Kristofer, IMHO this is all far too complicated and completely wrong-headed. For one thing, it seems to assume that major candidates have some interest in, or in some way benefit from, displacing minor candidates off the final ballot. In fact, with voluntary voting, they are just as likely to be harmed by them doing that as helped.  Major moderate wing candidates can benefit by minor (sure loser) more extreme candidates on the same wing being on the ballot, because they inspire more voters to turn out who will help that moderate wing candidate to defeat the other major candidate/s. So with your suggested method, a candidate could lose the election because it did too well in the primary. I only recently saw the first message in this thread, and was a bit surprised that the N suggested was so small and elastic ("2-5"). My suggested solution assumed a fixed N.  I would have no problem with 7, certainly at least 5. If we are happy to have N elastic because we don't want any very weak candidates on the ballot, then we can do IRV-style eliminations and vote transfers until the lowest tally of any not eliminated candidate meets some arbitrary threshold and then we stop. Or we can combine that with saying we are going to have at most X candidates. I think I prefer a quite high fixed number.  Lots of candidates can help inspire turnout and make for a wider and more interesting "battle of ideas". Chris B. > *Kristofer Munsterhjelm* km_elmet at t-online.de > <mailto:election-methods%40lists.electorama.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BEM%5D%20Condorcet%20meeting&In-Reply-To=%3Ca4347551-24f9-f38b-be5b-bb3da1a4f5e3%40t-online.de%3E> > /Mon Aug 28 12:37:50 PDT 2023/ > > * *Messages sorted by:* [ date ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/date.html#4835> > [ thread ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/thread.html#4835> > [ subject ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/subject.html#4835> > [ author ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/author.html#4835> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > On 8/28/23 19:24, Forest Simmons wrote: > >/For practical purposes, this appeals to me the most so far. />//>/But the question remains about how to determine the number N. />//>/Why not just use the number ranked (or approved, as the case may be) on />/the average primary ballot? / > Here's a similar approach with an idea to preserve a kind of clone > independence: > > Use STV, but don't eliminate candidates when they're elected, just > reweight the ballots according to surplus instead. > > When a candidate is elected again, he only appears once in the final > outcome, but the number of candidates in the outcome is reduced by one > instead. In effect, the duplicate election leads to the election of a > "hole" that takes up a spot without assigning any candidate to that spot. > > Say N = 5, so that the Droop quota is 1/6. Then a candidate with > above-majority support (say 1/2 + epsilon) gets three such quotas, and > is elected three times: once to get into the finalist set, and twice > more to reduce the number of other candidates from four to two. > > The idea is that if the candidate were to be cloned, then these clones > would occupy three spots of the outcome, so the result is the same; just > in one case, there's only one winner from that bloc and two "holes", > while in the other case, there would be three winners from the bloc. > > I would probably reserve one of the five spots for the primary CW, > though. Ideally it would use a proportional ordering or a pairwise STV > variant, but then we're moving into "deluxe, complex method" territory.

Mostly I agree with Chris. It's hard to say how many candidates should make it through to the final (Condorcet) round of voting. We can only guess at how effective the proposed primary methods would be, and our knowledge of the performance of ranked voting systems is based largely on idealised evaluations. I posted some figures a while ago indicating that as the level of truncation increased, some strange reversals set in just after the half-way mark: the Borda count briefly gained in accuracy while Condorcet methods started a headlong fall. After this point the Borda count outperforms Condorcet methods. (The figures relate to sincere voting; there's no suggestion that Condorcet methods become more manipulable than the Borda count.) This suggests that we should keep the field small enough to expect voters to rank at least half the candidates, or motivate them to rank more than they would naturally be inclined to, or abandon standard voting theory in favour of methods tailored to truncated ballots. I have a suggestion on the second head which I'll make in another thread. I think I favour a fixed maximum field size. We want to ensure that the number of candidates is not more than will be voted on accurately; we don't want to discard the candidate closest to the median of the voter distribution; jointly satisfying these two desiderata requires a fair degree of subtletly, and there are other parts of the election system which will give better rewards to algorithmic complexity. CJC On 30/08/2023 09:17, Chris Benham wrote: > > > Kristofer, > > IMHO this is all far too complicated and completely wrong-headed. > > For one thing, it seems to assume that major candidates have some > interest in, > or in some way benefit from, displacing minor candidates off the final > ballot. > > In fact, with voluntary voting, they are just as likely to be harmed > by them doing that > as helped.  Major moderate wing candidates can benefit by minor (sure > loser) more extreme > candidates on the same wing being on the ballot, because they inspire > more voters to turn out > who will help that moderate wing candidate to defeat the other major > candidate/s. > > So with your suggested method, a candidate could lose the election > because it did too well in > the primary. > > I only recently saw the first message in this thread, and was a bit > surprised that the N suggested > was so small and elastic ("2-5"). > > My suggested solution assumed a fixed N.  I would have no problem with > 7, certainly at least 5. > > If we are happy to have N elastic because we don't want any very weak > candidates on the ballot, > then we can do IRV-style eliminations and vote transfers until the > lowest tally of any not eliminated > candidate meets some arbitrary threshold and then we stop. > > Or we can combine that with saying we are going to have at most X > candidates. > > I think I prefer a quite high fixed number.  Lots of candidates can > help inspire turnout and make for > a wider and more interesting "battle of ideas". > > Chris B. > > > > > > >> *Kristofer Munsterhjelm* km_elmet at t-online.de >> <mailto:election-methods%40lists.electorama.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BEM%5D%20Condorcet%20meeting&In-Reply-To=%3Ca4347551-24f9-f38b-be5b-bb3da1a4f5e3%40t-online.de%3E> >> /Mon Aug 28 12:37:50 PDT 2023/ >> >> * *Messages sorted by:* [ date ] >> <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/date.html#4835> >> [ thread ] >> <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/thread.html#4835> >> [ subject ] >> <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/subject.html#4835> >> [ author ] >> <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/author.html#4835> >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> On 8/28/23 19:24, Forest Simmons wrote: >> >/For practical purposes, this appeals to me the most so far. />//>/But the question remains about how to determine the number N. />//>/Why not just use the number ranked (or approved, as the case may be) on />/the average primary ballot? / >> Here's a similar approach with an idea to preserve a kind of clone >> independence: >> >> Use STV, but don't eliminate candidates when they're elected, just >> reweight the ballots according to surplus instead. >> >> When a candidate is elected again, he only appears once in the final >> outcome, but the number of candidates in the outcome is reduced by one >> instead. In effect, the duplicate election leads to the election of a >> "hole" that takes up a spot without assigning any candidate to that spot. >> >> Say N = 5, so that the Droop quota is 1/6. Then a candidate with >> above-majority support (say 1/2 + epsilon) gets three such quotas, and >> is elected three times: once to get into the finalist set, and twice >> more to reduce the number of other candidates from four to two. >> >> The idea is that if the candidate were to be cloned, then these clones >> would occupy three spots of the outcome, so the result is the same; just >> in one case, there's only one winner from that bloc and two "holes", >> while in the other case, there would be three winners from the bloc. >> >> I would probably reserve one of the five spots for the primary CW, >> though. Ideally it would use a proportional ordering or a pairwise STV >> variant, but then we're moving into "deluxe, complex method" territory. >

- *Messages sorted by:* [ date ]
<http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/date.html#4835> [
thread ]
<http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/thread.html#4835> [
subject ]
<http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/subject.html#4835> [
author ]
<http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/author.html#4835>

On Wed, Aug 30, 2023, 12:17 AM Chris Benham <cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au> wrote: > > Kristofer, > > IMHO this is all far too complicated and completely wrong-headed. > > For one thing, it seems to assume that major candidates have some interest > in, > or in some way benefit from, displacing minor candidates off the final > ballot. > > In fact, with voluntary voting, they are just as likely to be harmed by > them doing that > as helped. Major moderate wing candidates can benefit by minor (sure > loser) more extreme > candidates on the same wing being on the ballot, because they inspire more > voters to turn out > who will help that moderate wing candidate to defeat the other major > candidate/s. > > So with your suggested method, a candidate could lose the election because > it did too well in > the primary. > > I only recently saw the first message in this thread, and was a bit > surprised that the N suggested > was so small and elastic ("2-5"). > So voters just rank as many as they feel like, as Chris suggested.... then ... ... initialize a set finalists with the IRV winner, the MaxMinPS winner, the Implicit Approval winner, and possibly others. Then expand this set by including every candidate that pairwise beats at least one of its current members ... and continue to expand it in this way until it has reached or surpassed some minimum target size ... or until every candidate with a beatpath to the set has already been incorporated ... whichever condition obtains first. Note that two expansions already includes every Landau candidate ... so we could make that our hard cutoff without much loss. > > My suggested solution assumed a fixed N. I would have no problem with 7, > certainly at least 5. > > If we are happy to have N elastic because we don't want any very weak > candidates on the ballot, > then we can do IRV-style eliminations and vote transfers until the lowest > tally of any not eliminated > candidate meets some arbitrary threshold and then we stop. > > Or we can combine that with saying we are going to have at most X > candidates. > > I think I prefer a quite high fixed number. Lots of candidates can help > inspire turnout and make for > a wider and more interesting "battle of ideas". > > Chris B. > > > > > > > *Kristofer Munsterhjelm* km_elmet at t-online.de > <election-methods%40lists.electorama.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BEM%5D%20Condorcet%20meeting&In-Reply-To=%3Ca4347551-24f9-f38b-be5b-bb3da1a4f5e3%40t-online.de%3E> > *Mon Aug 28 12:37:50 PDT 2023* > > > - *Messages sorted by:* [ date ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/date.html#4835> [ > thread ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/thread.html#4835> [ > subject ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/subject.html#4835> [ > author ] > <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2023-August/author.html#4835> > > ------------------------------ > > On 8/28/23 19:24, Forest Simmons wrote: > >* For practical purposes, this appeals to me the most so far. > *> >* But the question remains about how to determine the number N. > *> >* Why not just use the number ranked (or approved, as the case may be) on > *>* the average primary ballot? > * > Here's a similar approach with an idea to preserve a kind of clone > independence: > > Use STV, but don't eliminate candidates when they're elected, just > reweight the ballots according to surplus instead. > > When a candidate is elected again, he only appears once in the final > outcome, but the number of candidates in the outcome is reduced by one > instead. In effect, the duplicate election leads to the election of a > "hole" that takes up a spot without assigning any candidate to that spot. > > Say N = 5, so that the Droop quota is 1/6. Then a candidate with > above-majority support (say 1/2 + epsilon) gets three such quotas, and > is elected three times: once to get into the finalist set, and twice > more to reduce the number of other candidates from four to two. > > The idea is that if the candidate were to be cloned, then these clones > would occupy three spots of the outcome, so the result is the same; just > in one case, there's only one winner from that bloc and two "holes", > while in the other case, there would be three winners from the bloc. > > I would probably reserve one of the five spots for the primary CW, > though. Ideally it would use a proportional ordering or a pairwise STV > variant, but then we're moving into "deluxe, complex method" territory. > > >

On 8/30/23 09:17, Chris Benham wrote: > > Kristofer, > > IMHO this is all far too complicated and completely wrong-headed. > > For one thing, it seems to assume that major candidates have some > interest in, or in some way benefit from, displacing minor candidates > off the final ballot. > > In fact, with voluntary voting, they are just as likely to be harmed > by them doing that as helped. Major moderate wing candidates can > benefit by minor (sure loser) more extreme candidates on the same > wing being on the ballot, because they inspire more voters to turn > out who will help that moderate wing candidate to defeat the other > major candidate/s. Then I'm sorry, but I don't know what the desiderata are. First I suggest using Approval, to which you say this will lead to the selection of a bunch of clones. Then I construct a method that's intended to be cloneproof, and then you say that clone independence is a bad thing, because more extreme clones can support more moderate ones and make the latter win. So which is it? Should this kind of method pass clone independence in the sense that cloning some group's candidates should never change the number picked from that group to be finalists -- or not? Maybe this shows that we need to nail down what the method is supposed to accomplish before designing it. -km