Why truncation resistance is important (RE: [EM] Re: Rob: MDDA vs BeatpathWinner)

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 21:30 -0500, Paul Kislanko wrote: > All of the gobblydegoog aside, to Rob - we don't care what you want, us > voters want to NOT have to rank all altertantives. I want to list only the > ones I find acceptable in the order I prefer them. Any method that > "encourages" me to ra

Re: [EM] Rob: MDDA vs BeatpathWinner

Hi Mike, I could be convinced that MDDA or similar system is better than a full-on Condorcet system. The one major objection I have is the lack of truncation resistance - I really hope we can find a system that encourages a full ranking. It seems that MDDA would tend to discourage ranking anyone

Re: [EM] Alternative SFC wording

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 14:41 -0500, Ken Kuhlman wrote: > I still have a hard time seeing the value of this criterion. > > A profile is a profile. It doesn't matter if the reason for the votes > was honest, strategic, or if the voter's mothers told them what to do. > Once the votes are cast, a

Re: [EM] sincerity in range votes / and fantasies

On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 16:26 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > I also point out that Robla on a previous occasion agreed that RV was a good > system > and, if I recall correctly said he would be "dancing in the streets" were it > enacted. However, yesterday he said he could "never support it" > in vi

Fixing the SFC definition on Electowiki (Re: [EM] Rob reply: FBC vs CC. SFC. RV.,)

I think Mike and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on most of the points from his previous mail. However, there's one thing I'd like the group to straighten out: I wrote, regarding this definition of SFC on Electowiki ( http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Strategy-Free_criterion ): > I'm

Re: [EM] Rob: Condorcet's Criterion vs FBC. Will people favorite-bury?

On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 23:24 -0400, Abd ulRahman Lomax wrote: > At 04:30 AM 10/3/2005, Rob Lanphier wrote: > >90 voters: A=7, B=6 > >10 voters: A=0, B=10 > > It has been proposed that Range votes be normalized, otherwise voters > who honestly recognize that no candidate

Re: [EM] Rob: Condorcet's Criterion vs FBC. Will people favorite-bury?

Hi Mike, On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 05:12 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > You said that you don't think that significantly many people would > favorite-bury in a public BeatpathWinner election. > > A voter will favorite-bury if, for that voter, the important goal is to keep > an unacceptable candidate

Re: [EM] Re: Condorcet's strategy problem, ICA

Hi Kevin, Thanks for the response. I've had to cut my response short, because I want to get back to a project I'm working on. More inline. On Sun, 2005-09-18 at 23:00 +0200, Kevin Venzke wrote: > --- Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > > My understandi

Re: [EM] Any chance someone could post a definitiion of DMC?

On Sun, 2005-09-18 at 03:32 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > Could someone post the definition of DMC? Here's the writeup on Electowiki: http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Definite_Majority_Choice Rob Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

[EM] Moral basis for "Approval"

Hi all, As you've seen, I've been having trouble with the whole concept of "approval". I think I've come to the gist of my problem, which discusses some matters we discussed really early on in the history of this list. For voters, "approving" a candidate is cheap, and in the context of an electi

Re: [EM] Re: Condorcet's strategy problem, ICA

On Sun, 2005-09-18 at 03:15 +0200, Kevin Venzke wrote: > --- Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > > My understanding is that FBC is mutually exclusive of the Condorcet > > winner criteria. As I've stated above, when Condorcet winner is > > violated, there

Re: [EM] Re: Condorcet's strategy problem

Hi Mike, I should be really clear here if I haven't stated this already. If I'm only considering the final outcome (not looking at it with my electoral reform strategist hat on), my range ballot for voting systems looks something like this (scale of 0-5): Condorcet methods*: 5 Range Voting, Appr

Re: [EM] Re: Condorcet's strategy problem

Hi Mike, I'm going to respond a little out of order. On Fri, 2005-09-16 at 01:23 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > But you haven't shown that the way I would vote in a Condorcet election is > stupid. Saying it isn't enough. > [...] > Let's not sling namecalling around unless we can show that it's tr

Re: [EM] Rob: Condorcet's strategy problem

Hi Mike, Comments below. On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 02:53 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > You wrote: > > Incidentally, this particular scenario presents some nasty strategy > problems for Range and Approval as well. > > I reply: > > Nasty enough to make voters bury their favorite? > > Nope. That ince

Re: [EM] Re: Condorcet's strategy problem

On Tue, 2005-09-13 at 22:51 -0600, Adam Tarr wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > There was an FBC failure example posted recently. It arises from a > cycle with a lot of sincere indifference. It goes like this: > > 31% C>A>B > 9% B>C>A > 28% B=C>A > 32% A>B>C > 68% C > 32% A > 63% A > 37% B > 41% B >

Re: [EM] Condorcet's strategy problem

On Wed, 2005-09-14 at 03:13 +, MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: > As Warren said, wv's problems in public political elections are enough to > recommend other methods instead, for public political elections. WV's > problem in public political elections is its FBC failure. In public > political elections,

Re: [EM] Copeland's criteria

Hi Kevin, You're right. Copeland has some pretty big issues. It appears to suffer the same deficiencies as margins-based methods, since Copeland ends up treating a victory of 3%-1% with 96% abstaining as being just as good as some other candidate's 51%-49% victory with 0% abstaining. Below is a

Re: [Condorcet] RE:[EM] MinMax(ao)

hen you take into account that MinMax has just been > proposed by Rob Lanphier as a Copeland tiebreaker. Whoa there. The whole layer of a separate Approval election on top of a Condorcet election is VERY complex for people new to Condorcet methods. Yes, Copeland//Minmax(wv) sounds complicated w

[EM] Re: [Condorcet] RE: (crossposted) Revisiting Copeland

On Fri, 2005-09-09 at 16:52 +0200, Kevin Venzke wrote: > I couldn't support Copeland unless you use a tiebreaker that satisfies > minimal defense. Otherwise: > > 49 A > 24 B > 27 C>B > > A could be elected, for instance with a plurality tiebreaker. > > You suggested in a later message that plura

Re: [EM] Re: AWP versus DMC

On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 19:56 -0400, James Green-Armytage wrote: > I also find the following "RAV" heuristic to be easier to understand > than the DMC heuristic. > > 1. Drop the least approved candidate until there is an unbeaten candidate. I absolutely agree. I missed this explanation when the me

[EM] Revisiting Copeland

Hi all, In thinking about proposals for public elections, it occurs to me that we may have dismissed Copeland's method too soon. A refresher on Copeland: Count up the pairwise victories. The one with the best Win-Loss-Tie record is the winner (where a win is 1 point, a tie is 1/2 point, and a l

Re: [EM] question re EM list history

On Sat, 2005-09-03 at 05:48 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I'd appreciate a few more details about how this list was started. > I was at the 1992 founding meeting of the organization that became > CVD (Center for Voting and Democracy) and I know quite a bit > about it's history, but I wasn't awa

Re: The problem with "utility" (Re: [EM] Re: Election-methods Digest, Vol 15, Issue 1)

On Fri, 2005-09-02 at 15:17 -0400, Abd ulRahman Lomax wrote: > At 04:07 PM 9/1/2005, Rob Lanphier wrote: > >Range voting methods tend to give strategic advantage to those that are > >prone to hyperbole, i.e. those people that declare "candidates A, B, and > >C are PERFECT

Re: [EM] Moderating vs suppressing

Hi Dave, The moderation of the Condorcet mailing list is off-topic for the EM list. As you are well aware, I have a very open policy when it comes to the EM list...it's pretty much a free-for-all, because this list was founded by a group of people who were shouted off a CVD-operated list for not

Re: [EM] utility - some agreement at last...

On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 17:08 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > >robla: The problem with placing paramount importance on "utility" in voting > methods is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no systematic, > fair way of measuring utility. > > --WDS: EXACTLY GOOD!!! Warren, we don't agree.

The problem with "utility" (Re: [EM] Re: Election-methods Digest, Vol 15, Issue 1)

Warren, The problem with placing paramount importance on "utility" in voting methods is not that it doesn't exist, it's that there's no systematic, fair way of measuring utility. In the highly charged atmosphere of high-stakes decision making, it's hard to tell the real Hitler from someone who is

Re: [EM] wiki emergency: home page hacked (and maybe more)

It's fixed now, and the IP is blocked. Not sure what the sluggishness you saw was. It was pretty zippy for me. I wouldn't refer to this as a "hack" (you had me worried for a sec). A "hack" would be a case where someone circumvented the security measures in place. Since anyone can edit a wiki,

Re: [EM] Re: IRV vs Range on totalizing machines

On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 14:06 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote: > On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 10:26 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > > Are you the same Scott Ritchie associated with the CVD, the important > > pro-IRV-voting group? If so, I believe we should talk. I believe the CVD, > > while having accomplished a

[EM] Approval for many candidate, non-partisan, multi-seat elections

Hi folks, As you saw earlier, some people on Wikipedia are considering a switch to Bloc voting (plurality-at-large) for a multi-seat election, away from Approval. I had always thought Approval made the most sense here, but I'm starting to see the wisdom of the criticism. With a very large field,

Re: [EM] range versus condorcet & others; practical purposes

On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 17:20 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > >robla: Condorcet has zero chance in 2005. It has a small chance in 2010, and > >better than even odds in 2050. That's assuming we ignore your advice > >and actually continue our work. > > --what is your strategic plan? One can make stati

Re: [EM] voter strat & 2-party domination under Condorcet voting

Hi Warren, I'm eagerly awaiting your reply on this message. Rob On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 14:12 -0700, Rob Lanphier wrote: > Hi Warren, > > I'm not following your theorem. Can you give an example of what you are > referring to, showing a set of sincere preferences, followed

[EM] Proposal to change Wikipedia Arbitration Committee to first-past-the-post

Sadly, it appears as though there's a proposal to change the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election method from Approval to First Past The Post: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2005/Proposed_modifications_to_rules Actually, since it's multi-member

[EM] Approval strategy in close three-way race?

Hi folks, As I alluded to before, I'm still a little shakey when it comes to the optimal Approval strategy. So, first, let me paraphrase what I believe is the right strategy, and then ask about a case that's been bugging me. My understanding is that current strategy involves classic two-party po

Re: [EM] range versus condorcet & others; practical purposes

On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 11:24 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > In some sense the range versus Condorcet debate is a red herring > since Condorcet methods have, I think, no chance of actual adoption > by governments. And range does have a chance. So for practical purposes, > forget Condorcet. Condorce

[EM] New election-methods web-based chat room

Hi folks, As an experiment, I'd like to run an Electorama chat room. I found a pretty good piece of chat software (ARSC Really Simple Chat), and I'm giving it a whirl: http://electorama.com/2005/chat No special software necessary - most web browsers work. My understanding is that the software

Re: [EM] simplcity of range v condorcet

On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 23:48 -0400, Dave Ketchum wrote: > On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:35:19 -0700 Rob Lanphier wrote: > > In fairness, the specification for counting votes is something that > > voters will probably care about, and it is one of the biggest > > liabilities of Co

Re: [EM] Re: simplcity of range v condorcet

On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 19:42 -0700, Rob LeGrand wrote: > Rob Lanphier wrote: > > In fairness, the specification for counting votes is something > > that voters will probably care about, and it is one of the > > biggest liabilities of Condorcet. Part of the uphill battle for &g

RE: [EM] simplcity of range v condorcet

On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 19:13 -0500, Paul Kislanko wrote: > "Shortest computer program" is not a criterion that any voter would care > about. > > "Rules for voters" and "specification for counting programs" are two > different things. In fairness, the specification for counting votes is something

Re: [EM] voter strategy & 2-party domination under IRV voting

On Sat, 2005-08-13 at 18:48 -0400, Dave Ketchum wrote: > NOT at all clear that 2-party domination is as evil as some claim. This is a really good point to consider. We probably need to discuss the specific characteristics of the two-party system we rail about in order to judge if a system is bad

Re: [EM] voter strat & 2-party domination under Condorcet voting

Hi Warren, I'm not following your theorem. Can you give an example of what you are referring to, showing a set of sincere preferences, followed by a set of tactical ballots which illustrate your point? E.g.: Sincere preferences: Group 1 - 18 votes: A>B>C Group 2 - 18 votes: A>C>B Group 3 - 16 v

Re: [EM] encourage dishonesty / range / WDS reply to robla

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 21:54 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > To a certain extent RL's whole argument at the start of this email could > be said to be "I prefer methods that are hard to understand because then > others will not undestand them either and everybody will just give up > on trying to find th

Re: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 20:33 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > If [the Condorcet winner criterion] means (2a) "if we redid the same > election but using a DIFFERENT election system, namely majority vote, > and demanding votes `logically consistent' with the originally-cast > votes, then A would win" Thi

Re: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 19:38 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > My point is, a "property" can be defined, or aturally defined, in a unique > way for ranked ballot systems, but when you try to extend to mor general > systems it sometimes can be undefinable, or undefined, or more > than one possible way to

RE: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

it, but writing crystal-clear prose is a lot of work that no one is paying me for. I'll be as clear as I can without spending an inordinate amount of time, and hope that people ask if they are confused. Sound fair? Rob > > -Original Message- > > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED

Re: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

Warren, My apologies. I did not mean to call you a liar. I maintain that any statement that Range Voting is somehow Condorcet-winner compliant is misleading. I'm not saying you intend to mislead, just observing that I believe the site, as written, has that effect. I'm hoping that, as the hones

RE: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 12:42 -0500, Paul Kislanko wrote: > Rob, please lose the invective and the misleading statements: invective? > "Your tactic a very similar tactic to one used by many Condorcet > advocates which I also object to. Condorcet fails the "Independence > from Irrelevant Alternativ

Re: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 09:29 -0400, Warren Smith wrote: > [Rob Lanphier wrote]: > > Here's a counterexample: > > > > 41 ballots: > > A:10 > > B:3 > > C:0 > > (Ranked equiv: A>B>C) > > > > 10 ballots: > > A:5 > > B:10

Re: [EM] Center for Range Voting Formed

Hi Warren, I'm interested in Range Voting, since it appears to be popular among many electoral reform advocates here. However, being a Condorcet partisan myself, I'm having a hard time getting through the Range v. Condorcet page here: >From the site: > A "Condorcet method" is any voting method t

[EM] Over the top personal comments

MIKE OSSIPOFF wrote: Replying to Russ is more like trying to talk with a babbling, drooling person whose meaning can't even be determined. Russ Paielli wrote: You're an [expletive deleted] to the core, Mike, and you don't have a clue about what is really needed for a good public election method

Re: [EM] better names for "sequential dropping"

James Green-Armytage wrote: Sequential dropping is most useful as a very-simple alternative, so it should have a simple, non-technical-sounding name. Any ideas? Let's brainstorm... loop cutting (method)? simple cycle breaking (method)? ... * serial tiebreaker * "musical chairs" tiebreaker Rob ---

[EM] Secondary list moderator

Hi folks, With the Mailman software we're using for this mailing list, it's a fairly easy exercise for me to go though the queue of email that gets sent to the list from non-list members. The bad news is that I'm still falling down on the job. I let 156 messages stack up from the beginning of

[EM] Instant Runoff story on KUOW (NPR Seattle)

Hi all, There was a great show about Instant Runoff on KUOW, the NPR affiliate in Seattle today. The guests were Steven Hill from the Center for Voting and Democracy as well as the Republican Party official who wrote the opp

Re: [EM] Fw: borda count

Steve Eppley wrote: Mike (R?) asked: Here's a similar question: Does it matter if we use a Borda count of 3-2-1-0 (Highest score wins) or 0-1-2-3 (lowest score wins)? I thought I read somewhere they weren't necessarily symmetric, but I can't think of any counterexamples so I might be mistaken.

Re: [EM] Voting Systems Study of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota

Markus Schulze wrote: I just read the Voting Systems Study of the League of Women Voters of Minnesota (2544 kB): http://www.lwvmn.org/LWVMNAlternativeVotingStudyReport.pdf The committee is in favor of IRV. In the summary, they write [many inaccurate things] Hi Markus, I haven't read the study, b

[EM] Slashdot: An Analysis of Various Election Methods

Our favorite topic is currently the topic of discussion over at Slashdot: http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/01/2139227&tid=226 "An Analysis of Various Election Methods" Posted by michael on Saturday October 02, @02:08AM from the anything-would-be-a-step-forward dept. An anonymous re

[EM] New version of n-rank ballot

Hi all, Here's a new version of the ranked ballot: http://electorama.com/2004/condorcetballot/ Changes: * Uses select drop down form elements instead of plain text for ratings, allowing for minimal operation without Javascript. * Allows for altering the number of stars (between 1 and 100) * Str

Re: [EM] Re: Demo of n-rank ballot for U.S. president

Rob Brown wrote: I have some sliders I've worked on getting really slick for a different project, maybe they can be adapted for this (all I did was change the captions on them to be presidential candidates): http://www.karmatics.com/slider/vote.html Opretty. I'll contact you offline ab

Re: [EM] Demo of n-rank ballot for U.S. president

e: On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Rob Lanphier wrote: I spent the better part of today mucking around with Javascript and DHTML, and have come up with something that I hope makes a pretty good web interface for an n-rank ballot. The results are here: http://electorama.com/2004/condorcetballot/ Hmm. O

[EM] Demo of n-rank ballot for U.S. president

Hi all, I spent the better part of today mucking around with Javascript and DHTML, and have come up with something that I hope makes a pretty good web interface for an n-rank ballot. The results are here: http://electorama.com/2004/condorcetballot/ The ballot has the nominated candidates for U.

[EM] IRV-P

Hi all, I'd like to direct everyone's attention to a proposal (not mine) to a proposal for referring to Condorcet as IRV-P http://electorama.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=59&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Rob Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em f

Re: [EM] ironclad pro-Condorcet argument?

James Green-Armytage wrote: BASIC STATEMENT: If there is a Condorcet winner with regard to the sincere preference rankings of voters, and the voting method is plurality, then the Vote is only at equilibrium when the Condorcet winner is selected. If casual observers could understand and believe

[EM] List should be back up now

Hi all, The mail list upgrade happened very shortly after my last mail. It appears to me that everything is working properly. If you run into any problems, please let me know. Thanks Rob Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

[EM] Possible downtime in the next week

Hi all, I'm asking my ASP (Dreamhost) to move this mailing list to a new machine, which has a newer version of Mailman installed on it. My understanding is that this SHOULD be transparent to everyone but me (some admin functions will not work for hours if not days). So, this should not result in

[EM] Shutting down Yahoo Groups access; this group is not hosted at Yahoo

Hi everyone, After making repeated attempts to contact Yahoo, with no response, I'm shutting down the Yahoo Groups access to the election-methods-list. A little background, as I remember it (I may have some of the details wrong). Back in 1998, findmail.com started archiving this mailing list,

Re: [EM] Butt off OSSIPOFF: can't Lanphier expell him ?

dea I have is that certainly no improvement is to be hoped for. We already have replacement lists. I might complain a little extra since I alone seem to do the good research into fairer voting methods. Meanwhile here, there is no use of the word fair. Perhaps false claims of fairness would occur, bu

Cardinal Ratings == Range Voting? (Re: [EM] Cardinal Ratings vs. Approval Voting (vs. IRV))

Bill Lewis Clark wrote: I want to call into question the claim that Cardinal Ratings (CR) is strategically equivalent to Approval Voting (AV.) Is "Cardinal Ratings" the same as "Range Voting" described here: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting My reading is that it is. If so, it'd be gr

[EM] Appeal for better weblog polling (Electorama)

Hi all, I'm all giddy because I've received the first external submission to the Electorama weblog (http://electorama.com/) Here's an excerpt: Crude Polling Hampers Sophisticated Political Discussions

Re: [EM] Batch of old messages

It looks like (c) is the most popular option, so that's what I'll be implementing, short of any further discussion/debate on the list. I'd like to respond to David's mail below: David GLAUDE wrote: Obviously answer to the problem is to really moderate the list... not every 20 days. Sifting thr

[EM] Batch of old messages

Hi all, You'll probably notice a batch of fairly old messages coming through on the list. This is because I just went through the queue of 28 messages which sat in the moderator queue, and found the half a dozen or so that are legit emails, as opposed to the rest, which were spam. The reason

[EM] Testing 123

I haven't been able to post to this list, so I'm just sending a simple test message, to see if it's something to do with the message I was sending... Rob Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

Re: [EM] Displaying intermediate results in Condorcet-based elections (re: Rob Brown's original question)

Rob Brown wrote: As I think we all agree, if you can pick a single winner, you should by straightforward extension be able to rank all the candidates. In ranking the candidates we have, then, linearized the matrix. If it can be linearized in a reasonable way, I believe it can be done such th

Re: [EM] Displaying intermediate results in Condorcet-based elections (re: Rob Brown's original question)

Not sure why this didn't make it the first time Original Message Subject: Re: [EM] Displaying intermediate results in Condorcet-based elections (re: Rob Brown's original question) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 20:51:25 +0000 From: Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Re: [EM] Web interfaces and Condorcet scores

Hi Rob, Comments inline. Rob Brown wrote: So I'm thinking, what I need to concentrate on is finding the "delta score" between a candidate and the one above him. This value should always be positive, of course, and should represent the number of votes necessary to tie that candidate, but that

Re: [EM] Intro to list (etc)

Rob Brown wrote: So has anyone tried showing bar graphs or numerical scores for Condorcet elections? I suspect that if this is completely impossible to show something reasonable, I won't have much luck selling a condorcet based system to a mainstream web audiencepeople really seem to want

[EM] [Fwd: A new voting system, Borda Fixed Point, solution to Arrow'sproblem]

+0200 From: Thomas Cool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: Craig Carey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Dear mr. Martin Harper and mr. Rob Lanphier, A mutual contact Craig Carey informed me about a voting page at an institution wikipedia. It appears that you have

Re: [EM] bye byte

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leaving this list, you [many expletives deleted] I clearly haven't been reading this list closely enough, and I don't know which message provoked this response. However, there is no reason for this behavior EVER. As people have found, I'm tolerant of a lot of stuff (