Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 10, 2007, at 6:08 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 04:09 PM 8/9/2007, Juho wrote: I used term sincere roughly to refer to voters marking their personal candidate utility values in the ballots. Or if you don't like the word utility then we can just talk about putting candidates on the value axis without putting any special emphasis on the min and max values. So what do I come up with as so-called sincere non-normalized Range Votes? Range 100, 50.25% for Gore. Bush is below 50% by five times as much as Gore is above it, so Bush is 48.75%. Rounding off for Range 100, it is Gore 50%, Bush 49%. My sincere votes. If this is not what sincere vote means, please explain what is! In the light of this example it doesn't matter how the sincere votes are derived or where they come from. Any method and logic is ok. It could be based on terms sincere and utilities, or not. The only criterion is technical by nature, i.e. that the voter uses the values in some other way than using mostly min and max values. So how is this a bad result? In the example the idea of Range electing the candidate that has best utility from the society point of view failed. In the example the votes were 50% - 50% but Range could ignore also a clear majority opinion. Juho ___ Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
On Aug 9, 2007, at 20:14 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: I've been over and over this point, there is little in this post that is new. I'd suggest reading it carefully. In this discussion I'm quite sensitive to different wordings that are used when describing Range. And if you wish to continue asserting that Range can cause a mess when voters vote a mixture of sincere voting and Approval-style voting, please define sincere in a manner that we could agree upon, define what a sincere Range vote is, and how, and *how much* the voters are harmed by voting sincerely, and what effect this has on society as a whole. I used term sincere roughly to refer to voters marking their personal candidate utility values in the ballots. Or if you don't like the word utility then we can just talk about putting candidates on the value axis without putting any special emphasis on the min and max values. The voters could be harmed considerably in some cases. There have been several examples. One could e.g. translate utility values 1 A=90, B=80 and 1 B=90, A=70 to actual votes 1 A=100, B=0 and 1 B=90, A=70. The effect on the society could be e.g. bad election results (e.g. worse candidate A elected due to strategic voting) or Range becoming Approval in practice. I think we have covered all this before. Let's try to avoid repeating the cycle. Insincere refers to reversing a preference; That's one option. In natural language I'd include also other cases. (sincere votes) You seem to be recommending the voters to primarily do so, I do recommend not reversing preferences. As to the expression of so-called sincere ratings -- what is that? Defined above. (I didn't refer to reversals specifically.) -- I suggest normalization, for starters, in nearly all circumstances. In some, what I call the first normalization would remain proper, not the second. (The first normalization: the voter considers *all* possible candidates, not just those on the ballot. The voter assigns 100% to the best of these and 0% to the worst. This is pretty much what Warren does with his simulations, to generate sincere and not normalized utilities. But by assuming that all voters have the same internal scale, there is a normalization. Other utilities are proportional. An assumption is made that they are linear, though various distributions of utilities are used.) (The second normalization: the voter considers all candidates on the ballot, including a write-in, if any. The voter assigns 100% to the favorite and 0% to the worst. Another variation of this would not include any write-ins. Again, other utilities would be presumed to fall in the middle somewhere, but that is actually a separate issue.) (And how are so-called sincere internal utilities translated to Range Votes, when they are not at the extremes? There is no fixed standard. Approval-style voting could be, in ordinary usage of the term, sincere. That is, the voter is saying, I'll be about as happy with either of these, and about as unhappy with either of those. This does *not* necessarily mean that the voter has no measurable preference, if only given the choice of two. It does mean that the voter is more likely, perhaps, to stay home in a runoff, but that is not guaranteed.) It seems you recommend not to normalize the estimated frontrunners to min and max. With this I think we are back in the original claim that Range may create a mess if some voters vote sincerely (and maybe are guided to do so) and some strategically. No such mess has been alleged specifically. Rather, Juho and others continue to claim that a mess is created, but not *specific* scenario that deserves the name is mentioned. There have been examples. See e.g. the example I gave above. Suppose we have a pizza election. Two friends are choosing a pizza, using Range Voting. They express, with their votes, not only what they prefer, but how strongly. Certainly, the person who votes Approval style is more likely to get what he wants -- indeed it is guaranteed -- than the one who votes sincerely. This is quite like two friends having a discussion about it. One says, I like Artichoke, but Mushroom is okay with me. The other says, wow! I *love* Mushroom and I *hate* Artichoke. Which pizza do they choose? Routinely, in ordinary human interaction, we give precedence to strongly expressed preferences. Do we question the sincerity of these preferences? We may, if voting over time shows a pattern. But who is to say, even then. A person's preferences may change. If a person always expresses strong preference, we may think them histrionic, but usually we will treat their preference as strong; however, in some cases, we may also start to treat our own as strong, if we never get what we want. It balances out. And I expect the same with elections. Do you mean
[Election-Methods] Response to Schudy re Range vs Approval voting
W.Schudy: Summary: I believe it's better to force everyone to vote strategically (approval) than to give power to the candidate whose supporters have the most black and white, polarized view of the world. --WDS replies: This criticism of range voting has been heard several times before, but Schudy perhaps has a nicer way to phrase and view it than the previous critics, which makes his attack overcome more of range voting's defenses. (For some of those defenses, see, e.g. http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.html http://rangevoting.org/ShExpRes.html .) *1. with range voting, it is recommended (this could be, by law, printed on ballots) but not required that voters rate their favorite with the top score (say 99 for 0-99 range) and their most-hated with the least score (0). With such a recommendation, it is likely that almost all range voters will actually do that. If range voters max and min the two perceived-frontrunner candidates, then they gain almost all the strategic advantages of approval voting, while still allowing quite a lot of honesty concerning other candidates. *2. So for example, if 49% voted Bush=99, Gore=0, Nader=53(avg), and 49% voted Gore=99, Bush=0, Nader=53(avg), and 2% voted Nader=99, Gore=20, Bush=0 then Nader would win. This structure is a realistic possibility that totally contradicts the assertion RV gives power to the candidate whose supporters have the most black and white, polarized view of the world. In this case, Nader is winning despite a severe lack of polarized Nader supporters. (See also http://rangevoting.org/TidemanRespB.html .) Indeed by forcing voters to vote approval-style, you would *force* artificial polarization and thus distort the results by causing Nader to have an artificially high or low score (probably the latter; it depends on the shape of the distribution whose average was 53). This is totally contrary to Schudy's claimed desire. *3. If we also add, say, Badnarik with scores not of 53 like for Nader, but rather, say, 20, then Badnarik would not win, but still would get a total range-voting score in the same ballpark as Bush, Gore, and Nader, thus permitting him to claim he has a lot of popular support, and thus allowing his party to try to get money and support for future elections. *4. However, if forced to vote approval-style, the latter possibility is precluded, causing Badnarik and his party forever to get very low scores (below 1%) and never be able to attract either money or serious candidates. As a result, the country would have fewer choices since small parties would be artificially prevented from growing to a deservedly-large size and strength. That's very bad. Furthermore, with continued 2-party domination, polarization is kind of inherent! Thus Schudy, by supporting approval over range, in fact could be CAUSING huge polarization, FORCING all Nader-like candidates to lose, and fossilizing it forever, preventing third parties from ever becoming significant - exactly the opposite of what Schudy says he wants! Note, it was an immediate bad effect that (above) Approval caused Nader to lose when Range vould have caused him to win. But what we here are talking about is a secondary - not-immediate but rather prolonged over historical time - effect somewhat resembling Duverger's law that certain voting systems engender 2-party domination. *5. That scenario (the nursery effect http://rangevoting.org/NurseryEffect.html ) is quite plausible. See http://rangevoting.org/PsEl04.html to see that Badnarik indeed got hugely less with approval than with range voting. This is a systematic effect that hurts all third-party candidates with approval, and hurts them hugely. *6. We have to base our arguments on reality. In our study of the 2004 US election, we were not able to find any evidence that Bush voters were either more or less polarized and strategically exaggerating than Gore voters. (Perhaps they were, but if so the effect was too small for our statistics to see.) This is only one election of course, so it does not mean a lot, but still, the fact is, Schudy apparently has no evidence that any nonuniform polarization ever exists, and what little evidence we do have, suggests it does not. The point is, it is hard to make such a conspiracy work. You have to get your suppoters to all agree to be strategic, AND keep this conspiracy secret so the other side does not find out about it and try to compensate. Realistic? Or a fantasy? *7. Might it be somebody could have a legitimate reason to score some preferences more strongly than others, and this is not because they are polarized? *8. Another interesting and good - kind of more philosophical - response to this kind of criticism, is by Lomax: http://rangevoting.org/TidemanRespA.html . Warren D. Smith http://rangevoting.org Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
