AOCBucklin is because there wouldn't, for me, be many levels of candidate-merit. Under different circumstances, I might use ABucklin or AOCBucklin. *(We've been talking about how the conditional methods have a ridiculous secondary defection strategy. I'd use the MTAOC option anyway, because I don't think that people would use that ridiculous, counter-intuitive, and potentially disastrous defection strategy. So, while 1st-level defection is discouraged, there might well not be any 2nd level defection. Let me just add that, because I only suggest AOC and MTAOC, etc., as _options_, the appearance of complexity of the conditionality-implementation software code isn't an acceptance problem, because everyone will know that s/he needn't use it. An _option_ for managing one's Approval voting power isn't a problem. Anyone's voting power is his/her own, and if s/he chooses a complicated way of managing it, that isn't anyone else's problem.) It isn't that Approval can't be improved on at all. I'm just saying that voting system reform advocates often have (in my perception) an exaggerated impression of _how much_ Approval can be improved on. For instance, though I like ABucklin, and it's one of my favorites, it isn't perfect. Improvements and refinements of Approval don't bring perfection. Maybe you rank one of the acceptable candidates in 3rd place, because you want to distinguish between the merit of the various acceptable candidates. But then, in the count, someone gets a majority when ballots give to their 2nd choices. A candidate unacceptable to you wins because you ranked that acceptable candidate in 3rd place. Or maybe the opposite could happen: You give 2nd place rankiing to B, and 1st place ranking to A. No one gets a 1st place majority, and so all the ballots, including yours, give to their 2nd choice. B then gets a majority and wins. But A would have gotten a majority in the next round. Or maybe A and B both got a 2nd rank majority, but B got a bigger majority than A did. A would have won if you hadn't ranked B. Of course that can happen in Approval, and, in fact, of course ABucklin makes it less likely. My point is merely that it's still possible. Yes, I know that ABucklin offers something that Approval doesn't offer. I'm just saying that it doesn't _always_ prevent accidentally giving the election away to a 2nd choice. And you can regret not voting Approval-style. Probably some improvement--I'd use the multi-level MTA or MTAOC--but not the perfect improvement that some expect. And, whether in Approval with options, or in Abucklin, the person voting an Approval ballot has simpler strategy (though he/she has to of course be willing to forgo the multi-level nature of ABucklin or MTA). Of course ABucklin adds MMC compliance, and I value that. Bottom-line: Improvement, yes. Perfect or complete improvement, no. I suggest offering improvements, such as the options of AOC, ABucklin, AOCBucklin, MTA, MTAOC, etc., & maybe delegation, sometime after the enactment of Approval. Especially if there's considerable talk about wanting something fancier than ordinary Approval. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] How much does ABucklin improve on Approval?
I like ABucklin (an easier name by which to refer to ER-Bucklin, as defined in the electowiki), because, when done right, it meets the Mutual Majority Criterion (MMC), and, thereby, even gives co-operation-defection protection under certain conditions (lots of parties; the two parties in question don't add up to a majority). In ABucklin, maybe there won't be a 1st-choice majority, an immediate initial majority. But, even if not, then there is obviously a very good chance that the next stage, wherein ballots give to their next choice, will result in a majority. If so, then, if you've ranked someone below 2nd choice, then you haven't helped hir. S/he might lose, where s/he would have won, had you ranked hir higher. There's good strategic reason to rank important compromises at least in 1st or 2nd place. So, ABucklin's unlimited number of rank positions might not really be a good idea to use. ABucklin retains the unmatched simple and clear strategies of Approval. If it's an option in an Approval election, the Approval strategies are still valid if you're voting an ordinary Approval ballot. If the method is ABucklin, then the Approval strategies are valid for you if you vote Approval, by only using ABucklin's top rank position. But one thing that is lost if Approval isn't used is Approval's unique optimization: No matter what kind of election it is, and no matter whether or not it's 0-info, Approval maximizes the number of voters who are pleasantly surprised by the outcome. The use of options for other ways of voting would lose that optimization. And it (obviously) elects the candidate marked as approved by the most voters. That counts for a lot, if public approval and satisfaction with the govt matters. Here's something that can be said for ABucklin: Under the condtions outlined above, ABucklin gives co-operation/defection protection. But, because that's only under specified conditions, that doesn't change the conclusion that I stated earlier: Approval can't be improved upon, other than questionably and doubtfully. (Jameson: I'm referring to a comparison of Approval with other ballots-only methods. Of course delegation is one of several options that can be offered in an Approval election. Though SODA's FBC violation isn't the worst kind, it still represents a departure from full, ideal compliance with FBC. Tolerable, but not complete. I have no objection to adding the delegation option to an Approval election. I consider it a valid and maybe desirable option, as are ABucklin, MTA and MCA. As I've said, objections would be difficult to oppose (I don't oppose the above-named options. But "SODA" means Approval with the delegation option, and not any other options, as I understand the definition of SODA. The delegation option could be offered, but can you really argue that the ABucklin option shouldn't be allowed? Or MTA or MCA?) Mike Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] How does one post an answer on Quora?
I tried to post an answer to the question (about how the govt's low approval rating can be improved), but my answer appeared only as a sort of comment, not like the other answers. And my comment was way, way down in the list, where it will never be noticed. How does a person post an answer, one that will be posted at the top of the list, as I assume that regular answers are posted? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kristofer: Democrat Tribal Plot
Kristofer: You wrote: Yes, that could work for Democrats and those who don't want to vote for the lesser evil. The poll does seem to have a rather large number of people who go "this is a liberal plot to swindle the election from us", though. and the "tribalist counting coup" guys who are going "okay, I know Approval is a Democrat plot [endquote] I think that the best answer to that "Democrat plot" argument is to say: "Republicans have lost elections because of non-Republican conservative spoilers. Only you can say whether you consider that important, and a reason for you to support Approval. I can't speak to that issue. Of course you're welcome to support Approval if the answer is yes. "What I can tell you is that many, many Democrat voters report that they're holding their nose to vote for a "lesser-of-2-evils", whom they don't really like or want. There are a lot of such people. If they, and only they, want to be able to approve the candidates whom they like better than their distasteful compromise, including their favorites, and if they therefore support Approval, that will be enough. "No, I'm not favoring the Democrat voters. I'm just frankly stating that they're likely to be Approval's best customers." Approval will benefit those who suffer the worst from Plurality's faults. If that's the Democrat voters, then the Republicans won't like Approval. That can't be helped. As for the 0-info angry-noises posts at SodaHead, with their incoherent Approval opposition, one possibility would be to ignore them. The other would be to calmly and politely answer their objections as if those objections were seriously-meant. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Dave: Approval-objection answers
Dave: You wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 4:09 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: > On 03/22/2012 07:57 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: >> There are plenty of voters who report having to "hold their nose" and >> vote only for someone they don't like. They'd all like to be able to >> vote for better candidates to, including their favorites. Even if one >> only counts the Democrat voters who say that they're strategically >> forced >> to vote only for someone they don't really like, amounts to a lot of >> people who'd see the improvement brought by Approval. If there is no one acceptable to vote for, the voters have not done their job: . Could happen occasionally such as failures in doing nominations. Write-ins can help recover for this. [endquote] There could be elections in which there's no one acceptable to vote for, but, as you said, even then, there should be write-ins. But, even with the difficulty of getting non-big-2 parties on the ballot, and especially after the way Approval will open things up, there will usually be someone reasonably acceptable on the ballot. Even now, ballots often have a wide variety of candidates and parties. You continued: "strategically forced" should not be doable for how a particular voter voted [endquote] It's doable because many voters are so resigned and cowed that it doesn't take much to force them to do giveaway compromise strategy, without any reliable information to justify that strategy. I refer to the progressive people who think they strategically need to vote for the Democrat. You continued: (but no one voted for the supposedly forced choice [endquote] Regrettably, millions vote for that "choice", because it's billed as one of "the two choices". You continued: - why force such a hated choice? [endquote] To keep voters from voting for someone whom they genuinely prefer. What the public, including the voters, would like isn't the same as what is most profitable to those who own the media that tell us about "the two choices". Everyone believes that only they have the preferences that they have, because that's how it looks in the media. Notice that all politicians routinely promise change. That's because they know that the public wants change. So the politicians are adamant about change. They're mad as hell and they want to do something about it, and give us change. Amazingly, that pretense continues to reliably work, every time. You continued: OMOV may inspire some - many of us have to argue against it having value because we back, as better, methods this thought argues about - such as Condorcet, Score, and even IRV. [endquote] OMOV is easily answered by pointing out that Approval let's everyone rate each candidate as approved or unapproved. You continued: Part of the chicken dilemma difficulty is that it depends on what some voters will do without any compulsion, and what others will do after making promises to cooperate [endquote] The chicken dilemma is very difficult to get rid of. I don't know of anyone proposing a FBC-complying method that really gets rid of that problem. The methods that I call "defection-resistant" do much to alleviate that problem, but don't eliminate it. They just push it to a secondary level, where defection strategy is more complicated and counterintuitive, and therefore less likely to be used. A party whose members might defect by not support your party in Approval isn't likely to engage in the Machiavellianly bizarre strategy of conditionally approving Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Nazis in order to gain some mutual conditional approvals. Not if ethical reputation counts for anything. I've said that methods that don't get rid of that problem don't significantly improve on ordinary Approval. All that can be said for the defection-resistant methods is that they might improve a little on Approval, in a way. In other words, the improvement is questionable at best. And, for most methods trying to improve on Approval, the improvement is outright illusory. I'd say that Approval can't be improved on, other than questionably or doubtfully. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Approval strategy introduction improvement
When I suggested things to say about Approval strategy yesterday, I should have given different emphasis: 1. Approval strategy is simpler than that of any other voting system. It's much simpler than Plurality strategy. Plurality strategy is a horrendously complicated and difficult guessing-game. 2. In Approval, just vote for your favorite, and also for whomever you think you likely need as a compromise. In Plurality, you now vote for whom you think you need as a compromise. Do so in Approval too, by giving them an approval--but now you can also approve everyone better as well, including your favorite. Note that if you don't know exactly which candidate you need for compromise, or which one the other voters like you will vote for, you can approve a whole set of candidates for compromise, &/or because they're favorites. 3. What was said above is sufficient, but, if you want more detail regarding how far to compromise (detail that would be pretty much impossible to feasibly have in Plurality), then consider the _optional_ simple strategy suggestions listed below. You wouldn't use them all. If you use one, you'd use only one of them--the one appropriate for the information or feel that you have about the election. Again, note that this doesn't amount to a complication added by Approval voting. What was said in paragraphs 1 and 2 corresponds to, and replaces, what you now do in Plurality. The interesting but simple strategies below are optional strategies for guiding your choice of how far you compromise. The only reason you don't hear about such strategy suggestions for Plurality is that they'd be humungously , prohibitively, complicated for Plurality. [Then would be listed the Approval strategy suggestions that I listed yesterday] Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kristofer: The Approval poll
ult do you think Approval will have that Plurality doesn't have?" When millions of people report having to hold their nose and vote only for someone whom they don't like, with no mention or support for anyone better, in order to defeat someone worse, something is very wrong with the voting system. One shouldn't expect a healthy society, with such a sick voting system. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Lomax: Approval
then compare it to Plurality strategy. You only use one of those strategies, depending on what your information or feeling is. Approval's strategy is interesting, not prohibitively difficult like that of Plurality. Approval's strategy is the easiest there is, in comparison to other methods. In principle, why shouldn't voters be allowed to mark candidates "acceptable"? The voters who are holding their nose and voting for someone whom they don't like or want--They're the ones who will like Approval. There are millions of such voters. Some will read and like these arguments for Approval. Tell them that, with Approval, for the first time everyone will be able to support their favorite. No more favorite burial. Plurality forces millions of voters to lie about which candidate they like best, and not express what they want. How healthy for society can that be? Mike Ossipoff Approval is simply Count All the Votes. Years ago, I started calling this a "no-brainer." If a voter wants to add multiple approvals, why not count them? I see no reason that survives examination, not in a deterministic election, non-ranked Approval. There are issues when more than one candidate is being elected, I'm not going there at this point. Approval-at-Large isn't a great method ... but still better than Plurality-at-Large. The habit of vote-for-one came from deliberative process and standard elections under Robert's Rules, where a winner was required to gain a majority, and the election was *repeated* if nobody did. So the necessary compromise process took place outside the polling itself. Approval could make this more efficient, that's all (and, historically, approval was used this way for the election of popes, where a two-thirds majority was required to approve the election.) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson: Sure, I basically agree about conditional methods
Jameson: You wrote: The basic chicken dilemma is: 35 A>B 25 B>A 40 C This is, indeed, resolved by AOC. But what about: 39 A 39 B 22 C If C voters AOC-approve A and B, then A and B are in a chicken-like position. Whichever one of them gives C more AOC approvals will win; but if they both give 20 or more, then C wins. [endquote] Something similar could happen in the ABE that I've been using too (the 27,24,49 example), as you pointed out later in your posting. You continued: I think that C winning in the normal chicken dilemma is at least a bit justifiable. C winning in this upside-down scenario is totally wrong. [endquote] Ok, it gets ridiculous, doesn't it. And complicated. But that's what I consider an _advantage_ of the conditional methods. The chicken dilemma, in ordinary Approval (and other non-defection-resistant methods) I refer to as the primary C/D problem. The chicken dilemma that remains in the defection resistant methods, when people continue to defect, in the new situation, I refer to as a secondary C/D problem. Secondary C/D problems are so ridiculous and complicated that I don't think that people will be likely to vote in that way. Approval's primary C/D problem only requires the natural and instinctive strategy of not assisting a rival. That will likely happen. The secondary C/D problem of AOC, and the other conditional methods, requires voting that is so ridiculous, complicated, counter-intuitive and unnatural, that it will happen a lot less. So, that's why I say that the conditional methods complicate and alleviate the C/D problem. Ridiculous defection strategies? Sure. Complicated defection strategies? Sure. Less appealing defection strategies too. I readily admit that I, too, don't like the ridiculous and complicated nature of that secondary C/D problem. But it might be better than the primary C/D problem. ...or maybe not. After all, in a posting a few days ago, I listed five ways that Approval's primary C/D problem can be dealt with in Approval. So it isn't a hopeless irremediable problem. I don't know if any such solutions exist for AOC's secondary C/D problem. So, it may well be better to stick with plain ordinary Approval and ABucklin (and MTA & MTA), and their solvable primary C/D problem. Thanks for the persistance that brought the secondary C/D problem to my attention. I'm inclined now to just prefer ordinary Approval. Maybe ABucklin &/or MTA or MCA as options in the Approval election. Especially if people demand more than ordinary Approval. Speaking for myself, I'd be content if the method were ordinary Approval, without the other voting options. I'd also have no objection to the options either. Certainly ordinary Approval should be the first proposal. And if options are not later added to it, and ordinary Approval remains the method in use, that would be fine. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Some Lomax statements that I hadn't gotten to yet
t posting on this topic, I described the process in detail. It isn't necessary to poll in every community. There might not be that many poll volunteers. I discussed how to aggregate their results. I made that suggestion in a posting that I posted soon after returning to this mailing list in October or November of 2011. The posting was clearly labeled in its subject-line. What count method should be used? I suggest that the strategy problems existing in actual elections could also mess up the results of a Plurality-strategy-informing poll. For that reason, I suggest ICT as the method for counting the rankings. Though I like MMPO2 and MDDTR, their burial strategy could prevent the method from finding the sincere CW. I feel that ICT is the method that is sufficiently strategy resistant, and likely to find a sincere CW. Of course ICT would also be one of the best choices for the official voting system for elections. So would Approval. So would Approval with the various options that I've been discussing. Approval, and Approval with options, has the tremendous advantage that people wouldn't be asked to accept a relatively complicated rank-count, and take our word for it that it won't have some problem that makes it worse than Plurality. Those options include ABucklin, and its various conditional versions too. One nice thing about Approval is that it's so simple that no "study" is needed. Nor is it necessary to test it in local municipal elections, to determine that it improves on Pluralilty. And one nice thing about options is that no one can really object to them. Who could object to the ABucklin option in an Approval election--an option by which a voter could opt to delay or refuse some of hir approvals? But start by proposing only plain ordinary Approval. Anyway, returning to the Plurality-strategy-informing poll: It will probably take a long time to get another voting system. Voting system reform advocates, including the people at EM, mostly want to argue about which relatively complicated method is the ideal best. Many won't even consider anything other than their own complicated favorite as worthy of proposing. That isn't very promising for progress. So it's a safe guess that it will be several generations before there is any actual voting system reform. If ever. But, in the meantime, the situation isn't hopeless: We can at least make good use of the method that we already have (Plurality), as I described above. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Lomax reply, 3/17/12
ority Criterion (MMC). I don't know who first suggested it. Maybe Chris Benham? I don't know. What criterion compliance do you think is lost due to the delay? >If you'd ranked those candidates in consecutive rank positions, then >one of them would get your vote in round N. >The 2nd would get a vote in round N+1and the 5th would get your >vote in round N+4. So only in round N+5 >would your ballot then give to your next candidate. I could probably actually understand this if I suspected it were worthwhile! [endquote] Whether you consider it worthwhile depends on whether you consider MMC worthwhile. And that depends on whether you value majority rule. To each their own, of course. You wrote: This is utterly damaging to social utility, as I see it. [endquote] That statement needs support. How does it damage SU, when we protect mutual majorities? I see Bucklin as practically using a Range ballot, with an analytical method that slides down the approval cutoff until there is a majority. If voters vote sincerely, it's obvious that messing with the counting messes with the basic principle. [endquote] That depends on what you think the basic principle is. If you agree that MMC is an important goal of Bucklin, then the delay prevents that goal to be messed with. You wrote: (social utility optimization can violate the majority criterion). [endquote] Sure, if you have _sincere_ RV ballots, then RV will hopefully give better SU than majoritarian methods. But we aren't comparing Bucklin to sincerely-voted RV. In fact there will be no sincerely-voted RV. And, absent that, hurting majority rule will lower, not raise, SU. You wrote: But, you should know, I dislike overcoming a majority preference without the voters being explicity asked if it's okay! [endquote] Then don't take away majority rule by denying the delay that preserves MMC compliance. >As I said, that preserves Mutual-Majority-Criterion compliance, but >it greatly increases the labor of a handcount, >almost surely making handcount infeasible. And it also makes the voters dizzy when they try to understand the effect of their vote [endquote] That's one reason why I suggest that the first proposal should be ordinary Approval. Save the more complicated methods for later. Don't propose methods that can't feasibly be handcounted. This completes my reply to this posting of yours. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Lomax reply, 3/16/12
Abd: Regarding how AOC would look on the ballots, and how understandable it would be, I'd like to remind you that I don't suggest AOC as a first proposal. I suggest ordinary Approval. AOC could be later added as an option. Various other options could be added too, maybe later, maybe together. That question needn't be dealt with now. The AOC option would be offered only if the C/D problem is already perceived. Voters wouldn't be new to it when entering the voting booth, though there should be information there about it. And remember that often, probably usually, a voter wouldn't need conditional appovals. Sometimes some people would prefer to give some one or more candidate(s) a conditional approval. It's useful to speak of primary and secondary C/D problems. Primary is the kind that a not defection-resistant method has. The kind wherein defection consists of not supporting the other candidate. Defection-resistant methods still retain a C/D problem of another kind. With defection-resistant rank methods, that consists of burial. With the conditional methods, it consists of giving strategic insincere conditional support to candidates that the voter wouldn't otherwise give any support to. I call that latter, 2nd-level kind of C/D problem, the kind retained by defection-resistant methods, "Secondary C/D problem". I was mistaken to say that the conditional methods' secondary C/D problem requires burial. But the conditional methods complicate and alleviate the C/D problem--their secondary C/D problem. Don't judge the conditional methods because they don't entirely get rid of C/D. IRV does, but at too high a cost for public elections. I don't know of any FBC-complying method that doesn't have at least a secondary C/D problem. You were concerned about AOC's effect on SU. But, when AOC helps elect A, in the Approval bad-example (ABE), it's electing the sincere CW when there is one. Electing the sincere CW doesn't always maximize SU, but, in general, it typically improves SU. Now to reply to a few parts of your posting that I didn't get to yesterday. There won't be time to more than start on this continued reply. You asked how Bucklin handles the C/D problem. It doesn't. AOCBucklin does. You mention runoffs. Runoffs can bring problems. Runoff doesn't bring FBC compliance to methods that don't have it. Maybe could lose it in some methods that do. Runoffs about double the cost of an election. Kevin pointed out why Approval-Runoff wouldn't be a very good proposal. Much better just to propose the much more inexpensively implemented ordinary Approval. You say that most people don't regard the Democrats as I do. I reply that, with the enaction of Approval, the Democrats' illusory status, as favorite to a significant number will evaporate. Mike Ossipoff[ author ] Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Lomax reply, 3/15/12
At 03:53 PM 3/14/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: Abd: Remember that I don't suggest AOC as a first proposal. I suggest only plain Approval as a first proposal. People are debating about the ideally best complicated methods. Instead, we should just, for now, be working to enact Approval. The non-hand-countable methods can wait. The difficultly-described methods can wait too. > >I admit that that is a mess--when my > >optional-conditionality-by-mutuality algorithm definition > >is in three widely-separated postings. At least I should re-post the > >corrected pseudocode in > >one posting. Should have already done that before now. Will within > a few days. > >While there may be value for this in terms of working on improved >methods, as to theory, as to possible public implementations, not >method that is so complex to explain has a prayer of seeing >application outside of specialized societies where they are willing >to tolerate that. Show someone the Approval bad-example, and ask them if they'd like to be able to give an approval that is conditional upon reciprocity. If they were an A voter, would they like to give to B an approval that doesn't count unless the B voters approve A as much as vice-versa? ...doesn't count unless the B voters give to A as many approvals as they get from the A voters? How complicated is that? GMAT and MMT are defined in posts that have those names in their subject lines. In the subject line, MMT is written out as Mutual-Majority-Top. GMAT is probably written out as Greatest-Mutual-Approval-Top. But it's also abbreviated GMAT. If what I've said above isn't detailed enough, and they ask for more detail, then I tell them what you quoted below: >It can be said in more detail, but a little more wordily: > >Call a ballot's unconditionally-approved candidates its "favorites". > >A ballot on which C is favorite is called a C-favorite ballot. Interrupting the description, let me reply to this: You have not defined "unconditionally approved." [endquote] I've defined "conditionally approved". "Unconditionally approved" means "approved without being conditionally approved". In other words, it means that the approval is given without condition. You continued: How is that shown on the ballot? I could guess, but I'd rather not! [endquote] No need to guess: An approval ballot could have a square box to the left of each candidate's name. The instruction at the top of the ballot would say: "Approve any one or more candidates by checking the box to the left of their name." There would be an arrow pointing to the top of the boxes column. There would also be another square box to the right of the candidate's name. An instruction above would say: "To make an approval for a candidate conditional, mark the box to the right of the candidate's name". There would be an arrow pointing to the top of that box-column. There would be a simple and brief page, maybe attached to the ballot, maybe handed out by poll-managers, explaining what it means to make an approval conditional. It would, I expect, just say that conditionality means that the approval is counted only if it is reciprocated. Maybe the Approval bad-example would be shown on that page, with a briefly worded explanation of why some would want to give a conditional approval. No, it doesn't dilute the information you give. It lets you give more information. In the Approval bad-example, it pretty much ensures that the CW, A, wins. Must quit for the time being. To be continued... Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Quinn, regarding Lomax reply
Jameson: You wrote: Abd: You are right that C will probably win the chicken dilemma Mike stated, where C has 49%, under almost any system except SODA. [endquote] No, A will win in Approval, if A all the A voters approve B, and all the B voters approve A. Forest posted a solution for the C/D problem, for Approval and RV. I've discussed several other ways whereby the problem can be dealt with in Approval. In AOC, MMT, or GMAT, A will win, because the B voters know that they'll get nothing from the A voters if they don't approve A, at least conditionally. That's because they'll know that the A voters will probably only give to B a conditional approval. MMPO2 and MDDTR automatically elect A. People have said "What if the B voters are sincere about their A vs C indifference? Answer: Then A isn't the CW. But if the B voters prefer A to C, then A is the CW. It's more important what happens when there's a CW, than when there isn't one. Therefore, it's best if A wins in that example. MMPO2 and MDDTR are doing right when they elect A. Their problem is their burial strategy. Because of that, I no longer like them as much as I did. In ICT, A will win, for the same reason as A wins in AOC, MMT, and GMAT. I've never claimed that Bucklin or ABucklin solves the C/D problem, the Approval bad-example problem. It doesn't. But AOCBucklin, ACBucklin, GMATBucklin and MMTBucklin do solve it. Of course Approval with any or all of the conditional options solves it. So it's an exaggeration to say that only SODA solves it. You continued: In the end, I do not believe that AOC conditionality really fixes the problem any more than Bucklin does. [endquote] Bucklin doesn't solve it at all, nor ABucklin. AOCBucklin, etc. does. AOC solves it for the reason described above. You continued: If C voters give conditional approvals to A and B, then A and B voters are again tempted to seek a leg up on the others by conditionally approving C, and again if both do so C wins. I doubt they'd be so shortsightedly partisan, though, just as I doubt it with Bucklin. [endquote] We've already discussed that. I acknowledged that possibility, and I said that I don't know of any FBC-complying method (at least one that uses only ballots) that really completely avoids a co-operation/defection problem. With all the FBC methods I know of, a C/D problem can come back, via burial strategy, as you describe above. I've told why that isn't as bad as the C/D problem that AOC, ICT, etc., solve. The persistent C/D problem requires burial strategy. It won't be as much of a problem. You wrote: There are only two ways I know of to truly fix this dilemma. One is as with IRV [endquote] IRV is a method that seems to completely avoid a C/D problem, and it fails FBC. That's worse than having a completely unmitigated C/D problem, and especially worse than the lesser C/D problem had by the defection-resistant methods such as ICT, AOC, etc. You wrote: Still, as I said above, half-solutions like AOC or Bucklin [endquote] ' Bucklin isn't even a half solution, unless it's made conditional, like AOCBucklin. AOC could be called a half-solution, as could ICT, MMPO and MDDTR, and AOCBucklin, GMATBucklin and MMTBucklin--because, with those methods, the C/D problem can come back via burial strategy. IRV is a complete solution to C/D, at the (unacceptable) cost of FBC failure. Mike Ossipoff may be enough if C has more like 40%; by merely making the slope down to a C win less slippery, such systems may avoid that outcome. Still, since AOC is not really better than Bucklin here, while it is clearly more complex, I think there's no reason to waste our breath on it. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Lomax reply, 3/14/12
trategy based in information about the two frontrunners, etc. You continued: We all support voting systems which will allow you to, at least, act clearly to prevent unacceptable results. With Count All the Votes, you know how to vote, and it's simple and easy to understand. I'm merely suggesting that with some better knowledge of the probabilities, you may be able to maximize your expected return. [endquote] Undeniable. You continued: This black-and-white understanding of what is acceptable leads you to the black-and-white voting. [endquote] Of course. You continued: It reduces your real effectiveness in the world. [endquote] Incorrect. It maximizes the effectiveness of my vote. It maximizes my expectation in the election. ...in terms of my candidate-utilities, but maybe not in terms of your candidate-utilities. You continued: >The Republocrats are a set, effectively a party, consisting of two >nearly identical subsets called >Democrats and Republicans. Gore Vidal said that we don't have a >two-party system--We have one party with two right wings. Must be true if Gore Vidal said it. [endquote] Did I say that it was true because Gore Vidal said it? There was a time when people didn't attribute the ideas that they quoted. Now it's considered dishonest to quote someone without attribution. That's why I named Gore Vidal. I didn't want to imply that I was the originator of that statement. I didn't name him to prove that the statement is correct. You continued: No, if he was actually making sense, we have one party with a right and a left wing. [endquote] No, he said "...two right wings", and there's no reason to believe that he meant otherwise. Sort of. So we have a one-party system. We are accustomed to thinking of that as a bad thing. Is it? I'm not sure at all. We have one government, and that is really "one party." Imagine the communist regimes, where the Party nominates the candidates, for unopposed elections. Is this undemocratic? Not necessarily. It depends on the Party's nomination process, and whether or not the Party truly represents the people, as it claims. The problem was that it didn't. Or doesn't, as the case may be. [endquote] I'd say that a 1-party system is undemocratic, based on the etymology of "democracy". If there's only one party, one policy platform, for voters to choose among, then the voters don't have a choice, and there's no meaningful sense in which they're governing. > >At 04:04 PM 3/5/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > >You said that achievability, getting from here to there, is more >important than optimality, for >a voting system proposal. Yes, and that's why strongly suggest that >Approval should be the first >proposal. In later proposals, vote-management options could be >added. They include: You continued: Count All the Votes. Terminally simple, clear improvement, only bogus arguments against it. Not Perfect. So? Count All the Votes. When it's is presented as Approval, hosts of distracting questions are raised [endquote] Isn't Count All the Votes another name for Approval? I think that when we speak of "voting for" several candidates, we encourage the fallacious "one-person-one-vote" objection. We indicate which candidates are acceptable. Or we indicate which candidates we approve of. And the method elects the candidate approved by the most, or acceptable to the most. That's a difficult thing to criticize. Or maybe first talk about 0-10 RV, and then offer 0-1 RV, to show that Approval is a points system, no less than is 0-10 RV. I think that I understand what you're suggesting with Count All The Votes. You're referring to a Plurality election in which overvotes are counted. The trouble with that is that it encourages the objection that Approval is legitimizing and accommodating something that is currently considered not valid. I think that that invites the criticisms that Approval gets. We count all the votes because we want to elect the approved-by-most or acceptable-to-most candidate. It's a whole different basis of what the election is. It's necessary to explicitly confront and reject Plurality's assumptons for what we want to do, replacing them with the above introductions. Ok, sometimes people will be voting strategically, rather than by "Whom do I approve?" or "Who is acceptable?". In a non-u/a election, strategy doesn't ask about acceptability. But it would be difficult to criticize each voter's right to rate each candidate, to vote up/down on each candidate. Whatever strategy the voter might be using, it's hir vote, to use as s/he wishes. For each candidate, it really is one-person-one-vote. Just as it is in any other point
[EM] Lomax reply 3,/13/12
Abd: I'm starting this reply today, though I probably won't have enough computer-time today to complete this reply. First, two definitions that you asked about: AOC: AOC is Optional Conditional Approval. You can make any of your approvals conditional by mutuality. Then, that approval is counted only if it is reciprocated. The best way to describe how it actually works is by the pseudocode for the proposed process for optional conditionality by mutuality. That pseudocode can be found in my first posting that introduced (and mentioned in the subject-line) "MTA-Optional-Conditional (MTAOC)" That posting contains the pseudocode for determining whether a conditional MTA middle-rating will be counted. AOC uses that same algorithm to determine whether to count a conditional approval. Some days later I posted a message with a subject line indicating a fix for a typo, an inadvertently-omitted line that needed to be added to the pseudocode. Then later I posted another message in which I suggested that all of your top-rated (in MTA) candidates should be regarded as "coalition-suitable" (instead of asking the voter to mark some top-rated candidates as "coaliton-suitable") for you. In AOC, unconditional approval is, for that purpose, treated as top-rating. I admit that that is a mess--when my optional-conditionality-by-mutuality algorithm definition is in three widely-separated postings. At least I should re-post the corrected pseudocode in one posting. Should have already done that before now. Will within a few days. u/a election: u/a stands for unacceptable/acceptable. A u/a election is one in which there is one or more completely unacceptable candidates who could win. In such an election, avoiding the election of an unacceptable is all-important. In a u/a election by ABucklin, it's definitely your best strategy to top-rank all the acceptables, and not rank any unacceptables. I consider our public political elections to be u/a. The Republocrats are the among the unacceptables, though there are probably others too. That's just my opinion as a voter, judging by standards such as dishonesty, corruption, bought-ness, etc. The Republocrats are a set, effectively a party, consisting of two nearly identical subsets called Democrats and Republicans. Gore Vidal said that we don't have a two-party system--We have one party with two right wings. End of definitions of AOC and u/a election. At 04:04 PM 3/5/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: You said that achievability, getting from here to there, is more important than optimality, for a voting system proposal. Yes, and that's why strongly suggest that Approval should be the first proposal. In later proposals, vote-management options could be added. They include: AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin (Bucklin with the MTAOC kind of optional conditionality), the delegation option of SODA, and fractional voting (RV). All of these options could be offered for the same Approval election. Of course they needn't all be offered in the same enhancement proposal. I'd start with AOC. But, first, Approval should be proposed. Approval, though entirely adequate as a destination method, is also the best route to ABucklin or SODA or maybe RV. Or, alternatively, RV could be the first proposal: Of course it goes without saying that Approval voting is automatically a way of voting in RV (you top-rate your approved candidates and bottom-rate everyone else). Then, all of the abovementioned Approval vote-management options could be proposed too. Approval, then, is naturally, easily, expandable to AOC, AOCBucklin, ABucklin, RV, SODA, etc., as vote-management options in the Approval election. You spoke of the "one-person-one-vote" (opov) objection to Approval. Yes, that objection amounts to a complete misunderstand of what opov was originally intended to mean. Opov meant that each person should have the same voting power. One person shouldn't be able to outvote two or three people. Approval doesn't violate opov. If someone wants more elaboration about that, point out to them that, in an Approval election, my ballot can cancel your ballot, no matter how many candidates you vote for--I could do that by voting for all the candidates you don't vote for, and not for any that you do vote for. For example, suppose that you vote for all of the candidates except for one. I can cancel your ballot by voting only for the one candidate that you didn't vote for. So, obviously, you don't have more voting power by voting for more candidates. In a 10-candidate election, in the above example, you've voted for 9 times as many candidates I've voted for, but I've canceled you out. Voting for more candidates didn't give you more voting power. Any ballot can be cancelled out by an oppositely-voted ballot. Approval is a point system. Like the 0-10
[EM] Lomax reply, 3/12/12
genuine support doesn't exist. With the enactment of Approval, those fictitious hollow-men known as Democrats will cease to appear to exist. Indeed, that was the thinking behind Carroll's invention of Asset Voting. >Those were only municipal elections, of course. You can't use them to predict >voting in national or state elections. In important elections, >people would soon >learn what voting strategy is in their best interest. Let's start with small scale elections, eh? First of all, there are as yet no national elections in the U.S. [endquote] I just mean elections for national office. So I include elections for presidents and congress-members (including senators) as national elections. Of course I should say "national-office elections" instead of "national elections". Innovation is easier to achieve locally, but it takes a while for local innovation to filter up to the national-office level. It would be nice if, somehow, Approval could be enacted for state or national offices without going through the long local-offices-first process. I like ABucklin, and it seems to me that the best route to it, the natural route, is as an option in Approval elections. As I often say, it's difficult to oppose or criticize an option. After all, how someone uses their Approval vote will be understood to be their business. So how could anyone object to a vote-management option such as ABucklin, in Approval elections? But I feel that the real improvement on Approval is getting rid of the co-operation/defection problem. That's accomplished by AOC, GMAT and MMT. Options such as those, for an Approval election, (they aren't mutually compatible as options in the same election) are therefore the ones that I'd suggest first. Later I'd suggest ACBucklin or AOCBucklin (wherein a voter could optionally make any non-top listing of a candidate conditional). In ordinary non-conditional ABucklin, of course the C/D problem could be dealt with in the various ways we've discussed for ordinary Approval and RV. So ordinary ABucklin isn't without merit. It's just that I personally feel that, as Approval-election vote-management options, AOC, GMAT or MMT offer a more important kind of improvement over ordinary Approval. , the largest jurisdiction to hold an election is a state. What we think of as presidential elections are actually local elections of pledged electors. [endquote] An uncontroversial tacit agreement in these discussion is that the president should be elected by a direct national election, dispensing with the electoral college. Of course it could be reasonably argued that parliamentary government would be better, and I have no quarrel with that. But proposing a better way to elect the president is much more modest than proposing the drastic change from presidential to parliamentary system. You continued: There is a lot of crap out there on what strategy is in the voter's best interest [endquote] ...like the crap that says we should vote for a lesser-evil in Plurality. Maybe sometimes vote for a compromise, the most winnable acceptable candidate, or a candidate agreed-upon by a similar-believing large set of voters. But never vote for an evil, even if a lesser one. You continued: , and there is a large class of voters who vote for what is in the society's best interest (in their opinion, of course, but these voters will value *consensus* and will recognize that getting their own preference is not necessarily best for the society). [endquote] Maybe some will vote that way in RV. I don't know. But surely most people feel that their favorite candidate would be best for society, and that has a lot to do with why he's their favorite. Might some know that their candidate is bad for society, but good for their own private special interest? Maybe, but probably most people have convinced themselves that he's best for society in some meaningful sense. To be coninued... Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Notabililty
Kevin: You wrote: On Wikipedia they remove articles if you can't show sources to argue that the topic is important enough to have an article. [endquote] But do you see anything wrong with that? Are "sources" needed for everything? So they're saying that not having to bury your favorite candidate isn't important unless it says so in an academic journal? :-) Could it be that someone at wikipedia has their head up their a**? And, in general, is that the same for everything? Does the validity of everything depend on its being validated by an academic? I'm not criticizing all academics. In mathematics, physics and other physical sciences, I have no quarrel with the authority of academics. But a sweeping worship of academic authority in general is unproductive for progress of any kind. There are areas where academic authority is questionable at best. Have you every looked at what academic philosophers write? You'd be surprised how nearly-uniformly muddled and befuddled they are. Voting system academics are similar. I'm sorry, but the metaphor of "head up the a**" is unavoidable when the subject of voting system academics comes up. I'm disappointed to hear that about wikipedia. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Approval-Runoff
Kevin: You wrote: I don't think Approval-Runoff can get off the ground since it's too apparent that a party could nominate two candidates (signaling that one is just a pawn to aid the other) and try to win by grabbing both of the finalist positions. If this happened regularly it would be just an expensive version of FPP. [endquote] I'd believed that it would just be seen as a minimal change from Runoff. You mean that, because of Approval in the 1st election, it would be too easy for a faction to put two identical candidates in the runoff? Yes, now that you mention it, that's probably so. Approval-Runoff suggestion withdrawn. You coninued: SODA actually does allow you to not delegate via checking a box. [endquote] Of course. Myself, I think it would be more winnable if non-delegation were the default, and one checks a box to delegate. I think it's best for innovations to be options. You continued: But a version that required delegation might be interesting because it wouldn't require an "approval plus checkbox" ballot, it would just need a vote-for-one ballot. [endquote] But it would be seen as often in violation of a voter's wishes. I feel that optional delegation would be far more winnable. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Obvious Approval advantages. SODA. Approval-Runoff.
It's well known that Approval is precinct-summable. Approval also has the easiest, simplest, and least expensive hand-count, of any method other than Plurality. That means that Approval can have the security of a handcount. Even if it's somehow possible to make a computer-count secure, the security of a handcount is easy, already well-established and well-known. Of course Approval would be the obvious thing to replace Plurality with, in state and national elections. What about local municipal elections, where Runoff is what is currently in use? Plainly the simplest, most modest change would be to replace Runoff with Approval-Runoff. Just do Approval (instead of vote-for-1) in the 1st balloting of a Runoff election, and then hold the runoff as usual, between the top two votegetters. That would almost surely violate FBC. Voting for favorite, F, in addition to compromise, C, in the 1st election could cause F to edge C out of the runoff. But maybe F can't win the runoff, but C would have. So someone worse than C wins. So Approval-Runoff is no good as a _destination_ method. But it's still acceptable as a _transitional_ method: It could bring some public attention to Approval, give Approval some precedent, which might enable its adoption for state &/or national elections. Or maybe that would have to happen via the mechanism of Approval-Runoff being replaced by Approval in municipal elections, where the municipal Approval is what provides precedent for state and national Approval. Not that this is very important, because Approval-Runoff, failing FBC as it does, is only a transitional proposal, but the options available for Approval could also be offered in Runoff's 1st balloting in which Approval replaces vote-for-one. But of course I wouldn't suggest bothering to even mention options for Approval-Runoff, since it's no good as a destination method, due to its FBC failure. I merely mention Approval-Runoff because it could maybe facilitate earlier adoption of genuine Approval, municipally, &/or state or federal. The name SODA refers to Approval elections in which delegation is the only option. I speak of delegation as one of various options for Approval elections, most of which are mutually compatible for availability in the same Approval election. I refer to that as the delegation option, reserving "SODA" for a method consisting of Approval with no added options other than delegation. I'd prefer also offering and making available all the options I've named, such as AOC, AOCBucklin, MTAOC, MCAOC (those of course include the options of voting ordinary ABucklin, MTA or MCA ballots too). And the delegation option too. The delegation option would be for people who want to leave it all to their favorite candidate. It also automatically avoids C/D, if the various delegates can negotiate before they use their delegated votes, and after they have the initial ballot-results, and if their negotiated agreements are public and binding. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kevin: FBC deleted from electowiki?
Kevin: You wrote: Did they use a special term for this property? We used to have an FBC page on Wikipedia, based on content from Russ' site I believe, but eventually this was removed [endquote] Yes, that's why I don't have much use for electowiki. Something that I put up can later be modified or deleted by anyone. You continued: since the notability is unclear. [endquote] What is notability? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Bucklin option wrap-up
er than ordinary Approval. If they do, then offer AOC, ABucklin &/or AOCBucklin, and SODA as possible options in Approval elections. Options are difficult to argue against. Anyway, I propose that entire complete system, probably with those options added as later proposals of enhancements for Approval. For that matter, MMT or GMAT could be an option in an Approval election too, but not both in the same election. And those methods don't allow for conditionality for some candidates but not others. I prefer AOC, with which you can give conditional votes to some candidates, and unconditional votes to others. It's the most fully-optional kind of conditionality. GMATBucklin and MMTBucklin would be the same as AOCBucklin, except that they'd implement conditionality the GMAT way, or the MMT way, instead of the AOC way. Of course GMATBucklin would be compatible with GMAT as options in the same Approval election. I agree that MMPO (I prefer its MMPO2 version) and MDDTR might run into criticism trouble, even though I like them best, and so I don't consider them to be major proposals, though one might mention them to an initiative committee or a public that insists on something fancier than Approval. But I feel that it would be better, in that eventuality, to just offer the options of AOC, ABucklin, AOCBucklin and SODA, as I described 3 paragraphs ago. All of those could be options in the same Approval election, in fact. Let the initiative committee decide what it wants to include. SODA might sound a little too different, to the public, though I've gotten a favorable reaction to my brief definition of it. MTA, MCA, MTAOC and MCAOC could be offered too, but people who want something fancier than Approval usually want an unlimited ranking method, and there's a simplicity advantage in not speaking of too many options. That all these methods/options are natural enhancements of ordinary Approval, and could be offered as options in an Approval election, makes it all more proposable than other approaches to voting system reform. So then, why don't you find out what single-winner elections are conducted in your municipal jurisdictions, and then contact local party organizations and other political elections, and tell them about Approval. Suggest an Approval initiative. And/Or, if you have a progressive city council or county board of supervisors (or whatever they call it in your area), suggest to them that they offer a referendum about it. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Reply to Lomax
Abd: I might post this when it's only partially finished, and then continue it Monday. You wrote: At 04:55 PM 3/1/2012, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: >If you rank your favorite, F, in 1st place, s/he gets a majority, >even though s/he doesn't win, because someone else has a higher >majority. That's apparently quite unusual. Even if multple votes in first rank are allowed -- they certainly should be -- most voters will not use them. [endquote] You don't have sufficient information to make that prediction. Yes, the IRVists point out that, when Bucklin was used in the early 20th century, few if any voters would even rank a 2nd choice. My answer to that is that plumping is a valid good strategy if no one but your favorite is acceptable to you, or if you're sure that s/he will win if you don't rank anyone else. Those were only municipal elections, of course. You can't use them to predict voting in national or state elections. In important elections, people would soon learn what voting strategy is in their best interest. It seems to me that, in ABucklin, most people's best strategy would often or usually be to just vote certain candidates in 1st place, and not rank anyone else. You continued: Sequential approval voting, i.e., a series of polls where voters start out with "insisting on their favorite," and then gradually lower their approval cutoff until a majority is found, is simply a more efficient version of what is standard deliberative process, i.e., vote-for-one majority-required, repeated until a majority is found [endquote] I have nothing against that, but it would be expensive for large public elections. ABucklin, would be a perfectly good substitute. AOCBucklin would be better. . You continued: In any case, to me, if the number of ballots were not to be limited, I'd want to see Range polling, with explicit approval cutoff, plus a ratification vote that explicitly approves the result. [endquote] More expensive still. A good proposal would propose only one balloting. You continued: In some organizations, a mere majority margin, thin, really isn't desirable, it should be better than that. Popes were elected by repeated approval polling, two-thirds majority required. But I'd prefer to leave it to the majority to decide what margin is needed. Otherwise it is the *rules* which are in charge. I.e., the past is ruling the present, which I'm learning is not a great idea, for many reasons. Informing and suggesting, yes, but ruling, no. [endquote] ??? Ok, I and those who agree with me have a 51% majority. So you ask us how large a majority should be required, and we reply (guess what) "51%". I'm not sure how or why you'd implement the flexible majority-magnitude requirement that you suggest. >A number of people rank F, and, if you help F get a majority, then >they won't give a vote to their next choice. > >That's regrettable, because their next choice could win with those >votes, while F can't win. And when their next choice doesn't win, >someone worse than s/he (as judged by you) wins. > >You got a worse result because you didn't favorite-bury. You reply: Mike, I'm not sure I'm following you here, but the situation, multiple majorities in the first round, would be indicative of a highly unusual context. [endquote] Maybe. FBC-failure won't be common in Beatpath either. But it's possible. It's likewise possible in Stepwise-to-Majority. In any method where there could be a situation where your best outcome can only be gotten by favorite-burial, you can't assure people that they have no need for favorite-burial. I believe that voters have shown us, in elections and in straw-polls, that it's absolutely necessary to assure voters that it's entirely impossible for there be to be a situation where they can get their best outcome only by favorite-burial. You said: Let's see if I understand. [endquote] I meant what I said, nothing more or less. But the first thing you should understand is that I've already said that my FBC failiure scenario doesn't work for ABucklin. ABucklin apparently passes FBC. I now am convinced that it does, and that there's good reason to believe that a failure example cannot be found for ABucklin. The failure we're talking about, therefore, is only that of Stepwise-to-Majority. You continued: If you vote for your Favorite in first place, someone else has a higher majority, call him or her A. In the first round? There is a third candidate who has a lesser majority, B, whom you prefer to A. [endquote] B might not have hir majority yet. S/he might get it when the other voters I spoke of give votes to their next choice, in the next round. You continued: If you vote for B in first rank, they might tie the other majo
[EM] MMPO's problem and proposability. IRV in Burlington.
MMPO's problem and proposability: Kevin, good point about MMPO's problem in the bad-example being more about lack of support, as opposed to mere lack of favoriteness. Yes, it's understandable if people don't like that. I can't say that I like it myself. But of course, for perspective, it's necessary to consider it in comparison to other methods' problems. I concede that MMPO is choosing wrongly in that example. But I still claim that, as problems go, that problem isn't a strategy problem, or a problem that will prevent an electorate from getting what they want. And isn't that the main important thing? In that example, C isn't a Hitler. _None_ of the voters think that C is worse than both of the two most favorite candidates. Still, I fully concede that criticism about what happens in that example could easily be a problem for MMPO in an enactment campaign. As I've said, opponents of progressive reform tend to have a lot more money to spend than proponents have. Opposition to voting reform will be very heavily funded. That example will be described on doorknob-hangers, and in broadcast-media, and people will hear about it a lot more than they'll hear proponents' reply. So, though I rank MMPO2 at the top of my merit-ranking, Approval is my proposal. You know, all the advocates of better voting systems agree that Approval is better than Plurality. We disagree only about how we'd improve on Approval. Isn't it obvious to all that Approval is the obvious thing that we all can agree on? The obvious first proposal? It's the first, simplest, natural improvement on Plurality. Plurality done right. IRV in Burlingon: The problem with what IRV did in Burlington is the effect that that sort of result can have on timid voters. It will make them favorite-bury. The reason I don't like favorite-burial is because many people are inclined to resignedly compromise on a disliked lesser-evil. Never compromise on or support an evil. That should be obvious. A good and valid strategy in IRV is to rank the acceptable candidates in order of winnability. The only problem is that many think that a disliked lesser-evil is "acceptable". If people knew what "acceptable" means, then IRV would be ok, and the IRV strategy of ranking the acceptable candidates in order of winnability would be ok. There's also nothing wrong with not using tht strategy, but, instead, just ranking sincerely. That apparently, is what the Republicans did in Burlington. Nothing wrong with that. If the Republicans and Democrates were a mutual majority, then one of those would have won. If the Democrat voters ranked the progressive 2nd, then the Democrats and Progressives were the mutual majority. The mutual majority won. I and others have been a bit unfair to IRV in Burlington. IRV didn't do anything wrong in Burlington, except in the sense that it did something that will make many people give elections away to a lesser-evil. Given better voting strategy, IRV would be ok, as I've said. But, voters' strategy being what it is, IRV isn't a good proposal, and I still oppose it as a voting system reform for the United States. If the Republicans really considered the Democrat acceptable, not just a lesser-evil, then it would be fine for them to rank hir 1st, strategically. If they consider it fair to not win without a mutual majority, then there's nothing wrong with their sincere voting, and they'd have no objection to the resulting Progressive win. (I'm going to reply to Abd's posting, but I have to go somewhere now, and so I'll probably have to reply on Monday.) Mike Ossipoff Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kevin: My failure scenario was erroneous for ABucklin
Kevin: I've now realized that my FBC failure scenario works for Stepwise-to-Majority, but not for ABucklin. So: False alarm. Sorry about that. I myself hadn't fully studied the failure scenario, which is why I didn't, at first, realize that the failure scenario doesn't work for ABucklin. The argument that you stated, for why ABucklin won't fail FBC, sounds entirely convincing. Thanks for posting that argument, and for assisting with my question. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Better Approval-voting option? Could ABucklin fail FBC?
Though the options of voting as in AOCBucklin, MTAOC or MCAOC in an Approval election make some sense, when the election is regarded as that kind of election, with some people (the Approval-ballot voters) rating everyone at top-rank, one can't help noticing that some aspects of those vote-management options, in an Approval election, seem suboptimal for the voter. Two conclusions suggest themselves: 1. Maybe MTA, MCA and ABucklin don't often really improve on Approval. Maybe Approval-style voting is often the best strategy in those methods. 2. Maybe there could be a better vote-management option in an Approval election. Regarding #2, how about Stepwise-to-Majority? I'd previously proposed Middle-When-Needed, and Stepwise-When-Needed. Stepwise-When-Needed could be called Stepwise-to-Win. The rankings, as in Bucklin, keep simultaneously giving a vote to their next choice, stepwise, by stages, as in ABucklin, each ballot continuing to do so as long as no candidate it's already given to is the current winner. I acknowledged, at that time, that it would often turn out to be no different from an Approval count of all the ranked candidates. Then I noticed that the those 2 methods probably fail FBC. I wondered if there's something somewhat similar that meets FBC. Maybe, judging candidates by an arbitrary number like majority would avoid the problem, as opposed to judging by whether one of your higher ranked candidates is winning. Hence, Stepwise-to-Majority. During the Buckliln-like vote-giving stages, each ballot keeps giving to its next choice till someone it has given to has a majority. But could this happen?: If you rank your favorite, F, in 1st place, s/he gets a majority, even though s/he doesn't win, because someone else has a higher majority. A number of people rank F, and, if you help F get a majority, then they won't give a vote to their next choice. That's regrettable, because their next choice could win with those votes, while F can't win. And when their next choice doesn't win, someone worse than s/he (as judged by you) wins. You got a worse result because you didn't favorite-bury. So maybe, even if that scenario is merely possible, I shouldn't propose Stepwise-to-Majority unless it turns out that the FBC-failure scenario can't happen. But more worrying is the fact that one could tell that same story about ABucklin (the ER-Bucklin defined at electowiki). Of course a vague verbal scenario like the above might not have an actual numerical example that can carry it out. There might be some reason why such an example couldn't work. Still, it's worrying. Does anyone know if there's actually a proof that ER-Bucklin meets FBC? Can it be shown that the verbal FBC-Failure scenario described above couldn't really happen? Might ABucklin fail FBC? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA sometimes FBC-safe
Jameson: You wrote: Actually, with SODA, it does help, because you can know ex ante (by looking at the predeclared preferences) when you are safe by FBC. That is, if you prefer A>B, and B prefers A, or A prefers B, or A and B both prefer a certain viable C, then you are safe. Only if B prefers the most-viable third candidate C, but A is indifferent between B and C, then you might consider a favorite-betraying vote for B. And even then, it's only appropriate if A very nearly, but not quite, is able to win... not exactly the situation where favorite betrayal is the first thing on your mind. This is a specific enough circumstance that favorite-betraying strategy would never "take off" and become a serious factor in SODA. With SODA, you can give that as a solid ex-ante guarantee to most voters, just not quite all of them. This is unlike the situation in most voting systems, where you can make no solid guarantees before the vote unless you can make them to all voters. [endquote] Ok yes, as you say, that's a very different situation from the ordinary FBC-failure, because, for most people there is known to be no favorite-burial need. The favorite-burial problem really exists when there's uncertainty for everyone, or for a large percentage of the voters, which isn't the case with SODA. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson: SODA & FBC
lity is implemented as shown in the MTAOC pseudocode. AOCBucklin is ABucklin in which optional conditionality by mutuality is implemented in that manner. As I've said before, ABucklin is just a more convenient name for ER-Bucklin, as defined at the electowiki. In AOCBuckliln, the conditionality-by-mutuality calculation (the one described by the pseudocode) must be done anew for each round of Bucklin vote-giving. In AOCBucklin, every vote that a ballot has, so far, given to a candidate (other than by 1st ranking) counts as a middle rating, for the purposes of the pseudocode algorithm. AC means Approval in which conditionality-by-mutuality is automatic rather than optional. That could just mean that the method is AOC, except that instead of designating unconditional and conditional approvals, the voter desginates favorites and less-than-favorite approved candidates, for whom the approvals are counted as conditional. But MMT and GMAT qualify for the name "AC", because they amount to automatically conditional Approval. MTAC is MTAOC in which all middle ratings are automatically conditional. MCAC is MCAOC in which all middle ratings are automatically conditional. ACBucklin is AOCBucklin in which all middle ratings are automatically conditional. (As I said, any vote that a ranking gives to a candidate, other than at 1st rank, is a "middle-rating" for the purposes of the conditionality-by-mutuality algorithm that I posted.) Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] The oldest bad-example trick in the book
Instructions for how to make a method look bad: Contrive an example in which the main contending candidates barely differ by the method's own standard, but in which those candidates differ humungously and outrageously by some other standard. In order to achieve the latter condition as strongly as possible, it's typically necessary that the candidates are within one vote of eachother, in terms of the method's standard. Then say, "Look how wrongly that method can choose!" Try to sound especially outraged when you say that, as some here are already practiced at doing. And yes, it's true: In Kevin's MMPO bad-example, A, B, and C do almost identically, in terms of MMPO's own standard. No choice would be significantly worse than another in terms of that standard. But, in terms of the favoriteness standard, they differ drastically and dramatically. Has someone followed my above-supplied instructions? Sure. To the letter. So, because the candidates don't significantly differ by MMPO's standard, but differ outrageously by the favoriteness standard, guess which standard we notice? Yes, intuitively, you look at that and say that A or B should win. The winner should come from [A,B ]. In other words, if A doesn't win, then B should win. If B doesn't win, then A should win. You know it. I know it. Problem: The voters don't think so. (Remember them?) Why don't the voters think so? Because that's necessary in order to create the favoriteness-outrageous outcome of Kevin's MMPO bad-example. Early on in the discussion of that example, I asked who was wronged in that bad-example. Someone answered that the [A,B ] voters as a whole, were collectively wronged. But, as I discussed in my previous post about this, the A voters couldn't care less whether B or C wins. Therefore, it's a bit creative to say that they're wronged because B didn't win instead of C. C won precisely because and only because the A voters didn't care about B vs C, and the B voters didn't care about A vs C. In fact, strictly speaking, if you took a poll among the A voters, between B and C, C would win that poll. It's obviously fallacious to speak of [A,B] as a "person" who has been wronged--a resort of desperation needed because no one can point to a particular individual who was wronged. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] C/D is persistent. Another Approval C/D mitigation. IRV and sincerity.
C/D: It seems to me that the co-operation/defection (C/D) problem is more difficult to truly eliminate than I'd believed. Hugely reducible, but maybe not eliminatable. The methods that I've been suggesting, to get rid of the C/D problem--I'll refer to those as "defection-resistant" methods. They include AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin, AC, MTAC, MCAC, ACBudklin, MMT, GMAT, and ICT. It seems to me that all of the defection-resistant methods that I know of which meet FBC still allow another C/D problem, with burial. Of course the mechanism differs with different methods, but they all seem to have that burial C/D problem. For example, with the conditional methods, the burial takes the form that Jameson described. But, for one thing, as I said, the burial can backfire, in the conditional methods, just as it can in the pairwise-count methods. Besides, unlike pairwise-count methods, the conditional methods have no such thing as truncation offensive strategy. I don't know, but it may well be that, in principle, strictly-speaking the new C/D problem, with the defection, is the same as the old one. But there's a big and important difference: It requires the drastic offensive strategy of burial. Burial is much less likely, more culpable, and better-deterred than mere truncation or non-support. So I still claim that the defection-resistant methods are a big improvement. I still claim that they're the only significant improvement over Approval, and that there's no point proposing or using something more complicated than ordinary Approval, unless it's defection- resistant. Maybe someone could show that the C/D problem can't be entirely eliminated with a FBC-complying nonprobalistic ballots-only method. Defection-resistant, yes. Defection-proof, no. Another Approval C/D mitigation: This isn't anything new, but I just haven't mentioned it before: Actual elections are different from examples, such as the Approval bad-example (ABE). When there's going to be an actual Approval election (ordinary non-conditional Approval), people will know what the supporters of other candidates are saying about their candidate. You'll know if they're going to vote for hir. In fact that matter could be made explicit during a campaign. There could be an agreement that the supporters of 2 candidates, or members of 2 factions, will vote for eachothers' candidate. Or it could be declared that they won't. So Approval's C/D problem is exaggerated by the Approval bad-example. But I still claim that AOC would be better, and that, in general, the defection-resistant methods would be better. Still, Approval looks quite adequate and merit-possessing, as a first proposal. I don't think that there's any reason to propose anything other than Approval, as a first proposal. For me, there's no question about what voting system should be proposed: Approval. IRV with sincere voting: Though I don't like FairVote's dishonesty, I must agree with something that they've claimed: Sincere voting is an ok strategy in IRV. But that doesn't mean that people will vote sincerely. I hasten to add that we know that voters are overly compromise-prone, and that they _won't_ vote sincerely. We can't not take that into consideration when proposing a voting system. At least if the method is Approval, no one will fail to fully support for their favorite. I'm not saying that IRV would be as good a proposal as Approval. But, for sincere voters, IRV wouldn't be so bad. As you know, it meets the Mutual Majority Criterion (MMC). A mutual majority has nothing to fear when voting sincerely. One of their candidates will win. Maybe you're not in a mutual majority, and the supporters of your needed compromise will bottom-rank your favorite, and so, when Compromise gets eliminated, due to your not top-ranking hir, Worst will win. That's why I earlier suggested, and still suggest for that situation, ranking the _acceptable_ candidates in order of their winnability. The key word is _acceptable_. The problem is that voters who are resigned to compromise tend to be willing to compromise their hopes away too readily. So, in IRV, advise people to rank sincerely, because a mutual majority can't lose that way. And advise them that if they're not in a mutual majority, even then, they should reserve their compromise- high-ranking only for acceptable candidates. And they should be very particular what they deem acceptable. They shouldn't give up their hopes. They should rank the genuinely acceptable candidates over all the others. ...no matter what they think the winnabilities are. Do that, and IRV would be ok. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Update on MMPO class-action lawsuit, trial transcipts
Prologue: Here's the scenario, which I call "Kevin's MMPO bad-example: : A 1: A=C 1: B=C : B Some object to C winning. But note that half the voters say that C is just as good as B; and the other half say that C is just as good as B. C is hardly a Hitler. A and B are big favorites, and so, given what I said in the previous paragraph, the election of C couldn't be much of a tragedy, mistake or error. Sure, nearly everyone thinks that _someone_ is better than C. But, then, that's also true of A and B. In fact, they have _more_ people saying that some particular candidate is worse. (Yes I know, that's MMPO's standard, so you might accuse me of using MMPO's standard to defend MMPO. But note that you brought it up, if you objected to how many people think someone is worse than C). The objection to C's election amounts to a sleight-of-hand that fallaciously attempts to portray the set [A,B] as a single aggreived "person". What makes the above MMPO result "look bad" is it's un-plurality-like nature. In terms of favoriteness, C looks terrible. But I remind you that, in general, pairwise-count methods are not about favoriteness, nor are they intended or expected to be. even though some want to compare them by a criterion that is based on favoriteness. The trial: Mr. A-Spokesman: Your Honor, Mr. B-Spokesman and I, representing an aggreived group, consisting of the A voters and the B voters, come here in unity to protest the election of C. We claim that it's clear that either A or B should win, and we strongly believe that A or B should win, and we all strongly want A or B to win." Judge: Let's clarify something: Do you mean that, if A doesn't win, you want B to win instead of C? Or are you really just saying that you want A to win, and the B voters want B to win? Mr. A-Spokesman: It's very important to all of us that, even if our favorite doesn't win, the other member of [A,B] win. Therefore it is an outrage against us all if that doesn't happen. Mr. C-Spokesman: Your Honor, I enter into evidence exhibit A, the summary of the A-voters' ballots; and exhibit B, the summary of the B-voters' ballots. Judge: Mr. A-Spokesman, having looked at this evidence, I must question your claim that it's very important to you that, if A doesn't win, then at least B should win. The evidence clearly shows that your A group was entirely indifferent between B and C. (except for one person who preferred C). Likewise, the B voters were entirely indifferent between A and C. How do you answer that? (A-Spokesman doesn't answer) Judge continues: Mr. A-Spokesman, I recommend that, in subsequent elections, you demonstrate, in the election, some of that solidarity, mutual support, unity and common purpose that you claim, in this courtroom, to feel. I dismiss the claims of the A voters and B voters. Case dismissed. (Bangs gavel) Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Turkey-raising. Options. MJ majority protection.
hods in Ruderman's poll. A more complete merit ranking: 1. MMPO2 2. MDDTR 3. optionally-conditional methods 4. automatically-conditional methods 5. ICT (Approval and Bucklin versions below are ordinary, don't have conditionality) 6. ABucklin 7. Approval, MTA and MCA 8. RV 9. MJ Among the optionally or automatically conditional methods, I'd rank their Approval, MTA, MCA and ABucklin versions in the same order as ordinary Approval, MTA, MCA and ABucklin are ranked. For public proposals, though, I'd say that ordinary Approval is at the top, with AOC next. Though AOC is better, brings big improvement to Approval, it's also true that ordinary Approval already had at least 3 other ways to deal with co-operation/defection: 1. Public declaration of principled refusal to accept a compromise or co-operate with a faction (Maybe under specified conditions) 2. The consequences, in subsequent elections, of defection 3. Forest's solution (probabilistically-implemented in Approval) Regarding #2, a good strategy for a defected-against faction would be to refuse to help the defectors in the next election. Then give them another chance to co-operate in the election after that. Factions should make it clear that that will be their strategy. In the co-operation/defection tournament for computer programs, described in Scientific American some time ago, the winner was a program called "Tit-For-Tat". I believe that the strategy that I described in the above paragraph is the Tit-For-Tat strategy: Vote the same strategy that the other faction did in the previous election. But SciAm later described another strategy that worked even better than Tit-For-Tat. I don't remember what it was, but it was nearly as simple as Tit-For-Tat. The point is that there are good deterrent strategies for co-operation/defection. The broader point is that, even without AOC's conditionality, ordinary Approval can deal very well with the co-operation/defection problem. So ordinary Approval has merit, as will as winnability, as a first proposal. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] MJ, Bucklin reply
Jameson: 012/2/21 MIKE OSSIPOFF I don't oppose MJ. I like Approval, and MJ is Approval. That's the obvious first improvement on Approval. Sure, MTA, MCA & ABucklin improve on Approval too, slightly, by adding more levels of majority-rule protection. MJ is a Bucklin method too, and has exactly the same "levels of majority-rule protection" as these other methods. [endquote] 1. But my point was that Bucklin's improvement over Approval is insignificant compared to that of Optionally-Conditional-Approval (AOC), MTAOC, MCAOC, and AOCBucklin. 2. So you're saying that if we count an MJ election by ABucklin as well (we infer each ballots ranking from the order of its ratings), the two methods will always get another answer? Can the result of an MJ election be changed by altering a ballot without changing the order of its ratings of the candidates? If so, then how can the answer to the previous paragraph's question be "Yes"? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Typo
When I said "The pairwise-count problems that ICW doesn't get rid of don't really seem problematic to me.", I meant "ICT", and not "ICW". ICW was a typo. So I meant: "The pairwise-count problems that ICT doesn't get rid of don't really seem problematic to me." Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Brief MJ comment. ITC & conditional methods.
I don't oppose MJ. I like Approval, and MJ is Approval. True, it's an unnecessarily complicated, elaborate and expensive Approval, but it's still Approval. In Ruderman's poll, I voted: 1. Approval 2. RV 3: MJ I would have put the Approval cutoff just below MJ, but I didn't know that it was an Approval cutoff. I don't oppose ICT. I consider it one of the better full-ranking methods for public elections. ...along with AOCBucklin and ACBucklin. And maybe IC(wv-conditional) or IC-ACBucklin. I don't claim to know which of all those is better. There are certain strategy problems shared by the pairwise-count methods. Condorcet(wv) avoids &/or minimizes some of them, but ICT avoids Condorcet(wv)'s worst problems: FBC-failure and co-operation/defection dilemma. The pairwise-count problems that ICW doesn't get rid of don't really seem problematic to me. Problems sure, but secondary problems. Compare them to the kind of problems Plurality and IRV and most rank methods have. It's my opinion that the best full-ranking method is AOCBucklin. But that's really a matter of opiniion. The optional conditionality gives the voter more to do other than just sincerely rank. But that's the trade-off, for what I consider a more deluxe method. ICT is effectively automatically conditional, like ACBucklin. For the voter, more to do means more choices to make, more work in voting; but it also means more freedom, expressiveness and control of what one's ballot will do. It's difficult to compare a pairwise-count method to an Approval-based method, because they're so different. I feel that the Approval-based methods are closer to the rightness of Approval. Approval's simplicity and rightness are there in stepwise Approval too (that's ABucklin). In comparison, the pairwise-count methods are more like a machine that does certain things convincingly, but also has unintended consequences, as do many machines. ...not that all methods don't have unintended consequences too, but that seems less for the more natural Approval-based methods. The pairwise-count methods are the ones for reliably choosing the CW. But we all know that Condorcet's Criterion is incompatible with FBC anyway. ICT does something that's more similar to looking for a CW, but when we abandon Condorcet's Criterion, it isn't obvious what else is most important. One difference between ICT and ACBucklin is that Bucklin starts at the top and looks for a majority that can be assembled from the top of people's rankings. In a way, doesn't that make more sense? Say one ballot has y in 100th place, and x in 99th place. Another ballot has y in 1st place and x in 2nd place. Another has x in 1st place, and y in 4th place. Pairwise-count counts those ballots' treatment of x & y equal. But are they? Might it not make more sense, the way ABucklin starts from the top down, in its search for a majority? ACBucklin, like ABucklin and AOCBucklin meets the Mutual-Majority-Criterion. (Though IRV meets MMC, and doesn't have the co-operation/defection problem, it has (as you know) a particularly bad and frequent FBC failure). In optionally conditional Approval (AOC), you should give a conditional vote to a candidate if you want to help hir, for protection against someone worse, but you don't want your help to be usable against candidates whom you like more. S/he's better than the worse ones, but s/he's still a rival to the better candidates. Likewise in AOCBucklin. That's the obvious first improvement on Approval. Sure, MTA, MCA & ABucklin improve on Approval too, slightly, by adding more levels of majority-rule protection. But that's insignificant in comparison to getting rid of the co-operation/defection problem. So: Obvious first Approval improvement: AOC. After that, maybe MTAOC, MCAOC or AOCBucklin. And, even if ICT is better than ACBucklin, a problem of ICT is: How do you get there from here? If you propose ICT, people can ask, "But, with so many full-ranking methods, and with so many methods, why choose that one particular one?" That question isn't a problem for Approval and its natural and obvious improvements. One advantage of the optional conditionality of AOC is that an option is much more difficult to criticize than a non-optional change or feature. Returning to the comparison of ICT and ACBucklin, if you truncate in ICT, you still can benefit from help given by the supporters of the candidate you truncated from your ranking. That isn't so in ACBucklin. I wanted to post these comparison of these methods. Mike Ossipoff A fair comparison would be one between ACBucklin and ICT, because they're both automatically conditional. In the Approval bad-example, it isn't enough for the A voters to co-operate. C w
[EM] Jameson: reply regarding SODA & favorite-burial
Jameson: You said that the F-preferring voters could let G win by merely approving both F and G. But maybe only a subset of the F voters are willing to try to keep G from losing. Then, those few might need to vote for G and not for F, in order to keep F from beating G in the initial ballots-only Approval count. Your arguments depended on the words "probably" and "unlikely". You'd assure voters that "You probably won't regret not burying your favorite". With compromise-cowed voters (such as those in our public political elections), "probably" just don't cut it. In Condorcet, you probably won't regret not burying your favorite. It would be unlikely. And yet (as I've said) I've observe a lesser-of-2-evils Democrat-voter bury under all of the Democrat candidates, the candidate whose policies she prefers to those of the Democrats. No, as I said, it's necessary to assure voters that it's entirely impossible for them to get a worse result because they didn't bury their favorite. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Something that can happen in SODA
Say the method is SODA. Say your favorite, F, is going to win the initial, ballots-only, Approval count, under sincere voting. The runner-up, G, has some (from your viewpoint) not-as-good-as-G candidates at the top of hir ranking for delegated approvals. (There's nothing unusual or unlikely about that. A big-votegetting compromise can have some preferences that many don't like as much) Because F wins, G doesn't win. Therefore, s/he gives hir delegated approvals to some of hir higher-ranked candidates. One of them wins as a result. But if you had voted for G, but but not for F, then G would have won, instead of the worse candidates in hir ranking. If you'd buried your favorite, you would have gotten a better outcome, not gettable by you in any other way. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson: Conditional methods and DH3
So that progressive-majority misconception, held by all, because everyone has the same polling data, won't hurt the progressives. Of course it works the other way too: If it looks as if nonprogressives have a majority, that could make them win. ...except that, in both cases, principled, noncompromising voters, people who are basing their vote on acceptability vs unacceptability, aren't going to cross the progressive/nonprogressive line with their approvals. In other words, Approval favors candidates preferred by principled uncompromising voters, people who are sure about what is acceptable or unacceptable. How many Democrat voters do you think vote for the Democrat because of uncompromising principle, rather than lesser-of-2-evils, hold-your-nose, voting? >From what they themselves say, not too many. Anyway, the problem you speak of only occurs when voters are burying. When they're using conditional votes as intended, the problem doesn't happen. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Conditionality-by-top-count probably violates FBC
It probably does, and, if so, I no longer propose conditionality-by-top-count. But conditionality-by-mutuality doesn't have that problem, and so I still propose that, for voting-options in Approval elections, and for freestanding voting systems. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson: I thought you said that people can safely rate sincerely in MJ.
Jameson: I'd said: > Say my sincere ratings are: > > x: 100 > y: 90 > > (other candidates considerably lower) > > Your sincere ratings are: > > y: 100 > x: 90 > > (other candidates considerably lower) > > x and y are similar, but different enough to be supported by > different factions. > > This situation is hardly unusual. > > My ratings: > > x: 100 > y: 0 > > Your ratings: > > y: 100 > x: 90 > > Guess which of those two is more likely to win. > You replied: Neither. Once people are strategizing as you are, chances are high of a chicken dilemma crash, and the other extreme (A?) will win. [endquote] Sorry, but you misunderstand. The assumption was that you rate sincerely. You said that it takes a big majority of strategizers to defeat sincee voters. I've just told how strategizers can defeat an equal number of sincere voters. So make up your mind: Do you want to rate sincerely in MJ or not? But, if you're saying that MJ has the co-operation/defection problem, the chicken dilemma, then you're right about that. For that reason, it is no improvement over Approval. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Further comments to Kristofer's MJ posting
d otherwise be, then you're raising hir median by the same amount, regardless of how far you rate hir above that median. If you rate someone top or bottom, you _reliably_ raise or lower hir median. If you rate x top and y bottom, then you _reliably_ help x against y. The more closely you rate two candidates, the less likely you are to be helping one against the other. ...just as, in RV, the more closely you rate 2 candidates, the less you help one against the other. The difference is that, with MJ, it's about the probability of helping one against the other. You don't know if you are at all. Say my sincere ratings are: x: 100 y: 90 (other candidates considerably lower) Your sincere ratings are: y: 100 x: 90 (other candidates considerably lower) x and y are similar, but different enough to be supported by different factions. This situation is hardly unusual. My ratings: x: 100 y: 0 Your ratings: y: 100 x: 90 Guess which of those two is more likely to win. To both of us, x and y could be called "favorites". Different people have different favorites. Therefore, the medians of x and y are likely to be lower than your ratings of them--They're not as favorite to everyone as they are to you. Therefore, you're rating x and y above their otherwise-medians. Therefore you're raising both of their medians. You're raising my candidate's median. I'm lowering your candidate's median. And that situation, as I said, is hardly unusual. Of course, instead of speaking of just two voters, we should speak of two factions of equal size. Your faction will be had--will lose due to its sincere rating. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] MJ, Kristofer
Kristofer: MJ's defenders like to say that it takes a huge majority of strategizers to affect the election. Often repeated, never verified. In my 1st posting about MJ, I showed how one strategizer could defeat one sincere voter. ...Or a strategizing faction can defeat an equal-size sincere faction. And if the election is at all close, even fewer strategizers could defeat sincere voters. You said or implied that you wouldn't like Approval because, with it, you'd have to use the "frontrunners plus" strategy. No one has to say "Who are the frontrunners?" Surely you've heard here that there are many Approval strategies. Which one you use depends on what your information is. We discussed them perhaps a month or so ago, at EM. If it's a u/a election, then just approve all the acceptables and none of the unacceptables. We discussed many non-u/a Approval strategies, too many to describe again in this reply. If it's non-u/a, and you have no information, then just vote for all of the above-mean candidates. Tell me what kind of information you have, and I'll suggest an Approval strategy. You seem to think that with MJ you have no need for information, for voting optimally. Sincere ratings isn't optimal, in MJ or RV. Yes you could get away with it. People often think that their method is better than Approval, and that supposed improvement over Approval is illusory. In Laraki's & Balinski's poll, what were people voting on? Maybe they didn't strategize because they were instructed to rate the candidates according to perceived merit. Having agreed to do that, strategic voting would be dishonest, and would be perceived as violating the conditions of the experiment, spoiling the experiment. I make no promise to try to rate sincerely in an RV or MJ election. Somewhere in your post you asked if the conditional methods were ranking methods rather than rating methods. Yes, if you regard 3-slot methods as ranking methods too. We speak of top, middle, and bottom ratings in 3-slot methods, but no one has to assign utility-numbers to candidates, and so, for that reason, you might want to call the 3-slot methods ranking methods. So yes, in that case, all of the conditional methods are ranking methods rather than rating methods, because no one has to try to assign merit-proportional ratings to candidates. But you know, the distinction between ratings and rankings blurs. With 3 rank positions, shall we call them 1st, 2nd and 3rd ranks, or shall we call them A, B and C ratings? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] FW: Kristofer: MJ & RV
From: nkk...@hotmail.com To: election-meth...@electorama.com Subject: Kristofer: MJ & RV Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 22:17:06 + Kristofer: You say that MJ and RV are the methods to propose because they're the ones that meet the two criteria you defined. Have you demonstrated that they're the only ones? What about Approval? It's simpler. Simpler to define, implement and vote. And supplementable by the conditionality options that I've described, to get rid of the co-operation/defection problem. Your reply regarding MJ seemed basically to be saying that maybe you won't regret voting sincerely in MJ. That's great if you like "maybe". When you say that some will rate sincerely, you're moving the topic to psychology. And I like the way you guys like to theorize about how people would vote, while declining to find out what voting is like in the various proposed methods, via a poll. But maybe you're right. Maybe in MJ some would rate sincerely and some would, instead, voting in their best interest. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether the suckers are your co-factionalists or mine. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kristofer: MJ & RV
Kristofer: You say that MJ and RV are the methods to propose because they're the ones that meet the two criteria you defined. Have you demonstrated that they're the only ones? What about Approval? It's simpler. Simpler to define, implement and vote. And supplementable by the conditionality options that I've described, to get rid of the co-operation/defection problem. Your reply regarding MJ seemed basically to be saying that maybe you won't regret voting sincerely in MJ. That's great if you like "maybe". When you say that some will rate sincerely, you're moving the topic to psychology. And I like the way you guys like to theorize about how people would vote, while declining to find out what voting is like in the various proposed methods, via a poll. But maybe you're right. Maybe in MJ some would rate sincerely and some would, instead, voting in their best interest. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether the suckers are your co-factionalists or mine. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kristofer: MJ & RV
Kristofer: You say that MJ and RV are the methods to propose because they're the ones that meet the two criteria you defined. Have you demonstrated that they're the only ones? What about Approval? It's simpler. Simpler to define, implement and vote. And supplementable by the conditionality options that I've described, to get rid of the co-operation/defection problem. Your reply regarding MJ seemed basically to be saying that maybe you won't regret voting sincerely in MJ. That's great if you like "maybe". When you say that some will rate sincerely, you're moving the topic to psychology. And I like the way you guys like to theorize about how people would vote, while declining to find out what voting is like in the various proposed methods, via a poll. But maybe you're right. Maybe in MJ some would rate sincerely and some would, instead, voting in their best interest. Whether that is good or bad depends on whether the suckers are your co-factionalists or mine. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson MJ. Alternative IC rule? ICT's main problem.
Jameson-- You said that suckers are more easily taken advantage of in the methods that I propose (Approval, Approval with conditional voting options, and MTAOC and MCAOC, and maybe ABucklin with the kinds of conditionality that I've proposed). For one thing, I don't propose sucker-voting with any voting system. For another thing, how would you take advantage of a sucker in AOC, MMT, GMAT, MTAOC or MCAOC? I suppose that, in the ABE, you could say that an A voter who doesn't make his help for B conditional is a sucker. You could take advantage of him. But I don't advocate sucker-voting. If you want to say that those methods have a strategy problem, then you need to say what strategy problem you think it has. Then you need to tell why you think so. Alternative IC rule? Would it be as good, or sometimes better, to say that x is not beaten by y if the number of ballots ranking y over x is not greater than the number ranking x over y plus the number ranking x and y equal-top; and that x wins if no one beats hir? It seems to me that, most likely, ICT's main problem is innocent truncation. Non-strategically-intended truncation. One advantage that I always pointed out for wv Condorcet was that it does a good job of avoiding that particular problem. So maybe Improved Condorcet, completed in a wv sort of way, with one of the conditionality-by-mutuality systems that I've proposed, would be better than ICT for that reason. That would be my reason for chooseing Improved-Condorcet-Winning-votes-Optional-Conditional (ICWOC) instead of ICT. Conditionality of the type used in MMT or GMAT could perhaps be used instead, in which case I'd call the method ICWC, because, with those kinds of conditionality, the conditionality isn't optional. As you know, changes or procedures that get rid of a problem tend to bring with them a different problem. Conditionality doesn't seem to do that. It avoids problems, without bringing one. I said that I wouldn't propose ABucklin or its conditional versions because AERLO is needed to alleviate its strategic uncertainty. But, though they wouldn't get rid of that problem, the conditionalities that I've proposed would do much to alleviate it. So maybe conditional ABucklin would be a good method, a good way to get the greater expressivity of unlimited ranking. I've told here how ABucklin could be used with MTAOC style conditionality, in which case I'd call it AOCBucklin. It could also be used with MMT or GMAT condititionality, in which case I'd call it ACBucklin, because the conditionality wouldn't be optional. With MTAOC style conditionality, not only is the conditionality optional, but it's optional by candidate. That's the kind of conditionality that I'd most likely propose. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson: Repeating my statements
(By the way, Middle-When-Needed and Stepwise-When-Needed probably fail FBC. Of course, if they do, then I withdraw those suggestions.) Jameson: You said: Please repeat them [statements about MJ strategy]. (Doing so in the 1st place would have saved us both time). [endquote] No, what would have saved time would be if you'd initially read what you were replying to. And, failing that, if you'd at least looked at the recent earlier message to find out what you had been replying to. But here it is: (for some reason it double-spaced) But of course MJ differs from RV in the following way: In RV, if you rate x higher than y, you’re reliably, unquestionably, helping x against y. In MJ, of course that isn’t so. In fact, if you like x and y highly, and at all similarly, and rate sincerely, then you’re unlikely to help one against the other, at all. Another difference is that, in MJ, even if you correctly guess that you’re raising a candidate’s median, you can’t know by how much. Suppose x is your favorite. y is almost as good. Say the rating range is 0-100. You sincerely give 100 to x, and 90 to y. Say I prefer y to x, and, as do you, I consider their merit about the same. If I rated sincerely, I’d give y 100 and x 90. But, unlike you, I don’t vote sincerely. Because x is a rival to y, and maybe also because I expect you to rate sincerely, I take advantage of your sincerity by giving y 100, and giving x zero. Because different people have different favorites and near-favorites, your high rating of x and y is probably above those candidates’ median ratings. So you’re raising the medians of both candidates, with no particular reason to believe that you’re raising one’s median more than that of the other. In our above-described example, that’s what you’re doing: Raising the medians of x and y. Probably by about the same amount. I, however, am raising y's median and lowering x's median. You’re raising my candidate’s median, and I’m lowering your candidate’s median. You aren’t helping x against y. I’m helping y against x. You’ve been had. At least in RV, you’d have reliably somewhat helped x against y. There's something familiar about that strategy situation :-) MJ fully has the co-operation/defection problem. [end of re-posted statements] Jameson, maybe you should look up the meaning of "instrumental voting" or "instrumental strategy". It refers to an effort (only) to affect the result of the current election. So you wouldn't vote instrumentally in MJ. Good. Suckers are easily taken advantage of. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Universality of top-count-conditionality. MTAOC alone. Stepwise-When-Necessary. Conditional in Condorcet?
I abbreviate Middle-When-Necessary as MWN. Though, as I've mentioned, mutuality-conditionality a la MTAOC pseudocode, and by MMT, and by GMAT are all (it seems to me) mutually incompatible as options in an Approval election, conditionality by top-count is compatible with each one of those, as options offerable together in an Approval election. If, as seems to me now, it doesn't make sense to speak of MTAOC and MCAOC as voting options in an Approval election, then it could be more worthwhile for them to be considered by an initiative committee, when choosing its proposal. Most likely AOC would be a better proposal, though, if anything more complicated than plain Approval is proposed, due to AOC's greater simplicity. The other day I proposed Middle-When-Necessary, a 3-slot voting option for an Approval election. It's a special case of Stepwise-When-Necessary: Stepwise-When-Necessary: Unlimited rankings. Each ballot gives a vote to each of its top-ranked candidate(s). A count is done for each rank position, starting with 1st place. A count is won by its biggest votegetter. Any ballot all of whose top-ranked candidates are not currently winners gives a vote to its candidate(s) at the next rank position, and a count is conducted. That is repeated till there are no ballots that have a next rank position to give to. The winner then is the candidate with the most votes. Of course it could just turn out as an Approval count. Advantage over plain Approval voting: If your upper choices are sufficiently popular, the victory chance of one of them is helped by the fact that you won't have yet given votes to any less liked. A disadvantage in comparison to Approval is that the strategy isn't known as precisely. I don't claim great improvement for Stepwise-When-Necessary (SWN) over plain Approval voting, but the use of that option seems at least a little advantageous. For methods of more than 3 slots, conditionality-by-top-count could, and probably should, be replaced by conditionality-by-current-vote-total. The candidate gets your vote only if s/he currently has more votes than any of your top-ranked candidates. Maybe Condorcet could have an option, for any particular rank position, to make the listing of a candidate there conditional, where that conditionality is implemented by the ways that I've described. For instance, if instead of Approval or top-count, Improved Condorcet were completed in winning-votes sort of way, and conditionality could be specified for any rank-listing of a candidate, it could be called ICWOC (Improved Condorcet winning-votes Optional Conditional) I haven't thoroughly looked at that possibility, of course, and, at this point, it's just speculative. If it works, its advantage over ICT could be somewhat better burial-deterrence. ...at the cost of loss of simplicity. Pairwise count methods are all subject to strategy that the conditional Approval options and MTAOC and MCAOC aren't subject to. Additionally, they're farther from the simple and natural first proposal, Approval. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson: MJ
I'd said: > But I'd told how easily a strategic faction can take advantage of and beat > a sincere-voting faction. > Not to my satisfaction. [endquote] Of course that won't do. If you want to claim that my statements referred to were incorrect, then you need to tell why you think so. I clearly told how, in MJ, a strategizing faction can take advantage of a sincere faction. Which part of that description do you disagree with? Be specific. I'd said: > Thanks, Kristofer, for confirming my conjecture: MJ strategy is like RV > strategy. > > This is for sure: In a u/a election, MJ's strategy is the same as that of > RV: Max-rate the acceptables and > min-rate the unacceptables. > This is not true. If sending a message about the relative value within either group is worth more than a thousand times less than winning the election, the rational strategy is to use the top two and the bottom two ratings. [endquote] Incorrect. In a u/a election, the all-important thing is ensuring that no unacceptable candidate wins. > I conjecture that, in a non-u/a, 0-info election, MJ's strategy is > likewise identical to that of RV: Max-rate the > above-mean candidates and min-rate the below-mean candidates. As above. [endquote] Strategy whose purpose is the the outcome of the current election is called "instrumental strategy". It's usually or always what we're referring to when we speak of a method's voting strategy. I was talking about instrumental strategy. That can be, and often is, more important than sending a message. But sure, if what you want is to send a message about a merit-difference among the candidates for whom you'd vote for in instrumental Approval voting, then of course you might not do instrumental voting. Sometimes, in mock elections, in rating the candidates, I have slightly differed from instrumental voting in order to express a difference. But, above, I was talking about instrumental strategy. Maybe you wouldn't do instrumental strategy. One thing for certain is that anyone who considers it a u/a election will do instrumental strategy. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Majority-Judgement. Condorcet.
MJ: Thanks for all the answers about MJ strategy. But I'd told how easily a strategic faction can take advantage of and beat a sincere-voting faction. And, if the contest is close, then even a small difference in sincerity could decide which faction's candidate wins. And that amounts to a co-operatioin/defection problem too. No amount of speculation or discussion of MJ's other strategy issues or mystique will make that go away. Thanks, Kristofer, for confirming my conjecture: MJ strategy is like RV strategy. This is for sure: In a u/a election, MJ's strategy is the same as that of RV: Max-rate the acceptables and min-rate the unacceptables. I conjecture that, in a non-u/a, 0-info election, MJ's strategy is likewise identical to that of RV: Max-rate the above-mean candidates and min-rate the below-mean candidates. I further conjecture that all MJ strategy, u/a and non-u/a, 0-info and not 0-info, is the same as that of RV: Max-rate all of the candidates whose merit, for you, is above your expectation for the election. Min-rate all of the candidates whose merit, for you, is below your expectation for the election. Of course many Approval strategies have been discussed at EM, but they all are instances, special cases, of the above-stated better-than-expectation strategy. Condorcet: Condorcet is almost fine if you don't care about FBC or the co-operation/defection problem. I've already told why I consider FBC and CD to be important. There's no need to repeat that now. I've been saying that, when advocating a criterion, one should say why one considers it important. I've amply done that, regarding FBC and CD. So, if you advocate Condorcet, it's because we agree to disagree about FBC and CD. Above, I said "almost fine". That's because, even aside from FBC and CD, Condorcet doesn't work as well as I'd formerly believed. My claims about Condorcet's powerful thwarting and deterence of burial strategy were all based on 3-candidate examples. Just as we all have been in denial about the co-operation/defection problem, maybe I and some others hadn't wanted to look at what can happen when there are more than 3 candidates in Condorcet. Condorcet's thwarting and deterence of burial, it seems to me, doesn't work nearly as well when there are more than 3 candidates. That means that SFC doesn't mean as much. SFC was central to my advocacy of Condorcet. So, for all of those reasons, I don't consider Condorcet, in any of its versions, to be a good proposal for single-winner reform. In addition to Approval's FBC compliance, and the fact that CD compliance can easily be added via the conditional options, Approval is the answer to the question "There are so many voting system proposals--Why should we choose yours?". Approval's answer is: "Because Approval is the minimal, obvious, natural, easily-implemented, improvement-change from Plurality. Plurality done right. Approval transparently eliminates Plurality's worst problem, without adding one." And then, with the conditionality-options added, perhaps in a later proposal, the method will have un-equalled freedom from strategy problems, unmatched mild strategy. Could it be that the simplest and most obvious and natural is the also best, in terms of getting rid of strategy problems? Yes. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Top-majority options for Approval? An alternative 3-slot option.
tually incompatible as Approval options, but any one of them would work well as a conditionality option in an Approval election. It only recently occurred to me that Middle-When-Necessary could be practical and useful, and so of course it could have a problem, drawback, or shortcoming that I don't know of yet. For instance, I don't know if it could spoil FBC compliance. So, at this point, it's only a tentative possibility-suggestion, and not a proposal. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Kevin: Majority Judgement
Hi Kevin-- You wrote: In my simulations MJ and Bucklinesque methods usually show similar strategy patterns to Approval. (Though so does Range.) [endquote] Yes. And so there's no justification for MJ's greater elaborateness, if it doesn't get get rid of strategies possessed by much simpler methods. The conditional methods, offerable as voting-options in Approval election, do much to alleviate the problem of help for a lower choice hurting your favorite. You wrote: If you go lower in the rankings (e.g. consider safety of 2nd preference from the specified 3rd preference) I think the numbers just get more and more unclear as to whether you stand to gain anything for the risk you definitely take. [endquote] Yes, things get more doubtful and uncertain lower in a ranking. For one thing, in a 3-slot method, if you're a progressive, then you might feel safe in the belief that no progressive will middle-rate a Republican, though many might (at first) middle-rate one or more Democrats. You might also feel safe in assuming that Democrat top-raters won't middle rate Republicans. They consider the Republicans to the main thing they need to defeat. (Sure, the Democrat and Republican candidates are really so policy-identical that one would expect a top-rater of one to like the other too, but I feel that most or all Democrat voters don't really like the Democrat policies best. I believe that most or all Democrat voters are really progressives who feel that they need to strategically give it to the Democrats) Knowing those things in a 3-slot election gives some sureness to the protection and enforcement of majority rule. In ABucklin, with unlimited rank positions, at lower rank positions, you can't really expect to guess reliably at what point a group of voters will refuse to rank less-liked candidates, and so you don't have the assurances that you'd have in a 3-slot method. Not unless there is some explicit organizing for co-operation among factions. For that reason, I said earlier that I'd only advocate AOCBucklin if AERLO is available. So, now that I won't propose AERLO, then I probably won't propose AOCBucklin (or ABucklin or Bucklin either, of course) either. Mike Ossipoff By the way, I agree that AERLO methods probably violate FBC. The effects are too unpredictable. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] AERLO probably spoils FBC compliance.
It probably does that with any method. Suppose it's Nader, some Democrats, and some Republicans. You equal-top-rank Nader and all the Democrats. Nader wins. If you and others like you had left Nader out, a Democrat would have won. The Republicans have ranked all the Republicans and Democrats, and protected them all with AERLO, in order to protect against the election of anyone they like less than the Democrats. Nader's win, therefore, triggers the Republican AERLO, bringing lots of Republicans and Democrats to top-ranking among the Republican ballots. That gives the win to a Republican. If you had only top-ranked the Democrats, and left Nader out of your ranking, a Democrat would have won. That violates FBC. Sure, a verbally-described non-numerical scenario like that isn't as conclusive as a numerical example, but it sounds like something that could happen, and it's convincing. AERLO probably spoils FBC compliance. So I don't propose AERLO for public elections. I want it to always be possible to assure voters that there is absolutely no way that they could regret voting their favorite at top rank or rating. I feel that majority working-together, to enforce majority rule, would be more difficult with more than 3 ranking slots. A 3-slot method makes it easier to assume what your compromise's supporters will do. AOCBucklin would involve more strategic guesswork and risk than would MTAOC. So now I don't know if I'd propose any method with more than 3 rating slots. Well, in my conversations with people new to voting systems, I've been told that ABucklin is too complicated anyway. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Majority Judgement
Does anyone here know the strategy of MJ? Does anyone here know what valid strategic claims can be made for it? How would one maximize one’s utility in an election with acceptable and completely unacceptable candidates who could win? How about in an election without completely unacceptable candidates who could win? And no, I don't mean refer to a website. The question is do YOU, as an MJ advocate, know what MJ's strategy is? Of course, if anyone here advocates MJ, then they, themselves, should know MJ’s strategy, and its advantages and disadvantages, and be able to state them here. I’m just guessing, but isn’t MJ’s strategy the same as that of RV? (Maximum rating for candidates you’d vote for in Approval, and minimum points for candidates you wouldn’t vote for in Approval). And surely the u/a strategy of MJ is to max-rate the acceptables and min-rate the unacceptables. But of course MJ differs from RV in the following way: In RV, if you rate x higher than y, you’re reliably, unquestionably, helping x against y. In MJ, of course that isn’t so. In fact, if you like x and y highly, and at all similarly, and rate sincerely, then you’re unlikely to help one against the other, at all. Another difference is that, in MJ, even if you correctly guess that you’re raising a candidate’s median, you can’t know by how much. Suppose x is your favorite. y is almost as good. Say the rating range is 0-100. You sincerely give 100 to x, and 90 to y. Say I prefer y to x, and, as do you, I consider their merit about the same. If I rated sincerely, I’d give y 100 and x 90. But, unlike you, I don’t vote sincerely. Because x is a rival to y, and maybe also because I expect you to rate sincerely, I take advantage of your sincerity by giving y 100, and giving x zero. Because different people have different favorites and near-favorites, your high rating of x and y is probably above those candidates’ median ratings. So you’re raising the medians of both candidates, with no particular reason to believe that you’re raising one’s median more than that of the other. In our above-described example, that’s what you’re doing: Raising the medians of x and y. Probably by about the same amount. I, however, am raising y's median and lowering x's median. You’re raising my candidate’s median, and I’m lowering your candidate’s median. You aren’t helping x against y. I’m helping y against x. You’ve been had. At least in RV, you’d have reliably somewhat helped x against y. There's something familiar about that strategy situation :-) MJ fully has the co-operation/defection problem. Discussion of a method’s strategy shouldn’t have to come from someone who doesn’t advocate that method. A tip: Don’t have confidence in a method whose advocates evidently don’t know its strategy. Another thing: Just as one example, try MJ on the Approval bad-example. What you thereby find out is that, to be usable, MJ needs bylaws and patches, such as to make it too wordy and elaborate (and arbitrary?) to be publicly proposable. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Propose plain Approval first. Option enhancements can be later proposals.
The enhancement consisting of voting options in an Approval election should only be mentioned when there’s plenty of time to talk, and when talking to someone who is patient or interested enough to hear that much. And the enhancements should only be mentioned as possibilities, when speaking to someone to whom the whole notion of voting-system reform is new. Maybe that goes for SODA as well. Don’t propose too much change, when talking to someone new to the subject. So the method to propose first is ordinary Approval. If, in some particular community, there is a committee of people interested in working on a voting-system reform proposal, then, though the enhancements might be mentioned to that committee, the suggestion to include them in a public proposal should come only from other members of the committee, people new to voting systems. That’s a measure of their enactment-feasibility in that community. For AOC, MTAOC, etc., I’ve spoken of two kinds of conditionality :conditionality by mutuality, and conditionality by top-count. In an Approval election in which the conditional methods are offered as optional ways of voting, any particular voter could choose which of those two kinds of conditionality s/he intends to use for any particular conditional vote for any particular candidate. There’s no reason why a voter couldn’t specify different kinds of conditionality for conditional votes for different candidates. In the count, the conditionality by top-count should be done first, and then, when those conditional votes are established, the calculation for conditionality by mutuality, as described in the MTAOC pseudocode, should be done. Of course, if SODA’s delegation is also an option in the same election, then after the entire count is completed (including AERLO’s 2nd count if AERLO is offered), then the work of the delegates would begin, just as it would if SODA’s delegation were the only option enhancement in the election. Of course, for SODA to work as needed, mutual approval agreements among candidate-delegates, whether made before or after the pre-delegate-work count(s), should be public, officially-recorded, and binding. Of course, one would expect that there would be no need for delegates to make agreements before the pre-delegate-work count(s). Since the current poll’s voting period doesn’t end till zero hours, one minute, on February 1st (Wednesday), GMT (UT), or, in other-words, at a minute after midnight, Tuesday night, GMT (UT), which is 4:01 p.m. Tuesday, Pacific Standard Time in the U.S., and 7:01 p.m. Tuesday, Eastern Standard Time—then I’ll mention that of course the above-described variety of conditionality options should be available in a mock election too, including the current one. Yes, I’ve noticed that no one’s participating in the poll. I was glad to provide you the opportunity to try out the methods that you advocate. On a related subject: The other thing lacking at EM, in addition to mock elections, is support for claims that a criterion is important. We hear, “I consider this criterion to be very important”. But such assertions need to be supported by explanation of _why_ you consider that criterion important. Why should others consider it important? What practical problems are present in non-complying methods but not in complying methods? What would it be like to vote in a non-complying method? That kind of criterion-discussion would make EM a useful resource for people comparing the merits of voting systems. As I said, I’ll be putting some definitions of methods, voting-options, and criteria on the electowiki, and will continue to check EM and reply when appropriate during that time. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] General strategy and proposabiliy
lect the two most despised parties forever, at Myerson-Weber equilibrium. (in which the results (one of “the 2 choices” always wins and no one else gets any votes to speak of) seem to confirm the belief that those 2 parties are indeed the 2 choices). But it’s possible to avoid the co-operation/defection problem, in an obvious, natural, straightforward way, with an obvious enhancement of Approval: The conditional methods, starting with Optionally-Conditional Approval (AOC). Less important, the next kind of straightforward improvement would be to increase the number of levels of majority rule protection, by such obvious transitions as the transition from AOC to MTAOC or MCAOC. Or even AOCBucklin. I’ve suggested conditionality by mutuality, but these methods could also use conditionality by top-count, where a conditional middle rating is actually given only if its recipient has more top-ratings than any of the voters’s top-rated candidates. Though not quite as straightforward as AOC and MTAOC, other approaches to conditionality by mutuality are MMT and GMAT. MMT’s mutual majority set, and GMAT’s mutual approval set are natural ways to achieve conditionality by mutuality. I emphasize that all of these are natural, obvious and straightforward enhancements of Approval, to get rid of its co-operaton/defection problem, and (less important) to gain additional levels of majority-rule protection. That naturalness, obviousness and simplicity, of Approval, and its various derived methods named above, is the answer to the questsion “How can we justify proposing some particular method, when there are so many?” The fact that these Approval enhancements can be offered as _options_ in an Approval election further increases their proposability and makes them more difficult for opponents to object to. As I said yesterday, the conditional methods avoid the strategy problems of the other nonprobabilistic ballots-only methods, without adding any problems. For nonprobabilistsic ballots-only methods, there’s no such thing as getting rid of strategy, but the conditional methods show that it’s possible to get rid of the genuinely problematic strategy problems. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Strategy in two kinds of FBC/ABE methods
At first the only FBC/ABE method we knew of was MMPO. Then MDDTR. But both had criticisms which, though I don't recognize their importance, could still be used against them in an enactment campaign. Other than those, there are my conditional methods, and Chris's ICT. ICT avoids the co-operation/defection problem by completing Improved Condorcet with a top-count. But the fact that it uses a pairwise count makes it vulnerable to the offensive strategies of burial and offensive truncation. As I said, that's mitigated by the fact that those strategies can ony help a more favorite candidate. But that strategic consequence of pairwise-count is still there. As I said, the top-count is what avoids the co-operation/defection problem. But, when AOC uses conditionality-by-top-count, one of thekinds of conditionality that I've suggested, it's making use of the same solution. Let me repeat how that simple kind of conditionalitly works:Give top rating to the candidates you approve unconditonally. Give middle rating to those you approve conditionally. They'll get an approvalfrom you only if they get more top ratings than do your top-rated candidates. I prefer conditionality by mutuality, but what I described in the previous paragraph avoids the kind of calculations needed by mutuality-conditionality, while retaining optionality by candidate. All of the methods that I call "conditional methods" are simply and closely based on Approval, thereby having Approval's avoidance of many strategy problems that other methods have. And the conditionality gets rid of Approval's remaining problem, the co-operation/defection problem. Ordinary Approval is good enough. We've discussed various ways of dealing with ABE in ordinary Approval. Forest's diplomatic solution. Or publicilzed principled refusal of a compromise. It's been shown that Approval will soon home in on the voter median, avoiding an unliked Myerson-Weber equilibrium. The conditional methods have been objected to by someone, on the grounds that he doesn't like coalition, or doesn't like conditionality. 1. As I said, "... then is it important to you that you not help the people whose help you want?"2. Any method that elects C in the ABE, if B voters don't co-operate, is, itself, conditional, even if not explicitly. The simple, direct, obvious and transparent explicit conditionality of the conditional methods, used with Approval, and Approval-basedmethods such as MTA, MCA and ABucklin, avoids the strategy problems of other methods, without adding one. Of course all ballots-only nonprobabilistic methods have strategy. The strategy considerations that the conditional methods have are not problems, by that term's meaning in discussions of other methods. I'm only comparing the conditional methods to other ballots-only methods. And, as I've said, the conditional methods have the advantage of being obvious and simple improvements on Approval. So closely related to Approval are they that AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC and AOCBucklin can be offered together as options in an Approval election. Options areuncontrovesial, and difficult to criticize. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Supernumerary. Subnumerarity.
I'd assumed that, in that word, the "numer-" was streamlined by dropping its 2nd syllable. But, just in case, I eventually looked up "Supernumerary", and_it_ was in the dictionary. So "numer-" isn't shortened in that way, and the word is "Supernumerary". So the opposite would be "Subnumerary", andthe state-of-affairs noun would be "Subnumerarity". Of course, in this usage, that noun would refer to the state of affairs of a set, as opposed to how "Supernumerary" usually refers to one member of a set. But, of course, what's wrong with the familiar word "Paucity, " or the universally-used expression "small sample"? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Dave reply, IRV
dlw: I agree with JQ's approach of realism that presumes that LNH or the Weak Cournot Winner problem matters because it is important to take into account the fears of incumbents when pushing electoral reform. [endquote] ...so Dave is pushing for something that current incumbants will like because it will keep on electing the same two odious parties, as lesser-evils, at Myerson-Weber equilibrium. Dave says: As for your dumb and dumber characterization, this gets at my arg that lowering the Pirv After Burlington, Pirv(federal) = 0. ...doesn't raise the Poth [endquote] If IRV continues to embarrass electoral reform, then P(anything) will approach zero. That's why serious advocates of electoral reform must distance themselves from IRV, FairVote, and Richie. Dave says: ...because there is no unity over which election rule would take the place of IRV3 as the de facto leader by virtue of its P if not it's X. [endquote] Can we guess that Dave is using "X" to stand for "merit"? Most people wouldn't propose something more complicated than Approval unless it's better than Approval. IRV is the "de facto leader", in terms of local enactments, due to heavy promotion by means of someone's personal wealth. It's rather like buying your son's way into a prestigious university, and then buying him a degree there. There's no unity about which method we like best, but there is a strong consensus that Approval is pretty good, and it's the obvious, natural proposal due to its simplicity and its minimal change from Plurality. Then we can talk about equally simple and obvious ways to get rid of the co-operation/ defection problem, and maybe add an additional level of majority rule protection. In other words, such proposals as the conditional methods or SODA, all of which are based on, and follow directly from, Approval. > > From: MIKE OSSIPOFF > To: > Cc: > Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:12:09 + > Subject: [EM] Dave, Jameson: IRV > Dave: > > *Any proposal **for federal elections would be thoroughly scrutinized and > examined. Do you **think that Burlington's demonstration of IRV's spoiler > ** problem won't be found by those studying IRV's merit? * > > * * dlw: You gotta find new material. > > [endquote] > > MO:Most likely dlw doesn't know what he means by that either. Comedians > and other > showmen must use original material. > dlw: My arg that there's a healthy party-dynamism triggered by the potential of IRV variants to spoil in a three-way competitive election is original material. Yes, that is original material. And, as new comedic material should be, it is hilarious. Healthy party-dynamism triggered by the spoiler problem? :-) What is triggered by the spoiler problem is the stagnation of two un-favorite parties continuing to win because the spoiler problem and the grossest FBC-failure make people feel that they need to vote for their more preferred of "the two choices". Dave says: You're the one repeating the mantra that Burlington sinks IRV once and for all [endquote] For one thing, it isn't a mantra. Look the word up in your dictionary. If you don't have a dictionary, you might consider visiting a library. Many things are said by more than one person. Many parents tell their children not to play with matches or run into the street in front of cars. They say it even though others have already said it. If you insist on continuing to repeat FairVote's lies and confusions, then don't be surprised if someone repeats the answers to your statements. IRV's problems don't go away just because they've already been mentioned. IRV's chances for federal enactment don't improve just because they've already been discussed. So yes, it's been said before, but it remains true. But I'll make a deal: I'll stop talking about IRV's merits and chances if you do. You haven't repeated anything here, have you? :-) > MO:Regrettably, IRV's spoiler problem is still there, > just like it was during the previoius many years when we tried to warn > about it. > It's old material. But it's currently a problem, as Burlington showed. So > maybe the new material > that's needed is a new voting system, instead of the old-material failure > known as IRV. > dlw: Like I said... or as George Gershwin wrote, "It ain't necessarily so..." [endquote] You could say that before the predicted failure was demonstrated in an actual election. Now, the failure is demonstrated. Have you heard the story of the ostrich? > > Dave says: > > It's called the problem of micronumerosity. > > MO:Nonsense. That isn't a descriptive name. No doubt anything is called by &
[EM] SODA posting with run-on lines (hopefully) fixed.
This is a test, to find out if I can get rid of the run-on lines by re-typing the posting with automatic linebreaks at the right margin instead of using the carriage-return. But does that mean that if I try to make a paragraph division, I'll instead end up with an endless line? Sorry, but I'm having difficulty sending readable e-mail wth my new computer system. Now let's try a paragraph and find out if that works: I'm copying the posting here, and will then rewrite it without the carriage-returns. What is sent will be the verion without the carriage-returns.(except for new paragraphs). One problem is that the "zoom" scale keeps changing, which could make nonsense of the automatic linebreaks. SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it acceptable. You're specifying the rules in too much detail. The initiative street-descrliption needn't be legal language, though that should be available upon request. Likewise, for the computer program of MTAOC, MCAOC and AOC. So here's how I described SODA to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you can optionally check a box indicating that you want that candidate to be able to add approval votes to your ballot on your behalf if s/he doesn't win. S/he will have previously published a ranking of candidates to indicate the order in which s/he would give such designated approvals. That's it. That brief descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is non-delegation. If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box. I'd better send this before the system finds a way to mess it up more, or freeze the computer, etc. (more when I can fix the remaining run-on lines in the posting) Mike Ossipoff. more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-return characters.) Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA
Jameson: SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In
a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it
acceptable. You're speciflying the rules in too much detail. The
street-description, and the petition-language, needn't be the legal language
(though that should be available upon request). Likewise, for MTAOC or MCAOC,
or AOC, people won't demandto see the computer program, but it will be
available to the person who wants to look at it. The person who wouldn't accept
a computer program also wouldn't ask to read it. So here's how I described SODA
to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you
can optionally check a box indicating that you want that personto be able to
add approval votes to your ballot, on your behalf, if s/he doesn't win. S/he
will have previously published a rankingof candidates to show the order in
which s/he would give such delegated approvals. That's it. That brief
descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me
that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is
non-delegation.If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box to indicate
that. I'd like SODA to be a bit fancier: Why should delegation only b e
available to the person who has only voted for one candidate? Say you vote for
several candidates. Each candidate has a delegation box by hir name. If you
want to, you can designate as delegate anycandidate for whom you've voted. (but
you can only deleglate just one candidate) As in your version, s/he can add to
your ballot approvals for candidates for whom you haven't voted, as long as
your resulting approval set doesn't skip any candidates in hir publicized
ranking. Disadvantage: It loses some of SODA's simplicity. I understand that
the "S" in SODA is for "simple". As you said, the optional-ness of the
delegation should avoid any complaint of undemocratic-ness. But of couise
opponentswill still try to use that complaint. I'll mention SODA (simple or
more elaborate) along with the other FBC/ABE methods, any time I suggest new
methods more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time
to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably
opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text
editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to
be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-returncharacters.) Mike Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] My message posted without linebreaks. Disregard. Will fix it.
With my new computer setup, the editor automatically does carriage returns at the right margin, but those linebreaks aren't included in the message when it's posted. So disregard my posting "Jameson reply", until I re-post it with the linebreaks added. Likewise for my message before that, if it has the same problem. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Jameson reply
Jameson: > Therefore, s/he can't lose if s/he is one of the two biggest votegetters in the primary. IRV doesn't have a guarantee like that. The conditional methods that I've been proposing won't elect "weak CWs", unfavorite CWs. You replied: Do you mean strategic CWs? [endquote] As people here use the term, a "weak CW" is a CW who is the favorite of few voters. That's why I also called it an unfavorite CW. Whether voters have sufficiently examined the candidates is their businbess only. A recommendation: If you haven't examined xenough to know that you'd rather elect x than y, then maybe you shouldn't rank x over y. It isn't our place to 2nd guess the voters, and question whethr they've informed themselves sufficiently. Often people who haven't examined candidates' and parties' platforms don't vote--as witness the turnout of the current poll at EM. I don't know how insincere voting could cause a candidate to pairwise-beat all the others, but I don't consider it a problem to worry about. You continued: Anyway, that whole argument just leaves IRV, MJ, and SODA as viable. > > What?? :-) > I don't mean that these are the most viable methods. I mean that they're the most viable according to the weak-centrists-shouldn't-win argument. I don't think that WCSW is the most important criterion, by any means, but it is one aspect of viability worth discussing. [endquote] No one other than the voters themselves has a right to say who should win. By the way, the conditional methods don't elect weak centrists or favorite-of-few CWs. I don't claim that weak centrists shouldn't be elected. Most pairwise count methods elect themas they should if that's what voted preferences indicate. It just happens that the conditional methodsdon't do so. It is not because of that property that I advocate them. But it's true that some or most peoplewould consider the election of a favorite-of-few CW to be a bad-example. By the way, let's avoid "centrist". It has more than one meaning. The usual meaning is: "Someonewho is between the average positions of the Republican candidates and the Democrat candidates. But there's no reason to believe that that "center" or "middle" is anywhere near the actual population median There are reasons tobelieve that it is not. I believe that you yourself said that too. We often hear of how Republocrat "middle" positions differ drastically from public wishes. Nader won all of the presidential mock elections here, and most others that I've heard of elsewhere too. I'd said; > You're all worried about what the incumbants will like or accept. They'll > only accept what will keep electing them. They were elected by a method > with a serious spoiler problem. Without that problem, and voters' > consequent favorite-burial, those people wouldn't be in office. > You replied: I expect that around half of incumbents would be out, not all of them. The ones with real, non-spoiler-based popularity do exist, and I have no beef with them (per se). [endquote] ...and which current incumbants do you think would get elected when voters could vote for genuine favorites, and thereby have found out where the population median really is, and who is winnable? I'd said: It was shown by Myerson & Weber that Plurality and IRV will keep on > electing even the two most despised parties, if media have led Ipeople to > believe that those are "the 2 choices". > That's because, after everyone has voted for those parties, (surprise) one > of them will win, seeming to confirm the belief that they're "the 2 > choices". > > Of course we're familiar with this in Plurality. But Myerson & Weber > demonstrated that it's > true of IRV too. > Is this Myerson, R. and Weber, R.J.(1993) A theory of Voting Equilibria American Political Science Review Vol 87, No. 1, 102-114? [endquote] That sounds like the article. I don't have the date & volume particulars right now, thoughI posted them about a month ago. Maybe, as you say, current officeholders have the power to prevent voting reform. If so, thenit won't happen, because I guarantee that incumbants will never accept a voting system thatlets voters express their wishes. That's because they don't want their careers to be over. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Dave, Jameson: IRV
ty and IRV will keep on electing even the two most despised parties, if media have led people to believe that those are "the 2 choices".That's because, after everyone has voted for those parties, (surprise) one of them will win, seeming to confirm the belief that they're "the 2 choices". Of course we're familiar with this in Plurality. But Myerson & Weber demonstrated that it'strue of IRV too. Initiaitives can win without any help from incumbants. It would be nice if incumbants wouldsupport methods that would end their careers, but don't count on it. Mike Ossipoff IRV is if the two biggest parties do not center themselves around the center. This possibility is what will goad them to recenter themselves more often. That is what would have happened in Burlington if the anti-IRV campaign had not succeeded. > > Over the decades, when confronted with IRV's spoiler problem, the IRV > promoters always insisted that it's just "theoretical". > I believe non-monotonicity is theoretical, because it presumes that a significant fraction of the population has a total change of heart as to who to vote for. It doesn't have the Weak Condorcet Winner problem, which means the CW doesn't always win and when that happens, it can get spun to bring back a more illiberal election rule. > > if complete results were > always available from IRV elections, the spoiler problem would be found to > happen in other instances as well. > The issue is how much and how bad is the numero dos candidate relative to the CW. The Vermont Prog candidate wasn't that far off from the center... > > (We should be contacting IRV opposition in the cities using it or > considering it, to suggest that they insist that complete > election results be divulged after IRV elections. Maybe letters to the > editor to papers in those cities too.) > > Though I've heard some IRV-promoter rhetoric about it, I haven't heard an > IRV-promoter's explanation for how that "theoretical" > problem actually happened, and an explanation for how he can still claim > that IRV's spoiler problem is only theoretical. > You have to sort thru what's being discussed. Nonmonotonicity is theoretical, as in sour grapes "if only if..." As for "spoiling", IRV reduces its likelihood of happening. It can only happen if there are three relatively big parties and the two biggest are not centered around the center and the supporters of the party-off center don't read the writing on the wall and strategically support the more centrist party. > > JQ:It's obvious that Burlington was a serious failure for IRV. It did not > live up to the advantages promoters had claimed for it. dlw: Their simplified marketing pitch wisely did not go into these sort of relatively unlikely outcomes and they froze the message to being about IRV vs a return to the status quo, as is also wise in an election campaign, as opposed to an electoral methods listserve. > > JQ: However, I have heard IRV supporters claim that Burlington was not a > total failure, because the results were better than plurality, assuming > that same set of (presumably mostly honest) ballots. I've also heard them > claim that Approval would have gotten the same results as plurality, due to > (my words) the Chicken dilemma. I disagree with both of these ideas, but I > can't trivially refute them. > > That said, I agree that it's hard to imagine voters going for IRV > nationally after Burlington. Even the arguments above amount to "it wasn't > TOO bad", which is not exactly inspiring. > I've no doubt that Burlington wd continue to get spun against IRV. The point is the dynamics. Instead of two major parties tilting too far off center, as has been the case, we'd have two major parties that'd need to adjust to the moving center far more often. But it's inane to think that a particular third party is going to be able to get as strong as the Prog party of VT in Burlington at the Nat'l level w.o. getting coopted by the major parties, jealous to keep their duopoly positions. So the chances of this happening are nil in prez elections. The problem with IRV in such elections wd be vote-counting and that is fixed by IRV3/AV3 > > Honestly, this is part of why I keep pushing SODA. I think that incumbents > are used to balancing the dynamic tension of playing to their base or > playing to the center. I think that a system which radically upsets that > balance in favor of centrists is very scary to them, as well as to partisan > activists. I think that Condorcet actually does upset the balance in this > way; and that Range and Approval arguably do, at least enough to wake > those fears. I thin
[EM] Brief comment about IRV discussion
The discussion about IRV referred to something like P(IRV) and P(other), where those presumably represent the probability of success of IRV vs that of other methods. Burlington should show you that the probability of IRV ever making it to federal use is zero. I mean, can you be serious? Any proposal for federal elections would be thoroughly scrutinized and examined. Do you think that Burlington's demonstration of IRV's spoiler problem won't be found by those studying IRV's merit? Over the decades, when confronted with IRV's spoiler problem, the IRV promoters always insisted that it's just "theoretical". But now it can no longer be said to be only theoretical, because it has happened. In fact, most likely, if complete results were always available from IRV elections, the spoiler problem would be found to happen in other instances as well. (We should be contacting IRV opposition in the cities using it or considering it, to suggest that they insist that complete election results be divulged after IRV elections. Maybe letters to the editor to papers in those cities too.) Though I've heard some IRV-promoter rhetoric about it, I haven't heard an IRV-promoter's explanation for how that "theoretical" problem actually happened, and an explanation for how he can still claim that IRV's spoiler problem is only theoretical. David was using "x" to mean "merit" or something like that, when he spoke of x(IRV). Regarding IRV's merit, see above. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] TTPBA//TR is innocent. Electing A is controversial.
TTPBA//TR is innocent:
TTPBA//TR, which I call ICT, is innocent of most of the charges that I made
yesterday.
My posting making those charges was based on treating ICT as if it said "tied"
instead of "tied at top".
1. It's true that ICT doesn't elect A in the ABE. It elects C, in compliance
with the Plurality Criterion.
I emphasize that I would have no objection to the election of A, which confers
some strategy benefit.
(As for objections to electing A, I'll address those later in this posting.
2. Because it's "tied at top", instead of "tied", ICT doesn't elect C in
Kevin's MMPO bad-example.
3. ITC has successful burial strategy. But yes, that's greatly mitigated by the
fact that that strategy is only
usable for the most favorite candidate.
Electing A in the ABE is controversial:
Certainly it's controversial on EM. And maybe similar controversy could be
stirred up by opponents
of an MMPO enaction proposal, in an enaction campaign.
Sure, Jameson, the A voters might really be indifferent between B and C. They
might be using
burial strategy against C, by insincerely voting B over C.
Sincere rankings:
27: A
24: B
49: C
Everyone is indifferent between the candidates other than their favorite.
First, I emphasize that the conditional methods elect C in the ABE.
(In the _optional_ conditional methods, of course C, instead of B, is elected
only if enough A voters have made their B middle rating
conditional).
I acknowledge that strategy problem. The C voters could defend by burying the
non-C candidate
able to benefit from burying C. That would be A. But I, too, don't like anyone
to have to use
defensive burying strategy, even though favorite-burial isn't needed.
Of course one should consider disadvantages in comparison to advantages.
How bad is that burying problem? In the sincere plumping example above, the
burial strategy
is used among 3 disunited non-majority factions. The important thing is
protection of majority
rule. Majority rule doesn't apply in the above example.
If there's a majority voting B over C, then there's nothing that the C voters
can do about
that. All they can do is use insincere burial to choose which of {A,B} will
win.
How bad is that, that a losing faction can at least choose which candidate of
the {A,B}
majority faction will win?
If someone brings up a scenario where the buryers' insincere pairwise votes
combine with
sincere ones by the majority members among eachother's candidates, to defeat
the majority
candidates, then, even if that could pose a problem, the majority voters could
avoid it
by top-rating the same set of candidates, or by protecting them with AERLo.
An advantage of electing A? My poll ballot shows one. Among the CD-complying
rank-counts
that don't let voters designate conditionality, the ones that elect A instead
of C in the
ABE don't strategically deter the use of AERLO.
Mike Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] TTPBA//TR is innocent. Electing A is controversial.
TTPBA//TR is innocent:
TTPBA//TR, which I call ICT, is innocent of most of the charges that I made
yesterday.
My posting making those charges was based on treating ICT as if it said "tied"
instead of "tied at top".
1. It's true that ICT doesn't elect A in the ABE. It elects C, in compliance
with the Plurality Criterion.
I emphasize that I would have no objection to the election of A, which confers
some strategy benefit.
(As for objections to electing A, I'll address those later in this posting.
2. Because it's "tied at top", instead of "tied", ICT doesn't elect C in
Kevin's MMPO bad-example.
3. ITC has successful burial strategy. But yes, that's greatly mitigated by the
fact that that strategy is only
usable for the most favorite candidate.
Electing A in the ABE is controversial:
Certainly it's controversial on EM. And maybe similar controversy could be
stirred up by opponents
of an MMPO enaction proposal, in an enaction campaign.
Sure, Jameson, the A voters might really be indifferent between B and C. They
might be using
burial strategy against C, by insincerely voting B over C.
Sincere rankings:
27: A
24: B
49: C
Everyone is indifferent between the candidates other than their favorite.
First, I emphasize that the conditional methods elect C in the ABE.
(In the _optional_ conditional methods, of course C, instead of B, is elected
only if enough A voters have made their B middle rating
conditional).
I acknowledge that strategy problem. The C voters could defend by burying the
non-C candidate
able to benefit from burying C. That would be A. But I, too, don't like anyone
to have to use
defensive burying strategy, even though favorite-burial isn't needed.
Of course one should consider disadvantages in comparison to advantages.
How bad is that burying problem? In the sincere plumping example above, the
burial strategy
is used among 3 disunited non-majority factions. The important thing is
protection of majority
rule. Majority rule doesn't apply in the above example.
If there's a majority voting B over C, then there's nothing that the C voters
can do about
that. All they can do is use insincere burial to choose which of {A,B} will
win.
How bad is that, that a losing faction can at least choose which candidate of
the {A,B}
majority faction will win?
If someone brings up a scenario where the buryers' insincere pairwise votes
combine with
sincere ones by the majority members among eachother's candidates, to defeat
the majority
candidates, then, even if that could pose a problem, the majority voters could
avoid it
by top-rating the same set of candidates, or by protecting them with AERLo.
An advantage of electing A? My poll ballot shows one. Among the CD-complying
rank-counts
that don't let voters designate conditionality, the ones that elect A instead
of C in the
ABE don't strategically deter the use of AERLO.
Mike Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] 3-Slot ratings
Ted-- I'd said: > 4. 3-Slot rankings You wrote: Could you clarify that 3-slot means something like "Prefer, Accept, Reject"? That is, two approved rankings and one disapproved. [endquote] Yes, that's how I mean it. I've been calling the 3 slots "Top", "Middle" and "Bottom", but of course that just refers to physical _position_ on the ballot. To put it in terms of the voter's actual rating of the candidates, then yes, it would be more accurate to call it Preferred, Accepted, Rejected. ...Because that's what the positions mean. On my own ballot, I rated GPUS "Middle", because I consider GPUS to be acceptable, though not favorite, and though I distinctly prefer another party to it. I rated G/GPUSA "Top" because I prefer it to the other alternatives. So yes, Preferred, Accepted, Rejected is what the ratings really mean. For public elections, Preferred, Accepted, Rejected is probably better because it clarifies those meanings. For use in this poll, either naming is fine. I'd have spoken of Preferred, Accepted, Rejected instead of Top, Middle, Bottom, if it had occurred to me to put it in terms of what the positions actually mean, what the ballot is actually saying about the parties. So I agree that Preferred, Accepted, Rejected is a better way to say it, and therefore it is a better way to write it on the ballot. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] My ballot didn't post correctly. Re-posting it.
The rankings portion of my ballot didn't post correctly. I'm re-posting the ballot here: My ballot, which is also the demonstration ballot: -- Approval without other voting options: G/GPUSA - Approval with other voting options: Voting option chosen: MTAOC Top-rated: G/GPUSA Middle-rated: GPUS (conditional) AERLO - Score-Voting (0-99): G/GPUSA: 99 All others zero -- 3-Slot and Unlimited-Ranking: For methods that fail the CD criterion: 1.G/GPUSA --- For methods that meet CD and only defeat C in the ABE if there is mutual coalition support: 1.G/GPUSA 2.GPUS For methods that meet CD and can defeat C in the ABE by unilateral coalition-support: 1.G/GPUSA 2.GPUS AERLO - I’ll vote an IRV3/AV3 ballot when that method’s definition is posted to EM. - Designated method: Approval with other voting options ------ Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] The list of ballotings didn't post well. So I'm re-posting it here
These are the ballotings in the poll. If you participate, try to vote a ballot for each of these ballotings.It won't take long,due to the small number of parties nominated. But if there isn't sufficient time to vote all 6 of the ballotings,then vote whichever ones you want to. 1. Approval without other voting options 2. Approval with other voting options 3. Score-Voting (0-99) 4. 3-Slot rankings 5. Unlimited rankings 6. IRV3/AV3 Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Ballot
My ballot, which is also the demonstration ballot: -- Approval without other voting options: G/GPUSA - Approval with other voting options: Voting option chosen: MTAOC Top-rated: G/GPUSA Middle-rated: GPUS (conditional) AERLO - Score-Voting (0-99): G/GPUSA: 99 All others zero -- 3-Slot and Unlimited-Ranking: For methods that fail the CD crirerion: 1.G/GPUSA --- For methods that meet CD and only defeat C in the ABE if there is mutual coalition support: G/GPUSAGPUS For methods that meet CD and can defeat C in the ABE by unilateral coalition-support: G/GPUSAGPUS AERLO - I’ll vote an IRV3/AV3 ballot when that method’s definition is posted to EM. - Designated method: Approval with other voting options Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Poll Update
Poll Update: Of course the nomination period has ended. And of course the voting period beginsimmediately when the nomination period ends. Note that I said “voting _period_”, and not “voting”, which is an entirely different matter. I did and do feel that I should propose a poll. I’ve been saying this in various ways previously, but let me say it in this way now: Though I wanted to make a poll available, and though you’re welcome to participate, that’s your business only. Please don’t think that I _expect_ anyone to participate. You might get that impression, given the care with which I’ve specified the poll and its nomination and balloting periods. It’s just something that I felt that I should do. Let me give you a tip: In general, with things like this, what matters, rather than the outcome, is what __you_ do. …that you did your part. That’s why I’m proceeding with the poll postings though there haven’t been any nominations other than my own. Likewise, I’ll post my ballot, regardless of whether it may be the only one. A demonstration ballot is part of a poll. So the voting period began Sunday, two days ago. Let’s say that the voting period ends on February 1st, at 0 hours, one minute, GMT (UT) if, at that time, there hasn’t been a ballot posted during the previous 72 hours. If there has, then the voting period ends as soon as, subsequent to February 1st, there hasn’t been a ballot posted for 72 hours. I’d initially suggested 3 ballotings for the poll. Two other people suggested two additional ones, for a total of 5. I’d like to add one more: Approval without other balloting options. I suggest that the poll should include such a ballot because traditionally all of EM’s polls have included an ordinary Approval balloting. So here are the 6 ballotings in the poll: Approval without other voting optionsApproval with other voting optionsScore Voting (0-99)3-Slot Unlimited RankingIRV3/AV3 I couldn’t find IRV3/AV3 in the electowiki, but I’m hoping that Dave will post its definition to EM. For my participation in EM, I’ve saved the poll for last. After the end of the voting period, I’ll put some method and criterion definitions in the electowiki. Then I’ll check out polls and polling possibilities elsewhere than EM. During the days when I’m doing those things, I’ll continue to look at the EM postings, and maybe sometimes comment when appropriate. My own ballot, the demonstration ballot, will combine 3-slot with unlimited rankings, because I’m not voting for more than two parties. Of course there’s no need to vote more than one 3-slot ranking, and, if desired, one longer ranking. That’s how people have traditionally voted in EM polls: One ranking. As for myself, I’ll vote 3 rankings: One for methods that fail the CD criterion; one for methods that pass CD and require mutual coalition support to defeat C in the ABE; and one for methods that pass CD and allow unilateral coalition-support to defeat C. But you needn’t bother with such distinctions. Typically people here have voted just one ranking. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] TTPBA,TR
ied-at-Top-Pairwise-Beats-All, Top Ratings. In keeping with Kevin's naming, and reflecting its relation to ICA, it could be called Improved Condorcet-Top (ICT). I'll use that because it's shorter. One thing that I like about the tied-at-top methods is that they elect A in the ABE, meaning that one-sided coalition support is sufficient to defeat C, but without giving the election away to B. Of course the election of A violates the Plurality Criterion, but that's fine with me. To me, the _practical_ advantage described in the previous paragraph is worth more than the non-practical, aesthetic, Plurality Criterion. ICT has burial strategy. In the ABE, the B voters can make B win by burying A, by middle- rating C but not A. Then A doesn't have any indifference on his side, in hir comparison with C. But B still beats C, because B>C is still greater than C>B. For the same reason, C still doesn't beat everyone. And B still beats A, because B>A + B=A is greater than A>B. So B is now the only beats-all candidate. B wins. As currently defined, ICT elects C in Kevin's MMPO bad-example. No one is indifferent between A and B. So, since A=B is zero, then A>B + A=B is no greater than B>A. Likewise vice-versa, of course, since A & B are symmetrically-related. Therefore, neither beats the other. Maybe that can be fixed, by defining "beat" in the opposite way, so that x beats y if x>y is greater than y>x + x=y, and then saying that the winning set is the set of unbeaten candidates. In summary, ICT does three things that some find unacceptable: 1. Plurality Criterion violation 2. Successful burial strategy 3. Noncompliance in Kevin's MMPO bad-example. #1 and #2 aren't a problem to me. #2 could be, but I don't know what burial-deterrence ICT has. With the sole exception of MMT, the conditional methods meet Mono-Add-Plump. They probably meet the Plurality Criterion too, because of their close relation to Approval. If B defects, those methods elect C, in compliance with the Plurality Criterion. Burial strategy has no meaning in the conditional methods. As I've been saying, they're a completely new kind of method, with a new kind of strategy, a milder strategy. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] MTA
I said that there's no justification to propose or use a method any more complicated than Approval, unless it avoids the co-operation/defection problem. MTA and MCA both elect B in the Approval bad-example. It seems to me that, due to some advantage, I decided that I'd vote by MCAOC voting instead of MTAOC voting in an Approval election among the 7 parties that I nominated. But, because I'd like to use more than 3 rank-positions, provided that AERLO is available, I'd use AOCBucklin instead of either in that election. Without AERLO, strategy becomes much less reliable and knowable with more than 3 slots. As I said, I'm not sure whether or not AERLO spoils FBC-compliance, but I nevertheless suggest having it as an option in the poll, and I will use it, if the poll happens. But, if AERLO spoils FBC-compliance, I wouldn't propose it publicly. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] A few poll comments
Just as I did when I proposed the poll, I continue to proceed is if there will be interest and participation in the poll. I should do so whether or not it later turns out that there is interest and participation. There have only been 7 parties nominated (by me), with the Republicans and Democrats divided into five subgroups. So, 7 parties or 10 parties and party-subgroups. Though the Directory of U.S. Political Parties (if that's its accurate name), findable on the Internet, lists a _lot_ of parties, the 7 that I nominated adequately cover the political spectrum in the U.S. It turns out that it's advantageous to have so few "candidates" in this mock election, because people on EM have suggested two additional ballotings: 3-slot, and IRV3/AV3. That brings the number of ballotings to five: 1. Approval (where, optionally, voters can use any one of the other voting methods that I've offered) 2. Score Voting (Unless someone suggests otherwise, I suggest voting as you would in an actual Score-Voting election, which may or may no be sincere). I suggest a range of 0-99. 3. 3-Slot Rankings (or ratings). No special balloting features. 4. Unlimited Rankings. No special balloting features. 5. IRV3/AV3 For every voting method of more than 2 slots, I suggest the availability of the AERLO option, because it's useful in every such method, and therefore is not method-specific. Though I wouldn't publicly propose AERLO until I'm sure it wouldn't spoil FBC compliance, I'm certain that a highly improbable FBC violation wouldn't be a problem in EM voting. If I knew that AERLO caused an FBC violation, I wouldn't suggest its use, even here. Since I don't know yet, I'll assume that it doesn't have that problem and that it will qualify as a good public proposal. Any such unlikely FBC problem that it might have wouldn't be a problem in an EM poll. Anyway, with so many ballotings, it wouldn't do to have a lot of "candidates". Five ballotings are manageabe and feasible when there are only 7 parties. Still, of course anyone should feel free to nominate others. But be conscious of the need to keep the candidate-number down, due to the relatively large number of ballotings (five). The nominations deadline is January 15th, at 0 hours, 1 minute, GMT (UT). And I repeat that you don't really know what you think of the methods, what it would be like to use them, what problems they have, etc., until you actually do use them. That's why polling, fairly frequent polling,] is absolutely essential at a mailing list that discusses voting systems. Voting systems can't meaningfully or usefully be discussed without finding out what it's like to actually use them. To the person who feels "why should I go along with what _you_ say? Who appointed you?", I answer that, if someone else had proposed a poll, that would have been fine with me. I waited a long time. So, then, why accept my poll? How about because it's the only political mock election that has been proposed in the past few months. I don't know how recent the most recent mock political election on EM is. We did one in 2004. And note that I specifically and systematically want to avoid any dictatorialness regarding this poll. I nominated 7 parties, but I don't claim exclusive right to nominate parties. I suggested three ballotings, but I don't claim exclusive right to decide that either. Two people have suggested additional ballotings. My exclusive role in this poll pretty much ended with my proposing it. After that, I intend for it to be a collective project, and I claim no exclusive or special right to decision-input. Related to this poll, only one suggestion is exclusively my own: That there be a poll. Beyond that, I claim no special input. Yes, I intend to do a Voter's Choice count, if there is participation and if voters designate a method, but that, too, isn't an exclusive right: Anyone can count any of the ballotings however they want to. Some might be bothered by the fact that I've offered my conditional voting methods as options in the Approval election. But note that they're _options_. Obviously, anyone else could suggest other options, and anyone could use, or not use, any option. Likewise for the AERLO option. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] I should have listed SODA. The conditional methods win, _among the ballots-only methods_.
Jameson-- Yes, sorry to have again missed SODA in my list of FBC/AOC methods. Methods involving delegation or proxy can do a good job of avoiding strategy problems. I suggest that Proxy Direct Democracy, as I've described it during the last few months on EM, is the obvious best form of government. (if count-validity can be assured) ...Let's let government catch up with technology. Of course in Proxy DD, there'd still be single-winner choices among alternatives (but not candidates). SODA, therefore, wouldn't be applicable in Proxy DD. Under the present system of single-winner-elected representation, I include SODA among the good FBC/ABE methods, even though I neglected to list it in my previous posting. So I don't oppose or criticize SODA. I consider SODA less winnable than the simplest ballots-only FBC/ABE methods. But that's just an individual subjective impression, not supported by polling. Well, yes I did talk to a few people unfamiliar with voting systems, and they didn't like SODA because it was a bit complicated, and because the weren't used to deciding elections by anyone other than the voters themselves. So I personally feel that SODA will be a harder sell. I've had a few conversations to back up that impression, but I'm the first to admit that there has been no genuinely useful polling on the matter. We should do polling about which FBC/ABE methods people will accept. Only then can reliable statements be made on that matter, and regarding the matter of which proposal would be best. But there's a much more important and immediate polling need: We must poll people about which 2012 presidential candidates they like. Preferably rank-balloting, with sincere ranking requested. Tell voters to rank sincerely, to find out which candidate is the best one that they can get. Count the ballots by Condorcet-Schwartz-Top. The main purpose would be to find a voted CW. If there is, instead, a circular tie, then the Schwartz set is the natural place to look for the best candidate that one can get. The most favorite candidate in that set seems the best one to support with out Plurality votes. But it could be said that Beatpath looks for the Schwartz-set member most qualified to be in the Schwartz-set, and so maybe Beatpath (Or the equivalent Schwartz-Sequential-Dropping (SSD) ) would be a good count method for that practical poll. But even a Plurality poll would be useful. Assuming a 1-dimensional political spectrum, we could find the median candidate, and give our Plurality support to hir. Since legitimate single-winner reform advocates don't have the kind of money that FairVote has, it could be a very, very long time before we get a better single-winner method. And likely it would start out only in local elections. Then it would take even longer for it to replace Plurality in state and federal elections. In stark contrast, we could effectively have Condorcet _immediately_, for 2012, if we did Condorcet polling to determine the best candidate to whom to give our Plurality votes. Condorcet for 2012! Let's do polling to make the best use of the voting system that we already have, Plurality. And let's do such polling before all elections for state and national office. We could simultaneously work for the enactment of better single-winner methods too, of course. But right now, in a presidential election year, surely public effort should be toward using Plurality to elect the CW. And no, don't assume that the CW is a Democrat or a Republican. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Oops! MMPO with summed disapprovals as an opposition elects B in ABE. FBC/ABE roundup.
Forest-- The Approval bad-example: 27: A>B 24: B 49: C B's negative score is 49, the number who rank C over B, and also the number who don't rank B C's negative score is 51, the number who rank B over C, and also the number who don't rank C A's negative score is 73, the number who don't rank A B has the lowest negative score, and wins. You described a good, diplomatic way to avoid the ABE problem in high-res Score Voting. Of course, in public elections, that strategy could be implemented probabilistically in Approval. But that requires information about how many votes C will get. To me, an FBC/ABE method is one that automatically avoids the co-operation/defection problem, not requiring predictive information on the part of the A voters. What kinds of FBC/ABE methods are proposed so far? Three kinds: 1. MMPO and MDDTR: Advantages: Simple and brief definition. A voters can unilaterally establish coalition defeat of C. Disadvantage: Criticizable by Mono-Add-Plump or Kevin's MMPO bad-example. Those criticisms don't describe genuine problems. They don't amount to strategy problems for voters. They don't prevent the electorate from getting changes that they want. But they could be used by opposition to distract voters from the important considerations. 2. Conditional methods such as MMT, GMAT, AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin, AC, MTAC, MCAC and ACBucklin: Advantages: Avoids criticisms of #1. Though MMT doesn't meet Mono-Add-Plump, that criticism is easily answered for MMT. The other conditional methods don't have even that criticism, or the Kevin's MMPO bad-example criticism eitiher. These methods are simple, and follow from Plurality and Approval in a simple, obvious and natural way. Their avoidance of the co-operation/defection problem, too, is obvious, simple, natural and straightforward, as is its motivation. These methods can be offered as _options_ in an Approval election. For example, all of them other than MMT and GMAT can be offered together as options in an Approval election. For the methods other than MMT and GMAT, the conditionality can be optional by candidate. Disadvantages: One disadvantage: Chris doesn't like them. Chris doesn't like them because he evidently doesn't like coalition or conditionality (though any method which, in the ABE, defeats C only if the B voters co-operate is conditional too. The rule-explicitness of the conditional methods' conditionality is what makes their avoidance of the co-operation/defection problem simple, straightforward and natural. Chris doesn't like MMT because of its noncompliance with Mono-Add-Plump, though that criticism is easily answered. 3. Methods using Kevin's tied-at-top comparison: Several have been suggested. No one has claimed that any of them have the desired properties. They're all speculative. Advantages: At least some of them elect A in the standard ABE. In other words, like MMPO and MDDTR, the A voters can defeat C by unilateral coalition support. They probably avoid the criticisms that are used against MMPO and MDDTR. Disadvantages: Too complicated and wordy of definition. They're only speculations, as of this time. I suggest that the conditional methods are the winners. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] CLDMMPO
Forest-- You wrote: I wonder if it is possible for a CL to win three slot MMPO when the number of ballots on which X appears in the bottom slot is counted as an oppsitions to X. In other words, I wonder if the CL disqualification is redudant in that context. Also, how does the CLD rule affect the FBC in general? [endquote] I too have been concerned that FBC compliance could be affected by CLD, or the other disqualification and completion proposals that I've speculatively suggested. I suggest that when one method is completed by another, or when there are disqualifications, the "," relation should be used instead of the "//" relation. So, when applying the 2nd method--the completion method, or the method used after the disqualifications--the entire initial set of candidates would be used in calculating the scores for the completion or post-disqualification method, even though that method is applied only to the post-disqualification candidates. Doesn't that do a lot to protect FBC compliance. I found that CLDMMPO wouldn't avoid Kevin's MMPO bad-example (I mentioned that in my other post today). But, as Ted suggested, maybe 3-slot methods can avoid many of the problems that can happen with unlimited-ranking methods. So that's another thing to investigate. Might 3-slot MMPO be easier to protect from Kevin's bad-example? Is there some easy way to achieve that? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] CLDMMPO
Forest-- You wrote: I wonder if it is possible for a CL to win three slot MMPO when the number of ballots on which X appears in the bottom slot is counted as an oppsitions to X. In other words, I wonder if the CL disqualification is redudant in that context. Also, how does the CLD rule affect the FBC in general? [endquote] I too have been concerned that FBC compliance could be affected by CLD, or the other disqualification and completion proposals that I've speculatively suggested. I suggest that when one method is completed by another, or when there are disqualifications, the "," relation should be used instead of the "//" relation. So, when applying the 2nd method--the completion method, or the method used after the disqualifications--the entire initial set of candidates would be used in calculating the scores for the completion or post-disqualification method, even though that method is applied only to the post-disqualification candidates. Doesn't that do a lot to protect FBC compliance. I found that CLDMMPO wouldn't avoid Kevin's MMPO bad-example (I mentioned that in my other post today). But, as Ted suggested, maybe 3-slot methods can avoid many of the problems that can happen with unlimited-ranking methods. So that's another thing to investigate. Might 3-slot MMPO be easier to protect from Kevin's bad-example? Is there some easy way to achieve that? Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] AERLO in conditional voting. Speculations.
I want to emphasize the distinction between speculations and proposals. AOC, MTAOC, MCAOC, AOCBucklin, and their automatic (non-optional)-conditionality versions AC, MTAC, MCAC and ACBucklin are proposals, not speculations. I prefer the optional-conditionality versions to the automatic-conditionality versions. Because the conditional voting methods are offered as optional, offering those ways of using one's Approval vote as voting options in the Approval election doesn't wrong anyone who doesn't choose to use them. I sometimes mention speculations too. I'll mention a few at the end of this post. AERLO in conditional voting: 1. Obviously, if you want your middle rating for a candidate to be conditional, then you certainly wouldn't want to give hir unconditional AERLO status. So, plainly, if a ballot marks an above-AERLO candidate as "(conditional)", the AERLO status should only apply if the candidate qualifies for receiving your conditional middle rating. 2. I suggested that the default assumption for designation of coalition-suitable candidates should be "Above AERLO (or top-rated or top-ranked if the ballot doesn't use AERLO)". But, for use in conditional voting, I suggest, for that default assumption, two additional requirements for a coalition-suitable candidate: a) must not be a conditionally-rated candidate b) must be ranked over the candidate being considered for actually receiving the conditional vote listed for hir on the ballot. I mentioned that, in MTA or MCA, when AERLO is used, a ballot's middle-rated candidates could be listed vertically, as a ranking, for AERLO purposes, even though they're all middle-rated. That qualifies as the ranking referred to in b). 3. Though I wouldn't unilaterally suggest it, AERLO could fairly be automatic at the bottom of any ranking that doesn't choose AERLO. After all, you like all of your ranked candidates better than any of your unranked ones. So, in the event that none of your ranked candidates wins, it could only be beneficial to you to move them all up to 1st place, for a 2nd count. That could only be beneficial. Still, it amounts to changing someone's ranking without their permission. Based on that principle, and wanting to offer AERLO as an _option_, my inclination is to not make AERLO automatic at the end of ballots that don't specify use of AERLO. If others advocated that, then sure. But I wouldn't unilaterally suggest any automatic, non-optional application of AERLO, or any other non-optional modifications of a voted ballot. A speculation, regarding #1, above: Maybe, for top rating, there could and should be a stronger mutuality requirement, a top-mutuality requirement, before moving the conditional, but above-AERLO, candidate to top, but I haven't looked at if, or how, that could work. It's a speculation. I emphasize that I don't suggest that complication for the poll. And, for public proposals, that would be a _later_ proposal. If such a requirement were workable and desirable, it could be implemented exactly as conditional middle ratings are dealt with in MTAOC. Some FBC/ABE Condorcet-like rank method speculations: I mentioned that maybe Condorcet could be modified for FBC/ABE methods. Before that, of course Kevin's tied-at-top pairwise comparisons had been suggested for use in such methods. Yesterday I suggested MMPO, but with an initial disqualification of Condorcet losers. But that wouldn't avoid Kevin's bad-example, because we could add a Candidate D, whom no one ranks. C pairwise pair-beats hir, and so isn't Condorcet loser. Maybe Condorcet (Tied-At-Top), MMPO2 is more promising. I don't know if it would have the desired properties. It's only a speculation at this point. Other such speculations: 1. MinMax Tied-at-Top pairwise defeat? A Tied-at-Top counterpart to MMPO. Of course I mean that its pairwise comparisons would be Kevin's tied-at-top pairwise comparisons. 2. Greatest Tied-at-Top pairwise win? 3. Condorcet(Tied-at-Top), Top.Among the candidates who don't have a tied-at-top pairwise defeat, elect the one who has the most top ratings. I haven't examined those speculations. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] I retract the posting about changing MTAOC conditionality. Answering a criticicism.
MTAOC conditionality doesn't need the change that I suggested in a post a few minutes ago. I'd believed that there'd be a problem if (in the ABE) the number of A voters + B voters was odd. But that isn't so. If middle(x,y) is even one greater than middle(y,x), then saying par(x,y) = "no" is consistent with the method's intent. So I'm leaving MTAOC conditionality as it was, and retracting the "fix" that I posted a few minutes ago. By the way, someone objected to conditionality by mutuality, but any FBC/ABE method that elects C in the Approval bad-example is effectively doing the same as that. That includes the FBC/ABE proposal posted by the poster who objected to conditionality by mutuality. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Small fix for MTAOC conditinality
if middle(x,y) > middle(y,x)+1 then par(x,y) - "no" ...for a small poll such as the current one. For public elections, I might suggest, say, 5 instead of 1. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Nested Sequential Conditionality didn't seem useful. CL Disqualification MMPO (CLDMMPO)
Because ABucklin is Approval that gives its votes stepwise, it was natural to consider a Conditional Approval that takes away votes stepwise. That's what I referred to yesterday as nested sequential conditionality. It seemed to make sense, and was worthwhile to check out, but, upon examination, there didn't seem to be much point in it. There didn't seem to be significant improvement over ordinary Conditional Approval. By the way, for MMPO, why not start by disqualifying Condorcet losers? Or maybe do the tied-at-top version (that meets Kevin's criterion) of Condorcet, and complete it with MMPO. The former of those two suggestions makes for a briefer-defined method, which I'd call Condorcet Loser Disqualification MMPO (CLDMMPO). That's the version of MMPO that I'll count in the poll's rank ballotings (unlimited and 3-slot), if there is enough participation for it to be a poll. There's enough interest in 3-slot methods at EM to justify a separate 3-slot balloting, and IRV3/AV3 has been discussed here enough to justify a special balloting for it too. In general, of course when I proposed this poll, I never intended that it should be entirely up to me how it's conducted, what the ballotings will be, etc. As I said, such decisions are collective matters. I'll do a Voter's Choice count, but, that just means that I'm doing a count that I like, as of course can anyone. And the various options that I offer for voting in the Approval election are, of course _options_. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
