Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
[I rewrote the message whose draft version I sent out earlier by mistake.] Now I have a reasonable definition of Mike Ossipoff's strategy that is supposed to be valid for all Condorcet methods (and even for all FBC failing methods). The strategy is if there are winnable unacceptable candidates and winnable acceptable candidates, find that winnable acceptable candidate that is most likely to win all the unacceptable candidates, and rank him alone at top. Here use of terms acceptable and unacceptable means that the voter has some higher than marginal interest to make one of the acceptable candidates win instead of the unacceptable ones. Let's study it in the US framework. I'll use the Republican candidate, the Democrat candidate and Nader to describe what could happen. The key idea of the strategy is that the voter can bury his non-winning favourites (Nader) without concern since they will not win anyway. The strategy says that the voter may bury also winnable favourites if another acceptable candidate is more likely to win all the unacceptable ones (not covered in this example). The reason why this burial might benefit the voter is that there might be an intentional strategic loop caused by other strategists (Republicans), and that strategic loop could make R win instead of D. Alternatively there might sometimes be also a loop caused by sincere votes. I'll address some reasons why the strategy might not be on optimal strategy for real life elections to be applied always in all Condorcet elections. [The rewritten part follows.] In this example we can assume that the candidates are roughly positioned on a one-dimensional left-right axis where the order of the candidats is N, D, R. 1. What will Nader supporters lose if they bury their favourite: There are benefits to voting for your favourites also when those candidates can not win. The Nader voters see obviously already today some reasons to vote for Nader in Plurality elections although Nader has no chances to win. The voters maybe want to lift the political weight of Nader and his opinions, or make him or his followers win in some future election, or they may just want to carry a message that they do not like either one of the current major parties. They do so although their vote is likely to help the Republican candidates (the worst winnable candidate). If the election method would not punish them as much as Plurality does (e.g. Condorcet), Nader voters would probably be even more interested to show support to their favourite. It thus doesn't sound like the Nader voters would be happy to bury their favourite if the election method was changed from Plurality to Condorcet. In real life elections optimality of a stratgey is thus not measured only in terms of who is the winner of this election but in some much wider sense. 2. What will Nader supporters win if they bury their favourite: If the Republicans decide to strategically bury the Democrat under Nader, when Republicans have 48% support, Democrats 42% and Nader 10%, more than 42/48 of the Republican voters should follow the planned strategy and vote R N D. This is not probable. So the Nader voters have no reason to worry that ranking Nader first would help R to win D. Nader supporters could cancel the Republican strategy (and thereby make their compromise candidate D win instead of R) by burying their favourite, but in practice the Republican strategy is not likely to happen nor be successful if it would be attempted. With high probability there will be no benefits. The proposed strategy seems to be based on the theoretical vulnerability of Condorcet methods to the burial strategy. One should however clearly separate theoretical vulnerabilities from what is likely to happen in practical elections. Also in this example it seems that in practice the benefits of the strategy reman at theoretical level while the benefits of sincere voting and ranking Nader first would be lost right away if voters would follow the strategy. It is not likely that Nader supporters would consider it beneficial to betray their favourite. Are these arguments sufficient to prove that the proposed strategy would not be optimal for the Nader supporters of this example. (Also the Condorcetists are welcome to pont out possible holes in the arguments.) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Now I have a reasonable definition of Mike Ossipoff's strategy that is supposed to be valid for all Condorcet methods (and even for all FBC failing methods). The strategy is if there are winnable unacceptable candidates and winnable acceptable candidates, find that winnable acceptable candidate that is most likely to win all the unacceptable candidates, and rank him alone at top. Here use of terms acceptable and unacceptable means that the voter has some higher than marginal interest to make one of the acceptable candidates win instead of the unacceptable ones. Let's study it in the US framework. I'll use the Republican candidate, the Democrat candidate and Nader to describe what could happen. The key idea of the strategy is that the voter can bury his non-winning favourites (Nader) without concern since they will not win anyway. The strategy says that the voter may bury also winnable favourites if another acceptable candidate is more likely to win all the unacceptable ones (not covered in this example). The reason why this burial might benefit the voter is that there might be an intentional strategic loop caused by other strategists (Republicans), and that strategic loop could make R win instead of D. Alternatively there might sometimes be also a loop caused by sincere votes. I'll address some reasons why the strategy might not be on optimal strategy for real life elections to be applied always in all Condorcet elections. 1. Nader supporters would lose the benefits of ranking their favourite first: There are benefits to voting for your favourites also when those candidates can not win. The Nader voters have obviously already today some reasons to vote for Nader in Plurality elections although Nader has no chances to win. The voters maybe want to lift the political weight of Nader and his opinions, or make him or his followers win in some future election, or they may just want to carry a message that they do not like either one of the current major parties. They do so although their vote is likely to help the Republican candidates (the worst winnable candidate). If the election method would not punish them as much as Plurality does (e.g. Condorcet), Nader voters would probably be even more interested to show support to their favourite. It thus doesn't sound like the Nader voters would be happy to bury their favourite if the election method was changed from Plurality to Condorcet. In real life elections optimality of a stratgey is not measured only in terms of who is the winner of this election but in some much wider sense. 2. The marginality of the benefits: If the Republicans decide to strategically bury the Democrat under Nader, when Republicans have 48% support, Democrats 42% and Nader 10%, more than 42/48 of the Republican voters should follow the planned strategy and vote R N D. This is not probable. So the Nader voters have no reason to worry. The benefits of ranking their favourite first will be more important than the need to defend against a possible strategy that is not likely to materialize. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
This mail was just a draft that I sent by mistake. It contains still errors and is badly formulated, so you an ignore it. I'll send a new one in a day or two. Sorry about the confusion, Juho On 29.5.2012, at 11.30, Juho Laatu wrote: Now I have a reasonable definition of Mike Ossipoff's strategy that is supposed to be valid for all Condorcet methods (and even for all FBC failing methods). The strategy is if there are winnable unacceptable candidates and winnable acceptable candidates, find that winnable acceptable candidate that is most likely to win all the unacceptable candidates, and rank him alone at top. Here use of terms acceptable and unacceptable means that the voter has some higher than marginal interest to make one of the acceptable candidates win instead of the unacceptable ones. Let's study it in the US framework. I'll use the Republican candidate, the Democrat candidate and Nader to describe what could happen. The key idea of the strategy is that the voter can bury his non-winning favourites (Nader) without concern since they will not win anyway. The strategy says that the voter may bury also winnable favourites if another acceptable candidate is more likely to win all the unacceptable ones (not covered in this example). The reason why this burial might benefit the voter is that there might be an intentional strategic loop caused by other strategists (Republicans), and that strategic loop could make R win instead of D. Alternatively there might sometimes be also a loop caused by sincere votes. I'll address some reasons why the strategy might not be on optimal strategy for real life elections to be applied always in all Condorcet elections. 1. Nader supporters would lose the benefits of ranking their favourite first: There are benefits to voting for your favourites also when those candidates can not win. The Nader voters have obviously already today some reasons to vote for Nader in Plurality elections although Nader has no chances to win. The voters maybe want to lift the political weight of Nader and his opinions, or make him or his followers win in some future election, or they may just want to carry a message that they do not like either one of the current major parties. They do so although their vote is likely to help the Republican candidates (the worst winnable candidate). If the election method would not punish them as much as Plurality does (e.g. Condorcet), Nader voters would probably be even more interested to show support to their favourite. It thus doesn't sound like the Nader voters would be happy to bury their favourite if the election method was changed from Plurality to Condorcet. In real life elections optimality of a stratgey is not measured only in terms of who is th e winner of this election but in some much wider sense. 2. The marginality of the benefits: If the Republicans decide to strategically bury the Democrat under Nader, when Republicans have 48% support, Democrats 42% and Nader 10%, more than 42/48 of the Republican voters should follow the planned strategy and vote R N D. This is not probable. So the Nader voters have no reason to worry. The benefits of ranking their favourite first will be more important than the need to defend against a possible strategy that is not likely to materialize. 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] To Condorcetists:
Juho says:
Maybe the number one on the list of the still unanswered questions is the
following one.
[example+question starts here]
26: A B C
26: B A C
24: C A B
24: C B A
- A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican
How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if
they follow the better than expectation strategy? Should A and B be seen
as the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the
voters should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?).
[endquote]
You don't say how good a result the various voters expect from the election.
You don't say if it's u/a. You show higher magnitude dislike for C, among
the A and B voters. Should we infer that you mean that it's u/a, and that,
to the A and B voters, A and B are acceptable and B is unacceptable? .that
{A,B} and {C} are sets such that the merit differences within the sets are
negligible in comparison to the merit differences between the sets? If so,
then the Approval's u/a strategy would call for the A and B voters to
approve A and B.
But there's the co-operation/defection problem, isn't there. I've discussed
it. I've described some solutions to it, in a post in recent days. I'll
re-post my list of 5 solutions.
But remember that Condorcet equally has the co-operation/defection problem
too.
What about ICT in your example? The A voters should vote AB. The B voters
should vote BA.
Mike Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 23.5.2012, at 0.38, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Juho says:
Maybe the number one on the list of the still unanswered questions is the
following one.
[example+question starts here]
26: A B C
26: B A C
24: C A B
24: C B A
- A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican
How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if
they follow the better than expectation strategy? Should A and B be seen as
the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the voters
should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?).
[endquote]
You don’t say how good a result the various voters expect from the election.
In my recent mail, where I studied the Approval strategy that you gave and this
example opinion set, I gave some guesses on how the voters might estimate the
outcome of the election (expectation).
You don’t say if it’s u/a.
What is the definition of u/a? Is it needed for the Approval strategy that you
gave?
You show higher magnitude dislike for C, among the A and B voters. Should we
infer that you mean that it’s u/a, and that, to the A and B voters, A and B
are acceptable and B is unacceptable? …that {A,B} and {C} are sets such that
the merit differences within the sets are negligible in comparison to the
merit differences between the sets? If so, then the Approval’s u/a strategy
would call for the A and B voters to approve A and B.
But there’s the co-operation/defection problem, isn’t there. I’ve discussed
it. I’ve described some solutions to it, in a post in recent days. I’ll
re-post my list of 5 solutions.
But remember that Condorcet equally has the co-operation/defection problem
too.
I'm planning to study the strength of that problem when I get the description
of the strategy.
What about ICT in your example? The A voters should vote AB. The B voters
should vote BA.
I have not thought of that. I'll come back if I find something useful to say on
this topic.
Juho
Mike Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 20.5.2012, at 1.00, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You asked if I’d answer questions that you say remain unanswered. Of course. I answer all questions. If there’s a question that I haven’t answered, then let me know. But please be specific. Maybe the number one on the list of the still unanswered questions is the following one. [example+question starts here] 26: A B C 26: B A C 24: C A B 24: C B A - A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if they follow the better than expectation strategy? Should A and B be seen as the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the voters should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?). [example+question ends here] A good answer to this question would solve many of the Approval strategy related open questions. (Working Condorcet strategies still to be covered.) What should an individual regular voter do in the given situation? How do they identify their best strategic vote? That situation is quite common, except that accurate ties in polls are not common. In practice that could mean one poll saying that A leads B by 0.5% and another one saying that B leads A by 0.4%. Anyway, the difference between A and B falls within the error margin and expected amount of changes in opinions before the election day, and people are uncertain of which one of A and B will be more popular. If you want, you may assume that C is not likely to reach 50% first preference support. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Drive-by comment. At 04:05 AM 5/21/2012, Juho Laatu wrote: On 20.5.2012, at 1.00, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You asked if I'd answer questions that you say remain unanswered. Of course. I answer all questions. If there's a question that I haven't answered, then let me know. But please be specific. Maybe the number one on the list of the still unanswered questions is the following one. If this is the most important unanswered question, you are lucky, Juho. [example+question starts here] 26: A B C 26: B A C 24: C A B 24: C B A - A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if they follow the better than expectation strategy? Should A and B be seen as the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the voters should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?). [example+question ends here] This is an unanswerable question about a preposterous situation, that *will not* occur in real public elections under conditions where elections even make sense. The population is entirely and completely polarized into two camps of almost equal size. No voters are intermediate in position, no voters have C as their second favorite. Essentially, there are no independent voters. Now, suppose that, nevertheless, we have such a situation. The problem boils down to two parties, with one having a slight edge over the other. The other, the slight majority party, is united. The majority party is itself evenly divided into two factions, supporters of A and B. Do they care about winning? From the stated preferences, yes, that is what means. Strong preference. If they care about winning, they will never let this situation go to an election, they will present a united candidate, even if they have to toss a coin to do it. That is what the Democrats *must* do if the method is plurality. That is why Plurality leads to 2-party systems. What is presented here is really a three party system, with the slight majority party being split into two factions. Parties that allow themselves to be split this way lose elections. Society itself, overall, it this situation, doesn't give a hoot. The SU of all three winners is evenly divided. So from what perspective do you want to advise voters? For obtaining their individually-maximized utility? Or for creating a socially beneficial result, which indirectly benefits *all* individuals, because a coherent society produces value for all members? So, next step up with improved voting system, what about Approval? From the stated preferences, A and B voters have a dilemma, but it is only a small one. If they do not unite, they risk losing to C, a big loss. If they do unite, they risk their favorite losing to their next-favorite, but by the terms of the problem, this is a smaller loss. They maximize expected personal utility by approving both A and B. If they get greedy, and only go for their favorite, they risk loss to the least-favorite, by far. They would, basically, deserve this loss. The reward of greedy stupidity is loss. From the point of view of overall social utility, this election could go to any of the three candidates and be approximately the same utility. Hence the method I'd want to see for this election is Score voting, if we must have a single poll. Bucklin would work fine, though. Bucklin allows voters to stand, for the early rounds of counting, for their favorite, while uniting before the election is over, if it's needed. The votes would presumably be 26:AB or A.B 26:BA or B.A 24:C or C.A 24 C or C.B (the period represents a blank rank. This was actually used in the Bucklin elections, it's clear. Some voters postponed compromising until the last rank.) I'd say that Bucklin handles this election perfectly. A tie is unlikely, because voters will vary in how they add additional ranking. What determines how the voters actually vote is preference strength. A good answer to this question would solve many of the Approval strategy related open questions. (Working Condorcet strategies still to be covered.) What should an individual regular voter do in the given situation? How do they identify their best strategic vote? It's obvious. Real voters will have little or no difficulty if they know the situation. There is no remedy for ignorance, though. I do have some question about designing voting systems to empower the ignorant. (By the way, that is *not* an elitist position, I'm ignorant, often, and systems that give equal weight to my ignorant opinion can make some poor decisions. Choice is another matter, but I won't go into that, beyond noting the important issue of consent to results, the reason why I strongly support systems that require majority consent for a result, directly or, if not directly, if that's not possible, then indirectly.) That situation is quite common, except that accurate ties in polls are
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 21.5.2012, at 18.03, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Drive-by comment. At 04:05 AM 5/21/2012, Juho Laatu wrote: On 20.5.2012, at 1.00, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You asked if I'd answer questions that you say remain unanswered. Of course. I answer all questions. If there's a question that I haven't answered, then let me know. But please be specific. Maybe the number one on the list of the still unanswered questions is the following one. If this is the most important unanswered question, you are lucky, Juho. A good point to start the analysis. [example+question starts here] 26: A B C 26: B A C 24: C A B 24: C B A - A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if they follow the better than expectation strategy? Should A and B be seen as the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the voters should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?). [example+question ends here] This is an unanswerable question about a preposterous situation, that *will not* occur in real public elections under conditions where elections even make sense. The population is entirely and completely polarized into two camps of almost equal size. No voters are intermediate in position, no voters have C as their second favorite. Essentially, there are no independent voters. There can be also additional candidates and richer set of voter opinions. However the general set-up where one wing has two srong candidates, the other one has one, and the balance between the wings is close to 50%-50%, is a common se-up that all good methods should be able to handle. This example ignores the finer details in order to show the core concepts (three major candidates and their relative position). Now, suppose that, nevertheless, we have such a situation. The problem boils down to two parties, with one having a slight edge over the other. The other, the slight majority party, is united. The majority party is itself evenly divided into two factions, supporters of A and B. Yes. Do they care about winning? From the stated preferences, yes, that is what means. Strong preference. I assume that this is a competitive election (with or without the strong preferences). If they care about winning, they will never let this situation go to an election, they will present a united candidate, even if they have to toss a coin to do it. If Approval can not handle three potential winners, then making sure already before the election that there will be only two potential winners would make the common Approval strategies work. Often we don't have this luxury. The other Democrat candidate could as well be from a rival Democrat2 party. That is what the Democrats *must* do if the method is plurality. That is why Plurality leads to 2-party systems. What is presented here is really a three party system, with the slight majority party being split into two factions. Parties that allow themselves to be split this way lose elections. Yes, this example could be from a society with three or more (potentially winning) parties. Society itself, overall, it this situation, doesn't give a hoot. The SU of all three winners is evenly divided. So from what perspective do you want to advise voters? For obtaining their individually-maximized utility? Or for creating a socially beneficial result, which indirectly benefits *all* individuals, because a coherent society produces value for all members? I assume that the election is competitive. So the individual voters want an answer to questions how can I make my favourite candidate win and how can I make my favourite party/wing win. So, next step up with improved voting system, what about Approval? From the stated preferences, A and B voters have a dilemma, but it is only a small one. If they do not unite, they risk losing to C, a big loss. If they do unite, they risk their favorite losing to their next-favorite, but by the terms of the problem, this is a smaller loss. They maximize expected personal utility by approving both A and B. If they get greedy, and only go for their favorite, they risk loss to the least-favorite, by far. They would, basically, deserve this loss. The reward of greedy stupidity is loss. Yes, it would make sense for all Democrats to approve both A and B. It is however quite probable that some voters will vote for their favourite only. This can happen because they do not understand that the secure strategy would be to approvo both. Or they can vote this way since they have a strategic incentive to make their favourite win instead of the other Democrat canididate. From the point of view of overall social utility, this election could go to any of the three candidates and be approximately the same utility. Hence the method I'd want to see for this election is Score voting, if we
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 20.5.2012, at 1.00, Michael Ossipoff wrote: One: No one knows for sure exactly what way of voting (by hir and some hypothetical same-preferring and same-voting faction) will give the best outcome. ……….That’s true in Condorcet as well as in Approval. In Condorcet one can sincerely recommend sincerity. In theory there are cases where one could cheat the system. But in practice sincerity is by far the best strategy that voters have in large elections where voters make independent decisions. The challenge is to find practical situations where regular voters, after hearing some poll results (and possibly some poll based situation specific strategic advices by the media), would have good reason to vote otherwise (in a way that they can master an that is likely to improve the outcome). If for these reasons strategy free voting becomes widely accepted, and a norm, we have a system that may serve the society well. Two: In Approval, if you like strategy, I’ve given simple instructions for determining the way of voting that maximizes your expectation. I’ve described it for u/a elections, ………..and for non-u/a elections. I'd be interested in the one (or ones) that the regular voters are supposed to follow in real life Approvan elections. That one determines how well Approval will work (after taking into account any additional facts like e.g. some tendency to bullet vote and possible situation specific strategic guidance). You mentioned also sincere approval of approvable canddates as a strategy that could be recommended to the voters. Do you think Approval can handle well situations where some voters or voter groups are strategic while some are sincere? Three: In Condorcet, you don’t have a known strategy for maximizing expectation. In a u/a election you have, instead, a ridiculous dilemma, and no hint of what will maximize ..your expectation. In fact, in general, expectation-maximizing strategy is not available in Condorcet. In Condorcet sincere voting approximates maximization of expectation pretty well. In Approval I'm waiting for your description on how to do that, i.e. some words of guidance to regular voters on how to vote. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 19.5.2012, at 4.56, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Will it be different with Approval? You be it will. Agreed. Change of Plurality to Approval in a two-party system will cause changes in many areas. I'm going to repeat this: It will be different in regards to the fact that people who think they need to support a lesser-evil can also support everyone they like, including those they regard as the best. Yes, one can approve many candidates. It will be different because the voter hirself can be the one to decide to which candidate(s) s/he wants to give 1 point instead of 0 points, instead of the method deciding that all but one must get 0 points. That change seems to worry you. What will happen as a result?, you ask. It's ok to be able to approve all the candidates that one wants to. No worries. (Maybe some worries in the areas of need to make further changes in other parts of the system, and also in strategic voting.) What will happen is that voters will be in charge of their ballots. You keep repeating that you're worried about the results. I keep asking you what bad results you expect from the above changes. And instead of answering that question, you just repeat your unspecified and vague worry. I tried to describe in last couple of mails what kind of impacts that change might have. Can you be a bit more specific on which parts were unclear. The whole concept and my worries are a bit vague also to me (and therefore maybe explanations too) because I don't exactly know how the society would react to such non-cassical and untested changes. You said: . Also Approval method itself is not free of problems (my key concern is its strategic problems when there are more than two potential winners). [endquote] And what problems might those be? Ones that I've already answered about? Just the usual and thorougly discussed strategy problems of the Approval method. I don't think you discussed them yet. They are however quite independent from the implications of using a compromise seeking single-winner methods instead of Plurality in a two-party political system. Therefore the problems of the Approval method could be discussed separately as a separate stand-alone topic if needed (but there is no need since I assume you are already familiar with those discussions). Because I've already answered lots of claims about problems, you need to say, specifically, what problems you mean, and how you answer my rebuttals to the claims about those problems. Remember that one of the conduct-guidelines for EM is that we shouldn't keep repeating claims that have already answered, without first responding to the answers. I tried to answer all the questions that I found in your mail. I will also answer any additional ones or ones that I have so far left unanswered (within reason). Just point them out. Btw, do you promise to answer questions that I think you did not answer yet? You claim a problem. I answer you about it. You just keep repeating that there would be problems. Ok, that may be a problem. Just point out where my description was not sufficient or where I left something unanswered, or present new clarifying questions. You said: I have now understood that your ideal (or actually best reachable) target system is a system that elects from few large parties, where few 2. [endquote] You keep saying that too. I have no idea why. I've never said what number of parties in government is ideal. My intention was not to refer to governments here, just to the overall number of parties with representatives. I don't care how many parties are in government. It could be one. It could be many. Ok, but that question and the qustion of how to nominate a government will pop up after there will be more than two large parties. When people are approving whom they like, Approval will elect the most liked candidate. It will do so whether or not s/he has strong party affiliations, and regardless of whether or not s/he belongs to a part at all. Which part of that don't you understand? Now I understand that you are flexible with respect to the strength of party affiliations. I also note that you say: But Approval doesn't care about party affiliation, and neither do I. And if everyone's strategizing, Approval will elect the candidate who is better than expectation for the most voters. That's an interesting positive attitude towards Approval. I guess you mean better or equal to expectation - or should people always not approve the expected winner? 26: A B C 26: B A C 24: C A B 24: C B A - A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if they follow the better than expectation strategy? Should A and B be seen as the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the voters should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?). You continue: There would be no
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 05/15/2012 09:10 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You continued: Before you talk about a *need* to literally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican, consider what you have said yourself, in response to my posts. You have said that the voters' overcompromise is a result of their history with Plurality, not an objective *need* to, within Condorcet, rearrange the preferences or the worse guy will win. [endquote] They do so because of Plurality history, yes. But their need to overcompromise is the result of a subjective choice, not an objective error. In fact, under certain circumstances you, too, would favorite-bury in Condorcet. I certainly would. (contrary to what I've said in the past, I admit) Suppose that it's a u/a election. The method is Condorcet. It's pretty much certain that Compromise, an acceptable, but not your favorite, is the only candidate who can beat Worse, an unacceptable. What do you do? You rank Compromise alone at top, that's what you do. As would I. In an Nader-Bush-Gore type of u/a, I would say like this: - Okay, this is an election in the inception of a transition of the method. Therefore, it is u/a. If this had been some time after the people had got used to the new method, it would no longer be u/a. - Therefore, there will be a few frontrunners, perhaps two or three. These are the ones that will end up in the Smith set in the worst case - certainly none of the minor parties will. - Since I can't push someone off the Smith set by ranking someone not in the set above him, and Favorite isn't one of the frontrunners, I'm free to rank Favorite first. - (alternately) If Favorite and Compromise are in the Smith set and Worse isn't, then I should make it count: vote Favorite first so as to help maximally against Compromise. - Only when all three are or will be in the set might I gain a strategic advantage by betraying Favorite, and I might not even need to (depends on u/a FBC). Here I *think* the probability would be so low that I wouldn't betray Favorite. However, that might sound like rationalization, so I'll explain at the bottom*. Now you might say that this is cheating because I'm refining u/a further to a Nader-Bush-Gore situation. But consider your reasoning for a moment. You say you're concerned about voters favorite-betraying in u/a, and you say current political elections in the US are u/a. So I don't think I have to consider u/a elections with n-way races n3 because by the time that many parties would be viable, people would have got over their overcompromise anyway. But, maybe you _don't_ know that Compromise is the only acceptable who can beat Worse. Maybe you have no idea which one can beat Worse. Then what do you do? You top rate all the acceptables. The problem, of course, is in the majority of circumstances, when it's somewhere in between those two circumstances. Only if they're all in the Smith set, and then only if you want to escalate - to bet the advantage after you push the method to weirdness is greater than the loss at doing so in the first place. You continued: And finally, I'd give this hint: the moment it feels like the other side has somehow acquired a preponderance of people in denial, take a more Copernican view. When an otherwise sensible group holds a view that seems to be silly, and to explain the silliness, a greater part of that group needs to be extraordinarily blind (and very specifically so), perhaps they are not. Perhaps, instead, the view is not so silly. [endquote] It's hardly rare for a majority to be mistaken. It's common. You rely too much on polling. As I said, the configuration of advocacy on EM is but a snapshot of something that's constantly changing. I would hardly call the discussions on EM mere polling. If they are polling, then your discussions with the favorite-betrayers upon which you build most of your idea of FBC's necessity is also mere polling -- and polling with a much lesser sample size at that. As I've mentioned, Approval won the most recent EM poll on voting systems. Approval won by every method that we used. Approval was the CW, the Approval winner, and the Range winner. In the short list of Declaration signers, more people mention Approval than Condorcet, even if you count VoteFair as Condorcet. And one of the people who mentions Condorcet ranks it below Approval. True enough. You keep returning to Plurality vs Approval. My point, however, was that if otherwise reasonable people just so seem to happen to have a big hole where their judgement of Condorcet vs Approval is located, then it has to be awfully specific (and convenient) for them to be thus blind. And if favorite betrayal really is so rampant, then it is strange that so few other American EM participants have mentioned the need for absolute FBC to guard against it. You don't make it out to be a contested issue like say, left vs right, but rather something that is obvious: something
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 19.5.2012, at 7.25, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You continue: I mean that there could be need for further reforms. [endquote] You like to speculate. Speculations aren't really answerable. To what needs are you referring, in particular? One key topic was the already discussed possible use of coalition governments instead of the single 50+% party governmnets of today. It wouldn't be anymore a pure president's government. ... Certainly advocates of rank methods would want to propose them ... Those questions are mainly not related to the Approval vs. Condorcet question but to the Plurality vs. compromise seeking single-winner method question. You said: . The problems of Approval with three or more potential winners might irritate people and change their voting behaviour. [endquote] You like to refer to problems without specifying them. As I said in my previous mail. The Approval problems that I refer to are the well known and well discussed problems of the Approval method. They are quite separate from the impact on the two-party system oriented questions (where Approval and Condorcet behave in quite similar way). In particular, you have never answered my question about what problem Approval will have that Plurality doesn't have. Thanks, this is one concrete request that I can reply to. I tried to address also that question earlier but obviously my explanations were not good enough. If we study Approval and Plurality as separate single-winner methods, then maybe you aleady know all the discussions, maybe even too well. My opinion is that the biggest problem of Approval is the difficulty of voters to find a working strategy when there are more than two poential winners (e.g. when there are two candidates from one wing and one from the other). Also Plurality has related problems with strategy, but in Plurality (in a two-party system) a good strategy is to vote for one of the two dominant parties. In Approval the voter may not have any such safe strategy option. If we study Approval and Plurality as part of the proposed system where single-winner methods are used in single-member districts in a multi-winner election, then the answer is quite different. Then the key difference is that while Plurality is a key component that maintains the two-party structure, Approval aims at electing compromise winners that need not come from the two dominant parties. This may be good or bad, depending on one's point of view. Approval introduces a new non-classical and untested system, but that system may well be worth a try. Approval (and other compromise seeking methods) will have some specific features like the already discussed influences on the government stucture. No one can predict exactly what the changes would be. But they'd definitely be improvements. Hmm. This sounds like the current system would be the worst of all possible systems. In that case all changes would of course be good. You said: (or return back as in Burlington). [endquote] I get tired of asking you why people would want to go back to Plurality. This discussion isn't productive. In Burlington people, or possibly only politicians, wanted to go back to the old system. It is obvious that at least within the current dominant parties there is some interst to maintain their current powerful position. Regular people may be less interested in going back. But I think going back to the old system is a risk (or why not sometimes a positive option) in every reform. I didn't observe any strong burial tendency in Burlington when I analyzed those votes. [endquot] It was a municipal election. Did your analysis include looking at the labels on the ballots that told what the voter really likes best? Oh way, the ballots don't have such labels, do they :-) As someone who is actually here, I've observed a strong favorite-burial tendency in a limited sample. But even in that sample, the consistency suggests that it won't be rare. The Burlington votes are available and the election is a relatively large and certainly competitive political election. If there is a general tendency to bury, that tendecy should be visible in those votes, and there should be a large set of votes that have ranked minor candidates above some of the (three?) most potential candidates. You know what, I'm still only halfway through this post. Do I really have to wade through the rest of it? Not if the rest is anything like what I've been replying to so far. Maybe I'll resume later, but, if so, I'll reply only to a few things that are relatively deserving of reply. No need to comment all the lines. Short replies are better than long ones. I generally try to limit myself to few essential points + explicit questions and requests to me (+ correcting misunderstandings of what I said, if any). I also regularly read through my drafts to eliminate repetitive points and points with minor value to
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Juho: You asked if I'd answer questions that you say remain unanswered. Of course. I answer all questions. If there's a question that I haven't answered, then let me know. But please be specific. You said: My opinion is that the biggest problem of Approval is the difficulty of voters to find a working strategy when there are more than two poential winners [endquote] You see, that is why I say that you haven't been reading my postings, and haven't read my article. My article described a number of easy and simple strategies for Approval, for those who want strategy. But I emphasized that my first recommendation is to just vote for candidates that you like, trust, or who deserve your support. That isn't has hard as you seem to think. It's usually pretty obvious which candidates qualify. And I've discussed this more in my most recent postings here at EM: One: No one knows for sure exactly what way of voting (by hir and some hypothetical same-preferring and same-voting faction) will give the best outcome. That's true in Condorcet as well as in Approval. Two: In Approval, if you like strategy, I've given simple instructions for determining the way of voting that maximizes your expectation. I've described it for u/a elections, .and for non-u/a elections. Three: In Condorcet, you don't have a known strategy for maximizing expectation. In a u/a election you have, instead, a ridiculous dilemma, and no hint of what will maximize ..your expectation. In fact, in general, expectation-maximizing strategy is not available in Condorcet. I'll reply to the rest of your recent postings within a few days. Mike Ossipoff (e.g. when there are two candidates from one wing and one from the other). Also Plurality has related problems with strategy, but in Plurality (in a two-party system) a good strategy is to vote for one of the two dominant parties. In Approval the voter may not have any such safe strategy option. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 05/15/2012 09:10 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
In fact, under certain circumstances you, too, would favorite-bury in
Condorcet. I certainly would. (contrary to what I've said in the past,
I
admit)
Suppose that it's a u/a election. The method is Condorcet. It's pretty
much certain that Compromise, an acceptable, but not your favorite, is
the only candidate who can beat Worse, an unacceptable. What do you
do? You rank Compromise alone at top, that's what you do. As would I.
You wrote:
In an Nader-Bush-Gore type of u/a, I would say like this:
- Okay, this is an election in the inception of a transition of the method.
Therefore, it is u/a. If this had been some time after the people had got
used to the new method, it would no longer be u/a.
[endquote]
Incorrect. u/a has nothing to do with whether or not people are used to a
new method. The election is u/a for a voter if, for that voter, there are
unacceptable candidates who might win. If you object to unacceptable, then
an election is u/a for a particular voter, if, for that voter, the
candidates can be divided into two sets such that the merit differences
_within_ the sets are negligible in comparison to the merit difference
_between_ the sets.
Nothing about that changes if the voter is familiar with the method.
You continued:
- Therefore, there will be a few frontrunners, perhaps two or three.
Not necessarily. A pair of pre-election frontrunners are two candidates who
are expected to get the most votes, to be the two candidates most in
contention for the win.
There might not be such. Maybe people don't have a perception or feel about
that, and no one wants to try to guess who the top two contenders are.
Ok, maybe you're saying that Bush, Gore and Nader are the frontrunners
because the election is, by assumption, known to be between them.
You said:
These are the ones that will end up in the Smith set in the worst case -
certainly none of the minor parties will.
[endquote]
Minor parties being defined as parties other than those of the 3
candidates you've assumed will be the relevant ones in this example, I take
it. Ok.
You said:
- Since I can't push someone off the Smith set by ranking someone not in the
set above him
, and Favorite isn't one of the frontrunners, I'm free to rank Favorite
first.
[endquote]
Yes, but other voters, without you psychic powers, wouldn't know that.
You continued:
- (alternately) If Favorite and Compromise are in the Smith set and Worse
isn't, then I should make it count: vote Favorite first so as to help
maximally against Compromise.
- Only when all three are or will be in the set might I gain a strategic
advantage by betraying Favorite, and I might not even need to (depends on
u/a FBC).
[endquote]
u/a FBC isn't ready to use yet. It's still in the early examination stage.
And you don't know for sure who will be in the Smith set.
You said:
Here I *think* the probability would be so low that I wouldn't betray
Favorite. However, that might sound like rationalization, so I'll explain at
the bottom*.
[endquote]
Sometimes I use an asterisk when I don't want to lengthen or complicate a
paragraph with a parenthetical remark. I put the asterisk reference directly
below that paragraph, where it is easily found.
On a printed page, where the whole page is simultaneously visible, it's
different, and convenient to put the referred-to remarks at the bottom.
You'd betray Favorite if the merit differences within sets A and B were
negligible in comparison to the merit difference between those sets, and if
Compromise is the only acceptable who can beat Worse.
Expectation-maximizing strategy in Condorcet would call for voting
Compromise alone in 1st place.
You said:
Now you might say that this is cheating because I'm refining u/a further to
a Nader-Bush-Gore situation.
[endquote]
Not at all. That would be a u/a election for me. Set A would be {Nader}. Set
B would be {Gore, Bush}.
But, for some people who aren't clear about their own feelings about what
they regard as acceptable or unacceptable, they actually believe that set A
is {Nader, Gore} and that set B is {Bush}. You might say that it's a
subjective matter. Maybe, but when you talk to most people who vote
Democrat, they express disgust for the corrupt, sold-out, bribed
(Republocrat) politicians. How bizarre, then, if they say that Gore is
acceptable.
(As I said before, check out Jim Hightower's account of Environmental Hero
Al Gore in East Liverpool, Ohio.)
Anyway, for me, and also (or so they believe) for the Anyone-But-Bush voter,
it is a u/a election.
You said:
But consider your reasoning for a moment. You say you're concerned about
voters favorite-betraying in u/a
[endquote]
A u/a election is one way to write an example in which favorite-burial is
expectation-maximizing strategy.
You continued:
, and you say current political elections in the US are u/a.
[endquote]
Yes.
So I don't think I have to consider u/a elections
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
This started as a thread to talk a bit about Condorcet. That has faded away, and all I see is trivia about Plurality vs Approval - too trivial a difference between them to support enough thoughts to be worth writing this much, even less for reading. DWK On May 18, 2012, at 9:56 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: How could using Approval instead of Plurality in our single-member districts be bad? I've talked about how Approval's results would differ from those of Plurality. Proportional representation and two-party systems are two well known approaches. Approval with single winner districts is a new kind of a system, and that may bring surpises (I wrote about them before the referenced line) [endquote] No you didn't. That's why I asked the question. And now you're just repeating the vague and unspecified worry that you expressed before. Will it be different with Approval? You be it will. I'm going to repeat this: It will be different in regards to the fact that people who think they need to support a lesser-evil can also support everyone they like, including those they regard as the best. It will be different because the voter hirself can be the one to decide to which candidate(s) s/he wants to give 1 point instead of 0 points, instead of the method deciding that all but one must get 0 points. That change seems to worry you. What will happen as a result?, you ask. What will happen is that voters will be in charge of their ballots. You keep repeating that you're worried about the results. I keep asking you what bad results you expect from the above changes. And instead of answering that question, you just repeat your unspecified and vague worry. You said: . Also Approval method itself is not free of problems (my key concern is its strategic problems when there are more than two potential winners). [endquote] And what problems might those be? Ones that I've already answered about? Because I've already answered lots of claims about problems, you need to say, specifically, what problems you mean, and how you answer my rebuttals to the claims about those problems. Remember that one of the conduct-guidelines for EM is that we shouldn't keep repeating claims that have already answered, without first responding to the answers. You claim a problem. I answer you about it. You just keep repeating that there would be problems. You say that hasn't been discussed enough? Ok, shall we discuss the properties of the political system that would result from choosing what people actually like, when voters are free to indicate all the candidates that they like? How would it differ from now? If you're suggesting that there would be some drawback, disadvantage or bad result that could happen because we elect candidates and parties that are more liked than what Plurality elects, then please let's hear them. You said: I have now understood that your ideal (or actually best reachable) target system is a system that elects from few large parties, where few 2. [endquote] You keep saying that too. I have no idea why. I've never said what number of parties in government is ideal. Approval will elect as many parties as people like. ...just as I said when you made that statement before. I don't care how many parties are in government. It could be one. It could be many. You continue: Technically multi-winner elections would use single-winner districts and Approval. Also the president could be elected with Approval. [endquote] Yes, in this country we use single-member districts. As I've said, PR isn't a feasible proposal here. So yes, my proposal is to use Approval for all of our state and national single-winner elections. Ideally we'd elect the president in one big direct election, but maybe at first we can use Approval in each state. In any case, Congress is the area where a single-winner method is straightforwardly used. But remember that we supposedly _effectively_ use Plurality, in each state, to allocate that state's electoral votes. We should use Approval instead. You said: At some point I thought that you might aim at electing good individuals without strong party affiliations, but maybe you are more party oriented that that. [endquote] I corrected that strange mis-statement of yours in my previous post. And now you're just repeating your mis-statement again. I have no idea where you get that statement. I haven't said anything about aiming for individuals with or without strong party affiliation. When people are approving whom they like, Approval will elect the most liked candidate. It will do so whether or not s/he has strong party affiliations, and regardless of whether or not s/he belongs to a part at all. Which part of that don't you understand? And yes, if people are strategizing, and voting for a compromise that they don't really like, at least, unlike in Plurality they're also voting for
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Juho: Would the governments be minority governments or coalition governments? [endquote] They'd be popular governments. If it consisted of only one party, I don't know if it would be the favorite of more than half of the voters. My guess is that it usually will. But yes, there could be several parties winning seats, and so that a government might then be a coalition government. With single-member districts, there wouldn't be the diversity of less-liked parties. So there it wouldn't be like a PR body. Probably not as many parties in government, only the most liked ones. You continue: I mean that there could be need for further reforms. [endquote] You like to speculate. Speculations aren't really answerable. To what needs are you referring, in particular? Certainly advocates of rank methods would want to propose them, and that would be fine. Maybe some would say that their methods are _needed_. That's ok to, though it I claim that it wouldn't be so. And if you want to say that something else will be needed, then you need to say why. At that time, if others are advocating Condorcet or IRV, or whatever, I'll mention ICT and tell of its advantages. But, under those circumstances, I'll also offer the possibility of merely adding voting options to Approval. The ones that I've already discussed a lot here in recent months. But you know, it's a bit premature to worry about that now. You said: . The problems of Approval with three or more potential winners might irritate people and change their voting behaviour. [endquote] You like to refer to problems without specifying them. As I said earlier in this reply, I've answered claims about problems, various ones. We have no way of knowing what problems you're referring to. If you're referring to problems that I've answered about, then say so, and say what part of my answer you disagree with, and why. In particular, you have never answered my question about what problem Approval will have that Plurality doesn't have. Will people's voting behavior change with Approval? Most definitely. As I've said many time, those who feel a need to compromise on a lesser-evil will be able to vote for their favorites too. That will certainly irritate the lesser-evils who won in Plurality :-) You said: I'm not sure what would happen [endquote] I'm not sure what you're talking about. I told you what would happen. If you think something else would happen, or might happen, don't forget to tell us what and why. You said: , but I expect this system to be at least in the beginning less predictable [endquote] I've made some reliable predictions. If you disagree with them, then share with us your reasons. No one can predict exactly what the changes would be. But they'd definitely be improvements. Why? Read my article and all of my posts on this subject, including the one that you're supposedly replying to. You said: than the old well tested approaches. [endquote] The results of Plurality have been very well tested, and found to be odious to everyone. You said: I'm not saying that this system should not be tried. [endquote] Oh thank you thank you :-) You said: I'm just saying that you might get surprises too [endquote] You will most definitely get surprises, Juho. And you might not like them. But people who live here will like them. Why? Because, unlike now, they'll be supporting what they like. Because they're the result of voters having more freedom regarding the marks that they give, the 1 point ratings and the 0 point ratings. The freedom to give 1 point to every candidate whom they like. No, you won't like that. But people who live here will like the results. You said: , and that the reform process might continue [endquote] Of course it might. As I've said many times now, there mere fact of the Approval balloting results will show that things aren't as our televisions have been telling us. Public wishes, the genuine mainstream and middle, those aren't what we were told. Rapidly media will be more open, and the climate will be good for additional reforms of various kinds. Those wanting additional electoral reforms will be in a better position than now to ask for them. Rank balloting advocates will try their proposals. Maybe a good one will win. Discussion will be open, and so I think it's likely that anything that wins will be good. You said: (or return back as in Burlington). [endquote] I get tired of asking you why people would want to go back to Plurality. This discussion isn't productive. you haven't talked with American favorite-buriers, and observed their voting, as I have. I didn't observe any strong burial tendency in Burlington when I analyzed those votes. [endquot] It was a municipal election. Did your analysis include looking at the labels on the ballots that told what the voter really likes best? Oh way, the ballots don't have such labels, do they :-) As someone who is actually here, I've observed a strong
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 17.5.2012, at 0.41, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I liked Finland's elegant open list system when I read about it. But didn't I read that you use d'Hondt? That under-represents small parties. Sainte-Lague is more perfectly proportional and more fair. Yes, Finland uses D'Hondt (and D'Hondt favours large parties when allocating the last fractional seats). Finland also allocates seats independently in each district. That actually favours large parties more than D'Hondt does. As you know having district size of 1 is quite radical from this point of view. In Finland district sizes are from 6 to 34, but still they they favour large parties. There was a reform proposal that would have counted the proportions at national level, but current government decided not to drive that proposal (that was already once approved earlier) forward. As you said small districts are ok if there's a mixed-member system in which national proportional results are used to top-up the parties' district seat totals. You can do that also without a mixed-member system. The Finnish reform proposal first counted the proportions at national level and then forced all the districts to make their seat allocations so that the end result was in line with the agreed proportions. And anyway, as I said, I don't want parties that aren't good enough to win in single-winner elections to have Congressional seats. Ok. But note that this approach allows minor parties whose supporters live in few hot spots to get seats, while parties of the same size but with even distribution of voters will not get any seats. How could using Approval instead of Plurality in our single-member districts be bad? I've talked about how Approval's results would differ from those of Plurality. Proportional representation and two-party systems are two well known approaches. Approval with single winner districts is a new kind of a system, and that may bring surpises (I wrote about them before the referenced line). Also Approval method itself is not free of problems (my key concern is its strategic problems when there are more than two potential winners). You say that hasn't been discussed enough? Ok, shall we discuss the properties of the political system that would result from choosing what people actually like, when voters are free to indicate all the candidates that they like? How would it differ from now? If you're suggesting that there would be some drawback, disadvantage or bad result that could happen because we elect candidates and parties that are more liked than what Plurality elects, then please let's hear them. I have now understood that your ideal (or actually best reachable) target system is a system that elects from few large parties, where few 2. Technically multi-winner elections would use single-winner districts and Approval. Also the president could be elected with Approval. At some point I thought that you might aim at electing good individuals without strong party affiliations, but maybe you are more party oriented that that. I assume that you expect most candidates to have a strong party affiliation. One topic that may need further discussion is the dynamic behaviour of the proposed method. You seemd to assume that the method would converge towards electing candidates from few well known major parties. Could be but I'm not sure. People could also bullet vote (especially the old party supporters), and the old parties could still dominate (although less than before). There would be no alternating power balance anymore, which could mean that people could feel that they can not change the policy however they vote. Would the governments be minority governments or coalition governments? I mean that there could be need for further reforms. The problems of Approval with three or more potential winners might irritate people and change their voting behaviour. I'm not sure what would happen, but I expect this system to be at least in the beginning less predictable than the old well tested approaches. I'm not saying that this system should not be tried. I'm just saying that you might get surprises too, and that the reform process might continue (or return back as in Burlington). you haven't talked with American favorite-buriers, and observed their voting, as I have. I didn't observe any strong burial tendency in Burlington when I analyzed those votes. Normal voters do not know what FBC means, so I'd expect some burying to be present in Burlington if people have strong tendency to do so. My guess is that ranked votes of Condorcet elections would no be radically different. Maybe some activists would mention the theoretical strategic opportunities, but still I believe most voters would just rank as they would rank in IRV. Bullet voting is probably a more common deviation from sincere ranking than burial is. the C/D examples that I've given--my versions of the Approval bad-example (ABE). Could
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 14.5.2012, at 22.03, Michael Ossipoff wrote: I wrote and you repled: I don't see any denial of Gibbard-Satterthwaite or other problems. My understanding is that many people like Condorcet methods because they think that their co-operation/defection problems are relatively small (although they exist at least in theory). [endquote] Nonsense. Can you justify that claim? I've showed a whole range of numerical examples, from the 27,24,49 example to the 33,32,34 example. I've told how the problem would come about, in Condorcet, just as well as in Approval. Condorcet is not strategy-free, or anything close to it. Since you had some concrete examples I'll provide some concrete feedback in line with what I asked you to provide. Sincere opinions: 33: AB 32: BA 34: C In the U.S. these must be A = Republicans (that hate C as you told) B = Democrats C = Socialists Proposed strategic votes: 33: RD 32: D 34: S You seem to assume winning votes since you expect D to win. So, let's continue with winning votes based Condorcet methods. First problem with the startegy is that it is unlikely that all Democats will vote strategically. If they vote 31:D, 1:DR, R will win. Reaching 32:D is not probable. Republicans have no reason to worry. Second problem. If Democrats really want to win, they could focus on making D look better than R. If that leads to one voter (= 1/99 of the voters) changing their opinion from RD to DR, D will win. On the other had, if they give a public recommendation to their supporters to vote strategically and try to cheat the victory from R, some voters that are close to the D/R border line might get upset and change their opinion from DR to RD. If that happens, the Deomcrat strategy will not work even if 100% of their voters will implement the strategy as told. In this set-up it seems that it would be a better strategy for Democrats to simply continue marketing their own candidate instead of starting to market strategic voting. Third problem. If Republicans hate the third (large) party much more than Democrats do it is not probable that all third party voters will truncate. In real life votes are more heterogeneous. If two of the Socialist supporters vote SD instead of S, D will win even without the strategy. I'd expect more than 0 Socialist supporters to have sincere preference SD. If this is true, then Democrats don't even need a strategy. Or is there some other real life set-up where these sincere opinions would be plausible? Since Democrats want all their supporters to vote strategically, I guess the strategy would include a public recommendation from the party to all their supporters to truncate / bullet vote and not to express their full preferences. Individual decisions and media guidance probably is not sufficient. Different political cultures may react in different ways to such messages. In some societies people would despise such attempt to falsify the results. In some other societies people might expect the party to reveal all such dirty tricks that they could use to fight and win by whatever means. Based on this quick analysis, and in the absense of other more convicing arguments on how this strategy might actually work in real life elections, I tend to classify this method in the theoretical vulnerabilities category (not in th epractical vulnerabilities category). I mean that this example is a bit like a Turing machine that demonstrates that something is possible in theory, but doesn't say much about how well and efficiently this strategy (or program of a Turing machine) works in some real life environment. Am I correct? Can you make this type of vulnerability more plausible by changing the numbers, votes or explanation/mapping to some real life society? Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 05/13/2012 03:04 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. There are many ways to try to convince the people with whom you're debating that they're mistaken. Calling them in denial is not one of them. Now, I could lower myself to your level, but I'm not going to do that. I *am* going to say, though, that this is not the kind of thing that makes me want to invest time in writing replies to your posts. Please don't do it. [endquote] Telling someone that they're in denial about something has no perjorative implication. I meant no offense by it. Condorcetists feel that they've found something ideal, and they want to believe that. When you want to believe something, it's tempting to overlook details that contradict what you want to believe. As I said, I meant no offense. I don't use insults. You continued: Before you start claiming people are in denial, look at what you've written yourself. More specifically, it looks rather bad when you, on the one hand, say that C/D resistance is not incompatible with the Condorcet criterion [endquote] Smith-Top and Schwartz-Top meet CC and are defection-resistant. You continued: , then turn around and claim that Condorcet has a blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem [endquote] Most Condorcetists don't advocate Smith-Top or Schwartz-Top. Most Condorcetists advocate methods that are not defection-resistant. That was what I meant. You continue: Before you talk about a *need* to literally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican, consider what you have said yourself, in response to my posts. You have said that the voters' overcompromise is a result of their history with Plurality, not an objective *need* to, within Condorcet, rearrange the preferences or the worse guy will win. [endquote] Yes, history with Plurality has a lot to do with it. But there's nothing objectively incorrect about what the Condorcet favorite-burier believes. S/he believes that s/he can't maximally help Dem beat Repub, without ranking Dem alone at top. She's right. Admittedly, the chance of having reason to regret not voting Dem alone at top is quite small. S/he doesn't care. Hir need to _literally_ maximally help Dem beat Repub is genuinely felt, and no one can find something objectively wrong with it. In fact, what would _you_ do under the following circumstances: It's a u/a election. Favorite and Compromise are the only acceptables. Most likely, Compromise is surely or almost surely only candidate who can beat Worse, an unacceptable. What are you going to do, in Condorcet? Hah! You'll vote Compromise alone in 1st place, just as I would. Yes, I've said that I wouldn't favorite-bury in Condorcet. Ok, I was mistaken. Of course we might not know for sure that the conditions are right for requiring favorite-burial. If it isn't certain which acceptable can win, then it can be best to vote them all at top. It depends on what information you have. No one said that Condorcet voting is simple. Or at least _I_ didn't. The voter has to _dither_ about whether, in that u/a Condorcet election, it's optimal to vote Compromise alone in 1st place, or to vote all of the acceptables together in 1st place. There are rough ways to try to guess which kind of situation it is. But knowing for sure? Not a problem in Approval. Just approve (only) all of the acceptables. Undeniably, unquestionably, Condorcet is much worse than Approval in a u/a election. You continue: And finally, I'd give this hint: the moment it feels like the other side has somehow acquired a preponderance of people in denial [endquote] It's hardly rare for a majority to be wrong. It's common. You shouldn't use polls as the ultimate arbiter of correctness. I've pointed out that any particular configuration of advocacy on EM is but a snapshot of something that is constantly changing. I've pointed out that Approval won the most recent EM poll on voting systems. Approval won by every method that we counted. Approval was the CW, the Approval winner, and the Range winner. In the published Declaration-signers list, Approval has more mention than does Condorcet, even if you count VoteFair as Condorcet. In fact, one of the mentions of Condorcet specifically ranks it below Approval. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 05/13/2012 03:04 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. There are many ways to try to convince the people with whom you're debating that they're mistaken. Calling them in denial is not one of them. Now, I could lower myself to your level, but I'm not going to do that. I *am* going to say, though, that this is not the kind of thing that makes me want to invest time in writing replies to your posts. Please don't do it. [endquote] I meant no offense. You know that I don't use insult. In denial has no perjorative meaning. When people really want to believe something, they often will disregard details that contradict what they want to believe. If you try the usually-advocated forms of Condorcet in the Approval bad-example (ABE), you'll find that Condorcet indeed fully has the C/D problem. I've posted that example in a 27,24,49 version, and, later, in a 33,32,34 version. But anything inbetween will do too. You continued: Before you start claiming people are in denial, look at what you've written yourself. More specifically, it looks rather bad when you, on the one hand, say that C/D resistance is not incompatible with the Condorcet criterion, then turn around and claim that Condorcet has a blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem of which Condorcetists are supposedly in denial. [endquote] I was referring to the Condorcet versions that are usually proposed. Of course I don't deny that CC and defection resistance are compatible, as in Smith-Top and Schwartz-Top. You continued: Before you talk about a *need* to literally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican, consider what you have said yourself, in response to my posts. You have said that the voters' overcompromise is a result of their history with Plurality, not an objective *need* to, within Condorcet, rearrange the preferences or the worse guy will win. [endquote] They do so because of Plurality history, yes. But their need to overcompromise is the result of a subjective choice, not an objective error. In fact, under certain circumstances you, too, would favorite-bury in Condorcet. I certainly would. (contrary to what I've said in the past, I admit) Suppose that it's a u/a election. The method is Condorcet. It's pretty much certain that Compromise, an acceptable, but not your favorite, is the only candidate who can beat Worse, an unacceptable. What do you do? You rank Compromise alone at top, that's what you do. As would I. But, maybe you _don't_ know that Compromise is the only acceptable who can beat Worse. Maybe you have no idea which one can beat Worse. Then what do you do? You top rate all the acceptables. The problem, of course, is in the majority of circumstances, when it's somewhere in between those two circumstances. So, then how do you know which to do? Good question. You _dither_. In Approval it's simple and easy: Just approve all of the acceptables and none of the unacceptable. How hard is that? Condorcet is much worse, as described above. You continued: And finally, I'd give this hint: the moment it feels like the other side has somehow acquired a preponderance of people in denial, take a more Copernican view. When an otherwise sensible group holds a view that seems to be silly, and to explain the silliness, a greater part of that group needs to be extraordinarily blind (and very specifically so), perhaps they are not. Perhaps, instead, the view is not so silly. [endquote] It's hardly rare for a majority to be mistaken. It's common. You rely too much on polling. As I said, the configuration of advocacy on EM is but a snapshot of something that's constantly changing. As I've mentioned, Approval won the most recent EM poll on voting systems. Approval won by every method that we used. Approval was the CW, the Approval winner, and the Range winner. In the short list of Declaration signers, more people mention Approval than Condorcet, even if you count VoteFair as Condorcet. And one of the people who mentions Condorcet ranks it below Approval. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Juho: You wrote: Yes, I know. I was thinking that good single-winner methods have been designed to elect single winners. They are not designed to elect representative bodies from single-winner districts. [endquote] I don't know when or where Plurality was first proposed /or used, but I can assure you that it's widely believed here that single-member districts, elected by a single-winner method, is the right way to elect Congress. We agree that PR hasn't any chance in the U.S. And you're right: Approval, or any other good single-winner method would tend to elect the same party to Congress in each single winner district. That's fine with me, because if it's a good single-winner method, then it would be a good choice. As for PR, not only is it entirely un-enactable in the U.S. (in spite of previous use of STV), but it also is obsolete. Don't get me wrong--I'm not criticizing PR. The countries where you and Kristofer live don't have the voting system problem that we have, because PR is used. PR can do a great job. But PR can fail when it has too few seats per district, or a threshold that excludes small parties. PR is fine, provided that there are sufficiently many seats per district, and there isn't an inclusion threshold. I suppose a very low threshold would be ok, but it would be better to have no threshold at all. I feel that any lack of perfection in the results of PR in Europe can be attributed to small districts /or theresholds. I won't deny that the we could definitely benefit from borrowing some ideas from Europe. Good PR would be one such beneficial borrowing. But, as I said, PR is un-enactable here. I'd be entirely satisfied if a good single-winner method were used for electing Congress and state legislatures in single-member districts. But which would be the _best_? Neither, of course. Proxy Direct Democracy would be best. Proxy DD uses single-winner methods to make multi-alternative choices. I've defined Proxy DD some months ago, and we discussed it. Basically, all decisions now made by Congress are made by direct democracy. Implemented by home computers, library computers, home telephones, etc. I described how an anonymous voter ID number could be obtained and used. A voter can designate proxies, or a sequence of proxies, or indicate that he'll let his voting power follow his proxy's list of proxies. Your proxy could by anyone. Parent, spouse, child, employer, teacher, party leader, candidate, etc. Anyone. You continued: In theory use of a Condorcet method in the Senate and House of Representatives elections could lead to electing all representatives from a small centrist party (zero from Democrats, zero from Republicans). Probably that is not the intent. [endquote] Electing each representative from the same winning party is what happens now, regardless of what the single-winner method is. Of course that was the intent. And, regarding that small centrist party: There's no reason why a voter-median party must be small. It could be small, or large. And let's be clear about centrist. It can mean, somewhere between the Democrat and the Republican. Or it can mean voter-median. Two very different things. You said: I see multi-winner methods as a separate set of methods where the requitements are quite different from the single-winner method requirements. Representative bodies have multiple members, so by default they should use multi-winner methods. Pluraity based two-party systems are a special case that uses Plurality (a s-w method) to achieve the two-party effect in a m-w election. But in general, a good s-w method is not necessarily a good m-w method, and a good m-w method is not necessarily good s-w method. [endquote] As I said, I'd have no objection to PR, provided that there are lots of seats per district, and no inclusion threshold. And as I also said, we could benefit greatly by borrowing ideas from Europe, and PR would be fine. But PR isn't _necessary_ if we use a good single-winner method. PR isn't the only way. I do understand that jumping e.g. to PR and multi-winner districts in the U.S. may not be possible in the short run. But I have not heard anyone naming use of single-winner methods in single-winner districts to elect multi-member representative bodies as their ideal target. [endquote] It would be a fine endpoint target. I'd be fine with a good single-winner method electing Congress in single-member districts. But, for me, the ideal target would be Proxy DD. As I said, it uses a single-winner method for all decisionmaking. You said: When I say that Condorcet methods are good methods I mean that they are good methods for typical single-winner elections (or to be more exact, for _compromise_seeking_ single-winner elections) (and I don't mean single-winner districts in multi-winner elections). [endquote] ...only if you disregard their favorite-burial incentive, and (for most of them) their C/D problem. Both Approval and Condorcet methods are
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 13.5.2012, at 4.04, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Condorcetists: I'm a condorcetist in the sense that I think that Condorcet methods are a pretty good local optimum for some election types. You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best. No interest to quibble. Unfortunately this problem exists. But it is not fatal. It could be seen also as a large set of available options. You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your 1st choice against your 2nd choice. Approval ballots contain less information than ranked or full rated ballots. But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all. Benefits depend on where you start from. Plurality very effectively puts a gag on everyone who would like something better than the corrupt sleazes that your tv offers as the two choices. We have to hold our nose and vote for the lesser-evil [Democrat], so that we don't waste our vote. Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support? I guess we are speaking about the U.S. elections here. Do you recommend compromise seeking single-winner election methods like Approval or Condorcet to be used in electing representative bodies from single-winner districts? I note that that would lead to an interesting political system that has probably not been tested anywhere in the world yet. Do you understand the difference between liked and unliked? And what would happen if everyone could support whom and what they actually like best? Do you recommend sincere Approval where people sincerely approve those candidates that they like, or strategic Approval where people are supposed to find the best strategy for them and vote that way? (The best strategy often includes approving the lesser-evil too.) My guess is that in public elections strategic approach to Approval would dominate. Do you have any idea how far-reaching the resulting changes would be? No, I'm not saying that the resulting country and world would be perfect in every way. I'm saying that it would be what people actually want--something that they can support without holding their nose. But don't underestimate the magnitude of that change. Though I consider Approval to be the best in some meaningful ways, I also would like more--as you would. But, as I said, most of the benefit comes from everyone being able to support 1st choice and 2nd choice _at all_. Let's not be greedy and dwaddle around forever about what else we could ideally get. Do you want improvement or not? Or would you rather debate forever? If this is a reference to the minor change in the electoral system to change Plurality to Approval, then I agree that Approval has this benefit of being an easy change. I'm not sure that I'd recommend Approval in the U.S. for presidential elections or various representative bodies. But at least for pure single-winner (currently Plurality based) elections like maybe mayoral elections Approval could be a step forward. That leaves open the posibility of moving later forwad for example to Condorcet methods. And, as for helping 1st choice over 2nd choice, while helping both over last choice, free of strategy need: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem. I don't see any denial of Gibbard-Satterthwaite or other problems. My understanding is that many people like Condorcet methods because they think that their co-operation/defection problems are relatively small (although they exist at least in theory). To me the promise of Condorcet methods is in that in large real life electons their vulnerabilities would be small and difficult to use, and as a result people could vote sincerely (without strategic concerns and without strategic intent). And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. I can see a potential problem of numerous voters voting D all_others R or R all_others D in the first Condorcet elections just to make sure that their worst competitors will not win. My hope is that they would soon learn that there is no need and no sense to do so. The promise of Condorcet is that sincere ranking is sufficient. And that's not even counting the good chance of successful offensive burial strategy when there are more than 3 candidates. In real life such strategies are not very easy to implement. I have asked multiple times people to write down some guidelines for strategies in real life Condorcet elections but I have not seen any yet. Theoretical proofs of the existence of some vulnerabilities are not
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Juho: You said: I'm a condorcetist in the sense that I think that Condorcet methods are a pretty good local optimum for some election types. [endquote] Condorcet-Criterion methods would be fine for EM. I doubt very much that EM members would have any favorite-burial need, with Condorcet, or Condorcet-Criterion methods. However, the co-operation/defection problem can appear just as easily here on EM as anywhere. Therefore, for EM voting, Smith-Top would be fine, in this non-favorite-burying electorate that includes a fair number of people who insist on Condorcet's Criterion (CC). Ideally, I'd still prefer ITC, but Smith-Top would be fine. In fact, for that EM electorate, with so few voters, there could even be an argument for Schwartz-Top. Myself, if EM were voting on political candidates, or on voting systems, I'd consider it a u/a election. Therefore, on the Voter's Choice 2 ballot, I'd designate Direct, meaning that my ballot would award points directly ,according to my marks on my Approval ballot. ...And, for EM, I'd prefer Voter's Choice 2 to the single-designation Voter's Choice. Maybe Voter's Choice (only allowing one method designation) could have appeal for when the public distrust all alternative methods. Then, single-designation Voter's Choice might be an easier proposal. But even single-designation Voter's Choice should allow the Direct designation. If the person wants to use it, it would mean giving one point to one candidate, instead of being counted toward the points that a method could bestow on its winner. If we were using single-designation Voter's Choice in a poll on voting systems, I'd designate Direct, and give my point to Approval, as the only acceptable in a u/a election. But if that single-designation Voter's Choice poll were about political candidates, and I wanted to help several, then I'd probably designate Approval, ICT, Smith-Top or Schwartz-Top--whichever seemed more popular. Not that I'd necessarily want to help several. So, yes, Condorcet Criterion methods could have use in some electorates, such as EM. Maybe some organizations too. I'd said: You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best. You replied: No interest to quibble. [endquote] Thank you. But of course that's what EM is all about. A debate-club, and not a productive place for advocacy of actual practical reform. You continued: Unfortunately this problem exists. But it is not fatal. It could be seen also as a large set of available options. [endquote] Make that subset. And yes, as long as you keep the total set large, then voting system reform advocates are their own worst opponents. You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your 1st choice against your 2nd choice. Approval ballots contain less information than ranked or full rated ballots. [endquote] I've already said that I have no quibble with the non-practical mathematical study of ways of counting sincere rankings. But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all. Benefits depend on where you start from. [endquote] And guess where we're starting from here?... :-) We're starting with Plurality. Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support? I guess we are speaking about the U.S. elections here. Do you recommend compromise seeking single-winner election methods like Approval or Condorcet to be used in electing representative bodies from single-winner districts? [endquote] Juho, I recommend that you look up, somewhere, what sort of elections we do here. I'll explain it. Other than some municipal elections all of our elections are single-winner elections. We elect our state legislatures in single-winner elections (though there have been just a few exceptions). We elect the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in single-winner elections. I'm not suggesting a complete change of the political system, such as proportional representation or parliamentary government. Parliamentary govt is fine, but it's too big A change to ask for here, at least now. PR is likewise much too difficult to ask for here, a big change. I'm asking only for the minimal change: For our single-winner elections, for which we already use Plurality, I merely suggest that we repeal Plurality's ridiculous forced falsification requirement. And yes, our Presidential elections are effectively by Plurality, at least in the states, for the most part. Many would prefer one nationally-counted presidential election. So would I, but I'd settle for Approval in the states, first. But, first of all, Approval for Congress (HR and sentate), and state legislatures. You said: I note that that would lead to an interesting political system that has probably not been
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 05/13/2012 03:04 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. There are many ways to try to convince the people with whom you're debating that they're mistaken. Calling them in denial is not one of them. Now, I could lower myself to your level, but I'm not going to do that. I *am* going to say, though, that this is not the kind of thing that makes me want to invest time in writing replies to your posts. Please don't do it. Before you start claiming people are in denial, look at what you've written yourself. More specifically, it looks rather bad when you, on the one hand, say that C/D resistance is not incompatible with the Condorcet criterion, then turn around and claim that Condorcet has a blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem of which Condorcetists are supposedly in denial. Before you talk about a *need* to literally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican, consider what you have said yourself, in response to my posts. You have said that the voters' overcompromise is a result of their history with Plurality, not an objective *need* to, within Condorcet, rearrange the preferences or the worse guy will win. And finally, I'd give this hint: the moment it feels like the other side has somehow acquired a preponderance of people in denial, take a more Copernican view. When an otherwise sensible group holds a view that seems to be silly, and to explain the silliness, a greater part of that group needs to be extraordinarily blind (and very specifically so), perhaps they are not. Perhaps, instead, the view is not so silly. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 14.5.2012, at 22.03, Michael Ossipoff wrote: You said: I note that that would lead to an interesting political system that has probably not been tested anywhere in the world yet. [endquote] Single winner elections have actually been tested! And widely used, Juho! I kid you not! Yes, I know. I was thinking that good single-winner methods have been designed to elect single winners. They are not designed to elect representative bodies from single-winner districts. In theory use of a Condorcet method in the Senate and House of Representatives elections could lead to electing all representatives from a small centrist party (zero from Democrats, zero from Republicans). Probably that is not the intent. I see multi-winner methods as a separate set of methods where the requitements are quite different from the single-winner method requirements. Representative bodies have multiple members, so by default they should use multi-winner methods. Pluraity based two-party systems are a special case that uses Plurality (a s-w method) to achieve the two-party effect in a m-w election. But in general, a good s-w method is not necessarily a good m-w method, and a good m-w method is not necessarily good s-w method. I do understand that jumping e.g. to PR and multi-winner districts in the U.S. may not be possible in the short run. But I have not heard anyone naming use of single-winner methods in single-winner districts to elect multi-member representative bodies as their ideal target. Maybe that could be one intermediate step (first easy step) on a path towards something else. When I say that Condorcet methods are good methods I mean that they are good methods for typical single-winner elections (or to be more exact, for _compromise_seeking_ single-winner elections) (and I don't mean single-winner districts in multi-winner elections). What would be somewhat new would be single-winner elections without Plurality's forced falsification requirement. And yes, the lack of testing and prior experience would be a problem for most reform proposals. But not for Approval, because, as I said, that minimal change from Plurality is so simple that it would be obvious that it would be an improvement, and nothing other than an improvement. Both Approval and Condorcet methods are compromise seeking single-winner methods in the sense that they tend to elect centrist compromise candiates with no requirement of proportionality. In that sense changing the method from Plurality to Approval may lead to major changes in the distribution of the seats in the long run (although the technical change is small). If one starts from a two-party set-up, in the first elections Approval may just allow some approvals to be given also to third parties, but it may still elect practically all representatives from the two old parties. Old party supporters might generally bullet vote. But in the long run things may change. Approval has the tendency to elect centrists, not from the two major parties of the two wings. One may consider also that property to be an improvement. But from another viewpoint, maybe people don't want the system to change in that way. If one wants to allow also third party candidates to win, maybe the long term t arget could be proportional representation of all the parties. The problems of Condorcet (when used as part of a a multi-winner method in single-winner districts) are quite similar. It is possible that use of Approval would not lead to as clear tendency of electing centrist candidates as described above. But that does not mean that the method would behave in some other sensible way that would be easy to predict and easy to justify. Large parties might continue to bullet vote, and small parties might not grow strong enough to widely challenge the old strong ones. Voters might stick to the stong ones since they are considered to be the strongest players in Washington anyway. If you're merely saying that you make no recommendation regarding voting systems here, then that's fine. If you're saying that Approval is less qualified for recommendation, than that claim would call for justification. I think the U.S. citizens should decide, and I try to avoid taking position on what they should do. However, the reason why I see potential problems in the use of Approval or Condorcet in electing representative bodies is that they are not planned to be used that way. There is no nice theory behind that would support that kind of a political system. But maybe also such untested political system could be one useful (intermediate?) step in the reform process. U.S. citizens to decide. For presidential elections Approval and Condorcet would be fine (or as good as they are as single-winner methods) except that the presidential elections of the U.S.A. are not pure single-winner elections in the sense that the whole presidential system is based on the assumption of having
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
Responding because you wrote, but with no authority. On May 12, 2012, at 9:04 PM, Michael Ossipoff wrote: Condorcetists: You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best. No - we want to move past that. You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your 1st choice against your 2nd choice. True that while Approval is much better than Plurality, it keeps this weakness. But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all. We get back to wanting more when offered Approval's offering only best and worst and we are looking at a candidate we cannot stand grouping with best, yet desperately want to vote as being better than worst. Plurality very effectively puts a gag on everyone who would like something better than the corrupt sleazes that your tv offers as the two choices. We have to hold our nose and vote for the lesser-evil [Democrat], so that we don't waste our vote. Again, we do not want this lesser-evil to be seen in the counting as desired equally with best, yet also see this lesser-evil as better than those we classify as worst. Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support? For all to support their favorites is our desire, hoping we do equal seeing. Do you understand the difference between liked and unliked? And what would happen if everyone could support whom and what they actually like best? Do you have any idea how far-reaching the resulting changes would be? No, I'm not saying that the resulting country and world would be perfect in every way. I'm saying that it would be what people actually want--something that they can support without holding their nose. But don't underestimate the magnitude of that change. Though I consider Approval to be the best in some meaningful ways, I also would like more--as you would. But, as I said, most of the benefit comes from everyone being able to support 1st choice and 2nd choice _at all_. Let's not be greedy and dwaddle around forever about what else we could ideally get. Do you want improvement or not? Or would you rather debate forever? Do want the improvement we see Condorcet offering, and see you seeming to be promoting endless debate rather than working to move ahead. With Condorcet: . Those who still see Approval as good enough can vote it in Condorcet by using a single rank for all liked candidates. .. Those who want to indicate unequal liking simply use unequal ranking. .. The vote counters can see and respond to the unequal liking. And, as for helping 1st choice over 2nd choice, while helping both over last choice, free of strategy need: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co- operation/defection problem. The problem can be overstated. It requires willing plotters, whose efforts can be too easily seen and responded to - especially in significant elections such as for governor or senator. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. With better voting methods the party balance can vary in response to voter desires. And that's not even counting the good chance of successful offensive burial strategy when there are more than 3 candidates. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] To Condorcetists:
Condorcetists: You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best. You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your 1st choice against your 2nd choice. But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all. Plurality very effectively puts a gag on everyone who would like something better than the corrupt sleazes that your tv offers as the two choices. We have to hold our nose and vote for the lesser-evil [Democrat], so that we don't waste our vote. Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support? Do you understand the difference between liked and unliked? And what would happen if everyone could support whom and what they actually like best? Do you have any idea how far-reaching the resulting changes would be? No, I'm not saying that the resulting country and world would be perfect in every way. I'm saying that it would be what people actually want--something that they can support without holding their nose. But don't underestimate the magnitude of that change. Though I consider Approval to be the best in some meaningful ways, I also would like more--as you would. But, as I said, most of the benefit comes from everyone being able to support 1st choice and 2nd choice _at all_. Let's not be greedy and dwaddle around forever about what else we could ideally get. Do you want improvement or not? Or would you rather debate forever? And, as for helping 1st choice over 2nd choice, while helping both over last choice, free of strategy need: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. And that's not even counting the good chance of successful offensive burial strategy when there are more than 3 candidates. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
I do not know what this email is asking. There's so much that is not relevant in it that I don't know how answer it. It's a badly-formed question, so I don't have any way to answer it. Please give me an up-r-down vote on whatever it is you are talking about. From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Michael Ossipoff Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2012 7:05 PM To: election-meth...@electorama.com Subject: [EM] To Condorcetists: Condorcetists: You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best. You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your 1st choice against your 2nd choice. But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all. Plurality very effectively puts a gag on everyone who would like something better than the corrupt sleazes that your tv offers as the two choices. We have to hold our nose and vote for the lesser-evil [Democrat], so that we don't waste our vote. Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support? Do you understand the difference between liked and unliked? And what would happen if everyone could support whom and what they actually like best? Do you have any idea how far-reaching the resulting changes would be? No, I'm not saying that the resulting country and world would be perfect in every way. I'm saying that it would be what people actually want--something that they can support without holding their nose. But don't underestimate the magnitude of that change. Though I consider Approval to be the best in some meaningful ways, I also would like more--as you would. But, as I said, most of the benefit comes from everyone being able to support 1st choice and 2nd choice _at all_. Let's not be greedy and dwaddle around forever about what else we could ideally get. Do you want improvement or not? Or would you rather debate forever? And, as for helping 1st choice over 2nd choice, while helping both over last choice, free of strategy need: You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite. You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem. And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican. And that's not even counting the good chance of successful offensive burial strategy when there are more than 3 candidates. Mike Ossipoff Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] To Condorcetists:
On 5/12/12 10:39 PM, Paul Kislanko wrote: I do not know what this email is asking. There’s so much that is not relevant in it that I don’t know how answer it. It’s a badly-formed question, so I don’t have any way to answer it. it's one reason why i plonked Mike. i don't see anything from Mike O unless someone else on the list quotes him. Please give me an up-r-down vote on whatever it is you are talking about. *From:*election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] *On Behalf Of *Michael Ossipoff** * plonk. * -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
