Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring version

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

please consider including a list of endorsed election methods for
proportional elections, just as you have done for single winner elections.
Otherwise the bold statement will just cover one special case in election
theory - single winner elections.

Furthermore you might consider covering the issues of
(i) proportional rank orders. For instance when electing the party list
in primaries, in countries where closed lists are used.
(ii) proportional rank orders to elect a hierarchy of functions
proportionally, like board president, vice presidents and other board
members.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 3:06 AM, Richard Fobes  wrote:

> I very much agree with Jameson Quinn that the time has come to write, sign,
> and widely distribute a formal statement of the election-method principles
> that we agree upon. Yet instead of just providing a checklist of what we
> approve, I suggest we take advantage of this opportunity to ...
>
> * ... inspire(!) policymakers, politically active citizens, and frustrated
> voters to take action, and ...
>
> * ... give them a clearly explained declaration they can use as ammunition
> in their battles to implement election-method reforms.
>
> To serve these purposes, I'm boldly suggesting an entirely new wording.
> Keep in mind that one of my professions has been to work as a technical
> writer specializing in translating especially complex technology into clear
> English, and I also have experience writing marketing materials.
>
> This version incorporates the suggestions and refinements already
> discussed, so the revision work already done is not being wasted.
>
> Previously I too was thinking that the other version was too long.
> Ironically this version is even longer. I now realize that the other version
> went into too much detail about subtle issues, and that's what made it seem
> long. In contrast, this version uses the extra words to clearly explain
> fundamental voting concepts that most people do not already understand, and
> to serve the above-listed purposes.
>
> Also I think (or at least hope) that this version better identifies our
> real areas of agreement.
>
> My hope is that either this version, or a merging of this version with
> other versions, will produce a declaration that we can sign with much more
> enthusiasm.
>
> - The Declaration of Election-Method Experts -
>
> We, the undersigned election-method experts from around the world,
> unanimously denounce the use of "plurality" voting in elections in which
> there are more than two candidates, and in this declaration we offer
> ready-to-adopt replacement election methods that we agree will reliably
> produce much fairer results.
>
> We agree that there are no perceived political or economic risks associated
> with adopting the election methods recommended here. In fact, we believe
> that improving the fairness of election results will produce many political
> and economic benefits. Some of the benefits we expect include reduced voter
> frustration, reduced government costs (that arise from excessive political
> influence from self-serving special interests), wiser use of tax dollars
> (based on electing problem-solving leaders who solve underlying problems
> that waste money), dramatically increased voter turnout because of having
> meaningful choices, increased compliance with laws including taxation laws,
> and likely increases in widespread economic prosperity (arising from
> increased fairness in the business world).
>
> We use the term "plurality" voting to refer to the commonly used counting
> method in which each voter marks only a single choice on the ballot, and the
> number of marks for each candidate are counted, and the candidate with the
> highest number is regarded as the winner. In some nations this method is
> called "First Past The Post" (and abbreviated FPTP). Although this election
> method produces fair results when there are only two candidates, the results
> are often dramatically unfair when this approach is used in elections with
> three or more candidates.
>
> In spite of its well-known weaknesses, plurality voting is predominantly
> used in most elections in most democratic nations around the world, with
> Australia and New Zealand being notable exceptions. It is also the preferred
> election method in nations that pretend to be democracies, yet lack the
> freedoms and economic benefits of democracy.
>
> Unanimously we agree that the kind of ballot used in plurality voting is
> not appropriate when there are more than two choices. Its deficiency is that
> it does not collect enough preference information from the voters in order
> to always correctly identify the most popular candidate when there are more
> than two candidates.
>
> Unanimously we agree that there are three kinds of ballots that collect
> enough preference information to always, or almost always, correctly
> identify the most popular candidate. The names and descriptions of th

Re: [EM] Voting reform statement; a clearer and more inspiring version

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi,

I aggree it would be good to make a separate statement for proportional
election methods.

Some other comments for the record:

Looking at single-winner elections
1) What about multiple round single-winner methods? For instance the
Brittish conservatives vote on who to eliminate each round . The candidate
with the least number of votes is eliminated, using only bullet voting. So
far, as I have understood, the only disadvantage with such an election
system is many election rounds.
2) All of the endorsed methods could be improved by simply letting the top
two contenders meet in a second round. Tactical voting might lead to changes
in preference orderings between the rounds and thus to improved results by
introducting a second round.
3) what about the option "None of the above", the blank vote, are we neutral
to this option? I certainly think this option is good and important.

Looking at proportional elections:
4) Aren't we in a position to
a) recommend Meek's method ahead of IRV-STV, when it comes to a better
proportional representation?
b) recommend IRV-STV (scottish STV) for its simplicity and relative ease of
being explained
c) recommend fractional vote transfer in STV? I cannot endorse random vote
transfer in STV.
d) fractional quotas instead of integer quotas? I cannot endorse integer
quotas.
e) be able to recommend at least one Condorcet-STV method, which is used
somewhere?
f) endorse that the majority rule should be fulfilled, i.e.that  a majority
of voters get a majority of the seats? I would not like to endorse
proportional election methods violating the majority rule, like IRV-STV and
the Hare quota. The Hare quota with Meek's method might however satisfy the
majority criterion, as the only STV method (have seen no proof though).
6) proportional election methods are most certainly not only appropriate for
elections to state legislative, but also for elections in any organisation,
the statement limits the scope of consideration to public elections,
especially to parliamentary bodies.
7) I do not think that it is a good idea to recommend proportional methods
outside the statement, i.e. at the time of signature.

Well normally, i.e. in our party, alternative proposals are voted upon.
If the proposals are supported, then they are included in the final text.
Sometimes a qualified majority is needed (like two thirds).
As this is an "expert opinion", it is important that almost all experts
agree, ofherwise it is not an expert opinion.
So the qualified majority quota could be higher, maybe 80 percent or five
sixths (used in Sweden for some constitutional changes).
Then the other question is who is an expert.
Someone who has published at least one paper in a peer-reviewed journal.
Well that's how policy is made in politics.
I think noone has come up with something better, except for enlightened
dictatorship :o)

In any case, it is great a statement is being made and I hope the people on
this list will be able to agree on a final wording.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_el...@lavabit.com> wrote:

> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>  please consider including a list of endorsed election methods for
>> proportional elections, just as you have done for single winner elections.
>> Otherwise the bold statement will just cover one special case in election
>> theory - single winner elections.
>>  Furthermore you might consider covering the issues of
>> (i) proportional rank orders. For instance when electing the party list in
>> primaries, in countries where closed lists are used.
>> (ii) proportional rank orders to elect a hierarchy of functions
>> proportionally, like board president, vice presidents and other board
>> members.
>>
>
> I think it would be better to have a separate statement for details about
> multiwinner methods than to put everything into one grand document, so as
> not to burden the latter too greatly. The statement we're considering now
> could have details about what single-winner methods we agree to support and
> then say "just about all multiwinner methods but closed list", then, if
> necessary, have another statement that mentions proportional rank orders,
> STV/QPQ/Schulze STV, open list, and so on.
>
> Perhaps it would be enough to say "anything but closed list" and be done
> without needing a second statement, as multiwinner methods have the
> advantage of multiple seats to even out strange results that would otherwise
> make for a bad method. On the other hand, it may be useful to have a common
> position on semiproportional methods (SNTV, parallel voting and limited vote
> systems, and so on).
>
>

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

Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Richard,

maybe a second round could take place between the winners of competing
methods, say Schulze winner vs Approval or  Bucklin winner or any
other endorsed method. This would allow for election-methods
"competitions", and could address potential weaknesses of each method.
When one of the method would generate a "bad" winner, then the other
method could still give a "good" winner. For instance, if the Schulze
method would generate a winner noone has heard of before (the dark
horse), then in the second round, when he meets the Bucklin or
Approval winner, he or she might lose the second round, after new
details of his/her political past come to public knowledge due to the
increased attention given. The election methods should be different
for this approach to work. The obvious downside of this approach is
increased complexity and thus less public support. With this method
IRV might be used as one of the methods, or the old method could be
used against the new method.

A second proposal: since most single winner methods have their
multiple-winner counterpart, the first round could proprtionally elect
two (or more) candidates, between which the second round would take
place. This solution would use one method for both rounds, thus
decrease complexity compared to the first proposal; the solution would
not require political party candidates; it would provide a solution
for the French presidential elections. The downside of this system is
that some of the multiple winner versions of the single-winner methods
are not used anywhere and exist only on paper and/or in vote-counting
software.
Example: 1st round: Schulze-STV elects two candidates for the runoff.
2nd round: Schulze-Condorcet is used.

Personally I think the issue of one vs two rounds of elections is a
neglected issue. For instance, if the Brittish liberals would have
chosen a run-off elections as the alternative to FPTP instead of IRV
(AV), then I think they would have found support in the referendum.

A second issue, which I think the statement does not address, is the
minimal number of seats in each constituency, or in other words, the
number of regional constituencies in the election to one body, like
the parliament. If we have a 200 seat parliament and each constituency
has only two seats, elected proportionally, then we have a
proportional election system, with a quota of 33%. This is not a
system I can endorse. I would rather endorse low (max., say 5%) and
would prefer no quotas, i.e. the quota equals the votes needed for one
seat with only one constituency - around 0.5% for a 200 seat election.
Using a party list system, there might be constituencies which do not
hinder proportional representation, provided that there is a "National
constituency" of sufficient size, which makes sure that each party is
proportionally represented in the elected body (Swedish election
system). The national constituency would level-out any disproportional
representation of the parties, which might arise from the division of
the electorate into constituencies. Maybe a similar system could be
(or most probably has already been) constructed for open lists. The
voter would cast a vote in his/her constituency and at the same time a
vote in the national constituency. Question is then how to achieve a
proportional representation for open lists balancing the regional
constituencies and the national one. I think it is possible and should
not be too difficult but don't know how to do it.

Maybe these questions have already been discussed.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

On 8/30/11, Richard Fobes  wrote:
> Here is what I've just written for the new section titled "Multiple
> rounds of voting":
>
> --- begin 
>
> In highly competitive elections, multiple rounds of voting are needed to
> eliminate the weakest candidates so that attention can be focused on
> electing one of the most popular candidates.  Our supported election
> methods work as described for two rounds of voting if the first round of
> voting elects a single winner from each political party, and the second
> round chooses from among those winners.
>
> However, different counting methods are needed if the same voters vote
> in both rounds. There are election methods that handle such cases, and
> they use the better ballots we support. However, we have not yet
> analyzed this category of counting methods sufficiently to express
> support for any specific methods.
>
> We do strongly agree that single-mark ballots must not be used in any
> round of voting. More specifically, just as the candidate with the most
> first-choice votes is not necessarily the most popular, and the
> candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is not necessarily the
> least popular, the candidate with the second-most first-choice votes is
> not necessarily second-most popular, and the c

Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Richard,

I am sending a small P.S. to clarify one of the ideas in my email below.

I think that the most viable transfer from an "old" one-round
single-winner election system to a "new" system. Goes through a two
round system, where the  winner of the election in the "old" system
meets the winner in the "new" system. This is the track for changes of
voting system, which I think will have the biggest chance to get
political support. A FPTP system would thus be reformed so that, the
FPTP winner would meet the Condorcet/Approval/Score/Bucklin winner in
the second round, if the two winners would be different.

I think the reform of a two round system could take two different paths:
1) a three round system where a second run-off is held between the
runoff winner in the second round and the
Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner from the first round, if the
Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner would be different from the
two run-off candidates.
2) a two-round system, where the FPTP winner would meet the
Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner if they are different,
otherwise we would have a normal run-off.

In theory one might imagine a two-round election second round with
three candidates, but then the second-round election system would not
be a run-off election, which would maket the system politically more
difficult to pass.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

On 8/31/11, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> maybe a second round could take place between the winners of competing
> methods, say Schulze winner vs Approval or  Bucklin winner or any
> other endorsed method. This would allow for election-methods
> "competitions", and could address potential weaknesses of each method.
> When one of the method would generate a "bad" winner, then the other
> method could still give a "good" winner. For instance, if the Schulze
> method would generate a winner noone has heard of before (the dark
> horse), then in the second round, when he meets the Bucklin or
> Approval winner, he or she might lose the second round, after new
> details of his/her political past come to public knowledge due to the
> increased attention given. The election methods should be different
> for this approach to work. The obvious downside of this approach is
> increased complexity and thus less public support. With this method
> IRV might be used as one of the methods, or the old method could be
> used against the new method.
>
> A second proposal: since most single winner methods have their
> multiple-winner counterpart, the first round could proprtionally elect
> two (or more) candidates, between which the second round would take
> place. This solution would use one method for both rounds, thus
> decrease complexity compared to the first proposal; the solution would
> not require political party candidates; it would provide a solution
> for the French presidential elections. The downside of this system is
> that some of the multiple winner versions of the single-winner methods
> are not used anywhere and exist only on paper and/or in vote-counting
> software.
> Example: 1st round: Schulze-STV elects two candidates for the runoff.
> 2nd round: Schulze-Condorcet is used.
>
> Personally I think the issue of one vs two rounds of elections is a
> neglected issue. For instance, if the Brittish liberals would have
> chosen a run-off elections as the alternative to FPTP instead of IRV
> (AV), then I think they would have found support in the referendum.
>
> A second issue, which I think the statement does not address, is the
> minimal number of seats in each constituency, or in other words, the
> number of regional constituencies in the election to one body, like
> the parliament. If we have a 200 seat parliament and each constituency
> has only two seats, elected proportionally, then we have a
> proportional election system, with a quota of 33%. This is not a
> system I can endorse. I would rather endorse low (max., say 5%) and
> would prefer no quotas, i.e. the quota equals the votes needed for one
> seat with only one constituency - around 0.5% for a 200 seat election.
> Using a party list system, there might be constituencies which do not
> hinder proportional representation, provided that there is a "National
> constituency" of sufficient size, which makes sure that each party is
> proportionally represented in the elected body (Swedish election
> system). The national constituency would level-out any disproportional
> representation of the parties, which might arise from the division of
> the electorate into constituencies. Maybe a similar system could be
> (or most probably has already been) constructed for open lists. The
> voter would cast a vote in his/her constituency and at the same time a
&g

Re: [EM] Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Richard,

I am sending a P.S. to my P.S. below.
I hope the message got through despite the bad English in the first part of
my email below.
If not, please let me know, and I will try to explain further.

I wrote below:

"I think the reform of a two round system could take two different paths:
1) a three round system where a second run-off is held between the
runoff winner in the second round and the
Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner from the first round, if the
Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner would be different from the
two run-off candidates."

I would like elaborate this proposal a little.
Call the Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner K.
Assume K is different from the two second round runoff candidates R1 and R2.
The third round could make use of the same ballot paper as the second round,
by making the voter first vote between R1 and R2 (the normal runoff in the
second round).

Then the voter would make two more choices:
Between R1 and K (i.e the question would be: if R1 would win the runoff with
R2 would you prefer R1 or K as president (or chairman/leader etc.)?)
Between R2 and K (i.e the question would be: if R2 would win the runoff with
R1 would you prefer R2 or K as president (or chairman/leader etc.)?)

If R1 would win the second round runoff, then the votes R1 vs K would be
counted as the third round votes.
If R2 would win the second round runoff, then the votes R2 vs K would be
counted as the third round votes.

The same informtion could be encoded in a ranked ballot with R1, R2 and K,
but this could maybe fool some voters to think that the same method was used
in the third round as the method for selecting K in the first round - this
is just a minor detail.

 The first round ballot could be either a ranked ballot, or a ballot with a
FPTP (bullet vote) ballot part on one side and a ranked ballot part on the
second side (a double-vote ballot). The double-vote ballot would enable the
voter to bullet vote for a different candidate than he would give his first
preference to on the ranked ballot part of the ballot, which might be
optimal if different voting tactics are used for both elections, or if the
voter cannot make up his mind between two of the candidates and would like
to see them both in the combined second/third round.

The first-round ballot could also be used in the two round election to
reform the FPTP system.

I would endorse this three-round system as a good way to reform runoff
elections, like the French presidential elections, which is likely to get
needed political support. The runoff winner meets the
Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner and the voter only has to vote
twice, so it is difficult to see why a voter would not like this expansion
of the current system.

A footnote: a similar construct is found on the ballot for
constitutional referendums in Switzerland, I think.
 There is a proposal of constitutional change to be voted on, and
a "compromise" proposal from the Swiss government or Parliament too (I don't
remember which).
First the voter votes between "change the constitution" Yes/No
If the voter votes "Yes" then he has to select between the proposed change
and the proposal from the government/parliament.
Then, if "change the constitution" gets a majority, then a second round is
held between the two different proposals.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 10:43 AM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:


> Hi Richard,
>
> I am sending a small P.S. to clarify one of the ideas in my email below.
>
> I think that the most viable transfer from an "old" one-round
> single-winner election system to a "new" system. Goes through a two
> round system, where the  winner of the election in the "old" system
> meets the winner in the "new" system. This is the track for changes of
> voting system, which I think will have the biggest chance to get
> political support. A FPTP system would thus be reformed so that, the
> FPTP winner would meet the Condorcet/Approval/Score/Bucklin winner in
> the second round, if the two winners would be different.
>
> I think the reform of a two round system could take two different paths:
> 1) a three round system where a second run-off is held between the
> runoff winner in the second round and the
> Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner from the first round, if the
> Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner would be different from the
> two run-off candidates.
> 2) a two-round system, where the FPTP winner would meet the
> Condorcet/Bucklin/Approval/Score winner if they are different,
> otherwise we would have a normal run-off.
>
> In theory one might imagine a two-round election second round with
> three candidates, but then the second-round election system would not
> be a run-off election, which would maket the system politically more
> difficult to 

[EM] Proportional parliamentary and government elections with proxies

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

has a direct proportional election system with proxies been considered
before?

Each voter is granted a vote in parliament, either personally or through a
proxy (as in stock companies). The voter could change his representative in
parliamet when she/he likes (or at a specific date to avoid identification
of the voter). The voter could have several representatives, each of them a
specialist in a different issue (health care, tax, education, business and
so on), or split his vote on several representatives in each area. There
would be no elections, just a continuous switching of proxies. The
representative of the voter would not know who supports him/her to avoid
coercion.

The voter who chose to represent himself would have the right to speak and
be present "virtually" or (less practical) physically in the parliament and
to vote on all issues and so on. For the time being I would like to put
aside such practical details, like how a milion parlamentarian would vote
and so on. Such problems can be solved through remote voting or similar.

The government could (but need not) be formed through proportional elections
by the citizens too.
Each voter would vote for each department, i.e., if there were 10
ministries, then the voter would cast a ranked ballot for each of the 10
ministries.
Some weights could be applied, i.e. if the voter could only care for one
ministry instead of all 10, then he could put all of his votes on this
ministry and none for the others.
In addition to this, each ministry could be weighted according to the share
of the public budget it uses.
I.e some ministries would take more of the vote than others. I.e. if one
ministry has half the budget, then a "standard" vote for this would require
half of the votes the voter has (i.e. 5 votes in the case of 10 ministries).
I.e. the voter has a constant number of votes (say V votes), each vote for a
specific seat "costs" A1,...,AS, where S is the number of ministries, and
A1+...+AS=V. A vote for ministry s, 1>=s>=S, would be normalised by the
"cost", i.e. if the voter would like to vote only for one minstry s, then he
would get V/As votes.
Furthermore, the voter would need to specify the rank-order of the
ministries themselves, so that all of the vote is used, even if the minister
in the "favorite minstry" becomes someone else than the candidates preferred
by the voter or if the preferred candidate is elected but the vote is not
fully exhausted.
The elections would then proceed as a normal STV election.
This got a bit complicated, I will provide a simple example upon request.

An election system as described above would blur the difference between
proportional representation and direct democracy and allow for direct
elections of a government.

A question I am not sure of, is how the approach above should be applied for
budget allocation for each ministry, i.e. how big part of the cake each
ministry should get. I guess each voter could make his budget allocation
between the ministries, and the resulting budget would be the arithmetic
mean of the submitted allocations. I guess there are better or more
sophisticated systems for optimal budget allocation.

Does anyone on this list have more information on similar methods to the
ones described above?
I guess such methods have been discussed on this list before.
A recommended book or paper or a reference to previous posts on this list
would be appreciated.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

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

Re: [EM] [CES #3566] Re: Declaration of Election-Method Experts and Enthusiasts: final stretch

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

the statement would probably benefit from executive summary of length 1/2 to
1 page.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 7:01 PM, Toby Pereira  wrote:

> I agree that it's too long. I've had another go at culling come parts of
> it, but if anyone objects, feel free to revert some or all.
>
>  *From:* Warren Smith 
> *To:* electionscie...@googlegroups.com; election-methods <
> election-meth...@electorama.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 7 September 2011, 16:17
> *Subject:* Re: [EM] [CES #3566] Re: Declaration of Election-Method Experts
> and Enthusiasts: final stretch
>
> this "declaration" is suffering from exactly what everybody
> most-complains about re the rangevoting.org website.
>
> I.e. it tried to cover everything and got large.  In fact, enormous.
>
> That for a website is a flaw that is not necessarily an
> insurmountable obstacle
> since one can put short "summary" pages (or try...)  and use of lots
> of hyperlinks, so it isn't just a flat document, it's
> easier to get to information.
>
> But for a "consensus statement" it is a major problem since (a) nobody
> is going to sign it and (b) nobody is going to read it.
>
> Well, "nobody" is an exaggeration. But not by much.
>
> This statement (4328 words) is now over 3 times the length of the
> USA's "Declaration of Independence" (1315 words) and also longer than
> the entire USA constitution (as un-amended) at 4318 words.
>
> Have you seen my attempt to study what election experts and/or Joe
> Public actually agree on?  The total amount of true consensus out
> there, is extremely small.  So you could have an extremely short
> statement, if you wished to summarize what is the current consensus.
> If you have the more ambitious goal of creating consensus by actually
> changing minds... well, I doubt you can do it with one single
> document.
>
> It's very hard to get people to sign statements, and the difficulty
> increases with the length.
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>

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

Re: [EM] Executive Summary for Declaration

[Peter Zbornik]

Out of the three summaries of the declarations, I think Richard's is the
most efficient.

PZ

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 8:34 PM, Toby Pereira  wrote:

> I think the executive summary needs to mention that plurality = First Past
> the Post. The term plurality is basically never used in the UK and most
> people wouldn't know what it means, so to cover as many countries as we can,
> we need to use the terms that each country uses.
>
>  *From:* Andy Jennings 
> *To:* electionmeth...@votefair.org
> *Cc:* election-meth...@electorama.com
> *Sent:* Thursday, 8 September 2011, 6:49
> *Subject:* Re: [EM] Executive Summary for Declaration
>
>  I do like the executive summary.  Maybe it's a little too long?
>
> I think we could do without the sentence "Some good Condorcet methods
> are:..."
>
> I do think the PR section could be significantly shortened.
>
> I made a few changes.  Feel free to review, roll back, and discuss if you
> think I have erred.
>
> ~ Andy Jennings
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 9:25 PM, Richard Fobes <
> electionmeth...@votefair.org> wrote:
>
> On 9/7/2011 2:09 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
> > I still think the 12 page declaration (incl table of contents) needs an
> > executive summary. The table of contents does not in my honest opinion
> > give good enough information.
>
>
> I agree that the declaration needs an executive summary.  Here is what I've
> come up with as a first draft:
>
> - Executive Summary -
>
> This declaration, which has been signed by election-method experts from
> around the world, publicly denounces the use of plurality voting in
> governmental elections.  Plurality voting mistakenly assumes that the
> candidate who receives the most ballot marks – on single-mark ballots – is
> the most popular.  Plurality voting also suffers from vote splitting, which
> is what forces political parties to offer only a single choice in each
> election.
>
> As replacements for plurality voting, this declaration recommends four
> significantly fairer election methods, namely, in alphabetical order:
> Approval voting, any Condorcet method, Majority Judgment voting, and Range
> voting.  These methods use better ballots – namely the Approval ballot,
> Ranked ballot, and Score ballot – to collect much more preference
> information compared to plurality's primitive single-mark ballot.
>
> The lack of awareness about plurality voting's unfairness arises from its
> use of single-mark ballots, which not only fail to collect enough
> information to correctly identify the most popular candidate, but also fail
> to collect enough information to produce proof or evidence of the unfair
> results.
>
> Computer technology now makes it easy to count better ballots and correctly
> identify who deserves to win.  All the supported methods are based on the
> fact that a majority of voters, not just a plurality of voters, must approve
> or prefer the winning candidate in order to produce fairer results.
>
> In spite of the academically recognized, well-known unfairness of plurality
> voting, it is used throughout Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States,
> and to some extent nearly every democracy around the world.  As a
> consequence of adopting fairer election methods, this declaration's signers
> expect the benefits to include a dramatically reduced gap between voters and
> government, more easily -- and fairly -- resolved political conflicts, and
> significantly increased economic prosperity for any region that adopts
> fairer election methods.
>
> Significantly the election-method experts do not support the use of
> instant-runoff voting, which is also known as the alternative vote. This
> method is based on the mistaken belief that the candidate with the fewest
> plurality votes is the least popular candidate.
>
> The four supported methods also can be adopted for use in non-governmental
> situations, such as electing an organization's officers, making democratic
> decisions, and electing corporate board members.
>
> The signers of this declaration do not share any common political beliefs,
> and are confident that the recommended election reforms will not favor any
> particular political parties or political orientations. Their clearly stated
> goal is to improve election fairness by replacing primitive plurality voting
> with any of the fairer supported methods. Their expectation is that a higher
> level of democracy will lead to higher standards of living, reduced
> conflicts, and widespread greater economic prosperity, just as replacing
> monarchies and dictatorships with plurality voting has produced dramatic and
> widespread benefits.
>
> The sign

[EM] Multiple rounds of voting

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

I shortened the part on multiple rounds of voting after someone opted to
remove the section entirely.
To me multiple rounds is an important issue, as they might improve the
election result and ease the transition to better election methods as
explained in my previous mails (will resend the emails upon request, in case
they got lost in the email flood).

The text on multiple rounds is now as follows, which I think or at least
hope is uncontroversal.

It wasnt very difficult to shorten the multiple round section by half, maybe
a similar razor-like approach could be used in the other parts of the text
to trim the text.

Multiple rounds of voting
Good voting systems can reduce the need for primaries and runoffs, or give
even-better results when combined with such extra rounds.

Current elections commonly use multiple rounds of voting. This includes both
“primary elections” to narrow the field before the main vote, and
second-round “runoff elections” to ensure a majority if one is not obtained
in the main first round.

Some of us believe that improved voting methods mean that only one round of
voting is needed. Others of us still believe that multiple rounds can still
usefully serve to focus attention and might improve the outcome of the
election.

When choosing which candidates deserve to progress to a runoff election, we
do not offer specific recommendations for interpreting results – beyond
obviously including the most popular candidate. There are various
possibilities for how to choose the second, third, and additional
candidates.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

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

Re: [EM] Kemeny challenge

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

Some weeks ago, I showed how to complete incomplete ballots by adding
the null candidate (i.e. the option "none of the above") with lower
rank than the ranked candidates and equally ranking the unranked
candidates below the null candidate.  This ballot completion method
gives the same result for winning votes and margins for Condorcet
elections,

I guess the comment the Kemeny method not being able to handle
incomplete ballots, does not apply if the ballot completion method
above is used.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

On 9/14/11, Richard Fobes  wrote:
> The Condorcet-Kemeny method does allow candidates to be ranked at the
> same preference level, and no special calculations are needed to handle
> these ballots.  Such "ties" can occur at any combination of preference
> levels.  The interactive ballots at VoteFair.org allow such "ties" and,
> more broadly, allow any one oval to be marked for each choice.  (On a
> paper-based version, if a voter marks more than one oval, only the
> left-most marked oval is used.)
>
> I've addressed the "clone dependence" issue previously, yet I'll repeat
> the important points:  Exact clones (which is what clone dependence
> assumes) are very rare in real elections, and circular ambiguity (that
> includes the winner) is not common (because Condorcet winners are more
> common), so the combination of these two events -- which is what must
> occur in order to fail the clone independence criteria -- is extremely rare.
>
> When I get time to reply to Warren's other message I'll address the
> "computational intractability" misconception.
>
> Richard Fobes
>
> On 9/13/2011 2:39 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote:
>> The problems with Kemeny are the same as the problems with Dodgson:
>> (1) computational intractability
>> (2) clone dependence
>> (3) they require completely ordered ballots (no truncations or equal
>> ranking), so they do not readily adapt to Approval ballots, for example.
>> In my posting several weeks ago under the title "Dodgson done right" I
>> showed how to overcome these three problems. (The same modifications do
>> the trick for both methods.) However, much of the simplicity of the
>> statements of these two methods (Dodgson and Kemeny) gets lost in the
>> translation.
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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

Re: [EM] [CES #3650] FairVote folks are not the friendliest bunch

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

I agree with James, and that was why I proposed that election reform
took the path through added election rounds.

Reform of FPTP would thus add a second election round where the
Condorcet winner would meet the FPTP winner. Who in the UK would
object to that?

I described also how to add a third election round the run-off
elections while the voters would not have to go to the voting booth
more than two times.

If the two systems above are considered as beeing too simple for the
experts and enthousiasts on this list, why not reform the FPTP to a
three round system (although politically it might be a more difficult
task to sell than a a two round system as a reform path from FPTP)

Round 1: The FPTP, Condorcet and Bucklin Winners are elected (for example).
Round 2: The voter Choses between the Condorcet and the Majority
judgement (Bucklin) winner
Round 3: The FPTP winner meets the winner from round two (i.e. the
voter writer if he prefers the Condorcet winner to the FPTP winner and
the Bucklin winner to the FPTP winner).

Rounds 2 and 3 could take place at the sametime (i.e. not requiring
the voter to go to the voting booth an extra time after round 2.

So far there have been no objections to this reformpath.

I see the weaknesses as the following:
1) increased election costs
2) risk of lower turn-out in the second round

I see the advantages as the following:
1) The weaknesses of each method are greatly diminished by combining
different methods and letting the voter chose the most preferred
winner from the methods.
2) A second round allows for more deliberation from the side of the
voters on the candidates
3) Voters actually like being granted more power through the extra
round and voter who "don't care" enough to go to the voting booth a
second time will not affect the election outcome
4) Multiple round systems where the old election system is combined
with a new one is able to gather political support from those voters,
who think the old system works well, and do not want to abandon it
entirely, but are open to improvements. This might be crucial in order
to gather the required political support for election reform.
5) The voter is in control of the extent of the voting reform, i.e.
the multiple round system allows the voters to chose their preferred
voting system according to its result. A voter who is a FPTP fanatic
may always vote for the FPTP winner in the second round, same for the
Condorcet/Majority judgement/score/approval fanatic, and then there is
the voter who simply will vote according to his/her preference
ordering in the second round.

I think the multiple round path to election reform is a bit neglected
as I consider it to be very powerful in its simplicity.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 6:40 PM, James Gilmour  wrote:
> Jameson Quinn  > Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:00 AM
>> If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially
>> politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility
>> of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In
>> Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a
>> relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest
>> against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates.
>> The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that
>> everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other
>> extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the
>> low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important
>> flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner.
>
> I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I 
> know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at
> FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your 
> comment above  -  the problem of the weak Condorcet
> winner.  This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the 
> voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to
> any reform) and to a sceptical public.
>
> For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant preferences) 
> we could have:
>        35 A>C
>        34 B>C
>        31 C
> "C" is the Condorcet winner.  Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP 
> supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the
> electors.
>
> But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences):
>        48 A>C
>        47 B>C
>         5 C
> "C" is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that.  But I doubt 
> whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the
> electorate, at least, not here in the UK.
>
> And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in 
> office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the
> politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an office-holder 
> daily.  And the media would be no help  -  they would
> just pour fuel on the flames.  The result would be political chaos and 
> totally ineffective government.
>
> The flaw in IRV is that it can

Re: [EM] Weak Condorcet winners [was: FairVote are not the friendliest]

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Jameson,

I think the multiple round system (as described in my previous email
today and several others) might be a the best way to get combined
support for one single method on this list.

If we skip the issues about political support for the method, I think
a good method that everyone approves might be constructed as follows:

Precondition:
(1) We have a set of voting methods V - example: Schulze, IRV,
Majority Judgement, Score, Approval, SODA, IRV-Condorcet.
(2) Every method has a ranking based on its results in previous
elections, similar to the way tennis players have a ranking on the ATP
tour etc., for instance the ranking from best (1) to worst (7) is (1.
Schulze, 2. IRV, 3. Majority Judgement, 4. Score, 5. Approval, 6.
SODA. 7. IRV-Condorcet).

(3) Round 1: The voter casts one or more ballots and the election
winner for each method is elected.
(4) Round 2:
There are two optiond for round 2:
Option 1: The voter ranks the different winners on a ranked ballot. In
order to avoid preferring a method before an other, a
tournament-system is used, like in a tennis tournament.
The winner from the method with the highest ranking meets the winner
from the method with the lowest ranking (if sevral methods give the
same winner, then the method with the highest ranking is used). The
winner from the method with the second to highest ranking meets the
winner from the method with the second to lowest ranking.
Example: Schulze, IRV and IRV-condorcet elect candidate A. Majority
Judgement elect candidate B, Score and SODA elect C and Approval elect
D.
The rankings (high to low) of the candidates: 1. A, 2. B, 3. C, 4. D.
A meets D and B meets C in a run-off and the winners of the two
run-offs meet in a second round.
The all the winners are determined by the ranked ballot.
Option 2: The voter only elects between the first tier in the
tournament. In the example the voter votes between A vs D and B vs C.
Then the ballots are counted and a third round is held for the finals
between the two winners from the last round.
(5) After the elections the ratings of the methods are updated
according to their performance (this system has to be invented), for
instance as in Tennis or some other sport, where the tournament system
is used.

This is in some sence a unified and fair approach which helps unifying
election reformers, and at the same time allows for the testing of new
methods like SODA without potentially disastrous consequences. A new
election method is just a new player on the tour so to say.

And at the end of each election season, we would finally know which
election method won the tour :o)

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Jameson Quinn  wrote:
>
>
> 2011/9/22 James Gilmour 
>>
>> Jameson Quinn  > Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:00 AM
>> > If I'm right, the claim is that voters, and especially
>> > politicians, are intuitively concerned with the possibility
>> > of someone winning with broad but shallow support. In
>> > Approval, Condorcet, Majority Judgment, or Range, a
>> > relatively-unknown centrist could theoretically win a contest
>> > against two high-profile ideologically-opposed candidates.
>> > The theory is that the electorate would be so polarized that
>> > everyone would explicitly prefer the centrist to the other
>> > extreme, but because the voters don't really expect the
>> > low-profile centrist to win, they might miss some important
>> > flaw in the centrist which actually makes her a poor winner.
>>
>> I cannot comment on the quoted remark (cut) that prompted your post and I
>> know nothing at all about the activities of anyone at
>> FairVote, but you have hit on a real problem in practical politics in your
>> comment above  -  the problem of the weak Condorcet
>> winner.  This is a very real political problem, in terms of selling the
>> voting system to partisan politicians (who are opposed to
>> any reform) and to a sceptical public.
>
> Yes. I think that your term "weak Condorcet winner" is clearer than my terms
> "mushy centrist" or "unknown centrist". And I think that a lot of IRV
> supporters talk about LNH, is actually about this problem.
>
>>
>> For example, with 3 candidates and 100 voters (ignoring irritant
>> preferences) we could have:
>>        35 A>C
>>        34 B>C
>>        31 C
>> "C" is the Condorcet winner.  Despite the inevitable howls from FPTP
>> supporters, I think we could sell such an outcome to the
>> electors.
>>
>> But suppose the votes had been (again ignoring irrelevant preferences):
>>        48 A>C
>>        47 B>C
>>         5 C
>> "C" is still the Condorcet winner - no question about that.  But I doubt
>> whether anyone could successfully sell such a result to the
>> electorate, at least, not here in the UK.
>>
>> And I have severe doubts about how effective such a winner could be in
>> office. Quite apart from the sceptical electorate, the
>> politicians of Party A and of Party B would be hounding such an
>> office-holder daily.  

Re: [EM] Weak Condorcet winners [was: FairVote are not the friendliest]

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Jameson,

I think the best reform proposal would be FPTP and "the other method"
in a two round system.

This is certainly not complex and run-off elections are held
everywhere in Europe, except for some larger islands of the coast of
France :o).

The disadvantage of introducing a new method is, that people don't
understand it and are afraid that it might lead to worse results.

The idea with the two-round reform path, is that people don't have to
understand the "other method". If it generates a bad candidate, they
will just vote for the FPTP winner. That is, there is an insurance for
the electorate against worse results after election reform. And the
last thin election reformers would like to see is an other election
reform rolled back just like in Burlington.

A two round system is very easy to explain along the following lines:
Ok you have on one hand the winner of our old and tried FPTP and then
the winner which is generated by a very modern method, which you don't
understand how it work. Now the new thing is, you can chose which of
the two winners you like. The one who gets the most votes in the
second round wins, just like in FPTP.

Now that was not so hard to explain, and the voter is assured that the
result will not be "disastrous" because of the workings of a method he
doesn't really understand.

As for more imaginative proposals, see my recent post.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Jameson Quinn  wrote:
>
>
> 2011/9/22 Peter Zbornik 
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I agree with James, and that was why I proposed that election reform
>> took the path through added election rounds.
>>
>> Reform of FPTP would thus add a second election round where the
>> Condorcet winner would meet the FPTP winner. Who in the UK would
>> object to that?
>> 
>
> I agree that such a system would have good results, often would not even
> need two rounds (if all systems' winners were the same), and would
> successfully address the weak Condorcet winner objection. Unfortunately, I
> also think that it passes the complexity threshold for most people. It's
> hard enough to explain one new system; you're suggesting making it so we'd
> have to explain three? Remember, faux-just-folks "too complicated for me"
> arguments were a big part of the successful anti-AV campaign in the UK.
> Jameson

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

Re: [EM] Weak Condorcet winners [was: FairVote are not the friendliest]

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Jameson,

Well i think the argument that two-rounds systems are silly and
complex, can be countered with the fact that it is used all throughout
Europe and elsewhere. I woud say runoff elections are the standard way
of conducting single member  elections. Even though I have no data for
this claim, the "silly and complex" argument against multiple rounds
is easily countered.

As for the argument "why two rounds-arent they sure about their own
method?". This argument can be countered by arguing, that we leave it
to the voter to chose which method and candidate she prefers rather
than some, almost exclusively male, politicians.

And as for the issue of focusing on the disadvantages of plurality.
Anti-reform lobby will focus on the disadvantages of the "other
election system", and the voter wont be able to tell which side is
right, so he will rather go with the tried and tested FPTP or whatever
system they currently use.

But if the issue is framed as: hey guys, we know our method isnt
perfect, the winner can sometimes be a "nobody", and neither is yours,
the winner can sometimes be a person which very few voters actually
support. But hey, if we can chose which winner of the two methods
actually will be the guy who gets the seat, then it is much less
likely that we will elect a the wrong guy in the end and we also have
a second chance to focus on the pros and cons of only two candidares
and not tens of them.

Well something along those lines is what I imagine could be helpful in
selling the two-round reform path.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik



On 9/22/11, Jameson Quinn  wrote:
> 2011/9/22 Peter Zbornik 
>
>> Hi Jameson,
>>
>> I think the best reform proposal would be FPTP and "the other method"
>> in a two round system.
>>
>> This is certainly not complex and run-off elections are held
>> everywhere in Europe, except for some larger islands of the coast of
>> France :o).
>>
>> The disadvantage of introducing a new method is, that people don't
>> understand it and are afraid that it might lead to worse results.
>>
>> The idea with the two-round reform path, is that people don't have to
>> understand the "other method". If it generates a bad candidate, they
>> will just vote for the FPTP winner. That is, there is an insurance for
>> the electorate against worse results after election reform. And the
>> last thin election reformers would like to see is an other election
>> reform rolled back just like in Burlington.
>>
>> A two round system is very easy to explain along the following lines:
>> Ok you have on one hand the winner of our old and tried FPTP and then
>> the winner which is generated by a very modern method, which you don't
>> understand how it work. Now the new thing is, you can chose which of
>> the two winners you like. The one who gets the most votes in the
>> second round wins, just like in FPTP.
>>
>> Now that was not so hard to explain, and the voter is assured that the
>> result will not be "disastrous" because of the workings of a method he
>> doesn't really understand.
>>
>
>
> This is basically a matter of framing. If pro-reform forces can get the
> average voter to think of the choice as "A runoff between a system I know
> and something new that might be better", I agree, reform wins. But
> anti-reform forces will be busy trying to get them to think "Some
> complicated and silly system where I'll have to vote twice instead of once,
> which nobody really understands". People can be convinced by nonsensical
> arguments like, "if this new system really had such great advantages, why
> are even the reformers including this escape hatch?" (This argument makes no
> more sense than saying that a car without seatbelts is less likely to crash;
> but it can still have an impact.)
>
> Basically, we're some dudes (almost exclusively male) on the internet.
> Anti-reform forces (lobbyists versed in exploiting the current system) are a
> formidable enemy. I am not confident that we can win such a framing battle.
> I think the chances of single-system reforms are better than hybrid runoffs,
> because we can focus the debate on how the system solves plurality's
> problems, which is where our strongest arguments lie.
>
> However, if a runoff-based proposal were actually being seriously considered
> in some jurisdiction, I would of course support it enthusiastically.
>
> Jameson
>
>
>>
>> As for more imaginative proposals, see my recent post.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Peter Zborník
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Jameson Quinn 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >

Re: [EM] Weak Condorcet winners [was: FairVote are not thefriendliest]

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear James,

thanks for your comments.
Answers in the text below.

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 12:53 AM, James Gilmour wrote:

> Peter Zbornik  > Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 9:04 PM
> > Well I think the argument that two-rounds systems are silly
> > and complex, can be countered with the fact that it is used
> > all throughout Europe and elsewhere.
>
> Yes, and the French Presidential election of 2002 showed us very clearly
> what is wrong with such two-round voting systems.
>

As Juho, wrote, that problem would be solved with my proposal.


>
>
> > I would say runoff
> > elections are the standard way of conducting single member
> > elections. Even though I have no data for this claim,
>
> Yes, I should like to see some hard data to back up that statement.
>

Since we have no data, and both of us probably won't bother enough to dig it
up, I change my claim above to "I would say runoff elections are one of the
two standard ways of conducting single member elections, the other one being
FPTP". I have no data for that claim too, but maybe you will agree to it
anyway. I simply don't know of any widely used single-winner election system
than those two.



> James Gilmour
>
>
>

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

Re: [EM] Kemeny update

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

I guess there could be some simple elimination of candidates before the
election, so that there will be a manageable set of candidates for the
Kemeny election, like 10 to 15.

I guess sometime the winner would be lost in the reduction, but I would
expect this to be extremely rare if just the elimination would be efficient.

Variable elimination is standard in multivariate data analysis with one
response variable (the thing you like to predict) to reduce the number of
variables, which initially can be several hundreds to something more
manageable, like 40 variables. A common way to reduce the number of
variables is just to do a single variable analysis with the response
variable. The variables with a significance below a threshold are
eliminated. Yes, it might happen, that a good variable is eliminated, which
significantly improve the analysis, but this is very likely, since you
normally have so many other good variables.

The same thing applies for single-winner elections. There is no need to be
afraid pr ashamed to eliminate some of the candidates using some rule of
thumb in order to get a manageable number of them.

So the question I would like to pose would be: Which rule should be used to
reduce the number of candidates in a Kemeny election to K in the unlikely
case we have a Smith set of candidates larger than K, i.e. a very even
election? What should be the value of K?

Here are my favorites (all rules assume that the candidates outside the
Smith set are eliminated)
1) There will be a candidate threshold for first preferences, just like in
some parliamentary election, say 5%
2) The K candidates with the highest first preferences will be retained
3) Perform a K-seat STV election
4) eliminate the candidates according to least preferences until the method
finds a winner within X minutes using a fast computer

Let's face it, you can crash any method, unless you have extra rules, and in
the real world there are a lot of them and few object to them.

What if every citizen of the USA would decide to run for president?
That would be a 300 million candidate election (gasp!).
Now those ballots would be really long, which might pose a problem if you
have paper ballots.
Ok, so in order to prevent that, I guess there are some rules in the US that
decrease the number of candidates (number of signatures, money, party
support and so on).

Best regards
Peter Zborník



On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_el...@lavabit.com> wrote:

> Warren Smith wrote:
>
>> To reiterate and/or answer some questions:
>>
>> 1. there is no way to find the Kemeny winner that is much faster than
>> finding the full Kemeny ordering. More precisely, both are NP-complete
>> tasks
>> so there is no poly-time algorithm for either unless P=NP.
>>
>> 2. Even if some benificent God helpfully informs you of the name of
>> the Kemeny winner,
>> or the full Kemeny ordering, then there is no easy way for you
>> to confirm or deny that claim.   No matter how much supporting information
>> God provides to you (if it is only a polynomially-bounded number of
>> bits) -- such
>> as a proof -- there remains no way to confirm or deny either claim that
>> runs in
>> polynomial time, unless NP=coNP.  In other words, no short proofs exist.
>>
>> 3. It IS possible to find both the Kemeny
>> ordering and Kemeny winner, in any election, if you are willing to
>> devote enough compute time to it.  But the amount of time needed will
>> exceed any polynomial in the #candidates.  Every currently known
>> algorithm in the papers I cited fails for easy-to-generate and fairly
>> natural
>> 40-candidate elections, no matter how much time they devote to it
>> within the limits of their finances.
>>
>> 4. The hardest elections have got Smith set = the full set of candidates.
>> This is asymptotically not a great restriction since random elections have
>> Smith set = full set, with probability -->1 in the limit as
>> #candidates --> infinity.
>>
>
> Is Kemeny independent of Smith-dominated alternatives? Toby said he thought
> he was. If it is, then Kemeny is feasible for practical elections because
> you can just restrict it to the Smith set (and the Smith set won't be very
> large in practice). That is, of course, unless the existence of advanced
> voting methods will make the public vote in ways that will lead to a greater
> Smith set (e.g. candidates who otherwise didn't want to split the vote now
> feel bold enough to show up). Still, even so, I can't imagine there would be
> a 27-member Smith set.
>
>
>  5. I posed as a challenge, a certain randomized class of 27-candidate
>> elections
>> which I designed to be hard.
>> It seemed plausible to me that these 27-candidate elections might be too
>> hard
>> for current algorithms to reliably provably find the Kemeny winner.
>> I of course do not know the winners of my challenge elections, since if I
>> did,
>> then a short proof would exist, which it cannot in maximally hard
>> elections.

Re: [EM] Kemeny update

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

a small correction to my email below (a negation was forgotten):
I wrote: "Yes, it might happen, that a good variable is eliminated, which
significantly improve the analysis, but this is very likely, since you
normally have so many other good variables."
The text should read: "Yes, it might happen, that a good variable is
eliminated, which significantly improve the analysis, but this is NOT very
likely, since you normally have so many other good variables."

My appologies and thanks for your understanding or at least patience.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 5:52 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> I guess there could be some simple elimination of candidates before the
> election, so that there will be a manageable set of candidates for the
> Kemeny election, like 10 to 15.
>
> I guess sometime the winner would be lost in the reduction, but I would
> expect this to be extremely rare if just the elimination would be efficient.
>
> Variable elimination is standard in multivariate data analysis with one
> response variable (the thing you like to predict) to reduce the number of
> variables, which initially can be several hundreds to something more
> manageable, like 40 variables. A common way to reduce the number of
> variables is just to do a single variable analysis with the response
> variable. The variables with a significance below a threshold are
> eliminated. Yes, it might happen, that a good variable is eliminated, which
> significantly improve the analysis, but this is very likely, since you
> normally have so many other good variables.
>
> The same thing applies for single-winner elections. There is no need to be
> afraid pr ashamed to eliminate some of the candidates using some rule of
> thumb in order to get a manageable number of them.
>
> So the question I would like to pose would be: Which rule should be used to
> reduce the number of candidates in a Kemeny election to K in the unlikely
> case we have a Smith set of candidates larger than K, i.e. a very even
> election? What should be the value of K?
>
> Here are my favorites (all rules assume that the candidates outside the
> Smith set are eliminated)
> 1) There will be a candidate threshold for first preferences, just like in
> some parliamentary election, say 5%
> 2) The K candidates with the highest first preferences will be retained
> 3) Perform a K-seat STV election
> 4) eliminate the candidates according to least preferences until the method
> finds a winner within X minutes using a fast computer
>
> Let's face it, you can crash any method, unless you have extra rules, and
> in the real world there are a lot of them and few object to them.
>
> What if every citizen of the USA would decide to run for president?
> That would be a 300 million candidate election (gasp!).
> Now those ballots would be really long, which might pose a problem if you
> have paper ballots.
> Ok, so in order to prevent that, I guess there are some rules in the US
> that decrease the number of candidates (number of signatures, money, party
> support and so on).
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
> km_el...@lavabit.com> wrote:
>
>> Warren Smith wrote:
>>
>>> To reiterate and/or answer some questions:
>>>
>>> 1. there is no way to find the Kemeny winner that is much faster than
>>> finding the full Kemeny ordering. More precisely, both are NP-complete
>>> tasks
>>> so there is no poly-time algorithm for either unless P=NP.
>>>
>>> 2. Even if some benificent God helpfully informs you of the name of
>>> the Kemeny winner,
>>> or the full Kemeny ordering, then there is no easy way for you
>>> to confirm or deny that claim.   No matter how much supporting
>>> information
>>> God provides to you (if it is only a polynomially-bounded number of
>>> bits) -- such
>>> as a proof -- there remains no way to confirm or deny either claim that
>>> runs in
>>> polynomial time, unless NP=coNP.  In other words, no short proofs exist.
>>>
>>> 3. It IS possible to find both the Kemeny
>>> ordering and Kemeny winner, in any election, if you are willing to
>>> devote enough compute time to it.  But the amount of time needed will
>>> exceed any polynomial in the #candidates.  Every currently known
>>> algorithm in the papers I cited fails for easy-to-generate and fairly
>>> natural
>>> 40-candidate elections, no matter how much time they devote to it
>>> within the limits of their finances.
>>>
>>> 4. The hardest elections have g

Re: [EM] Proxy Direct Democracy

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi all,

proxy voting for a person i in a specific election could maybe be
formalized as follows:

V:=(v1,...vi,..., vN), where vi is the vote of voter i, 1<=i<=N, N is the
number of voters.
V is the actual or publically announced votes of the voters, where 1 means
yes, and 0 means no.
sum(V) counts the number of yes votes in V.
sum(-V):=sum(-1*V+1) counts the number of no votes in V.

Let Wi:=fi(V).
Wi is the vector of weights that voter i attaches to the votes in
V, Wi=(Wi1,...Wii,...,WiN), 1<=i<=N., where the sum of all weights in Wi,
sum(Wi) must be <=1
fi(V) is a function which is specific for voter i and allocates the vote of
person i according to the votes in V.
Example, voter i gives the vote to voter j (i.e. j is the proxy of i). We
get Wi=fi(V)=(0,...,1,...,0), where the 1 occurs on place j in the vector,

The vote tally is conducted as follows:
The yes vote of voter i is then calculated as the sum of weights for the
yes votes: sum(Wi*V):=Wi1*V1+Wi2*V2+...+WiN*VN
The no vote of voter is is calculated as the sum of weights for the no
votes: sum(Wi*-V).

Example: Say we have three voters a, b, c.
The vote is on bill B.
V=(1, 0, 1), i.e. a and c votes yes. b votes no.
Wa=(1,0,0), a votes for him/herself not delegating to any proxy
Wb=(1,0,0) if sum(V)>=2, Wb=(0,1,0) otherwise (i.e. the weight vectors with
weight 1 for the first yes vote and the first no vote in V respectively),
i.e. b votes according to the majority of the voters (like in a party
fraction in parliament)
Wc=(1/3,2/3,0), i.e. c gives 1/3 of the vote to a and 2/3 of the vote to b.

Tally:
a: yes: 1, no: 0
b: yes: 1, no: 0
c: yes: 1/3, no: 2/3
Total: yes:2 1/3, no: 2/3
B gets a majority of yes votes and bill B is approved.

I think the generic framework above could be helpful when discussing the
possibilities of proxy voting.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Michael Allan  wrote:
>
> Dear Mike (and Kathy),
>
> Mike wrote:
> > And a proxy needn't be a political figure, party leader, candidate,
> > or anyone special.  One's proxy could be _anyone_ whom one wants to
> > vote for hir. (As designated for a particular issue-category, or a
> > particular vote, or as pre-chosen default proxy).  It could be a
> > friend, family member, or any kind of public figure or advocate,
> > etc.
>
> I see such flexibility as a step toward the more general facility of
> giving the elector hir own ballot to do with as s/he pleases.  In that
> sense, proxy voting is a partial solution to the problems described
> here in my thesis, which I trace precisely to the lack of such a
> facility: http://zelea.com/project/autonomy/a/fau/fau.xht
>
> I do technical work with proxy voting myself for project Votorola.
> See the figure caption at bottom for links to the voting theory:
> http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht
>
> > As You [Kathy] suggested, you could designate a different proxy for
> > various kinds of issues. But there could be different opinions on
> > which issues are in which categories, unless vote issues are
> > specifically designated by categories. For that reason, it might be
> > necessary to designate such special proxies at the time of
> > voting. But maybe not: Maybe, if vote issues are
> > officially-designated by category, you could have pre-chosen proxies
> > for different categories of votes.
> >
> > Of course, in addition, you could designate a special proxy (or a
> > special ranking of proxies) for any particular vote too.
>
> We found it simpler to begin there, with the assumption that the voter
> would cast a separate vote on every issue.  This is the general case
> for us.  Category voting then becomes the special case; or actually
> cases, because we allow any number of category schemes to be layered
> atop the simple general system.
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Mike Ossipoff wrote:
> > Kathy--
> >
> > You wrote:
> >
> >
> > Why not make the idea better yet? Allow all voters to select a
> > different representative for each issue of interest to the voter, so
> > that one rep might be tasked to vote on environmental issues, another
> > on education issues, and perhaps another on foreign trade treaty
> > issues or on judicial appointments A voter could simply select a
> > person to vote on all issues, or select separate persons for different
> > issues.
> >
> > [endquote]
> >
> > Absolutely. I don't remember if that was in my earlier proposal, but of
course
> > it should be.
> >
> > One would have a pre-chosen default proxy designation, as I described,
but one would also be
> > able to designate a proxy on any pa

[EM] STV and single constraints, like gender quotas

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

do anyone of you know the best way to incorporate single constraints
into STV and proportional rankings from STV (see for instance:
http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/issue9/p5.htm)?
For instance, the constraint can be that at least 1/3 of the elected
seats go to candidates of each gender.
I found some information in the links below, but I wonder if there are
better or more recent suggestions:
http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P1.HTM
http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/issue9/p5.htm

Best regards
Peter Zborník

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

Re: [EM] STV and single constraints, like gender quotas

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kristofer,

I don't consider Schulze STV, only standard STV (IRV-based, fractional
static Droop quotas, not meek),
since it is the only method, which is simple to explain to
non-enthusiasts and widely used and have tested and widely used
software support for vote counting.

I guess, that by the "naive approach" you mean: "elect seats normally,
if during the vote-count the, same number of seats remain must belong
to one quota group in order not to break the quota (i.e. if. all
remaining seats must belong to one quota group), elect only candidates
from this quota group.
Do you also to the "naive approach" count "guarding" candidates from
elimination, if it could mean not filling the quotas?

I guess a combinatorial method is CPO-STV and Schulze-STV?
I consider only single constraints (i.e. no combination of women and
skin color etc.).
I didn't understand your proposal how "you could make ordinary STV
combinatorial".

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2011/11/27 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> do anyone of you know the best way to incorporate single constraints
>> into STV and proportional rankings from STV (see for instance:
>> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/issue9/p5.htm)?
>> For instance, the constraint can be that at least 1/3 of the elected
>> seats go to candidates of each gender.
>> I found some information in the links below, but I wonder if there are
>> better or more recent suggestions:
>> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P1.HTM
>> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/issue9/p5.htm
>
> I don't know of any better rules than the naive rule off the top of my head.
> I will note this, however: if you use a combinatorial method like Schulze
> STV, it is very easy to accommodate both simple and complex rules. You just
> decide to consider only those seat compositions that are permitted by the
> constraints.
>
> For instance, if you need at least one black and at least one woman (but
> they can be the same person), then you enumerate all possible permutations
> and remove those that have no blacks and no women. Then you run Schulze STV
> (or combinatorial method of choice) with respect to what's left.
>
> This also works for constraints that can't easily be determined in advance
> or from the ballots themselves. If you say that the CW based on the same
> ballots, or the current chairman's pick, has to be on the council, first run
> the ballots through a Condorcet method (or ask the chairman) and only
> consider the seat compositions where the candidate in question is included.
>
> I suppose you could make ordinary STV combinatorial by considering "how many
> voters did we have to overrule to get the composition we wanted" (where this
> is measured as number of last preferences for the candidate that was
> eliminated in each round, less the number of last preferences for the
> candidate that would have been eliminated by ordinary STV rules, using a
> forced elimination sequence that minimizes this number for the given
> composition), but it's not clear to me how you would go about actually
> calculating that minimizing sequence.
>
>

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

Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

86 emails in this discussion is quite a lot to read to catch up on the
discussion on this topic.
Maybe a summary could be in place, in case you have agreed upon something,
or someone has come up with some great idea.
Thx.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2012/8/2 Michael Allan 

> > ...  Are P-Q-R-S-T separate groups (parties?), each with members
> > making nominations? ...
>
> They are primary processes, i.e. for selecting candidates prior to the
> official election.  So the unreformed ones are party primaries, yes.
>
> > ... When you say "at least two are reformed processes, are you
> > speaking of groups with open nominations? ...
>
> One could be the process you and Juho were mooting, and another could
> feature open nominations, yes.
>
> > ...  Are the percentages the percent of the groups' membership or of
> > the entire electorate?
>
> Of the entire electorate.
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Fred Gohlke said:
> > Good Afternoon, Michael
> >
> > In response to your July 29th post on a different thread:
> >
> > re: "I guess we can safely assume that reforms (whatever they
> >   are) will not begin with the official electoral process.
> >   It is too difficult to change and too easy to circumvent.
> >   What matters is the selection of candidates, namely the
> >   primary electoral process.  Right?"
> >
> > Yes, we are discussing a possible method of selecting candidates.  We
> > arrived at this particular idea by assuming that parties still operate
> > in more or less the same way they do today, but that everyone has the
> > right to nominate candidates for public office - party members within
> > parties and unrepresented people (in the 'party' sense) as a separate
> group.
> >
> >
> > re: "Consider a point in the future at which there are five main
> >   primary processes in operation at varying levels of turnout,
> >   with at least two being reformed processes (your choice
> >   which)."
> >
> >  Process  Turnout
> >  ---  ---
> > P   20 %
> > Q   15(at least two are
> > R5reformed processes)
> > S2
> > T1
> >
> >   Is this expectation more-or-less reasonable?  Anyone?
> >
> > Please help me with this one.  Are P-Q-R-S-T separate groups (parties?),
> > each with members making nominations?  When you say "at least two are
> > reformed processes, are you speaking of groups with open nominations?
> > Are the percentages the percent of the groups' membership or of the
> > entire electorate?
> >
> >
> > re: "When you speak (Fred) of controlling the time at which
> >   'candidates are announced', do you mean only for the process
> >   that you and Juho are mooting, say one of P-T?  Or all
> >   processes P-T?  Your purpose would seem to require control
> >   of all the major primaries."
> >
> > The concept we were examining imagined a single nominating process in
> > which partisans and non-partisans nominate candidates for public office.
> >   After being nominated, the nominees for each party (and the
> > non-partisan nominees as a group) decide which of the nominees are the
> > best advocates of the party's point of view.  Then, the remaining
> > partisan/non-partisan nominees examine each other to decide which of
> > their number will be the candidates for public office.  Then the people
> > vote for their choice of the candidates.  The question of how many
> > candidates there would be for each office was not discussed, and,
> > barring further discussion, would be left to those who implement the
> > process.
> >
> > Fred
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Michael,

Thank you for structuring up the discussion.
I think de-constructing the political party is a good idea.
Your primary electoral system could work out after practicalities having
been sorted out.
However your proposal almost exclusively focused on the primary electoral
system and not the primary legislative system.
After the top candidates of the public party have been elected in all
public elections, then what happens?

Peter

2012/8/4 Michael Allan 

> Peter Zbornik said:
> > Maybe a summary could be in place, in case you have agreed upon
> > something, or someone has come up with some great idea.
>
> What I learned, I summarized in this proposal.
> http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/Public_parties
> Please click on the discussion tab for an index to related
> discussions.  What do you think?  Is it a good idea?
>
> Maybe others can summarize what they themselves have learned?
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/
>
>
> Peter Zbornik said:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > 86 emails in this discussion is quite a lot to read to catch up on the
> > discussion on this topic.
> > Maybe a summary could be in place, in case you have agreed upon
> something,
> > or someone has come up with some great idea.
> > Thx.
> >
> > Best regards
> > Peter Zborník
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Fred,

Thanks for the overview.
It certainly helps to get a grip on the discussion.
I am sending some unstructured ideas into the discussion.

Being a member of the Czech Green party myself, I think that political
parties are not inherently "evil".
The problem is how to make the primary election process and the "primary
legislative proces" democratic and inclusive, so that most people feel
motivated to take part of it, are able to influence politics and have the
same chances to participate - see the "classic" definition of an ideal
democracy by R. Dahl  -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Dahl#Democracy_and_polyarchies
The problem is, that there has not yet been a better proposal around.

Problems with the electoral process:
In your list, you forgot to mention "campaign spending by third parties"
and "media coverage".
I also found a list of insufficiencies of representative democracy here:
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Representative_democracy
A candidate needs not to spend vast amounts of money, he just needs a fat
cat who spends horrendous amounts of money behind the scene to influence
public opinion through mass media.
The money of the fat cat would be wasted however, if he/she would not be
reasonably sure to get a "return of his/her investment" (ROI).
A positive ROI would fail to materialize:
1) if it would prove too expensive to bribe the voters (the fat cat has to
spend his/her money on something to help his/her candidate), for instance
if (for the sake of argument), there was no mass media, only peer-to-peer
media, and
2) if the fat cat would not be able to override the opinion of the voters
by simply closing a secret agreement with the supported candidate, that
after being elected he/she will give the fat cat the public contracts and
public money he/she needs to get his/her ROI positive.

I also think we should study how media could be democratized, using
peer-to-peer concepts. It is however no secret, that media can efficiently
"bury" or "coronate" a candidate. In the case when media is privately
owned, this means, that democracy is in part privatized too. A media owner
doesn't have to spend any money, he just tells his/her employees what to
write or send, he/she doesn't even have to order someone to do something,
it is just enough to hire and fire the right people.

Regulating and innovating the party:
I personally think, the political parties need regulation and technological
innovation in order to arrive at close to ideal democratic conditions,
which R. Dahl defined.
By regulation I mean sense, that internal party democracy will be under the
protection of law, just as in stock companies.
Fraud in member counts, intimidation, limiting comunication channels only
to some in the party, this should be ruled out.
Minorities in the party should have rights, for instance to call for audits.

By technological innovation I mean on-line and secure voting, and arenas to
exchange ideas and tools that track the history of a candidate. All of this
already works in on-line forums.

Democratical innovation of the party would be needed too of course (like
proportional election systems, which have been studied shamefully little).

Real world examples:
The German Pirate party is an exception so far and it seems it has managed
to gather many members based on the promise, that politics can be fun, and
the normal man can actually influence politics and they have a
technological platform (liquid feedback) and the expertise (I guess the
entire hacker community) to try out some new stuff. The concept of Liquid
democracy is described here:
http://spinelessliberal.wordpress.com/2012/05/26/liquid-democracy-the-future-of-ldconf/

Advantages of political parties:
An advantage of political parties is, that people seem to like meeting
likely-minded people, because then it is so much easier to agree upon
something, such as a political program, which the winning candidates should
implement.

Or, the other way around. If we manage to design an inclusive and open
primary election process, then one group might appear which has a better
idea of how the process should work. Refusing this group the possiblity to
try their thing out for real, i.e. to found a party would lead us to a
one-party state, which is practically unreformable.

Or the other way around again, if a party was 100% democratic, then we
would actually need no more than one party, as all opinions would be
adequatly taken care of.

If I should mention, what is wrong with democracy today, I would say:
1) Capital transations, which are not monitored by a regulator - i.e.
untransparent cash-flow
2) Organizational and techical innovation in all areas, exept for the
democratic functioning of the state
3) Privately-owned media, which has the ability to tilt the election
results in any direction based the owners want
4) Majority rule
5) Lack of inovation

In a deeper level, I feel it is a mistake only to focus on currently
elected positions.
I think that a more inte

Re: [EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

some comments below

2012/7/21 Michael Allan 

> Paul, Ed and Kristofer,
>
> Paul said,
> > indeed Demoex voting was restricted to members but membership was
> > not restricted. ...
>
> This is like a political party, but unlike a public party.  A public
> party will not restrict voting to its members.
>

To become a member, you actually have to be a citizen in the municipality
where Demoex works (being from Sweden, I checked it out).
This is a reasonable condition, and thus, unless we have a wold-wide public
party, there needs to be some voter qualifications (except for being human,
above 16/18/21 years of age, not seriously mentally impaired etc.


> > ... to show the citizens that they have the real decisive power if
> > they want to. And that is probably the most challenging part, they
> > have to want to. The idea has to be sold and until this moment a
> > positive response is indeed very hard to get. ...
>
> Michael Allan wrote:

> We want people to take the reins, but we put barriers in front of
> them.  It's a barrier to join a party; a barrier to accept someone
> else's vision of democracy; to be told where and when to vote, with
> whom, and by what method.  Even if these restrictions *seem* to be
> necessary, they are effective as barriers.  Do you agree?
>
>
> Ed said,
> > ...  I think I get stuck here:
> >
> > > The public party strives to increase its primary turnout by all
> > > means.  This includes mirroring the votes of would-be competitors
> > > (other public parties) such that turnout is effectively pooled
> > > among them. *
> >
> > How can this mirroring be accomplished without duplication of votes?
> > Most current formal elections (including primaries) are anonymous,
> > and rely on a controlled registration process. If you are
> > aggregating these controlled elections along with less-controlled
> > input from many other sources, isn't it possible for some people to
> > vote many times (or at least twice), while others with less
> > energy/time/knowledge/etc. would have fewer votes (or perhaps just
> > one)?
>
>
Michael Allan wrote:

> Yes, that's correct.  We cannot image anonymous votes.  We must know
> the identity of the voter and the time at which the vote was cast.
> Only the latest vote is valid.
>

If the identity of the voter will be public, then you open up for voter
coercion - the employer, husband, political party, "secret society", church
etc. etc. might be tempted to buy your vote or threaten you to vote as they
want (sticks and carrots). That is why voting is secret, except for the
voting of elected representatives. I do not think we can dispose of voting
secrecy today.

Personally I thought, that in a delegative proxy system, only the voting of
a person, which has more than, say 1000 votes will be public.
If I give my vote to a candidate with less than 1000 votes, using a ranked
ballot, he is eliminated and the candidate who is next in ranking gets my
vote.
I am not sure I make sense, here, as I am new to the discussion.

In an ideal world with no coercion, all voting could be public, but now, we
don't live in an ideal world.

I think cryptography might give us a possibility to retain the secrecy of a
vote, and allow the voter to reallocate his/her votes.
After all, stock markets function the same way.
The stock-owner knows what he owns, and can buy or sell assets anonymously.
The buyer and seller however do not know to whom they sell.
The same way, the voter could change vote allocation, but nobody would know
to whom.

I am not sure I have understood this vote-mirroring thing.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


> Paul Nollen said:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > indeed Demoex voting was restricted to members but membership was not
> > restricted. At the time they started (2002 ) and place this was the only
> > possibility to make a list of people with voting rights.
> > Here in Belgium, today, we can use our electronic ID card for voting. The
> > only problem with that is that we can't exclude people who lost their
> voting
> > rights by a court conviction. That list is not publically available.
> > And the purpose is indeed to use the system in the way it is (elected
> > representatives in a representative system) , because it is nearly
> > impossible to change it, and act as a Troyan horse with a direct
> democratic
> > initiative in a purely representative system.
> > Of course this can be only a temporary action, just like the Troyan
> horse,
> > to breach the power of the representative system and to show the citizens
> > that they have the real decisive power if they want to. And that is
> probably
> > the most challenging part, they have to want to. The idea has to be sold
> and
> > until this moment a positive response is indeed very hard to get.
> > On the other hand, the same idea is emerging, even here in Belgium, in
> other
> > groups who never heard about us and Demoex. We can say that it seems to
> be a
> > more or less natural proces when people become awar

Re: [EM] Public parties: a Trojan Horse in the party system

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Mike,

answers in the text of your email below.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2012/8/6 Michael Allan 

> Peter Zbornik said:
> > To become a member, you actually have to be a citizen in the
> > municipality where Demoex works (being from Sweden, I checked it
> > out).  This is a reasonable condition, and thus, unless we have a
> > wold-wide public party, there needs to be some voter qualifications
> > (except for being human, above 16/18/21 years of age, not seriously
> > mentally impaired etc.
>
> I guess there are three issues in this.  I'll try to unravel them as
> they bear on the public party.
>
>   * Party membership
>   * Human expression
>   * Vote counting
>
> The public party has no formal membership.  Its actual membership is
> assumed to be identical to that of the public.  Public membership is
> determined ad hoc by human expression *in* public.  Speaker and
> audience are made members by the fact of their participation.  In not
> assuming this mode of membership, Demoex is not a public party.
>
> The public depends on freedom of expression.  Voting is a form of
> expression.  Placing restrictions on who can vote and who cannot (or
> where they can vote, when, and how), Demoex is not a public party.
>
> Public votes may be tallied by anyone and the tallier alone decides
> which votes to count and which to discount.  A public party may tally
> votes, too, and may publish a count restricted to the local electors,
> or to any other subset of the voters.  Such a restricted count would
> not in itself disqualify Demoex from being a public party. [1]
>
>
Ok, so every citizen in every country in the world will be able to vote in
the election of the municipal council where I live?
I don't think I would like that and neither would the other people living
in this municipality too, I believe.


> > > ...  We cannot image anonymous votes.  We must know the identity
> > > of the voter and the time at which the vote was cast.  Only the
> > > latest vote is valid.
> >
> > If the identity of the voter will be public, then you open up for
> > voter coercion - the employer, husband, political party, "secret
> > society", church etc. etc. might be tempted to buy your vote or
> > threaten you to vote as they want (sticks and carrots). That is why
> > voting is secret, except for the voting of elected
> > representatives. I do not think we can dispose of voting secrecy
> > today. ...  I am not sure I make sense, here, as I am new to the
> > discussion.
>
> I'll share what I've learned about the secret ballot.  It's not what
> it seems to be.
>
>   (a) The enabling motivation behind the secret ballot, as with other
>   electoral reforms of the 19th century, was the consolidation of
>   power in the newly organized political parties.  Of particular
>   concern was control over the selection of primary candidates,
>   which could not be secured when the nominations and voting were
>   conducted in public, as before. [2]
>

Talking about history, I'll share what I learned about the secret ballot
too: "The use of a secret ballot in America was first deemed necessary to
protect the voting rights of recently freed slaves after the Civil War.
Voter intimidation during southern reconstruction was rampant, with African
American first-time voters being threatened with physical violence, even
lynching, based on how their publicly known ballots were cast. In 1892,
Grover Cleveland became the first United State president elected by secret
ballot."
http://www.sosballot.org/frequently-asked-questions/


>
>   (b) If all restrictions are lifted and public voters have complete
>   freedom of expression, then it is difficult to see how the
>   results could be manipulated except (as Conseo suggests) by
>   re-imposing systematic restrictions.  Isolated instances of
>   coercion, as with family, are unlikely to affect the overall
>   primary results.  And, in all cases, the individual is still
>   protected by the secret ballot at a later stage, in the official
>   election. [3]
>

"Complete freedom of expression" is a utopia, similar as the "classless
society".
It sounds good initially, but thinking of it a bit longer, the attraction
fades quickly.
If you claim, that coercion will be "unlikely to affect the overall primary
results".
Try to think about communism or fascism. Those were some efficient systems
of mass coercion.
But peer-to-peer coercion would have similar effects.
Your claim that, that a little peer-to-peer coercion here and there,
actually is not much to talk about, is unacceptable to me and not a
statement supported by any argument - im

Re: [EM] Conceiving a Democratic Electoral Process

[Peter Zbornik]

Good Morning Fred,

those points were just some food for thought.
Thanks for your reflection on some of them.
Let's start innovating democracy.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

2012/8/10 Fred Gohlke 

> Good Evening, Peter
>
> I think I've covered the primary points in your post.  Have I overlooked
> anything?  Can we use any of the material that has been expressed on this
> thread to conceive a democratic electoral process?
>
> Political systems are always an embodiment of human nature.  Until we
> learn to harness our own nature, we can improve neither our politics nor
> our society.  In the U. S., there is no Constitutional bar to devising a
> more democratic process; the only impediment is ourselves.  Since we can
> not divorce our political institutions from our own nature, we must make
> virtue a desirable attribute in those who seek political advancement.
>
> That may be difficult ... but it is not impossible.  The question is, "How
> can we get started?"
>
>
> Fred
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Better runoffs

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

A simple extention of IRV to two rounds IRV would be the following:
1. In the first round have no quota (i.e. no transfer of surpluses).
2. The two candidates who are eliminated last go to the second round
3. In the second round the two candidates meet in a normal IRV election.

Question: Will this method always generate the same winner as one-round
IRV, in the case that the preference orderings of the voters are the same
in both rounds?
I believe yes and it seems trivial, but cannot prove it just like that.

I am considering proposing this method for use among the Czech Greens as an
improved IRV and a natural two-round alternative to the Run-off elections
we use today.

Example:
10 A D C
20 B C
25 C A
15 D C

70 votes, no quota
In the 1st round A is eliminated first, his votes goes to D who gets 25
votes.
Then B is eliminated with his 20 votes.
Thus D and C go to the second round, where C wins.

Thanks for some help.

Otherwise, we will use STV in our party, and we are working with the
details.
More info coming in a month or two.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2012/7/10 Kristofer Munsterhjelm 

> When runoffs are subjected to criterion analysis, one usually considers
> voters to vote in the same order in each round. If they prefer A to B in
> the first round, and A and B remain in the second round, they'll vote A
> over B in the second round.
>
> This may not necessarily fit reality. Voters may leave or join depending
> on whether the second round is "important" or not, and the same for later
> rounds in exhaustive runoff. But let's consider top-two runoffs and, to
> begin with, that the voters will stay consistent.
>
> The kind of criterion analysis performed on top-two then says that top-two
> Plurality runoff is not monotone. Furthermore, it is worse than IRV (i.e.
> fails participation, consistency, and so on, but also things IRV passes
> like MDT and mutual majority).
>
> If we want to have a method that does better, what would we need?
>
> Some methods (like Ranked Pairs or Kemeny) pass what is called local IIA.
> Local IIA says that if you eliminate all candidates but a contiguous subset
> (according to the output ranking), then the order of those candidates
> shouldn't change. If you eliminate all candidates but the ones that
> finished third and fourth and rerun the election, then the candidate that
> finished third should win. More specifically, for runoff purposes: if you
> pick the two first candidates to the runoff, and voters are perfectly
> consistent, then the order doesn't change.
>
> Thus, all that you really need to make a runoff that isn't worse than its
> base method is that the method passes LIIA. Use Ranked Pairs for both
> stages and there you go -- if the voters change their minds between rounds,
> conventional criterion analysis doesn't apply, and if they don't change
> their minds, you don't lose compliance of any criteria.
>
> However, such runoffs could become quite boring in practice. Say that
> there are a number of moderates in the first round and people prefer
> moderates to the rest. After the first round is done, two moderates are
> retained and run in the second round. What does it matter which moderate
> wins? The closer they are to being clones, the less interesting the runoff
> becomes.
>
> More formally, it seems that the whole voting population is not being
> properly represented. Two candidates represent the middle but nobody
> represents either side. That might be okay if voters are normally
> distributed around the candidate, but if they are, you wouldn't need the
> runoff to begin with.
>
> If that's correct, then it'd be better to have a proportional ordering.
> That proportional ordering should still put one of the moderates first
> (assuming he'd be the winner had there been only one round), but also admit
> one of the side candidates. But here's the tricky part. That proportional
> ordering method should also pass LIIA, so that all the criterion
> compliances held by the base method are retained. It's thus necessary that
> the winner of the base method comes first. Beyond that, however, I have
> little idea how the method might be constructed, or if it's even possible
> to have both a proportionality criterion and LIIA.
>
> Finally, if such a method were to be found, one could possibly have more
> than two candidates in the runoff. The runoff would serve as a way of the
> method to say "hey, look at these candidates more closely", where their
> positions could then be compared and voters possibly change their minds. If
> the method passes LIIA, it doesn't matter how many (or few) candidates you
> put in the second round - the method acts like the one-round method if all
> the voters remain perfectly consistent. Practically, also, if there are
> only two candidates and one is a moderate, the "other" wing not represented
> might feel cheated out of a chance if only one of the wings are
> represented. If the centrist and the leftist goes to the second

Re: [EM] Better runoffs

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kristofer,

thanks for the answer

2012/10/4 Kristofer Munsterhjelm 

> On 10/04/2012 07:05 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> A simple extention of IRV to two rounds IRV would be the following:
>> 1. In the first round have no quota (i.e. no transfer of surpluses).
>> 2. The two candidates who are eliminated last go to the second round
>> 3. In the second round the two candidates meet in a normal IRV election.
>>
>> Question: Will this method always generate the same winner as one-round
>> IRV, in the case that the preference orderings of the voters are the
>> same in both rounds?
>> I believe yes and it seems trivial, but cannot prove it just like that.
>>
>
> Yes, at least if you disregard ties. Say that after every round but the
> last has been run, A and B remain. Then A will win in IRV iff a majority of
> the ballots that express a difference between A and B, ranks A above B. Now
> consider a genuine runoff between A and B. The voters can only give their
> vote for either A or B (or abstain), and if the majority interested in that
> contest votes for A, then A wins, and same for B. Since the preference
> orderings are the same, this A-vs-B contest is also the same as in the
> final round of IRV.
>
>
>  I am considering proposing this method for use among the Czech Greens as
>> an improved IRV and a natural two-round alternative to the Run-off
>> elections we use today.
>>
>
> It might be better than Plurality runoff - I haven't heard of anybody
> using IRV+runoffs before, so I don't know its performance for sure.
>
> If you're looking at variants of IRV, you could ensure the CW stays in the
> contest (when there is one) by not eliminating the Plurality loser at each
> stage of IRV, but the one who loses a one-on-one between the two candidates
> with least Plurality score for the round in question. That may be of use if
> you want to have a runoff and at the same time make sure the Condorcet
> winner stays in it.
>
>
I guess it is the simplest transfer from IRV to Condorcet voting.
And this recent paper in Voting Matters on Hybrid methods show it might be
a good method to use, which is robust to strategic voting. At the same time
it is very simple to describe.

Condorcet methods are not requested in my party yet, but I like this
Condorcet-light method and will consider it when time is rights.

P.

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Re: [EM] The Green scenario, and IRV in the Green scenario, is a new topic here. Hence these additional comments. Clarification of position and why.

[Peter Zbornik]

Being a green party member (although a Czech one and not US), I would
advocate only the top-two-run-off
variant of IRV, i.e. elimination of the candidates and transfer of
votes until two remain, no quota for election (or quota=100%) except
for the case where one candidate has more than 50% of first
preferences.

The top two candidates would meet in a second round in IRV.
A candidate would be elected if he/she would get more than 50% of the votes.

Empty votes would count as  valid votes in both first and second round.

If no candidate would be elected in second round new elections would take place.

The advantages of the proposed election system are
1) the voters are given a chance to concentrate only on two candidates
in the second round, and are thus allowed to change their preferences.
2) blank votes together with IRV might make the candidates less
polarized, as, given a large number of blank votes, the candidate with
the highest number of votes in the second round would have to rely on
the second preferences of the voters for the opposing candidate in
order to get 50%+ votes.

PZ

2013/1/31 Michael Ossipoff :
> The reason why I'm posting these comments separately, instead of in
> one complete message is that it's about a new topic, one that we
> haven't discussed.
>
> As I said, we've been talking about methods for current conditions.
> Methods for a different electorate haven't been our topic. In
> particular, that's true regarding conditions that are being worked for
> by alternative political parties, like GPUS. The electorate that would
> elect GPUS by Plurality might or might not come into being, but that
> "Green scenario", whether or not it will happen, is worth discussing,
> because the GPUS is working on it, and because (I claim) it would
> happen if people looked at platforms and voted in their best interest.
>
> Anyway, these additional comments, instead of just one complete
> message, are because this topic is new to all of us.
>
> What I want to say now is that IRV would be perfectly good, perfectly
> ok, in he Green scenario.
>
> It isn't what I'd choose, but it would be ok. If IRV became the voting
> system, then, maybe for some of us (in a mutual majority) the voting
> situation would be ideal, or maybe (if the mutuality isn't assured)
> the situation could take on a confrontational brinksmanship character.
> And for those not in a mutual majority (MM), there'd be
> favorite-burial need. But that isn't unfair or wrong, because it's
> widely accepted that the win is for the majority.
>
> I wouldn't choose IRV, because I just want to approve all of the
> progressive candidates.
>
> Every method that gives you a finer choice among your preferred set of
> candidates, always comes with a drawback. That luxury always comes at
> a price. That's why I've long been saying that improving on Approval
> is easier said than done.
>
> In the case of IRV, the drawback occurs if you aren't in a majority,
> or your majority isn't mutual, or if the mutuality is in some way
> jeopardized.
>
> For example, suppose that there were a progressive party that felt
> that it had media-acceptance-strategy incentive to tell its voters to
> rank the Democrat in 2nd place. That would clearly jeopardize the
> progressive mutual majority. It would create a dangerous brinksmanship
> game. I don't want that. As I said above, I just want to approve all
> of the progressives.
>
> If that were the situation, and if we had IRV, that party would surely
> realize that sincere ranking is assumed in IRV--especially in a mutual
> majority, where sincere ranking is optimal. If the situation should be
> a mutual majority, but might not be voted as such, might some people
> insist on voting as if it were? Might not the defecting party know
> that? That's why I said it would be a brinksmanship game.
>
> That's why, even though IRV would be perfectly good in the Green
> scenario, it isn't what I'd choose. I'd choose Approval or Score, for
> the reasons stated above.
>
> But IRV will be the next voting system unless we can tell to the GPUS
> platform committee, some convincing reasons why they don't want IRV. I
> described some of those reasons in an earlier post. Maybe other people
> here don't want to bother. Ok, then IRV is likely to be the next
> voting system.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

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Re: [EM] The Green scenario, and IRV in the Green scenario, is a new topic here. Hence these additional comments. Clarification of position and why.

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi I am afraid a proportional approach in the first round wouldnt
work, it opens up for strategic voting.
Say we have an election with A, B, C.
45 A
30 B A
25 C B A

The first round in a 2-seat election the quota is 34 votes
If we would have a two-round proportional election, then B would win
in the second round.

So A's voters find this out and decide to change their preferences and
10 of the voters of A vote for C
So we have

35 A
30 BA
25 CBA
10 CA

C and A meet in the second round, where A wins.

PZ

2013/2/4 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> On 02/04/2013 02:40 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> Being a green party member (although a Czech one and not US), I would
>> advocate only the top-two-run-off
>> variant of IRV, i.e. elimination of the candidates and transfer of
>> votes until two remain, no quota for election (or quota=100%) except
>> for the case where one candidate has more than 50% of first
>> preferences.
>>
>> The top two candidates would meet in a second round in IRV.
>> A candidate would be elected if he/she would get more than 50% of the
>> votes.
>>
>> Empty votes would count as  valid votes in both first and second round.
>>
>> If no candidate would be elected in second round new elections would take
>> place.
>>
>> The advantages of the proposed election system are
>> 1) the voters are given a chance to concentrate only on two candidates
>> in the second round, and are thus allowed to change their preferences.
>> 2) blank votes together with IRV might make the candidates less
>> polarized, as, given a large number of blank votes, the candidate with
>> the highest number of votes in the second round would have to rely on
>> the second preferences of the voters for the opposing candidate in
>> order to get 50%+ votes.
>
>
> Perhaps this method would work for runoffs if you can get a more
> sophisticated base method through, say for internal elections:
>
> - Run a single-winner election using your method of choice. Call the winner
> w_1.
> - Use a proportional ranking method to determine the second runoff candidate
> w_2 so that the virtual council {w_1, w_2} represents as much as possible of
> the population.
> - Have a runoff between w_1 and w_2.
>
> If w_1 is a strong winner, he'll win in the runoff. If he's a weak winner
> (e.g. the "bland politician being everybody's second choice" scenario), w_2
> wins.
>
> In IRV, this would be like running two-member STV where the IRV winner is
> barred from being disqualified.
>
> There could be a problem, though, in a society that has a bland centrist
> politician and strong left- and right-wing candidates. Since the runoff can
> only hold two candidates, either the left-wing or the right-wing candidate
> would be disqualified; and if the bland politician is sufficiently bland,
> then the wing candidate would pretty much win by default. IRV "solves" this
> by not letting center-squeezed candidates win in the first place. Another
> option is to have multiple candidates in the runoff, but then the simplicity
> and strategy resistance properties of the second round go away.
>

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Re: [EM] The Green scenario, and IRV in the Green scenario, is a new topic here. Hence these additional comments. Clarification of position and why.

[Peter Zbornik]

Kristoffer,

no the example below applies for my two-round proposal as well, thus
rapidly sinking what I previously proposed :o)
Nice to having had done away with the two-round variant of IRV.
Now I don't have to bother about it any more.

For Condorcet I am not sure.
I guess, there might even be a new criterion invented: multiple-round
strategy-proof , but I don't know of any method satisfying this
criterion.

The two-round method would however be suitable when trying out which
of two methods is the best by letting the winners meet in the second
round (like plurality vs. IRV winner), in order to gather political
support, but that's an other topic.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2013/2/4 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> On 02/04/2013 09:31 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> Hi I am afraid a proportional approach in the first round wouldnt
>> work, it opens up for strategic voting.
>> Say we have an election with A, B, C.
>> 45 A
>> 30 B A
>> 25 C B A
>>
>> The first round in a 2-seat election the quota is 34 votes
>> If we would have a two-round proportional election, then B would win
>> in the second round.
>>
>> So A's voters find this out and decide to change their preferences and
>> 10 of the voters of A vote for C
>> So we have
>>
>> 35 A
>> 30 BA
>> 25 CBA
>> 10 CA
>>
>> C and A meet in the second round, where A wins.
>
>
> A one-on-one runoff (i.e. second round), taken on its own, is
> strategy-proof. However, if we imagine the voters never change their
> opinion, then we could build a ranked election system that works as however
> the first round would in reality, then simulates a runoff between the
> winners. This method would, like any other ranked method, be subject to
> Arrow's theorem and to Gibbard-Satterthwaite.
>
> Thus, the runoff can't, as a whole (both rounds considered) be
> strategy-proof. So there will be some kind of strategy. But does a
> proportional first round make it more vulnerable to strategy than a plain
> first round?
>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

2013/2/5 Jonathan Lundell :
> On 5 Feb 2013, at 9:50 AM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> We recently managed, after some effort to elect some people in our
>> party using STV (five of seven board members of the Czech Green Party
>> and more recently some people to lead the Prague organisation etc.).
>> We used standard fractional STV, with strict quotas, valid empty
>> ballots, Hagenbach-Bischoff quota, no Meek.
>> It was the first bigger usage of STV in the Czech republic.
>> As a footnote, I would like to add, that one big advantage of
>> proportional election methods, is that it elects "the best people",
>> i.e. meaning the people, who have the biggest support in the
>> organisation.
>>
>> Now we would like to go on using STV for primary elections to party
>> lists in our party.
>> I have a good idea on how to do it using proportional ranking, but am
>> not entirely confident in how to implement the gender quotas.
>> So here I would like to ask you, the experts, for help.
>> I have only found some old papers in election-methods, but they are
>> not of any great help to resolve the following problem, unfortunately.
>>
>> The problem (after a slight simplification) is as follows:
>> We want to elect five seats with any proportional ranking method (like
>> Schulze proportional ranking, or Otten's top-down or similar), using
>> the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota) under the
>> following constraints:
>> Constraint 1: One of the first two seats has to go to a man and the
>> other seat has to go to a woman.
>> Constraint 2: One of seat three, four and five has to go to a man and
>> one of those seats has to go to a woman.
>
> Why the two constraints, as opposed to a single constraint the overall gender 
> distribution must be 3:2 or 2:3? Constraints are hard enough (OK, impossible 
> in the general case) to square with proportionality without making them 
> stricter than required.

We dont want to quote-in the women at the last places on the party
list, where they are practically unelectable.
This is how we have defined the constraints it in our statutes, so the
constraints 1 and 2 cannot be "simplified".

>
>> Say the "default" proportional ranking method elects women to all five
>> seats, and thus that we need to modify it in a good way in order to
>> satisfy the constraints.
>>
>> Now the question is: How should the quoted seats be distributed in
>> order to insure
>> i] that the seats are quoted-in fairly proportionally between the
>> voters (i.e. the same voters do not get both quoted-in seats) and at
>> the same time
>> ii] that the proportional ranking method remains fairly proportional?
>
> Define "fairly proportional", please.

If "fairly proportional" will be defined, then I my question will be
easy to answer.
The definition of  "fairly proportional" is at the core of my question.
I think there is a trade-off between "ranking proportionality" and
"quota proportionality",
i.e. you cannnot in all cases maximalize the proprtionality of both
the ranking and the distribution of the quoted seats at the same time.

To quote my previous email:
I.e. we search for
a) a quota proportionality measure and
b) a proportional ranking measure and
c) a rule, which "optimises" both the "quota proportionality" and the
"proportional ranking proportionality".

The optimization in c) above, is what I mean by "fairly proportional".

PZ

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kristofer,

I am afraid your approach might in some cases not lead to
proportionally distributed quoted-in candidates.

For instance, say we have three coalitions: A, B, C.
Coalition A and B get their first place candidate
Coalition C get their second place candidate quoted-in (i.e. they
would prefer Agda, but they get Adam due to the quota rules).
Coalition A and B get the third and fourth place candidates respectively.
Coalition C, again, get their fifth place candidate quoted in (i.e.
they would prefer Erica, but they get Eric due to the quota rules).

This approach leads to an unproportional distribution of quoted-in
seats (candidates) as Coalition C get both of the quoted-in candidates
and Coalition A and B get none.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik



2013/2/5 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> On 02/05/2013 06:50 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> The problem (after a slight simplification) is as follows:
>> We want to elect five seats with any proportional ranking method (like
>> Schulze proportional ranking, or Otten's top-down or similar), using
>> the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota) under the
>> following constraints:
>> Constraint 1: One of the first two seats has to go to a man and the
>> other seat has to go to a woman.
>> Constraint 2: One of seat three, four and five has to go to a man and
>> one of those seats has to go to a woman.
>> Say the "default" proportional ranking method elects women to all five
>> seats, and thus that we need to modify it in a good way in order to
>> satisfy the constraints.
>
>
> Oh, sorry. I didn't see the part about that you could use a proportional
> ranking method. In that case, the answer's simple. Pick the highest ranked
> council extension that doesn't violate the constraints.
>
> E.g. for Schulze's proportional ranking method, say the candidates are W1,
> W2, W3, M1, M2, M3 (for Woman and Man respectively).
>
> First round, you have a matrix with W1, W2, W3, M1, M2, and M3. Say the
> Schulze winner is M1. That's okay, M1 gets first place.
>
> Second round, you have a matrix with {M1, W1}, {M1, W2}, {M1, W3}, {M1, M2},
> and {M1, M3}. Determine the Schulze social ordering according to the Schulze
> proportional ordering weights (as defined in his paper). Remove {M1, M2} and
> {M1, M3} from the output social ordering since these aren't permitted. Say
> {M1, W1} wins.
>
> Then you just continue like that. In essence, you're picking the best
> continuation of the ordering given what the constraints force you to do.
>
> You could also just null out the defeat strengths in the proportional
> ordering matrix, but that would produce strategy incentives since Schulze
> doesn't satisfy IIA.
>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kristofer,

I am sending a short P.S. to my email below just to clarify the example
In the example in my email below we get the following result:

Seat/place number (ordered) --- Coalition --- quotas apply
1 --- A, B --- no
2 --- C --- yes
3 --- A --- no
4 --- B --- no
5 --- C --- yes

The problem is, that the quotas apply on the same coalition both
times, which leads to an unproportional distribution of candidates
which were quoted-in between the coalitions.

I am afraid this is not a trivial problem nor a problem.

PZ

2013/2/5 Peter Zbornik :
> Hi Kristofer,
>
> I am afraid your approach might in some cases not lead to
> proportionally distributed quoted-in candidates.
>
> For instance, say we have three coalitions: A, B, C.
> Coalition A and B get their first place candidate
> Coalition C get their second place candidate quoted-in (i.e. they
> would prefer Agda, but they get Adam due to the quota rules).
> Coalition A and B get the third and fourth place candidates respectively.
> Coalition C, again, get their fifth place candidate quoted in (i.e.
> they would prefer Erica, but they get Eric due to the quota rules).
>
> This approach leads to an unproportional distribution of quoted-in
> seats (candidates) as Coalition C get both of the quoted-in candidates
> and Coalition A and B get none.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zbornik
>
>
>
> 2013/2/5 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
>> On 02/05/2013 06:50 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>>
>>> The problem (after a slight simplification) is as follows:
>>> We want to elect five seats with any proportional ranking method (like
>>> Schulze proportional ranking, or Otten's top-down or similar), using
>>> the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota
>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota) under the
>>> following constraints:
>>> Constraint 1: One of the first two seats has to go to a man and the
>>> other seat has to go to a woman.
>>> Constraint 2: One of seat three, four and five has to go to a man and
>>> one of those seats has to go to a woman.
>>> Say the "default" proportional ranking method elects women to all five
>>> seats, and thus that we need to modify it in a good way in order to
>>> satisfy the constraints.
>>
>>
>> Oh, sorry. I didn't see the part about that you could use a proportional
>> ranking method. In that case, the answer's simple. Pick the highest ranked
>> council extension that doesn't violate the constraints.
>>
>> E.g. for Schulze's proportional ranking method, say the candidates are W1,
>> W2, W3, M1, M2, M3 (for Woman and Man respectively).
>>
>> First round, you have a matrix with W1, W2, W3, M1, M2, and M3. Say the
>> Schulze winner is M1. That's okay, M1 gets first place.
>>
>> Second round, you have a matrix with {M1, W1}, {M1, W2}, {M1, W3}, {M1, M2},
>> and {M1, M3}. Determine the Schulze social ordering according to the Schulze
>> proportional ordering weights (as defined in his paper). Remove {M1, M2} and
>> {M1, M3} from the output social ordering since these aren't permitted. Say
>> {M1, W1} wins.
>>
>> Then you just continue like that. In essence, you're picking the best
>> continuation of the ordering given what the constraints force you to do.
>>
>> You could also just null out the defeat strengths in the proportional
>> ordering matrix, but that would produce strategy incentives since Schulze
>> doesn't satisfy IIA.
>>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

yes, that's it.

P.

2013/2/6 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> On 02/05/2013 09:37 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> Hi Kristofer,
>>
>> I am afraid your approach might in some cases not lead to
>> proportionally distributed quoted-in candidates.
>>
>> For instance, say we have three coalitions: A, B, C.
>> Coalition A and B get their first place candidate
>> Coalition C get their second place candidate quoted-in (i.e. they
>> would prefer Agda, but they get Adam due to the quota rules).
>> Coalition A and B get the third and fourth place candidates respectively.
>> Coalition C, again, get their fifth place candidate quoted in (i.e.
>> they would prefer Erica, but they get Eric due to the quota rules).
>>
>> This approach leads to an unproportional distribution of quoted-in
>> seats (candidates) as Coalition C get both of the quoted-in candidates
>> and Coalition A and B get none.
>
>
> So you need not just proportionality in the group as a whole, but
> proportionality within each gender too?
>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

James, Jonathan,

I need that the quoted-in people are quoted-in in such a way, that the
proportionality of the election is not significantly disturbed.

I think Rosenthiel's approach has the following insufficiencies:
If I elect five women, and then increase the number of elected seats
until two more men have been elected, then we might end up with a
situation, where
a] one coalition of voters get all the seats (the easiest example is
when we elect two ordered seats, one man and one woman) - i.e. the
resulting list is not a proportionaly ordered list
b] one coalition of voters get all the qouted-in men - i.e. the
resulting list has no proportionality between gender.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


2013/2/6 James Gilmour :
>> Jonathan Lundell  > Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2013 6:40 PM
>> There is, I think, an underlying misconception here, namely
>> that STV order of election can be interpreted as a ranking of
>> level of support. It's not, in the general case.
>
> Jonathan is absolutely right.  If you want lists ordered by relative support, 
> you need to adopt a procedure like that recommended by
> Colin Rosenstiel and used by some UK political parties when they have to 
> select ordered lists for closed-list party-PR elections.
>
> First you use ordinary STV-PR to elect the required total number of 
> candidates.  Then you conduct a series of STV-PR elections, each
> for one vacancy less than the preceding election.  The unsuccessful candidate 
> takes the lowest vacant place on the ordered list.
> Continue until you run-off between the top-two for the second-last place.
>
> For full details, see:
>   http://www.crosenstiel.webspace.virginmedia.com/stv/orderstv.htm
> and
>   http://www.crosenstiel.webspace.virginmedia.com/stv/ordstvdt.htm
>
> The second one includes a constraint for candidate's sex.
>
> James Gilmour
>
>
>
>
> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.
> Virus Database (VPS): 130205-0, 05/02/2013
> Tested on: 05/02/2013 23:49:22
> avast! - copyright (c) 1988-2013 AVAST Software.
> http://www.avast.com
>
>
>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Kristofer,

to be more exact:
I need not just proportionality in the ordered list as a whole (i.e.
meaning proportional ranking), but also that seats/candidates are
quoted in proportionally within each gender too.

Proportionality within each gender is not needed, if the constraints are met.

I.e., the guiding principle when constraints are not met and when
deciding upon which seat to apply quotas on should be
i. to quote-in the seat proportionally within the gender, but
ii. without causing an unnecessary "disproportionality" within the
ordered list.

This means for instance, that if we have to decide if we should apply
the constraint (quote-in) at seat 3, 4 or 5
and the proportionality within the gender would be identical in each case,
then the candidate should be quoted-in at seat 5, since seat 5 is
"less important" than seats 3 and 4 and since there is no gain in
proportionality within the gender by quoting in at seat 3 or 4
compared to quoting-in at seat 5.

It is necessary to quantify what "less important" above exactly means,
but I am not sure of how to do it.

P.

2013/2/6 Peter Zbornik :
> yes, that's it.
>
> P.
>
> 2013/2/6 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
>> On 02/05/2013 09:37 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Kristofer,
>>>
>>> I am afraid your approach might in some cases not lead to
>>> proportionally distributed quoted-in candidates.
>>>
>>> For instance, say we have three coalitions: A, B, C.
>>> Coalition A and B get their first place candidate
>>> Coalition C get their second place candidate quoted-in (i.e. they
>>> would prefer Agda, but they get Adam due to the quota rules).
>>> Coalition A and B get the third and fourth place candidates respectively.
>>> Coalition C, again, get their fifth place candidate quoted in (i.e.
>>> they would prefer Erica, but they get Eric due to the quota rules).
>>>
>>> This approach leads to an unproportional distribution of quoted-in
>>> seats (candidates) as Coalition C get both of the quoted-in candidates
>>> and Coalition A and B get none.
>>
>>
>> So you need not just proportionality in the group as a whole, but
>> proportionality within each gender too?
>>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Jameson,

I am not sure if we understand each other here.
I am looking for an election system, where the quoted-in seat gives
(or moves toward) a proportional distribution of the quoted-in gender.
If we fix the seats which will be quoted-in at no. 2 and 5, the
quoted-in gender will in some cases not be proportionally distributed,
for instance when the same group of voters get both quoted-in
candidates at places 2 and 5.
I think the problem is not restricted to STV, so other election
methods might be used and extended to resolve it, like Schulze STV.
The problem is not to quote in the underrepresented gender at place 2,
the problem is to proportionally quote-in the second seat at seat 3, 4
or 5, in order to get a proportional distribution of the quoted-in
gender.

A special case is when two women are elected to seats 1 and 2, and
three men are elected to seats 3, 4 and 5.
Here, the constraints are also breached, but with diferent gender for
seats 1 and 2 and for seats 3, 4 and 5.

Again, it would be unfair, if, with three coalitions, the same
coalition would get both quoted-in candidates.
Now, the solution for this problem would be to look for
proportionality of quoted-in candidates.
I am not sure, that we are looking for proportionality within each
gender, but rather proportionality of quoted-in candidates.

PZ


2013/2/6 Jameson Quinn :
> STV is not my personal favorite PR rule (my favorites are Bucklin
> Transferrable Vote or PAL Representation, and Schulze PR is also better than
> STV). However, if you're starting from STV, the way to do the quota is
> clear. When the quota makes one gender ineligible for a seat, simply ignore
> that gender of candidates on all ballots. That's not just about
> eliminations; it also means the count of the top preferences on each
> (reweighted) ballot means the top eligible preferences.
>
> So say there are 7 piles of votes (as an unrealistic illustrative example):
>
> 18: W0 W1 M1 W2
> 17: W0 W1 M2 W2
> 16: W0 W1 M3 W2
> 15: W0 W1 M4 W2
> 14: W0 W1 M5 W2
> 13: W0 W1 M6 W2 M5
> 7: W3
>
> For the first seat, the unanimous choice W0 wins, and all votes are rescaled
> to 5/6 strength. For the second choice, you ignore the preferences for
> ineligible candidates W1, W2, and W3, and so M6 is eliminated and M5 wins
> with the transferred votes. Etc.
>
> Jameson
>
> 2013/2/5 Peter Zbornik 
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> We recently managed, after some effort to elect some people in our
>> party using STV (five of seven board members of the Czech Green Party
>> and more recently some people to lead the Prague organisation etc.).
>> We used standard fractional STV, with strict quotas, valid empty
>> ballots, Hagenbach-Bischoff quota, no Meek.
>> It was the first bigger usage of STV in the Czech republic.
>> As a footnote, I would like to add, that one big advantage of
>> proportional election methods, is that it elects "the best people",
>> i.e. meaning the people, who have the biggest support in the
>> organisation.
>>
>> Now we would like to go on using STV for primary elections to party
>> lists in our party.
>> I have a good idea on how to do it using proportional ranking, but am
>> not entirely confident in how to implement the gender quotas.
>> So here I would like to ask you, the experts, for help.
>> I have only found some old papers in election-methods, but they are
>> not of any great help to resolve the following problem, unfortunately.
>>
>> The problem (after a slight simplification) is as follows:
>> We want to elect five seats with any proportional ranking method (like
>> Schulze proportional ranking, or Otten's top-down or similar), using
>> the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagenbach-Bischoff_quota) under the
>> following constraints:
>> Constraint 1: One of the first two seats has to go to a man and the
>> other seat has to go to a woman.
>> Constraint 2: One of seat three, four and five has to go to a man and
>> one of those seats has to go to a woman.
>> Say the "default" proportional ranking method elects women to all five
>> seats, and thus that we need to modify it in a good way in order to
>> satisfy the constraints.
>>
>> Now the question is: How should the quoted seats be distributed in
>> order to insure
>> i] that the seats are quoted-in fairly proportionally between the
>> voters (i.e. the same voters do not get both quoted-in seats) and at
>> the same time
>> ii] that the proportional ranking method remains fairly proportional?
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Here is how I have been thinking about the problem myself.
>> I am not sure, however, that my

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kristofer,

to be even more exact and correct:
I need not just proportionality in the ordered list as a whole (i.e.
meaning proportional ranking), but also that seats/candidates are
quoted in proportionally, i.e. that the quoted-in candidates are
proportionally distributed.

That should be the most exact framing of the problem (I hope).

P.

2013/2/6 Peter Zbornik :
> Kristofer,
>
> to be more exact:
> I need not just proportionality in the ordered list as a whole (i.e.
> meaning proportional ranking), but also that seats/candidates are
> quoted in proportionally within each gender too.
>
> Proportionality within each gender is not needed, if the constraints are met.
>
> I.e., the guiding principle when constraints are not met and when
> deciding upon which seat to apply quotas on should be
> i. to quote-in the seat proportionally within the gender, but
> ii. without causing an unnecessary "disproportionality" within the
> ordered list.
>
> This means for instance, that if we have to decide if we should apply
> the constraint (quote-in) at seat 3, 4 or 5
> and the proportionality within the gender would be identical in each case,
> then the candidate should be quoted-in at seat 5, since seat 5 is
> "less important" than seats 3 and 4 and since there is no gain in
> proportionality within the gender by quoting in at seat 3 or 4
> compared to quoting-in at seat 5.
>
> It is necessary to quantify what "less important" above exactly means,
> but I am not sure of how to do it.
>
> P.
>
> 2013/2/6 Peter Zbornik :
>> yes, that's it.
>>
>> P.
>>
>> 2013/2/6 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
>>> On 02/05/2013 09:37 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Kristofer,
>>>>
>>>> I am afraid your approach might in some cases not lead to
>>>> proportionally distributed quoted-in candidates.
>>>>
>>>> For instance, say we have three coalitions: A, B, C.
>>>> Coalition A and B get their first place candidate
>>>> Coalition C get their second place candidate quoted-in (i.e. they
>>>> would prefer Agda, but they get Adam due to the quota rules).
>>>> Coalition A and B get the third and fourth place candidates respectively.
>>>> Coalition C, again, get their fifth place candidate quoted in (i.e.
>>>> they would prefer Erica, but they get Eric due to the quota rules).
>>>>
>>>> This approach leads to an unproportional distribution of quoted-in
>>>> seats (candidates) as Coalition C get both of the quoted-in candidates
>>>> and Coalition A and B get none.
>>>
>>>
>>> So you need not just proportionality in the group as a whole, but
>>> proportionality within each gender too?
>>>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

No, only one election, please, no meta-elections. Two elections would
take too much time.
Thanks for your understanding.

PZ

2013/2/6 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> On 02/06/2013 08:56 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 2013/2/6 Peter Zbornik mailto:pzbor...@gmail.com>>
>>
>>
>> Jameson,
>>
>> I am not sure if we understand each other here.
>> I am looking for an election system, where the quoted-in seat gives
>> (or moves toward) a proportional distribution of the quoted-in gender.
>> If we fix the seats which will be quoted-in at no. 2 and 5, the
>> quoted-in gender will in some cases not be proportionally distributed,
>> for instance when the same group of voters get both quoted-in
>> candidates at places 2 and 5.
>>
>>
>> OK. I was responding to your initial statement of the problem, without
>> this additional proportionally-quoting-in constraint.
>>
>> The issue with this constraint is that it is only meaningful if the
>> electorate is meaningfully separable into parties. If, on the other
>> hand, the electorate is in a 2D issue space, it's hard to see exactly
>> what this constraint even means. Thus I suspect no non-partisan system
>> can be made to fit this constraint. I could easily see how to meet this
>> constraint with a party list system (preferably open, because closed
>> list systems are bad), and possibly I could work it out with a
>> pseudo-list system like PAL, but with STV it looks to me like an
>> impossible task.
>
>
> With a council size of 5, it might be possible to do an election between all
> consistent sets. The general idea would be something to the effect of that
> you first use a proportional ordering, setting constraints at different
> places (force woman at position one, position two, etc). Then you find all
> the sets the proportional ordering produces, and you hold a supermajority
> election to decide which to use.
>
> The supermajority election could be a parliamentary procedures one if the
> number of members is small, otherwise it would have to be by means of an
> election method (or Asset/liquid democracy). I say it'd have to be
> supermajority so that the majority can't force disproportionality on the
> minority. However, a consensus election might on the other hand give undue
> power to the minority. So that leads to another problem, which is similar to
> the question of how to get a proportionally represented council if the only
> thing you can do is ask the voters to rank the different councils.
>
> Simmons had some ideas relating to lotteries in that respect, if I'm not
> mistaken. I don't remember the details, though. Could they be applied here?
>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Say twenty, for instance.

We might have situations, where we will fill for instance 12 seats
(quotas for each triple of seats) and have 30 candidates, as an
extreme case.

I wanted to focus on the most important case, which is the top five seats.

The 12 seats/30 candidates case is an extreme, if someone wants to do
serious combinatorics.

PZ

2013/2/6 Richard Fobes :
> On 2/6/2013 10:42 AM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> Hi Kristofer,
>>
>> to be even more exact and correct:
>> I need not just proportionality in the ordered list as a whole (i.e.
>> meaning proportional ranking), but also that seats/candidates are
>> quoted in proportionally, i.e. that the quoted-in candidates are
>> proportionally distributed.
>>
>> That should be the most exact framing of the problem (I hope).
>
>
> How many candidates would/could compete for the five (open) party-list
> positions?
>
>
> 
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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

2013/2/7 Juho Laatu :
> On 5.2.2013, at 19.50, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
> i] that the seats are quoted-in fairly proportionally between the
> voters (i.e. the same voters do not get both quoted-in seats) and at
> the same time
>
>
> 50: w1 > w2 > m1 > m2
> 50: w3 > w4 > m3 > m4
>
> The first seat goes to w1 (lottery). The second seat goes to m3 (male
> representative needed).
>
> I read the rule above so that the third seat should go to w3 (not to w2).
> The rule talks about getting both quoted-in seats, but I guess the intention
> is that already the first quoted-in seat is considered to be a slight
> disadvantage that shall be balanced by ranking w3 third. Is this the correct
> way to read the rule?

In a sense yes, but I haven't thought about the problem that way.
The question is how to quantify the "disadvantage", for instance if we
had the votes 55 w1 w2 m1 m2 and 45 w3 w4 m3 m4, should we still rank
w3 third, instead of w2?

>
> The fourth seat goest to w2.
>
> 1) If we read the rule above literally so, that one grouping should not get
> both quoted-in seats, the fifth seat goes to m1.
> 2) If we read the rule so that the quoted-in seats are considered slightly
> less valuable than the normal seats, then the fifth seat goes to m4.

That is an interesting point. I guess both interpretations are valid.
Personally, at first sight, I like the second interpretation.
I have to think about that a little.

>
> Which one of the interpretations is the correct one? My understanding is now
> that there is no requirement concerning the balance of genders between the
> groupings, so allocating both male seats to the second grouping should be no
> problem. But is it a problem to allocate both quoted-in seats to it?
>
> Is the second proportional ordering ( < w1, m3, w3, w2, m4 > ) above more
> balanced / proportional in the light of the planned targets than the first
> one ( < w1, m3, w3, w2, m1 > )?
>
> (The algorithm could in principle also backtrack and reallocate the first
> seats to make it possible to allocate the last seats in a better way, but
> that doesn't seem to add anything useful in this example.)
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
> 
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>

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Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Juho,

considering your example
50: w1 > w2 > m1 > m2
50: w3 > w4 > m3 > m4

If we say, that a quoted-in candidate has the value and weight of 1/2
of a seat and if we lower the Hagenbach-Bischoff quota accordingly, so
that only half of the number of votes are used, then we actually have
a 4-seat election instead of a 5-seat election and thus it is
appropriate that one coalition gets both women.

That approach is interesting.

Now how exactly to value a quoted-in candidate compared to a
non-quoted in candidate?
One way is to determine the largest Hagenbach-Bischoff quota which
elects the last elected candidate, which was not quoted-in (call this
quota Qmin) and then compare the value with the quoted-in candidate
(Q).
(Qmax-Q)/Qmax will be the value of the quoted-in candidate.
Lacking a better formula to set the value of the quoted-in candidate a
value of 1/2 or 2/3 of a seat for the quoted-in candidate could maybe
be used.

Maybe someone will propose a better formula to value the quoted-in candidate,
which might (or might not) depend on the number of the seat being
elected (i.e. it is worse to get seat no. 2 quoted-in, than seat no.
5).

P.

2013/2/7 Peter Zbornik :
> 2013/2/7 Juho Laatu :
>> On 5.2.2013, at 19.50, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> i] that the seats are quoted-in fairly proportionally between the
>> voters (i.e. the same voters do not get both quoted-in seats) and at
>> the same time
>>
>>
>> 50: w1 > w2 > m1 > m2
>> 50: w3 > w4 > m3 > m4
>>
>> The first seat goes to w1 (lottery). The second seat goes to m3 (male
>> representative needed).
>>
>> I read the rule above so that the third seat should go to w3 (not to w2).
>> The rule talks about getting both quoted-in seats, but I guess the intention
>> is that already the first quoted-in seat is considered to be a slight
>> disadvantage that shall be balanced by ranking w3 third. Is this the correct
>> way to read the rule?
>
> In a sense yes, but I haven't thought about the problem that way.
> The question is how to quantify the "disadvantage", for instance if we
> had the votes 55 w1 w2 m1 m2 and 45 w3 w4 m3 m4, should we still rank
> w3 third, instead of w2?
>
>>
>> The fourth seat goest to w2.
>>
>> 1) If we read the rule above literally so, that one grouping should not get
>> both quoted-in seats, the fifth seat goes to m1.
>> 2) If we read the rule so that the quoted-in seats are considered slightly
>> less valuable than the normal seats, then the fifth seat goes to m4.
>
> That is an interesting point. I guess both interpretations are valid.
> Personally, at first sight, I like the second interpretation.
> I have to think about that a little.
>
>>
>> Which one of the interpretations is the correct one? My understanding is now
>> that there is no requirement concerning the balance of genders between the
>> groupings, so allocating both male seats to the second grouping should be no
>> problem. But is it a problem to allocate both quoted-in seats to it?
>>
>> Is the second proportional ordering ( < w1, m3, w3, w2, m4 > ) above more
>> balanced / proportional in the light of the planned targets than the first
>> one ( < w1, m3, w3, w2, m1 > )?
>>
>> (The algorithm could in principle also backtrack and reallocate the first
>> seats to make it possible to allocate the last seats in a better way, but
>> that doesn't seem to add anything useful in this example.)
>>
>> Juho
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>>

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

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Juho,

I have to think this through a bit.
Thanks for the examples.
At second sight, I think that giving different quota weights (V) to
quoted-in candidates would lead to strategic voting leading to the
weaker-gender candidates being placed at the end in order to be
quoted-in, as you mention yourself.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


2013/2/7 Juho Laatu :
> I try to address the targets one more round without taking position on how 
> the actual algorithm will work. From this point of view I start from the 
> question, what is the value of a quoted-in seat. Maybe we can use a constant 
> value (V) that is smaller that the value of a normal seat (1).
>
> One problem that we have is that although the value of a quoted-in seat is 
> smaller than 1, the final value of that representative may be equal to 1. I 
> mean that if we are electing members of a parliament, all elected candiates 
> will have one vote each in the parliament. Therefore, from political balance 
> point of view, every representative is equally valuable. The lesser value of 
> the quoted-in candidate refers only to the fact that some grouping did not 
> get their most favoured candidate throuh.
>
> If one tries to meet e.g. regional proportionality and political 
> proportionality requirements at one go simultaneously, the only erros are 
> rounding errors in the allocation of the last seats. The quoted-in 
> requirements and political proportionality requrements are however in 
> conflict with each others. One has to decide how much weight to put to the 
> need to elect the most liked candidate of a grouping vs. to give all 
> groupings equal weight in the parliament.
>
> In the example below, if we assume that five candidates (w1, m3, w3, w2, m4) 
> will be elected, and V = 0.5, the "liked candidate points" of the two groups 
> will be < 2, 2 > but the voting weights in the parliament will be < 2, 3 >. 
> What is the ideal outcome of the algoritms then? Should the algorithm make 
> the "liked candidate points" as equal as possible for all groupings, or 
> should the algorithm lead to a compromise result that puts some weight also 
> on the voting strengths in the parliament? I guess you can do this quite well 
> also by adjusting the value of V, e.g. from 0.5 to 0.75.
>
> So far my conclusion is that one could get a quite reasonable algorithm by 
> just picking a good value for V and then using some algorithm that optimizes 
> proportionality using these agreed weights (and the gender balance 
> requirements).
>
> - - -
>
> Personally I'm still wondering if the "less liked candidate reweighting" 
> rules are a good thing to have. One reason is the equal voting weight of the 
> elected representatives in the parliament. Sometimes the quoted-in candidates 
> could be elected also without the quoted-in rules (e.g. if the second set of 
> opinions was 50: w3 > m3 > w4 > m4). The algorithm could thus not be accurate 
> anyway (could give false rewards). One could also say that if some of the 
> groupings doesn't have any good (= value very close to 1) candidates of the 
> underrepresented gender, it is its own fault, and that shoudl not be rewarded 
> by giving it more seats.
>
> One more point is that the algorithm might favour the quoted-in grouping also 
> for other reasons. I'll modify the example a bit.
>
> 45: w1 > w2 > m1 > m2
> 05: w1 > w2
> 45: w3 > w4 > m3 > m4
> 05: w3 > w4
>
> Here I assume that those candidates that are ranked lower in the votes will 
> typically get also less votes in general. Here all male candidates have only 
> 45 supporters, while all female candidates have 50 supporters each. Here I 
> assume that voters do not generally rank all candiates or all candidates of 
> their own grouping (this may not be the case in all elections). Anyway, the 
> impact of this possible phenomenon is that at least w3 will be automatically 
> ranked third, also without the "less liked candidate reweighting" rules. I'll 
> skip the analysis of the fifth seat (it gets too complex).
>
> If the green party is determined that there should be some "liked candidate" 
> rules, just forget this last part of my message, I'm not a membr of the Czech 
> Green Party anyway :-).
>
> In general I think it is possible to generate an algoritm that does pretty 
> accurately what it is required to do. The low number of seats of course means 
> that there will be considerable "rounding errors". But I guess that's just 
> natural, and all are fine with that, as long as the general principles that 
> are used to order the list are fair and as agreed to be.
>
> Juho
>
>
>
> On 7.2.2013,

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi all,

maybe I should specify, that I prefer (although I don't require), that
a top-down approach (Otten, Schulze) to the ordering is applied before
a bottom-up approach (Rosenthiel).
In our party, we will most probably use a top-down approach.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2013/2/7 Peter Zbornik :
> Hi Juho,
>
> I have to think this through a bit.
> Thanks for the examples.
> At second sight, I think that giving different quota weights (V) to
> quoted-in candidates would lead to strategic voting leading to the
> weaker-gender candidates being placed at the end in order to be
> quoted-in, as you mention yourself.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
>
> 2013/2/7 Juho Laatu :
>> I try to address the targets one more round without taking position on how 
>> the actual algorithm will work. From this point of view I start from the 
>> question, what is the value of a quoted-in seat. Maybe we can use a constant 
>> value (V) that is smaller that the value of a normal seat (1).
>>
>> One problem that we have is that although the value of a quoted-in seat is 
>> smaller than 1, the final value of that representative may be equal to 1. I 
>> mean that if we are electing members of a parliament, all elected candiates 
>> will have one vote each in the parliament. Therefore, from political balance 
>> point of view, every representative is equally valuable. The lesser value of 
>> the quoted-in candidate refers only to the fact that some grouping did not 
>> get their most favoured candidate throuh.
>>
>> If one tries to meet e.g. regional proportionality and political 
>> proportionality requirements at one go simultaneously, the only erros are 
>> rounding errors in the allocation of the last seats. The quoted-in 
>> requirements and political proportionality requrements are however in 
>> conflict with each others. One has to decide how much weight to put to the 
>> need to elect the most liked candidate of a grouping vs. to give all 
>> groupings equal weight in the parliament.
>>
>> In the example below, if we assume that five candidates (w1, m3, w3, w2, m4) 
>> will be elected, and V = 0.5, the "liked candidate points" of the two groups 
>> will be < 2, 2 > but the voting weights in the parliament will be < 2, 3 >. 
>> What is the ideal outcome of the algoritms then? Should the algorithm make 
>> the "liked candidate points" as equal as possible for all groupings, or 
>> should the algorithm lead to a compromise result that puts some weight also 
>> on the voting strengths in the parliament? I guess you can do this quite 
>> well also by adjusting the value of V, e.g. from 0.5 to 0.75.
>>
>> So far my conclusion is that one could get a quite reasonable algorithm by 
>> just picking a good value for V and then using some algorithm that optimizes 
>> proportionality using these agreed weights (and the gender balance 
>> requirements).
>>
>> - - -
>>
>> Personally I'm still wondering if the "less liked candidate reweighting" 
>> rules are a good thing to have. One reason is the equal voting weight of the 
>> elected representatives in the parliament. Sometimes the quoted-in 
>> candidates could be elected also without the quoted-in rules (e.g. if the 
>> second set of opinions was 50: w3 > m3 > w4 > m4). The algorithm could thus 
>> not be accurate anyway (could give false rewards). One could also say that 
>> if some of the groupings doesn't have any good (= value very close to 1) 
>> candidates of the underrepresented gender, it is its own fault, and that 
>> shoudl not be rewarded by giving it more seats.
>>
>> One more point is that the algorithm might favour the quoted-in grouping 
>> also for other reasons. I'll modify the example a bit.
>>
>> 45: w1 > w2 > m1 > m2
>> 05: w1 > w2
>> 45: w3 > w4 > m3 > m4
>> 05: w3 > w4
>>
>> Here I assume that those candidates that are ranked lower in the votes will 
>> typically get also less votes in general. Here all male candidates have only 
>> 45 supporters, while all female candidates have 50 supporters each. Here I 
>> assume that voters do not generally rank all candiates or all candidates of 
>> their own grouping (this may not be the case in all elections). Anyway, the 
>> impact of this possible phenomenon is that at least w3 will be automatically 
>> ranked third, also without the "less liked candidate reweighting" rules. 
>> I'll skip the analysis of the fifth seat (it gets too complex).
>>
>> If the green party is dete

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Juho,

returning to your original example, again,  with slightly modified
number of votes to avoid tie-breaking:
Coalition 1 (C1) - 51: w1 > w2 > m1 > m2
Coalition 2 (C2) - 49: w3 > w4 > m3 > m4

Results:
Seat number, candidate, coalition, quoted in
1. w1, C1, no
2. m3, C2, yes
3. w2, C1, no
4, w3, C2, no
5. m1, C1, no

There is no problem here, as C1 got the majority of candidates, and
kept the constraints, so there was never any issue with
proportionality of quoted-in candidaes.

Here is an example to illustrate the problem:
Coalition 1: 32: w1>w4>w3>m3
Coalition 2: 33: w1>w3>w4>m4
Coalition 3: 35: w2>w5>m1>m2

Apply top-down proportional ordering (Otten) for normal STV:
Elect 1st seat - w1 (quota 50)
Elect 2nd seat - m1 (quoted in instead of w2) (quota 33.4)
3rd seat - w3 (quota 25)
4th seat - w4 (quota 20)
5th seat - m4 (quoted in instead of w5) (quota 16.7)

This leads to the quoted-in candidates being disproportionally
distributed in coalition 3.

Thus, the right distribution, intuitively is:
4th seat - m3
5th seat - w5

Sorry to have bothered you with this, but on the other hand, I feel
this is an important problem.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2013/2/7 Peter Zbornik :
> Hi Juho,
>
> I have to think this through a bit.
> Thanks for the examples.
> At second sight, I think that giving different quota weights (V) to
> quoted-in candidates would lead to strategic voting leading to the
> weaker-gender candidates being placed at the end in order to be
> quoted-in, as you mention yourself.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
>
> 2013/2/7 Juho Laatu :
>> I try to address the targets one more round without taking position on how 
>> the actual algorithm will work. From this point of view I start from the 
>> question, what is the value of a quoted-in seat. Maybe we can use a constant 
>> value (V) that is smaller that the value of a normal seat (1).
>>
>> One problem that we have is that although the value of a quoted-in seat is 
>> smaller than 1, the final value of that representative may be equal to 1. I 
>> mean that if we are electing members of a parliament, all elected candiates 
>> will have one vote each in the parliament. Therefore, from political balance 
>> point of view, every representative is equally valuable. The lesser value of 
>> the quoted-in candidate refers only to the fact that some grouping did not 
>> get their most favoured candidate throuh.
>>
>> If one tries to meet e.g. regional proportionality and political 
>> proportionality requirements at one go simultaneously, the only erros are 
>> rounding errors in the allocation of the last seats. The quoted-in 
>> requirements and political proportionality requrements are however in 
>> conflict with each others. One has to decide how much weight to put to the 
>> need to elect the most liked candidate of a grouping vs. to give all 
>> groupings equal weight in the parliament.
>>
>> In the example below, if we assume that five candidates (w1, m3, w3, w2, m4) 
>> will be elected, and V = 0.5, the "liked candidate points" of the two groups 
>> will be < 2, 2 > but the voting weights in the parliament will be < 2, 3 >. 
>> What is the ideal outcome of the algoritms then? Should the algorithm make 
>> the "liked candidate points" as equal as possible for all groupings, or 
>> should the algorithm lead to a compromise result that puts some weight also 
>> on the voting strengths in the parliament? I guess you can do this quite 
>> well also by adjusting the value of V, e.g. from 0.5 to 0.75.
>>
>> So far my conclusion is that one could get a quite reasonable algorithm by 
>> just picking a good value for V and then using some algorithm that optimizes 
>> proportionality using these agreed weights (and the gender balance 
>> requirements).
>>
>> - - -
>>
>> Personally I'm still wondering if the "less liked candidate reweighting" 
>> rules are a good thing to have. One reason is the equal voting weight of the 
>> elected representatives in the parliament. Sometimes the quoted-in 
>> candidates could be elected also without the quoted-in rules (e.g. if the 
>> second set of opinions was 50: w3 > m3 > w4 > m4). The algorithm could thus 
>> not be accurate anyway (could give false rewards). One could also say that 
>> if some of the groupings doesn't have any good (= value very close to 1) 
>> candidates of the underrepresented gender, it is its own fault, and that 
>> shoudl not be rewarded by giving it more seats.
>>
>> One more point is that the algorithm might favour the quoted-in grouping 
>> als

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

2013/2/9 Richard Fobes :
>> 2013/2/6 Richard Fobes:
>
>>> How many candidates would/could compete for the five (open)
>>> party-list positions?
> On 2/6/2013 3:12 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>> Say twenty, for instance.
>
> To: Peter Zbornik
>
> After considerable thinking about your request, I've come up with a
> recommended election method for your situation.
>
> The method has these advantages:
>
> * Uses open-source software that is already available.
>
> * Does not require any modification of the software.
>
> * Provides proportional results for the five seats.
>
> * Provides quota-based representation for women -- which, as I understand
> it, you specified as requiring a woman in one of the top two positions, and
> another woman in the next three positions.
>
> * Is very resistant to strategic voting.
>
> * Produces better representation compared to using STV (single transferable
> vote).
>
> The method consists of running VoteFair _representation_ ranking
> calculations.  Five levels of representation would be requested.  As a part
> of that calculation, VoteFair _popularity_ ranking results are also
> calculated for all twenty or thirty candidates.
>
> The open-source VoteFair ranking software, which runs under either Microsoft
> Windows or Linux, is here:
>
> http://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking
>
> For convenience it can be used in conjunction with the Vote-Info-Split-Join
> (VISJ) framework here:
>
> htts://github.com/cpsolver/Vote-Info-Split-Join-VISJ
>
> The adjustments to ensure quota-based representation for women is done
> manually, after the calculations have been done.
>
> Here/below is a description of the election method.
>
> Tentatively the five open-list party positions are assigned to the five
> candidates who are ranked as most representative -- according to VoteFair
> _representation_ ranking.
>
> These results are proportional.  And they are very resistant to strategic
> voting.  The details are explained at this web page:
>
> http://www.votefair.org/calculation_details_representation.html
>

Does VoteFair representation ranking fulfil the criterion, that
candidate for seat number 2 is elected proportionally to the elected
candidate at seat 1, and candidate for seat number 3 is elected
proportionally to the elected candidates at seats 1 and 2, etc. as in
the top-down method of Otten?

> If the tentative results already happen to meet the quota for women, then no
> adjustments are needed.
>
> If there are no women in any of the tentatively assigned five positions,
> then the two women who are the most popular according to VoteFair
> _popularity_ ranking are moved into positions # 2 and # 4, and the men are
> shifted down.
>
> When the men who tentatively won are shifted down (to make room for the two
> women), their order is preserved (which in the above case means the men in
> seats # 4 and # 5 are completely removed, and the man who was in position #
> 3 is moved to position # 5, and the man who was in position # 2 is moved
> into position # 3).

This does not necesarily lead to proportionality within the five candidates.

>
> If one or two women won seats in the top five positions, but a woman did not
> reach position # 1 or position # 2, then the more-representative woman is
> shifted into position # 2 and, if necessary, the man in position # 5 is
> completely removed.
>
> In other words, if any woman needs to be promoted, she first comes from the
> tentatively assigned most-representative positions.  Otherwise she comes
> from the highest woman-occupied position in the popularity ranking.
>
> As an example, if the representation ranking looks like this (where M=male
> and F=female) ...
>
> 1:  Jiri (M)
> 2:  Petr (M)
> 3:  Karel (M)
> 4:  Vaclav (M)
> 5:  Eva (F)
>
> ... and within the popularity ranking the most popular woman who is not
> listed above is ...
>
> Tereza (F)
>
> ... then these are the final results for the party list:
>
> 1:  Jiri (M)
> 2:  Eva (F)
> 3:  Petr (M)
> 4:  Tereza (F)
> 5:  Karel (M)
>
> Why is the second woman moved into position # 4 instead of position # 5?
> Because presumably half of the Green-party voters are women, and presumably
> you want proportional results if your party should win 4 seats.  (If the
> quotas are met without needing any adjustments, then the second woman might
> end up in position # 5, and this would be fair because the results imply
> that quotas are no longer necessary to override other political priorities.)

Both presumptions are wrong.

>
> (As a minor point, if in the future the gender-based quota is no longer
> needed because women typically end 

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

2013/2/16 Kristofer Munsterhjelm :
> On 02/14/2013 07:07 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
>
>>> ... as in
>>> the top-down method of Otten?
>>
>>
>> I did not find any information about the "top-down method of Otten." If
>> you send me a link to a place that describes it, then I can answer this
>> part of your question.
>
>
> I've been really busy lately, so I haven't got anything else to add here of
> yet, but perhaps Peter meant this one?
>
> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE13/P3.HTM

yes, that's the method I was thinking of. Thanks Kristofer.

>
> Possibly combined in some way with
>
> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/issue9/p5.htm .
>

Maybe, I don't know.

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

Re: [EM] proportional constraints - help needed

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Richard,

sorry for not getting to your reply earlier than now.
Comments to your email in the text below.

2013/2/17 Richard Fobes :
> On 2/17/2013 12:17 AM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>> 2013/2/16 Kristofer Munsterhjelm:
>>>
>>> On 02/14/2013 07:07 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
>>>  ...
>>>>>
>>>>> ... as in
>>>>> the top-down method of Otten?
>>>>
>>>> ...
>>>
>>> ... perhaps Peter meant this one?
>>> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE13/P3.HTM
>>
>>
>> yes, that's the method I was thinking of. Thanks Kristofer.
>
>
> The approach specified in this article by Joseph Otten involves identifying
> "doomed" candidates and "guarded" candidates.
>
> No, VoteFair representation ranking does not use that approach.
>
> VoteFair representation ranking uses a more advanced approach that looks
> deeper into the ballots.
>
> Specifically, after the first-position winner has been chosen, VoteFair
> _representation_ ranking starts by identifying the ballots that do not rank
> that candidate as their first choice, and using those ballots it identifies
> which (remaining) candidate is most popular.  Then, it looks at the relative
> ranking between those two candidates.
>
> Obviously the ballots that rank the first-position winner higher are
> well-represented.  The other ballots -- that rank the second tentatively
> popular candidate above the first-position winner -- are not represented by
> the first-position winner, so those ballots get full influence.  The
> well-represented ballots get only a small influence, specifically to the
> extent that the first winner had the support of _more_ _than_ half the
> voters (the amount beyond 50%).  Then the second-position winner is
> identified.

I don't understand votefair ranking neither from the description above
nor from the web pages.
Don't you have a worked example and a complete and exhaustive
description of the algorithm?

>
> Note that the second-position winner might be, or might not be, the
> tentatively identified candidate.
>
> This approach precludes the strategy of a majority of voters putting
> unpopular candidates at the top of their ballot (with different voters using
> different unpopular candidates) as an attempt to fool the algorithm into
> thinking they are not well-represented by the first-position winner.
>
> This approach avoids the weakness of STV (and IRV), which focuses attention
> on the top-ranked candidate on each ballot, and only looking at lower-ranked
> candidates on an as-needed basis.
>
>
>>> Possibly combined in some way with
>>>
>>> http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/issue9/p5.htm .
>>>
>>
>> Maybe, I don't know.
>
>
> The key paragraph from this second article is:
>
> "Were we to know in advance that we would win, say, n seats in a region,
> then it would be straightforward to use STV to select n candidates from the
> potential candidates and put them in the top n places in our list. If we
> don't know n in advance (which we don't!) then we can perform this operation
> for every possible n, i.e. from 1 up to the number of seats available in the
> region, and attempt to construct a list whose top n candidates are those
> victorious in the nth selection ballot. (There is really only 1 ballot - the
> division into n ballots is notional.)"
>
> It says what I said earlier: that STV needs to know in advance how many
> seats will be won.
>
> I did not quickly understand how Joseph Otten proposes combining the
> different lists (one for each value of "n") into a single list, and I'm not
> in the academic world so I would not get paid to spend time figuring that
> out, and since Peter says it may not be relevant, I'll leave this level of
> detail unresolved.
>
> Getting to the point of answering Peter's question, no, VoteFair
> representation ranking also does not use this second-article approach.
>
> Shifting perspective here, there is an important difference between STV and
> VoteFair representation ranking.
>
> STV has the same weakness as IRV, namely it puts all of its focus on the
> top-ranked candidate on each ballot.
>
> In contrast, VoteFair representation ranking looks much deeper into each
> ballot to identify whether the ballot is from  a voter who is (or is not)
> well-represented by which candidates have won the earlier seats (in the
> party list).

Well I don't understand what "looking deeper" means.

>
> As I've indicated before, if a party list needs to be longer than about five
> positions, it's pos

Re: [EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Bayle,

your proposed square-root solution violates the principle of "one person,
one vote, one value", as votes have different weights.

A better solution to the Mafia problem in proxy voting is to have public
voting but secret voters and proxies.
This solution has the positive side-effect of focusing the debate on issues
and not on people.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

Dne pondělí, 8. dubna 2013, Bayle Shanks  napsal(a):
>
> Typically when large numbers of people are voting you'd like to have
> secret ballots so that the Mafia can't buy votes or intimidate people
> and also so that people feel free to make unpopular choices.
>
> However, when the people voting are representing others, you often
> want to publish who voted for what so that the constituents can use
> the past voting records of their representatives to decide whether to
> vote for them in future elections.
>
> In a proxy voting system, where voters can allow other voters to vote
> for them 'by proxy', and particularly in a transitive proxy voting
> system, where the proxies can be re-proxied (e.g. Alice can give a
> proxy to Bob who can give both Alice's proxy and his own to Caroline),
> you want to satisfy both these objectives.
>
> You want everyone's vote to be secret, because you don't want the
> Mafia to intimidate them or buy their votes, and you want unpopular
> outcomes to be feasible.
>
> But you also want everyone's votes to be
> public, because you don't want to give your proxy to someone who says
> they'll do one thing with your proxy and then actually does another,
> without you ever knowing.
>
> One fear is that the Mafia will say, 'You'd better give me your proxy
> or you'll be punished'. I think you can probably fix that by not
> giving proxy holders very precise information on how many proxies they
> hold, when they were given, or who gave them.
>
> Even if each person casts their own vote secretly, but can see which
> way their own proxied vote was vast, the Mafia just has to
> secretly ally with a small number of proxy givers in order to see
> which way the proxied votes are being cast (note that even if the
> system let the vote caster know whose proxies they hold, they
> don't know which proxy-ers are allied with the mafia).
>
> One idea is just to say, if you accept proxies your votes are
> public, otherwise they are secret. This essentially reduces the
> transitive proxy system to ordinary voting however because
> it provides no way to have proxy holders who can cast proxied votes in
> a way that the Mafia can't control.
>
> Here's an idea I had to deal with this problem.
>
> Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.
>
> Everyone can see which way they vote their public ballot. If they hold
> proxies from others, the proxies' secret ballots follow their secret
> ballot and the proxies' public ballots follow their public ballot. The
> originators of the proxies don't ever find out which way their secret
> ballots were cast.
>
> To tally the vote, for each candidate, you sum the secret ballots for
> that candidate, then you sum the public ballots for that candidate,
> then you multiply these two sums together, then you take the square
> root.
>
> After transforming sums in this manner, you can use most existing
> voting methods to determine the winner.
>
> For instance, if there are five voters and two candidates, and they
> vote like this:
>
> PUBLIC BALLOT
>   CANDIDATE
> VOTERA   B
> 1   10
> 2   10
> 3   10
> 4   01
> 5   01
>
> SECRET BALLOT
>   CANDIDATE
> VOTERA   B
> 11   0
> 20   1
> 30   1
> 40   1
> 50   1
>
> then the public ballot tally for A is 3, the secret ballot tally for A
> is 1, the public ballot tally for B is 2, the secret ballot tally for
> B is 4; the combined tally for A is sqrt(3 + 1) = 2, the combined
> tally for B is sqrt(2 + 4) = 2.45.
>
>
> Virtues:
> * you can use your secret ballot to express your true preference
> * however, if you care about influencing the election, you can have
> the most impact if your secret ballot matches your public ballot. So
> there is at least some incentive not to lie about what you plan to do
> if you accumulate proxies.
>
> I expect that what would happen is that the Mafia would
> be limited to corrupting public ballots (and people lying about what
> they are doing with their proxies to attract proxies from the
> opposition party would be limited to corrupting secret
> proxied ballots). If the Mafia can only reach a subpopulation of
> voters, then that subpopulation will effectively have less weight,
> because the multiplication of the public and the secret tallies
> effectively downweights voters who cast their public and secret
> ballots differently.
>
> A slightly different approach would be to provide only public ballots,
> but in addition a way for each person to secretly submit a re

Re: [EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Bayle,

to clarify, the voters pick their proxy based on his/her voting record, but
don't actually know who, specifically is voting.
The voters just have a "vote stream".
The voter should in any case have the power to change the vote, if the
proxy votes differently, than the voter would like.
In order to de-motivate the proxy from selling his/her vote to the Mafia,
he/she should not know how many votes she/he has.

Best regards
Peter Zborník



2013/4/8 Peter Zbornik 

> Dear Bayle,
>
> your proposed square-root solution violates the principle of "one person,
> one vote, one value", as votes have different weights.
>
> A better solution to the Mafia problem in proxy voting is to have public
> voting but secret voters and proxies.
> This solution has the positive side-effect of focusing the debate on
> issues and not on people.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
> Dne pondělí, 8. dubna 2013, Bayle Shanks  napsal(a):
>
> >
> > Typically when large numbers of people are voting you'd like to have
> > secret ballots so that the Mafia can't buy votes or intimidate people
> > and also so that people feel free to make unpopular choices.
> >
> > However, when the people voting are representing others, you often
> > want to publish who voted for what so that the constituents can use
> > the past voting records of their representatives to decide whether to
> > vote for them in future elections.
> >
> > In a proxy voting system, where voters can allow other voters to vote
> > for them 'by proxy', and particularly in a transitive proxy voting
> > system, where the proxies can be re-proxied (e.g. Alice can give a
> > proxy to Bob who can give both Alice's proxy and his own to Caroline),
> > you want to satisfy both these objectives.
> >
> > You want everyone's vote to be secret, because you don't want the
> > Mafia to intimidate them or buy their votes, and you want unpopular
> > outcomes to be feasible.
> >
> > But you also want everyone's votes to be
> > public, because you don't want to give your proxy to someone who says
> > they'll do one thing with your proxy and then actually does another,
> > without you ever knowing.
> >
> > One fear is that the Mafia will say, 'You'd better give me your proxy
> > or you'll be punished'. I think you can probably fix that by not
> > giving proxy holders very precise information on how many proxies they
> > hold, when they were given, or who gave them.
> >
> > Even if each person casts their own vote secretly, but can see which
> > way their own proxied vote was vast, the Mafia just has to
> > secretly ally with a small number of proxy givers in order to see
> > which way the proxied votes are being cast (note that even if the
> > system let the vote caster know whose proxies they hold, they
> > don't know which proxy-ers are allied with the mafia).
> >
> > One idea is just to say, if you accept proxies your votes are
> > public, otherwise they are secret. This essentially reduces the
> > transitive proxy system to ordinary voting however because
> > it provides no way to have proxy holders who can cast proxied votes in
> > a way that the Mafia can't control.
> >
> > Here's an idea I had to deal with this problem.
> >
> > Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.
> >
> > Everyone can see which way they vote their public ballot. If they hold
> > proxies from others, the proxies' secret ballots follow their secret
> > ballot and the proxies' public ballots follow their public ballot. The
> > originators of the proxies don't ever find out which way their secret
> > ballots were cast.
> >
> > To tally the vote, for each candidate, you sum the secret ballots for
> > that candidate, then you sum the public ballots for that candidate,
> > then you multiply these two sums together, then you take the square
> > root.
> >
> > After transforming sums in this manner, you can use most existing
> > voting methods to determine the winner.
> >
> > For instance, if there are five voters and two candidates, and they
> > vote like this:
> >
> > PUBLIC BALLOT
> >   CANDIDATE
> > VOTERA   B
> > 1   10
> > 2   10
> > 3   10
> > 4   01
> > 5   01
> >
> > SECRET BALLOT
> >   CANDIDATE
> > VOTERA   B
> > 11   0
> > 20   1
> > 3 

Re: [EM] secret ballots and proxy voting

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Bayle,

a second clarification.
The voter can split his/her vote to several "vote streams" which are
similar or identical.
Then the vote buying and selling becomes much more complicated, since the
votes are split.

Best regards
Peter Zborník



2013/4/8 Peter Zbornik 

> Dear Bayle,
>
> to clarify, the voters pick their proxy based on his/her voting record,
> but don't actually know who, specifically is voting.
> The voters just have a "vote stream".
> The voter should in any case have the power to change the vote, if the
> proxy votes differently, than the voter would like.
> In order to de-motivate the proxy from selling his/her vote to the Mafia,
> he/she should not know how many votes she/he has.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
>
>
> 2013/4/8 Peter Zbornik 
>
>> Dear Bayle,
>>
>> your proposed square-root solution violates the principle of "one person,
>> one vote, one value", as votes have different weights.
>>
>> A better solution to the Mafia problem in proxy voting is to have public
>> voting but secret voters and proxies.
>> This solution has the positive side-effect of focusing the debate on
>> issues and not on people.
>>
>> Best regards
>> Peter Zborník
>>
>> Dne pondělí, 8. dubna 2013, Bayle Shanks  napsal(a):
>>
>> >
>> > Typically when large numbers of people are voting you'd like to have
>> > secret ballots so that the Mafia can't buy votes or intimidate people
>> > and also so that people feel free to make unpopular choices.
>> >
>> > However, when the people voting are representing others, you often
>> > want to publish who voted for what so that the constituents can use
>> > the past voting records of their representatives to decide whether to
>> > vote for them in future elections.
>> >
>> > In a proxy voting system, where voters can allow other voters to vote
>> > for them 'by proxy', and particularly in a transitive proxy voting
>> > system, where the proxies can be re-proxied (e.g. Alice can give a
>> > proxy to Bob who can give both Alice's proxy and his own to Caroline),
>> > you want to satisfy both these objectives.
>> >
>> > You want everyone's vote to be secret, because you don't want the
>> > Mafia to intimidate them or buy their votes, and you want unpopular
>> > outcomes to be feasible.
>> >
>> > But you also want everyone's votes to be
>> > public, because you don't want to give your proxy to someone who says
>> > they'll do one thing with your proxy and then actually does another,
>> > without you ever knowing.
>> >
>> > One fear is that the Mafia will say, 'You'd better give me your proxy
>> > or you'll be punished'. I think you can probably fix that by not
>> > giving proxy holders very precise information on how many proxies they
>> > hold, when they were given, or who gave them.
>> >
>> > Even if each person casts their own vote secretly, but can see which
>> > way their own proxied vote was vast, the Mafia just has to
>> > secretly ally with a small number of proxy givers in order to see
>> > which way the proxied votes are being cast (note that even if the
>> > system let the vote caster know whose proxies they hold, they
>> > don't know which proxy-ers are allied with the mafia).
>> >
>> > One idea is just to say, if you accept proxies your votes are
>> > public, otherwise they are secret. This essentially reduces the
>> > transitive proxy system to ordinary voting however because
>> > it provides no way to have proxy holders who can cast proxied votes in
>> > a way that the Mafia can't control.
>> >
>> > Here's an idea I had to deal with this problem.
>> >
>> > Give each person two ballots: a secret ballot and a public ballot.
>> >
>> > Everyone can see which way they vote their public ballot. If they hold
>> > proxies from others, the proxies' secret ballots follow their secret
>> > ballot and the proxies' public ballots follow their public ballot. The
>> > originators of the proxies don't ever find out which way their secret
>> > ballots were cast.
>> >
>> > To tally the vote, for each candidate, you sum the secret ballots for
>> > that candidate, then you sum the public ballots for that candidate,
>> > then you multiply these two sums together, then you take the square
>> > ro

[EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi,

I am a member of the Czech Green party, and we are giving our statutes
an overhaul.
We are a small parliamentary party with only some 2000 members.
Lately we have had quite some problems infighting due to the
winner-takes-it-all election methods used within the party.
I am sitting in the working-group for the new party statutes, and
would like introduce proportional elections instead.
So I thought I might find some help in this forum in formulating my proposal.

There are several practical different types of elections in the party,
which need to be addressed:
1. election of council members
2. election of delegates to regional and national rallies, where the
regional and national council members are elected
3. election of candidates to the ballot - primary elections

In this letter, I would like to ask you to propose good proportional
election system for the election of the council members.
A council exists at all levels in the party organization: national,
regional and local.

SCENARIO 1: COUNCIL ELECTIONS
We have to elect the following:
1. Election of the party president
2. Election of one or more vice-presidents in order of importance,
i.e. first vice president, second, third etc.
3. Election of the rest of the council members
Normally the council has five or seven members.

CURRENT SYSTEM:
Currently the president and the vice presidents are elected in several
two-round run-off elections
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system).
The rest of the board members are elected by block-voting
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality-at-large_voting) in the
following way:
1. A candidate who gets 50% of the vote is elected
2. In the second round, candidates with less than 25% of the votes are
eliminated
3. In the third round, candidates with less than 30% of the votes are
eliminated. Now only 40% of the votes is enough for election.
4. New elections are arranged for the rest of the mandates, where
candidates who got at least 20% of the votes in the previous election
rounds can run as candidates in new elections:


DELIVERABLES FOR IMPLEMENTATION:
In the end, if proportional elections are to make their way into the
party statutesm, then I have to deliver the following:
1. a proposal of a text to the statutes, describing the election rules
and procedures
2. a motivation of the proposal which shows why it is better than the
present one.
3. a vote counting computer program which works
4. preferably a ballot scanning program
5. preferably some good examples that the system works in real life.

CRITERIA:
I am looking for a approximately proportional election scheme, which is
(i) simple for the party members to understand - this is the main
criterion. A complex system like Schulze-STV has no chance of getting
required political support
(ii) simple to use, i.e. where it is quick to vote and vote counting
is also quick (max 400 votes cast)
(iii) gives results which leave most party members reasonably
satisfied with the result
(iv) votes are cast "secretly" on paper ballots, alternatively on some
smart electronic voting system that is as secure as paper ballot
voting.
(v) asset voting is excluded due to lack of political support

ASSUMPTIONS:
There are several types of board elections in the party, where several
types of assumptions apply:
1] 70-90% of the voters are "dishonest" - i.e. they vote strategically
as they are told by leaders, who want to maximize the number of
"their" people on the board - this is the case for the election of the
national party board
2] 30-60% of the voters are "dishonest" - the roughly regional election case
3] 20% of the voters are "dishonest" - this is roughly the local election case

Currently I am considering Re-weighted range voting and range voting,
since it fulfills the criteria above, but other simple-to-understand
methods could be used.
Maybe the RRV system will have be reduced to approval voting for the
high dishonesty scenario.
This would lower its attractivity.
A contender to the RRV-range voting system is the STV-IRV system used
by the green party of the USA, since it evidently works, but is more
difficult to understand than RRV: see
http://www.gp.org/documents/rules.shtml#section7

QUESTIONS:
Please propose a voting system fulfilling the criteria above with the
given assumptions, and answer the following questions:

1. if the proposed election system is as simple to understand as RRV
and range voting,
name what advantages and disadvantages it has to RRV and range voting.
Alternatively, which specific variant of RRV and range voting do you
recommend for the elections described above (normalization of voter
scores, number of categories, given that 70-90% of the voters vote
strategically)?
To clarify: Asset voting is excluded for this election type, since we
have problems with transparency and political support.

2. In which order should the election of the board members be
performed in order to insure that all the voters will be reasonably
satisfied with.
a] how should t

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Jameson,

answers in the text.

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 6:58 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> Two questions, before I respond more fully:
>
> 1.
>
> 2010/4/25 Peter Zbornik 
>
> (v) asset voting is excluded due to lack of political support
>>
>
> Can you clarify? Is the problem with vote secrecy of the "lower" delegates,
> and/or with the "back room" process among the "higher" delegates (that is,
> the candidates in the current system)?
>
Yes that is indeed the problem - it allows for bribery and blackmailing.
The secret ballot was introduced together with the equal voting right in
many states of Europe, including the Czech Republic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_ballot.


>  There are versions of asset voting which avoid either or both problem -
> the former, by only allowing votes for "qualified candidates" (however
> that's defined), and the latter, by having each candidate pre-declare their
> transfer order, which is then made public simultaneously before the vote and
> used to automate the transfer process. In other words, it's basically STV
> with one predeclared ballot type per candidate.
>
The latter system is acceptable to me provided you can chose to cast either
an asset-type vote or a STV vote (in any case you can always vote for
yourself).
The latter system means that the preference orderings should be clearly
stated, which actually could be a good thing to make the voting more
transparent, but I wouldn't call it an essential part of the STV.
Usually the negotiating goes on until shortly before the voting, so I am not
sure if the added value would be so big. Normally the party fractions have
this preference ordering set up anyway.
The former system breaks the principle of the secret ballot.


>
> 2.
> Would you be interested in another proportional system, based on two-rank
> Bucklin ("favor", "approve", or unvoted), which can be explained as STV-like
> - that is, candidates accumulate a pile of a droop quota of (possibly
> fractional) ballots to win, no ballot fraction is in more than one pile or
> in a pile it doesn't approve. The advantages over STV are that my system is
> monotonic, because it can find condorcet-like compromise winners for each
> proportional segment of voters; that it's simpler to vote, either a
> considered individual ballot, a "vote for one candidate, approve one
> faction" simple vote, or a "party-line" factional vote; and that, unlike
> STV, it has a good single-winner special case. The disadvantages are that
> it's completely unknown as a system, that the internal mechanics are
> complicated (except for single winner), and that I don't have a working
> implementation - but I would be willing to code one if you're interested. If
> you are, I would be happy to say more about this.
>
Maybe a description of your system for dummies in three sentences would be a
help, since I don't understand it from your description. Brand-new unproven
systems will have troubles of gaining support, but give it a shot, I am
curious of your system anyway.


>
> Jameson Quinn
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Juho,

the requirements are correct, except that several elections is not a big
problem. Thus I do not require, that "board, P and VP elections will take
place at the same time (=> one can use the same ballots in all these
elections)", it would be nice to have, though.
I have to study your proposal and the discussion a little bit more.

Peter

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 1:45 AM, Juho  wrote:

> I think there are good and well tested single-winner and proportional
> multi-winner methods that the Czech Green party could use (like Condorcet
> methods and STV). For the election of president (P) and vice-presidents (VP)
> there maybe are no good existing solutions (see requirements below), so we
> may need to propose a new one (hopefully just a combination of old well
> tested tested methods). Here's one proposal for your consideration.
>
>
> Based on the discussion my understanding of the requirements is as follows
> (please correct if wrong).
>
> - P and VP are regular members of the elected board (or council)
> - it would be a good idea to elect a centrist P (one that appeals to all,
> not just to the biggest grouping)
> - VPs should be elected in a proportional style (the strongest group shall
> not be able to take all the P and VP seats)
> - the board (including P and VPs) should be proportional
> - the board election should be based on voting individuals (not named
> sections of the party or their nominated representatives)
> - board, P and VP elections will take place at the same time (=> one can
> use the same ballots in all these elections)
> - the method must be easy to understand and also well tested where possible
>
>
> Draft of a method:
>
> - collect ranked votes
> - use Condorcet to determine P (Condorcet tends to elect a compromise
> candidate that all voters find reasonably good)
> - use STV (using the same ballots) to elect the group of P and VPs (some
> special rules are needed to guarantee that the already named P will not be
> eliminated in the process but will be elected)
> - use STV (using the same ballots) to elect members of the board (some
> special rules are needed to guarantee that the already named P and VPs will
> not be eliminated in the process but will be elected)
>
> One could elect P and VPs also later. In that case one could elect them
> from the members of the (already existing) board. Otherwise the process
> would be similar.
>
> If one needs to elect new members to the board to replace old ones one
> could use the old ballots + special rules that will not eliminate any of the
> sitting board members.
>
> Does this work? Is this practical? Can this be considered to be
> understandable and well tested? Are there some strategic opportunities? Does
> this maintain proportionality as it should? Any conflicts with the
> expectations and needs of the Czech Green party?
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi,

I would prefer to have the P. elected by the same people electing the board.
The P. is indeed the person most often representing the party on the
outside.

Peter

On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 4:02 AM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

>  On Apr 26, 2010, at 5:54 PM, Juho wrote:
>
> > On Apr 27, 2010, at 3:22 AM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> >
> >> On Apr 26, 2010, at 5:18 PM, Juho wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Apr 27, 2010, at 3:01 AM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
> >>>
>  On Apr 26, 2010, at 4:45 PM, Juho wrote:
> 
> > Draft of a method:
> >
> > - collect ranked votes
> > - use Condorcet to determine P (Condorcet tends to elect a compromise
> candidate that all voters find reasonably good)
> > - use STV (using the same ballots) to elect the group of P and VPs
> (some special rules are needed to guarantee that the already named P will
> not be eliminated in the process but will be elected)
> > - use STV (using the same ballots) to elect members of the board
> (some special rules are needed to guarantee that the already named P and VPs
> will not be eliminated in the process but will be elected)
> >
> > One could elect P and VPs also later. In that case one could elect
> them from the members of the (already existing) board. Otherwise the process
> would be similar.
> 
>  This is a better approach, I think. Protecting already-elected members
> and preserving proportionality is a subtle problem, and I don't think
> there's a completely satisfactory solution available. It's defensible for
> filling vacancies (below), but when it can be avoided, it should be. (Unless
> someone has a great idea for this kind of countback.)
> 
>  A burial strategy for P would have unfortunate effects for the STV
> election, is a possible problem.
> >>>
> >>> The STV election that follows may also reduce the incentives to try the
> burial strategy. That is because (in addition to burial not being a very
> efficient strategy in the first place) the benefit would be only to get a
> better P but not more voting power in the board, and because the modified
> vote could well contribute to the benefit of the competing sections in the
> proportional election.
> >>
> >> It's a reasonable argument (though the STV election should go first), if
> the voters are reasonable and if they regard the P office as less important
> than the makeup of the board--that depends on how the office is defined, I
> suppose.
> >>
> >> Another alternative would be to hold a separate P election (new ballots)
> once the board is defined. Or to let the board elect the officers from
> amongst themselves. That appeals to me, actually, again depending on the
> definition of the roles.
> >
> > A fully separate P election would make the board less proportional -
> unless the elected P would have voting power only if he/she is already a
> member of the board.
>
> That wasn't my suggestion. Rather, one would hold an STV board election,
> and then elect P from the proportionally elected board. Depending on the
> role of P, the voters for P would be the at-large membership or the board
> itself (the latter makes sense if P/VP is largely an internal role, as
> opposed to an external independent executive).
>  
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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[EM] Fwd: Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Raph Frank 
Date: Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 2:51 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green
party - Council elections
To: Peter Zbornik 


On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 9:18 AM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
> thanks for your information and the short explanation on STV.
> I was thinking about d'Hondt's method in general.

D'Hondt is equivalent to the Jefferson Method.  It is clearer why that
is proportional.

1) pick an initial divisor
2) divide each party's vote total by the divisor
3) For each party round down to the nearest whole number of seats
4) If the total number of seats is correct, then finish
5) Otherwise, update to a better divisor and repeat (go to 2)

Lots of divisors will give the correct number of seats, but they
always give the same number of seats per party.

So, you take each party's vote total, divide it by a number and then
round downward.  This means that the method is proportional, except
for rounding errors.  The divisor will work out to be around (votes
cast)/(seats).

Sainte-Lague rounds to the nearest whole number rather than rounding
downwards.  This is why Sainte Lague is fairer (though there can be
strategy issues for smaller parties).

Anyway, the process for d'Hondt is equivalent to:

The initial divisor is set equal to the number of votes received by
the largest party.

When you divide all the other parties' totals by this value, they all
give a fraction less than one, so none of the other parties receive
any seats.  The largest party gets 1 seat.  This is the same as
d'Hondt.

When updating the divisor, we reduce it by just enough so that 1
additional seat is assigned.

If party has N seats and V votes, then the divisor must drop below

divisor = V/(N+1)

before it will get the next seat.

So, according to the update rule, we reduce the divisor so that at
most one more party gets a seat.  Therefore, we need to find the party
who gets its next seat at the highest possible divisor.

So, we pick the party with the highest

V/(N+1)

and we set the divisor so that they get 1 more seat.  So, we set the
divisor to slightly below the above number.

This means that the party who has the highest V/(N+1) gets the next
seat in each step.

However, this is exactly what d'Hondt does.  It just doesn't calculate
the divisors at each step.

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Hello,

I have some catching up to do here.
I need to think more about some of the different methods and the proposals I
have gotten.
Some of the methods are new to me.
As I am a layman it takes time to understand them.

Condorcet methods have not been used in politics yet, I think.
Are there by any chance other methods to elect centrist presidents?
If I have understood the discussion correctly, you are still in draft phase.
When some of you feel you have a good proposal at hand in this discussion,
feel free to summarize and put forward a draft.

Using the same ballots with different vote counting techniques seems like
quite an elegant and interesting solution.
I never thought of that possibility.
If more than one ballot is to be used, then I prefer to having the P and
VP elected before the councilmembers.

Just to avoid misunderstandings:
The president is the party leader as in most political parties around the
world.
He is the main guy simply, the person appearing on television etc., the one
people know best in the streets.
The president also chairs the meetings of the national council (sometimes I
have used the term "board", the meaning is the same in this context).
Think Gordon Brown or Angela Merkel, small scale :o)
We have discussed splitting the external and internal funcions of the
president, but it is not politically feasible to do.
It is neither feasible to change the role of the president to be a stricly
internal guy or to have him elected by the council.
The president has to be elected by the delegates as is the case today, if
the proposal should have a chance to pass.
The vice president's are ordered first and second and third. The number of
VP chan vary. The VP are the ones who stand in for the president or party
leader (in that order).
The president and the vice presidents are all member of the board, which
currently has seven members.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On 4/28/10, Jonathan Lundell  wrote:
>
> On Apr 28, 2010, at 7:34 AM, Raph Frank wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 4:47 AM, Juho  wrote:
> >> You assume that there is only one VP.
> >
> > Well, if more than 1 VP is possible, then the election could be
> >
> > - Elect council with PR-STV
> > - The condorcet winner (only including the councillors) is President
> > - Elect 2 of the councilors as VPs using PR-STV
> >
> > However, there is still the question of what exactly the VPs and
> > President is supposed to do.
> >
> > If they are to chair council meetings, then it is better to just elect
> them.
> >
> >> We could have also two and keep track
> >> of which members are elected first, second and third.
> >
> > I still disagree with using order of election in a PR-STV election.
> > It provides an additional incentive for dishonest rankings.
>
> It also encourages strategic nominations. The whole idea of using
> order-of-election in STV for *anything* should be drowned in a bathtub ASAP.
>
> >
> > It would have most of the same problems that plurality has where you
> > need to vote for one of the top-2.
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

OK, thanks.
Please go on to propose the condorcet, if you think it is the best.

Approval voting was used in the French presidential election, first round,
where far-right nationalist Le Pen got to the second round.
Le Pen was hardly a centrist.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Effect_on_elections
Quote:"one study [16] showed that approval voting would not have chosen the
same two winners as plurality voting (Chirac and Le Pen) in France's
presidential election of 2002 (first round) - it instead would have chosen
Chirac and Jospin. To some, this seemed a more reasonable result[citation
needed] since Le Pen was a radical who lost to Chirac by an enormous margin
in the second round."

Peter




On 4/28/10, robert bristow-johnson  wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 28, 2010, at 2:19 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
> Condorcet methods have not been used in politics yet, I think.
>>
>
> Condorcet has not yet been used in a *government* general election.  that
> does not mean it hasn't been used in politics.  it has been used in
> organization elections for a single winner.  i might consider the Czech
> Green Party to be an "organization".  you can choose to use whatever method
> you like without having to get a law passed as you would in a general
> election.
>
> Are there by any chance other methods to elect centrist presidents?
>>
>
> Condorcet *does* tend to favor centrist candidates because Condorcet makes
> good use of 2nd-choice rankings and people on the two extreme wings are
> likely to choose the centrist for their 2nd choice over the extremist on the
> other side.
>
> but that is not a good reason to use Condorcet.  there are many reasons to
> use Condorcet but the main reason is simply majority rule:
>
>If a majority of voters agree that Candidate A
>is a better choice than Candidate B, then
>Candidate B should not be elected.
>
> that's really it.  that's why Condorcet is the correct method over IRV-STV,
> Plurality, Borda, Bucklin, Range, Approval or whatever else they come up
> with.  it's simple, transparent, and directly compatible with the goals of
> majority rule.
>
> despite Kathy Dopp's knee-jerk reaction against STV, it probably remains to
> be the simplest fair method to get proportional representation for the
> multi-winner Council seats.  IRV proponents like to extend STV to
> single-winner, but it's pretty well established that it's inferior to
> Condorcet.  sometimes they elect the same winner and sometimes they don't.
>  the problem is when IRV fails to elect the Condorcet winner - when that
> happens, a majority of voters agreed that Candidate A is a better choice
> than Candidate B, yet Candidate B was elected.
>
> --
>
> r b-j  r...@audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
>
>
>

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

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Ok, thanks.
Yes, my misstake.

Peter

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:

>
>
> 2010/4/28 Peter Zbornik 
>
>  OK, thanks.
>> Please go on to propose the condorcet, if you think it is the best.
>>
>> Approval voting was used in the French presidential election, first round,
>> where far-right nationalist Le Pen got to the second round.
>> Le Pen was hardly a centrist.
>> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Effect_on_elections
>> Quote:"one study [16] showed that approval voting would not have chosen
>> the same two winners as plurality voting (Chirac and Le Pen) in France's
>> presidential election of 2002 (first round) - it instead would have chosen
>> Chirac and Jospin. To some, this seemed a more reasonable result[citation
>> needed] since Le Pen was a radical who lost to Chirac by an enormous margin
>> in the second round."
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
> I think you're misreading Wikipedia there. Approval was not used; the
> passage simply says that some suggest that if it HAD been used, the results
> would have been better.
>
> JQ
>

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

Re: [EM] VoteFair representation ranking recommended for Czech Green Party

[Peter Zbornik]

Hello,

thanks for the information.
It seems a bit unusual to keep switching methods.
I don't understand how proportionality is achieved.
I would appreciate if Votefair ranking would have some mathematical
description and at least well described and discussed in some peer-reviewed
paper.
According to the description votefair ranking looks like STV.

I also have some concerns about the vote-counting.
We would need to make sure that the vote counting cannot not be manipulated
and that the count is independently verifiable.
Is the vote-counting program possible to install on a computer?
Is it open source?
Is the count implementable by a reasonably skilled programator?

Peter

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 10:20 PM,  wrote:

> To Peter Zbornik, per your request for a proportional election method for
> the Czech Green party:
>
> I recommend that you use VoteFair representation ranking to achieve your
> goal of fairness in electing your Green Party's council members.
>
> VoteFair representation ranking has these characteristics:
>
> * It is relatively easy to explain and understand.  (It is explained
> below.)
>
> * Reliable software to do the calculations (and optionally the balloting)
> is
> available for free at VoteFair.org.
>
> * Drafts of statutes to implement it already exist, and I can modify those
> for your situation.
>
> * It has been successfully used in a similarly adversarial election of
> directors.
>
> * Most importantly, it produces fair results when a group is split into a
> few different sub-groups.
>
> Here is a testimonial from Allan Barber who coordinated the use of VoteFair
> representation ranking for electing directors of the San Francisco Bay Area
> Curling Club:
>
> "Our club is extremely pleased with multiple aspects of the VoteFair
> system.
> The ability to vote online meant an extremely high voter turnout,
> approximately 70-75%!  Equally as important are the concepts underlying the
> VoteFair system.  Using a comparison system instead of the more common
> method of voting for a single candidate we came out knowing that we had
> voted in the candidates our club members preferred to have in the seats.
> Not only were there a number of good candidates, which could have split a
> conventional vote to the point of electing a non-preferred candidate, but
> our club is essentially split between 2 facilities and some candidates were
> known better in one or other of the facilities.  VoteFair [ranking] gave us
> the ability to balance that out transparently.  Thanks!"
>
> Verbally I was told that everyone in the club -- except the people who did
> not get re-elected -- liked the results.
>
> Before explaining the method, please consider that the reason your group's
> voters are "dishonest" is that the current voting rules allow a voter to
> vote strategically in a way that gives that voter (or that voter's
> subgroup)
> increased (compared to other voters) influence over the results.  A
> well-designed voting method does not allow the results to be influenced by
> strategic voting.  In other words, widespread strategic voting reveals that
> the voting method, not the voters, are flawed.
>
> Regarding strategic voting, range voting is vulnerable to strategic voting
> by using an approval-like approach where the approved candidates are given
> the highest score and the disapproved candidates are given the lowest
> score.
> (I presume the re-weighted version has the same basic weakness.)  IRV and
> (all versions of) STV also are well-known to be vulnerable to strategic
> voting.  These reasons alone are enough to disqualify them for use in your
> situation.  The fact that they do not necessarily elect a Condorcet winner
> is yet another flaw.
>
> As you recognize, the Condorcet criteria is important for electing your
> president.  You want to ensure that he/she is pairwise preferred over each
> of the other candidates.
>
> To achieve the Condorcet portion (but not yet the proportional portion) of
> the outcome, I recommend using the Condorcet-Kemeny method.  For a simple
> description of the method, here is the first paragraph of its description
> in
> the "Condorcet method" Wikipedia article
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method#Kemeny-Young_method):
>
> "[This] method considers every possible sequence of choices in terms of
> which choice might be most popular, which choice might be second-most
> popular, and so on down to which choice might be least popular. Each such
> sequence is associated with a Kemeny score that is equal to the sum of the
> pairwise counts that apply to the specified sequence. The sequence with the
> highest score is identified as the overall ranking, from most popular 

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 2:45 AM, Juho  wrote:

>   On Apr 28, 2010, at 9:19 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>  Hello,
>
> I have some catching up to do here.
> I need to think more about some of the different methods and the proposals
> I have gotten.
> Some of the methods are new to me.
> As I am a layman it takes time to understand them.
>
> Condorcet methods have not been used in politics yet, I think.
> Are there by any chance other methods to elect centrist presidents?
>
>
> The most common single-winner methods (plurality, top-two runoff, IRV) are
> known not to be "centrist oriented". For example in the quite common set-up
> where we have two extremists and one centrist with slightly less support
> they all elect one of the "extremists".
>
> Approval and Condorcet are more centrist oriented. They are both also old
> and well tested methods although they have not been widely used in public
> political elections.
>
> One problem with Approval (that was not mentioned yet) is the limited
> expressive power of the Approval vote and resulting problems in choosing the
> right strategy, e.g. when there are three leading candidates and one should
> approve either one or two of them. That is problematic e.g when left wing
> has 2 candidates and is is bigger than right wing that has 1 candidate. (In
> Approval voters are generally assumed to vote strategically and not just
> sincerely list candidates that they consider "approvable".)
>
>  If I have understood the discussion correctly, you are still in draft
> phase.
>
>
> Many of the presented drafts can be quickly made into concrete and exact
> proposals. Some of the used components are more mature / well tested than
> others. There are some details left to decide, e.g. which STV variant (/
> which proportional method) or which Condorcet variant (/ which single-winner
> method) to use.
>
>  When some of you feel you have a good proposal at hand in this
> discussion, feel free to summarize and put forward a draft.
>
>
> I'm trying t listen to you to understand which one of the proposals would
> be the best for your needs :-). Now my understanding is that you still want
> all the listed requirements to be met and you want to use as "well tested"
> (and simple/explainable) methods as possible.
>
Yes, the requirements are set.
People have to understand what they are voting about, if they are to support
the method.
The people who like the majoritarian system can be expected to spread FUD
(fear uncertainty doubt).
It has at least to be a method in use in some organizations.
Maybe I shouldn't have excluded Schulze STV right away, since it is in use
at some places.


>  Are you btw ok with the idea of limiting the choice of P+VPs to the
> (already elected of simultaneously elected) council members?
>
Yes as one variant

>
>
> Using the same ballots with different vote counting techniques seems like
> quite an elegant and interesting solution.
> I never thought of that possibility.
> If more than one ballot is to be used, then I prefer to having the P and
> VP elected before the councilmembers.
>
>
> There is a small problem here. If one elects the P and VPs first, then the
> voters may not give the already elected P+VPs any votes in the second
> (council) round for strategic reasons (or maybe they are not even candidates
> there any more but considered "already elected"), and as a result
> the groupings of P and VPs would be over-represented in the council. This is
> not ok if you want the council (that includes P+VPs) to be proportional.
> (For this reason my first draft used the same ballots for all elections and
> the second draft elected the council first and P+VPs among the council
> members only after that.)
>
>
> Just to avoid misunderstandings:
> The president is the party leader as in most political parties around the
> world.
> He is the main guy simply, the person appearing on television etc., the one
> people know best in the streets.
> The president also chairs the meetings of the national council (sometimes I
> have used the term "board", the meaning is the same in this context).
> Think Gordon Brown or Angela Merkel, small scale :o)
> We have discussed splitting the external and internal funcions of the
> president, but it is not politically feasible to do.
>
>
> Two separate jobs then, and someone might be competent for one job and
> someone else for the other. This would make the election process more
> complex. The simplest approach would be to elect these two persons among the
> council members in two separate elections and forget proportionality with
> respect to these two jobs. VPs could still be elected proportional

[EM] Fwd: Fwd: Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Hello,

I am sending the proposal of M. Schulze as a reaction to my request.

Peter Z.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Markus Schulze 
Date: Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 9:46 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green
party - Council elections


Dear Peter Zbornik,

thank you for your interest in the Schulze method.

A very good website with many links is here:

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

A Czech version of this article is here:

http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulzova_metoda

A short version of the English article is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:MarkusSchulze/Short_version_of_the_Schulze_method

A very good book on the Schulze method is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=dccBaphP1G4C&pg=PA37

*

The following organizations are using the Schulze
method for internal elections:

organization (number of eligible members)

Pirate Party of Sweden (50,000)
Wikimedia Foundation (26,000)
Debian (900)
Free Software Foundation Europe (900)
Squeak (500)
Software in the Public Interest (400)
Gentoo (300)
Graduate Student Organization at the State University of New York: Computer
Science (300)
KDE (150)
Ubuntu (150)

It is also used by a large number of organizations
with less than 100 eligible members each.

*

Detailed descriptions of the Schulze STV method and
the Schulze proportional ranking method are here:

http://home.versanet.de/~chris1-schulze/schulze2.pdf

An implementation of the Schulze STV method is
"prog01.c" and "prog01.exe" of this file:

http://home.versanet.de/~chris1-schulze/schulze3.zip

An implementation of the Schulze proportional ranking
method is "prog02.c" and "prog02.exe" of that file.

*

You wrote (30 April 2010):

> Three variants of the elections could be submitted.
> 1. The presidents and vice presidents are proportionally
> elected.

I recommend that the Schulze proportional ranking method
should be used. The candidate on the first place of this
ranking becomes the president. The candidate on the second
place becomes the vice president.

You wrote (30 April 2010):

> 2. The presidents and vice presidents need not to be
> proportionally elected (but the council needs to be).

I recommend that the Schulze ranking should be calculated
as defined here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Procedure

The candidate on the first place of this ranking becomes
the president. The candidate on the second place becomes
the vice president. The council is elected by the Schulze
STV method.

*

You wrote (30 April 2010):

> 1. election of council members
> 2. election of delegates to regional and national rallies,
> where the regional and national council members are elected
> 3. election of candidates to the ballot - primary elections

I recommend the Schulze STV method for the council and
the delegates and the Schulze proportional ranking method
for the party list.

Markus Schulze

---
Follow up concerning rankings:

Dear Peter Zbornik,

a "proportional ranking" is a complete ranking of all
candidates such that, for every possible number M, the
first M candidates of this ranking are a proportional
image of the electorate. A proportional ranking method
can be used e.g. to create a party list; when a party
list is created, then we usually don't know in advance
how many candidates of this list will be elected.
Proportional ranking methods have also been proposed
by Otten and Rosenstiel:

http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P4.HTM
http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE9/P5.HTM
http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE12/P1.HTM

On the other side, when we only talk about a "ranking",
then we usually mean a "single-winner ranking". A
"single-winner ranking" tells us who should be
elected when only a single seat has to be filled.

Markus Schulze

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

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

if the single-winner president or the proportionally elected VPs
sometimes are not a member of the set of proportionally elected
council members (which is likely), then I would also like to ask you
for a proposal on the last "conservative" method, thus it would not be
optional, as I wrote below.  Thus, in all I ask you for three
proposals.

Motivation:
I can imagine that there could be a method, which elected the rest of
the council members after the the president and some or all vice
presidents have been elected using proportional ranking (see the
proposal of Markus Schulze for an example).

Such an election method would sacrifice a proportionality in the
council in order to elect the president unambigously and to achieve
proportionality between the president and some of the vice presidents
(at least the 1st VP).

The election of the rest of the council members would be done to
maximize the proportionality of the elected council, maybe by using a
modified version of STV, where the pre-elected president and vice
presidents would be considered elected to the council at the start of
the STV election, using the same ballots as for the  proportional
ranking election. Less important VPs (like for instance a fourth VP),
would be elected from the council.

Thus, the rest of the council members would be elected in such a way,
that the council would be as much proportional as possible given the
pre-elected P and VPs.

The advantage of this method is, that there would be no ambiguity
relating to the legitimacy of the elected president and the most
important VPs.

What methods would you recommend for this scenario?

Would there be a software that could be able to handle this problem
(possibly after some slight modification)?

I think the scenario above (i.e.first proportional ordering of P and
some VPs, then balancing election of the rest of the council to
achieve proportionality in the council and finally possibly electing
some less important VPs from the elected council) is the variant which
would come closest to the way the elections are done in our party
today, while attaining proportionality.

Right now the scenario above seems to be the optimal solution, which I
would like propose to the party.

 It wasn't easy to arrive to the model above, but now I think the
problem is well-defined.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

2010/4/29, Peter Zbornik :
> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 2:45 AM, Juho  wrote:
>
>>   On Apr 28, 2010, at 9:19 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>>  Hello,
>>
>> I have some catching up to do here.
>> I need to think more about some of the different methods and the
>> proposals
>> I have gotten.
>> Some of the methods are new to me.
>> As I am a layman it takes time to understand them.
>>
>> Condorcet methods have not been used in politics yet, I think.
>> Are there by any chance other methods to elect centrist presidents?
>>
>>
>> The most common single-winner methods (plurality, top-two runoff, IRV)
>> are
>> known not to be "centrist oriented". For example in the quite common
>> set-up
>> where we have two extremists and one centrist with slightly less support
>> they all elect one of the "extremists".
>>
>> Approval and Condorcet are more centrist oriented. They are both also old
>> and well tested methods although they have not been widely used in public
>> political elections.
>>
>> One problem with Approval (that was not mentioned yet) is the limited
>> expressive power of the Approval vote and resulting problems in choosing
>> the
>> right strategy, e.g. when there are three leading candidates and one
>> should
>> approve either one or two of them. That is problematic e.g when left wing
>> has 2 candidates and is is bigger than right wing that has 1 candidate.
>> (In
>> Approval voters are generally assumed to vote strategically and not just
>> sincerely list candidates that they consider "approvable".)
>>
>>  If I have understood the discussion correctly, you are still in draft
>> phase.
>>
>>
>> Many of the presented drafts can be quickly made into concrete and exact
>> proposals. Some of the used components are more mature / well tested than
>> others. There are some details left to decide, e.g. which STV variant (/
>> which proportional method) or which Condorcet variant (/ which
>> single-winner
>> method) to use.
>>
>>  When some of you feel you have a good proposal at hand in this
>> discussion, feel free to summarize and put forward a draft.
>>
>>
>> I'm trying t listen to you to understand which one of the proposals would
>> be the best for your needs :-). Now my understanding is that you still
>> want
&g

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

I am sending a post scriptum to the email below.

1. The conservative method is only interesting if, the unambiguously
pre-elected president and vice president(s) are not in the set of
proportionally (for instance STV) elected council members.
2. If the unambiguously elected president and vice president(s) is in the
set of proportionally (for instance STV) elected council members, then I
guess the conservative method would include the "optimal" method as a
special case (the optimal method was where the president and vice presidents
are elected from the proportionally elected council members).
3. The number of pre-elected vice presidents in point 1 above can be zero.
The president is always unambiguously pre-elected.

4. For completeness, I would like to add one additional requirement, which I
think can be resolved after the seletion of a good voting procedure.
Requirement: The selected council must contain at least X members of each
sex (gender-equality rule). X is specified before each election.
This gender rule is used in our organization today.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2010/5/3 Peter Zbornik 

> Dear all,
>
> if the single-winner president or the proportionally elected VPs
> sometimes are not a member of the set of proportionally elected
> council members (which is likely), then I would also like to ask you
> for a proposal on the last "conservative" method, thus it would not be
> optional, as I wrote below.  Thus, in all I ask you for three
> proposals.
>
> Motivation:
> I can imagine that there could be a method, which elected the rest of
> the council members after the the president and some or all vice
> presidents have been elected using proportional ranking (see the
> proposal of Markus Schulze for an example).
>
> Such an election method would sacrifice a proportionality in the
> council in order to elect the president unambigously and to achieve
> proportionality between the president and some of the vice presidents
> (at least the 1st VP).
>
> The election of the rest of the council members would be done to
> maximize the proportionality of the elected council, maybe by using a
> modified version of STV, where the pre-elected president and vice
> presidents would be considered elected to the council at the start of
> the STV election, using the same ballots as for the  proportional
> ranking election. Less important VPs (like for instance a fourth VP),
> would be elected from the council.
>
> Thus, the rest of the council members would be elected in such a way,
> that the council would be as much proportional as possible given the
> pre-elected P and VPs.
>
> The advantage of this method is, that there would be no ambiguity
> relating to the legitimacy of the elected president and the most
> important VPs.
>
> What methods would you recommend for this scenario?
>
> Would there be a software that could be able to handle this problem
> (possibly after some slight modification)?
>
> I think the scenario above (i.e.first proportional ordering of P and
> some VPs, then balancing election of the rest of the council to
> achieve proportionality in the council and finally possibly electing
> some less important VPs from the elected council) is the variant which
> would come closest to the way the elections are done in our party
> today, while attaining proportionality.
>
> Right now the scenario above seems to be the optimal solution, which I
> would like propose to the party.
>
>  It wasn't easy to arrive to the model above, but now I think the
> problem is well-defined.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zbornik
>
> 2010/4/29, Peter Zbornik :
>  > On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 2:45 AM, Juho  wrote:
> >
> >>   On Apr 28, 2010, at 9:19 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
> >>
> >>  Hello,
> >>
> >> I have some catching up to do here.
> >> I need to think more about some of the different methods and the
> >> proposals
> >> I have gotten.
> >> Some of the methods are new to me.
> >> As I am a layman it takes time to understand them.
> >>
> >> Condorcet methods have not been used in politics yet, I think.
> >> Are there by any chance other methods to elect centrist presidents?
> >>
> >>
> >> The most common single-winner methods (plurality, top-two runoff, IRV)
> >> are
> >> known not to be "centrist oriented". For example in the quite common
> >> set-up
> >> where we have two extremists and one centrist with slightly less support
> >> they all elect one of the "extremists".
> >>
> >> Approval and Condorcet are more centrist oriented. They are both also
> old
> >> and wel

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Markus Schulze,

thank you for your reply.
Why do you recommend the first vice-president to be elected as the second
ranked of Schulze single-winner method and not the second ranked using the
Schulze proportional ranking method?
Do you have a strong oppinion in this issue?
What is the difference in the results of these two methods?
I guess that in the single winner case both the president and vice president
will belong to the biggest faction, while for the proportional ranking this
is the case only if the second largest faction will not get a droop quota of
votes.
In our party there is one tradition used in some parts of the party, which
says that if there are two competing factions with two candidates for
the presidential post, the candidate of the losing faction gets the first
vice presidential post.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 11:52 AM, Markus Schulze <
markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Dear Peter Zbornik,
>
> > Is the winner of a single-winner Schulze election always
> > in the set of winners of a Schulze-STV election, if the
> > same ballots are used for both elections?
>
> If more than one seat has to be filled, then the winner
> of the Schulze single-winner election method is not
> necessarily in the winning set of the Schulze STV method.
>
> *
>
> > If the answer to the question in my email below is no or
> > if the vice presidents sometimes are not members of the
> > set of Schulze-STV winners (which I guess can be the case
> > even in a council with 7 members, one prezident and 3 VPs),
> > then I can imagine that there could be a method, which
> > elected the rest of the council members after the the
> > president and vice presidents have been elected using
> > Schulze proportional ranking.
> >
> > Such an election method would sacrifice a proportionality
> > in the council in order to achieve proportionality in the
> > ordered set of the president and the vice presidents.
> >
> > The election of the rest of the council members would be
> > done to maximize the proportionality of the elected council,
> > maybe by using a modified version of Schulze-STV, where the
> > president and vice presidents would be considered elected
> > to the council at the start of the STV election, using the
> > same ballots as for the Schulze proportional ranking election.
> >
> > Thus, the rest of the council members would be elected in
> > such a way, that the council would be as much proportional
> > as possible.
> >
> > Would your software be able to handle this problem (possibly
> > after some slight modification)?
> > What methods would you recommend for this scenario?
>
> I recommend:
>
> --the president is the top-ranked candidate of the Schulze
>  single-winner ranking,
> --the vice president is the second-ranked candidate of the
>  Schulze single-winner ranking,
> --the other members of the council are chosen by the Schulze
>  proportional ranking method so that proportionality is
>  maximized.
>
> My software could handle this problem (after some slight
> modifications).
>
> Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Markus Schulze <
markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Dear Raph Frank,
>
> you wrote (3 May 2010):
>
> > For the rest of the council, I think electing
> > them using Schulze-STV with the restriction
> > that only results where the President and VP
> > are members are allowed would give better
> > proportionality.
>
> If I understand Peter Zbornik correctly, then he
> wants a ranking of the members of the council, so
> that it is clear who the 2nd vice president, the
> 3rd vice president, the 4th vice president, etc.,
> is.

Markus Schulze understands me correctly.

>
> Therefore, I recommend a proportional ranking
> method for the election of the council.
>
> Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 10:16 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:

> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>  I am sending a post scriptum to the email below.
>>  1. The conservative method is only interesting if, the unambiguously
>> pre-elected president and vice president(s) are not in the set of
>> proportionally (for instance STV) elected council members.
>> 2. If the unambiguously elected president and vice president(s) is in the
>> set of proportionally (for instance STV) elected council members, then I
>> guess the conservative method would include the "optimal" method as a
>> special case (the optimal method was where the president and vice presidents
>> are elected from the proportionally elected council members).
>> 3. The number of pre-elected vice presidents in point 1 above can be zero.
>> The president is always unambiguously pre-elected.
>>  4. For completeness, I would like to add one additional requirement,
>> which I think can be resolved after the seletion of a good voting procedure.
>> Requirement: The selected council must contain at least X members of each
>> sex (gender-equality rule). X is specified before each election.
>> This gender rule is used in our organization today.
>>
>
> A simple way of doing this, if the council size (after president and VPs
> have been elected) is even, is to have two elections, each of a council size
> equal to half the assembly. Then, for the first, only elect women, and for
> the second, only elect men. Use the same ballots, but remove candidates of
> the sex you don't want.

I am affraid that this is not possible. First we have mostly odd-numbered
council sizes, and secondly the gender rule does not require that half of
the men should be men and the other half women.
Our current gender rule goes as following: "for every three members of the
body, there has to be one person of each sex". A five member council thus
has to have one woman and one man. For seven members it is two men and two
women.


> Methods like Schulze STV work by comparing possible councils to determine
> which are best. Thus, it may be possible to limit them to only consider
> "balanced" councils. I'm not sure how to do this in ordinary STV, however,
> since it doesn't work that way, and in any case, this would be untested.
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Juho  wrote:

>   On May 3, 2010, at 2:07 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>  On Mon, May 3, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Markus Schulze <
> markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:
>
>> Dear Raph Frank,
>>
>> you wrote (3 May 2010):
>>
>> > For the rest of the council, I think electing
>> > them using Schulze-STV with the restriction
>> > that only results where the President and VP
>> > are members are allowed would give better
>> > proportionality.
>>
>> If I understand Peter Zbornik correctly, then he
>> wants a ranking of the members of the council, so
>> that it is clear who the 2nd vice president, the
>> 3rd vice president, the 4th vice president, etc.,
>> is.
>
> Markus Schulze understands me correctly.
>
>
>  I understood that the VPs should be ranked but that there is no such
> requirement for the rest of the council. Or are all members of the council
> considered to be numbered VPs?
>
Normally the National council has three VPs, the regional normally two VPs
(in Prague we have an excption and have unranked VPs) for the local councils
I don't know, I guess two is normal, one VP is not uncommon.
The voters can decide upon the number of VPs and the size of the council
Seven members of the body is standard, I think five is not uncommon.
Some bodies of the party has no VP (that applies normally only for specific
bodies, like audit bodies and such and is rare),
The rest of the council members are not ranked.

>
> The use of some proportional ranking method indeed distorts proportionality
> a bit. But I proposed to study also this "one method only" approach (as an
> alternative to best possible optimization of the proportionality of the
> council) since the resulting method would be simple and the distortion that
> it causes could be smaller than its benefits.
>
> Juho
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

d could do
the dummies explanation).

OK, so I have to start looking at the details of this method, and I have to
start somewhere, so:
Thinking of page 60: http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf
What does: r ( *V *... → *ae *) mean in the first diagramme? I guess it is
the strength of the vote-management. Where is this concept discuseed?
Why do you calculate r ( *V ae → be *)?
How do you calculate r ( *V ae → be *)?
How do you calculate the strongest path from ae to be?

Finally I would need to nail the method down in the party statutes, if the
method will be greeted by interest.
Is this doable?
A peer-review of the Schulze method (formal - in a paper or at
least informal - here on this list) is appropriate.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Markus Schulze <
markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Dear Peter Zbornik,
>
> this is my proposal:
>
> --Use the Schulze proportional ranking method.
>
> --The top-ranked candidate becomes the president.
>
> --The second-ranked candidate becomes the vice president.
>
> --If the first two candidates happen to be male, then,
>  when you calculate the third-ranked candidate, restrict
>  your considerations to female candidates.
>
>  If the first two candidates happen to be female, then,
>  when you calculate the third-ranked candidate, restrict
>  your considerations to male candidates.
>
>  The third-ranked candidate becomes the 2nd vice president.
>
> --The fourth-ranked candidate becomes the 3rd vice president.
>
> --The fifth-ranked candidate becomes the 4th vice president.
>
> --If 4 of the already elected candidates happen to be male,
>  then, when you calculate the sixth-ranked candidate, restrict
>  your considerations to female candidates.
>
>  If 4 of the already elected candidates happen to be female,
>  then, when you calculate the sixth-ranked candidate, restrict
>  your considerations to male candidates.
>
>  The sixth-ranked candidate becomes the 5th vice president.
>
> --The seventh-ranked candidate becomes the 6th vice president.
>
> Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Markus Schulze, dear readers,

The example below is intriguing. But I am afraid I fail to understand
this formulation of Schulze's proportional ranking.
I would be grateful if M. Schulze or someone else, could give an
example, which could help me get it.
Specifically, I didn't understand what H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] is. Is
it a function, H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]=min(cardinality of T(i),
0<=i<=n+1 plus other criteria)?, I didn't get the properties of
T(n+1). Why are there n+1 partitions of the electorate and not only n?
Are hopefuls x. y two members of the set of all hopefuls? I guess yes.
Some reference to the definitions in the paper could be useful.
Thank you for you kind help.

Best regards
Peter Zbornik

2010/5/6, Markus Schulze :
> Dear Peter Zbornik,
>
> in the scientific literature, candidates, who
> have not yet been elected, are sometimes called
> "hopeful".
>
> ***
>
> The Schulze proportional ranking method can be
> described as follows:
>
>Suppose place 1 to (n-1) have already been
>filled. Suppose A(i) (with i = 1,...,(n-1))
>is the candidate of place i.
>
>Suppose we want to fill the n-th place.
>
>Suppose x,y are two hopeful candidates. Then
>H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] is the largest possible
>value such that the electorate can be divided
>into n+1 disjoint parts T(1),...,T(n+1) such that
>
>1. For all i := 1,...,n: |T(i)| >= H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>2. For all i := 1,...,(n-1): Every voter in T(i)
>   prefers candidate A(i) to candidate y.
>3. Every voter in T(n) prefers candidate x
>   to candidate y.
>
>Apply the Schulze single-winner election method
>to the matrix d[x,y] := H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>The winner gets the n-th place.
>
> ***
>
> The best way to understand the Schulze proportional
> ranking method is to investigate the properties of
> H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]. For example:
>
> a. Suppose x and y are the only hopeful candidates.
>Suppose N is the number of voters.
>
>Suppose Droop proportionality for n seats requires
>that x must be elected and that y must not be
>elected, then we get H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] > N/(n+1)
>and H[A(1),...,A(n-1),y,x] < N/(n+1), and, therefore,
>H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] > H[A(1),...,A(n-1),y,x].
>
>This guarantees that the Schulze proportional
>ranking method satisfies the proportionality
>criterion for the top-down approach to create
>party lists.
>
> b. Adding or removing another hopeful candidate z
>does not change H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>
> c. H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] is monotonic. That means:
>
>Ranking candidate x higher cannot decrease
>H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]. Ranking candidate x
>lower cannot increase H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>
>Ranking candidate y higher cannot increase
>H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]. Ranking candidate y
>lower cannot decrease H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>
> d. H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] depends only on which
>candidates of {A(1),...,A(n-1),x} the individual
>voter prefers to candidate y, but it does not
>depend on the order in which this voter prefers
>these candidates to candidate y.
>
>This guarantees that my method is not needlessly
>vulnerable to Hylland free riding. In my paper
>(http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf), I argue
>that other STV methods are needlessly vulnerable to
>Hylland free riding, because the result depends on
>the order in which the individual voter prefers
>strong winners. In my paper, I argue that voters,
>who understand STV well, know that it is a useful
>strategy to give candidates, who are certain of
>election, an insincerely low ranking. I argue
>that, therefore, the order in which the individual
>voter prefers strong winners doesn't contain any
>information about the opinion of this voter, but
>only information about how clever this voter is in
>identifying strong winners. Therefore, the result
>should not depend on the order in which the
>individual voter prefers strong winners.
>
> Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

-- 
Odesláno z mobilního zařízení

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Markus Schulze,

I think got the idea of the Schulze proportional method after your
definition and Raph Frank's explanation and example.

I am however not sure that the Schulze proportional method "satisfies the
proportionality criterion for the top-down approach to create party lists".

You wrote (6.5.2010):

a. Suppose x and y are the only hopeful candidates.
  Suppose N is the number of voters.

  Suppose Droop proportionality for n seats requires
  that x must be elected and that y must not be
  elected, then we get H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] > N/(n+1)
  and H[A(1),...,A(n-1),y,x] < N/(n+1), and, therefore,
  H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] > H[A(1),...,A(n-1),y,x].

  This guarantees that the Schulze proportional
  ranking method satisfies the proportionality
  criterion for the top-down approach to create
  party lists.


If I have understood you correctly, you only show "that the Schulze
proportional ranking method satisfies the proportionality  criterion for the
top-down approach to create party lists" for the special case where there
are only two hopefuls x and y.

If I am correct, then it would be helpful if you could provide a full proof,
or further explanation, which shows that "the proportionality criterion for
the top-down approach to create party lists" is satisfied for any number of
hopefuls.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Markus Schulze <
markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:


> Dear Peter Zbornik,
>
> in the scientific literature, candidates, who
> have not yet been elected, are sometimes called
> "hopeful".
>
> ***
>
> The Schulze proportional ranking method can be
> described as follows:
>
>   Suppose place 1 to (n-1) have already been
>   filled. Suppose A(i) (with i = 1,...,(n-1))
>   is the candidate of place i.
>
>   Suppose we want to fill the n-th place.
>
>   Suppose x,y are two hopeful candidates. Then
>   H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] is the largest possible
>   value such that the electorate can be divided
>   into n+1 disjoint parts T(1),...,T(n+1) such that
>
>   1. For all i := 1,...,n: |T(i)| >= H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>   2. For all i := 1,...,(n-1): Every voter in T(i)
>  prefers candidate A(i) to candidate y.
>   3. Every voter in T(n) prefers candidate x
>  to candidate y.
>
>   Apply the Schulze single-winner election method
>   to the matrix d[x,y] := H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>   The winner gets the n-th place.
>
> ***
>
> The best way to understand the Schulze proportional
> ranking method is to investigate the properties of
> H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]. For example:
>
> a. Suppose x and y are the only hopeful candidates.
>   Suppose N is the number of voters.
>
>   Suppose Droop proportionality for n seats requires
>   that x must be elected and that y must not be
>   elected, then we get H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] > N/(n+1)
>   and H[A(1),...,A(n-1),y,x] < N/(n+1), and, therefore,
>   H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] > H[A(1),...,A(n-1),y,x].
>
>   This guarantees that the Schulze proportional
>   ranking method satisfies the proportionality
>   criterion for the top-down approach to create
>   party lists.
>
> b. Adding or removing another hopeful candidate z
>   does not change H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>
> c. H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] is monotonic. That means:
>
>   Ranking candidate x higher cannot decrease
>   H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]. Ranking candidate x
>   lower cannot increase H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>
>   Ranking candidate y higher cannot increase
>   H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y]. Ranking candidate y
>   lower cannot decrease H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y].
>
> d. H[A(1),...,A(n-1),x,y] depends only on which
>   candidates of {A(1),...,A(n-1),x} the individual
>   voter prefers to candidate y, but it does not
>   depend on the order in which this voter prefers
>   these candidates to candidate y.
>
>   This guarantees that my method is not needlessly
>   vulnerable to Hylland free riding. In my paper
>   (http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf), I argue
>   that other STV methods are needlessly vulnerable to
>   Hylland free riding, because the result depends on
>   the order in which the individual voter prefers
>   strong winners. In my paper, I argue that voters,
>   who understand STV well, know that it is a useful
>   strategy to give candidates, who are certain of
>   election, an insincerely low ranking. I argue
>   that, therefore, the order in which the individual
>   voter prefers strong winners doesn't contain any
>   information about the opinion of this voter, but
>   only information about how clever this voter is in
>   identifying strong winners. Therefore, the result
>   should not depend on the order in which the
>   individual voter prefers strong winners.
>
>   Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Juho,

thanks for taking the time to formalize the requirements and the discussion
so far.
I would like to put some ideas into the ether, which extend the approach of
Schulze in some directions.
It is worth emphasizing that I presently do not in any way recommend any of
the approaches below before Shulze's proportional ranking, and that they are
just some ideas, which I would like to get out of my head.
Thus in this email I deliberately leave the "procurement process" for a
proportional election system for the Czech green party in order to indulge
in some academic speculation.

---

Extension suggestion:
The Schulze proportional rankig method is good, but has one weakness, which
I will try to examplify below.

Our main problem with the proposal of Schulze, is that it gives us more
hierarchy than we usually need, and that it drops proportionality
unnecessarily much.
Let's for the sake of the argument say, that we want to select the Green
regional party council in Prague, which (as an exception) has two vice
presidents, without internal ordering and seven members.
Thus this council looks like the following: P, VPa, VPb, Ma, Mb, Mc, Md (Ma
means Member a).

The proportional ranking needed is not P>VPa>VPb>Ma>Mb>Mc>Md,
but P>[VPa, VPb]>[Ma, Mb, Mc, Md].
Let us call this required ranking for "boundary conditions".

I will discuss some ideas to address this issue by with a little
inspiration from the world of statistics.

---

 In statistics, the top-down and bottom-up approach correspond to two
heuristics often used to select variables to a regression model from a large
number of candidate variables, specifically to forward and backward
selection, see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression):

In statistics , *stepwise
regression* includes regression models in which the choice of predictive
variables is carried out by an automatic
procedure.[1]
[2] 
[3]Usually,
this takes the form of a sequence of
F-tests , but other techniques are
possible, such as t-tests , adjusted
R-square , Akaike information
criterion , Bayesian
information 
criterion,
Mallows' Cp , or false discovery
rate .

The main approaches are:

   - Forward selection, which involves starting with no variables in the
   model, trying out the variables one by one and including them if they are
   'statistically significant'.
   - Backward elimination, which involves starting with all candidate
   variables and testing them one by one for statistical significance, deleting
   any that are not significant.

An other method (the exhaustive search), which can be used for a moderate
number of candidate variables and variables in the model, is to evaluate all
possible variable combinations. I.e. in the case where we are looking for a
model with two variables, and we have four candidate variables (a,b,c,d),
then we evaluate the model for the variables (a,b), (a,c), (a,d), (b,c),
(b,d), (c,d).

A combination of the forward selection approach and the exhaustive search
would take as imput information on how many candidate variables to evaluate
in each step, for instance, Step 1: one variable, step 2: two variables,
step 3: four variables (the Green regional party council in Prague)

---

The underlying idea from the combine statistical approach in the previous
paragraph, could be used combine top-down and
bottom-up ranking, by modifying or generalize the Schulze proportional
ranking (which I understand a little) and Schulze STV (which I haven't
studied) to one "universal" top-down method.
The unified method would have the Schulze proportional ranking as a special
case, when the bondary conditions would be a<...B (A is elected before B) the same "unified"
method would select AC otherwise (i.e. Schulze proportional ranking).

An other example where this ranking would be needed could for instance be
the national council with two presidents (party leaders), whch is a common
leaderhip structure in the green parties in some countries.
Thus, let us for instance assume the following structure:
[Pa, Pb]>VPa>VPb>[Ma, Mb, Mc]
In the case of two presidents, Shulze's proportional ranking fails to
elect the "most proportional" "Condorcet" presidential pair (I have no clue
of how to be able to find the "most proportional Condorcet presidential
pair"), since it imposes an unnecessary condition that one president should
be ranked ahead the secon.
Maybe the presidential pair or Prague regional council of the Greens cou

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Juho,

I attach a post scriptum to my email below (7.5.2010).

I wrote:
"The "unified" method for two seats without boundary conditions would select
BA (i.e.Schulze STV)
Under the boundary condition A>B (A is elected before B) the same "unified"
method would select AC otherwise (i.e. Schulze proportional ranking)."

A less ambiguous formulation is (changes in bold):
"The "unified" method for two seats without boundary conditions would select
BA (i.e.Schulze STV)*.*
Under the boundary condition *P>VP (the P is elected before the VP)* the
same "unified" method would select AC (i.e. Schulze proportional ranking)."

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Dear Juho,
>
> thanks for taking the time to formalize the requirements and the discussion
> so far.
> I would like to put some ideas into the ether, which extend the approach of
> Schulze in some directions.
> It is worth emphasizing that I presently do not in any way recommend any of
> the approaches below before Shulze's proportional ranking, and that they are
> just some ideas, which I would like to get out of my head.
> Thus in this email I deliberately leave the "procurement process" for a
> proportional election system for the Czech green party in order to indulge
> in some academic speculation.
>
> ---
>
> Extension suggestion:
> The Schulze proportional rankig method is good, but has one weakness, which
> I will try to examplify below.
>
> Our main problem with the proposal of Schulze, is that it gives us more
> hierarchy than we usually need, and that it drops proportionality
> unnecessarily much.
> Let's for the sake of the argument say, that we want to select the Green
> regional party council in Prague, which (as an exception) has two vice
> presidents, without internal ordering and seven members.
> Thus this council looks like the following: P, VPa, VPb, Ma, Mb, Mc, Md (Ma
> means Member a).
>
> The proportional ranking needed is not P>VPa>VPb>Ma>Mb>Mc>Md,
> but P>[VPa, VPb]>[Ma, Mb, Mc, Md].
> Let us call this required ranking for "boundary conditions".
>
> I will discuss some ideas to address this issue by with a little
> inspiration from the world of statistics.
>
> ---
>
>  In statistics, the top-down and bottom-up approach correspond to two
> heuristics often used to select variables to a regression model from a large
> number of candidate variables, specifically to forward and backward
> selection, see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression):
>
> In statistics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics>, *stepwise
> regression* includes regression models in which the choice of predictive
> variables is carried out by an automatic 
> procedure.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression#cite_note-0>
> [2] 
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression#cite_note-1>[3]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression#cite_note-2>Usually,
>  this takes the form of a sequence of
> F-tests <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-test>, but other techniques are
> possible, such as t-tests <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-test>, adjusted
> R-square <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-square>, Akaike information
> criterion <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion>, 
> Bayesian
> information 
> criterion<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_information_criterion>,
> Mallows' Cp <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallows%27_Cp>, or false
> discovery rate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_discovery_rate>.
>
> The main approaches are:
>
>- Forward selection, which involves starting with no variables in the
>model, trying out the variables one by one and including them if they are
>'statistically significant'.
>- Backward elimination, which involves starting with all candidate
>variables and testing them one by one for statistical significance, 
> deleting
>any that are not significant.
>
> An other method (the exhaustive search), which can be used for a moderate
> number of candidate variables and variables in the model, is to evaluate all
> possible variable combinations. I.e. in the case where we are looking for a
> model with two variables, and we have four candidate variables (a,b,c,d),
> then we evaluate the model for the variables (a,b), (a,c), (a,d), (b,c),
> (b,d), (c,d).
>
> A combination of the forward selection approach and the exhaustive search
> would take as imput information on how many candidate variables to evaluate
> in each step, for instance, Step 1: one variable, step 2: two variables,
> step 3: fo

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear  Juho,

I couldn't resist submitting a post post sciptum to my email below
(7.5.2010):

Example of the unified method:
Assume we have the boundary conditions [Pa, Pb]>VPa>VPb>[Ma, Mb, Mc],
then the Schulze "unified" proportional method would work like this:
Step 1: apply Schulze STV to elect Pa and Pb simultaneously and
proportionally.
Step 2: apply Schulze proportional ranking with A(1)=Pa and A(2)=Pb (in the
notation of Shulze, where A(i) are elected council members), and we are
constructing the matric d[x,y]:=H[Pa, Pb, x, y] to elect VPa and
Step 3: elect Pb using Schulze proportional ranking analogously as in Step
2,
Step 4: somehow "feed" [Pa, Pb, VPa, VPb] into schulze STV and elect Ma, Mb
and Mc simultaneously to get maximum proportionality in the ordered council
i.e. maximum proportionality under the boundary conditions.

The unified method would thus be the "most" proportional condorcet method
under boundary conditions.

PZ

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:59 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Dear Juho,
>
> I attach a post scriptum to my email below (7.5.2010).
>
> I wrote:
> "The "unified" method for two seats without boundary conditions would
> select BA (i.e.Schulze STV)
> Under the boundary condition A>B (A is elected before B) the same "unified"
> method would select AC otherwise (i.e. Schulze proportional ranking)."
>
> A less ambiguous formulation is (changes in bold):
> "The "unified" method for two seats without boundary conditions would
> select BA (i.e.Schulze STV)*.*
> Under the boundary condition *P>VP (the P is elected before the VP)* the
> same "unified" method would select AC (i.e. Schulze proportional ranking)."
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
>   On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 5:27 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear Juho,
>>
>> thanks for taking the time to formalize the requirements and the
>> discussion so far.
>> I would like to put some ideas into the ether, which extend the approach
>> of Schulze in some directions.
>> It is worth emphasizing that I presently do not in any way recommend any
>> of the approaches below before Shulze's proportional ranking, and that they
>> are just some ideas, which I would like to get out of my head.
>> Thus in this email I deliberately leave the "procurement process" for a
>> proportional election system for the Czech green party in order to indulge
>> in some academic speculation.
>>
>> ---
>>
>> Extension suggestion:
>> The Schulze proportional rankig method is good, but has one weakness,
>> which I will try to examplify below.
>>
>> Our main problem with the proposal of Schulze, is that it gives us more
>> hierarchy than we usually need, and that it drops proportionality
>> unnecessarily much.
>> Let's for the sake of the argument say, that we want to select the Green
>> regional party council in Prague, which (as an exception) has two vice
>> presidents, without internal ordering and seven members.
>> Thus this council looks like the following: P, VPa, VPb, Ma, Mb, Mc, Md
>> (Ma means Member a).
>>
>> The proportional ranking needed is not P>VPa>VPb>Ma>Mb>Mc>Md,
>> but P>[VPa, VPb]>[Ma, Mb, Mc, Md].
>> Let us call this required ranking for "boundary conditions".
>>
>> I will discuss some ideas to address this issue by with a little
>> inspiration from the world of statistics.
>>
>> ---
>>
>>  In statistics, the top-down and bottom-up approach correspond to two
>> heuristics often used to select variables to a regression model from a large
>> number of candidate variables, specifically to forward and backward
>> selection, see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression):
>>
>> In statistics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics>, *stepwise
>> regression* includes regression models in which the choice of predictive
>> variables is carried out by an automatic 
>> procedure.[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression#cite_note-0>
>> [2] 
>> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression#cite_note-1>[3]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepwise_regression#cite_note-2>Usually,
>>  this takes the form of a sequence of
>> F-tests <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-test>, but other techniques are
>> possible, such as t-tests <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-test>, adjusted
>> R-square <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-square>, Akaike information
>> criterion <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaike_information_criterion>, 
>> Bayesian
>> information 
>&

Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Raph Frank,

Thanks, for sorting things out and for the example.

Based on your comments, I'll try to explain what I meant by the
"unified" method, even though you basically said it all in your
previous email.

Thus, as you pointed out, the "unified" Schulze method is equivalent
to Schulze STV, if it is modified to always include already elected
members. You mention, that the Schulze proportional ranking thus is a
special case of this method which always elects only one member.

The "unified" Schulze method is also equivalent to Schulze's
proportional ranking, if it is modified to elect groups of hopefuls.
A special case of this method is Schulze STV - where the group size is
the same as the number of seats.

I guess, that we can say, that Schulze proportional ranking and
Schulze STV are special cases of an underlying Schulze method.

Thanks for pointing these things out.
I really have to take a closer look at the paper, and at Schulze STV.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

2010/5/7, Raph Frank :
> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
>> The proportional ranking needed is not P>VPa>VPb>Ma>Mb>Mc>Md,
>> but P>[VPa, VPb]>[Ma, Mb, Mc, Md].
>> Let us call this required ranking for "boundary conditions".
>
> Schulze's method can do that too.
>
> Step 1: Elect the Schulze single seat method winner as President
> Step 2: Elect a 3 person council using Schulze-STV, but the President
> must be a member
> Step 3: Elect a 7 person council using Schulze-STV, but the President
> + VPs must be members.
>
> I think this is what you meant by your unified method?
>
> Schulze rankings is just Schulze-STV, except you elect councils that
> increase in size by one each iteration, and members elected in
> previous iterations must be members of subsequent councils.
>
>> Example (from an email by Schulze):
>> "40 ABC
>> 25 BAC
>> 35 CBA
>> The Schulze proportional ranking is BAC.
>> However, for two seats, Droop proportionality, requires that A and C are
>> elected."
>>
>> The "unified" method for two seats without boundary conditions would
>> select
>> BA (i.e.Schulze STV)
>
> Schulze-STV meets the Droop criterion, so would elect A and C in a 2 seat
> race.
>
> Schulze-rankings elects B and then A as you say.
>
> There are 2 steps:
>
> *** Work out A's score vs C:  ***
>
> We split the voters in 2 groups
>
> Voters who prefer B to A: 60
> Voters who prefer C to A: 35
>
> There are no options in which group each voter can be placed, as no
> voter is eligible for both groups.
>
> The smallest group has 35 voters so, A better than than C gets 35 votes
>
> *** Work out C's score vs A ***
>
> Again we split into 2 groups
>
> Voters who prefer only B to C: 0
> Voters who prefer only A to C: 0
> Voters who prefer both to C: 65
>
> Thus we split the third group into 2 parts, as they can be placed in
> either group.
>
> Voters who prefer B to C: 32.5
> Voters who prefer A to C: 32.5
>
> The smallest group has 32.5 voters so, C better than A gets 32.5 votes
>
> Thus the result is
>
> A gets 35 votes and C get 32.5 votes, so A wins the 2nd seat.
>
> Anyway, I think the rankings method can be generalised to allow groups
> of candidates to be elected at once, rather than electing them one at
> a time.
>

-- 
Odesláno z mobilního zařízení

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Andrew Myers,

this method looks interesting, as it is proportional, Condorcet and non
STV-like.
You write on your web-page, that: "the correctness of the algorithm depends
on a currently unproved conjecture: that if improvement of a committee is
possible, it can be done by replacing one member at a time".
It would be very difficult to gain support for a method, which relies on an
unproven conjecture.
I see this as the biggest problem in your proposed method.

I guess that from the presentation every voter votes for M candidates, where
M is the number of seats, and that the voter uses range-like voting for each
of the candidates voted for on the ballot.
I don't understand the two modes - combined weights and best candidate and
why two modes are needed.

You write on your web page, that: "The factor (*k*+1) may be surprising in
the condition for proportional validity, but it actually agrees with
proportional representation election methods developed elsewhere; it is
analogous to the Droop
quota used
by many STV election methods"
It could be nice, if you could show a proof on how the method achieves
proportionality, what advantages it has to standard STV and how it tackles
strategic-voting/vote management (for instance - give zero weight to the
strongest competitors).
I assume it is not used for elections anywhere, so some alpha testing could
be appropriate.

Best regards
Peter Zborník



2010/5/4 Andrew Myers 

> If you are looking for a proportional Condorcet method, I will also
> recommend the proportional election method that I developed. It is not
> STV-like, but it achieves proportionality when there are blocs of voters. It
> has the added advantage that it is already built into a running Internet
> voting system, CIVS. This algorithm has been used for many online polls and
> has been a success. The code of CIVS is publicly available. For more
> information about the method, see:
>
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/civs/proportional.html
>
> By the way, CIVS has recently acquired support for internationalization. It
> would be easy to construct a Czech instance if someone were willing to
> translate approximately 250 sentences from English to Czech. There is, for
> example, a Hungarian version (see
> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/civs-test/index.html.hu, translated by
> Árpád Magosányi). I am in the market for help translating to other
> languages.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- Andrew
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

A mathematically more sound notation of the importance of the functions of
the council members would be the following:
M1>M2=M3>M4=M5=M6=M7, where Mn is a member of the set of all council
members.
instead of P>[VPa, VPb]>[Ma, Mb, Mc, Md].

The "unified method" is called Schulze generalized proportional ranking.
This method would repeatedly apply the fill the not yet elected (vacant)
seats of councils, that are
elected by STV method (FVSSTV).
Schulze describes his method in chapter 7 of
http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf

<http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf>
Best regards
Peter Zborník



On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:11 PM, Raph Frank  wrote:

> On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 4:27 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
> > The proportional ranking needed is not P>VPa>VPb>Ma>Mb>Mc>Md,
> > but P>[VPa, VPb]>[Ma, Mb, Mc, Md].
> > Let us call this required ranking for "boundary conditions".
>
> Schulze's method can do that too.
>
> Step 1: Elect the Schulze single seat method winner as President
> Step 2: Elect a 3 person council using Schulze-STV, but the President
> must be a member
> Step 3: Elect a 7 person council using Schulze-STV, but the President
> + VPs must be members.
>
> I think this is what you meant by your unified method?
>
> Schulze rankings is just Schulze-STV, except you elect councils that
> increase in size by one each iteration, and members elected in
> previous iterations must be members of subsequent councils.
>
> > Example (from an email by Schulze):
> > "40 ABC
> > 25 BAC
> > 35 CBA
> > The Schulze proportional ranking is BAC.
> > However, for two seats, Droop proportionality, requires that A and C are
> > elected."
> >
> > The "unified" method for two seats without boundary conditions would
> select
> > BA (i.e.Schulze STV)
>
> Schulze-STV meets the Droop criterion, so would elect A and C in a 2 seat
> race.
>
> Schulze-rankings elects B and then A as you say.
>
> There are 2 steps:
>
> *** Work out A's score vs C:  ***
>
> We split the voters in 2 groups
>
> Voters who prefer B to A: 60
> Voters who prefer C to A: 35
>
> There are no options in which group each voter can be placed, as no
> voter is eligible for both groups.
>
> The smallest group has 35 voters so, A better than than C gets 35 votes
>
> *** Work out C's score vs A ***
>
> Again we split into 2 groups
>
> Voters who prefer only B to C: 0
> Voters who prefer only A to C: 0
> Voters who prefer both to C: 65
>
> Thus we split the third group into 2 parts, as they can be placed in
> either group.
>
> Voters who prefer B to C: 32.5
> Voters who prefer A to C: 32.5
>
> The smallest group has 32.5 voters so, C better than A gets 32.5 votes
>
> Thus the result is
>
> A gets 35 votes and C get 32.5 votes, so A wins the 2nd seat.
>
> Anyway, I think the rankings method can be generalised to allow groups
> of candidates to be elected at once, rather than electing them one at
> a time.
>

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[EM] Hybrid/generalized ranked/approval ballots

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

have the properties of hybrid or generalized ranking/approval ballots been
examined?
A hybrid/generalized ranking/approval ballot is a ballot, with where the
voter ranks the candidates by either > or = without any other restrictions.
Say we have seven candidates ABCDEFG.
Say the voter likes A the most, then BC the same, then DE the same and last
FG.
Then instead of having the ranking A>B>C>D>E>F>G, or some approval of ABC
for instance, the ballot would look like
A>B=C>D=E>F=G.
For this type of ballot, the approval and ranked ballot would be a special
case.
I speculate that, such a hybrid ballot might take the best of two worlds:
the expressiveness of the fully ranked ballot and the robustness of the
approval voting ballot.

The voters (at least I) would most likely appreciate this liberation of
their preferences, since they might themselves decide to use a fully ranked
ballot, an approval ballot or something inbetween.

It seems that for instance the Schulze single-winner method allows for a
simplified hybrid system, as it allows for not listing all candidates.

Would be nice to know your thoughts on this.
Are hybrid ranked ballots a good idea?
Would your preferred methods be able to handle hybrid?

Best regards
Peter Zborník

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Re: [EM] Hybrid/generalized ranked/approval ballots

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all

If we study Condorcet voting with the two types of ballots: ranked and
hybrid, then the differences can be drastic:

Normal ranked ballots:
30 B>C>A
30 A>C>B
1 C (i.e. C>A=B, when using Schulze, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Ballot)
1 C>B>A

Pairwise preferences
A B C
A 30 30
B 31 30
C 32 32

Thus C wins

Hybrid ranked ballots (replace two > with = in the example above):
30 B>C=A
30 A>C=B
1 C (i.e. C>A=B)
1 C>B>A

A B C
A 30 30
B 31 30
C 2 2

Thus B wins.

I hope I calculated correctly.

As a voter, I would prefer the hybrid ballot, as it gives me more expressive
power, unless this kind of ballot has some other weakness when used.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> have the properties of hybrid or generalized ranking/approval ballots been
> examined?
> A hybrid/generalized ranking/approval ballot is a ballot, with where the
> voter ranks the candidates by either > or = without any other restrictions.
> Say we have seven candidates ABCDEFG.
> Say the voter likes A the most, then BC the same, then DE the same and last
> FG.
> Then instead of having the ranking A>B>C>D>E>F>G, or some approval of ABC
> for instance, the ballot would look like
> A>B=C>D=E>F=G.
> For this type of ballot, the approval and ranked ballot would be a special
> case.
> I speculate that, such a hybrid ballot might take the best of two worlds:
> the expressiveness of the fully ranked ballot and the robustness of the
> approval voting ballot.
>
> The voters (at least I) would most likely appreciate this liberation of
> their preferences, since they might themselves decide to use a fully ranked
> ballot, an approval ballot or something inbetween.
>
> It seems that for instance the Schulze single-winner method allows for a
> simplified hybrid system, as it allows for not listing all candidates.
>
> Would be nice to know your thoughts on this.
> Are hybrid ranked ballots a good idea?
> Would your preferred methods be able to handle hybrid?
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>

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Re: [EM] Hybrid/generalized ranked/approval ballots

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

an alternative way to count wins against equally ranked candidates,
would be to give both 0.5 wins per vote and not 0 as I did in my previous
mail.

Thus the current state: A>B gives 1:0. A=B gives ?:? (A=B is only allowed at
the end of the ballot)
The proposal above: A>B gives 2:0. A=B gives 1:1 (linear transformation from
A>B - 1:0 and A=B - 0.5:0.5).
The soccer proposal  A>B gives 3:0, A=B gives 1:1 (linear transformation
from A>B - 1:0 and A=B -1/3:1/3. This proposal would (as in soccer)
encourage voters to differenciate between candidates, and candidates to try
to gain more support than the other candidates. The soccer ranking is purely
speculative though.

In the case, where we give 0.5 wins to equally-ranked candidates and 1 win
to higher ranked candidates, then I guess the second example below would
become:

A B C
A 30.5 45
B 31.5 45
C 17 17

given
30 B>C=A
30 A>C=B
1 C (i.e. C>A=B)
1 C>B>A

Thus B wins, but C does better than in the example below.

The example above is not the best illustration of how equal rankings can
change election results,
since a voter can always vote B>C=A by simply bullet-voting B.
A better example would be on the form A=B>C or A>B=C>D, but I hope you get
the point.

The question is, what the benefits and draw-backs are, if equal ranking of
candidates is allowed and if equal ranking should be allowed, but
discouraged, as in the soccer proposal.
If there are no draw-backs, then this ballot-type could be of use.

This is just a question out of curiousity and is really not a question for
the green party council elections.
I hope I haven't spammed this you too much with these emails.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Dear all
>
> If we study Condorcet voting with the two types of ballots: ranked and
> hybrid, then the differences can be drastic:
>
> Normal ranked ballots:
> 30 B>C>A
> 30 A>C>B
> 1 C (i.e. C>A=B, when using Schulze, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Ballot)
> 1 C>B>A
>
> Pairwise preferences
> A B C
> A 30 30
> B 31 30
> C 32 32
>
> Thus C wins
>
> Hybrid ranked ballots (replace two > with = in the example above):
> 30 B>C=A
> 30 A>C=B
> 1 C (i.e. C>A=B)
> 1 C>B>A
>
> A B C
> A 30 30
> B 31 30
> C 2 2
>
> Thus B wins.
>
> I hope I calculated correctly.
>
> As a voter, I would prefer the hybrid ballot, as it gives me more
> expressive power, unless this kind of ballot has some other weakness when
> used.
>
> Best regards
> Peter Zborník
>
> On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 2:26 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> have the properties of hybrid or generalized ranking/approval ballots been
>> examined?
>> A hybrid/generalized ranking/approval ballot is a ballot, with where the
>> voter ranks the candidates by either > or = without any other restrictions.
>> Say we have seven candidates ABCDEFG.
>> Say the voter likes A the most, then BC the same, then DE the same and
>> last FG.
>> Then instead of having the ranking A>B>C>D>E>F>G, or some approval of ABC
>> for instance, the ballot would look like
>> A>B=C>D=E>F=G.
>> For this type of ballot, the approval and ranked ballot would be a special
>> case.
>> I speculate that, such a hybrid ballot might take the best of two worlds:
>> the expressiveness of the fully ranked ballot and the robustness of the
>> approval voting ballot.
>>
>> The voters (at least I) would most likely appreciate this liberation of
>> their preferences, since they might themselves decide to use a fully ranked
>> ballot, an approval ballot or something inbetween.
>>
>> It seems that for instance the Schulze single-winner method allows for a
>> simplified hybrid system, as it allows for not listing all candidates.
>>
>> Would be nice to know your thoughts on this.
>> Are hybrid ranked ballots a good idea?
>> Would your preferred methods be able to handle hybrid?
>>
>> Best regards
>> Peter Zborník
>>
>
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Markus Schulze,

thanks for your reply.
Basically, I have to come up with some method or way to select one of the
two rankings you gave for A10, A12, A23, A33, A67.
That is a real problem.

Maybe we could use approval voting in this case to reduce the number of
candidates (hopefuls), I don't know.
These things happen in regression too when there are too many candidate
variables and too few data (forgot what it is called), therefore it is
standard to add a requirement that each variable (candidate) should be
significant in a univariate model at, say 5% or so in order to qualify as a
candidate in the multivariate model.
This requirement could for instance translate to a requirement of
eliminating the first X candidates, with the lowest Schulze-single winner
ranking (or the lowest share of preferences of the candidate on first M
places of the ballot) in the Schulze-STV election.
That heuristic could eliminate the candidates before they enter the model
and might resolve the ambiguities in some of the elections you describe.
R Fobes mentioned using approval voting to pre-select candidates.

I would like to send you an input file, but first I have to generate some
test-data.
I could start with some fictive elections, since we don't use ranked ballots
in our party.
A full-scale test will take some time to arrange.

By the way, out of pure curiosity, could a hybrid ranked ballot, i.e. a
ballot on the form A=B>C=D>E, be used in Schulze-STV in theory, without
sacrificing any of the good properties of the method?

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Markus Schulze <
markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Dear Peter Zbornik,
>
> you wrote (9 May 2010):
>
> > In your paper schulze3.pdf, there are some instances,
> > where the Schulze proportional ranking fails to produce
> > an unambiguous ordering (see for instance the result
> > for data set A10). Why do there ambiguities occur and
> > how would you recommend them to be resolved in a
> > deterministic manner without resorting to random number
> > generation etc?
>
> In 5 instances (A10, A12, A23, A33, A67), the Schulze
> proportional ranking is not unique. This is caused by
> the small numbers of voters and the large numbers of
> candidates.
>
> For example, in instance A10 (83 voters, 19 candidates),
> there are two possible Schulze proportional rankings:
> NAPMQFGRSLIBDJKEHOC and NMPQAFGRSLIBDJKEHOC.
>
> You wrote (9 May 2010):
>
> > Does Schulze-STV allow for truncated ballots? I.e. when
> > there are 5 candidates, does Schulze-STV allow me to
> > only rank two of them on my ballot?
>
> I recommend "proportional completion".
> This is explained in section 5.3 of
> http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf
> and in the file calcul01.pdf of
> http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze3.zip
>
> You wrote (9 May 2010):
>
> > I am also curious to know, if you think it would be
> > difficult for you to implement a program, which would
> > handle the green council elections in an optimal
> > proportional manner, i.e. methods, which would only
> > impose the required ranking.
>
> It would be simple to incorporate all the requested
> specifications. Send me an input file with explanations.
>
> Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Proportional election method needed for the Czech Green party - Council elections

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Markus Schulze,

You wrote On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 6:59 PM:
"I recommend that you should solve indecisive situations by using the
numbers of the member ID cards of the candidates."
we have member ID cards, and each of them has a number.
I guess we could give the oldest member of the party the place in case of a
tie, i.e. the person with the lowest number on the ID card.
Is this solution in line with what you recommend?

You wrote On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 6:59 PM:
"Yes, the Schulze STV method and the Schulze proportional ranking method can
handle situations with incomplete individual rankings without sacrificing
any of the good properties."
This would be great. Just to avoid any potential misunderstandings: can
Schulze-STV and Schulze proportional ranking handle ballots on the form "M1
Operator M2 Operator ... Operator Mn", where Operator is in {>, =} and
M1,..., Mn are elements in the set of hopefuls?
That would indeed be a great bonus.

Best regards
Peter Zborník


On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 6:59 PM, Markus Schulze <
markus.schu...@alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Dear Peter Zbornik,
>
> you wrote (9 May 2010):
>
> > Basically, I have to come up with some method or way
> > to select one of the two rankings you gave for A10,
> > A12, A23, A33, A67. That is a real problem.
>
> I recommend that you should solve indecisive situations
> by using the numbers of the member ID cards of the
> candidates.
>
>
>
> > By the way, out of pure curiosity, could a hybrid
> > ranked ballot, i.e. a ballot on the form A=B>C=D>E,
> > be used in Schulze-STV in theory, without sacrificing
> > any of the good properties of the method?
>
> Yes, the Schulze STV method and the Schulze proportional
> ranking method can handle situations with incomplete
> individual rankings without sacrificing any of the good
> properties.
>
> Markus Schulze
>
>
> 
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>

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[EM] Article: Electoral dysfunction: Why democracy is always unfair (New Scientist)

[Peter Zbornik]

Article in New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627581.400-electoral-dysfunction-why-democracy-is-always-unfair.htm
(link from http://www.openstv.org/).

PZ

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[EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

thank you for your help with the election system for the council elections
of the green party.
I will try to move on with technical testing of Schulze's methods and the
specification of the elections to the party lists as soon as time allows.
Thanks all for the support and all methods supplied.
I never could imagine that I would get such a response.
When advocating proportional elections in the party, I have found it
difficult to explain to other members of the green party why proportional
elections to our party organs is a good thing.

So far my argument has been the following:
The leadership of the party should represent all members.
Otherwise infighting will follow, which weakens the party both internally
and in the eyes of the voter.
A member of the green party without any representatives he/she likes is
likely to either
(i) leave the party or
(ii) try to get representation of his/her faction by removing all
the current party representatives, which the current representatives
naturally do not like, so both sides spend a great deal of time on
positional battles instead of working for the party.
An other argument is, that it is much easier to tear down a party's
reputation than building it up.

I guess I would need more help with propagating proportional elections
within my party

I would like to ask you if you could help finding some short and to the
point arguments (preferrably with some real-life examples).
We need to explain why a political party would benefit from electing their
representatives to the different party councils proportionally instead of
using the winner-takes-it-all methods (block-voting) which are in use today.

Such power arguments could be a help when I try to sell the idea of
proportional elections in the Czech Green party.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

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Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Terry,

thanks, answers in the text.

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Terry Bouricius <
ter...@burlingtontelecom.net> wrote:

> Peter Zborník,
>
> The appropriateness of using PR to elect a party governing council really
> depends on the function and goal of the body.
>
> PR is appropriate when a group is going to engage in a deliberative
> process... where it is beneficial to have a microcosm of the full
> membership participating. There is compelling evidence that the quality of
> group decisions is enhanced through diversity, compared to exclusively
> like-minded people or "experts" who tend towards "group-think." Including
> members with diverse perspectives promotes consideration of new options
> that might not occur to a homogeneous group, and frequently leads to
> better decisions. (James Surowiecki gives examples and sites research
> showing this in his book "The Wisdom of Crowds.")

- Thanks yes, your tip is very relevant, I have used it in argumentation,
but forgot about the relevance.

However, if the council's function is non-deliberative, but rather to
carry out a workplan adopted by a majority vote at a convention, diversity
and proportional representation may not be beneficial to the organization.
Including minority perspectives who lost the battle at the convention may
prompt this faction to prove they were right by under-cutting the
workplan.
- OK. Our councils have significant executive powers they are not just
"clerks". There is not much time to discuss politics at the conventions,
since the elections take so much time into question.

Terry Bouricius

>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Raph Frank" 
> To: 
> Cc: 
> Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 5:36 AM
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed
> (Czech green party)
>
>
> Another argument that can be used is that it maximizes the number of
> people who are directly represented.
>
> If you elect using a single seat method, then you could end up with a
> situation where 51% of the party are represented and the other 49%
> aren't.
>
> With PR, if you have 5 seats, then each councilor would represent at
> least 1/6 of the party.  This means that at least 5/6 of the party are
> represented on the council by someone they actually voted for.
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 8:00 AM,   wrote:
> > The method you have in mind proposing, namely the Schulze
> > proportional method, may not correctly fill the council with
> > smaller sub-groups -- such as members who comprise 15
> > percent of the Green Party -- so I don't suggest saying that
> > those smaller sub-groups will get representation. I presume
> > that the Schulze proportional method at least gives
> > representation for both a majority group and an opposition
> > group (which is often a virtual coalition), so that's what I
> > suggest focusing on.
>
> I think the final proposal was to use proportional rankings.  This
> will give a generally proportional result.  There might be some small
> variations.
>
> However, if the last few councilors are elected at the same time, then
> they should correct any problems with the earlier stages, so you get a
> President that is centerist and a proportional council.
>
> > As I've said before, it's difficult to get proportional
> > representation for more than the two main sub-groups
>
> That isn't true, PR methods are designed to do exactly that.  If a
> group represents 1/6 of the electorate, then they will get roughly 1/6
> of the seats.
>
> However, very small groups can't be represented due to a lack of seats.
>
> > (Although I have not yet seen a description of the Schulze
> > proportional method, I'm confident that it has to be much
> > better than your current approach of using single-mark
> > ballots.)
>
> Right, any PR method is better than single seat methods in terms of
> maximising the number of people who are directly represented
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

Frank, just one comment: Vote management is very common in our party. And
yes, we have voters often split up in groups, or factions.
Peter

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Raph Frank  wrote:

> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 5:46 PM,   wrote:
> > In particular, such a highly proportional method is more
> > likely to be vulnerable to strategic voting.
>
> In what way?
>
> > Personally I regard resistance to strategic voting to be
> > very important, and it should not be neglected just to
> > achieve what on the surface appears to be highly
> > proportional results.
>
> "Vote management" is the main strategic issue with PR-STV and
> Schulze's method is designed to be resistant.
>
> This shouldn't be a big issue for elections within a party.  It
> requires voters to be split up into groups and vote according to
> instructions.  I would hope that if a candidate tried to organise
> that, there would be a negative reaction within the party.


> Even with basic PR-STV, I don't think this is a major issue for
> internal party elections.
>
> > Another way to express this is to say that, as a voter, I
> > would rather choose to elect a competent leader whose
> > political views are slightly different than mine, rather
> > than elect a less-competent politician who claims to
> > represent the party I most prefer.
>
> I agree, but that is what PR-STV allows you to do.  You rank the
> candidates in order of your choice.
>
> You can decide how to balance competence and political alignment.
> Other votes might decide on a different trade-off.
>  
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Kristoffer, dear readers,

Kristofer, you wrote below: "A minor opinion within the party might need
time to grow, and might in the end turn out to be significant, but using a
winner-takes-it-all method quashes such minority opinions before they get
the chance."

Thanks, yes I have used this line of argument a lot (we actually have a
global charter of the greens, according to which the greens are obliged
to put the same principles into practice in thei organizations as they work
for in society).
The problem is, that this argument does not "stick", it is simply not sexy.

Would it be possible to measure the "utility" or "happiness" among the
voters in the party compared to different election methods. I saw you
Kristofer did some work on this but I didn't understand it, I guess I lack
the preliminaries.

I guess the notion of "Bayesian regret" or something similar could be used
to argue that proportional elections are better than block-voting, but I
have no idea of how to explain this, as I don't know the subject at all
(pareto optimal social allocations, or whatever).

It seems intuitive that economic tools could be used (I know almost no
economics), since ranked ballot elections simply are explicitly stated
preference orderings.

I guess that voting and elections, could be indeed one of the best
imaginable real-world examples, where preference orderings of the
actors actually are known, and thus all of the machinery of economic
equilibria and social welfare functions could be applied (like the
Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function).

I am personally interested in the possiblity of measuring utility, is there
some (preferably short) literature on social welfare, utility and voting
theory for proportional elections (I know some undergrad maths and
statistics)?

Best regards
Peter

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:

> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>  thank you for your help with the election system for the council
>> elections of the green party.
>> I will try to move on with technical testing of Schulze's methods and the
>> specification of the elections to the party lists as soon as time allows.
>> Thanks all for the support and all methods supplied.
>> I never could imagine that I would get such a response.
>> When advocating proportional elections in the party, I have found it
>> difficult to explain to other members of the green party why proportional
>> elections to our party organs is a good thing.
>>
>
> As far as I remember, your party, the Czech Green Party, is a minor party.
> Therefore, it might be possible to draw an analogy to the proportional
> methods used by the Czech Republic itself. Without proportional
> representation, the Green Party would have next to no chance of ever getting
> into parliament. However, since your nation does use proportional
> representation, there is some chance.
>
> The same argument could be used within the party. Since the Green Party is
> a minor party, I reason that the party membership honestly believes the
> presence of that party is a good thing. Thus, they would also know (to some
> extent, at least), that minor groups of opinion - like their own party in
> comparison to the major parties - can be good and can add valuable ideas to
> governance. Then could not the same argument be used for the party itself? A
> minor opinion within the party might need time to grow, and might in the end
> turn out to be significant, but using a winner-takes-it-all method quashes
> such minority opinions before they get the chance.
>

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Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all,

just a post scriptum to the email below to make things clear:
I wonder if there is a short and to the point argument for dummies, why
proportional elections (say elections meeting the droop quota) leave the
voters happier than winner-takes it all elections.
This "for dummies" explanation of the advantages of proportional voting
could be combined with a longer technical explanation, perhaps using social
welfare functions. for people with time and interest to understand the
argument in full.

I don't mean that the argument above would be the best argument, but it
could be a really interesting one.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Dear Kristoffer, dear readers,
>
> Kristofer, you wrote below: "A minor opinion within the party might need
> time to grow, and might in the end turn out to be significant, but using a
> winner-takes-it-all method quashes such minority opinions before they get
> the chance."
>
> Thanks, yes I have used this line of argument a lot (we actually have a
> global charter of the greens, according to which the greens are obliged
> to put the same principles into practice in thei organizations as they work
> for in society).
> The problem is, that this argument does not "stick", it is simply not sexy.
>
> Would it be possible to measure the "utility" or "happiness" among the
> voters in the party compared to different election methods. I saw you
> Kristofer did some work on this but I didn't understand it, I guess I lack
> the preliminaries.
>
> I guess the notion of "Bayesian regret" or something similar could be used
> to argue that proportional elections are better than block-voting, but I
> have no idea of how to explain this, as I don't know the subject at all
> (pareto optimal social allocations, or whatever).
>
> It seems intuitive that economic tools could be used (I know almost no
> economics), since ranked ballot elections simply are explicitly stated
> preference orderings.
>
> I guess that voting and elections, could be indeed one of the best
> imaginable real-world examples, where preference orderings of the
> actors actually are known, and thus all of the machinery of economic
> equilibria and social welfare functions could be applied (like the
> Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function).
>
> I am personally interested in the possiblity of measuring utility, is there
> some (preferably short) literature on social welfare, utility and voting
> theory for proportional elections (I know some undergrad maths and
> statistics)?
>
> Best regards
> Peter
>
>   On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
> km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:
>
>> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>  thank you for your help with the election system for the council
>>> elections of the green party.
>>> I will try to move on with technical testing of Schulze's methods and the
>>> specification of the elections to the party lists as soon as time allows.
>>> Thanks all for the support and all methods supplied.
>>> I never could imagine that I would get such a response.
>>> When advocating proportional elections in the party, I have found it
>>> difficult to explain to other members of the green party why proportional
>>> elections to our party organs is a good thing.
>>>
>>
>> As far as I remember, your party, the Czech Green Party, is a minor party.
>> Therefore, it might be possible to draw an analogy to the proportional
>> methods used by the Czech Republic itself. Without proportional
>> representation, the Green Party would have next to no chance of ever getting
>> into parliament. However, since your nation does use proportional
>> representation, there is some chance.
>>
>> The same argument could be used within the party. Since the Green Party is
>> a minor party, I reason that the party membership honestly believes the
>> presence of that party is a good thing. Thus, they would also know (to some
>> extent, at least), that minor groups of opinion - like their own party in
>> comparison to the major parties - can be good and can add valuable ideas to
>> governance. Then could not the same argument be used for the party itself? A
>> minor opinion within the party might need time to grow, and might in the end
>> turn out to be significant, but using a winner-takes-it-all method quashes
>> such minority opinions before they get the chance.
>>
>
>

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Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Jameson,

yes your argument is similar to the one of Terry Bouricius ("the wisdom of
crowds", and yes it is a good one.
Diversity also has an appeal to a diverse set of voters, allowing for
improvements in voter preferences.
That is a good line of argument, thanks.


A very nice argument for proportional elections would be one founded in
welfare economic theory.
That would be very interesting at least for me, and I quess this argument
should not be too difficult to formulate for elections (but I have no clue
how)

I am not sure if the resulting argument would be interesting for normal
party members, but I think it is an important and very fundamental question
to answer.
I have seen technical arguments flying around in this forum (Bayesian
regret, socially optimal pareto fronts, and Kristian's intruigung graph at:
http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/), which I haven't
been able to understand.

What I do understand is that we have a preference ordering when voting,
which can be used in social welfare functions (see
http://aede.osu.edu/programs/Anderson/trade/Welfare5rev.pdf, page 8 and on).

Maybe it can be shown that proportional elections are better than
winner-takes-it-all elections for a wide range of social welfare functions.

*Some wild speculation about things I don't understand very well:*
 Selecting a social welfare function (i.e. selecting between a utiltarian,
bernoulli-nash or rawlsian social welfare function) can indeed be a voting
task itself. I just don't have the proper training in economy to understand
the details, like the publication below:

I quote a publication I found:
"The isoelastic SWF [see the publication *PZ comment*]  takes on a number of
familiar foms depending on the value of *p. *When *p *=O, it is the
classical utilitarian. The limit as p-1 is the Bernoulli-Nash *(linear *in
the logarithms). *And *as *p-m, *it is the Rawlsian maximin fom. These cases
are characterized by the shape of the social indifference curves shown in
Figure 2.1. Because it is a function (i.e. the inverse) of the elasticity of
substitution along *these *indifference curves. p reflects society's
willingness to made-off utility berween individuals. *A *greater value of *p
*reflects greater social aversion to inequality . Therefore, *p *may be
considered an equity parameter, chosen by consensus or some other political
means."(see page 24-25 in *
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10891/1/NQ27722.pdf*<https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10891/1/NQ27722.pdf>
)

Threse publications seems to be on a path which could have something to do
with voting (selects the bernoulli-nash social welfare function):
Economic analysis and distributive justice, page 49:
http://people.ku.edu/~dburress/econ-ana.pdf
Page 9: http://www.cherry.gatech.edu/mod/pubs/proceed3/c14_burr.pdf
Isoelastic function again: Page 9, equation 10:
http://www.mi.uni-hamburg.de/fileadmin/fnu-files/publication/tol/ereaggregation.pdf
(there
is even a maximin function)

 I personally like the Bernoulli-Nash welfare function on page 13, as it has
good properties, where the utilities are multiplied instead of added (i. the
form is the same as the other functions in the Pareto framework ii. it gives
logaritmic weighs to utility by multiplying them efficiently preferring more
"equal" utility distributions without demanding that utility should be
distributed equally). Samuelson and Bergson proposed the Bernoulli-Nash
social welfare function themselves.

Ok, I am not sure if I made things clear or not, i touched (very
lightly) upon this stuff in my studies. Seems to be an area which is not
well understood.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 5:55 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> The whole point of having a representative body is that it represents the
> diversity of an organization. It's not just a matter of diversity of
> opinion; it's a diversity of strengths, of outlooks, of focus, which makes
> the organization stronger than any one person. A non-proportional system
> tends in the other direction, of electing N clones of the same bland
> majority candidate. Selecting only for broad appeal means selecting only for
> bland schmoozing; certainly a valuable skill in politics, but not the only
> skill you want your party to cultivate.
>
> Is that a good start?
>
> Jameson Quinn
>
> 2010/5/19 Peter Zbornik 
>
>>   Dear all,
>>
>> just a post scriptum to the email below to make things clear:
>> I wonder if there is a short and to the point argument for dummies, why
>> proportional elections (say elections meeting the droop quota) leave the
>> voters happier than winner-takes it all elections.
>> This "for dummies" explanation of the advantages of proportional voting
>> could be combined with a longer technical explanatio

Re: [EM] Why proportional elections - Power arguments needed (Czech green party)

[Peter Zbornik]

On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 9:43 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:

> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear Kristoffer, dear readers,
>>  Kristofer, you wrote below: "A minor opinion within the party might need
>> time to grow, and might in the end turn out to be significant, but using a
>> winner-takes-it-all method quashes such minority opinions before they get
>> the chance."
>>  Thanks, yes I have used this line of argument a lot (we actually have a
>> global charter of the greens, according to which the greens are obliged to
>> put the same principles into practice in thei organizations as they work for
>> in society).
>> The problem is, that this argument does not "stick", it is simply not
>> sexy.
>>  Would it be possible to measure the "utility" or "happiness" among the
>> voters in the party compared to different election methods. I saw you
>> Kristofer did some work on this but I didn't understand it, I guess I lack
>> the preliminaries.
>>  I guess the notion of "Bayesian regret" or something similar could be
>> used to argue that proportional elections are better than block-voting, but
>> I have no idea of how to explain this, as I don't know the subject at all
>> (pareto optimal social allocations, or whatever).
>>
>
> Yes, I made a voting simulator using a binary issue model to determine
> proportionality. Very simply put, each voter and candidate has a number of
> bits specifying whether the voter/candidate in question takes the "yes" or
> the "no" position on each issue, voters prefer candidates with similar
> opinions, and proportionality is determined by comparing the fraction of
> "yes" for each opinion when considering the elected council members alone
> and the population in general - the closer, the better.
>
> However, that metric is only of interest if you already think
> proportionality is a good thing. By using the metric, I have found that some
> methods are more proportional than others; but I have also (later) found
> that there often is a tradeoff. Some methods are better than others on both
> proportionality and on majoritarian satisfaction (by metrics such as
> Bayesian regret), but beyond this, a method that is more proportional is
> also worse from a majoritarian point of view.
>
> This should not come as a surprise in hindsight. Proportionality forms a
> constraint, and majoritarian satisfaction another. While proportionality
> seeks to set the council so that any given group is well represented,
> majority satisfaction seeks to set it so that the majority of society, as
> one bloc, has its opinions represented. Giving a minority a voice leaves
> less for the majority, and there is your tradeoff.
>
> I may have given the link before, but I think it's a good graph showing
> this tradeoff for a council of two candidates:
> http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/
>
> Scroll down a little to see the results graph.

Yes, your example is cool and gives food for thought.
However some explanations might help.
What is the Social optimum Pareto front? How do you calculate it? In what
publication is "Social optimum Pareto front"
On the page above, you write "Detailed data: election methods scores (Pareto
front)" -What is the difference between the election methods scores and the
Pareto front election data?
What is normalized Bayesian regret for ranked list, how do you calculate it?
Could you please give a simple example?


>
>  It seems intuitive that economic tools could be used (I know almost no
>> economics), since ranked ballot elections simply are explicitly stated
>> preference orderings.
>>  I guess that voting and elections, could be indeed one of the best
>> imaginable real-world examples, where preference orderings of the actors
>> actually are known, and thus all of the machinery of economic equilibria and
>> social welfare functions could be applied (like the Bernoulli-Nash social
>> welfare function).
>>
>
>  Game theory can be applied to single-winner methods, and has been with
> concepts like the uncovered set, minimal covering set, independence of
> Pareto-dominated alternatives and so on. Game theory can't really be applied
> to multiwinner methods because much less is known about multiplayer games.
> Further confounding the issue is the fact that voting is not rational in an
> economic sense; unless in a very small committee, any given voter has next
> to no chance of actually altering the outcome.

I guess this is correct if we analyse the decision between voting and not
voting for a "rational economic man"

Re: [EM] Satisfaction Approval Voting - A Better Proportional Representation Electoral Method

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear Kristofer,

would the constant relative risk function be of any help for Approval
voting?

F=( s(1)^(r-1)+...+s(n)^(r-1) ) / (r-1).

s(i) is the number of approved council members that are elected, where
1<=i<=n, n is the number of voters
r is a coefficient of risk aversion, which determines the rate at which
marginal utility of the voter declines with the number of council members
awarded to the voter.

The constant relative risk aversion function (CRRA) is a special case of
Arrow-Pratts relative risk aversion function
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_relative_risk_aversion#Relative_risk_aversion.
Other names of this function is: isoelastic utility function, CES.

Why this function:
Each of the elected council member represents one unit of a consumption
good.
If a voter approves of a candidate and this candidate is elected, then the
voter gets one unit, if the voter approves of two elected council members,
then he/she gets two units and so on. The marginal utility of the next unit
is defined by the function F above given a value on r.
Thus we want to distribute S units of this good, where S is the number of
council members in such a way that happiness or utility (i.e. F) is
maximized among the voters, given a value on r.

The selection of r determines the behavior of F:
If r=1, then F becomes the Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function:
log(s(1))+...+log(s(n)) in the limit. As log(0) is minus infinity, this
function requires that each voter gets at least one council member, thus it
over-represents minorities and insures, that "everyone has their
representative" in the council. This function is useless, if all bullet vote
for themselves.
If r=0, then F becomes the standard utilitarian function used to calculate
Bayesian regret: s(1)+...+s(n), which just counts the number of approvals
and is indifferent about the distribution (i.e. if we have two voters and
two seats and four candicates a b c d, and the ballots (approve a b) and
(approve c d), then all elected councils have the same value of F).
If r<0, then F favors winner-takes-it-all block voting.
As r goes to minus infinity, it favors dictatorial council appointments:
max(s(i), 1<=i<=n)
As r goes to infinity then it becomes min(s(i), 1<=i<=n)
If r is around 0.5, then it seems to prefer droop quota proportionality, at
least for the case of two seats and five voters. Maybe there is a value of r
or a function to determine the value of r.

Usage for Satisfaction Approval voting (SAV):
The function F can also be used to construct election systems, provided that
the utility can be measured (which is the case in Approval voting and in the
simulations at: http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/).
The task for SAV is to find a suitable value of r, for instance which finds
proportional representations meeting the droop quota and optimizes utility.
I don't know if there is one, but values of around 1/2 could be a good point
to start (i.e. F=(sqrt(s(i))+...+sqrt(s(n)))*2.

Other uses:
It seems that F can be used both as a proportionality index and as a
majoritan preference index for suitable values of r.

F can be used to explain why there are different voting systems - they
simply have different values of r, i.e. they have different utility
functions. For a suitable value of r, block-voting has higher utility and is
thus "better" than proportional representation, like STV.

F can also be used to measure which voting systems are the "best" and to
measure the "distance" or "similarity" between voting systems against some
benchmark values of r.
It would be cool to see how the chart at
http://munsterhjelm.no/km/elections/multiwinner_tradeoffs/ would look like
using F with different values of r at the axis.
For instance, if r=0, then we would get Bayesian regret.
F with r=0.5 (or some other value of r between 0http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/ISSUE20/I20P4.PDF.

Maybe the index could be generalized for condorcet methods, but I don't know
how.

Best regards
Peter Zborník



On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:

> fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote:
>
>> Satisfaction Approval Voting - A Better Proportional Representation
>> Electoral Method
>>
>> One way to generalize Proportional Approval voting to range ballots is by
>> finding the most natural smooth extension of the function f that takes
>> each
>> natural number n to the sum
>>
>> f(n) = 1 + 1/2 + ... + 1/n.
>>
>> It turns out that we can extend f(n) to all positive real values of n via
>> the
>> integral
>>
>> Integral from zero to one of (1-t^n)/(1-t) with respect to t
>>
>> For PAV generalized to range ballots, first normalize the ratings to be
>> between
>> zero and one.
>>
>
> As might be obvious by my messages, I find Sainte-Lague of interest. What
> would the integral be for the corresponding "generalized divisor"
> C/(n+C)?
>
> If C is 1, we have D'Hondt. If C is 0.5, we have Sainte-Lague.
>
>
>  Then for each proposed coalition C of k candida

Re: [EM] PAV and risk functions

[Peter Zbornik]

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:

> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear Kristofer,
>>
>> would the constant relative risk function be of any help for Approval
>> voting?
>>
>> F=( s(1)^(r-1)+...+s(n)^(r-1) ) / (r-1).
>>
>> s(i) is the number of approved council members that are elected, where
>> 1<=i<=n, n is the number of voters
>> r is a coefficient of risk aversion, which determines the rate at which
>> marginal utility of the voter declines with the number of council members
>> awarded to the voter.
>>
>
> That scoring method could be used for PAV (not SAV) style optimization. One
> could create a whole class of PAV style methods this way:
>
> - Define a function f(a, b) -> R, mapping pairs of candidate sets to real
> numbers, where a is the approval ballot and b is the candidate council.
> - Voters submit approval ballots v_1 ... v_n
> - Using brute force, find the council c so that sum(q = 1..n) f(v_q, c) is
> maximized.
>
It would be interesting to see the performance of these functions in your
chart with the pareto fronts, especially F for different values r.

>
> The greedy approximation can be defined in a similar generalized manner,
> but places restrictions upon the kind of f that can work. The greedy
> approximations would also be house monotone, I think, since they work by
> picking one candidate, then another, then another..

Thanks for the analysis. f can be a much more generally specified than I
did.
I don't know much about greedy approximatioins.


>
> The selection of r determines the behavior of F: If r=1, then F becomes the
>> Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function: log(s(1))+...+log(s(n)) in the
>> limit. As log(0) is minus infinity, this function requires that each voter
>> gets at least one council member, thus it over-represents minorities and
>> insures, that "everyone has their representative" in the council. This
>> function is useless, if all bullet vote for themselves.
>>
>
> Couldn't this be solved in a leximax fashion if only some voters bullet
> vote? That is, an outcome with fewer infinities win over an outcome with
> more no matter what; then if there's a tie between the number of infinities,
> the one with the greatest finite score wins.


I would rather prefer a small positive value of r, say 0.01.

I guess you could use leximax, but the method would lose its nice
mathematical properties. I think we would make up some own house mathematics
when saying that one result with infinitely low utility+3 would be better
than a result with infinitely low utility, since F measures cardinal utility
and not ordinal utility.

An other option would simply be to reward every voter one extra point of
utility from start, but that would be an ad-hoc rule (why not then add 1000
utility points or 0.01 points?).


>


> Other uses:
>> It seems that F can be used both as a proportionality index and as a
>> majoritan preference index for suitable values of r.
>
>

 Just to avoid misunderstandings: My hunch was that SLI and F with r=0.5 are
more or less in a linear relation, i.e. that F(r=0.5) reaches maximum for
proportional distributions.

F(r=0.5)=( s(1)^0.5+...+s(n)^0.5 ) * 2 (exclude the last factor)
I did a calculation on the series of satisfaction from an other seat.
The series does not lie in between the d'Hondt series and sainte-lague (see
the table at the end of this mail), since F decreases slower than d'Hondt
series and Sainte-Lague.
For some valus of r, the function comes close though. I don't know if this
is a good or bad thing though, I don't know so much about d'Hondt,
Sainte-Lague and other divisor methods and I still haven't seen any
analytical proof of why Sainte-Lague is close to LR-Hare and if any divisor
method is close to the Droop quota.

The Sainte Lague series could be plugged into this function, and we would
get our PAV which gives us optimal Sainte Lague proportionality:
f=sum(1<=i<=n) sum(1<=j<=s(i)) 1/(1+((s(i)j-1)*2)), s(i) are the seats
awarded fot voter i, s(i)j is a positive integer <=s(i), n are the number of
voters. The d'Hondt method can be similarly defined for f.


>


> F can be used to explain why there are different voting systems - they
>> simply have different values of r, i.e. they have different utility
>> functions. For a suitable value of r, block-voting has higher utility and is
>> thus "better" than proportional representation, like STV.
>
>


>
> That appears to be similar to my ideas about proportionality and
> majoritarian preference being tradeoffs. For some value of r, people would
> value the latter more than the former. Thus the decisio

Re: [EM] PAV and risk functions

[Peter Zbornik]

Just a small correction to the email below:
I wrote (May 24, 2010): "I would rather prefer a small positive value of r,
say 0.01."
The sentence should read "I would rather prefer r to be slighltly less than
1, say 0.99.

Sorry for the error, thanks for your understanding.

PZ

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 8:19 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

>  On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
> km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:
>
>> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Kristofer,
>>>
>>> would the constant relative risk function be of any help for Approval
>>> voting?
>>>
>>> F=( s(1)^(r-1)+...+s(n)^(r-1) ) / (r-1).
>>>
>>> s(i) is the number of approved council members that are elected, where
>>> 1<=i<=n, n is the number of voters
>>> r is a coefficient of risk aversion, which determines the rate at which
>>> marginal utility of the voter declines with the number of council members
>>> awarded to the voter.
>>>
>>
>> That scoring method could be used for PAV (not SAV) style optimization.
>> One could create a whole class of PAV style methods this way:
>>
>> - Define a function f(a, b) -> R, mapping pairs of candidate sets to real
>> numbers, where a is the approval ballot and b is the candidate council.
>> - Voters submit approval ballots v_1 ... v_n
>> - Using brute force, find the council c so that sum(q = 1..n) f(v_q, c) is
>> maximized.
>>
> It would be interesting to see the performance of these functions in your
> chart with the pareto fronts, especially F for different values r.
>
>>
>> The greedy approximation can be defined in a similar generalized manner,
>> but places restrictions upon the kind of f that can work. The greedy
>> approximations would also be house monotone, I think, since they work by
>> picking one candidate, then another, then another..
>
> Thanks for the analysis. f can be a much more generally specified than I
> did.
> I don't know much about greedy approximatioins.
>
>
>>
>> The selection of r determines the behavior of F: If r=1, then F becomes
>>> the Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function: log(s(1))+...+log(s(n)) in the
>>> limit. As log(0) is minus infinity, this function requires that each voter
>>> gets at least one council member, thus it over-represents minorities and
>>> insures, that "everyone has their representative" in the council. This
>>> function is useless, if all bullet vote for themselves.
>>>
>>
>> Couldn't this be solved in a leximax fashion if only some voters bullet
>> vote? That is, an outcome with fewer infinities win over an outcome with
>> more no matter what; then if there's a tie between the number of infinities,
>> the one with the greatest finite score wins.
>
>
> I would rather prefer a small positive value of r, say 0.01.
>
> I guess you could use leximax, but the method would lose its nice
> mathematical properties. I think we would make up some own house mathematics
> when saying that one result with infinitely low utility+3 would be better
> than a result with infinitely low utility, since F measures cardinal utility
> and not ordinal utility.
>
> An other option would simply be to reward every voter one extra point of
> utility from start, but that would be an ad-hoc rule (why not then add 1000
> utility points or 0.01 points?).
>
>
>>
>
>
>> Other uses:
>>> It seems that F can be used both as a proportionality index and as a
>>> majoritan preference index for suitable values of r.
>>
>>
>
>  Just to avoid misunderstandings: My hunch was that SLI and F with r=0.5
> are more or less in a linear relation, i.e. that F(r=0.5) reaches maximum
> for proportional distributions.
>
> F(r=0.5)=( s(1)^0.5+...+s(n)^0.5 ) * 2 (exclude the last factor)
> I did a calculation on the series of satisfaction from an other seat.
> The series does not lie in between the d'Hondt series and sainte-lague (see
> the table at the end of this mail), since F decreases slower than d'Hondt
> series and Sainte-Lague.
> For some valus of r, the function comes close though. I don't know if this
> is a good or bad thing though, I don't know so much about d'Hondt,
> Sainte-Lague and other divisor methods and I still haven't seen any
> analytical proof of why Sainte-Lague is close to LR-Hare and if any divisor
> method is close to the Droop quota.
>
> The Sainte Lague series could be plugged into this function, and we would
> get our PAV which gives us optimal Sainte Lague proportionality:
> f=sum

Re: [EM] PAV and risk functions

[Peter Zbornik]

I found a second error in my mail below.
How embarrassing.

I wrote below (May 24, 2010 at 8:19 PM): "Find below the incremental
satisfaction for a seat F(r=0.3), F(r=0.4151) and F(r=0.5) compared to
d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague (original calculations in Excel)."

That was wrong, the text should have read "Find below the incremental
satisfaction for a seat F(r=0.7), F(r=0.5849) and F(r=0.5), without the
denominator (r-1) compared to d'Hondt and Sainte-Lague (original
calculations in Excel)."
In the table F(0.3) should be F(0.7) and F(0.4151) should be F(0.5849).

My apologies again.

PZ

On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 8:23 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:

> Just a small correction to the email below:
> I wrote (May 24, 2010): "I would rather prefer a small positive value of r,
> say 0.01."
> The sentence should read "I would rather prefer r to be slighltly less than
> 1, say 0.99.
>
> Sorry for the error, thanks for your understanding.
>
> PZ
>
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 8:19 PM, Peter Zbornik  wrote:
>
>>  On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 12:13 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
>> km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:
>>
>>> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Kristofer,
>>>>
>>>> would the constant relative risk function be of any help for Approval
>>>> voting?
>>>>
>>>> F=( s(1)^(r-1)+...+s(n)^(r-1) ) / (r-1).
>>>>
>>>> s(i) is the number of approved council members that are elected, where
>>>> 1<=i<=n, n is the number of voters
>>>> r is a coefficient of risk aversion, which determines the rate at which
>>>> marginal utility of the voter declines with the number of council members
>>>> awarded to the voter.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That scoring method could be used for PAV (not SAV) style optimization.
>>> One could create a whole class of PAV style methods this way:
>>>
>>> - Define a function f(a, b) -> R, mapping pairs of candidate sets to real
>>> numbers, where a is the approval ballot and b is the candidate council.
>>> - Voters submit approval ballots v_1 ... v_n
>>> - Using brute force, find the council c so that sum(q = 1..n) f(v_q, c)
>>> is maximized.
>>>
>> It would be interesting to see the performance of these functions in your
>> chart with the pareto fronts, especially F for different values r.
>>
>>>
>>> The greedy approximation can be defined in a similar generalized manner,
>>> but places restrictions upon the kind of f that can work. The greedy
>>> approximations would also be house monotone, I think, since they work by
>>> picking one candidate, then another, then another..
>>
>>  Thanks for the analysis. f can be a much more generally specified than I
>> did.
>> I don't know much about greedy approximatioins.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> The selection of r determines the behavior of F: If r=1, then F becomes
>>>> the Bernoulli-Nash social welfare function: log(s(1))+...+log(s(n)) in the
>>>> limit. As log(0) is minus infinity, this function requires that each voter
>>>> gets at least one council member, thus it over-represents minorities and
>>>> insures, that "everyone has their representative" in the council. This
>>>> function is useless, if all bullet vote for themselves.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Couldn't this be solved in a leximax fashion if only some voters bullet
>>> vote? That is, an outcome with fewer infinities win over an outcome with
>>> more no matter what; then if there's a tie between the number of infinities,
>>> the one with the greatest finite score wins.
>>
>>
>> I would rather prefer a small positive value of r, say 0.01.
>>
>> I guess you could use leximax, but the method would lose its nice
>> mathematical properties. I think we would make up some own house mathematics
>> when saying that one result with infinitely low utility+3 would be better
>> than a result with infinitely low utility, since F measures cardinal utility
>> and not ordinal utility.
>>
>> An other option would simply be to reward every voter one extra point of
>> utility from start, but that would be an ad-hoc rule (why not then add 1000
>> utility points or 0.01 points?).
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>> Other uses:
>>>> It seems that F can be used both as a proportionality index and as a
>>>> majoritan preference index for suitable values of r.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>  Just to avoid misunderst

[EM] Condocet with many candidates - two round elections considered

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all, dear Markus Schulze,

after having presented Condorcet elections to some people in the Czech green
party, the following question came up.
Condorcet elections might work with three candidates, but what about if
there are twenty of them, will the system work and elect the best candidate?

Q1: What would you answer for Condorcet elections in general and
Schulze-method elections in particular?
Q2: Specifically, would you recommend a two-round construct, i.e. the three
best candidates (or x best?) meet in the second round.
Q3: Would such a two-round system help to deal with the case of the "dark
horse" winning with long beat-paths and people being dissatisfied with the
election?
Q4: If yes, how many candidates should be in the second round and how should
they be selected (Schulze ranking?)?

One such mis-election with dissatisfied voters would be enough to discredit
Condorcet elections in our party and two-round elections might give an
additional sense of security for some voters in the face of a novel and
fairly complex election system. In the Czech republic we currently use
two-round elections.
However, if two round Condorcet elections bring no additional value, then
there is no need to complicate an elegant election system.

Thanks for your advice.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

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

Re: [EM] Condocet with many candidates - two round elections considered

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kevin,

thanks for your view on the topic.
In election-theoretic language, what criterion is used to describe, that a
method performs as well with many as with few candidates?
There is a list of criterias in the table at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Comparison_with_other_preferential_single-winner_election_methods,
but I don't know which it is (clone-independence? Maybe some other criterion
too?).

Peter


On 6/16/10, Kevin Venzke  wrote:
>
> Hi Peter,
>
> --- En date de : Mer 16.6.10, Peter Zbornik  a écrit :
> >Dear all, dear Markus Schulze,
> >
> >after having presented Condorcet elections to some people in the Czech
> >green party, the following question came up.
> >Condorcet elections might work with three candidates, but what about if
> >there are twenty of them, will the system work and elect the best
> >candidate?
>
> In my opinion, in theory, Schulze performs exactly as well with many as
> with few candidates.
>
> >Q1: What would you answer for Condorcet elections in general and Schulze-
> >method elections in particular?
>
> I would not say Condorcet in general is excellent at this, but Condorcet
> fans tend to prefer methods that don't break when you have many candidates.
>
> >Q2: Specifically, would you recommend a two-round construct, i.e. the
> >three best candidates (or x best?) meet in the second round.
>
> The only reason I would recommend something like this is if you expect
> that voters may not be familiar with the strongest candidates. If voters
> do not obtain *new* knowledge between rounds, and their preferences don't
> change, then the pairwise contests among them are going to be exactly
> the same, and the Schulze result would most likely be the same.
>
> >Q3: Would such a two-round system help to deal with the case of the "dark
> >horse" winning with long beat-paths and people being dissatisfied with
> >the election?
>
> If the "dark horse" can win in this way (more likely: he wins because
> everyone gives him a mid-range preference and he defeats everyone) he will
> most likely still win when you eliminate all but a few candidates. So
> again, a second round only makes a difference if the voters are supposed
> to get new information and change their preferences.
>
> The ordinary two-round method is different from this because when you
> eliminate candidates, the "best" candidate could very easily change, since
> it's all based (in theory) on who is everyone's favorite candidate.
>
> Kevin Venzke
>
>
>
>
> 
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>

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

[EM] Condorcet question - why not bullet vote

[Peter Zbornik]

Dear all, dear Markus Schulze,

I got a second question from one of our members (actually the same guy which
asked for the first time):
If I just bullet vote in a Condorcet election, then I increase the chances
of my candidate being elected.
If I have a second or third option, the chances of my prefered candidate to
win is lowered.
Q: In this case why should any voter not bullet-vote?
I have some clue on how to answer, but not enough for an exhaustive answer.

My argument starts:
If I vote for a candidate who has >50% of the votes, then it does not matter
if there is a second or third choice.
If my prefered candidate A gets <50%  of the votes, then it makes sense to
support a second choice candidate B.
However if the supporters of B only bullet vote, then maybe B's supporters
get an advantage over A?
... at this point I realize, that I don't know enough about Condorcet and/or
Schulze to answer the question.

Why is it not rational to bullet vote in a Condorcet election if you are
allowed not to rank some candidates?
I guess you have discussed this question a zillion of times, so please
forgive my ignorance.

Maybe you could help me out with this one.

Peter

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

Re: [EM] Condorcet question - why not bullet vote

[Peter Zbornik]

Hi Kristofer,

thanks for a detailed answer.
As you answer contingency, it might be beneficial to turn the question
around.
In what situations will bullet voting help my candidate to win (considering
the advanced Condorcet systems)?

Peter

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 8:14 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-el...@broadpark.no> wrote:

> Peter Zbornik wrote:
>
>> Dear all, dear Markus Schulze,
>>
>> I got a second question from one of our members (actually the same guy
>> which asked for the first time):
>> If I just bullet vote in a Condorcet election, then I increase the chances
>> of my candidate being elected.
>> If I have a second or third option, the chances of my prefered candidate
>> to win is lowered.
>> Q: In this case why should any voter not bullet-vote?
>> I have some clue on how to answer, but not enough for an exhaustive
>> answer.
>>
>
> I would say that the answer is contingency. Say that your favorite is A,
> and it's uncertain whether B or C is more popular, but you prefer B to C.
> Then, bullet-voting A might give you A instead of B (which would be good),
> but it might also give you C rather than B (which would be bad) because you
> falsely reported that it doesn't matter to you whether B or C wins.
>
> A bit more formally, consider this: C is the current CW and B is just short
> of beating him, while A is far behind. If two voters vote A > B = C, then
> nothing happens, but by voting A > B > C, B now beats C and wins.
>
> Also note that voting for additional candidates doesn't harm the outcome
> unless you, by doing so, set up or help others set up a cycle. If X is the
> CW and beats others by a lot of votes, then voting others ahead of X doesn't
> itself do anything harmful; the only potential for harm occurs in the domain
> of the cycle.
>
> Similarly, for the "advanced methods" (Schulze, Ranked Pairs, and so on),
> ranking candidates that end up outside of the Smith set doesn't do any harm
> either, because these methods satisfy Independence of Smith-dominated
> alternatives (also called "local IIA").
>
> To sum all of that up: bullet-voting is like driving straight in a game of
> Chicken. Sure, you might benefit by doing so, but you may also crash and get
> a very bad outcome. In addition, the advanced methods pass criteria that
> both narrow down the situations where sincerity will backfire, as well as
> the degree to which it would do so; an ISDA-compliant method must obviously
> elect from the Smith set in the first place, for instance.
>

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

Re: [EM] Condorcet question - why not bullet vote?

[Peter Zbornik]

Chris, thanks for pointing these things out. I didn't know about the
Later-no-Help.

You write: "But all Condorcet methods fail Later-no-Help, and in some this
effect is sufficiently strong for the method to have a "random fill"
incentive."
Do you know for which Condorcet methods this effect is sufficiently strong
to have a random fill incentive?

You write: "That means that if you know nothing about how other voters will
vote you are probabilistically better off by strictly ranking all your least
preferred candidates."
Is this claim possible to prove or is it at least supported by some
evidence?

As for the no info, equal rank - this is a rational strategy when you have
no info. In real life you have a lot of information about the expected
voting behavior of others.

Peter

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 9:11 PM, Chris Benham wrote:

> Peter,
>
> If I just bullet vote in a Condorcet election, then I increase the chances
> of my candidate being elected.
>
> Bullet voting in an election using a method that complies with the
> Condorcet criterion does I suppose
> somewhat increase the chance of your candidate being the Condorcet winner.
>
> But all Condorcet methods fail Later-no-Help, and in some this effect is
> sufficiently strong for the method
> to have a "random fill" incentive.  That means that if you know nothing
> about how other voters will vote
> you are probabilistically better off by strictly ranking all your least
> preferred candidates.
>
> 46: A>B
> 44: B
> 10: C
>
> Here A is the CW, but if the 44B voters change to B>C then Schulze(Winning
> Votes) elects B.
>
> Schulze (WV) also has a zero-info. equal-rank at the top incentive. So say
> you know nothing about
> how other voters will vote and you have a big gap in your sincere ratings
> of the candidates, then your
> best probabilistic strategy is to rank all the candidates in your preferred
> group (those above the big
> gap in your ratings) equal-top and to strictly rank (randomly if
> necessarily) all the candidates below
> the gap.
>
> Your question seems to come with assumption that the voter doesn't care
> much who wins if her favourite
> doesn't.
>
> Q: In this case why should any voter not bullet-vote?
>
> The voter might be mainly interested in preventing her least preferred
> candidate from winning. Bullet
> voting is then a worse strategy than ranking that hated candidate strictly
> bottom.
>
> Another Condorcet method is  Smith//Approval(ranking). That interprets
> ranking versus truncation as
> approval and elects the member of the Smith set (the smallest subset S of
> candidates that pairwise beat
> any/all non-S candidates) that has the highest approval score.
>
> (Some advocate the even simpler Condorcet//Approval(ranking) that simply
> elects the most approved
> candidate if there is no single Condorcet winner.)
>
> In the example above the effect of the 44B voters changing to B>C is with
> those methods to make C
> the new winner.
>
> Those methods do have a truncation incentive, so then many voters who are
> mainly interested in
> getting their strict favourites elected will and should "bullet vote".
>
> What is wrong with that?
>
> Chris Benham
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dear all, dear Markus Schulze,I got a second question from one of our
> members (actually the same guy which  asked for the first time):  If I just
> bullet vote in a Condorcet election, then I increase the chances  of my
> candidate being elected.  If I have a second or third option, the chances of
> my prefered candidate to  win is lowered.  Q: In this case why should any
> voter not bullet-vote?  I have some clue on how to answer, but not enough
> for an exhaustive answer.My argument starts:  If I vote for a candidate
> who has >50% of the votes, then it does not matter  if there is a second or
> third choice.  If my prefered candidate A gets <50%  of the votes, then it
> makes sense to  support a second choice candidate B.  However if the
> supporters of B only bullet vote, then maybe B's supporters  get an
> advantage over A?  ... at this point I realize, that I don't know enough
> about Condorcet and/or  Schulze to answer the question.Why is it not
> rational to
>  bullet vote in a Condorcet election if you are  allowed not to rank some
> candidates?  I guess you have discussed this question a zillion of times, so
> please  forgive my ignorance.Maybe you could help me out with this one.
>Peter
>
>
>
>

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