Do you want them ranked last, or somewhere else?

Just like in other elections I refuse to weigh in on candidates I don't
know about.  And on a ranked ballot they would likely be unranked unless
Hitler or Satan or Donald Trump was on the ballot, and then I would have to
rank these unfamiliar candidates higher.

S orry.  No nothing from me.  You guys know I'm pretty simplistic.  My
principles:

1. Equally-valued votes. One-Person-One-Vote.  Equality under the law.
   That means Majority Rule. (If any minority gets to rule, that means their
   votes counted more, per vote, than then individual votes from voters in the
   majority that doesn't rule. That has to be considered a "Bad Thing".)

(1a. Process transparency.  That means not giving up having Precinct
Summability.)

2. That means if more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A to
   Candidate B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the c
   ontrary, then Candidate B is not elected.  If we can, at all, avoid it.
   That means Condorcet.

3. Which Condorcet-consistent method to pick is whatever best finds its
   way to legislation.  That means the method, spelled out in words, needs to
   be meaningful and concise and reflect principles widely accepted by the
   public and legislators.

So my fav is straight-ahead Condorcet with Plurality as the contingency
method.  N^2 summable.  Maybe it should be Condorcet-TTR (top-two-runoff)
to give the Hare IRV advocates a fig leaf to cover their shame with.  Also
N^2 summable.  I dunno.

------ O riginal message------
*From: *Kristofer Munsterhjelm
*Date: *Sun, May 12, 2024 17:42
*To: *robert bristow-johnson;election-methods@lists.electorama.com;
*Cc: *
*Subject:*Re: [EM] POLL: New deadline: 2024-05-16 05:15:00 UTC

On 2024-05-12 18:24, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

The last ballot you submitted is what counts, so you don't need to
resubmit unless you want to make a change to it.

Though speaking of: you left out some (non-Condorcet) methods on your
ballot. Do you want them ranked last, or somewhere else? The methods are
Approval plus manual runoff, MJ, RCIPE, and Double Defeat Hare.

By my count, in reverse order of submission, there's:

Richard Fobes ("Poll, final ballot from Richard Fobes, the VoteFair guy")
You ("POLL: Approaching deadline: 2024-05-11 05:15:00 UTC")
Me ("Poll ballot")
fdpk69p6uq ("POLL: References (was: Re: Poll, preliminary ballots)")
Joshua Boehme ("My Preliminary Ballot for the Voting Systems Poll")
Chris Benham ("Poll ballot revision, Wednesday 24 April")
Mike Ossipoff ("Revised ballot, Wednesday, April 17th")

All the more reason for lurkers out there - or frequent posters for that
matter - to vote :-)

-km

Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info

ballot. Do you want them ranked last, or somewhere else?

Just like in other elections I refuse to weigh in on candidates I don't
know about.  And on a ranked ballot they would likely be unranked unless
Hitler or Satan or Donald Trump was on the ballot, and then I would have
to rank these unfamiliar candidates higher.

1. Though speaking of: you left out some (non-Condorcet) methods on
   your ballot. Do you want them ranked last, or somewhere else?

3. Just like in other elections I refuse to weigh in on candidates I
   don't know about.  And on a ranked ballot they would likely be
   unranked unless Hitler or Satan or Donald Trump was on the ballot,
   and then I would have to rank these unfamiliar candidates higher.

5. Approval plus manual runoff, MJ, RCIPE, and Double Defeat Hare

7. S orry.  No nothing from me.  You guys know I'm pretty
   simplistic.  My principles:

9. 1. Equally-valued votes. One-Person-One-Vote.  Equality under the
      law.  That means Majority Rule. (If any minority gets to rule,
      that means their votes counted more, per vote, than then
      individual votes from voters in the majority that doesn't rule.
      That has to be considered a "Bad Thing".)

11. (1a. Process transparency.  That means not giving up having
    Precinct Summability.)

13. 2. That means if more voters mark their ballots preferring
       Candidate A to Candidate B than the number of voters marking their
       ballots to the c ontrary, then Candidate B is not elected.  If we
       can, at all, avoid it.  That means Condorcet.
15. 3. Which Condorcet-consistent method to pick is whatever best
       finds its way to legislation.  That means the method, spelled out
       in words, needs to be meaningful and concise and reflect
       principles widely accepted by the public and legislators.

17. So my fav is straight-ahead Condorcet with Plurality as the
    contingency method.  N^2 summable.  Maybe it should be
    Condorcet-TTR (top-two-runoff) to give the Hare IRV advocates a
    fig leaf to cover their shame with. Also N^2 summable.  I dunno.

------ O riginal message------
*From: *Kristofer Munsterhjelm
*Date: *Sun, May 12, 2024 17:42
*To: *robert bristow-johnson;election-methods@lists.electorama.com;
*Cc: *
*Subject:*Re: [EM] POLL: New deadline: 2024-05-16 05 <tel:2024-05-16
05>:15:00 UTC

On2024-05-12 18  <tel:2024-05-12 18>:24, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

The last ballot you submitted is what counts, so you don't need to
resubmit unless you want to make a change to it.

Though speaking of: you left out some (non-Condorcet) methods on your
ballot. Do you want them ranked last, or somewhere else? The methods are
Approval plus manual runoff, MJ, RCIPE, and Double Defeat Hare.

By my count, in reverse order of submission, there's:

Richard Fobes ("Poll, final ballot from Richard Fobes, the VoteFair guy")
You ("POLL: Approaching deadline:2024-05-11 05  <tel:2024-05-11 05>:15:00 UTC")
Me ("Poll ballot")
fdpk69p6uq ("POLL: References (was: Re: Poll, preliminary ballots)")
Joshua Boehme ("My Preliminary Ballot for the Voting Systems Poll")
Chris Benham ("Poll ballot revision, Wednesday 24 April")
Mike Ossipoff ("Revised ballot, Wednesday, April 17th")

All the more reason for lurkers out there - or frequent posters for that
matter - to vote :-)

-km

Election-Methods mailing list - seehttps://electorama.com/em  for list info

On 05/15/2024 6:43 AM EDT Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

Robert,

That method is a big open invitation for the supporters of the Plurality (aka FPP) winner to engage in easy Burial strategy. Say sincere is

46 A
44 B
10 C>B

B is the Condorcet winner. B>A 54-46 and B>C 44-10.

What can the A supporters do about that?

46 A>C (sincere is A or A>B)
44 B
10 C>B

They have given B a pairwise defeat so now there is a cycle. B>A 54-46, A>C 46-10, C>B 56-44.

According to your preferred Condorcet//FPP method the strategists easily steal the election.

If it's not that close, how is it "easy"?  And what about the risk of backfiring?

I know that the Alaska 2022 (August) race is good example, Peltola wins with IRV and FPTP.  Begich is the CW.  If it were Condorcet/Plurality (or Bottom-Two Runoff, which also elects the Plurality winner, at least in the situation of only 3 significant candidates), I understand that if Peltola voters anticipating that Peltola might be the Plurality winner but Begich would win Condorcet, they might bury Begich and bullet vote Peltola.  But a lot of voters would have to do that, and it may be against their true desires, which is to make sure that Palin does not win.  They risk Palin winning if they bullet vote Peltola.

I like "dinky" if that description means "concise".  Benham's method, when encoded in legislative language is not dinky enough.  BTR only requires one simple runoff in each IRV round.  Your method essentially requires doing the straight-ahead Condorcet tabulation for each round.  I just cannot imagine legislators choosing that over the dinky BTR.

Chris, would you recommend changing to Condorcet/TTR?  I'm pretty much agnostic about that.

But here's what I want (because my interest is legislation for elections for public office in government):

1. I want everyone, legislators and the public, to understand the method and how the legal language directly describes the method.  If the legislative language is convoluted, it will most certainly be rejected by both legislators and the public.

2. I want everyone to understand the purpose of the legislative change; Why are we changing from FPTP to RCV?  What is it that we're trying to gain or to fix by changing?  That reason needs to be concise, well-understood, and compelling.  Straight-ahead Condorcet simply spells out application of the Condorcet criterion to the tabulation of the vote.  It's simply:

"If more voters mark their ballots preferring Candidate A to Candidate B than the number of voters marking their ballots to the contrary, then Candidate B is not elected."

At least if we can, at all, avoid it.

I don't want to sell these policy makers on that simple principle and then try to convince them that some language that is far nastier than IRV is necessary to implement it.  They will reject it.  They might think that I am obfuscating some trick in the language.  Benham isn't as opaque as Schulze, but it's not as transparent as BTR or straight-ahead Condorcet (which, of course, needs a completion method).

I'll connect you to a couple Vermont legislators that are sympathetic to Condorcet.  Let's see how you explain this to them.

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

.
.
.

Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info