http://permalink.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/23636 <pre>Oops! Yes, thanks Abd.   I made an error. The A and B group was supposed to add up to 49, not 51. So it should be:  25: A&gt;Y&gt;X 24: B&gt;Y&gt;X 17: C&gt;D&gt;X 17: E&gt;F&gt;X 17: G&gt;H&gt;X   100 ballots, Bucklin election.   The majority threshold is 51 and X wins in the third round. But if we add anywhere between 3 and 100 X&gt;Y ballots then Y wins in the second round.   Chris Benham  At 03:58 PM 6/17/2013, Chris Benham wrote: Some error there. Total votes are 102. Majority is 52 votes. &lt;snip&gt; ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Chris Benham 2013-06-18T23:13:22 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23635 <pre>I quickly read the article. Here are some observations. - Term "Bucklin system" has not been defined. I can guess that it probably refers to Bucklin style stepwise addition of new approvals, but that may not be as obvious to all readers. If there is no definition of "Bucklin system", maybe one could say "As in Bucklin" instead of "As with any Bucklin system". - Sentence "if there are more than one with a majority, the "B" votes are removed and the highest sub-majority wins" is ambigious in the sense that it is not clear if "highest sub-majority" refers to all candidates or to candidates that had majority after adding the "B" votes. - It is not quite clear what happens and if it is possible that there is no majority after the "F" votes have been counted. - The grades could be letters or numbers, but they could also be e.g. columns without any letter or number. This part of text discusses what the ballots might look like. I'm not sure if ballot different ballot formats should be seen as an essential part o</pre> Juho Laatu 2013-06-18T21:25:55 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23634 <pre>http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Majority_Approval_Voting Please help build up the article and work on the clearest consensus wording. This article is all my own voice so far; my goal is for it not to be. Jameson ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Jameson Quinn 2013-06-18T20:44:30 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23633 <pre>Hi, this is Benn Grant here (benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com) Just wanted you all to know that I am solving my inline quoting issue by using my gmail email account to interact with this list. Funnily enough, it's seems that the Gmail app handles it perfectly. So if you see me using either this account (panjakrejn&lt; at &gt;gmail.com) or my other one (benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com) know that both are me, just different emails. Thanks! :) ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Benjamin Grant 2013-06-18T19:59:56 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23632 <pre>New running tally, including Andy Jennings's latest votes (which went out on only one of the lists). Current voting tallies in parentheses, ordered JQ/AL/RB/AJ/DSH/BG/BRG. Options have been placed in descending order, which I expect to be stable from here on. Abd: please vote on MAV, MSV, CAV, AAV, and CSV. *Majority Approval Voting*: (A/?/C/A/A/D/B) Median: B, votes above: 3. PROBABLE WINNER. Additive Approval Voting: (B/?/B/C/B/E/B) Median: B, votes above: 0 Descending Approval Threshold Voting: (A/B-/B/C/C/F/A) Median B-; votes above B, 2. Cumulative Approval Voting: (A/?/B/C/D/A/F) Median C; votes above: 3 Majority Support Voting: (B/?/C/A/C/D/B) Median C; votes above: 3 Instant Runoff Approval Voting: (B/A/F/C/F/F/C) Median C; votes above: 2 Cumulative Support Voting: (A/?/B/C/F/C/F) Median C; votes above: 2 I am happy with how this went. There are still details we haven't come to consensus on — such as the numbers of and labels for rating categories — but I am comfortable with leaving those </pre> Jameson Quinn 2013-06-18T19:42:25 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23631 <pre> Some error there. Total votes are 102. Majority is 52 votes. I just want it to be noticed how *crazy* this scenario is. Voting systems criteria can be like that. A totally insane situation, won't happen in a real election in a billion years, can be asserted to cause criterion failure. There is no *evaluation*, no consideration of harm or effect on social utility, just a raw definition of a criterion and an example showing failure. Or, sometimes, a proof that failure is not possible (with *any* scenario). The deeper analysis is much more difficult. What are the conditions that allow mono-add-top failure? In the example above, X wins without the additional votes because X is the *unanimous* third choice of all the voters, while being the first or second choice of none. That's, for starters, preposterously unlikely. However, a somewhat more realistic version could be constructed. The ballots that then shift the win to Y cross a minimal majority threshold for Y in the second round (With the 3 vot</pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-06-18T18:52:24 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23630 <pre> I did err in my analysis. However, I would urge anyone tempted to write "you are wrong" to be very careful. It's a big red flag that one is, oneself, making some mistake. Would we not expect the addition of B&gt;A ballots to have the possibility of causing A to lose? No, the added ballots were A&gt;B ballots, at a lower ranking. The failure comes from causing majority failure, thus pulling in deeper votes. I had somehow failed to notice the B votes from the 5 voters. A wins in the first round without the added votes, with a simple majority. This is the sequence, which Jameson did not explore specifically, merely stating his result. A wins in the 9-voter case, by a simple majority. However, the 11-voter case has a new majority requirement, 6 votes instead of 5. We have the situation here that a majority favoring A votes second rank for B. In Range equivalents, often proposed as examples of "bad Range behavior," we see the same kind of phenomenon asserted. Under straight Bucklin, if there are two </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-06-18T16:56:48 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23629 <pre> I.e., common list practice, what I call conversational style. Benjamin, I suggest you set Outlook to general plain text responses. It's much easier to control. I have not verified this, but Outlook should be able to handle quoted material automatically with quotation markers. I use Eudora for mail, still, and it does have a non-plain text quotation marker which often gets translated to initial &gt; marks. ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-06-18T15:52:00 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23628 <pre>That has sometimes happened to me too. Juho On 18.6.2013, at 15.49, Benjamin Grant wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Juho Laatu 2013-06-18T14:30:18 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23627 <pre>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style: " The workarounds are to use the setting "read all standard mail in plain text", or to use the "Edit Message" option on the original email and convert it to plain text before replying (then discard the edited version). [16] &lt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#cite_note-16&gt;" 2013/6/18 Benjamin Grant &lt;benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com&gt; ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Jameson Quinn 2013-06-18T13:15:53 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23626 <pre>OK, I have been dealing with a huge issue, and that is using Outlook to perform inline replies. When, for example, Jameson Quinn sends a long and nuance post to the list, and I want to reply to it, the only method of reply I want to use in the inline method. That means that I post a chunk of his message, then my reply, then another chunk, then my reply to that, and so on, like this: (example) Jameson Chunk 1 Benn reply 1 Jameson Chunk 2 Benn Reply 2 Jameson Chunk 3 Benn Reply 3 .and so on. The ONLY way this works without becoming unintelligible is if it is easily visually apparent as one scans down my reply which sections are the original chunk (to which I am replying) and which sections are my new additions to the conversation, my replies. Outlook 2013 is frustrating me to no END in this regard. However, let me be 100% clear - switching from Outlook to another product is not an option. I depend on Outlook in a myriad of ways I do not want to get into here, but for be</pre> Benjamin Grant 2013-06-18T13:04:35 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23625 <pre>Well, I did put my computer consultant hat on (my day job) and this is what I found: With regard to the 2 or 3 emails that showed up on the list archive page but not in my inbox, 1) They did not show up in my inbox in Outlook 2) Nor did they show up in my webmail, since Outlook is configured to leave a copy on the server 3) Nor are they in the Bulk Mail folder of my Webmail I am at a loss to come up with a plausible explanation of the above apart from the idea that those emails were either never sent (list-serv issue) of somehow were sent but didn't make it to my mail server &lt; at &gt; godaddy (no idea how that might happen, I include it for the sake of completeness.) Anyways, just wanted the list-serv admins to know about this, will let you guys know if I see any other strange behavior. -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting &lt;mailto:benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com&gt; benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com 603.283.6601 From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.quinn&lt; at &gt;gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 5:45 AM To: Benjam</pre> Benjamin Grant 2013-06-18T12:49:24 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23624 <pre>2013/6/17 Benjamin Grant &lt;benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com&gt; I think you're close to right here, but not quite. In Bucklin, an additional top-rank vote does not hurt X; it always helps their individual median score and/or tiebreaker. It's just that that same ballot might pull the median for some Y upwards even further, so that Y leapfrogs ahead of X. In what circumstances would this happen? First, the ballot's rating for Y must be above Y's median. And second, Y must have dramatically fewer ratings at or just above its median than X does. Considering the psychology/politics of such a situation, we have reason to believe that it would be rare, and also it is arguable that Bucklin (not Buckley) is actually doing the right thing here. Why would it be rare? For some reason, Y is a polarizing candidate, with a bimodal grade distribution. Voters seem to either love them or hate them, with few falling in between. Such candidates certainly do exist in reality. For instance, a candidate with a compelling ethnic- or class-based narr</pre> Jameson Quinn 2013-06-18T09:16:38 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23623 <pre> Yes. This is a good approach to describing the problem. I tend to categorize different methods also as heuristic and "more mathmatically exact" methods that try to describe the outcome or wanted features of the winner more directly. IRV is a good example of a method that is based on an algorithms that makes pretty much sense to us, but that is anyway just an approximation of what we want. Also Bucklin is based on a similar kind of algorithm that does pretty good job, but still is just a serial stepwise approximation based on guesses on what direction we want to take (and which candidates might be bad enough so that we can eliminate them already at this step). I think out of the discussed methods at least Range does not really have this kind of randomness / fractal behaviour / oversensitivity / stepwise guesses based problems. It simply measures the quality of the candidates (=sum of utilities) and picks the best candidate as the winner. Range has other strategic problems in competitive environments, but</pre> Juho Laatu 2013-06-18T07:55:09 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23622 <pre>From: Jameson Quinn [mailto:jameson.quinn&lt; at &gt;gmail.com] Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 3:14 PM Subject: Re: Participation Criteria and Bucklin - perhaps they *can* work together after all? Unfortunately, Bucklin systems fail that one too. Hold on a sec. Let me think this through. If we are using a Bucklin system, perhaps a strictly ranked one, and X is currently winning. Adding a single ballot that has X ranked as the highest does two things: it changes the threshold, and it awards one more vote to X. The only way it can hurt X - ie, cause X not to win, is if the harm in changing the threshold is greater than the benefit of getting another first place vote. That's the key to why Buckley keep failing Participation!! I think I finally grasped the essential Participation flaw with Buckley!! Each added ballot changes the threshold. Changing the threshold will either have NO effect, or it will change how "deep" we have to go to find a winner. In this case, even if we know ALL the ballot we are</pre> Benjamin Grant 2013-06-18T01:24:20 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23621 <pre>I have noticed a few times, now, over the last several days where I have sent something to the list, and I don't receive a copy of my own email back from the list. Most of the time, I do - but on at least 2 or 3 occasions I have written something to the list - and I can see it at least made it to the archive here: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-J une/thread.html BUT I never get a copy of it in my inbox as I am supposed to. Is this a known issue with this list, that sometimes you don't get copies of the stuff you send? Is it worse than that, do you sometimes not get copies of the stuff *other* people send too? -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting &lt;mailto:benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com&gt; benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com 603.283.6601 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Benjamin Grant 2013-06-18T01:18:59 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23620 <pre>I just wanted to thank everyone for being so helpful and guiding me in learning this stuff. You are all quite generous with your time, and I appreciate it. I am especially looking forward to the response on the concept of "fragility" or "extreme sensitivity" with regard to voting systems, as I developed in my other post. Thanks everyone! This is a very tough and tricky subject, and without all of your help, I would be in deep trouble. -Benn Grant eFix Computer Consulting &lt;mailto:benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com&gt; benn&lt; at &gt;4efix.com 603.283.6601 ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Benjamin Grant 2013-06-18T01:08:54 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23619 <pre>Additive Approval Voting is a reasonable name, but ... it misses the powerful and real associations with runoff voting, and we may find that the most powerful and ready application of the method is *in an existing runoff system.* We could also call it "Runoff Approval Voting" to dump the "instant," which was a false promise. RAV. or ARV. At 02:03 PM 6/17/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-06-17T22:11:01 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23618 <pre>Premature, in my opinion. Rather, *we have not developed a consensus, to my knowledge, on this method as a second reform.* We should, my opinion, have a settled consensus on the exact method, as step two, before insisting on the name. The name should indeed have "approval" in the name. FairVote successfully piggy-backed on "runoff voting" with IRV, and the problem was that they made false promises. Bucklin *actually finds majorities*, under some conditions, probably more often than does IRV, for reasons I've documented. "Instant runoff approval" *actually describes the method.* DAT describes the voting strategy. Cumulative Approval also describes it. When we have a consensus on the method, we can formally collect names and set up an actual poll, the tools exist, or we can delegate the choice by any of various methods. At 02:03 PM 6/17/2013, Jameson Quinn wrote: ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info </pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-06-17T22:08:46 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23617 <pre> Some facts should be known. First of all, the system as described is *almost* identical to the system called Bucklin that was widely used in the U.S. That traditional system was different in two ways (as generally implemented, there were variations): 1. It only allowed equal ranking in the third rank. With our modern perspective, we see little reason to require exclusive ranking at the top rank, and less reason to require it in the second rank. It merely makes the system less flexible for the voter. First rank exclusion *might* be required because of ballot placement rules and public campaign funding, but there are better ways to handle this, we could suspect. (The basic cost of requiring exclusive ranking is that some votes will be "spoiled" and some voters who have low preference strength will be *forced to choose.* Even if that is difficult.) 2. The method *is* "instant runoff approval." That is, it simulates a series of repeated approval elections. In the earlier elections, voters may bu</pre> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax 2013-06-17T22:04:02 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.election-methods/23616 <pre>Benjamin, The criterion ("criteria" is the plural) you suggest is not new. It is called Mono-add-Top, and comes from Douglas Woodall. It is met by IRV and MinMax(Margins) but is failed by Bucklin. In my opinion IRV is the best of the methods that meet it.   26: A&gt;Y&gt;X 25: B&gt;Y&gt;X 17: C&gt;D&gt;X 17: E&gt;F&gt;X 17: G&gt;H&gt;X   The majority threshold is 51 and X wins in the third round. But if we add anywhere between 3 and 100 X&gt;Y ballots then Y wins in the second round.   You'll find some interesting stuff on Kevin Venzke's old page: http://nodesiege.tripod.com/elections/   Notice that your version (in an earlier post) of the Plurality criterion is wrong.   Chris Benham   Benjamin Grant wrote (17 June 2013): OK, let's assume that as defined, Bucklin fails Participation. Let me specify a new criteria, which already either has its own name that I do not know, or which I can call Prime Participation: "Adding one or more ballots that vote X as a highest preference should never change the winner from X to Y" In </pre> Chris Benham 2013-06-17T20:58:14 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.politics.election-methods