[EM] SODA terminology: opinions wanted.
I keep coming back to the basic question of terminology in SODA. If the voters delegate their votes, what is the verb for the thing the candidates do with those delegated votes? I want to be able to say: Candidate A is first in the Xing order, so she Xs for candidates B and C. is probably delegated approvals; what is ? Assign? Cast? Commit? Fill in? Inject? Or is one word not enough, and you need a phrase like delegated adding order? I'd love it if someone could help me find a better option. Even if not, I need more opinions before I can confidently choose one of the above options. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA terminology: opinions wanted.
On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 7:06 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: I keep coming back to the basic question of terminology in SODA. If the voters delegate their votes, what is the verb for the thing the candidates do with those delegated votes? I want to be able to say: Candidate A is first in the Xing order, so she Xs for candidates B and C. is probably delegated approvals; what is ? How about: Candidate A is first in the sharing order, so she shares her delegated votes with candidates B and C. ? I know we had a discussion in August where we decided to change share to add approvals to your vote on the wiki, and I agreed that I liked it better. Maybe I'm reconsidering... I like the word share because A passing on votes doesn't diminish her own. (Similar to filesharing.) ~ Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA sometimes FBC-safe
Jameson: You wrote: Actually, with SODA, it does help, because you can know ex ante (by looking at the predeclared preferences) when you are safe by FBC. That is, if you prefer AB, and B prefers A, or A prefers B, or A and B both prefer a certain viable C, then you are safe. Only if B prefers the most-viable third candidate C, but A is indifferent between B and C, then you might consider a favorite-betraying vote for B. And even then, it's only appropriate if A very nearly, but not quite, is able to win... not exactly the situation where favorite betrayal is the first thing on your mind. This is a specific enough circumstance that favorite-betraying strategy would never take off and become a serious factor in SODA. With SODA, you can give that as a solid ex-ante guarantee to most voters, just not quite all of them. This is unlike the situation in most voting systems, where you can make no solid guarantees before the vote unless you can make them to all voters. [endquote] Ok yes, as you say, that's a very different situation from the ordinary FBC-failure, because, for most people there is known to be no favorite-burial need. The favorite-burial problem really exists when there's uncertainty for everyone, or for a large percentage of the voters, which isn't the case with SODA. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA sometimes FBC-safe
2012/3/1 MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com Jameson: You wrote: Actually, with SODA, it does help, because you can know ex ante (by looking at the predeclared preferences) when you are safe by FBC. That is, if you prefer AB, and B prefers A, or A prefers B, or A and B both prefer a certain viable C, then you are safe. Only if B prefers the most-viable third candidate C, but A is indifferent between B and C, then you might consider a favorite-betraying vote for B. And even then, it's only appropriate if A very nearly, but not quite, is able to win... not exactly the situation where favorite betrayal is the first thing on your mind. This is a specific enough circumstance that favorite-betraying strategy would never take off and become a serious factor in SODA. With SODA, you can give that as a solid ex-ante guarantee to most voters, just not quite all of them. This is unlike the situation in most voting systems, where you can make no solid guarantees before the vote unless you can make them to all voters. [endquote] Ok yes, as you say, that's a very different situation from the ordinary FBC-failure, because, for most people there is known to be no favorite-burial need. The favorite-burial problem really exists when there's uncertainty for everyone, or for a large percentage of the voters, which isn't the case with SODA. Thank you. By the way, I left out one further circumstance in which you are FBC-safe. Using the letters above, you are also safe if C declared a preference for B. If C prefers A or is indifferent between A and B, then you might have to worry (if all the other circumstances listed above also pertain.) Jameson Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? Well, there is the 5% cutoff, below which your votes are automatically assigned for you. That's not really a punishment though. The candidate will probably get what they would've done anyway. I really think this is an issue that might need a rule of some kind. Why nominate one when you can nominate five? Anybody who appeals to some segment of the electorate could help bring in votes. Can you imagine if, for example, the Republicans were able to nominate every single one of their hopefuls for the presidency, with the knowledge that in the end all their votes would probably pool together? You don't have to like Gingrich, you can vote for Cain. And maybe your vote will end up with Gingrich, but without Cain you might not have cast it at all. That's a fair point I've thought some more about the just nominate everyone problem, and I think it may be worth making a SODA rule to deal with it. The problem with the first second + third rule is that it primarily focuses on the big candidates, while the marginal choice of whether to throw one more hat in the ring is made by the small candidates. So why not do something more obvious: if a candidate gets less than 1%, they cannot use their delegated votes at all. Say candidates are naturally distributed by a modified form of Zipf's law, with the top two candidates set to equal. That is to say, the top two candidates have X% support; the next one has half that, X/2; the next, X/3; etc. It would take 21 candidates to get down to 1% support, and if all votes were delegated or bullet votes, the top two would have 22% support each. The minimum majority coalition would be 7 candidates. If voters were a little more wary of wasting their vote, and left a safety factor of 2 (that is, refused to vote for a candidate whose support was under 2%), then there would be 12 candidates, and the top two would have 24% support each, and the minimum majority coalition would be 5 candidates. And if voters had a safety factor of 2, but there were a 1/3 chance of adding one more approval (that is, 2/9 of voters vote for 2 candidates, 2/27 vote for three, etc.; a total of 150% approvals) then there would be 14 candidates, the top two would have 35% support, and the minimum majority coalition (using only the delegated, not the approval, votes of all but the first coalition member) would be 3 candidates. Of course, if you use a reasonable power law instead of Zipf's law, the number of candidates would tend to be less, although the minimum majority coalition might be slightly larger. These numbers sound reasonable to me. I think the 1% cutoff would be a good rule, and I'm considering adding it to the definition of the standard version of SODA. What do others think? Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA arguments
For those who feel that Bayesian Regret is the be-all-and-end-all measure of voting system quality, that SODA's BR for 100% strategic voters will beat all other systems, including Range/Approval. For those who feel that Condorcet compliance is the be-all-and-end-all, a majority Condorcet winner, or any Condorcet winner with 3 candidates and full candidate preferences, is not just the winner with honest votes, but in all cases the strategically-forced winner; this contrasts with Condorcet systems, in which strategy can cause even majority- or 3-candidate- CWs to lose. For those who feel that strategic resistance is the most important, SODA is unmatched. It meets FBC, solves the chicken dilemma, has no burial incentive (ie, meets later-no-help), and even meets later-no-harm for the two most-approved candidates (where it matters most). It's monotonic, and I believe (haven't proven) that it meets consistency. It meets participation, cloneproofness, and IIA for up to 4 candidates. For those middlebrows who most value a system's acceptability to current incumbents, SODA is top-of-the-line. It allows voters to vote plurality-style and, if two parties are clearly favored by voters, allows those two parties to prevent a weak centrist from winning, even if polarization is so high that the centrist is an apparent Condorcet winner. For those who want simplicity: while it's true that the SODA counting process is more complicated than approval, the process of voting is actually simpler than any other system, because you can just vote for your favorite candidate. For the majority who agrees with their favorite candidate's preferences, there is no strategic need to watch the polls and figure out who the frontrunners are, and no nail-biting dilemma of whether to rank others as equal to your favorite. And for those who balk at delegation, SODA allows any voter to cast a direct, undelegated ballot; and allows those voters who do delegate to know how their vote will be used. Refusing to consider SODA because you don't want to delegate, is like refusing to walk into a candy store because you don't like chocolate; SODA allows, not requires, delegation. I think pretty much everybody on this list falls into one or more of the above categories. So, what's not to like about SODA? Jameson ps. I clarified the SODA procedurehttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/SODA_voting_(Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval)#Full.2C_step-by-step_rules on the wiki, though there were no substantive changes. I improved the formatting, marked the steps which are optional, and better explained that winning candidates use their delegated votes first because precisely because they will probably choose not to approve others. Comments are welcome. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
For those who feel that strategic resistance is the most important, SODA is unmatched. It ... has no burial incentive (ie, meets later-no-help), Oops. I got carried away. No burial incentive is arguably true, but it doesn't universally meet later-no-help, only up to 4 candidates. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
Hi Jameson, Just a few thoughts. De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com; electionsciencefoundation electionscie...@googlegroups.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 17 février 2012 9h20 Objet : [EM] SODA arguments For those who feel that Bayesian Regret is the be-all-and-end-all measure of voting system quality, that SODA's BR for 100% strategic voters will beat all other systems, including Range/Approval. I guess you will have a hard time arguing this, especially if you have multiple audiences. For instance, whether Range/Approval are even all that great is controversial. But if you're an anti-majoritarian type or think it's unfair/unrealistic to propose that voters are strategic, I guess that SODA looks like a step down. Didn't you post an example where SODA declined to elect a weak CW that you said was actually a good thing? If that's true, I guess some people won't agree with that. It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? (I have a simple rule for cutting down the number of candidates. I don't think I've ever mentioned it because I know how idealistic you all are. Just say that the first-preference winner auto-wins if he has more first preferences than second and third place combined. This can make it risky even to compete for third place. The idea is that voters should definitely then realize which candidates are the top three in their race, which could amount to a viability/visibility boost for #3. My rule assumes there's no equal-ranking, but I bet something could be devised for other ballots.) Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
2012/2/17 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, Just a few thoughts. *De :* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *À :* EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com; electionsciencefoundation electionscie...@googlegroups.com *Envoyé le :* Vendredi 17 février 2012 9h20 *Objet :* [EM] SODA arguments For those who feel that Bayesian Regret is the be-all-and-end-all measure of voting system quality, that SODA's BR for 100% strategic voters will beat all other systems, including Range/Approval. I guess you will have a hard time arguing this, especially if you have multiple audiences. For instance, whether Range/Approval are even all that great is controversial. But if you're an anti-majoritarian type or think it's unfair/unrealistic to propose that voters are strategic, I guess that SODA looks like a step down. I'm not sure that's true. Clay and Warren are the most hard-core BR advocates, and probably I should let them speak for themselves, but... I think their attitude is not that strategy is evil or Range voters will be 100% honest, but rather, Some fraction of voters will be honest under range, and that's good, so why not use range and let them? In that case, the fact that range voting is strictly better (by BR, and for a pre-chosen arbitrary strategic percentage) than [IRV, Condorcet, MJ, etc], is an important foundation of their argument. Finding a system which, while it is worse than range for 100% honest, is actually better than it in some cases (100% strategy, and presumably 99%, who knows where it stops), is an important qualitative difference in the situation. Didn't you post an example where SODA declined to elect a weak CW that you said was actually a good thing? If that's true, I guess some people won't agree with that. Yes. The basic setup is two major candidates and a weak centrist. The weaker of the two majors gets to decide which of the other two wins. So if the weak CW is truly a CW, they will be preferred by the weaker major, and thus win; but if they are more weak than CW, then the weaker major would rather allow the stronger major to win than stake their reputation on electing the weak CW. So in the end, it's more a question of giving a last chance to realize that someone isn't really the CW, rather than not electing someone who is the CW. It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? Well, there is the 5% cutoff, below which your votes are automatically assigned for you. (I have a simple rule for cutting down the number of candidates. I don't think I've ever mentioned it because I know how idealistic you all are. Just say that the first-preference winner auto-wins if he has more first preferences than second and third place combined. This can make it risky even to compete for third place. The idea is that voters should definitely then realize which candidates are the top three in their race, which could amount to a viability/visibility boost for #3. My rule assumes there's no equal-ranking, but I bet something could be devised for other ballots.) That rule doesn't sound too bad to me. Most of the time, there'd be no risk of it applying; but I think it would still be a gentle pressure in the intended direction. Still, I think it should be considered separately from SODA per se. Jameson Kevin 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] SODA arguments
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Vendredi 17 février 2012 19h53 Objet : Re: [EM] SODA arguments For those who feel that Bayesian Regret is the be-all-and-end-all measure of voting system quality, that SODA's BR for 100% strategic voters will beat all other systems, including Range/Approval. I guess you will have a hard time arguing this, especially if you have multiple audiences. For instance, whether Range/Approval are even all that great is controversial. But if you're an anti-majoritarian type or think it's unfair/unrealistic to propose that voters are strategic, I guess that SODA looks like a step down. I'm not sure that's true. Clay and Warren are the most hard-core BR advocates, and probably I should let them speak for themselves, but... I think their attitude is not that strategy is evil or Range voters will be 100% honest, but rather, Some fraction of voters will be honest under range, and that's good, so why not use range and let them? In that case, the fact that range voting is strictly better (by BR, and for a pre-chosen arbitrary strategic percentage) than [IRV, Condorcet, MJ, etc], is an important foundation of their argument. Finding a system which, while it is worse than range for 100% honest, is actually better than it in some cases (100% strategy, and presumably 99%, who knows where it stops), is an important qualitative difference in the situation. Alright. I guess I'll let them make their own arguments if they are so inclined. Didn't you post an example where SODA declined to elect a weak CW that you said was actually a good thing? If that's true, I guess some people won't agree with that. Yes. The basic setup is two major candidates and a weak centrist. The weaker of the two majors gets to decide which of the other two wins. So if the weak CW is truly a CW, they will be preferred by the weaker major, and thus win; but if they are more weak than CW, then the weaker major would rather allow the stronger major to win than stake their reputation on electing the weak CW. So in the end, it's more a question of giving a last chance to realize that someone isn't really the CW, rather than not electing someone who is the CW. Concerns me a little. I'm not sure candidates would do the thing their supporters would want (or even that they themselves feel is best) due to pressures like staking their reputation. For instance, I can see a moderate liberal giving his votes to a more extreme liberal even when he himself prefers a moderate conservative. A voter whose personal ranking crosses the line like that might want to avoid delegating. It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? Well, there is the 5% cutoff, below which your votes are automatically assigned for you. That's not really a punishment though. The candidate will probably get what they would've done anyway. I really think this is an issue that might need a rule of some kind. Why nominate one when you can nominate five? Anybody who appeals to some segment of the electorate could help bring in votes. Can you imagine if, for example, the Republicans were able to nominate every single one of their hopefuls for the presidency, with the knowledge that in the end all their votes would probably pool together? You don't have to like Gingrich, you can vote for Cain. And maybe your vote will end up with Gingrich, but without Cain you might not have cast it at all. (I have a simple rule for cutting down the number of candidates. I don't think I've ever mentioned it because I know how idealistic you all are. Just say that the first-preference winner auto-wins if he has more first preferences than second and third place combined. This can make it risky even to compete for third place. The idea is that voters should definitely then realize which candidates are the top three in their race, which could amount to a viability/visibility boost for #3. My rule assumes there's no equal-ranking, but I bet something could be devised for other ballots.) That rule doesn't sound too bad to me. Most of the time, there'd be no risk of it applying; but I think it would still be a gentle pressure in the intended direction. Still, I think it should be considered separately from SODA per se. Maybe it would be gentle if you expect a lot of candidates but in general I don't think it is very gentle. For example, this election: 49 A 44 B 4 CB 3 DB Would qualify, and auto-elect A. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA arguments
So in the end, it's more a question of giving a last chance to realize that someone isn't really the CW, rather than not electing someone who is the CW. Concerns me a little. I'm not sure candidates would do the thing their supporters would want (or even that they themselves feel is best) due to pressures like staking their reputation. For instance, I can see a moderate liberal giving his votes to a more extreme liberal even when he himself prefers a moderate conservative. A voter whose personal ranking crosses the line like that might want to avoid delegating. This scenario is about whether to elect the squeezed centrist or the opposite side. The extremist on your own side is already out of the running. Moreover, as a voter, you can already see if your candidate predeclared for a same-side exremist. It seems to me that there would be a lot more candidates under SODA. It's pretty hard to spoil the race and there is benefit to be had in receiving some votes. It seems parliamentary that way. How many supporters is too few to consider running? Well, there is the 5% cutoff, below which your votes are automatically assigned for you. That's not really a punishment though. The candidate will probably get what they would've done anyway. I really think this is an issue that might need a rule of some kind. Why nominate one when you can nominate five? Anybody who appeals to some segment of the electorate could help bring in votes. Can you imagine if, for example, the Republicans were able to nominate every single one of their hopefuls for the presidency, with the knowledge that in the end all their votes would probably pool together? You don't have to like Gingrich, you can vote for Cain. And maybe your vote will end up with Gingrich, but without Cain you might not have cast it at all. That's a fair point. But look at the other side. Imagine Obama, with a single votecatcher on his left, let's say Grayson. To me it's clear that the two-person tag team (in this case, on the left) would be much better off than the 6-person one (in this case, on the right). Too many people would be tempted to approve just some subset of the Republicans. And similarly, if it were just Romney and (pre-meltdown) Perry against (non-incumbent) Obama, Clinton, (pre-scandal) Edwards, and Kucinich... I think that Romney and Perry would have the advantage. That is to say, more is not always better, even in SODA. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
Example where SODA fails participation. To avoid the issue of ties, just assume that the alphabetically first candidate wins all ties. (Otherwise, you have to add votes in groups of two to make things clear). 25: A(BC) 5: B 5: C 25: D(CB) 40: E As things are, A gets to delegate first, and approves only B. Now B is the only candidate who can beat E, so D approves B as well, and B wins. But if one approval-style vote is added for B and D, then D delegates first, and approves only C. C wins by the same token. So a vote for B has made B lose. I can prove this is impossible with 4 or fewer candidates. In particular, the balance between the (AB) team and the (CD) team mean that such a scenario can never work without a plausible-threat candidate E. A similar scenario works for IIA, with the new candidate stealing votes from A and sharing A's delegation order. I find these scenarios very highly implausible; for 1 election every 4 years, it's literally not in a million years. Jameson 2012/2/1 Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com 2012/2/1 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, *De :* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *À :* Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr *Cc :* em election-meth...@electorama.com *Envoyé le :* Mercredi 1 février 2012 11h12 *Objet :* Re: [EM] SODA criteria 2012/2/1 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, I expect that unpredictability (whatever there may be) of candidates' decisions can only hurt criteria compliance. At least with criteria that are generally defined on votes, because with such criteria you usually have to assume the worst about any other influences incorporated into the method. This is true. For most of the criteria, I was implicitly talking about a version of SODA where all candidates use optimum strategy according to their predeclared preferences. This is well-defined and unique, but is not necessarily polytime-calculable. Still, even without being able to calculate results, you can prove criteria compliances for this version by contradiction. For a polytime-calculable version which satisfies most of the same criteria, assume that each candidate, when it is their turn to assign delegated votes, looks at the two distinct frontrunners; that is: Candidate X, their most-preferred member of the current Smith set and candidate Y, the candidate, of those whom they prefer differently from X, who does best pairwise (again, using current assignments and unassigned preferences) against X They approve as many candidates as possible without approving both X and Y. This version does not satisfy participation (though again, it's damn close) or IIA, and I'm not 100% sure about its cloneproofness (though I think it is). Otherwise, it satisfies the criteria I said. So I wonder, can you suggest a deterministic version of SODA, where the negotiations of SODA are instead calculated directly from the pre-announced preferences of the candidates? And if so, does it satisfy the same criteria in your view? I can say I would be skeptical of how a criterion is being applied, or how clearly it is being defined, if the satisfaction of it *depends* on the fact that candidates have post-voting decisions to make. Are you still suspicious of participation and [delegated] IIA, given that satisfying them depends on assuming optimal strategy? Hmm, I think so, just because optimal strategy is hard to define in general. Do you think that it will be possible to produce convincing proofs when somebody asks for one? Pretty daunting task I would think. The proofs for the condorcet-related properties using optimal strategy are pretty simple and obvious. The participation criterion only applies for delegated voters. The proof for that is a bit harder, but not too tough. For approval ballots, it is possible to fail the (voted) participation criterion only if the delegation order changes, and there are at least 5 candidates (in a delicate balance, and for voters whose ballots cannot make sense in a one-dimensional ideology space). I just discovered a hole in my proof for delegated IIA. It works if all votes for the new candidate are and were approval-style. It can fail if there are at least 4/5 candidates in a tricky balance and the 5th/extra candidate pulls delegated votes in a way that changes the delegation order. In that case, there is always still a rational strategy for those voters which would still preserve IIA. (This proof is tricky.) I find myself trying to suggest that it may never be necessary to delegate any power to the candidates. That would make it easier to analyze. But in that case the method is basically Approval and doesn't even satisfy Majority Favorite. Right? No. In my previous message, I suggested two versions which leave no freedom for the candidates, automatically assigning delegated ballots. The first – optimal strategy – is not polytime computable that I know of (I strongly suspect
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Mercredi 1 février 2012 18h35 Objet : Re: [EM] SODA criteria In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Oh, I missed that the voter can't rank at all. So you are good with FBC. But I don't regard Approval as satisfying what I call MF and Woodall's Majority. It's possible to say it satisfies MF, but I prefer Woodall's treatment. (The criteria framework I use doesn't have any way to say that Approval satisfies MMC. You can equate approval with equal-top, above-bottom, or call it something external, but I can't say that voters stick to a limited number of slots. I understand the meaning of two-slot MMC or voted MMC but I see these as inferior versions.) In response to your last line, if the majority set involves more than one candidate, the delegating voters are never part of it and are unnecessary in getting one of these candidates elected. (I'm using your treatment that voters only have two rank levels.) If you don't agree, I'd like to hear how you are interpreting MMC, because I can't think of how else it would work. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
2012/2/2 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, *De :* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *À :* Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr *Cc :* em election-meth...@electorama.com *Envoyé le :* Mercredi 1 février 2012 18h35 *Objet :* Re: [EM] SODA criteria In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Oh, I missed that the voter can't rank at all. So you are good with FBC. But I don't regard Approval as satisfying what I call MF and Woodall's Majority. It's possible to say it satisfies MF, but I prefer Woodall's treatment. I don't know what MF stands for. I agree that it fails Woodall's majority, though not in the unique strong Nash equilibrium. (The criteria framework I use doesn't have any way to say that Approval satisfies MMC. You can equate approval with equal-top, above-bottom, or call it something external, but I can't say that voters stick to a limited number of slots. I understand the meaning of two-slot MMC or voted MMC but I see these as inferior versions.) voted, because delegation means there's sometimes effectively more than two slots. In response to your last line, if the majority set involves more than one candidate, the delegating voters are never part of it and are unnecessary in getting one of these candidates elected. (I'm using your treatment that voters only have two rank levels.) If you don't agree, I'd like to hear how you are interpreting MMC, because I can't think of how else it would work. 10: A(BC?...) 10: B(CA?...) 10: C(AB?...) 21: ABC 49: One of A, B, or C must win. Jameson Kevin 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] SODA criteria
Hi Jameson, De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Cc : em election-meth...@electorama.com Envoyé le : Jeudi 2 février 2012 11h35 Objet : Re: [EM] SODA criteria In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Oh, I missed that the voter can't rank at all. So you are good with FBC. But I don't regard Approval as satisfying what I call MF and Woodall's Majority. It's possible to say it satisfies MF, but I prefer Woodall's treatment. I don't know what MF stands for. I agree that it fails Woodall's majority, though not in the unique strong Nash equilibrium. (The criteria framework I use doesn't have any way to say that Approval satisfies MMC. You can equate approval with equal-top, above-bottom, or call it something external, but I can't say that voters stick to a limited number of slots. I understand the meaning of two-slot MMC or voted MMC but I see these as inferior versions.) voted, because delegation means there's sometimes effectively more than two slots. In response to your last line, if the majority set involves more than one candidate, the delegating voters are never part of it and are unnecessary in getting one of these candidates elected. (I'm using your treatment that voters only have two rank levels.) If you don't agree, I'd like to hear how you are interpreting MMC, because I can't think of how else it would work. 10: A(BC?...) 10: B(CA?...) 10: C(AB?...) 21: ABC 49: One of A, B, or C must win. MF is Majority Favorite. If I understand you correctly, you're treating voters as casting either an approval ballot, or else one of the predeclared preference orders. I guess that makes sense though it's quite tricky to analyze. If a voter is counted as voting ABC, it's not possible to raise C above only B. But when I analyze this, it has to result in something consistent with the desired ranking unless that's completely impossible. I guess that could only be A, AC, or ACB approval ballots. I think that would result in some criteria problems. For instance, suppose that ABC elects C, but A=C=B elects B. Since I look at how the voter wanted to rank, and not the options the method made available, I would call that a Mono-raise failure. You might think that's unfair, but I don't know what framework you can suggest that will be more apparent and also allow you to fairly evaluate something like Mono-raise. Personally I think it would be easier to assume voters have no idea what candidates predeclare. In that case MMC doesn't apply in your scenario above. Granted, this might make it hard for criteria that are supposed to deal with optimal strategy assumptions or equilibrium. I just don't worry about those criteria because I don't know how to evaluate them. I also wanted to note, here instead of in a separate post, that I wonder about the FBC. I was thinking it must satisfy it because you could cast an approval ballot, but that's not good reasoning (see: any Condorcet method). What if it is possible to get a superior result by delegating your vote to someone other than your favorite? It's not clear to me that this is impossible. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
2012/2/2 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, *De :* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *À :* Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr *Cc :* em election-meth...@electorama.com *Envoyé le :* Jeudi 2 février 2012 11h35 *Objet :* Re: [EM] SODA criteria In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Oh, I missed that the voter can't rank at all. So you are good with FBC. But I don't regard Approval as satisfying what I call MF and Woodall's Majority. It's possible to say it satisfies MF, but I prefer Woodall's treatment. I don't know what MF stands for. I agree that it fails Woodall's majority, though not in the unique strong Nash equilibrium. (The criteria framework I use doesn't have any way to say that Approval satisfies MMC. You can equate approval with equal-top, above-bottom, or call it something external, but I can't say that voters stick to a limited number of slots. I understand the meaning of two-slot MMC or voted MMC but I see these as inferior versions.) voted, because delegation means there's sometimes effectively more than two slots. In response to your last line, if the majority set involves more than one candidate, the delegating voters are never part of it and are unnecessary in getting one of these candidates elected. (I'm using your treatment that voters only have two rank levels.) If you don't agree, I'd like to hear how you are interpreting MMC, because I can't think of how else it would work. 10: A(BC?...) 10: B(CA?...) 10: C(AB?...) 21: ABC 49: One of A, B, or C must win. MF is Majority Favorite. If I understand you correctly, you're treating voters as casting either an approval ballot, or else one of the predeclared preference orders. Yes. I guess that makes sense though it's quite tricky to analyze. If a voter is counted as voting ABC, it's not possible to raise C above only B. But when I analyze this, it has to result in something consistent with the desired ranking unless that's completely impossible. I guess that could only be A, AC, or ACB approval ballots. I think that would result in some criteria problems. For instance, suppose that ABC elects C, but A=C=B elects B. Since I look at how the voter wanted to rank, and not the options the method made available, I would call that a Mono-raise failure. I guess I'd have to agree with that... well, if your vote for A=C causes C to lose. So failing participation in this way – for which I recently posted an example scenario, impossible with 4 candidates but possible with 5 – means failing mono-raise. My claim of monotonicity was based on comparing only approval ballots to approval ballots, delegation preferences to delegation preferences, and undelegated bullet votes to delegated votes. I did not consider this case. You might think that's unfair, but I don't know what framework you can suggest that will be more apparent and also allow you to fairly evaluate something like Mono-raise. Well, you could do as I had done, and evaluate it when the candidate A changes from BC to B=C. Personally I think it would be easier to assume voters have no idea what candidates predeclare. In that case MMC doesn't apply in your scenario above. Easier, but I think less realistic. At that point, it's basically approval. Granted, this might make it hard for criteria that are supposed to deal with optimal strategy assumptions or equilibrium. I just don't worry about those criteria because I don't know how to evaluate them. I also wanted to note, here instead of in a separate post, that I wonder about the FBC. I was thinking it must satisfy it because you could cast an approval ballot, but that's not good reasoning (see: any Condorcet method). What if it is possible to get a superior result by delegating your vote to someone other than your favorite? It's not clear to me that this is impossible. Say your favorite is W, but you delegate to some other X. They add approvals Y and Z, so that your ballot is counted for X, Y, and Z; and Z wins. You could have just voted for W, X, Y, and Z for the same result. Your approval vote for X gives them the same boost in the delegation order that a delegated vote would have given them. In fact, if you don't like Y, you can probably leave them off. Jameson Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list
Re: [EM] SODA criteria
Hi Jameson, I expect that unpredictability (whatever there may be) of candidates' decisions can only hurt criteria compliance. At least with criteria that are generally defined on votes, because with such criteria you usually have to assume the worst about any other influences incorporated into the method. So I wonder, can you suggest a deterministic version of SODA, where the negotiations of SODA are instead calculated directly from the pre-announced preferences of the candidates? And if so, does it satisfy the same criteria in your view? I can say I would be skeptical of how a criterion is being applied, or how clearly it is being defined, if the satisfaction of it *depends* on the fact that candidates have post-voting decisions to make. Kevin De : Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com À : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Mardi 31 janvier 2012 20h50 Objet : [EM] SODA criteria SODA passes: Majority MMC (as voted) Condorcet (as voted, and in a strong Nash equilibrium as honest) Condorcet loser (ditto) Monotone Participation (with the fix that delegation can be any fraction) IIA (delegated version - that is, if a new candidate is added, the winner is either the same, or someone higher on the new candidate's delegation order.) Cloneproof Polytime (there is no guarantee that optimal delegated assignment strategy is polytime calculable, but it will be in any real case, and anyway, candidates can just choose some near-optimal strategy.) Resolvable Summable Allows equal rankings FBC So, of the criteria in the wikipedia voting systems table, the only ones it out-and-out fails are: Consistency (though it comes damn close) Later-no-harm and later-no-help (though it does satisfy LNHarm for the one (two) candidate(s?) with the most voted approvals, and for other candidates, adding later preferences is probably strategically forced; so I'd say it fulfills the spirit of both of these. Similarly, it satisfies LNHelp for the last-to-delegate candidate, and nearly so for other late-delegating candidates, and the point of LNHelp is to prevent a weak candidate from winning through clever bottom filling, so again it satisfies the spirit.) Allows later preferences (though delegation substitutes for this affordance in some cases.) If we could just get some wikipedia-notable mention of SODA, we could put it in the table, and I think it would graphically stand out as the most criteria-compliant method there. I'm working on an academic article on SODA, which would not be focused on these criteria or even on SODA, but would quickly state the above. But if anyone can make an article happen in a wikipedia reliable source, that would be great. Jameson 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] SODA criteria
2012/2/1 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, I expect that unpredictability (whatever there may be) of candidates' decisions can only hurt criteria compliance. At least with criteria that are generally defined on votes, because with such criteria you usually have to assume the worst about any other influences incorporated into the method. This is true. For most of the criteria, I was implicitly talking about a version of SODA where all candidates use optimum strategy according to their predeclared preferences. This is well-defined and unique, but is not necessarily polytime-calculable. Still, even without being able to calculate results, you can prove criteria compliances for this version by contradiction. For a polytime-calculable version which satisfies most of the same criteria, assume that each candidate, when it is their turn to assign delegated votes, looks at the two distinct frontrunners; that is: Candidate X, their most-preferred member of the current Smith set and candidate Y, the candidate, of those whom they prefer differently from X, who does best pairwise (again, using current assignments and unassigned preferences) against X They approve as many candidates as possible without approving both X and Y. This version does not satisfy participation (though again, it's damn close) or IIA, and I'm not 100% sure about its cloneproofness (though I think it is). Otherwise, it satisfies the criteria I said. So I wonder, can you suggest a deterministic version of SODA, where the negotiations of SODA are instead calculated directly from the pre-announced preferences of the candidates? And if so, does it satisfy the same criteria in your view? I can say I would be skeptical of how a criterion is being applied, or how clearly it is being defined, if the satisfaction of it *depends* on the fact that candidates have post-voting decisions to make. Are you still suspicious of participation and [delegated] IIA, given that satisfying them depends on assuming optimal strategy? Jameson Kevin *De :* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *À :* EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com *Envoyé le :* Mardi 31 janvier 2012 20h50 *Objet :* [EM] SODA criteria SODA passes: Majority MMC (as voted) Condorcet (as voted, and in a strong Nash equilibrium as honest) Condorcet loser (ditto) Monotone Participation (with the fix that delegation can be any fraction) IIA (delegated version - that is, if a new candidate is added, the winner is either the same, or someone higher on the new candidate's delegation order.) Cloneproof Polytime (there is no guarantee that optimal delegated assignment strategy is polytime calculable, but it will be in any real case, and anyway, candidates can just choose some near-optimal strategy.) Resolvable Summable Allows equal rankings FBC So, of the criteria in the wikipedia voting systems tablehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_selected_systems_.28table.29, the only ones it out-and-out fails are: Consistency (though it comes damn close) Later-no-harm and later-no-help (though it does satisfy LNHarm for the one (two) candidate(s?) with the most voted approvals, and for other candidates, adding later preferences is probably strategically forced; so I'd say it fulfills the spirit of both of these. Similarly, it satisfies LNHelp for the last-to-delegate candidate, and nearly so for other late-delegating candidates, and the point of LNHelp is to prevent a weak candidate from winning through clever bottom filling, so again it satisfies the spirit.) Allows later preferences (though delegation substitutes for this affordance in some cases.) If we could just get some wikipedia-notable mention of SODA, we could put it in the table, and I think it would graphically stand out as the most criteria-compliant method there. I'm working on an academic article on SODA, which would not be focused on these criteria or even on SODA, but would quickly state the above. But if anyone can make an article happen in a wikipedia reliable source, that would be great. Jameson 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] SODA criteria
2012/2/1 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, *De :* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *À :* Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr *Cc :* em election-meth...@electorama.com *Envoyé le :* Mercredi 1 février 2012 11h12 *Objet :* Re: [EM] SODA criteria 2012/2/1 Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Hi Jameson, I expect that unpredictability (whatever there may be) of candidates' decisions can only hurt criteria compliance. At least with criteria that are generally defined on votes, because with such criteria you usually have to assume the worst about any other influences incorporated into the method. This is true. For most of the criteria, I was implicitly talking about a version of SODA where all candidates use optimum strategy according to their predeclared preferences. This is well-defined and unique, but is not necessarily polytime-calculable. Still, even without being able to calculate results, you can prove criteria compliances for this version by contradiction. For a polytime-calculable version which satisfies most of the same criteria, assume that each candidate, when it is their turn to assign delegated votes, looks at the two distinct frontrunners; that is: Candidate X, their most-preferred member of the current Smith set and candidate Y, the candidate, of those whom they prefer differently from X, who does best pairwise (again, using current assignments and unassigned preferences) against X They approve as many candidates as possible without approving both X and Y. This version does not satisfy participation (though again, it's damn close) or IIA, and I'm not 100% sure about its cloneproofness (though I think it is). Otherwise, it satisfies the criteria I said. So I wonder, can you suggest a deterministic version of SODA, where the negotiations of SODA are instead calculated directly from the pre-announced preferences of the candidates? And if so, does it satisfy the same criteria in your view? I can say I would be skeptical of how a criterion is being applied, or how clearly it is being defined, if the satisfaction of it *depends* on the fact that candidates have post-voting decisions to make. Are you still suspicious of participation and [delegated] IIA, given that satisfying them depends on assuming optimal strategy? Hmm, I think so, just because optimal strategy is hard to define in general. Do you think that it will be possible to produce convincing proofs when somebody asks for one? Pretty daunting task I would think. The proofs for the condorcet-related properties using optimal strategy are pretty simple and obvious. The participation criterion only applies for delegated voters. The proof for that is a bit harder, but not too tough. For approval ballots, it is possible to fail the (voted) participation criterion only if the delegation order changes, and there are at least 5 candidates (in a delicate balance, and for voters whose ballots cannot make sense in a one-dimensional ideology space). I just discovered a hole in my proof for delegated IIA. It works if all votes for the new candidate are and were approval-style. It can fail if there are at least 4/5 candidates in a tricky balance and the 5th/extra candidate pulls delegated votes in a way that changes the delegation order. In that case, there is always still a rational strategy for those voters which would still preserve IIA. (This proof is tricky.) I find myself trying to suggest that it may never be necessary to delegate any power to the candidates. That would make it easier to analyze. But in that case the method is basically Approval and doesn't even satisfy Majority Favorite. Right? No. In my previous message, I suggested two versions which leave no freedom for the candidates, automatically assigning delegated ballots. The first – optimal strategy – is not polytime computable that I know of (I strongly suspect it's NP-complete in theory, though in practical cases it will be easy to compute). The second – vote-one-frontrunner – is easy to compute, but it causes violations of IIA and participation. In your criteria list you had Majority but for that you must actually be assuming the opposite of what I am trying, namely that *everyone* is delegating, is that right? Everyone who votes for the majority candidate is either delegating to them, or voting them above all other alternatives - that is, approving only them but checking do not delegate. This is the standard meaning of the majority criterion. For instance, by this meaning, approval meets the majority criterion. For MMC, everyone in the mutual majority is either delegating to one of the candidates, or approving all of them and nobody else. Kevin 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] SODA is monotonic. Earlier failure/fix was actually for participation, not monotononicity.
A week or two ago, I sent a message to the list with a scenario which I claimed was an example of nonmonotonicity in SODA as defined; and mentioned a natural fix for this problem (allowing partial assignment of delegated votes). I was mistaken. It was not an example of nonmonotonicity, but rather an example of failure of the participation criterion. The rest of what I said, including the simple fix for the problem, still applies. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA criteria
SODA passes: Majority MMC (as voted) Condorcet (as voted, and in a strong Nash equilibrium as honest) Condorcet loser (ditto) Monotone Participation (with the fix that delegation can be any fraction) IIA (delegated version - that is, if a new candidate is added, the winner is either the same, or someone higher on the new candidate's delegation order.) Cloneproof Polytime (there is no guarantee that optimal delegated assignment strategy is polytime calculable, but it will be in any real case, and anyway, candidates can just choose some near-optimal strategy.) Resolvable Summable Allows equal rankings FBC So, of the criteria in the wikipedia voting systems tablehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Compliance_of_selected_systems_.28table.29, the only ones it out-and-out fails are: Consistency (though it comes damn close) Later-no-harm and later-no-help (though it does satisfy LNHarm for the one (two) candidate(s?) with the most voted approvals, and for other candidates, adding later preferences is probably strategically forced; so I'd say it fulfills the spirit of both of these. Similarly, it satisfies LNHelp for the last-to-delegate candidate, and nearly so for other late-delegating candidates, and the point of LNHelp is to prevent a weak candidate from winning through clever bottom filling, so again it satisfies the spirit.) Allows later preferences (though delegation substitutes for this affordance in some cases.) If we could just get some wikipedia-notable mention of SODA, we could put it in the table, and I think it would graphically stand out as the most criteria-compliant method there. I'm working on an academic article on SODA, which would not be focused on these criteria or even on SODA, but would quickly state the above. But if anyone can make an article happen in a wikipedia reliable source, that would be great. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA
Jameson: SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In
a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it
acceptable. You're speciflying the rules in too much detail. The
street-description, and the petition-language, needn't be the legal language
(though that should be available upon request). Likewise, for MTAOC or MCAOC,
or AOC, people won't demandto see the computer program, but it will be
available to the person who wants to look at it. The person who wouldn't accept
a computer program also wouldn't ask to read it. So here's how I described SODA
to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you
can optionally check a box indicating that you want that personto be able to
add approval votes to your ballot, on your behalf, if s/he doesn't win. S/he
will have previously published a rankingof candidates to show the order in
which s/he would give such delegated approvals. That's it. That brief
descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me
that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is
non-delegation.If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box to indicate
that. I'd like SODA to be a bit fancier: Why should delegation only b e
available to the person who has only voted for one candidate? Say you vote for
several candidates. Each candidate has a delegation box by hir name. If you
want to, you can designate as delegate anycandidate for whom you've voted. (but
you can only deleglate just one candidate) As in your version, s/he can add to
your ballot approvals for candidates for whom you haven't voted, as long as
your resulting approval set doesn't skip any candidates in hir publicized
ranking. Disadvantage: It loses some of SODA's simplicity. I understand that
the S in SODA is for simple. As you said, the optional-ness of the
delegation should avoid any complaint of undemocratic-ness. But of couise
opponentswill still try to use that complaint. I'll mention SODA (simple or
more elaborate) along with the other FBC/ABE methods, any time I suggest new
methods more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time
to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably
opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text
editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to
be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-returncharacters.) Mike Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
2012/1/22 MIKE OSSIPOFF nkk...@hotmail.com Jameson: SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it acceptable. You're speciflying the rules in too much detail. The street-description, and the petition-language, needn't be the legal language (though that should be available upon request). Likewise, for MTAOC or MCAOC, or AOC, people won't demand to see the computer program, but it will be available to the person who wants to look at it. The person who wouldn't accept a computer program also wouldn't ask to read it. So here's how I described SODA to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you can optionally check a box indicating that you want that person to be able to add approval votes to your ballot, on your behalf, if s/he doesn't win. S/he will have previously published a ranking of candidates to show the order in which s/he would give such delegated approvals. Good description. That's it. That brief descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is non-delegation. If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box to indicate that. One main advantage of SODA is that the laziest possible voter, the one who just checks one candidate and goes home, has a vote which is essentially as strategically powerful as any. Thus, I prefer delegation by default. But I certainly wouldn't fight about it, and I'd happily embrace your version. I'd like SODA to be a bit fancier: Why should delegation only b e available to the person who has only voted for one candidate? Say you vote for several candidates. Each candidate has a delegation box by hir name. If you want to, you can designate as delegate any candidate for whom you've voted. (but you can only deleglate just one candidate) As in your version, s/he can add to your ballot approvals for candidates for whom you haven't voted, as long as your resulting approval set doesn't skip any candidates in hir publicized ranking. Disadvantage: It loses some of SODA's simplicity. I understand that the S in SODA is for simple. Exactly. In particular, it loses the ballot simplicity, and thus becomes arguably worse than plurality in that way (ie, more rather than less possible to unintentionally spoil a ballot in some way). Also, the summability, and the complexity of strategic possibilities in the delegation phase (although not, I think, the outcome; but I'm not sure) both suffer significantly. As you said, the optional-ness of the delegation should avoid any complaint of undemocratic-ness. But of couise opponents will still try to use that complaint. I'll mention SODA (simple or more elaborate) along with the other FBC/ABE methods, any time I suggest new methods more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time to mention Approval. Thank you. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA posting with run-on lines (hopefully) fixed.
This is a test, to find out if I can get rid of the run-on lines by re-typing the posting with automatic linebreaks at the right margin instead of using the carriage-return. But does that mean that if I try to make a paragraph division, I'll instead end up with an endless line? Sorry, but I'm having difficulty sending readable e-mail wth my new computer system. Now let's try a paragraph and find out if that works: I'm copying the posting here, and will then rewrite it without the carriage-returns. What is sent will be the verion without the carriage-returns.(except for new paragraphs). One problem is that the zoom scale keeps changing, which could make nonsense of the automatic linebreaks. SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it acceptable. You're specifying the rules in too much detail. The initiative street-descrliption needn't be legal language, though that should be available upon request. Likewise, for the computer program of MTAOC, MCAOC and AOC. So here's how I described SODA to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you can optionally check a box indicating that you want that candidate to be able to add approval votes to your ballot on your behalf if s/he doesn't win. S/he will have previously published a ranking of candidates to indicate the order in which s/he would give such designated approvals. That's it. That brief descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is non-delegation. If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box. I'd better send this before the system finds a way to mess it up more, or freeze the computer, etc. (more when I can fix the remaining run-on lines in the posting) Mike Ossipoff. more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-return characters.) Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA posting with run-on lines (hopefully) fixed.
Looks like your new system is teaching you properly. I tried printing with smaller characters - and each line filled out properly. I tried making the page wider or narrower - still properly got as many words on each line as would fit. On Jan 22, 2012, at 10:30 PM, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: This is a test, to find out if I can get rid of the run-on lines by re-typing the posting with automatic linebreaks at the right margin instead of using the carriage-return. But does that mean that if I try to make a paragraph division, I'll instead end up with an endless line? Sorry, but I'm having difficulty sending readable e- mail wth my new computer system. Now let's try a paragraph and find out if that works: I'm copying the posting here, and will then rewrite it without the carriage-returns. What is sent will be the verion without the carriage-returns.(except for new paragraphs). One problem is that the zoom scale keeps changing, which could make nonsense of the automatic linebreaks. SODA can be described to someone in a brief way that people accept. In a recent convefrsation, I described SODA, and the person considered it acceptable. You're specifying the rules in too much detail. The initiative street-descrliption needn't be legal language, though that should be available upon request. Likewise, for the computer program of MTAOC, MCAOC and AOC. So here's how I described SODA to that person: It's like Approval, but, if you vote only for one person, you can optionally check a box indicating that you want that candidate to be able to add approval votes to your ballot on your behalf if s/he doesn't win. S/he will have previously published a ranking of candidates to indicate the order in which s/he would give such designated approvals. That's it. That brief descriptionl tells how the method works. As I said yesterday, it seems to me that it would be much more publicly-accepable if the default assumption is non-delegation. If someone wants to delegate, they can check the box. I'd better send this before the system finds a way to mess it up more, or freeze the computer, etc. (more when I can fix the remaining run-on lines in the posting) Mike Ossipoff. more complicated than Approval. Of course sometimes you only have time to mention Approval. (The problem causing the lack of linebreaks was probably opposite to what I'd believed it was. I should make sure that I let my text editor do the linebreaks automatically. That will probably be more l ikely to be transmitted in e-mail than my carriage-return characters.) Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA: polls via like/+1/reddit; resulting nonmonotonicity; natural fix
I'm designing a SODA poll that would use facebook like, google+ +1, and/or reddit upvotes, along with automated delegated vote assignment, to give live-updated results. In thinking about this, I've realized that SODA can be nonmonotonic in the following (highly contrived) scenario: (delegated preferences in parentheses) 35: A(C) 30: B 25: C 10-n: X n: Y(BA) With n=4, A wins. With n=6, Y's votes are enough to make B win, so A approves C to prevent that from happening, and C wins; a worse result from the perspective of the Y voters. The natural fix is to allow A to approve C with only some of their delegated votes. Then, when n=6, A can approve C with 12 votes. Now Y's votes cannot make B win, so Y approves A, and the nonmonotonicity is gone. Of course, in order for this to work like that in a live poll, I have to make the logic for automatically updating assigned approvals much, much more complex. In fact, off the top of my head, I can't even prove that the general problem isn't NP-hard. But in real life, it's very unlikely that the scenario would be even this complex, so I'm not too worried about that. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA description adjustment
I adjusted the description of the process on the SODA pagehttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/SODA_voting_(Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval)to integrate two of the minor optional rules (slightly modified) and discard the third optional rule. Thus there is now only one official version of SODA. Input on the new method description is welcome. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA, negotiation, and weak CWs (Jameson Quinn)
Jameson, could you please submit this again in a plain text format that doesn't put in extra form feeds? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
2011/12/15 Andrew Myers an...@cs.cornell.edu On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Andy Jennings wrote: I don't see any huge theoretical downsides. Do others still have reservations about SODA? I realize that some people may be opposed to delegation, in principle. And others think delegable systems just don't have a chance of getting implemented. So I think these debates about which is the best voting system in the standard (non-delegable) model are still useful. I also think it's useful for Jameson to inject a plug about SODA every now and then. I will repeat what I've written before: I have to agree. SODA to me seems quite complex. It appears to pose difficult strategic decisions for candidates and even for voters. Thanks for the honest response. What do you think would help alleviate this largely-false appearance? Voter strategy is limited to a few cases: 1. Correct approval strategy in case your favorite candidate's preferences differ significantly from yours. People on this list understand approval strategy; in my opinion, it's not ideal, but it's no worse than plurality strategy, which most people tolerate. And I estimate that perhaps a third or fewer voters will differ significantly from their favorite candidates. If significantly only counts differences in the order between the two frontrunner candidates, that kind of number makes sense. 2. Attempts at chicken strategy in a few cases. In the classic A+B vs C case, such strategy can only work if C has no preference between A and B. (Under one rule variant of SODA, even an honest preference that wasn't predeclared would be sufficient to avoid a chicken dilemma). Note that, unlike in approval/Range/MJ, the only way a chicken strategy can work for A is by making it impossible for B to win the election; chicken strategy is * always* either ineffective or dangerous. So it seems to me that in SODA, unlike those systems, there is no slippery slope to a chicken dilemma. As for candidate strategy, that comes in two flavors: 1. Preference declaration strategies. Again, these mainly come down to chicken strategies, and there are several restraints even on such strategies. If A truncates B, B can retaliate; this should keep it from happening unless A is clearly a second-string candidate, in which case it may be a good thing. Also, C could intervene to avoid the dilemma. 2. Post-election strategy. This is a sequential, perfect-information game; there's a single optimal strategy, and in any real election it's pretty easy to calculate. (I can imagine artificially-balanced situations with dozens or hundreds of candidates which might be NP-hard; but in real life, it basically comes down to finding the delegated CW). Also note that journalists would quickly work out and publish the optimal strategy and all plausible variations thereof, so the candidates would not have to work it out on their own. So, I can't quite give a blanket denial that strategy matters, but I can give a qualified one: in real life SODA elections, it is not worth worrying about strategy. Having read the above, can you see any way I could say that better? I want to be able to allay this concern; strategy issues are an outstanding strength of SODA, not a weakness. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
One kind of SODA strategy which I didn't discuss is candidate preference-declaration strategy aimed, not at directly attaining a better result, but at attracting votes. This would basically take two forms: established candidates truncating upstarts to try to minimize their importance, and a candidate altering their true preference order to better conform to some important fraction (probably the majority) of their voters. In both cases, these phenomena would tend to have a bandwagon effect which is arguably socially beneficial - minimizing the chances that a weak Condorcet winner will win the election, while strengthening the margin of true Condorcet winners. So I'm not worried about this sort of strategy being a problem. Jameson 2011/12/15 Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com 2011/12/15 Andrew Myers an...@cs.cornell.edu On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Andy Jennings wrote: I don't see any huge theoretical downsides. Do others still have reservations about SODA? I realize that some people may be opposed to delegation, in principle. And others think delegable systems just don't have a chance of getting implemented. So I think these debates about which is the best voting system in the standard (non-delegable) model are still useful. I also think it's useful for Jameson to inject a plug about SODA every now and then. I will repeat what I've written before: I have to agree. SODA to me seems quite complex. It appears to pose difficult strategic decisions for candidates and even for voters. Thanks for the honest response. What do you think would help alleviate this largely-false appearance? Voter strategy is limited to a few cases: 1. Correct approval strategy in case your favorite candidate's preferences differ significantly from yours. People on this list understand approval strategy; in my opinion, it's not ideal, but it's no worse than plurality strategy, which most people tolerate. And I estimate that perhaps a third or fewer voters will differ significantly from their favorite candidates. If significantly only counts differences in the order between the two frontrunner candidates, that kind of number makes sense. 2. Attempts at chicken strategy in a few cases. In the classic A+B vs C case, such strategy can only work if C has no preference between A and B. (Under one rule variant of SODA, even an honest preference that wasn't predeclared would be sufficient to avoid a chicken dilemma). Note that, unlike in approval/Range/MJ, the only way a chicken strategy can work for A is by making it impossible for B to win the election; chicken strategy is *always* either ineffective or dangerous. So it seems to me that in SODA, unlike those systems, there is no slippery slope to a chicken dilemma. As for candidate strategy, that comes in two flavors: 1. Preference declaration strategies. Again, these mainly come down to chicken strategies, and there are several restraints even on such strategies. If A truncates B, B can retaliate; this should keep it from happening unless A is clearly a second-string candidate, in which case it may be a good thing. Also, C could intervene to avoid the dilemma. 2. Post-election strategy. This is a sequential, perfect-information game; there's a single optimal strategy, and in any real election it's pretty easy to calculate. (I can imagine artificially-balanced situations with dozens or hundreds of candidates which might be NP-hard; but in real life, it basically comes down to finding the delegated CW). Also note that journalists would quickly work out and publish the optimal strategy and all plausible variations thereof, so the candidates would not have to work it out on their own. So, I can't quite give a blanket denial that strategy matters, but I can give a qualified one: in real life SODA elections, it is not worth worrying about strategy. Having read the above, can you see any way I could say that better? I want to be able to allay this concern; strategy issues are an outstanding strength of SODA, not a weakness. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA strategy
If voters think that SODA is complex, then it's because they have been exposed unnecessarily or prematurely to the niceties of strategy considerations. Let's take a lesson from IRV supporters. They don't get anybody worried about IRV's monotonicity failure or FBC failure by bringing them up to unsophisticated voters. We need to emphasize the simplicity of SODA voting to the public, and answer the strategy questions to the experts. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA strategy
2011/12/15 fsimm...@pcc.edu If voters think that SODA is complex, then it's because they have been exposed unnecessarily or prematurely to the niceties of strategy considerations. Let's take a lesson from IRV supporters. They don't get anybody worried about IRV's monotonicity failure or FBC failure by bringing them up to unsophisticated voters. In fact, they disingenuously use IRV's LNH compliance to claim that no strategy is needed. Is there some criterion we could use to more-honestly say that strategy is practically-speaking irrelevant in SODA? Unfortunately, SODA does not meet the letter of the SFC, which has the best name of any criterion. (Though I'd argue that SODA meets the spirit of the SFC. It fails both because non-delegated votes don't allow full preferences, and because large clonesets can obscure a true CW and trip up the delegated-assignment order algorithm. But both of these are technicalities in my opinion.) For instance, the unique-FBC for 3 serious candidates is a guarantee that it is safe to bullet vote (delegate). But if we're going to make a big deal out of that criterion, it definitely needs a better name. We need to emphasize the simplicity of SODA voting to the public, and answer the strategy questions to the experts. 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] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
Jameson, Believe me, I'm on board with SODA. I think I, too, like it better than LRV, but I'm still trying to get a handle on LRV to make sure. In my opinion (and my wording), SODA's advantages are: 1. The laziest possible voter, who just bullet votes for his favorite, is still casting a (nearly?) optimal vote that is fair to him and to the rest of society. 2. Voters can vote approval style, instead, if they want. 3. The only people who have to rank all the candidates are the candidates themselves, who should be willing to do the work to come up with a full honest ranking. Their ratings are public, so we can call them out if they try to use turkey-raising or other dishonest strategies. 4. There is a delegation phase after the election where the candidates can negotiate an outcome, but their ability to negotiate back-room deals is severely limited because they have to use their pre-declared rankings and they have to play in an order determined by the votes. In fact, there will be a game-theory dominant equilibrium and the candidates will probably have very little power to change the outcome. Chicken scenarios are avoided because they know the play order, the other candidates' rankings, and exactly how much voting weight each one has. 5. If there is some super-weak Condorcet winner that is totally unfit to govern, then the others can indeed block him in the delegation phase. I don't see any huge theoretical downsides. Do others still have reservations about SODA? I realize that some people may be opposed to delegation, in principle. And others think delegable systems just don't have a chance of getting implemented. So I think these debates about which is the best voting system in the standard (non-delegable) model are still useful. I also think it's useful for Jameson to inject a plug about SODA every now and then. My main reservation about SODA at this point is that I see no practical path to adoption. It would be perfect for a large primary, like the current Republican presidential field, but there's no way to start at that level. We have to start small. But for small political elections, professional societies, open source decisions, elementary school elections etc. it seems too complicated. I had a long discussion with a party district chairman here. He's interested in alternative voting systems to fill his party positions but skeptical of complexity. I don't even think I've pitched him on SODA because he's still thinking about Approval Voting. And with SODA, you can't just run a straw poll to show it off like you can with so many other voting systems. You need the participation of the actual candidates to choose their rankings beforehand and to do their delegation afterwards. I know we haven't traditionally discussed implementation strategy on this list (though that has changed some recently), but if you see a good strategy for SODA adoption, please tell. ~ Andy On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: I believe that LRV (Least Resentment Voting) is indeed quite a clever solution to the chicken dilemma. But once more, I'd like to remind people that there is a way to solve the chicken dilemma without risking a victory by the plurality winner/condorcet loser. I'm speaking of course of SODA. First, SODA meets the FBC. In fact, in any 3-candidate scenario, and I believe in any 4-candidate one, it is strategically optimal to bullet vote for a candidate if you agree with their declared preferences. This ability, not just to vote your favorite equal-top, but unique-top, is not shared by any other method I know of. (Perhaps we could call this UFBC3, unique FBC for 3 candidates.) How does it do with chicken dilemma scenarios? For the following, I'll give honest ratings, then discuss the likely strategic implications under SODA. 40 C 25 AB 35 BA If this is the honest situation, then candidates A and B have every reason to find a way to include each other in their predeclared preference lists. These predeclared lists are made openly, and so one side cannot betray the other without giving the other side a chance to retaliate. The chance for retaliation will make betrayal a losing strategy. 40 C 25 A 35 BA If the A camp is honestly indifferent between B and C, and candidate B finds this indifference credible, then B can still decide not to retaliate, that is, to ignore A's truncation and nonetheless declare a preference for A. This enables A to win without B spoiling the election. (Any single-round method which elects A here is subject to the chicken dilemma; electing B is, in my mind, crazy; and any method which elects C here has been spoiled by candidate B, and so encourages shenanigans of the republicans-funding-greens sort. Any method I know of except SODA fails in one of these ways.) 40 C 25 AB 35 B This is like the above situation, but since A had no chance of winning anyway, they have even less
Re: [EM] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
Thanks, Andy, for the SODA endorsement. I agree with the advantages you list, but I would add the avoidance of the chicken dilemma (that is, the lack of either a self-reinforcing truncation incentive or hard-to-defend mindreadingresults that give a burial incentive) as an important advantage. Compromising favorite betrayal, truncation, and burial are the basic forms of strategy; and I don't know of any other system which is so resistant (and yet also resiliant) to all of these. Jameson ps. I realize I'm repeating myself a bit, but as Andy said, an occasional plug for SODA is worthwhile. 2011/12/14 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, Believe me, I'm on board with SODA. I think I, too, like it better than LRV, but I'm still trying to get a handle on LRV to make sure. In my opinion (and my wording), SODA's advantages are: 1. The laziest possible voter, who just bullet votes for his favorite, is still casting a (nearly?) optimal vote that is fair to him and to the rest of society. 2. Voters can vote approval style, instead, if they want. 3. The only people who have to rank all the candidates are the candidates themselves, who should be willing to do the work to come up with a full honest ranking. Their ratings are public, so we can call them out if they try to use turkey-raising or other dishonest strategies. 4. There is a delegation phase after the election where the candidates can negotiate an outcome, but their ability to negotiate back-room deals is severely limited because they have to use their pre-declared rankings and they have to play in an order determined by the votes. In fact, there will be a game-theory dominant equilibrium and the candidates will probably have very little power to change the outcome. Chicken scenarios are avoided because they know the play order, the other candidates' rankings, and exactly how much voting weight each one has. 5. If there is some super-weak Condorcet winner that is totally unfit to govern, then the others can indeed block him in the delegation phase. I don't see any huge theoretical downsides. Do others still have reservations about SODA? I realize that some people may be opposed to delegation, in principle. And others think delegable systems just don't have a chance of getting implemented. So I think these debates about which is the best voting system in the standard (non-delegable) model are still useful. I also think it's useful for Jameson to inject a plug about SODA every now and then. My main reservation about SODA at this point is that I see no practical path to adoption. It would be perfect for a large primary, like the current Republican presidential field, but there's no way to start at that level. We have to start small. But for small political elections, professional societies, open source decisions, elementary school elections etc. it seems too complicated. I had a long discussion with a party district chairman here. He's interested in alternative voting systems to fill his party positions but skeptical of complexity. I don't even think I've pitched him on SODA because he's still thinking about Approval Voting. And with SODA, you can't just run a straw poll to show it off like you can with so many other voting systems. You need the participation of the actual candidates to choose their rankings beforehand and to do their delegation afterwards. I know we haven't traditionally discussed implementation strategy on this list (though that has changed some recently), but if you see a good strategy for SODA adoption, please tell. ~ Andy On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: I believe that LRV (Least Resentment Voting) is indeed quite a clever solution to the chicken dilemma. But once more, I'd like to remind people that there is a way to solve the chicken dilemma without risking a victory by the plurality winner/condorcet loser. I'm speaking of course of SODA. First, SODA meets the FBC. In fact, in any 3-candidate scenario, and I believe in any 4-candidate one, it is strategically optimal to bullet vote for a candidate if you agree with their declared preferences. This ability, not just to vote your favorite equal-top, but unique-top, is not shared by any other method I know of. (Perhaps we could call this UFBC3, unique FBC for 3 candidates.) How does it do with chicken dilemma scenarios? For the following, I'll give honest ratings, then discuss the likely strategic implications under SODA. 40 C 25 AB 35 BA If this is the honest situation, then candidates A and B have every reason to find a way to include each other in their predeclared preference lists. These predeclared lists are made openly, and so one side cannot betray the other without giving the other side a chance to retaliate. The chance for retaliation will make betrayal a losing strategy. 40 C 25 A 35 BA If the A camp is honestly
Re: [EM] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
Further responses to Andy's advantage list: 2011/12/14 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, Believe me, I'm on board with SODA. I think I, too, like it better than LRV, but I'm still trying to get a handle on LRV to make sure. In my opinion (and my wording), SODA's advantages are: 1. The laziest possible voter, who just bullet votes for his favorite, is still casting a (nearly?) optimal vote that is fair to him and to the rest of society. It is less than optimal in only two cases that I know of: 1. In certain circumstances when there's a set of 3 or more clones facing a candidate who has more first-preferences than any of them. 2. When there is a chicken dilemma which is NOT resolved by the opposing candidate; that is, the candidate opposing the chicken cloneset has no honest preference between the chicken candidates.* *(In this case the lazy vote is individually suboptimal, but socially optimal; so I actually hope that there will be enough lazy and/or altruistic voters to overwhelm the optimal strategic voters.) 2. Voters can vote approval style, instead, if they want. 3. The only people who have to rank all the candidates are the candidates themselves, who should be willing to do the work to come up with a full honest ranking. Their ratings are public, so we can call them out if they try to use turkey-raising or other dishonest strategies. Actually, turkey-raising is a meaningless/useless strategy in SODA. The main thing you have to worry about is chicken-style truncation. And in that case, it's not just the voters who can call them out (and vote approval-style); it's the other clone candidate, who can respond by retaliatory truncation, which gives the truncating a candidate a chance to de-truncate. That is to say: there is a way to back down, even after one candidate has attempted truncation. 4. There is a delegation phase after the election where the candidates can negotiate an outcome, but their ability to negotiate back-room deals is severely limited because they have to use their pre-declared rankings and they have to play in an order determined by the votes. In fact, there will be a game-theory dominant equilibrium and the candidates will probably have very little power to change the outcome. Chicken scenarios are avoided because they know the play order, the other candidates' rankings, and exactly how much voting weight each one has. 5. If there is some super-weak Condorcet winner that is totally unfit to govern, then the others can indeed block him in the delegation phase. I don't see any huge theoretical downsides. Do others still have reservations about SODA? I realize that some people may be opposed to delegation, in principle. And others think delegable systems just don't have a chance of getting implemented. So I think these debates about which is the best voting system in the standard (non-delegable) model are still useful. I also think it's useful for Jameson to inject a plug about SODA every now and then. My main reservation about SODA at this point is that I see no practical path to adoption. It would be perfect for a large primary, like the current Republican presidential field, but there's no way to start at that level. We have to start small. But for small political elections, professional societies, open source decisions, elementary school elections etc. it seems too complicated. I had a long discussion with a party district chairman here. He's interested in alternative voting systems to fill his party positions but skeptical of complexity. I don't even think I've pitched him on SODA because he's still thinking about Approval Voting. And with SODA, you can't just run a straw poll to show it off like you can with so many other voting systems. You need the participation of the actual candidates to choose their rankings beforehand and to do their delegation afterwards. You've hit on SODA's biggest weak point, I think. All I can respond is that there's no reason not to use SODA in local political elections. (For internal elections of private groups... yeah, it may be overkill; but even in that case, the benefits for dealing with lazy voters are significant) I know we haven't traditionally discussed implementation strategy on this list (though that has changed some recently), but if you see a good strategy for SODA adoption, please tell. Step one is to make an online tool for running SODA elections smoothly... which I'll do if I ever get enough free time from my day job... I also plan (again, if I can find the time) to run an Amazon Turk-based behavioral-economics experiment to see which system allows the electorate to extract the most (small) monetary rewards (from me, the experimenter) in various chicken-dilemma and weak-condorcet situations. I don't expect SODA to do best at that (it may elect slightly more WCW than it should, and the experimental setup may make SODA look a bit worse
Re: [EM] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
Like Andy I prefer SODA as well, especially for a deterministic method. In some settings I prefer certain stochastic methods to deterministic methods. But my curiosity impels me to see what can be done while ignoring or putting aside the advantages of both chance and delegation. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA might be the method we've been looking for.
I believe that LRV (Least Resentment Voting) is indeed quite a clever solution to the chicken dilemma. But once more, I'd like to remind people that there is a way to solve the chicken dilemma without risking a victory by the plurality winner/condorcet loser. I'm speaking of course of SODA. First, SODA meets the FBC. In fact, in any 3-candidate scenario, and I believe in any 4-candidate one, it is strategically optimal to bullet vote for a candidate if you agree with their declared preferences. This ability, not just to vote your favorite equal-top, but unique-top, is not shared by any other method I know of. (Perhaps we could call this UFBC3, unique FBC for 3 candidates.) How does it do with chicken dilemma scenarios? For the following, I'll give honest ratings, then discuss the likely strategic implications under SODA. 40 C 25 AB 35 BA If this is the honest situation, then candidates A and B have every reason to find a way to include each other in their predeclared preference lists. These predeclared lists are made openly, and so one side cannot betray the other without giving the other side a chance to retaliate. The chance for retaliation will make betrayal a losing strategy. 40 C 25 A 35 BA If the A camp is honestly indifferent between B and C, and candidate B finds this indifference credible, then B can still decide not to retaliate, that is, to ignore A's truncation and nonetheless declare a preference for A. This enables A to win without B spoiling the election. (Any single-round method which elects A here is subject to the chicken dilemma; electing B is, in my mind, crazy; and any method which elects C here has been spoiled by candidate B, and so encourages shenanigans of the republicans-funding-greens sort. Any method I know of except SODA fails in one of these ways.) 40 C 25 AB 35 B This is like the above situation, but since A had no chance of winning anyway, they have even less of a motivation to retaliate against B, whether or not B's truncation is honest. 40 CA 25 AB 35 BA In this situation, it's difficult to say who's the correct winner; depending on the underlying utilities, it could easily be any of the three, so I'd have no problem with a method that elected any. Still, ideally a method would give similar results here as in the situations above, so that candidates and voters are not motivated to be conciliatory, rather than projecting an image of someone who's inclined to truncate. Strategically, it is in B's interest to truncate, to reduce the chance of 10 CA voters voting CA and thus giving A the all-important second move in the vote delegation stage. Then, candidate A will declare a preference for B, in order to present C with a credible threat. And candidate C will declare a preference for A to prevent B from winning. 40 CA??? 25 AB 35 BA??? This is the weak condorcet winner situation. The question marks denote a preference for the dark-horse candidate A which would evaporate in a runoff, when people took a hard look at A without being distracted by the C/B rivalry. If that is the case, A should not win. And indeed, even if C predeclares a preference for A, when C is faced with the morning-after reality of the choice to throw the election to A or allow it to go to B, they have a chance to leave it with B if A is really such a bad candidate. Sure, C may prefer a weak winner who owes them a favor to a stronger opponent, and so elect A even if B would be socially-optimal; but at least SODA gives B a chance in this situation. Any Condorcet method would simply elect A and not look back. I think that the situations above show that SODA always allows honest truncation without a strategic penalty, but does not encourage strategic truncation. I know that some people on this list dislike SODA for its delegation. Obviously, I disagree. Consider: - SODA delegation is optional and eyes-open. Because of pre-declaration, you know what kinds of result your delegated vote could and could not promote, and if you don't like those results, you don't delegate. - SODA delegation allows results that seem to me to be obviously better than other methods in the above scenarios. - SODA delegation allows for unmatched simplicity from the average voter's perspective. If you like your favorite's declared preferences, just vote for them, and you're done. - SODA delegation allows significant minority candidates a moment of personal power, which they can use to extract (non-binding) promises before throwing their votes behind someone. I believe that this transitory moment of minority power is a healthy compromise between the stability and leadership in winner-take-all systems and the broader accommodation of minority interests in parliamentary systems. Of course, there are cases where SODA is not ideal. For instance, for a pre-election poll, SODA cannot be used unless the inter-candidate preferences can be somehow known or inferred. Still, I think SODA is overall a standout good method for most
[EM] SODA false claim
It is simply false to say SODA's simplicity (for either the voter, or the counters) beats any other system I know of. It is less simple than plain approval voting. Full stop. If you persist in making ludicrous statements, then you will hurt your credibility. -- Warren D. Smith Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA false claim
On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Warren Smith wrote: It is simply false to say SODA's simplicity (for either the voter, or the counters) beats any other system I know of. It is less simple than plain approval voting. Full stop. If you persist in making ludicrous statements, then you will hurt your credibility. I have to agree. SODA to me seems quite complex. It appears to pose difficult strategic decisions for candidates and even for voters. -- Andrew attachment: andru.vcf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA false claim
Claim: SODA is simpler for voters than any system I know of, and specifically simpler for voters than approval. Justification: Simplest algorithm for voting Approval that is reasonably close to strategically optimal: Find the two frontrunners. Vote for one of them plus any candidate that's better. Simplist algorithm for voting SODA that's reasonably close to strategically optimal: Vote for your favorite. I understand that there is room for debate on this claim, and I'm not asking you to accept it at face value. But certainly I have a basis for making it. JQ 2011/9/7 Andrew Myers an...@cs.cornell.edu On 7/22/64 2:59 PM, Warren Smith wrote: It is simply false to say SODA's simplicity (for either the voter, or the counters) beats any other system I know of. It is less simple than plain approval voting. Full stop. If you persist in making ludicrous statements, then you will hurt your credibility. I have to agree. SODA to me seems quite complex. It appears to pose difficult strategic decisions for candidates and even for voters. -- Andrew 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] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
Basically, ⸘Ŭalabio‽'s objection is that SODA does not allow non-bullet votes to be delegable. The reason that SODA is designed that way is not paranoia, as ⸘Ŭalabio‽ claims, but rather simplicity. To see why multiple delegable votes would be confusing, consider the following scenario. Let us say that I vote for A and B. After the votes are counted, it turns out that all the other voters voted for X or Y, in a 50/50 proportion. My delegated vote could be decisive. But A approves X, and B approves Y. So both of these approvals are added to my delegated vote, which ends up being useless in deciding between X and Y. Also, making multiply-delegated votes possible would entirely ruin SODA's summability. This would make a number of useful anti-fraud measures impossible, including precinct-level counting, sampled count audits, and voter-auditable cryptographic ballot receipts like those of heliosvoting.org . ⸘Ŭalabio‽, I understand and sympathize with your desire for multiple delegation, but I do not see how a SODA-like system could meet that desire without too high a cost in complexity and insecurity. If you think that you can resolve these issues, please propose a specific solution and explore its implications. As you know, voting system design often involves trade-offs, and so doing P has disadvantage Q is not a good objection against a system unless it's accompanied by alternative S avoids Q without causing any other disadvantages as serious. Jameson 2011/9/4 ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com ¡Hello! ¿How fare you? I do not believe in attacking the ideas of others, so I refrained from making this post from the remainder of July and all of August. I gave others months to develop SODA without criticism: The problem with most traditional voting systems is that one must choose between jacks-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none and idiot-savants: Let us suppose that the greatest living Agronomist who studied under Professor Norman Ernest Borlaug (if you do not know who Professor Norman Ernest Borlaug was, please kill yourself immediately), and a Renaissance-Politician who served in the military, thus got to see the world, on the GI-Bill, got a score of degrees, but the most advanced of which are A.Scs and A.As, who went on to a score of careers before becoming a politician. One can vote for depth or breadth. With Asset-voting, one can have both: Let us suppose that we have an Asset-Election where each voter gets 9 votes. I chose 9 votes because it gives voters choice, but is easy for the voters to error-check: In Base-10, make certain that the number of Asset-votes is a single-digit-number. Make certain that the number in Base-10 is 9. I could vote for 9 different Nobel-Lauriets who promise to transfer their votes to Renaissance-Politicians who promise to call on their expertise when needed. In other words, with Asset-Voting, one can have one’s cake and eat it too. SODA-Voting is a version of Asset-Voting. SODA is based on the fear of being screwed by those who receive the Asset. It is impossible eliminate the possibility of getting screwed. This holds for politicians in nontransferable elections too. The logical thing to do is not vote for backstabbing politicians again. The paranoia of SODA is that it allows voters to make votes nontransferable so that the politicians cannot screw the voter during transfer negotiations. This means 2 things: * One risks loss of voting power due to ballot-exhaustion (I suspect that SODA is susceptible to voting-splitting and Duverger’s Law). * Politicians can still screw over voters in the legislature. SODA is a solution that does not work and it lets paranoid voters disenfranchise themselves. I do not mind paranoid voters disenfranchising themselves because that means more voting power for me, but soda hobbles everyone to prevent that: If one votes for more than 1 person in SODA makes the votes nontransferable. That means that nonparanoid voters cannot vote for exports who then transfer their votes to jacks-of-all-trades under the condition that the Renaissance-Politicians call upon the experts when appropriate. One must choose between the 2. I do not like being hobbled because other voters are paranoid. If other voters want to make their votes nontransferable, that is fine by me, but they should have to live with reduced voting power due to exhaustion rather than hobbling everyone else. This is how I would do it: * Paranoid voters can indicate that their ballots are nontransferable by marking on the ballots that the ballots are nontransferable by marking them nontranferable, but must live with loss of voting power due to ballot-exhaustion. * Nonparanoid voters can choose 9 Nobel-Lauriets who then transfer the votes to Renaissance-Politicians
Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
2011-09-05T09:28:14Z, “Jameson Quinn” jameson.qu...@gmail.com: 0thly, I recommend that you read this article: http://web.archive.org/web/20080113211450/http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html Basically, ⸘Ŭalabio‽'s objection is that SODA does not allow non-bullet votes to be delegable. The reason that SODA is designed that way is not paranoia, as ⸘Ŭalabio‽ claims, but rather simplicity. Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What is simple for me is choosing people whom I trust to represent my interests in the Asset-Negotiations and leave them to their work. If some of them screw me during Asset-Negotiations, I shall never vote for the bad 1s again. As far as simplicity goes, SODA seems more complex to me than Asset-Voting. To see why multiple delegable votes would be confusing, consider the following scenario. Let us say that I vote for A and B. After the votes are counted, it turns out that all the other voters voted for X or Y, in a 50/50 proportion. My delegated vote could be decisive. But A approves X, and B approves Y. So both of these approvals are added to my delegated vote, which ends up being useless in deciding between X and Y. Either A or B would eventually by won over to the other side by policy-concessions. Also, making multiply-delegated votes possible would entirely ruin SODA's summability. This would make a number of useful anti-fraud measures impossible, including precinct-level counting, sampled count audits, and voter-auditable cryptographic ballot receipts like those of heliosvoting.org. Just make the allowable votes a fixed number. This is required in 1 form or another in proportional systems. Indeed, most of the problems with SODA is that it is based on a system designed for creating a proportional legislature, but is modified for both creating proportional legislatures and for single-winner. These are 2 different domains and should use different systems. The simplest methods for these domains are: Single-Winner: Approval-Voting Proportional Legislature: Asset-Voting SODA should just forget about single-winner. Because it is based on a proportional-voting system, it is ilsuited for single winner. If voters want to make their votes in an Asset-Election nontransferable, that is fine by me, but we should tell them that they run a real risk of disenfranchising themselves. ⸘Ŭalabio‽, I understand and sympathize with your desire for multiple delegation, but I do not see how a SODA-like system could meet that desire without too high a cost in complexity and insecurity. If you think that you can resolve these issues, please propose a specific solution and explore its implications. As you know, voting system design often involves trade-offs, and so doing P has disadvantage Q is not a good objection against a system unless it's accompanied by alternative S avoids Q without causing any other disadvantages as serious. My solution is to scrap SODA SODA as being fundamentally flawed and use Approval for single-winner and Asset with 9 votes for proportional with an option to makes the votes nontransferable with the understanding that one _“*PROBABLY*”_ will disenfranchise oneself if one makes the votes nontransferable. FairVote started wanting STV for a new house of proportional representation or turning the House of Representatives into an house of proportional representation using STV. FairVote settled for using STV for single-winner which is IRV. We all know how lousy IRV turned out. SODA repeats the mistakes of IRV: One tries to use Asset for single winner, but it does not work well, so one modifies it into SODA which instead of working well for single-winner and proportional, works well for neither proportional nor single-winner. The fact is that Asset works better than SODA for proportional representation and Approval works better than SODA for single-winner. SODA just is not a good tool for the job: Let is suppose that we tell steelworkers to build a skyscraper using only the tool Allen-Wrench. The steelworkers are the voters, SODA is the Allen-Wrench, and the pile of rubble which is supposed to be a skyscraper is the legislature. SODA is good for neither proportional representation nor single-winner. Jameson “⸘Ŭalabio‽” Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
SODA was initially designed as a single-winner system. I believe that as such, it has four independent advantages, three of which are unmatched by any other good system. 1. It is the easiest possible system for voters. No spoiled ballots, bullet voting works, and no need to defensively strategize. 2. It is later-no-harm enough to satisfy political incumbents who don't want to be defeated by centrist nonentities. (This is also true of IRV, but IRV has other problems) 3. It resolves the chicken problem better than any other system I know of. 4. I believe it would give good results overall - like Approval, Condorcet, MJ, or Range. So if you are thinking of SODA as just being Asset shoehorned into a single-winner case, then you don't understand the motivation, and either you don't understand the system or I don't. JQ 2011/9/5 ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com 2011-09-05T09:28:14Z, “Jameson Quinn” jameson.qu...@gmail.com: 0thly, I recommend that you read this article: http://web.archive.org/web/20080113211450/http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html Basically, ⸘Ŭalabio‽'s objection is that SODA does not allow non-bullet votes to be delegable. The reason that SODA is designed that way is not paranoia, as ⸘Ŭalabio‽ claims, but rather simplicity. Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What is simple for me is choosing people whom I trust to represent my interests in the Asset-Negotiations and leave them to their work. If some of them screw me during Asset-Negotiations, I shall never vote for the bad 1s again. As far as simplicity goes, SODA seems more complex to me than Asset-Voting. To see why multiple delegable votes would be confusing, consider the following scenario. Let us say that I vote for A and B. After the votes are counted, it turns out that all the other voters voted for X or Y, in a 50/50 proportion. My delegated vote could be decisive. But A approves X, and B approves Y. So both of these approvals are added to my delegated vote, which ends up being useless in deciding between X and Y. Either A or B would eventually by won over to the other side by policy-concessions. Also, making multiply-delegated votes possible would entirely ruin SODA's summability. This would make a number of useful anti-fraud measures impossible, including precinct-level counting, sampled count audits, and voter-auditable cryptographic ballot receipts like those of heliosvoting.org. Just make the allowable votes a fixed number. This is required in 1 form or another in proportional systems. Indeed, most of the problems with SODA is that it is based on a system designed for creating a proportional legislature, but is modified for both creating proportional legislatures and for single-winner. These are 2 different domains and should use different systems. The simplest methods for these domains are: Single-Winner: Approval-Voting Proportional Legislature: Asset-Voting SODA should just forget about single-winner. Because it is based on a proportional-voting system, it is ilsuited for single winner. If voters want to make their votes in an Asset-Election nontransferable, that is fine by me, but we should tell them that they run a real risk of disenfranchising themselves. ⸘Ŭalabio‽, I understand and sympathize with your desire for multiple delegation, but I do not see how a SODA-like system could meet that desire without too high a cost in complexity and insecurity. If you think that you can resolve these issues, please propose a specific solution and explore its implications. As you know, voting system design often involves trade-offs, and so doing P has disadvantage Q is not a good objection against a system unless it's accompanied by alternative S avoids Q without causing any other disadvantages as serious. My solution is to scrap SODA SODA as being fundamentally flawed and use Approval for single-winner and Asset with 9 votes for proportional with an option to makes the votes nontransferable with the understanding that one _“*PROBABLY*”_ will disenfranchise oneself if one makes the votes nontransferable. FairVote started wanting STV for a new house of proportional representation or turning the House of Representatives into an house of proportional representation using STV. FairVote settled for using STV for single-winner which is IRV. We all know how lousy IRV turned out. SODA repeats the mistakes of IRV: One tries to use Asset for single winner, but it does not work well, so one modifies it into SODA which instead of working well for single-winner and proportional, works well for neither proportional nor single-winner. The fact is that Asset works better than SODA for proportional representation and Approval works better than SODA for single-winner. SODA just is not a good tool for the job:
Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
I'm not sure that three of those are unmatched by other systems. Point 1 - I don't think it is the simplest system. I certainly don't think it's any simpler than straight approval, and they've also got to decide whether to delegate or not and they've also got to understand that their vote can be delegated only if they vote for one candidate. You say they don't need to defensively strategize, but I'm not sure how well the benefits of SODA would get across to the general public. So it's not clear whether voters will see the strategy as simpler. Even if the task of voting is relatively simple, understanding the system and why it works like it does is not simple, and I think you have to include that in the simplicity of a system. Overall I'd say it's an above averagely complex system. And I don't know about in America (although I can't imagine it would be much different from the UK), but in the UK I simply canot see people ever accepting this idea of delegating votes. It's a major paradigm shift and I think it renders it a non-starter as a serious system to elect parliaments, if I'm being honest (along with any other asset system). Also, if it is better for a voter to bullet vote and allow delegation (from their point of view), then voters who like a candidate but don't like their delegation list are presumably at a disadvantage to begin with, which they may perceive as unfair. Point 2 - You've said yourself that IRV satisifes this, but then I notice you've qualifed this earlier by saying any good system. Clever. Point 3 - The chicken problem - yeah maybe. I'd have to get back to you. Point 4 - I imagine this is the one where it isn't unmatched by other good systems. So if we're allowing point 2 on this technicality, I still think it's only 2 out of 4, because I think it fails simplicity, and fails it badly. Toby From: Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com To: ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com Cc: EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Monday, 5 September 2011, 19:31 Subject: Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters. SODA was initially designed as a single-winner system. I believe that as such, it has four independent advantages, three of which are unmatched by any other good system. 1. It is the easiest possible system for voters. No spoiled ballots, bullet voting works, and no need to defensively strategize. 2. It is later-no-harm enough to satisfy political incumbents who don't want to be defeated by centrist nonentities. (This is also true of IRV, but IRV has other problems) 3. It resolves the chicken problem better than any other system I know of. 4. I believe it would give good results overall - like Approval, Condorcet, MJ, or Range. So if you are thinking of SODA as just being Asset shoehorned into a single-winner case, then you don't understand the motivation, and either you don't understand the system or I don't. JQ 2011/9/5 ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com 2011-09-05T09:28:14Z, “Jameson Quinn” jameson.qu...@gmail.com: 0thly, I recommend that you read this article: http://web.archive.org/web/20080113211450/http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html Basically, ⸘Ŭalabio‽'s objection is that SODA does not allow non-bullet votes to be delegable. The reason that SODA is designed that way is not paranoia, as ⸘Ŭalabio‽ claims, but rather simplicity. Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What is simple for me is choosing people whom I trust to represent my interests in the Asset-Negotiations and leave them to their work. If some of them screw me during Asset-Negotiations, I shall never vote for the bad 1s again. As far as simplicity goes, SODA seems more complex to me than Asset-Voting. To see why multiple delegable votes would be confusing, consider the following scenario. Let us say that I vote for A and B. After the votes are counted, it turns out that all the other voters voted for X or Y, in a 50/50 proportion. My delegated vote could be decisive. But A approves X, and B approves Y. So both of these approvals are added to my delegated vote, which ends up being useless in deciding between X and Y. Either A or B would eventually by won over to the other side by policy-concessions. Also, making multiply-delegated votes possible would entirely ruin SODA's summability. This would make a number of useful anti-fraud measures impossible, including precinct-level counting, sampled count audits, and voter-auditable cryptographic ballot receipts like those of heliosvoting.org. Just make the allowable votes a fixed number. This is required in 1 form or another in proportional systems. Indeed, most of the problems with SODA is that it is based on a system designed for creating a proportional legislature, but is modified for both creating proportional legislatures and for single-winner. These are 2 different domains and should use
Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
I think voter/strategic simplicity, and system-description simplicity, are two different aspects. I certainly don't claim that SODA is any great shakes in system-description simplicity, though there are worse. But it's no more complex than the electoral college, and a giant leap more simple than how Obama beat Clinton. That is to say, there are a lot of people who are OK with not fully understanding a system. System-description simplicity is definitely good, but not in my opinion a non-negotiable necessity. As to voter/strategic simplicity... sure, it's not perfect, but I still think it beats any other system I know of. Jameson Quinn 2011/9/5 Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk I'm not sure that three of those are unmatched by other systems. Point 1 - I don't think it is the simplest system. I certainly don't think it's any simpler than straight approval, and they've also got to decide whether to delegate or not and they've also got to understand that their vote can be delegated only if they vote for one candidate. You say they don't need to defensively strategize, but I'm not sure how well the benefits of SODA would get across to the general public. So it's not clear whether voters will see the strategy as simpler. Even if the task of voting is relatively simple, understanding the system and why it works like it does is not simple, and I think you have to include that in the simplicity of a system. Overall I'd say it's an above averagely complex system. And I don't know about in America (although I can't imagine it would be much different from the UK), but in the UK I simply canot see people ever accepting this idea of delegating votes. It's a major paradigm shift and I think it renders it a non-starter as a serious system to elect parliaments, if I'm being honest (along with any other asset system). Also, if it is better for a voter to bullet vote and allow delegation (from their point of view), then voters who like a candidate but don't like their delegation list are presumably at a disadvantage to begin with, which they may perceive as unfair. Point 2 - You've said yourself that IRV satisifes this, but then I notice you've qualifed this earlier by saying any good system. Clever. Actually, I even suspect that MJ may satisfy point 2, but for this point, not having clear evidence that a system is satisfactory is almost as bad as it definitely not being satisfactory. Point 3 - The chicken problem - yeah maybe. I'd have to get back to you. Point 4 - I imagine this is the one where it isn't unmatched by other good systems. So if we're allowing point 2 on this technicality, I still think it's only 2 out of 4, because I think it fails simplicity, and fails it badly. Didn't say there weren't points where it failed :). Jameson Toby *From:* Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com *To:* ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com *Cc:* EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com *Sent:* Monday, 5 September 2011, 19:31 *Subject:* Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters. SODA was initially designed as a single-winner system. I believe that as such, it has four independent advantages, three of which are unmatched by any other good system. 1. It is the easiest possible system for voters. No spoiled ballots, bullet voting works, and no need to defensively strategize. 2. It is later-no-harm enough to satisfy political incumbents who don't want to be defeated by centrist nonentities. (This is also true of IRV, but IRV has other problems) 3. It resolves the chicken problem better than any other system I know of. 4. I believe it would give good results overall - like Approval, Condorcet, MJ, or Range. So if you are thinking of SODA as just being Asset shoehorned into a single-winner case, then you don't understand the motivation, and either you don't understand the system or I don't. JQ 2011/9/5 ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wala...@macosx.com 2011-09-05T09:28:14Z, “Jameson Quinn” jameson.qu...@gmail.com: 0thly, I recommend that you read this article: http://web.archive.org/web/20080113211450/http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html Basically, ⸘Ŭalabio‽'s objection is that SODA does not allow non-bullet votes to be delegable. The reason that SODA is designed that way is not paranoia, as ⸘Ŭalabio‽ claims, but rather simplicity. Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder. What is simple for me is choosing people whom I trust to represent my interests in the Asset-Negotiations and leave them to their work. If some of them screw me during Asset-Negotiations, I shall never vote for the bad 1s again. As far as simplicity goes, SODA seems more complex to me than Asset-Voting. To see why multiple delegable votes would be confusing, consider the following scenario. Let us say that I vote for A and B. After the votes are counted, it turns out that all the other voters voted for X or Y, in a 50/50 proportion. My
Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
2011-09-05T18:31:16Z, “Jameson Quinn” jameson.qu...@gmail.com: SODA was initially designed as a single-winner system. Sorry but it looks like a terrible degraded form of Asset-Voting. I believe that as such, it has four independent advantages, three of which are unmatched by any other good system. [snip/] I just do not see any of those advantages. As far as simplicity, one cannot beat approval: Approve: +1 Neutral or no opnion: 0 Reject: -1 +1 0 -1 Name [ ] [ ] [ ] Alpha [ ] [ ] [ ] Bravo [ ] [ ] [ ] Charlie [ ] [ ] [ ] Delta [ ] [ ] [ ] Echo [ ] [ ] [ ] Foxtrot [ ] [ ] [ ] Golf [ ] [ ] [ ] Hotel [ ] [ ] [ ] India [ ] [ ] [ ] Juliet [ ] [ ] [ ] Kilo [ ] [ ] [ ] Mike [ ] [ ] [ ] November [ ] [ ] [ ] Oscar [ ] [ ] [ ] Papa [ ] [ ] [ ] Quebec [ ] [ ] [ ] Romeo [ ] [ ] [ ] Sierra [ ] [ ] [ ] Tango [ ] [ ] [ ] Uniform [ ] [ ] [ ] Victor [ ] [ ] [ ] Whiskey [ ] [ ] [ ] X-Ray [ ] [ ] [ ] Yankee [ ] [ ] [ ] Zulu Since I cannot find anything nice to say about SODA, after this reply and 1 to “Toby Pereira” tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk, I shall drop the subject. JQ “⸘Ŭalabio‽” Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
2011-09-05T208:05:13Z, “Toby Pereira” tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk: This is an article you should read: http://web.archive.org/web/20080113211450/http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html Point 1 - I don't think it is the simplest system. I agree: Soda is more complex than simple approval. So if we're allowing point 2 on this technicality, I still think it's only 2 out of 4, because I think it fails simplicity, and fails it badly. I generally agree with you, but I do not see SODA as winning on any front. Since, I have nothing nice to say, I shall make this my last post about SODA. Toby “⸘Ŭalabio‽” Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA unfairly hobbles nonparanoid voters.
¡Hello! ¿How fare you? I do not believe in attacking the ideas of others, so I refrained from making this post from the remainder of July and all of August. I gave others months to develop SODA without criticism: The problem with most traditional voting systems is that one must choose between jacks-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none and idiot-savants: Let us suppose that the greatest living Agronomist who studied under Professor Norman Ernest Borlaug (if you do not know who Professor Norman Ernest Borlaug was, please kill yourself immediately), and a Renaissance-Politician who served in the military, thus got to see the world, on the GI-Bill, got a score of degrees, but the most advanced of which are A.Scs and A.As, who went on to a score of careers before becoming a politician. One can vote for depth or breadth. With Asset-voting, one can have both: Let us suppose that we have an Asset-Election where each voter gets 9 votes. I chose 9 votes because it gives voters choice, but is easy for the voters to error-check: In Base-10, make certain that the number of Asset-votes is a single-digit-number. Make certain that the number in Base-10 is 9. I could vote for 9 different Nobel-Lauriets who promise to transfer their votes to Renaissance-Politicians who promise to call on their expertise when needed. In other words, with Asset-Voting, one can have one’s cake and eat it too. SODA-Voting is a version of Asset-Voting. SODA is based on the fear of being screwed by those who receive the Asset. It is impossible eliminate the possibility of getting screwed. This holds for politicians in nontransferable elections too. The logical thing to do is not vote for backstabbing politicians again. The paranoia of SODA is that it allows voters to make votes nontransferable so that the politicians cannot screw the voter during transfer negotiations. This means 2 things: * One risks loss of voting power due to ballot-exhaustion (I suspect that SODA is susceptible to voting-splitting and Duverger’s Law). * Politicians can still screw over voters in the legislature. SODA is a solution that does not work and it lets paranoid voters disenfranchise themselves. I do not mind paranoid voters disenfranchising themselves because that means more voting power for me, but soda hobbles everyone to prevent that: If one votes for more than 1 person in SODA makes the votes nontransferable. That means that nonparanoid voters cannot vote for exports who then transfer their votes to jacks-of-all-trades under the condition that the Renaissance-Politicians call upon the experts when appropriate. One must choose between the 2. I do not like being hobbled because other voters are paranoid. If other voters want to make their votes nontransferable, that is fine by me, but they should have to live with reduced voting power due to exhaustion rather than hobbling everyone else. This is how I would do it: * Paranoid voters can indicate that their ballots are nontransferable by marking on the ballots that the ballots are nontransferable by marking them nontranferable, but must live with loss of voting power due to ballot-exhaustion. * Nonparanoid voters can choose 9 Nobel-Lauriets who then transfer the votes to Renaissance-Politicians who promise to call upon the expertise of the Nobel-Lauriets when appropriate. Paranoid voters who are so afraid of being screwed that they make their ballots nontransferable just screw themselves. ¡Peace! -- “⸘Ŭalabio‽” wala...@macosx.com Skype: Walabio An IntactWiki: http://intactipedia.org/ “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” —— Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA strategy
SODA is not strategy free. Even if you make the assumption that candidate preferences are honest because dishonesty will be detected and punished by voters -- an assumption which puts the system beyond the reach of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite proof -- the fact remains that you can construct strategic scenarios. However, it seems to me that SODA is not just a less-strategic system than most others, but radically so. Unlike Approval, semi-honest approval strategy is not something voters must deal with at least implicitly. But like approval, non-semi-honest strategy is relegated to a tiny minority of voters in a tiny minority of cases. The system can deal with all the commonly-discussed strategic problems, including chicken, center squeeze, and honest cycle. I honestly suspect that strategy under SODA would be favored less than half as often as any other good deterministic system I know of, including Approval, Asset, Condorcet (various), IRV, Median, and Range. So, how would you set out to make this idea demonstrable or falsifiable? What rigorous statement about strategy and SODA could I make that would be testable, preferably using simulated elections or mathematical demonstration/counterexamples? What voter model could capture enough of the sophisticated strategic thinking of which humans are capable? How about SODA requires no self-reinforcing or defensive strategy? These are honest, not rhetorical questions. I appreciate good responses, good research questions, from anyone, whatever you expect that the results of that research would be. Thanks, JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA strategy
I checked the definition of SODA at the wiki page. Since the method consists of multiple phases and has many rules, it was difficult to find a simple mapping from that to one simple claim that could be proved or falsified. I also had some problems with terms semi-honest, non-semi-honest, self-reinforcing and defensive strategy below. I had multiple thoughts on where SODA might be vulnerable and where not, but on the other hand I didn't know which phases were supposed to be strategy free and which way (the phases whose role I wondered were nomination, preference order declaration, voting and vote transfer). Maybe one could do this in smaller pieces, like handling separately the chicken problem for one of the phases etc. Another approach would be simply to list all identified possible vulnerabilities and then prove that all those cases are harmless. Is there one major claim that could sum it all (at least the claims) in one sentence or should we start from smaller pieces? Juho On 9.8.2011, at 16.14, Jameson Quinn wrote: SODA is not strategy free. Even if you make the assumption that candidate preferences are honest because dishonesty will be detected and punished by voters -- an assumption which puts the system beyond the reach of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite proof -- the fact remains that you can construct strategic scenarios. However, it seems to me that SODA is not just a less-strategic system than most others, but radically so. Unlike Approval, semi-honest approval strategy is not something voters must deal with at least implicitly. But like approval, non-semi-honest strategy is relegated to a tiny minority of voters in a tiny minority of cases. The system can deal with all the commonly-discussed strategic problems, including chicken, center squeeze, and honest cycle. I honestly suspect that strategy under SODA would be favored less than half as often as any other good deterministic system I know of, including Approval, Asset, Condorcet (various), IRV, Median, and Range. So, how would you set out to make this idea demonstrable or falsifiable? What rigorous statement about strategy and SODA could I make that would be testable, preferably using simulated elections or mathematical demonstration/counterexamples? What voter model could capture enough of the sophisticated strategic thinking of which humans are capable? How about SODA requires no self-reinforcing or defensive strategy? These are honest, not rhetorical questions. I appreciate good responses, good research questions, from anyone, whatever you expect that the results of that research would be. Thanks, JQ 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] SODA strategy
2011/8/9 Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk I checked the definition of SODA at the wiki page. Since the method consists of multiple phases and has many rules, it was difficult to find a simple mapping from that to one simple claim that could be proved or falsified. I also had some problems with terms semi-honest, non-semi-honest, self-reinforcing and defensive strategy below. I had multiple thoughts on where SODA might be vulnerable and where not, but on the other hand I didn't know which phases were supposed to be strategy free and which way (the phases whose role I wondered were nomination, preference order declaration, voting and vote transfer). Maybe one could do this in smaller pieces, like handling separately the chicken problem for one of the phases etc. Another approach would be simply to list all identified possible vulnerabilities and then prove that all those cases are harmless. Is there one major claim that could sum it all (at least the claims) in one sentence or should we start from smaller pieces? I think starting small is probably the best way to go. I believe that there are worthwhile strategy-proofness claims to be made about each of the phases except preference order declaration. For that phase, the principal defense against strategy is the assumption that dishonesty in this phase would be detected and punished by the voters, either by voters withdrawing support, or in a weaker way by their turning delegated votes into non-delegated votes. The system I want to use for strategy considerations is SODA-DAC with candidate preferences completed to strict rankings by approval order. This differs in two ways from the simplest basic SODA version, but I believe that the latter is close enough to share most advantage. I'll try to develop a list of clear sub-claims in a later message. JQ Juho On 9.8.2011, at 16.14, Jameson Quinn wrote: SODA is not strategy free. Even if you make the assumption that candidate preferences are honest because dishonesty will be detected and punished by voters -- an assumption which puts the system beyond the reach of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite proof -- the fact remains that you can construct strategic scenarios. However, it seems to me that SODA is not just a less-strategic system than most others, but radically so. Unlike Approval, semi-honest approval strategy is not something voters must deal with at least implicitly. But like approval, non-semi-honest strategy is relegated to a tiny minority of voters in a tiny minority of cases. The system can deal with all the commonly-discussed strategic problems, including chicken, center squeeze, and honest cycle. I honestly suspect that strategy under SODA would be favored less than half as often as any other good deterministic system I know of, including Approval, Asset, Condorcet (various), IRV, Median, and Range. So, how would you set out to make this idea demonstrable or falsifiable? What rigorous statement about strategy and SODA could I make that would be testable, preferably using simulated elections or mathematical demonstration/counterexamples? What voter model could capture enough of the sophisticated strategic thinking of which humans are capable? How about SODA requires no self-reinforcing or defensive strategy? These are honest, not rhetorical questions. I appreciate good responses, good research questions, from anyone, whatever you expect that the results of that research would be. Thanks, JQ 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
[EM] SODA
http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/SODA SODA is slightly more complicated for the voter since voter needs to check box saying she delegates her vote, or not. Also more complicated in the sense that there is more information shoved in the voter's face. But those deficits are probably amply compensated for... I think this is a very nice voting method. It also can be used both as a single-winner method, and as a PR multiwinner method (in the sense it acts like asset voting), right? Another very elegant point. It also has ideas in common with DYN http://www.rangevoting.org/DynDefn.html It is not entirely clear to me some other mental hybrid of asset and dyn ideas, might not be superior to SODA. Specifically, SODA only delegates if you vote plurality style. But you could also have a ballot like this: YES.NO.Candidate ___ .___A who prefers BCD ___ .___B who prefers ACD ___ .___C who prefers BAD ___ .___D who prefers BCA and if you put down exactly one yes and an arbitrary number of nos, then your blank entries get delegated to the candidate you voted yes on. Is that an improvement or a worsening versus the SODA rules? I definitely think SODA is a good idea, and I'd like to add a SODA page or two to the CRV website. On the sample ballot on the SODA web page, I do not like the use of the word share. I think that word is not the right word. But I admit I'm unsure how best to re-word it. Delegate your remaining approvals is not the same as share, is my linguistic point. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 6:35 AM, Warren Smith warren@gmail.com wrote: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/SODA SODA is slightly more complicated for the voter since voter needs to check box saying she delegates her vote, or not. Also more complicated in the sense that there is more information shoved in the voter's face. But those deficits are probably amply compensated for... I think this is a very nice voting method. It also can be used both as a single-winner method, and as a PR multiwinner method (in the sense it acts like asset voting), right? Another very elegant point. It also has ideas in common with DYN http://www.rangevoting.org/DynDefn.html SODA is definitely a descendant of DYN. In my opinion, it comes down to three improvements that are basically orthogonal. 1. Ballot design - The most important thing here is that the ballot basically looks like it always has and that voters who bullet vote like they always have are casting a delegated vote for one candidate, which is an effective vote. (Yes there is one extra question at the bottom, but I find that preferable to forcing people to write in Do not delegate.) 2. Candidates must exercise their ballots in a way consistent with a preference order they declared before the election - Helps voters understand how their ballot might get extended and vastly decreases opportunities for strategy in the delegation phase. 3. Candidates exercise their ballots one-at-a-time in a specific order - Avoids candidates trying to mislead each other about how they will exercise their delegated ballots (if they all go simultaneously). Can eliminate the chicken paradox. You could apply these improvements to DYN in isolation or in other combinations, or even mix in other improvements, but together I think they make quite a strong system. On the sample ballot on the SODA web page, I do not like the use of the word share. I think that word is not the right word. But I admit I'm unsure how best to re-word it. Delegate your remaining approvals is not the same as share, is my linguistic point. I agree. At one point I reworded it to candidates exercise their delegated ballots. But I don't think this is perfect. Jameson wanted to unify the language on the whole page, which is good, and went with share likely because it is the most succinct, but I do think it can be confusing for someone learning about SODA for the first time. ~ Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion
Jameson, as you say, it seems that SODA will always elect a candidate that beats every other candidate majority pairwise. If rankings are complete, then all pairwise wins will be by majority. So at least to the degree that rankings are complete, SODA satisfies the Condorcet Criterion. Also, as I mentioned briefly in my last message under this subject heading, SODA seems to completely demolish the chicken problem. To review for other readers, we're talking about the scenario 48 A 27 CB 25 BC Candidates B and C form a clone set that pairwise beats A, and in fact C is the Condorcet Winner, but under many Condorcet methods, as well as for Range and Approval, there is a large temptation for the 25 B faction to threaten to truncate C, and thereby steal the election from C. Of course C can counter the threat to truncate B, but then A wins. So it is a classical game of chicken. Some methods like IRV cop out by giving the win to A right off the bat, so there is no game of chicken. But is there a way of really facing up to the problem? i.e. a way that elects from the majority clone set by somehow diffusing the game of chicken? The problem is that in most methods both factions must decide more or less simultaneously. However, if the decisions can be made sequentially, then the faction that plays first can safely forestall the chicken threat of the other. That's one reason that it makes sense for SODA to have the candidates play sequentially, and to have the strongest candidate of a clone (or near clone) set go before the other candidate or candidates in the clone set. Since DAC is designed to pick out the strongest candidate in the plurality winner clone set, it is a natural for setting the order of play (in the sophisticated version of SODA). Another way to solve the chicken problem is to not allow truncations. But in SODA it seems essential to allow the candidates to truncate. However there is a pressure for the candidates to not truncate too high up in the rankings; if they do, they lose credibility with their supporters, so fewer of them will delegate their approval decisions to them. Since having complete rankings helps both in chicken and with regard to the Condorcet Criterion, it might be worth using the implicit order in the approval ballots of the supporters of candidate X to complete X's rankings by using that implicit order to rank the candidates truncated by X (or otherwise ranked equal by X). This would discourage X from too much truncation, and would make it more likely that the true CW was elected in the (usual?) case where there is one. Forest From: Jameson Quinn To: EM Subject: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion Here's the new text on the SODA page Delegated_Approval#Criteria_Compliancerelatingto the Condorcet criterion: It fails the Condorcet criterion, although the majority Condorcet winner over the ranking- augmented ballots is the unique strong, subgame-perfect equilibrium winner. That is to say that, the method would in fact pass the *majority* Condorcet winner criterion,assuming the following: - *Candidates are honest* in their pre-election rankings. This could be because they are innately unwilling to be dishonest, because they are unable to calculate a useful dishonest strategy, or, most likely, because they fear dishonesty would lose them delegated votes. That is, voters who disagreed with the dishonest rankings might vote approval-style instead of delegating, and voters who perceived the rankings as dishonest might thereby value the candidate less. - *Candidates are rationally strategic* in assigning their delegated vote. Since the assignments are sequential, game theory states that there is always a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, which is always unique except in some cases of tied preferences. - *Voters* are able to use the system to *express all relevant preferences*. That is to say, all voters fall into one of two groups: those who agree with their favored candidate's declared preference order and thus can fully express that by delegating their vote; or those who disagree with their favored candidate's preferences, but are aware of who the Condorcet winner is, and are able to use the approval-style ballot to express their preference between the CW and all second-place candidates. Second place means the Smith set if the Condorcet winner were removed from the election; thus, for this assumption to hold, each voter must prefer the CW to all members of this second-place Smith set or vice versa. That's obviously always true if there is a single second-place CW. The three assumptions above would probably not strictly hold true in a real-life election, but they usually would be close enough to ensure that the system does elect the CW. SODA does even better than this if there are only 3 candidates, or if the Condorcet winner goes
Re: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion
the implicit order in the approval ballots of the supporters of candidate X to complete X's rankings by using that implicit order to rank the candidates truncated by X (or otherwise ranked equal by X). Ugh. The big problem with this is that approval-style votes for a candidate will be, by definition, from voters who disagree with that candidate's actual ordering. Also, as a small group, it would be very vulnerable to hijacking, at little cost. This would discourage X from too much truncation, and would make it more likely that the true CW was elected in the (usual?) case where there is one. Yes, I sympathize with the goal. But I can't see how to achieve it without inventing CODA. JQ Forest From: Jameson Quinn To: EM Subject: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion Here's the new text on the SODA page Delegated_Approval#Criteria_Compliancerelatingto the Condorcet criterion: It fails the Condorcet criterion, although the majority Condorcet winner over the ranking- augmented ballots is the unique strong, subgame-perfect equilibrium winner. That is to say that, the method would in fact pass the *majority* Condorcet winner criterion,assuming the following: - *Candidates are honest* in their pre-election rankings. This could be because they are innately unwilling to be dishonest, because they are unable to calculate a useful dishonest strategy, or, most likely, because they fear dishonesty would lose them delegated votes. That is, voters who disagreed with the dishonest rankings might vote approval-style instead of delegating, and voters who perceived the rankings as dishonest might thereby value the candidate less. - *Candidates are rationally strategic* in assigning their delegated vote. Since the assignments are sequential, game theory states that there is always a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, which is always unique except in some cases of tied preferences. - *Voters* are able to use the system to *express all relevant preferences*. That is to say, all voters fall into one of two groups: those who agree with their favored candidate's declared preference order and thus can fully express that by delegating their vote; or those who disagree with their favored candidate's preferences, but are aware of who the Condorcet winner is, and are able to use the approval-style ballot to express their preference between the CW and all second-place candidates. Second place means the Smith set if the Condorcet winner were removed from the election; thus, for this assumption to hold, each voter must prefer the CW to all members of this second-place Smith set or vice versa. That's obviously always true if there is a single second-place CW. The three assumptions above would probably not strictly hold true in a real-life election, but they usually would be close enough to ensure that the system does elect the CW. SODA does even better than this if there are only 3 candidates, or if the Condorcet winner goes first in the delegation assignment order, or if there are 4 candidates and the CW goes second. In any of those circumstances,under the assumptions above, it passes the *Condorcet* criterion, not just the majority Condorcet criterion. The important difference between the Condorcet criterion (beats all others pairwise) and the majority Condorcetcriterion (beats all others pairwise by a strict majority) is that the former is clone-proof while the latter is not. Thus, with few enough strong candidates, SODA also passes the independence of clones criterion . Note that, although the circumstances where SODA passes the Condorcet criterion are hemmed in by assumptions, when it does pass, it does so in a perfectly strategy-proof sense. That is *not* true of any actual Condorcetsystem (that is, any system which universally passes the Condorcet criterion). Therefore, for rationally-strategic voters who believe that the above assumptions are likely to hold, *SODA may in fact pass the Condorcetcriterion more often than a Condorcet system*. 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] SODA and the Condorcet criterion
Here's the new text on the SODA pagehttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval#Criteria_Compliancerelating to the Condorcet criterion: It fails the Condorcet criterionhttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Condorcet_criterion, although the majority Condorcet winner over the ranking-augmented ballots is the unique strong, subgame-perfect equilibrium winner. That is to say that, the method would in fact pass the *majority* Condorcet winner criterion, assuming the following: - *Candidates are honest* in their pre-election rankings. This could be because they are innately unwilling to be dishonest, because they are unable to calculate a useful dishonest strategy, or, most likely, because they fear dishonesty would lose them delegated votes. That is, voters who disagreed with the dishonest rankings might vote approval-style instead of delegating, and voters who perceived the rankings as dishonest might thereby value the candidate less. - *Candidates are rationally strategic* in assigning their delegated vote. Since the assignments are sequential, game theory states that there is always a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, which is always unique except in some cases of tied preferences. - *Voters* are able to use the system to *express all relevant preferences*. That is to say, all voters fall into one of two groups: those who agree with their favored candidate's declared preference order and thus can fully express that by delegating their vote; or those who disagree with their favored candidate's preferences, but are aware of who the Condorcet winner is, and are able to use the approval-style ballot to express their preference between the CW and all second-place candidates. Second place means the Smith set if the Condorcet winner were removed from the election; thus, for this assumption to hold, each voter must prefer the CW to all members of this second-place Smith set or vice versa. That's obviously always true if there is a single second-place CW. The three assumptions above would probably not strictly hold true in a real-life election, but they usually would be close enough to ensure that the system does elect the CW. SODA does even better than this if there are only 3 candidates, or if the Condorcet winner goes first in the delegation assignment order, or if there are 4 candidates and the CW goes second. In any of those circumstances, under the assumptions above, it passes the *Condorcet* criterion, not just the majority Condorcet criterion. The important difference between the Condorcet criterion (beats all others pairwise) and the majority Condorcet criterion (beats all others pairwise by a strict majority) is that the former is clone-proof while the latter is not. Thus, with few enough strong candidates, SODA also passes the independence of clones criterionhttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/index.php?title=Independence_of_clones_criterionaction=editredlink=1 . Note that, although the circumstances where SODA passes the Condorcet criterion are hemmed in by assumptions, when it does pass, it does so in a perfectly strategy-proof sense. That is *not* true of any actual Condorcet system (that is, any system which universally passes the Condorcet criterion). Therefore, for rationally-strategic voters who believe that the above assumptions are likely to hold, *SODA may in fact pass the Condorcet criterion more often than a Condorcet system*. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion
I want to thank Jameson for taking the ball and running with it on SODA. I really appreciate his talented and energetic work on elaborating, explaining, and selling the method. It's exciting to me to see the possibilities. Here's more evidence of monotonicity: With a three candidate cycle x ABC y BCA z CAB if xyz, then A plays first, but B wins the election. If the B faction increases at the expense of the x faction so that yxz, then B goes first, and still wins! (because ACB is opposite the cyclic order of the beat cycle) The other nice thing about SODA and strong first play order is that it makes the game of chicken go away. Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 08:01:30 -0500 From: Jameson Quinn To: EM Subject: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Here's the new text on the SODA page Delegated_Approval#Criteria_Compliancerelatingto the Condorcet criterion: It fails the Condorcet criterion, although the majority Condorcet winner over the ranking- augmented ballots is the unique strong, subgame-perfect equilibrium winner. That is to say that, the method would in fact pass the *majority* Condorcet winner criterion,assuming the following: - *Candidates are honest* in their pre-election rankings. This could be because they are innately unwilling to be dishonest, because they are unable to calculate a useful dishonest strategy, or, most likely, because they fear dishonesty would lose them delegated votes. That is, voters who disagreed with the dishonest rankings might vote approval-style instead of delegating, and voters who perceived the rankings as dishonest might thereby value the candidate less. - *Candidates are rationally strategic* in assigning their delegated vote. Since the assignments are sequential, game theory states that there is always a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, which is always unique except in some cases of tied preferences. - *Voters* are able to use the system to *express all relevant preferences*. That is to say, all voters fall into one of two groups: those who agree with their favored candidate's declared preference order and thus can fully express that by delegating their vote; or those who disagree with their favored candidate's preferences, but are aware of who the Condorcet winner is, and are able to use the approval-style ballot to express their preference between the CW and all second-place candidates. Second place means the Smith set if the Condorcet winner were removed from the election; thus, for this assumption to hold, each voter must prefer the CW to all members of this second-place Smith set or vice versa. That's obviously always true if there is a single second-place CW. The three assumptions above would probably not strictly hold true in a real-life election, but they usually would be close enough to ensure that the system does elect the CW. SODA does even better than this if there are only 3 candidates, or if the Condorcet winner goes first in the delegation assignment order, or if there are 4 candidates and the CW goes second. In any of those circumstances,under the assumptions above, it passes the *Condorcet* criterion, not just the majority Condorcet criterion. The important difference between the Condorcet criterion (beats all others pairwise) and the majority Condorcetcriterion (beats all others pairwise by a strict majority) is that the former is clone-proof while the latter is not. Thus, with few enough strong candidates, SODA also passes the independence of clones criterion . Note that, although the circumstances where SODA passes the Condorcet criterion are hemmed in by assumptions, when it does pass, it does so in a perfectly strategy-proof sense. That is *not* true of any actual Condorcetsystem (that is, any system which universally passes the Condorcet criterion). Therefore, for rationally-strategic voters who believe that the above assumptions are likely to hold, *SODA may in fact pass the Condorcetcriterion more often than a Condorcet system*. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: electorama.com/attachments/20110804/d8f85fc2/attachment-0001.htm Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA and the Condorcet criterion
2011/8/4 fsimm...@pcc.edu I want to thank Jameson for taking the ball and running with it on SODA. I really appreciate his talented and energetic work on elaborating, explaining, and selling the method. Thank you. More stuff I've added to the SODA page recently: -I tried to unify the terminology. Voters can delegate their votes; Candidates receive delegated votes (not ballots), which they then use (I had been using assign, exercise, or share) by approving other candidates, who in turn receive these shared votes. I'd be open to suggestions to improve any of those terms, though I think consistency is more important than perfection. -I revamped the section on Advantages, and added a section on Electoral College compatibility. The latter contains proposed rules for using with the EC, for which I'm open to refinements or suggestions. Here are the sections as they stand: Advantages SODA has advantages for many groups. In fact, most of the advantages would fit in more than one of the categories below, so the division is somewhat arbitrary. Also, on the talk page (click discussion above) there are also two hard sell SODA pitches for two different audiences, which restate these advantages in more-opinionated terms. [edithttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/index.php?title=Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approvalaction=editsection=10 ]For voters 1. SODA is extremely easy for the voters; in fact, *no voting system is simpler to vote*. (Plurality, by restricting you to only one vote, also makes it possible to mistakenly overvote, spoiling your ballot. There is no such way to accidentally invalidate your ballot under SODA. Also, both Plurality and Approval require a conscientious voter to consider strategy and polling status; SODA allows a simple bullet vote to still be strategically as strong as possible, regardless of the candidate standings.) 2. Under SODA, there is *no need for dishonesty* from individual voters. A voter can safely vote for any candidate that they honestly agree with, without fear of that vote being wasted; or safely vote an honest approval-style ballot, if they do not agree with any candidate's preference order. This is drastically different from plurality, where voters must dishonestly spurn spoiler candidates as a matter of course. 3. SODA *does not require you to trust any politician*. Any vote delegation is both safe (you can see where your delegated vote will go) and entirely optional. Any voter who dislikes the idea of their vote being delegated in a smoke-filled room, need not allow that to happen. [edithttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/index.php?title=Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approvalaction=editsection=11 ]For society (results) 1. SODA is far *more likely to arrive at a majority result* than Plurality (or even IRV). Winners will thus have a clearer mandate. 2. SODA may be *more likely to elect the Condorcet winner* (aka pairwise champion, the candidate who could beat all others one-on-one) than *any other system* (except SODA-DAC http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/DAC). See the technical discussion in the prior section for the assumptions that would make this true. 3. However, unexpected, relatively unknown or *unqualified winners will be as rare or rarer under SODA* than under Approval or a Condorcet system. In a polarized society, Condorcet can have such a strong tendency to elect centrists that even unqualified, largely-unknown centrists have an advantage over better-known candidates; SODA will not have such a tendency unless the stronger candidates consciously choose this as a compromise. [edithttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/index.php?title=Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approvalaction=editsection=12 ]For society (process) 1. Leaders of *minority factions would have an appropriate voice for their concerns*, although power would ultimately reside with any majority coalition which exists. In fact, you could say that SODA combines the best of both worlds - the negotiated, everyone-gets-a-voice coalitions of parliamentary government, with the decisive, buck-stops-here clear winner of a US-style system. 2. SODA would *reduce negative campaigns*. A negative attack against opponent A would often just shift votes to another opponent B who would end up sharing them back with A in the delegation round. Meanwhile, the candidate carrying out the attacks could also suffer with voters. 3. Like many other voting reforms, SODA would *reduce the influence of money* in political campaigns. Plurality, with its overriding need to be a frontrunner, exaggerates the importance of money. SODA in particular, by encouraging meaningful campaigns and get-out-the-vote operations by minor candidates, while still ensuring that the extra turnout those generated would have an effective impact in deciding between the major candidates, would help substitute grassroots
[EM] SODA rationale, part 1 of 4: Undecided voters (was: Record activity on the EM list?)
but, as a peripheral actor here, i haven't been participating too much in this SODA thing or any other asset voting systems. i have to admit that my attitude toward such is why bother?. i still don't get it. maybe in an election in an organization or corporation, but i just can't see such in a governmental election. people who complain about IRV or a ranked ballot as complicated will feel no different about an proxy-assignable contingency vote. toss in the option to not assign the contingency vote to a proxy (with an additional check box) and these people will all the more so say hunh?. It's a fair criticism. So let me try to explain why I think SODA is especially promising from a practical standpoint. I think SODA would be better than other good systems from the perspective of several constituencies who are typically skeptical about voting reform. RBJ speaks of people who complain about IRV, but I think it's worth being more specific. - First off, there's the typical undecided voters, whom I'd recast as being mostly more like *disengaged voters*. My thinking about such people has been influenced by this 2004 article from the New Republichttp://www.csus.edu/indiv/f/friedman/spring2011/govt1/schedule/g/g2/undecided.htm. Basically it argues that undecided voters are not so much the centrists that pundits like to make up just-so stories about, but rather, they're just people who view politics as an unappealing chore. They accept voting as their civic duty, but see it as a boring and distasteful requirement to choose between a bunch of people they don't know and probably wouldn't like or even trust if they did. A person like that really does not care about how the ballot-counting process works, any more than they want to have to think about where their electricity comes from. And they don't want anyone coming around to tell them later that they should have spent more effort to make a strategically optimal vote (whatever that means). SODA's advantages for this group are clear. They want to vote-for-one and forget about it. And they don't care about the rest. Sure, they may express their skepticism about IRV in terms of how the inner workings seem to complex, but in reality they don't care about the inner workings. Note that, even though it adds undesirable complexity, the optional part of SODA, the ability not to delegate, is also important in convincing this group of people. They don't trust politicians, and so any system which forces voters to delegate and trust is a non-starter. So it's important to have the option not to delegate, even if these voters will rarely use it. Why even worry about such people, if they're so disengaged? It's not as if they'll ever become political activists for your cause. But still, ignore them at your peril. It's easy for a negative campaign to bring to the forefront these people's simmering distrust, and while they are the weakest of allies, you do not want them as enemies. Disengaged they may be, but they are still voters. (They might have plenty in common with non-voters, but that's not who I'm talking about). (By the way, I have friends like this, as I'm sure most of you do. I certainly hope I'm not being insulting. They are just as smart as anyone else on average. The difference between the kind of person who'd be on an election methods mailing list, and the kind of person who views voting as about as fun as cleaning the toilet, isn't that the former is necessarily more capable of understanding voting systems, it's that they're more interested.) *(to be continued)* Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA page updated with SODA-PR
Just to alert those who may be interested, I've added SODA-PR to the SODA page on electowikihttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval#SODA-PR_.28proportional_representation_version_of_SODA.29 . It includes some minor adjustments since the last time I expounded it here: Simplifying the ballot by including same-district candidates in a larger font, nearby-district candidates in a smaller font, and far-away candidates as write-ins only, is now part of the system by default. Random discards are repeated until the next candidate to be elected is the same twice in a row. That is intended as a compromise between the mathematical simplicity of ballot discarding and the deterministic nature of fractional reweighting. In most cases, it will not affect the result. Intercandidate can be conditional on being mutual, but not conditional on anything else. That should allow a reasonable, but not excessive, level of party discipline. It also notes the circumstances when this will give the same results as plurality, to argue that existing plurality winners will find this to be a relatively-good PR system. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
For generic SODA, the current rule is: candidates exercise their ballots in descending order of current approval score. By current approval score do you mean the non-delegated scores? If so, what do we do when everbody delegates? No, I mean total votes - including non-delegated approval from voters, delegated bullet votes from voters, and assigned delegated votes from other candidates. Yes, these totals increase as the game is played, so descending order is a bit of a misnomer; perhaps I should say the next player is always the candidate with the highest current votes. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
I like it! - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn Date: Thursday, July 21, 2011 4:11 am Subject: Re: [EM] SODA To: fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com For generic SODA, the current rule is: candidates exercise their ballots in descending order of current approval score. By current approval score do you mean the non-delegated scores? If so, what do we do when everbody delegates? No, I mean total votes - including non-delegated approval from voters,delegated bullet votes from voters, and assigned delegated votes from other candidates. Yes, these totals increase as the game is played, so descending order is a bit of a misnomer; perhaps I should say the next player is always the candidate with the highest current votes. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA
In our SODA development we came to something of an impasse for determining the
order of play for
the candidates casting their approval cutoffs.
Here's a suggestion:
Let the DSC winner go first, because the DSC winner is easily calculated,
satisfies Later-No-Harm (so
does not unduly encourage truncation), and can be thought of as the minimal
acceptable modification of
plurality, namely de-cloning it without destroying its montonicity. In a way,
DSC elegantly
accomplishes what IRV attempts but botches.
[In the context of SODA where there is only one faction for each of the n
candidates, the DSC method
has to score at most n*(n-1) subsets, and it takes no more than the order of
n^2 steps to determine the
DSC score of each of these subsets. So the whole thing can be done in the
order of n^4 steps at worst.]
From then on the next player in the sequence is the candidate that ranked the
previous player X the
highest. If there is a tie, say Y1, Y2, and Y3 each ranks X equally high (and
higher than anybody else
does) then the member of {Y1, Y2, Y3} ranked highest by X is the next player.
This order is clone consistent, i.e. if Y is replaced by a clone set, then the
entire clone set will be
intercalated into the order in place of Y.
This order discourages burial, because if X is first in the order, and Y buries
X, then Y will not follow X,
unless all of the other candidates bury X, too, in which case X could not have
been first.
Note that we could reverse the roles of X and Y in determining the order and
breaking ties: The
remaining candidate Y that X ranks the highest is next, and if X ranks no
remaining candidate, then the
candidate that ranks X the highest is next. My intuition is that this order
might not be quite as burial
resistant, but it would be better at discouraging what we could call fawning,
namely ranking the
presumed DSC winner artificially high for the sole purpose of getting into the
order earlier.
Another option would be to use the DSC winner's rankings for all of the rest of
the players, and passing
to the second player's rankings to resolve any equal rankings made by the DSC
winner, etc.
We need to experiment to see if any of these is adequate, and if so, which is
best.
What are some good scenarios to test?
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
Sounds good. - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn I would like to keep generic SODA as simple as possible, to make it easier to promote for practical use. However, I am still interested in figuring out the best possible SODA+ method, using DSC or whatever. For generic SODA, the current rule is: candidates exercise their ballots in descending order of current approval score. By current approval score do you mean the non-delegated scores? If so, what do we do when everbody delegates? This will correctly get the CW in all 3-candidate scenarios (including non-delegable votes), and I suspect in all 4-candidate scenarios without delegable votes and full ranking. (I can get a very fragile non-CW scenario for 5 candidates, all-delegable votes, and full ranking, in a (1+*2*)v(2) clone scenario, where the CW is one of the starred 2.) Note that, simple as it is, this rule tends to follow clone sets down, as Forest's proposed rules do, because if A delegates to B, then B is almost certain to go next. Thus, this rule is highly clone resistant, for reasonable numbers of clones, although not perfectly clone-proof. It is also clone-proof (ie, IIA) for 1D scenarios. I'd like to make some Yee diagrams for SODA with this rule. Does anybodyknow what algorithms I could use? It would be pretty easy if you assumed that all voters gave a delegable vote; but I think that a more realisticrule would be that voters give a delegable vote iff they agree with their preferred candidate's first delegation, and approves the top max(2 candidates or 1/3 of all candidates) if not. That, plus the delegation order, is getting a bit hairy for calculating Yee diagrams from, so I'd appreciate any tips on algorithmic short cuts. (eg, is there some way to prove that this voting rule in a 2-dimensional space always gives a ballot-CW under SODA, and that therefore I can avoid dealing with delegation order?). If the diagrams can be calculated relatively quickly, I'd be interested in doing this using a real-time web tool (as an excercise in programming in go with GAE); otherwise, I could do it in whatever language, offline. As for Forest's DSC rule for SODA+: how about starting with the DSC winner, then proceeding to the DSC winner among those who got votes from the last player, or the DSC winner among the remainder if the last player did not assign votes? It's in effect similar to the higest ranking from the previous player rule, but closer to the generic SODA rule. JQ ps. I vaguely know how DSC works, but I'd appreciate a refresher. Here's a link: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Descending_Solid_Coalitions It's quite fun to play with. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
From: Jameson Quinn Here's the scenario you used to first show your tree method of determiningdelegation order. 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA1=A2 48 C What if some candidate outside the A1 A2 faction had an A2A1 preference? I mean either: Scenario S 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA2A1 48 C Or: Scenario T 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA1=A2 43 C 5 CA2 Or even: Scenario U 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA1=A2 43 C 5 A2C I believe that A2 should go first in all of the above scenarios. I agree, and my coalition tree/DAG idea doesn't work, so let's scrap it. However, before we settle on a quick and dirty way of deciding the player order, I suggest that we do find an ideal way as a standard of comparison for competing approximations. The ideal way should generate a clone consistent monotonic list from ballot rankings. Short of CSSD itself, note that DAC (Descending Acquiescing Coalitions) elects A2 in all three of the scenarios S, T, and U above, and A! in the original. So use DAC to get the first player, and then to get the next player use DAC to choose from the remaining candidates, etc. DAC is easy to describe and easy to do in O(n*m) steps where n is the number of candidates, and m is the number of factions, which in our case is also n. On another note, I think it is important to get a fairly complete ranking for each faction to avoid the temptation of playing chicken before the approval stage by truncating the rankings. I'm not saying that the candidates have to submit a complete rankings, but we need a way of more or less completing the ballots that have truncations and equal rankings. Here's what I suggest. To complete (or nearly complete) the ranking submitted by candidate X, take a weighted average of all of the approval ballots (i.e. non-delegating ballots) that approve X, with the weight of each such ballot being the reciprocal of the number of candidates approved by that ballot. Use this weighted average of approval ballots to break as many ties as possible in the ranking submitted by X. Note that if candidate C bullet votes, then the supporters of candidate C who have strong opinions about second and third choices will have significant incentive to submit approval ballots. Once the approval ballots have been used in this way to help fill out the rankings, we restore full weight to each of them for the final approval count.. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA clarification
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 8:33 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: Andy, I like both of your suggestions. Why don't you try putting them on the pagehttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approvalyourself? I don't want this system or that page to be mine, I just want them to be good. Okay, I changed the Wiki. I'll try to give it a second look tomorrow to see if I want to re-word anything. 2011/7/7 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, I'm really liking the SODA method that is evolving. I have a couple of cosmetic suggestions: First, in the description of SODA, I dislike using the term delegate for step 3, candidate-to-candidate transfers. I would only use the word delegate for step 2, the bullet voters' votes getting delegated to their candidates. I prefer to think of step 3 as the candidates casting their votes (which includes all the delegated votes they control). It's a much simpler mental model for me. Since they aren't passing anything on to another candidate which can be changed or controlled, I don't consider it delegation. Also, it decreases the implication of smoke-filled rooms (for me) to have as little delegation as possible. I think this terminology was why I was confused about step 3 in a prior email. Second, I find it incredibly confusing to say you have to write in do not delegate if you bullet vote and you don't want your vote delegated. I realize that you want delegation to be the default for bullet voters. Why not organize the ballot with that as a separate question (as follows)? Vote for as many candidates as you approve: [ ] Candidate A [ ] Candidate B [ ] Candidate C [ ] Candidate D [ ] ___(write-in)_ [ ] ___(write-in)_ [ ] ___(write-in)_ If you only vote for one candidate, he can choose to transfer his vote to one or more alternate candidates in the event that he cannot win, UNLESS you check the box below: [ ] Do not let the candidate I voted for transfer my vote to other candidates Andy On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:54 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: 2011/7/6 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, I have become confused about one point of operation in SODA. Take this scenario: 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If A delegates to A,B then does B have 69 votes he can delegate to B,C or does he have only 34 he can play with? In other words, can votes delegated from one candidate to another be re-delegated to a third candidate? B has 34. Delegable votes are only bullet votes. In fact, a real SODA scenario would probably be more like: 25 A (B) 5 A,X 5 A,B 26 B (C) 4 B,X 4 B, C 29 C (A) 1 C,X 1 C,A Initial totals: 36A, 39B, 35C Delegable: 25A, 26B, 29C Note that in this example, C has the most delegable votes and would decide delegation first, even though B has the most total initial votes. In this case - a Condorcet cycle - the result would be the same no matter who delegates first, as long as all candidates use correct strategy. But there are cases where it wouldn't be: 25: Left (X) 15: Left, Center 5: Left, Right 25: Center (Right) 30: Right (Center) The candidate Left has not declared any delegable preferences, but the left voters clearly tend to prefer Center over Right. Center is the Condorcet winner, but Right would get the chance to delegate before Center, and thus would be the strategic winner under SODA. If delegation order went in order of total votes instead of delegable votes, Center would win. Hmm... now that I look at this scenario in black and white, I'm starting to think that delegation order should be in order of total, not delegable, votes. Not that there isn't a case to be made for Right in this election; if Center were really a better result, then they should get either Left's delegation or more delegable votes from the nominally voters who chose [Left, Center] here. This argument like FairVote's handwaving arguments about strength of support - which is not necessarily invalid just because it's imprecise and easy to reduce ad absurdem. But... I think that having this scenario go to Right puts too much of a burden of strategic calculation on the [Left, Center] voters. So, yet another adjustment to SODA, I think. Delegation choice goes in descending order of total votes; the person with the most total votes gets the first move. If my grounded intuition is correct, this should not matter when there's a 3-way cycle, only when there's a pairwise champion (CW). Hopefully this will be the last time I have to adjust SODA. Also note that all the adjustments so far have been minor tweaks; any of the versions so far would work well, though I believe they have been steadily improving. Current rules, as always, are at http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval JQ I looked at the wiki and still am unclear on this. I
Re: [EM] SODA
This is not an answer to the question of how to arrange them into a tree, but here is an idea for how to compare factions of different sizes: If there are N total candidates, then the score of a faction (a subset of candidates) of size M could be the voter count of that faction (the number of voters who ranked those candidates strictly above all other candidates) divided by the expected size of a faction of size M (total number of voters divided by N choose M). Then you could identify the weakest candidate in the strongest faction and make him go first, or something like that. In general, since it seems like an disadvantage to go first, to me it doesn't seem right to make the strongest candidate go first. Jameson, is the main thing you're trying to avoid the game of chicken between two clones? Or are you trying to avoid the game of chicken and the kingmaker problem at the same time? Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
Here's an off-the-wall idea. Haven't fully thought through the strategic implications, but here goes: What if, instead of requiring the candidates to vote sequentially, they all have to go at the same time, but we introduce another level between approve and don't approve which is conditional approval or approve this candidate only if he approves me. (I don't yet know how this fits in with the candidates' pre-specified rankings.) These are resolved on a pairwise basis. If A approves B and B conditionally approves A, then that is converted into full approval. If A and B both conditionally approve each other, then that should be converted into mutual full approval. Thoughts? Andy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
You're right, the same example dawned on me last night after I used up all of my computer time. But the Hasse diagram of the partial order does yield a weighted DAG (directed acyclic graph) where the weight of each coalition is the sum of the weights of the factions that are included in it. If we agree that edges are directed from coalition to subcoalition, then the only source is the set of all factions. [A source is a node that has at least one edge leaving it, but no edge entering it; i.e. indegree=0, outdegree0.] Here's how to order the factions: While there remains at least one edge in the graph .. remove the heaviest edge leaving the most recently exposed source. EndWhile The factions play in the order that they are exposed. [The weight of an edge is the weight of the node that it enters. A node is exposed at the stage its indegree reaches zero. In the original DAG the only source is considered to be the most recently exposed source.] This generalizes the order that I gave for trees, i.e.if the DAG is a tree, this order agrees with the order that I gave for that case. It is clear that this algorithm takes O(n) steps where n is the number of edges in the DAG. - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn The Hasse diagram for a partially ordered set is a tree. No, it's not. Or at least, not if I understand your terms correctly. If there are three candidates [ABC], and all vote types exist, then is [A] a leaf on the [AB] branch or on the [AC] branch? JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
Here's the scenario you used to first show your tree method of determining delegation order. 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA1=A2 48 C What if some candidate outside the A1 A2 faction had an A2A1 preference? I mean either: Scenario S 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA2A1 48 C Or: Scenario T 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA1=A2 43 C 5 CA2 Or even: Scenario U 16 A1A2B 12 A2A1B 24 BA1=A2 43 C 5 A2C I believe that A2 should go first in all of the above scenarios. Thus, you'd use the worst relevant pairwise WV totals over the whole electorate to determine order within a coalition. For two-member coalitions, that's just the pairwise WV between them; for a three-member, cycled coalition, it's minimax WV; and for a coalition of two multi-member subcoalitions, it's the worst WV of a member of subcoalition X over a member of subcoalition Y and vice versa. That is, in all cases, lower-bounded by the coalition size, but it can go higher, as it does in the three scenarios I gave above. I like this coalition tree method as a theoretical way of making a cloneproof SODA. However, for SODA as a practical proposal, it's too much complication for too little benefit. SODA is already proof against simple pairs of clones, and I don't think that larger clouds of clones without one stand-out winner will ever be a factor in a real election. Certainly I can't think of any historical election where this would have mattered, even including serious 4-way elections like US 1860 or Romania 2009. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 6:06 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Of course, with too many factions, the optimal strategy computation would be intractable. With twenty candidates, there are about a million different possible subsets to consider. Seems like it could be tractable. I'm not exactly following how the tree is organized. If there are N candidates and every voter ranks all candidates, then the biggest N-1 size faction will be the one that omits the candidate who is ranked last by the most voters, right? Can't you apply that recursively to build the tree? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA clarification
Jameson, I'm really liking the SODA method that is evolving. I have a couple of cosmetic suggestions: First, in the description of SODA, I dislike using the term delegate for step 3, candidate-to-candidate transfers. I would only use the word delegate for step 2, the bullet voters' votes getting delegated to their candidates. I prefer to think of step 3 as the candidates casting their votes (which includes all the delegated votes they control). It's a much simpler mental model for me. Since they aren't passing anything on to another candidate which can be changed or controlled, I don't consider it delegation. Also, it decreases the implication of smoke-filled rooms (for me) to have as little delegation as possible. I think this terminology was why I was confused about step 3 in a prior email. Second, I find it incredibly confusing to say you have to write in do not delegate if you bullet vote and you don't want your vote delegated. I realize that you want delegation to be the default for bullet voters. Why not organize the ballot with that as a separate question (as follows)? Vote for as many candidates as you approve: [ ] Candidate A [ ] Candidate B [ ] Candidate C [ ] Candidate D [ ] ___(write-in)_ [ ] ___(write-in)_ [ ] ___(write-in)_ If you only vote for one candidate, he can choose to transfer his vote to one or more alternate candidates in the event that he cannot win, UNLESS you check the box below: [ ] Do not let the candidate I voted for transfer my vote to other candidates Andy On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:54 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: 2011/7/6 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, I have become confused about one point of operation in SODA. Take this scenario: 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If A delegates to A,B then does B have 69 votes he can delegate to B,C or does he have only 34 he can play with? In other words, can votes delegated from one candidate to another be re-delegated to a third candidate? B has 34. Delegable votes are only bullet votes. In fact, a real SODA scenario would probably be more like: 25 A (B) 5 A,X 5 A,B 26 B (C) 4 B,X 4 B, C 29 C (A) 1 C,X 1 C,A Initial totals: 36A, 39B, 35C Delegable: 25A, 26B, 29C Note that in this example, C has the most delegable votes and would decide delegation first, even though B has the most total initial votes. In this case - a Condorcet cycle - the result would be the same no matter who delegates first, as long as all candidates use correct strategy. But there are cases where it wouldn't be: 25: Left (X) 15: Left, Center 5: Left, Right 25: Center (Right) 30: Right (Center) The candidate Left has not declared any delegable preferences, but the left voters clearly tend to prefer Center over Right. Center is the Condorcet winner, but Right would get the chance to delegate before Center, and thus would be the strategic winner under SODA. If delegation order went in order of total votes instead of delegable votes, Center would win. Hmm... now that I look at this scenario in black and white, I'm starting to think that delegation order should be in order of total, not delegable, votes. Not that there isn't a case to be made for Right in this election; if Center were really a better result, then they should get either Left's delegation or more delegable votes from the nominally voters who chose [Left, Center] here. This argument like FairVote's handwaving arguments about strength of support - which is not necessarily invalid just because it's imprecise and easy to reduce ad absurdem. But... I think that having this scenario go to Right puts too much of a burden of strategic calculation on the [Left, Center] voters. So, yet another adjustment to SODA, I think. Delegation choice goes in descending order of total votes; the person with the most total votes gets the first move. If my grounded intuition is correct, this should not matter when there's a 3-way cycle, only when there's a pairwise champion (CW). Hopefully this will be the last time I have to adjust SODA. Also note that all the adjustments so far have been minor tweaks; any of the versions so far would work well, though I believe they have been steadily improving. Current rules, as always, are at http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval JQ I looked at the wiki and still am unclear on this. I still have the original SODA proposal in my head (where votes could not be delegated multiple times) and I can't remember if we've changed this detail at some point. Thanks, Andy On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: Russ, you said that SODA was too complicated. In my prior message, I responded by saying that it was actually pretty simple. But thanks for your feedback; I realize that the SODA page was not conveying that simplicity well. I've changed the
Re: [EM] SODA clarification
Andy, I like both of your suggestions. Why don't you try putting them on the page http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approvalyourself? I don't want this system or that page to be mine, I just want them to be good. 2011/7/7 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, I'm really liking the SODA method that is evolving. I have a couple of cosmetic suggestions: First, in the description of SODA, I dislike using the term delegate for step 3, candidate-to-candidate transfers. I would only use the word delegate for step 2, the bullet voters' votes getting delegated to their candidates. I prefer to think of step 3 as the candidates casting their votes (which includes all the delegated votes they control). It's a much simpler mental model for me. Since they aren't passing anything on to another candidate which can be changed or controlled, I don't consider it delegation. Also, it decreases the implication of smoke-filled rooms (for me) to have as little delegation as possible. I think this terminology was why I was confused about step 3 in a prior email. Second, I find it incredibly confusing to say you have to write in do not delegate if you bullet vote and you don't want your vote delegated. I realize that you want delegation to be the default for bullet voters. Why not organize the ballot with that as a separate question (as follows)? Vote for as many candidates as you approve: [ ] Candidate A [ ] Candidate B [ ] Candidate C [ ] Candidate D [ ] ___(write-in)_ [ ] ___(write-in)_ [ ] ___(write-in)_ If you only vote for one candidate, he can choose to transfer his vote to one or more alternate candidates in the event that he cannot win, UNLESS you check the box below: [ ] Do not let the candidate I voted for transfer my vote to other candidates Andy On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:54 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: 2011/7/6 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, I have become confused about one point of operation in SODA. Take this scenario: 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If A delegates to A,B then does B have 69 votes he can delegate to B,C or does he have only 34 he can play with? In other words, can votes delegated from one candidate to another be re-delegated to a third candidate? B has 34. Delegable votes are only bullet votes. In fact, a real SODA scenario would probably be more like: 25 A (B) 5 A,X 5 A,B 26 B (C) 4 B,X 4 B, C 29 C (A) 1 C,X 1 C,A Initial totals: 36A, 39B, 35C Delegable: 25A, 26B, 29C Note that in this example, C has the most delegable votes and would decide delegation first, even though B has the most total initial votes. In this case - a Condorcet cycle - the result would be the same no matter who delegates first, as long as all candidates use correct strategy. But there are cases where it wouldn't be: 25: Left (X) 15: Left, Center 5: Left, Right 25: Center (Right) 30: Right (Center) The candidate Left has not declared any delegable preferences, but the left voters clearly tend to prefer Center over Right. Center is the Condorcet winner, but Right would get the chance to delegate before Center, and thus would be the strategic winner under SODA. If delegation order went in order of total votes instead of delegable votes, Center would win. Hmm... now that I look at this scenario in black and white, I'm starting to think that delegation order should be in order of total, not delegable, votes. Not that there isn't a case to be made for Right in this election; if Center were really a better result, then they should get either Left's delegation or more delegable votes from the nominally voters who chose [Left, Center] here. This argument like FairVote's handwaving arguments about strength of support - which is not necessarily invalid just because it's imprecise and easy to reduce ad absurdem. But... I think that having this scenario go to Right puts too much of a burden of strategic calculation on the [Left, Center] voters. So, yet another adjustment to SODA, I think. Delegation choice goes in descending order of total votes; the person with the most total votes gets the first move. If my grounded intuition is correct, this should not matter when there's a 3-way cycle, only when there's a pairwise champion (CW). Hopefully this will be the last time I have to adjust SODA. Also note that all the adjustments so far have been minor tweaks; any of the versions so far would work well, though I believe they have been steadily improving. Current rules, as always, are at http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval JQ I looked at the wiki and still am unclear on this. I still have the original SODA proposal in my head (where votes could not be delegated multiple times) and I can't remember if we've changed this detail at some point. Thanks, Andy On
Re: [EM] SODA
2011/7/7 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 6:06 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Of course, with too many factions, the optimal strategy computation would be intractable. With twenty candidates, there are about a million different possible subsets to consider. Seems like it could be tractable. I'm not exactly following how the tree is organized. If there are N candidates and every voter ranks all candidates, then the biggest N-1 size faction will be the one that omits the candidate who is ranked last by the most voters, right? Can't you apply that recursively to build the tree? But wouldn't you prefer to find the biggest faction of a size around N/2? I must admit, I'm also confused. It's easy with toy examples, but I can't understand what Forest means for a broad set of candidates. Here's one rule that might work: to divide a coalition, take the broadest (most candidates) strict sub-coalition that is larger (more voters) than any strict sub-coalition which is as broad or broader. That will be N-1 in a non-partisan, clone-free election, but I think it will still find any natural coalitions. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
- Original Message - From: Andy Jennings Of course, with too many factions, the optimal strategy computation would be intractable. With twenty candidates, there are about a million different possible subsets to consider. Seems like it could be tractable. Building the tree and finding the order of play is tractable, but computing the optimal strategy is intractable. Suppose there are twenty candidates, then each candidate has 19 choices of where to put her approval cutoff in her ranking of the candidates. That makes 19^20 possibilities. Precisely one of these will be optimal for the given order of play. So Jameson is right; it is better to not compute the optimal strategy automatically; just let the candidates play the chess game the best they can. However, when it gets down to the last five players, there will be only 19^5 possibilities left, and these could be done automatically in order to completely remove the temptation for a potential kingmaker to throw the election for some personal gain. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
2011/7/7 fsimm...@pcc.edu - Original Message - From: Andy Jennings Of course, with too many factions, the optimal strategy computation would be intractable. With twenty candidates, there are about a million different possible subsets to consider. Seems like it could be tractable. Building the tree and finding the order of play is tractable, That may be so, but I still don't understand what algorithm you're proposing. but computing the optimal strategy is intractable. Suppose there are twenty candidates, then each candidate has 19 choices of where to put her approval cutoff in her ranking of the candidates. That makes 19^20 possibilities. Precisely one of these will be optimal for the given order of play. So Jameson is right; it is better to not compute the optimal strategy automatically; just let the candidates play the chess game the best they can. However, when it gets down to the last five players, there will be only 19^5 possibilities left, and these could be done automatically in order to completely remove the temptation for a potential kingmaker to throw the election for some personal gain. Actually, if you assume only the top five vote-getters are viable - generally justified from the outset in real elections - then there are only 5^19 possibilities, and some good chess-playing algorithms could prune that tree to tractability. But the reason I said we should let the candidates do it rather than computing wasn't computability; it was to prevent pre-election strategy (principally burial) for candidates. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
A correction below at *** - Original Message - From: Date: Thursday, July 7, 2011 5:16 pm Subject: Re: [EM] SODA To: Jameson Quinn , Cc: Andy Jennings , election-methods@lists.electorama.com, - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn 2011/7/7 Andy Jennings On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 6:06 PM, wrote: Of course, with too many factions, the optimal strategy computation would be intractable. With twenty candidates, there are about a million different possible subsets to consider. Seems like it could be tractable. I'm not exactly following how the tree is organized. If there are N candidates and every voter ranks all candidates, then the biggest N-1 size faction will be the one that omits the candidate who is ranked last by the most voters, right? Can't you apply that recursively to build the tree? But wouldn't you prefer to find the biggest faction of a size around N/2? I must admit, I'm also confused. It's easy with toy examples, but I can't understand what Forest means for a broad set of candidates. Once we define precisely what we mean by coalition, the coalition tree practically builds itself, and the traversal order is found in O(n) steps. Let's say a faction is a (multi)set of identical ballots, so the atoms of coalitions are weighted factions, where the weight of a faction is the number of ballots in the faction. [These atoms with their weights will be the leaves of the weighted coalition tree.] Suppose that two or more factions share some initial segment of candidates in any order. Then all of the factions that rank no candidate outside that set above any candidate in that set form a coalition. In other words, the coalition C(S) based on a subset S of candidates is the set of all factions that do not rank any candidate outside of S ahead of any candidate inside S. The weight of the W(S) of C(S) is the sum of the weights of the factions in C(S). The set of all candidate coalitions is partially ordered by containment. If C(S) contains C(S'), then C(S') is a subcoalition of C(S). The Hasse diagram for a partially ordered set is a tree. In our case the coalitions are the nodes of the tree, and the weights of the coalitions make it into a weighted tree. *** The universal coalition consisting of all of the candidates is the root node. Its weight is the total number of ballots. The leaves of the tree are the atoms of the coalitions, i.e. the factions themselves. This paragraph should read ... The universal coalition consisting of all of the factions is the root node. Its weight is the sum of all of the faction weights, i.e. the total number of ballots. The leaves of the tree are the atoms of the coalitions, i.e. the factions themselves. To find the sequence of play for the ideal version of SODA, starting at the root node recursively order the leaves of the daughter nodes and concatenate them together in descending order of weight of the daughter nodes. There's probably a name for this order of traversal of a weighted tree. Does anybody know it? If so, you can look for an efficient cook book algorithm for computing the order of the leaves. Does that help? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
The Hasse diagram for a partially ordered set is a tree. No, it's not. Or at least, not if I understand your terms correctly. If there are three candidates [ABC], and all vote types exist, then is [A] a leaf on the [AB] branch or on the [AC] branch? JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA clarification
2011/7/6 Andy Jennings electi...@jenningsstory.com Jameson, I have become confused about one point of operation in SODA. Take this scenario: 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If A delegates to A,B then does B have 69 votes he can delegate to B,C or does he have only 34 he can play with? In other words, can votes delegated from one candidate to another be re-delegated to a third candidate? B has 34. Delegable votes are only bullet votes. In fact, a real SODA scenario would probably be more like: 25 A (B) 5 A,X 5 A,B 26 B (C) 4 B,X 4 B, C 29 C (A) 1 C,X 1 C,A Initial totals: 36A, 39B, 35C Delegable: 25A, 26B, 29C Note that in this example, C has the most delegable votes and would decide delegation first, even though B has the most total initial votes. In this case - a Condorcet cycle - the result would be the same no matter who delegates first, as long as all candidates use correct strategy. But there are cases where it wouldn't be: 25: Left (X) 15: Left, Center 5: Left, Right 25: Center (Right) 30: Right (Center) The candidate Left has not declared any delegable preferences, but the left voters clearly tend to prefer Center over Right. Center is the Condorcet winner, but Right would get the chance to delegate before Center, and thus would be the strategic winner under SODA. If delegation order went in order of total votes instead of delegable votes, Center would win. Hmm... now that I look at this scenario in black and white, I'm starting to think that delegation order should be in order of total, not delegable, votes. Not that there isn't a case to be made for Right in this election; if Center were really a better result, then they should get either Left's delegation or more delegable votes from the nominally voters who chose [Left, Center] here. This argument like FairVote's handwaving arguments about strength of support - which is not necessarily invalid just because it's imprecise and easy to reduce ad absurdem. But... I think that having this scenario go to Right puts too much of a burden of strategic calculation on the [Left, Center] voters. So, yet another adjustment to SODA, I think. Delegation choice goes in descending order of total votes; the person with the most total votes gets the first move. If my grounded intuition is correct, this should not matter when there's a 3-way cycle, only when there's a pairwise champion (CW). Hopefully this will be the last time I have to adjust SODA. Also note that all the adjustments so far have been minor tweaks; any of the versions so far would work well, though I believe they have been steadily improving. Current rules, as always, are at http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval JQ I looked at the wiki and still am unclear on this. I still have the original SODA proposal in my head (where votes could not be delegated multiple times) and I can't remember if we've changed this detail at some point. Thanks, Andy On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 12:39 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.comwrote: Russ, you said that SODA was too complicated. In my prior message, I responded by saying that it was actually pretty simple. But thanks for your feedback; I realize that the SODA page was not conveying that simplicity well. I've changed the procedure there from 8 individual steps to 4 steps - simple one-sentence overviews - with the details in sub-steps. Of these 4 steps, only step 1 is not in your proposal. And the whole of step 4 is just three words. The procedure is exactly the same, but I hope that this versionhttp://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Simple_Optionally-Delegated_Approval#Proceduredoes a better job of communicating the purpose and underlying simplicity of the system. Thanks, Jameson 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] SODA
Yes, you are right!
Now I would like to suggest a way to make this method clone proof:
The key is to use the solid coalition structure of the factions to determine
the sequential order of play
(i.e. delegation), from largest coalition to smallest. I believe that
completely solves the problem.
Here's an example where A got split into A1 and A2.
16 A1A2B
12 A2A1B
24 BA1=A2
48 C
Even though the C faction is the biggest faction, and the A1 faction is the
second smallest faction,
candidate A1 is the first to delegate in this new order. Here's why:
The largest coaltion (besides the entire set of factions) is the coalition made
up of the set of factions
{A1, A2, B} with 52 percent of the electorate (versus 48 percent for the
coalition {C faction}). Within the
large coalition, the largest subcoalition is {A1, A2} with 26 percent of the
entire electorate (versus 24
percent for the coalition {B faction}).
Within this subcoalition the larger of the two subcoalitions is the A1 faction.
Since there are no further
subcoalitions, candidate A1 plays first.
Then A2 goes next, because we finish the {A1, A2} subcoalition (which was
larger than the B
subcoalition) before letting B play. C goes last because at the root of the
coalition tree C was the branch
on the smaller side.
In sum the order of play is A1, A2, B, C.
The process of deciding the order of play can be summarized more succinctly
with a recursive
description:
Start at the root of the coalition tree, and recursively order the leaves (i.e.
the individual factions) of the
respective branches in descending order of the branch sizes.
I think that in selling the method, we can make the precise sequential order a
technical detail easily
glossed over by simply referring to it as the natural clone independent
sequential order, or something
like that.
- Original Message -
From: Jameson Quinn
Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2011 7:25 pm
Subject: Re: [EM] SODA
To: fsimm...@pcc.edu
Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
2011/7/5, fsimm...@pcc.edu :
I thought that A was required to make her approvals consistent
with her
ordering, i.e. to approve
everybody ranked above her cutoff. Doesn't that mean she is
required to
approve herself?
Maybe I'm thinking of an older version of SODA.
I hope you are right that there is nothing to fix.
Let's do this slowly. Here's the scenario:
34 ABC
35 BCA
31 CAB,
B delegates first. B delegates to B,C. Totals are now C 66, B35, A34.
A's turn. If A does not delegate, C will be winning when it
comes to
C's turn, and so C will not delegate. So A delegates to A,B. Totals
are now B69, C66, A34. C's turn. C is unhappy with B and so delegates
to C,A - but it's not enough. Final totals are B69, C66, A65.
I believe that the correct strategy for any combination of delegable
and undelegable votes (including minor, non-Smith candidates) in a
3-candidate Smith set is always for everyone to approve two
members of
the Smith set if they care between the bottom two. This gives
the same
result as minimax and most Condorcet methods. I haven't proven this,
and I don't have a general understanding of strategy for larger Smith
sets.
It is possible, when there are 3 or more near-clones A1, A2, A3...
running against a different candidate B with almost 50% - that
is, B
can beat any combination of fewer than all the A's, and B has no
preference among the A's - that the true Condorcet winner among the
A's is subject to center squeeze, and the A's are forced to throw
their support to whichever of them has the most delegable votes, in
order to prevent B from winning. The upshot is that SODA, even
assuming candidates are honest in their pre-vote rankings and
strategic in their delegation, does not pass the Condorcet criterion,
but does pass the majority Condorcet criterion (that is, a pairwise
winner always wins if each of the pairwise wins constitutes a
majority). But I can't find any nonmonotonic scenario pairs, so this
Plurality within the faction is the worst result I can find. I think
that it's both unlikely and, really, not so bad.
JQ
- Original Message -
From: Jameson Quinn
Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2011 1:07 pm
Subject: Re: [EM] SODA
To: fsimm...@pcc.edu
Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
2011/7/5
Jameson suggested that the SODA candidates make their approval
decisions sequentially instead of
simultaneously.
The problem with this is that if a winning candidate moves to
first place
in the sequence by an increase
in support, she may become a losing candidate:
Assume sincere preferences are
35 ABC
34 BCA
31 CAB
If approval decisions are made in descending order of faction
size A, B, C,
then B wins.
If B gains more support so that the totals become
34 ABC
35 BCA
31 CAB,
the sequential order becomes B, A, C, and the winner will
be C
Re: [EM] SODA
2011/7/6 fsimm...@pcc.edu By the way, when the delegations are done sequentially, the optimum strategy for each player is (generically) deterministic. No mixed strategies are needed to get optimum game theoretic results. Yes, that's the point. Because of this, a DSV (Delegated Strategy Voting) version would give the same result as rational players. Yes, but I don't recommend actually using the DSV version. Having candidates actually decide is a safeguard against candidates using dishonest strategy in the ranking - the only phase when dishonest strategy is possible. Therefore, we finally have a monotone, clone free, DSV that takes rankings as input, and puts out rationally determined approval ballots. Well, you'd have to impute the most popular ranking among a candidate's voters to the candidate, and either use some direct approval strategy or make fake candidates for all other rankings among a candidate's voters... and that breaks the nice symmetry of the method somewhat, but none of it should break the monotonicity or the clone-freeness. This should be of interest to Rob LeGrand, who has done a lot of study on DSV methods that turn rankings into approval ballots. Furthermore, this gives us a way of generating Yee diagrams for SODA, i.e. to make Yee diagrams for Approval without just assuming that Approval will always find the Condorcet winner. Yes, that is true, with the caveats above. JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
Therefore, we finally have a monotone, clone free, DSV that takes rankings as input, and puts out rationally determined approval ballots. Well, you'd have to impute the most popular ranking among a candidate'svoters to the candidate, and either use some direct approval strategy or make fake candidates for all other rankings among a candidate's voters...and that breaks the nice symmetry of the method somewhat, but none of it should break the monotonicity or the clone-freeness. Actually, the same coalition tree technique would work for as many factions as desired, outputing a (potentially) different approval ballot for each faction, even when several different factions have the same favorite. Of course, with too many factions, the optimal strategy computation would be intractable. Let's see how it would work on the simple example 45 BCA. 15 CBA 30 ACB 10 CAB The coalition tree is (45BCA /\15CBA)/root\(30ACB /\ 10CAB). I have ordered the factions so that traversing the tree in its preorder gives the correct sequence. At the root node the left branch accounts for 60 percent of the ballots, while the right branch accounts for 40 percent, so the left branch is rightfully traversed first (as in a preorder traversal), etc. Since there are two approval cutoff possibilities for each faction, there are sixteen possible cutoff configurations. I'm not going to list them all, but (if I am not grossly mistaken) the (essentially) unique optimal solution is 45B, 15C, 30 AC, 10 C, which gives approval totals for A, B, and C as 30, 45, and 55, respectively. I say essentially because it makes no difference whether the BCA faction approves C or not. In the long run any of Rob LeGrand's DSV (Designated Strategy Voting) methods (whether batch or sequential, whether strategy A or not) would yield approvals in the same proportion for this particular example.. Our coalition tree based method uses the same solid coalition structure as Woodall's Descending Solid Coalition (DSC) method, but soon parts company with DSC, although in this particular example it yields the same result, namely that C wins. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] SODA
Jameson suggested that the SODA candidates make their approval decisions
sequentially instead of
simultaneously.
The problem with this is that if a winning candidate moves to first place in
the sequence by an increase
in support, she may become a losing candidate:
Assume sincere preferences are
35 ABC
34 BCA
31 CAB
If approval decisions are made in descending order of faction size A, B, C,
then B wins.
If B gains more support so that the totals become
34 ABC
35 BCA
31 CAB,
the sequential order becomes B, A, C, and the winner will be C.
Going from smallest to largest has its problems, too. I don't think it fixes
the monotonicity problem, and
it introduces other problems like changing what would be the game of chicken in
the simultaneous case
into a clear cut win for the smaller faction:
49 C
27 AB
24 BA
In the simultaneous case there is a game of chicken between A and B.
In the sequential case whichever member of the set {A,B} goes first wins.
How can we fix this?
How about allowing the largest faction (in this example 49 C) to go second, and
making the second
largest faction (in this example 27 AB) go first?
That would also work in the example above. How bad would it be in a worst case
example?
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] SODA
2011/7/5 fsimm...@pcc.edu Jameson suggested that the SODA candidates make their approval decisions sequentially instead of simultaneously. The problem with this is that if a winning candidate moves to first place in the sequence by an increase in support, she may become a losing candidate: Assume sincere preferences are 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If approval decisions are made in descending order of faction size A, B, C, then B wins. If B gains more support so that the totals become 34 ABC 35 BCA 31 CAB, the sequential order becomes B, A, C, and the winner will be C. No. B still wins. If A feels that C is winning, then A can delegate to B, and then B cannot lose. So C cannot be the winner. And therefore B will delegate to C, to force A's hand. Whether or not C delegates then is irrelevant. Of course, if A actually prefers C to B, and has managed to keep B ignorant of this fact, then C will win. But then, in such a case, A could have gotten the same result by being honest from the start. How can we fix this? I don't think there's anything that needs fixing, though you may find another example to show I'm wrong. How about allowing the largest faction (in this example 49 C) to go second, and making the second largest faction (in this example 27 AB) go first? That would also work in the example above. How bad would it be in a worst case example? 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] SODA
I thought that A was required to make her approvals consistent with her ordering, i.e. to approve everybody ranked above her cutoff. Doesn't that mean she is required to approve herself? Maybe I'm thinking of an older version of SODA. I hope you are right that there is nothing to fix. - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2011 1:07 pm Subject: Re: [EM] SODA To: fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com 2011/7/5 Jameson suggested that the SODA candidates make their approval decisions sequentially instead of simultaneously. The problem with this is that if a winning candidate moves to first place in the sequence by an increase in support, she may become a losing candidate: Assume sincere preferences are 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If approval decisions are made in descending order of faction size A, B, C, then B wins. If B gains more support so that the totals become 34 ABC 35 BCA 31 CAB, the sequential order becomes B, A, C, and the winner will be C. No. B still wins. If A feels that C is winning, then A can delegate to B, and then B cannot lose. So C cannot be the winner. And therefore B will delegate to C, to force A's hand. Whether or not C delegates then is irrelevant. Of course, if A actually prefers C to B, and has managed to keep B ignorant of this fact, then C will win. But then, in such a case, A could have gotten the same result by being honest from the start. How can we fix this? I don't think there's anything that needs fixing, though you may find another example to show I'm wrong. How about allowing the largest faction (in this example 49 C) to go second, and making the second largest faction (in this example 27 AB) go first? That would also work in the example above. How bad would it be in a worst case example? 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] SODA
2011/7/5, fsimm...@pcc.edu fsimm...@pcc.edu: I thought that A was required to make her approvals consistent with her ordering, i.e. to approve everybody ranked above her cutoff. Doesn't that mean she is required to approve herself? Maybe I'm thinking of an older version of SODA. I hope you are right that there is nothing to fix. Let's do this slowly. Here's the scenario: 34 ABC 35 BCA 31 CAB, B delegates first. B delegates to B,C. Totals are now C 66, B35, A34. A's turn. If A does not delegate, C will be winning when it comes to C's turn, and so C will not delegate. So A delegates to A,B. Totals are now B69, C66, A34. C's turn. C is unhappy with B and so delegates to C,A - but it's not enough. Final totals are B69, C66, A65. I believe that the correct strategy for any combination of delegable and undelegable votes (including minor, non-Smith candidates) in a 3-candidate Smith set is always for everyone to approve two members of the Smith set if they care between the bottom two. This gives the same result as minimax and most Condorcet methods. I haven't proven this, and I don't have a general understanding of strategy for larger Smith sets. It is possible, when there are 3 or more near-clones A1, A2, A3... running against a different candidate B with almost 50% - that is, B can beat any combination of fewer than all the A's, and B has no preference among the A's - that the true Condorcet winner among the A's is subject to center squeeze, and the A's are forced to throw their support to whichever of them has the most delegable votes, in order to prevent B from winning. The upshot is that SODA, even assuming candidates are honest in their pre-vote rankings and strategic in their delegation, does not pass the Condorcet criterion, but does pass the majority Condorcet criterion (that is, a pairwise winner always wins if each of the pairwise wins constitutes a majority). But I can't find any nonmonotonic scenario pairs, so this Plurality within the faction is the worst result I can find. I think that it's both unlikely and, really, not so bad. JQ - Original Message - From: Jameson Quinn Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2011 1:07 pm Subject: Re: [EM] SODA To: fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com 2011/7/5 Jameson suggested that the SODA candidates make their approval decisions sequentially instead of simultaneously. The problem with this is that if a winning candidate moves to first place in the sequence by an increase in support, she may become a losing candidate: Assume sincere preferences are 35 ABC 34 BCA 31 CAB If approval decisions are made in descending order of faction size A, B, C, then B wins. If B gains more support so that the totals become 34 ABC 35 BCA 31 CAB, the sequential order becomes B, A, C, and the winner will be C. No. B still wins. If A feels that C is winning, then A can delegate to B, and then B cannot lose. So C cannot be the winner. And therefore B will delegate to C, to force A's hand. Whether or not C delegates then is irrelevant. Of course, if A actually prefers C to B, and has managed to keep B ignorant of this fact, then C will win. But then, in such a case, A could have gotten the same result by being honest from the start. How can we fix this? I don't think there's anything that needs fixing, though you may find another example to show I'm wrong. How about allowing the largest faction (in this example 49 C) to go second, and making the second largest faction (in this example 27 AB) go first? That would also work in the example above. How bad would it be in a worst case example? 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] SODA in a de-facto two-party system
Having considered these issues, there are two refinements I'd make to SODA: - If, after voting, one candidate has an absolute majority OR is the only possible winner, they win immediately. Sure, I can think an argument for why SODA should elect someone who's not the initial majority winner. But I don't relish the thought of having to make that argument, either with a politician or with a regular voter. And in reality, a majority winner is the correct winner in more than 95% of the cases, so let's just save the time and admit that immediately. - If, after voting, one candidate has fewer than 5% of the votes, their votes are automatically delegated to the first candidate on their preference list who has more than 5% (if any). The receiving candidate may delegate them in turn, only if the result thereby obtained or encouraged is consistent with the preference order of the original candidate. (That means that if minor A's order is B,C,D,E,F, and D is the first one of those with more than 5%, and D's order is C,F,X, E,..., then D may delegate these votes to C, or to C and F if F is already leading E by a greater margin than the number of votes in question, or to C, F, and E if D is delegating their own votes to X as well.) This appears to be a bigger compromise of principle than the above. But consider the kingmaker case: in a basically 50/50 split, some tiny party has the balance of votes, and manages to extract concessions far bigger than their base of support justifies, just in order to [not] delegate those votes. I think that's unjust, and this rule would prevent it. I think that 5% is a good cutoff here; that's tens of millions of voters, and enough to deserve a voice. It shouldn't be too high, because this rule is effectively taking power away from voters; that's only justified if the faction is so small that the power is not legitimate, and so it's better to err a bit on the small side if anything. But under 5% - that is, under 10% of the winning coalition - doesn't deserve kingmaker power. JQ I like it! Don't be impatient; some of us don't have time to read these things every day. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
