Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Dave Ketchum wrote: On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:51:36 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: The point is that it's an advantage to the voters to express their thoughts in this manner. It's kind of like if Condorcet weighted votes by 1 / (number of ranks specified) so that it made sense to bullet-vote. It is a convenience, but no advantage as to power of their votes. It's a mere convenience to Condorcet voters. To Range voters, voting Approval style (certain edge cases notwithstanding) is a definite power advantage. Say that the election is so far A: 99.8, B: 99.4, C: 37.4, and your sincere preference is A: 0.4, B: 0.7, C: 0.2. You'd prefer B to win, so you say A: 0, B: 1, C: 0. I am still trying to promote series thought as to need for a majority for other than Plurality or Approval. A worst-case point of view might be to consider the groups maximally different. That is, nobody who voted A B also voted A C. From that point of view, and a strict interpretation of majority, one would have to have the weakest victory be one of a majority - that is, for the candidate X so that the magnitude of the win of A against X is least, A must beat X by a majority. Let me offer bullet voting in Condorcet: 32 A 33 B 34 C C wins because, with 99 voters, C's 34 makes it CW. That's true. I was talking about Condorcet majorities, though, and none of those would have such a majority. In general, if you have a voting method and everybody bullet-votes, then you pretty much have to reduce to Plurality, since there's no other information available. I do not HAVE to reduce Condorcet to Plurality here, for the voters have provided valid Condorcet votes. However, if bullet voting is common enough in Condorcet elections, it could make sense to count as if Plurality until ranking is seen, and then adjust and continue counting by Condorcet rules. What I mean is that if you have some method, and the input is only bullet-vote ballots, the method pretty much has to act as Plurality would in that case. That is, the method reduces to Plurality in the case of everybody bullet-voting. Condorcet reduces to Plurality since if all votes are bullet votes, they're effectively of the form A B = C = D B A = C = D C A = B = D meaning that a vote for whoever was bullet-voted is a vote for that candidate in preference to all other candidates, hence a candidate that would win Plurality is a CW if everybody bullet-votes. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 05:15 AM 1/7/2009, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: [snip] On the other hand, the mayor election data that was given on this list earlier seems to show that people don't bullet-vote as much as one would expect (even though one should be careful in deriving conclusions from sample sizes of one). It showed this for *that* election. Burlington is a very unusual town, and there can be a lot of enthusiasm for preferential methods at first (there was a lot of enthusiasm for Bucklin at first.) We should look at the San Francisco data for more evidence. In Australia, experience with Optional Preferential Voting shows that bullet voting tends to increase with time, after full ranking becomes optional, as voters realize that full ranking is mostly a waste of time. Most voters can simply bullet vote for a frontrunner, in most elections, and if they do rank lower, it is never even counted. Only those who support minor party candidates need add additional ranks. This may mean that people start off innocent - that is, they don't know about strategy or truncation, etc. Then, as they grow more familiar with the method, they know what works and what doesn't. I have no proof of this, though; we'd need ballot images for the very first election (or one of the first), and then of later elections, to compare the two. If I'm right, that may mean that claims in favor of Range (e.g the nursery effect) would only be temporary as more and more switch to voting Approval-style. Bucklin deserves more thought as a competitor to Condorcet. Bucklin doesn't do that well, Yee-wise. It's simple, however; I'll grant that. As far as criteria go, it fails independence of clones, is not reversal symmetric, and can elect a Condorcet loser (according to WP). Don't trust Wikipedia for *anything*. It is not to be used as a source. Alright. I'll try to find other sources, and also mention a criterion of Benham's: IIR - if you add a candidate that loses (pairwise) to all others and the only ballots you add are those that plump for it (bullet-vote), then that shouldn't alter the election. In Bucklin, it does. By adding an insignificant candidate, the majority threshold is increased so that some other may get the majority. Regarding clone-proofing, Rangevoting.org says this: Similarly, ER-Bucklin is clone-immune with clones equality-ranked, but not with preferences among the clones, since cloning the winner can cause all winner-clones to be delayed in acquiring the necessary vote-majority, allowing somebody else to win sooner. (http://rangevoting.org/FBCsurvey.html) Rob LeGrand showed an instance of Bucklin not being cloneproof: 20:ABC 17:BCA 13:CAB so B wins by majority in the second round, but then clone A 20:DABC 17:BCAD 13:CADB and A wins by majority in the second round, having pushed the B-preferences down. (http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods-electorama@electorama.com /msg02705.html ) http://www.condorcet.org/emr/methods.shtml also says Bucklin fails Condorcet Loser, Consistency, LIIA (obviously), Reversal Symmetry, SPC (really LNHarm; again, obviously), and Smith. That page's maintained by Blake Cretney. Schulze shows Bucklin fail reversal symmetry here: http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods-electorama@electorama.com /msg00893.html 19 A C B 20 B C A 1 C A B 1 C B A 1 B A C 1 A B C Running it forwards, C wins in the second stage. Running it backwards, C also wins in the second stage. Consistency isn't that important. The method obviously fails LIIA if it fails Smith, which it does (and must since it fails Condorcet Loser). We know Bucklin fails LNHarm because it passes LNHelp and mutual majority, yet is monotonic. I don't trust much of the simulation work that's been done, because of lack of simulation of truncation, for example. Truncation is *normal.* With Bucklin elections, maybe two-thirds of the voters don't add additional preferences. So let's look at the data. Bucklin, further, as it was implemented, didn't allow multiple voting in the first and second rounds. I'd toss that restriction, I see no need to *force* voters to rank candidates; if they have sufficient preference strength between them, they will rank them, if not, they may not. This would make Bucklin even more like Approval. And simulating approval realistically is far more difficult than simulating ranked methods. Most simulations of approval have made wild assumptions that voters will, for example, approve any candidate better than the mean utility. It's preposterous, voters won't vote that way. If you want something explicitly Approval-esque, why not use MDDA? MDDA is: those candidates people rank count as approved. Those they omit don't. First eliminate all candidates that are beaten by some other candidate by a majority (unless that eliminates all of them). Then count the approved
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Dave Ketchum wrote: On Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Condorcet certainly costs more for the system than Plurality. Costs bullet-voters nothing - provides a service to whichever voters like to do more than bullet vote. Actually can be a service to candidates. Clinton and Obama had to try to kill their competitor's campaign for the Democrat nomination they could not share. A similar race in Condorcet would let them both get nominated and have a more civilized fight as to which should be ranked higher than the other on the ballot. If people tend to bullet-vote, it may be the case that elections in general suffer from vote-splitting - simply because if C splits into C1 and C2, people either bullet-vote C1 or C2. In the Condorcet election described above, Clinton and Obama would have been ENCOURAGING voters to vote for both of them - that the voters should consider both CO and OC according to which they preferred. That is consistent with bullet voting in the many elections where that is appropriate. Probably so, yes. I would assume that if one does A = B Y and A is eliminated, then the ballot becomes B Y next - the ballots are transformed as if the candidate in question never ran. Note that your words imply that A and B are each counted when neither has yet been eliminated - an advantage over the voter having to vote either AB or BA. Yes, though if it's fractional, each vote only counts half. Range reduces to Approval if enough people use strategy. I think that any version of cardinal ratings should either be DSV or have some sort of Condorcet analysis (like CWP does, or perhaps not that far). Those are my opinions, though, and others (like Abd) may disagree. Agreed that voters can CHOOSE to express the same restricted thoughts in Range as offered by Approval - but Range includes abilities beyond Approval's limited ability (just as Condorcet voters can express Plurality's limited thought). The point is that it's an advantage to the voters to express their thoughts in this manner. It's kind of like if Condorcet weighted votes by 1 / (number of ranks specified) so that it made sense to bullet-vote. I am still trying to promote series thought as to need for a majority for other than Plurality or Approval. A worst-case point of view might be to consider the groups maximally different. That is, nobody who voted A B also voted A C. From that point of view, and a strict interpretation of majority, one would have to have the weakest victory be one of a majority - that is, for the candidate X so that the magnitude of the win of A against X is least, A must beat X by a majority. Let me offer bullet voting in Condorcet: 32 A 33 B 34 C C wins because, with 99 voters, C's 34 makes it CW. That's true. I was talking about Condorcet majorities, though, and none of those would have such a majority. In general, if you have a voting method and everybody bullet-votes, then you pretty much have to reduce to Plurality, since there's no other information available. This encompasses the standard majority setting where a majority votes A [everybody else]. It's not equal to it, as one may see from this example: A B C D C B D A D B C A A B D C B has a majority against C, D, and A. Huh? 2 AB vs 2 BA? Oops, I calculated based on 50% as majority. It should be relatively easy to fix though. A B C D C B D A D B C A B D A C Now 3 BA, 1 AB. Also, 1 CB, 1 DB, so no other has 50%+1 over all others. It's also a worst-case point of view because it errs safe in the case of truncation - truncation so that A is not ranked on the ballot means that no victory for A above some other candidate will be counted for that ballot. Each ranked candidate counts toward beating each unranked candidate, as well as toward beating each lower ranked candidate! Of course. What I meant was, if you have 1: B A C 2: B the 2: B is the same as 2: B A = C, which means that it doesn't contribute to A's victory count. Truncation so that A is not ranked on the ballot means that no victory for A above some other candidate will be counted for that ballot. I don't know much about the cost of optical scanning machines, but presumably getting one with 8 or 10 sensors shouldn't be that more expensive than one with 3. They wouldn't have to be specialized, either, since optical scanning is used for other things than counting ballots. Eight sensors may be affordable. How much space on the paper ballot is required for the eight targets to be sensed - for you do this for each candidate for each race. Something like http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2007/10/22/ballot2007.gif seems quite reasonable, yet that has 25 ranks - so I don't foresee 8 being a problem. The ideal solution as far as granularity is concerned would be to have a machine that does OCR
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:51:36 +0100 Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: On Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Dave Ketchum wrote: Condorcet certainly costs more for the system than Plurality. Costs bullet-voters nothing - provides a service to whichever voters like to do more than bullet vote. Actually can be a service to candidates. Clinton and Obama had to try to kill their competitor's campaign for the Democrat nomination they could not share. A similar race in Condorcet would let them both get nominated and have a more civilized fight as to which should be ranked higher than the other on the ballot. If people tend to bullet-vote, it may be the case that elections in general suffer from vote-splitting - simply because if C splits into C1 and C2, people either bullet-vote C1 or C2. In the Condorcet election described above, Clinton and Obama would have been ENCOURAGING voters to vote for both of them - that the voters should consider both CO and OC according to which they preferred. That is consistent with bullet voting in the many elections where that is appropriate. Probably so, yes. I would assume that if one does A = B Y and A is eliminated, then the ballot becomes B Y next - the ballots are transformed as if the candidate in question never ran. Note that your words imply that A and B are each counted when neither has yet been eliminated - an advantage over the voter having to vote either AB or BA. Yes, though if it's fractional, each vote only counts half. Range reduces to Approval if enough people use strategy. I think that any version of cardinal ratings should either be DSV or have some sort of Condorcet analysis (like CWP does, or perhaps not that far). Those are my opinions, though, and others (like Abd) may disagree. Agreed that voters can CHOOSE to express the same restricted thoughts in Range as offered by Approval - but Range includes abilities beyond Approval's limited ability (just as Condorcet voters can express Plurality's limited thought). The point is that it's an advantage to the voters to express their thoughts in this manner. It's kind of like if Condorcet weighted votes by 1 / (number of ranks specified) so that it made sense to bullet-vote. It is a convenience, but no advantage as to power of their votes. I am still trying to promote series thought as to need for a majority for other than Plurality or Approval. A worst-case point of view might be to consider the groups maximally different. That is, nobody who voted A B also voted A C. From that point of view, and a strict interpretation of majority, one would have to have the weakest victory be one of a majority - that is, for the candidate X so that the magnitude of the win of A against X is least, A must beat X by a majority. Let me offer bullet voting in Condorcet: 32 A 33 B 34 C C wins because, with 99 voters, C's 34 makes it CW. That's true. I was talking about Condorcet majorities, though, and none of those would have such a majority. In general, if you have a voting method and everybody bullet-votes, then you pretty much have to reduce to Plurality, since there's no other information available. I do not HAVE to reduce Condorcet to Plurality here, for the voters have provided valid Condorcet votes. However, if bullet voting is common enough in Condorcet elections, it could make sense to count as if Plurality until ranking is seen, and then adjust and continue counting by Condorcet rules. This encompasses the standard majority setting where a majority votes A [everybody else]. It's not equal to it, as one may see from this example: A B C D C B D A D B C A A B D C B has a majority against C, D, and A. Huh? 2 AB vs 2 BA? Oops, I calculated based on 50% as majority. It should be relatively easy to fix though. A B C D C B D A D B C A B D A C Now 3 BA, 1 AB. Also, 1 CB, 1 DB, so no other has 50%+1 over all others. It's also a worst-case point of view because it errs safe in the case of truncation - truncation so that A is not ranked on the ballot means that no victory for A above some other candidate will be counted for that ballot. Each ranked candidate counts toward beating each unranked candidate, as well as toward beating each lower ranked candidate! Of course. What I meant was, if you have 1: B A C 2: B the 2: B is the same as 2: B A = C, which means that it doesn't contribute to A's victory count. Truncation so that A is not ranked on the ballot means that no victory for A above some other candidate will be counted for that ballot. I don't know much about the cost of optical scanning machines, but presumably getting one with 8 or 10 sensors shouldn't be that more expensive than one with 3. They wouldn't have to be specialized, either, since optical scanning is used for other things than
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 03:31 PM 1/6/2009, Dave Ketchum wrote: On Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:19:29 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:28 PM 1/4/2009, Dave Ketchum wrote: On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:16:14 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Perhaps. Perhaps not. That can be a *lot* of preparation, and people are busy, many don't already, find time for voting. Bullet voting is simple, it can be relatively easy to know who your favorite is. Agreed that bullet voting is often appropriate. Only occasional elections provide reason for some voters to do more ranking. And only certain voters. It's relatively uncommon that there are more than two frontrunners, and most voters know who they are. Under those circumstances, the only strong reason not to bullet vote is if you prefer someone other than a frontrunner, and care to express it. The argument for Plurality would be that the system shouldn't be encouraging useless candidates to run at all! That is, since vote-for-one usually works, and the only reason it doesn't work (usually, and even this is fairly unusual) is that some silly voters will throw away their vote on a candidate who can't win, why should we respect the unexpressed wishes of those voters? After all, they had their chance! We don't run elections as a popularity contest, i.e., so minor party candidates can brag about how many votes they got Your argument for Plurality is empty: It's not my argument. It is a possible argument that could be made, I've seen similar arguments made. I do not support Plurality, but Open Voting (i.e., Approval), which is Plurality with multiple votes allowed, is better. Plurality as a primary method is even better, in my opinion, and Open Voting would be even better than that, etc. Best single-ballot method would be Open Voting with fractional votes allowed. I.e., Range. To do better than that requires allowing possible runoffs to deal with the relatively rare situations that Range makes a bad choice. Condorcet certainly costs more for the system than Plurality. Costs bullet-voters nothing - provides a service to whichever voters like to do more than bullet vote. Actually can be a service to candidates. Clinton and Obama had to try to kill their competitor's campaign for the Democrat nomination they could not share. A similar race in Condorcet would let them both get nominated and have a more civilized fight as to which should be ranked higher than the other on the ballot. Very bad idea. It dilutes their election resources. Plurality is not the only reason to have a party system, and to only nominate one candidate from a party. It's a problem that the nomination process can be so divisive, but that's a different issue. Even if runoffs are possible/expected, it is wise to vote carefully in the primary to minimize possibility of bad choices getting to the runoff. And when it isn't easy to know, having trouble deciding between two, Open Voting (Approval) allows a simple option: vote for both! What is important is that Condorcet, unlike Approval, permits voting for both Good and Soso, while indicating that Good is preferred. Right. However, with American Preferential Voting (Bucklin), you *can* indicate your preferences. My point is only that equal ranking, if allowed, can be, actually, more expressive. Bucklin deserves more thought as a competitor to Condorcet. It doesn't have to be a competitor. Rather, condorcet analysis can serve as one of a number of possible runoff triggers. Definitely, Bucklin deserves more thought. And more research, including better knowledge of the history. What the hell happened? We had an advanced voting system, in a *lot* of places, and the FairVote explanations of what happened are facile and self-serving and seem to be mostly speculation. Looking over the ballots from Burlington, as I just did, I'm struck by how many voters do seem to imagine that their votes will be counted! Overvotes are more common than I'd expect if they were mere slips. It is very easy for me to imagine that voters think that if they vote for more than one candidate in one of the ranks, why, the votes will be counted, they are merely saying that, for first preference, they prefer either the Progressive or the Democrat, or some other combination. The fact is that if such votes were counted, they'd make sense, even in IRV. (Allowing equal ranking turns IRV into a much better system than without it.) How do you count equal ranking in IRV? If I vote XA=BY, A and B become visible to the counters at the same time - what does this do to deciding what candidate is next to mark lost? The method doesn't change. Yes, A and B become visible at the same time. So? It's standard Approval voting, only in ranked rounds. The candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. If there is a tie, then there are standard tie-breaking methods. (This problem with intermediate ties is only a problem with IRV,
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 05:46 PM 1/5/2009, Juho Laatu wrote: It is possible that the voters would have liked to take position but for some reason did not know which candidates would be the strongest in this election. This situation is the same for all methods. A second round could improve things. But it may be that it is enough if the method offers the voters the option to indicate their opinion. This should be fair enough, at least if the number of the candidates is reasonable (not e.g. 100) or the leading candidates are well known so that all voters can evaluate those key candidates if they want to do so. Voters may need more information to rank candidates. The problem of limited voter knowledge was recognized by Lewis Carroll, in a pamphlet published in 1884, as a weakness of STV; many voters know, quite well, their favorite, but don't know much more than that. Is there a minor candidate who is better than the other frontrunner? Lower preference votes contain a lot of noise, but it is noise which is spectrally affected by matters such as name recognition. I think that this is the reason why IRV in nonpartisan elections tends to closely reproduce Plurality results. Suppose we have an election where X% of voters prefer A over all others. Let's assume that this is a plurality. Now, eliminate candidate B from the election. What percentage of voters prefer A over all others? It turns out that the supporters of candidate B, that preference excepted, are more or less a representative sample of the rest of the population, so, roughly, X% of them prefer A over all remaining candidates. The absolute gap between A and the rest simply widens with vote transfers. However, voters without adequate knowledge may have truncated, so A may not make it to a majority. Only in close elections would we expect to see a comeback election, where the runner-up in the primary or first IRV round ends up winning. Apparently, in Australia, it never happens that the third place candidate ends up winning. In other words, one could probably save a whole lotta countin' by doing batch elimination. Yet we also know that third place candidates in primaries might very well win a real runoff. The Lizard v. the Wizard. Chirac v. Le Pen. These were both major runoff elections where the probable Condorcet winner -- and a stable one -- would almost certainly have won a direct runoff between himself and either of the actual runoff candidates. Rules prevented write-ins. To some extent, folks, we -- and many others in academia -- have allowed ivory-tower preoccupations to distract us from what is really going on in real elections. The theoretical desirability of deterministic elections, the holy grail of the ideal single-winner deterministic system, led us down the wrong path and made much of our theoretical work practically useless. We *must* understand what is going on with runoff systems. Note that small democratic bodies use a simple majority requirement to great effect. With simple Plurality voting and a majority rule, and no candidate eliminations, but voluntary withdrawal and voter shifts in voting patterns to accomplish compromises, they elect Condorcet winners efficiently (or a candidate with utility close to that of the Condorcet winner) and usually quickly. But not with a single ballot, in some cases. Consider what it would be like if we wanted to build a computer to make decisions. If we require that the decision be made instantly based on input, in one processor cycle, we must build one very complex computer. But if we allow the computer to iterate, it can be much simpler. *Much* simpler, a Turing machine. If the input is human communication, the single-cycle computer can't even approach what an interactive process can do, where, essentially, questions are asked that are dependent on the results of previous questions. This is Robert's Rules of Order's criticism of the STV method: not only can it fail to find what they call a compromise winner, which is basically a Condorcet winner, which is a pure methodological failure, other preferential voting systems are far better at this -- even though IRV probably gets it right 90% of the time *as does plurality*, partisan elections excepted -- but it deprives voters of their right to base votes in a subsequent election on the results of the previous one. Remember, RRONR is assuming election *failure* and not a reduced candidate set in the succeeding elections. This is like Approval theorists who consider cycles of polls, where voters, realizing that in order to complete the election, they must lower their approval cutoffs, do so, until one candidate has a majority. That's what Bucklin does, effectively, as a method, but it's hindered by bullet voting, *which is normal and which must be expected.* Runoffs fix this problem, and if voters don't like having to vote again, they can take steps: add additional preferences!
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 06:14 PM 1/5/2009, James Gilmour wrote: At 07:04 PM 1/2/2009, James Gilmour wrote: So let's try again, with little bit of additional information that was (more or less) implied first time. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. East person is allowed to vote for only one candidate in each round of the exhaustive ballot and the votes for each candidate are to be indicated by show of hands. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? Answer Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 6:32 PM Yes, A won the second round with a majority of votes. So we have made some progress. Note: A majority of votes in the second round, which is properly considered an independent election. Note that this process isn't used by deliberative bodies, generally. Exhaustive ballot is occasionally prescribed. It's a bad idea, precisely because it can suffer from center squeeze. In standard deliberative process, there are no candidate eliminations, but candidates may and do withdraw. And other candidates may be nominated. (My own comment, generally, about close elections, is that the best result is probably none of the above. The best candidate wasn't on the ballot!) Now let us suppose the meeting decides to hold this election by STV instead of by Exhaustive Ballot (STV = IRV in this single-winner case). Each person has only one vote and is required to show his or her contingency (STV!!) preferences for as many or as few candidates as he or she wishes by writing the candidates' names in successive order down a small sheet of plain paper (top = 1 = first preference). You have stated inconsistent conditions: Required to show, For as many as he or she wishes. That's not a requirement, it's an allowance. However, it's true: if the penalty for not providing adequate ranking is that the voter is deprived of participation in further process, which is true for IRV, then we can call it a required ranking, with a penalty that isn't as severe as it is in Australian where full ranking is fully required. This limited requirement is probably constitutional in the U.S. Mandatory ranking isn't, i.e., ranking where the entire vote is spoiled if full ranking isn't performed. When all the ballot papers have been collected up and the votes counted, we find: First stage: first preferences: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D and transfer the votes that are transferable on D's 15 ballot papers. Second stage: transfer of D's votes: A 7; B 0; C 0; non-transferable 8. All 15 ballot papers accounted for. Votes totals: A 47; B 25; C 20. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second stage with 'a majority of the votes'? A won the second stage with a majority of votes *in that stage.* This is *not* a majority of the votes in the election. IF the answer to this question about the STV election is different from the answer above to the question about the Exhaustive Ballot, why is it different? Because, in the first case, there was an election in which the majority of those who decided to vote in the election cast a vote for the winner. In the second case, a majority of voters did *not* cast a vote, in the election, for the winner. How many elections were there in the second case? An election is a collection of votes on a ballot -- or by a show of hands or risings or other expression, in a single process of amalgamation. Again, the second case finds a majority of a kind, but not what is ordinarily meant by a majority of votes when it refers to the whole election. You can say, after the smoke clears in the second election, that it was won by a majority of votes among the remaining candidates after eliminations. The qualification is important and necessary for the statement to not be misleading. 100 people voted in an election, and A won by a majority. Tell me what that statement means! I'd say that it has a clear meaning: 51 or more voters voted for A, in some manner. In Optional Preferential Voting, voters are not forced to vote for candidates they may detest. Now, if a majority of voters detest a candidate and choose, therefore, not to vote for this candidate, how can we then claim that this same candidate won by a majority? No, because that majority was divided in terms of whom it did prefer, and because it truncated, perhaps because it detested the two frontrunners, -- or,
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 07:04 PM 1/5/2009, James Gilmour wrote: It is quite clear (and now agreed) that the winner (A) of the Exhaustive Ballot example had a majority of the votes at the second round and so was the rightful winner of that Exhaustive Ballot. But it would quite wrong to say that candidate A had the support of the majority of those who had taken part in that election, because there were two rounds in that one election and some who voted in the first round opted not to vote in the second round. The error here is in describing exhaustive ballot as if it were a single election. It isn't. It is a series of elections, with the candidate set for each increasingly restricted. It's a bad idea; if it's practical to hold a series of elections like that, why not simply hold them, without forced elimination? Sure, *in theory*, the series could then go on forever. In practice, though, it terminates, eventually the voters get it together and figure out the best compromise and vote for it. Now, if it is a deliberative body, with motions in order, a member could always rise and move that an eliminated candidate be restored. A majority could *force* this (a majority can effectively suspend a rule like an elimination rule). So a Condorcet winner would *not* be eliminated, if the voters cared sufficiently to make that motion and stand behind it. They could also, by a majority, eliminate candidates. Better voting methods simulate this process better. And *preference strength matters.* This is what so many of us have missed. Ranking doesn't contain adequate information to predict what will happen in deliberative process. AB, fine. Now, *how likely is it that this voter will *change his or her mind*? I.e., vote A=B or even BA? It depends on preference strength! candidate A had the support of the majority of those who had taken part in that election, because there were two rounds in that one election and some who voted in the first round opted not to vote in the second round. Is this wrong? Sure, as stated, it is, because we can figure out from the context that the election means the entire process, which is actually two elections. Under Robert's Rules, the original election *fails* and becomes totally moot. There could be *many* elections. The papal election rules required a 2/3 majority and Open Voting (approval) was used. It sometimes took a lot of polls. Given all those polls, would we say that 2/3 of those who took part supported the winner? Sure, we would. Took part means that they voted in the final poll. When a matter is voted on repeatedly, and we then talk about the result, we talk about the *final* result, and the number of votes and the results of the earlier polls, which failed to find the required quota, are moot. James, you are stretching pretty far. Why? So here we have an important difference between a majority of the votes and a majority of the voters. But neither is (or should be) of any relevance to the detailed voting system rules for an IRV election. Want to talk about the votes in IRV elections? How many votes are there? Sure, only one vote is active at a time, but there are *many votes* cast. Look at Burlington; the vast majority of votes cast, as alternative votes, were never counted at all. The Minnesota case, Brown v. Smallwood, following an earlier case, notes that it is a majority of voters which counts, not votes. However, they then proceed to count the number of votes, with apparent concern that with Bucklin, there are more votes than voters. *This same argument* applies to IRV, in fact. It was an anomalous decision, not sustained anywhere else in the U.S. IRV allows voters to cast more than one vote; the particular nature of the rules means that only one of these votes is active in each round. Bucklin allowed more than one vote to be active in each round, but there is still only one vote cast in any pairwise election -- or two, which is the same in effect as none -- and, in the end, only one vote from each voter contributes to the outcome, *all the rest could be eliminated without changing the result, but only the margins.* Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 07:04 PM 1/5/2009, James Gilmour wrote: It is quite clear (and now agreed) that the winner (A) of the Exhaustive Ballot example had a majority of the votes at the second round and so was the rightful winner of that Exhaustive Ballot. But it would quite wrong to say that candidate A had the support of the majority of those who had taken part in that election, because there were two rounds in that one election and some who voted in the first round opted not to vote in the second round. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 6:11 PM The error here is in describing exhaustive ballot as if it were a single election. It isn't. It is a series of elections, with the candidate set for each increasingly restricted. This statement is nonsense. There is no error in what I wrote. There is ONE election to determine the one winner from the set of candidates who stand. In the case of the Exhaustive Ballot the election proceeds by a series of rounds (one or more as required), but it is still ONE election. James Gilmour No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.3/1879 - Release Date: 06/01/2009 17:16 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 07:44 PM 1/5/2009, Kathy Dopp wrote: IRV/STV cannot claim majority winners, not only because ballots are exhausted and not considered in the final counting round, but also because not all voters' choices are even fairly and equally considered during the counting process - thus resulting in winners who are disliked by a majority of voters and overlooking candidates who are preferred by a majority of voters casting votes in the contest. IRV cannot claim to *consistently* find a majority winner, though this is indeed claimed by advocates. I disagree with Ms. Dopp, however, on one thing. The elimination of a Condorcet winner doesn't, itself, guarantee that IRV won't find a majority winner in spite of that, it depends. Majority doesn't mean best, necessarily. It simply means that, in an election, more than half of the voters chose to vote for a candidate. What does this mean, vote for a candidate? IRV obscures it, and, we see, in Burlington, that many voters chose to vote for candidates whom they clearly didn't support, because they apparently had an idea that it was a good thing to rank all the candidates. By ranking all the candidates that were on the ballot, they were, effectively, voting for a candidate whom they most certainly didn't approve and would likely prefer to see a runoff than to elect this candidate. Usually this is moot, because when they bottom-ranked a candidate whom they detested, they were only voting for this candidate over a write-in; so only with a massive write-in campaign could this become an issue, where the top two were a write-in and the candidate these voters ranked last. Basically, IRV, when it fails to find the Condorcet winner, where, indeed, the ballots show an eliminated candidate as being preferred to the IRV winner, nevertheless can claim that the winner won by an absolute majority, if that happens. Usually, though, because of truncation, which will be fairly common for those who voted for the Condorcet winner (that is, they truncate with that candidate, who is, by the conditions of this problem, probably in second rank for many), there will be majority failure as well. Thus if there is a real runoff *and if write-in votes are allowed in the runoff*, the voters *could* fix it. Robert's Rules of Order describes STV as a means of finding majorities and *not* as a runoff replacement, a true majority of ballots cast is still required. What they may not have realized is that IRV is particularly bad at this, in nonpartisan elections -- i.e., practically all elections in bodies advised by RRO. American Preferential Voting -- Bucklin -- does much better, because, if necessary to find a majority, it reveals all the votes and counts all of them. And it is *far* simpler to canvass. Just count all the votes in each rank. Add them as necessary to find a majority. If they are all added and no majority is found, then there are two paths to take: terminate with a Plurality, which is honestly shown in the results, or hold a runoff. Because Bucklin was sold as finding majorities from a single ballot, the latter was never considered. This should sound familiar. Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Abd ul is right that Top two runoff is a lot better system, and TTR is most likely less costly, definitely is easier to count and more auditable, is fairer, and both elections are monotonic too. TTR has some obvious problems, which are easy to fix. Quite simply, use a better method in the primary, one which will efficiently find true majorities, thus reducing the need for runoffs. Then, allow write-ins in the runoff, and use a better method for that as well. Bucklin, two-rank, would be *great* for this, because it would allow write-in voters to still participate among the two candidates on the ballot. Usually, in the majority of actual office elections like this, there would be a majority in the primary; it's hard to say what percentage, though, it depends on context and the number of candidates. If they are partisan elections, a majority in the primary gets more likely. Then, I'd predict, a majority would be found in the runoffs, almost always, yet it would no longer be a majority coerced by the method. Write-ins would have a chance, and the situation where something went wrong in the primary can be fixed *if the voters care enough about it.* Basically, a proper goal would be to reduce runoffs, but not to eliminate them. It is also possible, with some kinds of plurality results, to predict with very high confidence that a runoff would produce the same result. However, a majority requirement is very clear and simple, and, in my view is quite adequate. Where one could set the bar lower than that isn't clear to me. I'd suggest that with better methods in the primary and runoff, with a majority requirement in the primary (not in the runoff), problems would be minimized, and analysis of results over
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
--- On Tue, 6/1/09, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: If the vote for any one candidate equals or exceeds the votes of all the other candidates combined, that candidate shall be declared elected. Here you will see there is no reference to a quota, nor is there any reference to a majority of any kind. Good definition. One could use also term majority in the definition but maybe better not. So here we have an important difference between a majority of the votes and a majority of the voters. Good shorthand for different flavours of majority. Term vote means here given opinions (not all ballots). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
--- On Tue, 6/1/09, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: From: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk How should we see other methods like Range and Condorcet in this light? That is not a valid comparison because, unlike IRV/STV, both Range and Condorcet methods consider *all* rankings or ratings that *all* voters make on their ballots. I think this is a different problem of IRV. In the last round the exhausted ballots have already been fully considered, and the remaining ballots that have not been considered fully can no more change the result since there are too few of them. The problem of not considering the votes occurs already earlier where some good candidates may be eliminated early. IRV/STV cannot claim majority winners, not only because ballots are exhausted and not considered in the final counting round, but also because not all voters' choices are even fairly and equally considered during the counting process - thus resulting in winners who are disliked by a majority of voters and overlooking candidates who are preferred by a majority of voters casting votes in the contest. There are two questions - majority at the last round - majority in the whole election I guess you are here talking more about the whole election. Direct claim (without additional explanations) that IRV elects THE majority winner would at least be quite confusing (a majority winner would be closer to the truth since IRV winner wins at least one of the others). Abd ul is right that Top two runoff is a lot better system, and TTR is most likely less costly, definitely is easier to count and more auditable, is fairer, and both elections are monotonic too. I think there are good and bad points. Juho Cheers, Kathy 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] Does IRV elect majority winners?
On Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:19:29 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 10:28 PM 1/4/2009, Dave Ketchum wrote: On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:16:14 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Perhaps. Perhaps not. That can be a *lot* of preparation, and people are busy, many don't already, find time for voting. Bullet voting is simple, it can be relatively easy to know who your favorite is. Agreed that bullet voting is often appropriate. Only occasional elections provide reason for some voters to do more ranking. And only certain voters. It's relatively uncommon that there are more than two frontrunners, and most voters know who they are. Under those circumstances, the only strong reason not to bullet vote is if you prefer someone other than a frontrunner, and care to express it. The argument for Plurality would be that the system shouldn't be encouraging useless candidates to run at all! That is, since vote-for-one usually works, and the only reason it doesn't work (usually, and even this is fairly unusual) is that some silly voters will throw away their vote on a candidate who can't win, why should we respect the unexpressed wishes of those voters? After all, they had their chance! We don't run elections as a popularity contest, i.e., so minor party candidates can brag about how many votes they got Your argument for Plurality is empty: Letting useless candidates run in Condorcet means less runoffs than for Plurality, for voters can vote for both a frontrunner (helping it win), and those the voters desire to have counted even if not expected to win. Useless candidates can run in Plurality. Condorcet lets them get voted for without, necessarily, disturbing the frontrunner - also, their getting counted helps in the rare occasions when they deserve to win. *My* point here is that there are some reasons to prefer plurality, we often neglect them completely. Whatever system we try to implement, it's not likely to be stable if it is more work than it's worth. If all the system does is to, nearly always, confirm Plurality results -- and this is the case with IRV in nonpartisan elections -- it is a *huge* waste. Condorcet certainly costs more for the system than Plurality. Costs bullet-voters nothing - provides a service to whichever voters like to do more than bullet vote. Actually can be a service to candidates. Clinton and Obama had to try to kill their competitor's campaign for the Democrat nomination they could not share. A similar race in Condorcet would let them both get nominated and have a more civilized fight as to which should be ranked higher than the other on the ballot. Even if runoffs are possible/expected, it is wise to vote carefully in the primary to minimize possibility of bad choices getting to the runoff. And when it isn't easy to know, having trouble deciding between two, Open Voting (Approval) allows a simple option: vote for both! What is important is that Condorcet, unlike Approval, permits voting for both Good and Soso, while indicating that Good is preferred. Right. However, with American Preferential Voting (Bucklin), you *can* indicate your preferences. My point is only that equal ranking, if allowed, can be, actually, more expressive. Bucklin deserves more thought as a competitor to Condorcet. Looking over the ballots from Burlington, as I just did, I'm struck by how many voters do seem to imagine that their votes will be counted! Overvotes are more common than I'd expect if they were mere slips. It is very easy for me to imagine that voters think that if they vote for more than one candidate in one of the ranks, why, the votes will be counted, they are merely saying that, for first preference, they prefer either the Progressive or the Democrat, or some other combination. The fact is that if such votes were counted, they'd make sense, even in IRV. (Allowing equal ranking turns IRV into a much better system than without it.) How do you count equal ranking in IRV? If I vote XA=BY, A and B become visible to the counters at the same time - what does this do to deciding what candidate is next to mark lost? Those concerned about Later-No-Harm can simply avoid equal ranking! If any Condorcet method is used, it should allow equal ranking, because this *allows* more sincere voting, in fact. AGREED that equal ranking should be permitted. Permitting it with Plurality turns Plurality into a far better system, with no cost. Bucklin is very much like Open Voting (i.e., plurality with equal ranking allowed, i.e., Approval) except that it is possible for the voter to rank so that votes are counted in rounds. The original Bucklin only allowed multiple votes in the third rank, but I don't see any reason to *prohibit it* -- i.e., discard ballots that equal rank -- in the first two ranks. Approval, Plurality and IRV are distractions from need to pick a live destination. I see need to compare, more
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 05:58 AM 1/6/2009, James Gilmour wrote: --- On Tue, 6/1/09, James Gilmour jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk wrote: If the vote for any one candidate equals or exceeds the votes of all the other candidates combined, that candidate shall be declared elected. Here you will see there is no reference to a quota, nor is there any reference to a majority of any kind. Juho Laatu Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 10:31 AM Good definition. One could use also term majority in the definition but maybe better not. Juho, most certainly NOT. The whole point of that wording in the ERS IRV (Alternative Vote) rules is that it completely avoids the word majority which can be given a variety of different meanings. As we can see from some of the posts to this lists even today, there are those who completely reject any idea of the winner having a majority in any IRV election. I haven't noticed that. I certainly don't believe that, and if James has been reading carefully, he'd know that. If the winner of an IRV election has received, either in the first round, or after transfers, a vote from a majority of ballots cast, the winner is a majority winner. Most IRV elections do produce majority winners, unless there are very large numbers of candidates. The ERS wording also makes it clear that the comparison to be made is of the numbers of votes for the candidates at the CURRENT stage of the count. This is the correct approach because this is an STV election in which the preferences marked on the ballot papers are contingency choices. So if at stage 2 or some later stage, some who voted at stage 1 now opt out and do not indicate any further preferences, they are, in accordance with their expressed wish, left out of the decision-making process about the remaining candidates. A lack of a vote is not an expressed wish. If the voter truncates with some mark that indicates that, if the voter has explicitly indicated that they may be excluded from the majority, this, then, is an explicit abstention and, indeed, it would be legitimate to exclude such an exhausted ballot. It could be done. Otherwise a ballot with a vote is not an expressed wish to be left out, or abstention, we do violence to the language to claim it is. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
One comment on concerns related to IRV's decision between the last two candidates on if that decision is a majority decision. Many ballots may have exhausted before the last round. As a result one may claim that the last round decision was not a majority decision. The point is that in all elections that have numerous candidates there is a risk that voters will not properly indicate their preferences on those candidates that turn out to be the strongest competitors. Typically methods have some agreed way of handling those unrated/unranked candidates (or alternatively they require full ratings /rankings). The typical rule is to consider those candidates to be at the shared last position. Also in IRV one could say that those votes that were eliminated before the last round did take position. They said that those two candidates are both at shared last position. This may have happened because the voters really felt so, or since the voters thought (erroneously) that these candidates had no chances to win. How should we see other methods like Range and Condorcet in this light? If there is a default handling of candidates that were not rated/ranked should we say that there is something wrong with the winner if there are many votes that did not take position on the competition between the winner and its strongest competitors? It is possible that the voters would have liked to take position but for some reason did not know which candidates would be the strongest in this election. This situation is the same for all methods. A second round could improve things. But it may be that it is enough if the method offers the voters the option to indicate their opinion. This should be fair enough, at least if the number of the candidates is reasonable (not e.g. 100) or the leading candidates are well known so that all voters can evaluate those key candidates if they want to do so. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 07:04 PM 1/2/2009, James Gilmour wrote: So let's try again, with little bit of additional information that was (more or less) implied first time. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. East person is allowed to vote for only one candidate in each round of the exhaustive ballot and the votes for each candidate are to be indicated by show of hands. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? Answer Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2009 6:32 PM Yes, A won the second round with a majority of votes. So we have made some progress. Now let us suppose the meeting decides to hold this election by STV instead of by Exhaustive Ballot (STV = IRV in this single-winner case). Each person has only one vote and is required to show his or her contingency (STV!!) preferences for as many or as few candidates as he or she wishes by writing the candidates' names in successive order down a small sheet of plain paper (top = 1 = first preference). When all the ballot papers have been collected up and the votes counted, we find: First stage: first preferences: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D and transfer the votes that are transferable on D's 15 ballot papers. Second stage: transfer of D's votes: A 7; B 0; C 0; non-transferable 8. All 15 ballot papers accounted for. Votes totals: A 47; B 25; C 20. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second stage with 'a majority of the votes'? IF the answer to this question about the STV election is different from the answer above to the question about the Exhaustive Ballot, why is it different? James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.2/1874 - Release Date: 04/01/2009 16:32 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Juho Laatu Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 10:46 PM One comment on concerns related to IRV's decision between the last two candidates on if that decision is a majority decision. Many ballots may have exhausted before the last round. As a result one may claim that the last round decision was not a majority decision. Juho's post (rest cut) points to two quite separate issues: 1. How is the 'winner decision' made in an IRV election? 2. What claims can be made for that winner? In the discussion so far, these two separate issues have been muddled together, as they usually are in descriptions of IRV and discussions about IRV. It may come as a surprise to some (or all) that the Electoral Reform Society (founded 1884) had no rules for IRV (STV single winner) elections until 1978, when under the supervision of Robert Newland (ERS Chairman and mathematician) and Major Frank Britton (ERS Director of Elections), I codified a set of such rules for the Society. The standard STV-PR rules all refer to the calculation of a quota, but do make provision for the election of one or more winners without a quota if that becomes necessary. But it really makes no sense at all to apply that approach to a single-winner STV election, so in the 1978 IRV rules we made no reference to a quota. Instead, the winner, at any stage, was to be determined by this simple rule: If the vote for any one candidate equals or exceeds the votes of all the other candidates combined, that candidate shall be declared elected. The rules also make it clear that each voter has only one vote and the votes are transferred on a contingency basis in accordance with the successive preferences marked on the relevant ballot papers - this being an STV election. Here you will see there is no reference to a quota, nor is there any reference to a majority of any kind. Neither is relevant to the determination of the winner of an IRV election. You will find the same form of words today in the detailed rules for IRV (called Alternative Vote) on the ERS website: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=116 I commend the wording of those ERS rules to anyone who needs rules for an IRV election. Quite separately from how the winner is defined in the detailed voting system rules, there is a question about what claims may be made for the winner of an IRV election in terms of votes and voters. And THIS is where the issue of majority comes in. It is quite clear (and now agreed) that the winner (A) of the Exhaustive Ballot example had a majority of the votes at the second round and so was the rightful winner of that Exhaustive Ballot. But it would quite wrong to say that candidate A had the support of the majority of those who had taken part in that election, because there were two rounds in that one election and some who voted in the first round opted not to vote in the second round. So here we have an important difference between a majority of the votes and a majority of the voters. But neither is (or should be) of any relevance to the detailed voting system rules for an IRV election. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.2/1874 - Release Date: 04/01/2009 16:32 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
From: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk How should we see other methods like Range and Condorcet in this light? That is not a valid comparison because, unlike IRV/STV, both Range and Condorcet methods consider *all* rankings or ratings that *all* voters make on their ballots. IRV/STV cannot claim majority winners, not only because ballots are exhausted and not considered in the final counting round, but also because not all voters' choices are even fairly and equally considered during the counting process - thus resulting in winners who are disliked by a majority of voters and overlooking candidates who are preferred by a majority of voters casting votes in the contest. Abd ul is right that Top two runoff is a lot better system, and TTR is most likely less costly, definitely is easier to count and more auditable, is fairer, and both elections are monotonic too. Cheers, Kathy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 02:29 PM 1/3/2009, Terry Bouricius wrote: Paul, I am extremely versed in state legislative parliamentary procedure, as I served ten years as a state legislator. Nearly every state uses Mason's Manual instead of RRONR. That's right. RRONR was based on the practice of the U.S. House of Representatives. There are plenty of differences in detail. Every deliberative body, as a general rule, may set its own rules governing its deliberations. It's actually a loophole one could drive a truck through, but, it seems, it is not *much* abused. (The nuclear option in the Senate involved the presiding officer -- possibly Dick Cheney -- ruling that a simple majority was adequate to cut off debate on consenting to a judicial appointment; since this was contrary to the rules, on the face, presumably there would be an appeal of the ruling to the body itself; if I'm correct, it takes a majority to overturn the ruling of the chair, but just a simple majority, not the 60% required for normal cloture. Needless to say, many Senators were concerned about precedent; cloture rules are a protection against ill-considered decisions. It's bad enough that, not too many years ago, cloture was reduced from 2/3 to 3/5.) The basis for calculating majorities is specific to the situation, or constitutional provision. There are a few cases where the basis is the entire membership (such as over-riding a veto, etc.) but for most votes it is a majority of those present and voting -- assuming a quorum is present. That's right. Deliberative bodies do not normally use any voting system other than simple majority rule, and, if I'm correct, absolute majorities are reserved for special situations. It would not be desirable for a veto override to be made by a minority of members, which can happen if only a quorum is necessary. This is probably an example of where the body is restrained by its charter, i.e., the state constitution, which, I'd imagine, requires that absolute supermajority. There are a few rare examples of national popular elections in which the basis is the entire eligible population, such as some referenda in Italy, where opponents often urge their adherents not to vote as a way of blocking the passage of some measure (since all of the abstainers who don't care to participate one way or the other are effectively counted as no votes). This is desirable when a measure takes away essential rights. Otherwise it's a device for maintaining status quo, because of the difficulty of gaining an absolute majority. However, if such a measure is actually and seriously worthwhile, it shouldn't be that difficult to gain an absolute majority; it is effectively a supermajority requirement, declining in percentage as the turnout increases, to a minimum of an absolute majority. However the norm in governmental elections is to discount all abstainers from the basis, regardless of the manner of their abstention. An abstention, however, means someone who doesn't vote on a question. This is the only place in this post from Bouricius where he appears to be inserting a spin. Regardless of the manner of their abstention is a loophole one could, again, drive a truck through, and, indeed, that's what Bouricius is attempting to do. There are two questions, here, and he will, if history is a guide, attempt to confuse them, because then the argument he will make for the first one, which is stronger, he can hope will rub off on the second. Debate tactic. (1) If there is a preferential ballot, used by such a body, for an election or for any multiple-choice question, and a winner is determined by the rules, and members have abstained from making some pairwise comparisons, is this an abstention if they have voted in other pairwise races? It is clearly an abstention if they have voted in none. But, if they have voted for someone, one candidate at least, participating in the process, the usage of the term abstention becomes highly problematic. It is like an abstention, in some ways, but it is an abstention that generally represents equal-ranking bottom, i.e., a pure No on the election of all those not ranked; because the voter is utterly opposed -- one may assume by default -- to all those candidates, ranking them would imply approval of any one of them ranked, and could create a majority, and therefore the voter will be responsible for electing someone whom the voter might consider to be a monstrous choice. And this is how Robert's Rules will treat it, and Robert's Rules does consider the question. It is not an abstention, it's a vote, and it counts in the basis for majority. And I also think this is just plain common sense. Does Mason's Manual even consider the question? (2) If the ballot does not allow full ranking, and a voter has used the available ranks, is the vote then an abstention against all other pairs? Given that Bouricius has already stated that he doesn't consider methods
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 07:48 AM 1/3/2009, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: By considering the runoff process in this manner, we find that runoffs aren't magic - they only ensure that a sincere Condorcet loser won't be elected, and if there's a sincere CW and the CW is in the runoff, that said CW will win. This is a common assumption, and it only holds under three (unrealistic) assumptions: (1) The same voters vote in the runoff. (2) They fully ranked in the primary. (3) They didn't change their minds. Preference strength affects all three of this, in a particular direction. Usually, yes, the Condorcet winner will win; however, I could also say that the Range winner will usually win. Usually, they are the same candidate! So what happens when they differ? That depends on how strategic voting has affected the votes. Generally, though, if the Range votes, overall, represent realistic averaging of the voter positions, the Range winner will prevail in the runoff against the first-round Condorcet winner. Of course, that first-round winner is no longer the Condorcet winner. The runoff is a separate election. The system is Condorcet compliant, overall, because a true -- stable -- Condorcet winner will prevail. However, that doesn't at all mean that a Condorcet winner from the primary ballot (let's assume it's a Range ballot, so both Range and pairwise analysis may be done) will necessarily win. A single runoff isn't magic, though, but it's like the old saying, two heads are better than one. The difference between two people working on a problem and just one can be drastic. Two rounds starts to approach, makes a large step toward, deliberative process, which is *intelligent*. It is not merely aggregation any more. It starts to approach what a sound and accurately representative parliamentary system would do, except that we probably get better results if we simply create that system and allow it to select single winners, i.e., officers. If you had a pessimal primary method that picked the two last place candidates in a Condorcet method after the Condorcet loser had been removed, and the ballots were sincere, the runoff would still pick a bad candidate (unless number of candidates = 3). If a runoff provides majority support, then that bad candidate would be supported by a majority. I don't agree that runoffs, in themselves, necessarily provide majority support, except technically. In substance, no, because of the restrictions. If there is no restriction, such as write-in votes being allowed, it's a different story. *But nobody seems to have noticed that we do have write-ins allowed in some runoffs, and that right is being chipped away by those in power.* Still, there's one important thing to remember when dealing with (two-candidate) runoffs: the second round will be sincere, since there are just two candidates and the simple whoever gets the most votes wins is strategyproof for two candidates. This means that the strategy employed will be focused on the first round (the primary) to pass the strategists' preferred candidates for the second round. Also, even if they succeed in making the system pass one candidate to the next round, they'll fail if the other candidate is preferred to him (sincerely). That's right. Two-round systems, arguably, make the best choice among the top two. In nonpartisan elections, turns out, about one out of three times, IRV gets it wrong, i.e., decides differently than the electorate would decide directly. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 07:44 PM 1/3/2009, Dave Ketchum wrote: BTW, I would not do runoffs with Condorcet, even with cycles - promise of no runoffs can encourage more careful preparation for the primary vote where Condorcet allows complete ranking. Perhaps. Perhaps not. That can be a *lot* of preparation, and people are busy, many don't already, find time for voting. Bullet voting is simple, it can be relatively easy to know who your favorite is. And when it isn't easy to know, having trouble deciding between two, Open Voting (Approval) allows a simple option: vote for both! If any Condorcet method is used, it should allow equal ranking, because this *allows* more sincere voting, in fact. However, majority vote and avoidance of all runoffs are two incompatible goals. So the question is, how important is it that a majority of those voting support the winner? I'd say it is a bare minimum! We have a defective democracy when we elect with other than a majority, either of voters directly, or through chosen representatives. Where representation is involved, we have a defective democracy even with a majority! Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 10:28 PM 1/4/2009, Dave Ketchum wrote: On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:16:14 -0500 Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Perhaps. Perhaps not. That can be a *lot* of preparation, and people are busy, many don't already, find time for voting. Bullet voting is simple, it can be relatively easy to know who your favorite is. Agreed that bullet voting is often appropriate. Only occasional elections provide reason for some voters to do more ranking. And only certain voters. It's relatively uncommon that there are more than two frontrunners, and most voters know who they are. Under those circumstances, the only strong reason not to bullet vote is if you prefer someone other than a frontrunner, and care to express it. The argument for Plurality would be that the system shouldn't be encouraging useless candidates to run at all! That is, since vote-for-one usually works, and the only reason it doesn't work (usually, and even this is fairly unusual) is that some silly voters will throw away their vote on a candidate who can't win, why should we respect the unexpressed wishes of those voters? After all, they had their chance! We don't run elections as a popularity contest, i.e., so minor party candidates can brag about how many votes they got *My* point here is that there are some reasons to prefer plurality, we often neglect them completely. Whatever system we try to implement, it's not likely to be stable if it is more work than it's worth. If all the system does is to, nearly always, confirm Plurality results -- and this is the case with IRV in nonpartisan elections -- it is a *huge* waste. Even if runoffs are possible/expected, it is wise to vote carefully in the primary to minimize possibility of bad choices getting to the runoff. And when it isn't easy to know, having trouble deciding between two, Open Voting (Approval) allows a simple option: vote for both! What is important is that Condorcet, unlike Approval, permits voting for both Good and Soso, while indicating that Good is preferred. Right. However, with American Preferential Voting (Bucklin), you *can* indicate your preferences. My point is only that equal ranking, if allowed, can be, actually, more expressive. Looking over the ballots from Burlington, as I just did, I'm struck by how many voters do seem to imagine that their votes will be counted! Overvotes are more common than I'd expect if they were mere slips. It is very easy for me to imagine that voters think that if they vote for more than one candidate in one of the ranks, why, the votes will be counted, they are merely saying that, for first preference, they prefer either the Progressive or the Democrat, or some other combination. The fact is that if such votes were counted, they'd make sense, even in IRV. (Allowing equal ranking turns IRV into a much better system than without it.) Those concerned about Later-No-Harm can simply avoid equal ranking! If any Condorcet method is used, it should allow equal ranking, because this *allows* more sincere voting, in fact. AGREED that equal ranking should be permitted. Permitting it with Plurality turns Plurality into a far better system, with no cost. Bucklin is very much like Open Voting (i.e., plurality with equal ranking allowed, i.e., Approval) except that it is possible for the voter to rank so that votes are counted in rounds. The original Bucklin only allowed multiple votes in the third rank, but I don't see any reason to *prohibit it* -- i.e., discard ballots that equal rank -- in the first two ranks. It makes one less reason to discard and not count a vote In the Burlington election, there were 77 blank ballots, if we can believe the images. I suspect that, in fact, some of these weren't blank, but that they had no vote in the first rank. Another technical reason to discard a ballot. A voter thinks, I really don't like any of these guys much, so I'll just leave the first preference blank -- not realizing that, probably, by the rules, the ballot won't be counted at all. IRV is *complicated.* On a Bucklin ballot, I'd argue, abstaining from the first rank shouldn't cause later ranked votes not to be counted. (And I'd argue that there is no reason in IRV to not count ballots with a vote in second rank, but none if first. The intended meaning is reasonably clear.) However, majority vote and avoidance of all runoffs are two incompatible goals. So the question is, how important is it that a majority of those voting support the winner? The CW has been compared with EACH other candidate, and found better liked in every case. However this does not guarantee a majority, since voters are not each required to rank all candidates. That's right. And, in fact, it could only be a small minority who so voted, i.e., that the winner was better liked. Majority requirements *require* that the electorate actually consider and accept or reject a winner. When there is a cycle its 3 or
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Paul Kislanko wrote: I don't believe RRs or practical implementations thereof define percentages this way. For instance, the US Senate rules call for 60 votes, not 60% of the Senators who vote, in their rules. Likewise by leaving the state, for a time Texas Democrats delayed the (ridiculous) re-districting plan the Republicans eventually got passed anyway by just reducing the numerator for a fixed denominator. Legislatures who follow RRoO pretty much define majority by majority of eligible voters. If we want to depend upon majority-criteria we need to pick whether we mean majority of voters or majority of eligible voters. If we chose the latter definition then NO method can make such a claim, unless it has a specific method for dealing with non-voters. If we chose the majority of voters approach, then Bucklin is an efficient way to find all majorities that support any alternative. IRV is problematic, because the method changes the definition of voters in each round. I'm not sure IRV is unconstitutional, but it is repugnant. In another respect, Condorcet is an efficient way to find majorities that support an alternative. If we (for the sake of simplicity) assume voters are sincere and runoffs have similar turnout as primaries, then if X pairwise beats Y, X would beat Y in a runoff. If X's a sincere CW, it win a runoff, no matter who it ran against. There are confounding factors: voters may employ strategy, and Abd's point that only the voters that care show up for the runoff may be true. However, these factors will exist for Bucklin (and IRV and any other method) as well. By considering the runoff process in this manner, we find that runoffs aren't magic - they only ensure that a sincere Condorcet loser won't be elected, and if there's a sincere CW and the CW is in the runoff, that said CW will win. If you had a pessimal primary method that picked the two last place candidates in a Condorcet method after the Condorcet loser had been removed, and the ballots were sincere, the runoff would still pick a bad candidate (unless number of candidates = 3). If a runoff provides majority support, then that bad candidate would be supported by a majority. Still, there's one important thing to remember when dealing with (two-candidate) runoffs: the second round will be sincere, since there are just two candidates and the simple whoever gets the most votes wins is strategyproof for two candidates. This means that the strategy employed will be focused on the first round (the primary) to pass the strategists' preferred candidates for the second round. Also, even if they succeed in making the system pass one candidate to the next round, they'll fail if the other candidate is preferred to him (sincerely). Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 10:02 PM 1/2/2009, Paul Kislanko wrote: In real elections the problem is that the Powers That Be chose to not allow me to vote at all, despite the fact I'm a registered voter. So whatever method you propose or support I consider irrelevant, until you sort out the problems on the collection side. How about: Count All the Votes! (Approval, or can be applied to Bucklin, for example, but also works for voting security and accuracy.) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 05:40 PM 1/2/2009, Jonathan Lundell wrote: On Jan 2, 2009, at 2:26 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Elections aren't merely picking some ideal best winner in a bad situation, they are seeking, if a majority is sought, one who will be accepted, *at least*, by most voters. That may well be a desideratum, but it's not the case in real elections. I've certainly contributed (or tried to contribute) to majorities by voting for a less-unacceptable candidate. It's rational, but it doesn't constitute acceptance except in some weak sense, perhaps acquiescence. You made the choice to accept. Compromises are part of any single-winner democratic process. It's possible to reduce compromise to a minimum with Asset Voting (and with certain rules, the compromise only applies to representation in deliberation); otherwise, it will always be there. There are no public elections, i.e., submitted to the general electorate, where majority acceptance is required. It is simply approached by some methods, not in general use. In particular, TTR is most often not used for partisan elections; probably the excuse for this is that the party primary systems, or party nominations systems, creates a kind of two-round system (where the primary rounds are distinct). I don't see contributing to a majority as, in itself, a legitimate goal, unless you really are accepting that candidate as a reasonable compromise. Otherwise, it's a faux majority, caused by severe compromise as a strategy. Election by plurality would at least be honest. There is only one system which would fully satisfy the desire to vote with complete sincerity, and that would be Asset. I think it a waste to use Asset for only individual single-winner elections (if you are going to create this body of public voters, why not put it to more uses), but it would be simple enough and would, in fact, produce results where the result was accepted *by a majority of the voters or by someone the voters freely chose to represent them, publicly, in that process.* And, of course, anyone could become a public voter. So the only compromise involved, even in the extreme case -- don't trust anyone except yourself -- is with practicality, and that becomes an individual choice. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Paul, I am extremely versed in state legislative parliamentary procedure, as I served ten years as a state legislator. Nearly every state uses Mason's Manual instead of RRONR. The basis for calculating majorities is specific to the situation, or constitutional provision. There are a few cases where the basis is the entire membership (such as over-riding a veto, etc.) but for most votes it is a majority of those present and voting -- assuming a quorum is present. There are a few rare examples of national popular elections in which the basis is the entire eligible population, such as some referenda in Italy, where opponents often urge their adherents not to vote as a way of blocking the passage of some measure (since all of the abstainers who don't care to participate one way or the other are effectively counted as no votes). However the norm in governmental elections is to discount all abstainers from the basis, regardless of the manner of their abstention. Terry - Original Message - From: Paul Kislanko kisla...@airmail.net To: 'Terry Bouricius' ter...@burlingtontelecom.net; jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com; 'Abd ul-Rahman Lomax' a...@lomaxdesign.com Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:11 PM Subject: RE: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? I don't believe RRs or practical implementations thereof define percentages this way. For instance, the US Senate rules call for 60 votes, not 60% of the Senators who vote, in their rules. Likewise by leaving the state, for a time Texas Democrats delayed the (ridiculous) re-districting plan the Republicans eventually got passed anyway by just reducing the numerator for a fixed denominator. Legislatures who follow RRoO pretty much define majority by majority of eligible voters. If we want to depend upon majority-criteria we need to pick whether we mean majority of voters or majority of eligible voters. If we chose the latter definition then NO method can make such a claim, unless it has a specific method for dealing with non-voters. If we chose the majority of voters approach, then Bucklin is an efficient way to find all majorities that support any alternative. IRV is problematic, because the method changes the definition of voters in each round. I'm not sure IRV is unconstitutional, but it is repugnant. -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Terry Bouricius Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 2:54 PM To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com; Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Abd, I think you miss-understood James Gilmour's question. He was asking about an exhaustive ballot election without any ranked-choice ballots. In his scenario 100 voters vote in the first round and 92 vote in the second round. Does the final round winner with 47 votes win with a majority? Robert's Rules and governmental election statutes would describe this candidate as a majority winner I believe. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? At 06:34 AM 1/2/2009, James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 6:07 AM Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? James Gilmour How many people voted in the election? Looks to me like 100. Could be more, actually; Robert's Rules considers all non-blank ballots that might possibly intend a vote, including overvotes. But let's stick with 100. How many people voted for A? We don't know, actually! IRV doesn't count all the votes. However, what the method has found is 47. We know that 47 voters voted for A. Are the ballots with a single vote for D on them votes? Surely those voters think they voted. Their ballots were recognized as legal. The FairVote propaganda sometimes talks about majority without any qualification at all as to what it refers to; they are depending on voters imagining they know what
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2009 14:29:23 -0500 From: Terry Bouricius However the norm in governmental elections is to discount all abstainers from the basis, regardless of the manner of their abstention. Terry, You redefine abstainer from the common usage of a person who does not vote in an election contest, to the unfortunate person who didn't happen to vote for one of the two candidates left standing in the final IRV/STV counting round. Again, this may be a clever way to mislead the public by using a very unusual definition of what a majority winner is by first defining majority as 50% plus one of a group of voters who does not abstain from voting and then redefining the concept of abstainer to a person who does not vote for one of the particular candidates who are left in the final IRV/STV counting round. It seems that IRV/STV proponents have no limit for the convolutions they'll use to justify their own unique definitions of commonly understood concepts like majority in order to mislead the public into supporting IRV/STV. Cheers, Kathy Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Dear James Gilmour, you wrote (2 Jan 2009): So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? Whatever the statement the winner always wins a majority of the votes means, this statement must be defined in such a manner that you only need to know the winner for every possible situation (but you don't need to know the used algorithm to calculate the winner) to verify/falsify the validity of this statement. Otherwise, this statement is only a tautology. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
James Gilmour wrote (2 Jan 2009): So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? Markus Schulze Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 2:51 PM Whatever the statement the winner always wins a majority of the votes means, this statement must be defined in such a manner that you only need to know the winner for every possible situation (but you don't need to know the used algorithm to calculate the winner) to verify/falsify the validity of this statement. Otherwise, this statement is only a tautology. Markus, I don't know where the statement the winner always wins a majority of the votes came from, but it is not mine, and in my opinion, it does not take the discussion any further forward.. What I wrote, very specifically, was with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. Statements of this kind, and in these words (or words almost identical to these), are used when elections are held at meetings and are conducted either by show of hands or by informal paper ballot This form of words distinguishes such elections from those where a single-round plurality result would be accepted, when the corresponding statement from the Returning Officer would be something like and the winner will be the candidate with the most votes. This thread is about the meaning of the expression a majority of the votes. I presented the simple scenario above to see what views there might be about the meaning of a majority of the votes in that specific situation. James No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.2/1871 - Release Date: 01/01/2009 17:01 Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Dear James Gilmour, you wrote (2 Jan 2009): So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? I wrote (2 Jan 2009): Whatever the statement the winner always wins a majority of the votes means, this statement must be defined in such a manner that you only need to know the winner for every possible situation (but you don't need to know the used algorithm to calculate the winner) to verify/falsify the validity of this statement. Otherwise, this statement is only a tautology. You wrote (2 Jan 2009): Markus, I don't know where the statement the winner always wins a majority of the votes came from, but it is not mine, and in my opinion, it does not take the discussion any further forward.. What I wrote, very specifically, was with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. Statements of this kind, and in these words (or words almost identical to these), are used when elections are held at meetings and are conducted either by show of hands or by informal paper ballot This form of words distinguishes such elections from those where a single-round plurality result would be accepted, when the corresponding statement from the Returning Officer would be something like and the winner will be the candidate with the most votes. This thread is about the meaning of the expression a majority of the votes. I presented the simple scenario above to see what views there might be about the meaning of a majority of the votes in that specific situation. This thread is rather about the meaning of the expression to win a majority of the votes. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Dave makes a good point, that I may have emulated Abd in verbosity in making my point. Here it is in a nutshell: Since the two-round runoff election system widely used in the U.S. that involves counting votes in two rounds is said to always elect a majority winner, meaning a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff, then by the identical logic, an IRV winner is also a majority winner who ALSO has a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff. Both methods define a majority by excluding from the basis for calculating the majority threshold all of the voters who may have voted for a candidate in the first round but abstain (do not indicate any preference) in the final round. In sum...If two round runoffs result in majority winners so does IRV. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com; Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 1:06 AM Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. They offer RRONR as ammunition in a war it was never intended for: Over 100 years ago General Robert had to chair a meeting. As an army general he should be able to handle such a task? After doing it he decided there better be batter directions put together for the future. The resulting rules continue to be used by many. RRONR has a few pages about elections. Unlike some of their directions for new meeting chairs, these are not designed for blind obedience. Their major direction is that whoever does serious elections had better decide carefully and formally agree as to how they will do such. Meaning of 'majority' is their big dispute. IRV documentation claims its found winner has a majority (with no attached statement of what this means) and Terry defends this usage. Abd claims this is deception, if not worse: Majority means more than half and, without qualification, means of the whole thing measured. Blanks are excludable - presumably their voters chose not to participate in deciding whatever is voted on. Exhausted ballots are not excludable - those voters certainly participated, though for other candidates. But IRV, claiming a majority, has to be excluding these since IRV only has a majority between the last two candidates considered. Therefore Abd complains since: Deciders can be sold IRV based on the Fairvote claim of majority. Anyone looking close will disagree due to failure of IRV to produce a true majority. On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:59:09 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: I take offense at Abd repeatedly suggesting I am a liar or am engaging in deception. We have a legitimate difference of opinion about the appropriate use of the term majority and interpretation of RRONR. ... - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net; kathy.d...@gmail.com; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 11:55 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 At 08:50 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Kathy Dopp wrote: snip since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted. snip I believe my interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order is correct. In order for a ballot being reviewed by a teller to be blank, and thus excluded from the majority threshold calculation, as directed by Robert's Rule of order, the voter must certainly have submitted a ballot paper. Bouricius, you are totally off, stretching, trying desperately to find ways to interpret the words there to mean what you want them to mean. ... And now the kicker: we have explained -- and I could cite word for word, and have in many places -- the explicit language of Robert's Rules of Order on this. Bouricius has just said the exact opposite of the truth. What he is proposing as the meaning of abstention, and the basis for majority, is totally contrary to the plain language of RRONR, not to mention the usual interpretation. Usual interpretation by whom? By FairVote activists and those duped by them? I'm saddened, to tell you the truth. This is the absolute worst argument I've ever seen from Bouricius, it's word manipulation to try to take a text and make it say the exact opposite of what it plainly says. I'd thought that he was above that, but, apparently not. The public will *not* be fooled when the issues are made plain and clear. -- da...@clarityconnect.com
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Not to muddy an already muddied water, but if I define majority to be 50%+1 of ELIGIBLE VOTERS no method can claim to select a majority winner unless there's a large turnout in every round (for systems that include more than one round of VOTING.) -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Terry Bouricius Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 12:23 PM To: Dave Ketchum; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Dave makes a good point, that I may have emulated Abd in verbosity in making my point. Here it is in a nutshell: Since the two-round runoff election system widely used in the U.S. that involves counting votes in two rounds is said to always elect a majority winner, meaning a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff, then by the identical logic, an IRV winner is also a majority winner who ALSO has a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff. Both methods define a majority by excluding from the basis for calculating the majority threshold all of the voters who may have voted for a candidate in the first round but abstain (do not indicate any preference) in the final round. In sum...If two round runoffs result in majority winners so does IRV. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com; Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 1:06 AM Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. They offer RRONR as ammunition in a war it was never intended for: Over 100 years ago General Robert had to chair a meeting. As an army general he should be able to handle such a task? After doing it he decided there better be batter directions put together for the future. The resulting rules continue to be used by many. RRONR has a few pages about elections. Unlike some of their directions for new meeting chairs, these are not designed for blind obedience. Their major direction is that whoever does serious elections had better decide carefully and formally agree as to how they will do such. Meaning of 'majority' is their big dispute. IRV documentation claims its found winner has a majority (with no attached statement of what this means) and Terry defends this usage. Abd claims this is deception, if not worse: Majority means more than half and, without qualification, means of the whole thing measured. Blanks are excludable - presumably their voters chose not to participate in deciding whatever is voted on. Exhausted ballots are not excludable - those voters certainly participated, though for other candidates. But IRV, claiming a majority, has to be excluding these since IRV only has a majority between the last two candidates considered. Therefore Abd complains since: Deciders can be sold IRV based on the Fairvote claim of majority. Anyone looking close will disagree due to failure of IRV to produce a true majority. On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:59:09 -0500 Terry Bouricius wrote: I take offense at Abd repeatedly suggesting I am a liar or am engaging in deception. We have a legitimate difference of opinion about the appropriate use of the term majority and interpretation of RRONR. ... - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: Terry Bouricius ter...@burlingtontelecom.net; kathy.d...@gmail.com; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 11:55 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Why I think IRV isn't a serious alternative 2 At 08:50 PM 12/29/2008, Terry Bouricius wrote: Kathy Dopp wrote: snip since abstentions or blanks are from those who have not voted. snip I believe my interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order is correct. In order for a ballot being reviewed by a teller to be blank, and thus excluded from the majority threshold calculation, as directed by Robert's Rule of order, the voter must certainly have submitted a ballot paper. Bouricius, you are totally off, stretching, trying desperately to find ways to interpret the words there to mean what you want them to mean. ... And now the kicker: we have explained -- and I could cite word for word, and have in many places -- the explicit language of Robert's Rules of Order on this. Bouricius has just said the exact opposite of the truth. What he is proposing as the meaning of abstention, and the basis for majority, is totally contrary to the plain
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
I think the cited text provides an important distinction we need to use on EM. In theory, we want to discuss election methods based upon how they collect and count ballots, which is analytic in some sense. As soon as you introduce real candidates and party politics (i.e. strategies) we get a real mess that is not so easily analyzed. This is relevant to the how do you define majority? question because if the denominator doesn't include all of the non-voters who dis-approve of EVERY alternative it's not a majority of stakeholders and in some sense you need to count the non-voters, especially if the method discards ballots in its counting rounds. So, just from a logical perspective a claim to always select a majority-approved winner must define majority in terms of Eligible Voters. Or at least define majority in terms of voters in the first round. So, an IRV winner with 47 votes out of 100 originally cast is NOT a majority-winner. Bucklin is a method that identifies the rank for which a Majority agrees the alternative should be ranked at least that highly. No information is discarded in the counting process, and no ballots are ignored just because the ballots' #1 isn't a plurality winner. If we make the reasonable assumption that majority be defined in terms of the number of eligible voters who cast any (ranked-) ballot at all, we'd prefer counting methods that do not discard any of those ballots. Just my opinion. -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lundell In the immortal words of Jim Hightower, If the gods had meant us to vote, they would have given us candidates. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 06:34 AM 1/2/2009, James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 6:07 AM Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? James Gilmour How many people voted in the election? Looks to me like 100. Could be more, actually; Robert's Rules considers all non-blank ballots that might possibly intend a vote, including overvotes. But let's stick with 100. How many people voted for A? We don't know, actually! IRV doesn't count all the votes. However, what the method has found is 47. We know that 47 voters voted for A. Are the ballots with a single vote for D on them votes? Surely those voters think they voted. Their ballots were recognized as legal. The FairVote propaganda sometimes talks about majority without any qualification at all as to what it refers to; they are depending on voters imagining they know what it means, they know that this imagination will lead them to support IRV. Sometimes, however, we see, majority of the votes. Or, in what is even more of a stretch, the winner will still be required to win a majority of the votes. A requirement implies a standard that can fail. The IRV method can't fail to find a last round majority, it's simple math -- if we except ties. But in Santa Clara, the arguments went further. Majority of the ballots was used. Once again, one could weasel out of the claim of deception. Why, we just meant, of course, majority of the ballots containing a vote for a continuing candidate. But any reasonable person, not knowing the details of IRV, would interpret the words to be a general majority, a majority of all the votes cast. What was found was a majority of unexhausted ballots found to contain a vote for the IRV winner. Not a majority of ballots, which implies the general usage. Further, these arguments are being made in a context where majority has a very clear meaning, IRV is replacing, usually, top two runoff. The primary *requires* a majority, a true majority, in order to complete. When you tell these people that they can obtain a majority without needing a runoff, they will very naturally assume that you are talking about the *same thing.* The voters go to the polls and cast their votes. Setting aside informal ballots, if more than half of these voters support the winner, a majority has been found. The details of the voting system are actually moot. Did a majority of the voters who voted support the winner -- regardless of preference order? A true majority is considered very desirable. IRV and Bucklin were apparently replaced by top two runoff, at least in some places, and the probable reason is that a majority was desired, and it was realized that these methods don't accomplish that, unless you coerce voters, as was tried in Oklahoma. (As is done in Australia.) However, a more sensible approach would have been to use preferential vote in the primary, thus avoiding *some* runoffs! I would argue that Bucklin is better, because it doesn't suffer so badly from Center Squeeze, and it probably provides sufficient LNH protection that voters won't be significantly more reluctant to add additional preferences than they are known to be with IRV. We saw very significant usage of additional rankings in the municipal elections where I've been able to find results. As I've noted, those who support a frontrunner don't have much incentive, with either method, to add ranks. With IRV, we don't know from the standard reports, how much truncation is present among those who vote for the top two. Further, it seems to make a huge difference if the elections are partisan or nonpartisan. In nonpartisan elections -- which is most of the IRV implementations so far in the U.S. -- IRV functions almost exactly like plurality, the first round winner goes on -- every example so far at least before Nov 2008, which I haven't examined -- to win the election. In most elections, a majority is found in the first round. Same as Plurality! So, looking just at the runoffs, roughly nine of them, in no case was there a comeback election. In *real* runoffs, it seems to happen about a third of the time, that the runner-up goes on to win
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 01:09 PM 1/2/2009, Jonathan Lundell wrote: So sure, IRV elects majority winners in one particular operation sense of the term. Even if there's a first-round absolute majority, we're faced with the problem of agenda manipulation. To take another US presidential election, in 1992 I might have voted Clinton Perot Bush but only because I didn't have a meaningful NOTA option. In the immortal words of Jim Hightower, If the gods had meant us to vote, they would have given us candidates. Any election where write-in-votes are allowed has a NOTA option. Under Robert's Rules, there is no restriction as to what you can write in, though identifying yourself on the ballot might be an exception. You could literally write in None of the above, and it would count as part of the basis for majority, it wouldn't be a stupid vote, because if enough people vote that way, or for candidates other than the leader, the election fails and there is another opportunity for the gods to give us candidates. (In preferential public elections, where only ballots with a vote for a legally allowed candidate count, you would simply use your ranks to vote for any candidate where you would not mind being part of the majority which elects the sucka.) Preferential voting with a runoff trigger can be a much better method than without it. With IRV, it seems, about one nonpartisan election in ten, very roughly, the method produces a winner who would lose in a direct face-off with either the runner-up or an eliminated candidate. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
On Jan 2, 2009, at 12:31 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: At 01:09 PM 1/2/2009, Jonathan Lundell wrote: So sure, IRV elects majority winners in one particular operation sense of the term. Even if there's a first-round absolute majority, we're faced with the problem of agenda manipulation. To take another US presidential election, in 1992 I might have voted Clinton Perot Bush but only because I didn't have a meaningful NOTA option. In the immortal words of Jim Hightower, If the gods had meant us to vote, they would have given us candidates. Any election where write-in-votes are allowed has a NOTA option. Under Robert's Rules, there is no restriction as to what you can write in, though identifying yourself on the ballot might be an exception. You could literally write in None of the above, and it would count as part of the basis for majority, it wouldn't be a stupid vote, because if enough people vote that way, or for candidates other than the leader, the election fails and there is another opportunity for the gods to give us candidates. (In preferential public elections, where only ballots with a vote for a legally allowed candidate count, you would simply use your ranks to vote for any candidate where you would not mind being part of the majority which elects the sucka.) In the above example, I like the opportunity to rank candidates that I don't like, since I do have relative preferences. But if the winner's majority includes very many voters like me, in what sense does he have a majority? A majority of ballots in the final stage, yes. Majority political support? No. FWIW, in California there's no way to write in NOTA and have it counted. NOTA is also hard to count, since it's not quite like just another candidate. In my 1948 example, one voter might be voting for anybody but Dewey or Thurmond, and another for anybody but Wallace or Truman. That is, the above in NOTA differs from ballot to ballot. NOTA is easier to interpret in a Condorcet method. It's very difficult for IRV to handle, I think, especially if counted as just-another- candidate, since it's not unlikely that NOTA would be eliminated early. Looked at another way, I don't think that the fact that IRV fails to find everybody's second choice is ordinarily a very serious problem. But it *is* a problem if that choice is NOTA. Preferential voting with a runoff trigger can be a much better method than without it. With IRV, it seems, about one nonpartisan election in ten, very roughly, the method produces a winner who would lose in a direct face-off with either the runner-up or an eliminated candidate. I'd be interested in seeing documentation on this that didn't involve reinterpreting plurality or TTR results as an IRV election. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Abd, I think you miss-understood James Gilmour's question. He was asking about an exhaustive ballot election without any ranked-choice ballots. In his scenario 100 voters vote in the first round and 92 vote in the second round. Does the final round winner with 47 votes win with a majority? Robert's Rules and governmental election statutes would describe this candidate as a majority winner I believe. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? At 06:34 AM 1/2/2009, James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 6:07 AM Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? James Gilmour How many people voted in the election? Looks to me like 100. Could be more, actually; Robert's Rules considers all non-blank ballots that might possibly intend a vote, including overvotes. But let's stick with 100. How many people voted for A? We don't know, actually! IRV doesn't count all the votes. However, what the method has found is 47. We know that 47 voters voted for A. Are the ballots with a single vote for D on them votes? Surely those voters think they voted. Their ballots were recognized as legal. The FairVote propaganda sometimes talks about majority without any qualification at all as to what it refers to; they are depending on voters imagining they know what it means, they know that this imagination will lead them to support IRV. Sometimes, however, we see, majority of the votes. Or, in what is even more of a stretch, the winner will still be required to win a majority of the votes. A requirement implies a standard that can fail. The IRV method can't fail to find a last round majority, it's simple math -- if we except ties. But in Santa Clara, the arguments went further. Majority of the ballots was used. Once again, one could weasel out of the claim of deception. Why, we just meant, of course, majority of the ballots containing a vote for a continuing candidate. But any reasonable person, not knowing the details of IRV, would interpret the words to be a general majority, a majority of all the votes cast. What was found was a majority of unexhausted ballots found to contain a vote for the IRV winner. Not a majority of ballots, which implies the general usage. Further, these arguments are being made in a context where majority has a very clear meaning, IRV is replacing, usually, top two runoff. The primary *requires* a majority, a true majority, in order to complete. When you tell these people that they can obtain a majority without needing a runoff, they will very naturally assume that you are talking about the *same thing.* The voters go to the polls and cast their votes. Setting aside informal ballots, if more than half of these voters support the winner, a majority has been found. The details of the voting system are actually moot. Did a majority of the voters who voted support the winner -- regardless of preference order? A true majority is considered very desirable. IRV and Bucklin were apparently replaced by top two runoff, at least in some places, and the probable reason is that a majority was desired, and it was realized that these methods don't accomplish that, unless you coerce voters, as was tried in Oklahoma. (As is done in Australia.) However, a more sensible approach would have been to use preferential vote in the primary, thus avoiding *some* runoffs! I would argue that Bucklin is better, because it doesn't suffer so badly from Center Squeeze, and it probably provides sufficient LNH protection that voters won't be significantly more reluctant to add additional preferences than they are known to be with IRV. We saw very significant usage of additional rankings in the municipal elections where I've been able to find results. As I've noted, those who support a frontrunner don't have much incentive, with either method, to add ranks. With IRV, we don't know from the standard reports, how much truncation is present among those who vote for the top two. Further, it seems to make
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 01:23 PM 1/2/2009, Terry Bouricius wrote: Dave makes a good point, that I may have emulated Abd in verbosity in making my point. Here it is in a nutshell: Since the two-round runoff election system widely used in the U.S. that involves counting votes in two rounds is said to always elect a majority winner, meaning a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff, then by the identical logic, an IRV winner is also a majority winner who ALSO has a majority of votes from those voters who chose to express a preference between the two candidates who made it into the final runoff. In other words, if we don't consider the runoff election to be a single election, if we neglect that this election can and does result in plurality winners (Long Beach, CA, recently), then a narrow claim, possibly misleading, made about this situation can be applied by analogy. However, Robert's Rules of Order specifically rejects this, and notes that the STV method deprives the voters of the opportunity to base their votes in the next election on the results of the previous one. What Bouricius is doing is to create an elaborate analogy; under this analogy, the use of the word majority is then, presumably, justified. However, the argument about majority is being used in a context where the word has a very clear meaning. It means more than half of the legal votes cast, i.e., the legal ballots contain a vote for the winner, never mind what rank -- as long as it isn't bottom, which is usually unexpressed. Now, if I were selling you something, and I were accused of consumer fraud in the sale, and I claimed an analogy like this, it would not be accepted as a defense, because the word, in context, had a specific and clear meaning, and that meaning was the foundation of the desirability of runoff voting. Voters want that rule. Runoff voting *seeks* a majority, and some forms guarantee it, in the second round, by considering all other votes to be illegal. However, in the runoff, voters make the specific decision to vote in that election or not. In the runoff, an abstention is specific and clear. Further, the electorate in a runoff is a different electorate, it is not the same voters. The primary merely controlled the nomination process. Come FairVote with a promise that a majority can be obtained without a runoff! And, in fact, one who doesn't realize the implications of truncation, nor who realizes how *common* it is, will think, why, of course it will do this! A true majority. However, the reality is that IRV doesn't do this, in practice. Most elections where a majority is not found in the primary, there is no majority found with the vote transfers -- in nonpartisan elections. The analogy is interesting, but it isn't what the voters were told! Words were used that would reasonably be expected to lead them in a certain direction, and the analogy is the typical deniability asserted by spin doctors when they get caught. I didn't have sex with that woman. (Uh, what I did isn't considered, by some people, to be sex.) Did that argument stand? It was actually stronger for him than the argument is here, he was under considerable pressure, and, as a lawyer himself, may not have had an obligation to parse the words more carefully, it would have been the obligation of the examining attorney to make sure meanings were clear. But I think he was found to have perjured himself. I'm claiming that, coming from FairVote, the deception was *intentional*. That there is an alternate interpretation -- a far-fetched one -- doesn't change that. The alternate interpreation is not what was communicated by the words, and I know this to be the case by the degree of resistance FairVote activists, including Mr. Bouricius, exerted against clarification. Both methods define a majority by excluding from the basis for calculating the majority threshold all of the voters who may have voted for a candidate in the first round but abstain (do not indicate any preference) in the final round. In sum...If two round runoffs result in majority winners so does IRV. This argument, of course, depends on, among other things, the ability to fully rank the candidates, which wasn't even present in nearly all these implementations. The voters may not have been able to sincerely rank candidates *and* vote in that last round. But the runoff election in TTR is actually a separate election, merely with a special nomination rule. That's why the first round is called a primary. There are various such primary methods. We don't compare the votes in the primary with those in the runoff because they may be a quite different set of voters. Bouricius knows that whenever a motion fails, or an election fails, in deliberative process, the vote becomes moot and of no further effect. But, desiring to avoid a long series of election
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
I don't believe RRs or practical implementations thereof define percentages this way. For instance, the US Senate rules call for 60 votes, not 60% of the Senators who vote, in their rules. Likewise by leaving the state, for a time Texas Democrats delayed the (ridiculous) re-districting plan the Republicans eventually got passed anyway by just reducing the numerator for a fixed denominator. Legislatures who follow RRoO pretty much define majority by majority of eligible voters. If we want to depend upon majority-criteria we need to pick whether we mean majority of voters or majority of eligible voters. If we chose the latter definition then NO method can make such a claim, unless it has a specific method for dealing with non-voters. If we chose the majority of voters approach, then Bucklin is an efficient way to find all majorities that support any alternative. IRV is problematic, because the method changes the definition of voters in each round. I'm not sure IRV is unconstitutional, but it is repugnant. -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Terry Bouricius Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 2:54 PM To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com; Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? Abd, I think you miss-understood James Gilmour's question. He was asking about an exhaustive ballot election without any ranked-choice ballots. In his scenario 100 voters vote in the first round and 92 vote in the second round. Does the final round winner with 47 votes win with a majority? Robert's Rules and governmental election statutes would describe this candidate as a majority winner I believe. Terry Bouricius - Original Message - From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com To: jgilm...@globalnet.co.uk; election-methods@lists.electorama.com Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 3:23 PM Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? At 06:34 AM 1/2/2009, James Gilmour wrote: Dave Ketchum Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 6:07 AM Terry and Abd look set to duel forever. Conduct of elections is a serious topic, but both of them offer too many words without usefully covering the topic. So let's try a small number of numbers. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? James Gilmour How many people voted in the election? Looks to me like 100. Could be more, actually; Robert's Rules considers all non-blank ballots that might possibly intend a vote, including overvotes. But let's stick with 100. How many people voted for A? We don't know, actually! IRV doesn't count all the votes. However, what the method has found is 47. We know that 47 voters voted for A. Are the ballots with a single vote for D on them votes? Surely those voters think they voted. Their ballots were recognized as legal. The FairVote propaganda sometimes talks about majority without any qualification at all as to what it refers to; they are depending on voters imagining they know what it means, they know that this imagination will lead them to support IRV. Sometimes, however, we see, majority of the votes. Or, in what is even more of a stretch, the winner will still be required to win a majority of the votes. A requirement implies a standard that can fail. The IRV method can't fail to find a last round majority, it's simple math -- if we except ties. But in Santa Clara, the arguments went further. Majority of the ballots was used. Once again, one could weasel out of the claim of deception. Why, we just meant, of course, majority of the ballots containing a vote for a continuing candidate. But any reasonable person, not knowing the details of IRV, would interpret the words to be a general majority, a majority of all the votes cast. What was found was a majority of unexhausted ballots found to contain a vote for the IRV winner. Not a majority of ballots, which implies the general usage. Further, these arguments are being made in a context where majority has a very clear meaning, IRV is replacing, usually, top two runoff. The primary *requires* a majority, a true majority, in order to complete. When you tell these people that they can obtain a majority without needing a runoff, they will very naturally assume that you are talking about the *same thing.* The voters go to the polls
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 02:51 PM 1/2/2009, Paul Kislanko wrote: I think the cited text provides an important distinction we need to use on EM. In theory, we want to discuss election methods based upon how they collect and count ballots, which is analytic in some sense. As soon as you introduce real candidates and party politics (i.e. strategies) we get a real mess that is not so easily analyzed. Yes. The biggest thing we neglected, going way back, was preference strength. In real decision-making, it is crucial, but theorists didn't like it, it was messy. It was imagined that preference was nice and neat. Though it isn't! This is relevant to the how do you define majority? question because if the denominator doesn't include all of the non-voters who dis-approve of EVERY alternative it's not a majority of stakeholders and in some sense you need to count the non-voters, especially if the method discards ballots in its counting rounds. Sure. It's pretty simple, though: Majority of the votes refers to more than half of those who voted. We could analyze an election like the mess in California a few years back by referring to a majority of votes from those who voted for a Democrat, or a Republican, or such. A major point is that most people, asked, want to see majority winners. Turns out that, where I have looked, U.S. state constitutions required a majority of votes to win, then resorted to various devices when a majority wasn't found. We see that with the electoral college: if no majority is found, the election goes to the House. In New Hampshire, the state House could choose between the top two, if I'm correct. So, people want to see majority winners. Telling them that they will get a majority winner from a method means to them that more than half of those who voted will have voted, in some way, for the winner. It *looks* to a casual observer that IRV will do that. I should have known better, but I was actually astonished to see the high percentage of majjority failure. It is the bulk of elections that didn't find a majority in the first round, with nonpartisan elections, and with some partisan ones. Majority is independent of the voting method, though the data must be collected to distinguish between support of a candidate and merely, with a full-ranking required system, saying that the candidate is better than the absolute worst. Elections aren't merely picking some ideal best winner in a bad situation, they are seeking, if a majority is sought, one who will be accepted, *at least*, by most voters. So, just from a logical perspective a claim to always select a majority-approved winner must define majority in terms of Eligible Voters. That's absolute majority, and it isn't what we've been talking about, except that I have, as part of this discussion, noted the effect of preference strength on turnout. Those voters who don't care about the available choices don't bother showing up (for better or for worse). This exerts a range-like effect on the election, shifting results toward those who care. In other words, methods which make voting trivially easy might actually worsen results, unless it's a Range method, because the factors that make ranked methods, and especially Plurality, work reasonably well might be taken away. Or at least define majority in terms of voters in the first round. So, an IRV winner with 47 votes out of 100 originally cast is NOT a majority-winner. This is the meaning I've been using, and it is the meaning of Robert's Rules, except that they would include a few more ballots (informal ballots with no recognizable vote by the rules, but still considered to be a vote.) For public elections, yes, it's the first-round vote. Bucklin is a method that identifies the rank for which a Majority agrees the alternative should be ranked at least that highly. No information is discarded in the counting process, and no ballots are ignored just because the ballots' #1 isn't a plurality winner. That's right. All votes become equal if it goes to the last round. As implemented, it was a plurality method like IRV, but, because all the votes are counted, and especially where it's a nonpartisan election, there may be votes hidden under the other frontrunner(s), so there might actually be a real majority, but it's not reported as moot, because the method isn't looking for an overall majority, it's only looking for a last round majority. Hence, in one San Francisco election, where it was touted that the winner will still be required to gain a majority, one Supervisorial position was won with less than 40% of the vote. Most elections where there are runoffs don't find a majority, but several have, it happens with elections where the first round result is close to a majority. In one election, the reported vote was shy of a majority, but it would be a practical certainty that if counting had continued, the winner would have had a majority. If we
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
At 03:53 PM 1/2/2009, Jonathan Lundell wrote: FWIW, in California there's no way to write in NOTA and have it counted. Depends on the election and perhaps on local rules. Pick the absolute best candidate *including write-ins and, if necessary, write that name in. A write-in is None of the above. In some elections, true write-in votes are not allowed, but the California constitution requires that write-ins be allowed; however minimal registration requirements have been considered acceptable. So San Francisco only recognizes registered write-ins. They aren't on the ballot, so voting for one of them would be voting for none of the above. NOTA is also hard to count, since it's not quite like just another candidate. In my 1948 example, one voter might be voting for anybody but Dewey or Thurmond, and another for anybody but Wallace or Truman. That is, the above in NOTA differs from ballot to ballot. Actually, in a sane system, requiring a majority, NOTA causes the exact intended effect. None of the Above are elected. If most voters vote NOTA, either directly -- were it allowed -- or indirectly, for various write-in candidates, then the election fails. And the rules presumably prescribe what happens next. NOTA is easier to interpret in a Condorcet method. It's very difficult for IRV to handle, I think, especially if counted as just-another- candidate, since it's not unlikely that NOTA would be eliminated early. Looked at another way, I don't think that the fact that IRV fails to find everybody's second choice is ordinarily a very serious problem. But it *is* a problem if that choice is NOTA. It's a problem in both cases. But that's enough for now. NOTA should cause election failure, and all that has to occur is that a majority be required for a candidate to win. Under standard democratic process, talking Robert's Rules as a model, writing NOTA on a ballot has exactly the desired effect. It contributes to the basis for election, but not to the victory of any candidate. But don't imagine that we have the rules we do in public elections because of pure democratic considerations! Preferential voting with a runoff trigger can be a much better method than without it. With IRV, it seems, about one nonpartisan election in ten, very roughly, the method produces a winner who would lose in a direct face-off with either the runner-up or an eliminated candidate. I'd be interested in seeing documentation on this that didn't involve reinterpreting plurality or TTR results as an IRV election. It's the other way. TTR results in runoffs, sometimes. When there are many candidates, often. A certain percentage of these runoffs are comebacks. It's roughly one-third. We can assume that first preference votes in IRV are *roughly* how people will vote in a runoff primary. Now, in the IRV elections -- look at em! there is an article on the implementations in the U.S. on Wikipedia -- there are *no* comeback elections in recent history. About nine runoffs, as I recall. No comebacks. Isn't this interesting? Think about it. It does make sense. We just didn't know how to look at it. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
On Jan 2, 2009, at 2:26 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Elections aren't merely picking some ideal best winner in a bad situation, they are seeking, if a majority is sought, one who will be accepted, *at least*, by most voters. That may well be a desideratum, but it's not the case in real elections. I've certainly contributed (or tried to contribute) to majorities by voting for a less-unacceptable candidate. It's rational, but it doesn't constitute acceptance except in some weak sense, perhaps acquiescence. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Who would have thought such a simple example and such a direct question could provoke so much obfuscation and prevarication. References to IRV, FairVote and Santa Clara are all completely irrelevant. So let's try again, with little bit of additional information that was (more or less) implied first time. At a meeting we need to elect one office-bearer (single-office, single-winner). There are four candidates and we decide to use the exhaustive ballot (bottom elimination, one at a time) with the requirement that to win, a candidate must obtain a majority of the votes. East person is allowed to vote for only one candidate in each round of the exhaustive ballot and the votes for each candidate are to be indicated by show of hands. First round votes: A 40; B 25; C 20; D 15. No candidate has a majority, so we eliminate D. Second round votes: A 47; B 25; C 20. It seems that some of those present who voted for D in the first round did not want to vote in the second round - but that is their privilege. QUESTION: did candidate A win at the second round with 'a majority of the votes'? If you want you can rephrase the definition: Win with a majority of the votes; Obtain a majority of the votes; Win a majority of the votes. IF these differences in wording have real differences in meaning, it would be helpful to explain the differences and then to answer the question in relation to each of the different meanings. Paul said 'Legislatures who follow RRoO pretty much define majority by majority of eligible voters. ' I am not going to argue about RRoO, but that definition is VERY different from the election scenario above. I have never heard such a definition used in a meeting for an ELECTION. The language I have heard would be something much more like a majority of the votes. Which takes us back to my request for answers to the direct question above. The wording majority of eligible voters would appear to include those eligible voters who were not actually present at the meeting. That could be a much higher threshold. I personally have never known such a threshold set in an election, but it does (or did) happen in public elections in Russia where the seat was left vacant and the local community unrepresented unless some minimum proportion (50% ??) of the registered electorate actually voted. I have, however, experienced a similar threshold in a public referendum in Scotland - that was set at 40% of the electorate. While such thresholds do not feature in election instructions in the UK, neither public nor private, something comparable is common in many organisations' constitutions to regulate voting on resolutions to amend the constitution itself. I have encountered three forms (given that is only a yes or no vote on each amendment): 1. a majority of the members; 2. two-thirds of those present; 3. two-thirds of those present and voting. These three thresholds are all very different, but in my experience, they are not applied to ELECTIONS. James . Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners?
In real elections the problem is that the Powers That Be chose to not allow me to vote at all, despite the fact I'm a registered voter. So whatever method you propose or support I consider irrelevant, until you sort out the problems on the collection side. -Original Message- From: election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com [mailto:election-methods-boun...@lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lundell Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:41 PM To: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax Cc: Paul Kislanko; 'Markus Schulze'; election-meth...@electorama.com Subject: Re: [EM] Does IRV elect majority winners? On Jan 2, 2009, at 2:26 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: Elections aren't merely picking some ideal best winner in a bad situation, they are seeking, if a majority is sought, one who will be accepted, *at least*, by most voters. That may well be a desideratum, but it's not the case in real elections. I've certainly contributed (or tried to contribute) to majorities by voting for a less-unacceptable candidate. It's rational, but it doesn't constitute acceptance except in some weak sense, perhaps acquiescence. 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] Does IRV elect majority winners?
Hallo, usually, the term majority winner refers to a candidate who is strictly preferred to every other candidate by a majority of the voters. However, IRV supporters usually use the term majority winner for a candidate A who can win a majority (or at least half of the votes) in a runoff between candidate A and some other candidates. Question: Who can win a majority (or at least half of the votes) in a runoff between himself and some other candidates? Answer: Everybody but a Condorcet loser. So when IRV supporters say that IRV always elects a majority winner then this is EXACTLY the same as saying that IRV never elects a Condorcet loser. Question: So why don't IRV supporters just say that IRV never elects a Condorcet loser? Answer: IRV supporters don't want IRV to be judged by its properties but by its own underlying heuristic. We all know that every election method is the best possible election method when judged by its own underlying heuristic. If IRV supporters just said that IRV never elects a Condorcet loser, then this argument could also be used by the supporters of other election methods that satisfy the Condorcet loser criterion. Markus Schulze Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
