On 03/28/2015 08:42 PM, Alexander Praetorius wrote:

The general argument is that if you want majority rule, it's possible to
set up examples where any wider interval than only considering the
median can violate majority rule whereas median always respects it.
Intuitively, when you use something that is closer to the mean, you let
the strength of preference matter, so if a minority feels strongly about
an issue, they can override a majority that doesn't feel quite as
strongly about it.

This might be what you want; I'm just saying that if you need to respect
majority rule in every situation, you can't use anything wider than the
median. My example was a way of showing the intuition behind that :-)

I don't think a method can determine the cutoff point on its own.
Remember that it can't read minds: it only has access to the votes
themselves. So if it is to adjust the cutoff, it has to do so based on
whether the voters think it's a reasonable cutoff or not.

I can think of two ways to do this. Call them implicit and explicit.

The implicit suggestion turns the continuous vote into an advisory vote.
That is, the method is used to find what most people would support, but
isn't binding in itself. Then, after one has done that, there's a formal
vote which may simply be of the form: "Do you want this proposal or
change to take effect? Yes or no", where a majority (or supermajority)
wins. One can then connect the system to an optimization algorithm that
chooses the cutoff so as to maximize the chance that the motion does
pass. If there is little strategy going on, this will happen when
there's not much of a cutoff (because the more honest information it can
make use of, the better its idea of whether it'll pass will be). If
there is a lot of strategy going on, it'll happen when there's a high
cutoff.

However, the idea is not perfect. First, it could equivocate: say there
are some difficult issues and some not-difficult issues, and say that
strategy is the main problem in the first whereas not having enough
information from honest votes is the main problem for the second type.
Then the algorithm can only pick one cutoff for all of these proposals.
Second, it may oscillate or lag, as any dynamic system might - e.g. if
there's a run of dishonest voting, it may push the cutoff too high for
too long, and then only pull it back down later.

The explicit suggestion is more conventional. You set the parameter "by
hand" (or rather, the voters do so) through a separate referendum. In
that respect, it's analogous to amending or altering a constitution, and
like altering a constitution, the vote should require a greater margin
to pass than an ordinary vote. Ideally, it would also be a yes/no
referendum, because having only two alternatives lessens the possibility
for strategy.

One way to look at the reasoning behind the explicit suggestion is that
the voting system is a method for the voters to come to an agreement
about something without having to spend a lot of time performing costly
deliberation (discussions in a council, etc). The voting system is then
a tool that is used by the people, and when the people want to fix that
tool, they should be able to. However, since the tool is being used as a
way to find the voice of the people, the method that alters it should be
constructed so that it can't be altered to favor a minority at the
expense of everybody else - hence the more stringent requirements for an
amendment as contrasted to an ordinary proposal.

(An interesting side thought: could Jobst and Forest's consensus methods
be used for adjusting voting system metaparameters or for amending or
altering constitutions?)

At 06:05 PM 4/23/2015, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

The problem is created by an artificial restriction: a single ballot.
Hence systems that move beyond the limitation required at least the
possibility of multiple polls.

Are we considering "voting systems," or "decision-making systems"?
Arrow came up with a bleak conclusion, in his impossibility theorem,
by rejecting methods of determining social preference order that were
not, as he defined them, "voting systems." Q.E.D.!

However, the standard methods of deliberative process, in use for
centuries, handle the problem. They simply don't do it single-ballot.
Every result must be approved by a majority of those voting, or there
is no result. Thus the process continues. What prevails in such a
system is very sensitive to preference strength.

However, at the same time, majority rule is rigorously respected.
"Plurality" doesn't cut it. In Robert's Rules, a ballot with any mark
on it, even if unintelligible, is counted in the basis for
"majority." People often propose None of the Above for ballots, not
realizing that under standard systems, in non-governmental
organizations, it's easy to vote for None of the Above, and it's
effective. Just write anything on the ballot, other than the name of
an existing candidate.

In public systems, we became impatient for a result. I find it odd.
Those elected by a voting system may be managing budgets in the
billions of dollars, but we don't want to spend money on a second ballot.

And then when we consider multiple-ballot systems, we only look at
the dumbest possible two-ballot system, ordinarily runoff voting, top
two by plurality. And we exclude write-in votes in the runoff,
because that might cause majority failure. As if causing majority
failure is a Bad Idea when the majority doesn't perfer any of the candidates.

The single ballot system that works is the use of a single ballot to
create a fully representative body that then uses as many ballots as
necessary to find the required level of support. Asset Voting. Asset
Voting has other possibilities as well, it can create a
full-representative Assembly, or so close to that, that the
difference isn't important.

In Asset Voting, there are no "wasted votes." There may be "stupid
votes," i.e., if you vote for someone who you don't trust, or vote
for someone likely to not participate in further process, you have
disempowered yourself, but other than that natural consequence, you
will be represented in a good Asset implementation.

So how to get from here to there? This is what I came to about a
decade ago. Use Asset Voting in voluntary organizations, demonstrate
it, as well as discovering the kinks or problems. Create a body of
experience with it. We have only one known example, an election of
the Election Science Foundation steering committee. It worked.
However, the problem wasn't the voting system, the problem was that
the ESF membership expected the steering committee to be the worker
bees. The steering committee wasn't that, it was a body that could
vet projects and proposals, to bless them with organizational
agreement (or rejection). So, to sum it up, the steering committee
didn't do anything, because nobody gave it proposals. Then, one of
those not elected to the committee went ahead and, with one of the 3
members of the steering committee, created the Center for Election
Science, as a standard board-controlled organization, and no mention
of the steering committee was made.

Behind that was some very personal politics.

The voting system worked, though, the elected steering commmittee did
reflect the collected trust of the entire voting membership, that was
validated.

The CES did not continue to use Asset Voting. Why? I described these
effects years ago. Activists want to run activist organizations. They
do not want to be responsible to a wider public. It's predictable,
and it's not even wrong. It merely does not transform the world by
demonstrating transformation. CES is doing great work. Just not that
particular job.