Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
At 11:37 AM 10/12/2007, Chris Benham wrote: We know that Condorcet methods are vulnerable to Burial and Compromise, and that Range is vulnerable to Burial and what has been called Compromise-compression (incentive to falsely vote one or more candidates equal-top alongside the voter's true strict favourite). As to Condorcet methods, the essential problem is an attempt to compress what should properly be a deliberative decision -- as it is in parliamentary systems, for officers -- into a single ballot process. It's inherent. In a real deliberative process, preferences shift *as part of the process*, and under standard rules, it is impossible for a decision to be made short of a majority preference for it over the status quo. About Range, though, there are indeed strategies for optimizing the election outcome; however, it is problematic to call these insincere and to use the term vulnerable as if harm is done by using them. Essentially, Range takes the votes as writ. The writing on this point often assumes that the voters have a weak preference, but vote a strong preference insincerely. However, there is no standard for this, and it seems to me that it is a direct contradiction, assumed as an initial condition. If so, then the conclusions are going to be invalid. From my point of view, for voting strategically in this way to confer an advantage, the voter must have a sufficiently strong preference. Preference strength can depend on context. If I am living normally, I may strongly prefer a cup of coffee to a glass of water. But if I am seriously thirsty, and voting for coffee is likely to leave me with nothing, suddenly my preference for water becomes strong, approaching that of my preference for coffee. That is, I may still prefer coffee, but, now, what I am expressing, if this is a Range Vote, is that, please, give me coffee or water, whatever. There is no standard for preference strength. Yet attempts to analyze Range strategy positing weak preference strength fail to model the effect of weak preference on how the voter will perceive the benefit of strategic exaggeration. What I'm suggesting is that there is *no* incentive for the voter to *truly* exaggerate. Rather, the voter modifies preferences according to context; the typical application would be that it's a two-party system, only two candidates have a reasonable chance of winning, so the voter max and min rates them, then adds other preferences *sincerely* to them. What the voter has done is to peg the internal absolute utilities to an external scale, the Range of the method. This is a simple and reasonable *and sincere* transform, in the ordinary meaning of the word. What this means, by the way, is that the transform between preferences and Range ratings is not linear. But the method is monotonic, if I'm using that term correctly. With infinite resolution (we can see why Warren Smith would like to see that), an increase in preference strength between candidates would always increase their distance in fully-sincere ratings, if such were practical, and all that is happened is that the transformation is not linear, it may be heavily compressed at the ends, which is why Benham's term -- where did he get it? -- is quite accurate. Compromise-Compression Yes, with a caveat. Compression implies that there is an uncompressed utility scale. That is far from clear! Rather, the internal utility scale is adaptive, it is not absolute, it adjusts to how we see the real possibilities in the world, so that our meaningful distinctions (the middle part of the range, particular where it shifts from aversion to affinity) are what are apparent to us, and the rest of the options are either lumped into Highly desirable or Highly rejected, with internal distinctions between those being not considered significant. The final runoff component means that in addition the composite method is vulnerable to Pushover. Voters who are confident that their favourite will be one of the finalists could have incentive to vote to try to promote a turkey as the other finalist. Voting sincerely could cause their sincere favourite to face a strong candidate and lose in the runoff. Well, I think more attention needs to be paid to the configurations involved. What may seem reasonable strategy can fall apart if it has weak preference strength behind it. In other words, there may be some strategy that increases the personal expected outcome for a voter or bloc of voters, but the increase is not significant and it is simply easier for the voters to vote sincerely, assuming that we understand what that is! How many voters would prefer to see a broadly acceptable candidate win -- and, for this question, we assume that the candidate is indeed acceptable to these voters -- over their personal favorite, again assuming that the preference strength is not great between these two candidates? I'd say that this depends on context
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:00:23 -0700 From: Jonathan Lundell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media On Oct 8, 2007, at 5:45 PM, Gervase Lam wrote: Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 17:34:10 -0700 From: Jonathan Lundell Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media We should have another name for it. This the plurality version of Bloc (or Block) Voting: I meant: another name for insincere voting. Oops! Sorry. Gervase. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: If you don't want to use the term sincere here, that's fine by me; let's use something else. Let's find some term that describes an ideal method in which a voter can express his true (dictatorial, perhaps benevolently so, perhaps not) preferences without worrying that there's some way of voting otherwise to achieve a better result. Well, there is such a method, actually. First of all, you've got to collect the necessary data, and the only ballot that does that is a Range ballot. But you can analyze a Range ballot as if it were a preference ballot with equal ranking allowed. There are two ways to go: with sufficient resolution, it can be a simple Range ballot, because a voter can maintain a preference of only one rating step, which is really pretty small if it is Range 100. It's still pretty small with Range 10! However, if the resolution is low, the device would be used of having a preference indicator that does not alter the Range vote. I.e., you could vote two candidates as perfect 10s but still prefer one. But, it turns out, you would be unlikely to actually do that, in what I propose. Basically, the ballots are analyzed two ways: sum of votes, which determines a Range nominee, and pairwise. If the Range winner is the Condorcet winner, and if the rules allow a victory by a plurality (I don't like that), then the election is over. There is no question about plurality if the Range winner is preferred by a majority. But if the Range winner is beaten by another candidate, pairwise by preference, then there is a runoff. Abd, What do you propose if the Range winner is pairwise beaten by more than one candidate? Chris Benham Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
At 11:03 AM 10/9/2007, Chris Benham wrote: Abd, What do you propose if the Range winner is pairwise beaten by more than one candidate? Chris Benham An obvious question of great interest to election methods experts. Not of much interest practically speaking. If it is sum-of-votes range, which I highly recommend, such a situation would be extraordinarily rare. But a complete method must address it. There is a simple solution, and it does not have to be perfect. The contest is between the Range winner and any candidate who beats the Range winner. If there are more than two, then there are possibilities: (1) (Preferred) The Condorcet winner among the set, (Range Winner, those who beat the Range winner). (2) If there is a whole condorcet cycle beating the Range winner, then the one with the lowest Range score is eliminated and the contest is between the Condorcet winner remaining. (The Range winner is guaranteed to be in the runoff. We can, thus, exclude the Range winner from any cycle, if the Range winner is a member of a Condorcet cycle.) This, then, always reduces to two candidates which can be resolved in a single runoff. Much better: use Asset Voting and deliberative process Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
On Oct 7, 2007, at 8:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 08:34 PM 10/7/2007, Jonathan Lundell wrote: The term insincere is an unfortunate shorthand for something other than the usual dictionary meaning. In this form of election, I take it to mean voting, for strategic reasons, for other than the voter's n favorite candidates, assuming that the voter approves of at least n candidates for the office Approves of is undefined. The voter bullet votes. That only indicates approval of one candidate. Indeed. That's why I added (and you snipped) one more sentence. The term insincere is an unfortunate shorthand for something other than the usual dictionary meaning. In this form of election, I take it to mean voting, for strategic reasons, for other than the voter's n favorite candidates, assuming that the voter approves of at least n candidates for the office. In this case, it's the vote that would be cast by a dictator. I mean dictator in the sense used by Arrow. Now, I have not spent much time with multiwinner elections. Yes, this article was about elections where there are n winners, but I'll look at one with two winners and so the voter has 2 votes. there are three candidates: Abraham Lincoln Genghis Khan Adolf Hitler. so to speak. Now, some elections have a threshold. If you don't get a certain percentage of the vote, you are not elected; there will perhaps be a runoff. The voter prefers Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, but detests both. Are we saying that a bullet vote for Abraham Lincoln is insincere? Why? The voter has essentially set an approval cutoff between Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. In this case, that isn't even questionable, it is quite sincere. Which is exactly what I meant by unfortunate shorthand above. Per your premise, our voter as dictator would fill the seats which Mr Lincoln and Mr Khan (or is it Mr Genghis?), assuming that both seats had to be filled from the candidate list. With STV, there's no problem expressing that preference. But with plurality or approval voting (or range, I suppose), the voter is forced to truncate his preferences to maximize his most-desired result: that Lincoln be elected, regardless of what happens to the second seat. If you don't want to use the term sincere here, that's fine by me; let's use something else. Let's find some term that describes an ideal method in which a voter can express his true (dictatorial, perhaps benevolently so, perhaps not) preferences without worrying that there's some way of voting otherwise to achieve a better result. What bullet voting means, if deliberate, that the voter has such a strong preference for the favored candidate winning that the voter does not want to support any other candidate against him. While not as drastic as the example I gave above, it merely indicates a strong preference for the single candidate, strong enough that the voter is willing to give up influencing a second seat. What's insincere about that? There is a contradiction set up in every discussion I have seen of the topic of strategic voting in Approval (and similar arguments are made with Range): 1. There is a voter who approves of two candidates 2. But only votes for one because the voter wants that one to beat the other. Ahem. Those are two contradictory conditions! Part of the problem is the use of the term approval. I was just reading Voting Matters and discover that I'm not the first person to suggest that we are talking about voting, not approving. I might vote for someone I rather heavily disapprove of, if I have no better practical option. A Nader supporter might vote for Gore, even if he thinks that Gore is just as much a tool as Bush, for there are other issues, such as Supreme Court appointments, etc. My point is that a voter can set an approval cutoff anywhere the voter pleases, and there is nothing insincere about it, in the ordinary sense, nor, in fact, in the technical voting sense. What has happened is that terms and measures developed for ranked methods are being applied to cardinal methods. In a ranked method, insincere has a clear meaning: preference reversal. That's easy to define! But preference reversal never benefits the voter in Approval, nor in Range. However, those who are actually advocating a ranked method, such as Instant Runoff Voting, can't stand the idea that Approval is not vulnerable to insincere voting, so they must extend the definition of insincere to include something else. Basically, they posit an approval cutoff of their own, such that the voter approves of two candidates, but only votes for one. And then they call this an insincere vote. Now, unless the voter is merely lazy, we have to say that the voter voted for the candidate the voter preferred; that the voter placed his approval cutoff between the two candidate
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
At 07:04 PM 10/8/2007, Jonathan Lundell wrote: Are we saying that a bullet vote for Abraham Lincoln is insincere? Why? The voter has essentially set an approval cutoff between Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. In this case, that isn't even questionable, it is quite sincere. Which is exactly what I meant by unfortunate shorthand above. Per your premise, our voter as dictator would fill the seats which Mr Lincoln and Mr Khan (or is it Mr Genghis?), assuming that both seats had to be filled from the candidate list. Actually, no. As dictator, he would fill one seat and leave the other vacant until he found a better candidate! This is one of the most offensive practices in actual elections, the assumption that the office *must* be filled. Robert's Rules dislikes that any action be taken without the support of a majority, voting explicitly on the question. What is interesting about Approval is that the winner clearly has that, the majority has decided to support the winner, there isn't any doubt about that. True, because of imperfect knowledge, the majority might actually prefer another candidate, but Well, I've seen it in action. A group had a majority preference (actually probably supermajority) for one thing, the status quo. A minority proposed that this be changed This was a group which valued group unity (and I'd claim that we should similarly value social unity overall), and so an Approval Poll was taken. Which if the following options would be acceptable to you? The majority could have bullet voted. But they did not. And while the status quo got something like a two-thirds vote, there was another option that got a *unanimous* vote, less only one. The obvious was then done, a motion was made to adopt the new option, and it passed *unanimously*. So my view of the majority criterion is colored by that. I've come to think that majority consent to any decision is *crucial*, and this is fully in line with Robert's Rules. So if a candidate does not get a true majority, the election *fails*. Robert's Rules also dislikes top-two elections, which essentially *force* a majority. Rather, it wants repeated balloting until the group finally figures out what it collectively wants. With STV, there's no problem expressing that preference. But with plurality or approval voting (or range, I suppose), the voter is forced to truncate his preferences to maximize his most-desired result: that Lincoln be elected, regardless of what happens to the second seat. We have to see approval as the next color in a spectrum of methods. This is the hierarchy as I see it: 1A. Vote for one only (equivalent to Yes for one, No to all others. 1B. Vote on each candidate as a Yes/No, as if this were a question, Shall this candidate be elected? Precedent is established in the second case that, if more than one candidate gets a majority, the one with the most Yes votes wins. (See, say, the Nevada State Constitution on the question of multiple conflicting ballot questions.) From here, where do we go. There are two options. 2. Allow fractional votes. This, of course, is Range. Why did I consider 1A and 1B to be variants of the same method? Well, they are counted the same, just add up the votes. Further, if we have a show of hands vote in a face-to-face meeting, there is no prohibition against voting for more than one candidate. I'm *sure* it happens, I've never seen a rule against it, and, in fact, there is no reason at all to prohibit it. In Robert's Rules, when the clerk is instructed to discard overvotes, there is a reason given: because the intention of the voter cannot be discerned. That *assumes* that overvotes are prohibited. It certainly is not a reason to prohibit them! I have, in fact, never seen such a reason that made any sense; as the dissent in Brown v. Smallwood (Minnesota) noted, there was no violation of one-person, one-vote in Bucklin (which is instant runoff approval, i.e., starts out with a single-vote rank, if no majority, next rank votes are added in, if no majority, third rank votes, which are not restricted to one vote, are added in.) It was only possible to discard overvotes with written ballots I said there were two options: the other option is using ranks, preference order. The big problem with preference order is that preference strength isn't involved; a huge preference is treated identically with an almost nonexistent one. And in real-world decision making on a small scale, this is blatantly a poor way to go. Does it get better as the scale increases? I don't see why it would! This is where most of the election paradoxes and difficulties arise. The big problem with Plurality -- and Approval is really a plurality method -- was the restriction to a bullet vote. Bullet voting makes sense if you are a supporter of a frontrunner in a two-party system, that is, your favorite is one of the top two, and any third candidate isn't viable as a winner.
Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
On Oct 9, 2007, at 4:00 , Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Oct 8, 2007, at 5:45 PM, Gervase Lam wrote: Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 17:34:10 -0700 From: Jonathan Lundell Subject: Re: [Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media On Oct 7, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 11:53 AM 10/7/2007, Brian Olson wrote: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/10/07/ ballot_query_to_bullet_or_not_to_bullet It may be worth noting (it goes without saying in the US) that the article is referring to n-seat plurality elections (vote for no more than n and top n win). We should have another name for it. This the plurality version of Bloc (or Block) Voting: I meant: another name for insincere voting. http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Bloc_vote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloc_voting Insincere is good, at least for scientific purposes. Term strategic that you picked up is good as well. For me the difference is maybe that that sincerity assumes that the voters have been asked to vote in some way (maybe in order to guarantee that the method will provide the intended result) but they will not. Term strategic assumes only consideration of different voting alternatives. It is also possible that they are asked to consider their strategic options and then vote strategically. In this case the two terms can differ a bit. One could say that the voters are now sincere but strategic. Juho ___ All new Yahoo! Mail The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use. - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
[Election-Methods] Bullet Voting in the wider media
In case anyone's interested in what the general public are hearing about voting strategy. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/10/07/ ballot_query_to_bullet_or_not_to_bullet Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
