Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 22:31 -0500, robert bristow-johnson wrote: > On 11/26/11 6:58 PM, matt welland wrote: > > Also, do folks generally see approval as better than or worse than IRV? > they don't know anything about Approval (or Score or Borda or Bucklin or > Condorcet) despite some effort by me to illustrate it regarding the > state senate race in our county. I wasn't clear. I want to hear opinions from the list: Is approval better or worse than IRV and why? > unless one were to bullet vote (which would make Approval degenerate to > FPTP), there is no way to express one's favorite over other candidates > that one approves of. it forces a burden of tactical voting onto voters > who have to decide whether or not they will vote for their 2nd favorite > candidate. i've repeated this over and over and over again on this > list. while Score voting demands too much reflection and information > from voters, Approval voting extracts too little information from > voters. both saddle voters with the need for calculation (and strategy) > that the ranked ballot does not. both Score and Approval are > non-starters, because of the nature of the ballot. but a ranked ballot > is not a non-starter, even if we lost it recently here in Burlington. > we just need to unlearn what FairVote did and decouple the concept of > ranked-choice voting from IRV. When you say approval and score are non-starters due to the ballot, what exactly do you mean? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] More non-altruistic attacks on IRV usage.
On Sat, 2011-11-26 at 16:56 -0500, robert bristow-johnson wrote: > On 11/26/11 4:08 PM, David L Wetzell wrote: > > > the counterexample, again, is Burlington Vermont. Dems haven't sat in > the mayor's chair for decades. Is this due to a split of the liberal vote by progressives or other liberal blocs? Or is it due to a truly Republican leaning demographic? Also, do folks generally see approval as better than or worse than IRV? To me Approval seems to solve the spoiler problem without introducing any unstable weirdness and it is much simpler and cheaper to do than IRV. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods
On Wed, 2011-10-19 at 00:51 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > > > Matt-- > > You're a bit unfair to rank methods. You said that it's difficult to > figure out the right strategy. Hmmm... I'm not sure I said that it is difficult to figure out the right strategy. One thing that I did say was that "rank methods hide or lose information". I still think that is true but of course rank methods are all over the map and are a mathematicians wet dream. so if you say they can convey the same info then I'll have to agree to disagree. > Approval voting is easiest when some candidates are acceptable and > some are entirely unacceptable: Just vote for the acceptables. I think approval voting is always very easy, but yes, it is trivial to decide in the case of highly polarised candidates. > If you have no information about winnability, then the strategy is > simply to vote for all the above-average candidates. > > But if there aren't "unacceptables", and if there is winnability > information of some kind, then Approval is inherently a strategic > method. > > Approval voting is strategic then. As I said, a good strategy is to > just vote for all candidates who are better than what you expect > from the election. Voters may be ill-informed but they are not stupid. I'm pretty sure 99.999% of the voters will have no trouble mastering the trivial "strategy" needed by approval in some races. > Bucklin has Approval-like strategy, with, as I said, 3 > protection-levels instead of two. If it's clear who belongs in each > protection category, > > then the strategy isn't difficult. Other than that, I don't think > Bucklin's strategy is known, to the extent that Approval's simpler > strategy > > is known. But, knowing who you'd vote for in Approval can inform your > Bucklin voting, because Bucklin lets you rank people you wouldn't vote > for in Approval, safe in the knowledge that you've equally top-ranked > the best set of candidates. > > Condorcet(wv), MDDA & MAMPO can be more free of strategy if no one > falsifies preferences, due to their SFC compliance. > > But, if some voters are likely to use burying strategy, then it's > desirable to thwart them, and enforce the methods' SFC benefit, > > by refusing to rank the candidates of the likely reversers. If that > sounds complicated, it isn't really. Just use some judgement about > how far down you rank. Don't rank the really odious candidates, or the > ones who (or their supporters) are antagonistic to your > candidate. > > Additionally, of course, the buriers intended victims have the same > polling information as do the buriers. And it isn't possible to > organize a large scale burial strategy without it leaking to the > intended victims. Burial only works against people who are trying to > help you. > > And, finally, what if the burial succeeded, this time. What about > subsequent elections. Do you think that party will get ranked in the > victims' rankings again? > > Oh, one more thing, in the above-listed methods, as I said, to steal > the election for a candidate by burial requires that a large fraction > of his favorite-supporters do burial. And thwarting and penalizing the > burial requires only a small fraction of the intended victims to > truncate the buriers' candidate. > I don't agree that rankings are awkward or painful to vote. I know > whom I like better than whom. But I'll agree with you on this: > > I consider our elections to consist of acceptables and unacceptables. > That kind of election is _made for_ Approval. Bucklin, however, > can let you rank among the acceptables, while still giving them full > SDSC protection from the unacceptables, if they have majority > support. And if they don't have majority support, not method can save > them. > > Likewise, MDDA and MAMPO make the same thing possible. > > And no one needs to vote 50 times in succession. Of course not, that misses the point. A proponent of any of these systems is going to be blind to the costs of the system. I've done the exercise of casting a ballot using different systems many times in succession. My original hypothesis was that I just wasn't used to it. After a dozen times I knew that the mental energy in ranking was *much* higher than for approval or plurality. By casting a ballot in each system fifty times in a row I think people will get a more balanced sense of just what a pain ranking is. For the exercise to be meaningful the candidates need to be presented randomly for each iteration. I'd add ranking to my (bitrot aflicted) approvalvote site for folks to do side-by-side comparison but unfortunately easy-to-do ranking is too hard to implement :) . Can anyone recommend a side-by-side approval and ranking site? I guess I could implement it similar to how St. Paul has implemented paper ballots: http://www.minnpost.com/twocities/2011/10/17/32440/st_paul_ready_to_give_ranked_voting_its_first_try > Someone quoted James Green-Armytage as saying that Approval is > "v
Re: [EM] Methods
On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 20:42 +0200, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: > matt welland wrote: > > Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked > > systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both > > these cases. > > In what manner does a ranked method hide information? Neither ranked > ballot methods nor strategic Approval can distinguish between > "everybody's equally good" and "everybody's equally bad". > > > Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system > > are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure > > to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval > > than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes > > sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The > > pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a > > massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of > > that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. > > Again, why is that the case? In Approval, you're either in or you're > out; but in ranked methods, the method can refine upon those two groups > and find the better of the good (be that by broad or deep support > relative to the others). If anything, this finer gradient should > increase the impact, not decrease it, because the search will more often > be pointed in the right direction. A ranked system cannot give the feedback that all the candidates are disliked (e.g. all candidates get less than 50% approval). It also cannot feedback that all the candidates are essentially equivalent (all have very high approval). Ranked systems essentially normalize the vote. I think this is a serious issue. A ranked system can give a false impression that there is a "favorite" but the truth might be that none of the candidates are acceptable. Ironically by trying to capture nuances the ranked systems have lost an interesting and valuable part of the voter feedback. A voting system should never give the impression that candidates that are universally loathed are ok. If our candidates were Adol Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong and Leopold II of Belgium then approval would rightly illustrate that none are good candidates. However a ranked system would merely indicate that one of them is the "condorcet" winner giving no indication that none are acceptable. I think any sane voting system *must* meet this requirement. The ability for the electorate to unambiguously communicate that none of the candidates are worthy of the post under contest. I don't know how to prove it but my hunch is that approval would be more resistant to manipulation by the so-called "one percenter" elites than ranked systems. We *need* headlines that read "Gallup Poll Indicates that No Candidate for President is Acceptable!" (in the case where it was true of course). You can never get that headline with ranked systems. Matt -=- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Methods
On Mon, 2011-10-17 at 00:19 +0100, Kevin Venzke wrote: > Hi, > > --- En date de : Dim 16.10.11, matt welland a écrit : > > > It has been shown, here, and in journal articles, that > > Approval will > > > soon home in on the CW. After a few > > > elecions. But "a few elections" can be a decade or > > more. We'd like > > > better results before that, and so > > > > Does this prediction of "a few" elections account for polls > > typically > > done over and over prior to the election also being done > > with approval? > > My hunch is that Approval would have an immediate > > disruptive (in a good > > way) impact if the accompanying polls were also approval. > > I completely agree with that. Swap "a few elections" with "a few > polling iterations" and you should be where you wanted. > > Approval's weakness is that it has to decide where the main contest is > prior to the vote. If there are few good options (i.e. any pair of > frontrunners leaves a large percentage of voters approving neither) or > too many good options (i.e. several likely candidates for sincere CW) a > rank method, with its "higher resolution," may be able to fish out a > better result. Hmmm... It seems to me that both those scenarios actually say something useful and even possibly important about the election results that would be lost in a ranked election. Assuming that a) decent information about the candidates has been available via news, web and debates and b) reasonable quality approval polls have been conducted prior to the election then: In the case where there are too few good options then clearly the candidates do not represent a good cross section of the values and criteria considered important to the people or the people are are too diverse to be easily represented. This is not a problem that can be solved by an election system. All a ranked system would do is hide the issue and choose some candidate that clearly a large portion of the population would not be happy with. In the case where there are many good options then approval is exposing that fact. It is true that this scenario makes strategic voting more important but since we are assuming that decent information and prior polling is available I think voters can apply a pretty simple strategy to decide if it is safe to not vote for the front runner they don't really like. Assuming a party or conservative/liberal philosophical split then if the candidate they do like is ahead of the leading candidate in the opposing camp then they can safely not vote for the front runner in their camp they don't like. Hard to explain but trivial once understood. Again, I think it is very, very important to note that the ranked systems actually lose or hide information relative to approval in both these cases. Note that in the first case the results and impact of a ranked system are actually worse than the results of approval. The political pressure to converge and appeal to a broad spectrum is greater under approval than the ranked systems. The evaluation of a voting system only makes sense in the context of all the other things going on in a society. The pressure on politicians to actually meet the needs of the people is a massively important factor and ranked systems appear to wash out some of that force which is a very bad thing IMHO. In the second case a ranked system *might* select a "more preferred" candidate but if you have several candidates all getting 75% approval then really, do you (pragmatically speaking) care which one gets chosen? I think we'd all be thrilled to have that problem. If we did have that problem you can be assured that not only would most people be reasonably happy with the outcome but there would almost certainly be open and intelligent dialog on moving to a ranked system - something that can never happen under plurality. In other words approval is the gateway drug to the really good stuff, a ranked system of some sort (*). Matt -=- (*) I personally suspect there is no need to go to a ranked system as there are lots of good people who would make a great leader, all that is needed is to keep who ever gets chosen fully accountable to the people, something that approval appears to do better than any other system. > 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
Re: [EM] Methods
On Sun, 2011-10-16 at 20:51 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > [snip] > It's difficult to choose between Approval and a good rank method, for > a public proposal. > > Rank methods elicit more interest from people, because they can offer > more. > > But rank methods have the disadvantage that there are so many ways to > count rankings, that people > are overwhelmed, and hear conflicting advice. How to count the > rankings, they wonder. > > Also, Approval is like a solid, reliable and simple hand-tool. It > isn't as labor-saving as a good rank method. > The rank-methods are labor-saving machines. But machines can have > their problems &/or idiosyncracies. Your analogy of hand tool is a good one but I disagree that rank methods can be likened to "labor saving". Instead consider cutting wood for the fire. I can take my axe and split a lot more logs in an hour than could be cut with a saw. But the nice clean cuts of the saw are irrelevant as I'm going to burn the wood. The ranking methods are like the saw, labor intensive and expensive to use whereas the approval method is like the axe, rough and crude but fast and efficient and does exactly what needs to be done and no more. It seems many folks hope that by using ranking more nuanced desires can be articulated by the voters. However I think in many elections nuance is wasted effort and allowing it is actually harmful to the process, especially since ranking and range can be used strategically (I guess you guys call it burial?). Look for example at the range of education levels in voters. Rankers are proposing to measure subtle differences in opinion in a population where 80% couldn't draw a supply-demand curve and 99.999% haven't even heard of say, Henry George (who, IMHO and completely off topic, offers the only sane explanation for our economic system failures). > Some or many will sometimes act up or do things that will embarrass > you. Some more than others, > of course. > > It has been shown, here, and in journal articles, that Approval will > soon home in on the CW. After a few > elecions. But "a few elections" can be a decade or more. We'd like > better results before that, and so Does this prediction of "a few" elections account for polls typically done over and over prior to the election also being done with approval? My hunch is that Approval would have an immediate disruptive (in a good way) impact if the accompanying polls were also approval. As I've said in a previous post, one of the desperately needed outcomes is merely to ensure that alternative voices are not buried. Approval is more than enough to keep the lead parties or politicians accountable and on their toes. Todays climate where both leading parties in the US can ignore the bulk of the wishes of their constituents would be utterly destroyed by implementing approval. > I'm for a rank method as much as anyone is. If we can overcome the > problem of voters confronted with > so many different rank counts. > > And the problem of telling the voter why our rank proposal is > desirable. The reason it is so hard to tell the voters why the rank proposals are desirable is because intuitively I think many people can sense trouble with the rank methods. This is because they *are* trouble. Expensive to implement, difficult to understand, difficult to "figure out" the right strategy. Awkward and painful to do the actual voting (*). The sale is for a cross cut saw when the customer clearly needs a heavy splitting ax and the customer is smart. Yeah, the saw is far better than the ax, but, uh, I need the ax! (*) find online approval and ranking systems with more than ten items and go vote fifty times in each. My experience is that ranking sucks. Voting fifty times in succession in an approval poll however is annoying but tolerable. > Mike Ossipoff > > > > 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] Poll for favorite single-winner voting system with OpaVote
So I gave the opavote thing (nicely done site BTW) a try and had the same experience I do with every ranked vote system. Choice overload and decision freeze up. I literally hate ranking and I hope to these things don't take over. Given how many people love the ranked systems I wonder if there is a cultural or age thing at play here, that or I'm just more time starved or dumber than ya'll but ... (I'll say it again) I HATE ranking. I remember coming to the States in the 80's having grown up in a backwater third world country and finding simple stuff like ordering a burger a bit overwhelming due to all the choices. 30 yrs later and I still don't like the (to me) absurd amount of choices to be made in consumer situations. Obviously everyone else is fine with the myriad of mostly irrelevant choices to be made so likely I'm an anomaly. So now I'm going to have to stare at a ballot with 20 items and 20! possible arrangements (is it really that many? its been a long time since stats class). All I can say is that it sucks and I'd prefer to stick with broken plurality rather than deal with this. Oh well. Has anyone done a study to assess how different people with different backgrounds respond to the information and decision burden of different voting systems? BTW, my response to complex decision making are not entirely out of the "normal" range: http://www.wealthinformatics.com/2011/06/29/too-many-choices-save-cost-money/ Matt -=- On Sun, 2011-10-09 at 18:36 -0400, Jeffrey O'Neill wrote: > OpaVote.org Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The meaning of this discussion (or lack thereof)
On Wed, 2011-08-31 at 01:13 -0400, Michael Allan wrote: > matt welland wrote: > > Ah, yes I can see the error. Some poor and ambiguous English on my > > part. I intended to group the "irrelevant and pointless" and apply > > it to the word "discuss". Sorry about that. > > I guess I understood that, no need to apologize. > > > > > > > The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and > > > > > > pointless to discuss. ... > > I still think you are wrong, and I put a question to you fair and > square: Is it your intention to imply that the individual vote is > irrelevant? Is that what you think, or not? As I tried to to previously communicate my opinion was this: an individual vote is relevant and of greater than zero value, however discussing voting methods from the perspective of the individual vote is of very limited usefulness. My opinion has shifted in that I now think there may be some usefulness in discussing the individual vote. For example the equations for the individual value of a vote can possibly yield insight into sensitivity to variables. For example it may be argued that the power of your vote should only vary with the number of voters. Plurality would violate this as the power of your vote depends on the number of candidates. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The meaning of this discussion (or lack thereof)
On Mon, 2011-08-29 at 04:28 -0400, Michael Allan wrote: > matt welland wrote: > > I did not say that a "vote has little meaning", I said that it is > > meaningless to discuss the individual vote! Those are two vastly > > different things. > > Well, I think what you said is wrong. Here is the original version: > > > > > The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and > > > > pointless to discuss. ... > > This implies that the individual vote itself is irrelevant. I wish to > clarify your intention on that point: are you saying that the > individual vote is irrelevant Ah, yes I can see the error. Some poor and ambiguous English on my part. I intended to group the "irrelevant and pointless" and apply it to the word "discuss". Sorry about that. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] The meaning of a vote (or lack thereof)
On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 23:24 -0400, Michael Allan wrote: > Matt, Dave and Fred, > > > > > The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant ... > > > > > > The individual vote itself is irrelevant? We know that the vote > > > is the formal expression of what a person thinks in regard to an > > > electoral issue. Do you mean: > > > (a) What the person thinks is irrelevant in reality? Or, > > > (b) What the person thinks is irrelevant to the election method? > > Matt Welland wrote: > > (c) Discussing the meaning of an individual vote is mostly > > pointless > > I can understand why you might want to dodge the question. You've > taken a position that is difficult to defend. Huh? Nothing to defend, if you continue to think that the "meaning of an individual vote" is worthy of analysis then more power to you. The (a) and (b) answers completely missed the point of my original statement so I added (c). > > > The election method cannot tell you, "there are ten thousand > > > people who share your values and will vote as you vote" ... > > > > Here in the US we have these things called "polls" which happen > > periodically prior to the real election. ... > > I know. Stuff happens outside of the election and beyond the reach of > the formal method, even (sometimes) unexpected stuff that the original > designers had no experience or understanding of. Maybe later we can > say something about these. For now, if you agree, let's return to the > topic and look at the meaning of a vote (or lack thereof). > > You claim that the vote has little meaning, and I claim it has none at > all. In either case, I think we can show that the election method is > consequently flawed. Once we recognize the flaw and understand its > nature, then we can attempt to trace its consequences, including the > work of the polsters. I did not say that a "vote has little meaning", I said that it is meaningless to discuss the individual vote! Those are two vastly different things. In my original response I voiced the opinion that analyzing a vote in isolation is meaningless. Well, mostly meaningless. I then had some fun contradicting myself and went ahead and gave some simple mathematical meaning to a single vote and illustrated how approval gives the voter N times more voting power than plurality where N is the number of candidates. In my opinion your claim that an individual vote has no meaning is wrong and all one has to do is look at the real world to see that. What is interesting is that I think it may be possible to show the relative value of a vote for each system. Value of a vote per system: V=number of voters, N=number of candidates Plurality: 1/(N*V) Approval: 1/V Condorcet: 1/(2*V) Range: 1/V etc. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the "meaning" of a vote (or lack thereof) and a (new?) metric for voting systems
On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 04:32 -0400, Michael Allan wrote: > Matt and Dave, > > Matt Welland wrote: > > The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and pointless > > to discuss. ... > > The individual vote itself is irrelevant? We know that the vote is > the formal expression of what a person thinks in regard to an > electoral issue. Do you mean: > > (a) What the person thinks is irrelevant in reality? Or, > > (b) What the person thinks is irrelevant to the election method? (c) Discussing the meaning of an individual vote is mostly pointless I vote for (c) > > ... If a barge can carry 10 tons of sand then of course at any point > > in time while loading the barge no single grain of sand matters ... > > (But an election is not a barge and a voter is not a grain of sand to > be shipped around in bulk, or otherwise manipulated. A voter is a > person, and that makes all the difference.) I didn't know that. Thanks for clarifying. > > ... but will *you* get on that barge for a 300 mile journey across > > lake Superior if it is loaded with 10.1 tons of sand? Probably > > not. Votes in any election with millions of voters are like this, > > individually irrelevant, but very meaningful as an aggregate. If > > there are ten thousand people who share your values and will vote as > > you vote then together you have a shot at influencing the outcome of > > the election with 20 thousand voters. > > The election method cannot tell you, "there are ten thousand people > who share your values and will vote as you vote". The election method > exposes no vote dispositions until after the election. By then it is > woefully late for any attempt at mutual understanding, or rational > reflection. Here in the US we have these things called "polls" which happen periodically prior to the real election. Other information sources might include attending political rallies and noticing the number of people attending, talking with friends and so forth. With plurality the available information on how others will vote is essential for an election to be anything other than a farce. Is there a term for this voter values information? I think it is a good indicator on the usefulness of the election method. |Criticality of voter|complexity | Matt gives Method|values information |and burden | Rating of ... -- plurality | extreme | very low | extremely poor condorcet | low | extreme | poor range | low | high | ok approval | medium| very low | good asset | low | medium| ok IRV | extreme | high | extremely poor Hmmm, I think the other column this table needs is "stability". For the discussion on what election system to advocate at this time I put very high weight on the complexity and burden column and medium weight on the voter values column. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] the "meaning" of a vote (or lack thereof)
On Sat, 2011-08-27 at 16:22 -0400, Michael Allan wrote:
> > > But not for voting. The voting system guarantees that my vote
> > > will have no effect and I would look rather foolish to suppose
> > > otherwise. This presents a serious problem. Do you agree?
>
> Dave Ketchum wrote:
> > TRULY, this demonstrates lack of understanding of cause and effect.
> >
> > IF the flask capacity is 32 oz then pouring in 1 oz will:
> > . Do nothing above filling if the flask starts with less than 31 oz.
> > . Cause overflow if flask already full.
> >
> > In voting there is often a limit at which time one more would have
> > an effect. If the act were pouring sodas into the Atlantic the
> > limit would be far away.
>
> Please relate this to an election. Take an election for a US state
> governor, for example. Suppose I am eligible to vote. I say my vote
> cannot possibly affect the outcome of the election. You say it can,
> under certain conditions. Under what conditions exactly?
The meaning of an individual vote is mostly irrelevant and pointless to
discuss. If a barge can carry 10 tons of sand then of course at any
point in time while loading the barge no single grain of sand matters,
but will *you* get on that barge for a 300 mile journey across lake
Superior if it is loaded with 10.1 tons of sand? Probably not. Votes in
any election with millions of voters are like this, individually
irrelevant, but very meaningful as an aggregate. If there are ten
thousand people who share your values and will vote as you vote then
together you have a shot at influencing the outcome of the election with
20 thousand voters.
For single winner elections in the US we need the simplest system that
can force politicians to be accountable to aggregates of voters.
Plurality voting creates a situation where the force on the candidates
from these smaller groups is a small fraction of the natural or real
force. In my opinion this is *the* key issue to fix at this point in
history.
I noticed something interesting in that some polling I heard reported on
the radio for the Republican nominee candidate sounded like approval. It
was reported as a per candidate vote ("when asked, 20% of likely voters
would vote for X)". It really is a very natural way to vote and because
it is *aggregates* that matter a single vote for each candidate is all
that is needed to accurately articulate the will of the people. So back
to meaning of a vote. Well, in approval, if N is the number of
candidates and V the number of voters I guess you get a maximum of
(N*1/N)/V worth of influence. With plurality you get (1/N)/V for
influence so to really stretch the sand analogy, if you fill your barge
with plurality sand your 10.1 tons of sand might actually only weigh one
or two tons and you can sally forth on your 300 mile journey with nary a
worry.
A final analogy ...
I remember a science fiction story (maybe a Harry Harrison book?) where
a prison was constructed of a massive stone disc set in a stone recess.
The cells were along the edge of the disk such that the prisoners could
push on the outer stone wall but the gap was too small to escape. If
enough prisoners pushed on that wall the disk would move a few
centimeters. The only way out of the prison was to get the disk to make
a full rotation where the cell was exposed to an exit. If on a
particular day a prisoner didn't push on the wall you probably could not
measure the reduction in distance moved that day. The individual vote
(prisoner pushing on the wall) is irrelevant, but the aggregate is
meaningful.
This idea is so much a part of life it baffles me when people make the
claim that their vote is meaningless. It is blindingly obvious to me
that the only meaningful context for discussing a vote is as an
aggregate and using thus you must use statistical notions.
> Note my critique of Warren's proof in the other sub-thread:
> http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2011-August/028266.html
>
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 01:07 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: > matt welland wrote ... > > > The only strategy in > > approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you > > despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise > > more to win. > > The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the > front runners really are. > Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that > the media created front > runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely > advertised front runners, then they > become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. > > When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. > But after the Citizens > United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the > exception. For me it seems we are so far from a point were discerning the front runner is anything but blindingly obvious (at least in the US) that it is a complete non-issue. Did any of the alternative candidates get into the two digit range in 2008? The third party candidates are so irrelevant that after a couple searches I still hadn't found a link that mentioned the percentage results to put in this post. I would be thrilled if when voting I even *considered* dropping my vote for the lesser horror front runner in an approval vote. These concerns are like bikeshedding, we are arguing about the paint color and we don't even have a roof, walls or foundation, hell, we don't even agree on the plans. That doesn't mean the debate on this list is not important, it is very important, but I come full circle to my post from a while back. When the knowledgeable experts can't put out a unified front there will be no moving forward. Sorry, it's hard to watch a country which had so much potential to make the human condition better for people all around the world, turn a bit uglier, meaner and, yup, more fascist every day. I suspect that the only thing that can turn this around in a sustainable way is a change in the voting system but without a crystal clear rallying cry from the experts for *ONE* method that will never happen. Truth is that the goals of this list are at odds with my primary interest. After reading any replies to this I'll sign off the list. Cheers and thanks to all for the great work done in furthering the art and science of choosing our leaders! Matt -=- > > 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] remember Toby Nixon?
On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 22:42 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: > About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice > on what election method > to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on > CSSD beatpath. As near as I > know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another > opportunity like that? > It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods > based on ranked ballots > because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis > Carroll) anticipated this > difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a > solution. > Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is > the next simplest. IMHO > anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a > chance with the general > public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually > truncated IRV to rank only > three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. > Asset Voting in its simplest form tends to squeeze out the CW, because when > flanked closely on both > sides by other candidates, the CW tends to have too few first place > preferences (assets or bargaining > chips) to survive. What is "CW"? Us "part time readers" would be forever grateful if some kind soul would put a magic decoder ring on the wiki. > On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed > strategy. This fact makes > Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. Is this a generally accepted truth? I don't think I agree with it, can you point me to more information or explain? The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. But I think this is only a factor for the period after transitioning to approval from a plurality system. In the longer term both the candidates and the voters will change. I think the change would be for the better, candidates would generally be more accountable, voters need only decide who they could live with as leaders and it is worth it to listen to what the minority players are saying - giving them your vote is both possible and meaningful. I guess most of these would be true (perhaps more so) for asset voting also. > That brings us to Delegable Yes/No (DYN) voting, which is a hybrid between > Asset Voting and Approval > that overcomes the weaknesses of those methods without increasing the > complexity to the level of IRV: > In DYN you circle the name of your favorite candidate and then optionally > mark “Yes” next to the > candidates that you are sure you want to approve of, and “No” next to those > that you are sure that you > want to disapprove of. You automatically delegate the rest of the Yes/No > decisions to the candidate that > you circled as “favorite.” > Those delegated decisions are made by the candidates after the partial > results have been made public, > so that no false polls can manipulate the strategy. > What do you think? > > 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] OT: git etc. (was "Re: Election method simulator code.")
Mindshare is not a perfect metric for judging worthiness - consider plurality voting for example. Git is a fine and powerful tool but it is complicated and quite counter intuitive in some ways. (fyi I've used rcs, cvs, svn, designsync, bitkeeper, monotone, darcs, mercurial, bazaar and fossil). My recommendation would be fossil. Although one of the youngest of the bunch you get a wiki, tickets and the easiest install and setup on windows and linux (and MacOS I believe) available and a simple but adequately powerful usage model. A nice writeup that captures my sentiments can be found here: http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1276624594.html Anyone who wants to try fossil (for open source code) but needs it to be hosted can send me a request with the project name and I'll set you up an online server on my host - no cost to EM members :) . Your repo would be at http://www.kiatoa.com/fossils/ (here is one of my fossil repositories http://www.kiatoa.com/fossils/opensrc). I plan on putting together a minimal github like site at that location. All this begs a question, what voting system makes the best sense when the voters have differing levels of competency related to the vote? Matt -=- On Fri, 2011-05-06 at 14:05 -0500, Duane Johnson wrote: > Git and GitHub has the largest mindshare among open source developers > that I am aware of (I come from the open source dev community, not > academia). If you want to be discovered or collaborate, I recommend > that route. > > Duane > > On May 6, 2011, at 1:19 PM, Brian Olson wrote: > > > > > I counter-recommend git. I don't like it. If you like the new > > 'distributed version control' system style, I recommend Mercurial. > > code.google.com also supports mercurial. > > > > > > My own election simulator is also up on google code, also with > > subversion. > > > > > > It's kinda hidden inside my project for multi-language (C/Java/perl) > > election method implementation library. > > > > > > http://code.google.com/p/voteutil/ > > > > > > http://code.google.com/p/voteutil/source/browse/#svn%2Fsim_one_seat > > > > On May 6, 2011, at 8:29 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: > > > > > I recommend you put it up on GitHub. Git handles versioning and > > > source control for you, and github is a good place for people who > > > want to suggest code changes to do it directly, so it's easy for > > > you to just accept or reject those suggestions. If you don't want > > > to have to learn Git's command-line interface, there are a few gui > > > tools: you can use git-cola for making checkins, and giggle or > > > gitg for looking at the history of checkins. > > > > > > 2011/5/6 Kristofer Munsterhjelm > > > Quite some time ago, I rewrote and expanded the > > > singlewinner part of my > > > election method analysis program, mainly to add a cache to > > > make X,,Y and X//Y methods very fast if results for base > > > methods and sets X and Y had been calculated earlier -- > > > and to only calculate the pairwise matrix one instead of > > > 200 times if I were to find the results of 200 Condorcet > > > methods. > > > > > > The last week or so, I've been cleaning up that code, and > > > a version is > > > up on Google Code at http://preview.tinyurl.com/5rd5krp . > > > It's only > > > tested on Linux, has some known bugs, and the actual > > > structure isn't > > > documented apart from comments, but there it is. > > > > > > I'll probably continue working on it now that I know how > > > versioning > > > works :-) If anyone has any questions or want to add to > > > it, go ahead and reply! > > > > > > > > > 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 > > > > 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] A conversation with an English woman about IRV [WARNING: mildly obnoxious and long rant]
On Tue, 2011-05-03 at 21:38 -0400, robert bristow-johnson wrote: > On May 3, 2011, at 9:17 PM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote: > > > An English woman came into my work today. This is very unusual. I > > brought up the coming referendum she will miss. She had no > > opinion. I explained that IRV which the English call AV for some > > crazy reason even though AV is approval voting is a false reform. > > She gave me a blank stare. > > > > Then I brought up that with the new ballots would support > > Condorcet, which is better than what she call alternative vote. She > > had no idea what Condorcet is. I brought up that the old ballots > > support the real A V, approval voting which easily beats Plurality > > and IRV. She had know idea what Approval voting is. I said that > > one votes for as many candidates as one wishes, thus making the > > system clone-immune. > > > > She left. If she is at all representative of the English as an > > whole, the English need much instruction about voting methods and > > are not qualified to vote on this referendum. That explains why the > > referendum goes down to defeat for the wrong reasons: > > > > IRV will almost certainly loose because of FUD (fear, Uncertainty, > > and Doubt). It should go down to defeat because it is still > > susceptible to Duverger’s Law, is not precinct-summable, costly, > > and nonmonotonic. > > > it's not just the English. > > unfortunately, both the Keep_Plurality_Rule crowd (with their mantra > "Keep Voting Simple") and the IRV crowd (or whatever acronym used, > like AV or RCV or PR or STV) muddy the discussion. i, personally, > feel that the Approval or Range crowds do too (actually, i think > Approval Voting is a good way to retain judges and such if the local > politics is that judges must answer to the public as do politicians). > > after IRV has been beaten up so badly because of its perceived > complexity, people ask me how can i explain Condorcet in a sentence > and i answer: > >"If Candidate A is preferred by more voters than Candidate B, then > Candidate B is not elected." > > it's simple and sensible and, of course, fails if there is a cycle. > > *everybody* needs to be educated. the unfortunate thing is that when > FairVote did the educating, they plugged only IRV as if it was the > only way to use a ranked-choice ballot to solve the spoiler problem. > they equated ranked ballot and the STV method of tabulation and that > falsehood needs to be de-educated out of people. it was really sad > that they did that. When the pragmatists collide with the perfectionists you get a lot of noise, no directed action and absolutely no results. This is a primary reason why we (the humans) are pretty much screwed, and it is indirectly why broken ideas such as IRV perpetuate. The pragmatists know that the English woman written about above pretty much represents the norm around the world. Judge them if you will but people have lives to get on with and understanding complicated voting methods for reasons that are hard to explain just doesn't compete with thinking about lovers, current or ex or the latest Friends episode. Ordinary people will struggle with approval, roll their eyes at range and go catatonic over Condorcet. The perfectionists on the other hand cannot accept any method with even the slightest unintended consequences and so will not endorse imperfect methods even if they agree that said method is an improvement over the status quo. The two extremes of Approval vs. Condorcet are the best example. I have followed this list for years and read many explanations on Condorcet and just like the description given to the English woman above none of them are easy to assimilate. How the heck do you translate my rankings into "if more prefer A over C ..." You are asking people to have faith in your fancy math and programming. At the end of the day I remain unconvinced that it is a sufficiently better method than Approval by any metric grounded in the messy reality of imperfect humans voting for other imperfect humans to be their leaders. From the perspective of US single winner elections I say the following: 1. Approval voting; - trivial to transition to (no over-voting), want to vote for the underdog while hedging your bet for the frontrunner, no problem - everyone gets the mechanics and the nuances of approval after a minute of explanation - very low effort to vote, avoids all the comparisons in ranking - minimal real world risk of unintended consequences - naturally resistant to strategic voting. It's binary, what can you do? 2. Range voting - degree of improvement over approval is debatable, at least for today, maybe a few years from now the need will be different - significant step in complexity for the equipment, 1 bit toggle to n bit integer. I can't implement that on the current bal
