At 05:15 AM 9/19/2005, Jan Kok wrote:
On 9/18/05, Abd ulRahman Lomax <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Please don't normalize the Range ballots. There are several reasons
why people might not vote the full range:
Indeed. However, we can't have it both ways. If we don't normalize,
there are going to be objections that somehow Range voting violates
one-person, one vote, even though what is really happening is that
some people cast fractional votes. In Range, full rating is
equivalent to a regular Approval or Plurality vote.
- Truly considering the candidates to be nearly equal. Sometimes,
when I am in a group that is trying to make a choice, and I am asked
which alternative I prefer, I may say, "I weakly prefer A". What I
mean by that is, if several of us weakly prefer A, but a few people
strongly prefer B, then I don't mind if B wins. I'm willing to give
others, who have a stronger opinion, a larger vote.
Fine. However, you are deliberately casting a weak vote. And then the
critics come along and object that there was this "vote" that was not
equally counted, that violates one-person one-vote. Of course, it doesn't.
But the instructions, in any case, should be crystal clear. By the
way, one way to make it explicit that one intends to cast a weak vote
would be to note that anyone can enter a write-in vote and give that
vote maximum rating. That vote could be anyone, or what is written in
could be "None of the Above." This would cause normalization to have no effect.
Normalization should be done anyway in the sense that the maximum
vote should be counted as "1".
Similarly, when
I'm asked to rate something (a course, a seminar, the food in a
restaurant, etc.), if it's not exceptionally good or exceptionally
bad, I will give it a medium rating. A vote such as A:3 B:2 might be
a sincere vote. The people who vote A:3 B:2 won't be upset if B wins.
But the people who vote A:0 B:5 would probably be anguished if A won.
Something has been overlooked here. Let's make the vote report a
little more complete. The weak vote as A:3, B:2, C:0
And the result of this, without normalization, could well be that C is elected.
A much better way for the voter to vote who thinks this way would be
to vote A:5 B:4. This has exactly the same effect in the A:B pairwise
election as 3:2, but it has the effect of causing A and B to be preferred.
However, if there is really a chance that C would be elected, the
voter should probably vote A:5, B:5. This *is* Approval voting, after
all. The same strategic considerations apply.
Because of that, fine-grained Range Voting produces better social
utility when people vote sincerely, compared with voting
strategically/Approval style. Why would you want to _prevent_ people
from voting sincerely?!
Because, in a context where a significant number of people vote
insincerely, for the ones who would be sincere to vote sincerely
would be to grant effective control to the insincere.
It is a great error to attempt to use a voting system as a
fine-grained expression of opinion. To do this probably requires the
inclusion of what might be called polling information on the ballot.
For example, consider what might look like a Range 6 Ballot:
Approved: 5 Favorite
4 Approved
3 Less Approved
2 Marginally Approved
1 Disapproved
(0) Strongly Disapproved.
(Or one might use a different Range granularity, Perhaps Range 3 is
the simplest:
Preferred
Approved
(0) Disapproved.
Once again, we run into trouble when we try to think of a vote in an
election in a partisan environment as an "approval poll." If we don't
deal with this issue, and somehow we manage to get Range implemented
under conditions that look anything like the present, the backlash
will be quite damaging. It could seriously harm the future prospects of Range.
I've seen Approval used in what started as a polarized environment.
Had a vote been taken before discussion, the result would have been A
by a substantial majority. However, there was discussion, and a list
of options was prepared. A poll was taken and there was one option,
B, which was considered "acceptable" -- not preferred necessarily --
by nearly everyone, whereas about one-fourth of the people did not
consider A acceptable. It was only one person, in fact, who did not
approve B. And then a vote was submitted that B be implemented, it
was seconded and it passed with *unanimity*. That was a group of
about fifty people, by the way, quite diverse.
So-called "sincere Approval," and Range is simply more fine-grained
with higher numbers of options, is great for polling, especially
where the poll is going to advise the people who are themselves
voting. If you don't vote sincerely, you get bad advice coming back.
Not a great idea. But as soon as you tie a fixed result to the poll,
i.e., it is an election with binding results, and unless the
environment changes radically (which I'm working on, by the way. How
optimistic should I be?), there is substantial pressure to vote "insincerely."
This issue does not really come up with basic Approval. It is clear
in that method, where you only have two options, Yes or the implicit
No of not marking the ballot, that you are rating candidates based on
a criterion that you have yourself set based on the set of candidates
running for office. You pick a set to Approve and a set to
Disapprove. In doing this, you are choosing to aid the election of
all candidates in the set you have approved, and to act against the
election of those you have not approved.
This is an action, not an emotion or an expression of some kind of
absolute approval. Frankly, we should not call the method "Approval."
We should just call it something like "Alternative Voting." In
Approval, votes are votes quite like what they are in plurality: an
action. Not a speech.
In Range, the situation has not really changed; the only difference
is that *intermediate* actions are possible. Again, these are
actions, and they are expressions only of relative approval. Not of
absolute approval. So when you fail to vote the full approval for at
least one candidate, you are partially abstaining from voting. Many
voters will fail to understand this unless it is made very, very
explicit in the instructions.
- As you say, "some voters would not understand that they are half-way
staying home if they don't vote the maximum range". Well, if a voter
doesn't understand that, and the voter ignores the directions of his
favorite candidate to "Vote 5 for Favorite, and 0 for all others", do
you really want to normalize his vote so it has the same power as
other voters?
Yes, if it is necessary to do this to counter the objection of
violating one-person, one-vote. If the votes are not normalized, it
will have happened that some voters are casting a full vote, and some
are casting less than that, perhaps without understanding it. This
*is* a violation of 1P1V. It could be argued that the violation is
not harmful, but, definitely, it will make implementation more
complex politically.
The 1P1V objection is already the number one objection we see to
Approval and Range.
- The voter may fail to give the highest rating to a candidate because
of some sort of error. For example, punching the wrong hole in a
butterfly ballot. Or not punching the hole out in a punch-card
system. Consider what would happen if a voter intended to vote A:5
B:1 C:0, but failed to punch the 5. Normalizing the ballot would give
A:0 B:5 C:0. It's unfortunate that A lost that 5-vote, but promoting
B from 1 to 5 just makes the problem worse.
Grasping at straws.... a ballot error can result in a miscounting of
a vote, no matter how you slice it. It is misleading to talk about
this as a 5-vote. Each voter casts at most one vote. The vote is
actually for an option that creates a rating. It is the options that
will be reported.
> The raw ballots would
> still be available for informational purpose, so if someone was
> voting, for example, their "favorite" as, say, 2, and the rest as 0
> or 1, their statement would not disappear. But the ballot would be
> normalized, i.e., the votes would be counted in this way:
>
> 800 votes:
> A: 5
> B: 3.333
>
> 200 votes:
> A: 0
> B: 200.
>
> Totals:
> A: 4000
> B: 2666
>
> Looks better, doesn't it?
No, I don't think so.
Ah, I can see that Mr. Kok would not do well in an Approval system.
Given the election totals, and with anything like present electoral
conditions, the result was obviously lopsided. You have an
environment where 80 percent of the voters prefer (by a substantial
margin, by the way) A to B, and then we have 20% of voters who claim
to completely reject A and prefer B. But that kind of polarization is
almost certainly not sincere. So the result of B winning is actually
horrific. I didn't make up the example. And examples like that will
quite certainly be proposed by the opponents of Range.
I think it is necessary to understand something about politics: you
can have the best argument in the world, but if your opponent comes
up with a plausible argument that looks devastating, you are on the
defensive. If your response, even if it is logically airtight, takes
more words than the objection, you've probably lost. You will look
like a sophist, trying to confuse people with complicated arguments.
Think about how the arguments are going to look to unsophisticated
voters (or legislators).
> ...To exercise a full vote under
> Range, you must rate at least one candidate at maximum.
And at least one candidate at minimum!
Yes.
Some people are working to implement Condorcet in Washington State.
Rock Howard did some work to try to implement Approval Voting in
Texas. I'm willing to leave them alone. I'd like to stake out a
claim on Iowa and New Hampshire for Range Voting. That leaves 46
states up for grabs.
The Condorcet movement in Washington State is actively considering
other options besides Condorcet, at the moment. There is some problem
with the moderator of the Condorcet list, who, it seems, is trying to
some extent to impose a relatively narrow focus. It is unclear how
much of this is him, and how much it is the preference of the
legislator being advised. I do know that specific advice regarding
how a legislator might use the results of extensive deliberations
such as take place in the list, without being overwhelmed with the
traffic, was rejected by the moderator....
Gatekeeping is a very important function, and it is one position
which I think should only rarely be entrusted to a single person,
except where the rules are quite explicit and clear.
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