gmane.politics.election-methods

SODA terminology: opinions wanted.

Jameson Quinn — 2012-05-25T14:06:37

I keep coming back to the basic question of terminology in SODA. If the
voters delegate their votes, what is the verb for the thing the candidates
do with those delegated votes? I want to be able to say: "Candidate A is
first in the XXXXXing order, so she XXXXXs YYYY for candidates B and C."
YYYY is probably "delegated approvals"; what is XXXX?

Assign? Cast? Commit? Fill in? Inject? Or is one word not enough, and you
need a phrase like "delegated adding order"?

I'd love it if someone could help me find a better option. Even if not, I
need more opinions before I can confidently choose one of the above options.

Jameson
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Re: Juho,5/25/12, roughly 2230 UT

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-25T08:39:13

I'll add one additional question right away in order not to delay the discussion by one more round.

On 25.5.2012, at 0.17, Michael Ossipoff wrote:


The definition of term "Condorcet(wv)" is not fully straight forward. I assume that the definition covers at least the case where we have a top loop of three candidates, and one of those looped candidates has the smallest worst loss of all candidates when measured as winning votes, and that candidate shall win. Is the strategy valid in this special case only or maybe in all situations in all methods that meet the definition of Condorcet(wv) that I gave above?

Juho





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Re: Juho,5/25/12, roughly 2230 UT

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-25T07:22:18

Based on what you say "u/a election" could be redefined => "if, for you, the POSSIBLY-WINNABLE candidates can be divided into two (NON-EMPTY) sets such that the merit differences within each set are negligible in comparison to the merit difference between the sets".

In my comment I however referred to the definition "If it’s a u/a election, and if Compromise is the only acceptable who can beat the unacceptables, then rank Compromise alone in 1st place". Words "the only acceptable" refer to exactly one possibly-winnable acceptable candidate. Later on in your mail you said that this limitation is not necessary, so let's assume also that limitation it's gone now.

Ok. I picked the sincere rankings from the air as a default answer since their treatment was not defined. If the voter rearranges those candidates he probably does so because of some other strategy or other needs that are not part of this strategy. So I guess the default behaviour is still sincerity but we don't want to require it.

Ok. It seems that Compromise is the one of the possibly-winnable acceptable candidates that has highest chances to win (according to the voter), and only that candidate will be ranked alone in 1st place. This means that the ranking of the other possibly-winnable acceptable candidates is not defined.

(I note that ranking your second best possibly-winnable acceptable candidate above your best possibly-winnable acceptable candidate may also make the outcome of the election worse.)

Ok. The strategy should be defined without the u/a criterion. That would mean giving up the requirement of strong merit differences between the acceptable and unacceptable candidates.

Ok. The strategy should be redefined so that at least one of the unacceptables is winnable.

(I guess terms "Worst" and "Worse" that you use refer to some of the unacceptable candidates.)

I referred to the possibility that your strategy could be classified as a defensive strategy that would be a reaction to some offensive strategy that is used by some other voters (and only marginally against situations where votes somehow unintentionally cause a burial like loop). You seem to recommend your strategy as an optimal strategy that is beneficial in all situations (including fully sincere elections as well as ones where other strategies are present). So let's assume that.

Yes, but note that I'm trying to see if the theoretical vulnerability (="sometime optimality") can be made also a practical vulnerability in a real election (="practical optimality").

And then back to the strategy definition.

I'm not 100% sure that my interpretation of your proposed changes are correct, but here's one considerably simpler version that tries to take the proposed modifications into account (including the idea to drop the u/a criterion's strong merit difference requirement away, but keeping terms "acceptable and "unacceptable", assuming that the voter can make that division also when the merit differences are not radical).

"If you think that there are both acceptable and unacceptable candidates that are possibly-winnable, then pick the one of the acceptable candidates that is most likely to win all the unacceptable candidates, and rank that candidate first before all the other candidates."

Is this in the direction that you wanted?

Juho

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Re: Juho,5/25/12, roughly 2230 UT

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-24T21:17:29

From: election-methods-bounces< at >lists.electorama.com
[mailto:election-methods-bounces< at >lists.electorama.com] On Behalf Of Juho
Laatu
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 5:18 AM
To: em Methods
Subject: Re: [EM] Juho,5/25/12, roughly 2230 UT

On 24.5.2012, at 5.40, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

Juho says:

Some further definitions are however needed. What is the definition of and
how will the voters determine if the election is a u/a election?

[endquote]

I'd replied:

An election is, for you, u/a if, for you, the candidates can be divided into
two sets such that the merit differences within each set are negligible in
comparison to the merit difference between the sets.

Juho says:

Good, we are making progress. Term "u/a" now has a definition 

[endquote]

I first posted that definition months ago, Juho :-)

I've posted it very many times during the past month.

Juho says:

"if, for you, the candidates can be divided into two sets such that the
merit differences within each set are negligible in comparison to the merit
difference between the sets". Terms "acceptable" and "unacceptable" refer to
this definition of "u/a".

[endquote]

Juho catches on fast.

Juho says:

Also terms "compromise"

[endquote]

I refer Juho to a dictionary, if he wants to find out what "compromise"
means.

It seems to be just a chosen name for the "only acceptable who can beat the
unacceptables".

[endquote]

That's what I had just said. 

Juho says:

It seems that the strategy has a condition that there must be exactly one
acceptable candidate that is also a potential winner (for he precondition
for the use of the strategy to be true).

[endquote]

Wrong. There need only be one or more possibly-winnable candidates in each
of the two sets, in order for it to satisfy my definition of u/a.

You're confusing the u/a definition with the conditions under which
favorite-burial can be optimal in Condorcet.

As I've been saying, of the two sets referred to in the above-stated
definition, the "acceptable set" is the one that the voter in question
prefers to the other set. That other set is the "unacceptable set". An
acceptable candidate is a candidate in the acceptable set. An unacceptable
candidate is a candidate in the unacceptable set.

We seem to have the same definition.

[endquote]

:-)  That's because you've finally caught on to what my definition is. Very
good, though it took you a long time, and those definitions were posted long
ago.

he's taken on a new tactic, one of asking for definitions

The reason why I (systematically) request exact and directly implementable
definitions

[endquote]

You're requesting definitions that I've already posted. In some cases
they're definitions that I've posted very many time. In some cases, they're
definitions that I've been posting for months.

You're also sometimes requesting definitions of words and expressions that I
use in the standard manner, with the obvious standard dictionary meaning.

You might just as well demand the definition of "the", etc.

Juho says:

is that in order to have a strategy that would work in real life elections
we must have a definition that we can print in the newspapers and then
expect regular voters to follow. 

[endquote]

Ok, now we're talking about strategy instructions or suggestions.

But Juho wants to criticize my strategy suggestions because he still doesn't
understand them. I suggest that Juho isn't typical in that regard. Most
anyone would understand my strategy suggestions.

Juho says:

(An alternative would be to have a strategy that we can send to the parties
and other interest groups, and based on that description those groups could
then publicly recommend how the voters should modify their vote, or what
kind of a vote to cast.)

[endquote]

That would work, but Approval strategy isn't difficult enough to require
that.

Then back to the strategy.

An alternative definition of the strategy could be "If, for you, the
candidates can be divided into two sets ("acceptables" and "unacceptables")
such that the merit differences within each set are negligible in comparison
to the merit difference between the sets, and there is exactly one
acceptable candidate that can win all the unacceptable candidates, then you
should rank that acceptable candidate first and then rank all the other
candidates in your sincere preference order".

[endquote]

Your "alternative definition" is the same as the definition that I'd been
giving, except for the sincere preference order of the other acceptables.
I'd merely spoken of the need to rank Compromise alone in 1st place. I don't
necessarily agree about the "sincere preference order" for the other
acceptables. If they can't win, why would it make any difference. If they
have some small chance of winning, then it would seem best to rank them in
order of what winnability they have.

And it really maybe needn't be that Compromise is the only candidate that
can beat Worst. I said it that way for simplicity. It's probably enough that
Compromise has a better chance than the other acceptables. I haven't given
consideration to that, because I've preferred the simpler case in which
Compromise is the only candidate who can beat Worse.

Later I said that it needn't be u/a. The important thing is that Compromise
is the only candidate who can beat Worse.

Juho says:

For example a voter with sincere opinon a > B > c >>> d > e should vote B >
a > c > d > e. The uppercase letter refers to the candidate that, according
to the voter, can win all the unacceptable candidates. The strategy does not
take position on if there are potential winners among the unacceptable
candidates.

[endquote]

Favorite-burial only makes any sense if Worse, or the unacceptable, is/are
winnable.

Btw, the conditions of the strategy could maybe be also a bit more relaxed
with respect to candidates than the voter expects not to win in any case
falling exactly in the "acceptable" and "unacceptable" categories. I mean
that maybe it is enough if all the other potential winners are unacceptable,
for the strategy to take effect. But this is a minor topic that we can skip
for now. Also the case where there are no unacceptable potential winners
could be slightly different.

As I was saying, I now don't say that u/a is necessary for the optimality of
favorite-burial in Condorcet.

The strategy says that if the top favourites of the voter are candidates
that can not win, then they should be buried under the only acceptable
candidate that can win (the "Compromise") (if such a candidate exists). The
key strategic thought behind the strategy must be that by burying those
candidates as a precaution they can not be used to (or accidentally) bury
the only acceptable potential winner. 

[endquote]

They don't want to bury the only acceptable potential winner. They want to
rank hir alone at top.

If so, then this is a defensive startegy whose idea is to respond to another
offensive strategy used by others (or maybe as a very marginal case, a
response to an unintentional loop).

[endquote]

Yes, there needn't be any assumption about offensive strategy.

Juho says:

The strategy that this strategy responses to could be either rational or
irrational. 

[endquote]

Condorcet's favorite-burial strategy needn't be responding to any other
strategy.

Juho says:

I assume that the strategy applies at least to all typical winning votes
based Condorcet methods.

Am I on the correct track so far?

[endauote]

Yes, I'd say that, under the conditions I described, favorite-burial is
optimal in all Condorcet(wv) versions. But the sometime optimality of
favorite-burial is, by definition, a property of all FBC-failing methods.
I'm not trying to single-out Condorcet(wv). It's just one of many
FBC-failing methods.

Mike Ossipoff

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Co-operation/defection in perspective

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-24T19:49:28

The co-operation/defection problem is nothing in comparison to the problems
of Plurality. By comparison, to just have, for a problem, the C/D problem
would be more like not having a problem at all. Think of it as a nuisance,
as opposed to a disasterous distortion that thoroughly conceals public
wishes.

 

The reason why I emphasize it anyway is because it's the only Approval
problem worthy of the name. That's why I say that you can't significantly
improve on Approval unless you gain defection-resistance.

 

And I'll say again that if you think that Condorcet doesn't have the C/D
problem, then just try Condorcet in the 27,24,49 example and the 33,32,34
example.

 

Mike Ossipoff

 

 

 

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Re: Juho,5/25/12, roughly 2230 UT

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-24T09:18:02

Good, we are making progress. Term "u/a" now has a definition "if, for you, the candidates can be divided into two sets such that the merit differences within each set are negligible in comparison to the merit difference between the sets". Terms "acceptable" and "unacceptable" refer to this definition of "u/a".

It seems to be just a chosen name for the "only acceptable who can beat the unacceptables". It seems that the strategy has a condition that there must be exactly one acceptable candidate that is also a potential winner (for he precondition for the use of the strategy to be true).

We seem to have the same definition.

The reason why I (systematically) request exact and directly implementable definitions is that in order to have a strategy that would work in real life elections we must have a definition that we can print in the newspapers and then expect regular voters to follow. (An alternative would be to have a strategy that we can send to the parties and other interest groups, and based on that description those groups could then publicly recommend how the voters should modify their vote, or what kind of a vote to cast.)

In the EM disdussions we often talk about and try to prove the existence of a modified vote set that would change the winner to the benefit of the voters whose votes were modified. The existence of such modified set of votes I have called "theoretical vulnerability". When we want to comment the viability of different election methods in typical real life elections we should talk about "practical vulnerabilities" or "practical strategies" that can be implemented systematically in a successful way in the targeted societies, with incomplete information about the opinions, just guesses of the votes that will be cast on the election day, with incomplete ability to steer the voters to follow the various possibly simultaneous and alternative strategies, and with other interests of the voters like interest to show support to their favourites even when they can not win, maybe in preparetion for the next elections. ("Practical strategies" could be given also a more formal definition, but maybe that is good enough to be used softly in the less than mathematically hard real world.)

Then back to the strategy.

An alternative definition of the strategy could be "If, for you, the candidates can be divided into two sets ("acceptables" and "unacceptables") such that the merit differences within each set are negligible in comparison to the merit difference between the sets, and there is exactly one acceptable candidate that can win all the unacceptable candidates, then you should rank that acceptable candidate first and then rank all the other candidates in your sincere preference order".

For example a voter with sincere opinon a > B > c >>> d > e should vote B > a > c > d > e. The uppercase letter refers to the candidate that, according to the voter, can win all the unacceptable candidates. The strategy does not take position on if there are potential winners among the unacceptable candidates.

Btw, the conditions of the strategy could maybe be also a bit more relaxed with respect to candidates than the voter expects not to win in any case falling exactly in the "acceptable" and "unacceptable" categories. I mean that maybe it is enough if all the other potential winners are unacceptable, for the strategy to take effect. But this is a minor topic that we can skip for now. Also the case where there are no unacceptable potential winners could be slightly different.

The strategy says that if the top favourites of the voter are candidates that can not win, then they should be buried under the only acceptable candidate that can win (the "Compromise") (if such a candidate exists). The key strategic thought behind the strategy must be that by burying those candidates as a precaution they can not be used to (or accidentally) bury the only acceptable potential winner. If so, then this is a defensive startegy whose idea is to respond to another offensive strategy used by others (or maybe as a very marginal case, a response to an unintentional loop).

The strategy that this strategy responses to could be either rational or irrational. If it is a rational strategy, then there should be another description of that rational strategy for voters to follow. Alternatively one could assume that large number of voters will have a tendency to bury the "Compromise" under some minor candidates (including some of the favourites of this voter).

I assume that the strategy applies at least to all typical winning votes based Condorcet methods.

Am I on the correct track so far?

Juho

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Juho,5/25/12, roughly 2230 UT

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-24T02:40:47

Juho:

 

I'm not going to reply to the repetition and vagueness that constitutes the
rest of your post, but I'll answer this silly question that you've asked.
Your question is silly partly because it asks for a definition that I've
given here many times. But also because it asks if I meant something
different from what I said. ("Silly" is the polite word for the content of
the post to which I'm replying,and your other ones).

 

I'd said:

 

beat the unacceptables, then rank Compromise alone in 1st place.

 

Maybe one can build an implementable strategy from this one. Some further
definitions are however needed. What is the definition of and how will the
voters determine if the election is a u/a election?

 

[endquote]

 

I've many times given definitions of a u/a election. An election is u/a for
you if, for you, it has one or more unacceptable candidates who might win.
And when someone objects that "unacceptable" is undefined,  this is what
I've said: An election is, for you, u/a if, for you, the candidates can be
divided into two sets such that the merit differences within each set are
negligible in comparison to the merit difference between the sets.

 

For the purposes of criteria, I've defined u/a in terms of voting, in a way
that is consistent with the above definition involving 2 sets. And no, I
won't re-post it. It's among the discussion of the possibility of a u/a FBC
criterion, maybe roughly a week ago, give or take some days.

 

Juho says:

 

Also terms "compromise"

 

[endquote]

 

I refer Juho to a dictionary, if he wants to find out what "compromise"
means. 

 

I've been using "Compromise" as the name of a candidate in some of my
discussions, and in some of my criterion definitions. As such, for that
purpose, the word needn't be defined, because it is a name, not a term.

 

Juho says:

 

, "acceptable" and "unacceptable" have to be defined. 

 

[endquote]

 

As I've been saying, of the two sets referred to in the above-stated
definition, the "acceptable set" is the one that the voter in question
prefers to the other set. That other set is the "unacceptable set". An
acceptable candidate is a candidate in the acceptable set. An unacceptable
candidate is a candidate in the unacceptable set.

 

[endquote]

 

Does "rank Compromise alone in 1st place" mean lifting one of the candidates
in the ranked vote to first place while keeping the others as they are?

 

[endquote]

 

If Juho doesn't know what it means to rank a candidate alone in 1st place,
then I again refer him to a dictionary.

 

Actually, this part of Juho's post didn't deserve a reply either. I answered
it only because he's taken on a new tactic, one of asking for definitions. I
don't want anyone to

think that I'm not willing to supply definitions of terms that I use. But
the definitions Juho asked for were each from one of two types: Definitions
already posted by me; and definitions available in any dictionary.

 

Mike Ossipoff

 

 

 

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Re: full-ranking SODA: FBC compliant

Jameson Quinn — 2012-05-23T17:09:31

One more important criterion this system would meet (assuming honest
predeclarations and optimal candidate strategy; this optimal strategy is
unique and knowable, and although it's potentially NP-complete, that
wouldnt be a factor unless there were dozens of potential winners): the
voted Condorcet criterion for any number of candidates.

Also, like prior versions of SODA, this passes later-no-harm for the
candidate with the fewest direct votes (the one whose supporters'
second-choice votes are most important to elicit).

I think that a system which passes FBC and (arguably) Condorcet and a
weakened-but-significant form of LNH is a big deal! This LNH is enough to
ensure that "chicken dilemma" burial problems won't be significant; FBC is
enough to ensure that compromise won't be a problem; so votes will be
honest, and so the Condorcet compliance actually means something.

Note that this system is not of course Condorcet compliant over all voter
preferences, just over the ones they actually express through approval or
delegation. Full compliance would be impossible with this level of
strategic robustness. Still, if things are close to a 1D ideological
spectrum, almost all preferences will be expressible on the ballot. Even if
ideology is 2D or more, the worst case is that unexpressable preferences
are (100/((n-1)!))% rarer than approval (which in itself isn't so bad),
where n is the number of effective candidates (usually 3 or less).

Jameson

2012/5/23 Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn< at >gmail.com>

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full-ranking SODA: FBC compliant

Jameson Quinn — 2012-05-23T14:50:45

In SODA (Simple Optionally-Delegated Approval), candidates must pre-declare
their preferences among the other candidates, and their post-election
approvals using votes delegated to them[1] must be consistent with these
pre-declared preferences. As defined until now, those pre-declared
preferences were partial orderings; that is, tied preferences were
allowed. I have recently realize that if you require full preference
orderings, SODA's criteria compliances improve significantly. Specifically,
I strongly suspect (though I have not yet fully proven) that it meets all
of the following:

1. FBC
2. There is always some semi-honest vote which meets participation (this is
closely related to FBC, but not quite exactly just a stronger version of it)
3. Participation for up to 4 (5?) candidates
4. Consistency for up to 4 candidates
5. Condorcet and ISDA for up to 4 candidates
6. Local IIA (ie, IIA for the weakest alternative) for up to 5 (or possibly
any number of???) candidates

Sadly, this system still doesn't meet plain IIA for even 3 candidates.

Note of course that the "up to N candidates" mathematically, means "up to N
serious candidates" in practical terms. Real-world elections with more than
4 serious candidates are quite rare; and those that do exist are typically
non-partisan and non-ideological, and thus do not exhibit interesting
enough inter-candidate dynamics to result in the tightly-constrained
pathologies that are possible. So I'd bet that in practice, full-ranking
SODA would pass all of the above criteria over 99% of the time.

More to come on this, as I try to work through the relevant proofs.

Jameson

[1] I really wish I had better terminology for this, "approvals using votes
delegated to them" is a mouthful for what should ideally be a single word.
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Re: To Condorcetists:

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-22T22:31:58


In my recent mail, where I studied the Approval strategy that you gave and this example opinion set, I gave some guesses on how the voters might estimate the outcome of the election (expectation).


What is the definition of u/a? Is it needed for the Approval strategy that you gave?


I'm planning to study the strength of that problem when I get the description of the strategy.


I have not thought of that. I'll come back if I find something useful to say on this topic.

Juho



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Two completely different kinds of voting reforms. ICT vsCondorcet.

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-22T22:18:11

There are two completely different kinds of voting system reforms:

1. A completely different and new voting system
2. A minimal obvious fix to the current voting system

Our Condorcetists at EM don't seem to get that distinction.

The proposal to repeal Plurality's forced falsification rule follows
obviously from an examination of what's wrong with Plurality, what
Plurality's problem is. It's a type #2 reform, a minimal obvious fix to the
current voting system.

Which of those two kinds of reform proposals do you think would have a
shorter expected enactment time? 

Which one could be considered as a voting-rights case?

Condorcetists keep implying that they don't think that Approval would bring
enough benefit, if I'm correctly guessing what they mean.

I've told of the societal benefits that Approval would bring. I've told why
that is. Anyone should feel free to tell why they believe that isn't so.

But, for now, I'll just add that Myerson & Weber have shown that Approval
would quickly home in on the voter median, and then stay there.

Do Condorcetists feel that electing candidates at the voter-median position
isn't good enough? 

Plurality's problem, which causes it to keep on electing, at voting
equilibrium, two unliked parties, will be gone when its forced falsification
rule is repealed.

ICT vs Condorcet:

Voting instructions for ICT can correctly say:

1. There absolutely cannot be any reason or need to vote someone over your
favorite. There can be no benefit from doing so.

2. Defection in the ABE is always a losing strategy. Support a mutual
majority that you need to beat someone whom you want to beat. Just counting
on their supporting your favorite, without mutuality, won't be enough, won't
work. Since other voters know this, you can feel safe in supporting that
mutual majority.

3. Offensive burial usually won't work.

Condorcet cannot promise #1 and #2.

Approval meets FBC, Intermediate FBC, and Strong FBC.
ICT meets FBC and Intermediate FBC.
Condorcet fails all three of those criteria.

Mike Ossipoff










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Re: Juho , 5/21/12, roughly 0800 UT

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-22T22:17:52


I'm sorry if it was not clear enough. I can provide further explanations of the unclear or missing arguments. Just point them out.


Thanks. I think this is the same one that I already got and commented.


I already did so in my recent mail (that starts "Here is a quick analysis...").


Agreed. People tend to do it that way.


Maybe one can build an implementable strategy from this one. Some further definitions are however needed. What is the definition of and how will the voters determine if the election is a u/a election? Also terms "compromise", "acceptable" and "unacceptable" have to be defined. Does "rank Compromise alone in 1st place" mean lifting one of the candidates in the ranked vote to first place while keeping the others as they are?

Juho



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Re: To Condorcetists:

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-22T21:38:27

 

Juho says:

 

Maybe the number one on the list of the still unanswered questions is the
following one.

 

 

[example+question starts here]

 

26: A > B >> C
26: B > A >> C
24: C >> A > B
24: C >> B > A
- A and B are Democrats and C is a Republican

How should voters vote after seeing these (quite reliable) poll results if
they follow the "better than expectation" strategy? Should A and B be seen
as the expected winners with 50% winning chance both? Maybe 50% of the
voters should guess that A wins and 50% that B wins (?).

 

[endquote]

 

You don't say how good a result the various voters expect from the election.
You don't say if it's u/a. You show higher magnitude dislike for C, among
the A and B voters. Should we infer that you mean that it's u/a, and that,
to the A and B voters, A and B are acceptable and B is unacceptable? .that
{A,B} and {C} are sets such that the merit differences within the sets are
negligible in comparison to the merit differences between the sets? If so,
then the Approval's u/a strategy would call for the A and B voters to
approve A and B.

 

But there's the co-operation/defection problem, isn't there. I've discussed
it. I've described some solutions to it, in a post in recent days. I'll
re-post my list of 5 solutions.

 

But remember that Condorcet equally has the co-operation/defection problem
too.

 

What about ICT in your example? The A voters should vote A>B. The B voters
should vote B>A.

 

 

Mike Ossipoff

 

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Re: Juho , 5/21/12, roughly 0800 UT

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-22T21:18:18

Juho says:

 

[Note: Michael Ossipof's message was not a reply to a mail on this list but
to an offline discussion.]

 

On 21.5.2012, at 23.13, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

 

I don't know what you mean by "all regular voters".

 

I requested strategy descriptions that would be intended for real life
elections and normal voters (not EM experts) in such elections. That means
that the strategy shall be clear enough so that normal voters can implement
it.

 

[endquote]

 

This is just more of the same repetition, and answering it would require me
to repeat answers that I've already given, yet again. I'm not going to. But
there are just a few things that are so outrageously silly that I will
comment.

 

First, in my Approval voting recommendations and descriptions of Approval
strategy, I meant what I said. I don't accept or endorse Juho's strange
interpretations. Those are not what I meant.

You identified two of your examples by giving their "characteristic
numbers", 27,24,49 and 33,32,34. I found and commented the latter one in a
mail
(http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-
May/030400.html).

 

If you want to say that one of them isn't good enough, then you need to
clearly specify it, and then tell what's wrong with it, and why you think
so.

 

I hope the mail was clear enough. 

 

[endquote]

 

Are you joking? It wasn't clear enough, bedause it said that the example
didn't work, but said nothing about why you think so.

 

Juho says:

 

Maybe you did not notice that mail since you did not comment it yet.

 

[endquote]

 

I've replied to everything, unless it's one of the two new ones today.

 

I'd said:

 

Do you mean that you only want your favorite to win? Then, in Approval,
approve hir only. 

Juho says:

 

This doesn't sound like a good strategy. You know well that there are better
Approval strategies.

 

[endquote]

 

On the contrary, it's the very best strategy if all you want is for your
favorite to win. You'd spoken of wanting to win. I took a guess that you
were referring to wanting your favorite to win.

 

Juho:

 

Only Condorcet strategy still missing.)

 

[endquote]

 

General strategy for Condorcet is not known. I've described optimal
Condorcet strategy for when it's a u/a election and Compromise is the only
acceptable who can beat the unacceptables: Vote Compromise alone in 1st
place. I've repeated that very many times for you. That's the last time.

 

 

 

But if you're questioning the assumption that people wouldn't strategize in
Approval, I merely suggest voting for all whom you like. If you want to, you
can strategize. Suit yourself.

 

Yes, that is what I meant. And I'm still confused with your idea that people
would choose between those two options in a competitive election.

 

[endquote]

 

Many will just vote for those whom they like. Many, including me, would vote
only for the acceptables. Many won't give any consideration to strategy
other than that. Maybe some will, and that's fine too.

 

Juho says:

 

On the Approval side you say that Approval works fine. I say that there are
situations where Approval fails in the sense that the voters don't have any
reasonable strategies.

 

[endquote]

 

With his usual vagueness, Juho neglected to share with us what situations he
is referring to.

 

If he's referring to his examples, they aren't relevant to the strategies
that I've described. Juho doesn't supply the relevant information.

 

Juho says:

 

You should pick the strategy that works in all situations. 

 

[endquote]

 

Since no general strategy for Condorcet is known, I assume that Juho is
referring to Approval strategy.

 

Ok, Juho, get ready. Get your pencil and paper:

 

Vote for the candidates who are better than what you expect from the
election result.

 

All of the other Approval strategy suggestions are special case
implementations of that strategy, which of course can also be implemented
directly.

 

Juho says:

 

I'm to point out the vulnerabilities based on that given strategy, e.g. by
providing examples of situations where that strategy does not work well
enough.

 

[endquote]

 

Fine. Do so.

 

 

 

Juho says:

 

I provided at least one problematic Approval example to you although I did
not yet get yet any exact definition of a recommended Approval strategy that
voters could use when planning how to vote.

 

[endquote]

 

Your examples were problematic because they gave no information about
voters' expectation in the election, nor the information needed for the
special case implementations of Approval's general strategy.

 

 

Juho says:

Does "result-merit that you expect" mean the value of the (single) guessed
winner or maybe the weighted average of potential winners?

[endquote]

Answer to both questions: Yes, if that's what you feel that you know, or
have a perception or feel about.

People are not going to determine their expectation in the election by
multiplying the win probability of each candidate by hir utility, and
summing the products. But you can do that if you want to.


But you know how good a result you expect from the election.

 

I take that to mean that voters are expected to estimate (at some level) the
value of each candidate and the probability of each candidate to win, and
then estimate what the value of the outcome is likely to be. 

 

[endquote]

 

That's hilarious. But you're serious. I'd just finished saying that that is
_not_ how people are going to determine their expectation. 

 

It will be a guess, an impression, not a calculation.

 

 

Juho says:

Does the expectation refer to the sincere opinions or does it include the
expected strategic voting too (much more complicated and cyclic)?

[endquote]

...if you want it to.

 

Ok. I take that to mean, if the voters take that into account in their
considerations.

 

[endquote]

 

They won't. But you're free to calculate, judge or estimate expectation in
as elaborate manner as you prefer.

 

 

It seems that this is finally an exact definition of an Approval strategy.
It is not quite user friendly since I don't expect normal voters to
understand much about expectation values. 

 

[endquote]

 

What is Juho talking about? As I said, anyone knows who good a result they
expect from the election. Even a 0-info election.

 

Juho says:

 

Actually the article (see above) contained one classical definition of
Approval strategy that says pretty much the same thing and that voters might
understand better (although you had your doubts about it too). It was "Would
I rather appoint him/her to office than hold the election?".

 

[endquote]

 

I made it clear that that probably isn't something that people would have a
feel for, since we don't have the task or ability to actually appoint people
to office. That's why I said that the best direct implementation of
better-than-expectation is just to vote for the candidates who are better
than what you expect from the election. We _do_ have a feel for how good a
result we expect from the election.

 

 

 

 

Also this may be too difficult for many voters, which is not good for
Approval (many voters will not follow the strategy). But I'll take this
strategy (with either definition) as your recommended strategy for voters in
competitive elections.

 

[endquote]

 

Suit yourself :-)   But I said recommended otherwise.

 

 

If you have a similar exact strategy description available for taking
benefit of the claimed Condorcet vulnerabilities, that would be welcome, and
actually needed to make the strategy credible.

 

[endquote]

 

I didn't say that it was for taking advantage of Condorcet vulnerabilities.
I said that I was telling you Condorcet's optimal strategy for certain
conditions.

 

Ok, are you ready?  Here it is:

 

If it's a u/a election, and if Compromise is the only acceptable who can
beat the unacceptables, then rank Compromise alone in 1st place.

 

What's that? You say that sounds familiar? You catch on fast.

 

Mike Ossipoff

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Re: To Condorcetists:

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-22T07:48:28

Here is a quick analysis of the proposed Approval strategy against the Approval example that I gave earlier.

I have two descriptions of the strategy. Their meaning should be the same.
- "Approve the candidates who are better than (or maybe exactly as good as) the result-merit that you expect from the election"
- “Would I rather appoint him/her to office than hold the election?”

Now let's see what will happen in the election where the voters have following approximate poll results (and/or general understanding of the preferences of the voters) available.
26: A > B >> C
26: B > A >> C
24: C >> A > B
24: C >> B > A

Note that if Approval election polls are collected as approvals, the voters wll have less information available for decision makin than this. They could know only the sum of approvals, e.g. A;52, B:52, C:48. But let's assume for now that they have more information that they can use as a basis for their strategic decisions.

First guess of the voters must be that either A or B will win. The expected outcome is between the values of A and B. If all the voters follow the given stratey they should vote as follows.
26: A
26: B
24: C, A
24: C, B

With these votes A or B wins. However, it is highly unlikely that voters will vote this way. The strategy allows the voters to take into consideration also the possible strategic votes. And the voters should take into accout possible changes in the opinions before the election day. Voters are also typically slightly optimistic in the sense that they have tendency to think that their own favourite candidates are better and more popular and will gain more votes before the election day than they actually will do in real life. Yet one more reason not to follow the stategy is interest to sen a message, e.g. by not approving A nor B (potential winners) in order to show that one does not support them. One may do this also in these elections in order to make a good start for the next elections.

One problem with the above listed votes is also that they do not measure the real opinion of the voters. If A will be more popular than B in the election day, that will not be mesured at all. Both have 50% chance to win even if people woul like to elect A. This is a falure of the method to measure the true opinions of the voters.

Second problem. The voters are not really on average this skilled in determining the expected outcomes. Many people will not follow the given strategy. My guess is that the most common deviation from the strategy is to cast shorter votes. In any case there will be a mixture of all kind of votes, not just votes that follow the strategy accurately.

Second try. Now the voters take some additional things into account when determining the expected outcome. C supporters are maybe the first to note that actually C could win. Since they prefer C strongly it doesn't take much to switch to bullet voting.
26: A
26: B
01: C, A
23: C
01: C, B
23: C

Now C wins. This is not a good result since A and B have majority. Most people and most methods agree that A or B should actually win.

Thirs try. Now A and B understand the probable behaviour of the C supporters and they realize that they can not follow their first strategy. Actually they can still vote in line with the strategy. Thy just assume that due to strategic voting (and possible changes in opinions) also C has a chance to win. Their expected outcome falls below the value of A and B.
26: A, B
26: B, A
01: C, A
23: C
01: C, B
23: C

Now A or B wins again. And still voters have no proper say on which one of them will win. The outcome will be a lottery, even if A is more popular than B. (The C voters may have some say here since some of them may approve A or B depending on how much they like them.)

One problem is that it is no likely that all A and B supporters will follow the strategy. Some of them simply fail to identify their best strategy and they may bullet vote either A or B, which easily allows C to win. (This problem exists also in other advanced methods but not as strongly.)

Further, A and B supporters have a strong incentive to bullet vote since few bullet votes will make their favourite win. But too many strategic votes make both their favourites lose. This means that Approval voters face a major dilemma. If we assume that A is slightly ahead of B in preference, A supporters that approve both may elect B, and A supporters that approve only A may elect C. There is no way the A supporters could vote rationally and safely and get the correct winner.

We can see that voters have also other (more offensive) working (but risky) strategies that they may mix with the recommended strategy.

If A and B come from the same party, a natural solution for the party (to fix the strategy problems) would be to nominate only one candidate. But if there are more than two potntially winning parties that can not give orders to each others (as usual), there may be more than three potential winner candidates in the election, and we may face the problems of this example. Even in Plurality elections there are often third party candidates although they are quite likely to be spoilers to the second favourite of their supporters.

It seems that with high probability in this election the voters will have great difficulties to follow the recommended strategy in a way that would pick the rightful winner. In theory the voters could be so skilled with estimating the expected outcome that they could even pick the rightful winnner (A, if A was in the end more popular than B). But in practice it looks like this will be a mess. My guess is that in real life elections C will win with highest probability since many enough A/B supporters will fail to approve both of their favourites.

The recommended strategy is likely to be too difficult for the voters to apply successfully. If they don't get confused with the strategy itself with sincere opinios from the poll, they probably will have difficulties in analyzing how others are likely to vote and how the opinions may change and how that should impacts their selection of their ideal strategic vote. In this set-up, to reach the rightful outcome, and for the A/B side to win, the A/B party/parties should publicly remind people that they should approve both A and B. That recommendation would however make the election pretty meaningless in the sense that nobody would indicate any preference on whether A or B should win (assuming that C party recommends, or its supporters themselves decide to bullet vote). The recommended strategy and Approval method don't seem to work well enough in this given set-up. Since three or more potential winners is the target situation, the strategy does not seem to be good enough in guaranteeing a rightful and rational outcome of the election.

The voters won't probably like the idea of having to make this kind of complex strategy decisions. Sincere voting (=approve the approvable candidates) would be one option, but we know that then the stratgic voters will have more weight than the sincere ones.

The promise of Approval (when compared to Plurality) is that it allows also third party candidates to run without becoming spoilers. And it works fine; it is ok to approva one of the two(!) frontrunners and all the third party candidates that one likes. But when the third parties grow and become potential winners, the toolbox of Approval voters is not sufficient, and the method will face problems like the one that was discussed above. For this reason, Approval may be a good start of a Plurality reform, but not a good long term solution.

Juho

On 21.5.2012, at 12.05, Juho Laatu wrote:

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Re: Juho , 5/21/12, roughly 0800 UT

Dave Ketchum — 2012-05-22T00:00:56

Thanks Juho, for working to make this dialog more useful!
DWK

On May 21, 2012, at 7:36 PM, Juho Laatu wrote:



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Re: Juho , 5/21/12, roughly 0800 UT

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-21T23:36:39

[Note: Michael Ossipof's message was not a reply to a mail on this list but to an offline discussion.]

On 21.5.2012, at 23.13, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

I requested strategy descriptions that would be intended for real life elections and normal voters (not EM experts) in such elections. That means that the strategy shall be clear enough so that normal voters can implement it.

Also strategies that do work only under specific conditions are ok. You just have to write the strategy description so that a regular voter can see when that strategy can be applied and when not. I don't require that a "general" strategy should be used (=modify your vote) in every election. It is enough if there is a strategy that can be applied reasonably often, and that will clearly improve the outcome from that voter's point of view. I encourage you to rewrite the strategy so that it clearly indicates when a voter should use it and how the vote should be modified. A working strategy for public elections must be such that regular voters can successfully implement it (or get strategic guidance e.g. from his party and implement that strategy).

You identified two of your examples by giving their "characteristic numbers", 27,24,49 and 33,32,34. I found and commented the latter one in a mail (http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2012-May/030400.html).

I hope the mail was clear enough. Maybe you did not notice that mail since you did not comment it yet.

I used term "general" just to indicate that the voter can refer to that strategy description in all elections and check what it says, not that it would always lead to a modified vote.

Google gave me this: http://www.democracychronicles.com/2012/05/06/problems-current-voting-system-plurality-voting/. It seems to be the correct one since it talks about Approval strategies at the end.

This doesn't sound like a good strategy. You know well that there are better Approval strategies.

What I'm missing is a description of the strategy in an exact format that can be used by regular voters. (But I think I got one for Approval at least towards the end of this mail. Only Condorcet strategy still missing.)

Yes, that is what I meant. And I'm still confused with your idea that people would choose between those two options in a competitive election.

“Would I rather appoint him/her to office than hold the election?”

You say that Condorcet is vulnerable to strategies. I say that it is not enough to sow that in theory some modification in the votes would give a better winner to the strategists to prove a practical vulnerability. I say that in order to prove that there is a practical vulnerability one must be able to give practical guidelines on how some strategy can be applied successfully in real life elections when the voters have some poll information available. You can pick any vulnerability type that you think is easiest to take benefit of. If I'd pick one strategy that would be a limitation to you.

On the Approval side you say that Approval works fine. I say that there are situations where Approval fails in the sense that the voters don't have any reasonable strategies. You should pick the strategy that works in all situations. I'm to point out the vulnerabilities based on that given strategy, e.g. by providing examples of situations where that strategy does not work well enough.

I provided at least one problematic Approval example to you although I did not yet get yet any exact definition of a recommended Approval strategy that voters could use when planning how to vote.

Ok. Random or free choice in the case of a "tie".

I take that to mean that voters are expected to estimate (at some level) the value of each candidate and the probability of each candidate to win, and then estimate what the value of the outcome is likely to be. They need not do that mathematically. It is enough if their "general feeling" to some extent approximates the mathematical formula. (Actually I think that the equation is more detailed since people have different weights e.g. for uncertainty and risks. But let's forget that for now and consider this to be a good enough equation.)

Ok. I take that to mean, if the voters take that into account in their considerations.

It seems that this is finally an exact definition of an Approval strategy. It is not quite user friendly since I don't expect normal voters to understand much about expectation values. Actually the article (see above) contained one classical definition of Approval strategy that says pretty much the same thing and that voters might understand better (although you had your doubts about it too). It was “Would I rather appoint him/her to office than hold the election?”. Also this may be too difficult for many voters, which is not good for Approval (many voters will not follow the strategy). But I'll take this strategy (with either definition) as your recommended strategy for voters in competitive elections. I think I'll come back to that in another mail to see how well this strategy works.

If you have a similar exact strategy description available for taking benefit of the claimed Condorcet vulnerabilities, that would be welcome, and actually needed to make the strategy credible.

Juho

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Typo. Plurality strategy, not Approval strategy,is a difficult problem.

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-21T21:25:05

When I said "Approval strategy is a difficult problem", I meant "Plurality
strategy is a difficult problem."

Let me repeat a little of what I said before:

It's difficult because of the difficulty of getting an agreement, among
those who want something better than the Democrats, regarding where they
will combine their Plurality votes.

That's why I suggest just voting sincerely, at least once, to actually find
out what people want.

In a presidential election, or a specified congressional election, or in
specified state elections for specified unimportant offices.

Mike Ossipoff
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Kristofer, contd.

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-21T21:16:54

This is my reply to the remainder of Kristofer's post:

Enough voters feel like this, and there would be a backlash.

[endquote]

Approval doesn't have a problem that Plurality doesn't have. You
haven't shown one, you know.

What you're saying above is just that you want a rank method, and that
you want to express all of your preferences.

If that's what you'd most like, then I recommend ICT.

But just fixing Pluruality's ridiculous rating-falisification
requirement would a lot more enactable, and would bring enormous
societal improvement.

You can dither forever, arguing about what is the ideal best. Dither
all you want to, because the voting system reforms are being
considered for here, not for there (No one claims that they're needed
there).

By the way, you spoke of how you vote in your PR elections. Since
you've opened the door to that topic, then which party do you vote
for?

Kristofer says:

Approval would in that respect then be like IRV: appearing sensible when
you have two + minor parties, but in a three-way race, the problems surface.

Nonsense. With only 2 parties, it's entirely irrelevant which voting
system is used. It's when there are more than two candidates that
Approval's
big advantages over Plurality and Condorcet are manifest.

 In contrast, in Condorcet the voters just rank.

[endquote]

...if they don't know what they're doing. Or if the election is 0-info
and non-u/a.

Kristofer says:

Black's theorem handles
the rest

[endquote]

Kristofer, do you know what "hand-waving" is? You're hand-waving.

Kristofer says:

 ** You seem to be more inclined to look at ballots in a strategic
manner in general, I think. For instance, when you said that you would
only use
a few ranks in (some Bucklin variant I don't remember), that struck me
as quite strange. Are not ranked ballots expressions of preferences? No
- not if they're primarily *strategic*.

[endquote]

That's right. If you're voting in your best instrumental interest,
then that's different from if you merely want to express your sincere
preferences.
Decide which it is that you want to do.

Kristofer says:

My initial puzzlement was at how
you directly jumped to the instrumental point of view.

[endquote]

American and British voters have shown that they nearly all vote
instrumentally, in order to help a "lesser-evil".

There are some times when non-instrumental voting is called for.

1. In some of the solutions to the defection problem.

2. In Plurality, where instrumental voting requires unavailable
information about where we should combine our support. Of course it
could be reasonably argued that our Plurality elections
are really  0-info, in which case sincere voting _is_ the
instrumentally best expectation-maximizing strategy.

Otherwise, yes, I would vote instrumentally.

Approval strategy is a difficult problem. What should we do? I tell
people to just vote for their genuine favorite. As I said, our
elections are really 0-info anyway,
and so sincere voting is the best instrumental strategy therefore.

If we could all vote sincerely in this year's Plurality election, then
we'd know where we stand, and what our best strategy is in subsequent
ones. But no, people
are going to do their usual lesser-evil giveaway.

I've suggested that we pick relatively unimportant state elections.
Have the non-Republocrat parties run in those elections, and let's use
those to find out the
actual numbers.

I've suggested that progressive parties and organizations do some
polling, nationally. The sample would be limited, but the results
could be
meaningfully aggregated for a national estimate. Count by ICT. Then,
give advice, to everyone who wants something better than the Democrat,
to vote for that ICT winner.

...or do a voting rights lawsuit to repeal Plurality's forced
falsification requirement. As I've said, the result is called
"Approval voting".

I'd vote instrumentally in Approval. Sincere and strategic voting
would be the same for me, because it is a u/a election.

In Plurality, if there is no organization, agreements or polling, I
believe in sincere voting.
Sincere voting is instrumentally optimal for Plurality in 0-info elections.

Mike Ossipoff
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Juho , 5/21/12, roughly 0800 UT

Michael Ossipoff — 2012-05-21T20:13:41

I'd said:

Tricky isn’t the word for it. Try “unknown”, for most typical situations in
Condorcet.

But I told the expectation-maximizing strategy for a u/a election in which
Compromise is the only acceptable perceived to be able to beat Worse. No,
I’m not going to repeat it for you.

Juho says:


Since you don't want to point out any such strategy

[endquote]

I've only described it many times already, in replies to you. I'm not going
to waste any more time repeating it for you.

Juho says:

 I assume there is no such single strategy that you want to recommend for
all regular voters.

[endquote]

To maximize expection with Condocet in a u/a election where Compromise is
the only acceptable able to beat the unacceptables, rank Compromise alone
in 1st place.

I don't know what you mean by "all regular voters". The above strategy is
for voters who perceive the above-desecribed conditions.
If you want a general strategy for Condorcet, none is known.

Juho says:

 Actually any working general strategy that regular voters or parties can
use will do, either for Approval or Condorcet, either expectation-maximizing
or other strategy that is expected to improve the outcome. But so far I
have thus not seen any (lots of u/a discussion though but no general
strategy for all situations).

[endquote]

No general strategy is known for Condordet. The general
expectation-maximizing strategy of Approval is the better-than-expectation
strategy.

Juho says:

I got the two numeric examples though. Thanks for them. At least one of
them didn't however seem to work well enough, so I assume that the theory
and strategy behind those examples is not quite well thought yet.

[endquote]

As usual you're vague. I have no idea what examples you're referring to. If
you want to say that one of them isn't good enough, then you need to
clearly specify it, and then tell what's wrong with it, and why you think
so.



But I fully admit that expectation-maximizing strategy isn’t known for
Condorcet in most typical situations. It isn’t that Condorcet doesn’t need
strategy. It’s just that you don’t know what the expectation-maximizing
strategy is. But don’t feel bad—no one else does either.




In theory there are cases where one could cheat the system. But in practice
sincerity is by far the best strategy that voters have in large elections
where voters make independent decisions. The challenge is to find practical
situations where regular voters, after hearing some poll results (and
possibly some poll based situation specific strategic advices by the
media), would have good reason to vote otherwise (in a way that they can
master an that is likely to improve the outcome).

[endquote]

I described one to you, and no, I’m not going to repeat it. I don’t have
time to keep repeating things for you.


Sorry, I don't recall, or maybe didn't identify the the general solution
when I read it. You might point that out to help my poor memory. :-)

[endquote]

No, sorry, I don't have time for that. I've repeated it enough already.  I
refer you to my previous replies.



I’ve abundantly and sufficiently discussed that. It’s time to just agree to
disagree.

Ok. My statement is pretty well covered above. My assumption is that you
wll stick to the claim that there are often working strategies in Condorcet

[endquote]

…unknown ones, yes. But I described a strategy for a particular situation,
showing that sometimes favorite-burial is optimal in Condorcet.


If you describe a theoretical vulnerability or a practical strategy for
some specific situation, and the strategy is intended for regular people or
parties, then it can be made a general and usable strategy by adding some
criteria that tell the voters when that strategy should be applied.

[endquote]

Fine. Then do so. Write a general strategy for Condorcet :-)


Juho says:

That would make the strategy a working strategy (although not necessarily a
strategy that would work often).

[endquote]

Then it wouldn't be a general strategy, would it.





, and voters would be foolish toassume that they can generally vote
sincerely.

[endquote]

Correct.







Two: In Approval, if you like strategy, I’ve given simple instructions for
determining the way of voting that maximizes your expectation. I’ve
described it for u/a elections,
………..and for non-u/a elections.

I'd be interested in the one (or ones) that the regular voters are supposed
to follow in real life Approvan elections.

[endquote]

Any one of them that they like, or any one of them that makes use of the
information, perception or feel possessed by the voter. Yes, in real life
Approval elections.

That was not an answer. A concrete strategy please.

[endquote]

No, actually that is an answer. I’ll repeat it again for you: Look at the
last part of my Approval article.  If you feel that some part of the
strategy suggestions there are insufficiently “concrete”, then tell me what
it is that you need more details about. Ask a specific question.


Ok, but which Approval article?

[endquote]

The one that I posted to EM. The one that is at Democracy Chronicles.






You said:

You mentioned also sincere approval of "approvable" canddates as a strategy
that could be recommended to the voters. Do you think Approval can handle
well situations where some voters or voter groups are strategic while some
are sincere?

[endquote]

It’s easy to show strategizers taking advantage of sincere suckers in Range
or Majority Judgment. Maybe you’re saying that you fear that if you approve
the candidates you like, then the supporters of one of them will take
advantage of you by approving the candidates that they perceive as
acceptable, above-mean, or better-than-expectation. Sorry, but I don’t see
it. If you think that there’s a problem there, then you need to explain
what and why.

Simple example:
2: A>B>>C
1: B>>A>C

If the first group of voters approves sincerely A and B, B will win. Ins't
this a good enough reason for the first group to vote strategically and
place the approval cutoff between the two potential winners? That is, if
they want to win and not just elect the most approved candidate.

[endquote]

If you’ve approved some candidates whom you like, and one of them wins,
then I guess that I’m not quite understanding what your problem is.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to vote strategically, then of course you
should do so.

Juho says:

The problem is that we usually talk about competitive political elections
where all the players want to win.

[endquote]

You need to clarify, with yourself, what you mean, what you want. Do you
mean that you only want your favorite to win? Then, in Approval, approve
hir only.

If you want to maximize your expection, I've told Approval strategy for
that purpose.

Juho says:

Few lines above you assumed that people would use their burying
possibilities to the maximum.

[endquote]

Available evidence indicates that many voters would do whatever it takes to
maximally help Democrat against Republican.

Juho says:

I don't understand why in this case voters would be indifferent with
respect to the outcome of the election.

[endquote]

If you're asking about favorite-burial need in Approval, there is none.
Those same voters wouldn't favorite-bury in Approval because it is
transparently obvious that there can be no reason to do so.

But if you're questioning the assumption that people wouldn't strategize in
Approval, I merely suggest voting for all whom you like. If you want to,
you can strategize. Suit yourself.

Juho says:

Maybe you recommend Approval as a good method for non-competitive elections.

[endquote]

...and for competitive elections.







As for the defection problem, we’ve discussed it before, and the fact that
Approval has ways of dealing with it, and the fact that Condorcet fully has
that  problem too.

Disagreed. I don't know how Approval can handle it.

[endquote]

I posted some solutions some months ago.  I’ll find that posting and
re-post it.


Thanks.


But my suggestions included Forest’s solution in which the A voters give to
B only enough approvals such that if C’s favoriteness-percentage is as
estimated, then the larger of {A,B} will win. In Approval that would be
done probabilistically. The A voters tell the B voters that they should do
the same, if they don’t want C to win, and if the A faction might be bigger
than the B faction. No, not perfect, due to imperfect predictive
information, but still helpful.


Without exactly knowing what the strategy is, I note that in practical
elections there may be some problems with making the voters vote in line
with the strategy.

[endquote]

The strategy is as described above. Any difficulty in following it would be
likewise encountered when it is needed in Condorcet.


One more thing in my mind. Regular voters may be interested only in the
outcome of this election and never mind if their opponents get angry.

[endquote]

Fine, with Tit-For-Tat in use, the B voters will keep defecting, and so
will the A voters. But the B voters will know that as soon as the
co-operate, so will the A voters.

Anyway, Forest's suggested solution has its effect in the current election.
The non-secretness of a faction's voting intentions is also relevent to the
current election.


This claim was just a reflection of your idea that Approval could "maximize
expectation".

[endquote]

Nonsense. We haven’t been speaking of some methods that maximize
expectation. We’ve been speaking of expectation-maximizing strategies.

It’s been established and agreed on EM that the strategies that I’ve
described do indeed maximize expectation in Approval.


"agreed on EM" :-)

[endquote]

Correct. And many special cases of, implementations of,  the
better-than-expectation strategy have been well-known for a long time in
the broader voting system discussion.

Juho says:

Are there multiple such strategies?

[endquote]

As I've already repeated for you many time, there is one
expectation-maximizing strategy for Approval: Vote for the candidates who
are better than expectation. That strategy can be implemented directly, or
via various implementations that are special cases of it.

This time, pay attention, because I'm not going to repeat that for you
again.


Juho says:

 Does that mean that each voter can pick his favourite, and they work well
in sync that way?

[endquote]

Yes to both questions. Pick whichever implementation you like or have the
information or intuitive feel for. Remember that they're just special cases
of the same strategy.






Maybe better to focus on concrerte practcal strategic vulnerabilities
(unless there is something more in this).

[endquote]

So focus on it then, instead of just making a vague reference to it.


What should I provide? I'm willing to be more concrete if you tell me what
you want.

[endquote]

In general, what you should provide is the specifics of what you mean. You
never do that, and no doubt you never will. That's why talking to you is a
waste of time.

In particular, in this instance, you speak of focusing on concrete
practical strategic vulnerabilities. I suggested that you specify and focus
on one.

Juho says:

I'd like you to point out concrete and practical strategies for real life
elections for both or either of the methods.

[endquote]

I've written this sentence many times for you: I've pointed out a practical
expectation-maximizing strategy for certain conditions in Condorcet
elections. I've pointed out that no general strategy is known for Condorcet.

I've suggested concrete and practical strategies for real life elections
with Approval. I've told you where to find them. I won't repeat it for you
again. I refer you to my previous replies, and to my Approval article. The
one that I posted to EM fairly recently. The one that is at Democracy
Chronicles.





And in addition you say that any (your listed) strategy is ok. Why so? Is
there no good working strategy that all could use?

[endquote]

Yes there is. The better-than-expectation strategy. As I’ve said here many
times, all of the Approval expectation-maximizing strategies for Approval
are special cases of better-than-expectation.


I don't have a full description of that strategy yet.

[endquote]

I've repeated it for you many times, and told you where to find it. I've
helped you all I can. You're wasting my time.




The direct implementation of better-than-expectation could just consist of
approving the candidates who are better than (or maybe exactly as good as)
the result-merit that you expect from the election.

Juho says:

Is this the definition of the better-than-expectation strategy for regular
voters?

[endquote]

It's for any voter, regular or otherwise, who wants to vote strategically
in Approval.

Juho says:

Does "or maybe" mean random selection or selection based on what the voter
feels like that day?

[endquote]

I said "(or maybe exactly as good as)" because approving a candidate who is
exactly as good as your expectation doesn't affect your expectatation. It
doesn't matter whether or not you approve a candidate who is exactly as
good as your expectation. You can flip a coin, or yes, go by how you feel
that day.

Juho says:

Does "result-merit that you expect" mean the value of the (single) guessed
winner or maybe the weighted average of potential winners?

[endquote]

Answer to both questions: Yes, if that's what you feel that you know, or
have a perception or feel about.

People are not going to determine their expectation in the election by
multiplying the win probability of each candidate by hir utility, and
summing the products. But you can do that if you want to.


But you know how good a result you expect from the election.


Juho says:

Does the expectation refer to the sincere opinions or does it include the
expected strategic voting too (much more complicated and cyclic)?

[endquote]

...if you want it to.

Do as complicated and elaborate an analysis as you want to, to try to
calculate your expectation. It isn't for me to tell you if or how to
calculate your expectation, if you want to calculate it. That's your
business.

But, as I said above, you know how good a result you expect from the
election.

Or, if you really don't, then just use the 0-info Approval strategy of
approving the above-mean candidates.

Mike Ossipoff
----
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Re: To Condorcetists:

Juho Laatu — 2012-05-21T17:07:44

A good point to start the analysis.

There can be also additional candidates and richer set of voter opinions. However the general set-up where one wing has two srong candidates, the other one has one, and the balance between the wings is close to 50%-50%, is a common se-up that all good methods should be able to handle. This example ignores the finer details in order to show the core concepts (three major candidates and their relative position).

Yes.

I assume that this is a competitive election (with or without the strong >> preferences).

If Approval can not handle three potential winners, then making sure already before the election that there will be only two potential winners would make the common Approval strategies work. Often we don't have this luxury. The other Democrat candidate could as well be from a rival Democrat2 party.

Yes, this example could be from a society with three or more (potentially winning) parties.

I assume that the election is competitive. So the individual voters want an answer to questions "how can I make my favourite candidate win" and "how can I make my favourite party/wing win".

Yes, it would make sense for all Democrats to approve both A and B. It is however quite probable that some voters will vote for their favourite only. This can happen because they do not understand that the secure strategy would be to approvo both. Or they can vote this way since they have a strategic incentive to make their favourite win instead of the other Democrat canididate.

I'm thinking about elections that have three potential winners (with any number of parties). There are not too many mappings of those three candidates to the political map. In this example two of them are quite near to each otehrs, and they have about equal "political distance" to the third candidates. Other settings might include e.g. a balanced triangle and three points on a "left-right" axis. If we have three potential winners, I claim that the set-up of this example is one of the common ones (if we allow some variation in the numbers but still maintain the relative positions of the candidates). What would be a more common political mapping of three potential winners?

Bucklin collects some more information. The problem of Approval can be said to be the fact that the voters are not able to indicate the preference order of three candidates (but are forced to indicate equal support to two of them). Rankings and full ratings contain sufficient information for voters to indicate all their preferences.

Ok, works if parties are able to limit the number of credible canidates to two. But I have understood that the point of the planned reform is for many to be able to have more than two potential winners. So we must assume that we should be prepared also for the situation where there are three or more potential winners. In the given example the other "Democrat" could thus come from a party or grouping that is not under the control of the Democrat party, and whose nomination of a candidate can not be cancelled by the Democrats.

I thus accept limiting the number of candidates to two as one solution to the problem. But I guess the whole point of the reform is to allow more than two potential winners to take part in the election, and to be able to handle such situations.

What do you think about the Condorcet methods (that were discussed in this stream earlier) and their ability to cope in this kind of situatiions?

In many ways, yes. I think Approval has also some weak spots where it can fail also more dramatically than Plurality. Approval is good in the sense that it allows also additional minor candidates without them becoming spoilers (assuming that one wants that to happen). Its problem is that when the minor parties are no more minor but become potential winners, Approval voting strategies may become quite impossible to master, and the method becomes unstable (as in the example). For that reason I hope that an Approval based reform will continue and the method will be replaced with some better working method before the problmes three (or more) potential winners appear in real elections and cause people to turn their back to this method.

One question was not answered yet. How did the voters know that in this election they are supposed to approve both A and B? Is there a general strategy description that the voters could follow? Where is the border line where they should go back to approving only their favourite? The strategy can not be to always approve all the candidates of one's favourite wing. What if the numbers were 30, 30, 20, 20. Would that be a safe margin to allow A and B supporters to make a choice between A and B? Of course also with those numbers some of the voters would have to approve both A and B, or otherwise C wins. My general claim is that actually Approval is quite often clueless (and the voters are) as soon as this kind of situations with three or more potential winners appear. In this example the A and
B supporters also have a strong strategic incentive to NOT approve the other candidate of the same wing. They may vote wrong and lose the election whichever way they vote.

Juho

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