Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 04:44 AM 12/28/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: [it was written:] I am satisfied that there are perfectly adequate vote once systems available for all public elections, both single-office elections and assembly elections. If they are good for public elections, why are they *never* used for smaller organizations where repeated ballot is easy? Wouldn't it save time? Yes, advanced methods *can* save time, *if* a majority is still required. Otherwise the result can *easily* be one that a majority would reject. How often? Depends on the method, I'm sure, but my estimate is that it's about one in ten for IRV in nonpartisan elections in the U.S. It's pretty easy to show. Wouldn't that be because you can do RRO type iteration because of the small size? Of course. (i.e., nobody considers using advanced methods in such organizations when, for example, face-to-face meetings are possible and normal for election. There are exceptions, and, I'd say, they have been warped by outside political considerations; there is a sense among some student organizations, for example, that by implementing IRV, they are advancing a general progressive cause. They've been had.) Consider the extreme, where there's just you and a few friends. There would seem to be little point in voting when you can just all discuss the options and reach a conclusion. Absolutely. However, this kind of direct process indicates the foundations of democracy. There are problems of scale as the scale increases, but the *substance* does not intrinsically change, until not only the scale has become large, but the culture expects alienation and division. When the scale is small, people will take the time to resolve deep differences, ordinarily (if they care about the cooperation being negotiated). That cannot be done, directly, on a large scale. *However, it can be done through a system that creates networks of connection.* These networks are what we actually need, and not only is it unnecessary to change laws to get them, it actually would be a mistake to try to legislate it. If it's subject to law, it is subject to control and corruption. It would be like the State telling small groups how they should come to agreement! I would say that the problem is not just that culture expects alienation, but that a full on everybody discusses with everybody else scales very poorly (worst case quadratic) so that the common opinion never converges, or converges very slowly. This is somewhat related to Parkinson's coefficient of inefficiency - as the number of members in a committe grows, subgroups form and there's no longer direct discussion. The networks of connections would presumably make groups that readjust and form in different configurations according to the political positions of the people - like water, hence *Liquid* Democracy. I think vote buying would be a problem with that concept, though, because if the network of connections is public, then those who want to influence the system can easily check whether the members are upholding their ends of the bargain (votes for money). Perhaps there would be if you just can't reach an agreement (okay, this has gone long enough, let's vote and get this over with). Absolutely. And this happens all the time with direct democratic process. And those who have participated in it much usually don't take losing all that seriously, provided the rules have been followed. Under Robert's Rules, it takes a two-thirds majority to close debate and vote. Common respect usually allows all interested parties to speak before the question is called. However, it takes a majority to decide a question, period, any question, not just an election. That's the bottom line for democracy. Taking less may *usually* work well enough, but it's risky. It can tear an organization apart, under some circumstances. That's why election by plurality is strongly discouraged in Robert's Rules. Given the above, maybe advanced methods would have their place as figurative tiebreakers when one can't reach a majority by other means. Say that the discussion/meeting goes on for a long time, and a supermajority decides it's been long enough. If there are multiple proposals, one could then have an election among those (law, no law, law with amendment, law without rider, whatever). If there is no method that's good enough to provide the majority certification you seek, there could be a runoff afterwards - but I'll note that a runoff doesn't magically produce majority support, since if one of the runoff candidates/options is bad, most would obviously align themselves with the other. The Le Pen situation would be a good example of that. Just because Chirac got 82%, that doesn't mean that Chirac is best, just that he's best in that one-on-one comparison. In short, you'd have something like: for very small groups, the cost
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:36 AM 12/28/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:45 AM The UK is also parliamentary, so I suppose there would be few places where you could actually have a runoff. Given that all members of the UK Parliament are elected from single-member districts (UK constituencies) and that all districts were contested by at least three candidates (max 15 in 2005), it would be theoretically possible to have run-off elections in all 645 districts. In the 2005 general election, 425 of the districts were won with a plurality of the votes not a majority, so that could have been 425 run-offs. Quite a thought! Sure. Consider the implications. Most of those who voted, in those districts, did not support the winner. Odd, don't you think, that you imagine an outcry over a weak Condorcet winner, when what is described is, quite possibly, an ongoing outrage. Is it actually an outrage? It's hard to tell. It's quite possible that the majority was willing to accept the winner; that is normally the case, in fact. Bucklin would have found some majorities there. IRV probably -- in spite of the theories of some -- probably a bit fewer. In nonpartisan elections, IRV almost never finds a majority when one is not found in the first round, but those were, I presume, partisan elections, where finding a majority is more common.) However, consider this: the Plurality voting system (FPTP) encourages compromise already. There would have been more sincere first preference votes. My guess, though, is that the use of, say, Bucklin, would have resulted in *at least* half of those pluralities becoming a majority, possibly more. However, this is the real effect of the system described: In maybe one election out of 10, were it top two runoff, the result would shift, which, I contend, is clearly a more democratic result. There might be a slightly increased improvement if the primary method weren't top two Plurality, majority win, but a method which would find a Condorcet winner or at least include that winner in a runoff. How much is it worth to improve the result -- it could be a very significant improvement -- in 10% of elections? I'd say it's worth a lot! I'd also say that even if you had a magic best utility single-winner method, it wouldn't be the right method to use in a parliamentary context. If a majority of the voters agree with some position (and we discard gerrymander-type effects, intentional or not), then the parliament will agree with that position, unanimously. Hence... PR is needed. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Just for clarity, can we agree that In Bucklin, after the first round, there is no majority. is a non-sequitor? There aren't rounds in Bucklin. All counts for all (#voters ranking alternative x = rank n are known simultaneously. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 12:55 PM 12/30/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: However, consider this: the Plurality voting system (FPTP) encourages compromise already. There would have been more sincere first preference votes. My guess, though, is that the use of, say, Bucklin, would have resulted in *at least* half of those pluralities becoming a majority, possibly more. However, this is the real effect of the system described: In maybe one election out of 10, were it top two runoff, the result would shift, which, I contend, is clearly a more democratic result. There might be a slightly increased improvement if the primary method weren't top two Plurality, majority win, but a method which would find a Condorcet winner or at least include that winner in a runoff. How much is it worth to improve the result -- it could be a very significant improvement -- in 10% of elections? I'd say it's worth a lot! I'd also say that even if you had a magic best utility single-winner method, it wouldn't be the right method to use in a parliamentary context. If a majority of the voters agree with some position (and we discard gerrymander-type effects, intentional or not), then the parliament will agree with that position, unanimously. Hence... PR is needed. I was considering single-winner context. Yes. For representation, single-winner is, almost guaranteed, a nondemocratic proposition. If I have to contend with you to determine who represents the two of us, it can't be said that whoever wins actually represents us both. Only if I can choose my representative can I be truly said to be represented fairly. STV methods approach this, but Asset simply does it. I choose the candidate I most trust, there isn't any reason to vote for anyone else. I can, perhaps, even register as an elector-candidate and vote for myself, if I'm willing to go to the trouble of participating in further process. And then this person will either end up representing me in the assembly, or will, again, choose the person who does end up in the assembly. In an Asset system, it may not be necessary that the votes be passed on, as in a delegable proxy system. Rather, the electors would negotiate, and when enough of them agree with each other on the identity of the seat, they register the required quota of votes and it is done. I've been recommending the Hare quota, not the Droop quota, because it is theoretically possible that all the votes would be used; the Droop quota assumes wasted votes. Further, because I'm looking to the possibility that electors might be able to vote directly in the Assembly, the voting power of the seats is equal to the summed voting power of the votes transferred by the supporting electors to the seat. Because it's very likely that *some* votes will be wasted, i.e., won't create a seat, for some reason or other, I'd rather aim for a number of seats but tolerate that normally, there would be a vacancy. There might be even more than one! If the electors can vote directly, they actually don't lose that much if they are unable to elect a seat. If they can vote by proxy, it's almost as good! -- but they wouldn't have deliberative rights, just voting rights. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 12:46 PM 12/30/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:48 AM 12/28/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: That makes the entire cycle, including polls and feedback, into one election system. Method is too narrow, because the system isn't just input, then function, then output; it doesn't just translate individual preferences into social preferences. Election systems in the real world are extraordinarily complex. Voting systems are methods for taking a ballot and generating a result; sometimes this is a fixed and final result, sometimes it is feedback for subsequent process, which may include a complete repetition, repetition with some restrictions, or even a coin toss. Individual preferences do not exist in a vacuum, there is inherent and massive feedback in real societies. The idea that there are these isolated voters who don't talk to each other and don't influence each other by their positions is ... ivory tower, useful for examining certain theoretical characteristics of systems, but not for predicting the function of systems in the real world. It can be useful, sometimes, but we must remember the limits on that utility as well. Thats all nice, but with the versatility of that wider definition, you get the chance of problems that accompany systems that include feedback within the system itself. Such can include cycling, and too much of either stability (reaches a compromise that wasn't really a good compromise) or instability (doesn't settle, as with cycling, or reaches a near-random result depending on the initial state of the system). We are now considering as relevant cycling within the entire electorate, within the process by which a whole society comes to an election with the set of preferences and preference strengths that they have. Human societies have been dealing with this for a long, long time, and the best answers we have so far are incorporated in traditional deliberative process, which insures that every point of view of significance is heard, that possible compromises are explored, and that there is an overall agreement that it is time to make a decision, before the decision is actually made. And then the decision is generally made by or with the explicit consent of a majority of those voting, with the implicit consent of those not voting (but able to vote). In short, there's a wider range of possible outcomes because the system permits many more configurations than a simple one-shot election method. This is good when it leads to a better result from voters optimizing their votes in a way that reaches the true compromise, but it's bad when factions use that increased range to try to game the system. If Range voters (for instance) need to consult polls or the prevailing atmosphere to gain knowledge of how to express their votes, then that too is something the strategists can manipulate. Range voters don't need to consult polls! They can do quite well, approaching the most strategic possible vote, without them, voting purely based on their opinions of the candidates and some common sense. Those who strategize, who do something stronger than this, are taking risks. All the groups will include people who strategize When one uses strategy to construct a wider mechanism on top of a single election method by adding a feedback system (such as one may say is done by Range if it's used honestly), then that's good; but if one uses strategy to pull the method on which the system is based in a direction that benefits one's own preferences at the expense of others, giving oneself additional power, then that is bad. Even worse is if many factions do so and the system degrades further because it can't stabilize or because the noise swamps it; or if the combined strategizing leads to a result that's worse for all (chicken-race dynamics) The pulling of a group toward its preferred result is, however, what we ask voters to do! Tell us what you want, and indicate by your votes how strongly you want it! Want A or you are going to revolt? You can say that, perhaps, though we are only going to give you one full vote to do it with. Want to pretend that you will revolt? -- or merely your situation is such that A is so much better than the others that you don't want to dilute the vote for A against anyone by giving them your vote? Fine. That's your choice. It helps the system make its decision. Be aware that if the result is not going to be A, you have abstained from the result. If there is majority failure, you may still be able to choose between others. (IRV *enforces* this, you don't get to cast a further vote unless your candidate is eliminated.) *Truncation will be normal*. And, in fact, represents a reasonably sincere vote for most voters! (In most common elections under common conditions). Why are these strategic voters different. I realized the error
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd wrote: snip The term majority as applied to elections has some very well-established meanings. If we say that a candidate got a majority in an election, we mean that a majority of those voting supported that candidate. There are quibbles around the edges. What about ballots with marks on them but the clerk can't figure out what the marks mean? Robert's Rules are clear: that's a vote, part of the basis for a majority. snip I guess a little rehashing is needed to correct Abd's miss-stating of Robert's Rules of Order on the basis for determining a majority. Abd seems to be relying on RRONR description in chapter XIII on Voting, on page 402 of how to deal with illegal votes, such as over-votes, cast by legal voters -- they should be included in the denominator for calculating a majority. However, on page 387 RRONR states that majority vote means more than half of the votes cast by persons legally entitled to vote, EXCLUDING BLANKS OR ABSTENTIONS... [emphasis added]. The question is whether an exhausted ballot (one with no preference shown between the finalists) in an IRV election, is an abstention or an illegal vote. Since RRONR mentions abstentions rather than merely using the word blanks, it can be interpreted that there may be some way of indicating abstention, other than with a blank ballot. I think this perfectly fits the concept of an exhausted ballot, where the voter has abstained and indicated no preference between remaining candidates, if the voters favored candidates cannot win. There is room here for reasonable people to disagree. Perhaps an organization could reasonably write bylaws to expressly include or exclude such exhausted ballots from the denominator in determining a majority threshold. If the organization wrote bylaws to include exhausted ballots in the denominator, then an election could fail, requiring some alternate procedure (or new election) to fill the office, or the bylaws could be written to exclude exhausted ballots so that the one election would be decisive using a reasonable definition of a majority vote (using RRONR's standard definition that EXCLUDES abstentions in determining a majority threshold.) Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net; Election Methods Mailing List election-meth...@electorama.com Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 7:30 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 At 12:02 PM 12/28/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: I don't want to re-hash our Wikipedia argument about whether an exhausted ballot in a full-ranking-possible IRV election should be treated as an abstention -- like a stay-home voter in a runoff (excluded from the denominator), or treated as a vote for none-of-the-above (included in the denominator), in deciding whether the winner has a majority. I will simply say, that I have not resorted to deception, in any of my writing about IRV and majority winners. I'm not aware that I've attributed this personally to Terry. However, the description above shows a certain slipperiness. The term majority as applied to elections has some very well-established meanings. If we say that a candidate got a majority in an election, we mean that a majority of those voting supported that candidate. There are quibbles around the edges. What about ballots with marks on them but the clerk can't figure out what the marks mean? Robert's Rules are clear: that's a vote, part of the basis for a majority. However, public election rules generally only admit, as part of the basis for a majority, ballots containing a vote for an eligible candidate. By making up some complicated definitions and conditions, Terry can attempt to confuse the issue, which is what this is looking like. The San Jose initiative ballot arguments, 1998, are worth looking at: http://www.smartvoter.org/1998nov/ca/scl/meas/F/ Impartial Analysis from the County Counsel ...If a candidate now has a majority of the ballots, that candidate is elected. If not this process is repeated until one candidate receives a majority of the ballots. IRV eliminates the need for the second, separate, runoff election. ... The analysis mentions candidate eliminations. It does not mention ballot eliminations, and that is what is necessary to consider the IRV majority a majority of the ballots. Terry, it is sophistry to claim that the ordinary person would not understand majority of the ballots would mean the majority of all ballots legitimately cast in the election. Note that Terry here refers to full ranking possible IRV elections. It's *possible* to make that argument if, indeed, full ranking is possible. That has not been a proposal in San Francisco. Further, with real runoffs, the voter makes a choice to vote or not. In the primary, the voter may not even have known the relevant candidates well enough to make a choice. But the point about deception, here
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Kathy Dopp wrote: snip since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted. snip I believe my interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order is correct. In order for a ballot being reviewed by a teller to be blank, and thus excluded from the majority threshold calculation, as directed by Robert's Rule of order, the voter must certainly have submitted a ballot paper. RRONR is clearly not referring to hypothetical ballots from those members of an association who did not submit a ballot at all. Those who do not submit a ballot clearly did not vote, but those who cast ballots may abstain or leave the ballot blank, and thus not have their ballots included when calculating the majority threshold. The only question is whether an exhausted ballot should be interpreted as abstaining on the question of which finalist should win, or if that ballot should be interpreted as an illegal vote, which RRONR says should be included in calculating the majority threshold. One can think of the ranked ballot as a series of questions about pairwise contests...not unlike the way a Condorcet ballot is viewed... one of the questions could be IF the race comes down to a final runoff between candidate C and candidate E, which should win? The difference between IRV and Condorcet is that IRV uses a sequential algorithm to determine which candidates are finalists, while Condorcet does not reduce to finalists at all. However, if a voter has indicated no ranking for either C or E, that voter has effectively abstained from that particular question. Since the voter who voluntarily truncates is de facto abstaining from deciding which finalist should be elected, if the voter has indicated no preference between them, I think it is reasonable to treat this abstention as an abstention as directed by RRONR. While I agree that it may not be completely UNresonable to take the view that Abd and Kathy Dopp favor, I think it is contrary to the most usual interpretation of RRONR. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 7:54 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 From: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Abd wrote: snip The term majority as applied to elections has some very well-established meanings. If we say that a candidate got a majority in an election, we mean that a majority of those voting supported that candidate. majority. However, on page 387 RRONR states that majority vote means more than half of the votes cast by persons legally entitled to vote, EXCLUDING BLANKS OR ABSTENTIONS... [emphasis added]. The question is whether an exhausted ballot (one with no preference shown between the finalists) in an IRV election, is an abstention or an illegal vote. -- Terry, It's difficult to know whether you are merely confused or deliberately trying to mislead, but it is clear that Abd ul's definition of majority was exactly correct when Abd ul said that: we say that a candidate got a majority in an election, we mean that a majority of those voting supported that candidate. as that corresponds exactly with the Robert's Rules you yourself cite since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted. Fair Vote and anyone else who claims that IRV/STV produces majority winners in any U.S. election (where a full ranking of all candidates is never required according to U.S. law and is not even permitted in most jurisdictions) is flat-out lying and deliberately attempting to mislead the public. Majority winners has a very simple definition - a majority out of all voters who cast votes in that election contest. To redefine majority winner as a winner out of all voters whose ballots have not expired by the final IRV/STV counting round is just one of the many unethically misleading statements made by IRV/STV proponents. As everyone on this list knows, IRV/STV also does not solve the spoiler problem if a spoiler is simply defined (as it has been for decades) as a nonwinning candidate whose presence in the election contest changes who wins the contest. There are so many examples of provably incorrect and misleading statements being made by Fair Vote and other IRV/STV proponents, even after these proponents were amply informed of the falsity of their statements, that the only conclusion one can reasonably draw is that these IRV/STV proponents are deliberately trying to mislead the public, in which case, the avowed publicly stated goals of IRV/STV proponents must also be treated as suspect. Cheers, Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net wrote: Kathy Dopp wrote: snip since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted. snip To be more precise, I meant since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted IN THE ELECTION CONTEST. I certainly did not mean on the entire ballot as you interpreted. Since the normal meaning of a majority winner is a majority out of those who voted in the election contest, as per Robert's Rules, the false claim made by Fair Vote and other IRV/STV proponents that IRV/STV finds majority winners is deliberate deception. There is no other reasonable explanation. If Fair Vote and other IRV/STV proponents wanted to be precisely truthful, they would be modifying their claim as follows: IRV/STV finds a majority winner OUT OF THE VOTERS WHOSE BALLOTS ARE NOT ELIMINATED BY THE FINAL IRV/STV COUNTING ROUND BECAUSE THEY HAPPENED TO VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE WHO IS LEFT IN THE FINAL IRV/STV COUNTING ROUND - AND IF A MAJORITY IS NOT FOUND IN ROUND ONE, THAN IRV/STV WINNERS USUALLY RECEIVE VOTES FROM LESS THAN A MAJORITY OF VOTERS WHO VOTED IN THE ELECTION CONTEST Only then, could I consider that Fair Vote and other IRV/STV proponents are attempting to be honest rather than deliberately misleading. But then, I do place honesty at the top of my value system. -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ Post-Election Vote Count Audit A Short Legislative Administrative Proposal http://electionmathematics.org//ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/Vote-Count-Audit-Bill-2009.pdf History of Confidence Election Auditing Development Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
I side with Abd over Terry on this one. Topic is what activity should be counted as a vote in determining what percentage of the votes were for the leader (was it a majority?). Agreed that overvotes count - the voter clearly intended to vote, though the result was defective. Agreed that blanks do not count - the voter avoided any attempt to vote. But what of a vote for C which is for a loser aince A and B each got more votes (assume that all three were nominees for this discussion)? Terry would exclude these as abstentions since they dropped oujt of the counting before the final step. Abd and I would count them with A and B as part of total votes - C voters, like A and B voters, were expressing their desires. To me abstention is simply refusal to vote - blank fits where the ballot provides for several races and a voter, while submitting the ballot, leaves the field for this race blank. What we suggest makes achieving a majority more difficult. I say I am going for truth, but suggest a debate as to whether demanding a majority is appropriate here. Note that a majority makes more sense for Plurality elections - there voters can not completely express their desires and C voters could vote for A or B in a runoff. In IRV or Score or Condorcet, desires can be more completely expressed - so that possible value for a runoff is little to none. DWK On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:48:02 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: Abd wrote: snip The term majority as applied to elections has some very well-established meanings. If we say that a candidate got a majority in an election, we mean that a majority of those voting supported that candidate. There are quibbles around the edges. What about ballots with marks on them but the clerk can't figure out what the marks mean? Robert's Rules are clear: that's a vote, part of the basis for a majority. snip I guess a little rehashing is needed to correct Abd's miss-stating of Robert's Rules of Order on the basis for determining a majority. Abd seems to be relying on RRONR description in chapter XIII on Voting, on page 402 of how to deal with illegal votes, such as over-votes, cast by legal voters -- they should be included in the denominator for calculating a majority. However, on page 387 RRONR states that majority vote means more than half of the votes cast by persons legally entitled to vote, EXCLUDING BLANKS OR ABSTENTIONS... [emphasis added]. The question is whether an exhausted ballot (one with no preference shown between the finalists) in an IRV election, is an abstention or an illegal vote. Since RRONR mentions abstentions rather than merely using the word blanks, it can be interpreted that there may be some way of indicating abstention, other than with a blank ballot. I think this perfectly fits the concept of an exhausted ballot, where the voter has abstained and indicated no preference between remaining candidates, if the voters favored candidates cannot win. There is room here for reasonable people to disagree. Perhaps an organization could reasonably write bylaws to expressly include or exclude such exhausted ballots from the denominator in determining a majority threshold. If the organization wrote bylaws to include exhausted ballots in the denominator, then an election could fail, requiring some alternate procedure (or new election) to fill the office, or the bylaws could be written to exclude exhausted ballots so that the one election would be decisive using a reasonable definition of a majority vote (using RRONR's standard definition that EXCLUDES abstentions in determining a majority threshold.) Terry Bouricius ... -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 08:50 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Kathy Dopp wrote: snip since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted. snip I believe my interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order is correct. In order for a ballot being reviewed by a teller to be blank, and thus excluded from the majority threshold calculation, as directed by Robert's Rule of order, the voter must certainly have submitted a ballot paper. Bouricius, you are totally off, stretching, trying desperately to find ways to interpret the words there to mean what you want them to mean. A blank is a blank ballot with no mark on it. From p. 401: All blanks must be ignored as scrap paper. There is no way to know if this was actually cast by a voter, or if it was a piece of paper stuck to the underside of another ballot. It is a *blank*. There is another possibility: the ballot has multiple questions on it. In this case, each section is treated as if it were a separate piece of paper. In this case, if an election is in a section, and there are no marks in the section, the ballot is considered, for that election, as if blank. In this case, we may consider that the voter has abstained. But if the voter marks in the section, but the marks are ambiguous, or do not cast a vote for an eligible candidate, in this case the voter is considered to have voted, and is part of the basis for a majority. Public election rules differ here. A voter must generally have cast a vote for an eligible candidate, and the vote must not be spoiled, if I'm correct, for it to count as part of the basis for a majority. Robert's Rules of Order places particular emphasis on finding a majority, and if a vote is doubtful, it may have been the intention of the voter to participate, but not to vote for the otherwise-winner. RRONR is clearly not referring to hypothetical ballots from those members of an association who did not submit a ballot at all. Not submitting a ballot at all -- or submitting an explicitly abstaining ballot -- is an abstention. Those who do not submit a ballot clearly did not vote, but those who cast ballots may abstain or leave the ballot blank, and thus not have their ballots included when calculating the majority threshold. Casting a blank ballot is equivalent to an abstention, except it isn't explicitly recorded as such, because the member pretended to vote. However, all the member has to do is write on the ballot NO! and it is a vote. Against all the candidates, effectively. (YES! would have the same effect!) The only question is whether an exhausted ballot should be interpreted as abstaining on the question of which finalist should win, or if that ballot should be interpreted as an illegal vote, which RRONR says should be included in calculating the majority threshold. There is no question. Bouricius, THERE IS NO QUESTION. Not for any parliamentarian. Robert's Rules are quite clear, if you actually read the whole section on preferential voting, that majority failure may occur if voters don't fully rank candidates. This was utterly clear from precedent, and the interpretation that you are making up here does enormous violence to the very concept of majority vote. Questions submitted to votes should be explicit. Voters don't definitively know who the finalists are, with IRV. They may have intended to vote for a finalist, but got it wrong as to who the finalists were. They may detest both finalists and are unwilling to support either. If a majority is required, truncation is a very legitimate strategy, it means, please, if it is not one of the candidates I have ranked, I want further process to determine a winner, I want the chance to reconsider and maybe even to write in a candidate on the runoff ballot. (*Which is allowed in many places.*) One can think of the ranked ballot as a series of questions about pairwise contests...not unlike the way a Condorcet ballot is viewed... You can. But that's not what's on the ballot. one of the questions could be IF the race comes down to a final runoff between candidate C and candidate E, which should win? Sure. Now, there are 23 candidates, as in San Francisco. There are three ranks on the ballot. Further, I don't even recognize most of the names. Maybe I know the frontrunners, but what if I don't? Should I vote for someone who I don't know? No, I vote for the candidate or candidates I know and trust. In a real runoff election, if no majority is found, I am then presented with, usually, two candidates, and I can pay particular attention to them. We see comeback elections with real runoffs that we don't see with IRV, for several reasons, all of which indicate that these comebacks improved results. The difference between IRV and Condorcet is that IRV uses a sequential algorithm to determine which candidates are finalists, while Condorcet does not reduce to finalists at all. Condorcet could be conceptualized that way.
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 09:05 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:36 AM Do you think my runoff idea could work, or is it too complex? My personal view is that runoff is not desirable and would be an unnecessary and unwanted expense. I know runoff voting systems are used in some other countries, but they are not used at all in the UK. They are used in places with strong multiparty systems. The UK is a two-party system. The UK is also parliamentary, so I suppose there would be few places where you could actually have a runoff. Scotland doesn't have runoffs either, yet multiple parties grew there after its change from FPTP/SMD to MMP. I'm not sure about Scottish politics, but I think there are three or four main parties now. I am satisfied that there are perfectly adequate vote once systems available for all public elections, both single-office elections and assembly elections. If they are good for public elections, why are they *never* used for smaller organizations where repeated ballot is easy? Wouldn't it save time? Yes, advanced methods *can* save time, *if* a majority is still required. Otherwise the result can *easily* be one that a majority would reject. How often? Depends on the method, I'm sure, but my estimate is that it's about one in ten for IRV in nonpartisan elections in the U.S. It's pretty easy to show. Wouldn't that be because you can do RRO type iteration because of the small size? Consider the extreme, where there's just you and a few friends. There would seem to be little point in voting when you can just all discuss the options and reach a conclusion. Perhaps there would be if you just can't reach an agreement (okay, this has gone long enough, let's vote and get this over with). In short, you'd have something like: for very small groups, the cost of involving a voting method is too high compared to the benefits. For intermediate groups, iteration works. For large groups, voting is the right thing to do, because iteration is expensive and may in any event lead to cycling because people can't just share the nuances of their positions with a thousand others, hive-mind style. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Still, your point is taken. The problem with ordinal methods is that you can't specify strength; but that's also, in some sense, an advantage, since that means the method is less prone to being tricked by noise or by optimization. Which matters more is a question of perspective and what you want out of the method. Sure. However, Range methods are actually less vulnerable to being tricked by noise. Range votes are sincere votes, in what they express as to ranking. Equal ranking is an important option, when equal ranking isn't an option, then low-preference votes get just as much strength as high preference ones. That's noise, and it can be severe. Those decisions may be made last-minute based on sound bites on last might's TV broadcast, an automated phone call received, etc. These phenomena don't generally shift heavy preference, but they will shift minor preference. In Range, it's possible that the effect is damped, negative publicity, not well-considered, may lower ratings some but it would have to be pretty bad to shift it from 100% to 0%. Methods which allow equal ranking devolve to Approval, which is a Range method, when voters fully truncate. Optimization and the similar normalization -- the latter being probably almost universal -- do distort Range results, but only toward Approval results. Which distort towards Plurality in the extreme. We fix that with runoffs! Those extremes won't happen, apparently, and it seems that even a few voters voting intermediate ratings in Range can beneficially affect the result, can make it even better than either purely strategic (Approval) Range or fully accurate representation of preference strength Range. More work needs to be done in the simulations. Say that Approval distorts towards Plurality. What does Condorcet distort towards -- Borda? Let's bury the suckers? If people are strategic and do a lot of such distortion, wouldn't a runoff between Condorcet (or CWP, if you like cardinal ballots) and something resistant to Burial (like one of the methods by Benham, or some future method), be better than the TTR which would be the result of Approval-to-Plurality distortion? If people stop burying, the first winner (of the handle sincere votes well method) will become more relevant; if they don't, the latter (strategy resistant Condorcet) will still be better than Plurality, I think. Now, that's probably a very complex system: first you have to define both the sincere-good and the strategy-resistant method, then you have to set it up to handle the runoff too. But it's not obvious how to be selfish in CWP (except burying), whereas it's rather easy in Range (-Approval, or to semi-Plurality based on whatever possibly inaccurate polls tell you). This, in itself, may produce an incentive to optimize. I can get off with it, and I know how to maximize my vote, so why shouldn't I?; and then you get the worsening that's shown in Warren's BR charts (where all methods do better with sincere votes than strategic ones). In the worst case, the result might be SNTV-like widespread vote management. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd, I don't want to re-hash our Wikipedia argument about whether an exhausted ballot in a full-ranking-possible IRV election should be treated as an abstention -- like a stay-home voter in a runoff (excluded from the denominator), or treated as a vote for none-of-the-above (included in the denominator), in deciding whether the winner has a majority. I will simply say, that I have not resorted to deception, in any of my writing about IRV and majority winners. I am, however, interested in your statement: snip It's simply a fact: top two runoff is associated with multiparty systems, IRV with strong two-party systems. I take it, that your use of the word associated means you are not actually claiming any causality, correct? Can you give examples of countries that use only winner-take-all Top-Two Runoffs (TTR) elections (and no form of PR) that has a multi-party democracy (by which I mean that more than two parties regularly succeed in electing candidates). It seems to me that the distinction you are trying to make between TTR and IRV in terms of multi-party democracy is specious, as both are winner-take-all and inevitably not conducive to multi-party democracy...What matters is whether the country uses a form of PR for legislative elections, regardless of what method is in place for electing single-seat executives. Terry - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net; Election Methods Mailing List election-meth...@electorama.com Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 12:16 AM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 At 08:06 PM 12/24/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Another shortcoming of two-round elections is the sharply lower voter participation (primarily among lower income voters) typical in one of the rounds of a two election system. I know you have written favorably about such drop off in voter turnout as an effective method of compromise (voters who don't care enough stay home). I disagree. Low voter participation means, almost certainly, that the voters don't have anything at stake in the election. Another flaw here is that when both rounds of a top two runoff election are special elections, turnout tends to be roughly the same. That's not *exactly* the case in, say, Cary NC, where the primary is in October and a runoff is with the general election in November, but the turnout in both in the elections I looked at roughly matched. The general election is an off-year election without major candidacies on it. There has been a lot of *assumption* that the low turnout in runoff elections is connected to somehow the poor being disenfranchised, but I've seen no evidence for this at all. I do wonder what comparing registration data and turnout data -- usually who voted is public record -- would show. But the theory would be in the other direction: low turnout indicates voter disinterest in the result, which can be either good or bad. From what I've seen, when an unexpected candidate makes it into a runoff, turnout tends to be high, as the supporters of that candidate turn out in droves. In France, of course, the supporters of Le Pen did increase in turnout, apparently, but Le Pen already had most of his support in the primary, and that, of course, didn't stop everyone else from turning out too, since the French mostly hated the idea that Le Pen even did as well as he did. It's simply a fact: top two runoff is associated with multiparty systems, IRV with strong two-party systems. Two party systems can tolerate the existence of minor parties, with even less risk if IRV is used, the annoyance of minor parties becomes moot. The only reason the Greens get Senate seats in Australia is multiwinner STV, which is a much better system than single-winner IRV. The place where we can probably agree is with understanding that single-winner elections for representation in a legislature is a very bad idea, guaranteeing that a significant number of people, often a majority, are not actually represented. It's really too bad that the proportional representation movement in the U.S. was recently co-opted by FairVote to promote IRV as a step toward it. That's a step that could totally torpedo it, as people realize that they have been conned. IRV, used in nonpartisan elections, is an expensive form of Plurality, almost never changing the results from what people get if they simply vote for their favorite, nothing else. Top two runoff *does* change the results in roughly one out of three runoffs. Why? Shouldn't that be an interesting question? Shouldn't cities considering using IRV as a replacement for top two runoff be aware of this? Instead, they are being told that IRV guarantees majorities, with statements that are just plain lies. The winner will still have to get a vote from a majority of the ballots. Really? Even the *opponents* of IRV largely missed this. In San Jose, 1998, a Libertarian opponent
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 07:38 PM 12/27/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Most UK organisations, large and small, from national trade unions to local badminton clubs, would follow essentially the same procedures, particularly with regard to making no provision for write-ins and requiring written confirmation by each candidate of consent to nomination. What are the standard rules of procedure? What manual, if any, is the most common used? In the U.S., the most common rules for nongovernmental organizations are based on Robert's Rules of Order, which was based on the rules for the U.S. House, which rules also descended from English procedure. There is another parliamentary manual that is common for New England Town Meetings, Town Meeting Time. So there you have it - but I don't think it provides many (any ?) useful pointers for a robust write-in procedure. Write-ins are just not part of our political culture, but I do understand and do appreciate that, in their various forms, they are very much part of the political culture in the USA. They are also part of standard balloting procedure under Robert's Rules. U.S. elections actually had, long ago, no printed names on the ballot. Rather the voter would write in the candidate's name. I would assume, then, that write-in votes continued to be allowed, that it's quite possible that the practice of printing major candidates on the ballot was only acceptable because of this continued possibility. (Even with write-ins, being on the ballot confers a huge advantage, but the *possibility* of write-ins allows the public to fix egregious problems with the nomination process, with the list of those on the ballot, and it does work that way from time to time.) Under Robert's Rules, by default, all elections must be won by a majority of votes, the basis for the majority being all ballots with some mark on them that might possibly be a vote. Blank ballots are so much scrap paper, but marked ballots count. In other words, None of the above has always been an option under the Rules. If there is no majority, the election *fails* and is effectively moot, except that the electorate is now much better informed as to the situation and as to possible compromises. It's been considered impossible to do this with public elections; however, with internet voting, it *could* become possible. Asset Voting, though, makes something *almost* as democratic -- possibly, in some senses *more* democratic -- possible. Same rules, majority required (for single winner, quota for multiple winner), but a greatly reduced electorate which votes in public, and therefore the process becomes far less cumbersome. (More democratic, because being able to designate a proxy is a *freedom,* and increases the power of the client, the one represented. In some Asset implementations, any voter willing to vote in public can register to receive votes, and then participate in subsequent process, so it truly is a freedom and not a restriction.) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 04:44 AM 12/28/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: [it was written:] I am satisfied that there are perfectly adequate vote once systems available for all public elections, both single-office elections and assembly elections. If they are good for public elections, why are they *never* used for smaller organizations where repeated ballot is easy? Wouldn't it save time? Yes, advanced methods *can* save time, *if* a majority is still required. Otherwise the result can *easily* be one that a majority would reject. How often? Depends on the method, I'm sure, but my estimate is that it's about one in ten for IRV in nonpartisan elections in the U.S. It's pretty easy to show. Wouldn't that be because you can do RRO type iteration because of the small size? Of course. (i.e., nobody considers using advanced methods in such organizations when, for example, face-to-face meetings are possible and normal for election. There are exceptions, and, I'd say, they have been warped by outside political considerations; there is a sense among some student organizations, for example, that by implementing IRV, they are advancing a general progressive cause. They've been had.) Consider the extreme, where there's just you and a few friends. There would seem to be little point in voting when you can just all discuss the options and reach a conclusion. Absolutely. However, this kind of direct process indicates the foundations of democracy. There are problems of scale as the scale increases, but the *substance* does not intrinsically change, until not only the scale has become large, but the culture expects alienation and division. When the scale is small, people will take the time to resolve deep differences, ordinarily (if they care about the cooperation being negotiated). That cannot be done, directly, on a large scale. *However, it can be done through a system that creates networks of connection.* These networks are what we actually need, and not only is it unnecessary to change laws to get them, it actually would be a mistake to try to legislate it. If it's subject to law, it is subject to control and corruption. It would be like the State telling small groups how they should come to agreement! Perhaps there would be if you just can't reach an agreement (okay, this has gone long enough, let's vote and get this over with). Absolutely. And this happens all the time with direct democratic process. And those who have participated in it much usually don't take losing all that seriously, provided the rules have been followed. Under Robert's Rules, it takes a two-thirds majority to close debate and vote. Common respect usually allows all interested parties to speak before the question is called. However, it takes a majority to decide a question, period, any question, not just an election. That's the bottom line for democracy. Taking less may *usually* work well enough, but it's risky. It can tear an organization apart, under some circumstances. That's why election by plurality is strongly discouraged in Robert's Rules. (And why Robert's Rules description of IRV -- they don't call it that -- continues to require a majority, contrary to the implications in FairVote propaganda. Sequential elimination preferential voting, for them, is a means of more efficiently finding a majority, but they note that if voters don't rank all the candidates, there may be majority failure and the election will have to be repeated. I've been asked, sometimes as a challenge, Why don't they describe Bucklin or some other method? The answer is pretty obvious: RRO is a manual of actual practice, not a manual of theory, leading the public, and, apparently, at the time the latest edition was being compiled, there weren't enough examples of other methods to allow inclusion. However, they did note, with substantial precision, that the specific form of preferential voting they describe -- having noted that there are many others -- suffers from possible failure to find a compromise candidate. Given how little they write on the topic, this is remarkable.) In short, you'd have something like: for very small groups, the cost of involving a voting method is too high compared to the benefits. For intermediate groups, iteration works. For large groups, voting is the right thing to do, because iteration is expensive and may in any event lead to cycling because people can't just share the nuances of their positions with a thousand others, hive-mind style. Right. However, there is Range Voting, which simulates negotiation, actually. If there are stages in it, it more accurately simulates negotiation. There are hybrid methods which address most of the concerns that I've seen raised. However, having two possible ballots taken rather than one is a *huge* step toward simulation of direct process, so large that I'd be reluctant to replace TTR with Range, unless it
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 05:48 AM 12/28/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: The error was in imagining that a single ballot could accomplish what takes two or more ballots. Even two ballots is a compromise, though, under the right conditions -- better primary methods -- not much of one. I think I understand your position now. Tell me if this is wrong: you consider the iterative process of an assembly the gold standard, as it were, so you say that all methods must involve some sort of feedback within the method, because that is required to converge towards a good choice. It's not clear how close a method like Range can get to the idea in a single round. If any method could do it, it would be Range. It may depend on the sophistication of the electorate and its desire to have an overall satisfactory result. In what I consider mature societies, most people value consensus, they would rather see some result that is broadly accepted than one that is simply their primary favorite. What goes around comes around: they know that supporting this results in better results, averaged over many elections, *for them* as well as for others. That feedback may be from one round to another, as with TTR, or through external channels like polls, as with the mutual optimization of Range. Is that right? Yes. Polls or just general voter impressions from conversations, etc., simulate* a first round, so voters may *tend* to vote with compromise already in mind. And that's important! That's called strategic voting, and is treated as if it were a bad thing. But, we know, systems that only consider preference are flat-out whacked by Arrow's Theorem. And once preference strength is involved, and we don't have a method in place of extracting sincere preferences with strengths from voters, we must accept that voters will vote normalized von Neumann-Morganstern utilities, not exactly normalized sincere utilities, generally. Real voters will vote somewhere in between the VNM utilities -- incorrectly claimed to be Approval style voting -- and fully sincere utilities. Such a system is claimed by Dhillon and Mertens to be a unique solution to a set of Arrovian axioms that are very close to the original, simply modified as necessary to *allow* preference strength to be expressed. But even a single stage runoff can introduce vast possibilities of improvements of the result. The sign that this might be needed is majority failure. (Majority must be defined in Range, there are a number of alternatives.) Range could, in theory, improve results even when a majority was found, but, again, we are making compromises for practicality. A majority explicitly accepting a result is considered sufficient. (Asset can do better than this! But that's another argument for another day.) If you're going to use Bucklin, you've already gone preferential. Bucklin isn't all that impressive, though, neither by criteria nor by Yee. So why not find a better method, like most Condorcet methods? If you want it to reduce appropriately to Approval, you could have an Approval criterion, like this: Simplicity and prior use. I'm not convinced, as well, that realistic voter strategy was simulated. Bucklin is a phased Range method (specifically phased Approval, but you could have Range Bucklin, you lower the approval cutoff, rating by rating, until a majority is found. (I'll mention once again that Oklahoma passed a Range method, which would have been used and was only ruled unconstitutional because of the rather politically stupid move of requiring additional preferences or the first preference wouldn't be counted.) No, Bucklin isn't theoretically optimal, but my suspicion is that actual preformance would be better than theory (i.e., what the simulations show.) Bucklin is a *decent* method from the simulations, so far. (Most voters will truncate, probably two-thirds or so. If a simulation simply transfers preferences to the simulated ballots, Bucklin will be less accurately simulated. Truncation results in a kind of Range expression in the averages -- just as Approval does to some degree. The decision to truncate depends on preference strength.) If each voter has some set X he prefers to all the others, but are indifferent to the members among X, there should be a way for him to express this so that if this is true for all voters, the result of the expressed votes is the same as if one had run an approval election where each voter approved of his X-set. A Range ballot provides the opportunity for this kind of expression. It's actually, potentially, a very accurate ballot. If it's Range 100, it is unclear to me that we should provide an opportunity for the voter to claim that the voter prefers A to B, but wants to rate them both at, say, 100 -- or, for that matter, at any other level. What this means is that the voter must spend* at least 1/100 of a vote to indicate a
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 10:36 AM 12/28/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 9:45 AM The UK is also parliamentary, so I suppose there would be few places where you could actually have a runoff. Given that all members of the UK Parliament are elected from single-member districts (UK constituencies) and that all districts were contested by at least three candidates (max 15 in 2005), it would be theoretically possible to have run-off elections in all 645 districts. In the 2005 general election, 425 of the districts were won with a plurality of the votes not a majority, so that could have been 425 run-offs. Quite a thought! Sure. Consider the implications. Most of those who voted, in those districts, did not support the winner. Odd, don't you think, that you imagine an outcry over a weak Condorcet winner, when what is described is, quite possibly, an ongoing outrage. Is it actually an outrage? It's hard to tell. It's quite possible that the majority was willing to accept the winner; that is normally the case, in fact. Bucklin would have found some majorities there. IRV probably -- in spite of the theories of some -- probably a bit fewer. In nonpartisan elections, IRV almost never finds a majority when one is not found in the first round, but those were, I presume, partisan elections, where finding a majority is more common.) However, consider this: the Plurality voting system (FPTP) encourages compromise already. There would have been more sincere first preference votes. My guess, though, is that the use of, say, Bucklin, would have resulted in *at least* half of those pluralities becoming a majority, possibly more. However, this is the real effect of the system described: In maybe one election out of 10, were it top two runoff, the result would shift, which, I contend, is clearly a more democratic result. There might be a slightly increased improvement if the primary method weren't top two Plurality, majority win, but a method which would find a Condorcet winner or at least include that winner in a runoff. How much is it worth to improve the result -- it could be a very significant improvement -- in 10% of elections? I'd say it's worth a lot! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
James Gilmour had written: This not about MY view. The background to this recent discussion was about the political acceptability of a weak Condorcet winner to ordinary electors. I said I thought a strong third-place Condorcet winner would be politically acceptable. But I had, and still have, real doubts about the political acceptability to ordinary electors (at least in the UK) of a weak Condorcet winner. I am also concerned about the political consequences of a weak Condorcet winner being elected to a powerful public office. My fear is that the weak winner will be made into a weak and ineffectual office-holder by the forces ranged against him or her from all sides, and because the office-holder was a weak winner, he or she will not have real support from the electors, despite being a true Condorcet winner. Aaron Armitage Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 6:56 PM I don't think this is a deliberate evasion, but it seems you're avoiding the burden of justifying your argument by citing the very people you've persuaded. Actually, I see IRV promoters in general do this: they'll use the weak Condorcet winner as their primary objection to Condorcet, and when pressed for justification, will fall back on whatever amount of time they've spent talking to people, all of whom apparently make the same objection to Condorcet. But these are people whose only exposure to voting theory is what you're telling them. The fact that you consider it a serious problem and the fact that you consider the LNHs important can't help but color your presentation, whether you're trying to be biased or not. Aaron, you do me a disservice, but I don't think that was intentional - I have perhaps not explained the whole context. I have never persuaded (or tried to persuade) anyone in the UK about the use of IRV or any other single-winner voting system, because in Scotland we don't have any single-office public elections (thank goodness). All my campaigning has been to get STV-PR used instead of (mainly) FPTP/SMD and more recently instead of MMP. My interpretation (and it is my interpretation) of UK electors' likely reaction to different voting systems is based on a mixture of comments made in face-to-face meetings with ordinary electors, party activists and elected politicians; daily reading of the political press and readers' letters and blogs; comments made by political parties (which have obvious vested interested, both pro- and anti-reform); comments made by other political pressure groups, from trade unions, commerce, media moguls and big money, all of whom have vested interests which they try to make less obvious, mostly anti-reform. And from time to time there have been public opinion polls in which relevant questions have been asked, usually without a great deal of context and without any discussion. You can of course dismiss my interpretation of that accumulated evidence, especially as that evidence is of the grey or soft variety and cannot be subject to the normal rigorous scrutiny which one would apply to hard evidence. You can also dismiss the evidence as being obtained from a community that for many decades has been exposed to nothing but (bad) plurality voting systems and has accepted the political outcomes without any serious protest. (All the recent reforms of voting systems in the UK, except for a few mayoral elections in England, have been to introduce PR - in three varieties! - but that has happened only in the last decade.) So that plurality mindset (for the sake of having a shorthand term) is the reality we have to confront when we campaign for practical voting reform. I don't need any persuading about the potential merit of a Condorcet winner over an IRV winner when they are not the same (though there are some unresolved technical issues about breaking Condorcet cycles). I have said I think I could sell Condorcet to our plurality minded electors when the likely outcome would be a strong third-placed Condorcet winner, and see off the vested interests that opposed reform. But if the likely outcome was a weak Condorcet winner, I am quite convinced that the forces of reaction would have no problem in winning the public and political debate, and the reform would never happen - or if it had happened, it would be reversed. We do not have in the UK a really powerful, high profile political office to which the incumbent is directly elected. But just suppose for a moment that we had direct elections for the Prime Minister, but within our parliamentary system. The public opinion polls show support for the three main parties has fluctuated quite a bit during the past year, but one recent set of figures was Conservatives 47%, Labour 41%, Liberal Democrats 12% (after removing the Don't knows). Now suppose these were the voting figures in a direct election for Prime Minister. The Liberal Democrat would be the second choice of most
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:32 PM Yes. You are English. At 09:55 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: NO, I am not English. I was born in the UK and I am a subject of Her Majesty The Queen (there are no citizens in the UK), but I am not English. Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 12:31 AM The distinct matters to you and to some, not to me, here. You are expressing a view that might be expected to be roughly typical for those from your environment. You could say the same thing about me with respect to write-in votes. Abd, your arrogance is breathtaking and you comment is deeply insulting with regard to personal identity and nationality of any contributor to this list. From the tone and content of most of your posts on this list I had expected better of you. I had put your original comment down to American ignorance (England = UK), but I now see it is really a manifestation of the worst kind of American imperialism. Sad, very sad. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1865 - Release Date: 26/12/2008 13:01 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 07:43 AM 12/27/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:32 PM Yes. You are English. At 09:55 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: NO, I am not English. I was born in the UK and I am a subject of Her Majesty The Queen (there are no citizens in the UK), but I am not English. Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Saturday, December 27, 2008 12:31 AM The distinct matters to you and to some, not to me, here. You are expressing a view that might be expected to be roughly typical for those from your environment. You could say the same thing about me with respect to write-in votes. Abd, your arrogance is breathtaking and you comment is deeply insulting with regard to personal identity and nationality of any contributor to this list. From the tone and content of most of your posts on this list I had expected better of you. I had put your original comment down to American ignorance (England = UK), but I now see it is really a manifestation of the worst kind of American imperialism. Sad, very sad. My, my, my. The distinction (between English and being a citizen of the U.K.) matters to some. To some it matters a great deal. It doesn't matter to me, but neither do I assert that they are equal. It's rather obvious that they are not, in general. The term American and English in the discussion came from usage almost a century ago, relevant to the overall discussion, because Bucklin was called the American system, and STV-single winner the English system, even though the inventor of single-winner STV might be ascribed to an American. (There is some doubt about this but it's the conventional wisdom.) Imperialism? That is indeed quite a stretch! It *could* be attributed to ignorance, perhaps, but imperialism? I think somebody has gotten caught in relatively local disputes. Yes, we see this kind of dispute on Wikipedia, not uncommonly. Various communities are very attached to the names of things, for political and social reasons. British Isles? People edit war over it, are blocked over it, rage over it. Palestine or Israel The place is actually *both,* whether we like it or not. Absolutely, there are citizens of the U.K. who are not English. Plenty. However, English in the context refers to the voting systems in use, to an experience shared by a relatively integrated culture or nation. And English system was the name used a century ago, at least here in America. What that ignorant? Perhaps, because those using the term weren't involved in the disputes and struggles for ethnic identity of the non-English involved. In any case, it seems that Mr. Gilmour was personally offended, more by this, even, than by my warning him that he might look like an idiot if he persists. Therefore I apologize, since it was never my intent to insult his ethnicity or other identity, but only to note that his view wasn't surprising *given the context of his birth and experience.* Many similar things could be said about me. That I favor write-in votes, as I noted and as he did not quote, isn't surprising given that I'm an American. With more sensitivity perhaps, I could have written, Because he is from the U.K. That, for my meaning, would be quite equivalent. However, I've never encountered this particular sensitivity before. Does he think I'm asserting some imperialist view? I.e., that the English own the place and not everyone else? But in my meaning, everyone who lives there is English, as ignorant as that colloquial usage might be, just as everyone from America might be called a Yankee, even if they aren't in another sense. Yankee has somewhat of a perjorative edge, now, though obviously it didn't have that for Mark Twain. Does English have that edge? Not usually Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
One more approach is to allow ranked ranking preferences, e.g. ABCDEF. Juho --- On Fri, 26/12/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no wrote: From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 To: eutychus_sl...@yahoo.com Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Friday, 26 December, 2008, 12:22 AM Aaron Armitage wrote: Perhaps the voter is given an extra vote to augment his more strongly held preferences, so that if he gives it all to his first preference, that candidate gets two votes against all other candidates, but the second choice gets one vote against everyone ranked lower. On the other hand, if he gives half to his first choice and half to his second, then the second choice gets 1.5 against third and lower candidates, but the first gets 1.5 against the second and 2 against third and lower. If he gives it all to third, then the top three get 2 against everyone lower, but the preferences first second third all get 1, as does fourth fifth. And so on. This would be more complicated and involve some interesting strategic choices. At first glance it would seem optimum to treat it as an approval cutoff. At least it would avoid the arbitrariness of assuming that the first vs. second preference is more important than second vs. third, and that by the same multiplier for every voter. The endpoint of that line of thought, I think, is Cardinal Weighted Pairwise. The input is a rated (Range-style) ballot. Say, WLOG, that A is more highly rated than B. Then A beats B by (rating of A - rating of B). So, for instance, if on a 0-100 ballot: A (100) B (75) C (20) you get A B by 25 A C by 80 B C by 55. Use your favorite method to find the winner, as CWP produces a Condorcet matrix that can be used by any method that employs the matrix alone (e.g, not Nanson, Baldwin, or similar). If you want to vote nearly Approval-style, you would do something like A (100) B (99) C (98) D (2) E (1) F(0) but that may not be optimal strategy; one could argue that in the same way that ranking Approval style is not optimal in ranked Condorcet methods, rating nearly Approval style isn't for CWP. 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] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
--- On Wed, 24/12/08, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: IRV has been used for public elections for many decades in several countries. In contrast, despite having been around for about 220 years, the Condorcet voting system has not been used in any public elections anywhere, so far as I am aware. One basic reason is of course that Condorcet methods are too tedious to hand count in large elections with many candidates. Obviously Condorcet is now better off due to the availability of computers. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
--- On Wed, 24/12/08, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: The myth that single-member-district voting systems work well for assembly elections when there are only two parties in very persistent. We must all work together and do everything we can to kill it off because it is just a big, big lie promoted by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Ok. I of course don't want to claim that single-member-district voting systems would work particularly well, and even less that they would be good in electing assemblies. I don't want to claim that two-party systems would be useless but I do think than multi-party systems work better (and are an option for two-party countries too). (As discussed in a recent mail) I very much support the idea of finding new approaches that help breaking the status quo related problems both in two-party and multi-party systems (they are worse in two-party). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Dec 26, 2008, at 9:46 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: We have a nominee list with much of the formality you describe. Then we have write-ins, with very little formality. James frowns on such, saying that the UK properly demands more formality in dealing with the needed exceptions to normal nomination. I agree that present write-ins are too informal, nominations are too formal to cover all needs, and UK thoughts might help us with doing something to fill the gap. California write-in rules lie somewhere in that gap. Here's a sample: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/cand_qual_wi.pdf These requirements must be met in order for write-in votes to be counted. DWK On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 10:56:22 + (GMT) Juho Laatu wrote: One approach that is used in practice and that to some extent avoids the problems of - few random votes to random people - difficulty to identify to whom the votes actually are meant - votes to people that do not want to be candidates - having too many candidates is to require people to collect an agreed number of names of supporters (and candidate's agreement) to get their candidate on the candidate list. Juho --- On Fri, 26/12/08, Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com wrote: On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:55:23 - James Gilmour wrote: Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision for write-ins at all in public elections. If I am not prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why anyone should take me seriously. If my friends think I would be the best person to do the job, they should come and tell me and persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to get me elected. Worth some thought: I think nominate has been thoroughly defined, and should not be changed as part of this debate. Something such as authorized for write-in could be developed: Approved by candidate BEFORE the election. This would outlaw some of the present nonsense. Perhaps James could offer useful thought. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. 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] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 05:31 PM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: It is not a question of my thinking in terms of plurality - that is where our electors (UK and USA) are coming from. It is my experience (nearly five decades of campaigning) that UK electors attach great importance to their first preference. *Of course they do.* At least the majority do; more accurately, some do and some don't, with the majority having a strong preference for their first preference, over all others. There is a feedback between single-winner plurality, or other strong two-party system, and the strength of preference for the favorite: You may say that's the result of bad conditioning, but if we want to achieve real reform of the voting systems used in public elections, these are the political inconveniences we have to accommodate. Absolutely. This is why I concluded that Bucklin was the place to start. The only argument for Approval that might prevail in some places is that it's cheap. The strong preference for the first preference will result in more disuse of additional rankings with Open Voting -- Approval -- than with Bucklin. But Bucklin provides sufficient protection for the first preference, in my opinion. And this is the question that you have not been asking, you have been asking within the assumptions of other methods and the presentation of Later No Harm within those assumptions. And you need to ask yourself, first, you seem to be quite ambivalent, confusing your own position with political expedience. That's a form of strategic voting, isn't it? A 5% Condorcet winner could possibly be a disaster, or could possibly be a great relief. Which is more likely? Doesn't it depend on the conditions that led to it? If a condorcet winner only gets 5% first preference votes, what was the system? What was the overall voting pattern? It's quite possible that *no* outcome of this election would be other than a disaster! Looking at this in isolation is, for you, projecting present experience onto a situation where present assumptions and conditions don't apply. Pretty easy to make a drastic mistake, doing this. Want to consider election scenarios? You *must* consider sincere preference strengths, which is the same as saying that you must consider underlying utilities. 5% Condorcet winner tells us almost nothing about this. So you are taking a situation where we know almost nothing, and confidently predicting chaos. If it's 5% first preference, with twenty candidates, similarly to what was noted originally, the Condorcet winner might *unanimously* be considered an excellent compromise. The voters could be *very* happy with the result. Or it might be very different. It depends on underlying utilities; and to be accurate, it depends on underlying *absolute* utilities, not merely relative ones. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 05:57 AM 12/26/2008, Juho Laatu wrote: One basic reason is of course that Condorcet methods are too tedious to hand count in large elections with many candidates. Obviously Condorcet is now better off due to the availability of computers. There is a simple Condorcet method which only requires two counts, almost always, then some conditionally: First preference, then pairwise against that preference. If there is a pairwise defeat, then pairwise against that candidate. If no defeat, Condorcet winner prevails. If defeat, Condorcet cycle exists, count as necessary to identify members of Smith set, which may be as little as one additional round of counting. Winner could then be by first preference among the Smith set. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 12:46 PM 12/26/2008, Dave Ketchum wrote: We have a nominee list with much of the formality you describe. Then we have write-ins, with very little formality. Too little, probably. I know of a case where a write-in should have won the election, by law, but the clerk didn't count the votes. I've described it before, here. The problem has to do with recognizing and identifying the write-in. Write-in doesn't necessarily mean unregistered. It is legal to prohibit votes for candidates who haven't registered. Registration requirements are different than ballot position requirements. Ballot position often requires fairly long notice, petitions, or the formal recognition of a candidate as the candidate of a recognized political party. Write-ins recognize the fact that this process sometimes fails us. The two-party system, plus Plurality elections, is *like* top-two runoff, when the parties are roughly balanced. But sometimes they name candidates who are too far from the center, where both candidates are too extreme for most voters. When the extreme faction within a party, motivated by high preference strength, can overwhelm the centrists within the party, which doesn't take a lot, this can happen. If it happens with both parties at once, it's like TTR failing to find the compromise candidate. The *system* experiences center-squeeze. Sometimes in that case, there is an independent candidacy or a third party steps in. These occasionally win elections. Write-ins occasionally win elections. I've never seen serious harm from write-in votes, though theoretically they can cause a spoiler effect. That effect is *worse* when the candidates are on the ballot. Write-ins screw up the nice neat calculations of voting systems experts. What's a sincere vote if voters can write in their true favorite? Voters, by not doing that, are *already* being strategic in voting for their Favorite among those on the ballot. A good system will allow them to write in the favorite and still participate fully -- or *almost* fully -- in the rest of the election. But it can be proper to require registration of write-in candidates -- which should be easy, it is just to identify them and to confirm that they accept the responsibility if elected. Asset Voting, I expect, will lead to a veritable explosion of candidates, ultimately. And registration would, then, be even more important. Counting of write-ins could be automated if candidates have numbers, possibly even with an error-correcting code incorporated, while still allowing a hand-filled ballot. This would have the additional advantage that writing in identifiable information, other than a legitimate code, could void the ballot (as it is supposed to, but write-in votes currently don't void a ballot, even if the voter writes in the voter's name, in some places. Other races might be on the same ballot) James frowns on such, saying that the UK properly demands more formality in dealing with the needed exceptions to normal nomination. I agree that present write-ins are too informal, nominations are too formal to cover all needs, and UK thoughts might help us with doing something to fill the gap. As I mentioned, San Francisco, I know, requires registration of write-ins. I don't know the exact requirements, I should look them up. They used to allow write-ins on runoffs as well, the California default. But the last runoff election they held was in 2004. I think it was only for that election, write-ins were prohibited, and it went to the California Supreme Court, there was a write-in candidate, registered, who might well have won -- possibly. The Court ruled that the constitutional provision requiring write-ins in all elections didn't apply to a runoff, except by default. Runoffs, they reasoned, were part of the same election, and, since the voters could have voted for this candidate in the first election, they had their opportunity. Considering parliamentary precedent, it was poor reasoning. Runoffs are a new election with special rules for ballot access, intended to make the finding of a majority likely. The original election failed for lack of a majority, but was used to select the top two to be featured on the ballot. If the first and second election are considered one election, then why not consider the total vote important? (It is then like every eligible voter having a half-vote in each election. It becomes a bit like runoff Bucklin, then.) The voters, as a result of the first ballot, may recognize the value of a write-in that they did not see before. To prohibit write-ins, then, reduces the flexibility of voters in dealing with unusual but important situations. It institutionalizes center-squeeze, thus making it impossible to fix the most common, and known, failure of top two runoff. I rather doubt that much of this was considered by the California court, usually the level of expertise shown in
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
An exchnage that escaped the list - acccidentally. --- On Thu, 12/25/08, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of politically unacceptable. I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to the good old ways. Aaron Armitage Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 11:26 PM That depends on how soon after the switch this election happens. Getting 5% of the vote is not a meaningful concept in a Condorcet election; the meaningful concept is getting X% vs. a particular other candidate. James Gilmour replied Nowhere did I or other previous contributors to this discussion say anything about getting 5% of the vote. What I (and others) wrote (as shown above) was 5% of the first preference votes. That is an important difference, but your next comments suggests that you may not think so. Aaron ArmitageSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 7:40 I do see is as an important difference, in such a way as to preclude the use you're making of the first preferences. So to me it looks exactly like you're treating 5% of the voters ranking a candidate over every other candidate as getting 5% in the plurality sense. This not about MY view. The background to this recent discussion was about the political acceptability of a weak Condorcet winner to ordinary electors. I said I thought a strong third-place Condorcet winner would be politically acceptable. But I had, and still have, real doubts about the political acceptability to ordinary electors (at least in the UK) of a weak Condorcet winner. I am also concerned about the political consequences of a weak Condorcet winner being elected to a powerful public office. My fear is that the weak winner will be made into a weak and ineffectual office-holder by the forces ranged against him or her from all sides, and because the office-holder was a weak winner, he or she will not have real support from the electors, despite being a true Condorcet winner. I am well aware that this may be considered a plurality way of looking at the voting patterns and at the outcome of the Condorcet election, but that is the political reality we face in campaigning for reform of the voting systems. AA contd: In a Condorcet context, the question isn't how many rankings over every possible alternative a candidate has, but how many rankings over this or that particular alternative. We should be asking that question anyway; using non-Condorcet methods means putting A in office despite knowing that a majority voted B A. Unless we're introducing some formal recognition of preference strength (e.g., the extra vote I suggested in the other e-mail, CWP, or Range proper), there's no good reason to do that. AA It's only by thinking in terms of plurality thatthis looks like a problem, because in plurality you're voting for one candidate rather than ranking them, a conception of voting that IRV retains despite the fact that it allows multiple rankings. JG It is not a question of my thinking in terms of plurality - that is where our electors (UK and USA) are coming from. It is my experience (nearly five decades of campaigning) that UK electors attach great importance to their first preference. You may say that's the result of bad conditioning, but if we want to achieve real reform of the voting systems used in public elections, these are the political inconveniences we have to accommodate. AA Well, I haven't spent very much time talking to UK voters, much less 50 years (having been alive only a little over half that long), but I haven't had any trouble selling ordinary Americans on Condorcet. But does the weak Condorcet winner feature in those discussions? How happy would your electors be with a really weak Condorcet winner? And of course, because there is (at least, as yet) no great public campaign for Condorcet or one that looks as if it might make real progress, you have not had to face the forces opposed to reform of your voting systems. To see who they are and how effective their dirty tracks will be, just look at how they got rid of STV-PR from all the US cities bar one in the 1930s and 1940s. I suspect you're playing up the LNHs. I don't know about playing up LNH. LNH is important to me personally. but more importantly, it seems also be important to significant numbers of UK electors. I have no evidence for this, but it seems to me quite possible
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Dave Ketchum Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 3:15 AM On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:25:09 - James Gilmour wrote: Yes, all the marked preferences will allow the voter's one vote to be used in as many pair-wise comparisons as the voter wishes to participate in. Voter wishes do not matter. Voter explicit ranking does count: No count for equal ranking, whether voter assigned equal ranking, or ranked neither. Count every pair with different ranks, whether one or both are ranked by voter. Maybe my use here of wishes caused some confusion. All I meant was the preferences the voter had and wished to express, i.e. that the voter may not mark preferences for all the candidates. Indeed, a voter should never mark preferences he or she does not have. Suppose there are six candidates (A - F) and the voter marks preferences for only three of them (A, B and C). That voter has given a clear vote in all the pair wise comparisons involving A, B or C. But that voter has given no vote that could be used in the pair wise comparisons involving only D, E and F. That voter has opted out if the choice has to be made between D and E, or between D and F, or between E and F. That what I meant by one vote to be used in as many pair-wise comparisons as the voter wishes to participate in. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1865 - Release Date: 26/12/2008 13:01 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Markus Schulze wrote: Hallo, James Gilmour wrote (24 Dec 2008): IRV has been used for public elections for many decades in several countries. In contrast, despite having been around for about 220 years, the Condorcet voting system has not been used in any public elections anywhere, so far as I am aware. That could perhaps change if a threshold were implemented to exclude the possibility of a weak Condorcet winner AND if a SIMPLE method were agreed to break Condorcet cycles. I don't agree to your proposal to introduce a threshold (of first preferences) to Condorcet to make Condorcet look more like IRV. As I said in my 21 Dec 2007 mail: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2007-December/021063.html [snip] I was the one who made that proposal, but mostly out of practicality than anything. To have an explicit threshold or cutoff is a bit hacky in that there's no theoretical reason for it, but if we're down to the choice between Condorcet and hack, or no Condorcet at all, Condorcet and hack would be better than FPP (IRV, etc). Do you think my runoff idea could work, or is it too complex? If it's not, there's another property which may make weak winners more acceptable: if it's the true CW, then it'll win in the second round by first preference votes alone (since for the CW, for any one alternative, more people prefer the CW to that alternative than vice versa). However, if it's a very weak candidate, then the other candidate with a greater core support/FPP support/whatever would be chosen instead. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of politically unacceptable. I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to the good old ways. That depends on how soon after the switch this election happens. Getting 5% of the vote is not a meaningful concept in a Condorcet election; the meaningful concept is getting X% vs. a particular other candidate. It's only by thinking in terms of plurality that this looks like a problem, because in plurality you're voting for one candidate rather than ranking them, a conception of voting that IRV retains despite the fact that it allows multiple rankings. The primary battle between Clinton and Obama here presents a strong argument for getting rid of Plurality elections - better for them both to go to the general election fighting against their shared foe, McCain. This represents a VERY idealistic view of politics - at least, it would be so far as the UK is concerned. NO major party is going into any single-office single-winner election with more than one party candidate, no matter what the voting system. Having more than one candidate causes problems for the party and it certainly causes problems for the voters. And there is another important intuitive reaction on the part of the electors - they don't like parties that appear to be divided. They like the party to sort all that internally and to present one candidate with a common front in the public election for the office. But maybe my views are somewhat coloured by my lack of enthusiasm for public primary elections. In the United States there are sometimes special elections (i.e., by elections) without primaries, and there are usually several candidates from each party. It would be in each party's interest to limit itself to one candidate, yet this does not happen because without the public primary system they have no way of enforcing this. Also Louisiana uses the top-two runoff system without party primaries, and it is not a mutiparty system. When we dispense with the party primaries in the United States, the general election is open to whoever wants to run. Which is a disadvantage if your real interest is in breaking up the two-party system, rather than in better electoral systems for their own sake, because initially and possibly permanantly the available political space will be filled by members of the major parties; but in this case, the parties will no long be restricting the range of political debate, so the major objection to them is gone. The removal of party nomination is a major benefit. In the Hillery vs. Obama match, there were two questions. 1) Who would be a better nominee for the Democratic Party? 2) Who would be a better President of the United States? The first question, if it must be asked at all, is properly addressed to Democrats only, but the second question is properly addressed to all citizens, to citizens as citizens. The primary system conflates the two in an incoherent way. An internal party question can be voted on by anyone who cares to vote on it, whether he has ever had involvement in the party before. Much worse, a public decision is made by a partisan subset of the public. IRV avoids the institutional questions, but continues to address public questions to factions of the public rather than the public itself. By assuming that everything below the first (remaining) preference is worthless (but becomes everything once the higher preferences are gone), IRV will ordinarily ask only two questions: Do you prefer the left or the right, and which candidate on your preferred wing would you like? And the second question is not settled in any reasonable way. More importantly, if an election is to be carried by one wing, it still matters which one actually wins, and people on the other side are entitled to a vote on that question by virtue of their being citizens. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 03:36 AM 12/25/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Do you think my runoff idea could work, or is it too complex? For years, attempts were made to find a majority using advanced voting methods: in the U.S., Bucklin was claimed to do that, as it is currently being claimed for IRV. (Bucklin, in fact, may do it a little better than IRV, if voters vote similarly; my sense is that, in the U.S. at least, voters will respond to a three-rank Bucklin ballot much the same as an IRV one, so I consider it reasonable to look at analyzing IRV results by using the Bucklin method to count the ballots. If the assumption holds -- and prior experience with Bucklin seems to confirm it, Bucklin detects the majority support that is hidden under votes for the last-round candidates. The methods generally failed; holding an actual runoff came to be seen as a more advanced reform, worth the cost. All this seems to have been forgotten in the current debate. Bucklin, IRV, at least one Condorcet method (Nansen's, apparently) have been used. The error was in imagining that a single ballot could accomplish what takes two or more ballots. Even two ballots is a compromise, though, under the right conditions -- better primary methods -- not much of one. When considering replacing Bucklin or IRV with top two runoff, what should have been done would have been keeping the majority requirement. This is actually what voters in San Jose (1998) and San Francisco (2002) were promised, but, in fact, the San Francisco proposition actually struck the majority requirement from the code. Promise them majority but given them a plurality. If the methods hadn't been sold in the first place as being runoff replacements, we might have them still! The big argument against Bucklin, we've been told by FairVote (I don't necessarily trust it) was that it did not usually find a majority. There is little data for comparison, but I do know that quite a few Bucklin elections that didn't find a first preference majority *did* find a second or third round one, but in the long Alabama party primary series, apparently there was eventually little usage of the additional ranks. But even the 11% usage that existed could have been enough to allow the primary to find a compromise winner. What they should have done, in fact, was to require a runoff, just like they actually did, but continue to use a Bucklin ballot to try to find a majority. This would avoid, in my estimation, up to half of the runoffs. Since Bucklin is cheap to count and quite easy to vote, this would have been better than tossing preferential voting entirely. Sure. Setting conditions for runoffs with a Condorcet method seems like a good idea to me. One basic possibility would be simple: A majority of voters should *approve* the winner. This is done by any of various devices; there could be a dummy candidate who is called Approved. To indicate approval, this candidate would be ranked appropriately, all higher ranked candidates would be consider to get a vote for the purposes of determining a majority. In Range, it could be pretty simple and could create a bit more accuracy in voting: consider a rating of midrange or higher to be approval. This doesn't directly affect the winner, except that it can trigger a runoff. Not ranking or rating sufficient candidates as approved can cause a need for a runoff. If voters prefer than to taking steps to find a decent compromise in the first ballot, *this should be their sovereign right.* A Range ballot can be used for Condorcet analysis. Given the Range ballot, though, and that Range would tie very rarely, it seems reasonable to use highest Range rating in the Smith set, if there is a cycle, to resolve the cycle. Thus we'd have these conditions for a runoff: (1) Majority failure, the Range winner is a Condorcet winner. (probably the most common). Top two runoff, the top two range sums. (2) Majority failure, the Range winner is not a Condorcet winner. TTR, Range and Condorcet winner (cycles resolved using range sum). (3) Majority, both Condorcet and Range, but Range winner differs from Condorcet winner. same result as (2). (4) Majority for Range winner, not for Condorcet. or the reverse. I'm not sure what to do about this, it might be the same, or the majority winner might be chosen. A little study would, I think, come up with the best solution. Range is theoretically optimal, as optimal as is possible given an assumption that most voters will vote a full strength vote in some pair. However, normalization or poor strategy can result in distortion of the Range votes compared to actual voter utilities. One of the symptoms of this might be Condorcet failure for the Range winner. If it is true that the Range winner truly is best, then we have a situation where the first preference of a majority might not be the Range winner, or, supposedly, the Range winner vs the Condorcet winner
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
--- On Thu, 12/25/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no wrote: From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 To: Gervase Lam gervase@group.force9.co.uk Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Thursday, December 25, 2008, 2:41 AM Gervase Lam wrote: Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:53:36 +0100 From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Sorry. I have not been following this lengthy thread carefully. Just been taking in the bits that I find 'interesting.' most PR systems have a threshold (either implicit or explicit). Perhaps real world implementation of Condorcet systems would have a first preference threshold, either on candidates or on sets: anyone getting less than x% FP is disqualified. Either that or have IRV with a different candidate elimination method (i.e. not the one with the least number of top votes)? I dunno. Or, as someone else proposed, a Condorce method where A B, for all B, is weighted to some multiple if A is the first preference. Perhaps the voter is given an extra vote to augment his more strongly held preferences, so that if he gives it all to his first preference, that candidate gets two votes against all other candidates, but the second choice gets one vote against everyone ranked lower. On the other hand, if he gives half to his first choice and half to his second, then the second choice gets 1.5 against third and lower candidates, but the first gets 1.5 against the second and 2 against third and lower. If he gives it all to third, then the top three get 2 against everyone lower, but the preferences first second third all get 1, as does fourth fifth. And so on. This would be more complicated and involve some interesting strategic choices. At first glance it would seem optimum to treat it as an approval cutoff. At least it would avoid the arbitrariness of assuming that the first vs. second preference is more important than second vs. third, and that by the same multiplier for every voter. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 09:05 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:36 AM Do you think my runoff idea could work, or is it too complex? My personal view is that runoff is not desirable and would be an unnecessary and unwanted expense. I know runoff voting systems are used in some other countries, but they are not used at all in the UK. They are used in places with strong multiparty systems. The UK is a two-party system. I am satisfied that there are perfectly adequate vote once systems available for all public elections, both single-office elections and assembly elections. If they are good for public elections, why are they *never* used for smaller organizations where repeated ballot is easy? Wouldn't it save time? Yes, advanced methods *can* save time, *if* a majority is still required. Otherwise the result can *easily* be one that a majority would reject. How often? Depends on the method, I'm sure, but my estimate is that it's about one in ten for IRV in nonpartisan elections in the U.S. It's pretty easy to show. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 09:25 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 5:39 PM The general legal opinion seems to be that it doesn't fail that principle. It *looks* like the person has more than one vote, but, when the smoke clears, you will see that only one of these votes was actually effective. The voter has contributed no more than one vote to the total that allowed the candidate to win. Consider the election as a series of pairwise elections. An appeal to effective votes is sophistry. Bucklin is not a series of pair-wise elections and more than one of your votes is being counted when there is no first preference winner but only one of mine. The vote is counted, yes, but, in the end, if you did not vote for the winner, and your ballot, in a recount, were to vanish, you would find that it would not change the result at all. NONE of your votes mattered. And if you did vote for the winner, ONE of them counted. Thus all the others were alternate votes that don't change the result. Apply elimination to Bucklin, the final vote, as if it were IRV. No more transfers, that's all. The same thing happens. All the useless alternative votes are eliminated and we are left with two candidates, and the one with the majority of non-eliminated candidates wins. What is sophistry is the idea that IRV, in doing this, is satisfying one-person, one-vote, and Bucklin isn't. There is actually very substantial legal opinion in the U.S. that Bucklin does satisfy OPOV. Minnesota, Brown v. Smallwood, is the one cited by FairVote, but, in fact, BvS decided on the basis of *any* alternative vote being used, it is quite clear that it applies to IRV as well; but it was also idiocyncratic, confirmed nowhere, and the American Preferential System was used in as many as 52 cities in the U.S., nowhere else was it found unconstitutional. Yes, more vote than one is counted, but that's true with IRV as well, the only difference is the sequencing. In the end, with single-winner, what matters is how many votes the winner gets, compared to the runner up. But what if the voter has voted for both? In that case, yes, both votes are counted, but that's moot. The vote has no effect on the result. The ballot could be discarded, same result. (Except that there *could* be majority failure for the winner, unlikely but possible; in that case, we are looking, again, at only one vote being counted in the end.) James, you are out on a limb. Voters unfamiliar with voting systems and how they work do often come up with what you've said as a knee-jerk response to Approval. However, and the matter has been considered for many years, it was argued and debated eighty years ago in the U.S., and it's settled, in fact, that Approval doesn't violate one person, one vote. In a ranked method, generally, such as STV, the voter may possibly vote in all pair-wise elections, except that with STV some of these votes aren't counted. STV is not a series of pair-wise elections. In STV the voter indicates contingency choices. These contingency choices (successive later preferences) are considered only in the contingency that the voter's ONE vote has to be transferred. That doesn't change the fact that the voter casts votes in *possible* pairwise elections. STV is a truly complex voting system, compared to just about everything else. With a Condorcet method, the votes all count. Yes, all the marked preferences will allow the voter's one vote to be used in as many pair-wise comparisons as the voter wishes to participate in. Yes. Personally, I find it offensive that I can cast a vote and it is not even counted. Think of it as IRV with a different method of deciding whom to eliminate. I have heard this suggested for IRV (and STV-PR), but such a method of deciding the next elimination would not comply with Later-No-Harm. That's true. So? Which is more important, finding the best winner, the candidate who will most satisfy the voters, behind whom they can most effectively unite, or satisfying, in the extreme, LNH? LNH isn't a criterion that actually improves results. It's one that supposedly motivates sincere votes, that's about the limit of it. It actually fails in this, to a large extent, people still bullet vote or don't use up their ranks, or don't vote for a frontrunner in the ranks they have. Based on what I've seen so far, Bucklin sufficiently separates the first preference from additionally approved candidates that voters aren't impeded. They add additional preferences if they have weak preference against them, and not if they don't know any more to rank or they have strong preference. That's all. Same with IRV, in fact. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 09:55 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Abd, you are a great wriggler. Thanks. I'm not a butterfly to be pinned to your specimen board. My comments were not in the context of small direct democratic situations. The discussion was about major public elections - city mayor, state governor, perhaps even the ultimate goal of direct election of the President of the USA. Nowhere was there any suggestion there would be or could a runoff, nor was there any suggestion of a write-in. Small democratic situations are the model for democracy. We know how to do it, it works, it's effective, and it produces healthy communities that are united. In such situations, unopposed candidacies are often more common than opposed ones. People know the candidates. When there are contests, it's almost always just two candidates, so Plurality works fine. Small communities are also aware of preference strength. They see each other and know each other, and they talk. This, again, shifts results toward Range results, even if a method appears to be Plurality. Now, take this and compare large public elections? In my view, the best voting systems imitate the process used in small communities, to the extent practical. No small community which understands the system will use IRV. (There have been trials, for sure, but they appear to mostly be motivated to make some political statement, they are not a natural choice when repeated ballot is possible, and they are strongly discouraged by parliamentary rulebooks when repeated ballot is possible. Write-ins are a U.S. practice, if I'm correct, we are quite attached to them. And they are known to improve results on occasion. They fix problems with the ballot process and they can fix problems with the voting system used in the primary, if allowed in a runoff. Don't want to discuss that, go away, don't read it. It will just irritate you, and you may end up looking like an idiot, which is certainly not my preferred outcome. Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision for write-ins at all in public elections. Yes. You are English. Surprise! You are here, though, talking about American elections. Almost everywhere here it is required by law that write-ins must be allowed, we respect the sovereignty of the voter. There was a recent decision in California allowing San Francisco to prohibit write-ins in runoffs, based on the theory that it was part of the same election. Bad decision! Contradicts a lot of thinking and writing and parliamentary practice on successive election process. Fixing stuff like this is what a sane Center for Voting and Democracy could have done. Too bad. So we need a new organization that *will* protect democracy. If I am not prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why anyone should take me seriously. You are thinking about yourself. What about the voters? What are their rights? Here, you are intending to deprive *voters* of their right to free choice. You and many others, by the way, dislike of free democracy is common among some voting systems theorists and activists. If my friends think I would be the best person to do the job, they should come and tell me and persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to get me elected. However, what if you were all supporting a candidate, and after the deadline for registration, that candidate dies. Or there is some huge scandal and he becomes unelectable. Why shouldn't you and your friends be able to mount a last-minute write-in campaign. Write-ins have been used to preserve the power of the voters against the power of legislatures or city councils to decide how voters should vote. It's a shame to lose it. How would this be disastrous? Leaving your alterative scenario aside as irrelevant to the actual discussion, I cannot imagine the election of a President of the USA as the genuine Condorcet winner with zero (or very few) first preferences as being anything other than disastrous. The failure of your imagination isn't a reason to believe anything. The possibility of that is so preposterous that to then imagine that *everything else would be the same* is also preposterous. Under what conditions could such a victory happen? Look at those conditions, and you might see something different. Asset Voting, in fact, can *easily* award a victory -- a seat or an office -- to someone who got *no* votes at all in the election. All that has to happen is that a quota of electors decide to vote, in their subsequent process, for that person. I would absolutely not prohibit this, to prohibit it would be to, again, impair the right of voters to assign their vote to someone they trust with it, and then for that person to make the best decision as they see it. What would be wrong with this outcome? In the election that counts,
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Aaron Armitage wrote: Perhaps the voter is given an extra vote to augment his more strongly held preferences, so that if he gives it all to his first preference, that candidate gets two votes against all other candidates, but the second choice gets one vote against everyone ranked lower. On the other hand, if he gives half to his first choice and half to his second, then the second choice gets 1.5 against third and lower candidates, but the first gets 1.5 against the second and 2 against third and lower. If he gives it all to third, then the top three get 2 against everyone lower, but the preferences first second third all get 1, as does fourth fifth. And so on. This would be more complicated and involve some interesting strategic choices. At first glance it would seem optimum to treat it as an approval cutoff. At least it would avoid the arbitrariness of assuming that the first vs. second preference is more important than second vs. third, and that by the same multiplier for every voter. The endpoint of that line of thought, I think, is Cardinal Weighted Pairwise. The input is a rated (Range-style) ballot. Say, WLOG, that A is more highly rated than B. Then A beats B by (rating of A - rating of B). So, for instance, if on a 0-100 ballot: A (100) B (75) C (20) you get A B by 25 A C by 80 B C by 55. Use your favorite method to find the winner, as CWP produces a Condorcet matrix that can be used by any method that employs the matrix alone (e.g, not Nanson, Baldwin, or similar). If you want to vote nearly Approval-style, you would do something like A (100) B (99) C (98) D (2) E (1) F(0) but that may not be optimal strategy; one could argue that in the same way that ranking Approval style is not optimal in ranked Condorcet methods, rating nearly Approval style isn't for CWP. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Aaron ArmitageSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 7:40 PM To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of politically unacceptable. I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to the good old ways. That depends on how soon after the switch this election happens. Getting 5% of the vote is not a meaningful concept in a Condorcet election; the meaningful concept is getting X% vs. a particular other candidate. Nowhere did I or other previous contributors to this discussion say anything about getting 5% of the vote. What I (and others) wrote (as shown above) was 5% of the first preference votes. That is an important difference, but your next comments suggests that you may not think so. It's only by thinking in terms of plurality that this looks like a problem, because in plurality you're voting for one candidate rather than ranking them, a conception of voting that IRV retains despite the fact that it allows multiple rankings. It is not a question of my thinking in terms of plurality - that is where our electors (UK and USA) are coming from. It is my experience (nearly five decades of campaigning) that UK electors attach great importance to their first preference. You may say that's the result of bad conditioning, but if we want to achieve real reform of the voting systems used in public elections, these are the political inconveniences we have to accommodate. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1863 - Release Date: 24/12/2008 11:49 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:01 PM At 09:05 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: My personal view is that runoff is not desirable and would be an unnecessary and unwanted expense. I know runoff voting systems are used in some other countries, but they are not used at all in the UK. They are used in places with strong multiparty systems. The UK is a two-party system. This statement is quite simply wrong. Two parties may (unfairly) dominate the scene at Westminster (UK Parliament), but at the last general election those two parties received only 68% of the total vote. For details see: http://www.jamesgilmour.f2s.com/Percentage-Votes-for-Two-Largest-Parties-UK-GEs-1945-2005.pdf or http://www.jamesgilmour.org.uk/Percentage-Votes-for-Two-Largest-Parties-UK-GEs-1945-2005.pdf In Scotland we have a four-party system (previously three-party) and we don't use any form run-off for any of our public elections. I am satisfied that there are perfectly adequate vote once systems available for all public elections, both single-office elections and assembly elections. If they are good for public elections, why are they *never* used for smaller organizations where repeated ballot is easy? Wouldn't it save time? In the UK the smaller organisations that have moved on from FPTP would nearly all use the Alternative Vote = IRV. I am not aware of any in the UK that would use any form of run-off. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1863 - Release Date: 24/12/2008 11:49 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
--- On Thu, 12/25/08, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: From: James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Thursday, December 25, 2008, 4:31 PM Aaron ArmitageSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 7:40 PM To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of politically unacceptable. I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to the good old ways. That depends on how soon after the switch this election happens. Getting 5% of the vote is not a meaningful concept in a Condorcet election; the meaningful concept is getting X% vs. a particular other candidate. Nowhere did I or other previous contributors to this discussion say anything about getting 5% of the vote. What I (and others) wrote (as shown above) was 5% of the first preference votes. That is an important difference, but your next comments suggests that you may not think so. I do see is as an important difference, in such a way as to preclude the use you're making of the first preferences. So to me it looks exactly like you're treating 5% of the voters ranking a candidate over every other candidate as getting 5% in the plurality sense. In a Condorcet context, the question isn't how many rankings over every possible alternative a candidate has, but how many rankings over this or that particular alternative. We should be asking that question anyway; using non-Condorcet methods means putting A in office despite knowing that a majority voted B A. Unless we're introducing some formal recognition of preference strength (e.g., the extra vote I suggested in the other e-mail, CWP, or Range proper), there's no good reason to do that. It's only by thinking in terms of plurality that this looks like a problem, because in plurality you're voting for one candidate rather than ranking them, a conception of voting that IRV retains despite the fact that it allows multiple rankings. It is not a question of my thinking in terms of plurality - that is where our electors (UK and USA) are coming from. It is my experience (nearly five decades of campaigning) that UK electors attach great importance to their first preference. You may say that's the result of bad conditioning, but if we want to achieve real reform of the voting systems used in public elections, these are the political inconveniences we have to accommodate. James Well, I haven't spent very much time talking to UK voters, much less 50 years (having been alive only a little over half that long), but I haven't had any trouble selling ordinary Americans on Condorcet. I suspect you're playing up the LNHs. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Thursday, December 25, 2008 8:32 PM At 09:55 AM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Abd, you are a great wriggler. Thanks. I'm not a butterfly to be pinned to your specimen board. Abd, I don't want to pin you or anyone else to a specimen board. I just don't think it advances a discussion about major public elections to bring in arguments that MAY have some validity in a totally different context. And small direct democratic situations, run-offs and write-ins are all completely different contexts from that in which the discussion about the political acceptability of strong and weak Condorcet winners was set. No small community which understands the system will use IRV. Then we in the UK must have a lot of small communities that do not understand IRV, because, as I said in reply to one of your earlier comments, lots of our smaller communities use it for their internal elections. Write-ins are a U.S. practice, if I'm correct, we are quite attached to them. Yes, I know the first and I understand the second. I don't think there is any need for them in public elections, but they are part of the scene in the USA and so must be accommodated in any proposal for practical reform if it is to gain political acceptance. Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision for write-ins at all in public elections. Yes. You are English. NO, I am not English. I was born in the UK and I am a subject of Her Majesty The Queen (there are no citizens in the UK), but I am not English. You are here, though, talking about American elections. Almost everywhere here it is required by law that write-ins must be allowed, we respect the sovereignty of the voter. Yes, I know it's US law, so roll with it - until you have a voting system that makes it irrelevant. (In the UK, the nomination process for all public elections requires written confirmation of the candidate's consent to his or her nomination, as do many organisations for their internal elections.) If I am not prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why anyone should take me seriously. You are thinking about yourself. What about the voters? What are their rights? Here, you are intending to deprive *voters* of their right to free choice. Of course, I am think about you. You might have many good reasons why you did not wish to be elected to public office, either at that particular time or ever. What right have I and some other voters to make you the winner without even consulting you and letting others know about our views and of your consent by nominating you along with all the other candidates? Even if we accept that voters should have free choice, with that voters' right to free choice goes responsibility, firstly to the write-in target (who is not a candidate as he or she has not been nominated) and secondly to all the other electors. You and many others, by the way, dislike of free democracy is common among some voting systems theorists and activists. You have jumped to several unjustified conclusions here. However, my voting reform campaigning has been within a system of representative democracy, and the discussion to which I was contributing was also in the context of representative democracy. So alternative systems of democracy, whatever their merits, were hardly relevant. We have managed to make some significant improvements to the voting systems we use in our representative democracy in the UK and I am hopeful of seeing some more. But the replacement of our system of representative democracy with some other system of democracy will not be achieved in my lifetime, no matter who campaigns for it. I therefore prefer to concentrate my remaining energies on achievable goals. If my friends think I would be the best person to do the job, they should come and tell me and persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to get me elected. However, what if you were all supporting a candidate, and after the deadline for registration, that candidate dies. UK election law has provisions that cover that eventuality. For local government councils, the election is cancelled and a new election must be held within 35 days of the date of the original election. (I haven't checked the rules for Parliamentary elections, but they'll be similar.) Or there is some huge scandal and he becomes unelectable. Why shouldn't you and your friends be able to mount a last-minute write-in campaign. In the UK, no candidate may withdraw after the close of nominations, so this is a theoretical possibility. I don't know off-hand how frequent such post-nomination problems have been in the UK. We certainly have had situations where a nominated candidate has withdrawn and been replaced, but again, I couldn't give numbers. Most of our
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:55:23 - James Gilmour wrote: Incidentally, my personal view is that there should be no provision for write-ins at all in public elections. If I am not prepared to declare myself as candidate and be nominated in the same way as all the other candidates, I cannot see any reason why anyone should take me seriously. If my friends think I would be the best person to do the job, they should come and tell me and persuade me to stand, nominate me, and then campaign like fury to get me elected. Worth some thought: I think nominate has been thoroughly defined, and should not be changed as part of this debate. Something such as authorized for write-in could be developed: Approved by candidate BEFORE the election. This would outlaw some of the present nonsense. Perhaps James could offer useful thought. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 12:56 AM 12/21/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: --- En date de : Ven 19.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : [starts with Venzke, then my response, then his] Mean utility is supposed to be naive, and it is optimal, if you are naive about win odds. I know that this (mean voting strategy in Approval) has been proposed, but it's a poor model. A voter who is naive about win odds is a voter who is so out of touch with the real world that we must wonder about the depth of the voter's judgment of the candidates themselves! I can't understand what you're criticizing. It is the zero-info strategy. You seem to be attacking this strategy by attacking the voters who would have to use it. That doesn't mean that those voters wouldn't have to use it. Yes, that is *a* zero-knowledge strategy that misses something. A voter with no knowledge about other voters is a very strange and unusual animal. I'm saying that the *strategy* is a stupid one, and that real voters are much smarter than that. Voters have knowledge of each other, generally. Positing that they have sufficient knowledge of the candidates to have sufficient preference to even vote -- I don't vote if I don't recognize any of the candidates or knowledge of whom to prefer -- but they don't have *any* knowledge of the likely response of others to those candidates, is positing a practically impossible situation. Yet this is the zero-knowledge assumption. In this sense, zero-knowledge doesn't exist, it's an oxymoron. I'm a human being. My response to a collection of candidates is a human response. My response will *resemble* that of other voters if we live in the same society. It won't be the same, but, I'm contending, assuming that my response is more-or-less typical is a very good starting position. In other words, one of the things that I should consider in a zero-knowledge situation, in any voting situation, is what will happen if everyone thinks like me! This enables me to avoid Saari's mediocre election, for starters. Now, take this to an extreme, how will I vote? I will vote in a manner that will do no harm if everyone thinks like me, so, if the method is Range, I will express a significant preference if that's possible. I *won't* vote as if the other voters were random robots picking from among the candidates randomly. However, I will also assume that there is *some* variation between my opinion and that of other voters. Most voters, in fact, have a fairly accurate knowledge of the rough response of the overall electorate to a set of candidates, provided they know the candidates. Those on the left know that they are on the left, and that the average voter is therefore to their right. And vice versa. Those near the middle think of themselves as, again, in the middle somewhere. We know this *generically*, we don't have to look at polls, and we will mistrust polls which strongly violate our assumptions. Essentially, we can't be fooled quite as easily as that. The most common Approval Vote will be a bullet vote. How much knowledge does that take? This is why runoff voting is so important, why the need for runoffs doesn't disappear by using an advanced voting system in the primary. What happens when voters don't have sufficient knowledge to make compromises is that they don't. They bullet vote. And if enough of them do this, and there are enough candidates attracting these votes, there will be majority failure. No matter what the system, as long as the system insists on a majority to award the win. Better informed voters, which means that they know more about the candidates *and* they know more about the social preference order and the preference strengths involved, will cause them to make more compromises. Strategic voting. Very functional, very helpful strategic voting, essential to democratic process. If the method is Approval, they will lower their approval cutoff as necessary, as they see appropriate, so we would start to see additional approvals. Bucklin in a runoff would allow them to maintain their sincere preferences, but also open the door to compromise. Bucklin, indeed, is more likely to find a majority, probably, than IRV, in a nonpartisan election, because it does count all the votes. This naive voter has no idea if the voter's own preferences are normal, or completely isolated from those of other voters. This is far, far from a typical voter, and imagining that most voters will follow this naive strategy is ... quite a stretch, don't you think? I don't know of anyone who said that voters would follow this strategy in a public election. It's been implied that the scenario is somehow realistic. If there is no possibility that a scenario could occur in a real election, then considering it as a criticism of the method is ivory-tower thinking. Mean utility of the candidates strategy has been proposed by Approval supporters,
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Juho Laatu Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 7:43 AM Using single-winner methods to implement multi-winner elections is a weird starting point in the first place. All my comments were exclusively in the context of single-office single-winner elections. As I have said many times before, it is my firmly held view that single-winner voting systems should NEVER be used for the general election of the members of any assembly (city council, state legislature, state or federal parliament, House of Representatives or Senate). All such assemblies should be elected by an appropriate PR voting system. This approach works for two-party systems, although PR of those two parties will not be provided. Statements like this are commonly made, but are completely wrong, at least so far as FPTP (simple plurality) in single-member districts is concerned. Even when there are only two parties, not only is there no guarantee of PR of the two parties, but such voting systems create electoral deserts for both of the parties where they win no seats despite having lots of local support, give the election to the wrong party (occasionally), and leave about half of those who voted without representation. The importance of a small number of swing voters in a few marginal districts also has very serious and very bad political effects for the assembly and the government (if government is based in the assembly). Given such results (repeatedly in the UK), it is completely unjustified to assert that such voting systems work in any real sense of the meaning of that word. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1862 - Release Date: 23/12/2008 12:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 9:54 AM Perhaps real world implementation of Condorcet systems would have a first preference threshold, either on candidates or on sets: anyone getting less than x% FP is disqualified. I have not seen any advocate of Condorcet make such a suggestion, but it has been made for IRV, though not taken up by any serious IRV advocates, so far as I am aware. The weak Condorcet winner is, in my view, the political Achilles' heel of the Condorcet voting system. The corresponding political defect in IRV is that it can eliminate a Condorcet winner (whether that is common or not is irrelevant - it is possible). But we know from experience that real electors and real politicians will accept that political defect in IRV - evidence: IRV has been used for public elections for many decades in several countries. In contrast, despite having been around for about 220 years, the Condorcet voting system has not been used in any public elections anywhere, so far as I am aware. That could perhaps change if a threshold were implemented to exclude the possibility of a weak Condorcet winner AND if a SIMPLE method were agreed to break Condorcet cycles. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1862 - Release Date: 23/12/2008 12:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 9:54 AM Perhaps real world implementation of Condorcet systems would have a first preference threshold, either on candidates or on sets: anyone getting less than x% FP is disqualified. I have not seen any advocate of Condorcet make such a suggestion, but it has been made for IRV, though not taken up by any serious IRV advocates, so far as I am aware. The weak Condorcet winner is, in my view, the political Achilles' heel of the Condorcet voting system. The corresponding political defect in IRV is that it can eliminate a Condorcet winner (whether that is common or not is irrelevant - it is possible). But we know from experience that real electors and real politicians will accept that political defect in IRV - evidence: IRV has been used for public elections for many decades in several countries. In contrast, despite having been around for about 220 years, the Condorcet voting system has not been used in any public elections anywhere, so far as I am aware. That could perhaps change if a threshold were implemented to exclude the possibility of a weak Condorcet winner AND if a SIMPLE method were agreed to break Condorcet cycles. Technically, Condorcet methods have been used in public elections. Nanson's method (below-average Borda-elimination) was used in a town in Michigan. That's one place against IRV's hundreds, though, so I see your point. A less arbitrary or hacked upon manner of fixing your problem might be to have two elections. The second is between two winners: the winner of a Condorcet election, and the winner of a Condorcet election with a quite high threshold (or the IRV winner, or FPP winner - probably should be a summable system). If there's a CW and it's the sincere CW, the second round is pointless. Otherwise, if people really prefer someone with a certain amount of first preference votes, not all is lost. That might be too complex, though, and one of the points of Condorcet is to not need to have multiple rounds. As for a simple method, I think Ranked Pairs (or MAM, rather) is quite simple. Juho thinks Minmax would work, I'm a bit too picky about criteria; but if it does, that is about as simple as you get. Schulze is complex but has precedence (history) in organizations: mainly technical/computer-related organizations, but also Wikimedia and MTV. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
I wrote: As I have said many times before, it is my firmly held view that single-winner voting systems should NEVER be used for the general election of the members of any assembly (city council, state legislature, state or federal parliament, House of Representatives or Senate). All such assemblies should be elected by an appropriate PR voting system. Juho replied: Ok, sorry for giving the opposite impression. I was replying to several streams and finding reasons behind why people in two-party countries don't like methods that may elect candidates that have only 5% first place support. Juho had written earlier: This approach works for two-party systems, although PR of those two parties will not be provided. I replied: Statements like this are commonly made, but are completely wrong, at least so far as FPTP (simple plurality) in single-member districts is concerned. Juho says: My word works should be taken to mean that voters are able to switch the rule from one party to the other when they think that should be done. But even within that more restricted meaning, I would have difficulty in accepting that our FPTP system works. No-one can be sure what the effect of voting will be. Sometimes we have had a surprising no change. All too often when change was really wanted, a landslide occurred, which then had bad political effects on the parliament and the government. And since 1945 we have had two very serious elections when the system got it wrong. On both occasions the government of the day (one Labour, one Conservative) was in trouble and went to the country to seek a renewed mandate for its policies. On both occasions the government party won the vote but lost the election. That doesn't fit within my definition of works. The myth that single-member-district voting systems work well for assembly elections when there are only two parties in very persistent. We must all work together and do everything we can to kill it off because it is just a big, big lie promoted by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1862 - Release Date: 23/12/2008 12:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Dave Ketchum Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 6:11 AM Does real likely fit the facts? Some thought: Assuming 5 serious contenders they will average 3rd rank with CW doing better (for 3, 2nd). Point is that while some voters may rank the CW low, to be CW it has to average toward first rank to beat the competition. Or, look at the other description of CW - to be CW it won all counts comparing it with other candidates - for each the CW had to rank above the other more often than the other ranked above the CW (cycles describe nt having a CW). Yes, I think really likely does fit the facts when the two big parties are nearly tied and together win most of the votes. Parties and electors respond to the specifics of whatever voting system is in place for the particular election. With any preferential voting system for a single-office election, I think the Democrats and the Republicans would each put up only one candidate. They are not going to offer their supporters a choice: left wing and right wing, north and south, east coast and west coast, or whatever. The middle will not be so well organised. If there really is a groundswell of support and a campaign to break the two-party duopoly, it is (just) possible to imagine the middle coalescing around one candidate, but that candidate would still be weak in first preferences compared to the candidates of the two big parties. Maybe the middle would more likely be split among three candidates, so the election would have five candidates. Any middle candidate emerging as the Condorcet winner would likely also be weak in first preferences. Dave asked: Per your enthusiasm note, we see primaries as a normal way to decide on a single candidate for each party in the general election. How is this handled in the UK - you agree the deciding needs doing. I am well aware that primaries are part of the US political system, but in the UK the selection of candidates is private and internal matter for the parties. Neither the state nor the public law is involved, beyond the law providing any party member with an ultimate recourse to natural justice if they believe the party has failed to follow its own rules or has behaved corruptly. Some of the parties are very democratic (one member, one vote); some are, or have been, very oligarchic; and some employ complex internal electoral colleges. In some parties, the national leadership has a very big role, in others the decision is made mainly by the district party. Because all UK political parties must be legally registered for the purposes of elections (but only since 1998), any candidate who wishes to use a party's name or one of its registered descriptions, on the ballot paper, MUST have his or her nomination paper countersigned by that party's Nominating Officer (whose name and office is registered with the UK Electoral Commission). This gives the party leadership great control, no matter what the local selection process might be. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1862 - Release Date: 23/12/2008 12:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hallo, James Gilmour wrote (24 Dec 2008): IRV has been used for public elections for many decades in several countries. In contrast, despite having been around for about 220 years, the Condorcet voting system has not been used in any public elections anywhere, so far as I am aware. That could perhaps change if a threshold were implemented to exclude the possibility of a weak Condorcet winner AND if a SIMPLE method were agreed to break Condorcet cycles. I don't agree to your proposal to introduce a threshold (of first preferences) to Condorcet to make Condorcet look more like IRV. As I said in my 21 Dec 2007 mail: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2007-December/021063.html I don't think that it makes much sense to try to find a Condorcet method that looks as much as possible like IRV or as much as possible like Borda. The best method according to IRV's underlying heuristic will always be IRV; the best method according to the underlying heuristic of the Borda method will always be the Borda method. It makes more sense to propose a Condorcet method that stands on its own legs. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Markus Schulze Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 9:24 PM James Gilmour wrote (24 Dec 2008): IRV has been used for public elections for many decades in several countries. In contrast, despite having been around for about 220 years, the Condorcet voting system has not been used in any public elections anywhere, so far as I am aware. That could perhaps change if a threshold were implemented to exclude the possibility of a weak Condorcet winner AND if a SIMPLE method were agreed to break Condorcet cycles. I don't agree to your proposal to introduce a threshold (of first preferences) to Condorcet to make Condorcet look more like IRV. Markus - this was NOT a proposal made by ME. I was merely speculating (following earlier comments by others) that IF a solution could be found to the weak winner problem and IF a simple solution could be agreed to deal with (rare) cycles, then perhaps Condorcet might be considered a contender for public elections in a way that it has not been for the past 220 years. I don't think that it makes much sense to try to find a Condorcet method that looks as much as possible like IRV or as much as possible like Borda. The best method according to IRV's underlying heuristic will always be IRV; the best method according to the underlying heuristic of the Borda method will always be the Borda method. It makes more sense to propose a Condorcet method that stands on its own legs. I agree with you. IRV has a significant political defect, but the empirical evidence is that electors and politicians will accept IRV despite that defect. So far as I am concerned, Borda is out of the window. Leaving cycles to one side, the problem for Condorcet remains that there is no Condorcet solution to the weak winner problem, or at least, I've never seen one suggested by any Condorcet advocate. Indeed, it has previously been impossible to get any advocate of Condorcet even to acknowledge that the weak winner might be a real POLITICAL problem. A similar political problem would confront any other voting system that would allow a weak winner to come through. It is one thing to discuss voting systems in a theoretical vacuum, it is quite another to achieve practical reform in the real world. Theoretical discussion is desirable and necessary, but right now, practical reform of the voting system is more urgent, and in more countries of the world than I like to think about. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1862 - Release Date: 23/12/2008 12:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 04:47 AM 12/22/2008, James Gilmour wrote: In a post last night I wrote: Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 11:14 PM I am not going to comment of the rest of your interesting post in detail, but I am surprised that anyone should take Bucklin seriously. I, and some of our intuitive electors, would regard it as fundamentally flawed because a candidate with an absolute majority of first preferences can be defeated by another candidate. Such a result may measure some compromise view computed from the voters' preferences, but it is not considered acceptable - at least, not here for public elections. Chris Benham has kindly (and gently) pointed out my error, off-list. My comments above relate to BORDA, not Bucklin. My apologies to Abd and all for confusing the two systems and for any confusion my comments may have caused. No problem. It was simply confusing. Bucklin would, of course, correctly identify the majority winner in the case described above. But some of us take the view that Bucklin falls one person, one vote unless all voters are (undesirably) compelled to mark preferences for all candidates - but that is a completely different issue, and I am aware there is more than one view on the meaning of one person, one vote. The general legal opinion seems to be that it doesn't fail that principle. It *looks* like the person has more than one vote, but, when the smoke clears, you will see that only one of these votes was actually effective. The voter has contributed no more than one vote to the total that allowed the candidate to win. Consider the election as a series of pairwise elections. If the voter votes a single vote, the voter is casting a vote for the favorite in all pairwise elections involving that favorite. The voter is, however, abstaining from all other pairwise elections. If the voter approves another (whether unconditionally as in Open Voting or Approval, or conditionally as in Bucklin), the voter has voted in other pairwise elections, but has abstained from one, the pairwise election involving the two. There *is* additional voting power, but not violating one-person, one-vote. In a ranked method, generally, such as STV, the voter may possibly vote in all pairwise elections, except that with STV some of these votes aren't counted. With a Condorcet method, the votes all count. Think of it as IRV with a different method of deciding whom to eliminate. Elect the winner of a rank unless a majority isn't found, if not found, proceed to the next rank. When the ranks are all exhausted and counted and added together, eliminate the candidates with less than a majority. Or eliminate the lowest-vote getters, thus finding the candidate or candidates with the most ballots showing support. This most ballots showing support approach was cited with approval in Brown v. Smallwood, but then the court proceeded, in order to find Bucklin violating one person one vote, to ignore it, noting that there were more marks than voters thus confusing, in direct contradiction with what they had just quoted, marks with the ballots. The argument that they gave applies to any alternative vote system where the voter votes for more than one candidate, and that in STV, only one vote at a time is counted, is simply a procedural difference. The reasoning in Brown v. Smallwood was not repeated elsewhere, and Bucklin systems weren't elsewhere removed for constitutional reasons related to the canvassing method. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 05:18 AM 12/22/2008, James Gilmour wrote: But, of course, if it were possible to elect a no first preferences candidate as the Condorcet winner, such a result would completely unacceptable politically and the consequences would be disastrous. No example is known to me. It's easy to see examples in small direct democratic situations where this compromise could clearly be the best result. We know that sometimes the best candidate, for example, doesn't make it to the ballot, even. Suppose there is a majority requirement, two candidates on the ballot. But so many voters would prefer candidate C, that some of them write it in, causing majority failure. If it's top two runoff, and write-ins are allowed, and *especially* if the runoff method doesn't cause a serious spoiler effect, the write-in can win the runoff *with a majority*. Or, in spite of the obstacles, with a plurality. Given the obstacle of not being on the ballot, it's quite likely in that case, that a majority would ratify the election. How would this be disastrous? The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; centrist candidate M Centrist candidate M, let's say, was a Republican who didn't get the party's nomination because he didn't please the right core of the Republican Party. He's popular with many Republicans, maybe just short of a majority and he's popular with many Democrats, maybe even most of them. He runs as an independent in the election, or as a Reform Party candidate. Election 1 35% DM; 33% RM; 32% M Election 2 48% DM; 47% RM; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political consequences of the two results would be very different. Note that in both elections there is Majority failure. Thus in a primary-majority required situation, there would be a runoff. Given the Condorcet principle, and the same electorate and votes, M, if allowed to be on the ballot, would win the runoff against either of the other candidates. If not allowed to be on the ballot, it would not escape the notice of the supporters of M that M is the Condorcet winner, a runoff write-in candidacy makes sense, as long as it doesn't spoil it. The election of either the R or the D produces a result which is unsatisfactory to the majority. Majority rule requires something different. Majority rule requires a disaster? Minority -- plurality -- rule is better? Bucklin in the runoff handles this situation with ease -- even if a write-in candidacy is necessary. The situation probably would not exist in the first place -- the need for a runoff -- with Bucklin or a Condorcet-compliant method. Note that in both cases, ballot truncation shows significant preference gap of M over other candidates, and minor preference gap between the D and R candidate. How in the world would the election of M be a poor result? This is the second preference candidate of *everyone*. And that doesn't mean lesser evil? With poor core support in the second election, M is nevertheless considered a good alternative, a good compromise. You are standing in a relatively isolated position, James. Robert's Rules of Order considers this failure to find a compromise winner a serious argument against sequential elimination ranked methods. My own view is that the result of the first election would be acceptable, but the result of the second election would be unacceptable to the electorate as well as to the partisan politicians (who cannot be ignored completely!). Actually, partisan politicians voiced strong objections to preferential voting systems when they won the first preference vote, but lost when voluntary additional preferences were added in (Bucklin) or were substituted in (IRV). The electorate, however, was undisturbed, except for minorities supporting those politicians. Thus in Ann Arbor, MI, the Republicans arranged a repeal of IRV, scheduled when many of the students who supported the Human Rights Party and Democratic candidate were out of town. They won, with low participation in the repeal. There is no substitute for the majority being organized! Which organization must reach across party lines. If such an outcome is possible with a particular voting system (as it is with Condorcet), that voting system will not be adopted for public elections. Bucklin, which makes the result possible, was adopted and wasn't rejected by the electorate because of this. It was rejected, often not by the electorate per se, for other reasons; the idea that the first preference winner should win was used as an argument as part of this. Want to stand on that side, the side that favors party power over public power? It's your choice! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 07:23 PM 12/22/2008, Dave Ketchum wrote: Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. As to my no first preferences example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. I'll go both ways on this. The election outcome as stated is close, not an obvious one. It's obvious when there are many small parties, as in France in 2000. The Condorcet winner, almost certainly, was in third place, just a nose behind the second place. In this particular example, IRV would probably have transferred sufficient votes to Jospin to keep him in to the last round, where he would have won. But with a less fanatic candidate than Le Pen, it's not at all guaranteed, and in a two-party system, with occasional candidacies that contest that, it is likewise very possible. There are two reasons why Top Two Runoff might have different results than IRV; the first is that different voters show up, and the second is that voters change their minds. Both of these phenomena favor candidates preferred with strong preferences. Whatever the reason, it clearly happens, about one out of three TT Runoffs. Very rarely -- no examples in the U.S. so far for nonpartisan elections (almost all of these elections are nonpartisan; partisan elections show different phenomena, and comeback elections do happen.) The scenario where a Condorcet winner has only 5% of first preferences would require two competing candidates both squeezing the center, so that primary support for the center is weak, even though overall pairwise preference may be strong, in comparison to the other two candidates. It also depends on the distribution of preferences. But a Condorcet winner is unlikely to be viewed as illegitimate. It's the reverse that will suffer this problem, in some cases. In other cases the electorate is mostly apathetic Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 08:56 PM 12/22/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Dave, I think you make a common semantic manipulation about the nature of a Condorcet winner (particularly in a weak CW example) by using the term wins by a majority. He wouldn't be the one who invented this practice, Terry. In fact, each of the separate and distinct pairwise majorities may consist largely of different voters, rather than any solid majority. That's correct, with truncation. This is why it's an important reform, one long ago introduced into the U.S. in progressive jurisdictions, to require a majority of ballots contain a vote for the winner, at least in a primary that can elect if there is a majority. The big error that was made, and it was made with Bucklin as a runoff substitute -- it was also sold that way, as well as with IRV -- was to imagine that, somehow, these preferential voting systems were going to manufacture a majority. This is why I think the Mutual-Majority Criterion is a more useful criterion. In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. Sure. But wait a minute! Every voter ranks next to last. Ain't gonna happen unless every voter ranks all the candidates. Under voluntary ranking systems, that represents every ballot containing a vote for the Condorcet winner. Consider the case that this is RCV, three ranks. That's a strong showing! But it *also* isn't going to happen in public elections, except possibly with exceeding rarity under unusual conditions. The biggest factor in voting patterns in public elections is probably name recognition. A Condorcet winner with high name recognition is also going to get a substantial number of votes. This is not a little-considered candidate if everyone uses one of their three ranks for the candidate. Terrill, it's pretty obvious to me that the decision to support IRV in the U.S. was made for strategic reasons, not because the system is actually superior to other options. IRV is probably inferior (different result being a worse result) in probably one out of ten nonpartisan elections or so, just compared to top two runoff, not to mention better systems (in my view, real runoff voting has a huge advantage, such that it's possible that TTR, with write-ins allowed -- as is the case in some U.S. jurisdictions -- is better even than Range. And what have you and your friends been replacing with IRV? Plurality? No. Top Two Runoff, vulnerable because of (1) widespread ignorance about the difference between IRV and TTR, and (2) an alleged -- and possibly spurious -- cost savings. FairVote's first victory was the San Jose measure that allowed IRV, in 1998. The ballot arguments were flat-our wrong. They essentially would only be correct with full ranking, which is a Bad Idea in the U.S. and is the reason why Oklahoma Bucklin was ruled unconstitutional. It wasn't the additive method, it was the mandatory full ranking. The ballot analysis by the impartial county counsel -- who apparently swallowed the propaganda -- and, of course, the Pro argument by Steve Chessin et al, very specifically misrepresented the majority issue, using ballots instead of the somewhat vaguer votes in the similar San Francisco situation. IRV *functionally, in nonpartisan elections*, is Plurality. The difference must exist, sometimes, when an election is close enough, but it is rare enough that we haven't seen it yet in the U.S. in over thirty such elections. And since, if it does occur, the vote is likely to be quite close, it's quite unclear that IRV would be enough better than Plurality *in that context* to make it worthwhile. TTR *is* better, clearly, in probably one out of ten elections. I'm waiting for you to realize just how much of a mistake was made You and FairVote have been damaging U.S. democracy, replacing the only method which is known, in practice, to encourage strong multiparty systems, with IRV, which doesn't. That method, Top Two Runoff could be made better by using a better preferential voting system in the primary, and submitting, to a runoff, ambiguous results (such as majority failure, but there are other possible situations, such as a multiple majority in an additive system like Bucklin -- though, here, there is good precedent for choosing the candidate with the most votes). IRV avoids runoffs by discarding the majority requirement through a trick definition. Bucklin doesn't follow that definition, if there is a majority in Bucklin it is not a trick, all the ballots are included and counted. So Bucklin will show majority failure when IRV can conceal it, to those who don't pay attention, by only considering the last-round votes, meaning that many voters, who did vote and cast legitimate votes, and who did not necessarily truncate, don't count, it is as if they did not vote. The phrase wins by a majority creates the image in the reader's mind of a happy satisfied
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd, Abd wrote about center squeeze: snip The problem happens with reasonable frequency with Top Two Runoff, and the principles are the same. *In this way,* IRV simulates TTR, though, in fact, it is a little better in choosing among the remaining two. IRV would not have elected Le Pen. But it missed the very clear, and broadly supported, Jospin, who would have won against Chirac, and not by a small margin. If Jospin had gotten 1% more of the vote, the runoff would have been between Chirac and Jospin, the voter turnout would have been lower because of lower preference strength, but I'd have predicted, from what's known, 70% or more of the vote for Jospin. snip It sounds as if you are saying IRV would have missed electing Jospin over Le Pen and Chirac...but perhaps by it you mean two round runoffs??? If you want to promote two-round runoffs over IRV, you shouldn't use the example of the French election, because it shows the exact opposite of what you seem to claim here. That French presidential election underscores how IRV also is better than runoffs that reduce the field to two after the first count. Extremist Jean Marie Le Pen only gained the runoff with 17 percent of the vote (barely more than his share in past elections) because the center-left split its 40 percent-plus pool of votes among several candidates. Under IRV, by reducing the field gradually, the center-left vote would have coalesced behind prime minister Lionel Jospin, putting him well ahead of Le Pen and within striking range of Jacques Chirac. This is an example of how IRV can avoid the center squeeze that is far more probable with your favored two-round runoff method. Another shortcoming of two-round elections is the sharply lower voter participation (primarily among lower income voters) typical in one of the rounds of a two election system. I know you have written favorably about such drop off in voter turnout as an effective method of compromise (voters who don't care enough stay home). I disagree. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net; Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com; Election Methods Mailing List election-meth...@electorama.com Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 7:02 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 At 08:56 PM 12/22/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Dave, I think you make a common semantic manipulation about the nature of a Condorcet winner (particularly in a weak CW example) by using the term wins by a majority. He wouldn't be the one who invented this practice, Terry. In fact, each of the separate and distinct pairwise majorities may consist largely of different voters, rather than any solid majority. That's correct, with truncation. This is why it's an important reform, one long ago introduced into the U.S. in progressive jurisdictions, to require a majority of ballots contain a vote for the winner, at least in a primary that can elect if there is a majority. The big error that was made, and it was made with Bucklin as a runoff substitute -- it was also sold that way, as well as with IRV -- was to imagine that, somehow, these preferential voting systems were going to manufacture a majority. This is why I think the Mutual-Majority Criterion is a more useful criterion. In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. Sure. But wait a minute! Every voter ranks next to last. Ain't gonna happen unless every voter ranks all the candidates. Under voluntary ranking systems, that represents every ballot containing a vote for the Condorcet winner. Consider the case that this is RCV, three ranks. That's a strong showing! But it *also* isn't going to happen in public elections, except possibly with exceeding rarity under unusual conditions. The biggest factor in voting patterns in public elections is probably name recognition. A Condorcet winner with high name recognition is also going to get a substantial number of votes. This is not a little-considered candidate if everyone uses one of their three ranks for the candidate. Terrill, it's pretty obvious to me that the decision to support IRV in the U.S. was made for strategic reasons, not because the system is actually superior to other options. IRV is probably inferior (different result being a worse result) in probably one out of ten nonpartisan elections or so, just compared to top two runoff, not to mention better systems (in my view, real runoff voting has a huge advantage, such that it's possible that TTR, with write-ins allowed -- as is the case in some U.S. jurisdictions -- is better even than Range. And what have you and your friends been replacing with IRV? Plurality? No. Top Two Runoff, vulnerable because of (1) widespread ignorance about the difference between IRV and TTR, and (2) an alleged -- and possibly spurious -- cost savings. FairVote's first
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 08:02 AM 12/23/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Dave, I never said that I would find that result objectionable. What I did say was that I thought such a result would be POLITICALLY unacceptable to the ELECTORS - certainly in the UK, and perhaps also in the USA as there are SOME similarities in the political culture. It goes almost without saying that such a result would be politically unacceptable to the two main parties I had in mind. The main parties don't like losing, is what this boils down to. However, it's unlikely that any advanced voting system is going to magically award victories to minor party candidates more than rarely, at least at first. By the time it does, it will have been well-established as fairer than Plurality. Preferential voting in the U.S. -- usually Bucklin -- won many judicial victories, definitely, losers tried to overturn it, only in Minnesota was there the idiosyncratic Brown v. Smallwood decision that did it because of the method itself. In Oklahoma, it was mandatory ranking. Political acceptability is extremely important if you want to achieve practical reform of the voting system. The Electoral Reform Society has been campaigning for such reform for more that 100 years (since 1884), but it has still not achieved it main objective - to reform the FPTP voting system used to elected MPs to the UK House of Commons. Sure. What this means is simple: if the status quo gives inequitable power to some, those, who, by definition, have excess power, will resist reform toward equity. Could it be, however, that the ERS has been pushing the wrong methods? Asset Voting was invented in England, over 120 years ago, as a tweak on IRV. It would be a far better method than standard preferential voting, allowing voters who only want to rank one candidate to vote, and it could produce true proportional representation with minimal compromise. The obstacles to that reform are not to do with theoretical or technical aspects of the voting systems - they are simply political. Yes. And political doesn't mean massive voter outcry against fair election results. Voters don't massively reject results in the U.S. even when they are patently unfair, just look at Presidential 2000. The fact is, though, that the 2000 election was close. A close election is, in my view, an *inherently* poor result unless there is truly low preference strength involved. It was for political reasons that the Hansard Society's Commission on Electoral Reform came up with its dreadful version of MMP in 1976 and for political reasons that the Jenkins Commission proposed the equally dreadful AV+ in 1998. Jenkins' AV+ was a (slight) move towards PR, but it was deliberately designed so that the two main parties would be over-represented in relation to their shares of the votes and that one or other of two main parties would have a manufactured majority of the seats so that it could form a single-party majority government even though it had only a minority of the votes. Sure. Politics. And this is why I believe that true reform must start with organization outside of government. The fact is that if the electorate were organized, it could ensure that the best possible candidate was on the ballot, and close elections, even with plurality, would be rare. In small jurisdictions, where people know each other and know the candidates, it's common for elections to be unopposed. It is sometimes possible to marginalise the politicians and the political parties in a campaign if you can mobilise enough of the ordinary electors to express a view, but our experience in the UK is that constitutional reform and reform of the voting system are very rarely issues on which ordinary electors will take up arms (metaphorically, of course). That's right. However, Bucklin was very popular in the U.S., that's what I'm finding. What I *don't* know is how the reform disappeared. It seems it was usually replaced with top two runoff, and that may indeed be an improvement. But holding a runoff with a Bucklin primary would have been even better, and about half the runoffs would probably be avoided. In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. Leaving aside the debate about the meaning of majority, it is clear to me that M is the Condorcet winner - no question. But, as explained above, it is MY view that such an outcome would not be acceptable to our electors. I base my view of UK electors' likely reaction on nearly five decades of campaigning for practical reform of the voting systems we use in our public elections. It's hard to argue with experience, except that it's obvious that this experience doesn't include actual experience with such an outcome. James is extrapolating from other opinions that he's seen, just as he
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 3
At 10:29 PM 12/23/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: (in response to my post) This is missing the point. There is no implication anywhere that a zero-info strategy is supposed to be usable by real voters. If we use zero-info strategy to judge a method, and that strategy doesn't apply to real voters, we are generating analysis that is divorced from real applications. Now, if what we like is playing mathematical games, and don't care about real applications, this could be fun. But it's not my interest. I'm interested in analysis that approaches, to the extent possible, description of how real voting systems with real voters in real elections will function. Zero-info strategy is interesting, and I've put some work into it, but what gets dangerous is when, indeed, it is implied that voters will behave with this strategy, when zero-info strategy is used, for example, to criticize Approval Voting, as was done by Saari. Saari explicitly used a mean expected utility that was based on *no* knowledge of who might win the election, when the situation was that 9,999 voters had strong preference (almost 50% utility) for A. There is an implication here that the strategy is realistic. The most common Approval Vote will be a bullet vote. How much knowledge does that take? Do you have a very concise summary of why you believe the most common Approval vote will be a bullet vote? Are you making any assumptions about nomination strategy, what kinds of and how many candidates will be nominated? I'm assuming that Open Voting is adopted for public elections under otherwise current conditions. Hence the norm in partisan elections would be a few candidates. With many candidates, and with nonpartisan elections, we also know that many or even most voters will add additional approved candidates. But if we look at the most common situation, two main candidates and possibly, even no minor candidates on the ballot, we will see a few write-in votes, and only these, with very rare exceptions, will have additional votes on the ballot. Add a minor party, and only the minor party supporters, and only some of them, will add an additional vote, and a few major party supporters will add a vote for a minor party. In nonpartisan elections, I'd expect the percentages to increase, and, as well, as more parties begin to show up on partisan ballots (because they start to get votes, they start to get ballot position, further increasing votes, and because the spoiler effect is reduced greatly), there will be more multiple approvals. In nonpartisan elections, alternative voting systems or top two runoff tend to encourage more candidates to run. This causes majority failure with any system, but my guess is that Bucklin addresses this the most effectively. Approval won't do it quite as well. It's been implied that the scenario is somehow realistic. Do you want to name names? I don't know who has implied this. If there is no possibility that a scenario could occur in a real election, then considering it as a criticism of the method is ivory-tower thinking. Are you talking about Saari? Sure. But I think I've seen it elsewhere. For example, FairVote uses preposterous scenarios to show how Range Voting can produce allegedly preposterous results. Yet when one criticizes IRV with much more realistic scenarios, that is labeled ivory tower thinking. Apparently geese and ganders require different sauces. Mean utility of the candidates strategy has been proposed by Approval supporters, but unless the utilities are modified by expectations, it's a terrible strategy, bullet voting is better, probably. Why do you think it's a terrible strategy? I think it is a better strategy than bullet voting, unless you believe lots of clones have been nominated in order to take advantage of your strategy. But that would be a pretty bizarre fear since, if anyone ever learned of this conspiracy, the strategy would disappear. That's not zero knowledge, of course It's a terrible strategy precisely because applied by relatively ignorant voters, it produces worse results than if they simply vote for their favorite. Depends on other details, though. Bullet voting causes majority failure, which is a good thing, in fact, when the electorate hasn't settled on a candidate. It's only for practical reasons that we don't like this. There is nothing wrong with bullet voting. It's, in fact, the basic voting strategy, enforced by methods that only allow a single vote. That what I consider the ideal method can use the bullet vote is interesting: Asset Voting. Better than expectation strategy is sound. Better than mean of the candidates isn't. But this is inherently a strategy. The latter is a special case of the former. Sure. However, to be realistic, the voter must be a nonrepresentative sample of the electorate, such that there is *no connection* between the preferences of the voter and the other
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 02:42 AM 12/24/2008, Juho Laatu wrote: ... the Condorcet voting system will never get off the ground so long as a 5% FP Condorcet winner is a realistic scenario, as it is when the current (pre-reform) political system is so dominated by two big political parties. The question is if methods that may regularly elect a 5% first place support Condorcet winner can be politically acceptable. That a 5% first-preference support candidate could be the Condorcet winner is radically improbable under anything like current conditions. For it to happen would probably take very different conditions, which would probably mean that we don't have a clue as to what would be politically acceptable. I can easily imagine such a winner with Asset used single-winner, and there wouldn't be any question about legitimacy, it would be *obviously* legitimate. One reason supporting this approach is that most single-winner methods are designed to always elect compromise winners. (Some methods like random ballot are an exception since they give all candidates a proportional probability to become elected.) Random ballot hasn't a snowball's chance, I'd say. Even though the theory might support it, I wouldn't vote for it! Not unless there is some prefiltering. I'd support random ballot in close elections where the winner isn't clear. It could cause some defacto proportional representation, and I know of a prominent and very important -- to me -- organization where that is done. In electing delegates to the General Service Conference, area conferences hold repeated ballots; they are seeking a two-thirds vote supporting the delegate. If it can't be found within a certain number of ballots or time, I'm not sure which, the winner is selected at random from among the top two. AA is an organization which seeks general consensus, and this approach gives minority positions some representation, they've been using it for more than fifty years. Some representation is enough when consensus is being sought Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 06:59 AM 12/24/2008, James Gilmour wrote: As I have said many times before, it is my firmly held view that single-winner voting systems should NEVER be used for the general election of the members of any assembly (city council, state legislature, state or federal parliament, House of Representatives or Senate). All such assemblies should be elected by an appropriate PR voting system. I'll agree on that, and would go further. All officers should be elected in the assembly. Make sure that the assembly is truly representative, then allow it to hire officers. And fire them. Using deliberative process for elections avoids the whole mess of election paradoxes, and does, indeed, guarantee majority support for a winner. Abuse of this process is usually related to disproportional representation, not to true proportional representation. Asset Voting, which produces, in theory, nearly perfect PR, on the cheap, can also keep the assembly representative, if the electors, the public voters in Asset, can recall seats and reform them. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 08:06 PM 12/24/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Abd, Abd wrote about center squeeze: snip The problem happens with reasonable frequency with Top Two Runoff, and the principles are the same. *In this way,* IRV simulates TTR, though, in fact, it is a little better in choosing among the remaining two. IRV would not have elected Le Pen. But it missed the very clear, and broadly supported, Jospin, who would have won against Chirac, and not by a small margin. If Jospin had gotten 1% more of the vote, the runoff would have been between Chirac and Jospin, the voter turnout would have been lower because of lower preference strength, but I'd have predicted, from what's known, 70% or more of the vote for Jospin. snip It sounds as if you are saying IRV would have missed electing Jospin over Le Pen and Chirac...but perhaps by it you mean two round runoffs??? Sorry. Yes, It referred to TTR. (top two runoff). IRV would not have elected Le Pen, as I wrote. It *might* have elected Jospin, because Jospin was in third place, and before being eliminated, would almost certainly have gathered enough transferred votes to pass up Le Pen, who would have been eliminated instead. I.e., in this case, IRV would have gotten it right. IRV fixes *some* of the Center Squeeze situations that the more primitive FPTP primary in standard Top Two Runoff misses. But it misses others. If we look at a close three-candidate election, all that has to happen is that the compromise winner, who could be the second choice of practically everyone, if not their first choice, is edged out by the other two. That's a rare circumstance in a two-party system, for sure, but it could be the death of a third party that fronted what came to be a spoiler with a vengeance. If you want to promote two-round runoffs over IRV, you shouldn't use the example of the French election, because it shows the exact opposite of what you seem to claim here. Terry, I'm not a promoter, politician, or die-hard advocate, I don't pick and choose my arguments for political effect; rather I examine the issues. I emphasize certain points that I think important, I'll return to them, but I try not to be imbalanced; like Warren Smith, I will write stuff that appears to be contradictory to what might seem to be my agenda. The French election indeed shows a failure of Top Two Runoff, but the failure is in the first round and in the runoff rules. If the French system allowed write-ins in the runoff, and the runoff were, say, Bucklin (two candidates on the ballot, plus a write-in is possible), I'd predict that the motivation there would have been sufficiently strong for an active write-in campaign, but, knowing the danger of a write-in as to spoiler effect, the write-ins for Jospin would have been accompanied by second-preference votes for Chirac. But even without those, in that case, there was no danger that Le Pen would have won. He got about 20% of the vote. Even if Jospin and Chirac had split the rest, one of them would have won. That French presidential election underscores how IRV also is better than runoffs that reduce the field to two after the first count. However, Terry, don't you realize that top-two batch elimination is called IRV when it comes to listing implementations of IRV in the U.S. by FairVote? Batch elimination would have shown the same effect; I would guess that voting patterns would have been the same, except that additional preferences would have been added. Jospin would have been eliminated, quite likely. Same problem. The more sophisticated sequential elimination, one or only a few hopeless candidates at a time, is indeed better. But a Bucklin primary Extremist Jean Marie Le Pen only gained the runoff with 17 percent of the vote (barely more than his share in past elections) because the center-left split its 40 percent-plus pool of votes among several candidates. Under IRV, by reducing the field gradually, the center-left vote would have coalesced behind prime minister Lionel Jospin, putting him well ahead of Le Pen and within striking range of Jacques Chirac. This is an example of how IRV can avoid the center squeeze that is far more probable with your favored two-round runoff method. Be more specific, Terry. Sequential elimination, unlimited round IRV, not just any IRV, does indeed avoid the particular Center Squeeze situation encountered in France. In that situation, I consider it almost certain that STV-IRV would have, correctly, chosen Jospin. But it misses others. What do you think the American Preferential System would have done in France? It would also, I think it certain, have elected Jospin. With a whole lot less counting fuss. Bucklin and IRV will usually come up with the same results. Except for the 3-way Center Squeeze situation, where Bucklin, because it doesn't eliminate candidates, but counts all the votes, is more likely to get it right. I don't favor two-round runoff with
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 08:06 PM 12/24/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Another shortcoming of two-round elections is the sharply lower voter participation (primarily among lower income voters) typical in one of the rounds of a two election system. I know you have written favorably about such drop off in voter turnout as an effective method of compromise (voters who don't care enough stay home). I disagree. Low voter participation means, almost certainly, that the voters don't have anything at stake in the election. Another flaw here is that when both rounds of a top two runoff election are special elections, turnout tends to be roughly the same. That's not *exactly* the case in, say, Cary NC, where the primary is in October and a runoff is with the general election in November, but the turnout in both in the elections I looked at roughly matched. The general election is an off-year election without major candidacies on it. There has been a lot of *assumption* that the low turnout in runoff elections is connected to somehow the poor being disenfranchised, but I've seen no evidence for this at all. I do wonder what comparing registration data and turnout data -- usually who voted is public record -- would show. But the theory would be in the other direction: low turnout indicates voter disinterest in the result, which can be either good or bad. From what I've seen, when an unexpected candidate makes it into a runoff, turnout tends to be high, as the supporters of that candidate turn out in droves. In France, of course, the supporters of Le Pen did increase in turnout, apparently, but Le Pen already had most of his support in the primary, and that, of course, didn't stop everyone else from turning out too, since the French mostly hated the idea that Le Pen even did as well as he did. It's simply a fact: top two runoff is associated with multiparty systems, IRV with strong two-party systems. Two party systems can tolerate the existence of minor parties, with even less risk if IRV is used, the annoyance of minor parties becomes moot. The only reason the Greens get Senate seats in Australia is multiwinner STV, which is a much better system than single-winner IRV. The place where we can probably agree is with understanding that single-winner elections for representation in a legislature is a very bad idea, guaranteeing that a significant number of people, often a majority, are not actually represented. It's really too bad that the proportional representation movement in the U.S. was recently co-opted by FairVote to promote IRV as a step toward it. That's a step that could totally torpedo it, as people realize that they have been conned. IRV, used in nonpartisan elections, is an expensive form of Plurality, almost never changing the results from what people get if they simply vote for their favorite, nothing else. Top two runoff *does* change the results in roughly one out of three runoffs. Why? Shouldn't that be an interesting question? Shouldn't cities considering using IRV as a replacement for top two runoff be aware of this? Instead, they are being told that IRV guarantees majorities, with statements that are just plain lies. The winner will still have to get a vote from a majority of the ballots. Really? Even the *opponents* of IRV largely missed this. In San Jose, 1998, a Libertarian opponent noted that the language was vague, and it seems he was referring to the usage of the word majority, which wasn't made explicit in the ballot measure. He made the political mistake of claiming that the elected body that would consider implementation details would use the ambiguity to feather their own nest. Maybe, but it made him look like a nut case. It's too bad that he didn't just focus on the deception involved of the claim that IRV would guarantee majorities. The opponents in San Francisco totally missed it, they argued for this and against that, but not against the central error: the claim that IRV would still require the candidates to get a majority of the vote. If majority of the vote meant majority of the vote after ballots not containing a vote for the top two remaining candidates after eliminations are set aside, which would in itself be deceptive, it would still not be a requirement, but, instead, a simple mathematical certainty (ties excepted), just as it would be certain that we'd get unanimity if we set aside all ballots not containing a vote for the winner. Terrill, I ask you, how can you justify such deception? Political expediency? What? *It worked.* But it won't work forever. The opponents of IRV, for better and for worse, will figure it out. The deceptive arguments that have been promoted by FairVote about Bucklin and Approval and Range Voting and Condorcet methods will also be trotted out by these opponents. Deception is bad news, and the effects of it can persist. How many Americans still think that Saddam Hussein and 9/11 were connected?
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hallo, Terry Bouricius wrote (22 Dec 2008): In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. Markus Schulze wrote (23 Dec 2008): As the Borda score of a CW is always above the average Borda score, it is not possible that the CW is a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. Juho Laatu wrote (23 Dec 2008): Except that there could be only two candidates. But maybe the CW wouldn't be little-considered then. Even when there are only two candidates, the Borda score of the CW is always above average. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Dave KetchumSent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 12:23 AM Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. Dave, I never said that I would find that result objectionable. What I did say was that I thought such a result would be POLITICALLY unacceptable to the ELECTORS - certainly in the UK, and perhaps also in the USA as there are SOME similarities in the political culture. It goes almost without saying that such a result would be politically unacceptable to the two main parties I had in mind. Political acceptability is extremely important if you want to achieve practical reform of the voting system. The Electoral Reform Society has been campaigning for such reform for more that 100 years (since 1884), but it has still not achieved it main objective - to reform the FPTP voting system used to elected MPs to the UK House of Commons. The obstacles to that reform are not to do with theoretical or technical aspects of the voting systems - they are simply political. It was for political reasons that the Hansard Society's Commission on Electoral Reform came up with its dreadful version of MMP in 1976 and for political reasons that the Jenkins Commission proposed the equally dreadful AV+ in 1998. Jenkins' AV+ was a (slight) move towards PR, but it was deliberately designed so that the two main parties would be over-represented in relation to their shares of the votes and that one or other of two main parties would have a manufactured majority of the seats so that it could form a single-party majority government even though it had only a minority of the votes. It is sometimes possible to marginalise the politicians and the political parties in a campaign if you can mobilise enough of the ordinary electors to express a view, but our experience in the UK is that constitutional reform and reform of the voting system are very rarely issues on which ordinary electors will take up arms (metaphorically, of course). In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. Leaving aside the debate about the meaning of majority, it is clear to me that M is the Condorcet winner - no question. But, as explained above, it is MY view that such an outcome would not be acceptable to our electors. I base my view of UK electors' likely reaction on nearly five decades of campaigning for practical reform of the voting systems we use in our public elections. As to my no first preferences example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. I'm not sure what this statement is really mean to say.. I understand that a Condorcet winner could, indeed, have no first preferences at all. But in political terms, such a possibility is not just unacceptable, it's a complete non-starter. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1861 - Release Date: 22/12/2008 11:23 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Dave Ketchum Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:54 PM Ok, I did not say it clearly. Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are salable. Take the one about a Condorcet winner with no first preferences. Ugly thought, but how do you get there? Perhaps with three incompatible positions that share equally all the first preferences, while a neutral candidate gets all the second preferences. Assume it will never happen, so do not provide for such? As I suggested before, somehow, if you assume such fate will, somehow, prove you wrong. Provide a fence, forbidding getting too close to such? Where do you put the fence without doing more harm than good? Leave it legal, while assuring electors they should not worry about it ever occurring? I see this as proper - it is unlikely, yet not a true disaster if it does manage to occur. Interesting points, but I don't think any of them address the problem I identified. It is no answer at all to say Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are saleable.. The ordinary electors will just not buy it when a weak Condorcet winner is a real likely outcome. I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of politically unacceptable. I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to the good old ways. I said in an earlier post that I thought a strong third-placed Condorcet winner could be politically acceptable, and thus the voting system could be saleable if that was always the only likely outcome. So I have been asked before where I thought the tipping point might be, between acceptable and unacceptable. I don't know the answer to that question because no work has been done on that - certainly not in the UK where Condorcet is not on the voting reform agenda at all. In some ways the answer is irrelevant because the Condorcet voting system will never get off the ground so long as a 5% FP Condorcet winner is a realistic scenario, as it is when the current (pre-reform) political system is so dominated by two big political parties. The primary battle between Clinton and Obama here presents a strong argument for getting rid of Plurality elections - better for them both to go to the general election fighting against their shared foe, McCain. This represents a VERY idealistic view of politics - at least, it would be so far as the UK is concerned. NO major party is going into any single-office single-winner election with more than one party candidate, no matter what the voting system. Having more than one candidate causes problems for the party and it certainly causes problems for the voters. And there is another important intuitive reaction on the part of the electors - they don't like parties that appear to be divided. They like the party to sort all that internally and to present one candidate with a common front in the public election for the office. But maybe my views are somewhat coloured by my lack of enthusiasm for public primary elections. Actually, the Electoral College complicates this discussion for presidential elections but it does apply to others. Yes, the Electoral College is a complication in any discussion about choosing a voting system for the possible direct election of the US President. As a practical reformer, that's one I would leave severely alone until every city mayor and every state governor and every other single-office holder in the USA was elected by an appropriate voting system instead of FPTP. But then I don't have a vote in any of those elections! James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.0/1861 - Release Date: 22/12/2008 11:23 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hello, --- En date de : Dim 21.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : Hello, --- En date de : Ven 19.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : With LNH, the harm is that the voter sees a second preference candidate elected rather than the first preference. Actually, the harm need not take that form. It could be that you add an additional preference and cause an even worse candidate to win instead of your favorite candidate. That's not called LNH, I think. LNH: Adding an additional preference cannot cause a higher preference candidate to lose. I didn't contradict that. I contradicted the statement quoted. When a voter adds a preference and so makes a preferred candidate lose, there is no guarantee that the new winner was ranked by this voter, according to the definition of LNHarm. With Bucklin, the described behavior can't occur, if I'm correct. That's correct. Yes, but the concern should not be that you personally will ruin the result, it's that you and voters of like mind and strategy will ruin the result. There are two approaches: true utility for various vote patterns, which is the last voter utility, since if your vote doesn't affect the outcome, it has no utility (except personal satisfaction, which should, in fact, be in the models. There is a satisfaction in voting sincerely, all by itself, and this has been neglected in models.) The other approach is the what if many think like me? approach. That's not been modeled, to my knowledge, but it's what I'm suggesting as an *element* in zero-knowledge strategy. It's particularly important with Approval! The mediocre results in some Approval examples proposed come from voters not trusting that their own opinions will find agreement from other voters, and if almost everyone votes that way, we get a mediocre result. This actually requires a preposterously ignorant electorate, using a bad strategy. That's not very relevant to the point I was making. I was saying it doesn't matter whether a given (negative) change to the outcome can be achieved by a single voter, or whether it takes a group of like-minded voters. From the beginning, we should have questioned the tendency to believe that strategic voting was a Bad Thing. All things being equal it is a bad thing, when the alternative is sincerity. There are situations where it helps, is all. I'd have to look at it. How does MMPO work? I worry about nearly, [...] The opposition of candidate A to candidate B is the number of voters ranking A above B. (There are no pairwise contests as such, though the same data is collected as though there were.) Score each candidate as the greatest opposition they receive from another candidate. Elect the candidate with the lowest score. This satisfies LNHarm because by adding another preference, the only change you can make is that a worse candidate is defeated. Okay, that's clear. Now, nearly a Condorcet method? If truncation and equal ranking are disallowed then it is a Condorcet method (and equivalent to the other minmax methods). Discrepancies occur when equal ranking and truncation are allowed, because instead of candidates only being scored according to contests that they actually lose, they are scored according to all of them, even the ones they win. But this is a peripheral issue for me. Reading about MMPO, my conclusion is that, absent far better explanations of the method and its implications than what I found looking, it's not possible as an alternative. But that's irrelevant. I'm not trying to persuade you to advocate MMPO. I'm pointing out again that you can't effectively criticize LNHarm by using arguments that are specific to IRV. DSC is harder to explain. Basically the method is trying to identify the largest coalitions of voters that prefer a given set of candidates to the others. The coalitions are ranked and evaluated in turn. By adding another preference, you can get lumped in with a coalition that you hadn't been. (Namely, the coalition that prefers all the candidates that you ranked, in some order, to all the others.) But this doesn't help the added candidate win if a different candidate supported by this coalition was already winning. MMPO is easy to explain, but the *implications* aren't easy without quite a bit of study. DSC being harder to explain makes the implications even more obscure. Thanks for explaining, I appreciate the effort; but I'm prioritizing my time. I'll need to drop this particular discussion. If, however, a serious proposal is made for implementing one of these methods, I'll return. Again, the point was not to encourage you to advocate DSC. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 3
Hello, --- En date de : Lun 22.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : At 12:56 AM 12/21/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: --- En date de : Ven 19.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : [starts with Venzke, then my response, then his] Mean utility is supposed to be naive, and it is optimal, if you are naive about win odds. I know that this (mean voting strategy in Approval) has been proposed, but it's a poor model. A voter who is naive about win odds is a voter who is so out of touch with the real world that we must wonder about the depth of the voter's judgment of the candidates themselves! I can't understand what you're criticizing. It is the zero-info strategy. You seem to be attacking this strategy by attacking the voters who would have to use it. That doesn't mean that those voters wouldn't have to use it. Yes, that is *a* zero-knowledge strategy that misses something. A voter with no knowledge about other voters is a very strange and unusual animal. I'm saying that the *strategy* is a stupid one, and that real voters are much smarter than that. This is missing the point. There is no implication anywhere that a zero-info strategy is supposed to be usable by real voters. Voters have knowledge of each other, generally. Positing that they have sufficient knowledge of the candidates to have sufficient preference to even vote -- I don't vote if I don't recognize any of the candidates or knowledge of whom to prefer -- but they don't have *any* knowledge of the likely response of others to those candidates, is positing a practically impossible situation. Yet this is the zero-knowledge assumption. In this sense, zero-knowledge doesn't exist, it's an oxymoron. That's fine. It makes no difference whether zero-info strategy is ever usable in practice. Most voters, in fact, have a fairly accurate knowledge of the rough response of the overall electorate to a set of candidates, provided they know the candidates. Those on the left know that they are on the left, and that the average voter is therefore to their right. And vice versa. Those near the middle think of themselves as, again, in the middle somewhere. Yes, this is not a zero-info situation. The most common Approval Vote will be a bullet vote. How much knowledge does that take? Do you have a very concise summary of why you believe the most common Approval vote will be a bullet vote? Are you making any assumptions about nomination strategy, what kinds of and how many candidates will be nominated? This naive voter has no idea if the voter's own preferences are normal, or completely isolated from those of other voters. This is far, far from a typical voter, and imagining that most voters will follow this naive strategy is ... quite a stretch, don't you think? I don't know of anyone who said that voters would follow this strategy in a public election. It's been implied that the scenario is somehow realistic. Do you want to name names? I don't know who has implied this. If there is no possibility that a scenario could occur in a real election, then considering it as a criticism of the method is ivory-tower thinking. Are you talking about Saari? Mean utility of the candidates strategy has been proposed by Approval supporters, but unless the utilities are modified by expectations, it's a terrible strategy, bullet voting is better, probably. Why do you think it's a terrible strategy? I think it is a better strategy than bullet voting, unless you believe lots of clones have been nominated in order to take advantage of your strategy. But that would be a pretty bizarre fear since, if anyone ever learned of this conspiracy, the strategy would disappear. Better than expectation is mean *weighted* utility. You weight the utilities by the expected odds that each candidate will win. (There is an assumption in there about these odds being proportional to the odds that your vote can break a tie.) Sure. That's the correct understanding of mean utility. It means a reasonable expectation of the outcome. However, what's incorrect is assuming that voters have no idea of the probably votes of others. Ok, but I have never done that. Better than expectation strategy does not really depend on ignorance of other voters' intentions. Better than expectation strategy is sound. Better than mean of the candidates isn't. But this is inherently a strategy. The latter is a special case of the former. Being human, each voter is a sample human, and more likely to represent the views of other humans than not. This is a far more accurate model of human behavior than the assumption that candidate preferences are random, which only would be true in a simulation that assigns the preferences that way. Voters are members of society, and not
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:05:56 - James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 9:54 PM Ok, I did not say it clearly. Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are salable. Take the one about a Condorcet winner with no first preferences. Ugly thought, but how do you get there? Perhaps with three incompatible positions that share equally all the first preferences, while a neutral candidate gets all the second preferences. Assume it will never happen, so do not provide for such? As I suggested before, somehow, if you assume such fate will, somehow, prove you wrong. Provide a fence, forbidding getting too close to such? Where do you put the fence without doing more harm than good? Leave it legal, while assuring electors they should not worry about it ever occurring? I see this as proper - it is unlikely, yet not a true disaster if it does manage to occur. Interesting points, but I don't think any of them address the problem I identified. It is no answer at all to say Obvious need is to package arguments such that they are saleable.. The ordinary electors will just not buy it when a weak Condorcet winner is a real likely outcome. Does real likely fit the facts? Some thought: Assuming 5 serious contenders they will average 3rd rank with CW doing better (for 3, 2nd). Point is that while some voters may rank the CW low, to be CW it has to average toward first rank to beat the competition. Or, look at the other description of CW - to be CW it won all counts comparing it with other candidates - for each the CW had to rank above the other more often than the other ranked above the CW (cycles describe nt having a CW). I do not think you have to be anywhere near the zero first-preferences Condorcet winner scenario to be in the sphere of politically unacceptable. I am quite certain that the 5% FP CW would also be politically unacceptable, and that there would political chaos in the government in consequence. The forces opposed to real reform of the voting system (big party politicians, big money, media moguls, to name a few) would ensure that there was chaos, and the electors would have an intuitive reaction against a weak Condorcet winner so they would go along with the demands to go back to the good old ways. I said in an earlier post that I thought a strong third-placed Condorcet winner could be politically acceptable, and thus the voting system could be saleable if that was always the only likely outcome. So I have been asked before where I thought the tipping point might be, between acceptable and unacceptable. I don't know the answer to that question because no work has been done on that - certainly not in the UK where Condorcet is not on the voting reform agenda at all. In some ways the answer is irrelevant because the Condorcet voting system will never get off the ground so long as a 5% FP Condorcet winner is a realistic scenario, as it is when the current (pre-reform) political system is so dominated by two big political parties. So long as the domination stays, Condorcet does not affect their being winners. It helps electors both vote per the two party competition AND vote as they choose for third party candidates. Only when (and if) the two parties weaken and lose their domination would the third party votes do any electing. The primary battle between Clinton and Obama here presents a strong argument for getting rid of Plurality elections - better for them both to go to the general election fighting against their shared foe, McCain. This represents a VERY idealistic view of politics - at least, it would be so far as the UK is concerned. NO major party is going into any single-office single-winner election with more than one party candidate, no matter what the voting system. Having more than one candidate causes problems for the party and it certainly causes problems for the voters. And there is another important intuitive reaction on the part of the electors - they don't like parties that appear to be divided. They like the party to sort all that internally and to present one candidate with a common front in the public election for the office. But maybe my views are somewhat coloured by my lack of enthusiasm for public primary elections. So long as the general election would be Plurality, the parties DESPERATELY needed to offer only single candidates there. Thus the Democrats had to have a single candidate. Clinton and Obama invested enormous sums in the needed primary - apparently the Democrats were unable to optimize this effort. If the general election was Condorcet the Democrats could have considered a truce in this internal battle and invested all that money in making sure McCain lost. Per your enthusiasm note, we see primaries as a normal way to decide on a single candidate for each party in the general election. How is this handled in the UK - you agree the
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 06:14 PM 12/21/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 1:44 AM LNH as an absolute principle, which, as an election criterion, it is, is harmful. That is a value judgement - which of course you are perfectly entitled to make. Sure. The desirability of any criterion is generally a value judgement. However, there are fundamental values and less fundamental ones, consensus values and idiosyncratic ones, ignorant values and informed ones. What I've heard from you, James, is that LNH is desirable because, without it, some voters (how many? under what conditions?) will be inclined to not add additional preferences, fearing harm to their favorite. Apparently, hang the outcome! I said as an absolute principle. There is a political issue. If a voting system doesn't satisfy LNH, but the situations where that's possible, where that would actually impact the voter's interests, it's politically inconvenient. One can't say Never. I've seen, however, that LNH has been asserted for a method where, in context, it simply wasn't true, it was possible for a later preference, with IRV, to harm the favorite's election prospect, because it was IRV where a true majority requirement was maintained. *LNH is incompatible with a majority requirement, unless the further process considers all eliminated candidates permanently eliminated, no matter what. It's incompatible with direct democratic process.* When I wrote absolute, I meant that some forms of LNH protection were quite possibly useful. How, indeed, do we judge voting system criteria? Is there any approach that isn't subjective? How much harm is done by those alleged truncations because of the theoretical possibility of LNH failure. I've never seen any evidence that truncation is less common with IRV than it was with Bucklin, and there is some evidence to the contrary. Bucklin. Should I say, the American Preferential Voting System, as it was called? It was an Englishman, though, who noted the probable reason for most truncation, and it ain't LNH fears. It is a combination of ignorance regarding remaining candidates and, on the other hand, strong preference for the favorite and relative disinterest in who wins if the favorite doesn't win. Preference strength. Don't leave home without it. It makes all kinds of voter behavior far more understandable. It prevents the system acting as a negotiator seeking compromise, because it prevents compromise until and unless the favorite is eliminated. Frankly, I doubt that anyone who fully understands the implications would prefer an LNH system to one which more appropriately negotiates on behalf of the voter, seeking the best compromise. LNH means *no compromise unless you eliminate my candidate totally!* That kind of position will readily be seen as fanatic, intransigent, and selfish, in normal negotiation situations. LNH in a system *enforces* this, requiring all voters to be just this intransigent. I would hesitate to describe the electors I have experienced as fanatic, intransigent and selfish. Of course not, but they are voting in a system that makes it unnecessary, if they are voting in an STV system. The system does it for them, and what I see from Mr. Gilmour is that this is what they want. I don't think they would really want it, if they understood the implications, and I suspect that he has not explained them to them. I said that, in direct personal negotiations, this kind of behavior would generally be seen that way, not that voters were this way. What interests me particularly is that their insistence on LNH (or at least, their reaction to the effects of its presumed absence) is an intuitive response. Sure. Like lots of intuitive responses, it's less than optimal. There is nothing wrong with the response, per se. Bullet voting as an initial stage in negotiation is perfectly normal and functional. This is what I want, people will say. They don't say, if they have a significant preference, This is what I want, but if you don't like that, this other option is fine with me. That's giving away the farm for a small price. So I expect some kind of reluctance to disclose lower preferences. The strongest effect would be with Approval, which only allows equal ranking top or bottom. Bucklin fixes that, though, without *enforcing* LNH under all circumstances. Voters will know how to use it. Optional Preferential Voting, in Australia, sees massive truncation. Truncation is normal, when voters are free to do it. *Most voters* in *most public elections* will truncate, they won't use up all the ranks even in a 3-rank system. Other comments made by ordinary electors over the years lead me to suspect that this intuitive response reflects the importance ordinary electors attach to their first preference. Yes. It's functional, as I wrote above. The problem arises when the system *can't* move beyond that,
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 06:39 PM 12/21/2008, James Gilmour wrote: It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! Depends on the process. What if the process required majority approval. I.e., say it was a Range ballot, and first preference is expressed with a 100% vote. (Voters *may* express multiple first preferences, perhaps but there is little strategic incentive to do so, a 99% rating would have almost the same impact. Or a first preference marker is required, there could be some reasons for doing that.) But 50% rating is defined as Approval. I.e., consent to elect. If the winner had a majority of ballots showing consent to elect, why would you think that this President couldn't be effective? We don't require that now! And some very effective Presidents didn't get a majority. They got a majority in the electoral college, that's different. What if the electoral college were actually representative? What if it used real deliberative process, instead of voting as obligated? So, perhaps, electors, say, represented first preference votes. A candidate gets 5% first preference. But this is really the compromise candidate, and because of this, eventually gets the votes of a majority of electors? Why would this be a bad result? Low first preference can mean different things. It means, for starters, that the candidate isn't the candidate of a major party. That could mean ineffective, or not. It would depend on the context. I'd assume that the electors representing the major party candidates wouldn't compromise on this one unless they though he or she would be effective! But *effective* isn't everything. Sometimes it's enough to Do No Harm. In a badly polarized environment, on the verge of a civil war, electing the candidate with the most core support can be a total disaster, think the Hutus in Ruanda. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.19/1860 - Release Date: 21/12/2008 15:08 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] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
--- On Mon, 22/12/08, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; centrist candidate M Election 1 35% DM; 33% RM; 32% M Election 2 48% DM; 47% RM; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political consequences of the two results would be very different. My own view is that the result of the first election would be acceptable, but the result of the second election would be unacceptable to the electorate as well as to the partisan politicians (who cannot be ignored completely!). If such an outcome is possible with a particular voting system (as it is with Condorcet), that voting system will not be adopted for public elections. Example 1. In this country there are 10 small parties. Each party has one candidate. In addition there is one neutral candidate that has worked to make the fighting parties agree with each others. All voters vote MyPartyCandidate TheNeutralCandidate ... The neutral candidate gets 0% first preferences but he might be the best president anyway. Example 2. Voters of the large parties think that one should not elect a president from a 5% party. The votes are 48% DR; 47% RD; 5% M. Candidate D will win. If the voters think that it is better to elect a candidate from a 5% party than to elect the candidate of the large competing party then they could vote as in your example. Maybe they gave M a mandate although he is from a small 5% party. Example 3. IRV philosophy is to emphasize the importance of first place preferences (among the remaining candidates during the elimination process). First place preferences could be considered to be a sincere target in elections where the elected person will need support of his first place supporters when in office (well, the voters could also simply vote for candidates that have sufficient first place support among the citizens). One could do a similar trick also in Condorcet. Let's say that a pairwise preference has strength 1.5 if it includes the most preferred candidate of the ballot. In that case with preferences 43% DM; 42% RM; 15% M the pairwise comparison results would be D-R 64.5-63; D-M 64.5-64.5; R-M 63-65.5. That is a tie between D and M. Would this be a good balance between the 35% M and 5% M examples? Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. As to my no first preferences example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. DWK On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:18:34 - James Gilmour wrote: James Gilmour had written: It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! Dave Ketchum Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 4:24 AM Such a weak Condorcet winner would also be unlikely. Second preferences? That 5% would have to avoid the two strong candidates. The other two have to avoid voting for each other - likely, for they are likely enemies of each other. The other two could elect the 5%er - getting the 5% makes this seem possible. Could elect a candidate who got no first preference votes? Seems unlikely. I see the three each as possibles via first and second preferences - and acceptable even with only 5% first - likely a compromise candidate. Any other unlikely to be a winner. What were you thinking of as weak winner? I'm afraid I don't understand your examples at all. The no first preferences example is so extreme I would not consider it realistic. But, of course, if it were possible to elect a no first preferences candidate as the Condorcet winner, such a result would completely unacceptable politically and the consequences would be disastrous. The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; centrist candidate M Election 1 35% DM; 33% RM; 32% M Election 2 48% DM; 47% RM; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political consequences of the two results would be very different. My own view is that the result of the first election would be acceptable, but the result of the second election would be unacceptable to the electorate as well as to the partisan politicians (who cannot be ignored completely!). If such an outcome is possible with a particular voting system (as it is with Condorcet), that voting system will not be adopted for public elections. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Dave, I think you make a common semantic manipulation about the nature of a Condorcet winner (particularly in a weak CW example) by using the term wins by a majority. In fact, each of the separate and distinct pairwise majorities may consist largely of different voters, rather than any solid majority. This is why I think the Mutual-Majority Criterion is a more useful criterion. In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. The phrase wins by a majority creates the image in the reader's mind of a happy satisfied group of voters (that is more than half of the electors), who would feel gratified by this election outcome. In fact, in a weak CW situation, every single voter could feel the outcome was horrible if the CW is declared elected. Using a phrase like wins by a majority creates the false impression that a majority of voters favor this candidate OVER THE FIELD of other candidates AS A WHOLE, whereas NO SUCH MAJORITY necessarily exist for there to be a Condorcet winner. The concept of Condorcet constructs many distinct majorities, who may be at odds, and none of which actually need to like this Condorcet winner. I am not arguing that the concept of Condorcet winner is not a legitimate criterion, just that its normative value is artificially heightened by saying the candidate wins by a majority when no such actual solid majority needs to exist. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 7:23 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Disturbing that you would consider clear wins by a majority to be objectionable. In Election 2 Condorcet awarded the win to M. Who has any business objecting? 52 of 100 prefer M over D 53 of 100 prefer M over R Neither R nor D got a majority of the votes. As to my no first preferences example, surest way to cause such is to be unable to respond to them. DWK On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:18:34 - James Gilmour wrote: James Gilmour had written: It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! Dave Ketchum Sent: Monday, December 22, 2008 4:24 AM Such a weak Condorcet winner would also be unlikely. Second preferences? That 5% would have to avoid the two strong candidates. The other two have to avoid voting for each other - likely, for they are likely enemies of each other. The other two could elect the 5%er - getting the 5% makes this seem possible. Could elect a candidate who got no first preference votes? Seems unlikely. I see the three each as possibles via first and second preferences - and acceptable even with only 5% first - likely a compromise candidate. Any other unlikely to be a winner. What were you thinking of as weak winner? I'm afraid I don't understand your examples at all. The no first preferences example is so extreme I would not consider it realistic. But, of course, if it were possible to elect a no first preferences candidate as the Condorcet winner, such a result would completely unacceptable politically and the consequences would be disastrous. The two situations I had in mind were: Democrat candidate D; Republican candidate R; centrist candidate M Election 1 35% DM; 33% RM; 32% M Election 2 48% DM; 47% RM; 5% M M is the Condorcet winner in both elections, but the political consequences of the two results would be very different. My own view is that the result of the first election would be acceptable, but the result of the second election would be unacceptable to the electorate as well as to the partisan politicians (who cannot be ignored completely!). If such an outcome is possible with a particular voting system (as it is with Condorcet), that voting system will not be adopted for public elections. James -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. 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] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hallo, Terry Bouricius wrote (22 Dec 2008): In a crowded field, a weak CW may be a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. As the Borda score of a CW is always above the average Borda score, it is not possible that the CW is a little-considered candidate that every voter ranks next to last. Terry Bouricius wrote (22 Dec 2008): The phrase wins by a majority creates the image in the reader's mind of a happy satisfied group of voters (that is more than half of the electors), who would feel gratified by this election outcome. In fact, in a weak CW situation, every single voter could feel the outcome was horrible if the CW is declared elected. Using a phrase like wins by a majority creates the false impression that a majority of voters favor this candidate OVER THE FIELD of other candidates AS A WHOLE, whereas NO SUCH MAJORITY necessarily exist for there to be a Condorcet winner. On the other side, IRV supporters usually use the term majority winner in such a manner that it could refer to every candidate, except for a Condorcet loser. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative KD
James Gilmour wrote: Kevin Venzke Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 1:49 PM The reason I believe LNHarm is more valuable than monotonicity is that when a method fails LNHarm, the voter is more likely to realize in what insincere way to vote differently, in order to compensate. When a method fails monotonicity, a voter will rarely know to do anything differently because of it. LNH is important to ordinary electors, as I have explained in a recent post, at least where the voting system is susceptible to LNH effects. If the vote counting method is not LNH-compliant, electors are likely to vote strategically in an attempt to avoid or mitigate the effects of LNH-failure or to try to gain some real or imagined advantage from its effects. Monotonicity, or more specifically, the lack of monotonicity, is of no importance whatsoever in public elections because neither candidates nor voters can exploit it. It would be nice if the vote counting system were monotonic, but we cannot have monotonicity AND some of the other criteria we consider desirable. For example, monotonicity and later-no-harm are incompatible in IRV and STV-PR. Of the two, LNH is important - non-monotonicity is irrelevant. We can't have both LNHs, mutual majority, and monotonicity (by Woodall). FPTP has LNH* (simply because later choices are ignored) and monotonicity. IRV has LNH* and mutual majority, but not monotonicity. I'd say that IRV's monotonicity problem is indeed a problem, because it's so pervasive. Just look at Yee diagrams. On the other hand, I'm not unbiased, and so I may be saying that because it's unaesthetic. In any case, it may be possible to have one of the LNHs and be monotonic and have mutual majority. I'm not sure, but perhaps (doesn't one of DAC or DSC do this?). If so, it would be possible to see (at least) whether people strategize in the direction of early truncation by looking at methods that fail LNHarm but pass LNHelp; that is, Bucklin. Was bullet voting pervasive under Bucklin? Unfortunately, no method that passes only LNHarm has been used, so we can't do the same there (to see if there was pervasive random filling in that case). We can stil get some idea of how easily voters would strategize by looking at Bucklin, though; or for that matter, at ranked voting methods that fail both LNHs. Schulze's used in some technical associations (Debian, Wikimedia), and, although I don't have raw voting data, they seem to be mostly honest. The Wikimedia election had no Condorcet cycles down to the sixth place, for instance. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.19/1857 - Release Date: 19/12/2008 10:09 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] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Dave Ketchum Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 3:51 AM Responding to one thought for IRV vs C (Condorcet): My comments were not specific to IRV versus Condorcet. JG had written When there is no majority winner they may well be prepared to take a compromising view, but there are some very real difficulties in putting that into effect for public elections. Given that a majority of first preferences name Joe, IRV and C will agree that Joe wins. Given four others each getting 1/4 of first preferences, and Joe getting a majority of second preferences: IRV will award one of the 4, for it only looks at first preferences in deciding which is a possible winner. C will award one of the 5. Any of them could win, but Joe is stronger any outside the 5. The problem cases I had in mind were much less extreme. When there is a strong Condorcet winner, I think the idea would be sellable to ordinary electors (but there are remaining problems about covering the rare event of cycles). What I think would be completely unsellable would be the weak Condorcet winner. That winner would, of course, truly be the Condorcet winner - no question, but that does not mean the result would be politically acceptable to the electorate. Such a weak winner would also be considered politically weak once in office. It MAY be possible to imaging (one day) a President of the USA elected by Condorcet who had 32% of the first preferences against 35% and 33% for the other two candidates. But I find it completely unimaginable, ever, that a candidate with 5% of the first preferences could be elected to that office as the Condorcet winner when the other two candidates had 48% and 47% of the first preferences. Condorcet winner - no doubt. But effective President - never! James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.19/1860 - Release Date: 21/12/2008 15:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Sunday, December 21, 2008 1:44 AM LNH as an absolute principle, which, as an election criterion, it is, is harmful. That is a value judgement - which of course you are perfectly entitled to make. It prevents the system acting as a negotiator seeking compromise, because it prevents compromise until and unless the favorite is eliminated. Frankly, I doubt that anyone who fully understands the implications would prefer an LNH system to one which more appropriately negotiates on behalf of the voter, seeking the best compromise. LNH means *no compromise unless you eliminate my candidate totally!* That kind of position will readily be seen as fanatic, intransigent, and selfish, in normal negotiation situations. LNH in a system *enforces* this, requiring all voters to be just this intransigent. I would hesitate to describe the electors I have experienced as fanatic, intransigent and selfish. What interests me particularly is that their insistence on LNH (or at least, their reaction to the effects of its presumed absence) is an intuitive response. Other comments made by ordinary electors over the years lead me to suspect that this intuitive response reflects the importance ordinary electors attach to their first preference. I know some voting system theoreticians say that no more importance should be attached to a first preference than to any other preference, but I don't think ordinary electors view the world that way. And as a PRACTICAL reformer, it is ordinary electors who concern me (along with the politicians and party activists we have to get on-side if we want to achieve actual reform). I do think ordinary electors approach voting for a candidate in a public election differently from how they might approach a discussion and deliberative vote in a meeting - but no compromise can be the order of the day there, too!! As you suggested in your post, it MIGHT be possible to educate the electors to see the value of giving effect to compromise and how insistence on LNH prevents that. But my experience leads me to think they would still make their intuitive response, based on their attitude to their first preference choice. It is no wonder that a referee, reviewing Woodall's original paper describing and naming Later No Harm, called it disgusting. (This is reported by Woodall in the paper.) So this is not just my view, James. The comment by the referee was a personal value judgement. That comment and that language should have had no place in a professional review of an academic paper. I am pleased that Woodall published it. I never suggested that this view of LNH was yours alone, Abd. I am well aware it is shared by quite a number of others, who put other criteria above (or well above) LNH. I am not going to comment of the rest of your interesting post in detail, but I am surprised that anyone should take Bucklin seriously. I, and some of our intuitive electors, would regard it as fundamentally flawed because a candidate with an absolute majority of first preferences can be defeated by another candidate. Such a result may measure some compromise view computed from the voters' preferences, but it is not considered acceptable - at least, not here for public elections. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.19/1860 - Release Date: 21/12/2008 15:08 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative KD
Kristofer, Woodall's DAC and DSC and Bucklin and Woodall's similar QLTD all meet mono-raise and Mutual Majority (aka Majority for Solid Coalitions). DSC meets LNHarm and the rest meet LNHelp. Chris Benham Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote (Sun.Dec.21): snip In any case, it may be possible to have one of the LNHs and be monotonic and have mutual majority. I'm not sure, but perhaps (doesn't one of DAC or DSC do this?). If so, it would be possible to see (at least) whether people strategize in the direction of early truncation by looking at methods that fail LNHarm but pass LNHelp; that is, Bucklin. snip Stay connected to the people that matter most with a smarter inbox. Take a look http://au.docs.yahoo.com/mail/smarterinbox Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative KD
At 04:31 AM 12/21/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: In any case, it may be possible to have one of the LNHs and be monotonic and have mutual majority. I'm not sure, but perhaps (doesn't one of DAC or DSC do this?). If so, it would be possible to see (at least) whether people strategize in the direction of early truncation by looking at methods that fail LNHarm but pass LNHelp; that is, Bucklin. Was bullet voting pervasive under Bucklin? In some contexts, yes. However, we see upwards of 30% or so usage of additional preferences in the municipal elections I've looked at. I consider that high. Bullet voting occurs for reasons other than LNH concern. As Lewis Carroll pointed out, it's simply how many people will vote, representing their best knowledge, they may not have sufficient knowledge to intelligently rank or rate the rest of the candidates. Further, if they have strong preference for their favorite over all others, they may not care to vote for any of the others, not wanting to contribute to the victory of any of them. Voting is a moral action, and choosing the lesser of two evils isn't always the best thing to do. Sometimes the best action is to reject both evils, and that's what a bullet vote for the best candidate could be doing. In other words, Nader supporters in 2000, if they really believed that Gore and Bush were Tweedledum and Tweedledee, might not have added an additional ranked choice for Gore even if the method had allowed it, and LNH has nothing to do with that. We don't know, unless we do some serious ballot analysis -- the necessary information is available from a few elections now -- how many IRV voters truncate, because we don't know the lower preference expressions from those who did vote for a frontrunner. My guess is that the numbers are quite similar to what I've seen with Bucklin historically and what I'd expect from Bucklin today. We can stil get some idea of how easily voters would strategize by looking at Bucklin, though; or for that matter, at ranked voting methods that fail both LNHs. Schulze's used in some technical associations (Debian, Wikimedia), and, although I don't have raw voting data, they seem to be mostly honest. The Wikimedia election had no Condorcet cycles down to the sixth place, for instance. What I've seen from Bucklin, there is a very extensive analysis of the Cleveland election of 1915, I think it was, is that voters who didn't want to vote for a candidate didn't. Truncation, at least in Bucklin, is not insincere! All things considered, the numbers of additional preference votes are actually higher than I'd have expected. FairVote claims additional preference votes on the order of 11% in a series of Alabama party primary elections, and that majority failure was universal. I'm not sure what to make of that, beyond a possibility that most primary voters simply knew who their favorite was and trusted that the plurality favorite would be good enough. In nonpartisan elections, it seems, regardless of theory, the first preference leader wins the election, exceptions have to be pretty rare. (None so far in the U.S. with well over thirty such elections.) 11% additional preference will flip some elections, and apparently it did. Indeed, some of the opposition to Bucklin seems to have come from parties and candidates who lost elections due to additional preference votes, considering that this somehow violated their basic right to win if they get the most first preference votes. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 12:42 AM LNH, has, I think, been pretty widely misunderstood. I don't consider it desirable *at all*. That is, it interferes with the very desirable process of compromise that public elections should simulate. I don't have time to read any of the extended essays that now feature on this list, but these two remarks in a recent post caught my eye and I could not let them pass. LNH may well be pretty widely misunderstood, but Abd's view that it is not desirable at all conflicts with my experience of the reaction of ordinary electors. When preferential voting systems are first introduced to them, it is a common reaction for them to say I'll vote only for my first preference because any later preference would count against my most preferred candidate. It is only when it is explained to them that under the counting rules that will actually be used, a second or later preference can never harm their first preference, that they begin to see the merit in marking all the preferences they really have. So Later-No-Harm does seem to be important to ordinary electors, at least here in the UK. There are two very different situations in which to consider Abd's assertion that purpose of public elections should be to simulate a process of compromise. Taking the general first, where an assembly of some kind is being elected (e.g. city council, state legislature, House of Representative, Federal Senate), the fundamental requirement in a representative democracy is for such an assembly to be representative of all significant viewpoints among those who vote (as expressed by their votes for the candidates who offer themselves for election). So the purpose of such an election should be to reflect that diversity. It should not be the purpose of the election to manufacture some consensus in the determination of the candidates who are to be elected. Reflecting the diversity of voters' views is, of course, impossible when a single winner is required in a single-office election (e.g. city mayor, state governor). In this situation there MAY be a case for suggesting that one of the purposes of the public election should be to simulate compromise. However, even then, most of our voters would expect the winner to be the candidate who has a majority of the first preferences even if some other candidate had greater overall compromise support, i.e. they would expect LNH to apply and operate. When there is no majority winner they may well be prepared to take a compromising view, but there are some very real difficulties in putting that into effect for public elections. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.19/1857 - Release Date: 19/12/2008 10:09 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 10:36 PM 12/18/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hello, --- En date de : Mar 16.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : However, in defense of Venzke, he thinks that the situations where IRV is non-monotonic are rare enough that it's not worth worrying about. What I think would be rare is that such situations (or the risk of such situations) would have any effect on voter behavior. This is more true than false. However, this judgment depends on voter ignorance or laziness, when strategic voting would substantially improve results. Further, eventually, we will see, I predict, the norm to be that full ballot images will be available. It's happening in San Francisco with limited images. (The images are ballot data summarized by the Opscan equipment, so, for example, what is legally moot may have been removed. I don't recall details, but certain possibly interesting voting patterns have been removed. (An example would be an overvote in a second rank, with no third rank expressed; this is indistinguishable, to my memory, from the same overvote but with one of the candidates, or another candidate, voted in the third rank. That is a vote where a reasonable voter intention could be deciphered, and even if the overvote itself were not resolvable, a better estimate of voter intentions as to the whole election could be made. But at the least, the claim is made that IRV leads to more ballot spoilage, or that it presents more opportunities for voter error, at least) So, some big election shows monotonicity failure, if some small set of voters had abstained, or voted insincerely, they'd have gotten better results. This is different from majority criterion failure, a remote possibility and arguably harmless possibility with approval methods. This would, if discovered, create a sense of illegitimacy in the election, and there would be, in addition, two reasonably likely outcomes: (1) the rejection of the voting reform -- and increased suspicion regarding all voting reform (in this situation, a majority might agree that the result was poor) -- and (2) increased use of strategic voting. The idea that voters won't vote strategically misses a huge phenomenon: the use of vote cards in Australia, where voting strategy is decided by a political party, and then voters are advised. Many will follow this advice. And, of course, there is truncation. And there will be lots of truncation, unless full ranking is required, and, not only is this unlikely to be used in the U.S., it's been found unconstitutional in the past. Full ranking was required in the Oklahoma application of Bucklin, and, contrary to what's been claimed or implied -- the voting system aspect of it, aside from the three-rank ballot -- wasn't an issue for the Court rejecting the method. It was the obligatory additional choice votes, when there where three or more candidates. So voters cast first rank votes, *and they weren't counted.* The real bite is with Center Squeeze. I agree with this. Thanks. You and me and nearly everyone who understands the issue. Highly speculative. Bucklin probably experiences about the same level of bullet voting due to LNH fears as IRV, not much more, because the harm only happens when a majority isn't found in the first round. If methods typically won't require more than the top rank, then I guess neither LNHarm nor monotonicity failures will be much of a problem. With LNH, the harm is that the voter sees a second preference candidate elected rather than the first preference. In fact, in full-vote methods (only Range is different), a single vote never purely flips an election result, rather it turns an election into a tie or a tie into an election. Voter's won't be exercised about a rare LNH failure. Most voters will bullet vote in a situation where LNH is a real risk. And, yes, methods in the U.S., at least, will not require full ranking, and for very good reasons. The Oklahoma case gave them in about 1926, as I recall. Dove v. Ogleby. Full ranking forces voters to vote for someone, effectively, whom they may detest, striking at the heart of the freedom of the voter. Democratic process only forces this when there really is no alternative, as agreed upon by a majority of voters. They would rather see the office filled by the Lizard than go vacant. In real democratic process, election failure is always an option that a majority can create -- or prevent. Majority rule. Don't try this at home? In other words, Center Squeeze is a direct consequence of LNH compliance by IRV. Well, MMPO satisfies LNHarm, and is nearly a Condorcet method. I'd have to look at it. How does MMPO work? I worry about nearly, but, sure, if the exception took extraordinarily rare conditions, and the results then were merely suboptimal, not disastrous I can imagine a method that uncovers the votes and uses them to decide other pairwise
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative KD
Kevin Venzke Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 1:49 PM The reason I believe LNHarm is more valuable than monotonicity is that when a method fails LNHarm, the voter is more likely to realize in what insincere way to vote differently, in order to compensate. When a method fails monotonicity, a voter will rarely know to do anything differently because of it. LNH is important to ordinary electors, as I have explained in a recent post, at least where the voting system is susceptible to LNH effects. If the vote counting method is not LNH-compliant, electors are likely to vote strategically in an attempt to avoid or mitigate the effects of LNH-failure or to try to gain some real or imagined advantage from its effects. Monotonicity, or more specifically, the lack of monotonicity, is of no importance whatsoever in public elections because neither candidates nor voters can exploit it. It would be nice if the vote counting system were monotonic, but we cannot have monotonicity AND some of the other criteria we consider desirable. For example, monotonicity and later-no-harm are incompatible in IRV and STV-PR. Of the two, LNH is important - non-monotonicity is irrelevant. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.9.19/1857 - Release Date: 19/12/2008 10:09 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
On Sat, 20 Dec 2008 19:19:02 - James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman LomaxSent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 12:42 AM I don't have time to read any of the extended essays that now feature on this list, but these two remarks in a recent post caught my eye and I could not let them pass. Responding to one thought for IRV vs C (Condorcet): Reflecting the diversity of voters' views is, of course, impossible when a single winner is required in a single-office election (e.g. city mayor, state governor). In this situation there MAY be a case for suggesting that one of the purposes of the public election should be to simulate compromise. However, even then, most of our voters would expect the winner to be the candidate who has a majority of the first preferences even if some other candidate had greater overall compromise support, i.e. they would expect LNH to apply and operate. When there is no majority winner they may well be prepared to take a compromising view, but there are some very real difficulties in putting that into effect for public elections. Given that a majority of first preferences name Joe, IRV and C will agree that Joe wins. Given four others each getting 1/4 of first preferences, and Joe getting a majority of second preferences: IRV will award one of the 4, for it only looks at first preferences in deciding which is a possible winner. C will award one of the 5. Any of them could win, but Joe is stronger any outside the 5. James Gilmour -- da...@clarityconnect.compeople.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026 Do to no one what you would not want done to you. If you want peace, work for justice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hello, --- En date de : Ven 19.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : Highly speculative. Bucklin probably experiences about the same level of bullet voting due to LNH fears as IRV, not much more, because the harm only happens when a majority isn't found in the first round. If methods typically won't require more than the top rank, then I guess neither LNHarm nor monotonicity failures will be much of a problem. With LNH, the harm is that the voter sees a second preference candidate elected rather than the first preference. Actually, the harm need not take that form. It could be that you add an additional preference and cause an even worse candidate to win instead of your favorite candidate. In fact, in full-vote methods (only Range is different), a single vote never purely flips an election result, rather it turns an election into a tie or a tie into an election. Yes, but the concern should not be that you personally will ruin the result, it's that you and voters of like mind and strategy will ruin the result. In other words, Center Squeeze is a direct consequence of LNH compliance by IRV. Well, MMPO satisfies LNHarm, and is nearly a Condorcet method. I'd have to look at it. How does MMPO work? I worry about nearly, but, sure, if the exception took extraordinarily rare conditions, and the results then were merely suboptimal, not disastrous I can imagine a method that uncovers the votes and uses them to decide other pairwise contests, but I'm suspicious of the claim. The opposition of candidate A to candidate B is the number of voters ranking A above B. (There are no pairwise contests as such, though the same data is collected as though there were.) Score each candidate as the greatest opposition they receive from another candidate. Elect the candidate with the lowest score. This satisfies LNHarm because by adding another preference, the only change you can make is that a worse candidate is defeated. DSC is harder to explain. Basically the method is trying to identify the largest coalitions of voters that prefer a given set of candidates to the others. The coalitions are ranked and evaluated in turn. By adding another preference, you can get lumped in with a coalition that you hadn't been. (Namely, the coalition that prefers all the candidates that you ranked, in some order, to all the others.) But this doesn't help the added candidate win if a different candidate supported by this coalition was already winning. Interesting, eh? Top three. A Condorcet winner is almost certainly in there! I think this is doubly likely if you arrange the incentives so that it's likely that third place achieved that position better than randomly. In other words: I want to have a TTR election where candidates risk being spoilers if they place worse than third. That would be a system where the candidate is risking damage to the overall benefit of the election. Did you mean to write it as you did? A spoiler typically will drop the spoiled candidacy one rank, not two. That is what I meant to write, although I don't understand your second statement. As far as it being a system where the candidate is risking damage to the overall benefit of the election: We already have this with FPP, with every candidate who places third or worse. Basically I want a hybrid of FPP and TTR, that does better than either at providing an actual third choice that might be able to win. That everyone and their mother can be nominated fairly safely under TTR is nice and democratic, but I think it's a waste of potential. The *theory* of oscillation or endless regression based on feedback between polls and voter decisions is just that, a theory. What is the alternative? Do you think polls will settle on two frontrunners almost arbitrarily? The only alternative I can think of is that there would be no effective polls. And I suspect that would be just as bad as having polls that don't stabilize. From the first message: Frontrunner strategy is a common one that seems to help with ranked methods as well as Range ones. Make sure you cast a maximally effective vote for a frontrunner, and, where against matters, against the worst one. Usually there are only two frontrunners, so it's easy. Expectation is actually tricky if one doesn't have knowledge of the electorate's general response to the present election situation. How do you determine expectation. Mean utility of the candidates is totally naive and non-optimal. Mean utility is supposed to be naive, and it is optimal, if you are naive about win odds. I know that this (mean voting strategy in Approval) has been proposed, but it's a poor model. A voter who is naive about win odds is a voter who is so out of touch with the real world that we must wonder about the depth of the voter's judgment of the candidates themselves! I can't
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 1
At 03:36 AM 12/15/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 02:29 PM 12/7/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: But your description confused me somewhat, regarding what's the assembly and what's the electoral college. The electoral college is simply a term for the collection of electors, who are public voters. It's similar to the U.S. electoral college, but these electors are chosen by voters directly, without contest. I presme that they would be required to register, they might get a number to be used by voters to specify them, there might e a pamphlet published with a list of registered candidates, we might as well say electors because we may assume that they will all get at least one vote, should they vote for themselves. In some systems there may be a minimum number of votes to actually qualify as an elector, but that is under difficult conditions, I won't consider it here. Let me see if I got this right. If you were to elect a President using Asset (I know, not a good way to use the method, but I'm trying to keep it simple), it would go like this: Well, it's not keeping it simple. Simple is: use Asset to create a proportional representation assembly. Handle officer elections there. That's the original design (by Lewis Carroll). (The method was STV, actually, and Asset was a tweak to handle exhausted ballots. But once you do that, you now have the possibility of single-vote asset, or of what I long ago proposed, FAAV, Fractional Approval Asset Voting. Most people would vote for one, but if you did vote for more than one, your vote was divided up. I.e., vote for three, each gets 1/3 vote. Some people propose that for normal approval, but that's a terrible idea, because it makes those weak votes. Because no votes are wasted in Asset, fractional votes make sense from an Approval ballot. But bullet voting would be the norm, I'd expect. Why weaken your representative? But it should be up to the voters, and not tossing overvoted ballots is a benefit.) Just for a single election, Asset may seem a tad cumbersome, but won't necessarily be in practice. - You vote for whoever you think would be a good elector. That's right. Unrestricted; however, I'd require registration of candidates. This is in effect registering to become a public voter, an elector. If you get *any* votes, you have become that. Did you vote for yourself? That's fine, and it is secret ballot. Ah, did your wife vote for you? If you don't get two votes, is she in trouble. Some ask these questions, but the fact is that in places where direct democracy is practiced, this doesn't seem to come up as a big issue, and all votes (of certain kinds) in those places are public. There is a solution, but I won't clutter this up with it. So there might be a booklet with all registrants who have chosen to pay a fee that covers printing costs. Cheap. I wouldn't prohibit voting for others, not in the booklet, but if you do, you might be wasting your vote. The problem with allowing unregistered votes is that they can be hard to identify, more than one person could have the same name, etc. So voting would be by candidate number, from the booklet. And one would vote for a candidate not in the book (didn't pay for it, or whatever), by the registration number that the candidate got when registering. Could be you, yourself. - Electors gather and deliberative body rules are used with a threshold (to keep scaling problems from going out of hand). What the electors do is up to them. It need not be a matter of law. However, whatever structure they set up isn't binding. What is binding is votes cast by electors in what might be a standing election for a time. Or it might be a series of ballots. These are public electors, the votes are public, so the security issues quiet down a lot. It could be a web site, electors are given an account there, and they vote there. They might be given a security code (password) with their registration; registration involved proof of identity. What would be legally binding would be the expressed intent of an elector at the time of an actual election, that is, the receipt of a quorum of votes for the office. For a single-winner election, the quota is over half of the electors. (Yes, it could be an absolute majority. However, I'd make provision for nonparticipating electors, inactivity might result in temporary exclusion from the basis for majority.) Okay, that's an election procedure. But how do the electors manage whom to vote for? As I said, it's up to them. I've set up conditions for delegable proxy, one might note, and, as far as the legal system is concerned, it's possible that proxies could be assigned and use for voting. But I'm not sure this is actually a good idea. Rather, I'd give proxies no legal power, except to advise those who choose them. So what does this accomplish? Isn't the problem of scale still there? Sure it
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative KD
Hi Kathy, You are responding to me, not Abd ul-Rahman Lomax. --- En date de : Mar 16.12.08, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com a écrit : Hi, --- En date de?: Dim 14.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a ?crit?: That's not very generous. I can think of a couple of defenses. One would be to point out that it is necessitated by the other criteria that IRV satisfies. All things being equal, I consider LNHarm more desirable than monotonicity, for instance. Abd ul, That is about the strangest position I've seen you take on any subject because it is equivalent to saying that it is more important for a voting method not to hurt my lower choice candidates than my first choice candidates. The reason I believe LNHarm is more valuable than monotonicity is that when a method fails LNHarm, the voter is more likely to realize in what insincere way to vote differently, in order to compensate. When a method fails monotonicity, a voter will rarely know to do anything differently because of it. Thus, *all things being equal* (which must be kept in mind if it's IRV that is on your mind), I would expect that failing LNHarm will provoke more insincerity (and thus destroy more information) than failing monotonicity. IRV has other issues that can lead to a different conclusion, but that isn't what I was discussing. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 09:58 PM 12/15/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: Kevin's post had lost all formatting, the quoted material was extremely difficult to follow, and the new text was only distinguishable with difficulty, because I recognize, sort of, my own writing. So I may have missed a lot Hi, --- En date de : Dim 14.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : Remember, not all voters will follow frontrunner strategy. They don't with Plurality, why should they start with Approval? Well, I'm not using frontrunner strategy but better than expectation strategy, since that can be applied more universally. Frontrunner strategy is a common one that seems to help with ranked methods as well as Range ones. Make sure you cast a maximally effective vote for a frontrunner, and, where against matters, against the worst one. Usually there are only two frontrunners, so it's easy. Expectation is actually tricky if one doesn't have knowledge of the electorate's general response to the present election situation. How do you determine expectation. Mean utility of the candidates is totally naive and non-optimal. It's not how I'd vote, but, then again, I strongly want to see majority requirements, which makes bullet voting much safer. But it's a complex issue. My point is that better than expectation has been taken to mean average of the candidates, which is poor strategy, any wonder that it comes up with mediocre results? If D voters are more resilient then it's possible that B will sink instead. It's not as likely to be C, though, since C has an avenue of bouncing back that B and D lack. In this simulation, I don't simulate voters who don't care if their vote isn't expected to be effective. Sure. To my knowledge, nobody has. But if you generate random utilities, then, you are missing something: voters with below a certain level of preference strength won't put any effort into voting. They won't show up for a special election like a runoff or a primary that isn't scheduled with the general election. Some of them will bullet vote, if they have a distinguishable preference, but it doesn't mean much, they won't exercise themselves for strategy, since it is all the same to them, more or less. I have in mind, remember, Saari's preposterous example, where 9,999 voters approve the middle candidate (mediocre) because this one is at or above the average of their favorite and the worst. And then comes one nutty voter who votes reversed preference, and Mr. Mediocre wins. Of course, what if the nutty voter hadn't come along? Mr. Mediocre might still have won, if there was a tiebreaker method. Totally silly example. People just won't vote that way. The hard part is encouraging people to add additional Approvals, if they prefer a frontrunner, or just if they have a significant preference for one. And it's not clear that we should even try! Not in a first round, anyway. Bucklin is nice because it puts up a small fence, to protect a first preference, but not to prevent compromise in the second round, etc. In Bucklin, do you think that a majority of voters would add a mediocre second choice as an additional approval in the first round? Hardly! So *theory* might show Bucklin as not satisfying the Majority Criterion if we allow additional approvals in the first rank, but that's totally unrealistic in public elections. People will bullet vote, lots of them. FairVote claims almost 90% did in Bucklin elections used for political primaries in the U.S (What they don't say is that IRV likewise showed heavy truncation.) The facility of additional votes helps supporters of minor candidates, it gives them a choice that they didn't have under Plurality. But most voters don't need it and most won't use it. Fixing the spoiler effect, generally, takes only a few percent of voters using additional ranks or approvals. (This is entirely separate from the illusory help provided by IRV, in fabricating a majority by discarding exhausted ballots.) To summarize this, the scenario makes sense only if B, C, and D are in a near-tie. If both B voters and D voters prefer C over the other of B and D, then C is, indeed, their compromise candidate! It's perfectly rational that the B and D voters, iterating over polls, increase their support for C, but it will never go all the way. Well it wouldn't be both the B and D factions. You would only add votes for C if you believe your expectation is dropping. That happens when your preferred candidate (D) looks to be slipping. The B voters have no need to compromise that far. In this situation, D voters who decline to vote in the main contest are basically voting for Nader. That's right, and it is their right, and that many voters do this prevents the mediocre candidate scenario from happening. And if a majority is required, it's all safer. Want to vote for Nader alone in the primary? Fine. If enough people do
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative KD
At 08:49 AM 12/16/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: Thus, *all things being equal* (which must be kept in mind if it's IRV that is on your mind), I would expect that failing LNHarm will provoke more insincerity (and thus destroy more information) than failing monotonicity. Highly speculative. Bucklin probably experiences about the same level of bullet voting due to LNH fears as IRV, not much more, because the harm only happens when a majority isn't found in the first round. And it isn't really a harm, that's an unfortunate aspect of the name. What the second vote harms is not exactly the favorite, but the first vote for the favorite, and only in the specific pairwise election against the additionally approved candidate. It is backing up and saying, okay, if my candidate isn't getting a majority from favorite votes, this additional candidate is also acceptable to me. And, sure, that can cause the additional candidate to win. If that candidate is also approved by more people than my favorite. (Multiple majorities are rare, BTW, I've never heard of one happening in a Bucklin election, and I doubt that it ever happened. So, if the second vote harms the favorite, it's because lower-ranked candidate got a majority, and the favorite didn't. IRV can pretend that there is no harm from the second vote for two reasons: it eliminates the first candidate before using the second vote. The *voter* hasn't harmed the first candidate, because the *method* has. Requiring that the favorite be eliminated before a second rank choice is considered cuts two ways. It prevents this alleged harm, but it also prevents help. I.e., second rank votes coming from other candidates; those are exactly the votes which would allow IRV to find a compromise winner, as Robert's Rules notes. In other words, Center Squeeze is a direct consequence of LNH compliance by IRV. LNH is also incompatible with actual runoff voting when there is majority failure, unless the runoff is simply the top two IRV candidates. In Vermont, the governor must be elected by a majority. If there is majority failure, the election goes to the legislature, which votes by secret ballot (Plurality election, if I'm correct) from among the top three candidates. The IRV legislation introduced by Terrill Bouricius had a ballot instruction included: voting for a lower ranked candidate can't hurt your favorite. It wasn't true. Your lower ranked vote could cause the election to complete, whereas without it, there would be further process, which your candidate could win. Even Robert's Rules of Order gets this one wrong. Interesting, eh? Top three. A Condorcet winner is almost certainly in there! IRV has other issues that can lead to a different conclusion, but that isn't what I was discussing. Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 01:24 AM 12/16/2008, Kathy Dopp wrote: Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:58:29 + (GMT) From: Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Hi, --- En date de?: Dim 14.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a ?crit?: That's not very generous. I can think of a couple of defenses. One would be to point out that it is necessitated by the other criteria that IRV satisfies. All things being equal, I consider LNHarm more desirable than monotonicity, for instance. Abd ul, That is about the strangest position I've seen you take on any subject because it is equivalent to saying that it is more important for a voting method not to hurt my lower choice candidates than my first choice candidates. I didn't write that. Venzke's quotation got all messed up. If you get the list mail and keep it, look back at my post. Venzke wrote that thing about monotonicity. LNH, has, I think, been pretty widely misunderstood. I don't consider it desirable *at all*. That is, it interferes with the very desirable process of compromise that public elections should simulate. However, Bucklin Voting allows a voter-controllable level of LNH compliance that I consider good. Pure Approval doesn't allow sufficient flexibility of expression. Range only allows preference expression, of a favorite over a frontrunner, with some sacrifice of voting strength in the real election. That may be a good thing, but politically, at this point, concern over this, including Later No Harm, inhibits the adoption of Approval, though it really ought to be totally obvious that Approval is a huge bang-for-the-buck reform: Open Voting, Count All the Votes. Free. And actually one of the better methods, considering how simple it is. Bucklin uses an RCV ballot, but is much, much simpler to count, and doesn't suffer from the serious pathologies that afflict IRV. Monotonic. I.e. Monotonicity is, briefly stated, first no harm. So you are saying that you don't want a voter's second choice to hurt the voter's first choice, but you don't mind if the voter's first choice hurts the voter's first choice. I find that position to be very bizarre. So do I. However, in defense of Venzke, he thinks that the situations where IRV is non-monotonic are rare enough that it's not worth worrying about. But nonmonotonicity is a clue that there is something seriously wrong with the amalgamation method, it's quirky and unreliable. The real bite is with Center Squeeze. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 1
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 02:29 PM 12/7/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: But your description confused me somewhat, regarding what's the assembly and what's the electoral college. The electoral college is simply a term for the collection of electors, who are public voters. It's similar to the U.S. electoral college, but these electors are chosen by voters directly, without contest. I presme that they would be required to register, they might get a number to be used by voters to specify them, there might e a pamphlet published with a list of registered candidates, we might as well say electors because we may assume that they will all get at least one vote, should they vote for themselves. In some systems there may be a minimum number of votes to actually qualify as an elector, but that is under difficult conditions, I won't consider it here. Let me see if I got this right. If you were to elect a President using Asset (I know, not a good way to use the method, but I'm trying to keep it simple), it would go like this: - You vote for whoever you think would be a good elector. - Electors gather and deliberative body rules are used with a threshold (to keep scaling problems from going out of hand). - When there's a majority, the President's elected. Otherwise the process continues. Something like that? Or is it - You vote for whoever you think would be a good elector. - Electors gather and discuss. - There's an STV vote (or some good single-winner method for President) at the end and the winner wins. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hi, --- En date de : Dim 14.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : That's not very generous. I can think of a couple of defenses. One would be to point out that it is necessitated by the other criteria that IRV satisfies. All things being equal, I consider LNHarm more desirable than monotonicity, for instance. I, and certainly some experts, consider LNH to cause serious harm. Absolutely, it's undesirable in deliberative process, someone who insists on not disclosing lower preferences until their first preference has become impossible would be considered a fanatic or selfish. That's a trait I'd like to allow, but not encourage! Well, I said all things being equal. All things being equal I think it is a positive thing that by providing more information, you don't have to worry that you're worsening the outcome for yourself. Maybe something else gets ruined, but then all things are not equal. You don't add the information if you reasonably fear that the damage to your desired outcome would be serious. You provide it if you think it will increase your expected outcome. I don't understand what this is a response to. LNHarm is a guarantee that says you do not have to fear any damage. You must be talking about methods that don't satisfy LNHarm. Yes, that's right, you don't add the information if you fear it will hurt you, and you do provide it when when you think it will help. You don't really think someone would argue with that? Where I would agree is that it would be ideal if a voter could control LNH compliance. It is possible. This is equivalent to the voter taking a very strong negotiating stance. But I would not, myself, want to encourage this unless the method tested majority failure and held a runoff in its presence. And it's a general truth that if there is a real runoff, with write-ins allowed, total LNH compliance is impossible. Unless you truly eliminate the candidate. Never again can an eliminated candidate run! Basically, so that I can't harm my favorite by abstaining in one of the pairwise elections involving him, the *method* eliminates him! I'd rather be responsible for that, thank you very much. Again, you seem to describe LNH as though it is synonymous with the IRV counting mechanism. MMPO and DSC do not render preferences impossible thereupon disclosing more preferences. I think this is correct. LNH, however, is strongly associated with sequential elimination methods. Ok, but that doesn't make it effective to criticize LNHarm using characterizations that only apply to IRV. It's possible to reveal lower preferences but to not use them in the pairwise election with the additional approval. I've not studied all the variations, there is enough to look at with forms of Approval and Range. When Bucklin is mentioned to knowledgeable IRV proponents -- there are several! -- LNH will be immediately mentioned as if it were a fatal flaw. But the harm, as I've noted is actually not harm from the ballot but only the loss of benefit under one particular condition: the voter, by adding a lower preference, *if* there is majority failure in previous rounds, has abstained from that particular pairwise election while participating in all the rest. It should be possible, by the way, to leave the second rank in 3-rank Bucklin empty, thus insisting on LNH for one more round. That shouldn't be considered an error, but a legitimate voting pattern. It's impossible for me to imagine how you could use this option effectively. If I were voting under Bucklin, with equal ranking allowed, I would vote approval-style, with one exception. If I had some reason to believe that my favorite candidate is either the majority favorite, or else not especially viable, then I would use the top two slots. More complicated scenarios are theoretically possible but I can't imagine the information would be adequate in real elections to act on them. 3. they simulate voter strategy that is customized to the method That is relatively easy, and has been done. No, this is the hard one! I don't know if Warren has even implemented this for Approval and Range. I don't remember, whether the strategic voters simply exaggerate, or actually approve above-mean. Various strategies have been used. Above-mean is an *awful* strategy, unless it's defined to mean something other than the mean utility for all the candidates. Above-mean is zero-info strategy. Exaggerate, with Approval, is meaningless. That strategy was indeed used: from Smith's 2001 simulation run: 16. Honest approval (using threshhold=average candidate utility) 17. Strategic range/approval (average of 2 frontrunner utils as thresh) 18. Rational range/approval (threshhold=moving average) Strategy 16 is awful. That's what Saari assumed as a strategy when he gave his example in his paper, Is Approval Voting an
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:58:29 + (GMT) From: Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 Hi, --- En date de?: Dim 14.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a ?crit?: That's not very generous. I can think of a couple of defenses. One would be to point out that it is necessitated by the other criteria that IRV satisfies. All things being equal, I consider LNHarm more desirable than monotonicity, for instance. Abd ul, That is about the strangest position I've seen you take on any subject because it is equivalent to saying that it is more important for a voting method not to hurt my lower choice candidates than my first choice candidates. I.e. Monotonicity is, briefly stated, first no harm. So you are saying that you don't want a voter's second choice to hurt the voter's first choice, but you don't mind if the voter's first choice hurts the voter's first choice. I find that position to be very bizarre. Cheers, Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ How to Audit Election Outcome Accuracy http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf History of Confidence Election Auditing Development Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Sorry folks, self-correction here: Abd ul, I misstated this: That is about the strangest position I've seen you take on any subject because it is equivalent to saying that it is more important for a voting method not to hurt my lower choice candidates than my first choice candidates. *should* have typed. because it is equivalent to saying that it is more important for a voting method not to result in having my second choice hurt my first choice, than it is for a voting method not to result in having my FIRST choice hurt my first choice Below is correct. I.e. First no harm is not important but Later no harm is? Just a position is impossible for me to understand. It is OK if your first choice candidate hurts your first choice candidate, but *not* OK if your second choice candidate hurts your first choice candidate. It is OK for voters not to know if their first choice might hurt their first choice, but not for their second choice to hurt their first choice if their second choice were more popular with a majority? This seems to me to be a very illogical position you're taking in prioritizing later no harm as more important than first no harm (monotonicity) Abd ul when normally your positions seem so logical. Kathy I.e. Monotonicity is, briefly stated, first no harm. So you are saying that you don't want a voter's second choice to hurt the voter's first choice, but you don't mind if the voter's first choice hurts the voter's first choice. I find that position to be very bizarre. Cheers, Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ How to Audit Election Outcome Accuracy http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf History of Confidence Election Auditing Development Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf -- Kathy Dopp The material expressed herein is the informed product of the author's fact-finding and investigative efforts. Dopp is a Mathematician, Expert in election audit mathematics and procedures; in exit poll discrepancy analysis; and can be reached at P.O. Box 680192 Park City, UT 84068 phone 435-658-4657 http://utahcountvotes.org http://electionmathematics.org http://electionarchive.org http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/ How to Audit Election Outcome Accuracy http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/VoteCountAuditBillRequest.pdf History of Confidence Election Auditing Development Overview of Election Auditing Fundamentals http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/History-of-Election-Auditing-Development.pdf Voters Have Reason to Worry http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 08:57 PM 12/13/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: --- En date de : Lun 8.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : What you're talking about here isn't even playing nice, it's more like using lower ratings as loose change to toss into an (inadequate) street musician's hat. I'm not clear on what motivates that either. I don't think I've ever wanted to communicate to a candidate that they aren't acceptable (i.e. worse than what I expect out of the election after considering both frontrunners' odds), but should keep trying. Why did voters vote for Nader in 2000? Were they purely stupid? You may never have voted this way, but other real people do. Why do voters bother to vote for minor parties, ever? Do you think that most of them imagine that candidate could win? I would say that they voted for Nader because they wanted him to win. Mmmm Sure, they would *prefer* to see that candidate win. But that avoided the issue. Did they think the win was a realistic possibility? Were they naive? I don't think so. I think they knew that their vote would have no effect on the outcome. (They did *not* cause Bush to win, if they sinned, it was a sin of omission, not of commission. If, in Range, they voted zero for Gore, *then* we might say that they would have caused Bush to win, perhaps. But it depends on method details and the rest of their votes. If they bullet voted for Nader, then their vote would probably have been moot, not causing Gore to lose.) It is not relevant whether he could or not. It's relevant to most voters who would otherwise support a minor candidate. In fact, because of the election method, it's quite likely that quite a few more voters would prefer minor candidates. They don't even go there because they don't want to waste their time with false hopes. Give them a better voting system, they would, indeed, tend to become more politically sophisticated. Warren Smith is right, to a degree: Range Voting would have an incubator effect. The phenomenon I'm scratching my head over, is where you give a lowish but positive rating to someone who isn't good enough to be elected, but good enough to encourage in a sense. It's not about the candidate, necessarily, though candidates can grow and mature. Giving a small but positive rating to a candidate could send a message: you've got something. Work on it and maybe next time I'd give you a higher rating. It's also about the party. Giving some positive rating to a minor party could encourage your major party to shift in that direction. But never give an approval rating (if that means anything in a method) (in Range it might be above 50%) to a minor party unless you'd like to see that party win. That's my suggestion. The exception would be under serious lesser-of-two-evils conditions, which, I'd argue, would cover U.S. Presidential 2000, definitely 2004 and probably 2008. Those are just my opinions, of course, and don't affect the principles here. I would certainly have preferred Obama over any of the libertarian candidates, including Ron Paul (the libertarian Republican). But I'd have given Ron Paul some serious rating strength, were he on the ballot, because I want wider consideration of libertarian principles, and because I don't think he'd be a disastrous President, and thus if it happened that, by some rare constellation, he were to win, I'd not have been distressed. Range Voting allows far more sophisticated expression. Many wouldn't use it. That's not a problem. It seems that many *would* use it. With good voter education, they wouldn't use it stupidly. If they care who wins the election, they would know to vote high, perhaps max, for at least one frontrunner, and low or even min, for the other, and that it isn't, in any but the rarest and weirdest of circumstances, which can safely be neglected, advantageous to vote reversed preference. If you prefer one candidate to another, rate the one higher than the other, or rate them equally if you don't want to waste any vote strength. But don't reverse rate them, thinking this might help you. I'd rather start with MCA (two rating levels plus the option to not rate at all) and stay there, as I think MCA is at least a little better than Approval. How is it counted? There are three slots (the lowest of which can be expressed through truncation). If any candidate has top-slot ratings from more than half of the voters, then the one of these candidates with the most, wins. If there is no such candidate, then elect the candidate who has the most top-slot plus middle-slot ratings. (Which is the same as saying: Elect the candidate truncated by the fewest voters.) This is Bucklin-ER with two ranks. I've been recommending it. The only difference between it and, say, Duluth Bucklin is that the latter had three explicit ranks, and overvoting was prohibited in the first two. I see no reason at all to prohibit
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
Hello, Here are some sections I wanted to quickly reply to. --- En date de : Lun 8.12.08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com a écrit : What you're talking about here isn't even playing nice, it's more like using lower ratings as loose change to toss into an (inadequate) street musician's hat. I'm not clear on what motivates that either. I don't think I've ever wanted to communicate to a candidate that they aren't acceptable (i.e. worse than what I expect out of the election after considering both frontrunners' odds), but should keep trying. Why did voters vote for Nader in 2000? Were they purely stupid? You may never have voted this way, but other real people do. Why do voters bother to vote for minor parties, ever? Do you think that most of them imagine that candidate could win? I would say that they voted for Nader because they wanted him to win. It is not relevant whether he could or not. The phenomenon I'm scratching my head over, is where you give a lowish but positive rating to someone who isn't good enough to be elected, but good enough to encourage in a sense. I'd rather start with MCA (two rating levels plus the option to not rate at all) and stay there, as I think MCA is at least a little better than Approval. How is it counted? There are three slots (the lowest of which can be expressed through truncation). If any candidate has top-slot ratings from more than half of the voters, then the one of these candidates with the most, wins. If there is no such candidate, then elect the candidate who has the most top-slot plus middle-slot ratings. (Which is the same as saying: Elect the candidate truncated by the fewest voters.) I have criticized this method (and Bucklin and median rating, to which it is similar) for not offering any great basis on which to decide whether to rate a candidate top or middle. But I do guess that it is more stable and more Condorcet efficient (in the abstract sense) than Approval. (In my simulations it was definitely more stable, though it was difficult to devise the strategic logic for it, so there could have been a flaw.) That's not very generous. I can think of a couple of defenses. One would be to point out that it is necessitated by the other criteria that IRV satisfies. All things being equal, I consider LNHarm more desirable than monotonicity, for instance. I, and certainly some experts, consider LNH to cause serious harm. Absolutely, it's undesirable in deliberative process, someone who insists on not disclosing lower preferences until their first preference has become impossible would be considered a fanatic or selfish. That's a trait I'd like to allow, but not encourage! Well, I said all things being equal. All things being equal I think it is a positive thing that by providing more information, you don't have to worry that you're worsening the outcome for yourself. Maybe something else gets ruined, but then all things are not equal. Again, you seem to describe LNH as though it is synonymous with the IRV counting mechanism. MMPO and DSC do not render preferences impossible thereupon disclosing more preferences. Entirely neglected in Kevins consideration here is the possibility I've mentioned: that the very fact that voters can express intermediate ratings, and the near certainty that some do so, improves the method performance. There is a possibility. But even if voters do provide them, this isn't sufficient to say that this would improve method performance, because we can't deduce that the intermediate ratings we collect mean the same thing as the mind-read utilities we can see in simulations. Warren's approach could be useful when: 1. they simulate realistic voter profiles (and some of them apparently do, but again, anyone can argue about whether they really are realistic) I've pointed out that they don't have to be realistic, only unbiased, not warped against one method and for another. I don't agree. If certain scenarios are realistic for public elections, then those are the profiles we care about. The idea of scoring each method according to an average of all possible election scenarios, is not on its face very promising. 3. they simulate voter strategy that is customized to the method That is relatively easy, and has been done. No, this is the hard one! I don't know if Warren has even implemented this for Approval and Range. I don't remember, whether the strategic voters simply exaggerate, or actually approve above-mean. For rank ballot methods Warren has implemented the same strategy for all, and it is the biggest problem, with the least clear solution. 4. they simulate pre-election information This is necessary for Approval and Range strategy, for sure, so I believe this has been done. I don't believe Warren's simulations do this for any method. All strategy is either zero-info, or (for rank ballot methods) based on random arbitrary info provided uniformly to all voters. It can actually be
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
At 04:33 PM 12/6/2008, Kevin Venzke wrote: So, to try to summarize. You can argue for Range in two ways. On the one hand, if voters really do vote similarly to how they behave under the simulations, then Range is the ideal method according to utility. On the other hand, if Range doesn't work out that way, no one claims it will be any worse than Approval, which many people feel is not too bad. Right. In reality, Range will improve results. A little. What we don't know is how much. But Range, unless perhaps it is afflicted by poor ballot design, improper suggestions to voters, or bad voter education, isn't going to make things worse. Range is nothing other than Approval with fractional votes allowed. Just as Approval is nothing other than Plurality with voting on more than one candidate allowed. (I.e., it is quite analogous to common practice with multiple conflicting initiatives, especially if there is a majority requirement, where the analogy is practically exact. The vote on each candidate is Yes/No. If two get a majority, the one with the most votes wins. In initiative practice, if none get a majority, they all fail. There is no runoff, but they could be proposed all over again) The procedure should be described as voting, not rating, just as preferential ballots I've seen for RCV in the U.S. only call the votes choices. They do not use the word preference, and voting doesn't make a statement about preference. But, nevertheless, that is what people will do, mostly, almost all the time. My guess is that most don't go far down the allowed ranks, my guess is that a majority of ballots are truncated, but I don't know, it's not apparent from the results because most of the truncations would be for frontrunners in first choice. But it would be in the ballot images available from San Francisco. So you can argue Range vs. Approval. For me this is a tough fight for Range in the absence of a way to show that voters would/should play along with it. On the other hand one can always point out that Range won't be any worse. But on Approval's side, you can say that it's displeasing for the method's results to disfavor those who play along with it. If the method is going to degrade towards Approval, it would be nice if the degradation were neutral in effect. This repeats the misconception -- or mistaken emphasis -- that I've been struggling against. Range does not disfavor those who play along with it. Any harm to them is small; as I've written, an almost-ideal result instead of the fully-ideal one. I haven't seen studies on the variability, i.e., *how much* does an impaired result affect the sincere voters. There is no particular reason to expect that sincere voters will be specially concentrated into those who prefer one option, with maximizers concentrated into another, and that is what it takes to get more impact on outcome, otherwise the maximizers cancel or average each other out. However, it's very important to recognize that I'm not proposing Range for immediate use in political elections. In another post today, I list three immediate priorities and I'll add a little here. (1) Act to prevent the replacement of Top Two Runoff by Instant Runoff Voting, particularly for nonpartisan elections, but also for partisan ones. This is a step backwards, typically satisfying cost concerns, supposedly -- that's probably a misrepresentation, or at least exaggerated -- at the cost of better results. It is arguable with a straight face that IRV is an improvement over Plurality for partisan elections. But there are better options that are cheaper and that perform better under the contingency that a third party actually benefits from the improvement and rises in popularity, bring IRV to Center Squeeze, which is generally considered a serious problem. (2) Suggest Approval or Bucklin or other advanced method for use with Top Two Runoff primaries, thus addressing the major known problem with TTR, which is also Center Squeeze. (3) Make it known that Approval is a cost-free reform, a drastic improvement over Plurality. It really ought to be a no-brainer, if the choice is Plurality or Approval. (4) Make it known that Bucklin is instant runoff Approval. It answers the major objection raised to Approval, the inability to express a favorite. It was widely used in the U.S. at one time, and it is a bit of a mystery why it disappeared, but there are political forces that, here, would act against any preferential voting system. It doesn't technically satisfy Later-No-Harm, but its violation of that is mild. It does not suffer from Center Squeeze, because it is an Approval method which probably encourages broader use of additional preferences. As an primary for TTR, it becomes even better. (Bucklin has low counting cost as well, and, once a decision is made to count a rank, all the votes are counted, thus it falls under my Count All the Votes campaign. -- and I
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 1
At 02:29 PM 12/7/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: But your description confused me somewhat, regarding what's the assembly and what's the electoral college. The electoral college is simply a term for the collection of electors, who are public voters. It's similar to the U.S. electoral college, but these electors are chosen by voters directly, without contest. I presme that they would be required to register, they might get a number to be used by voters to specify them, there might e a pamphlet published with a list of registered candidates, we might as well say electors because we may assume that they will all get at least one vote, should they vote for themselves. In some systems there may be a minimum number of votes to actually qualify as an elector, but that is under difficult conditions, I won't consider it here. So let's be more specific. Say you want to use Asset voting to elect a president (or some other office, but let's call it president). Now, the advantage of Asset is representation for everybody, right? So there seems to be two possible ways this could happen. Either the first round is a vote for electors and the second round is a vote by the electors for the first outcome. In that case, you'd need a traditional single-winner method to decide the second outcome; only that the second round would be restricted to the electors and weighted by the votes they got in the first round There could be many possible ways to conduct the successive elections. I'm presuming that the electors have a means of voting easily. It could be by internet, phone, etc.. The votes are public and fraud could be detected and corrected. Because they are public votes, they could be registered and even changed until some point considered final. I do *not*, by the way, favor using Asset to directly elect a president. I'd prefer to see a parliamentary election. The electors may vote in it, but the deliberation takes place in the Assembly, and the vote takes place there. ... or, the first round vote for an elector (whoever, including yourself if it may be) is for the composition of a deliberative body that uses rules like RRO to determine a true majority decision (in this case, of who becomes president). If so, you're subject to all the scaling issues of a deliberative body - scaling issues that keep us from simply using direct democracy. Which is it? The second. The voting method for the assembly is STV, but it is not single-ballot, and it is likely that the Hare quota would be used. Because all electors may retain the right to cast direct votes on matters before the assembly, it's important that the voting power of each seat be the same as the voting power of the electors who have not combined to form a seat. That's why the Hare quota. The electoral college is the entire body of electors, all those who have the right, now, to vote publicly vote. They do not obtain, thereby, deliberative rights in the Assembly, other than the right to vote. (The right to vote in the Assembly is not part of the original Asset; the original Asset was STV-PR, probably with a Droop quota, which does leave a quota of voters unrepresented, which I dislike. It's possible, using the Hare quota, to have some quasi-seats with, possibly, restricted rights, to deal with the dregs. But simply having the right to vote, and especially if that right can be revocably delegated, there isn't much of a problem. (Or does Asset voting imply proxy democracy?) Asset Voting is a form of proxy democracy, incorporating a base-level proxy assignment by ballot. It's not a revocable proxy until the next election, when all proxies are confirmed. It's not a personal proxy, the proxy does not know the identity of the voter, but the voter knows the proxy and knows how the proxy voted, and how whomever the proxy gave his or her vote to voted. The voter presumably has better access to the proxy than to the seat, hence the proxy continues to serve as a means of communication between the public and their representatives. The seats know who voted for them. It's different from proxy democracy in that votes are routinely delegated to seats; when a seat votes, the seat votes with a quota of votes, effectively. But if any of those who voted for the seat vote, those votes are deducted from the seat's vote. My expectation is that most of the time, electors will simply allow their seat to vote. But having the *right* to vote changes the nature of the system and makes it harder for it to fail. It also deals with allowing complete representation: even if an elector doesn't manage to put all of his or her votes into a seat or seats, those votes aren't wasted. Delegable proxy could be used to combine lots of loose votes, easily and efficiently, into a few who would cast them. But if you are an elector who only got your own vote, one vote, and you want to vote on every issue before the
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
At 03:17 AM 12/4/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: James Gilmour wrote: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 10:52 PM The tragedy is that IRV is replacing Top Two Runoff, an older reform that actually works better than IRV. I have seen statements like this quite a few times, and they puzzle me. I can see the benefit in TTRO in knowing before voting at the second stage which two candidates will actually be involved in the run-off. But what concerns me is the potential chaos in getting to that stage. The French Presidential election of 2002 is a good example of the very bad results that can come from the first round of TTRO. And we have seen similar problems in some of the mayoral elections in England where the so-called Supplementary Vote is used in which the voters can mark their first and second preferences but only the second preferences for the first stage Top-Two candidates are counted. In such circumstances the outcome from TTRO is very bad and I should have thought that an IRV election would have given a much more representative result. Condorcet might be better still, but that's a different debate. I'm not Abd, but I think the argument goes like this: in TTR, if a (usually) third candidate gets enough FPP votes to make it to the second round, that candidate has a real chance of winning, since the second round will be focused on those two candidates alone, whereas, on the other hand, if it's IRV, then IRV's chaos may deprive the candidate of its rightful victory, and even if it wouldn't, people can only vote for the third candidate that would become the winner as one of many, not as one of two. If that's right, then the Supplementary vote should give significantly worse results than TTR, simply because people can't discuss and realign between the first and second rounds. For the benefit of those who aren't familiar with the terminology, Supplementary Vote is top-two batch-elimination IRV. In the United States, there are or have been a few implementations of SV, and FairVote claims these as IRV successes. IRV with sequential bottom elimination is probably better than batch elimination, because there is, at least, an opportunity for vote transfers from other eliminated candidate. However, it is far more difficult to count and what I've seen with U.S. IRV in nonpartisan elections, the vote transfers tend to not change the positions of the top three. If we imagine only three candidates, which has been the case with some IRV elections, this is identical to Supplementary Vote. For whatever reason, the fact is that in TTR in U.S. nonpartisan elections (or in party primaries which are effectively nonpartisan in this sense), we see comeback elections where the runner-up in the primaries wins the runoff, roughly one-third of runoffs. This hasn't happened yet in these IRV elections in the U.S. Now, I have not studied the most recent elections. One writer responded that the Pierce County, Washington, elections showed an exception. If I'm correct, that was a partisan election. When there are minor parties present, with relatively predictable vote transfers, (such as, usually, Green to Democrat), IRV corrects for the spoiler effect. *However*, don't celebrate! If the use of a runoff method encourages more parties to be on the ballot, majority failure becomes common. That is what had happened with San Francisco, in the nonpartisan elections where they were using top-two runoff. That will continue with IRV, and it has. Usually a majority is not found through transfers if it was not found in the primary, and, in fact, usually the first rank choices generally express the results after transfers, as far as overall rank order. This probably makes the world safe for major parties! A third party is prevented from spoiling elections, which removes some of their power. Again, for whatever reason, IRV is associated with strong two-party systems, whereas top-two runoff, around the world, is associated with vigorous multiparty systems. Both methods display the problem Mr. Gilmour is concerned about, it's odd that he pins it on TTR and not on IRV, which is merely *maybe* a *little* better in that respect. We may speculate that with IRV, Le Pen would have slipped behind Jospin, thus putting the true top two if second place preferences are considered into the runoff. To come up with a guess about that would take more information than I have and effort than I can spare. The point here is that it can happen, and does happen, that Center Squeeze pops up, it is not a rare effect. Center Squeeze is certainly a problem with TTR, but IRV isn't the fix. IRV fixes the spoiler effect in Plurality, but so does TTR, and so would other voting reforms, starting with the terminally simple Open Voting (Approval). Bucklin uses the same three-rank ballot as RCV (IRV), but allows far more flexibility on the part of voters, who can use the three
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
At 10:09 AM 12/4/2008, James Gilmour wrote: Kristofer MunsterhjelmSent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 8:17 AM I'm not Abd, but I think the argument goes like this: in TTR, if a (usually) third candidate gets enough FPP votes to make it to the second round, that candidate has a real chance of winning, since the second round will be focused on those two candidates alone, whereas, on the other hand, if it's IRV, then IRV's chaos may deprive the candidate of its rightful victory, and even if it wouldn't, people can only vote for the third candidate that would become the winner as one of many, not as one of two. I'm afraid I cannot follow your argument at all. The whole point about TTRO is that a strong third-preferred candidate, who with IRV or Condorcet might come through to be the eventual winner, is dumped at the first stage by TTRO rules. That is almost certainly what happened in the 2002 French Presidential election - and that defeat ended the political career of the politician concerned. But, of course, the same can happen with IRV, we need only posit a Le Pen with some broader support, such that vote transfers don't alter relative positions. In nonpartisan elections, this is actually the most likely scenario. But that election was very close in the first round, so, even if it had been nonpartisan, it could have gone either way, the difference was down in the noise. The argument is not that TTRO is better than Condorcet methods; when the first round is Plurality, it's obvious that it can make a poor choice of the top two. (Essentially, it's making a poor choice of the second candidate, once the frontrunner is eliminated -- and all the voters who voted for that candidate as well. Batch elimination IRV, exactly.) IRV *sometimes* will find the compromise winner, but it's not reliable at all for this. It's really closer to TTRO than Condorcet methods. A Condorcet method *must* find Jospin in a situation like that which was faced, assuming that voters express the necessary preferences. If the defeat in that election ended the political career of Jospin, it was ripe to end. However, it wasn't Jospin's fault that the method did what it did, and neither was it a fault that the French desire a majority result. Rather, they simply have used a limited method for the primary. Rather, consider using two-winner STV for the primary. If a true majority is found for one candidate, done. If not, then runoff between a better top two. It can be done better and cheaper, but if that's what people want The sin is in leaving behind a majority method for one which would demolish the French multiparty system, probably, IRV. IRV is being sold in the U.S. as finding a majority without the need for runoffs, but that is one of the most deceptive arguments in this field. It finds a majority by simply eliminating the vote of every voter who didn't vote for one of the top two. As I've pointed out, with a procedure like this, you can claim election by unanimity, just carry the IRV procedure one step further. That's not a majority of votes cast, as the San Francisco voter information pamphlet for the proposition that brought them RCV, their name for IRV, claimed. It's a majority of ballots containing votes for continuing candidates, i.e., excluding those who voted only for candidates other than those. Their sin? Assuming that they could vote sincerely, and only vote for candidates they liked. (The latter problem still exists with full ranking allowed.) And just to be clear, in the examples I gave we are not dealing with TTRO that started with only three candidates . In the 2002 French Presidential there 16 candidates. And some of the mayoral elections in England also have large numbers of candidates - one immediately to hand had 14. I think in these circumstances I would prefer the risk of some lower order chaos with IRV exclusions to the high risk of excluding of the most-preferred candidate with TTRO. But the problem is not the real runoffs, it's the primary method. Want IRV? Use it for the primary method. But you could accomplish the same effect much more cheaply and more reliably. Bucklin. Mr. Gilmour, you really should take a look at U.S. IRV elections, which have almost entirely been nonpartisan. With sometimes over twenty candidates on the ballot. IRV in that environment, functions like plurality. There have been *no* comeback elections before November 2008; and in this most recent election, I think there was a comeback, but it was a partisan election, where these things happen more often. French 2002 was very close in the primary, between all the frontrunners, actually, so you can argue that IRV would have done better. However, if you also look at runoff elections in the same places, I looked at data for Cary, NC and San Francisco, runoffs were comebacks about one-third of the time. There are various explanations for this, but the
Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 1
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:37 AM 12/5/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Something I've always wondered about Asset Voting. Say you have a very selfish electorate who all vote for themselves (or for their friends). From what I understand, those voted for in the first round become the electors who decide among themselves who to pick for the final decision. Wouldn't this produce a very large parliament? No. It would produce a large electoral college, which doesn't have legislative power directly. As I'd have it, these small-vote electors could not introduce motions or speak to the Assembly directly by right, as anyone with a seat can. I was a bit imprecise; I meant a large deliberative body when I said parliament, hence the quote marks. But your description confused me somewhat, regarding what's the assembly and what's the electoral college. So let's be more specific. Say you want to use Asset voting to elect a president (or some other office, but let's call it president). Now, the advantage of Asset is representation for everybody, right? So there seems to be two possible ways this could happen. Either the first round is a vote for electors and the second round is a vote by the electors for the first outcome. In that case, you'd need a traditional single-winner method to decide the second outcome; only that the second round would be restricted to the electors and weighted by the votes they got in the first round ... or, the first round vote for an elector (whoever, including yourself if it may be) is for the composition of a deliberative body that uses rules like RRO to determine a true majority decision (in this case, of who becomes president). If so, you're subject to all the scaling issues of a deliberative body - scaling issues that keep us from simply using direct democracy. Which is it? (Or does Asset voting imply proxy democracy?) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: For the benefit of those who aren't familiar with the terminology, Supplementary Vote is top-two batch-elimination IRV. In the United States, there are or have been a few implementations of SV, and FairVote claims these as IRV successes. That's not quite standard terminology, as I understand it. In the Supplementary Vote, voters may rank only two candidates. That's the system used to elect the Mayor of London isn't currently in use in the U.S. The top-two batch-elimination version of IRV, where voters rank more than two, is called the Contingent Vote. It's the Contingent Vote, limited to three rankings, that has been implemented under the name instance runoff in North Carolina. Greg Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
