Re: [EM] So I got an email...
But it's because of the Condorcet failure that the IIA failed. The Condorcet winner (if one exists) must be kept out of the final round. The candidate that loses in the final round and displaces the CW from the final round is the spoiler. Then voters for the spoiler who ranked the IRV winner lowest are punished for not betraying their favorite.But I think Precinct Summability is what's getting the most scrutiny here. We look at Maine who had to haul 600,000 ballots from every corner of the state and didn't have an outcome for 4 days.Powered by Cricket Wireless------ Original message------From: Richard, the VoteFair guyDate: Sun, Apr 10, 2022 1:34 PMTo: election-methods@lists.electorama.com;Cc: Subject:Re: [EM] So I got an email...This discussion about IRV and FairVote (not VoteFair) is motivating me
to point out my different perspective of the Burlington VT mayoral
election result.
IMO the biggest failure in the Burlington was an IIA -- independence of
irrelevant alternatives -- failure. Not the Condorcet failure.
If the Republican candidate had not been in the race, the Democrat would
have won instead of the Progressive. That didn't happen because the
Republicans voted sincerely. If they had voted tactically by ranking
the Republican after the Democrat and before the Progressive, their
ballots would not have gotten "stuck" supporting the Republican during
the top-three counting round where the Democrat was eliminated.
Of course the major weakness of IRV is that the counting does not look
deeply into all the marks on all the ballots.
This weakness can be reduced by removing any clearly unpopular
candidates, such as the Republican in the Burlington election. I
suggest eliminating the "pairwise losing candidate" -- which is the
"Condorcet loser" among the remaining candidates.
When the FairVote folks defend the Burlington result they spin it to be
a Condorcet failure and point out that a candidate who is second-ranked
on all the ballots doesn't really deserve to win. That's somewhat
reasonable.
But their only defense against the IIA failure criticism might be that
it rarely happens. OK, but it does happen. And it happens because the
method does not look deeply enough into all the marks on all the
ballots. And that's an obvious flaw in IRV.
Many fans of STAR voting initially supported IRV until this flaw (and
another one I'll introduce below) became obvious. Alas, instead of
choosing to support a better way to count ranked ballots, the STAR fans
created their own kind of ballot that isn't compatible with anything
else. Now that STAR voting momentum is slowing down, it's time to
consider resolving the conflicts between IRV, STAR, and better
ranked-choice ballot methods.
That's why I recently suggested a way to improve the Ranked Robin method
that some STAR fans created.
Yet ultimately what's needed is for Rob Richie -- the leader of the
FairVote organization -- to admit that IRV and STV are not acceptable as
they are currently counted, yet can be improved in simple ways to make
them widely acceptable.
The other flaw in IRV is that the FairVote counting method does not
allow a voter to mark two or more candidates at the same preference
level. This is easy to fix (as I've discussed here before).
These simple improvements to IRV and STV would yield a compromise that I
believe would be acceptable to STAR fans, math-savvy Condorcet fans, the
FairVote organization, and me, the VoteFair guy.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/9/2022 6:49 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
... from Rob Richie. I am trying to be nice (because I'm in the last throes of my struggle to keep Vermont from repeating a mistake) and I saw a small numerical error in the FV page at https://www.fairvote.org/research_rcvwinners regarding non-monotonicity (and Burlington 2009). So I wrote him (the first time since 2017) and he wrote back. That's a lot better than I can say for Aaron Hamlin.
Anyway, in our friendly back-and-forth, Rob brought up a contrived example of an election where they purport that Hare works better than Condorcet. In this rhetorical example there is a dead-tie symmetry. And Rob suggested that it gets resolved with "RCV - Jump ball" or "jump ballot". What, exactly, is "jump ballot"? Is it drawing a ballot out of the entire pile at random? Like sortition?
FYI This is the context:
A and B, polarizing candidates
C is Condorcet candidate in third
1st choices
A - 40%
B - 40%
C - 20%
Preferences (honest)
ACB - 40%
BCA - 40%
CAB - 10%
CBA - 10%
RCV - Jump ball
Condorcet - C wins 60%-40% over both A and B
BUT... polls show this to be the case, and backers of A and B both know the only way they can win is to keep C out of it. So their backers bury C
Preferences (strategic, both major campaigns)
ABC - 40%
BAC - 40%
CAB - 10%
CBA - 10%
C is no longer the condorcet winner, as both A and B seem to defeat C by 8-020. The winner will be decided by a jump ballot tally between A and B. Strategy worked
Let's suppose only one side decides to do this. It probably backfires, but still gives them a chance depending on the tiebreaker., So you might get:
Preferences (strategic, only 1 major campaign - backers of B)
ACB - 40%
BAC - 40%
CAB - 10%
CBA - 10%
Condorcet: C over B 60-40 but A over C 80-20 and jump ball with A and B. So B voters may end up helping A win if they lose the jump ballot, they create a cycle and then win an IRV tiebreaker if they win the tiebreaker between A and B.
I don't mind hearing opinions from anyone on the list about this scenario, but what I most want is a good understanding of exactly what Rob means by "jump ballot". (And I know I could ask him, but I wanna ask you dawgs instead.)
I told Rob about my paper about Burlington 2009. https://tinyurl.com/2tety9tj I dunno if that was a mistake or not.
About my struggle in Vermont: I have gotten the attention of several legislators in Vermont. Several RCV bills have stalled and languished in committee and will die when this legislative session ends at year's end. But the Burlington RCV charter change has been revived and has passed the Vermont House (but they took out the specific language of exactly how the RCV election method will work, bumping that back to Burlington city council). It's going before the Vermont Senate Government Operations Committee in the near future and I expect to be visiting the state capitol again to lobby.
I thank y'all.
robert
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
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Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
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On 10.04.2022 20:52, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
But it's because of the Condorcet failure that the IIA failed. The
Condorcet winner (if one exists) must be kept out of the final round.
The candidate that loses in the final round and displaces the CW from
the final round is the spoiler. Then voters for the spoiler who ranked
the IRV winner lowest are punished for not betraying their favorite.
I agree. In the fully general sense of IIA (that you can remove any
subset of the losing candidates and the winner will still win),
Condorcet methods must fail IIA when there's no CW, as the typical
Arrow's example shows. So must non-Condorcet methods. But non-Condorcet
methods also fail some of the time when there is a CW[1]. In that
respect, Condorcet methods are superior.
But I think Precinct Summability is what's getting the most scrutiny
here. We look at Maine who had to haul 600,000 ballots from every
corner of the state and didn't have an outcome for 4 days.
Is there a chance, then, that Burlington will go directly to a summable
Condorcet method instead of a patch to IRV?
-km
[1] ... because eliminating everybody but the method winner and the CW
leads the CW to win by majority rule.
On 04/10/2022 3:52 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de wrote:
...
Is there a chance, then, that Burlington will go directly to a summable
Condorcet method instead of a patch to IRV?
maybe a fool's hope. and it's the state government that will save our asses, not the city government. Too many children on the city council. But city charter code are at the level of state law. So the legislature and guv have to approve charter changes.
but my state rep, Bob Hooper, was in contact with Eric Maskin's office to get him to testify. And I mentioned this to Prof. Tideman. If we can get open minds and open ears in the Vermont state senate and in the Senate Government Operations Committee, we maybe have a fool's hope.
Maskin is Harvard and has a Nobel. In 2004 (before the Nobel), he and Partha Dasgupta published this Scientific American article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m6qn6Y7PAQldKNeIH2Tal6AizF7XY2U4/view . Maskin calls Condorcet "true majority rule". But he's also an endorser to FairVote: https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_endorsements
That FairVote train runnin on a lotta momentum. VPIRG spent $71000 to do a commercial.
https://www.vpirg.org/news/new-ad-campaign-gives-ranked-choice-voting-a-big-boost/
All these people hate my guts. Becca and Kesha (they are running for Congress) and Chris P are, I'm sure, very disappointed in me.
Reformer wannabees hate hearing that their reform, itself, needs reform.
I think Precinct Summability might save the day, Kristofer. I am getting good attention from the Secretary of State's office.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
I want to say something and ask something here.
Say: It's not my intention that only Eric Maskin and Nicolaus Tideman are worthy academics to talk to the Vermont legislature committees about Ranked-Choice Voting and the advantages to be gained by moving from Hare to Condorcet. I recognize there are some heavy hitters here, too. Maskin has a Nobel and there is a nice Scientific American article from 2004 with his name on it, and he dubs Condorcet RCV as "true majority rule". I am sorta collaborating with Nic Tideman about all of this. Someday I'm gonna encode Ranked Pairs into portable C code for him. But I think a simpler language for legislative use is better, which is why I had been proposing either Bottom-Two Runoff or just straight-ahead Condorcet (with plurality as the contingency if no CW). Much easier to write language. Sorry Markus, but I can't even approach how to do Schulze with a procedure in normal text.
Ask: If you want to get on a list of scholars/researchers to advise the State of Vermont to pivot to Condorcet before re-adopting RCV for the first time since the 2010 repeal in Burlington, please let me know. I will connect you to real people. But I wanna discuss with you first.
It's a fool's hope, but there is hope that history can again be made in Vermont, because many legislators remember the Burlington repeal, and the Sec of State's office is keen on Precinct Summability.
But the IRV folks are getting really pushy. They smell victory at the finish line, too. I'm Don Quixote, and the FairVote train hasn't rolled over me yet.
Always happy for help.
robert
On 04/10/2022 4:46 PM robert bristow-johnson rbj@audioimagination.com wrote:
On 04/10/2022 3:52 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de wrote:
...
Is there a chance, then, that Burlington will go directly to a summable
Condorcet method instead of a patch to IRV?
maybe a fool's hope. and it's the state government that will save our asses, not the city government. Too many children on the city council. But city charter code are at the level of state law. So the legislature and guv have to approve charter changes.
but my state rep, Bob Hooper, was in contact with Eric Maskin's office to get him to testify. And I mentioned this to Prof. Tideman. If we can get open minds and open ears in the Vermont state senate and in the Senate Government Operations Committee, we maybe have a fool's hope.
Maskin is Harvard and has a Nobel. In 2004 (before the Nobel), he and Partha Dasgupta published this Scientific American article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m6qn6Y7PAQldKNeIH2Tal6AizF7XY2U4/view . Maskin calls Condorcet "true majority rule". But he's also an endorser to FairVote: https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_endorsements
That FairVote train runnin on a lotta momentum. VPIRG spent $71000 to do a commercial.
https://www.vpirg.org/news/new-ad-campaign-gives-ranked-choice-voting-a-big-boost/
All these people hate my guts. Becca and Kesha (they are running for Congress) and Chris P are, I'm sure, very disappointed in me.
Reformer wannabees hate hearing that their reform, itself, needs reform.
I think Precinct Summability might save the day, Kristofer. I am getting good attention from the Secretary of State's office.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
As I remember, Maskin's Sci. Am. article advocated Copeland completed with
Borda.
Simpler and no worse would be ...
Elect the CW if there is one, else instant pairwise runoff between top two
first place candidates. Precinct summable ... monotonic ... more clone
free than Copeland or Borda.
El dom., 10 de abr. de 2022 6:52 p. m., robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> escribió:
I want to say something and ask something here.
Say: It's not my intention that only Eric Maskin and Nicolaus Tideman are
worthy academics to talk to the Vermont legislature committees about
Ranked-Choice Voting and the advantages to be gained by moving from Hare to
Condorcet. I recognize there are some heavy hitters here, too. Maskin has
a Nobel and there is a nice Scientific American article from 2004 with his
name on it, and he dubs Condorcet RCV as "true majority rule". I am sorta
collaborating with Nic Tideman about all of this. Someday I'm gonna encode
Ranked Pairs into portable C code for him. But I think a simpler language
for legislative use is better, which is why I had been proposing either
Bottom-Two Runoff or just straight-ahead Condorcet (with plurality as the
contingency if no CW). Much easier to write language. Sorry Markus, but I
can't even approach how to do Schulze with a procedure in normal text.
Ask: If you want to get on a list of scholars/researchers to advise the
State of Vermont to pivot to Condorcet before re-adopting RCV for the first
time since the 2010 repeal in Burlington, please let me know. I will
connect you to real people. But I wanna discuss with you first.
It's a fool's hope, but there is hope that history can again be made in
Vermont, because many legislators remember the Burlington repeal, and the
Sec of State's office is keen on Precinct Summability.
But the IRV folks are getting really pushy. They smell victory at the
finish line, too. I'm Don Quixote, and the FairVote train hasn't rolled
over me yet.
Always happy for help.
robert
On 04/10/2022 4:46 PM robert bristow-johnson rbj@audioimagination.com
wrote:
On 04/10/2022 3:52 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm km_elmet@t-online.de
wrote:
...
Is there a chance, then, that Burlington will go directly to a summable
Condorcet method instead of a patch to IRV?
maybe a fool's hope. and it's the state government that will save our
asses, not the city government. Too many children on the city council.
But city charter code are at the level of state law. So the legislature
and guv have to approve charter changes.
but my state rep, Bob Hooper, was in contact with Eric Maskin's office
to get him to testify. And I mentioned this to Prof. Tideman. If we can
get open minds and open ears in the Vermont state senate and in the Senate
Government Operations Committee, we maybe have a fool's hope.
Maskin is Harvard and has a Nobel. In 2004 (before the Nobel), he and
Partha Dasgupta published this Scientific American article:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m6qn6Y7PAQldKNeIH2Tal6AizF7XY2U4/view
. Maskin calls Condorcet "true majority rule". But he's also an
endorser to FairVote:
https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_endorsements
That FairVote train runnin on a lotta momentum. VPIRG spent $71000 to
do a commercial.
All these people hate my guts. Becca and Kesha (they are running for
Congress) and Chris P are, I'm sure, very disappointed in me.
Reformer wannabees hate hearing that their reform, itself, needs reform.
I think Precinct Summability might save the day, Kristofer. I am
getting good attention from the Secretary of State's office.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
On 11.04.2022 06:34, Forest Simmons wrote:
As I remember, Maskin's Sci. Am. article advocated Copeland completed
with Borda.
Simpler and no worse would be ...
Elect the CW if there is one, else instant pairwise runoff between top
two first place candidates. Precinct summable ... monotonic ... more
clone free than Copeland or Borda.
That's not monotone, is it? Take the IRV example from
https://www.rangevoting.org/Monotone.html:
6: C>A>B
2: B>A>C
3: B>C>A
4: A>B>C
2: A>C>B
The Plurality order is C=A>B. C beats A pairwise and wins.
Let two ACB voters raise C:
8: C>A>B
2: B>A>C
3: B>C>A
4: A>B>C
Now the Plurality order is C>B>A. B beats C pairwise and wins.
My modification would be this, which happens to pass single-candidate DMTBR:
Elect the CW if there is one, otherwise if at least two candidates have
more than 1/3 first preferences, elect the pairwise winner of the two,
otherwise elect the Plurality winner.
That might be a little complicated, though, and I'm not sure it's
different enough to ordinary Plurality to make a difference (I could
easily see "three party rule" forming due to the 1/3 qualifier).
Kevin Venzke's rule that also passes single-candidate DMTBR might be
more well-behaved yet more complex still:
Elect the CW if there is one, otherwise each candidate's score is the
sum of that candidate's first preferences plus the first preferences of
every candidate he beats. Elect the candidate with the highest score.
-km
On 11.04.2022 10:48, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Kevin Venzke's rule that also passes single-candidate DMTBR might be
more well-behaved yet more complex still:
Elect the CW if there is one, otherwise each candidate's score is the
sum of that candidate's first preferences plus the first preferences of
every candidate he beats. Elect the candidate with the highest score.
I mustn't have been properly awake. Kevin suggested the method where
each candidate's score is that candidate's first preferences minus the
first preferences of the candidate who beats that candidate and has the
most first preferences.
The sum variant suggestion was mine, and it is:
Elect the CW if there is one, otherwise each candidate's score is that
candidate's first preferences minus the sum of first preferences of
every candidate who beats him. Elect the candidate with the highest score.
-km
El lun., 11 de abr. de 2022 6:09 a. m., Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_elmet@t-online.de> escribió:
On 11.04.2022 10:48, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
Kevin Venzke's rule that also passes single-candidate DMTBR might be
more well-behaved yet more complex still:
Elect the CW if there is one, otherwise each candidate's score is the
sum of that candidate's first preferences plus the first preferences of
every candidate he beats. Elect the candidate with the highest score.
I mustn't have been properly awake. Kevin suggested the method where
each candidate's score is that candidate's first preferences minus the
first preferences of the candidate who beats that candidate and has the
most first preferences.
The sum variant suggestion was mine, and it is:
Elect the CW if there is one, otherwise each candidate's score is that
candidate's first preferences minus the sum of first preferences of
every candidate who beats him. Elect the candidate with the highest score.
I like it!
Possible rewording ...
Lacking a CW, elect the alternative whose top preference count most nearly
surpasses the top preference total of the alternatives that beat it
pairwise.
-km
The Hare system is at-large STV/PR, as Thomas Hare clearly advocated.
Basically the right way of doing elections. It's wrong to attach his
name to single members.
The drawback of Condorcet pairing is that it loses more than binary
comparisons. It loses the ordinal scale information of preference
voting. Not using voting methods that lose, rather than use, information
is the consideration...
On 11/04/2022 05:34, Forest Simmons wrote:
As I remember, Maskin's Sci. Am. article advocated Copeland completed
with Borda.
Simpler and no worse would be ...
Elect the CW if there is one, else instant pairwise runoff between top
two first place candidates. Precinct summable ... monotonic ... more
clone free than Copeland or Borda.
El dom., 10 de abr. de 2022 6:52 p. m., robert bristow-johnson
rbj@audioimagination.com escribió:
I want to say something and ask something here.
Say: It's not my intention that only Eric Maskin and Nicolaus
Tideman are worthy academics to talk to the Vermont legislature
committees about Ranked-Choice Voting and the advantages to be
gained by moving from Hare to Condorcet. I recognize there are
some heavy hitters here, too. Maskin has a Nobel and there is a
nice Scientific American article from 2004 with his name on it,
and he dubs Condorcet RCV as "true majority rule". I am sorta
collaborating with Nic Tideman about all of this. Someday I'm
gonna encode Ranked Pairs into portable C code for him. But I
think a simpler language for legislative use is better, which is
why I had been proposing either Bottom-Two Runoff or just
straight-ahead Condorcet (with plurality as the contingency if no
CW). Much easier to write language. Sorry Markus, but I can't
even approach how to do Schulze with a procedure in normal text.
Ask: If you want to get on a list of scholars/researchers to
advise the State of Vermont to pivot to Condorcet before
re-adopting RCV for the first time since the 2010 repeal in
Burlington, please let me know. I will connect you to real
people. But I wanna discuss with you first.
It's a fool's hope, but there is hope that history can again be
made in Vermont, because many legislators remember the Burlington
repeal, and the Sec of State's office is keen on Precinct Summability.
But the IRV folks are getting really pushy. They smell victory at
the finish line, too. I'm Don Quixote, and the FairVote train
hasn't rolled over me yet.
Always happy for help.
robert
On 04/10/2022 4:46 PM robert bristow-johnson
<rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:
On 04/10/2022 3:52 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km_elmet@t-online.de> wrote:
...
Is there a chance, then, that Burlington will go directly to a
summable
Condorcet method instead of a patch to IRV?
maybe a fool's hope. and it's the state government that will
save our asses, not the city government. Too many children on
the city council. But city charter code are at the level of
state law. So the legislature and guv have to approve charter
changes.
but my state rep, Bob Hooper, was in contact with Eric Maskin's
office to get him to testify. And I mentioned this to Prof.
Tideman. If we can get open minds and open ears in the Vermont
state senate and in the Senate Government Operations Committee, we
maybe have a fool's hope.
Maskin is Harvard and has a Nobel. In 2004 (before the Nobel),
he and Partha Dasgupta published this Scientific American article:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m6qn6Y7PAQldKNeIH2Tal6AizF7XY2U4/view
. Maskin calls Condorcet "true majority rule". But he's also
an endorser to FairVote:
https://www.fairvote.org/ranked_choice_voting_endorsements
That FairVote train runnin on a lotta momentum. VPIRG spent
$71000 to do a commercial.
https://www.vpirg.org/news/new-ad-campaign-gives-ranked-choice-voting-a-big-boost/
All these people hate my guts. Becca and Kesha (they are
running for Congress) and Chris P are, I'm sure, very disappointed
in me.
Reformer wannabees hate hearing that their reform, itself, needs
reform.
I think Precinct Summability might save the day, Kristofer. I
am getting good attention from the Secretary of State's office.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em
for list info
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
list info
Election-Methods mailing list - seehttps://electorama.com/em for list info
On 04/11/2022 3:10 PM Richard Lung voting@ukscientists.com wrote:
The Hare system is at-large STV/PR, as Thomas Hare clearly advocated. Basically the right way of doing elections.
Do you mean multi-winner elections? (Even so, it might be a disputed notion.)
It's wrong to attach his name to single members.
In my opinion, William Ware's contribution to the thing is virtually a "nothing burger". It is Thomas Hare who is credited with the idea of the Single Transferrable Vote and that is the key innovation that was used to convince policy makers that were was no multiplication of votes and made the method feasible.
The drawback of Condorcet pairing is that it loses more than binary comparisons. It loses the ordinal scale information of preference voting.
That makes pretty much no sense to me. The ballots are purely ordinal and that ballot information is not lost in Condorcet. But for each individual pairing, there are only two rankings that mean anything.
Not using voting methods that lose, rather than use, information is the consideration...
What information is lost? Because I can certainly point to how information is obscured with Hare RCV that results in the Center Squeeze (which is the root flaw that broke the Burlington 2009 election).
On 11/04/2022 05:34, Forest Simmons wrote:
As I remember, Maskin's Sci. Am. article advocated Copeland completed with Borda.
I don't see a completion method at all mentioned in the article. The author's define "an electoral system called true majority rule (or simple majority rule), in which voters submit rankings of all the candidates and the winner is the one who beats each opponent in head-to-head competition based on these rankings."
It's just straight-ahead Condorcet.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.