Re: [EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results
I’m not interested in a Calvinball definition that can be twisted to suit
nebulous purposes.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I think
the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree. However, if
you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and win an
imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
where there are at least 3 major candidates.
OK: the definition of a competitive election is one where the effective
number of electoral parties in the first round exceeds 2.5 as measured by
the supremum norm and 3 as measured by the L2 norm.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:42 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I’m not interested in a Calvinball definition that can be twisted to suit
nebulous purposes.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I think
the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree. However, if
you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and win an
imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
where there are at least 3 major candidates.
Stop the IRV scam in Oregon & Nevada in November.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:56 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
OK: the definition of a competitive election is one where the effective
number of electoral parties in the first round exceeds 2.5 as measured by
the supremum norm and 3 as measured by the L2 norm.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:42 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I’m not interested in a Calvinball definition that can be twisted to suit
nebulous purposes.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I
think the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree.
However, if you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and
win an imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
where there are at least 3 major candidates.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
If you want to further entrench the status quo, absolutely!
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 3:00 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
Stop the IRV scam in Oregon & Nevada in November.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:56 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
OK: the definition of a competitive election is one where the effective
number of electoral parties in the first round exceeds 2.5 as measured by
the supremum norm and 3 as measured by the L2 norm.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:42 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I’m not interested in a Calvinball definition that can be twisted to
suit nebulous purposes.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I
think the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree.
However, if you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and
win an imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking about races
where there are at least 3 major candidates.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 12:04 Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:
If you want to further entrench the status quo, absolutely!
I pleaded with them to retract, or at least not keep telling, their lie.
…to choose honesty.
But their choice was otherwise.
If it were offered honestly I’d have campaigned, tabled & canvassed for
their proposal, simply because then it would be the only
immediately-enactable (even if small)improvement.
But, as a lie, it’s no improvement.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 3:00 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
Stop the IRV scam in Oregon & Nevada in November.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:56 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
OK: the definition of a competitive election is one where the effective
number of electoral parties in the first round exceeds 2.5 as measured by
the supremum norm and 3 as measured by the L2 norm.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:42 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I’m not interested in a Calvinball definition that can be twisted to
suit nebulous purposes.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I
think the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree.
However, if you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and
win an imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking
about races where there are at least 3 major candidates.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
"They're not promoting it exactly how I want, so I'm taking my ball and
going home."
Real mature of you. You'll get far with that attitude.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 3:36 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 12:04 Michael Garman michael.garman@rankthevote.us
wrote:
If you want to further entrench the status quo, absolutely!
I pleaded with them to retract, or at least not keep telling, their lie.
…to choose honesty.
But their choice was otherwise.
If it were offered honestly I’d have campaigned, tabled & canvassed for
their proposal, simply because then it would be the only
immediately-enactable (even if small)improvement.
But, as a lie, it’s no improvement.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 3:00 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
Stop the IRV scam in Oregon & Nevada in November.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:56 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
OK: the definition of a competitive election is one where the effective
number of electoral parties in the first round exceeds 2.5 as measured by
the supremum norm and 3 as measured by the L2 norm.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:42 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
I’m not interested in a Calvinball definition that can be twisted to
suit nebulous purposes.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael, I'm happy to discuss rates of pathologies in IRV and why I
think the headline figures are misleading, or why you might disagree.
However, if you're going to ignore what I actually say ("major") to try and
win an imaginary debate instead, I'm not very interested in continuing this
conversation.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 11:28 AM Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:
There were four candidates on the ballot.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:27 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
Maine House 2018 had only 2 major candidates. I'm talking
about races where there are at least 3 major candidates.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life elections either. I don't see any reason why "moderate" candidates (presumably those in the centre) will automatically get fewer first place votes than the "extreme" candidates in any case. Most people won't know of the practical differences between Condorcet and IRV, so if the Condorcet winner is almost always elected under IRV anyway, I don't see that it will affect candidate behaviour that much.
Toby
On Sunday 9 June 2024 at 18:50:26 BST, Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com wrote:
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere) Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects us from cycles).
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates
are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of
empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life
elections either.
There's a low rate of empirical pathologies after an election or two, once
politicians have learned how the system works. ERRG studied this
https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/rcv-impact-on-candidate-entry-and-representation/
and found a big increase in the number of candidates in the first election
after IRV, but the effect disappears by the next election. This is actually
pretty interesting, because as we know the equilibria for
plurality-with-primaries and IRV are almost identical; it suggests elites
are testing out new strategies like promoting more moderate contenders,
then quickly abandoning them after they've realized that IRV and the
current system are essentially the same.
It takes time for party elites and donors to learn they have to switch
strategies—e.g. avoid blowing money on extremists in Condorcet
elections, recruit more moderate candidates, reach out to second-preference
voters. But, because IRV and plurality-with-primary have the same
equilibrium strategies, there's no need to learn a new strategy for IRV.
Elites act the same way they always have, which is to say that the moderate
candidates never get any kind of funding or attention under IRV, just like
under our current system.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:51 PM Toby Pereira tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates
are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of
empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life
elections either. I don't see any reason why "moderate" candidates
(presumably those in the centre) will automatically get fewer first place
votes than the "extreme" candidates in any case. Most people won't know of
the practical differences between Condorcet and IRV, so if the Condorcet
winner is almost always elected under IRV anyway, I don't see that it will
affect candidate behaviour that much.
Toby
On Sunday 9 June 2024 at 18:50:26 BST, Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is
often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no
examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).
I'm going to reply at the top again even though things go out of order, because Yahoo makes it difficult to tell who's written what when I post below.
The decrease after the first election could just be because the new candidates naively think that they will suddenly have a shot at winning or getting close, and then finding out that it's not as simple as that, so they don't stand in subsequent elections. Without testing it out, we don't know that the same wouldn't also happen under Condorcet, Approval, STAR etc.
Toby
On Tuesday 11 June 2024 at 17:13:23 BST, Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life elections either.
There's a low rate of empirical pathologies after an election or two, once politicians have learned how the system works. ERRG studied this and found a big increase in the number of candidates in the first election after IRV, but the effect disappears by the next election. This is actually pretty interesting, because as we know the equilibria for plurality-with-primaries and IRV are almost identical; it suggests elites are testing out new strategies like promoting more moderate contenders, then quickly abandoning them after they've realized that IRV and the current system are essentially the same.
It takes time for party elites and donors to learn they have to switch strategies—e.g. avoid blowing money on extremists in Condorcet elections, recruit more moderate candidates, reach out to second-preference voters. But, because IRV and plurality-with-primary have the same equilibrium strategies, there's no need to learn a new strategy for IRV. Elites act the same way they always have, which is to say that the moderate candidates never get any kind of funding or attention under IRV, just like under our current system.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:51 PM Toby Pereira tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life elections either. I don't see any reason why "moderate" candidates (presumably those in the centre) will automatically get fewer first place votes than the "extreme" candidates in any case. Most people won't know of the practical differences between Condorcet and IRV, so if the Condorcet winner is almost always elected under IRV anyway, I don't see that it will affect candidate behaviour that much.
Toby
On Sunday 9 June 2024 at 18:50:26 BST, Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com wrote:
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning, so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system, all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere) Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects us from cycles).
The decrease after the first election could just be because the new
candidates naively think that they will suddenly have a shot at winning or
getting close, and then finding out that it's not as simple as that, so
they don't stand in subsequent elections.
Right, I think that's what's happening: candidates who didn't have a shot
under FPP are learning they still have no shot under IRV.
Without testing it out, we don't know that the same wouldn't also happen
under Condorcet, Approval, STAR etc.
I think we can't be 100% sure, but it's reasonable to think that the worse
you fail favorite-betrayal, the worse the effective number of candidates
will be. And so far the approval elections in Fargo and St. Louis have been
very competitive.
On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 11:49 AM Toby Pereira tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I'm going to reply at the top again even though things go out of order,
because Yahoo makes it difficult to tell who's written what when I post
below.
The decrease after the first election could just be because the new
candidates naively think that they will suddenly have a shot at winning or
getting close, and then finding out that it's not as simple as that, so
they don't stand in subsequent elections. Without testing it out, we don't
know that the same wouldn't also happen under Condorcet, Approval, STAR etc.
Toby
On Tuesday 11 June 2024 at 17:13:23 BST, Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates
are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of
empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life
elections either.
There's a low rate of empirical pathologies after an election or two, once
politicians have learned how the system works. ERRG studied this
https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/rcv-impact-on-candidate-entry-and-representation/
and found a big increase in the number of candidates in the first election
after IRV, but the effect disappears by the next election. This is actually
pretty interesting, because as we know the equilibria for
plurality-with-primaries and IRV are almost identical; it suggests elites
are testing out new strategies like promoting more moderate contenders,
then quickly abandoning them after they've realized that IRV and the
current system are essentially the same.
It takes time for party elites and donors to learn they have to switch
strategies—e.g. avoid blowing money on extremists in Condorcet
elections, recruit more moderate candidates, reach out to second-preference
voters. But, because IRV and plurality-with-primary have the same
equilibrium strategies, there's no need to learn a new strategy for IRV.
Elites act the same way they always have, which is to say that the moderate
candidates never get any kind of funding or attention under IRV, just like
under our current system.
On Sun, Jun 9, 2024 at 2:51 PM Toby Pereira tdp201b@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I'm not completely convinced by this. I doubt most potential candidates
are experts in voting method theory, and if there has been a low rate of
empirical pathologies, then they won't know about it from real-life
elections either. I don't see any reason why "moderate" candidates
(presumably those in the centre) will automatically get fewer first place
votes than the "extreme" candidates in any case. Most people won't know of
the practical differences between Condorcet and IRV, so if the Condorcet
winner is almost always elected under IRV anyway, I don't see that it will
affect candidate behaviour that much.
Toby
On Sunday 9 June 2024 at 18:50:26 BST, Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:
The reason IRV looks like it "basically works" is because its pathologies
mean moderate and third-party candidates know they have no hope of winning,
so they never run in the first place. At that point, in a 2-party system,
all voting systems will return the same results (because it's just a simple
majority vote).
I think this bears repeating: a low rate of empirical pathologies is
often a negative, not positive, indicator. If your dataset has no
examples of center-squeeze, that means your system is so bad at electing
Condorcet winners that moderate candidates are refusing to run in the first
place. Similarly, we'll know Condorcet methods are working if (sincere)
Condorcet cycles start popping up all the time. That's how we'll know we've
successfully depolarized our politics and broken free of the old
one-dimensional political spectrum (where the median voter theorem protects
us from cycles).