Re: [EM] Remember toby Nixon
On the mathematical-exploration side of things: 2011/5/26 fsimm...@pcc.edu From: Kevin Venzke To: election-meth...@electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon? FS Message-ID: 404845.50771...@web29613.mail.ird.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Hi Forest, --- En date de?: Mer 25.5.11, fsimm...@pcc.edu a ?crit?: The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D.? If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. The difference between Approval and Plurality here is that in Pluralitywhen the frontrunners are A and B, generally only A and B can win. Under Approval it is not guaranteed that the winner will be one of these candidates, as long as C or D haven't dropped out of the race. If the perceived frontrunners are actually the worst candidates, any better candidates should receive a vast number of votes. If C or D are clones of A/B then I think they probably would drop out of the race. But if we are simply electing the wrong clone, that doesn'tseem like an enormous problem. Yes, Approval is much better than Plurality and quickly homes in on the CW if there is one. But this homing in typically takes a couple iterations, which doesn't help when the candidates change every four years. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info I suspect that Approval, with even a modicum of openly-reported polling, would mostly get the CW (pairwise champion) on the first try... and that, given (real-world, perhaps-misguided, attempts at) strategy, actual Condorcet methods would not do measurably better at this. The one case where approval could fail to find the CW, even after a number of iterations, is when there are two near-clones splitting/sharing a majority (call them A1 and A2, and their strongest opponent B), and a game of chicken between the supporters of those two. If A1 and A2 have similar levels of support, the winner between those two will not be the CW, but rather whichever of the two has more-strategic supporters. But if there are too many such strategists, B will win. There is no dominant equilibrium to this game. DYN helps to resolve this somewhat, because it shifts the game of chicken from an impossible-to-coordinate mass, secret-ballot election to the two individual candidates themselves. This makes it much less likely that B will win by mistake; but it does not ensure that the winner between A1 and A2 will be the CW. It is possible to patch this problem with DYN by using some measure of candidate quality from the first, and only allowing candidates to approve of other candidates of higher quality. This is in the spirit of IRV's elimination-and-transfer, and like that process, it is theoretically vulnerable to center squeeze. However, I think that it would be possible to use a measure of candidate quality such that the overwhelming probability would be that the highest-quality candidate by that measure would be the CW, and that exceptions would be minor and/or manageable through simple strategies by the candidates. The measure I'd pick would be the range score of the candidate, measuring preference (circled), approved, and [unmarked or unapproved], as 2, 1, 0 respectively. (I'm grouping unmarked and unapproved so that there is no strategic motivation to explicitly unapprove a near-clone of your favorite candidate. Note that this 2,1,0 range score, unlike any more-finely-chopped range score, has the property that the actual CW is guaranteed to have a range score as high or higher than the highest approval score.) So, translated into ordinary language: You circle your favorite candidate, and approve or disapprove of as many other candidates as you want. Your favorite candidate is automatically counted as both favorite and approved. After these results are published, your favorite candidate may 'fill in your ballot' by approving of any other candidate who has more favorites plus approvals than themself. If you had left any such candidates unmarked, they then get a vote for you. The candidate with the most approvals wins. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
If you are looking for simplicity then maybe also minmax should be considered since it (the margins version) simply measures the number of required additional voters to beat all others. I agree. If minimax is twice as likely to be adopted, because it's simpler, and gives 95% of the advantage vs. plurality of the theoretically-best Condorcet methods, then it *is* the best. And besides, if we try to get consensus on which is the absolutely best completion method, then almost by definition, we're going to end up arguing in circles (cycles?). JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On 26.5.2011, at 7.10, matt welland wrote: On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 01:07 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: matt welland wrote ... The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. But after the Citizens United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the exception. For me it seems we are so far from a point were discerning the front runner is anything but blindingly obvious (at least in the US) that it is a complete non-issue. Did any of the alternative candidates get into the two digit range in 2008? The third party candidates are so irrelevant that after a couple searches I still hadn't found a link that mentioned the percentage results to put in this post. I would be thrilled if when voting I even *considered* dropping my vote for the lesser horror front runner in an approval vote. Approval would be a perfect start for the US (assuming that you want to get rid of the two party dominance). It would work fine as long as the small parties/candidates remain small. When there are more than two potential winners, then Approval will face some strategy problems, and possibly also some of the discussed strategic poll related problems. When such problems materialize, then it would be time to change the system again. And at that point the probability of people wanting to return back to the old FPTP and two party domination would maybe be smaller. These concerns are like bikeshedding, we are arguing about the paint color and we don't even have a roof, walls or foundation, hell, we don't even agree on the plans. On this list there are many people with their own inventions and favourite methods, and people who love to study all the possibilities. They may be less all over the place if one makes the difference between theoretical studies and practical implementations. Also pointing out the target environment will reduce the number of possible choices. For example to me Approval is not an ideal theoretical general purpose single winner method, but if we discuss about possible next steps for some single winner elections in the US (where FPTP is used today), and we state getting rid of the two party dominance, then Approval is an excellent choice (maybe not to last forever, but a perfect tool for the current problem anyway). There may also be endless debates e.g. on the properties of the numerous Condorcet variants. Many people on this list agree that Condorcet methods are excellent general purpose single winner methods for competitive majority oriented elections. But if the need to rank (or rate) all major candidates is too much, then some simpler ballots should be used. And it is difficult to get an agreement on which one of the Condorcet methods is the ultimate best one, but that doesn't matter too much since all of them work quite well when compared to many of their competitors. That doesn't mean the debate on this list is not important, it is very important, but I come full circle to my post from a while back. When the knowledgeable experts can't put out a unified front there will be no moving forward. I would have liked this list to find some general agreements on what methods should be generally recommended for practical use in different environments and traditions. That has not happened during the years. With clearly defined targets (e.g. a practical and politically acceptable solution for some particular election in the US within n years), maybe people on this list can at least point out the properties of various approaches. I don't expect consensus on one particular choice. I don't expect people to jointly sign any petition to support one chosen approach. Since the theoretical / scientific / web community is not organized, maybe support should be sought from some more traditional forms of political campaigning (lobbying, political activists, political movements, initiative with a support group). Sorry, it's hard to watch a country which had so much potential to make the human condition better for people all around the world, turn a bit uglier, meaner and, yup, more fascist every day. I suspect that the only thing that can turn this around in a sustainable way is a change in the voting system but without a crystal clear rallying cry from the experts for *ONE* method that will never happen. Truth is that the goals of this list
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On 26.5.2011, at 4.35, robert bristow-johnson wrote: being that they choose the same winner in the case that there are only 3 candidates in the cycle, i would recommend Tideman over Schulze (sorry Marcus) for the simplicity of explanation. while getting a Condorcet cycle is expected to be rare enough, how often in real elections in government, would you expect a situation where RP and CSSD will arrive at a different result? If there are only few candidates and clear political agendas and clear differences between them, then cycles of 3 are probably much more common than cycles of 4. If there is a large number of quite equal candidates and no dominant or clear preference orders among the voters, then cycles of 4 and higher could be almost as common. In that case the differences between methods that differ only on cycles of 4 become relevant, maybe not very critical though. The choice between margins and winning votes could impact the results sooner. I guess Schulze is by default winning votes based. Ranked pairs maybe more margins oriented(?). But one could use either depending on one's preferences. If you are looking for simplicity then maybe also minmax should be considered since it (the margins version) simply measures the number of required additional voters to beat all others. That is easy to explain, and also to visualize the results during the counting process (one should pay some attention also to this kind of real-time visualizations). It may pick also outside the top cycle in some extreme situations where the losses within the cycle are worse than the losses of some compromise candidate outside the cycle. Good or bad (to always respect the clone independence or to pick the least controversial winner), maybe a matter of taste. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon? FS
Hi Forest, --- En date de : Mer 25.5.11, fsimm...@pcc.edu fsimm...@pcc.edu a écrit : The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. The difference between Approval and Plurality here is that in Plurality when the frontrunners are A and B, generally only A and B can win. Under Approval it is not guaranteed that the winner will be one of these candidates, as long as C or D haven't dropped out of the race. If the perceived frontrunners are actually the worst candidates, any better candidates should receive a vast number of votes. If C or D are clones of A/B then I think they probably would drop out of the race. But if we are simply electing the wrong clone, that doesn't seem like an enormous problem. Kevin Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember toby Nixon
From: Kevin Venzke To: election-meth...@electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon? FS Message-ID: 404845.50771...@web29613.mail.ird.yahoo.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Hi Forest, --- En date de?: Mer 25.5.11, fsimm...@pcc.edu a ?crit?: The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D.? If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. The difference between Approval and Plurality here is that in Pluralitywhen the frontrunners are A and B, generally only A and B can win. Under Approval it is not guaranteed that the winner will be one of these candidates, as long as C or D haven't dropped out of the race. If the perceived frontrunners are actually the worst candidates, any better candidates should receive a vast number of votes. If C or D are clones of A/B then I think they probably would drop out of the race. But if we are simply electing the wrong clone, that doesn'tseem like an enormous problem. Yes, Approval is much better than Plurality and quickly homes in on the CW if there is one. But this homing in typically takes a couple iterations, which doesn't help when the candidates change every four years. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: On May 24, 2011, at 6:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. I would propose Condorcet, with just a few clarifications: Leave CSSD beatpath as a detail method decision to resolve later. Reject IRV for known problems. Those unranked are simply counted as having the bottom rank. Write-ins permitted and counted as if actually nominated. This is a bit of extra pain, but I like it better than demanding extra nominations that enemies could make unacceptably difficult. Equal ranking permitted. Those who like Approval should understand that using a single rank lets them express their desire without considering ranking in detail. No restrictions as to how rank numbers compare - when considering which of a pair has higher rank, ONLY their ranks compare as HL, LH, or E=- what ranks are assigned to other candidates have no effect on this. No restriction as to how many rank numbers a voter may use, beyond fact that a chosen ballot design may impose a limit as to how many can be expressed. DYN is a simple addition for those who see value in that method. Having conducted in the CIVS system an experiment over the past several years as to whether people are able to deal with ranked ballots, I have to say that voters seem to be able to deal with ranking choices. In fact they will even rank dozens of choices. As long as the user interface is not painful, it's not a big deal for most people. So I would choose Condorcet in a second. Like Dave, I don't think the completion method matters a great deal. However, write-ins are a more complicated issue and it is still not clear to me how to handle them fairly. -- Andrew Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? Being who I am, I would either pick Ranked Pairs or CSSD (Beatpath, Schulze): the former if it's more important that it can be explained easily, the latter if precedence is more important. It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. I'm not sure about this. If you look at history, ranked voting has been used many places in the US, and the voters didn't seem to complain about ranking -- the methods were usually repealed because the candidates or the political machines didn't like them. For instance, as I've mentioned before, New York used STV for ten years. Cincinnati did, too, and I think they still use STV in Cambridge, MA. There was also the Minnesota use of Bucklin, which wasn't stopped because people didn't want to rank, but because the courts found it unconstitutional for some strange reason. Most ranked methods also permit the voters to truncate. Even IRV does, though it then loses the majority winner feature. Thus, if the voters don't want to rank all the way down to the write-ins, they don't have to. They can even bullet vote if they so desire. If I'm to speculate, I think the reason for truncated IRV is so that already existing optical mark counters can handle the ranked ballots, to save on the infrastructure. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
matt welland wrote: On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 22:42 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. Is this a generally accepted truth? I don't think I agree with it, can you point me to more information or explain? The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. But I think this is only a factor for the period after transitioning to approval from a plurality system. In the longer term both the candidates and the voters will change. I think the change would be for the better, candidates would generally be more accountable, voters need only decide who they could live with as leaders and it is worth it to listen to what the minority players are saying - giving them your vote is both possible and meaningful. I guess most of these would be true (perhaps more so) for asset voting also. The strategy holds even when there are more than two frontrunners. AFAIK, the best strategy (LeGrand's strategy A) is approve all you prefer to whoever has the most votes, then vote for that one if you prefer him to the one who has second most. When there are only two frontrunners, that's simple enough: you vote for the frontrunner if you prefer him to the other guy. When there are more than two, however, the importance of polls increases, since you have to know who is currently in the lead and who is second. In between, there could be an uncertainty point. For instance, in the 2000 example, if Nader has no chance, you approve of him and Gore (but not Bush). If Nader has a lot of support, you vote for Nader alone because you want to make sure Gore doesn't win. But if Nader has just about the same chance to win as Gore, then it gets tricky. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
For a legislature one could use also multi-winner and proportional methods, but I think the question was what single-winner method to recommend. (I'd probably recommend proportional methods for most multi-winner elections, unless the community explicitly wants to have a two-party system.) Jameson Quinn mentioned the kingmakers. Delegating the power to decide who will win to one or few candidates is risky since (depending on the environment) that might lead to buying personal benefits, instead of basing the decision on one's sincere opinions or doing only political trading. Kristofer Musterhjelm mentioned the possibility that the limitations of current voting machines might limit the maximum number of candidates to rank. Good sigle-winner methods tend to require evaluation and some knowledge of at least all the major candidates. Maybe ranking is not much more difficult than other simpler approaches like approval. Different ballot types might be used, depending on the preferences of the community. If the complexity of allocating some preference strength (e.g. a rating) to at least all major candidates is not too much, (almost) any Condorcet method would be a good first guess. (Alternatively also Range could be used for clearly non-competitive (and non-majority-based) polls / elections. But probably the question addressed competitive political elections only.) To pick one of the Condorcet methods one might use criteria related to simplicity, performance with sincere votes, performance with strategic votes (hopefully an maybe likely strategies will be marginal in Condorcet), ability to explain and visualize the results, easy marketing. All Condorcet methods tend to give the same winner in almost all real-life elections since in most cases there is a Condorcet winner, and even if not, the winner still tends to be the same, and even if it was not, then it will be difficult to say which one of the about equal candidates should really have won. Matt Welland discussed the Approval strategies. The strategy of approving some of the frontrunners and not approving some of them is well known. Therefore it makes sometimes sense to distribute fake (or hand picked) polls. One may also distribute different polls or other messages to different target audiences. I wrote something about this few years ago. See http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2006-December/019127.html. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On May 25, 2011, at 2:07 AM, Andrew Myers wrote: On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Dave Ketchum wrote: On May 24, 2011, at 6:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. I would propose Condorcet, with just a few clarifications: Leave CSSD beatpath as a detail method decision to resolve later. Reject IRV for known problems. Those unranked are simply counted as having the bottom rank. Write-ins permitted and counted as if actually nominated. This is a bit of extra pain, but I like it better than demanding extra nominations that enemies could make unacceptably difficult. Equal ranking permitted. Those who like Approval should understand that using a single rank lets them express their desire without considering ranking in detail. No restrictions as to how rank numbers compare - when considering which of a pair has higher rank, ONLY their ranks compare as HL, LH, or E=- what ranks are assigned to other candidates have no effect on this. No restriction as to how many rank numbers a voter may use, beyond fact that a chosen ballot design may impose a limit as to how many can be expressed. DYN is a simple addition for those who see value in that method. Having conducted in the CIVS system an experiment over the past several years as to whether people are able to deal with ranked ballots, I have to say that voters seem to be able to deal with ranking choices. In fact they will even rank dozens of choices. As long as the user interface is not painful, it's not a big deal for most people. So I would choose Condorcet in a second. Like Dave, I don't think the completion method matters a great deal. However, write-ins are a more complicated issue and it is still not clear to me how to handle them fairly. I was not limiting how much deciding on completion method matters - just saying what I do care about matters more. Ranking dozens? I think some overdo that - It should be acceptable for any voter to quit after ranking those they care most about. Two thoughts on write-ins: When having a lone thought it matters little. When wanting to elect one who is not nominated, get serious and campaign, just as you do for a favored nominee. -- Andrew Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
matt welland wrote ... The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. But after the Citizens United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the exception. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
- Original Message - From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 11:31 pm Subject: Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon? To: fsimm...@pcc.edu Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? Being who I am, I would either pick Ranked Pairs or CSSD (Beatpath, Schulze): the former if it's more important that it can be explained easily, the latter if precedence is more important. It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. I'm not sure about this. If you look at history, ranked voting has been used many places in the US, and the voters didn't seem to complain about ranking -- the methods were usually repealed because the candidates or the political machines didn't like them. It's true that historically and even recently ranked systems have been adopted here and elsewhere. But these successes are infinitesimal in comparison to the failed initiatives. Why have the initiatives failed? Overwhelmingly because the voters have rejected the idea of ballots that require ranking of candidates. I first saw this pattern ten years ago when FairVote Oregon was working on an IRV ititiative here in Oregon. And it has been the constant theme in failed initiatives ever since then. Lewis Carroll was right! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On May 25, 2011, at 9:17 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: - Original Message - From: Kristofer Munsterhjelm Being who I am, I would either pick Ranked Pairs or CSSD (Beatpath, Schulze): the former if it's more important that it can be explained easily, the latter if precedence is more important. being that they choose the same winner in the case that there are only 3 candidates in the cycle, i would recommend Tideman over Schulze (sorry Marcus) for the simplicity of explanation. while getting a Condorcet cycle is expected to be rare enough, how often in real elections in government, would you expect a situation where RP and CSSD will arrive at a different result? ... It's true that historically and even recently ranked systems have been adopted here and elsewhere. But these successes are infinitesimal in comparison to the failed initiatives. Why have the initiatives failed? Overwhelmingly because the voters have rejected the idea of ballots that require ranking of candidates. The single affirmative vote. a religious position, but it's more honest than misrepresenting another principle: One person, one vote. the most effective political sign was probably Keep Voting Simple. what these people say they don't wanna do is vote for *anyone* other than their choice of candidate. it's like ranking their contingency vote as #2 will somehow hurt their #1 choice (as it would with Borda). then (with IRV) they find out that their #1 choice actually hurt their #2 choice by helping the candidate they hated the most. this is why i'm kinda mad at FairVote. by equating the Ranked Choice with Hare/IRV, when IRV screwed up, they sullied the ranked ballot for all other cases. -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 01:07 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: matt welland wrote ... The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. But after the Citizens United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the exception. For me it seems we are so far from a point were discerning the front runner is anything but blindingly obvious (at least in the US) that it is a complete non-issue. Did any of the alternative candidates get into the two digit range in 2008? The third party candidates are so irrelevant that after a couple searches I still hadn't found a link that mentioned the percentage results to put in this post. I would be thrilled if when voting I even *considered* dropping my vote for the lesser horror front runner in an approval vote. These concerns are like bikeshedding, we are arguing about the paint color and we don't even have a roof, walls or foundation, hell, we don't even agree on the plans. That doesn't mean the debate on this list is not important, it is very important, but I come full circle to my post from a while back. When the knowledgeable experts can't put out a unified front there will be no moving forward. Sorry, it's hard to watch a country which had so much potential to make the human condition better for people all around the world, turn a bit uglier, meaner and, yup, more fascist every day. I suspect that the only thing that can turn this around in a sustainable way is a change in the voting system but without a crystal clear rallying cry from the experts for *ONE* method that will never happen. Truth is that the goals of this list are at odds with my primary interest. After reading any replies to this I'll sign off the list. Cheers and thanks to all for the great work done in furthering the art and science of choosing our leaders! Matt -=- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[EM] remember Toby Nixon?
About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. Asset Voting in its simplest form tends to squeeze out the CW, because when flanked closely on both sides by other candidates, the CW tends to have too few first place preferences (assets or bargaining chips) to survive. On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. That brings us to Delegable Yes/No (DYN) voting, which is a hybrid between Asset Voting and Approval that overcomes the weaknesses of those methods without increasing the complexity to the level of IRV: In DYN you circle the name of your favorite candidate and then optionally mark “Yes” next to the candidates that you are sure you want to approve of, and “No” next to those that you are sure that you want to disapprove of. You automatically delegate the rest of the Yes/No decisions to the candidate that you circled as “favorite.” Those delegated decisions are made by the candidates after the partial results have been made public, so that no false polls can manipulate the strategy. What do you think? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
I think DYN is my new favorite practical proposal. It's simple and it would work beautifully. The one downside of that system would be the possibility of granting too much power to a minority kingmaker. For instance, a 4% candidate could have the power to swing the election to either one of two 48% candidates. They might well be able to negotiate concessions for their party (or worse, for themselves personally) which amounted to, say, a 20% share of the power, far in excess of their actual support. The only way to minimize this risk is to minimize the enforceability of any promises made between the voting rounds - for instance, by ensuring that all cabinet positions can be dismissed at will. Hmm... another way to address this would be to have candidates pre-decide their full preference order. After the first round, they would only be free to set their threshold. This would halve the chances that they'd end up as kingmakers, which is fair, because the winning 51% coalition gets essentially twice that much power. Anyway, this issue is actually a pretty good problem to have. Giving a slightly-larger minority of power to a minority in some circumstances is not the end of the world. I like it. Jameson 2011/5/24 fsimm...@pcc.edu About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. Asset Voting in its simplest form tends to squeeze out the CW, because when flanked closely on both sides by other candidates, the CW tends to have too few first place preferences (assets or bargaining chips) to survive. On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. That brings us to Delegable Yes/No (DYN) voting, which is a hybrid between Asset Voting and Approval that overcomes the weaknesses of those methods without increasing the complexity to the level of IRV: In DYN you circle the name of your favorite candidate and then optionally mark “Yes” next to the candidates that you are sure you want to approve of, and “No” next to those that you are sure that you want to disapprove of. You automatically delegate the rest of the Yes/No decisions to the candidate that you circled as “favorite.” Those delegated decisions are made by the candidates after the partial results have been made public, so that no false polls can manipulate the strategy. What do you think? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On Tue, 2011-05-24 at 22:42 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. Asset Voting in its simplest form tends to squeeze out the CW, because when flanked closely on both sides by other candidates, the CW tends to have too few first place preferences (assets or bargaining chips) to survive. What is CW? Us part time readers would be forever grateful if some kind soul would put a magic decoder ring on the wiki. On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. Is this a generally accepted truth? I don't think I agree with it, can you point me to more information or explain? The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. But I think this is only a factor for the period after transitioning to approval from a plurality system. In the longer term both the candidates and the voters will change. I think the change would be for the better, candidates would generally be more accountable, voters need only decide who they could live with as leaders and it is worth it to listen to what the minority players are saying - giving them your vote is both possible and meaningful. I guess most of these would be true (perhaps more so) for asset voting also. That brings us to Delegable Yes/No (DYN) voting, which is a hybrid between Asset Voting and Approval that overcomes the weaknesses of those methods without increasing the complexity to the level of IRV: In DYN you circle the name of your favorite candidate and then optionally mark “Yes” next to the candidates that you are sure you want to approve of, and “No” next to those that you are sure that you want to disapprove of. You automatically delegate the rest of the Yes/No decisions to the candidate that you circled as “favorite.” Those delegated decisions are made by the candidates after the partial results have been made public, so that no false polls can manipulate the strategy. What do you think? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
Hi, --- En date de : Mar 24.5.11, matt welland m...@kiatoa.com a écrit : What is CW? Us part time readers would be forever grateful if some kind soul would put a magic decoder ring on the wiki. CW is the Condorcet winner. This is a candidate who would beat any other candidate head-to-head. This could be defined using the ballots, or by the sincere preferences of the voters. In either case there may not be a CW. On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. Is this a generally accepted truth? I don't think I agree with it, can you point me to more information or explain? The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. I think that's mostly it. You need to know who the frontrunners are. In my simulations most scenarios result in there being two perceived frontrunners (especially if voter and candidate opinions are based on issue space) so I don't think this would change or become more complicated. What some find unappealing about Approval is that if nobody does any polling and everyone just votes above some threshold of acceptability that each voter defines for himself, there is no telling who will win. But we basically already have this situation with Plurality, if everyone just votes for his favorite (and nobody drops out of the race to prevent a disaster). Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On May 24, 2011, at 6:42 PM, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: About six years ago Toby Nixon asked the members of this EM list for a advice on what election method to try propose in the Washington State Legislature. He finally settled on CSSD beatpath. As near as I know nothing came of it. What would we propose if we had another opportunity like that? It seems to me that people have rejected IRV, Bucklin, and other methods based on ranked ballots because they don’t want to rank the candidates. I would propose Condorcet, with just a few clarifications: Leave CSSD beatpath as a detail method decision to resolve later. Reject IRV for known problems. Those unranked are simply counted as having the bottom rank. Write-ins permitted and counted as if actually nominated. This is a bit of extra pain, but I like it better than demanding extra nominations that enemies could make unacceptably difficult. Equal ranking permitted. Those who like Approval should understand that using a single rank lets them express their desire without considering ranking in detail. No restrictions as to how rank numbers compare - when considering which of a pair has higher rank, ONLY their ranks compare as HL, LH, or E=E - what ranks are assigned to other candidates have no effect on this. No restriction as to how many rank numbers a voter may use, beyond fact that a chosen ballot design may impose a limit as to how many can be expressed. DYN is a simple addition for those who see value in that method. Unranked serves as no; top rank serves as yes; third (middle) rank gets passed to the candidate this voter wants to leave choice to. Dave Ketchum Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) anticipated this difficulty in 1884, and he suggested what we now call Asset Voting as a solution. Asset voting is the simplest solution to the spoiler problem. Approval is the next simplest. IMHO anything much more complicated than Approval or Asset voting doesn’t stand a chance with the general public here in America. For this reason most IRV proposals have actually truncated IRV to rank only three candidates. This destroys IRV’s clone independence. Asset Voting in its simplest form tends to squeeze out the CW, because when flanked closely on both sides by other candidates, the CW tends to have too few first place preferences (assets or bargaining chips) to survive. On the other hand Approval requires reliable polling information for informed strategy. This fact makes Approval vulnerable to manipulation by disinformation. That brings us to Delegable Yes/No (DYN) voting, which is a hybrid between Asset Voting and Approval that overcomes the weaknesses of those methods without increasing the complexity to the level of IRV: In DYN you circle the name of your favorite candidate and then optionally mark “Yes” next to the candidates that you are sure you want to approve of, and “No” next to those that you are sure that you want to disapprove of. You automatically delegate the rest of the Yes/No decisions to the candidate that you circled as “favorite.” Those delegated decisions are made by the candidates after the partial results have been made public, so that no false polls can manipulate the strategy. What do you think? Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
