http://blog.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23472 <pre> Right. We learned how to accomplish this with modest-sized groups in the 20th century. Scaling this up has been thought impossible. It's not. Indeed, it is *necessary*. Great. It's the place to start. The goal that I see as realizable is that voting systems, and, more importantly, the *political process* can be designed to increase connectivity and trust between the people and government. When I started this, I felt like a voice crying in the wilderness. I don't feel that way any more. Lots of people are getting it. Structures are being built. The interesting possibility, to me, is that the *simplest* system, vote-for-one, can be used in Asset as a ballot, and handling votes for more than one can easily be done without harm. Voting strategy is so simple it's hard for people to understand? "What do you mean, vote for the single candidate you most trust? How would I know who this would be out of what might be thousands of candidates?" People get it backwards. Identify the person in your community you most trust, talk to them and ask them to register as a candidate, and vote for them! And if you don't know anyone, well, that's the source of your sense of isolation and disempowerment right there! Meet some people! Or find someone else like yourself, do what it takes, and cooperate. (People think that the "you most trust" is about comparing all the candidates and finding the one who most matches your opinions. A difficult task indeed! Trust is not about matching opinions, though it may correlate with them in some ways. And if we don't know what trust is, again, *there is what stops us!*) For complete work, do both. That's a goal that will distort your results. Do some real science here. It starts with exploration. Find some historical data, I suggest. Become familiar with how the methods work in actual practice. Then design simulations, see if you can predict the behavior of real elections with them. The advantage of simulations is that you can observe how absolute utility profiles create results, and then you can, for the simulations, measure Bayesian regret. Real performance as to a measure of overall social satisfaction, known because the profiles were *defined.* That's what you cannot do with real elections, or at least not generally. There might be some ways to do it. If you believe that the Droop quota is not needed, try to prove you are wrong, by designing tests. If you try to prove that your theory is true, you can always make up evidence to prove it. What's likely is that the Droop quota has functions and the Hare quota has functions. I always suggest the Hare quota for Asset elections because it's thoroughly fair, all seats fully and without compromise represent a quota of voters. However, the Droop quota does the same thing, *if one may elect an extra seat*. That seat might have some difference in funciton; it represents what I call "dregs." Left over votes from elected seats, isolated electors who haven't found a compromise. Attempting to complete the election immediately is what leads to wasted votes and wasted votes means people who aren't represented. Essentially, the quota can be arbitrary, it simply will produce a different number of seats if all votes are used. Is there harm in this? *How much harm*? If you look at what seems like unfairness, I suggest it will be found in the rules that attampt to reqiure completion in a fixed time. What if the results of elected seats are announced, and not all seats have been elected, and over the next weeks and months, electors get it together to create more seats? If enough seats have been elected initially, the Assembly can begin to function, and it could simply decide to consider the threshhold for substantive motions to pass to be the majority of electoral votes. It could even allow electors to vote directly, while still restricting the right to introduce motions and debate on the floor to elected seats. There are creative ways to address the problem that could transform the entire way we look at politics. Asset elections complete through *cooperation,* not competition. Every seat is *unanimously elected by a quota.* For N seats, that's the Hare quota. Single-winner elections use the Droop quota! (That is, when a majority is required. This is the origin of the Droop quota, really.) Single-winner elections *require* wasted votes. The equivalent of using the Hare quota in a single-winner election would be a requirement for unanimity. For those that don't know, the Hare quota in an N-winner election with V voters casting one vote -- or having one vote active -- is V/N. The Droop quota is V/(N+1). The methods we are considering, when a candidate is elected with votes in excess of the quota, the remaining votes after the quota is substracted are then available to be assigned to another caniddate. In Asset, votes held by the candidate may be assigned at will by the candidate, as if they were the candidate's "assets," hence the name. In STV, the transfers are assigned by a ranked ballot, the elected candidate is "eliminated" from the remainder of the election, and all ballots with a vote for that candidate drop to the next rank, and are given a fractional consideration so that the remaining sum is the left-over vote. At least that's one method. The stunning power of asset comes from the transfers being under intelligent control, and available for negotiation. The voters assign trust to electors, who then operate publically as to any re-voting. The electors can use any process they choose to decide how to rassign their votes. I expect that seats will be elected chaotically, essentially one at a time, as electors find agreement to assign a quota of votes to a seat. This is actually what happened with the ESF Steering Committee election. I was elected immediately, the only candidate with more than a quota of votes (Hare or Droop). I then elected the second of three seats, assigning him, beyond his own votes, enough to take him to the Droop quota, with, as I recall, still having enough votes to give him a Hare quota if necessary. (I don't remember exactly. The rules had been imperfectly and, my opinion, incorrectly specified, but the Asset concept is so powerful that we, as the candidates, could create a *unanimous election,* and with unanimity, is anyone gong to complain that we did not follow the announced process?). And then the second-highest vote-getter transferred his votes to a candidate who had only one vote of his own, giving him a Droop quota. So, to make the election unanimous, I asked the remaining candidate </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-05-19T04:35:09 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23471 <pre>Thank you Abd, I agree consensus is feasible when there are few people and they are committed to working together. I'm focusing on US elections and more so "more local" elections that tend to be chronically non-competitive. I agree we all use short-cuts in voting and that that shd be considered in thiinking about what sort of election rules we should use. For simulations, I could generate utilities like Warren Smith did, or I could sample from historical data. Either way, my goal wd be to refute the notion that a Droop quota is needed for 3-seat elections, when the purpose of the droop quota is served by another means, like the use of an at-large seat. dlw dlw On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 2:09 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax &lt;abd&lt; at &gt;lomaxdesign.com&gt;wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> David L Wetzell 2013-05-17T19:13:54 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23470 <pre> It's unlikely to result in a "minority being in power." A minority may get a disproportional number of seats, based on what is done when no more candidates get the quota. That is only one possible solution; it's based on the assumption that *all seats must be filled.* Indeed, since all seats meeting the Hare quota is pretty unlikely, setting the quota to aim for N+1 seats and then *not awarding that last seat unless the quota is met*, is a kind of solution. Asset demolishes the problem. One would indeed set the number of seats one high and tolerate it being met, because if it is met, *every voter is represented, no exceptions.* There is another solution as well. We actually held an Asset election, for the Election Science Foundation Steering Committee, and it seemed possible that only two candidates would get the Hare quota. The election was defined unilaterally by one of the candidates as electing the top three after transfers. The transfers made it Asset. I'd never have set the "top three" criterion. I was first in votes; this candidate was second, and Warren Smith was third, and there were two others with votes. I had enough votes to be elected by the Hare quota, with some votes left over. Nobody else had the Droop quota without transfers. I had enough votes to push Warren over the Hare quota, as I recall, certainly it was over the Droop. So since we had no clear rules, and the declaration of the candidate as to the method, was unilateral, and Warren and I now represented a supermajority of voters, I felt free to handle this the way I generally desire: push for maximized consensus. So I essentially declared Warren elected and, if we had been unable to agree on the third seat, we still had two members of the committee and could have made any necessary decision on behalf of the full electorate by mutual consensus. As it happened, the candidate in second place decided to finish the process by awarding his votes to another candidate. That left one candidate who was holding two votes. I asked him if he approved the election. He did. So we elected three seats with *unanimity*. All candidates had the Hare quota. As policitical scientists about this, they will tell you it's impossible. Sure, it was not really difficult because we only had 17 voters. But how does one elect a 3-person committee with 17 voters, and *quickly* manage that it's unanimous? If the 2nd candidate had held out, we could have then done whatever necessary to move on. Personally, I'd have invited him to participate fully, but without a deciding vote, unless an agreement had been made transferring those votes to him. That wasn't impossible. I wasn't actually *opposed*, I merely wanted to see what would happen if I held back. With a more formal method, the same thing could easily have happened. Basically, the elector left with the two votes had an obvious way to cast them. If they were not cast, all those who voted for that elector would not be represented. That's a high social pressure to find the best compromise. What disturbs some people is that *this process cannot be predicted,* at least not with high confidence. I'd not have predicted the 2nd candidate would do what he did. It was a surprise. It upset one of the voters, in fact, who thought that somehow this person had been deceptive. "Why did he run if he wasn't willing to serve?" But he *was* willing to serve, he simply made a compromise, for his own reasons. However, electors in Asset elections need not have any intention to actually serve, and they could even announce that in advance. They serve in the process of the election, that is the promise that they make, not to actually move to some location and spend their life dealing with endless minutia, the real service of real polticians. So: an option isto just leave that last seat vacant if there is no compromise found. And a way to handle that in the Assembly is to treat this vacant seat as part of the basis for a majority. Or just neglect it. However, Asset creates a body of *pubic voters* -- we did all the negotiations on a public mailing list; we *could* have negotiated privately and then announced our decisions as to vote transfers, but we didn't -- and it's possible, because these are real people with established identities (I'd require that for electors to be eligible), internet voting becomes possible with high security. It's secret ballot internet voting that's a problem. They electors have the elected seats to participate in deliberation, and to vote for them *by default,* but if the electors vote directly, the votes that went to them from the elector would devalue the vote of the seat fractionally. My sense is that this would be rare as making any difference, and it might be routinely neglected in reversible procedural decisions (i.e., later it would be revealed when the internet voting was considered). It is also possible that the internet voting would be real-time. I.e., an elector would be watching the proceedings over the net, see a vote, and vote immediately. Later is too late. This is the same restriction as is on seats. Be there or be square. Or the elector is actually present, in the gallery. Internet voting by phone would be simple, and they, as electors, would have a secure account on a legislative wireless network. Remember, all votes of seats and electors *must be public* for this system to work. Some legislative process requires secret committees. Sorry, electors, that's not where you can watch and vote. You don't have adequate proven public trust, only seats have that.) A step toward that would be to simply allow electors with unassigned votes to vote them. Voting is a small part of what an Assembly actually does. Most of the business is in process, in entering motions and debating them on the floor or in committee. That would only be open to elected seats. That, however, is all public process, and can be followed by electors *if they wish*. Electors who are widely trusted may wish to do this. An elector holding a couple of votes, or even just one (perhaps their own?) may find it more trouble than it is worth.... Natural consequences: compromise and gain access, or don't. But, with these systems, no votes need be wasted. Period. Unless they are cast for a poor candidate. (And it's possible for candidates to name a proxy or successor if they can't function. They should be trusted to do that. It would be voluntary, except in Asset systems that, for voter security, disallow becoming a public voter with less than a threshold of votes. That's to make voter coercion more difficult. Not necessary in many implementations, only under "difficult conditions." Under those conditions, the votes would be amalgamated by proxy and assigned to an elector as indicated, by the system, secretly. I don't like this at all, but necessity is necessity.) Party lists are very attractive. The reason is the same reason that led Lewis Carroll to invent Asset Voting. Most voters only know their favorite. They really don't know enough to rank others. So they bullet vote, when they can. (Much of what FairVote imagines is reaction to LNH failure, in the old Bucklin elections, is really just this phenomenon, and the same thing happens with IRV when voters are not forced to fully rank -- which many then do by just checking down the list, which is why they need to do Robson Rotation.... you don't get good information out of voters by coercing them. Bad Idea.) Voters know parties even better than candidates, and they know their favorite. The knowledge persists beyond a single election, and they can probably rank parties as well. The reason Demoex was able to gain a seat in their City Council was because of party list. It made it simple and cheap. They have not been as successful as they might have been because they created a no-party party, which then proceeded to behave like a party with *high discipline*, i.e., a winner who was pledged to only vote *as instructed by the party process*. And when another small party started up, that might have been similar in some positions to them, they treated it like the enemy because they lost votes. Demoex, then, in spite of the brilliant ideas in some of what they did, proceeded to demonstrate the hazards of being a political party. Even if it is theoretically open, in practice, it can easily become "Us First." They didn't cooperate. Had they set up Demoex to *advise* candidates </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-05-17T19:09:09 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23469 <pre> Warren did add to the page that "Secret Preferences" was also known as Later No Harm. I can readily understand why he did use a different name. The name is horrible. It implies "harm" is done by voting sincerely. Later-No-Harm implies that revealing a "secret preference" harms someone. Whom? "The more-preferred candidate" is alleged harmed by someone else being elected. LNH-compliant methods *force* voters to keep lower preferences "secret," the method does not uncover them unless the preferred candidate is eliminated. Note that this elimiination cuts both ways. The "secret preferences" of other voters cannot save the candidate from losing the election. The implication is strong: compromise must only be allowed if the first preference is *impossible*. Therefore Later-No-Harm compliant methods are inimical to compromise, and negotiating an optimal compromise is the principal mission of voting system. Along this line of thought, Approval fails LNH, because a voter who votes a second preference as well as a first can cause the first preference to tie, or, if a tie exists between the first and second preferences, it can cause the second preference to win. However, this is only visible if we know a "secret preference." The ballots won't show this. Now, if the voter voted for A and B, which one did the voter harm? It is true for either one that the other vote can cause the other to win. In Approval, the situation is exactly balanced. Both votes helped both candidates toward a win against all others. Essentially, the voter has, if bullet voting, helped only one, and if voting for two, has helped two *equally*. Only in the case that both candidates are frontrunners is this problematic. LNH "failure," then, is only of interest to voters who might consider approving both frontrunners. Where voters have a significant preference, they will only approve one frontrunner, and not the other. They have a *choice* of whether or not to approve both. We must assume that if they do approve both, they have a weak preference between them. The two votes then effectively expresses that weakness. Approval is the first step into a world of methods that rank (or rate) categories of candidates rather than candidates. It's up to the voter what categories to place candidates in, and Arrow recently explained in an interview that his famous Theorem did not apply to methods like this. Yet it is as simple as Counting All the Votes. Essentially, LNH is a Criterion that can sound good on first contact. It actively prevents a voting system from negotiating a fair compromise, hence the Spoiler effect in Plurality and Center Squeeze in IRV. It's simple to fix, but inevitably the fix causes LNH failure. In highly polarized situations, voters will bullet vote and cause Approval to default to Plurality. We can fix this either by using IRV, with conditional lower ranked votes (i.e., all ranks allow voting for more than one), but that method hasn't been well studied, to my knowledge. It should work at least as well as IRV, though. (With this, the voter chooses whether to vote approval style or IRV style). And more complex methods can be designed. IRV probably maximizes additional votes, but then proceeds to ignore many of them. Bucklin appears, from history, to encourage substantial additional approvals, in contested elections, possibly almost as many as does IRV, because Bucklin offers "conditional LNH protection." For "unless candidate is eliminated" substitute "candidate does not win with higher ranked amalgamations." Another approach to a fix can be done by using runoff voting, while not reverting to Plurality in the first round. If the first round is Bucklin, we can expect this system to somewhat depress the number of lower ranked votes, because voters can defer that "additional approval" decision even further than possibly by assigning a lower Bucklin rank. (All Bucklin votes are approvals, merely conditional ones.) If the runoff is also Bucklin, a voter could take an extended stand for the favorite, waiting down through five simulated runoffs (if it's three-rank Bucklin), before finally adding additional approvals. There is a cost to this: the voter may then need to add additional approvals, and may fail to get a more-preferred candidate into a runoff. For a truly advanced system, I've suggested using a Range ballot in a runoff system. The Range method must also indicate approval cutoff, and that could be as simple as setting a certain rating as the minimum approved rating. And "Approved" has a very specific meaning. It doesn't meant that the voter has some absolute Approval judgment of the candidate. It is a *choice,* only. The choice is this: does the voter prefer the candidate being elected to deferring the decision to lower ranks, or to a runoff, if it's the first election. That's an absolute preference, it's a comparison. Yes, it involves complex strategy if the voter wants to give it that much thought. Most voters won't do that, but their guesses will probably, on average and with experience, reflect something close to their real preferences. With a Range ballot of sufficient resolution, many candidates could be ranked. If the number of ratings is equal to the number of ranks, an easy default rating is obvious: just rank them. This would then be a Borda ballot. However, it allows equal ranking and it allows skipped ranks. (Real Bucklin did both.) The difference between Bucklin, then, is that rating of unapproved candidates becomes possible. If a plurality decision is to be made, that's necessary for optimization, because it does matter. IRV allows the voter to vote in these "unpalatable" races. With sufficient Range resolution, the "harm" to the favorite is tiny, and in a primary, the only usage of lower preferences would be for pairwise analysis, to ensure that a Condorcet winner makes it into the runoff. The runoff can have more than two candidates. If it's a Range ballot, the top two sum-of-votes candidates may go into the runoff, and if there is a candidate who beats them both, pairwise, that candidate can be there as well. The final ballot form? Bucklin would do very well and is very simple to vote. Range aficionados would want pure Range, and there is value to that. It could be Bucklin using a full Range ballot. (Bucklin is essentially median Range; Bucklin satisfies the majority criterion and only fails where multiple majorities are involved, a technical point. In the primary, an obvious and simple standard for going to a runoff is majority approval. No majority approval, no runoff. However, there can be some other additional criteria: for maximized performance, simple multiple majorities could got to a runoff. (This demolishes the argument that Bucklin does not satisfy the Majority Criterion). Condorcet failure? Runoff. (In reality, with sufficient resolution, multiple majorities would be rare in seriously contested elections. They did happen with Bucklin, on occasion.) (To count a Range ballot as Bucklin, just start adding in votes in a simulated series of Approval eletions, starting with the top rating and moving down, until a majority is found or the ratings have been exhausted. In a first round Bucklin election, majority required, stop counting when a majority is found; if the necessary rating round to reach that is below the defined approval cutoff, the election fails. There would then be various ways of determining runoff candidates.) Hybrid systems can satisfy all reasonable voting systems criteria. LNH, probably not. It intrinscially conflicts with Condorcet criterion, which is highly intuitive. The Condorcet criterion itself is defective, as can be shown by real-world examples, but it is *usually* telling. When a Range election fails the Condorcet criterion, it indicates that there is either a compromise that involves a plurality of voters giving up a small benefit in order to provide a larger benefit to a smaller number, which real people routinely do when they understand the choice, *or* strategic or inaccurate voting has led to an *appearance* of this. Which is why resolving this with a much more direct comparison, the electorate now knowing the situation, in a runoff, is likely to fix rare problems. Meanwhile, a voting system that is possibly as advanced as anything reasonably likely to see the light of public usage soon has been proposed in Arizona. It's far more sophisticated than meets the eye at first. Existing system: top two runoff. Nonpartisan municipal elections. Primary 10 weeks before the general election. If no majority, runoff in general election. Both elections, vote for one. Write-ins may be allowed in both elections, I'm unclear about that. (But write-in candidates must meet certain criteria or the votes are not counted.) Proposal (Arizona HB 2518): Approval primary, 10 weeks before the general election. This is *only* a primary, it cannot complete (unless the electin is uncontested? Many of these are.) Top two candidates go to the general election. There are some subtle features here that are easily missed by voting systems enthusiasts. The law does not change any existing elections, it merely provide options. An IRV option was tacked on through FairVote intervention, making a very simple bill into a monstrosity that might violate the Arizona constitution. This was on track to pass in the Arizona Senate, having passed in the House. It is now unclear. FairVote has stated that Approval might be a decent method in certain kinds of elections, and these might fit their idea, but they forgot to communicate this to the President of FairVote Arizona, who is also the President of the Arizona League of Women Voters, who argued against the bill on the basis that Approval is Bad -- FairVote has written a lot that might make one think that, like LNH violation, which really doesn't apply here -- so ... the bill's sponsor decided to accept the monstrosity as a compromise. It may have been unnecessary. But ... he's on the ground there. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-05-17T18:18:35 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23468 <pre>The Droop quota is often presumed for proportional representation over the Hare quota that is more proportional, due to how the Hare quota can result in a minority being in power. (I guess the majority get in power only a majority of the time with a Hare Quota. ) And since the amount of proportionality with a droop quota gets watered down as the number of contested seats is reduced, this has led some activists/experts, like Douglas Amy, to insist that PR use at least 5 seats. This is often coupled with an insistence on rank choice voting due to the problems with party lists. So I'd like to simulate the effects of using 3-seat LR Hare for a 13 seat city council election, like in MInneapolis, MN. We'd consider 7 cases: 1. 13 FPTP elections. 2. 13 IRV elections, as are used now. 3. Four 3-seat LR Hare elections with 1 at-large seat with IRV. 4. A 6 and a 7 seat with Droop quota election. 5. A 6 and a 7 seat with Hare quota election. 6. A 13 seat with Droop quota election. 7. A 13 seat with Hare quota election. I'd like to measure relative proportionality and the probability of a majority getting a ruling majority, the portion of close/competitive elections, and maybe some other stuff that cd be of interest. Anybody interested? My intuition is that smaller-order PRs retain the constituent-legislator relationship and would be preferred by many who like having their council-person. I also think that the Hare quota is more important for increasing the likelihood of having a competitive election and giving minority groups a higher chance of being swing voters. If this is paired with the use of an at-large seat or some other way of establishing a hierarchy who can get things done, it might be a winning combination. dlw On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, &lt; election-methods-request&lt; at &gt;lists.electorama.com&gt; wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> David L Wetzell 2013-05-17T15:28:17 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23467 <pre>I wanted to express the beatpath definition of the Schwartz set in a simpler and more compelling or appealing way, and the cycle definition (that I've posted here) seemed such a simplification. But the cycle definition doesn't define the Schwartz set. A candidate that doesn't have a defeat that isn't in a cycle isn't necessarily in the Scwhartz set (as defined by the unbeaten set definition and the beatpath definition]. Of the two definitions (unbeaten set and beatpath), the beatpath definition desn't have much compellingness. For compellingness, I much prefer the unbeaten set definition. Let me state both definitions here: Unbeaten set definition of the Schwartz set:: 1. An unbeaten sets is a set of alternatives none of which are beaten by anything outside the set. 2. An innermost unbeaten set is an unbeaten set that doesn't contain a smaller unbeaten set. 3.The Schwartz set is the set of alternatives that are in innermost unbeaten sets. [end of unbeaten set definition of Schwartz set] --------------------------------------- Beatpath definition of Schwartz set: There is a beatpath from X to Y if X beats Y, or if X beats A and there is a beatpath from A to Y. If there is a beatpath from Y to X, but not from X to Y, then X is not in the Schwartz set. Otherwise X is in the Schwartz set. [end of beatpath definition of the Schwartz set] Michael Ossipoff ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Michael Ossipoff 2013-05-14T20:18:25 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23466 <pre>What's with renaming later-no-harm as "secret preferences"? If you want to make the argument that the name should be changed in general, this one obscure web page seems to be a funny place to do so. Sometimes it's worth just using the same words other people do. 2013/5/11 Warren D Smith &lt;warren.wds&lt; at &gt;gmail.com&gt; ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Jameson Quinn 2013-05-12T02:11:33 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23465 <pre>http://RangeVoting.org/Criteria.html ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Warren D Smith 2013-05-12T02:01:56 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23464 <pre>If there are economies of scale in running as a competitive candidate for an important or larger-scale, single-winner election, regardless of which election rule gets used, then we can expect the number of competitive candidates, i.e. candidates with an a prior chance of winning with a score-voting rule of greater than .01, to be relatively low. This would consequently lower the relative value of most alternatives to first-past-the-post, presuming the existence of multiple non-serious candidates, and make the short-term likelihood of successful adoption the key criterion for which alternative to first-past-the-post should be advocated by electoral analysts/reformers of good will. When I say good-will, I mean as opposed to those who might be supported by those who unduly benefit from the status-quo to muddy the waters and thereby divide electoral analysts/advocates. If one did a Bayesian Regret analysis with seven candidates but drew the candidates from two different distribution, one with a good chance of winning and the other with a very small chance of winning in a fair contest then that might be a more realistic way to assess the relative value of different election rules. One might model the number of competitive candidates as being one plus the output of a Poisson random variable with a mean of one or one.five. It would likely be a lot more meaningful than if the a prior odds of winning of all seven candidates are the same, because in that case the odds of competitive three-way at the top election would be rather high. I think it's clear analytically that in a three-way competitive election, IRV is not as reliable in choosing the condorcet candidate or lowering Bayesian Regret. But I think there are good reasons to presume that in real life, in larger-scale single-winner elections that three-way competitive races will be relatively rare by the end of the election season, which is what counts for the evaluation of election rules: the preferences of voters on election day. dlw On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:02 PM, &lt; election-methods-request&lt; at &gt;lists.electorama.com&gt; wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> David L Wetzell 2013-05-08T19:34:46 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23463 <pre>It is clear 1. the French prefer Approval or Score-Voting over their current 2-stage ssytem. 2. Full rank ordering sucks. 3. Disinformation and low-info voters about voting alternatives make it hard to change to IRV, as would likely also be the case if another alternative had been on the ballot. 4. The relative value among electoral alternatives to FPTP is epistemically fragile. dlw On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:02 PM, &lt; election-methods-request&lt; at &gt;lists.electorama.com&gt; wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> David L Wetzell 2013-05-08T19:14:06 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23462 <pre>Academics just conducted another study in 3 French towns (exit poll) of several score voting schemes &amp; approval voting in 2012 presidential election. All produced the same winner as the official winner, Hollande. I'm using the following paper by them (in French): http://RangeVoting.org/France1220.pdf Anyhow, they appended a QUESTIONNAIRE to the approximately 2340 voters who participated in this voting study, getting 80-95% response rates to these additional questions. QUESTION 1 asked which type of voting they prefer. Apparently this question was conducted using 4-choice plurality voting (sigh). 1958 answered. The 4 choices were: I. Les deux regles("the two rules??" does this mean the present 2-round system? Or does it mean "I want both approval and score voting"?) 27.53% II.Vote par approbation ("approval voting") 29.47% III.Vote par note ("score voting") 32.84% WINNER!! IV.Aucunedes deux ("neither of them") 10.11% Can any French-speaker explain what the hell that was all about? This question wording seems extremely poor. Elsewhere in same paper the official system was described as "Vote uninominal a deux tours (officiel)." Fortunately, we can dodge all that since question 2 works excellently. QUESTION 2a asked for which kinds of elections approval voting system should be used (or not). 4 subquestions: Elections presidentielles: 61%. Electionslegislatives: 57%. Electionsmunicipales: 61%. Associations: 52%. QUESTION 2b asked for which kinds of elections score voting system should be used (or not). same 4 subquestions: Elections presidentielles: 62%. Electionslegislatives: 55%. Electionsmunicipales: 66%. Associations: 51%. Superb. Majority wants them for everything, and 61% is equivalent to the largest ever USA presidential "landslides." This to me is the first really convincing evidence the populace WANT approval and range voting. Meanwhile there also is convincing poll evidence from UK, Australia, and BC Canada that voters do NOT want IRV (instant runoff, full rank ordering) if choice is between IRV &amp; plain plurality voting. AUSTRALIA October 2010 nationwide professional telephone poll (NewsPoll http://www.rangevoting.org/AustraliaNewsPollVoteStudy.pdf ) 1202 random Australian adults: found that they prefer plain-plurality voting versus the preferential (instant runoff) system they presently use to elect their House. If forced to choose one, they'd choose to abandon IRV – the poll's result was 57% to 37% (with 5% don't know/refuse). UK: 5 May 2011 binding referendum asking voters to decide whether the UK should switch from plurality to IRV voting, resulting in a massive landslide victory (68% to 32% of the 19.3 million votes) for "stay with plurality." British Columbia Canada 12 May 2009: "switch to IRV" (from plain plurality) got only 39.09% of the 1.65 million votes in referendum. And I just posted landslide poll evidence voters do NOT want "majority judgment" with 7-point verbal scale, if choosing between it and present 2-round plurality plus 2nd round runoff system: FRANCE April 2011: http:/rangevoting.org/Sondageopinionway.pdf At the end of this poll of 1000, the pollees were asked WHICH voting method they preferred: 1. Traditional (plurality plus 2nd round runoff): 63% 2. MJ (median-based with verbal 7-point scale): 36% 3. Other/don't know: 1% Now returning to the academic study in the 3 towns, they trialed DIFFERENT score voting systems in the 3 towns: TOWN...........TYPE OF SCORE VOTING TRIALED Louvigny...............{-1, 0, +1} St.Etienne.............{0, 1, 2} Strasbourg............{0, 1, 2, ..., 19, 20} And the result of question 2b was that there was CLEARLY MORE SUPPORT for {-1,0,+1} and {0,1,2} than for {0,1,2,...,19,20} but in contrast question 2a got about the same support rates in all 3 towns. CONCLUSION: Voters want: Avg-based score voting (unspecified numerical scale) &gt; Approval voting and plain plurality voting &gt; IRV and Avg-based score voting with 3-point numerical scale (don't care if {-1,0,+1} or {0,1,2}) &gt; Avg-based score voting with 21-point numerical scale. </pre> Warren D Smith 2013-05-08T03:41:30 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23461 <pre>In the scenario below. From: Jonathan Denn &lt;info&lt; at &gt;aGREATER.US&gt; In a three way race for POTUS. Let's say we have the traditional D and R. A fringe third party candidate runs and is widely hated (H) by everyone except his/her supporters. But the final results are H 34% D 33% R 33% Now the hated candidate is leader of the free world. In Approval Voting, I think it unlikely in this hyper-partisan country that many voters will vote for D &amp; R, and not H. So the results might very well be the same. Is this a legit flaw for Approval? It seems quite plausible to me. dlw: But if Ds prefer Rs way over Hs and Rs prefer Ds way over Hs then both parties could easily adopt a strategy of flipping a coin at the voting booth and voting their approval for the other party's candidate over the Hs candidate if they get heads. This would then make the %s, H: 34% D: 49.5+e% R: 49.5+f% And so there'd be a 50-50 chance that either major-non-extremist party would get elected depending on whether e&gt;&lt;f. Now, I believe that the economies of scale in running a big campaign tends to make a 3-way competitive election relatively unlikely, which in turn tends to make most alternatives to FPTP of close to the same value-added. This is why I believe the focus shd be on changing the mix of single-winner and multi-winner/(quasi-)PR elections in such a way that will tend to increase the % of competitive seats. That'll make it so there'd be less acrimony, since neither of the (likely two) major parties would be able to dominate the other and so it'd be rat'l for them to cooperate to maintain their duopolistic positions. dlw ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> David L Wetzell 2013-05-07T19:21:48 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23460 <pre>As with many such scenarios I've seen, it assumes an electorate that is firmly attached to one or the other major party, and then, in this case, it assumes a third candidate who has supporters similarly attached. Any idea how preposterous this is in an established two-party system? Then, Kristofer again assumes rigid partisan voting, while the election method (Approval) sets up the possibility of different voting styles, and if free entry of candidates to this election -- implied by the setup -- is allowed, again, there is rigid voting. But the majority of voters in the U.S., anyway, quite simply, don't vote that way, and a third party isn't going to arise unless it vote-splits with an existing major party. And those who would be split with plurality would easily vote for both the new candidate and the existing one. Emotional weight is added to the argument by calling the new candidate(s) Hated. But in the circumstances described, it would be *easier* -- slightly -- to ascribe that to the D and the R. So what is set up is a situation where there are three rigid factions, and they hate each other. But we then give this a spin by *claiming* that the D and the R don't hate each other as much as they hate H. Yeah, but in a situation like this, obviously, Approval isn't expressive enough. Approval is a Range method, but with the minimum expressive range. Bucklin, Instant Runoff Approval, could handle this pretty well. And if the Ds and Rs hold out, each trying to win, yes, H could win with a plurality method, *and as described, Approval is a plurality method.* That is, it elects with a plurality. I hope that Kristofer is aware that the U.S. President is never elected with a plurality of electoral votes, this only could happen in a direct election by plurality. IRV would handle this situation, because of it's LNH satisfaction, but there are much better ways without the IRV pathologies. (Which don't bite in this situation, this is one where IRV works.) To keep the original intention of the U.S. Presidential system, I'd suggest Asset, vote for one -- or FAAV, which is Asset with any overvotes fractionated to keep it one total vote per voter, since all the votes will remain active. Then a majority of electoral votes can be required, as with the original intention. The electoral college without districts, and defined by candidate votes directly, instead of indirectly. If a runoff method is to be used -- which many countries do -- then I'd use Bucklin for both elections (or a range hybrid). With Bucklin in the runoff, it can be top 3. Any election with leading candidates so equally balanced is only resolved based on that data, at substantial risk of making a poor decision. A more sophisticated ballot than Approval is needed, unless the election is a series of approval runoffs, with only one eliminated at a time. We aren't going to do that. At 04:42 PM 5/6/2013, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-05-07T18:05:18 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23459 <pre> It would solve that problem, but the problem can be reintroduced if each party gets greedy. Say each party thinks like this: "We can get our partisan voters to vote for only our own candidates. If we'd win an ordinary Approval with a single candidate, then by fielding n candidates, we can win a top-n runoff". So they each field two clones, and you get a result like: H1: 34% H2: 34% D1: 33% D2: 33% R1: 33% R2: 33% now H1 and H2 go to the runoff. For Approval, it'd be better to pick the challenger as the candidate who's approved by most people who didn't approve of the winner. Then H1 and a non-H candidate go to the runoff, and the non-H candidate wins. There may be more sophisticated methods that solve that problem as well. My "pick the candidate who's approved by most who didn't approve of the winner" was just something I thought of as I wrote this, and it may (for all I know) have strange strategy incentives. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Kristofer Munsterhjelm 2013-05-06T21:42:34 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23458 <pre>In these "likely" scenarios, and assuming there is no electoral college, doesn't a runoff of the top two seem the best method until someone gets a majority? Jon On May 6, 2013, at 5:14 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Jonathan Denn 2013-05-06T21:21:37 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23457 <pre> Sure. Suppose the plurality numbers (could be approval with 100% bullet voting) were: H 32 R 33 D 35 D wins. But suppose that 5 D's decide to approve R in an effort to avoid the possible election of H, but the R's are determined to bullet-vote: H 32 R 38 D 35 Oops. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Jonathan Lundell 2013-05-06T21:14:50 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23456 <pre>Plurality voting without the Electoral College In a three way race for POTUS. Let's say we have the traditional D and R. A fringe third party candidate runs and is widely hated (H) by everyone except his/her supporters. But the final results are H 34% D 33% R 33% Now the hated candidate is leader of the free world. In Approval Voting, I think it unlikely in this hyper-partisan country that many voters will vote for D &amp; R, and not H. So the results might very well be the same. Is this a legit flaw for Approval? It seems quite plausible to me. Jon Denn ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Jonathan Denn 2013-05-06T21:08:05 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23455 <pre> Instead of minguo.net, I meant: http://minguo.info On Monday, May 6, 2013 3:01:49 PM UTC-4, Michael Ossipoff wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Michael Ossipoff 2013-05-06T19:04:20 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23454 <pre> On Wednesday, May 1, 2013 5:37:25 PM UTC-4, Warren D. Smith (CRV cofounder, http://RangeVoting.org) wrote: Yes. There's such a poll at http://minguo.net There have been polls like that at http://www.democracychronicles.com I've noticed that Obama tends to win those. But, when the poll is about _platforms_,and there are links to the latforms, then the Greens win. Michael Ossipoff ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Michael Ossipoff 2013-05-06T19:01:49 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23453 <pre>Hi. Michael Allan wrote: I see. Ok. Ok. Yes, very good and very interesting. On the other hand executives or committees can be given power if the input primaries [3] would assign it to them unforced via [2]. So executive action can still be supportive in swift ways if this is seen necessary. Yes, especially if the whole planning is already done in process and the plan is kept up-to-date in near realtime. While being binding for a determined period, this still helps to assign resources for the next budget, which can already be planned with to a certain degree by the executive (after all this is an important qualification for office) and help expand executive power where it is necessary now. Maybe SemanticMediawiki can already cover that since the mapping only has to go from the right [3] to the budget primary on the left [2]. Pledges still propagate through the tree of the input primary with its pipes, yet they are patched until they may become the executive plan in which case only the mapping is necessary (one query, right?). To project different none majority versions of the plan (yet unpatched propasals as patched/applied) one needed a different tool/algorithm. For this we need changes to semantic properties logged or somehow queryable. This also needs a fast incremental counting, maybe like I proposed. (1) conseo (1) http://zelea.com/w/User:4consensus_WebDe/Trees_of_Transactions This has to be adjusted for the pipe indirection. Resources then flow through the pipes of the projected officers/executives and patching (resource flow) can be projected on different branches of the plan. The programmability would be in the pipes now (?). You could in fact write programatic descriptions of executive behaviour, freeing the executive to stear and programmatically expand and connect the process (e.g. with other executives' programs or production systems). The programs would be embedded in the drafts (hence collective procedure) and the executive is responsible for running them. This is all optional. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> conseo 2013-05-04T01:09:02 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23452 <pre>conseo said: We might do the calculations in the pollwiki using these extensions. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VariablesExtension http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions And pull in the external data with Semantic MediaWiki. Here's a running prototype of a simple budget draft: http://zelea.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Mike-ZeleaCom/scratch&amp;oldid=6561 The bottom example uses SMW to clean up the external data pollution. That leaves pure, original, budgetary content in the draft. Now we can cleanly patch budget differences from draft to draft. (It looks like MediaWiki saves our bacon here, once again. I didn't think we could this without custom software.) This would all go in ??? below, as the whole-budget primary. I make corrections below to the "Unforced expenditures" row: Issue Guiding Primary Decisive Authority ============ =========================== ======================== Forced Legislative (tax law) [1] Assembly revenue Unforced Planning (production) [2] Executive (sub-office) revenue Planning (donation) [2] RAC pledger [3] + executive (sub-office) ------------ --------------------------- ------------------------ Forced - (supplier contracts) None expenditures Legislative [1] Assembly (statutory expenses) Unforced Planning (expenditures) [2] Executive (sub-office) expenditures + budget (expenditures) [4] + executive (finance) ============ =========================== ======================== Budget ??? Executive (finance) + assembly - - - - - - - - - - - - + judiciary (all decisions) We need two primaries for the unforced expenditures, and two deciders. On the primary side (left), the planning drafts for each program (or service etc.) must include their own budgets, specifically each must project the expenditures of the program. These are either fixed (a number), or functions of program size, or other execution variables. These data are pulled into the two types of budget primary (expenditures and whole budget). Now participants in the expenditures budgetary primary know how many votes a program needs in order to run, or to reach a preferred size, or capability, etc. If it hasn't enough primary votes, they'll know they need to campaign, or increase the turnout, or turn their efforts to saving other programs. On the decision side (right), the officer nominated to run the program decides whether to run it at all, and according to which plan (which variant draft from the planning primary). So this decision affects actual expenditures. Meanwhile, the finance officer for the overall budget has the authority to make changes here as well, of course. Although this is a complex practice, it looks like we're rationalizing it fairly well. None of the primaries is looking to be too complex in itself, not even the whole budget. The budget drafters need only choose which programs put forward by the nominated officers must be cancelled (not viable) or given haircuts in order to arrive at the correct balance with revenue. The correct balance (deficit or surplus) can be guided by a separate policy primary. It looks like we could almost generate a default budget automatically from simple rules (again input from policy primaries), and then tweak the draft to correct anomolies. Even the voting in the whole-budget primary might be simplified by a convention: vote for the draft that imposes the fewest tweaks, because it's likely to be the truest to the myriad of input primaries (what we're asking for). Moreover, since each necessary tweak signals an anomoly in the input primaries (like asking for what's impossible), we might eliminate even those residual tweaks by shifting our votes in the input primaries and resolving the anomolies. The primary budget might then be determined wholly from the input of external primaries; the whole-budget drafters *per se* (the tweakers) being effectively removed from the process in the end. The finance officer offered such a "perfect" primary budget need only be concerned with executing it. He/she would be purely an executive. That's perhaps the dream of every executive. The clearer the mandate (what ought to be) the greater the power to make it a fact (what is). Mike conseo said: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Michael Allan 2013-05-02T10:58:06 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.politics.election-methods