Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 25.6.2013, at 11.57, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 06/25/2013 09:00 AM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Remember that criterion compliances are absolute. So a method may fail a criterion yet be perfectly acceptable in real elections. I just want to support this viewpoint. It is not essential how many criteria a mehod violates. It is more important how bad those violations are, i.e. if the method likely have serious problems or not. The best method might well be a method that violates multiple criteria, but manages to spread the (unavoidable) problems evenly so that all of them stay insignificant. In a sense, it's like certain kinds of mathematical tests. There are primality tests that return either this number is definitely a prime or this number might be prime or might be composite. If you get the former result, you know you're dealing with a prime, but if you get the second, you don't know whether you're dealing with a prime or a composite number. Criterion compliances are similar. If something passes IIA, you don't have to worry about candidates being added or removed as long as the voters don't alter their votes when the candidates are being added/removed. Whatever the dynamics might be on the nomination side, IIA secures the method. On the other hand, if something fails IIA, then you have the might be scenario. The method might fail IIA in blatant ways, or it might fail it where it doesn't really matter. You don't know. Yes. Often you also know that although some method violates some criterion in practice it will (almost or completely certailnly) not cause any problems. We may also have a balance of benefits and problems where the benefits the problems so that e.g. trying some theoretically possible stratgy simply does not makes sense (= is more likely to cause damage than benefits). In this case there is no compliance but there is a strong understanding that there will be no problems. In the EM list discussions people often do not keep the difference of theoretical vulnerabilities and practical vulnerabilitis (in real life elections, maybe in some given political environment) clear enough. In my case, I do like the certainty that criterion compliance provides, but sometimes, it just isn't available. There is, though, one situation where criterion compliances go both ways. The method might produce a result that goes so completely against common sense that opponents can use it to argue against the method, even if that result itself only would appear very rarely. Perception does matter; and it's reasonable that it does, because sometimes the bizarre failure is symptomatic of a method that behaves strangely under pressure in general. That is not true all the time, though. It is good to handle both concerns. I like to discuss first about the properties of each method at abstract / technical / theoretical level, and then give also some consideration to how such methods would fit and could be marketed in some given political environments. What I don't like is method and criteria names that have been chosen to be as good for positive or negative marketing as possible. In the theoretical discussions the ugly and pretty names should have no meaning (except to idetify a criterion or method). Condorcet methods are an interesting example since in many cases their violations deal with situations where opinions are cyclical. In real elections sincere top level cycles are not very common, and artificially generated cycles (as a result of successfully implemented strategies) may also be difficult to generate and may easily lead to unwanted results from the strategists' point of view. The problem thus is that marginal violations (that voters actually need not worry about at all) will be marketed as major flaws that make it impossible to use the method in all real elections. Failing to meet FBC does not mean that voters are expected to betray or should always seriously consider betraying their favourite. Strategy never betray your favourite or always vote sincerely may lead to better results and may well be the best strategy for the voters (of all opinion groups) to follow. One can compare the vulnerabilities of the election methods also to security systems. In that area one often says that a system is as strong as its weakest link. Also in election methods one could optimize the system based on how strong the weakest link is. That means (roughly) that we need not worry how many flaws the stronger links have as long as those links are still stronger than the weakest link (and if weakening a strong link allows us to make a weak link stronger). In summary, I want to clearly separate discussion on the theoretical properties of the methods, on the practical properties of the methods (in real life elections), and on the marketability of the methods (to the politicians, media
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 25.6.2013, at 18.00, Benjamin Grant wrote: On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com wrote: On 24.6.2013, at 16.06, Benjamin Grant wrote: So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are: 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there’s no strategic downside. You seem to assume that voters with opinion 'Gore:75, Nader: 90, Bush: 10’ are not strategic when they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. There are thus two possible levels of sincereness, either people who think that all candidates are about equally good should vote that way, or if they should exaggerate and tell that the worst one of them is worth 0 points and the best one is worth 100 points. But in the instance where someone's highest priority is to stop Bush, and a distant second level priority is to see Nader elected over Gore, it seems unavoidable to admit that if they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’ they will be harming their first priority by withholding support from Gore. Isn't this correct? Yes. Those voters already have some strategic thoughts like I must maximize the power of my vote. If they sincerely feel strongly that way (Bush is worth 0 points etc.), this can be classified as sincere voting. But if they think that all politicians are actually quite equal, maybe they should vote sincerely 'Gore:75, Nader: 80, Bush: 70’. So then that is a non-strategic vote in comparison to 100/whatever/0, yes? I guess whether we call some vote strategic or not depends also on what the voters were requested to do. If they were requested to evaluate candidates so that 0 points means worst imaginable and 100 points means perfect, then 0 points should be reserved for Hitler and Stalin and similar. Bush is certainly above that level for most voters. But if they were asked to spred the candidates on a scale from 0 to 100, then voters should use also numbers 0 and 100. (The latter approach of course has problems like someone nominating a Republican candidate that is much worse than Bush and thereby lifts Bush to at least 25 points in all ballots.) That's what makes strategic voting different from sincere voting, isn't it: that strategic voting has a greater chance of creating a more preferred outcome? The voters can either try to influence the outcome of the election as much in their own favour as possible, or they can simply indicate their opininion sincerely, as requested by the election organizers. In competitive elections (e.g. political elections) voters tend to adopt the first approach. I some more peaceful elections and polls they may adopt the second approach. So long as the strategic vote and the sincere vote are not the same, a sincere vote is a vote against your preferences. If the election is not competitive, then your sincere votes is also ideal for you, even if you caould change the result to better from your point of view by falsifying your preferences. A typical example situation could be e.g. a vote within a family on what food to make today. In such environments the voters typically want to seek a balanced result rather than get their own preferences implemented every day by using some strategic tricks. Political elections are of course usually more competitive. That is why it seems so important to me to favor system where those two kinds of voting coincide as often as possible, right? Yes. It is one of the key targets to find an election method that would sufficiently discourage strategic voting. In some methods like Approval people (on the EM list) usually expect voters not to vote sincerely (= approve those that you approve) but to cast their best strategic vote, which typically includes approving some of the frontrunners and not approving some of the frontrunners. From this point of view there are at least two categories of practical methods 1) methods where people are expected to express their sincere opinions on the ballot and 2) methods where all voters are expected to follow some strategy that is available to all and that least to balanced results despite of all being strategic. In both cases we want to avoid situations where some voters can cast a stronger strategic vote than others, and where strategic voting would somehow make the end result bad, or make the election more random, or allow the plotters to win, or make it difficult for the regular voters to vote. It’s days like these that I feel that there *is* no way to elect people that is fair and right. L All methods have some problems. But the problems are not always so bad that they would invalidate the method. I'd propose to study also the Condorcet compliant methods. I note that they already popped up in the later discussions and you more or less already promised to study them. When compared to Range style
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 06/26/2013 11:24 AM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 25.6.2013, at 18.07, Benjamin Grant wrote: Now there are some criteria that aren't important to me at all, that I do not value what the try to protect - and those I factor out. I think I don't have any criteria that I'd absolutely require. How about unanimity? :-) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 26.6.2013, at 13.31, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: On 06/26/2013 11:24 AM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 25.6.2013, at 18.07, Benjamin Grant wrote: Now there are some criteria that aren't important to me at all, that I do not value what the try to protect - and those I factor out. I think I don't have any criteria that I'd absolutely require. How about unanimity? :-) Ok, that comes close. However, an otherwise excellent method with 1/100 random probability of not meeting unaminity, giving victory to some almost equally good candidate, would maybe be a stupid method, but still maybe acceptable. I.e. I could accept it if other alternatives are worse. :-) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 24.6.2013, at 16.06, Benjamin Grant wrote: So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are: 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there’s no strategic downside. You seem to assume that voters with opinion 'Gore:75, Nader: 90, Bush: 10’ are not strategic when they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. There are thus two possible levels of sincereness, either people who think that all candidates are about equally good should vote that way, or if they should exaggerate and tell that the worst one of them is worth 0 points and the best one is worth 100 points. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? I think you are generally very right about this. It’s days like these that I feel that there *is* no way to elect people that is fair and right. L All methods have some problems. But the problems are not always so bad that they would invalidate the method. I'd propose to study also the Condorcet compliant methods. I note that they already popped up in the later discussions and you more or less already promised to study them. When compared to Range style utility measuring style Condorcet methods take another approach by allowing majorities to decide. With sincere (Range) preferences 55: A=100 B=90, 45: B=100 A=0 majority based methods allow A to win. Althoug B has clearly higher sum of utiliy, it is also a fact that if one would elect B, B would be opposed by 55% majority. A would be supported by 55% majority. Not a pretty sight to watch, but that's how majority oriented systems are suposed to work. Maybe the majority philosophy is that you will get a ruler that can rule (and there is no mutiny), instead of getting a ruler whose proposals would be voted against every time by 55% majority in the parliament or in public elections. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Remember that criterion compliances are absolute. So a method may fail a criterion yet be perfectly acceptable in real elections. I just want to support this viewpoint. It is not essential how many criteria a mehod violates. It is more important how bad those violations are, i.e. if the method likely have serious problems or not. The best method might well be a method that violates multiple criteria, but manages to spread the (unavoidable) problems evenly so that all of them stay insignificant. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: So there are really three stages to a prospective new party or candidate (like the Greens or Nader): 1. the candidate is not competitive (e.g. fringe candidate). 2. the candidate is competitive but either not strong enough to win, or there's been a miscalculation by the voters. 3. the candidate has taken over the position that would belong to a competitor (e.g. Nader becomes the new Gore). I think Approval advocates argue that the relative share of approvals will inform the voters of where they are. So the progression goes something like: In stage one, everybody who approves of Nader also approves of Gore. In stage three, the tables are turned: everybody who approves of Gore also approves of Nader, but Nader still wins. Stage two and the transition to three is the tricky part. ... ... ... One more approach to the problems of Approval is that it works fine as long as there are two potential winners. Then it is easy to approve the better one of those, and any additional candidates that one wants to promote. It is much more difficult for individual voters to find a working voting strategy when there are three or more possible winners. One classical example is the one where one wing has two candidates that have about equal chances to win, and the other wing has just one candidate. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 06/25/2013 09:00 AM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Remember that criterion compliances are absolute. So a method may fail a criterion yet be perfectly acceptable in real elections. I just want to support this viewpoint. It is not essential how many criteria a mehod violates. It is more important how bad those violations are, i.e. if the method likely have serious problems or not. The best method might well be a method that violates multiple criteria, but manages to spread the (unavoidable) problems evenly so that all of them stay insignificant. In a sense, it's like certain kinds of mathematical tests. There are primality tests that return either this number is definitely a prime or this number might be prime or might be composite. If you get the former result, you know you're dealing with a prime, but if you get the second, you don't know whether you're dealing with a prime or a composite number. Criterion compliances are similar. If something passes IIA, you don't have to worry about candidates being added or removed as long as the voters don't alter their votes when the candidates are being added/removed. Whatever the dynamics might be on the nomination side, IIA secures the method. On the other hand, if something fails IIA, then you have the might be scenario. The method might fail IIA in blatant ways, or it might fail it where it doesn't really matter. You don't know. In my case, I do like the certainty that criterion compliance provides, but sometimes, it just isn't available. There is, though, one situation where criterion compliances go both ways. The method might produce a result that goes so completely against common sense that opponents can use it to argue against the method, even if that result itself only would appear very rarely. Perception does matter; and it's reasonable that it does, because sometimes the bizarre failure is symptomatic of a method that behaves strangely under pressure in general. That is not true all the time, though. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 06/25/2013 12:53 AM, Benjamin Grant wrote: On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com mailto:km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: Also, Range could possibly give different results than Approval voting. Consider an election where 99% of the voters are strategic. The vote comes out to a tie between Nader and Gore, according to these 99%. Then the remaining 1%, voting sincerely, vote something like [Nader: 90%, Gore: 70%, Bush: 10%] (strategic would be [Nader: 100%, Gore: 100%, Bush: 0%]). Then those votes break the tie and Nader wins. For reasons like this, a mix of strategic and honest voters give better results than just having strategic ones. Of course, there are (in the circumstance where Gore is the better chance to beat Bush than Nader) likely more Gore:100 Nader:0 Bush) votes than Nader: 90 Gore:70 Bush 10 ones. In fact, given that we *are* talking about an election with two strong front running candidates and one spoiler weaker one, isn't it *far* more likely that Gore is far in front of Nader and the only real unknown is if Gore will beat Bush or not? Which leads right back to the entire scenario of issues I began with. The thing is, whenever we have more than two parties running, I think we will always have weaker spoiler parties that cannot really win, but that can, if the system allows or encourages people to vote against their best interest, cause people to get a much lower ranked choice, possibly their least preferred choice - this is my whole concern. But here's a thing also to note. Nader voters are never worse off by voting [Nader: 100, Gore: 100, Bush: 0] than by voting [Nader: 0, Gore: 100, Bush: 0]. Because of this, a simple Approval strategy goes: Vote for the frontrunner if you prefer him to the second-place candidate. Then vote for everybody you like more than the candidate you approved in the first step. Stage two and the transition to three is the tricky part. In rounds of repeated polling, the voters start off cautious (approving both Nader and Gore). Then they see that Nader has approval close to Gore's level, so some start approving of Nader alone. This then reinforces the perception that Nader is winning, so more voters approve of Nader alone. And so it goes until Nader is slightly ahead of Gore and wins. Aha! But what if what is likely happens in stage two: People get ahead of themselves and give their full support to Nader and less support to Gore *before* Nader is strong enough to beat Bush? Then Bush wins, both the Nader and Gore voters freak out, and now Nader people go back to voting Gore with full support, because now they've been burned! The only way to avoid this, I *think*, is with a system in which expressing a preference of A over B doesn't let C win - and such a system may well have worse flaws, possibly. Yep. That's a very definite risk, and one of the reasons I don't think Approval is a good method in a vacuum. I'd support Approval as a compromise more because it gives a lot of benefit for a very small tweak to Plurality, than that it is good in itself: a value/cost consideration rather than a raw value consideration. But you're right, the problem there is very real (unless somehow the voters only think of candidates as people I can accept and people I definitely don't want to see in office). And the burn, as you put it, could not just harm Nader, but it could harm Approval itself -- just like I've argued that the weird way IRV acts can backfire. So, for rated methods, I suggest Majority Judgement. It's more resistant to strategy, the ballots are set up so as to encourage comparisons to a common standard (the grades) rather than comparisons between candidates, and the method passes IIA. There's also experimental data from its use in France. The proposers found out that IIA is too weak when the voters compare candidates to each other, because the addition or removal of candidates may lead the voters to change what they put on the ballots. Thus, they emphasize the importance of having the voter evaluate the candidates against a common standard rather than against each other: because otherwise, IIA doesn't amount to much. For ranked methods, I support Condorcet methods, particularly the advanced ones like Ranked Pairs and Schulze. So, the way I see it: Approval is very simple on the front end. It's just count all the votes. Back end is a completely different matter, as you see above. I think Approval pushes a lot of the oddities of voting into the back-end - the space in which the elections happen, as it were. The method itself appears to be very good (pass FBC, etc), but that's because the calculations happen in the minds of the voters before they submit their ballots and the criterion failures are therefore hidden. If one were to make a computerized system that took preferences as inputs
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
I've arrived at my destination, so I'll try to process through this thread. It's substantial, so I'll probably have several comments to make. I'll start with a quick response to Kristofer. ... So, for rated methods, I suggest Majority Judgement. I absolutely agree that a median (aka Bucklin) method such as Majority Judgment is a good solution to the problem you're talking about. But we activists really should push for consensus on which of these methods we should talk about, because the differences aren't important enough to justify separating our efforts. I would suggest that we unite behind Majority Approval Voting as the exemplary median/Bucklin method. Kristofer: do you disagree? If so, why? Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 06/25/2013 02:43 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I've arrived at my destination, so I'll try to process through this thread. It's substantial, so I'll probably have several comments to make. I'll start with a quick response to Kristofer. ... So, for rated methods, I suggest Majority Judgement. I absolutely agree that a median (aka Bucklin) method such as Majority Judgment is a good solution to the problem you're talking about. But we activists really should push for consensus on which of these methods we should talk about, because the differences aren't important enough to justify separating our efforts. I would suggest that we unite behind Majority Approval Voting as the exemplary median/Bucklin method. Kristofer: do you disagree? If so, why? I haven't really been investigating MAV enough to say if it's got any weird behavior (asymmetries in tiebreaking, etc). Apart from that, I'm a bit conservative with names, but not so much that I can't switch over to MAV :-) There could be another reason to using MJ, though: it's the name that was used in BL's paper. If you say MJ, then the people you're talking to can go and find the paper - and the experimental results - quite easily. But MAV? There's not much out there about it outside of Electorama. Also, a somewhat more distant objection: I don't really see these methods from the iterated Approval or Bucklin POV. To me, they're rated methods that use certain statistical concepts (the median estimator, primarily) to be better at resisting strategy (and to handle monotone nonlinear transformations of the grade scale). So Majority Approval doesn't explain my way of looking at the method very well. But: these are objections I can live with. If referring to the method as MAV is a good strategy and provides unity, then I will do so. I just thought I'd let you know what feelings I notice when I think of MAV - both the name and the method. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
2013/6/25 Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com On 06/25/2013 02:43 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: I've arrived at my destination, so I'll try to process through this thread. It's substantial, so I'll probably have several comments to make. I'll start with a quick response to Kristofer. ... So, for rated methods, I suggest Majority Judgement. I absolutely agree that a median (aka Bucklin) method such as Majority Judgment is a good solution to the problem you're talking about. But we activists really should push for consensus on which of these methods we should talk about, because the differences aren't important enough to justify separating our efforts. I would suggest that we unite behind Majority Approval Voting as the exemplary median/Bucklin method. Kristofer: do you disagree? If so, why? I haven't really been investigating MAV enough to say if it's got any weird behavior (asymmetries in tiebreaking, etc). Apart from that, I'm a bit conservative with names, but not so much that I can't switch over to MAV :-) There could be another reason to using MJ, though: it's the name that was used in BL's paper. If you say MJ, then the people you're talking to can go and find the paper - and the experimental results - quite easily. But MAV? There's not much out there about it outside of Electorama. I plan to use it as one option in my upcoming experimental paper, so there would be at least some academically-citeable (and wikipedia-RS) reference. Also, a somewhat more distant objection: I don't really see these methods from the iterated Approval or Bucklin POV. To me, they're rated methods that use certain statistical concepts (the median estimator, primarily) to be better at resisting strategy (and to handle monotone nonlinear transformations of the grade scale). So Majority Approval doesn't explain my way of looking at the method very well. I understand. It wasn't my first choice of title either. But it won the vote, and I value unity more than purity in such questions. But: these are objections I can live with. If referring to the method as MAV is a good strategy and provides unity, then I will do so. I just thought I'd let you know what feelings I notice when I think of MAV - both the name and the method. Thanks for responding. Jameson Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com wrote: On 24.6.2013, at 16.06, Benjamin Grant wrote: So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are: 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there’s no strategic downside. You seem to assume that voters with opinion 'Gore:75, Nader: 90, Bush: 10’ are not strategic when they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. There are thus two possible levels of sincereness, either people who think that all candidates are about equally good should vote that way, or if they should exaggerate and tell that the worst one of them is worth 0 points and the best one is worth 100 points. But in the instance where someone's highest priority is to stop Bush, and a distant second level priority is to see Nader elected over Gore, it seems unavoidable to admit that if they vote 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’ they will be harming their first priority by withholding support from Gore. Isn't this correct? So then that is a non-strategic vote in comparison to 100/whatever/0, yes? That's what makes strategic voting different from sincere voting, isn't it: that strategic voting has a greater chance of creating a more preferred outcome? So long as the strategic vote and the sincere vote are not the same, a sincere vote is a vote against your preferences. That is why it seems so important to me to favor system where those two kinds of voting coincide as often as possible, right? It’s days like these that I feel that there *is* no way to elect people that is fair and right. L All methods have some problems. But the problems are not always so bad that they would invalidate the method. I'd propose to study also the Condorcet compliant methods. I note that they already popped up in the later discussions and you more or less already promised to study them. When compared to Range style utility measuring style Condorcet methods take another approach by allowing majorities to decide. With sincere (Range) preferences 55: A=100 B=90, 45: B=100 A=0 majority based methods allow A to win. Althoug B has clearly higher sum of utiliy, it is also a fact that if one would elect B, B would be opposed by 55% majority. A would be supported by 55% majority. Not a pretty sight to watch, but that's how majority oriented systems are suposed to work. Maybe the majority philosophy is that you will get a ruler that can rule (and there is no mutiny), instead of getting a ruler whose proposals would be voted against every time by 55% majority in the parliament or in public elections. Juho Interesting observation. Personally, in the above example, my gut tells me that B ought to win. However, start tweaking B's numbers downwards, and at some point we will find a level in which A actually looks better that B, for example: 55: A=100 B=40 45: B=50 A=0 Now B isn't looking so good compared to A. So there is obviously some threshold - which may be different for each of us - at which A is the better choice. Perhaps score voting (when everyone *does* vote sincerely) captures that threshold - maybe B ought to win when his numbers are highest. Problem is, a lot of people - perhaps even most - will soon get wise how to push their preferences, and suddenly the Ballots start to look a lot like this: 55: A=100 B=0 45: B=100 A=0 And then we are back where we started. -Benn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:00 AM, Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com wrote: On 25.6.2013, at 1.06, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Remember that criterion compliances are absolute. So a method may fail a criterion yet be perfectly acceptable in real elections. I just want to support this viewpoint. It is not essential how many criteria a mehod violates. It is more important how bad those violations are, i.e. if the method likely have serious problems or not. The best method might well be a method that violates multiple criteria, but manages to spread the (unavoidable) problems evenly so that all of them stay insignificant. Hmmm. I think I would like to be more cautious. I think there are different levels of worries: - Having a criterion fail often in practice is worse than having it fail more rarely in practice. - Having a criterion fail rarely in practice is worse than having it fail more hypothetically (than actually). - Having a criterion fail hypothetically is worse than not having it fail at all Now there are some criteria that aren't important to me at all, that I do not value what the try to protect - and those I factor out. But in general, I am going to try to be very aware of the nature and prevalence of the unpleasant results that violating criteria can bring. In other words, until a particular system's violation of a criteria is clearly demonstrated to me to be insignificant, I shall instead adopt a worst case approach. ;) -Benn Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 5:44 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
km_el...@lavabit.com wrote:
On 06/25/2013 12:53 AM, Benjamin Grant wrote:
The thing is, whenever we have more than two parties running, I think we
will always have weaker spoiler parties that cannot really win, but
that can, if the system allows or encourages people to vote against
their best interest, cause people to get a much lower ranked choice,
possibly their least preferred choice - this is my whole concern.
But here's a thing also to note. Nader voters are never worse off by
voting [Nader: 100, Gore: 100, Bush: 0] than by voting [Nader: 0, Gore:
100, Bush: 0]. Because of this, a simple Approval strategy goes: Vote for
the frontrunner if you prefer him to the second-place candidate. Then vote
for everybody you like more than the candidate you approved in the first
step.
OK, I cannot argue with that. Once Abe has given his full support to Gore
(to stop Bush), it doesn't harm his desire to stop Bush to also score Nader
at 100. That is simply true.
However, while it doesn't help Bush, I would argue that it won't help Nader
defeat Gore either - I mean, the whole reason this Nader supported is top
scoring Gore in the first place is because it is well known that Gore has a
much better chance (perhaps the only chance) at beating Bush. In such a
situation, giving both Gore and Nader the same number of votes is not going
to change the fact that Gore is stronger than Nader. So it seems irrelevant
whether or not he votes for Nader in this circumstance.
Aha! But what if what is likely happens in stage two: People get ahead
of themselves and give their full support to Nader and less support to
Gore *before* Nader is strong enough to beat Bush? Then Bush wins, both
the Nader and Gore voters freak out, and now Nader people go back to
voting Gore with full support, because now they've been burned!
The only way to avoid this, I *think*, is with a system in which
expressing a preference of A over B doesn't let C win - and such a
system may well have worse flaws, possibly.
Yep. That's a very definite risk, and one of the reasons I don't think
Approval is a good method in a vacuum. I'd support Approval as a
compromise more because it gives a lot of benefit for a very small tweak to
Plurality, than that it is good in itself: a value/cost consideration
rather than a raw value consideration.
But you're right, the problem there is very real (unless somehow the
voters only think of candidates as people I can accept and people I
definitely don't want to see in office). And the burn, as you put it,
could not just harm Nader, but it could harm Approval itself -- just like
I've argued that the weird way IRV acts can backfire.
The thing is, I think I agree with most everybody on the list in that I
think Plurality voting is the absolute *worst*. My worry is functionally
and in practice, Approval won't ultimately fix what is broken in Plurality
- joke third parties and/or the spoiler effect.
Well, to be fair, just about anything is better than plurality. However,
what I meant is that functionally Approval (when each voter acts to
their best (or least bad) outcome) seems not that different from
Plurality Voting. We still top vote the front runner that has the best
chance to defeat our abhorred candidate. If we have a candidate we
prefer more than the palatable front runner, we can top vote him too,
but that won't help Nader beat Gore. It seems irreconcilable in this
context.
In Approval, you can choose between helping Nader beat Gore, or helping
{Nader, Gore} beat Bush. In Plurality, you can choose between helping Nader
beat Gore or helping Gore beat Bush. The whole dynamic of the readjustment
in stage 2 depends on the voters being able to tell others, through the
poll results, that they prefer *both* Nader and Gore to Bush.
As such, Approval is better than Plurality. If the tricky part between
stages two and three go off well, then Nader wins. In contrast, in
Plurality, there's no way to get to stage two itself because signaling that
you like Nader carries such a high cost of potentially making Bush win.
Again, I can't claim that it's not different - I just feel like for all
practical purposes, despite the options, you wind up getting the same
results in practice. Sure we can get more information out of an election,
and that may not be bad. If after all the votes are in, the average scores
are Gore:5.6 Nader 1.3 and Bush 4.7, that's more information for the people
to receive about how people voted than if the plurality vote was Gore: 51%
Nader: 6% and Bush: 43% - or worse yet (to Abe), Gore:43% Nader: 6% and
Bush: 51%.
So I guess Approval, even in worst case strategic situations has a few
plusses:
- People who can't not vote for Nader can still help stop Bush by also
voting for Gore.
- People who need to stop Bush and were going to vote Gore no matter
what can now also vote Nader. It is very
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Benjamin Grant dove in here with some knee-jerk reactions to Approval and Score vs. Plurality. Those reactions are not uncommon. However, what I saw in these exchanges was a collapse of an interpretation, based on imagined models of voter behavior that are common, but likely very incomplete, with fact. Let's back up. The advocacy of approval voting became a consensus position among students of voting systems because it is an extremely simple tweak on Plurality. It is simply an implementation of the slogan Count All the Votes. That has some expected effects, but this is not necessarily the ideal voting system. It will, however, very likely, produce some benefits, immediately. That is, supporters of minor parties will be able to see, in vote totals, a decent indication of real preference. We can predict this if approval is adopted: 1. Some increase in the number of minor parties. 2. A reduction of the spoiler effect. 3. A reduction in spoiled ballots. 4. Some increase in majority election results. 5. Better knowledge of true support for minor parties. Approval has an obvious defect, which is the inability to express first preference. That defect must be considered in real systems, especially partisan elections, where, currently, a vote counts toward maintaining ballot position for a party. That value of a vote was completely ignored by Benjamin, he seems to think that voters are only considering the current election. So with raw Approval, something would have to be done with regard to ballot position. The only solution I see that is adequately simple is to divide the vote, i.e, if a voter has approved candidates from two parties, the vote would be split fractionally. Other solutions could include a separate vote for a party, vote for one, or if it's approval on that section of the ballot, *then* if the voter votes for more than one party, the vote would be divided. But if one is going to go to that complexity, there is then a better solution, Bucklin. Instant Runoff Approval. There are many Bucklin systems, I won't go into detail here, but the point is that true first preference may be expressed, as with IRV, but without the IRV pathologies. Many voters will continue to bullet vote, and if one truly supports a frontrunner, that is a totally sensible vote. Practically by definition, then, until and unless elections become complex, we can expect low usage of the right to add additional votes. From various histories, it looks like it could be something like 10%. But 10% is easily enough to whack the spoiler effect! It is correctly understood that Approval has some difficulty when a third party candidate rises to parity, and could win. That is where the ability to rank approvals can come in. Still, as has been pointed out, *we don't know how Approval will behave under those circumstances.* The most likely symptom of such a situation, as it approaches, would be either majority failure or multiple majorities, with multiple majority failure being relatively harmless. It is beginning to look like the most likely implementations of approval will be, at first, under runoff systems, or for open primaries. However, we have recommended Count All the Votes as a principle that can be applied with any voting system. It would make IRV perform better, for starters. Why are multiple approvals at an IRV rank considered spoiled votes? Why not simply canvass them? Doing so would actually allow voters to vote approval style, under IRV. It would give those Burlington Republicans an additional choice. But they would surely prefer Bucklin, which would still allow them to express their first preference. *Bucklin worked*, we know that from the history. Now, another imagination from Benjamin is that Range Voting would devolve to Approval. He bases this on a belief that any knowledgeable voter would vote Approval style, i.e, would either max-rate or min-rate candidates. That pushes a conflict button here, because there are a lot of students of voting systems who think this. However, the claim that this is game-theory optimal is simply false, neglecting that voters have other values than simply generating an individual maximum, based only on the effect on a particular election. In fact, from a more careful game-theoretical analysis, which I did for a limited case -- all these claims of game theory have been hot air, for the most part -- I showed that the voter could vote approval style *or* cast an intermediate vote, and the expected outcome was the same. Further, relatively sincere expression is a value of its own for voters. If there are two frontrunners, game theory indicates voting min for one and max for the other, but that is silent on how one votes for other candidates, and if the system allows an expression of preference at a minimal weight, there can be other values that would indicate even some deviation from the max/min rule. The game
[EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi guys, I'm still here, still pondering, but now I have another question. I've been thinking about score voting, approval voting, and plurality (FPTP) voting, and I have a concern. Say we have a situation where we have three candidates, say Gore, Nader, and Bush. Say we have a voter, Abe whose greatest concern is that Bush NOT win. His second priority is that Nader win over Gore - but this priority is a distant second. He *really* doesn't want Bush to win. He would prefer Nader over Gore, but he *hates* Bush. Let's also say that Abe is intelligent, and he is committed to using his vote to maximize his happiness - in other words, rather than vote sincerely and cause his preferences harm, he will always vote strategically where it is to his benefit to do so. If Score Voting was in place, and he were to vote sincerely, Abe probably would vote something like 'Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0'. However, he's no fool, and he knows that while it is theoretically possibly that Nader *might* win, Gore is his best chance to stopping Bush, and that withholding score from Gore might (if all Nader supporters did it) result in Gore not getting enough of a score, therefor Bush could win. So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need - and so long as Nader's win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. The only people who would bother to vote sincerely are: 1) Those who truly prefer Gore highest and Bush lowest (or vice versa), because there's no strategic downside. 2) People who would rather feel more sincere about their vote than feel good about the outcome of their vote. 3) People who aren't intelligent to realize that by voting sincerely they may be helping elect their least preferred candidate. And say what you want about intelligence being a bar to entry, you can bet that the smart people behind ALL candidates will make sure that everyone gets the message, so we can largely ignore #3. Most people I imagine would be pragmatic enough to worry more about the end result and less about sincere vs. strategic, so we ignore #2. And #1 people are going to vote the same way anways, so they may as well use Approval voting. OK, so let's throw out Score Voting and use Approval voting. Gore v Nader V Bush. Abe (who hates Bush but prefers Nader) gives an approval vote to Nader, his top-most preference, but knowing that withholding approval from Gore could elect Bush (and not wanting to play the spoiler) he also gives an approval vote to Gore. Since Gore in this example is far and away receiving much more support than Nader, Gore now beats Bush. Let's call the party that put Nader on the ballot the Green party, and that they continue to field candidates in further elections that use the Approval voting system. Abe notices the following pattern: when the Green party fields a candidate that doesn't even have a glimmer of hope winning the election (like the Gore/Nader/Bush one) that people that support the Green party candidate also approve the Democrat candidate as a bulwark against the Republican. And since in those elections the Green party never really had a hope of winning, the Green approval vote is ultimately irrelevant - those elections would have proceeded no differently than if the Green supporters had simply voted Democrat. But much worse yet, Abe notices that in *some* election, the Green party actually gets a chunk of people thinking that Green could actually win. And emboldened by their hopes, many Green supporters decide to go for it, approve of the Green candidate, but *not* the Democrat one. Result: in elections where more voters think more favorably towards Green's chances, their least preferred choice (the Republican) tends to win more! This are my two thoughts: a) Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. b) Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates - which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person's least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. How is this not so? If it *is* so, then as much as I abhor Plurality Voting, I must now likewise abhor Score and Approval Voting. But that shoves me back at
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Please forward to the appropriate list for me. Thank you. From: electionscie...@googlegroups.com [mailto:electionscie...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Benjamin Grant Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:40 AM On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu mailto:un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: If you cast votes (approve or give high scores to) only for parties that might win the current election, then we will be stuck forever with the existing 2-party scam. Yes. But the point of approval or score voting is voters do not have to do that in order to keep their least favorite from winning. And under Score/Approval/Plurality voting systems, there would be three phases a party might go through: A) unpopular enough not to be a spoiler B) popular enough to be a spoiler, but not popular enough to win C) popular enough to win often (25% of the time, for example.) Those options apply to plurality and IRV, not to approval or score voting where a voter's 2nd choice vote cannot cause his least favorite to win. On your way to C, you are going to have a LOT of B, and you may never make it to C, especially if people get burned voting for the emerging party by getting their least preferred candidate. Speaking re. plurality or IRV still. The only way to build a strong new party in reality, as far as I can see, is to have a voting system that does not penalize you into getting your least favored choice by voting for your most favored one. Yes. Agreed. Second of all, it seems to me that the less divergence there is between strategic and sincere voting, the more beneficial qualities the voting system has, such as: -we can worry less about the spoiler effect, which promotes more than just 2 parties -we can worry less that people are accidentally voting against their interests -we can have fewer debates about whether people have an obligation to vote strategically or sincerely This would seem to be a good thing. Ideally, but practically we may have to continue to vote for all candidates other than our least favorates. * Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. I agree. * Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates - which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person's least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. First, why should anyone care if some votes turn out to be irrelevant according to your definition? Second, if someone uses approval voting like plurality byvoting for their true favorite without also voting for their most likely favorite candidate to win, then they are accepting that they might spoil the chances of their other favorite(s). Neither of these arguments is a logically coherent reason for favoring plurality over approval voting. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. There is no logically coherent reason for approval voting to devolve into plurality IMO. Kathy Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: Please forward to the appropriate list for me. Thank you. From: electionscie...@googlegroups.com [mailto:electionscie...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Benjamin Grant Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:40 AM On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 11:08 AM, Stephen Unger un...@cs.columbia.edu mailto:un...@cs.columbia.edu wrote: If you cast votes (approve or give high scores to) only for parties that might win the current election, then we will be stuck forever with the existing 2-party scam. Yes. But the point of approval or score voting is voters do not have to do that in order to keep their least favorite from winning. I understand that is it's goal, but I seem to have pointed out that it still does that. Aparently, not well, though. And under Score/Approval/Plurality voting systems, there would be three phases a party might go through: A) unpopular enough not to be a spoiler B) popular enough to be a spoiler, but not popular enough to win C) popular enough to win often (25% of the time, for example.) Those options apply to plurality and IRV, not to approval or score voting where a voter's 2nd choice vote cannot cause his least favorite to win. Except when it does? I know that the party line is that Approval and Score Voting cannot cause your least favorite to winner, but that's untrue if Nader being Abe's (our voter's) preference over Gore causes him to give less than 100 to Gore - that *can* cause Bush to win. The only way to be sure that he has done everything to prevent Bush from winning (if that is his highest priority in a Nader/Gore/Bush election) is to make sure to score the person most likely to beat Bush as high as possible. Therefore he *must* strategically score Gore a 100, Therefore Score/Range voting devolves into Approval voting. So let's examine Approval voting, since that is what we are left with. If we do an Approval voting system with Gore/Nader/Bush, assuming that Abe's first priority is to stop Bush and his next priority (a distant second, considering how opposed he is to Bush) is to support Nader over Gore. Well, now he cannot do that. He can support Nader *and* Gore, be he cannot support Nader *over* Gore without risking a greater chance of a Bush victory. And in our example (as in real life) Gore has much more support than Nader. This means that If he Approval votes for BOTH of them, it is unlikely that his vote for Nader will accomplish anything. If he votes for ONLY Nader, he has a better chance for Nader to beat Gore, but a much worse chance for stopping a Bush victory. And, this is the poison pill: Let's say that election after election people see that more and more people are voting for Nader,although he is not winning. Thinking optimistically (as some people like to) that this might be the year that Nader could take it all, they put all their money on Nader - they vote Nader, but *not* Gore. The result? Gore's numbers drop, Nader's numbers rise a little, but Bush still get's the most! This seems almost worse than plurality, in a way, because at least with plurality we all knew and admitted that we need to vote against the spoiler effect, but Approval voting may actually suffer from it just as much while not as obviously - meaning people may vote against there interests more by not seeing that. Make sense? On your way to C, you are going to have a LOT of B, and you may never make it to C, especially if people get burned voting for the emerging party by getting their least preferred candidate. Speaking re. plurality or IRV still. Huh? The only way to build a strong new party in reality, as far as I can see, is to have a voting system that does not penalize you into getting your least favored choice by voting for your most favored one. Yes. Agreed. Good. Second of all, it seems to me that the less divergence there is between strategic and sincere voting, the more beneficial qualities the voting system has, such as: -we can worry less about the spoiler effect, which promotes more than just 2 parties -we can worry less that people are accidentally voting against their interests -we can have fewer debates about whether people have an obligation to vote strategically or sincerely This would seem to be a good thing. Ideally, but practically we may have to continue to vote for all candidates other than our least favorates. Again, huh? we may have to continue to vote for all candidates other than our least favorates? When we we NOT vote for candidates other than our least favorites? You seem to be suggesting that I want voters to vote for their least favorite candidates? * Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler than) Score voting pragmatically. I agree. OK, so at least we agree that Score Voting is
[EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Ben Grant wrote: - Approval Voting tends to result in irrelevant approval votes being given to weak candidates – which is pointless, or slightly stronger (but still losing) candidates can once again present a spoiler effect where a person’s least preferred choice is elected because they cast their approval only toward their most preferred choice, who was nowhere near supported enough to stop their least preferred choice. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. The idea is that some voters dislike feeling strategically pressured to vote their sincere favourites below equal-top. With voters never needing to vote their sincere favourites below equal-top, previous elections become a much better indicator of which candidates are really weak. So I don't see compliance with the Favorite Betrayal Criterion as pointless. Chris Benham Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Bejamin, I think we fundamentally agree about most things except for one statement you made (I think you're seeing some disagreement where there is none), which is why I'll only respond to this. You said Since this isn't fixed, tell me what the benefit of Approval is in the real world over Plurality? I want to be CLEAR about this, so please let me: I am not asking how the what supporters of Approval voting promise will happen, nor what Approval voting's creators intentions are - I am ONLY asking about pragmatic and real-world RESULTS. Me: E.g. If people see that the number of votes for Nader are virtually equal to those for Gore, and investigation (undistorted polling) shows that 9 out of ten of those voters preferred Nader first, and the least favorite candidate was more than 10% behind, then in the next election mathematically, only 5% of those voters have to switch to Nader for Nader to win and still beat the least favorite. I.e. People are influenced by perceived public opinion and as well since your scenario was counterfactual, it may be less likely than cases that are possible where approval voting ends up making it possible for small parties to grow large and beat currently large parties. You have no basis for claiming your counterfactual is more likely to occur than any other and yet you want to cut off clear opportunity for building support for smaller parties based on it? People, or at least some people may be able to figure out how and when to use approval voting to boost currently smaller parties. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: Bejamin, I think we fundamentally agree about most things except for one statement you made (I think you're seeing some disagreement where there is none), which is why I'll only respond to this. You said Since this isn't fixed, tell me what the benefit of Approval is in the real world over Plurality? I want to be CLEAR about this, so please let me: I am not asking how the what supporters of Approval voting promise will happen, nor what Approval voting's creators intentions are - I am ONLY asking about pragmatic and real-world RESULTS. Me: E.g. If people see that the number of votes for Nader are virtually equal to those for Gore, and investigation (undistorted polling) shows that 9 out of ten of those voters preferred Nader first, and the least favorite candidate was more than 10% behind, then in the next election mathematically, only 5% of those voters have to switch to Nader for Nader to win and still beat the least favorite. Yes, that is the best case scenario, and what we all hope would happen. What if the scenario I described happened instead? It's actually virtually guaranteed on the *way* to gettting to the scenario you painted. I.e. People are influenced by perceived public opinion and as well since your scenario was counterfactual, it may be less likely than cases that are possible where approval voting ends up making it possible for small parties to grow large and beat currently large parties. You have no basis for claiming your counterfactual is more likely to occur than any other and yet you want to cut off clear opportunity for building support for smaller parties based on it? People, or at least some people may be able to figure out how and when to use approval voting to boost currently smaller parties. I have yet to see any demonstration of any counterfactuality, so at this point I am not granting that claim. Unless I just plain don't understand what you mean when you say counterfactual - which is quite possible. In any case, among the things I seek in a voting system is a system where one doesn't have to choose between stopping your least preferred candidate and supporting your most preferred one. And so far as I can see, that will happen realistically in Approval voting when a minority group gets too optimistic. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On 06/24/2013 03:06 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: Hi guys, I’m still here, still pondering, but now I have another question. I’ve been thinking about score voting, approval voting, and plurality (FPTP) voting, and I have a concern. Say we have a situation where we have three candidates, say Gore, Nader, and Bush. Say we have a voter, Abe whose greatest concern is that Bush NOT win. His second priority is that Nader win over Gore – but this priority is a distant second. He *really* doesn’t want Bush to win. He would prefer Nader over Gore, but he *hates* Bush. Let’s also say that Abe is intelligent, and he is committed to using his vote to maximize his happiness – in other words, rather than vote sincerely and cause his preferences harm, he will always vote strategically where it is to his benefit to do so. If Score Voting was in place, and he were to vote sincerely, Abe probably would vote something like ‘Gore:75, Nader: 100, Bush: 0’. However, he’s no fool, and he knows that while it is theoretically possibly that Nader *might* win, Gore is his best chance to stopping Bush, and that withholding score from Gore might (if all Nader supporters did it) result in Gore not getting enough of a score, therefor Bush could win. So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need – and so long as Nader’s win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. You're generally right. There are some very particular situations with incomplete information where it makes the most sense to use partial ballots, but those happen way too rarely to make a difference. You can see this from the other end, too: say you're in an Approval election and want to vote 0-10-range style. You want to give X a rating of 4, but it's an Approval election. To do this, you generate a random number on 0...10. If it is lower or equal to the rating (in this case 4), you approve of X, otherwise, you don't. If everybody did that, the Range and Approval results would give the same winner (with high probability). So in a real sense, Range is Approval with fractional votes permitted. Also, Range could possibly give different results than Approval voting. Consider an election where 99% of the voters are strategic. The vote comes out to a tie between Nader and Gore, according to these 99%. Then the remaining 1%, voting sincerely, vote something like [Nader: 90%, Gore: 70%, Bush: 10%] (strategic would be [Nader: 100%, Gore: 100%, Bush: 0%]). Then those votes break the tie and Nader wins. For reasons like this, a mix of strategic and honest voters give better results than just having strategic ones. And say what you want about intelligence being a bar to entry, you can bet that the smart people behind ALL candidates will make sure that everyone gets the message, so we can largely ignore #3. Most people I imagine would be pragmatic enough to worry more about the end result and less about sincere vs. strategic, so we ignore #2. And #1 people are going to vote the same way anways, so they may as well use Approval voting. OK, so let’s throw out Score Voting and use Approval voting. Gore v Nader V Bush. Abe (who hates Bush but prefers Nader) gives an approval vote to Nader, his top-most preference, but knowing that withholding approval from Gore could elect Bush (and not wanting to play the spoiler) he also gives an approval vote to Gore. Since Gore in this example is far and away receiving much more support than Nader, Gore now beats Bush. Let’s call the party that put Nader on the ballot the Green party, and that they continue to field candidates in further elections that use the Approval voting system. Abe notices the following pattern: when the Green party fields a candidate that doesn’t even have a glimmer of hope winning the election (like the Gore/Nader/Bush one) that people that support the Green party candidate also approve the Democrat candidate as a bulwark against the Republican. And since in those elections the Green party never really had a hope of winning, the Green approval vote is ultimately irrelevant – those elections would have proceeded no differently than if the Green supporters had simply voted Democrat. But much worse yet, Abe notices that in *some* election, the Green party actually gets a chunk of people thinking that Green could actually win. And emboldened by their hopes, many Green supporters decide to go for it, approve of the Green candidate, but *not* the Democrat one. Result: in elections where more voters think more favorably towards Green’s chances, their least preferred choice (the Republican) tends to win more! This are my two thoughts: a)Intelligent use of Score Voting becomes Approval Voting, and the harm in unwise use of Score voting means that Approval Voting is superior to (and simpler
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_el...@lavabit.com wrote: On 06/24/2013 03:06 PM, Benjamin Grant wrote: So strategically speaking, Abe reasons that although he supports a less likely candidate more, he strategically should score the front-runner Gore at full strength, so long as keeping Bush out is the greatest need – and so long as Nader’s win is unlikely. So, as far as *I* can see, this converts Score Voting into Approval voting. You're generally right. There are some very particular situations with incomplete information where it makes the most sense to use partial ballots, but those happen way too rarely to make a difference. Excellent, that makes me feel like I am not utterly in left field wondering where everyone went. You can see this from the other end, too: say you're in an Approval election and want to vote 0-10-range style. You want to give X a rating of 4, but it's an Approval election. To do this, you generate a random number on 0...10. If it is lower or equal to the rating (in this case 4), you approve of X, otherwise, you don't. If everybody did that, the Range and Approval results would give the same winner (with high probability). So in a real sense, Range is Approval with fractional votes permitted. Also, Range could possibly give different results than Approval voting. Consider an election where 99% of the voters are strategic. The vote comes out to a tie between Nader and Gore, according to these 99%. Then the remaining 1%, voting sincerely, vote something like [Nader: 90%, Gore: 70%, Bush: 10%] (strategic would be [Nader: 100%, Gore: 100%, Bush: 0%]). Then those votes break the tie and Nader wins. For reasons like this, a mix of strategic and honest voters give better results than just having strategic ones. Of course, there are (in the circumstance where Gore is the better chance to beat Bush than Nader) likely more Gore:100 Nader:0 Bush) votes than Nader: 90 Gore:70 Bush 10 ones. In fact, given that we *are* talking about an election with two strong front running candidates and one spoiler weaker one, isn't it *far* more likely that Gore is far in front of Nader and the only real unknown is if Gore will beat Bush or not? Which leads right back to the entire scenario of issues I began with. The thing is, whenever we have more than two parties running, I think we will always have weaker spoiler parties that cannot really win, but that can, if the system allows or encourages people to vote against their best interest, cause people to get a much lower ranked choice, possibly their least preferred choice - this is my whole concern. Am I substantially wrong about any of this? Ultimately, in real and practical terms, it seems that done intelligently, Score Voting devolves into Approval Voting, and Approval Voting devolves into Plurality Voting. How is this not so? I would much prefer a good ranked balloting system to Approval, but let me try to explain the other side as well. Your observation is right in that there's obvious tension between approving of only Nader (so Nader will win) and of both Nader and Gore (so Bush won't win). This is one of the reasons I dont like Approval all that much: I think it burdens the voter with having to convert an internal preference into an Approval-style ballot in what I call manual DSV. DSV is Designated Strategy Voting, a meta-system where one has a computer find out the optimal strategic vote for some given honest vote. The implication of having to engage in manual DSV is rather like having to do a mathematical task in your head before voting: we'd rather not and it makes the system more unwieldy. So there are really three stages to a prospective new party or candidate (like the Greens or Nader): 1. the candidate is not competitive (e.g. fringe candidate). 2. the candidate is competitive but either not strong enough to win, or there's been a miscalculation by the voters. 3. the candidate has taken over the position that would belong to a competitor (e.g. Nader becomes the new Gore). I think Approval advocates argue that the relative share of approvals will inform the voters of where they are. So the progression goes something like: In stage one, everybody who approves of Nader also approves of Gore. In stage three, the tables are turned: everybody who approves of Gore also approves of Nader, but Nader still wins. Stage two and the transition to three is the tricky part. In rounds of repeated polling, the voters start off cautious (approving both Nader and Gore). Then they see that Nader has approval close to Gore's level, so some start approving of Nader alone. This then reinforces the perception that Nader is winning, so more voters approve of Nader alone. And so it goes until Nader is slightly ahead of Gore and wins. Aha! But what if what is likely happens in stage two: People get ahead of themselves and give their full support to Nader and
Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality?
Hi, De : Benjamin Grant Cc : EM election-methods@lists.electorama.com Envoyé le : Lundi 24 juin 2013 17h53 Objet : Re: [EM] Score Voting and Approval Voting not practically substantially different from Plurality? The only way to avoid this, I *think*, is with a system in which expressing a preference of A over B doesn't let C win - and such a system may well have worse flaws, possibly. Right, you are here so close to IIA that you'd be stuck with random ballot or similar. FBC is sort of a next best. It's very close in spirit, only you're guaranteed to be able to vote A top and equal to B, but not necessarily strictly higher. Otherwise, we might create conflicting entitlements. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
