High5 voting (~ Smith//Approval on a reduced set)
I've been mulling over ways to get a Smith/Approval method into a somewhat
practical form, and have taken some cues from Jameson Quinn's Vote-321.
Vote-321 is a pretty method, with a lot of strategy resistance, and if it
were among the options for a new voting system (with no Condorcet method
available), I would choose it immediately.
However, I have a few issues with it: vulnerability to cloning; lack of
expression; and what I consider a too-small provisional subset. The latter
is more of a psychological / media problem, and what I mean by "too-small"
is that if only the top three first-place candidates make it past the first
pass, public attention could be excessively focused on the front-runners at
the cost of addressing issues raised by less popular candidates. But the
too-small subset is also what enables Vote-321's vulnerability to cloning.
By including at least one or two more candidates in the first pass of
candidate reduction, cloning risk is reduced.
Following is what I call the *High 5 *method for three or more candidates:
Ballot Expression:
I prefer a 6 slot ranked ballot, equal-ranking and gaps allowed, with the
rank/tiers named as follows:
Tier Name
Approval Status
Description
A
Approved
Most Preferred / Best / Favorite
B
Approved
Good
C
Approved
OK / Acceptable
D
Disapproved
Not Preferred, but would be in their coalition (i.e. Compromise)
E
Disapproved
Mostly Unacceptable but Lesser Evil
Reject
Dispapproved
Completely unacceptable
Summarized, there are 3 approved ranks (Most Preferred, Good, OK), 2
disapproved ranks (compromise, lesser of two evils), and Reject. Blank
ballots are counted as rejection.
Tabulation:
- Total most-preferred votes per candidate (i.e. "A" votes).
- Approval / Disapproval totals per candidate
- Pairwise preference array
- Optional:
- Tied-Approval pairwise
- Tied-Disapproval (above reject) pairwise
- Approved vs Disapproved/Reject pairwise
First-pass subset:
- Top 5 candidates by most-preferred votes
Procedure:
- Of the top 5 most-preferred candidates are found, drop the
least-approved candidate. - Among the remaining candidates, use the pairwise preference array to
find the Smith Set - If more than one candidate is in the Smith Set, pick the most approved
member of the set as the winner.
If you start with 3 candidates, this method reduces to top-two approval.
Starting with 4 candidates, this method reduces to sorting the candidates
by Approval and doing a top-three tournament: the winner is the pairwise
winner of A1 versus (the pairwise winner of A2 versus A3).
For 5 or more candidates, the method has a very high probability of finding
the CW (if one exists) among the top five favorites, while falling back to
approval in the event of a cycle among the four most-approved of those top
five.
In a "jungle-primary" type of situation (though no primary is necessary),
media attention would be given to at least the top 5 candidates instead of
just the top two, ensuring attention to a range of viewpoints. And in the
event of a large number of candidates, it would not be necessary to
tabulate pairwise preferences for more than 7 or 8 top-first-ranked
candidates as determined by pre-election polling, reducing tabulation
complexity while retaining summability.
Using most-preferred votes for the first pass has a slight anti-cloning
effect, as a preference ballot would lead to a tendency toward vote
splitting if one faction has too many candidates. The anti-cloning pressure
is greater than in Vote-321 because of the larger range of expression.
Finally, the Smith//Approval method, when combined with the explicit
approval cutoff ballot, allows enough strategy to reduce burial incentive.
I'm calling this "High 5" voting because it's descriptive of both the
ranking method and the top-five most preferred first-level truncation, and
it's easier to remember than Smith//Approval.
Thoughts?
I like various different kinds of voting reforms, including this one (That
doesn’t that mean I’d propose it).
Some methods that I like are too complicated, or make too much demand on
voters, or are too arbitrary. This is one such.
If there’s a Condorcet proposal as complicated as High-Five, I don’t know
about it.
I like High-Five’s evaluatory ratings.
E & Reject should be combined as Reject.
The uses of the ratings in the count seem arbitrary. I’m not saying that it
doesn’t sound right, but it’s just that there are many ways it could be
done.
As much as I like the evaluatory ratings, I don’t know how many people
would agree & want to be expected to vote all the candidates by all those
merit-levels. I like it, but would it play in Peoria?
And it remains a rating-system. As such, it can’t match the
strategy-freeness of Condorcet.
It’s complexity completely wipes-out the huge simplicity, familiarity &
unarbitrariness-elegance advantage of STAR & Approval.
For me as a voter High-Five would be fine, & it’s one of those that I like,
but it doesn’t meet the needs for a public-proposal.
On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:29 Ted Stern dodecatheon@gmail.com wrote:
I've been mulling over ways to get a Smith/Approval method into a somewhat
practical form, and have taken some cues from Jameson Quinn's Vote-321.
Vote-321 is a pretty method, with a lot of strategy resistance, and if it
were among the options for a new voting system (with no Condorcet method
available), I would choose it immediately.
However, I have a few issues with it: vulnerability to cloning; lack of
expression; and what I consider a too-small provisional subset. The latter
is more of a psychological / media problem, and what I mean by "too-small"
is that if only the top three first-place candidates make it past the first
pass, public attention could be excessively focused on the front-runners at
the cost of addressing issues raised by less popular candidates. But the
too-small subset is also what enables Vote-321's vulnerability to cloning.
By including at least one or two more candidates in the first pass of
candidate reduction, cloning risk is reduced.
Following is what I call the *High 5 *method for three or more candidates:
Ballot Expression:
I prefer a 6 slot ranked ballot, equal-ranking and gaps allowed, with the
rank/tiers named as follows:
Tier Name
Approval Status
Description
A
Approved
Most Preferred / Best / Favorite
B
Approved
Good
C
Approved
OK / Acceptable
D
Disapproved
Not Preferred, but would be in their coalition (i.e. Compromise)
E
Disapproved
Mostly Unacceptable but Lesser Evil
Reject
Dispapproved
Completely unacceptable
Summarized, there are 3 approved ranks (Most Preferred, Good, OK), 2
disapproved ranks (compromise, lesser of two evils), and Reject. Blank
ballots are counted as rejection.
Tabulation:
- Total most-preferred votes per candidate (i.e. "A" votes).
- Approval / Disapproval totals per candidate
- Pairwise preference array
- Optional:
- Tied-Approval pairwise
- Tied-Disapproval (above reject) pairwise
- Approved vs Disapproved/Reject pairwise
First-pass subset:
- *Top 5 candidates by most-preferred votes*
Procedure:
- Of the top 5 most-preferred candidates are found, drop the
least-approved candidate.
- Among the remaining candidates, use the pairwise preference array to
find the Smith Set
- If more than one candidate is in the Smith Set, pick the most
approved member of the set as the winner.
If you start with 3 candidates, this method reduces to top-two approval.
Starting with 4 candidates, this method reduces to sorting the candidates
by Approval and doing a top-three tournament: the winner is the pairwise
winner of A1 versus (the pairwise winner of A2 versus A3).
For 5 or more candidates, the method has a very high probability of
finding the CW (if one exists) among the top five favorites, while falling
back to approval in the event of a cycle among the four most-approved of
those top five.
In a "jungle-primary" type of situation (though no primary is necessary),
media attention would be given to at least the top 5 candidates instead of
just the top two, ensuring attention to a range of viewpoints. And in the
event of a large number of candidates, it would not be necessary to
tabulate pairwise preferences for more than 7 or 8 top-first-ranked
candidates as determined by pre-election polling, reducing tabulation
complexity while retaining summability.
Using most-preferred votes for the first pass has a slight anti-cloning
effect, as a preference ballot would lead to a tendency toward vote
splitting if one faction has too many candidates. The anti-cloning pressure
is greater than in Vote-321 because of the larger range of expression.
Finally, the Smith//Approval method, when combined with the explicit
approval cutoff ballot, allows enough strategy to reduce burial incentive.
I'm calling this "High 5" voting because it's descriptive of both the
ranking method and the top-five most preferred first-level truncation, and
it's easier to remember than Smith//Approval.
Thoughts?
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
…& the multi-part count would make for complicated strategy-calculation.
On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 20:03 Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:
I like various different kinds of voting reforms, including this one (That
doesn’t that mean I’d propose it).
Some methods that I like are too complicated, or make too much demand on
voters, or are too arbitrary. This is one such.
If there’s a Condorcet proposal as complicated as High-Five, I don’t know
about it.
I like High-Five’s evaluatory ratings.
E & Reject should be combined as Reject.
The uses of the ratings in the count seem arbitrary. I’m not saying that
it doesn’t sound right, but it’s just that there are many ways it could be
done.
As much as I like the evaluatory ratings, I don’t know how many people
would agree & want to be expected to vote all the candidates by all those
merit-levels. I like it, but would it play in Peoria?
And it remains a rating-system. As such, it can’t match the
strategy-freeness of Condorcet.
It’s complexity completely wipes-out the huge simplicity, familiarity &
unarbitrariness-elegance advantage of STAR & Approval.
For me as a voter High-Five would be fine, & it’s one of those that I
like, but it doesn’t meet the needs for a public-proposal.
On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:29 Ted Stern dodecatheon@gmail.com wrote:
I've been mulling over ways to get a Smith/Approval method into a
somewhat practical form, and have taken some cues from Jameson Quinn's
Vote-321.
Vote-321 is a pretty method, with a lot of strategy resistance, and if it
were among the options for a new voting system (with no Condorcet method
available), I would choose it immediately.
However, I have a few issues with it: vulnerability to cloning; lack of
expression; and what I consider a too-small provisional subset. The latter
is more of a psychological / media problem, and what I mean by "too-small"
is that if only the top three first-place candidates make it past the first
pass, public attention could be excessively focused on the front-runners at
the cost of addressing issues raised by less popular candidates. But the
too-small subset is also what enables Vote-321's vulnerability to cloning.
By including at least one or two more candidates in the first pass of
candidate reduction, cloning risk is reduced.
Following is what I call the *High 5 *method for three or more
candidates:
Ballot Expression:
I prefer a 6 slot ranked ballot, equal-ranking and gaps allowed, with the
rank/tiers named as follows:
Tier Name
Approval Status
Description
A
Approved
Most Preferred / Best / Favorite
B
Approved
Good
C
Approved
OK / Acceptable
D
Disapproved
Not Preferred, but would be in their coalition (i.e. Compromise)
E
Disapproved
Mostly Unacceptable but Lesser Evil
Reject
Dispapproved
Completely unacceptable
Summarized, there are 3 approved ranks (Most Preferred, Good, OK), 2
disapproved ranks (compromise, lesser of two evils), and Reject. Blank
ballots are counted as rejection.
Tabulation:
- Total most-preferred votes per candidate (i.e. "A" votes).
- Approval / Disapproval totals per candidate
- Pairwise preference array
- Optional:
- Tied-Approval pairwise
- Tied-Disapproval (above reject) pairwise
- Approved vs Disapproved/Reject pairwise
First-pass subset:
- *Top 5 candidates by most-preferred votes*
Procedure:
- Of the top 5 most-preferred candidates are found, drop the
least-approved candidate.
- Among the remaining candidates, use the pairwise preference array
to find the Smith Set
- If more than one candidate is in the Smith Set, pick the most
approved member of the set as the winner.
If you start with 3 candidates, this method reduces to top-two approval.
Starting with 4 candidates, this method reduces to sorting the candidates
by Approval and doing a top-three tournament: the winner is the pairwise
winner of A1 versus (the pairwise winner of A2 versus A3).
For 5 or more candidates, the method has a very high probability of
finding the CW (if one exists) among the top five favorites, while falling
back to approval in the event of a cycle among the four most-approved of
those top five.
In a "jungle-primary" type of situation (though no primary is necessary),
media attention would be given to at least the top 5 candidates instead of
just the top two, ensuring attention to a range of viewpoints. And in the
event of a large number of candidates, it would not be necessary to
tabulate pairwise preferences for more than 7 or 8 top-first-ranked
candidates as determined by pre-election polling, reducing tabulation
complexity while retaining summability.
Using most-preferred votes for the first pass has a slight anti-cloning
effect, as a preference ballot would lead to a tendency toward vote
splitting if one faction has too many candidates. The anti-cloning pressure
is greater than in Vote-321 because of the larger range of expression.
Finally, the Smith//Approval method, when combined with the explicit
approval cutoff ballot, allows enough strategy to reduce burial incentive.
I'm calling this "High 5" voting because it's descriptive of both the
ranking method and the top-five most preferred first-level truncation, and
it's easier to remember than Smith//Approval.
Thoughts?
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
Hi Ted,
Thanks for the detailed writeup and comparison to Vote321. I think "High5"
is a clever name, and I appreciate that it's not named after a dead white
guy (or maybe, perhaps, a living white guy). I'm admittedly not a big fan
of the system, though (at least, not yet).
It seems to me that the practical difference in outcomes between High5 and
STAR would be so trivial as to be negligible. It's my understanding that
STAR and pretty much all of the Condorcet methods VERY RARELY show
differences between them in simulations, and certainly, any contrived
scenario where there's a difference between Condorcet methods and STAR with
similar rankings/ratings feels contrived and highly unlikely. My hunch is
that High5's performance would be imperceptibly different than STAR (and
most Condorcet methods), at a cost of much greater complexity and less
mainstream political attention than STAR (if one can count a ballot measure
in a small Oregon city as "mainstream").
In a "High5" election, I'm also not sure that any more than two or three of
the frontrunners would get mainstream attention (even given the name and
mechanics of the method). My hunch is that mainstream electoral coverage
would do whatever it could to simplify all races down to the fewest number
possible.
Here's a different pair of systems which might achieve your stated goals
with High5: perhaps select five candidates to be selected via a "unified
primary"[1] (or rather, an approval-based primary). Then the top five
would be running against one another for a few weeks/months before a
general election, without having to also compete with the crackpots who had
a successful signature campaign and managed to get on the primary ballot.
Use a Condorcet method (or a really good single-winner method) for the
general election round (as in High5's final tabulation). This would put
five candidates "on the debate stage", so to speak.
There's a lot more that we could discuss about the value of two sequential
elections as is customary in the United States. In short (if I understand
your original "High5" proposal correctly), it seems a mistake to try
consolidating the primary and the general election. I think I'm going to
start a separate thread for the topic of primary+general elections versus
consolidated general elections.
Rob
[1] The "unified primary" is basically the approval-based system used in
St. Louis:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Unified_primary
On Fri, Dec 15, 2023 at 12:28 PM Ted Stern dodecatheon@gmail.com wrote:
I've been mulling over ways to get a Smith/Approval method into a somewhat
practical form, and have taken some cues from Jameson Quinn's Vote-321.
Vote-321 is a pretty method, with a lot of strategy resistance, and if it
were among the options for a new voting system (with no Condorcet method
available), I would choose it immediately.
However, I have a few issues with it: vulnerability to cloning; lack of
expression; and what I consider a too-small provisional subset. The latter
is more of a psychological / media problem, and what I mean by "too-small"
is that if only the top three first-place candidates make it past the first
pass, public attention could be excessively focused on the front-runners at
the cost of addressing issues raised by less popular candidates. But the
too-small subset is also what enables Vote-321's vulnerability to cloning.
By including at least one or two more candidates in the first pass of
candidate reduction, cloning risk is reduced.
Following is what I call the *High 5 *method for three or more candidates:
Ballot Expression:
I prefer a 6 slot ranked ballot, equal-ranking and gaps allowed, with the
rank/tiers named as follows:
Tier Name
Approval Status
Description
A
Approved
Most Preferred / Best / Favorite
B
Approved
Good
C
Approved
OK / Acceptable
D
Disapproved
Not Preferred, but would be in their coalition (i.e. Compromise)
E
Disapproved
Mostly Unacceptable but Lesser Evil
Reject
Dispapproved
Completely unacceptable
Summarized, there are 3 approved ranks (Most Preferred, Good, OK), 2
disapproved ranks (compromise, lesser of two evils), and Reject. Blank
ballots are counted as rejection.
Tabulation:
- Total most-preferred votes per candidate (i.e. "A" votes).
- Approval / Disapproval totals per candidate
- Pairwise preference array
- Optional:
- Tied-Approval pairwise
- Tied-Disapproval (above reject) pairwise
- Approved vs Disapproved/Reject pairwise
First-pass subset:
- *Top 5 candidates by most-preferred votes*
Procedure:
- Of the top 5 most-preferred candidates are found, drop the
least-approved candidate.
- Among the remaining candidates, use the pairwise preference array to
find the Smith Set
- If more than one candidate is in the Smith Set, pick the most
approved member of the set as the winner.
If you start with 3 candidates, this method reduces to top-two approval.
Starting with 4 candidates, this method reduces to sorting the candidates
by Approval and doing a top-three tournament: the winner is the pairwise
winner of A1 versus (the pairwise winner of A2 versus A3).
For 5 or more candidates, the method has a very high probability of
finding the CW (if one exists) among the top five favorites, while falling
back to approval in the event of a cycle among the four most-approved of
those top five.
In a "jungle-primary" type of situation (though no primary is necessary),
media attention would be given to at least the top 5 candidates instead of
just the top two, ensuring attention to a range of viewpoints. And in the
event of a large number of candidates, it would not be necessary to
tabulate pairwise preferences for more than 7 or 8 top-first-ranked
candidates as determined by pre-election polling, reducing tabulation
complexity while retaining summability.
Using most-preferred votes for the first pass has a slight anti-cloning
effect, as a preference ballot would lead to a tendency toward vote
splitting if one faction has too many candidates. The anti-cloning pressure
is greater than in Vote-321 because of the larger range of expression.
Finally, the Smith//Approval method, when combined with the explicit
approval cutoff ballot, allows enough strategy to reduce burial incentive.
I'm calling this "High 5" voting because it's descriptive of both the
ranking method and the top-five most preferred first-level truncation, and
it's easier to remember than Smith//Approval.
Thoughts?
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info