Re: [EM] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood
--- On Wed, 8/4/09, Don Cathy Hoffard dchoff...@verizon.net wrote: Thanks Peter for your comments Suppose that by my estimation about the electorate is about 400: Smith, Jones, Johnson 300: Jones, Smith, Johnson 600: Johnson, Jones, Smith Johnson loses regardless as to whether Smith or Jones is eliminated Normal IRV with no strategy: Jones is eliminated in the first round and Smith wins in the second round. IRV with a strategy, of 101 vote switch, from Johnson voters to Jones Smith is eliminated in the first round and Jones wins in the second round. The Johnson voters would have to except Jones as their second best choice. Here's another way to describe this strategy. If there is a Condorcet winner that will be eliminated before the last round, then some of the IRV voters have an interest to compromise and vote for the Condorcet winner. This group is large enough to make the Condorcet winner win. This strategy is also quite free of risks. In the example above, if the Johnson supporters are certain that Johnson will not win, then they could all vote for Jones. If the last round will be between Jones and Smith, Jones will win anyway. Actually it may be a quite good strategy in IRV not to rank those favourite candidates that do not have a chance but to rank only those candidates that have a chance. This increases the probability that one's most favoured candidates with chances of winning the election are not eliminated too early (assuming that they might win if they could stay in the race until the end). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood
--- On Thu, 9/4/09, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: Actually it may be a quite good strategy in IRV not to rank those favourite candidates that do not have a chance but to rank only those candidates that have a chance. This increases the probability that one's most favoured candidates with chances of winning the election are not eliminated too early (assuming that they might win if they could stay in the race until the end). That's also the strategy in Plurality - don't vote for those candidates that don't have a chance. But if everybody thinks like this, you end up with the lesser of n evils. Yes, it is true that if people do not rank the lesser candidates they will never grow and become major candidates. It may be more important for many to try to influence the future elections than to try to eliminate some small risks in this election. And of course in many cases one can vote also for the lesser candidates without problems. The described strategy is just a safe bet that eliminates risks in these elections. (Psychological factors are an important topic that should be covered too.) One of the points of ranked voting is that you don't have to do that - you can vote X Y Z so you say I like X, but if I can't have X, I'd have Y before Z. It seems that in IRV it is the safest strategy not to rank the weak candidates (if one only aims at winning this election in question), but not a necessary strategy for all situations to guarantee an optimal vote. If this ability is compromised by that voting for unpopular candidates dilutes the vote so much one should rather not, then why have ranked voting in the first place? Words so much are important. Polls are inaccurate, people do believe in the chances of their favourites, there will be changes in support, there is a need to show support to the so far unpopular candidates, and the risks involved in this strategy may be small. As a result I don't think people should and people will apply this strategy generally in IRV elections. There are however cases where the risks are very real. The original example was one. Here is another with moderate and radical Democrats and Republicans. Approximate support: 25: DrDmRmRr 20: DmDrRmRr 05: DmRmDrRr 05: RmDmRrDr 05: RmRrDmDr 25: RrRmDmDr In this example all four candidates have the risk of being eliminated early. If Dm or Rm will be eliminated first then the other party is likely to win. It makes sense to the Dr and Rr supporters not to rank their favourite first (although they are about as popular within the party as the other moderate candidate). (From this point of view Condorcet methods allow the voters to use more sincere rankings than IRV.) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood
Sorry, fifth line was wrong, should be: 25: DrDmRmRr 20: DmDrRmRr 05: DmRmDrRr 05: RmDmRrDr 20: RmRrDmDr 25: RrRmDmDr Juho --- On Thu, 9/4/09, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: From: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Re: [EM] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Thursday, 9 April, 2009, 7:39 PM --- On Thu, 9/4/09, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: Actually it may be a quite good strategy in IRV not to rank those favourite candidates that do not have a chance but to rank only those candidates that have a chance. This increases the probability that one's most favoured candidates with chances of winning the election are not eliminated too early (assuming that they might win if they could stay in the race until the end). That's also the strategy in Plurality - don't vote for those candidates that don't have a chance. But if everybody thinks like this, you end up with the lesser of n evils. Yes, it is true that if people do not rank the lesser candidates they will never grow and become major candidates. It may be more important for many to try to influence the future elections than to try to eliminate some small risks in this election. And of course in many cases one can vote also for the lesser candidates without problems. The described strategy is just a safe bet that eliminates risks in these elections. (Psychological factors are an important topic that should be covered too.) One of the points of ranked voting is that you don't have to do that - you can vote X Y Z so you say I like X, but if I can't have X, I'd have Y before Z. It seems that in IRV it is the safest strategy not to rank the weak candidates (if one only aims at winning this election in question), but not a necessary strategy for all situations to guarantee an optimal vote. If this ability is compromised by that voting for unpopular candidates dilutes the vote so much one should rather not, then why have ranked voting in the first place? Words so much are important. Polls are inaccurate, people do believe in the chances of their favourites, there will be changes in support, there is a need to show support to the so far unpopular candidates, and the risks involved in this strategy may be small. As a result I don't think people should and people will apply this strategy generally in IRV elections. There are however cases where the risks are very real. The original example was one. Here is another with moderate and radical Democrats and Republicans. Approximate support: 25: DrDmRmRr 20: DmDrRmRr 05: DmRmDrRr 05: RmDmRrDr 05: RmRrDmDr 25: RrRmDmDr In this example all four candidates have the risk of being eliminated early. If Dm or Rm will be eliminated first then the other party is likely to win. It makes sense to the Dr and Rr supporters not to rank their favourite first (although they are about as popular within the party as the other moderate candidate). (From this point of view Condorcet methods allow the voters to use more sincere rankings than IRV.) Juho 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] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood
One more observation about the strategy and long term promotion of candidates. In the polls before the election the voters may mark all the candidates but in the actual election they may leave out some favourites with no chances to win in order to make sure that their vote will not harm their favourite candidates with chances to win. Some votes may use the strategy when it is needed. Some voters may use it always (safely). Some voters may never use it. In the presented example such a mixture of voting behaviour would guarantee that the radical candidates will be eliminated early enough not to spoil the election from their supporters' point of view. Some information is lost in the actual election but if there are good polls that information may be readable there (and new candidates will get publicity that way and their viability will be considered before voters decide whether to rank them in the actual election. Long term promotion of candidates may thus still work and new entrants may grow even if the strategy is actively followed. If one wants to get full rankings also in the actual election one could use such IRV variants where this problem is not too bad. I sometimes proposed forcing voters to approve more and more candidates when their first candidates are too weak. No candidates are eliminated from the race, so they may come back if they have lots of secondary support (like the moderate candidates in the example). The described strategy may not materialize very strongly in real life since voters often are quite eager to support their first preference candidates. But as already noted in some scenarios (like in the example) it would be better to apply the strategy since using the wrong strategy (sincerity) may lead to a bad outcome that may be clearly visible (especially if the votes will be published). (Alternatively some variants of IRV could be used.) Juho --- On Thu, 9/4/09, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: Sorry, fifth line was wrong, should be: 25: DrDmRmRr 20: DmDrRmRr 05: DmRmDrRr 05: RmDmRrDr 20: RmRrDmDr 25: RrRmDmDr Juho --- On Thu, 9/4/09, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: From: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Re: [EM] IRV and Brown vs. Smallwood To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Thursday, 9 April, 2009, 7:39 PM --- On Thu, 9/4/09, Kristofer Munsterhjelm km-el...@broadpark.no wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: Actually it may be a quite good strategy in IRV not to rank those favourite candidates that do not have a chance but to rank only those candidates that have a chance. This increases the probability that one's most favoured candidates with chances of winning the election are not eliminated too early (assuming that they might win if they could stay in the race until the end). That's also the strategy in Plurality - don't vote for those candidates that don't have a chance. But if everybody thinks like this, you end up with the lesser of n evils. Yes, it is true that if people do not rank the lesser candidates they will never grow and become major candidates. It may be more important for many to try to influence the future elections than to try to eliminate some small risks in this election. And of course in many cases one can vote also for the lesser candidates without problems. The described strategy is just a safe bet that eliminates risks in these elections. (Psychological factors are an important topic that should be covered too.) One of the points of ranked voting is that you don't have to do that - you can vote X Y Z so you say I like X, but if I can't have X, I'd have Y before Z. It seems that in IRV it is the safest strategy not to rank the weak candidates (if one only aims at winning this election in question), but not a necessary strategy for all situations to guarantee an optimal vote. If this ability is compromised by that voting for unpopular candidates dilutes the vote so much one should rather not, then why have ranked voting in the first place? Words so much are important. Polls are inaccurate, people do believe in the chances of their favourites, there will be changes in support, there is a need to show support to the so far unpopular candidates, and the risks involved in this strategy may be small. As a result I don't think people should and people will apply this strategy generally in IRV elections.. There are however cases where the risks are very real. The original example was one. Here is another with moderate and radical Democrats and Republicans. Approximate support: 25: DrDmRmRr 20: DmDrRmRr 05: DmRmDrRr 05: RmDmRrDr 05: RmRrDmDr 25: RrRmDmDr In this example all four candidates have the risk of being eliminated early. If Dm or Rm will be eliminated first then the other party
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
--- On Thu, 30/4/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 3:18 AM, Kathy Dopp kathy.d...@gmail.com wrote: STV has *all* the same flaws as IRV but is even worse. I think that it has all the same flaws, but that the damage they do is mitigated by the fact that it is a multi-seat method. Yes, some of the main problems of IRV get smaller when the number of seats increases. OTOH, it has large benefits over other PR methods. Yes. But not necessarily superior in all aspects. The first problem in my mind is that STV sets some practical limits to the number of candidates. This means that the voters will have less to say and the parties will have more to say on which candidates will be elected (bad or good). This limitation also favours districts with few seats only, which then favours large parties. In the BC proposal some districts had only 2 seats. That may eliminate the smallest groupings/parties from those districts (= groups that may get representatives in the largest districts). One could also develop rules that would make the system more proportional at the country level, balancing the bias towards large parties that the small districts lead to (= allow also small groupings to get their proportional share of the seats). Full proportionality could mean in an n seat representative body to guarantee one seat to all groups that have 1/n (or 1/(n+1)) of the votes (at national level). (I don't however recommend any radical tricks to BC at the moment since the change is already significant from the current state and since complexity of the new system already seems to be one argument against it.) Large number of candidates is problematic in STV since ballots get larger and ranking sufficient number of candidates gets tedious. I understood that in BC the proposal is to list all the candidates of each party together (in the candidate lists). That at least makes it easy to see which candidates are from the right parties. There may be also different opinions on how person centric vs. how ideology centric the election in question should be. STV represents the person centric viewpoint but allows the voters to apply strict party preference order as well. Methods that force the candidates to clearly identify the ideological grouping and subgroup that they belong to may be more binding with respect to how the candidate will behave after being elected and during the campaign. These differences are subtle, but they exist and may have impact on how well the voters are able to use their voting power efficiently. It allows PR while at the same time keeping the power to decide which candidates are elected in the hands of the voters, rather than in the hands of the party leadership. Yes. Or at least voters can choose which ones of those candidates that the party did nominate will win.. It also doesn't discriminate against independents. This depends also a lot on the nomination rules (that need not be related to STV). It may be easy or difficult for the independents to become candidates. Since STV elections typically don't have very many candidates there may be a need to not allow independents on the lists very easily. But once on the lists then independents are quite equal with the candidates of the well established parties. This gives party members more freedom to vote against the party, as they can still be re-elected if they get kicked out of the party. Assuming that they will be on the candidate list. Compare that to New Zealand, where if a person leaves their party, they have to resign from parliament (Though most PR list countries aren't quite that bad). Candidates represent the party, not the public. What is yoru view on something like CPO-STV? This method collapses to a condorcet method in the single winner case. Ofc, it is super complex to count. Yes, it fixes some of the anomalies of STV and could be claimed to yield the ideal result. Unfortunately its complexity makes it unsuitable for many environments (and the small problems of STV may often weigh much less). (To me also open list (or tree) based methods seem to offer interesting paths forward. Here word forward should be read as if the target is to move towards a proportional multi-party system.) (Maybe I should still note that also single- seat and few-seat districts can be forced to be fully proportional if one strongly wants to keep both features (and accept some other anomalies).) clip Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
--- On Thu, 30/4/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: In Ireland, the constitution requires at least 3 per constituency and over time the average number of seats per constituency is being reduced. It is currently illegal (by statutory law) for constituencies to have more than 5 seats. For the upcoming EU elections, Ireland's 12 seats are being returned from all 3 seat constituencies. It practice that seems to set the limits to max 4 and min 2 parties/groupings per constituency represented in the Dail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_30th_D%C3%A1il One could also develop rules that would make the system more proportional at the country level I think care needs to be taken here, as votes for a candidate are not necessarily the same as votes for a party. (The tree system can resolve this). Yes, some tricks needed here. There may be also different opinions on how person centric vs. how ideology centric the election in question should be. STV represents the person centric viewpoint but allows the voters to apply strict party preference order as well. STV is actually neutral on this issue. The voter can vote by party if they wish, or can vote by personality if they wish. Yes, in the sense that the only problem is complexity in the case that there are many candidates. Party list systems aren't neutral at all. Yes. Or one could say that they may allow votes to individuals but they do not allow voters to define any arbitrary inheritance order of the vote (unlike in STV). It may be easy or difficult for the independents to become candidates. Since STV elections typically don't have very many candidates there may be a need to not allow independents on the lists very easily. I assume you mean that it would be very easy for independents to clutter up the ballot, since there are so many candidates? Yes. One could try to limit the number of candidates to keep voting easy from the voter point of view and to keep the size of the ballots sheets manageable. And of course to keep the irrelevant candidates out (= individuals that want to be on the list but that don't have any realistic chances of being elected now or in the next elections) (this last reason applies to all methods, not only STV). The rules could include allowing current representatives to participate (as you mentioned), allowing parties to nominate candidates based on their earlier success in the elections and allowing any party or individual in if they collect some sufficient number of supporter names. Also money has been used somewhere. (One additional point is that in elections where the votes to an individual will be always (or by default) votes to the party the parties may benefit of naming numerous candidates while in STV nomination of numerous candidates might mean that the party will have weaker chances of getting maximum number of their candidates elected.) i.e. you meant ... Since STV elections typically can have many candidates ... ? ... or did you mean that party list systems don't have many choices? I don't know what is a typical number of candidates in one constituency in the Irish Dail elections. In Finnish open list elections I'm used to have some 150 candidates. (In the Finnish model one benefit is that voters have great freedom of picking any candidate that they like (not the one that the party recommends). One problem is that the system is not proportional within parties since within each party and district the system elects simply those candidates with most votes.) But once on the lists then independents are quite equal with the candidates of the well established parties. Right, but there are surplus transfer issues. Are there some specific independent candidate related surplus transfer issues (more than that they don't have any fellow party members to transfer votes to)? I would probably allow ranking of parties, so that if a candidate gets a quota (or fails to be elected), votes that he held can be reassigned. Could you tell a bit more about the intended technique? (To me also open list (or tree) based methods seem to offer interesting paths forward. Here word forward should be read as if the target is to move towards a proportional multi-party system.) I think the tree method is superior to even open party lists systems. Yes, I agree. In addition to providing more exact proportionality I find also the property that the voters can steer the internal evolution of the party interesting. (Ability to influence = more interest = more direct citizen driven democracy. This line of development may be beneficial in typical stable democracies that may already have some flavour of stagnation and excessive control of the party inner circles and external interest groups in them.) However, PR-STV gives even more freedom to the voters, they aren't locked into voting according to the tree inheritance system. Yes.
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
In order to be a bit more concrete and to complement my other mails I draft here one approach to combining STV like and shorter open list/tree style ballots. The point is to see what could be done when the number of candidates grows large in STV (and to try to take in what is good in trees). Let's assume a simple hierarchical system with only two levels. The parties, groups and candidates are named as follows. P1 G11 C111 C112 C113 G12 C121 C122 P2 G21 C211 etc. Each voter casts one ranked ballot that may contain any of the above named items. Candidates have a default tree-like order of inheritance. Vote C121 will be counted as a vote to candidate C121, group G12 and party P1. This vote has the same meaning as vote C121G12P1ANYONE. Vote C121C211 is the same as vote C121C211G21P2ANYONE. Note that I assumed that the last ranked candidate determines the order of inheritance (unlike in the Maltese proposals where the first preference determined the party). If the voter would like the first preference to determine the order of inheritance she could vote e.g. C121C211G12. If one wants to determine one's preference order within a group one could vote C111C118C113. This kind of votes may be quite typical. Such votes may be easy to count in some methods since it is clear that they will support G11 and P1 in any case. We may allow also not giving any support to the party of the last ranked candidate. In this case the vote could be C211G21P2C111ANYONE. A bullet vote with no inheritance could with this ballot style be e.g. C555ANYONE. Vote C555C666ANYONE would be a traditional STV vote that may become exhausted after C555 and C666 have been eliminated (or elected). Also votes where a group or a party is ranked first are possible, e.g. G12G14. The examples above show what kind of votes would be possible in general. Any parties and groups and candidates can thus be ranked. In addition there are some simple default inheritance rules (last ranked candidate followed by her group and party) that the voter may overrun if she so wants. I hope the intention and meaning of this kind of votes is clear. From a traditional STV point of view the group and party names are actually just abbreviations of candidates in those groupings. Vote C111G11P1 does thus mean: C111 C112=C113=...=C119 C121=C122=...=C131=...=C199 From a tree voting point of view the idea is that voters can cast short votes, and that they are offered a basic structure where they can easily see the affiliations of each candidate. (Votes that list candidates from different branches do break the idea of seeing easily the power balance between different branches a bit but also parts of this benefit(?) can be maintained.) This approach may easily get too complex for such traditional STV ballot style where all candidates are explicitly listed. In this case we would need rows and columns also for the groups and parties. One easy approach would be to use code numbers. A vote could be simple a list of (maybe hand written) codes, e.g. 13 63 23 where numbers could refer also to groupings. One could have large posters of candidates instead of listing them all in the ballot sheets. 02: P1 03: G11 04: C111 05: C112 etc. (maybe using some nicer graphics :-) I'll skip the more detailed analysis of the possible seat allocation methods for now. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
Some systems use explicit thresholds that cut out the smallest parties. Many systems use districts. Use of districts also tends to cut out the smallest parties. Districts also tend to favour local groups. A pro district X group with 10% nation wide support might easily get seats (probably in district X) but a pro country group might not get any seats since its support is not focused on any particular district. There may be cases where some country has good reasons to cut out small parties (although they have more support than worth one seat) to keep the political life of the country stable enough, but I think there are nowadays more countries where the democratic systems has more problems with too few and too stagnant parties and political set-up. So, in most cases I wouldn't have anything against offering the voters full proportionality. (That is not to say that countries that *want* a two party system should not use it. But if one allows multiple parties then groupings of size 1/n (local or evenly spread) could well be allowed to get one of the n seats.) Juho --- On Sun, 3/5/09, Anthony O'Neal watermar...@gmail.com wrote: It is a rather huge problem. It effects the proportionately surprisingly little though - all the major parties still win a roughly fair number of seats. Districting tends to produce much more proportional results than the seat size would suggest, as random political differences in geography give some smaller parties too much support in some areas to make up for their unfair lack of support in other other areas. This is clear just looking at single-member districts. Event though the threshold is technically 50%, it's rather obviously much fairer than a party list system with a 50% threshold. As the number of seats gets larger, this effects seems to be exponential. However, IMHO, the minimum seats per district should be around five, or at least the average amount of seats should be five or seven. The fact that Irelands average number of seats has dwindled so dramatically over the years makes it clear that the big parties just can't be trusted when it comes to proportionality. The minimum number of seats in BC-STV is two, the maximum seven. There's really nothing from keeping them from making nearly every district a two or three seater. Clearly, as the situation in Ireland shows, this is much better than single-member districts, but the article should have been amended to state that the average number of seats per a district should be around five, which would leave room for two-seaters in rural districts but keep the big parties from colluding and implementing a seat number to their favor. Juho Laatu wrote: --- On Thu, 30/4/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: In Ireland, the constitution requires at least 3 per constituency and over time the average number of seats per constituency is being reduced. It is currently illegal (by statutory law) for constituencies to have more than 5 seats. For the upcoming EU elections, Ireland's 12 seats are being returned from all 3 seat constituencies. It practice that seems to set the limits to max 4 and min 2 parties/groupings per constituency represented in the Dail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_30th_D%C3%A1il One could also develop rules that would make the system more proportional at the country level I think care needs to be taken here, as votes for a candidate are not necessarily the same as votes for a party. (The tree system can resolve this). Yes, some tricks needed here. There may be also different opinions on how person centric vs. how ideology centric the election in question should be. STV represents the person centric viewpoint but allows the voters to apply strict party preference order as well. STV is actually neutral on this issue. The voter can vote by party if they wish, or can vote by personality if they wish. Yes, in the sense that the only problem is complexity in the case that there are many candidates. Party list systems aren't neutral at all. Yes. Or one could say that they may allow votes to individuals but they do not allow voters to define any arbitrary inheritance order of the vote (unlike in STV). It may be easy or difficult for the independents to become candidates. Since STV elections typically don't have very many candidates there may be a need to not allow independents on the lists very easily. I assume you mean that it would be very easy for independents to clutter up the ballot, since there are so many candidates? Yes. One could try to limit the number of candidates to keep voting easy from the voter point of view and to keep the size of the ballots sheets manageable. And of course
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
--- On Sun, 3/5/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: I think a candidate list system is better though as it allows more general inheritance ordering. Ofc, it is always going to be a tradeoff between precision and complexity (both for the count and for the voter). Closed party list Open party list Tree based lists Candidate list PR-STV Yes. In the above list the order of inheritance moves from a party centric model to a vote centric model. Party, candidate and voter impact is different in each case (and may vary also within the categories). Party list would allow a much smaller ballot. In some sense I'd be happy with a system where lazy voters may just point out one candidate (or even party) while voters with more specific needs could cast more detailed votes (e.g. rank the candidates within a grouping or just pick some random individuals). Yes. One could try to limit the number of candidates to keep voting easy from the voter point of view and to keep the size of the ballots sheets manageable. I think a reasonable compromise here would be to allow candidates to register as official write-in candidates. They could be given a code, and included on a list in the polling station. One related topic: When the number of candidates grows it is possible to switch to codes only. In the Finnish open list system ballots are very simple. One just writes the number of the candidate on a sheet of paper. It would be possible to do also rankings, maybe including party/group codes this way. Maybe with some fixed small number of slots in the ballot would be enough. One has to write the numbers but on the other hand there is no limit to the number of candidates. Ballots are simple. Also, candidates might form the tree based on geography rather than ideology. Ofc, that would depend on what issues the voters think are important. I tend to see geographical districts as one form of proportionality. In addition to ideological proportionality requirements there may be regional proportionality requirements. In a way people living in district X are forced to vote for the district X candidates. (Typically the proportions are determined based on number of citizens, not voters.) (There could be also other simultaneous proportionality requirements like sex, ethnicity, age, religion or occupation related. They could be mandated opinions (like in the regional case) or voluntary (like in the ideological case). And it is possible to force many proportionalities to be exact at the same time (unlike in typical current systems where the regional proportionality is exact and the ideological proportionality is less exact because ideological allocation is counted separately at each district).) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
--- On Tue, 5/5/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: My preference is to use a different method of counting for election and elimination. Election: Vote is shared between all candidates at current rank Elimination: Vote is given to each candidate at current rank at full strength Why only fraction of the vote in the election case? Doesn't a vote to a party mean that any candidate of the party may use it at full strength? Naturally once someone uses it it is not available to others at full strength anymore. Related observation: If there are many votes with direct inheritance (e.g. bullet vote C111) then the counting process may use the knowledge that this vote will be in any case inherited by G11 and P1. We can sum up this kind of votes to P1 from the beginning and allocate seats to P1 (in top down style as in list based methods). Vote C121C211 is the same as vote C121C211G21P2ANYONE. Note that I assumed that the last ranked candidate determines the order of inheritance (unlike in the Maltese proposals where the first preference determined the party). If the voter would like the first preference to determine the order of inheritance she could vote e.g. C121C211G12. It might be better to just have a default + override method. That was my intention. = By default the vote will be inherited along the given tree hierarchy. All voting patterns are still possible (=override the default). Simplest syntax for most common votes, complex syntax for the more uncommon voting patterns. So the 'ANYONE' choice allows voters to force their rankings to end? Yes, that was just my style of indicating that no inheritance means the same as inherited by all. Just a natural way of expressing how some intermediate levels are skipped. Also other syntaxes could be used (any good proposals?). A bullet vote with no inheritance could with this ballot style be e.g. C555ANYONE. Vote C555C666ANYONE would be a traditional STV vote that may become exhausted after C555 and C666 have been eliminated (or elected). It depends on what is the most convenient. Do we automatically assume that the voters want to expand their vote to include the tree or do we assume that the would rather bullet vote unless told otherwise. The basic idea was to develop a syntax that makes the most voting convenient. I assumed that political tree-like thinking is common. For some voters even bullet votes (with default inheritance) may be sufficient. Many others might be happy with ranking some of some of the closest candidates, e.g. C113C119C112, and leave the remaining fragments of the vote to their favourite group and party (G11, P1). Also, there is an issue with inheritance between parties. If the votes are being combined using a PR-STV method, then you might want your vote C111 expanded to C111G11P1PXPY... Where party X and Y are parties picked by P1. The tree assumption includes also option to use also party coalitions/alliances, e.g. A1, P12, G123, C1234. This makes it possible to group parties (e.g. the left wing). Full ordering as in your example (P1PXPY instead of P1PX=PY) would require the voter to write the inheritance order explicitly in the ballot. Giving the remaining fragments to the alliance would be easy (even bullet voting would do that). This approach may easily get too complex for such traditional STV ballot style where all candidates are explicitly listed. It depends on how many candidates are running. Yes. My assumption was to prepare for expanding the number of candidates and groupings. With less than 10 candidates the voters may be required to rank so many of them that the vote will be complete enough. If one's favourite party has 10 subgroups with 10 candidates each, then listing all of them (or all relevant of them) to guarantee that the vote stays within the correct party will be tedious. It still suffers from the counting problem if the plan is to have national level elections. It would in fact be more complex than PR-STV ballots as there are additional choices. What is the problem that makes this too complex? The numerous ties do add complexity but maybe computers can handle the counting process. Btw, one way that this approach might somewhat simplify things is that the votes could be shorter than in STV. (There might be such shortening needs also to keep the votes unidentifiable (to avoid vote buying and coercion). Maybe limiting the number of entries in the ballot could be used in some cases for this reason.) vote could be simple a list of (maybe hand written) codes, e.g. 13 63 23 where numbers could refer also to groupings. It might be easier to have the parties allowed to register codes. One factor that influences this choice is difference between manually written codes vs. use of voting machines. Simple (handwritten) numbers may be easy to read without errors and quick to write. Mnemonic names are easier to
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
--- On Tue, 5/5/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: Btw, one way that this approach might somewhat simplify things is that the votes could be shorter than in STV. (There might be such shortening needs also to keep the votes unidentifiable (to avoid vote buying and coercion). Maybe limiting the number of entries in the ballot could be used in some cases for this reason.) Right, but it depends on how many choices there are. With 100 candidates and PR-STV, you can have potentially 100! different votes. With 100 candidates, 30 groups and 10 parties and 4 ranks allowed, you are still looking at around 400 million different combination. (even if this is still much lower). Ofc, if most people just pick a candidate and use his list, then there would be much fewer possibilities. Yes. One may need to go to quite low numbers if one wants to be sure that there will be no problems. On the other hand in most problem cases the vote must contain also the intended voting pattern, which means that the part that identifies the vote will be smaller. If the vote would e.g. allow only three codes, then one could try to mark a vote to candidate C111 by ranking also two candidates that certainly will not win. The vote could be e.g. C999C888C111. Pairs of candidates like C999 and C888 might be rare enough to allow some vote buyer to mark numerous ballots. The default inheritance rules will help since also short votes will carry lots of inheritance information in them. Number of candidates and size of districts whose results will be reported are also important (and existence of hopeless candidates too). I remember one example from open list elections. A voter was happy that she voted for her friend as she said to her since the results of different voting stations were published (to her surprise) and there was only one vote to the candidate in question from the local voting station. (= Also voter privacy needs to be protected.) - - - Some more observations. - - Widespread use of the default inheritance paths means that parties may nominate more candidates than before (in STV) and still keep most of the voting power within the party. It may also be beneficial to nominate numerous candidates (like in open lists today). - - The named parties and groups are in a special position when compared to groupings that might exist as a result of many people voting them. E.g. votes C1C2C3C4 and C2C3C1C5 generate a group C1+C2+C3 that gets at least two votes. The tree structure sets some limits on what kind of groupings may exist. We may however relax the rules a bit. One could name also orthogonal groups that consist of candidates of different branches, e.g. candidates of town X or all female candidates. This would make it easier for the voters (there may be many such voters) to vote for these groups. I noted earlier that the seat allocation rules may also observe votes that will be inherited by a certain group. This may make the treatment of named and non-named groupings somewhat different. This kind of additional named groupings will assist the voters. But on the other hand they will also corrupt the basic idea of the tree structure (to offer a clean understandable structure of the political world to the voters). If the additional groups are listed only at some special secondary place they might not be too confusing. Actually there could in principle be also alternative complete hierarchies. If the primary hierarchy is a typical political party structure the alternative hierarchy could be e.g. a geographical structure. A vote to the candidates of town X could be inherited by candidates of the surrounding district. (A candidate could have a code in more than one hierarchy.) - - One of my key points in this discussion is to demonstrate that there is a space and continuum of methods between open lists / trees and STV. The maximum number of codes per ballot may vary for various reasons. Value 1 means actually just a basic tree method (if there is only one hierarchy). Also small values thus work quite well. Larger values allow more personalized votes (a la STV). The space could cover also closed lists. It would be a quite straight forward extension to use one code to refer to a list of candidate instead of only one. 01: C1 02: C2C3C4 A vote to 02 would have a mandatory order of inheritance. Code 02 could represent a party that wants to decide itself which of its candidates will be elected. (Voters might or might not agree with this approach.) This structure could also allow candidate defined inheritance orders. Code 02 above could be seen as a vote to C2 with inheritance as planned by C2. C2 could have also a different code that would not include the inheritance order (to allow voters to either vote as recommended by C2 or to create their own order of inheritance). These tricks may again confuse the voters by giving lots of new thoughts and patterns to the voters (instead of relying on the
Re: [EM] British Colombia considering change to STV
--- On Wed, 6/5/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: The vote could be e.g. C999C888C111. Pairs of candidates like C999 and C888 might be rare enough to allow some vote buyer to mark numerous ballots. Ofc, a law banning vote buying might be enough in 99% of cases anyway. Yes, that may be enough in most societies. Societies are different. In some societies the moral deterrent is enough. Somewhere else only fools don't cheat. Coercion is somewhat more difficult to defend against than vote buying because often it takes place behind closed doors. Also privacy problems have somewhat different characteristics. But in general, one need not defend more than what is necessary in the society in question. Number of candidates and size of districts whose results will be reported are also important (and existence of hopeless candidates too). Maybe, hopeless candidates could be removed before announcing the results. Ofc, then you can't use the ballot imaging idea ... or you need some way of covering the selections. Removing hopeless candidates has problems too. Maybe they themselves want publicity since they want to grow to strong candidates. It is possible to set stricter limits on who can become a candidate. And one could also give up all kind of ballot imaging. In STV like methods this is unfortunately not as easy as e.g. in Condorcet style methods where the ballots can often be summed up to a matrix. Of course also here one must be careful with the level of verifiability that the society needs (i.e. can you trust that the votes will be counted right or do you need special arrangements to guarantee that). One could name also orthogonal groups that consist of candidates of different branches, e.g. candidates of town X or all female candidates. An easy way of achieving this is to allow people to be part of more than 1 group. Yes. But I'd like to keep the primary tree hierarchy as clean and simple as possible to make it easy for all voters to understand the basic structure of the political space and to make voting easy (and to some extent to tie the candidates to something concrete, to avoid vote fishing with artificial additional lists). I.e. careful consideration needed to determine how easy it will be to add more groupings and candidates. I noted earlier that the seat allocation rules may also observe votes that will be inherited by a certain group. This may make the treatment of named and non-named groupings somewhat different. What are unnamed groups? If we have lots of votes where some set of candidates (e.g. C1, C2, C3) are the first three candidates then it could have been beneficial for these three candidates to name themselves as a group or a party (if the seat allocation rules give some reason to this). The number of different subsets of candidates is huge, so we can afford to check only some of them (in this case the named ones) during the seat allocation process. A related point: You mentioned that votes 10: A=B can be seen as two sets of votes, 5: AB and 5: BA. If the quota is 8 then we neither A nor B can be elected yet. But if A and B form a party of two candidates, then the seat allocation algorithm could see that together they actually have more than one quota of votes, and as a result one of them can be elected. (The A=B voters might vote for the party code.) Unnamed groupings would not be handled the same way (since there are too many of them to check all of them). (This is why I earlier commented that it would be possible to see both A and B to have full support of all the 10 votes.) It is another question if one should flip a coin and decide between A and B right away or to wait for some others to be eliminated (and votes transferred) before doing so. I note that your interest to keep the elimination rules different from the election rules are related. Note that the hierarchy allows also conclusions like vote C111G11=G12 to contribute to the total sum of party P1 support - although the vote contains also strict preferences, not only ties between all the listed codes. (I used term direct inheritance in some of the earlier mails to describe this kind of votes.) I know in Ireland, a switch to any form of national list would be promoted on the fact that it would help to weak local parish pump politics. Would use of larger districts alleviate the problem? I guess also here we need a balance between guaranteeing nation wide local representation and keeping the thoughts on nation wide questions. (One radical approach (not necessarily a good one) would be to allow voters to vote any candidate in the whole country but still use a seat allocation algorithm that forces regional proportionality.) Candidates C3 and C4 might not have any codes of their own. This would allow candidates to add names of people who had trouble with ballot access. Yes. There have to be some rules that set limits to who can nominate candidates and
Re: [EM] simple definition of Schulze method?
You could try to describe the very central Condorcet principle in an understandable way and then add Schulze as an attribute (just as a name that is not explained in detail) if you want and need to point out that particular Condorcet method. Maybe something like Would you like to use the Schulze method that always elects the candidate that would win every other candidate? (Depending on the formulation one may need to add ...whenever such a candidate exists.) Juho --- On Thu, 4/6/09, Árpád Magosányi mag...@rabic.org wrote: From: Árpád Magosányi mag...@rabic.org Subject: [EM] simple definition of Schulze method? To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Thursday, 4 June, 2009, 4:46 PM Hi! I am planning to initialize a referenda in my country to change our voting system. I want to propose Condorcet, and want to draft the referenda question in a way which makes no room for the legistrator to fall back to some ancient method when there is no Condorcet winner. I prefer Schulze method. The problem is that our constitution and its interpretation leaves very narrow place to draft a referenda question. The question should be clear, and it should be simple as well. The criteria so far executed by our Constitutional Court are the following: There should be one question. - I need to state multiple criteria, and some may interpret them as several questions. I can reason that the question is one, which refers to a set of criteria which would be meaningless without each other. There should be no specialized word. - The average voter should be able to understand. So Do you agree to vote our parliament members with a cloneproof Condorcet method which always produces a winner? won't work. There should be no explanations of terms and ideas in the question. - The average voter should be able to understand. Constitutional Court ruled that ideas and terms which need explanations are beyond that. It should be easily understandable. - The average voter should be able to understand. Well, our whole constitution is built on the assumption that citizens are dumb. There might be some place here as I can point to the current text of voting law which contains D'Hont method as a small piece of the description of our voting system, and a small set of criteria is much simpler than that. It should be definitive. - Would you like a voting system which reflects the different views of voters better, and the winnig strategy for candidates is to cooperate would be rejected because there are so many interpretation of it. I think the right way would be draft the question with simple words through criteria which should be satisfied. Can you help me by proposing such simple definitions of key criteria? Specifically I could not find a criteria which would not contain beat-path and be specific to Schulze. I am sorry to ask the impossible, but we are in a dire need here. -Inline Attachment Follows- 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] Some myths about voting methods
--- On Fri, 5/6/09, Warren Smith warren@gmail.com wrote:
Now consider tactics.
In contrast, with
preferential ballot, the
number of possible
exaggerated-tactical-style votes is
{Dem Nader Repub}
and {Repub Nader Dem}
which is only 2 options.
Do you have an exact definition for
what votes are acceptable as
sensible(?) rank-order votes here?
Note also that this voting style is
insane in the sense that if we get
50:DNR 50:RND then one vote to
Nader would make him the winner
(even if all others would find him
least preferred).
This discussion was mainly about the
amount of information that different
votes carry. Note however that the
meaning of the vote is already a
different story. Range votes are
richer than rank-order votes in the
sense that AB could be A=9 B=8 or
A=9 B=7. But on the other hand vote
ABC where the voter expresses
maximum preference on AB and BC
at the same time can not be expressed
in Range.
Juho
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] voting methods
--- On Fri, 5/6/09, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: Hi, --- En date de : Jeu 4.6.09, Árpád Magosányi mag...@rabic.org a écrit : I guess the list might have opininons in this discussion. If you argue that tactical voting reduces Range to Approval, you can expect the response that there's no evidence that everyone will vote tactically, and that to the extent that they don't vote tactically, it's an improvement. And that if everyone does vote tactically, then it's reduced to Approval, but Approval isn't that bad. Have fun. Kevin Venzke The to the extent that they don't vote tactically, it's an improvement part of such a response can be questioned. The problem is that the tactical voters will get more voting power than the sincere voters. The tactical parties will win. Parties are likely to recommend tactical voting, not to vote sincerely. Approval or fully approval style Range voting could in such circumstances be better than Range with a mix of sincere and tactical voters. (Intentional weak votes would be ok though, but cases where sincere voters cast weak votes without understanding that would be a problem.) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Some myths about voting methods
Yes, and ties may be allowed in rank-order votes. Warren Smith also assumed rank-order ballots to be transitive. That is not necessary. If we allow any kind of votes then there are many more possible rank-order votes. Most of them are not typically needed but the same applies to many of the Approval vote alternatives. Juho --- On Fri, 5/6/09, Jonathan Lundell jlund...@pobox.com wrote: From: Jonathan Lundell jlund...@pobox.com Subject: Re: [EM] Some myths about voting methods To: Warren Smith warren@gmail.com Cc: election-methods@lists.electorama.com Date: Friday, 5 June, 2009, 11:15 PM On Jun 5, 2009, at 1:08 PM, Warren Smith wrote: In a 3-candidate election, there are 6=3! possible rank-order votes. Only if truncation is forbidden. 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] Some myths about voting methods
P.S. Below I should have said that Nader
would be a Condorcet winner or winner in
Condorcet methods etc.
--- On Sat, 6/6/09, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
From: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk
Subject: Re: [EM] Some myths about voting methods
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Date: Saturday, 6 June, 2009, 10:51 AM
--- On Fri, 5/6/09, Warren Smith warren@gmail.com
wrote:
Now consider tactics.
In contrast, with
preferential ballot, the
number of possible
exaggerated-tactical-style votes is
{Dem Nader Repub}
and {Repub Nader Dem}
which is only 2 options.
Do you have an exact definition for
what votes are acceptable as
sensible(?) rank-order votes here?
Note also that this voting style is
insane in the sense that if we get
50:DNR 50:RND then one vote to
Nader would make him the winner
(even if all others would find him
least preferred).
This discussion was mainly about the
amount of information that different
votes carry. Note however that the
meaning of the vote is already a
different story. Range votes are
richer than rank-order votes in the
sense that AB could be A=9 B=8 or
A=9 B=7. But on the other hand vote
ABC where the voter expresses
maximum preference on AB and BC
at the same time can not be expressed
in Range.
Juho
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] Schulze definition (was: information content, game theory, cooperation)
To me all this sounds still a bit too complex for the referendum. I'd drop out all the criteria, Smith set etc. since the voters will not understand. There is also the risk that experts and opponents of the reform will sabotage the referendum by digging into the details (and thereby proving to the voters that the method is too complex). The question in the referendum can not in any case define the complete method. It may be enough to make it clear in the question that the method is a ranked method (the voters may understand even have interest in this point) and that it is a Condorcet method (if you want to rule out e.g. IRV). If the question clearly points out the group of Condorcet methods and it will be approved, then it may be natural to pick the Schulze method since it is anyway the most used Condorcet method. It could be thus enough to say: - The electors rank the candidates according to their preferences. - If some candidate is preferred over all other candidates then that candidate shall be elected. Juho --- On Sun, 7/6/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 7:35 PM, Árpád Magosányi mag...@rabic.org wrote: - The electors rank the candidates according to their preferences. - If there is a group of candidates all preferred over all candidates outside the group, then ignoring the candidates outside the group should not change the outcome of the election. - The winner should be choosen from the above group in a way that guarantees that if a candidate similar to an already running candidate is introduced, the outcome of the election is not changed, and the less controversial candidates are preferred. Reasoning below. Please point out possible mistakes and ways to better phrase it between the boundary conditions given (simple words, no expert terms like Schulze or beatpath, and should be matchable to correct mathematical definitions. Ok, so you are basically saying (in simple terms) A) the method is a ranked method B) All candidates outside the Smith set can be ignored without changing the result C) The method should be clone independent. That is a pretty good idea. You are in effect defining the characteristics that Schulze meets and the others don't. Wikipedia has a table at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method Schulze and ranked pairs are the only methods that meet clone independence and the condorcet rule. Does ranked pairs fail the Smith criterion? I would change B to If there is a group of candidates all preferred over all candidates outside the group, then only those candidates may win and the candidates outside the group may have no effect on the result. If you don't restrict the winner to the Smith set (which your rules don't necessarily), then you could end up with a non-condorcet method. Also, just because the popular/proposed condorcet methods are excluded by your definition doesn't mean that some other weird method can't be found that also meets the rule. It might be better to just include the reasons that you like Sculze and use those rules rather than trying to select Sculze by a process of elimination. BTW it would be nice if the wikipedia page would actually contain something describing Schulze method, not just the heuristics. The best I have found so far is: http://rangevoting.org/SchulzeExplan.html Therefore, my aim was to find a method that satisfies Condorcet, monotonicity, clone-immunity, majority for solid coalitions, and reversal symmetry, and that tends to produce winners with weak worst pairwise defeats (compared to the worst pairwise defeat of the winner of Tideman's Ranked Pairs method). Yeah. Though, ofc, Schulze isn't allow to edit the article. Could someone on this list give a brief outline or the formal rule (actually his statutory rules are probably it)? -Inline Attachment Follows- 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] Schulze definition (was: information content, game theory, cooperation)
--- On Mon, 8/6/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 11:52 PM, Juho Laatujuho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: My thinking was that if the question on the referendum excludes IRV, then the final outcome is anyway likely to be Schulze (and the unlikely event of choosing some other one of the good Condorcet methods would not be a big problem). But they could pick the bottom 2 runoff version of IRV, if all you want is Condorcet compliance. Some possibilities elect the condorcet winner if 1 exists, or the candidate with the most first choices otherwise. elect the condorcet winner if 1 exists or the candidate chosen by the outgoing PM otherwise. It depends on how evil the legislators are. Yes. Bottom 2 version of IRV is not one of the best Condorcet methods because of the rather random nature of the sequential elimination, but it is Condorcet compatible at least. Since one can not describe the full method in the referendum question one has to take some of these risks in any case. One could try to list all the key characteristics of the Schulze method but still the legislators could decide to take into use ballots that have only two slots in them (if you forgot to include the requirement of having more slots in the referendum question). For these reasons and to make the voters understand the question and to avoid giving too much space for general complexity arguments it may be wise to write the referendum question without all the details that would tie it exactly to the Schulze method. Using e.g. River or Ranked Pairs would probably also not be a catastrophe. So, I tend to think that the best approach would be to use some common language and make the question such that it gives some rough understanding to the voters and at the same time eliminates the worst pitfalls. The risks include e.g. 1) picking some bad method due to not understanding what is good, 2) use of complexity arguments against the Schulze method, 3) incumbents intentionally picking a method that favours them (could be e.g. IRV). I agree with Árpád Magosányi in that one should pay lots of attention on how to formulate the question. I'd however keep most of the complex criteria and requirements out since that gives too much space for speculation and complexity arguments. And as we know one can spend lots of time in arguing about the benefits and problems of most of the criteria (there are arguments for and against all of them, and all methods have some problems that some others do not have, later-no-harm can be used against the Condorcet methods, do we want winning votes or margins for Schulze etc.). I.e. keep it simple and close to what people really understand. If one wants a definite binding to the Schulze method, then one can mention its name in the question (without explaining the details). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] voting strategy with rank-order-with-equality ballots
I have a rather practical approach to strategies. Often we talk about theoretical properties of the methods. I prefer talking about the practical impacts (of the known theoretical vulnerabilities) since often the theoretical cases talk only about some marginal cases. I'll explain more below. Schulze and Condorcet methods in general may sometimes be vulnerable to strategies where voters change some to =. You however did not present and I do not know situations where it would be beneficial (strategically) to generally vote in approval style in Schulze/Condorcet. My practical approach is such that when some theoretical vulnerability has been identified I try to construct also a practical example (in some well defined real life environment) to see if it really is a threat. One needs to understand also the dynamics of the problem in real life situations. Topics to consider: - how often does the vulnerability occur - what information do the voters have - is that information reliable - unreliable polls - opinions may change - can voters apply the strategy on their own - media or party guidance may be needed - maybe a general rule for all elections - does the strategy require coordination - agreed voting pattern - different strategists to vote in different ways - will others know about the planned strategy - are there counter-strategies? - how bad is the change in the outcome - can the strategy backfire There are also many society related aspects: - what are the impacts of strategy proposals - all become strategic? - strategists will lose support? - what is the tradition of the society - strategic vs. sincere - is strategic voting morally acceptable - are the voter opinions stable or changing - party loyalty - are the polls used as propaganda - is the election large or small - do the voters make independent decisions - or do they follow party guidance - number of candidates and parties and groupings - great variety of opinions vs. just few patterns - impact on the next elections and society - e.g. strategic votes to unwanted candidates Practically all methods have vulnerabilities, so we just need to pick methods that are good enough in the given environment. One should also note that often there is also the other side of the coin. When defending against one threat one may open doors to other threats or otherwise make the system worse. (Note that this also means that sometimes it is better to have numerous weak vulnerabilities rather than only one more serious vulnerability, i.e. just listing the individual vulnerabilities does not work.) (One should btw also make sure that the behaviour of the used method can be justified also with sincere votes. Electing a wrong candidate with sincere votes is about as bad as electing a wrong candidate due to strategic voting.) Based on this kind of checklists I think it is often quite easy to quickly come into conclusion on if the discussed vulnerability is a serious threat or just theoretical. The theoretical vulnerabilities are important as a basis of the studies but often practical examples of typical but bad situations that may occur in the given environment demonstrate better what the actual performance level of some proposed system is. Practical group strategies that can be applied by individuals without central coordination are the most interesting ones. Counter strategies are already much less interesting (things are already quite bad if people really start using them). Now back to the discussed methods. It is characteristic to Schulze and Condorcet methods that their vulnerabilities are severe in the sense that in some cases some group may indeed (at least in theory) change the outcome of the election, but those strategies are not very easy to identify, not very common and may easily backfire. As a general rule voters' best strategy is often to vote sincerely. In Range one big problem is that exaggeration seems to work quite generally. For example in a typical US presidential election a general recommendation of all Democrats to vote D=max R=min is not a bad strategy to follow. In Condorcet finding a working strategy (other than sincerity) that could be generally recommended to the voters would not be that easy. Juho --- On Tue, 9/6/09, Warren Smith warren@gmail.com wrote: One problem is nobody really has a good understanding of what good strategy is. If one believes that range voting becomes approval voting in the presence of strategic voters (often, anyhow)... One might similarly speculate that strategic voters in a system such as Schilze beatpaths ALLOWING ballots with both and = (e.g. AB=C=DE=F is a legal ballot) usually the strategic vote is approval style i.e. of form A=B=CD=E=F, say, with just ONE . One might then speculate that Schulze, just like range, then becomes equivalent to approval voting for strategic voters. Well... how true or false is that? Is Schulze with approval-style
Re: [EM] tactical voting vs different methods
--- On Thu, 11/6/09, Árpád Magosányi mag...@rabic.org wrote: 2009/6/10 Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk I just want to agree with this viewpoint. I have seen e.g. claims that Condorcet (that can elect compromise candidates) would favour candidates that have no strong opinions. But I haven't found any serious basis behind these claims. In all methods candidates try to seek optimal position and often that is close to the centrist opinions. But differences between different methods don't seem to be very meaningful. Other matters in the societies are more important in determining the behaviour and style of the candidates. I guess that Schulze's favour-weak-beathpath property is example of favouring cooperation against confrontation. Any proof or rrebuttal is welcome. This property may have some benefits in some situations but in general I think the impact that this property will have on candidate behaviour may be quite marginal for the following reasons. - Condorcet elections often have a Condorcet winner - If not, then most Condorcet methods decide the same way anyway in most cases - If not, then the impact of the beatpath property may not be very strong - And if it is, still the candidates may not understand this - And if they understand, they may also understand that it seldom has any impact It may very well be that other factors like e.g. the verbal description of the method (words like weak beatpath) may have more impact on the behaviour of the candidates than the actual technical properties of the methods. If I try to think hard what impact the Condorcet methods in general might have on the bevaviour of the politicians it seems that the interest to collect second preferences might have some impact. That means that the candidates are less likely to say that the supporters of the neighouring groups (that may contain potential second preference voters) would be totally wrong. This however applies also to methods where the candidate tries to make supporters of the other groups change their first preference opinions. I can't draw any clear conclusions from this. One more attempt. Electoral systems and methods that clearly react to changes in voter opinions may make the politicians less arrogant towards the voters, and maybe towards the other representatives of the voters as well. That would speak to some extent in favour of Condorcet methods leading to a more harmonious society. (Some methods favour large parties and that may mean some interest in emphasizing the role of unified powerful parties etc, but I'm still quite far from saying that this would determine the style of competition between the candidates.) I think that favouring large parties is not the same as favouring cooperation. Actually I would be content with a method which converges to a state where there are at least four major parties. I regard two-party system too static. Yes, the impact may not be meaningful. The impact may also be reverse in the sense that if some method never gives a chance to some minority opinions then the major party candidates might intentionally never co-operate with those people. (And this might again be cancelled by some major party taking a positive attitude towards this minority in order to win them on its own side.) Could you point me to studies about this? I'm afraid no. I don't have any such good material. The interest to grab voters in all directions seems to be a general method independent trend. On the other hand we have seen that in some societies also negative campaigning has become an equally important trend. Probably the moral values of the society and voter judgement will have much higher impact on the behaviour than the used election method. A compromise seeking society might decide to use Condorcet methods but use of Condorcet methods may not make the society more compromise seeking. The overall positive impact of well working methods that let the voters decide was the best example I could find on methods influencing the behaviour of the politicians. No strong links to the Schulze method in particular yet (except that one can always market methods that one thinks are good in a positive spirit and thereby make the voters trust the system more and as a result make the democracy work better and make the politicians less self-centred and better listeners). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] tactical voting vs different methods
--- On Thu, 11/6/09, Kevin Venzke step...@yahoo.fr wrote: In Schulze you foremost want to defeat every other candidate head-to-head. If we are even looking at beatpaths, all candidates have failed their first goal. Yes, in Schulze and other Condorcet methods the primary goal can be said to be to be the Condorcet winner / win all other candidates. I think that favouring large parties is not the same as favouring cooperation. Actually I would be content with a method which converges to a state where there are at least four major parties. I regard two-party system too static. Could you point me to studies about this? Does it have to be a single-winner method? Yes, multi-party systems are usually built on (proportional) multi-winner methods. Condorcet methods work well in a multi-party setting when one has to elect one single winner in some election. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] voting strategy with rank-order-with-equality ballots
Yes, well organized and undivided groupings tend to have somewhat more voting power than fragmented collections of similar minded people. There may be many reasons why people can trust that there will be also other voters that will vote similarly, e.g. 1) A well coordinated group with explicit or implicit voting recommendations. 2) I think this way and I plan to use my one small vote this way. I assume that there are many people that have similar preferences. Probably they will have similar thoughts and they will vote in some similar way. Therefore I can trust that my vote will be part of a trend that will have some meaningful impact in these elections. These are the two extremes. One with lots of coordination and one that is simply based on the logic that although I make my decisions totally independently and alone there will be others that are likely to have similar thoughts. These considerations may include also strategic thinking. A US voter could e.g. be confident that many of the Nader supporters will vote for Gore (and many of them will vote for Nader). One can thus study group strategies and group based equilibrium without assuming that there would be some central coordination of the groups and their strategies. Maybe my point is just that if the voter feels that his/her opinions are not very exceptional he/she can trust that there will be a large number of people thinking and voting in the same or similar way. Although the weight of one vote is marginal, in most cases it is wiser to base one's decisions on how to vote on the assumption that one will not be alone. In a way one can thus influence with the 10% or whatever meaningful voting power that may well change the outcome of the election. (Note also that people who vote for some improbable candidate, e.g. themselves, and are sure that their vote will be marginal may still do so for other reasons than in the hope of becoming elected (a bit like some of the Nader voters). Even few votes might be meaningful as a protest or to make that candidate's election more probable in the next elections or to increase his/her weight in some totally different arena.) Juho --- On Wed, 17/6/09, Raph Frank raph...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Juho Laatujuho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: Do you mean that one individual vote practically never changes the result of a large election? One can see this from two viewpoints. 1) can I change the result 2) can I and similar minded people together change the result Well, you only control yourself. In principle, groups where it is expected that you vote + where your are asked if you bothered could tend to have higher turnouts. However, once you actually are in the polling booth, then you can somewhat ignore the issue of how the person got there. (but it would still have an effect on how you model other voters' behaviour.) Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Influence of a single vote (was Voting strategy etc.)
--- On Thu, 18/6/09, Michael Allan m...@zelea.com wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: Do you mean that one individual vote practically never changes the result of a large election? One can see this from two viewpoints. 1) can I change the result 2) can I and similar minded people together change the result Raph Frank wrote: Well, you only control yourself. For perspective: The influence of an individual vote on the results is expected to be different between private and public systems. The actual influence of a private vote is usually exactly zero. I guess it depends a little on the voting method, but it's almost always zero in FPTP. On the other hand, the influence of a public vote is usually positive, though incalculable. It is incalculable because the weight of a public expression per se cannot be felt in a strictly subjective, individual context. It can only be felt in an inter-subjective, social context. Juho, you're perhaps making the opposite mistake? You look at private voting from an inter-subjective persepective. I don't think that's valid. The vote itself can have no influence on the behaviour of other voters. It typically has no influence at all, except on the voter herself. So it's purely subjective. In elections votes are typically kept secret until counted. So they are not supposed to influence the decision of other voters. My thinking was that although one vote does not influence the decisions of others, the factors that influenced the voting behaviour of one voter are mostly the same also for other voters, and similar minded voters are therefore likely to make similar decisions. The individual voter may thus trust that other voters will be there (except if his/her opinions are marginal) and together they will influence the outcome of the election. = Unless I'm alone, we can influence. Juho (What's also interesting is the objective perspective of manipulation. But that means looking at the influence of money and power, and not votes per se.) -- Michael Allan Toronto, 647-436-4521 http://zelea.com/ 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] First Condorcet cycle ever spotted in a national presidential election (!?! apparently)
It is also interesting to separate different types of cycles. I'll assume that the number of voters is high. 1) Weak cycle (random cycle, noise level cycle, or noise generated cycle) - the looped candidates are almost tied - can be a result of some almost random variation in the votes - one could say that this kind of a loop is one special version of a tie - any of the looped candidates could be the winner (no big violation against any of the majority opinions) - the expected winner may change from day to day (in the polls) 2) Strong cycle (stable cycle, rational cycle, cycle with a stable identifiable reason) - there is some specific reason that has led to the formation of this loop (not random variation in the votes) - the reason behind the cycle can be described (maybe multiple theories) - the cycle / opinions are strong enough to carry over daily/weekly fluctuation in the opinions 3) Strategic cycle - a special case - artificially generated (result of strategies that some voters have applied) - not based on sincere opinions Weak cycles may well exist when we have candidates that are close to tied. Strong cycles are more interesting since then we must have some specific reason behind them and the opinion is stable and clear. There are such situations but I believe they are not too common in real life. One example of a strong cycle is a situation where candidate A promotes strongly topic T1 and slightly T2, candidate B promotes strongly T2 and slightly T3, and candidate C promotes strongly T3 and slightly T1. Many of the voters are mainly interested in one topic only (T1, T2 or T3). Each topic has about as many supporters. As a result a stable rational cycle is may well emerge. (This example is based on having a special set of candidates with looped opinions or campaigns. Do you have also some other kind of potential (real-life, rational, large election) strong cycles in mind?) Juho On Dec 10, 2009, at 1:31 AM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2009/12/9 seppley sepp...@alumni.caltech.edu Without studying details of the three Romanian candidates and the voters' preferences, the explanation of this majority cycle cannot be known for sure. However, consider a case of three very similar candidates. The voters' preferences in each of the three possible pairings would be nearly tied (approximately 50% preferring each candidate over each other candidate). In such a case, a cycle involving three small majorities would not be rare. Almost an even bet? Not rare, you're right. However, what you are describing is essentially something like a random elections model or perhaps a Dirchlet model, which, according to WDS's table of calculations, for 3 or 4 serious candidates, have probabilities of Condorcet cycles somewhere in the range of 6-18% - which is certainly nothing to be shocked about when it happens by chance, but also a good deal less than an even bet. --Steve -- Jameson Quinn wrote: This is good math, and very interesting, but it doesn't speak at all about the politics of the matter. Have you figured out any tentative explanation for the Condorcet cycles you postulate? Why would, for instance, OBG voters be more common than OGB voters, yet in the mirror-image votes, BGO voters more common than GBO ones? (I realize that the Condorcet cycle does not require exactly that circumstance, but it suggests something of the kind). I understand that any such explanation would be post-hoc and speculative, yet it is still worthwhile to make the attempt. Jameson 2009/12/8 Warren Smith warren@gmail.com preliminary page on Romania 2009 election now available here http://rangevoting.org/Romania2009.html The results are not as impressive as I originally thought they were going to be. -- Warren D. Smith Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info 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] IRV vs Plurality (or is it about Range? maybe it should be about Condorcet.)
On Jan 29, 2010, at 3:36 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 28, 2010, at 5:13 PM, Juho wrote: On Jan 28, 2010, at 10:33 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On Jan 28, 2010, at 3:12 PM, Juho wrote: On Jan 28, 2010, at 8:20 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote: ... it's amazing that anyone touts Range as the most strategy free. the more handles one finds on a control device (think of the ballot as such) or the more positions one can set the knobs to, the more one has to strategize on how to control it to one's intent. The basic Range strategy is unfortunately present in almost all elections, i don't see how it would be with a simple ranked-order ballot. especially, if decided by Condorcet, you cannot exaggerate your rankings. if you like A better than anyone and you like B better than C, then there is nothing to be gained by any other ranking than ABC. if you really hate C, you can rank a bunch of other candidates you don't care about between B and C. but it doesn't change how the election would work between the candidates A, B, and C. Yes, the main rule in Condorcet is that sincere voting is enough. Condorcet has also strategic vulnerabilities but in most environments one can expect those problems to be so marginal that sincere voting will be dominant and is the most practical strategy for all voters. again, other than to attempt to throw an election (decided by Condorcet rules) into a cycle, i can't think of any situation where it would serve any voter's political interests to rank a less preferred candidate higher than one that is more preferred. and, it's hard for me to imagine such a strategy serving the voter(s) using it, since it could be anyone's guess how the cycle that they create gets resolved. To be exact, one could also break an already existing cycle for strategic reasons (compromise to elect a better winner). And yes, the strategies are in most cases difficult to master (due to risk of backfiring, no 100% control of the voters, no 100% accurate information of the opinions, changing opinions, other strategic voters, counterstrategies, losing second preferences of the targets of the strategy). Juho -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. 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] Condorcet strategy spreadsheet (was, ...maybe it should be about Condorcet...)
Yes. It is not easy to give exact numbers on how often strategies are possible in Condorcet. Your calculations give one good estimate on the frequency of some of the key vulnerabilities. I tried to list also (in my old mail below) additional factors that make the strategies even less useful in practice. They may be quite difficult to estimate numerically since different societies may have quite different levels of willingness to apply strategies, different party structure, possibility to control and coordinate the voters, acceptance of strategic behaviour etc. Another approach to resistance against strategies is to study when and how the voters should apply some strategy. One may have generic strategy recommendations that voters may apply in Condorcet elections. Or alternatively specific recommendations for one election when one already has some opinion polls available (and when one can pick the voter opinions by hand - maybe some realistic set of votes though). I haven't seen any good generic recommendations that could be applied in typical real life political elections. Even the second challenge of election specific recommendations based on already available information is hard to meet. There have been quite a number of (non-political) Condorcet elections but I have not seen anyone point out any obvious strategic opportunities even after the elections. Maybe this also says something about how common the vulnerabilities are (more experiments needed though). So, even when there is a theoretical vulnerability that some set of voters could use to improve the end result from their point of view by altering their votes, that may still be quite far from practical implementation of the strategy. Have you maybe generated some rules that the voters or parties/candidates could recommend to implement some of the strategies in real life? Juho On Jan 29, 2010, at 6:17 PM, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2010/1/28 Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com To be exact, one could also break an already existing cycle for strategic reasons (compromise to elect a better winner). And yes, the strategies are in most cases difficult to master (due to risk of backfiring, no 100% control of the voters, no 100% accurate information of the opinions, changing opinions, other strategic voters, counterstrategies, losing second preferences of the targets of the strategy). Yes. Some months ago, when I proposed Score DSV voting, I did some playing with a spreadsheet to see the true individual benefit and social cost of various types of strategy in various 3-way condorcet tie scenarios. A link to the spreadsheet is here. There's a lot more black magic there than I care to explain fully - that's why I didn't share this earlier - but I think that something like this is useful in exploring the nature of strategies. So, I'm putting it out there for any geeks like me who are interested. Here's a quick (that is, incomplete) explanation of how it works. If you want to skip the technical details, there's a couple paragraphs about what I learned from it at the end of this message. ... The voting system used, in all cases, is Score DSV. This is a system which uses Range ballots and meets the Condorcet criterion. As a Condorcet tiebreaker, it is intended to give the win to the candidate whose opposing voters would be, overall, least motivated to use strategy to defeat her. (Of course, this least is after the normalization step. This is inevitable since normalization is the only mathematical means of comparing preference strength across voters.) Still, while the mechanics of Score DSV are unusual for a Condorcet system, its results are not so much. A typical Condorcet system would give results which are broadly comparable. (Actually, since only the 3 candidate, no-honest-equalities case is considered, the winner and all non-equal-ranking-based strategies are mutually identical for a large set of Condorcet systems, including, IIANM, Schultz, Tideman, Least Margin, and others, but not Score DSV). The spreadsheet works by first creating a 3-way Condorcet tie scenario. To do so, you set 7 parameters, the red numbers in the blue area. Feel free to change the red numbers, but please, if you want to change the spreadsheet in another way, use a copy. The basic parameters are: -In the column num voters, the size of the three pro-cyclical voting groups - ABC, BCA, and CAB. Without loss of generality, the first group is the largest. -To the right of each voter number is the average vote within that group. All groups vote 1 for their favorite of the three candidates and 0 for their least favorite, but you can change their honest utility for the middle candidate to any number between 0 and 1. -The voter population is assumed to have some anticyclical voters (ACB, CBA, and BAC). However, you do not set these numbers directly
Re: [EM] Condorcet question - why not bullet vote
On Jun 16, 2010, at 11:49 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote: Juho, we have the example 49: A 48: BC 3: CB you wrote to me: - C loses to B, 3-48. In winning votes the strength of this loss is 48. - B loses to A, 48-49. In winning votes the strength of this loss is 49. - A loses to C, 49-51. In winning votes the strength of this loss is 51. Thus: If the three C voters will truncate then they will win instead of B in winning votes based Condorcet methods. This is correct, if proportional completion is not used (see page 42 in http://m-schulze.webhop.net/schulze2.pdf) If proportional completion is used (which I would recommend) then B wins. Yes, the example applies to (typical) winning votes based methods. Other approaches like margins and the referenced approach may provide different results. If proportional completion is used, then we need to fill in the preferences of the ones who did not vote: We have 100 voters. - C loses to B, 3-48, means 49 voters did not vote. We split each voter into two: the first has weight 3/51 of a vote and the second 48/51, which gives a total score of 49*3/51+3 vs 49*48/51+48 - B loses to A, 48-49, means 3 voters did not vote. We split each voter into two: the first has weight 48/97 and the second 49/97, which gives a total score of 3*48/97+48 vs 3*49/97+49 - A loses to C, 49-51, means all voters voted. Thus after the proportional completion, the vote tally is the following: - C loses to B, 5,88-94,12. In winning votes the strength of this loss is 94,12. - B loses to A, 49,48-50,52. In winning votes the strength of this loss is 50,52. (delete this link first) What link? - A loses to C, 49-51. In winning votes the strength of this loss is 51. Thus B wins if proportional completion is used. C wins without proportional completion. There are many different approaches to measuring the preference strength of the pairwise comparisons. Winning votes and margins are the most common ones. The referenced approach would be a third approach. It seems to be the proportion of the given votes. Correct? 94,12 = 100/(3/48+1), i.e. the proportion of the preferences (48:3) scaled in another way (100/(1/x+1)) (Shortly back to the original question. Unfortunately I don't have any interesting proportion specific truncation related examples or properties in my ind right now.) Juho Best regards Peter Zborník On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 9:35 PM, Juho juho.la...@gmail.com wrote: On Jun 16, 2010, at 9:39 PM, Peter Zbornik wrote: In what situations will bullet voting help my candidate to win (considering the advanced Condorcet systems)? Here's one more example where a reasonably small number of strategic voters can change the result. 49: A 48: BC 3: CB If the three C voters will truncate then they will win instead of B in winning votes based Condorcet methods. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info 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] Statistical analysis of Voter Models versus real life voting
Simplified models can be used to prove something about real life if one assumes that the model is accurate enough for the situation in question. 2D models are often very good in demonstrating and visualizing some properties of voting methods. But they can thus not be assumed to prove some generic results (with no assumptions on the applicability of the used model). For many cases Yee and 2D models, with some chosen voter distribution etc. may work very well, but one has to check and justify their applicability well before drawing any strong conclusions. Juho Laatu On 28.1.2011, at 15.49, Leon Smith wrote: There are a couple different (honest) voter models that have commonly been used. The two used in Warren's Bayesian Regret simulations and ranked Yee diagrams come to mind, of course. Given access to enough data of fully-ranked, it seems to me that it should be possible, especially with a Yee model, to somehow determine how well that model fits real life. Is a 2-d euclidean plane a with voters ranking based on distance from the candidates a reasonable model? How would you analyze this? Best, Leon 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] a question about apportionment
Luckily Condorcet can use both ranking and rating style ballots (because rankings can always be derived from the more complex rating information). If one uses ratings, voting in Condorcet is easier than in Range in the sense that the voter need not care what numeric scale one uses. The first guess is good enough. Ratings A=1 B=2 C=3, A=1 B=2 C=9 and A=1 B=6 C=9 are equal in Condorcet. It is difficult to say how much a typical voter would spend time and effort to consider strategic aspects when voting. In Range the scale that one uses is important. Ballots A=1 B=2 C=9 and A=1 B=9 C=9 have a very different strategic impact. In Condorcet a typical voter need not care about strategies while in Range a typical voter should consider what the optimal strategy is (unless the Range voter wants to cast a sincere vote without any wish to cast a strong strategic vote, and unless strategies would become usable in some Condorcet election). Sincere voting in Range may thus be easy. Sincere ratings in Condorcet should be as easy or easier. In competitive Range elections every voter should consider what strategy tho choose (and how to rig the vote accordingly) while in Condorcet one may assume that regular voters need not worry about strategies. Juho On 9.5.2011, at 6.53, Jameson Quinn wrote: How hard it is to vote in each system is an empirical, not a theoretical system. The evidence is pretty clear that it is easier for most people to rate candidates on an absolute scale - whether numeric or verbal - rather than ranking them relative to each other. That is true despite the fact that it is illogical, that in some sense it should be easier to give a ranked vote which contains less information. But the fact remains: people can usually vote faster, with less ballot spoilage, and with less self-reported difficulty, under Range as compared to Condorcet. 2011/5/8 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com One of his thoughts caught my eye. On May 8, 2011, at 1:32 AM, ⸘Ŭalabio‽ wrote: With Condorcet, one must rate many candidates and then one must resolve cycles. I prefer scorevoting. We do not usually say rate with Condorcet but, thinking: Two thoughts fit together for Score. We optimize the ratings but, before we can really do that, we need to order the candidates from best to worst. In Condorcet we also need to order the candidates - so it makes sense to separate this shared task before comparing the differences in the systems. So now, comparing the systems: For either, order the candidates from best, that this voter hopes wins, to the collection of worst that this voter equally dislikes and wants to help none of. For Score distribute ratings equally, with equal ratings ok for equal liking - trivial effort. Then optimize ratings - perhaps for each trio, B/S/W, adjust S up to help S beat W, or down to help B beat S - THIS is LABORIOUS. For Condorcet simply rank as sorted, with equal rankings ok, and leaving worst unranked - trivial effort. DONE, for the voter is not concerned with cycles, a task for the method when there are three or more nearly tied candidates that form a cycle. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info 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] I hit upon why rating is easier than ranking.
In sincere / non-competitive Range mid-range default value could make sense. If 0 is the neutral value, then a negative value would mean that the voter prefers a random unknown candidate to that candidate. In competitive elections the default value should normally be the lowest value / ranking for the reason that you mentioned. It is not good if the most unknown candidates are considered better than the most known ones by default. It may well be that in a competitive Approval style election with more than two candidates the well known candidates will get more bottom ratings than top ratings (i.e. there are many bullet votes). Juho On 10.5.2011, at 2.03, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi, So, not everybody knows that you can have equal ranking and truncation in rank methods. But how about this idea that the default rating in Range ought to be mid-range (i.e. half an approval)? Is this defensible? It seems to me you'd get write-ins winning much of the time. Or, if write-ins aren't allowed to profit from this rule, I have to ask why you should have this half-vote privilege just for getting your name on the ballot...? Is the assumption that if people had the opportunity to learn about you, you must have some merit, even if the voters didn't bother? Or would the write-in restriction just be a kludge to prevent total chaos? Kevin Venzke 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] Continuous bias
On 16.5.2011, at 15.30, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: The final of the Eurovision Song Contest of this year was held last saturday. In the vote all countries give points to the songs of all other countries (that made it to the final). The voting traditions are a bit biased. Countries tend to give high points to their neighbours or otherwise similar countries. Countries are not allowed to vote for themselves, but minorities living or working in some country may have considerable impact since they may have sympathies also towards some other country. All this means that in addition to voting for good songs people vote also for their best friends. Eurovision Song Contest is a friendly competition though, and a major carnival, and people don't worry too much about this kind of (well known) voting patterns. Maybe they are just part of the fun and even one essential part of the competition. But as a person interested in voting I started wondering if this kind of voting patterns could be fixed or eliminated. (...) Would this approach maybe be useful and practical somewhere? What other approaches there are to eliminate this kind of systematical bias? There's a problem with this sort of blind compensation, because the method itself can't know whether the bias is because a country is consistently good or because the other countries consistently favor that country. If the country is consistently good, then all countries should give it lots of points. In that case the factors will remain low for all countries. They will get higher only if someone gives (continuously) more points to some song than others do. The given vote is thus compared to the average result of that song only (not to the average points of all the other songs, which is a constant number). Say, for instance, that country X somehow gets very good at making Eurovision songs, so it wins a lot more often than would be expected by chance. Then your compensation scheme would make it harder for X to win; X is punished, ratchet effect style, for being good. It gets even more blurry when you consider that the countries reward each other according to popularity - perhaps the people of the Eastern European countries like the kind of music they themselves make, for instance, so that the bias is indirect rather than direct? Let's say some country makes good songs, and it will get 12, 10 or 8 points from most countries every year. It gets maybe 10 points on average from all the other countries. In that situation a country that gives it 12 points gets a factor of 1.2 which is very low. So, support of good songs will not be punished (or only very lightly). On the other hand giving 12 points to a country that gets on average 0.5 points several years in a row yields a high factor (24). Voting for bad songs is thus a more likely way to gain high factors (for that country with bad songs). It is true that the method to some extent punishes Eastern European countries for liking eastern style songs. Is not the intention of the method to punish for sincere musical opinions. Probably that factor is however not high if Eastern European countries support each others as a (reasonably) unified group. Within a group is is also not possible to give all countries 12 points in the Borda like method of the Eurovision Song Contest. Note also that the assumption that the Eastern European countries support their own songs more than the Western European countries do already implies that the Western European countries must prefer their own songs. They will thus be equally punished, which makes the method neutral again. The next problem is what happens if different blocks are of different size. In the case that the size of some (sincere musical) blocks is two, they will be punished more. But still they would (usually) be punished less than in the case of strategic support between the two countries since in the strategic (/friendly) case the quality of the songs would have no impact on the points given to each others. (The factors will be low if their points vary according to the quality of the song.) The method thus relies on that it is not a common case that one country always likes the songs of another country (good or bad from and good or bad from the point of view of all the countries). Even if that happens, this probably does not have much impact on who wins. It would be however good not to unnecessarily reduce the points of any country. But it is not easy to separate strategic voting from sincere constant and song quality independent to some country. In the Eurovision Song Contest countries tend to produce songs that are liked in all the participating countries (also this fact has been criticized). The Eurovision Song Contest thus does not probably suffer too much from this phenomenon. But there might be other elections where the grouping effect and candidates that are intended
Re: [EM] Continuous bias
On 16.5.2011, at 15.49, Markus Schulze wrote: Hallo, currently, there is the tradition to give 12, 10, 8 points always to its political/ethnic/geographic neighbours. I recommend that a Condorcet method should be used to reduce the effects of this voting behaviour. As Condorcet methods put less emphasis on first preferences, the above voting behaviour would be nivellated over all countries. Markus Schulze Yes, Condorcet methods might be good. Also Borda seems to be quite good in the Eurovision context since I have not heard of countries giving 0 points to good songs that are so good that they might threaten their victory of their favourite songs or their favourite countries (with bad songs). The usual Borda strategies are thus probably not used. Range style methods would be more problematic since all the points could be given to few favourites. Condorcet and other ranking based methods may also be vulnerable to continuous bias. I was trying to find some defence also against one country always ranking some other country first. Similar factors could be counted and the weight of the pairwise preferences of the favoured countries (over others) could be reduced (I mentioned this shortly in the initial mail too). The current method gives high points only to ten best songs. It thus emphasizes the impact of being among the few best songs. Condorcet could support also songs that all find acceptable but not spectacular (=among the top ten). I don't believe this difference would make a big impact anyway. Condorcet would be a good method for Eurovision. It would not eliminate the continuous bias problem very efficiently though. (And as already noted few times, there may not be any need to reduce that continuous bias in the Eurovision Song Contest in the first place.) Condorcet counting process is a bit more difficult to follow than the Borda (or Range) counting process. That may make it a bit less fun in big real-time shows like the Eurovision Song Contest. (Note that votes needed to beat all the others could be a nice way to indicate the state of the vote calculation process to the real-time audience of millions of viewers. :-) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
For a legislature one could use also multi-winner and proportional methods, but I think the question was what single-winner method to recommend. (I'd probably recommend proportional methods for most multi-winner elections, unless the community explicitly wants to have a two-party system.) Jameson Quinn mentioned the kingmakers. Delegating the power to decide who will win to one or few candidates is risky since (depending on the environment) that might lead to buying personal benefits, instead of basing the decision on one's sincere opinions or doing only political trading. Kristofer Musterhjelm mentioned the possibility that the limitations of current voting machines might limit the maximum number of candidates to rank. Good sigle-winner methods tend to require evaluation and some knowledge of at least all the major candidates. Maybe ranking is not much more difficult than other simpler approaches like approval. Different ballot types might be used, depending on the preferences of the community. If the complexity of allocating some preference strength (e.g. a rating) to at least all major candidates is not too much, (almost) any Condorcet method would be a good first guess. (Alternatively also Range could be used for clearly non-competitive (and non-majority-based) polls / elections. But probably the question addressed competitive political elections only.) To pick one of the Condorcet methods one might use criteria related to simplicity, performance with sincere votes, performance with strategic votes (hopefully an maybe likely strategies will be marginal in Condorcet), ability to explain and visualize the results, easy marketing. All Condorcet methods tend to give the same winner in almost all real-life elections since in most cases there is a Condorcet winner, and even if not, the winner still tends to be the same, and even if it was not, then it will be difficult to say which one of the about equal candidates should really have won. Matt Welland discussed the Approval strategies. The strategy of approving some of the frontrunners and not approving some of them is well known. Therefore it makes sometimes sense to distribute fake (or hand picked) polls. One may also distribute different polls or other messages to different target audiences. I wrote something about this few years ago. See http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2006-December/019127.html. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On 26.5.2011, at 7.10, matt welland wrote: On Thu, 2011-05-26 at 01:07 +, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: matt welland wrote ... The only strategy in approval is to hold your nose and check off the front runner you despise because you don't want the other front runner you despise more to win. The main problem is determining (through the disinformation noise) who the front runners really are. Suppose the zero-information front runners to be candidates A and B, but that the media created front runners are C and D. If everybody votes for one of these two falsely advertised front runners, then they become the front runners, but only through self fulfilling prophecy. When unbiased polls are not drowned out by the big money, this is no problem. But after the Citizens United decision, we have to assume that disinformation is the rule, not the exception. For me it seems we are so far from a point were discerning the front runner is anything but blindingly obvious (at least in the US) that it is a complete non-issue. Did any of the alternative candidates get into the two digit range in 2008? The third party candidates are so irrelevant that after a couple searches I still hadn't found a link that mentioned the percentage results to put in this post. I would be thrilled if when voting I even *considered* dropping my vote for the lesser horror front runner in an approval vote. Approval would be a perfect start for the US (assuming that you want to get rid of the two party dominance). It would work fine as long as the small parties/candidates remain small. When there are more than two potential winners, then Approval will face some strategy problems, and possibly also some of the discussed strategic poll related problems. When such problems materialize, then it would be time to change the system again. And at that point the probability of people wanting to return back to the old FPTP and two party domination would maybe be smaller. These concerns are like bikeshedding, we are arguing about the paint color and we don't even have a roof, walls or foundation, hell, we don't even agree on the plans. On this list there are many people with their own inventions and favourite methods, and people who love to study all the possibilities. They may be less all over the place if one makes the difference between theoretical studies and practical implementations. Also pointing out the target environment will reduce the number of possible choices. For example to me Approval is not an ideal theoretical general purpose single winner method, but if we discuss about possible next steps for some single winner elections in the US (where FPTP is used today), and we state getting rid of the two party dominance, then Approval is an excellent choice (maybe not to last forever, but a perfect tool for the current problem anyway). There may also be endless debates e.g. on the properties of the numerous Condorcet variants. Many people on this list agree that Condorcet methods are excellent general purpose single winner methods for competitive majority oriented elections. But if the need to rank (or rate) all major candidates is too much, then some simpler ballots should be used. And it is difficult to get an agreement on which one of the Condorcet methods is the ultimate best one, but that doesn't matter too much since all of them work quite well when compared to many of their competitors. That doesn't mean the debate on this list is not important, it is very important, but I come full circle to my post from a while back. When the knowledgeable experts can't put out a unified front there will be no moving forward. I would have liked this list to find some general agreements on what methods should be generally recommended for practical use in different environments and traditions. That has not happened during the years. With clearly defined targets (e.g. a practical and politically acceptable solution for some particular election in the US within n years), maybe people on this list can at least point out the properties of various approaches. I don't expect consensus on one particular choice. I don't expect people to jointly sign any petition to support one chosen approach. Since the theoretical / scientific / web community is not organized, maybe support should be sought from some more traditional forms of political campaigning (lobbying, political activists, political movements, initiative with a support group). Sorry, it's hard to watch a country which had so much potential to make the human condition better for people all around the world, turn a bit uglier, meaner and, yup, more fascist every day. I suspect that the only thing that can turn this around in a sustainable way is a change in the voting system but without a crystal clear rallying cry from the experts for *ONE* method that will never happen. Truth is that the goals of this list
Re: [EM] remember Toby Nixon?
On 26.5.2011, at 4.35, robert bristow-johnson wrote: being that they choose the same winner in the case that there are only 3 candidates in the cycle, i would recommend Tideman over Schulze (sorry Marcus) for the simplicity of explanation. while getting a Condorcet cycle is expected to be rare enough, how often in real elections in government, would you expect a situation where RP and CSSD will arrive at a different result? If there are only few candidates and clear political agendas and clear differences between them, then cycles of 3 are probably much more common than cycles of 4. If there is a large number of quite equal candidates and no dominant or clear preference orders among the voters, then cycles of 4 and higher could be almost as common. In that case the differences between methods that differ only on cycles of 4 become relevant, maybe not very critical though. The choice between margins and winning votes could impact the results sooner. I guess Schulze is by default winning votes based. Ranked pairs maybe more margins oriented(?). But one could use either depending on one's preferences. If you are looking for simplicity then maybe also minmax should be considered since it (the margins version) simply measures the number of required additional voters to beat all others. That is easy to explain, and also to visualize the results during the counting process (one should pay some attention also to this kind of real-time visualizations). It may pick also outside the top cycle in some extreme situations where the losses within the cycle are worse than the losses of some compromise candidate outside the cycle. Good or bad (to always respect the clone independence or to pick the least controversial winner), maybe a matter of taste. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Statement by this list (was Remember toby Nixon)
On 27.5.2011, at 10.01, Jameson Quinn wrote: This thread, like this list, has two purposes - practical advocacy and mathematical exploration. One could divide the field also further by making a difference between 1) practical advocacy, 2) practical exploration of real life examples, 3) practical method exploration in general, and 4) mathematical (theoretical) exploration. These could mean respectively e.g. 1) active participation in politics, 2) using the current status of some country / election as a basis for the work, 3) general recommendations for presidential elections, and 4) delegation of one's vote to an intelligent computer in a future dystopia, or maybe just plain mathematical properties of some methods. On the practical advocacy front, I'd propose a process: 0. We discuss get some degree of informal consensus on this process itself - I imagine it will take about a week, so say, before Sunday June 5th. 1. We draw up a statement which details the serious problems with plurality in the US context, and states that there are solutions. Leave a blank space for a list of acceptable solutions. This statement, when finished (after step 3) would be signable by any members of this list, completely at their own option. Good approach. I have one comment on the target statement. Expression problems with plurality in the US context contains the assumption that the traditional two-party system in not the correct solution for the US. Expression and states that there are solutions refers to possible solutions at some general and neutral level. This latter formulation is a theoretical statement that does not yet say what the US should do. This is interesting from the point of view that US citizens might want to say what the US should do in this question while the non-US-citizens might be happy with stating the theoretical facts and possible options only. There could thus be two levels. One for practical advocation and political activism within some country and one for general opinions, coming from neutral experts (maybe unwilling to take position on the internal matters of that country). That is, category 1) vs. categories 2) and 3) in my list above. 2. We take a vote on what options to list. We can use betterpolls.com, remembering that the scores there are -10 to 10, and negative/positive is mapped to approval/disapproval. Voting could be a more difficult process than collecting the list of options using sone informal consensus as in point 0. In general I tend to rely on some single person (or few) taking a leading role in creating such a paper that it can be agreed my some critical mass. One can also produce serially multiple versions of the list and paper to find the best combination (that the creators and as large group of supporters as needed are happy to sign). 3. We list the options and the winner(s) in the statement and sign it. 4. When we have a good number of signatures, we put out a press release to some bloggers who've shown an interest in the issue (e.g. Andrew Sullivan) Would we be the list of supporters? That sounds easier than using the name of this list. My hope is that, despite the varied opinions, we could say something clearly and strongly enough to have an impact. I'm sure there are many points where most (or at least many credible) experts agree and that would bring useful information to politicians, practical reformers and regular voters. Maybe it would take some strong individual(s) dedicated to this kind of practical matters to extract those opinions out from the rest of the experts. I'd be happy to see some general statements with wide consensus among experts on how the voting practices could be improved allover the world (i.e. also practical facts that can support real life decisions in addition to personal opinions and mathematical facts). Juho JQ Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 28.5.2011, at 23.16, robert bristow-johnson wrote: On May 28, 2011, at 3:41 PM, S Sosnick wrote: On 27-May-2011, Jameson Quinn, wrote, I agree [with Juho Laatu]. If minimax is twice as likely to be adopted, because it's simpler, and gives 95% of the advantage vs. plurality of the theoretically-best Condorcet methods, then it *is* the best. And besides, if we try to get consensus on which is the absolutely best completion method, then almost by definition, we're going to end up arguing in circles (cycles?). I also agree. More noteworthy, however, is that Nicolaus Tideman does, too. At page 242 of Collective Decisions and Voting (2006), he says, If voters and vote counters have only a slight tolerance for complexity, the maximin rule is the one they would reasonably choose. will minimax of margins decide differently than ranked pairs? if the cycle has only three candidates, it seems to me that it must be equivalent to ranked pairs. With cycles of three maybe the main difference between the most popular methods is the choice between margins and winning votes. In addition to that minmax may elect outside the top cycle in the rare case that the defeats within the top cycle are all stronger than any of the losses of some candidate outside the top cycle. is there any good reason to use minimax of winning votes (clipped at zero) over minimax using margins? I guess the usual arguments on e.g. strategic voting and strength of pairwise comparisons apply on this comparison in both directions. If one looks for simplicity and ease of explaining the method and ease of following the vote counting process, then margins has some advantages since, as said, it always measures the number of additional (first preference) votes each candidate would have needed (or would still need) to beat all other candidates. it seems to me that a candidate pairing where Candidate A just squeaks by Candidate B, but where a lotta people vote should have less weight than a pairing where one candidate creams the other, but fewer voters weighed in on it. In margins pairwise victory of 55-45 is as strong as 35-25. In winning votes 55-45 is as strong as 55-5. In the margins example 35 is not a majority but it is 40% bigger than 25 (while 55 is only 22% bigger than 45). In the winning votes example both victories have majority but in the latter one the winning side has more than ten times the number of votes of the other side. It is hard to say what kind of a rule would be ideal for all elections. Minmax(margins) in a way relies on the required additional voters philosophy when measuring the strength of preferences. (There are also other approaches to measuring the pairwise preferences, like counting the proportion, e.g. 55/45 = 122%.) Juho -- r b-j r...@audioimagination.com Imagination is more important than knowledge. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 29.5.2011, at 1.33, Kevin Venzke wrote: Margins elects A here: 35 AB 25 B 40 C Is this going to be defensible when this method is proposed? Can you argue a case for A without mindreading off of the blank areas of the ballots? I guess the common assumption is that the unranked candidates are considered to be tied at the last position. So, vote B should be read BA=C. (The intended meaning of B and BA=C is thus the same by default. Some methods may however have an implicit approval cutoff at the end of the explicitly ranked candidates. In that case vote B should be interpreted B | A=C and BA=C should be interpreted BA=C |, but I consider that to be a special case. If the voter has some preference between A and C (and she wants to express it), then the voter should mark that in the ballot, since otherwise there is no other sensible interpretation but that A and C should be treated as equal. If there are so many potential winners in the election that one can not expect all voters to rank all potential winners, then we may lose some of the information that the voters wanted to give. I'm not sure if I answered properly to the mindreading point here but those were my thoughts anyway.) Why would margins elect A then? The explanation is simple from the margins point of view. If we elect A then there are 40 voters saying that C should have been elected instead of A and 5 less saying than A is better. If we elect B then there are 35 voters saying that A should have been elected instead of A and 10 less saying than B is better. If we elect C then there are 60 voters saying that B should have been elected instead of C and 20 less saying than C is better. From that point of view A is the least controversial winner. A would need only 6 additional votes to become a Condorcet winner and beat all others. the voters give you a single majority decision (more than half the voters) and that's the one you don't respect? That could happen in margins. It is possible that the winner is opposed by a majority of the voters, and in all other pairwise comparisons the winning side has less than majority of the votes, but those comparisons are stronger when measured as difference between winning and losing side (e.g. 30: AB, 21:B, 49: C). I'm not sure when majorities should be given precedence and what majorities that would mean. In large elections there is seldom a majority of all the people or the whole electorate. In the case of margins above in all the pairwise comparisons the winning side had majority of all the voters that wanted to express their opinion in that pairwise contest (although not a majority of all the valid ballots of that election). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Statement by this list (was Remember toby Nixon)
On 29.5.2011, at 2.09, James Gilmour wrote: On 27.5.2011, at 10.01, Jameson Quinn wrote: 1. We draw up a statement which details the serious problems with plurality in the US context, and states that there are solutions. Juho Laatu Sent: Friday, May 27, 2011 9:43 PM Good approach. I have one comment on the target statement. Expression problems with plurality in the US context contains the assumption that the traditional two-party system in not the correct solution for the US. I would respectfully suggest that this statement is not correct. I don't think JQ's statement says or implies anything about the traditional two-party system. But even if the electors and voters in the USA wanted and voted only for the traditional two-party system, there could be, and probably would be, problems with plurality, even in the US context. Plurality frequently distorts the voters' wishes, is inherently unstable, and even when it delivers acceptably balanced representation overall there are often electoral deserts where one party or the other has almost no representation despite having significant voting support there, even when there are only two parties. And I think you need to distinguish between the two types of election that occur in the US context: election to a single-office (city mayor, state governor, etc); and election to a representative assembly (city council, state legislature with upper and lower houses, federal legislature with upper and lower houses). These two types of election present different opportunities for securing representation of the voters within a system of representative democracy. These are more fundamental issues that I would suggest you need to address, and they are quite independent of any consideration of the number of parties (or the number of effective parties) that might come later. JG Ok, I agree that plurality may have problems also within an otherwise well working two-party system. And a two-party country might well have single winner elections that are not partisan and contain several candidates that are not associated with the two parties. Or maybe we want to have a method that allows both parties to nominate more than one candidate. In all these cases we might need also improved methods. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember toby
On 29.5.2011, at 3.53, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: I agree with Kevin. Winning Votes is much better and easier to defend. Kevin Venzke referred to the number of disappointed voters on the winning side (that will be overruled in the case of a top cycle). That's one concern. I have some problems finding good explanations behind the winning votes philosophy. One problem is that also the losing side votes should have some weight. 51-49 seems almost tied and 50-0 seems almost unanimous (although only half of the voters gave their opinion on this pairwise comparison). 49: AB 49: C 2: BC In this example there seem to be two large parties, one of which has two candidates (good and bad). In addition there are 2 voters that don't vote like the others do. It is not easy to me to defend the WV philosophy that B should win this election. In margins one can discuss if 55-45 should really be equal to 15-5 but to me it seems that margins is at least roughly in the correct direction all the time anyway. But I still think that we should go with a method that is does not require the voters to rank the candidates. From simplest to less simple but still simple enough: 1. Asset Voting 2. Approval 3. DYN 4. MCA 5. The Bucklin Variant of Venzke and Benham Filling an Approval ballot is technically easier than filling a Condorcet ballot (there can be many different kind of ballots). But isn't Bucklin already in in the Condorcet category of complexity (=to give rankings or ratings to at least all potential winners)? If one has only limited number of slots available (like in some of the methods), then the interesting question is how good results will Condorcet methods give if the number of ranks is limited to some fixed number (to make voting and/or ballot format simpler). Although Approval ballots can be simpler technically, the complexity of strategy selection in Approval may make it more complicated than Condorcet voting in the minds of some voters at least. One argument in favour of (the simplicity of) Condorcet methods is thus that usually strategic thinking is not needed. Giving one's sincere rankings is already enough and with good probability the best strategy for all voters. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 29.5.2011, at 5.07, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Sam 28.5.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : Margins elects A here: 35 AB 25 B 40 C Is this going to be defensible when this method is proposed? Can you argue a case for A without mindreading off of the blank areas of the ballots? I guess the common assumption is that the unranked candidates are considered to be tied at the last position. So, vote B should be read BA=C. (The intended meaning of B and BA=C is thus the same by default. Some methods may however have an implicit approval cutoff at the end of the explicitly ranked candidates. In that case vote B should be interpreted B | A=C and BA=C should be interpreted BA=C |, but I consider that to be a special case. If the voter has some preference between A and C (and she wants to express it), then the voter should mark that in the ballot, since otherwise there is no other sensible interpretation but that A and C should be treated as equal. If there are so many potential winners in the election that one can not expect all voters to rank all potential winners, then we may lose some of the information that the voters wanted to give. I'm not sure if I answered properly to the mindreading point here but those were my thoughts anyway.) The mindreading point is that you are having to say if the voters wanted to say something they could have said it. I'm not sure this will be persuasive because you can't offer an assurance that those voters could vote that way without risking something. This is why I suggest that you had better force voters to rank everyone in a margins method. In som sense margins does this. Vote B gives the same result as half vote BAC and half vote BCA together. Or statistically the results are the same if all uncertain voters will flip a coin and vote either way. In WV A and C will be considered as equal, too - it just won't count that voter as a schizophrenic who always feels 50% cheated no matter what happens between the two. This was not an easy explanation :-). Juho Kevin 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] Generalized symmetric ballot completion (was Hybrid/generalized ranked/approval ballots)
On 29.5.2011, at 16.06, Peter Zbornik wrote: On the other hand I might rather prefer My Political Opponent to be elected than Pol Pot. Thus a ballot on the form AXMy Political OpponentPol Pot, might be a good idea to allow. I like this kind of explicit cutoffs more than implicit ones (at the end of the ranked candidates) since implicit cutoff easily encourages truncation. If people like to truncate their strongest opponents we might end up having bullet votes only. That would mean that we would be back in plurality, and all useful information of the ranked votes would be gone. The explicit cutoff works well in elections where it is possible not to elect anyone (maybe keep the old elected alternative, or maybe arrange a new election after a while). One could also have elections where there are many possible outcomes, e.g. a seat for 6 months or a seat for 2 years (A2yBC6mD). In these cases it is possible to measure quite reliably which candidates fall into which categories (e.g. approvable enough). The detailed rules on how to interpret e.g. a pairwise defeat to a cutoff entity have to be agreed. Using the cutoff to give negative votes to candidates below the cutoff line (in the sense that such negative votes would really decrease their chance of winning candidates above the cutoff line) may be problematic since people could start giving negative votes to their worst competitors as a default strategy. There have been also various proposals allowing strength of preference to be expressed (e.g. ABCDE). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Generalized symmetric ballot completion
is guaranteed. Maybe an election type could be devised which makes a bottom-up proportional ranking. At the start of the election, as many seats as there are candidates are elected, then in each subsequent round one candidate is dropped util we have a Condorcet winner. Example: start with six candidates and elect five of them in a five-seat Condorcet-STV election, check if we have a Condorcet winner, if not, out of these five, elect four of them in a four-seat election and check if we have a Condorcet winner if not elect three of them in a three-seat election. Amon the three elected there is always a Condorcet winner. Well, it's a new method at least.Could be worth trying out, maybe it will help resist burying or have some other nice properties. Do you or anyone else around on this list have a reference to where the debate between IRV and Condorcet stands today (pros and cons of the methods respectively)? Personally I am not yet convinced that Condorcet is a better method than IRV when it comes to resisting tactical voting. They are quite different methods with respect to strategic voting. To me the promise of Condorcet methods is that in typical political elections they may avoid (rational) strategic voting even completely. If there is a top level cycle, then people may afterwards think I should have voted that way, but it is not easy to know what to do (except to vote sincerely) before the election. In IRV one may end up sooner in situations where e.g. some voter group knows that it should compromise (and thereby improve the result of the election). This may happen e.g. when a Condorcet winner is about to be eliminated at the first round and as a result the other side is likely to win. This example is not really on resisting tactical voting but on requiring tactical voting. Maybe this describes my first thoughts on this topic well enough. I will not try to prove these claims here (that would require too many lines of text :-). IRV had some problems at least in Burlington in 2009 (the Condorcet winner was eliminated). To summarize my thoughts also after reading the mail... - I like explicit cutoff marks when they carry a clear agreed message that voters can easily and sincerely (not to implement a strategy) rank (e..g. between acceptable and non-acceptabe candidates) - Ranked ballots can thus be efficiently used for collecting also additional information in addition to basic ranking data - In elections where there is no clear cutoff information to be collected, basic rankings will work fine (i.e. no need for fixes in the basic case, it works fine as it is) - There are many possible rules on how to take the cutoffs into account in the vote counting process (check impact on strategic voting) Juho Best regards Peter Zborník On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: On 29.5.2011, at 16.06, Peter Zbornik wrote: On the other hand I might rather prefer My Political Opponent to be elected than Pol Pot. Thus a ballot on the form AXMy Political OpponentPol Pot, might be a good idea to allow. I like this kind of explicit cutoffs more than implicit ones (at the end of the ranked candidates) since implicit cutoff easily encourages truncation. If people like to truncate their strongest opponents we might end up having bullet votes only. That would mean that we would be back in plurality, and all useful information of the ranked votes would be gone. The explicit cutoff works well in elections where it is possible not to elect anyone (maybe keep the old elected alternative, or maybe arrange a new election after a while). One could also have elections where there are many possible outcomes, e.g. a seat for 6 months or a seat for 2 years (A2yBC6mD). In these cases it is possible to measure quite reliably which candidates fall into which categories (e.g. approvable enough). The detailed rules on how to interpret e.g. a pairwise defeat to a cutoff entity have to be agreed. Using the cutoff to give negative votes to candidates below the cutoff line (in the sense that such negative votes would really decrease their chance of winning candidates above the cutoff line) may be problematic since people could start giving negative votes to their worst competitors as a default strategy. There have been also various proposals allowing strength of preference to be expressed (e.g. ABCDE). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info 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] Generalized symmetric ballot completion
On 31.5.2011, at 12.58, Peter Zbornik wrote: That would be, I think the smallest improvement on IRV, which could make a positive change in real life and would support centrist candidates. From the Condorcet criterion point of view, the Condorcet winner is a good, often centrist candidate. If Condorcet criterion is one of the targets to be met, then IRV could be modified appropriately. One simple trick that has been proposed is to eliminate the pairwise loser of the two candidates with least votes (instead of eliminating always the candidate that has least votes). (If IRV is used to pick candidates for a second round, and if centrists are interesting, then maybe Condorcet winners should be kept.) - Using explicit cutoff just as an extra candidate that voters can use as a strategic tool to generate big defeats to some candidates is more problematic (you can try to bury someone under X without any risk of electing X) You can try to bury someone under all other candidates anyway. Introducing a null-candidate as a cuttoff does not change that. Yes, but in traditional burial there is always a risk that when voters lie that candidate Z is better than it is (in order to bury someone) that introduces also a risk of electing Z, and that is one key factor that makes burial strategy usually too dangerous to try. If there is a candidate that can be used for burying but that can not be elected, burying may become less risky and therefore more common. My approach to the various criteria is that one should take into account also how much some method violates some criterion. No proper method meets them all. Condorcet methods are very good from this point of view in the sense that although they fail Later-no-harm there is usually and by default no harm ranking also later candidates. Same with burial. They are vulnerable to burial but usually and by default one need not worry about burial (=not a practical strategy in typical large public elections with independent voters). OK for public elections, but for a political party, where voting strategy is the name of the game? The risk of rational strategies increases if the election is competitive (all political elections tend to be), the number of voters is small, their voting behaviour can be reliably and centrally coordinated (e.g. direct commands from one's own party), information on the planned strategy does not leak out to others, when the preferences of all voters are already known (maybe there already was a test vote), and when other groups are probably not going to use any strategies. If there are multiple parties that may apply strategies and counter strategies things come more complicated again. Things may become more complex also if some groups try to fool others or hide information by giving false messages and false data in polls (maybe in a coordinated way) before the actual election. In small elections strategies may thus become easier, but still, it is hard to generate any easy rules that could be followed by a strategic grouping to implement rational and successful strategies in Condorcet methods. My understanding thus is, good for almost any competitive elections. Actually I have asked on this list couple of times for good strategy advices for practical elections (i.e. 100% accurate information of the given votes + option of exactly one grouping to change their voting behaviour after the election will not do (this is how the vulnerabilities are typically described on this list and elsewhere)) but I have not seen any yet. (I have my own favourites for the weakest spots, none of them not terribly weak, but I'd like others to step out and tell how Condorcet methods can be fooled best when the available information is just few inaccurate and contradictory polls, and the opinions are likely to still change a bit before the election day.) Do you have any references for your statements concerning usually and by defaults? That was just my way of saying that vulnerabilities exist but they tend to be marginal. If there is a top level cycle, then people may afterwards think I should have voted that way, but it is not easy to know what to do (except to vote sincerely) before the election. I don't aggree. There is polling and the voter normally knows who is the biggest competitor to the favored candidate. The competitor is buried. The voters for the competitor bury your favorite candidate, and the winner is a nobody that no-one cared enough about to out-maneuver and noone supports, but also noone dislike. In a polarized environment that is not an unlikely scenario. Are you saying that general burying of one's competitors is a rational strategy for all voters? I.e. is that strategy likely to bring more benefits than problems? I believe that in most cases burial is harmful to the strategist. I do not personally like the idea of keeping the voter uninformed of the workings
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 1.6.2011, at 5.46, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: I agree with Kevin that elect the CW if there is one, else elect the candidate ranked (or ranked above last) on the greatest number of ballots is plenty simple, and is much more satisfactory than MinMax or Copeland in other respects. In what sense is the above mentioned implicit approval cutoff + Approval to resolve is the best simple method? If compared to MinMax, is it maybe easier to explain to the voters, more strategy free, or yields better winners? Would an explicit approval cutoff be fine (to allow full rankings to be given)? Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 1.6.2011, at 13.48, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, Hi, I was busy with other activities for a while but here are some comments. --- En date de : Mer 1.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : I agree with Kevin that elect the CW if there is one, else elect the candidate ranked (or ranked above last) on the greatest number of ballots is plenty simple, and is much more satisfactory than MinMax or Copeland in other respects. In what sense is the above mentioned implicit approval cutoff + Approval to resolve is the best simple method? If compared to MinMax, is it maybe easier to explain to the voters, more strategy free, or yields better winners? Would an explicit approval cutoff be fine (to allow full rankings to be given)? It is surely easier to explain than MinMax, If we talk about the sincere voting procedure, then MinMax voter only needs to rank candidates, but if loops are resolved using implicit Approval, then the voter should know in addition to the idea of ranking that truncation means that the remaining candidates are not approved. The voter needs to decide where to truncate. Or alternatively one could let the voters vote without knowing that truncation means disapproval. That would give more power to those that have the knowledge (although not very much if approvals are expected to come into play only seldom). I note also that if we don't tell to the voters how their ballots will be interpreted, then all Condorcet methods become very similar from the sincere voting procedure point of view (just rank the candidates sincerely and that's it). If explanation to regular voters should contain strategic voting aspects, then the methods become more complex to the regular voter. I don't know if voters should be trained to use of approval as a tie breaker or if those properties should be hidden from the voters as discussed above. Burial would be even more difficult to explain (but maybe not recommended to the voters). In Approval all voters are expected to vote strategically (=decide where to put the cutoff), but if one uses approval only for tie breaking then one need not be as careful as with normal Approval. If we talk about the vote counting process (with sincere votes) and how to explain it, then we have a two phase explanation (=Condorcet winner, and alternatively sum of all the ticks in the ballots if there is no Condorcet winner) vs. a one or two phase MinMax explanation (elect the candidate worst worst defeat is least bad. MinMax(margins) is quite simple since it is enough to refer to the number of additional votes each candidate would need to win all others (if doesn't already). None of the explanations is quite obvious to average voters if one has to explain the difference between having a Condorcet winner and not having a Condorcet winner. The MinMax(margins) specific explanation is maybe easiest (and still fair, clear and exact enough) to present without talking about the probabilities of having or not having a top cycle. If we seek simplicity, I'd be happiest to explain the voting procedure simply just rank the candidates and use the MinMax(margins) additional votes explanation if the voters need to know how the votes are counted. has more obvious burial disincentive (especially if the comparison is to margins), All Condorcet methods have a burial incentive with some variation between different methods. I don't know why margins would be more problematic than winning votes. I mean that they have different kind of vulnerabilities and disincentives, and it is not straight forward to say which ones are more problematic. Also Condorcet with approval as a tie-breaker has its own burial problems, although the approval cutoff introduces also some risk to the burying strategy. I'll give one example of a burying strategy when approval is used for tie-breaking. 49: AB 02: BA 49: C A wins. But if the two B supporters vote BC, then there is a cycle, implicit approvals will be used, and B wins. One possible comment to this strategy problem is that A supporters could truncate and not approve B (that seems to come from the same party or the same coalition at least). In that case all the big groupings could simply bullet vote and only the small ones would rank their second favourites. That approach could kill the chances centrists that are not the first candidates of one of the major groupings as potential compromise candidates and Condorcet winners. It seems I have to give one more example to cover also cases where the difference between major an minor candidates is not that clear. 26: AB 25: BA 49: C Again, if two of the B supporters vote BC, then B wins. If some A and B supporters truncate in order to defend against burying or as a general safety measure against the other competing grouping (A and B supporters may not guess right which one of them will have more votes), then C wins. Before the election A and B
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
Here are some random observations about the SODA method. There should be a full definition of the method somewhere. If there are three candidates and their declared preferences are ABC, BCA and CAB, the method may introduce some additional problems. If most voters delegate, then we may easily have a cycle (easier than usual). It will not be easy to decide who will delegate votes to the others. If we have a centrist candidate (C) and left wing (L) and right wing (R) candidates, then it is problematic for C to decide whether to declare CLR or CRL. Some of C's right wing oriented supporters might be lost if C decides to declare CLR. C could ask for help from a less known person C2 to take part in the election C2's declared preferences could be C2CRL. Now the right wing oriented supporters of C will have a more sensible way to vote. Since C will not not rank C2, there is not much risk that C2 will be elected. One step further, maybe C could be allowed to give two preference orders, CLR and CRL. Then we are not far from allowing any preference order and full rankings. The votes could be delegated in multiple ways. The nominated candidate could decide how many to approve (in one or several phases). The nominated candidate could delegate the vote to the next one in chain so that the next one in chain would get also the right to delegate (or not) the vote further (using the original preference order). There is some smoke in the room in the sense that always when some nominated persons are given the right to decide the destiny of large number of votes (=delegated power), there is a possibility of trading the votes. One can imagine that some candidates would take part in the election only or mainly for this purpose - to get some votes and then decide how (how far in the chain) to sell them. (The price could typically be e.g. a nice seat in some office.) That's enough for now, Juho On 5.6.2011, at 7.01, Jameson Quinn wrote: Message contents: Section 1. When isn't SODA more condorcet compliant than condorcet methods Section 2. Smoke-filled rooms? Section 3. What are we looking for, anyway? (in this thread) Section 1. When isn't SODA more condorcet compliant than condorcet methods 2011/6/4 fsimm...@pcc.edu For the benefit of those who are advocating ranked ballots in order to achieve Condorcet Compliance, note well that Jameson has a good argument that SODA, a simple method that uses only a Plurality style ballot, is more Condorcet Compliant than most well known Condorcet methods. I believe that is true in a practical sense. However, I should note that I'm not claiming that SODA achieves the impossible. As with other methods, (attempted) strategy could spoil its condorcet compliance. I'll explain how, and why I think that wouldn't happen. First off: I'd like to note that I'm mostly worried about burial strategy here. Generally, favorite betrayal strategy is useful to break an honest Condorcet cycle to your advantage, while burial is useful to create a false cycle which gives you some advantage. Since I think that honest cycles will be rare, I'm more worried about the latter. Also, psychologically, most people have a much higher propensity for burial than for favorite betrayal. At any rate, in all the discussion that follows, I will assume that there is an honest pairwise champion (CW). So, in SODA, burial/truncation is still possible in several ways: 1. A candidate could cause a cycle through burial, and thus avoid the (known, unique, strong, stable) Nash equilibrium for the honest pairwise champion. However, that can only work to their advantage if the other candidates actually believe that the false, strategic preference order, or if they manage to exploit a dishonest strategic mistake by another candidate. I believe that high-profile frontrunner candidates could not plausibly claim a false preference order, so this strategy would be ineffective. 2. Individual voters could use truncation (not burial, because it's approval). For instance, voters could prevent their votes from being delegated in order to engage in games of chicken to ensure that their preferred near-clone was elected. This is a fundamentally unnecessary risk, however. The near-clone with an honest lead does not need such tactics, and the near-clone who is behind will probably need a dangerously large number of voters to do such tactics. I don't see how this could be coordinated on an effective scale in real life without backfiring. 3. Individual voters could vote for false flag minor candidates whose honest preference ordering happened to be the strategic burial ordering that they sought. I find this totally implausible, though; this requires a level of cold-bloodedness and sophistication that only a tiny portion of people have. So when is SODA voting more condorcet-compliant than Condorcet methods? When there is an honest
[EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
There has been quite a lot of discussion around the strategic vulnerabilities of Condorcet methods on this list recently. In general I think Condorcet methods are one of the least vulnerable to strategies, and in most typical elections their vanilla versions are simply good enough. In the case that people would start voting strategically there is one interesting defensive strategy that has not been discussed very much. The defensive strategy is to not tell your sincere opinions in the polls. Most Condorcet strategies are based on quite accurate understanding on how others are going to vote. If I expect someone to play foul play, I might just refuse to give the required information to them, and recommend others to do the same. (Also giving planned false information to mislead the strategists is possible, but more difficult.) This approach does not work about irrational voters that will bury anyway, just in case that might help. But the point is that in Condorcet elections the best strategy, in the absence of good information on the preferences, is to vote sincerely. In real life this strategy could be mentioned as a possibility in the case that strategic voting becomes threatening. The outcome hopefully is such that all parties, experts and media would recommend voters to vote sincerely and not try strategies. That would be better to all than having to live without the interesting polls. What do you think? Is this a way to drive away possible evil spirits and strategy promoting parties, experts and media? Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 8.6.2011, at 16.33, Jameson Quinn wrote: It's easy to minimize the problems with one's preferred systems, and focus on the problems with other systems you see as competing for mindshare. It's not even dishonest: the truth is that, compared to the giant issues with plurality, any good system has problems that are minor, but that on the other hand such minor problems would still be a hurdle in convincing voters to make a switch. But I don't think it's getting us much of anywhere to argue this back and forth. Let's imagine these minimizing-the-issues points were all granted, on all sides. Say Condorcet had negligible strategy, Range strategy were always unbiased, and SODA had no smoky rooms. (I think that all three propositions are close enough to true to use as an approximation.) I think that it's undeniable then that SODA would have the simplest balloting and Range the best results. So I, personally, don't see the attraction of Condorcet when compared to other proposals. I think the attraction of Condorcet methods is in that they 1) can collect very well sincere ranking information, 2) work also in competitive environments, 3) offer a sound basis for majority based elections (Condorcet criterion). Condorcet methods chat can be seen as a major local optimum in the methods space. Range is a nice method for some environments. It differs from Condorcet methods in 1) since it can not collect sincere ratings reliably, 2) since it has some Approval like problems in competitive elections when the number of potential winners is higher than two (while Condorcet's problems can be claimed to be typically negligible), 3) since it (=sincere ratings) is not majority based. One might consider the sum of ratings philosophy to lead to better winners than the majority decides philosophy. Even if on prefers the sum of ratings philosophy, majority decides philosophy could be considered better in competitive elections since one can not expect voters to provide sincere ratings if they have also the ability to decide by majority (as e.g. in two candidate Range elections). Range is thus a nice method, but mainly for environments that are non-competitive and where we want to follow the sum of ratings philosophy. This was one argument why Condorcet can be considered to be a clear local optimum in the typically competitive political elections. In SODA simplicity is one of the main targets. Although it has some nice properties like electing often Condorcet winners and avoiding many strategy and smoke filled room related problems, I'm not sure that it would automatically offer more than Condorcet methods do. Because of its simplicity and its ability to argue benefits over plurality it may be a good candidate in environments that now use plurality. I.e. all good methods but I still tend to think that for competitive political elections Condorcet methods may provide a quite good local optimum. In Condorcet the ballot filling procedure is more complex than in SODA, but if that is not a problem, then Condorcet might work very well in most typical political elections (maybe the strategy problems will not appear, maybe also that poll related defensive strategy that I mentioned could be used if something strange happens). But... I'd rather find a way to agree than fight about it. In my other recent message, I suggested that we put forward SODA and one simple Condorcet method as the practical proposals in some statement which people here could sign on to. Yes, it would be good to find better agreement on what would be good methods for practical elections. Based on this discussion I see Condorcet methods as good general purpose single-winner methods for competitive environments. Range is good only for certain environments as discussed above. SODA may be good especially when simplicity of the voting procedure is sought. In SODA I'm most worried about the Approval related problems, maybe also possible trading of votes, but it is an excellent idea and method anyway. In general a good approach when recommending different methods could be to list sincerely the benefits and problems and recommended use for each good method (good = can be considered to be a local optimum in some environments). The list of recommended methods could be a long one, a short one, targeted for certain target audiences or maybe all possible (single-winner and/or multi-winner) environments. Juho Jameson 2011/6/8 Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk There has been quite a lot of discussion around the strategic vulnerabilities of Condorcet methods on this list recently. In general I think Condorcet methods are one of the least vulnerable to strategies, and in most typical elections their vanilla versions are simply good enough. In the case that people would start voting strategically there is one interesting defensive strategy that has not been discussed very much
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 8.6.2011, at 16.15, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/6/8 Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk Here are some random observations about the SODA method. There should be a full definition of the method somewhere. I've posted a full definition. However, this definition included my additional step of recounting the top two without mutually-delegated votes. In further off-list conversation with Forest, I've realized that this addition, while it may be marginally helpful, does not fundamentally change the dynamics of the situation, and so is not worth the extra complexity. Here's the full definition without it: 1. Before the election, candidates (including declared write-ins) submit full rankings of other candidates. Equality and truncation (equal-bottom) is allowed in these rankings. These rankings are made public. I'm just wondering what the difference between a declared write-in and a regular candidate is. Maybe declared write-ins are candidates that have failed to meet some of the nomination criteria and that therefore will not get their own row in the ballot sheet or will not get a candidate number of their own (depends on what kind of ballots are in use, but the point is that voter must write their full name in the ballot). These declared write-ins must probably register themselves anyway as candidates in order to officially declare their preferences. Maybe votes to write-ins that have not officially declared their preferences are not allowed in the election at all. Or maybe votes to them are just always non-delegated approval votes. 2. Voters submit approval ballots, with up to two write-ins. Do not delegate is a valid write-in. Your definition seems to define also the used ballot format. That's ok although often the formal descriptions of methods don't cover this. Note that most countries of the world don't use the write-in option. Is this a recommendation that if they start using SODA they should support write-ins in general or that they should have a write-in slot to support the do not delegate feature? 3. All approvals are counted for each candidate. Bullet votes for each candidate are also counted. These totals are made public. 4. After a brief period (probably a couple of weeks) for analyzing and discussing these first-round results, all candidates, in a simultaneous and temporarily-secret ballot, decide how many rank levels (from their initial ranking in step 1) to delegate to. They may not delegate to candidates they ranked at the bottom (since this is strategically identical to delegating to nobody and withdrawing from the race). If A delegates to B, a number equal to A's bullet votes is added to B's approval total. I note that - candidates must delegate all or no votes, and all to the same level - couple of weeks is a long time to wait for the results - those couple of weeks probably include lost of negotiations, maybe to the level of agreeing how every candidate delegates (or at least a group that has power enough to agree what the outcome is) - I guess temporarily-secret means that the final vote of each candidate will be published afterwards - these rules assume one round of voting (i.e. not e.g. approvals that could be extended step by step) - empty votes are not allowed (maybe not necessary to ban, and many candidates could effectively cast an empty vote anyway, e.g. by not approving anyone else but themselves) 5. The candidate with the highest approval total after step 4 wins. Depending on the environment the winner could be agreed already before the second round, or alternatively all candidates would just, one by one, cast the vote that they consider best, and the end result could be a surprise. If there are three candidates and their declared preferences are ABC, BCA and CAB, the method may introduce some additional problems. If most voters delegate, then we may easily have a cycle (easier than usual). It will not be easy to decide who will delegate votes to the others. Actually, the strategy in such a cycle is simple and stable. Say C has the fewest bullet votes. C has no hope of winning C could still win, if for example candidate B would be happy to compromise and approve C. , so C delegates to A Is there moral pressure and an agreed rule that the one with least bullet votes should at east approve one/some of the others? , so B delegates to C, so A delegates to B. These are logical consequences after C's decision if B and A can be sure that the previous steps in this chain of decisions will be implemented with certainty. C however does not like the idea of B winning. C could cancel his plan to delegate to A, and he could tell this to A. A could then cancel his plan to delegate to B (if he trusts C). A would win. A and C would be happier. Actually any two of the candidates could make an agreement on the winner. They could also agree e.g. that X will be the president and Y
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 8.6.2011, at 18.58, Jameson Quinn wrote: In SODA I'm most worried about the Approval related problems, Do you mean the near-clone game-of-chicken problems? Yes. These apply to WV Condorcet methods too (although less-obviously to an unsophisticated voter), and with margins, there is the opposite burial problem: All methods have problems. We need to evaluate their importance in practical elections one by one. 35: AB 25: B 40: C What if, instead of being a game of chicken between A and B Did B already truncate? , this is a trick where A is burying their natural ally C? Many strategies have such mirror images. In general, I think that by reducing the number of players in the game of chicken, and providing perfect information to those players, SODA does more to avoid these problems than any non-asset, non-revoting-runoff system I can think of off the top of my head. The game of chicken is not an easy problem to solve, because if you try too hard, you end up with the opposite problem. Yes, finding the best balance is not always easy. At least it takes time to identify and analyze all the possible scenarios and their problems. Btw, I tend to think that often it is even better to fail multiple criteria than only few. The reason is that when one violates multiple criteria then it may be possible to violate each one of them only so little that it does not cause andy meaningful problems. The weakest link of a chain may be strongest when one does not spend all one's available resources and material in making only few of the links as strong as possible. maybe also possible trading of votes, but it is an excellent idea and method anyway. In general a good approach when recommending different methods could be to list sincerely the benefits and problems and recommended use for each good method (good = can be considered to be a local optimum in some environments). The list of recommended methods could be a long one, a short one, targeted for certain target audiences or maybe all possible (single-winner and/or multi-winner) environments. From my experience talking to normal people not already interested in voting or math, I think that it is very important to keep your list of proposals short. 1 is good, 2 is tolerable, 3 is approximately pointless, and anything more is clearly counterproductive. My experiences in negotiations say that it is usually best to have only one proposal, with one option that the decision makers can then solve in the correct way. :-) Since I understand that I'm probably not going to convince the condorcet supporters here, I'm willing to include a Condorcet proposal. Do you think it is a mistake to include Condorcet methods? Of course this depends on where you are going to make that proposal. If Condorcet methods do not have any chances, then it may be better not to include them, except as targets that can be shot down to make some other methods look better :-). But if we are talking about practical promotion of methods, the environment may require the input to be written for that environment only. Theoretical material that aims at collecting best available information together is a different animal. Since I value offering a simple option, I think that proposing (Some Condorcet) or SODA is better than just advocating (Some Condorcet). Still, I strongly urge that our statement should not go beyond two well-explained proposals, though it should endorse by simple mention a number of other systems (Schulze, Range, MCA, MJ...). I think I covered these matters already in another mail. I don't know yet what your targets are (what kind of a paper, for what audience). Juho Jameson 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] Challenge2 - give an example where MFBC is violated for Condorcet methods
On 7.6.2011, at 10.53, Peter Zbornik wrote: I'd say that FBC (and LNH) is quite a big problem for Condorcet methods, at least for someone (like me) who think sincere voting should be the norm. One could also claim that in typical political elections Condorcet methods will work fine, and people need not worry about the fact that these methods fail FBC and LNH. FBC does not mean that there would be a clear need to consider betraying one's favourite candidate, and LNH does not mean that there would be a clear need to consider truncating one's vote in order not to harm oneself. A much better advice to the voters is to vote sincerely. (And I note again that I have not seen good general advices on how people could in practice exploit the theoretical vulnerabilities of Condorcet methods in real elections.) It seems that there is a risk, that Condorcet methods are reduced to plurality-like methods due to voting strategies that exploit the fact that FBC and LNH do not hold. That could happen in principle, but I believe in most environments that would not be the case. And even if that would happen, probably those fears (leading to bullet voting or plurality-like methods) would be irrational. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 9.6.2011, at 1.31, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Mer 8.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : There has been quite a lot of discussion around the strategic vulnerabilities of Condorcet methods on this list recently. In general I think Condorcet methods are one of the least vulnerable to strategies, and in most typical elections their vanilla versions are simply good enough. In the case that people would start voting strategically there is one interesting defensive strategy that has not been discussed very much. The defensive strategy is to not tell your sincere opinions in the polls. Most Condorcet strategies are based on quite accurate understanding on how others are going to vote. If I expect someone to play foul play, I might just refuse to give the required information to them, and recommend others to do the same. (Also giving planned false information to mislead the strategists is possible, but more difficult.) This approach does not work about irrational voters that will bury anyway, just in case that might help. But the point is that in Condorcet elections the best strategy, in the absence of good information on the preferences, is to vote sincerely. In real life this strategy could be mentioned as a possibility in the case that strategic voting becomes threatening. The outcome hopefully is such that all parties, experts and media would recommend voters to vote sincerely and not try strategies. That would be better to all than having to live without the interesting polls. What do you think? Is this a way to drive away possible evil spirits and strategy promoting parties, experts and media? I don't see this working because you will never be able to disguise who the frontrunners are. I agree that there is always some information on the popularity of different candidates (also without any polls). But does this mean that it would be a working strategy (=likely to bring more benefits than harm) e.g. to always bury one of the assumed frontrunners under one of the assumer non-frontrunners? Is there some well known strategy that would work in this situation? In my recent simulations, when some voters saw the advantage of using burial strategy Was this decision (saw the advantage) based on highly inaccurate information like being able to guess who the frontrunners might be? , the defensive strategy used in response seems to be compromise strategy, as opposed to truncation or burial-in-turn, things that risk ruining the result. That is, there are voters who know they can't expect to gain anything by voting sincerely, so they play it safe. I agree that there are situations where some voters will not lose anything by using whatever strategy with even some infinitesimal hope of improving the outcome (e.g. when they know that otherwise the worst alternative will win). But how can they know (based on the limited available information) that sincere voting will not help them? Do they know for certain that some strategy is more likely to help (and not harm) them? So I expect that methods with greater burial incentive will just have more (voted) majority favorites I didn't quite get this expression. Would this be bullet voting by majority or what? , and candidate withdrawals Does this mean having only few candidates or ability to withdraw after the election and thereby influence the counting process or...? I didn't quite catch what the impact of this to the usefulness of the reduced poll information based defensive strategy would be. Could you clarify. Did you say that already very rough information on which candidates are the frontrunners would give sufficient information to the strategists to cast a working (=likely to bring more benefits than harm) strategic vote (in Condorcet methods in general or in some of them)? Juho , to avoid the problem. (You still can't use Borda.) Kevin Venzke Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 9.6.2011, at 4.51, Dave Ketchum wrote: On Jun 8, 2011, at 1:32 PM, Juho Laatu wrote: On 8.6.2011, at 16.15, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2. Voters submit approval ballots, with up to two write-ins. Do not delegate is a valid write-in. Your definition seems to define also the used ballot format. That's ok although often the formal descriptions of methods don't cover this. Note that most countries of the world don't use the write-in option. Is this a recommendation that if they start using SODA they should support write-ins in general or that they should have a write-in slot to support the do not delegate feature? Nothing said here of ballot format except for being Approval and capable of two write-ins. Do not delegate is a command entered as if a write-in. I was thinking about the write-ins. They were actually mentioned already in the previous bullet, but this bullet said that there should be two such slots. I guessed that if there are such write-in slots, maybe there is also an assumption that regular candidate names are listed next to the write-ins. I could at least guess what kind of ballot was intended. Alternatives to what I described above could include ballots and elections that do not recognize write-ins (I guess write-ins are not an essential part of the SODA method anyway). One could also e.g. vote based on candidate numbers and white ballots to write those numbers in. I thus considered the ballot format that I imagined based on the description to be maybe one good approach but not the only possible or mandatory format for SODA. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 9.6.2011, at 5.04, robert bristow-johnson wrote: i still think this Asset thingie is crappy. it is *immaterial* how candidates rank or value the other candidates. the only thing that matters is how the electorate values the candidates. No Smoke-Filled Rooms!!! Yes, there are risks. If one wants the electorate to make the decision, then delegation may be problematic. My default example that tries to point out the line between direct and delegated elections is this one: Millions of voters vote on who will be the president; voting power is delegated to candidates; one of the candidates will get the power to decide; that candidate (= one of the voters) then can and will decide if the next president is A or B. One problem is that millions of voters may feel disappointed since this one person made the final decision instead of them. One problem is that people may fear that this person traded his vote for money or political position or something else. One problem is that some of the supporters of this deciding candidate chose A instead of their favourite B. In SODA this last problem is reduced because of the pre-declared preferences, but still a voter with preference order CXYBA could have bullet voted for candidate C with declared preference order CXYAB. So, at least the voters should be made well aware that in these elections there may be some trading before the final decision. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Challenge2 - give an example where MFBC is violated for Condorcet methods
that voters could as well forget their existence and just vote sincerely without any worries instead. I guess i also assumed that voters would wake up if something special around these strategies starts happening some day (i.e. they can forget the topic and expect others to warn them if something special happens some day around this topic). Maybe a better (more neutral and descriptive) term (instead of typically irrational) to describe this kind of strategies could be e.g. no need to consider or no need to worry (at least not until further notice by the experts). Juho Best regards Peter Zbornik On 6/8/11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: On 7.6.2011, at 10.53, Peter Zbornik wrote: I'd say that FBC (and LNH) is quite a big problem for Condorcet methods, at least for someone (like me) who think sincere voting should be the norm. One could also claim that in typical political elections Condorcet methods will work fine, and people need not worry about the fact that these methods fail FBC and LNH. FBC does not mean that there would be a clear need to consider betraying one's favourite candidate, and LNH does not mean that there would be a clear need to consider truncating one's vote in order not to harm oneself. A much better advice to the voters is to vote sincerely. (And I note again that I have not seen good general advices on how people could in practice exploit the theoretical vulnerabilities of Condorcet methods in real elections.) It seems that there is a risk, that Condorcet methods are reduced to plurality-like methods due to voting strategies that exploit the fact that FBC and LNH do not hold. That could happen in principle, but I believe in most environments that would not be the case. And even if that would happen, probably those fears (leading to bullet voting or plurality-like methods) would be irrational. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 9.6.2011, at 11.23, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/6/8 robert bristow-johnson r...@audioimagination.com (this is worse than IRV.) i (and i would hope that most intelligent voters) do *not* want someone else voting for me in elections. And in SODA, you and anyone else who feels that way can easily make sure it doesn't happen. Why do you want to deny me and the people who feel like me the right to If we assume that it is ok to allow each voter to decide if he/she will delegate or not, there is still one smaller problem left. If the ballot would contain also option I will delegate my vote to myself then both paths would be in a rather similar position. Now those voters that do not want to delegate their vote (to others for further decisions on how the vote will influence the outcome of the election) have more limited choices (only fixed approvals) than those that delegate. Only the delegated votes may make further decisions based on the outcome of the first round and negotiations between the rounds. A voter that does not want to delegate may be interested in active participation in the second round too. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 9.6.2011, at 5.28, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Mer 8.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : --- En date de : Mer 8.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : There has been quite a lot of discussion around the strategic vulnerabilities of Condorcet methods on this list recently. In general I think Condorcet methods are one of the least vulnerable to strategies, and in most typical elections their vanilla versions are simply good enough. In the case that people would start voting strategically there is one interesting defensive strategy that has not been discussed very much. The defensive strategy is to not tell your sincere opinions in the polls. Most Condorcet strategies are based on quite accurate understanding on how others are going to vote. If I expect someone to play foul play, I might just refuse to give the required information to them, and recommend others to do the same. (Also giving planned false information to mislead the strategists is possible, but more difficult.) This approach does not work about irrational voters that will bury anyway, just in case that might help. But the point is that in Condorcet elections the best strategy, in the absence of good information on the preferences, is to vote sincerely. In real life this strategy could be mentioned as a possibility in the case that strategic voting becomes threatening. The outcome hopefully is such that all parties, experts and media would recommend voters to vote sincerely and not try strategies. That would be better to all than having to live without the interesting polls. What do you think? Is this a way to drive away possible evil spirits and strategy promoting parties, experts and media? I don't see this working because you will never be able to disguise who the frontrunners are. I agree that there is always some information on the popularity of different candidates (also without any polls). But does this mean that it would be a working strategy (=likely to bring more benefits than harm) e.g. to always bury one of the assumed frontrunners under one of the assumer non-frontrunners? Is there some well known strategy that would work in this situation? No, I wouldn't say that. I do think there are methods that offer two bad options and one of them is burial, though. (There is no working strategy, but there are some options??) In my recent simulations, when some voters saw the advantage of using burial strategy Was this decision (saw the advantage) based on highly inaccurate information like being able to guess who the frontrunners might be? What? The voters are participating in repeated polling, and have the ability to see not just each poll's outcome but what they could have accomplished by doing anything else. Buriers see that burial is an advantage if the opposing side is sincere. When pawn-supporting voters compromise, the buriers have no reason to revert to sincerity. (They don't even know what sincerity is.) You seem to assume repeated polling, sufficiently accurate results, unchanging results, similar results from all the polling companies, no intentionally misleading polls, no meaningful changes in behviour before the election day, no interest to give false information in the polls, maybe no impact of planned strategies on the voting behaviour of others, good enough control of the strategists (if needed). If what you're asking is whether this could be thwarted by not revealing any polls to the voters, then I can't address that. My voters have to have polls in order to learn how the method works. In some methods like Approval poll information is needed to cast a vote in line with the typical recommendations on how to vote (= approve one of the frontrunners etc.). One could also have Approval elections without such information. In that case voters would not vote strategically but would maybe mark those candidates that they approve for the job. In Condorcet the basic assumption is however that voters can sincerely rank the candidates. Doing so tends to improve the outcome of the election. The strategy of making polls unreliable may thus improve the outcome of the election. , the defensive strategy used in response seems to be compromise strategy, as opposed to truncation or burial-in-turn, things that risk ruining the result. That is, there are voters who know they can't expect to gain anything by voting sincerely, so they play it safe. I agree that there are situations where some voters will not lose anything by using whatever strategy with even some infinitesimal hope of improving the outcome (e.g. when they know that otherwise the worst alternative will win). But how can they know (based on the limited available information) that sincere voting will not help them? Do they know for certain that some strategy is more likely to help (and not harm) them
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
Yes, that's about it. But of course the situation is still somewhat uncomfortable to regular voters that are not interested and active enough to register themselves or that are unwilling to reveal their preferences to all (i.e. no secret vote allowed), but that would like to participate also in the second round. Juho On 9.6.2011, at 12.49, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/6/9 Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk On 9.6.2011, at 11.23, Jameson Quinn wrote: 2011/6/8 robert bristow-johnson r...@audioimagination.com (this is worse than IRV.) i (and i would hope that most intelligent voters) do *not* want someone else voting for me in elections. And in SODA, you and anyone else who feels that way can easily make sure it doesn't happen. Why do you want to deny me and the people who feel like me the right to If we assume that it is ok to allow each voter to decide if he/she will delegate or not, there is still one smaller problem left. If the ballot would contain also option I will delegate my vote to myself then both paths would be in a rather similar position. Now those voters that do not want to delegate their vote (to others for further decisions on how the vote will influence the outcome of the election) have more limited choices (only fixed approvals) than those that delegate. Only the delegated votes may make further decisions based on the outcome of the first round and negotiations between the rounds. A voter that does not want to delegate may be interested in active participation in the second round too. Technically speaking, SODA as defined allows this. Register as a write-in, declare your preferences (thus voluntarily ceding your right to a secret ballot), bullet-vote for yourself, and you are free to participate in the second round. The system is still satisfied, because second-round voters still have perfect information on the declared preference order of all other second-round voters. However, this would create logistical problems if it were too common an option. Simply publishing thousands of declared preference orders (desirable in the first round and mandatory in the second) would be difficult. And by increasing the number of second-round voters, the advantage that it's easier to ensure cooperation in a smaller group (to resolve the near-clone chicken) would be lost. Ideally, then, the rules for declaring yourself as a write-in and pre-announcing your preferences would contain some hurdle(s) just high enough to keep people from doing it frivolously. Something like a minimum-length candidate statement and a $25 dollar filing fee would be plenty; heavy enough to keep thousands of people from doing it, but light enough to be an insignificant burden to anyone who's remotely serious about it. Jameson 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] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 10.6.2011, at 3.04, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Jeu 9.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : No, I wouldn't say that. I do think there are methods that offer two bad options and one of them is burial, though. (There is no working strategy, but there are some options??) Absolutely. I'm being honest when I say I don't know how I would vote in the simplest election. If all I know is that my preference order is ABC and the frontrunners are A and B, what should I do? Let's go over it. 1. Vote sincerely, ABC. On a gut level I *don't want* to do this. B is the candidate I am trying to beat. Why do I want to help him beat C? Maybe you strongly dislike C and therefore want to make sure that C does not win. You however mentioned that A and B are the frontrunners. Maybe C has no chance of winning this election (with sincere votes at least). In that case it does not (technically) matter how you will rank C. But also in this case (where C is totally irrelevant in this election) you could have secondary goals (the primary goal is to decide who wins this time). Maybe you want to discourage C and his supporters so that they would not try again in next elections, or maybe you want to tell all the people how many people think C and C's party is no good (people might follow your opinion). Maybe you want to vote sincerely in order to encourage also others to do so and avoid elections becoming a playground of strategists. You could also vote sincerely because you want the election to act as a poll that measures the opinions of the society reliably and will offer guidance to the decision makers for the next few years. This can actually help B and it will never help A. I feel like a sucker if I expose myself to this risk for no possible benefit. I do not need to know whether there is *really* a threat; it makes no sense for me. I guess the Condorcet logic should be that the risk of indicating your sincere opinion (BC) harms you with such a low probability that it doesn't matter. The benefits (maybe secondary) are bigger than the risk. 2. Lie, and vote ACB. Now I'm a bad guy who you think must have some strategy in mind for picking this manner of voting. Maybe strategic, maybe misled to think that ranking C above B would always decrease the chances of B to win, maybe you want to discourage B by showing that he is not much more popular than C. If I thought B voters were going to use this same strategy against me then in voting like this I might just be defending myself. You are also taking a risk that C will win, despite of not having any chances with sincere votes. If many A and B supporters rank C second and C has also some first preference supporters, C could become a Condorcet winner. But outside of that possibility, maybe I just don't have any good options? How about sincerity as the default rule? If others are likely to generate (sincerely or by strategic votes) a loop, then your strategic options are a bit different than otherwise. But it is hard to know if there will be a cycle or not. I will not try to analyze all the alternatives here, but there are still many options and many risks. 3. Bullet-vote for A. Nope, not if this is margins. That's just splitting the difference or flipping a coin. Isn't that how it should be? AB=C is pretty much the same as sincere opinion I don't know which one is better, I might as well flip a coin. It's childish to vote like this. But actually, I think I might vote this way, just because I wouldn't have to feel like either a sucker or a jerk for doing it. It's your duty as a good citizen to give your sincere rankings and this way help the society to better know the opinions of the citizens. Falsifying your preferences is a bit like cheating. Right? What? The voters are participating in repeated polling, and have the ability to see not just each poll's outcome but what they could have accomplished by doing anything else. Buriers see that burial is an advantage if the opposing side is sincere. When pawn-supporting voters compromise, the buriers have no reason to revert to sincerity. (They don't even know what sincerity is.) You seem to assume repeated polling, sufficiently accurate results, unchanging results, similar results from all the polling companies, no intentionally misleading polls, no meaningful changes in behviour before the election day, no interest to give false information in the polls, maybe no impact of planned strategies on the voting behaviour of others, good enough control of the strategists (if needed). Your description isn't that unfair. Changes are possible, but most methods and scenarios become pretty stable. Last minute changes in opinions are possible. Their strength may be different in different societies and depending on random factors like last week debates, new revealed scandals etc. I am skeptical about the concept
[EM] C//A (was: Remember Toby)
On 9.6.2011, at 4.54, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Mer 8.6.11, Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com a écrit : I was busy with other activities for a while but here are some comments. --- En date de : Mer 1.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : I agree with Kevin that elect the CW if there is one, else elect the candidate ranked (or ranked above last) on the greatest number of ballots is plenty simple, and is much more satisfactory than MinMax or Copeland in other respects. In what sense is the above mentioned implicit approval cutoff + Approval to resolve is the best simple method? If compared to MinMax, is it maybe easier to explain to the voters, more strategy free, or yields better winners? Would an explicit approval cutoff be fine (to allow full rankings to be given)? It is surely easier to explain than MinMax, If we talk about the sincere voting procedure, then MinMax voter only needs to rank candidates, but if loops are resolved using implicit Approval, then the voter should know in addition to the idea of ranking that truncation means that the remaining candidates are not approved. The voter needs to decide where to truncate. Or alternatively one could let the voters vote without knowing that truncation means disapproval. That would give more power to those that have the knowledge (although not very much if approvals are expected to come into play only seldom). I note also that if we don't tell to the voters how their ballots will be interpreted, then all Condorcet methods become very similar from the sincere voting procedure point of view (just rank the candidates sincerely and that's it). If explanation to regular voters should contain strategic voting aspects, then the methods become more complex to the regular voter. I don't know if voters should be trained to use of approval as a tie breaker or if those properties should be hidden from the voters as discussed above. Burial would be even more difficult to explain (but maybe not recommended to the voters). In Approval all voters are expected to vote strategically (=decide where to put the cutoff), but if one uses approval only for tie breaking then one need not be as careful as with normal Approval. I don't recommend that voters not be instructed on how the method is supposed to work. I think with C//A it is easier to explain how to find the winner, and the strategy becomes obvious. No defeat strengths are involved. MinMax has its strategy too, and this is harder to perceive because the method rules are harder to understand. If we are taking about simple explanations to regular voters then maybe all the strategy related aspects should be considered not-simple. C//A's counting process is quite simple (to explain) although its counting process has two phases that differ from each others. I don't think e.g. the elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others would be more complex. If we talk about the vote counting process (with sincere votes) and how to explain it, then we have a two phase explanation (=Condorcet winner, and alternatively sum of all the ticks in the ballots if there is no Condorcet winner) vs. a one or two phase MinMax explanation (elect the candidate worst worst defeat is least bad. MinMax(margins) is quite simple since it is enough to refer to the number of additional votes each candidate would need to win all others (if doesn't already). None of the explanations is quite obvious to average voters if one has to explain the difference between having a Condorcet winner and not having a Condorcet winner. The MinMax(margins) specific explanation is maybe easiest (and still fair, clear and exact enough) to present without talking about the probabilities of having or not having a top cycle. You have to explain CW either way. Not necessarily, but that need might pop up. For example in the MinMax(margins) explanation above (elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others) CW is not mentioned. Some voters might however start wondering in what kind of situations the winner does not win all others. In that case that individual voter might need someone to explain that sometimes there is a CW and sometimes not. If we seek simplicity, I'd be happiest to explain the voting procedure simply just rank the candidates and use the MinMax(margins) additional votes explanation if the voters need to know how the votes are counted. When I think of simplicity I mean that the voters would actually understand how the method works. I don't think you will have much luck proposing methods if you don't think voters need to understand them. Can you find an angle / sales pitch that dodges this? I believe most people are not interested in the vote counting process. The voting procedure and general idea of the method must be easy to understand
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
On 9.6.2011, at 5.48, Jameson Quinn wrote: It seems I have to give one more example to cover also cases where the difference between major an minor candidates is not that clear. 26: AB 25: BA 49: C Again, if two of the B supporters vote BC, then B wins. If some A and B supporters truncate in order to defend against burying or as a general safety measure against the other competing grouping (A and B supporters may not guess right which one of them will have more votes), then C wins. Before the election A and B groupings could both claim that they are bigger and therefore they should truncate, and all the voters of the other grouping should rank also the candidate of the other grouping. This second example comes close to the traditional Approval strategy related problems where near clone parties/candidates fight about who must approve whom. The strategic problems of approval as a tie-breaker and winning votes are also quite closely related. The method isn't perfect, no. I don't believe this kind of scenario has a good resolution. I think in practice one of those candidates will drop out, and while that's bad, I don't think we can do much about it. I'm not claiming that this scenario has a perfect resolution, but I do think that SODA does pretty well here. By providing perfect information on which group is bigger (25 vs 26 in the above), by reducing the players in the game of chicken from thousands to two, and by providing incentives in terms of future credibility to those two players to behave in at least an arguably-honest fashion, I think that SODA would dramatically reduce the chances of a car crash, or even the wrong car ending up in the ditch. In this example SODA certainly is an improvement over basic Approval. There is a risk that some A and B supporters will cast bullet votes without delegation. Does that mean that one should try to discourage this kind of truncation. Actually the method already does so if bullet vote by default means that the vote is a delegated vote. Maybe the most risky scenarios are just like in this example, and things would be quite ok if voters that do not delegate would approve at least two candidates. Juho JQ 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] C//A (was: Remember Toby)
On 11.6.2011, at 6.09, Dave Ketchum wrote: Why are we here? It certainly made sense to come and explore. . We find ourselves asking the voters to do some truncating. . Counters may have to adjust counting ballots. Among the many variant Condorcet methods there are various ways of handling cycles that are close to defining CWs - why not start from here, especially for such cycles? I like this thinking since I have been advertising the simplicity of elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others :-). That is a clear (one possible) extension of the Condorcet criterion. Why are we here then? I tend to think that the reason is the fact that Condorcet methods have some vulnerabilities like interest to compromise and burial. Especially burial looks bad since there some grouping can potentially make their favourite win by falsifying their preferences (compromising is less dramatic than this). In an otherwise excellent method these vulnerabilities look even worse. We don't have a tradition of using Condorcet methods in competitive elections, so we don't really know how people will react to them, and that makes us fear that they might even collapse. As a result there have been active studies on how Condorcet methods could be defended and how Condorcet voters could defend themselves in case something goes badly wrong. Since there have been lots of studies, there has been also lots of focus on these vulnerabilities. Various campaigns in favour of different methods may also seek problems in other methods, and one needs to defend against such claims. All this has made strategic questions maybe the most central topic in Condorcet related discussions. And still, we don't even know how much different strategies will be a problem in real life elections. My hunch is that they may be less of a problem than all this discussion might imply. When we have discussed all the strategies for long, the other line of discussion, namely performance with sincere votes, has not received equal attention. I think it s also essential that when a method picks some candidate we have clear reasons why just this candidate was chosen. Otherwise the method may look just like a random collection of rules that pick a random winner. Condorcet methods are however never quite that bad since we can assume that in many elections there is a Condorcet winner and we can quite well explain why that candidate was a good choice. There are people who may not like the idea of electing sometimes someone with less first preference support than some other candidates, but we have to live with that and either claim that the Condorcet approach is the best one or at least one reasonable one (and that we have not seen any better rules that would work also in competitive majority based elections). One more essential reason behind not having clear answers to why it is difficult to identify agree what the best methods are is the existence of cyclic group preferences. Such cyclic preferences do not follow the thinking patterns that we are used to when discussion about linear / transitive preferences. We expect the opinions of individual voters to follow these rules, but we should not treat group opinions the same way. Individuals can quite easily say which candidate they like best. But we need some completely new thinking to be able to address the question which candidate is the best for a group. Anyway, although there are many complexities on the path, I think we should be able to find few exact formulations on which candidate could be considered to be the best. Such rules may vary depending on the needs of the society but I'm sure some of the rules are good general purpose rules too. And of course we have to take into account that we can only use rules that do not lead into problems in the area of strategies (we know that e.g. number of pairwise losses may not be a good rule in environments where people can nominate any number of candidates). If we assume that real world experiences will show that in many or most societies people can refrain from (other than marginal) strategic activities when using Condorcet, we might be in a position to pick the Condorcet method that we consider ideal from the sincere ballots and best winner point of view. And if that is not the case, maybe we can try tricks like the false polls trick that I advertised in other mails to force peop le back to decent voting practices rather than change the method to some other method that does not elect as good candidates with sincere votes. All in all, even though there can be no perfect voting methods I'm quite hopeful that we can do pretty well here. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 12.6.2011, at 0.26, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Ven 10.6.11, Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com a écrit : --- En date de : Jeu 9.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : No, I wouldn't say that. I do think there are methods that offer two bad options and one of them is burial, though. (There is no working strategy, but there are some options??) Absolutely. I'm being honest when I say I don't know how I would vote in the simplest election. If all I know is that my preference order is ABC and the frontrunners are A and B, what should I do? Let's go over it. 1. Vote sincerely, ABC. On a gut level I *don't want* to do this. B is the candidate I am trying to beat. Why do I want to help him beat C? Maybe you strongly dislike C and therefore want to make sure that C does not win. Sure... If... You however mentioned that A and B are the frontrunners. Maybe C has no chance of winning this election (with sincere votes at least). In that case it does not (technically) matter how you will rank C. With sincere votes at least you're right, I can do whatever I feel like doing. I can be insincere. So can everyone thinking along the same lines. But also in this case (where C is totally irrelevant in this election) you could have secondary goals (the primary goal is to decide who wins this time). Maybe you want to discourage C and his supporters so that they would not try again in next elections, or maybe you want to tell all the people how many people think C and C's party is no good (people might follow your opinion). This is all possible, but mostly I figure C is just a candidate who has only earned attention from me because I have to think about what to do with him strategically on my ballot. I don't usually hate the also-rans, though I do tend to wonder if they are qualified. They don't get that much press. Maybe you want to vote sincerely in order to encourage also others to do so and avoid elections becoming a playground of strategists. It seems like that would work backwards. If I vote sincerely I am making it safer for others to lie. Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote about thresholds. If the society thinks that it is ok to vote strategically, then many may do so. If you vote strategically, others will be tempted to follow you. You could also vote sincerely because you want the election to act as a poll that measures the opinions of the society reliably and will offer guidance to the decision makers for the next few years. Will you argue this for sincere Range voting as well? The thresholds with Range are very different. In competitive elections normalization and Approval strategies are so obvious that people must forget sincere ratings, go over the threshold, and start voting strategically. Sincere Range may however work fine for judges in sports events. As a voter, I think I know best... Thus I don't want to vote sincerely if this creates a risk for me. Now if I lie, there is a risk as well, but only if there is actually a danger that C will win due to voting shenanigans. That has little to do with *me*, that would be what other voters are doing anyway. This can actually help B and it will never help A. I feel like a sucker if I expose myself to this risk for no possible benefit. I do not need to know whether there is *really* a threat; it makes no sense for me. I guess the Condorcet logic should be that the risk of indicating your sincere opinion (BC) harms you with such a low probability that it doesn't matter. The benefits (maybe secondary) are bigger than the risk. Well, the risk from voting CB is also quite low, and there is actually some potential benefit there. Doubly so if most voters think as you do and go with the sincere route. But if voting CB is obvious to you, maybe it is obvious to all ABC voters. That could already mean quite a number of votes. And that could mean trouble. Maybe BAC voters would do the same. I wonder how many strategists it would take to make C a Condorcet winner. Or would your CB vote be just marginal noise in the election and only very few ABC and BAC voters would vote that way? In that case we can tolerate it. The frustrating thing is that the B:C contest shouldn't matter... When I consider what to do with it I am mostly thinking with my A vs B hat on. 2. Lie, and vote ACB. Now I'm a bad guy who you think must have some strategy in mind for picking this manner of voting. Maybe strategic, maybe misled to think that ranking C above B would always decrease the chances of B to win, maybe you want to discourage B by showing that he is not much more popular than C. Why misled? I don't believe that ranking CB always hurts B any more than I think that ranking BC always *helps* B defeat A. No always about it. You are an expert, so you do know. But it seems plausible that there are always some voters that rank the worst
Re: [EM] C//A (was: Remember Toby)
On 12.6.2011, at 2.07, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Ven 10.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : I don't recommend that voters not be instructed on how the method is supposed to work. I think with C//A it is easier to explain how to find the winner, and the strategy becomes obvious. No defeat strengths are involved. MinMax has its strategy too, and this is harder to perceive because the method rules are harder to understand. If we are taking about simple explanations to regular voters then maybe all the strategy related aspects should be considered not-simple. C//A's counting process is quite simple (to explain) although its counting process has two phases that differ from each others. I don't think e.g. the elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others would be more complex. The explanation may not be not much more complex. It is the strategy where I say MinMax is more complicated and, more importantly, hard to grasp. I recommend sincere voting. Teaching multiple strategies to regular voters is far too difficult. If you teach someone how C//A works, I think you get the strategy understanding almost for free. What is the general guidance? Maybe to rank those candidates that the voter approves. I don't see any way to go from the terse MinMax definition to an instinctive understanding of the strategy (or, if you wanted to suggest it, the reasoning why you wouldn't need a strategy). It may be undesirable that C//A has an approval strategy component at all, but that is a different question to my mind. If we talk about the vote counting process (with sincere votes) and how to explain it, then we have a two phase explanation (=Condorcet winner, and alternatively sum of all the ticks in the ballots if there is no Condorcet winner) vs. a one or two phase MinMax explanation (elect the candidate worst worst defeat is least bad. MinMax(margins) is quite simple since it is enough to refer to the number of additional votes each candidate would need to win all others (if doesn't already). None of the explanations is quite obvious to average voters if one has to explain the difference between having a Condorcet winner and not having a Condorcet winner. The MinMax(margins) specific explanation is maybe easiest (and still fair, clear and exact enough) to present without talking about the probabilities of having or not having a top cycle. You have to explain CW either way. Not necessarily, but that need might pop up. For example in the MinMax(margins) explanation above (elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others) CW is not mentioned. Some voters might however start wondering in what kind of situations the winner does not win all others. In that case that individual voter might need someone to explain that sometimes there is a CW and sometimes not. This feels like a shell game to me. The concept of beat all others is what you need to explain. I don't care whether you call it CW or avoid the term. Ok, that explanation could be called also an extended CW rule (nothing more needed). If we seek simplicity, I'd be happiest to explain the voting procedure simply just rank the candidates and use the MinMax(margins) additional votes explanation if the voters need to know how the votes are counted. When I think of simplicity I mean that the voters would actually understand how the method works. I don't think you will have much luck proposing methods if you don't think voters need to understand them. Can you find an angle / sales pitch that dodges this? I believe most people are not interested in the vote counting process. The voting procedure and general idea of the method must be easy to understand (but no mathematically exact description is needed). People are happy enough if the method seems good enough and experts and their own party are not complaining about its possible problems. If we take for example a country that uses D'Hondt to allocate seats, only some voters are able to explain how the D'Hondt allocation is actually counted. Most voters vote happily despite of this and have considerable trust on the method. It is possible that the complexity of a method will be used against it in some reform campaigns but maybe that's a different story. This is not really a problem of the regular voters but just a campaign strategy. Defendability in campaigns is a valid separate topic for discussions though. Sorry, I thought that was part of this topic. It is a great part of my concern here. Ok, also that is a major concern if there are people who want to use all the propaganda that they can get in their hands against you. has more obvious burial disincentive (especially if the comparison is to margins), All Condorcet methods have a burial incentive with some variation
Re: [EM] C//A
On 11.6.2011, at 13.30, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: On 9.6.2011, at 4.54, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Mer 8.6.11, Juho Laatu juho.la...@gmail.com a écrit : I was busy with other activities for a while but here are some comments. I think with C//A it is easier to explain how to find the winner, and the strategy becomes obvious. No defeat strengths are involved. MinMax has its strategy too, and this is harder to perceive because the method rules are harder to understand. If we are taking about simple explanations to regular voters then maybe all the strategy related aspects should be considered not-simple. C//A's counting process is quite simple (to explain) although its counting process has two phases that differ from each others. I don't think e.g. the elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others would be more complex. I think voters could be confused over that where one truncates actually matters to the method. That is, the method isn't resolvable if everybody votes untruncated and there's a cycle; no single ballot can break the tie unless it also breaks the cycle. Further, if only some people truncate, that would give power to them. So yes, the implied double use of the ballot could add more complexity. Instead of the complexity being in front (seemingly complex method), it's in the back, somewhat akin to the strategy equilibria you can get in the seemingly simple plain Approval method. Cutoffs add information but implicit cutoffs may also decrease information because of truncation. That could make the winner less ideal than with fully ranked (also ties possible) votes. All available information may help solving ties. Not necessarily, but that need might pop up. For example in the MinMax(margins) explanation above (elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others) CW is not mentioned. Some voters might however start wondering in what kind of situations the winner does not win all others. In that case that individual voter might need someone to explain that sometimes there is a CW and sometimes not. One doesn't have to explain the concept of the CW in least reversal Condorcet or Copeland either, nor Tideman or (I think) Schulze. Even for the Condorcet-IRV hybrid methods, you could slink your way out of defining the CW. For instance: Repeatedly eliminate the Plurality loser among uneliminated candidates until one of the remaining candidates beats all the other remaining candidates one-on-one. This defines the CW indirectly without mentioning the name CW itself. The winner of this method isn't a true CW either, because it's only a CW with regards to the uneliminated candidates. Perhaps you could define Minmax, as an algorithm, like this: A candidate beats another if more voters prefer the former to the latter than the latter to the former. If a candidate beats another, the strength of his victory is equal to how many voters prefer the former to the latter (WV). If a candidate beats another, the strength of his victory is equal to the number of voters preferring the former to the latter, less the number of voters preferring the latter to the former (Margins). If a candidate is beaten by another, the other candidate's victory is his defeat. Elect the candidate whose worst defeat is least. (Possible tiebreak: Break ties by electing the candidate whose second worst defeat is the least. Break further ties by third worst, fourth worst, and so on. If the tie remains after all defeats have been considered, flip a coin/ask the legislature/random voter hierarchy.) Some methods pass the Condorcet criterion without seeming Condorcet-like at all. Nanson and Baldwin, for instance, look like Borda IRV. BTR-IRV always keeps the CW in the running and so also elects the CW when there is one. None of these examples are monotone, but hey. If we take for example a country that uses D'Hondt to allocate seats, only some voters are able to explain how the D'Hondt allocation is actually counted. Most voters vote happily despite of this and have considerable trust on the method. It is possible that the complexity of a method will be used against it in some reform campaigns but maybe that's a different story. This is not really a problem of the regular voters but just a campaign strategy. Defendability in campaigns is a valid separate topic for discussions though. It might be useful to look at places that have complex methods and find out how they got passed. As far as I know, the (quite complex, computer calculated) Meek's method is used in certain New Zealand elections. How did that happen? How did the voters accept it? Perhaps some of that knowledge can be applied to electoral reform elsewhere. My best guess is that there were some active individuals with marketing skills
Re: [EM] C//A
On 12.6.2011, at 2.17, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Another solution is to infer the rankings from range style ballots. (As a retired teacher I find iot easier to rate than to rank, anyway.) Maybe the default ballot formats should also have names or something. A rating based ballot could be such that there is a row for each candidate name, and then there are columns from 9 to 0, and then the voter ticks some marks in the ballot. A ranking based ballot could be such that there is a row for each candidate name, and then there are columns from 1st to 10th, and then the voter ticks some marks in the ballot. These ballots were however almost similar. What ballot format did you assume? Maybe ballots that have a box where the voter can write a number (rating). Maybe a voting machine that can rearrange the candidates on the screen in the correct ranking order. Maybe a voting machine where the voter pushes buttons (next to the candidate names) one by one. Maybe a white paper where the voter can write the numbers of the ranked candidates in the correct order. My point is just that maybe we should have some definitions for the most common ways to fill a ballot (or u se a voting machine). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] C//A (was: Remember Toby)
On 13.6.2011, at 5.37, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, --- En date de : Sam 11.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : --- En date de : Ven 10.6.11, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk a écrit : I don't recommend that voters not be instructed on how the method is supposed to work. I think with C//A it is easier to explain how to find the winner, and the strategy becomes obvious. No defeat strengths are involved. MinMax has its strategy too, and this is harder to perceive because the method rules are harder to understand. If we are taking about simple explanations to regular voters then maybe all the strategy related aspects should be considered not-simple. C//A's counting process is quite simple (to explain) although its counting process has two phases that differ from each others. I don't think e.g. the elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others would be more complex. The explanation may not be not much more complex. It is the strategy where I say MinMax is more complicated and, more importantly, hard to grasp. I recommend sincere voting. Teaching multiple strategies to regular voters is far too difficult. I'm not sure this is the same question. You can recommend whatever you want, but this is not what I think is sought at the stage where you are trying to propose something. Do you mean that MinMax without strategic guidance would be a strategic mess, or what? If you teach someone how C//A works, I think you get the strategy understanding almost for free. What is the general guidance? Maybe to rank those candidates that the voter approves. Do we even need general guidance? I guess vote for who you approve is ok, even though approve is too vague for my own tastes. Personally, I am going to use something similar to better than expectation strategy. Ok, it could then be close to normal Approval strategy, with sincere rankings added for the approved candidates. You have to explain CW either way. Not necessarily, but that need might pop up. For example in the MinMax(margins) explanation above (elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others) CW is not mentioned. Some voters might however start wondering in what kind of situations the winner does not win all others. In that case that individual voter might need someone to explain that sometimes there is a CW and sometimes not. This feels like a shell game to me. The concept of beat all others is what you need to explain. I don't care whether you call it CW or avoid the term. Ok, that explanation could be called also an extended CW rule (nothing more needed). I didn't understand what that sentence is referring to. I referred to the MinMax(margins) explanation elect the candidate that needs least number of additional votes to beat all others that can be seen to refer to CW since it actually is an extended CW definition itself (it counts required additional votes instead of just requiring that the number of required additional votes should be 0). This is how I see it, as far as explanations. MinMax(margins): we want the candidate who beats all others. If we don't have one we take the candidate who needs the fewest addditional votes. (You can combine this into one sentence but I am unsure you get a lot of points for that.) Ok, see the short MinMax(margins) definition above. C//A: we want the candidate who beats all others. If we don't have one, we take the candidate with the most votes in total. votes = explicit rankings (or alternatively: votes = higher tan last place rankings) With both methods we have to explain the same concept to start with. I think the difficulty of explanation is about the same. The difference is that the strategy implications of Minmax's part two are much more opaque. Ok, you seem to refer also to strategic implications that maybe (?) should be explained and included as part of the general definition of the method. Or maybe the idea is that otherwise strategies will confuse the voters after they start wondering about them (?). The theory that this opacity makes it harder to strategize under Minmax is not obvious to your audience either. All that's obvious is I'm not sure I get it. That is what I see as a liability. It is possible that the complexity of a method will be used against it in some reform campaigns but maybe that's a different story. This is not really a problem of the regular voters but just a campaign strategy. Defendability in campaigns is a valid separate topic for discussions though. Sorry, I thought that was part of this topic. It is a great part of my concern here. Ok, also that is a major concern if there are people who want to use all the propaganda that they can get in their hands against you. I think this should be expected. When I see all the anti-IRV arguments
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 13.6.2011, at 17.33, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Kevin Venzke wrote: Is Condorcet//FPP a bad method? I agree with Jameson Quinn, the gap is too far and so it could be quite tempting to compromise as in FPTP (and failing that, to engineer a cycle if your candidate has great first place support). Smith,FPP... perhaps better, but there's still a gap between the Condorcet and the FPP part. If you want something that deters burial strategy, how about what I called FPC? Each candidate's penalty is equal to the number of first-place votes for those who beat him pairwise. Lowest penalty wins. Burying a candidate may help in engineering a cycle, but it can't stack more first-place votes against him. Unfortunately, it's not monotone. Finding the most strategy-resistant monotone Condorcet method is an interesting problem. If you permit approval cutoffs, UncAAO and C//A are probably quite good, but if not... what, I wonder? Perhaps some Ranked Pairs variant where winning contests are sorted ahead of losing contests, and then sorted further by FPP score of the first person in the ordering (e.g. A for AB and B for BA)? Or some Maxtree generalization. Who knows? Yes, this is an interesting problem and the FPC approach is an interesting approach. Maybe the number of problem and potential for improvements could be the burial strategy. One can study the resulting cyclic preferences and try to identify who are strategists and not let them win anyway. I see the FPC philosophy coming from this direction. So, let's focus on burial and the most typical cases there. Let's study the simplest and probably most common case where there are three candidates and they form an artificial loop as a result of someone using the burial strategy. There are three candidates (A, B, C). A is the sincere Condorcet winner, B is the strategist, and C is the candidate that B supporters use to bury A. FPC could reduce strategic behaviour if C is a weak candidate that does not have as many first place supporters as A and B. In that case A gets only a small number of penalty points. And as a result the sincere Condorcet winner wins. This is a good result from strategy avoidance point of view. One problem is however that not all burials follow this pattern. One could have e.g. votes 35: AB, 25: BA (= strategic BC), 40: C. Now C has the highest number of first place preferences. First preferences is thus one way to analyze the loop of three in order to find the A, B and C roles there. Another possible (but far less common) problem with first preferences is that some of the candidates might have clones. There could be two candidates A1 and A2 instead of one A. In that case the first preference support of A1 and A2 would be lower. Also number of minor candidates and their position on the political map may have an impact since they all tend to steal some first preference votes from A, B and C. Another approach to analyzing the cycle would be to check the defeat strengths. Thera are problems also in this approach. In some typical scenarios the BC pairwise victory os strong, but not in all scenarios. A third approach would be to check the number of voters that gave an opinion on each pairwise comparison (instead of typically ranking them equal last). In some scenarios comparison A vs. B could have low number of indicated opinions (e.g. in my example above). But again, not all burial scenarios will follow this pattern. (The expected overall popularity and voter's distance to different candidates have an impact on the probability of giving a pairwise opinion on some pairwise comparison.) One could also analyze the actual ballots to see which how near clones those three candidates are. A and C are not near clones since B could not bury A under a clone of A. B and C are not near clones since B could not bury A under a clone of B. So, if there are near clones, they must be A and B. In my example above A and B are indeed sincere clones. But in the strategic votes the clone relationship is lost. It seems that it is not very easy to draw reliable conclusions from the matrix or the actual ballots. Maybe the probability of different burial scenarios is different and therefore we could make some statistical guesses on which candidates are in which roles. Our guess should be such that the winner is either the sincere Condocet winner A (= no harm done) or C (= disincentive to bury). We should thus just avoid electing B and rewarding the strategists. Of course it would be good if the method would elect a decent winner also in the case of a sincere loop. There are also cases where we can not draw any conclusions. One basic example is a symmetric loop. Maybe the strategic / actual votes are 33: ABC, 33: BCA, 33: CAB. The sincere opinions of the B supporters were maybe 33: BAC. We know that B is the strategist (according to our naming convention) but the method can not make a
Re: [EM] Defensive strategy for Condorcet methods
On 15.6.2011, at 14.23, Kevin Venzke wrote: Hi Juho, I have to trim this due to being short on time. Thanks, compact opinions are always a good approach. In margins (and maybe in other variants too) ties should not carry any other additional meaning but that the voter didn't support XY nor YX. In a general context it is really unclear to me what this means. It's like an IRV-oriented criterion that assumes you're doing eliminations. It may be completely possible to satisfy you on this point, and also have a method that I don't find irritating. From what you've literally written here I don't even see how it excludes WV. There are maybe two ways to understand what the election methods do. 1) Elect the candidate that is best according to some (sincere) philosophy based on the given (hopefully) sincere opinions of the voters. 2) Generate a set of (whatever kind of) rules and let the voters cast their votes in the best way they can to make the outcome best possible for themselves. In the first approach we should have an interpretation on what ranking two candidates equal means from the utility and sincere preference point of view. If the intended meaning of equal ranking is the same as flipping a coin (and often it is about the same), then also the results should be the same (in the first interpretation). In the second interpretation any rules are ok as long as other stated requirements are met (e.g. equal treatment of all voters). WV is not excluded even in the first interpretation if there is a good explanation (that corresponds to some sincere philosophy) to why pairwise defeat strengths are measured the way WV does. It is quite natural to say that the number of voters on the opposing side is an important criterion (but may leave open the question does the number of voters in favour of that candidate have some meaning as well). I think the margins (sincere) philosophy is easier to explain than the WV philosophy. But with the first approach, with people being sincere, you shouldn't have to worry about equal ranking or truncation for the most part. Then WV and margins are the same. In the first approach people *can* be sincere since the methods measures sincere opinions well enough, picks the winner based on the corresponding sincere philosophy, and is strategy free enough so that this sincere state of affairs will not break. I believe WV would be sufficient in real elections. It may well be strategy free enough for most needs. People may interpret equality as equality, and also equal last positions / truncation might not be considered strategic but sincere. Even if truncation would be generally interpreted as approval, still people might be happy with it and vote sincerely according to this philosophy. If WV some day would give somewhat strange results (like B winning with votes 49: AB, 2: BC, 49: C) people could accept also that since probably the votes would not be as extreme and simple and uniform as in the given example (probably people would call the result just nearly a tie). WV is thus not strategy free nor perfect otherwise but probably goo d enough to be able to live in the first category in most political elections. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Something better than wv for Schulze's CSSD
On 22.6.2011, at 2.53, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: I am more convinced than ever that the best way to measure defeat strength in Beatpath (aka CSSD) is by giving the covering relation the highest priority Being uncovered is a positive criterion in the sense that it tries to improve the outcome with sincere votes. Also positive criteria have the problem that all of them can not be met at the same time. I drafted one cyclic example to see how this criterion and another positive criterion, the worst defeat criterion, relate to each others. 33: ABDC 16: ADCB 33: CBAD 17: DCBA Here candidate A is good from the worst defeat point of view in the sense that it is only two votes short of being a Condorcet winner (and having majority of first preferences). The worst defeats of all other candidates are considerably worse. But A is covered by B, and according to the covering rule above that would mean that A can not win. The point is thus that although covered candidates may sometimes be less good than others, they may sometimes be also better than others, e.g. from the worst defeat / number of required extra votes point of view. In this example the covered candidate could well be considered to be the best winner. The votes in this example do not have any very obvious mapping to some real life situation. One approximate explanation could be that almost 50% of the voters support A. All those that do not support A prefer both B and C to A. That is why A loses to two candidates (slightly) and becomes a covered candidate. D is a more complex candidate to explain (but some extra candidates are needed to build the required loop). Another example of a covering relation in a loop could be a situation where we have three parties in a loop. At least one of the parties has several candidates. They all beat all candidates of one of the other parties, and are beaten by all candidates of the other one of them. Within our party there is a clear order of preference between different candidates, and therefore the weaker candidates are covered by the stronger ones. In this situation it would make sense not to elect any of the covered candidates. But on the other hand in this kind of scenarios also the worst defeats (and strongest beatpaths) agree with the covering relation. In this example the covering relation is thus a natural argument in favour of the covering candidates against the covered ones, but adding the covering rule does not improve the method since also other criteria agree on which candidates are good and which ones are bad. The votes could be e.g. 33: A1A2A3B1B2B3C1C2C3 33: B1B2B3C1C2C3A1A2A3 33: C1C2C3A1A2A3B1B2B3 The question then becomes if there are situations (examples) where use of the covering rule would clearly (or likely) improve the outcome of the method (and where defeat strengths (or defeat strength based beatpaths) would elect some clearly worse candidate). In the first example the covering rule may have led to a worse winner (or what do you think). I may try to find one more example where the covering rule would improve the results (of other rules). Anyone else, any good candidates? Many good positive criteria tend to give the same winners. One has to pay special attention to cases where they give different results in order to see which ones of those rules should rule in such situations. Beatpath is not perfect, so there is potential for improvements. Winning votes sometimes give strange results with sincere votes. Also Smith set can sometimes be questioned. On my part the jury is still out on if there are situations that justify using (the usually good) covering rule to be included in the method to improve the results with sincere votes. It seems that there are some cases where the use of the covering rule could make the results also worse. I'm waiting for examples that would show that also the reverse is true. (For the sake of completeness I note also that different societies / elections may have slightly different needs, and therefore the fine-tuning of the methods might differ.) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Remember Toby
What is the difference between least extra votes and MinMax(margins)? Isn't least extra votes pretty much the definition of MinMax(margins)? (assuming that the extra votes rank the candidate in question first) Juho On 22.6.2011, at 10.28, Jameson Quinn wrote: My impression was that the remember Toby thread(s) was (were) inclining towards advocating simpler systems than CSSD. I heard more support for C//A, minimax, and SODA. Separately, I agree that it's best to describe a system by focusing on the outcome rather than the procedure. The difference is not so large for C//A and SODA; for minimax, though, that inclines one to the least extra votes description. (Although with a covering Smith set 4, this is not technically identical to minimax, I'm happy to ignore that difference, or even to actually use the least extra votes system instead of minimax.) JQ 2011/6/21 fsimm...@pcc.edu As I remember it, when Toby settled on CSSD, we made a huge psychological mistake: we got bogged down in the description of the CSSD algorithm for the public proposal. I think that was a fatal mistake, and I would like to propose a strategy for avoiding that mistake in the future. It was a mistake because it gave the impression that to understand the proposal, you have to understand a detailed algorithm. Here’s an analogy: Complicated Version of the law of refraction: Snell’s law says that the ratio of the signs of the angles of incidence and refraction are equal to the ratios of the speeds of light in the respective media at the interface where the refraction takes place. This is way too technical for the average man on the street. Simple version of the law of refraction: Fermat’s Principle's says that light takes the path of least time. The man on the street can understand this. Snell’s law gives a way of finding that path of least time for the technician. What is analogous to Fermat’s principle in the context of CSSD? Answer: the beatpath winner idea. We elect the alternative A with the strongest beatpaths to the other alternatives. This means that for each alternative B, alternative A has a stronger beatpath to B than B does to A. Once the concept of a beatpath is explained (and that its strength is that of the weakest link) then the man on the street can understand this definition of the method. The CSSD algorithm is the technical part like Snell’s law,that the man on the street doesn’t have to worry about. Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info 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] Eric Maskin promotes the Black method
On 24.6.2011, at 3.47, Paul Kislanko wrote: Marcus wrote: Maskin's argumentation doesn't work because of the following reason: Whether an election method is good or bad depends on which criteria it satisfies. Now, if good and bad are defined by which criteria methods satisfy, it seems to me that having introduced judgement we need judges to define the goodness of each criterion. And if there are more than 2 judges to decide the goodness of more than two criteria, there is no unambiguous way to consolidate the opinions of the judges. In addition to defining how important each criterion is we must also estimate how much each method violates some criterion. Since we can not meet all criteria (e.g. being strategy free) and not all interesting criteria at the same time it often makes sense to violate some criteria just a little, so that from practical point of view the method is about as good as if it meth that criterion fully. One bad violation of some key criterion may thus be worse than violating multiple criteria just a little. The number of criteria that some method meets of course has no meaning, only the importance of those criteria has, and maybe also other factors that have no named criterion representing them. I think Maskin's arguent is actually a really old one - if there's a CW nobody really has a complaint (though there are pathological cases where the CW is disliked by a majority of the voters...) This expression s a bit confusing. Majority of the voters may have some other candidates that they prefer to the CW but there is no majority that would prefer one single candidate x to the CW. and if there's not a CW use Borda (or Bucklin or ...) considering only the smallest Smith Set. There can be many opinions on if one should always pick the winner from the Smith Set. Logically, all we're talking about here is how to order alternatives in pairwise ABCA loops, right? Well, yes but, in principle there is no need to order the candidates but just pick one winner, and if that loop does not contain all the candidates, then there is also the option to elect the winner from the other candidate. If we don't like Y=Borda we can start talking about what Y should be if there's a need to have a Y. Yes, there are also better options. (although Borda may not be too terrible here if we assume that usually we have a CW and people don't care too much who will be elected if there is a tie (=top loop)) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] real world 9-winner election using RRV
Should the order be a proportional order or a best single winner order? I guess both are possible although so far the assumption obviously was proportional set or proportional order. Juho On 26.6.2011, at 1.21, Warren Smith wrote: The musical group who wanted me to process their election, actually wanted, not a list of 9 winners, but actually an ordering of all 16 candidates, top 9 being the winners. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html 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] What's wrong with the party list system?
On 3.7.2011, at 18.49, Kathy Dopp wrote: Someone from Europe on this list recently said that they did not like the party list system. Why not? Party list seems like a fair, simple system of electing legislators who represent people in approximately the same proportion that they exist in the electorate. I have not found a better-sounding proportional system yet. So, what's wrong with the party list system? I think list based methods are quite ok. Some reasons why people don't like them: - They don't like parties in general, they prefer methods like STV where there are (in principle) only individual candidates. In STV you can rank all your favourite candidates in the order you like without considering where on party changes to another. In list based methods you can usually vote only for one candidate. - A vote to a candidate of a party will support all the candidates of that party (although you might hate some of them). - In closed list based methods parties will dictate quite strongly which candidates will be elected. Note however that in open list based methods parties have no say on which ones of the nominated candidates will be elected. - List based methods typically do not support proportionality within the party. In open lists typically those candidates that get most personal votes will be elected. - People may like candidates that are totally independent and not tied to the command hierarchy of some party. - Some people have complained that in open lists parties easily nominate some public figures (like TV stars) to collect votes. And often those public figures will be also elected. (This problem is present also in the closed lists.) Some arguments that support the use of list based methods: - They can offer very accurate proportional representation (depends on various parameters like district size and number of elected candidates). - If there are very many candidates, then the idea of STV to rank all the candidates or many enough of them does not work very well. It is a tedious job to rank more than one hundred candidates. - Ballots can be very simple and they need not be printed for each election just in time. E.g. just a blank paper where one writes the number of the preferred candidate. - Parties offer a clear structure to the political field. People know what the candidates of certain party will stand for. Candidates can not market themselves with different conflicting arguments to different voter groups. - With party lists people don't need to study numerous candidates and understand their opinions in detail in order to cast a sophisticated vote. That makes voting easier to people that are not very interested in politics. Knowing your party is enough. Identifying the best candidate within that party is not very crucial if the vote goes anyway to the best party. - Some people like closed lists since they tend to elect people that have been found to be good and efficient within the party. (On the other hand this is a feature that some people hate, i.e. giving too much power to the party and lading figures within the party, and keeping the power within those circles that already have the power.) One could also enhance the list based methods by combining them and STV style systems (e.g. less ranking needed if one ranks only candidates of one's own party). One could also enhance the list structure to a tree structure to support also party internal proportionality, or to give a better and easy to understand structure to the political space. All in all, I think list based methods are good methods for proportional elections. And they can be improved if needed. You need to choose whether you want closed or open lists. They may not be good methods for elections where there is no existing party structure and where one does not want to create one (e.g. in some associations that are purely individual based). Juho -- Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 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] What's wrong with the party list system?
On 3.7.2011, at 20.44, Toby Pereira wrote: The problem I have with party list systems is that you do not elect individuals but organisations, who can then put in who they like. Closed and open party lists have different philosophy. Basic closed lists contain an ordered list of candidates and one elects candidates starting from the beginning of the list. In basic open lists parties have no say on which ones of the nominated candidates will be elected (people vote for individual candidates, and candidates with most personal votes will be elected). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] What's wrong with the party list system?
This was a good overall description of party list proportional representation. I wrote few (actually quite many) minor comments below. On 4.7.2011, at 2.06, James Gilmour wrote: First we have to recognise that there is no one voting system called party list proportional representation. There are probably as many variants of party-list PR as there are countries and jurisdictions using such a system for their public elections. However, these party-list PR voting systems fall into two broad categories: closed-list party-list PR and open-list party-list PR. In both closed and open versions of party-list systems the order of the candidates in each party's list is determined by the relevant political party. Why do all say this? It is possible that in all used systems parties determine the order. But it could be of no importance from the election result point of view. It could be just e.g. a random or alphabetical order, possibly determined by the election officials. In closed lists the order is essential but not necessarily in open lists. Different countries have different rules about how that is to be done and different parties have different procedures within those rules for ordering the lists. Some parties exercise very strong centralised control; other parties are much more democratic and give every member a vote. In closed-list systems the voters can vote only for a party. Seats are allocated to parties by an arithmetic formula, usually d'Hondt (favours parties with more votes) or Sainte-Laguë (favours parties with fewer votes). I think Sainte-Laguë could be said to be neutral with respect to party size. It is at least less biased than D'Hondt. (D'Hondt is also not grossly biased. It clearly favours large parties in the allocation of the remaining fractional seats. Full seats will be allocated accurately.) Candidates take the seats allocated to their respective parties strictly in the order in which they are named on their parties' lists. In open-list systems the voters can also mark a vote for a candidate but usually only for one candidate. Votes for a candidate are counted as votes for that candidate's party and seats are allocated to the parties by an arithmetic formula, usually d'Hondt or Sainte-Laguë as in closed-list party-list systems. When candidates are allocated to the seats won by each party, the votes for each candidate within the relevant party are taken into account (in different ways in the various implementations). Sometimes the candidates' votes can change the order in which they are allocated to the party's seats. The main objection to party-list voting systems is that they are centred on the registered political parties and not on the voters. I think they are very much centered on the voters, just like most other voting systems. They just assume that the political field is organized and can be divided into parties or other maybe more election specific lists of candidates. (In addition many but not all list based methods allow also parties to determine to order in which candidates are elected.) (Of course, such systems cannot be used in non-partisan elections.) The prime objective of all party-list voting systems is to deliver PR of the registered political parties. ... and other (non-registered) groupings of candidates and candidates running alone. Party-list voting systems entrench the political power of the political parties (especially the central party machine) at the expense of the voters. Maybe in the form of the party determined order in the closed lists. Otherwise maybe not more than in any other party based political system. I however note that methods that provide proportionality also within parties may reduce the power of the central party machine since then the opinions of the voters become more visible. Party lists don't exclude such proportionality although they usually do not provide any party internal proportionality. One more thing is that methods where candidates run as independent citizens and join together as parties or other groupings only after the election put at least psychologically more weight on the party independent role of the representatives. Also voters' ability to vote across party border lines (as e.g. in STV) may have some similar psychological effects. This is most certainly true of closed-list party-list voting systems where the voters have no say in which candidates are elected. Open-list systems do allow the voters some say in which of the parties' candidates should be elected Not some say but possibly also all say. In the beginning of the mail you said that there are two categories, closed-list party-list PR and open-list party-list PR. It s a matter of taste in which of those categories one puts those methods where voters have some say on which candidates will be elected (could depend on e.g. if voters vote for parties/lists or
Re: [EM] What's wrong with the party list system?
On 4.7.2011, at 4.08, Kathy Dopp wrote: Thanks for the responses. In response to the party leaders having too much control, I believe it is possible to make party-lists on the fly from voters' own rank choice ballots in a way that the most voters would naturally support -- which would put the control into voters' hands and treat all voters fairly and the same (unlike IRV and STV). As soon as I have time, I'll write it up. Yes. One could use primaries to determine the order of candidates in the closed lists. One could enhance open lists by using STV (or e.g. some Condorcet based proportional method) to build a hybrid method that provides proportionality also within parties. One could also use tree like lists to implement more accurate proportionality within parties. There are many tricks to reduce the possible problems of fixed order in the closed lists and to improve party INTERNAL proportionality in both open and closed lists. I appreciate the comments and agree with the problem of too much control given to party leaders -- but think that it is solvable, and that the Condorcet method can be used to resolve any ties with this method. It seems a little more complex than I like, but perhaps it can be simply described and counted? Not sure yet. One reason why Condorcet based proportional methods have not gained popularity is that they are even computationally complex (in addition to being quite difficult to understand to regular politicians) (when compared to basic single winner Condorcet methods that are simpler but do not provide proportionality). Juho On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 2:06 PM, padraigdelg...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: Hi Kathy, I can't speak for the person who said it on this list but the primary reason for most people is that it gives control to party elites - those who select the party candidates and decide order on which they come on said list. Personally I think there are many ways to overcome that problem, and it can be a good method. What, for instance? Kathy Dopp http://electionmathematics.org Town of Colonie, NY 12304 One of the best ways to keep any conversation civil is to support the discussion with true facts. Fundamentals of Verifiable Elections http://kathydopp.com/wordpress/?p=174 View some of my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=1451051 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] Condorcet divisor method proportional representation
On 3.7.2011, at 20.34, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Kathy Dopp wrote:
On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
km_el...@lavabit.com wrote:
Kathy Dopp wrote:
I do not like this system and believe it is improper to call it
Condorcet. It seems to have all the same flaws as IRV - hiding the
lower choice votes of voters, except if the voter voted for some of
the less popular candidates. Thus, I can see there may be lots of
cases when it eliminates the Condorcet winner.
Do you mean that it fails to elect the Condorcet winner in some singlewinner
elections, or in multiwinner ones? If it's the latter, then there's a
perfectly good reason for that.
Let me pull an old example again:
45: Left Center Right
45: Right Center Left
10: Center Right Left
If there's one seat, Center is the CW; but if you want to elect two, it
seems most fair to elect Left and Right. If Center is elected, the wing
corresponding to the other winning candidate will have greater power.
I disagree. In your example, clearly 55 prefer right to left, but only
45 prefer left to right. And center is the clear winner overall.
Thus, if only two will be elected, it should be center and right.
That's incompatible with the Droop proportionality criterion. The DPC says
that if there are k seats, and a fraction greater than 1/(k+1) of the
electorate all prefer a certain set of candidates to all others, then someone
in that set should be elected.
(Actually, the more general sense is that if more than p/(k+1) of the
electorate all prefer a set of q candidates to all others, then min(p, q) of
these candidates should win.)
You could also consider a single-candidate variant of the majority criterion:
If, in a single-winner case, more than 50% vote a certain candidate top, he
should win. If, in a two-winner case, more than 33% vote a certain candidate
top, he should win. If in an n-winner case, more than 1/(n+1) vote a certain
candidate top, he should win. Such a criterion would mean that Left and Right
have to be elected, because each is supported by more than 33%.
Here's one more example that I have used to point out the difference between
proportionality oriented and majority oriented elections. Party A has 55%
support and two candidates, party B has 45% support and only one candidate.
55: A1A2B
45: BA1A2
A1 is the clear Condorcet winner in single winner elections.
Any proportional multi winner election that elects two representatives would
elect A1 and B.
If we elect two most popular candidates, then we elect A1 and A2.
If we allow voters to elect any pair of candidates (using a single winner
Condorcet method), then the candidate sets are {A1, A2}, {A1, B} and {A2, B}.
Out of these three alternatives {A1, A2} would be a Condorcet winner (since the
55 A party supporters have a majority and can therefore always decide).
As Kristofer Munsterhjelm points out, proportional methods may and should
sometimes not elect the (single winner) Condorcet winner. The Condorcet
criterion can be applied in groups (extended) so that the best group of n
candidates is does not always contain all candidates of best group of size m,
where mn (in the single winner Condorcet case m=1). In more general terms my
point is also that dIfferent elections may have different needs and targets and
rules.
- We could also have single winner methods that do not always elect the
Condorcet winner. We could for example have a method that would elect A1 with
55% probability and B with 45% probability, and that would this way provide
statistical proportionality in time.
- A Republican government in the U.S.A. could elect only republican candidates
as ambassadors and judges, maybe in the Condorcet preference order. The voters
could be Republicans only, or alternatively both Republicans and Democrats, but
the point is that majority would rule in both cases, until next time when the
majority could be the other party.
- Also if you elect employees from a group of candidates there is maybe no need
to be proportional. Just pick the best ones.
((I also note that in principle Condorcet methods need not define a full
preference order of the candidates. Picking one winner is all that single
winner methods need to do.))
Juho
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Condorcet divisor method proportional representation
On 4.7.2011, at 16.33, Kathy Dopp wrote: I must say then, I simply do not like the Droop quota as a criteria because it elects less popular candidates favored by fewer voters overall and eliminates the Condorcet winners some times. If you want the most popular single candidates to be elected (e.g. Condorcet winner), and you do not require 100% best proportionality, then maybe you like methods that are based on proportional ordering. Also your interest in organizing the party lists in some preference order points out in this direction. Proportional order based methods thus do not provide the best possible proportionality but they are close. Typical proportional order methods follow philosophy where you fist pick the winner if there is only one representative. That would be the Condorcet winner. The next candidate is the one that makes a two seat representative body most proportional, but with the condition that the first candidate will not be changed. And so on for the rest of the seats. Proportional ordering methods are also algorithmically simpler than methods that seek best possible proportionality. (Methods that seek ideal proportionality do not respect the condition/limitation of creating an ordering that increases the number of representatives one by one.) If you want to put emphasis on always electing the most popular ones of the candidates, but keep good proportionality at the same time, and not allow majority to take all the seats, then maybe proportional ordering methods are close to what you want. They may also not always elect the next most popular candidate, if e.g. some wing has already had its fair share of candidates, but maybe they offer a good approximation of what you want. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] What's wrong with the party list system?
On 4.7.2011, at 16.53, Kathy Dopp wrote: That is an interesting idea that would require a different ballot type than in existing party list systems whereby one could rank all the candidates within a particular party one votes for. I just note that if we combine party lists and candidate ranking within those lists, then we can have actually quite simple ballots. In a flat STV election with many candidates voters may need to rank high number of candidates in order to be sure that their vote will be counted fully for their own party and it will not exhaust in the calculation process before that is done. In a list election with STV (or some other ranked method) within the parties it is enough to rank just one candidate to be sure that the vote will go fully to one's own party. That makes voting simple for those who are in a hurry or who don't want to study the background and opinions of all the candidates (to be able to rank them). For the same reason one could live with quite simple ballots without losing much and still be able to provide much better party internal proportionality than with one single vote (that is the traditional approach in list elections). One could e.g have a white ballot paper with three boxes. Voters would mark the numbers of their three favourite candidates in those three boxes. From ballot complexity and ballot filling effort point of view that would be about as simple as it gets (assuming that writing the numbers of the candidates in the ballot is not considered to be much more complex than ticking some ordered boxes next to the candidates, or giving and ordering number to each candidate). And this would work reasonably well also with very high number of candidates and elected representatives. (Of course the idea of having proportionally ordered candidate lists in a closer list election would make voting in the actual election even simpler. But then one would need to have a primary to find the ordering for each party.) Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] What's wrong with the party list system?
On 4.7.2011, at 18.59, James Gilmour wrote: Juho Laatu Sent: Monday, July 04, 2011 4:30 PM (Of course the idea of having proportionally ordered candidate lists in a closer list election would make voting in the actual election even simpler. But then one would need to have a primary to find the ordering for each party.) But that would not give proportional representation of the voters, i.e. those who voted in the public election. Any ordering of a party's list by a primary election can, at best, reflect only the views of those entitled to vote in that primary. Yes, that is not exact proportionality based on the voters of the actual election. But this proportionality is quite good still. It may be ok to determine some things also in the primary. There are also options like allowing only the party members to vote or allowing everyone to vote. Their results offer two different approaches to the philosophy of proportionality. The latter case is interesting since it can be used also as a strategy. Allowing non-party members to say which candidates are interesting makes the party list more interesting / better from the non-regular party voters' point of view, and may lead to getting more votes in the actual election. That is a private, internal matter for each party. For real proportional representation of the VOTERS, the voters must be free to express their opinions among the parties and among the candidates within the parties. That can be done only in the actual public election, i.e. all at one time, when all the voters know which parties are contesting the election and can see all the candidates of all the parties. I could accept even arrangements where each party has different rules in their primary, or arrangements where the votes of different parties will be counted in different ways in the actual election. It is true that one would get cleanest proportionality if everything would be decided in one go in one big election with same rules for all. But if votes can be distributed to the parties in some nice and proportional way, they could also have their own (democratically chosen) ways to decide who will get seats within that party. Or maybe the country would set some minimum requirements for nomination and seat allocation within each party. Nomination is anyway usually under the control of the parties nowadays, so they can play tricks there (not to nominate certain candidates, to nominate candidates so that some of them will have good probability of becoming elected). But I guess I agree with you roughly on which approaches are the cleanest. Juho James 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] What's wrong with the party list system?
One possible unwanted feature in Asset like methods is that they make it possible for the candidates to trade with the votes. The voters may trust their candidate, but they should not trust them too much, since in extreme cases they might even sell their valuable vote assets to someone. One straight forward fix to this problem is that the candidates would declare their preferences already before the election. In that case the voters would vote for these predeclared preference orders, and the used method could be STV or some other ranking based method. This approach could allow also voters to provide full rankings themselves, or it could allow short voter given preference orders to be completed to longer rankings e.g. so that the preference order of their first favourite will be used to continue the given preference order. Since it may be too tedious to study the preference orders of all potential candidates one could simplify the structure. That could lead to a tree based election where the votes to some candidate will be inherited in a tree so that a vote to a candidate would support the smallest branch in the tree that contains this candidate. Then to the next smallest branch etc. The tree could be ordered also so that not only the leaves but also the branches of the tree would contain candidates. Branch candidates would be elected first, leading to a preference order among the candidates of that branch. The basic idea of the tree is that it os easy to understand and politicians must declare their true preferences. Trees are not anymore far from basic lists. They just give a better structure to the political space. My point was to show how the problems of Asset could be fixed and that there is a continuum of methods between Asset and basic list methods. Juho On 4.7.2011, at 17.33, Jameson Quinn wrote: The nice feature of existing party list methods is that it allows the election of a large number of candidates to a large national body of legislators without requiring voters to rank individually a huge number of candidates. Yes, this is the main reason for people who favor party list systems. Note that this same advantage can be given, without giving any centralized power to party structures, by using Asset or Asset/STV blends. These can include ballots of any complexity - from vote-for-one to full ratings ballots - and many different proportional vote assignment/transfer rules. They can even do things similar to mixed member systems, in which all votes are local but vote transfers can be regional/national. And parties can voluntarily recreate the effects of either open or closed lists within such systems. The only downside to asset-like PR systems is that they require the candidates to be somewhat more sophisticated. Thus, in general, I prefer such systems to party lists. Also, with my house in Guatemala, I've seen close-up how extremely dysfunctional closed party list systems can get. JQ 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] Has this idea been considered?
On 5.7.2011, at 3.09, Russ Paielli wrote: Thanks for the feedback, Jameson. After thinking about it a bit, I realized that the method I proposed probably suffers from strategy problems similar to IRV. But at least it avoids the summability problem of IRV, which I consider a major defect. I agree that if IRV is interesting then also this method is. Some IRV related problems remain but you will get summability, clear declarations of candidate preferences, very simple voting and ability to handle easily large number of candidates. You could say that this method is also an improvement of TTR (similar voting, but has ability to pick the winner in one round only, maybe smaller spoiler problem). If people don't like the preference list given by their favourite candidate, one could nominate additional fake candidates to offer additional preference lists. If the preference list of candidate A is ABC, then thee could be an additional (weaker) candidate A1 whose preference order would be A1ACB. One possible extension would be to allow candidates that are afraid that they would be spoilers (that reduce the votes of a stronger favourite candidate too much so that he will be eliminated too early) to transfer their votes right away. The preference list could have a cutoff. Preference list ABCDE (of candidate A) would be interpreted so that votes to A would be added right away also to the score of B and C (but not D and E). If A gets transferred votes from some other candidates, they will be transferred further (to candidates not mentioned above cutoff in the original transfer list) only after A has been eliminated. (One could use this trick also in regular IRV.) If one wants to simplify the inheritance rules even more then we might end up using a tree method (I seem to mention it in every mail I send:). In that approach there is no risk of having loops in the candidate transfer order. Votes would be counted right away for each branch, and the candidate of the largest brach of the largest branch of the ... would win. OK, here's another proposal. Same thing I proposed at the top of this thread, except that voters can vote for more than one candidate, as in Approval Voting. How does that stack up? You should define that method a bit more in detail. I started wondering if it would allow candidate X to win if he asked also 100 of his friends to take part in the election and transfer their votes to him. Juho By the way, I took a look at SODA, and I must tell you that I don't consider it a practical reform proposal. It's way too complicated to ever be adopted for major public elections. The method I just proposed is already pushing the limit for complexity, and it is much simpler than SODA. Regards, Russ P. On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 1:10 PM, Jameson Quinn jameson.qu...@gmail.com wrote: A system based purely on candidates freely transferring their votes until a majority (or Droop quota) is reached is called Asset voting. I believe that Asset voting is a good system, though there are certainly those who'd disagree. It is also possible - and I'd say desirable - to combine aspects of Asset with other systems productively. One such proposal, SODA, is currently my favorite practical reform proposal, something I have real hopes for. So I'd certainly say you have (reinvented) some good ideas here. With that said, I can see a couple of problems with this system right off. First off, bottom-up elimination is probably the worst feature of IRV, because there is a fairly broad range of situations where it leads inevitably to eliminating a centrist and electing an extremist, in a way that can clearly be criticized as spoiled (the centrist would have won pairwise) and nonmonotonic (votes shifting to the winner can cause them to lose). Secondly, a voter has no power to ensure that their vote is not transferred in a way they do not approve of. This second disadvantage compounds with the first, because a minority bloc will be eliminated early, and their votes transferred more than once before the final result. Cheers, Jameson 2011/7/4 Russ Paielli russ.paie...@gmail.com Hello, I was somewhat active on this mailing list for a short time several years ago. How is everyone doing? I have an idea for a single-winner election method, and it seems like a good one to me. I'd like to know if it has been considered before and, if so, what the problems are with it, if any. Here's how it works: The mechanics of casting a ballot are identical to what we do now (in the US anyway). Each voter simply votes for one candidate. After the votes are counted, the last-place candidate transfers his or her votes to the candidate of his or her choice. Then the next-to-last candidate does the same thing, and so on, until one candidate has a majority. The transfer of votes at the close of polling could be automated as follows. Weeks before
Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?
On 5.7.2011, at 11.19, Russ Paielli wrote:
If one wants to simplify the inheritance rules even more then we might end up
using a tree method (I seem to mention it in every mail I send:). In that
approach there is no risk of having loops in the candidate transfer order.
Votes would be counted right away for each branch, and the candidate of the
largest brach of the largest branch of the ... would win.
That sounds interesting, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Can you
give an example?
Here's one example.
Tree of candidates + number of personal votes + sum of votes of candidates of
each branch:
Branch1 (13)
Branch1.1 (7)
A (4)
B (3)
Branch1.2 (6)
C (6)
Branch2 (18)
Branch2.1 (12)
D (5)
E (7)
Branch2.2 (5)
F (3)
G (2)
Branch2.3 (1)
H (1)
- Branch2 has more votes than Branch1 = Branch2 wins
- Branch2.1 has more votes than Branch2.2 and Branch2.3 = Branch2.1 wins
- candidate E has more votes than candidate D = candidate E wins
The tree approach thus forces the order of transfer to be non-cyclic. The
transfer order of candidate E is E D {F, G, H}.
The tree format can be printed on paper and it is easy to grasp. The ballot
sheet may also follow the same tree format. Branches may have names (e.g. party
names) or be unnamed. Left wing parties could join forces under one branch.
Candidates of one party could be divided in smaller groups. Or maybe the
branches have no party names and party affiliations, maybe just descriptive
names, maybe no branch names at all.
Juho
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?
On 6.7.2011, at 6.42, Russ Paielli wrote:
On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 2:14 AM, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
On 5.7.2011, at 11.19, Russ Paielli wrote:
If one wants to simplify the inheritance rules even more then we might end
up using a tree method (I seem to mention it in every mail I send:). In that
approach there is no risk of having loops in the candidate transfer order.
Votes would be counted right away for each branch, and the candidate of the
largest brach of the largest branch of the ... would win.
That sounds interesting, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Can
you give an example?
Here's one example.
Tree of candidates + number of personal votes + sum of votes of candidates of
each branch:
Branch1 (13)
Branch1.1 (7)
A (4)
B (3)
Branch1.2 (6)
C (6)
Branch2 (18)
Branch2.1 (12)
D (5)
E (7)
Branch2.2 (5)
F (3)
G (2)
Branch2.3 (1)
H (1)
- Branch2 has more votes than Branch1 = Branch2 wins
- Branch2.1 has more votes than Branch2.2 and Branch2.3 = Branch2.1 wins
- candidate E has more votes than candidate D = candidate E wins
The tree approach thus forces the order of transfer to be non-cyclic. The
transfer order of candidate E is E D {F, G, H}.
The tree format can be printed on paper and it is easy to grasp. The ballot
sheet may also follow the same tree format. Branches may have names (e.g.
party names) or be unnamed. Left wing parties could join forces under one
branch. Candidates of one party could be divided in smaller groups. Or maybe
the branches have no party names and party affiliations, maybe just
descriptive names, maybe no branch names at all.
Thanks for the example, but I don't understand. Who decides what the branches
are, and based on what? Why is E transferring votes if E has the most votes?
And what are the counts after each transfer? Sorry if those are dumb
questions.
Maybe the method is simpler than you expected. It could be as well described as
a list based method where the parties can be internally split in smaller
groupings (or they can join also together in larger groups). My references to
vote transfers are just to explain how this method relates to methods that use
transfers in the vote counting process. The votes that E transfers are
actually not taken away from him but counted both for him and all the branches
that contain him (sorry about using such confusing terms). In this method one
can in a way transfer all the votes right away to the groups that some
candidate is part of. We thus just count the votes of each party / grouping
(i.e. sum up the votes to the candidates of that party). Votes are not
transferred (or summed up) to other candidates but to the branches of the
tree (= parties, groups) that represent all the candidates within them. The
formal vote counting rules will probably not use term transfer at all (maybe
sum instead).
The numbers in the example show the final counts, where the votes (that were
all given to the candidates) have been summed up. The vote counting rule starts
simply the biggest party gets the only seat. In this example Branch2 (=
party2 or wing2) is bigger than Branch1, and therefore the only available seat
goes to that party. (Note that the tree method could be used as well in
multi-member elections.) Then that single seat will be allocated within Branch1
to the biggest of the party internal branches, i.e. Branch2.1, and then to E
that has more votes than D.
The branches will be decided by the parties or whatever associations or
groupings the candidates and their supporters will form. Let's say that
Branch1.1 and Branch 1.2 are two left wing parties that nominated their
candidates ( {A, B} and {C} ) themselves and then decided to joins forces and
form a joint branch (Branch1) to beat the right wing candidates (that was not
enough though since the right wing parties did the same thing and got more
votes). Or in a two-party country like the U.S. this example would of course be
Branch1=Democrats, Branch2=Republicans, and then the candidates of these
parties would form some groups within that party. Branch2.1. could contain two
similar minded candidates from California. They joined together since they
understood that if they would both run alone, they would probably be spoilers
to each others and they could not win. Party internal groupings could thus be
arranged by the party itself or by the individual candidates that form the
sub-branch. It would depend on the election rules who is will formally nominate
such groups (party vs. already nominated candidates vs. whatever group of
candidates).
From strategic point of view it makes sense to form sub-brances (all the way to
a binary tree). Within Branch2 sub-branches Branch2.2 and Branch2.3 could have
also joined forces together (and add one extra level of hierarchy in the tree
Re: [EM] Has this idea been considered?
On 7.7.2011, at 22.54, Russ Paielli wrote: Also, consider the fierce opposition that would develop from any group that thinks they would suffer. And who might that be? How about the two major parties! Do you think they would have the power to stop it? If we assume that one of the main targets of political parties is to get lots of votes and lots of power, then any new election method that makes it possible that also other parties might win some seats in some elections are something that they clearly should oppose. From this point of view all attempts to make a two-party system less two-party oriented are doomed. Actually all administrational systems and organizations resist change for some very similar reasons. From individual representative point of view any changes in the election method are extremely risky since they themselves got elected with the old method. Changing that to something new might not elect them again. And the old method will, with good probability. IRV is interesting since it looks like a quite radical reform, but it clearly favours large parties. Fears of some small party winning a seat are much smaller in IRV than e.g. in Condorcet. That may be one reason why IRV has made some progress while Condorcet has not. What didi people think before the nowadays generally agreed idea that all countries should be democratic. Maybe some idealists discussed the possibility that one day ordinary people might rule the country. I'm sure many others laughed at them and told them that such changes are dangerous and will never work, particularly since they are not in the interest of the current rulers, nor any other rulers that might overthrow the current rulers. So reforms are just a joke and idealistic dreams like democracy will never work. There would quickly be some new rulers that would kick the poor commoners out and probably even kill them. Today many of us live in democracies and people can make changes if they so want. Actually that was the case already before the age of democracy. Changes were more difficult to achieve then. Now making such improvements should be comparably easy. And despite of having democracy the world is not perfect yet. Improvements are still possible. The key problem is actually, as you say, to agree on the targets, and make a model that majority of the rulers (voters) agree with, and that looks plausible enough so that people can start to believe in that change. I wish there were a good, viable solution, but I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future. We will see. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Toby Pereira, PR voting methods
The intended difference was that in option 2 one can use any optimization algorithm, and after some time we will see who has found the best slate, while in the proposed new variant of the option we would have a known algorithm, that would be run with known previously agreed parameters. And after that program would finish running, we would know who the winner is. The end result should be in most cases the same. The only difference is to have an agreed method vs. a competition on who can find the best slate in some agreed time. Juho On 8.7.2011, at 1.05, Toby Pereira wrote: I'm not sure I exactly followed that. Jameson's option 2 is to look at the nominated slates and see which is best. You could also still use one of the other methods to find a possible winner and then compare it with the best nominated slate (if they are different). Is that anything like what you're saying? From: Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk To: election-methods Methods election-meth...@electorama.com Sent: Thu, 7 July, 2011 22:51:45 Subject: Re: [EM] Toby Pereira, PR voting methods I'd like to add one more option. It is actually close to option 2 below. Specify separately how to compare two slates (which one is better) and what optimization algorithm will be used when trying to find the best slate. The optimization algorithm may change from one election to the next, but the comparison rule stays the same. Also in this method algorithmic improvements can improve the method. Juho On 7.7.2011, at 23.17, Jameson Quinn wrote: Assume you have some way to score the goodness of a slate of representatives. You want to find the best possible such slate, but you don't have the computational resources to score all possible slates. The options are: 1. Add candidates one at a time. Advantages: deterministic and simple. Disadvantages: not very optimal. 2. Use the best nominated slate. Advantages: takes advantage of any future algorithmic improvements without needing new rules. Disadvantage: could provide an edge to those with more computational resources; requires time for people to nominate slates. 3. Add candidates N at a time, with N being as big as your computer can handle. All of the above have been discussed. But there's another possibility, which is probably better than 3: 4. One out and two in - at each step, find the best slate which differs from the prior step by removing M candidates and then adding M+N. This is almost certainly computationally feasible for N=M=1. 2011/7/7 Toby Pereira tdp2...@yahoo.co.uk On my web page where I describe my Proportional Range Voting System (http://www.tobypereira.co.uk/voting.html), I have suggested that it should be possible for a computer to sort out the result in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, this may not actually be the case considering the number of possible winning sets of candidates that you might get in some elections. So as with other systems, a sequential system could be used. Calculate who would be the winning candidate in a single-winner election and then find the best combination of two winners, given that the single winner is elected. Then with these two elected, find the best combination of three and so on. Then if this takes it too far the other way and makes it too easy for a computer to calculate you can select candidates in blocks of two or three. I think I've seen Forest Simmons and others discussing this hybrid version of sequential/non-sequential systems. I think this would still be a very different system to Reweighted Range Voting, especially consdering that it elects single winners in a different way. From: Warren Smith warren@gmail.com To: election-methods election-meth...@electorama.com Sent: Sun, 3 July, 2011 20:25:35 Subject: [EM] Toby Pereira, PR voting methods Two are RRV http://rangevoting.org/RRV.html and asset voting http://rangevoting.org/Asset.html A recent real-world election that used RRV is described here: June2011RealWorldRRVvotes.txt In T.P.'s essay it'd be nice if he subdivided it into smaller chunks with subheading titles, and summarized whatever he concluded concisely. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org -- add your endorsement (by clicking endorse as 1st step) and math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info 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] Learning from IRV's success
I actually already touched this question in another mail. And the argument was that (in two-party countries) IRV is not as risky risky from the two leading parties' point of view as methods that are more compromise candidate oriented (instead of being first preference oriented). I think that is one reason, but it is hard to estimate how important. Juho On 7.7.2011, at 23.56, Jameson Quinn wrote: Russ's message about simplicity is well-taken. But the most successful voting reform is IRV - which is far from being the simplest reform. Why has IRV been successful? I want to leave this as an open question for others before I try to answer it myself. The one answer which wouldn't be useful would be Because CVD (now FairVote) was looking for a single-winner version of STV. There's a bit of truth there, but it's a long way from the whole truth, and we want to find lessons we can learn from moving forward, not useless historical accidents. JQ 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] Has this idea been considered?
On 8.7.2011, at 8.55, Russ Paielli wrote: On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Juho Laatu juho4...@yahoo.co.uk wrote: What didi people think before the nowadays generally agreed idea that all countries should be democratic. Maybe some idealists discussed the possibility that one day ordinary people might rule the country. I'm sure many others laughed at them and told them that such changes are dangerous and will never work, particularly since they are not in the interest of the current rulers, nor any other rulers that might overthrow the current rulers. So reforms are just a joke and idealistic dreams like democracy will never work. There would quickly be some new rulers that would kick the poor commoners out and probably even kill them. I'll probably get a bit off topic here, but I think it is important to understand that democracy itself is almost worthless without Constitutionally guaranteed individual rights (as distinct from bogus group rights). That's what the American revolution was all about. The founders certainly did not want a pure democracy. They know very well where that majority rule would lead a tyranny of the majority. That's why they gave us the Bill of Rights. I think we are on our way from laws of jungle to something more civilized. We can invent better and more fine tuned models on how we should operate in order to achieve whatever we want to achieve. This is not completely off topic since decision making methods are one essential component and tool in making our societies work well. The main problem with our political system today is that far too few people understand what freedom and individual rights mean. The Bill of Rights is just the start of it. Property rights are essential to any real notion of freedom, and they are also essential to prosperity. When half the population thinks the gov't should take from those who have too much and give to others who don't have enough, we are in trouble. Yet that's exactly where we are. The greatest election methods in the world cannot save us from those kind of voters. Yes, not too much of that, although most societies of course expect those that are well off to take care of those that would otherwise be in trouble. Are some CEOs overpaid? Yes, I think some are. I happen to believe that some CEOs and boards are ripping off their own shareholders, and I would like to see the gov't do something to give shareholders more say in the matter. But the solution is not to just arbitrarily raise taxes on the rich, as so many want to do. People who don't understant the distinction are dangerous, because they fundamentally believe that the gov't really owns everything and let's us keep some of it out of sheer benevolence. If the gov't really owns everything, it owns you too. One interesting question is if government is considered to be us or them or it. I tend to think that the government and rest of the society (like companies) should serve the people, not the other way around. In a well working democracy we can decide how those structures serve us in the best possible way (allowing e.g. freedom and wealth to all). Today many of us live in democracies and people can make changes if they so want. Actually that was the case already before the age of democracy. Changes were more difficult to achieve then. Now making such improvements should be comparably easy. And despite of having democracy the world is not perfect yet. Improvements are still possible. The key problem is actually, as you say, to agree on the targets, and make a model that majority of the rulers (voters) agree with, and that looks plausible enough so that people can start to believe in that change. The fundamental problem now is that too many of us actually want to go back to a state in which gov't is our master rather than our servant. If gov't can arbitrarily take from you when it thinks you have too much, it is the master, and we are the servants. Why is that so hard for some to understand? I think this is a chicken and egg problem. If government is us, then all the money it takes is because we have agreed to proceed that way. In practice things are more complicated, and governments easily become money hungry beasts that take and spend all the money they can grab. If we go back to the EM topics, good methods need good and simple and credible models and philosophies to allow regular people (voters) to make sensible decisions on which routes to take. One does not work well without the other. Juho --Russ P. -- http://RussP.us 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] Composite methods (Re: Eric Maskin promotes the Black method)
On 8.7.2011, at 11.00, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: But now consider a parallel universe where the CW always won (and these victories were significant, i.e. people really preferred the CW to the rest). Say Montroll won. Then Kiss-supporters and Wright-supporters might try to unite in the feeling that Montroll wasn't what they wanted (we don't want any steenkin centrists); but if they tried so, there would be a majority who did like Montroll (because he was the CW), and therefore these could block the repeal if it came to a referendum. Condorcet methods are majority oriented, but unfortunately CW has majority only in pairwise comparisons. Majority of the voters would choose the centrist rather than X. But it is possible that majority of that majority would want Y rather than the centrist. And quite typically majority of the voters prefer someone else to the CW. In a two-party oriented political system both major parties would prefer a centrist to the candidate of the other major party. But if they think carefully, maybe it would after all be in their interest to just accept the fact that the major parties rule each 50% of the time, instead of e.g. the centrists ruling 50% of the time, leaving 25% to each of the major parties. In other words, in order to change the basic rules of distributing power in a society one may need also some good will from those currently in power and some general support to the new way of distributing power. In societies that are based on one party taking all the power after winning the election, giving that power to some minor party, or having more than two major parties rotating in power (with not much more than 33% support) may be problematic. Also Condorcet combined with single seat districts might not provide what people want. One may thus need to rethink the whole system to make people accept it and find the majority concept of Condorcet methods ideal for them. CW is ideal for many single winner decisions but the dynamics of the society may also work against it. And one may need to be ready to change more than just the election method to make the new rules work well. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Learning from IRV's success
On 8.7.2011, at 17.16, Andy Jennings wrote: Also, I think IRV's seemingly intuitive nature has something to do with it. For those who *did* investigate more deeply, IRV seemed sensible, too: instead of holding a bunch of expensive runoffs, collect all the required information at once and then act as if there were runoffs. That fails to account for the dynamics between the rounds, but that's a subtle detail and might easily be missed. I, too, must admit that IRV has a natural feeling to it. I had a friend who described to me a system he thought of on his own and he ended up describing IRV. I agree with that (as one reason). It is a bit like natural selection, or a like fight of strong men where the weakest ones must leave the arena first. Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Composite methods (Re: Eric Maskin promotes the Black method)
Some more observations. Party officials and representatives have more weight in decision making than regular voters. The opinions of regular supporters of party A could be ACentristB, but the opinions of people whose future and career are tied to the party have more ACentristB orientation. Some of them may simply count the number of days that they will be in power vs. in opposition. They want to rule themselves, not that someone ideologically close to them rules. From that point of view a two-party system may be better than one that allows also small parties that are ideologically closer to win. Parties that are ideologically close may be interpreted also as worst enemies since they may steal votes that would otherwise be yours (they might thus even think ABCentrist). These people could be more interested in going back to plurality from Condorcet than from IRV. And they are the ones that are in power (or have more power than many others). Juho On 8.7.2011, at 12.43, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: On 8.7.2011, at 11.00, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: But now consider a parallel universe where the CW always won (and these victories were significant, i.e. people really preferred the CW to the rest). Say Montroll won. Then Kiss-supporters and Wright-supporters might try to unite in the feeling that Montroll wasn't what they wanted (we don't want any steenkin centrists); but if they tried so, there would be a majority who did like Montroll (because he was the CW), and therefore these could block the repeal if it came to a referendum. Condorcet methods are majority oriented, but unfortunately CW has majority only in pairwise comparisons. Majority of the voters would choose the centrist rather than X. But it is possible that majority of that majority would want Y rather than the centrist. And quite typically majority of the voters prefer someone else to the CW. My point is that a majority of a majority isn't enough in a repeal-or-not referendum. If the repeal side can gather only a majority of a majority, while the keep-it side can gather a full majority, the method remains. In a two-party oriented political system both major parties would prefer a centrist to the candidate of the other major party. But if they think carefully, maybe it would after all be in their interest to just accept the fact that the major parties rule each 50% of the time, instead of e.g. the centrists ruling 50% of the time, leaving 25% to each of the major parties. The more general concept that you mention is of course true. I was considering Condorcet methods as new methods versus other methods as new methods, and giving a possibility that Condorcet methods might outlast non-Condorcet methods in voting reform. If society didn't have any bias at all, and could coordinate, it would quickly converge to the method that would do it best. The society would say We don't like the spoiler effect, let's find a way to fix it. But because voting reform is hard, we can assume that doesn't hold true. So yes, voting reform will be hard, no matter what new method you want to put in place. I'm merely saying that because of dynamics, it might be easier to replace status quo with a Condorcet method (and have the new method last) than it is to do so with a non-Condorcet method (and have *it* last), because majorities can complain more often in the latter case than in the former. If people are in favor of two-party rule, well, then Plurality will remain. If they want two-party rule with no chance of minor spoilers upsetting the outcome, they may settle on IRV. But even here, Condorcet wouldn't be worse than IRV: if the voters want two parties, then one would assume they'd vote in a manner consistent with it. Third parties wouldn't break free -- because the voters don't want them -- and a cloneproof Condorcet method would keep minor spoilers out of the way. 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] Has this idea been considered?
There are many reasons why it is difficult to find a statement that numerous people on this list would be willing to sign. As you know there are probably as many different opinions on different methods as there are people on this list. There have been some related (inconclusive) discussions also earlier on this list. I'll write few comments below to outline some possible problems. 1. Commonly agreed to be better than approval. First I'd like to understand what is the target environment for the method. In the absence of any explanation I assume that we are looking for a general purpose method that could be used for many typical single-winner elections and other decision making in potentially competitive environments. Numerous people on this list may think that Condorcet methods are better. People may find also numerous other methods better than approval, but it may be more difficult to find many people with firm and similar opinions on them. 2. Commonly agreed to be simple for an average voter to feel that they understand what's going on. Different societies may have very different expectations here, depending on what they are used to. Maybe Condorcet voting (ranking) is considered simple enough. Maybe the voters need to understand only how to vote, not how to count the results. Some more reasons why people may have problems with signing the statement. - there is no statement yet - they don't understand or agree that these two targets would be the key targets (why just better than approval, what do the voters need to understand, what is simple) - they may think that there should be more targets or less targets - it might be easier to find an agreement on even smaller statements, one at a time - this proposal would not meet the needs of their own default target environment (maybe some specific society) (maybe their current method is already better) - they are afraid of making public statements that they might regret later - they don't want to take part in web campaigns in general (e.g. because their primary focus is in their academic or other career) - they are simply too uncertain and therefore stay silent - there might be one sentence in the statement that they don't like (or one method) - this initiative was not their own initiative - they have a personal agenda and this initiative does not directly support it (maybe some favourite method, or some particular campaign, maybe this initiative competes with their agenda) - technical arguments I hope you will find some agreements. But I'm not very hopeful if the target is to find an agreement of numerous persons on numerous questions. Maybe if the statement would be very simple. One approach would be to make a complete personal statement and then try to get some support to it (maybe with comments). Juho On 8.7.2011, at 19.47, Jameson Quinn wrote: I'm sorry, but aarrhh. I think that people on this list are smart, but this is pathetic. I don't mean to be hard on Dave in particular. But why is it impossible to get any two of us to agree on anything? I want to make a list of systems which are 1. Commonly agreed to be better than approval. 2. Commonly agreed to be simple for an average voter to feel that they understand what's going on. I am not asking each person who responds to choose the best or simplest system according to them. I'm asking everyone to vote in the poll and approve (rate higher than 0) all systems which meet those two very low bars. Hopefully, the result will be a consensus. It will almost certainly not be the two best, simplest systems by any individual's personal reckoning. As to the specific comments: 2011/7/8 Dave Ketchum da...@clarityconnect.com What I see: . Condorcet - without mixing in Approval. You need some cycle-breaker. Implicit approval is the only order-N tiebreaker I know; fundamentally simpler than any order-N² tiebreaker like minimax. You don't have to call it approval if you don't like the name. . SODA - for trying, but seems too complex. I disagree, but I'm biased. I feel that approve any number of candidates or let your favorite candidate do it for you; most approvals wins is easy to understand. But I can understand if people disagree, so I'm not criticizing this logic. . Reject Approval - too weak to compete. Worse than plurality JQ 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] Challenge: two-party methods
On 9.7.2011, at 14.23, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Juho Laatu wrote:
After some recent discussions and thoughts around two-party systems I
thought it would be interesting to discuss two-party systems also in
a more positive spirit. The assumption is thus that we want the
system to be two-party oriented. We want to have two strong parties,
and one of them should rule. We want to allow only well established
parties with wide support to rule. The first obvious approach is to
ban all other parties than the two leading parties. But maybe we
don't want to be so brutal. Let's not ban the possibly already
existing, much liked and hopeful third parties. It is also good to
have some competition in the system. Let's not allow the two leading
parties think that they don't have to care about the voters and they
can do whatever they want, and stay in power forever.
What would be a good such method? In addition to what was already
said we surely want e.g. to avoid the classical spoiler problems.
I can think of two simple PR-based methods.
In the first, you use ordinary divisor-based PR, but set the divisors so that
they have a great large-party bias (even worse than D'Hondt).
It seems that this method would favour large parties so that they would get
lots of seats, and it would make sense to generally vote for them. One problem
with respect to the targets might be that small parties may have problems to
grow since votes to them have less weight than votes to large parties. If left
wing gets 50% of the votes, and in the right wing there are two parties, 35%
and 15%, then left wing gets majority. The small party was a spoiler to the
right wing.
In the second, you also use ordinary divisor-based PR, but top up the list of
the largest party so that it always gets 50%+1 of the seats if it would
otherwise get below that.
It seems that also here we may have a spoiler problem. In situation 40: L1, 10:
L2, 40: R1, 10: R2 any additional voters moving from a 40% group to the 10%
group of the same wing would be spoilers.
But I think that any two-party system will discourage smaller parties. If
only the two major parties can rule, voters will strategically think that
either I can use my vote to grant the lesser evil more seats/power so it can
defeat the greater evil, or I can use my vote to vote for a small party that
hasn't got a chance beyond being the opposition anyway. I'll do the former.
That sort of thinking will create an invisible barrier to third parties,
because as long as the third parties aren't large enough that they might win
(become one of the top two) with a small amount of additional votes, voters
won't vote for them, and if they don't vote for them, they'll never get close
enough to the threshold.
There might be irrational fears, that may be based on how the old methods have
worked. The target is anyway to make such fears irrational. The intention is
that although my favourite small party can not win this election, it is quite
possible that it will win in the next election, or one after that.
Even If the votes are now 50: A, 45: BCA, 5: CBA, next time they could be
50: A, 35: BCA, 15: CBA, and next time 50: A, 24: BCA, 26: CBA. C
should thus be able to grow without disturbing the balance between A and {B,
C}. (These votes should work in the method that I proposed.)
I can think of two ways to get around that, but both would bend the
definition of a two-party system.
Let's call the first an explicit coalition system. The election process
itself is party list PR. After the election is done, a group of parties with
a total vote share greater than a majority must form a coalition; they do so
by an internal supermajority vote, after which this group gets the government
and the rest becomes the opposition.
After that is done, they rule until at least one of the parties (or some
fraction of the whole group), plus the opposition (or supermajority thereof),
agrees to dissolve the current coalition. After that is done, there are new
elections. The current coalition rules until the next coalition can organize
itself.
Are you saying that actually many multi-party systems (that work pretty much in
the described way) are actually single-party governments, and therefore the
system is essentially a government vs. opposition system, and that would make
it effectively a two-party system? It is true that governments typically have a
unified policy, and the opposition takes the opposite position. Technically
this approach meets the two targets that I set, but I was thinking of somewhat
more stable parties, not ones that would be redesigned after every election
based on the results that the numerous smaller parties that participate in the
election do get :-).
(Note that I wrote the targets for a single-winner election (they talk about
electing one of the candidates) and we have now expanded the discussion also to
multi-winner
Re: [EM] Challenge: two-party methods
On 9.7.2011, at 16.14, James Gilmour wrote: Juho Laatu Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 10:35 AM After some recent discussions and thoughts around two-party systems I thought it would be interesting to discuss two-party systems also in a more positive spirit. The assumption is thus that we want the system to be two-party oriented. We want to have two strong parties, and one of them should rule. We want to allow only well established parties with wide support to rule. The first obvious approach is to ban all other parties than the two leading parties. But maybe we don't want to be so brutal. Let's not ban the possibly already existing, much liked and hopeful third parties. It is also good to have some competition in the system. Let's not allow the two leading parties think that they don't have to care about the voters and they can do whatever they want, and stay in power forever. This is a very strange proposal, all the more so because your principal objective is not clear. Is your objective to manipulate the voting system so that all the smaller parties are more or less crushed out of the political system, leaving only two? The idea is not to manipulate a working system but to provide an ideal two-party system. The rules and ideals of a two-party system may be different from other systems, so the method may seem strange if seen as a proposal for some other kind of elections (e.g. for multi-party countries). There may thus be different elections with different kind of requirements. Here the requirement is to allow the strongest parties to rule (except that it must be possible also for the small parties to become large parties one day). Small parties are thus not crushed out of the political system. They are not allowed to win yet, but they are well nursed in the hope that one day they will become large parties. Or is your objective to ensure single-party majority government where the government comes directly from the national elections? The target is to have a single-party government. Majority of voters should prefer it over the second largest party (in my example method at least) but there is no requirement of having an absolute majority of first preferences (in my example the votes were rankings, so the winner may be ranked e.g. second in many ballots). The first of these is not, to my mind, compatible with any definition of democracy. Ok, I think I escaped that criterion although the intention is not to let the small parties rule tis time. If single-party majority government is the objective, that is very easy to implement. If no party (in fairly representative elections) wins more than half of the seats, allocate 55% of the seats to the party with most votes nationally and divide the remaining seats proportionately among the remaining parties. This has already been done in national public elections, e.g. in Italy in the 1920s, when the 'premium' was two-thirds not 55%. One of the targets was to avoid the spoiler problem. I think in this method a small party could reduce the votes of the otherwise largest party so that it loses its 55% position. Assuming you are suggesting this in the context of electing an assembly (national or regional parliament) and not a single-winner election (state governor or president) I talked about single winners in the sense that one party will rule. This could mean electing one single president, electing the only representative of a single-winner district, or electing an assembly so that it would clearly delegate power to one of the large parties (as in the 55% rule). , it is very interesting to note what happened in Malta after STV-PR was introduced some 80 years ago. Before STV-PR was introduced AND for the first 40 years of its use, candidates from three, four or five parties were elected to the Parliament at each election, but for the past 40 years only two parties have been represented in the Parliament. If you believe at all in representative democracy I think it is much the best to leave that aspect of party dynamics to the voters. I do believe in representative democracy where each section of the voters if properly represented in the system. The voters might be split in two or more sections, or i no clear sections at all (if e.g. the representation is strongly individual based, not party based). On the other hand a two-party system could be considered a valid form of democracy too. In the challenge I tried to seek new approaches to implementing two-aprty systems. One could characterize two-party systems so that the intention is that the dividing line between the two parties represents the median voter. The two parties are expected to change their opinions in time so that the median point can be found (otherwise the opposition party will remain in opposition for a long time). The most common methods, plurality with single-winner districts
Re: [EM] Challenge: two-party methods
was to improve the system to allow them to grow. Another approach in a two-party system would be to allow them to rule (together with others or alone) already without growing. And also in proportional multi-part systems that is an interesting question (actually there I have actively promoted the idea that they should be allowed to have their proportional share of representation, without the limits set by thresholds, district sizes and related mechanisms). Juho James Juho Laatu Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 2:53 PM On 9.7.2011, at 16.14, James Gilmour wrote: Juho Laatu Sent: Saturday, July 09, 2011 10:35 AM After some recent discussions and thoughts around two-party systems I thought it would be interesting to discuss two-party systems also in a more positive spirit. The assumption is thus that we want the system to be two-party oriented. We want to have two strong parties, and one of them should rule. We want to allow only well established parties with wide support to rule. The first obvious approach is to ban all other parties than the two leading parties. But maybe we don't want to be so brutal. Let's not ban the possibly already existing, much liked and hopeful third parties. It is also good to have some competition in the system. Let's not allow the two leading parties think that they don't have to care about the voters and they can do whatever they want, and stay in power forever. This is a very strange proposal, all the more so because your principal objective is not clear. Is your objective to manipulate the voting system so that all the smaller parties are more or less crushed out of the political system, leaving only two? The idea is not to manipulate a working system but to provide an ideal two-party system. The rules and ideals of a two-party system may be different from other systems, so the method may seem strange if seen as a proposal for some other kind of elections (e.g. for multi-party countries). There may thus be different elections with different kind of requirements. Here the requirement is to allow the strongest parties to rule (except that it must be possible also for the small parties to become large parties one day). Small parties are thus not crushed out of the political system. They are not allowed to win yet, but they are well nursed in the hope that one day they will become large parties. Or is your objective to ensure single-party majority government where the government comes directly from the national elections? The target is to have a single-party government. Majority of voters should prefer it over the second largest party (in my example method at least) but there is no requirement of having an absolute majority of first preferences (in my example the votes were rankings, so the winner may be ranked e.g. second in many ballots). The first of these is not, to my mind, compatible with any definition of democracy. Ok, I think I escaped that criterion although the intention is not to let the small parties rule tis time. If single-party majority government is the objective, that is very easy to implement. If no party (in fairly representative elections) wins more than half of the seats, allocate 55% of the seats to the party with most votes nationally and divide the remaining seats proportionately among the remaining parties. This has already been done in national public elections, e.g. in Italy in the 1920s, when the 'premium' was two-thirds not 55%. One of the targets was to avoid the spoiler problem. I think in this method a small party could reduce the votes of the otherwise largest party so that it loses its 55% position. Assuming you are suggesting this in the context of electing an assembly (national or regional parliament) and not a single-winner election (state governor or president) I talked about single winners in the sense that one party will rule. This could mean electing one single president, electing the only representative of a single-winner district, or electing an assembly so that it would clearly delegate power to one of the large parties (as in the 55% rule). , it is very interesting to note what happened in Malta after STV-PR was introduced some 80 years ago. Before STV-PR was introduced AND for the first 40 years of its use, candidates from three, four or five parties were elected to the Parliament at each election, but for the past 40 years only two parties have been represented in the Parliament. If you believe at all in representative democracy I think it is much the best to leave that aspect of party dynamics to the voters. I do believe in representative democracy where each section of the voters if properly represented in the system. The voters might be split in two or more sections, or i no clear sections at all (if e.g. the representation is strongly individual based
Re: [EM] Two Party Challenge
On 9.7.2011, at 22.23, fsimm...@pcc.edu wrote: Here's an idea. First pick a party (with full knowledge who the candidates are in each party). Then hold an open primary to pick the winning candidate from the winning party. This sounds like a two-phase single winner election. The first used single-winner method should maybe be such that it elects major parties only (i.e. no weak compromise parties). I'm not sure the short description yet guarantees a two-party rule. The idea of ordering a late primary is an interesting approach to allowing multiple candidates for each party but still keeping the method simple (two election days probably needed but otherwise nice and clear). Juho Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Re: [EM] Challenge: two-party methods
First I'll try to clarify the definitions a bit. It is so obvious what a two-party system is, but when I think more carefully it is not that clear. Two-party system: - has a single-party government - one of the two major parties forms the government and the other one forms (the main part of) the opposition - the two major parties alternate in government and opposition roles - has typically one or more representative bodies - government may be elected directly (e.g. the president of the U.S.) or based on the power balance of a representative body - government has typically or often majority support in the representative bodies (this means that third parties are usually small enough not to disturb the bipolar balance) - members of the representative bodies come typically but not necessarily from small districts with few representatives, often elected using single-winner methods On 10.7.2011, at 12.03, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: On 9.7.2011, at 14.23, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: Juho Laatu wrote: After some recent discussions and thoughts around two-party systems I thought it would be interesting to discuss two-party systems also in a more positive spirit. The assumption is thus that we want the system to be two-party oriented. We want to have two strong parties, and one of them should rule. We want to allow only well established parties with wide support to rule. The first obvious approach is to ban all other parties than the two leading parties. But maybe we don't want to be so brutal. Let's not ban the possibly already existing, much liked and hopeful third parties. It is also good to have some competition in the system. Let's not allow the two leading parties think that they don't have to care about the voters and they can do whatever they want, and stay in power forever. What would be a good such method? In addition to what was already said we surely want e.g. to avoid the classical spoiler problems. I can think of two simple PR-based methods. In the first, you use ordinary divisor-based PR, but set the divisors so that they have a great large-party bias (even worse than D'Hondt). It seems that this method would favour large parties so that they would get lots of seats, and it would make sense to generally vote for them. One problem with respect to the targets might be that small parties may have problems to grow since votes to them have less weight than votes to large parties. If left wing gets 50% of the votes, and in the right wing there are two parties, 35% and 15%, then left wing gets majority. The small party was a spoiler to the right wing. It's relatively simple to get around such troubles: just slap an Asset patch on it. For that matter, you could have Asset with the requirement that the negotiations don't end until one of the parties has greater than a majority of the assets. One problem here is that we are slipping away from a two-party dominance towards a system where the ruling party is dependent on the support of smaller parties. That gets close to a coalition government although I understood that the government would consist of representatives of one party only. The government probably does not have majority in the representative body, so other parties may stop progress and cancel their support to the government at any time. I was also worried that the right wing will not get 50% of the seats although they got 50% of the votes because of the method that favours large parties. The small party may thus spoil the election also this way. In the second, you also use ordinary divisor-based PR, but top up the list of the largest party so that it always gets 50%+1 of the seats if it would otherwise get below that. It seems that also here we may have a spoiler problem. In situation 40: L1, 10: L2, 40: R1, 10: R2 any additional voters moving from a 40% group to the 10% group of the same wing would be spoilers. Same response :-) Is it then so that the largest coalition will get 50%+1 seats? Maybe the largest coalition based on given votes, not based on the seats that they would win without this rule (to cancel the balance shifting effect of the method that favours large parties) (?). If you want to deal directly with the spoiler problem, you'd need a method that has the property that it grants every party a score, and that cloning groups of parties gives one of the group of parties (since the method can't know which are clones) the same score as the original party would have if there was no cloning. That is one approach. That sounds pretty much like an exactly proportional method. Usually two-party countries don't have good proportionally in the representative bodies (except maybe between the two major parties). In the USA the representative bodies are clearly dominated by two parties (in the UK less so). Also my example method would allow third parties to get seats in the representative
