subject:"\[EM\] 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 t

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.




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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-30 Thread Paul Kislanko

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. 


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


At 08:56 AM 12/30/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

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.


Yes, *of course!* This is precisely the problem of scale in 
democracy. It is not a voting problem, per se, but a *deliberation* 
problem. And if voters don't deliberate, how can they intelligently vote?


What I hit upon was a finesse: they vote for what they understand or 
at least believe that they understand. They entrust the rest to 
representatives. Who decides if the voter is competent to vote on a topic?


*The voter.*

Democracy is properly rooted, not in popular decision, as such, but 
in popular *consent* to the decision process.


 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.


Yes; however, there is a classical response: when the group size 
reaches some point, subgroups form *and independently deliberate 
within themselves, then deliberate collectively through 
representatives; often the representation is totally informal, often 
proxy voting isn't allowed, *but when organizations seek consensus,* 
as many do, voting is not so important though when the group size 
increases beyond a few, polling remains useful to sense and detect 
the degree of consensus that has been found. I've seen Approval be 
very useful in this situation, I've never seen Range used, but it 
should be even more useful (but very small groups still may find it 
more cumbersome than is appropriate).


In the FA/DP model, proxies and their clients and subclients form 
what we've called "natural caucuses." The clients of a proxy may be 
connected through devices such as mailing lists or other tools, or 
even meet face-to-face when an organization is local, and may 
deliberate under the "supervision" of the proxy. The purpose of that 
deliberation is to advise the proxy, as well as for the proxy to 
communicate to his or her clients the reasoning behind positions, 
questions to be addressed, etc.


However, this takes us quite far from out topic. The relevance here 
was an approach to the study of voting systems to understand how they 
simulate -- or do not simulate -- direct democratic process.


Where the positions of the electorate are considered to be fixed -- a 
drastic assumption, actually -- then voting systems can probably do a 
pretty good job of predicting what a negotiation would produce as a 
maximally acceptable compromise, one which would be approved by the 
largest majority. (Multiple majorities are probably pretty rare once 
all the factors are broadly understood and the question reduced to a 
minimal one.)


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)


The matter has been considered in some depth. The problem with vote 
buying under Liquid Democracy or Delegable Proxy, and especially in 
FA/DP, where actual power is not delegated, only representation in 
deliberation and an informal and rough measurement of broad consent, 
is that it would be extraordinarily expensive, for a transient 
benefit. So ... the bought proxy votes and advises corruptly. In 
public. However, this proxy, in a mature system, only directly 
represents a relatively small number of clients, whom the proxy also 
trusts. So the proxy *may* publicly advise, and privately hint or 
advise to his or her direct clients that they check it out.


It is in the interest of the clients that the proxy get the payment! 
*Especially if they tell him about it.* So, is the payment 
conditional not only on the vote or advice of the proxy, but rather 
on ultimate success?


If the former, the proxy gets to collect and the clients just decide 
to investigate for themselves, and they themselves have natural 
caucuses whom they advise, and so they say, "My proxy, whom I respect 
greatly, seems to have missed somethin on this issue, so I'm advising 
the contrary of his advice."


If the latter, the decision by the clients will be made on a 
different basis. Further, since bribery would be illegal, I assume 
that would continue (I'm not sure what you call it when you corruptly 
influence someone's advisor, but if it isn't illegal, it should be), 
the agreement is unenforceable. Would you agree? Knowing that the 
person offering the bribe was unethical and could simply deny 
knowledge of the bribe when payment was demanded?

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


At 09:28 AM 12/30/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
The great majority of Condorcet methods use the Condorcet matrix to 
determine the outcome. I say great majority because non-summable 
Condorcet methods exist. Anyhow, the use of a matrix may seem 
complex, but I think that to sum Bucklin votes, you'd also need a 
matrix. The matrix would be n (number of candidates) times k (number 
of rounds). The first row is the count of approval for each 
candidate for first preference. The second row is the count of 
approval for each candidate for second preference, and so on. To 
determine the winner, you check for a majority in the first row, 
then you check for a majority in the sum of the first and second 
row, then the sum of the first three rows, etc.


Yes. Bucklin results were reported with such a matrix. Rows: 
candidates. Columns: Totals for each rank.


Because these are simply totals of votes in voting positions, they 
are easy to totalize, would work with lever machines and any system 
that handles multiwinner elections already. You just assign 3 
positions to each candidate. (it would work with just two, probably, 
but some voters will appreciate the flexibility, and if leaving a 
rank blank is allowed without spoiling the next one, it gives voters 
who want it some additional "LNH" protection. *The need for this 
would depend on preference strength.*)


Thus, in order to have a summable count, you'd have to use matrices 
both for Bucklin and Condorcet. The matrices are different matrices 
(a Condorcet matrix for Condorcet, and what one may call a weighted 
positional matrix for Bucklin), but doing Condorcet analysis 
shouldn't make things more complex than either alone.


Well, it depends. I don't think the Condorcet matrix can be generated 
by simply summing votes from positions. Each ballot generates its own 
unique votes in pairs. To get the votes from position totals, one 
would need to actually have the voter vote the matrix. Too 
complicated, I'd say. So Condorcet, while it is precinct summable, 
isn't as simple to implement and probably couldn't, practically, use 
existing equipment and software. Bucklin clearly could.


As long as the Condorcet method is a good one, I wouldn't have much 
of a problem with this. If the Condorcet method is good, the 
Condorcet completion winner would usually win the runoff, so nothing 
lost (except the inconvenience of the second round). In that sense, 
having a runoff is itself a sort of compromise option - a hedge 
against the methods electing bad (undeserving) winners.


No, there is a common error here. A Condorcet winner is rigidly 
defined from the pairwise elections, and does not -- except sometimes 
with cycle resolution -- consider preference strengths.


The Condorcet winner, I'd predict, would generally *lose* to a Range 
winner, with the same ballots in the primary used for both Range and 
Condorcet analysis. I've explained why many times.


Supporters of the Condorcet winner are less likely to turn out in a 
runoff than those who support the Range winner, if we assume sincere 
votes. Further, with weak preferences, they are more likely to change 
their minds, particularly once they are aware of the issues between 
the two candidates. *The Range winner* -- if the votes have not been 
badly distorted by bullet voting or the like -- is indeed the best 
winner, overall.


Some Range advocates think we should just go with the Range winner. 
That is actually better than simply going with the Condorcet winner, 
*but* there are exceptions. A runoff will test for them!


The most common "voting strategy" would be truncation, which simply 
expresses something that is probably sincere! (I.e., I prefer this 
candidate strongly to all others, so strongly that I don't even 
want to allow competition two ranks down!)


The method can't know whether voters are honestly truncating or are 
truncating out of some game theoretical sense.


That's right. However, the division between "honesty" and "game 
theoretical truncation" is very poorly defined. You don't make a game 
theory move unless you have sufficient preference strength behind it!


 You may say that because it can't tell the two apart, there is no 
difference, but by imagining sincere preferences and then 
considering adversary voter groups, we may see situations where 
people could strategize just to get their candidate to win whereas 
that would not otherwise be the case.


Yes, but there are severe limits on what they could do in a hybrid 
Range/Condorcet method. Voting insincerely in Range, truly 
insincerely, would be *very* risky, and generally useless. Maximal 
strategy simply shoves votes to the extremes; with very good 
knowledge of the context, this can be safe. With poor knowledge, it 
can be disastrous. The sincere vote, reasonably considered, is 
probably the *personally* safest vote. It doesn't aim for quite so 
much benefit as an exaggerated vote, perhaps, but it does not risk 
the worst o

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.

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

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.


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.


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).


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.


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).


I think that what we have to distinguish here is Range as part of the 
wider system that involves adaptation, and Range as an isolated method. 
If you consider Range as an isolated method like other methods, which 
gathers information from voters, churn it through some function, and 
outputs an aggregate ballot ("society's ballot"), be it ordinal, 
cardinal or some other format, then Range is susceptible to strategy - 
the kind of strategy that leads to bad outcomes. However, if it's just 
one component of a wider system - the feedback method - then it becomes 
a sort of manual DSV that polls the intent of the voters (if they don't 
lie or drive it into oscillation etc), and that "greater method" may be 
a good one. I don't know.


From a convenience point of view, some voters may want not to have to 
care about other voters' positions. "I just want to give my preference", 
says a (hypothetical) Nader voter who, although a third party supporter, 
 thinks Bush is so bad that among two-party mediocrity, Gore would be 
preferrable to Bush. Of course, if your point that people naturally vote 
VNM utilities (or somewhere in between those and sincere utilities) is 
true, then it would be an inconvenience to ask sincere cardinal opinions 
of voters, rather than the other way around. In any case, ranked methods 
 handle this issue, but note that the ranked methods are once-through 
methods, not part of a "manual DSV" system.


But, we know, systems that only consider preference are flat-out whack

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

At 05:03 AM 12/28/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

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.


I'm certainly open to other suggestions. However, practical suggestions 
at this point should be relatively simple methods, which is why I'm 
suggesting Bucklin. Bucklin distorts toward Plurality. But the 
protection of the favorite is substantial enough that many voters *will* 
add votes; and historically, in municipal elections, many did. Plenty 
enough to impact results.


(FairVote points to a long primary election series in Alabama with only 
11% of ballots using the additional ranks, but that seems to be very low 
compared with the municipal elections, it's not clear what the cause 
was. And my guess is that IRV would have shown quite the same phenomenon.)


The great majority of Condorcet methods use the Condorcet matrix to 
determine the outcome. I say great majority because non-summable 
Condorcet methods exist. Anyhow, the use of a matrix may seem complex, 
but I think that to sum Bucklin votes, you'd also need a matrix. The 
matrix would be n (number of candidates) times k (number of rounds). The 
first row is the count of approval for each candidate for first 
preference. The second row is the count of approval for each candidate 
for second preference, and so on. To determine the winner, you check for 
a majority in the first row, then you check for a majority in the sum of 
the first and second row, then the sum of the first three rows, etc.


Thus, in order to have a summable count, you'd have to use matrices both 
for Bucklin and Condorcet. The matrices are different matrices (a 
Condorcet matrix for Condorcet, and what one may call a weighted 
positional matrix for Bucklin), but doing Condorcet analysis shouldn't 
make things more complex than either alone.


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.


Let's keep it simple to start! Bucklin has some interesting possible 
variations: Condorcet analysis could be done on the ballots, and one 
runoff trigger could be conflict between the Bucklin winner and a 
Condorcet winner. Bucklin is a very simple method to canvass, just count 
and add the votes. You can look at a summary of all the votes in each 
position and use it. Preferential analysis is different, and requires 
the matrix, but at least that can be summed!


Bucklin/Condorcet/Majority required runoff would still be simpler to 
canvass than IRV.


As long as the Condorcet method is a good one, I wouldn't have much of a 
problem with this. If the Condorcet method is good, the Condorcet 
completion winner would usually win the runoff, so nothing lost (except 
the inconvenience of the second round). In that sense, having a runoff 
is itself a sort of compromise option - a hedge against the methods 
electing bad (undeserving) winners.


The most common "voting strategy" would be truncation, which simply 
expresses something that is probably sincere! (I.e., I prefer this 
candidate strongly to all others, so strongly that I don't even want to 
allow competition two ranks down!)


The method can't know whether voters are honestly truncating or are 
truncating out of some game theoretical sense. You may say that because 
it can't tell the two apart, there is no difference, but by imagining 
sincere preferences and then considering adversary voter groups, we may 
see situations where people could strategize just to get their candidate 
to win whereas that would not otherwise be the case.


Burial in Condorcet is one such situation, but truncation, too, can be 
gamed. For the sake of the argument, let's consider three groups. The 
first group knows the votes of the other groups. This is not necessa

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

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-29 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 08:50 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote:

Kathy Dopp wrote:


since "abstentions or blanks" are from those who have not voted.


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

2008-12-29 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 07:54 PM 12/29/2008, Kathy Dopp wrote:

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.


Indeed.

What happened was that a political cynic and spin doctor was given 
leadership of FairVote. What matters to such people is winning, and 
truth doesn't matter. Sound bites, brief, reasonable-sounding 
arguments matter. Such a one will appeal to ignorance, use the 
ignorance of people -- an ignorance which is natural when facing a 
topic without study -- and manipulate it to the effect he desires.


However, information about voting systems is spreading. FairVote is 
starting to run into obstacles, people who are *informed* about 
voting systems. There were classic arguments against IRV, many of 
them quite ignorant.


However, it's fascinating to read debates back in the 1920s about 
American Preferential Voting vs. English Preferential Voting, i.e., 
Bucklin vs. IRV.


We see many of the same arguments then. What was missing, though, was 
the kind of understanding of voting systems that arose when 
economists started studying voting. Arrow's work was seminal, but 
it's almost as if Arrow wasn't an economist; he missed utility, 
discarded it as impractical to use. It was a strange lacuna. Since 
then, though, it has been discovered that there is a unique solution 
to the problem of determining an overall social order from a set of 
individual preference orders while satisfying general Arrovian 
conditions: and it involves using, not merely preferences, but 
utilities, a particular kind of utility that factors in 
probabilities. Popularly, an approximation to this solution is Range Voting.


And Bucklin, American Preferential Voting, is a tweak on Range Voting 
that continues to satisfy the Majority Criterion. It's 
"instant-runoff Approval," and it was used in over fifty U.S. cities 
for a time, beginning in roughly 1915. It's simple to canvass, it is 
a sum-of-votes method, all the votes are counted, all the votes count 
(at least, if any vote in a rank is counted and used, all the votes 
in that rank are counted and used. Bucklin terminates and does not 
count lower ranks when it finds a majority, which is why it respects 
the Majority Criterion. And, unlike Approval Voting, one can specify 
one's unique favorite, while still participating in the rest of the election.)


Contrary to what is sometimes implied, Bucklin wasn't generally found 
unconstitutional; the reverse was true. I've encountered only two 
cases where Bucklin implementations were tossed: Brown v. Smallwood, 
where, contrary to FairVote propaganda, the decision was clearly 
against *all kinds* of alternative votes, not just the particular 
Bucklin method, and Dove v. Oglesby, where Bucklin itself wasn't 
rejected, but an additional requirement that voters rank additional 
candidates or their first preference votes wouldn't be counted.


(I.e., what they do in Australia!)


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-29 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax


At 03:48 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote:

Abd wrote:

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.


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.


Pot. Kettle. Black. We'll see:


 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].


Yes. A "blank" is exactly that, a *blank ballot.* This has been 
referred to as "scrap paper." It is moot, it is not counted for 
anything, though the clerk may make a note of it. "Abstentions" 
generally refers to no vote at all.


Bouricius has acknowledged that illegal votes are nevertheless 
included in the basis for majority. But he will try to turn 
"abstention" into some reference to incomplete ranking. In other 
words, overvotes count, but not exhausted ballots? He's stretching 
desperately for some way to claim that what FairVote has been doing 
for the last decade has been legitimate.



 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.


Please do remember, as well, to consider the case where the voter has 
filled out all available ranks on a ballot.


That vote is neither an abstention nor is it an illegal vote. It's a 
vote for every ranked candidate. On a Bucklin ballot, all those votes 
would eventually be counted. There is no precedent at all for 
considering these votes as abstentions or illegal. If they are 
considered illegal, the rule would be, in public elections, 
unconstitutional in the U.S. Were the votes for Nader in Florida 2000 
"abstentions."? If the Nader voters believed Nader's argument that 
Gore and Bush were Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and, even on an IRV 
ballot, they only ranked Nader, would that have been an abstention? 
No, it would have been a vote for Nader, not an abstention. They 
voted, they didn't vote for the winner, the winner did not get a 
majority, not matter what tricks you do, what shuffling you do with 
the ballots.


What is found with IRV is a "majority of ballots containing a vote 
for continuing candidates." Not an unqualified "majority.*



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.


"Abstentions" are explicit. You have to remember that the statement 
is a general one, it doesn't only refer to written ballots. A member 
abstains informally simply by not acting to vote in any way. And a 
member may abstain formally, and it will be recorded as such under 
some circumstances, by stating -- or writing -- the abstention. The 
intention of one abstaining is to have no part in the process, and 
this must then exclude the abstaining voter not only from the votes 
but also from the basis for majority. This is *entirely* different from voting.



 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.


This assumes that the "abstention" is a deliberate act, so this 
argument utterly fails with RCV ballots. And this does total violence 
to Robert's Rules. Their meaning is very clear. As I've mentioned, 
Australian law is explicit about this: they use the term "absolute 
majority" to refer to the quota in single-winner STV, mandatory full 
ranking, and they drop that word and use something like the "majority 
of ballots containing a vote for the continuing candidates," with 
Optional Preferential Voting.


In any case, the ballot arguments I cited were quite explicit: "a 
majority of the ballots". There was no mention of excluding any 
ballots at all, and, as you know, Robert's Rules doesn't accept this 
argument about majority. It claims that if voters don't fully rank 
the candidates, "it may prevent any candidate from receiving a 
majority and require the voting to be repeated."


It is impossible to reconcile this with the argument Bouricius is 
making. He and his friends have redefined "majority," and have used 
that redefined word in propaganda promoting IRV, without making the 
redefinition clear. It is a sophisticated for

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-29 Thread Dave Ketchum

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:

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.


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.




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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-29 Thread Kathy Dopp

On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Terry Bouricius
 wrote:
> Kathy Dopp wrote:
>
> 
> since "abstentions or blanks" are from those who have not voted.
> 

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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-29 Thread Terry Bouricius

Kathy Dopp wrote:

since "abstentions or blanks" are from those who have not voted.

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" 
To: 
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 7:54 PM
Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

> From: "Terry Bouricius" 
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
>
> Abd wrote:
> 
> 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 a

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-29 Thread Kathy Dopp

> From: "Terry Bouricius" 
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
>
> Abd wrote:
> 
> 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
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

2008-12-29 Thread Terry Bouricius

Abd wrote:

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.

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" 
To: "Terry Bouricius" ; "Election Methods 
Mailing List" 
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 proposa

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


At 07:51 PM 12/28/2008, James Gilmour wrote:

 All my campaigning has been to get STV-PR used instead
of (mainly) FPTP/SMD and more recently instead of MMP.


By the way, multiwinner STV is a *far* better system than 
single-winner IRV. Later-No-Harm makes must more sense when applied 
to *representation.* It doesn't make so much sense for single-winner 
offices, where compromise is necessary (which is also that *last 
seat* being elected in a multiwinner STV election.)


(And, in fact, the nearly-ideal Asset Voting tweak on STV makes 
"Later" pretty much unnecessary! If the method remains STV, fine, it 
means voters can control the process to a degree, but, frankly, I 
doubt I would bother. Vote for the one I want to represent me, and 
this one represents me, either in the parliament or assembly, or 
represents me in the process of choosing who will represent me.)



  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.


The problem is that knee-jerk reactions to many of the involved 
issues can be very far from what would be a response of someone who 
has become educated on the subject. We have seen where it appears 
that FairVote advocates, if they were not outright lying, failed to 
understand the issues of majority vote, and most opponents of IRV 
here likewise missed it; yet it strikes to the core of the claims being made.


I just read again where a FairVote presentation to Los Angeles 
continues to claim that IRV guarantees a majority result. It's said 
over and over again, but it is *never* mentioned that this isn't what 
is ordinarily meant by a majority, and it is not what one gets with 
real runoff voting. It's a faux majority, obtained by simply 
disregarding all *legitimate ballots* that don't contain a vote for 
the frontrunners.


Now, if the methods being advocated allowed full ranking, some 
semblance of argument might be made that by not fully ranking, voters 
were forfeiting their right to participate in the "runoff." Except, 
of course, that this requires that voters (1) have the necessary 
knowledge to deeply rank the candidates and (2) could *tolerate* 
voting for a candidate whom they detest. Real runoffs allow the voter 
to reconsider, for one thing, and sometimes voters can still cast a 
write-in vote, and sometimes these actually win.


But the methods don't allow full ranking. Not here in the U.S. in 
major elections. 3 ranks, period. So someone who prefers three 
candidates to any of the frontrunners: doesn't count.


As I've pointed out, this could be done with Plurality: don't vote 
for one of the frontrunners, too bad, your vote doesn't count, and 
won't be considered part of the basis for "majority." Instant Runoff 
Plurality. Just take the top two candidates, set aside all other 
candidates, and notice which one has a majority of the remaining 
ballots. It's pretty much what IRV does, anyway, in nonpartisan 
elections, if anyone would bother to notice. Vote transfers only 
rarely affect the overall social ordering that results from IRV, in 
nonpartisan elections, when voters don't have that party marker to guide them.


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

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, is that the arguments were made, 
very plainly, that a majority was still going to be required, and any 
ordinary person, unfamiliar with what actually happens with real IRV 
elections (massive truncation), would read it as just that, a 
majority of the ballots cast. Not only of ballots containing votes 
for uneliminated candidates. As I've pointed out, with that kind of 
sophistry, one could claim a majority in any Plurality election: just 
do *exactly* the same thing: eliminate all but the top two.


Now, the above was from the County Counsel, supposedly neutral. I 
have no reason to doubt the neutrality, in intention, but the Counsel 
swallowed a bit of propaganda! What is the "need for a second, 
separate runoff election"? It is nothing but the need to find a 
majority, a real majority of ballots cast in an election where all 
registered voters may vote. Does IRV satisfy that need? It does not. 
Robert's Rules knows that, and you should know it by now.


What you are doing is trying to deflect this with arguments about the 
numbers of voters in each election. But these are separate elections, 
and there is no fixed relationship. Sometimes runoffs have more votes 
than the primary. With the real Ranked Choice Voting that voters are 
getting, they *cannot* fully rank, so this is simply nonsense. A 
voter may easily vote sincerely using all the available ranks, but 
still the voter is excluded from the basis for a majority. Literally, 
their vote doesn't count, and they have no opportunity to remedy that 
in a runoff, as they would under top two runoff.


The arguments went on

Steve Chessin et al wrote, in the pro argument:

IRV reduces the cost of campaigns. Candidates only have to raise 
funds once, and the county only has to pay for one election. Most 
elections for open seats have resulted in runoffs - take the current 
Sheriff's race as an example. With IRV the public gets a majority 
winner with only one trip to the polls.


"Majority winner?" What's that? The word has an ordinary meaning. In 
Australia, with Preferential Voting, they use the term "Absolute 
majority." That's what is required to win. But: they require full 
ranking, a ballot which is not fully ranked is spoiled, not counted. 
So they get a majority. In Queensland and some other places where 
they have Optional Preferential Voting, they change the wording, it 
becomes a majority of ballots containing a vote for a continuing 
candidate. Sure, you can claim

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-28 Thread James Gilmour

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 Minist

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


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 indi

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


At 05:03 AM 12/28/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

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.


I'm certainly open to other suggestions. However, practical 
suggestions at this point should be relatively simple methods, which 
is why I'm suggesting Bucklin. Bucklin distorts toward Plurality. But 
the protection of the favorite is substantial enough that many voters 
*will* add votes; and historically, in municipal elections, many did. 
Plenty enough to impact results.


(FairVote points to a long primary election series in Alabama with 
only 11% of ballots using the additional ranks, but that seems to be 
very low compared with the municipal elections, it's not clear what 
the cause was. And my guess is that IRV would have shown quite the 
same phenomenon.)


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.


Let's keep it simple to start! Bucklin has some interesting possible 
variations: Condorcet analysis could be done on the ballots, and one 
runoff trigger could be conflict between the Bucklin winner and a 
Condorcet winner. Bucklin is a very simple method to canvass, just 
count and add the votes. You can look at a summary of all the votes 
in each position and use it. Preferential analysis is different, and 
requires the matrix, but at least that can be summed!


Bucklin/Condorcet/Majority required runoff would still be simpler to 
canvass than IRV.


The most common "voting strategy" would be truncation, which simply 
expresses something that is probably sincere! (I.e., I prefer this 
candidate strongly to all others, so strongly that I don't even want 
to allow competition two ranks down!)


That there is a runoff would probably encourage more truncation; 
however, supporters of truly minor candidates can make their minor 
candidate statement and prevent compromise failure in the primary. 
They will continue to add additional preference votes, and it is this 
that will generally prevent Center Squeeze.





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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,

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

At 01:55 PM 12/27/2008, Aaron Armitage wrote:

  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.

Or look at the history of Bucklin.

The reform that had the greatest penetration and persistence is 
top-two runoff. And it is now being threatened by -- and in a few 
places replaced by -- Instant Runoff Voting. Top Two Runoff, it 
appears, is far more likely to give a minor party candidate a chance 
at winning. Le Pen got his chance in France! If he'd had a position 
with possible deep support, he could have won. The same with David 
Duke in the U.S. Both of these made it to a runoff by edging out what 
was probably the Condorcet winner.

It's less likely with IRV, but still possible; but, in any case, in 
nonpartisan elections, where voting patterns aren't so strongly 
connected with party support, we know that Top Two Runoff does result 
in "comeback elections," whereas, in that environment, IRV almost 
never does, almost always preserves the Plurality preference order.

Proponents of IRV mostly have in mind situations where there are two 
strong candidates, and nobody else within reach of winning, and so 
the small-scale spoiler effect that IRV does address looms large in 
their mind. But when there are three, or a single frontrunner with 
two coming up, and the total "core support" for the two being more 
than a majority, IRV becomes very, very quirky. As Yee diagrams show, 
when there are four moderately strong candidates, IRV becomes quite chaotic.

IRV is equally vulnerable. Fear of change and a misunderstanding of
one-person-one-vote work against us both (although I don't know if
one-person-one-vote is treated as a quasi-Constitutional principle in the
UK).

Yes. However, with Bucklin in particular, the issue was examined in 
the U.S. long ago, and only the idiosyncratic decision of Brown v. 
Smallwood in Minnesota found a violation, and, reading the actual 
decision in lieu of FairVote propaganda about it, this finding was 
against all forms of alternative vote, not only Later-No-Harm forms.

My impression, from the actual history of Bucklin, so far as I have 
been able to find it, is that Bucklin was very popular here, there 
was fairly strong objection in Duluth to the Minnesota decision. But 
to challenge it would have taken a constitutional amendment there, 
probably, and it's hard enough to get voting reform through a 
majority on a local scale, much more a state-wide constitutional decision.

Because of its superficial resemblance to runoff voting, IRV more 
easily bypasses the one-person, one-vote objection. Nobody thinks of 
voters has getting two votes because they can vote in the primary and 
in the runoff. However, *they do* get up to two votes! California 
ruled incorrectly in deciding that the runoff was part of the 
original election. It's a separate election, with a distinct 
electorate and unconnected votes, usually, and the only difference, 
under California constitutional rules, is that being named on the 
ballot requires being one of the top two candidates in the primary. 
Just as the total vote in the primary has become moot, so too have 
the write-ins there.

But nobody was minding the democracy store, nobody seems to have 
noticed that democracy lost a battle there. That's not unusual!

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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.)



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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-28 Thread Terry Bouricius

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:

"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" 
To: "Terry Bouricius" ; "Election Methods 
Mailing List" 
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 ma

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-28 Thread James Gilmour

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!


> 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.

The change in Scotland from two parties to three parties and then from three 
parties to four parties all took place long before the
Scottish Parliament was reinstituted and MMP introduced.  Those changes, like 
the change in the UK Parliament from two parties to
three parties, occurred when all the elections were by FPTP from single-member 
districts.

James



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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-28 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm


Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

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.


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. 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?

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.


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:


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.


All methods that satisfy this will be limited to the criterion 
compliance of Approval itself, because criteria either pass or fail, and 
if it's possible to force the method into Approval-mode, then it's also 
possible to make the method fail any criteria that Approval does fail.


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.


So, an approval cutoff. For a sincere vote, what does "approved" mean 
here? Is it subject to the same sort of ill definition (or in your 
opinion, "non-unique nature") that a sincere vote for straightforwards 
Approval has?


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 c

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-28 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm


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.


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-28 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm


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.


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-27 Thread Dave Ketchum

My memory says you described procedures used in the UK when something was
needed to add new candidates after nomination deadlines.

I cannot find such tonight, so proceed for US needs without assuming such.

DWK

In Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:38:50 - James Gilmour wrote:

Dave Ketchum > Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 5:47 PM

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.

Dave, I'm surprised you should think any UK experience could help with this one
(as you've suggested in a couple of posts), because
our systems for public elections are all based on completely formal nomination.
The details differ, for example, as between local
government elections (local authority councils) and parliamentary elections (at
various levels), and as might be expected, there are
fewer barriers for the former (no fees and no subscribers required). But since
you've asked .

...

So you see, our system is very rigid compared to the "write-in" provisions that
are common in many parts of the USA. ALL candidates
must be formally nominated, both party candidates and independents, and the
names of ALL candidates will be printed on the relevant
ballot papers. There is NO provision for a "write-in" of any kind and no provision for
"None of the above". (That, of course, does
not stop some of the voters from expressing their opinions very clearly on the
ballot papers!!)

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.

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.

James

--
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Dave Ketchum 108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY 13827-1708 607-687-5026
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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-27 Thread James Gilmour

Dave Ketchum  > Sent: Friday, December 26, 2008 5:47 PM
> 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.

Dave, I'm surprised you should think any UK experience could help with this one 
(as you've suggested in a couple of posts), because
our systems for public elections are all based on completely formal nomination. 
 The details differ, for example, as between local
government elections (local authority councils) and parliamentary elections (at 
various levels), and as might be expected, there are
fewer barriers for the former (no fees and no subscribers required).  But since 
you've asked .

Any political party that wishes to nominate candidates for any public elections 
in the UK must be registered with the UK Electoral
Commission.  Each party has one registered name (but translations into 
non-English official languages are allowed), may register one
or more emblems (logos), and may register up to twelve registered descriptions 
(for use in different parts of the UK or in different
types of election).  Each party must have a registered Nominating Officer, who 
must sign a certificate confirming consent to the
nomination of each candidate who wishes to use that party's name, description 
and emblem on a ballot paper.  The state does not play
any part in the private processes of the various parties in the selection of 
their candidates for the variety of public elections.
There is no public register of the party affiliations of ordinary electors.  
(We regard such personal information as totally
confidential and its disclosure is covered by the Data Protection Act.)

For local government elections in Scotland (legislation conveniently to hand!), 
the date of the elections (in all wards in all 32
council areas) is prescribed in legislation (first Thursday in May, usually at 
four-yearly intervals) and the Notice of Election
must be published not earlier than the 28th day and not later than the 21st day 
before the date of the poll.  Nominations may be
submitted on any day after that Notice has been published, up to 4.00 pm on the 
16th day before the date of the poll.

The Nomination Form must be signed by the candidate (to indicate consent to be 
nominated) and by one witness to that signature.
Party candidates must submit at the same time, a certificate of consent from 
the Nominating Officer of the relevant party.
Non-party candidates may use the description "Independent" or opt to have no 
description at all on the ballot paper.

A candidate who has submitted nomination papers may withdraw at any time up to 
the close of nominations, by submission of a signed
and witnessed declaration.  No candidate may withdraw once that time has past.  
If a candidate dies at any time after nominations
have closed but before the result of the election has been announced, the 
election is abandoned and a new election must be held
within 35 days of the date of the abandoned election.

So you see, our system is very rigid compared to the "write-in" provisions that 
are common in many parts of the USA.  ALL candidates
must be formally nominated, both party candidates and independents, and the 
names of ALL candidates will be printed on the relevant
ballot papers.  There is NO provision for a "write-in" of any kind and no 
provision for "None of the above".  (That, of course, does
not stop some of the voters from expressing their opinions very clearly on the 
ballot papers!!)

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.

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.

James

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-27 Thread Abd ul-Rahman Lomax

At 07:43 AM 12/27/2008, James Gilmour wrote:

> > > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   > Sent: 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 Lomax   > Sent: 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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-27 Thread Aaron Armitage

> 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 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.

The "weak Condorcet winner" argument, or as FairVote puts it the "core
support" argument, seems to derive much of its force from the guess that
upballot rankings (and especially first preferences) are real and serious
preferences, while downballot rankings are not, and that therefore
preference strength can be derived directly from ordinal rankings, so that
if someone only gets only 5% of the first preferences, a majority which
prefers him over the IRV winner must be almost indifferent between the
two. But we have no way of knowing this, and we have no justification for
overruling a majority because we've decided for them (in total ignorance
of who or what they're voting on) that they don't really care, just
because most of them wanted other candidates outside of that pairwise
contest more than either candidate inside it. Should it have mattered how
many Obama voters really wanted Hillery?

In the kind of polarized election you're picturing your nightmare
scenario, a winner with very few real friends and opponents on both sides
who are always taking shots at him, could very easily happen. Only it's
not much of a nightmare, considering that the alternative may be a
countermajoritarian result when the defeated majority is completely
serious about keeping the other side out of power.
 
> 
> But does the weak Condorcet winner feature in those
> discussions? 

No. It doesn't occur to them and I don't consider it a legitimate problem.
I do bring up cycles and nobody seems troubled by complex completion
methods. After all, some of them are less complicated than the Electoral
College.

 How happy would your electors be with a really
> weak Condorcet
> winner?

Compared to what? (But that's what a Condorcet supporter *would* say.)

  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.
> 

IRV is equally vulnerable. Fear of change and a misunderstanding of
one-person-one-vote work against us both (although I don't know if
one-person-one-vote is treated as a quasi-Constitutional principle in the
UK).


  

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-27 Thread James Gilmour

> > > Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   > Sent: 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 Lomax   > Sent: 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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

At 06:54 PM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote:

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   > Sent: 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.

"Wriggler" implies resistance to being "pinned down."

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.

I happen to think the opposite: "Major public elections" fail because 
we *don't* use what we know how to use on a small scale. Refusing to 
look at this, which is essentially what James seems to be advocating 
here, isn't helpful.

In general, poor voting systems result in increased alienation 
between citizens and government. It's so common that most of us seem 
to think of it as perfectly normal. Yet it isn't that way in 
small-town direct democratic government, or even nonpartisan 
representative government, normally, when the scale is small. I 
believe that it's possible to bring the situations closer together.

A small step, not enough by itself but certainly an improvement, 
would be voting systems that collect the kind of information that 
citizens share when they, formally or informally, negotiate solutions 
for common support. And that is *only* a Range ballot, actually, it 
*allows* accurate representation of relative preference strength. 
Find a way to pin the relative strength to absolute, commensurable 
strength, and it would be ideal, but my sense from what I know about 
voters is that it will be *in effect* closer to this, and when 
special elections are involved, where the voter has to invest some 
significant time to vote, has to have a certain level of caring about 
the result to be motivated to vote, it will, even with relative 
expression, move toward what absolute utilities would show.

In other words, voting systems should not be seen abstracted from 
general theory about how humans decide how to communication, 
coordinate, and cooperate. The ideal voting system for large-scale 
application would simulate this as closely as possible. My discovery 
has been that runoff voting is an important part of this, even 
though, with a good system, it shouldn't be necessary for most elections.

  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.

The issue was pure horse pucky. It's impossible to discuss with any 
deep knowledge the acceptability of Condorcet winners without 
examples of the specific context. It's absolutely true that there 
might be a problem with a "weak" Condorcet winner, because of 
truncation. This would be detected by a majority support requirement. 
(It's possible to set the necessary threshold below a majority, where 
the Condorcet Criterion becomes the Majority Criterion, particularly 
where voting patterns -- which could be defined -- make it a 
practical certainty that a face-off would award the election to the 
Condorcet winner.)

Now, a 5% first preference Condorcet winner with a majority support 
shown on the ballot? If it's voluntary ranking, and a majority of 
voters have ranked the candidate, not deeply, but highly? I don't 
think there would be any problem *at all*! At least the *voters* 
wouldn't be complaining! What I've seen with advanced voting system 
is that *losers* complain! Even when the result was patently fair, 
the best possible result given the votes.

> 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.

How small? How much choice do they have? And, most importantly, since 
they've seen it used in large scale elections, and it's been around 
for over a hundred years, how much have they considered alternatives? 
These are political elections. I was actually referring to 
*nongovernmental communities.* In the current environment, we are 
seeing some such communities adopting IRV. But that is in the context 
of a political campaign, and, in addition, these are communities 
where repeated balloting is considered impractical. This isn't 
"small" as I was using the word.

When you have a two-party system, which means that, in nearly all 
elections, particularly with large districts, one of two parties 
prevails, IRV works, in a sense. It prevents the spoiler effect, 
largely, in this context. Which actually negatively impacts the power 
of third parties, it appears.

Parties don't own voters. However, when there is a simple checkbox on 
the ballot which allows the voters to vote straight party ticket 
the owners

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-26 Thread James Gilmour

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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-26 Thread James Gilmour

An exchnage that escaped the list - acccidentally.

> > > > --- On Thu, 12/25/08, James Gilmour  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 Armitage   > Sent: 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 i

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

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

At 05:42 PM 12/25/2008, James Gilmour wrote:

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   > Sent: 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
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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.




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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


At 05:56 AM 12/26/2008, 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.



San Francisco has a write-in requirement that candidates must be 
registered for the vote to be counted. That's not a bad idea in 
write-in situations, and the registration should be possible up to 
the day of the election. I'd consider the idea that it could be post-facto.


And that if the non-candidate who wins wishes to do so, that 
candidate may reassign the votes, effectively choosing a replacement 
for himself or herself. Doesn't want the responsibility? Sorry. This 
person has been offered the power, and can use it or not. It's a 
variation on TANSTAAFL. We cannot avoid sins of omission by refusing 
to accept responsibility, the responsibility comes from being alive 
and having the power to act.


However, for very good practical reasons, preregistration is a good 
idea. It should be cheap or even free. I disagree with petition 
requirements, they make sense only if the name is to appear on the 
ballot. There is no harm to the process from solitary registration. 
And there *could* be harm from signing a petition. It is, 
effectively, a non-secret vote for the candidate.


We forget that some of the protections of secret ballot aren't 
necessary most of the time. We have them for the rare exceptions.



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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.



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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-26 Thread Jonathan Lundell


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  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

--
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Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
  Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-26 Thread Dave Ketchum


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.


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  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.




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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

--- On Wed, 24/12/08, James Gilmour  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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

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  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.com   
> people.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


  


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

One more approach is to allow "ranked
ranking preferences", e.g. A>B>>C>D>>>E>F.

Juho


--- On Fri, 26/12/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm  wrote:

> From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm 
> 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.
> 
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> http://electorama.com/em for list info


  


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

--- On Thu, 25/12/08, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  wrote:

> 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.

Yes, 5% first-preference support
candidates may look bad in countries
that are used to two almost 50%
candidates and some additional
irrelevant alternatives. And yes,
the situation could look quite
different if one would have multiple
parties and 20 viable candidates in
the election.

> 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.

Yes. There are different needs and
different methods. I think Random
Ballot belongs to a different category
of methods than the more typical
single-winner methods that aim at
*always* electing the best candidate.

Juho

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

--- On Wed, 24/12/08, James Gilmour  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

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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 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

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Dave Ketchum


On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 14:25:09 - James Gilmour wrote:

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax > Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 5:39 PM

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.


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.


Think of it as IRV with a different method of deciding whom to 
eliminate.


Condorcet does not really eliminate - it is only looking for the CW. 
Looking at any pair of candidates the leader is either the CW, or on the 
path to the CW.  Of course a cycle is possible, so you watch out for 
chasing your tail.


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.




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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Dave Ketchum


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.




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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   > Sent: 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,

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Aaron Armitage

--- On Thu, 12/25/08, James Gilmour  wrote:

> From: James Gilmour 
> 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 Armitage   > Sent: 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.


  

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax   > Sent: 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
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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

Aaron Armitage   > Sent: 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
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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm


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.


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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

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.

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2


At 03:41 AM 12/25/2008, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:


That's kinda contrived, but if either A or B wins, there'll be big trouble.

Doesn't this depend on how good Compromise is?  It is impossible to tell
just from the above.


I was considering an unstable nation where the A and B groups want 
to destroy each other. Even if the compromise is a near standstill, 
it's better than having a war.


That's right. Methods which fail to find a serious compromise winner 
can have disastrous consequences. We imagine in the U.S. that "It 
Can't Happen Here," but we don't know what changes the future will 
bring. Given that there are better methods which are easier to 
canvass than IRV -- why not go for a better method now? When the 
situation arises, if it arises, that Center Squeeze is literally 
killer, it may be too late.


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.




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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.



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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Aaron Armitage

--- On Thu, 12/25/08, Kristofer Munsterhjelm  wrote:

> From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm 
> Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2
> To: "Gervase Lam" 
> 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
> 
> >> 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.

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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 mi

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Aaron Armitage

 > 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.


  

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax  > Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 5:59 PM
> > 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.

Abd, you are a great wriggler.  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".

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.

> 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.  If you
cannot immediately see that, your experience of practical politics must be very 
different from mine.  Although we live on different
sides of "the pond", nothing I read about US politics makes me think it would 
be significantly different on your side from how it is
on mine.

James

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

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.


> 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.


> 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.


> 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.

James

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

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.  I am 
satisfied that there are perfectly adequate "vote once"
systems available for all public elections, both single-office elections and 
assembly elections.

James

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm

Gervase Lam wrote:

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:53:36 +0100
From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm 
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.

For instance,

49: Faction A controls nation > Compromise > Faction B controls nation
48: Faction B controls nation > Compromise > Faction A controls nation
  2: Compromise > Faction A controls nation = Faction B controls nation

That's kinda contrived, but if either A or B wins, there'll be big trouble.

Doesn't this depend on how good Compromise is?  It is impossible to tell
just from the above.

I was considering an unstable nation where the A and B groups want to 
destroy each other. Even if the compromise is a near standstill, it's 
better than having a war.

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.

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-25 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm


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.


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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 wer

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":

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.


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 part

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.



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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

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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, 
ju

Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-24 Thread Terry Bouricius

Abd,

Abd wrote about "center squeeze":

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.

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" 
To: "Terry Bouricius" ; "Dave Ketchum" 
; "Election Methods Mailing List" 

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

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

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




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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% D>M;  33% R>M;  32% M

Election 2
48% D>M;  47% R>M;  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!



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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.

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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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-24 Thread Markus Schulze

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



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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-24 Thread Gervase Lam

> Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:53:36 +0100
> From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm 
> 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.

>  If it's 
> directly on candidates, that isn't cloneproof, but if it's done on sets, 
> it could be. On the other hands, doing it on sets could preserve the 
> complaints, and in a completely polarized world, it would be a problem.
> 
> For instance,
> 
> 49: Faction A controls nation > Compromise > Faction B controls nation
> 48: Faction B controls nation > Compromise > Faction A controls nation
>   2: Compromise > Faction A controls nation = Faction B controls nation
> 
> That's kinda contrived, but if either A or B wins, there'll be big trouble.

Doesn't this depend on how good Compromise is?  It is impossible to tell
just from the above.

Thanks,
Gervase.


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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

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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

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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-24 Thread Kristofer Munsterhjelm


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.


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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2

2008-12-24 Thread Juho Laatu

--- On Wed, 24/12/08, 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.

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.

> > 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. 

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.

> 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. 

Yes, single-member districts do that.
(There could be still PR based
representation at national level but
it is typical that nearly 50% of the
voters do not have a local
representative that they would
consider "their own".)

> 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.

This sounds like criticism of
two-party systems in general. I also
tend to think that PR systems typically
work better. I have also interest to
develop the PR methods further. Now
they are too often stagnated in the
current positions of the parties and
their supporters, lacking ability to
change dynamically according to the
wishes of the voters. From this point
of view the interesting direction of
study is the ability of the voters to
influence the policy of the parties in
more detail and the support of
different directions within the party.

One concrete example today in many
countries is the dilemma of voters to
decide if they should vote Greens
(assuming that they have green
interests) or their own party. They
need to abandon either direction.
There are no easy and efficient means
(for voters who are active in politics
only in the elections) to drive their
own party in the green direction or to
get their own non-green views properly
represented within the green party.

Lack of this kind of features makes the
political system less responsive than what
it could be.

Juho

P.S. Note that the two-seat method that
I drafted does reduce gerrymandering,
does provide PR, does have quite local
representation and its philosophy is
to provide a representative to voters
of a party that didn't win a seat in a
district in some of the neighbouring
districts. (The described method didn't
guarantee that the representative would
be provided in a nearby district but one
could add also hierarchical districts in
the method and thereby make number of
representatives per each party
proportional also within such larger
areas.) I don't claim that the method
would be ideal, but it provides local
representation an PR in case someone
is interested in such solutions.

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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
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Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2