Poll, preliminary ballots
Richard,
I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than a
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER occur.
Given that voting methods are mostly simple and cut-and-dried and so
plenty of 100% guarantees that criterion failures NEVER occur are
available, I find the approach "Near enough is good enough! I am an
expert. I've done a computer simulation" to be suspicious and flaky.
That attitude can lead to people switching off their brains and
swallowing BS propaganda from say STAR advocates.
It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED
failure types. Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
giving them names? Several of the voting methods criteria I uphold and
promote are ones I coined myself.
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. That could become a huge deal in the
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks in the
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not on the
ballot.
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
strategy.
I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as demonstrated in
Burlington and Alaska.
IRV (properly implemented, with unrestricted strict ranking from the
top) doesn't have any "flaws". It simply fails some criteria that some
people like so that it can meet other criteria that some people like. As
Woodall put it, it has a "maximal set of properties".
It is not garbage like STAR.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
FPP. With FPP the best strategy is to vote for your favourite among the
candidates you think have a realistic chance of winning. With Approval
you just do the same thing and then also approve every candidate you
like as much or better. An alternative is the simple "surprise"
strategy: approve any given candidate X if you would be pleasantly
surprised if X won or unpleasantly surprised if X lost.
It's a huge "bang-for-buck" improvement on FPP. But I'm not a big fan
either.
- STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type. (Always six columns, even
when there are three or four candidates. And always with the star icon,
no thanks!)
I find this objection to be superficial and just about style. A lot of
ok methods can be happily used with 6-slot ratings ballots, such as say
ABCDEF grading ballots. STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
I welcome any comments you may have have about my poll favourite,
Approval Sorted Margins. Or anything else related to my most recent ballot.
Chris
Richard, the VoteFair guyelectionmethods at votefair.org
mailto:election-methods%40lists.electorama.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BEM%5D%20Poll%2C%20preliminary%20ballots&In-Reply-To=%3C0d892c56-6b62-4fb3-8b67-312a3963e670%40votefair.org%3E
/Thu Apr 18 11:43:19 PDT 2024/
Chris B., thanks for your questions! Here are my answers:
On 4/17/2024 11:58 PM, Chris Benham wrote:
I have trouble understanding the motivation behind "RCIPE". ...
RCIPE -- Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination -- is a compromise
method.
It inherits lots of the cloneproofness of IRV because that's the backup
elimination process when an elimination round does not have a pairwise
losing candidate.
The elimination of pairwise losing candidates causes RCIPE to seldom
fail the Condorcet criterion and other "majority" criteria. It took
some head scratching to discover a case in which RCIPE fails the
Condorcet criterion. (As I recall Kristofer gets credit for finding
such a case.)
Chris B., all of your concerns seem to be about the "pass" or "fail"
categorization of methods.
I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than a
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER occur.
Visually this perspective is conveyed by measuring failure rates:
http://www.votefair.org/clone_iia_success_rates.png
About this graph: Under the simulation conditions of these measurements
the RCIPE method has zero clone failures. In real elections there can
be a few clone failures compared to IRV. Those few failures don't
concern me.
It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED
failure types. Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored!
For example, clone failures and Local IIA failures are just two
categories within the broad category of IIA failures.
This is why I presume the Schulze method fails the various unnamed IIA
criteria in order to have zero clone failures.
Just because those increased kinds of failures don't have names doesn't
mean they should be ignored!
I find this all very odd, and I'm not sure what you are "buying" in
comparison with plain Hare (aka IRV).
The payoff is that RCIPE would not have failed in Burlington and Alaska!
That's huge.
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. That could become a huge deal in the
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks in the
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not on the
ballot. If the race is close, that counting error could cause the wrong
candidate to win. (This counting error is less likely to affect STV
election results for Portland city council members because winning the
second seat instead of the first seat is not a big deal.)
Clarification: I regard IRV as a steppingstone to RCIPE, so I have
supported adopting IRV here in Oregon. I dislike the misrepresentations
that come from the FairVote organization, but I'm not using that
organization's flaws as reasons to fully reject IRV. (We have to crawl
and walk before we can run.)
Why do you think that RP(wv) and Schulze are significantly different
from each other?
Schulze is much more difficult to understand. That's important in this
poll which is supposed to be about what can be adopted for use in real,
governmental elections.
And why do you think that MinMax(wv) is better than either? Doesn't
it fail Smith and Clone Independence?
See above about my lack of concern about the difference between "never"
and "almost never."
Why do you think Woodall is better than Benham?
What is the (or your) definition of "Schwartz-Woodall"?
And what do you think is the positive point of it compared with plain
Woodall?
I don't recall what I was thinking during every detail of my ranking
process.
Broadly my thinking is:
-
I'm a big fan of pairwise vote counting.
-
I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as demonstrated in
Burlington and Alaska. -
I dislike Borda being any part of a method because it requires honest
voting to yield fair results. (Honestly, honesty doesn't happen in
elections.) -
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to avoid it.
I know that Approval fans disagree. Yet I assure them that when I
have to make a decision between approval and disapproval I have to do
the equivalent of mentally flipping a coin. -
I strongly dislike score/rating ballots for single-winner methods
because they are vulnerable to tactical voting. Specifically, it's
impossible to know whether a ballot is from a person with strong
religious beliefs or a person who is acting like a "drama queen" (or
whatever the modern name is for this concept). This tactical
vulnerability is important in single-winner elections. -
I do agree that score/rating ballots could be useful in multi-winner
elections where strength of preference is worthy of being considered
when there are interactions between who wins each seat. But this poll
isn't about multi-winner elections. And governmental elections need to
adopt single-winner methods first. Only later will voters and
legislators be ready to begin learning subtle concepts such as
interactions between seat winners. -
STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type. (Always six columns, even
when there are three or four candidates. And always with the star icon,
no thanks!)
Again, thank you Chris for your questions.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
... It is not garbage like STAR.
...
... STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
Horrible, yes. Garbage, no, because it's a clever way to improve
single-winner score voting. It's useful among friends when voting is
not anonymous. Or when "dishonest" exaggeration cannot be hidden.
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
giving them names? ...
Time and money. Unlike two STAR promoters, the folks at FairVote, and
academic professors, I'm not getting paid to promote or advance
election-method reform.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
FPP. ...
Our goal is to rise way above plurality. Accepting limitations of
plurality is unnecessary.
Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. ...
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
strategy.
I and most voters want to be able to rank an evil candidate -- Gollum,
Voldemoron, etc. -- below all other candidates. Truncation means the
evil candidate is as acceptable as other "bad" candidates.
I've written code that correctly counts so-called "overvotes." It's not
a "complex procedure":
https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
I'm bothered by the failures in Burlington and Alaska. But those were
not just Condorcet failures. They also were IIA failures,
center-squeeze failures, etc.
I want fewer failures in real elections. I don't care about convoluted
scenarios that would never occur in a real election.
Again, thank you for this useful discussion. I appreciate that you
really want to understand why I rank some methods better than others.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
Richard,
I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than a
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER occur.
Given that voting methods are mostly simple and cut-and-dried and so
plenty of 100% guarantees that criterion failures NEVER occur are
available, I find the approach "Near enough is good enough! I am an
expert. I've done a computer simulation" to be suspicious and flaky.
That attitude can lead to people switching off their brains and
swallowing BS propaganda from say STAR advocates.
It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED
failure types. Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
giving them names? Several of the voting methods criteria I uphold and
promote are ones I coined myself.
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. That could become a huge deal in the
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks in the
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not on the
ballot.
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
strategy.
I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as demonstrated in
Burlington and Alaska.
IRV (properly implemented, with unrestricted strict ranking from the
top) doesn't have any "flaws". It simply fails some criteria that some
people like so that it can meet other criteria that some people like. As
Woodall put it, it has a "maximal set of properties".
It is not garbage like STAR.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
FPP. With FPP the best strategy is to vote for your favourite among the
candidates you think have a realistic chance of winning. With Approval
you just do the same thing and then also approve every candidate you
like as much or better. An alternative is the simple "surprise"
strategy: approve any given candidate X if you would be pleasantly
surprised if X won or unpleasantly surprised if X lost.
It's a huge "bang-for-buck" improvement on FPP. But I'm not a big fan
either.
- STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type. (Always six columns, even
when there are three or four candidates. And always with the star icon,
no thanks!)
I find this objection to be superficial and just about style. A lot of
ok methods can be happily used with 6-slot ratings ballots, such as say
ABCDEF grading ballots. STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
I welcome any comments you may have have about my poll favourite,
Approval Sorted Margins. Or anything else related to my most recent ballot.
Chris
> Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
voting. ;)
On Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods@votefair.org> wrote:
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
... It is not garbage like STAR.
...
... STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
Horrible, yes. Garbage, no, because it's a clever way to improve
single-winner score voting. It's useful among friends when voting is
not anonymous. Or when "dishonest" exaggeration cannot be hidden.
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
giving them names? ...
Time and money. Unlike two STAR promoters, the folks at FairVote, and
academic professors, I'm not getting paid to promote or advance
election-method reform.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to avoid
it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
FPP. ...
Our goal is to rise way above plurality. Accepting limitations of
plurality is unnecessary.
Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. ...
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
strategy.
I and most voters want to be able to rank an evil candidate -- Gollum,
Voldemoron, etc. -- below all other candidates. Truncation means the
evil candidate is as acceptable as other "bad" candidates.
I've written code that correctly counts so-called "overvotes." It's not
a "complex procedure":
https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
I'm bothered by the failures in Burlington and Alaska. But those were
not just Condorcet failures. They also were IIA failures,
center-squeeze failures, etc.
I want fewer failures in real elections. I don't care about convoluted
scenarios that would never occur in a real election.
Again, thank you for this useful discussion. I appreciate that you
really want to understand why I rank some methods better than others.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
Richard,
I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than a
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER occur.
Given that voting methods are mostly simple and cut-and-dried and so
plenty of 100% guarantees that criterion failures NEVER occur are
available, I find the approach "Near enough is good enough! I am an
expert. I've done a computer simulation" to be suspicious and flaky.
That attitude can lead to people switching off their brains and
swallowing BS propaganda from say STAR advocates.
It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED
failure types. Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
giving them names? Several of the voting methods criteria I uphold and
promote are ones I coined myself.
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. That could become a huge deal in the
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks in the
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not on the
ballot.
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
strategy.
I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as demonstrated in
Burlington and Alaska.
IRV (properly implemented, with unrestricted strict ranking from the
top) doesn't have any "flaws". It simply fails some criteria that some
people like so that it can meet other criteria that some people like. As
Woodall put it, it has a "maximal set of properties".
It is not garbage like STAR.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
FPP. With FPP the best strategy is to vote for your favourite among the
candidates you think have a realistic chance of winning. With Approval
you just do the same thing and then also approve every candidate you
like as much or better. An alternative is the simple "surprise"
strategy: approve any given candidate X if you would be pleasantly
surprised if X won or unpleasantly surprised if X lost.
It's a huge "bang-for-buck" improvement on FPP. But I'm not a big fan
either.
- STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type. (Always six columns, even
when there are three or four candidates. And always with the star icon,
no thanks!)
I find this objection to be superficial and just about style. A lot of
ok methods can be happily used with 6-slot ratings ballots, such as say
ABCDEF grading ballots. STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
I welcome any comments you may have have about my poll favourite,
Approval Sorted Margins. Or anything else related to my most recent
ballot.
Chris
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info
On 4/20/2024 1:12 PM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
voting. ;)
OK, I should have included the word "extra" as follows:
Why impose any EXTRA strategic burden on the voter?
Richard Fobes
On 4/20/2024 1:12 PM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
/> Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?/
True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
voting. ;)
On Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM Richard, the VoteFair guy
<electionmethods@votefair.org mailto:electionmethods@votefair.org> wrote:
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
> ... It is not garbage like STAR.
> ...
> ... STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
> vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
Horrible, yes. Garbage, no, because it's a clever way to improve
single-winner score voting. It's useful among friends when voting is
not anonymous. Or when "dishonest" exaggeration cannot be hidden.
> If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping
you from
> giving them names? ...
Time and money. Unlike two STAR promoters, the folks at FairVote, and
academic professors, I'm not getting paid to promote or advance
election-method reform.
>> Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to
avoid it.
> The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
> FPP. ...
Our goal is to rise way above plurality. Accepting limitations of
plurality is unnecessary.
Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
>> Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls
"overvotes."
>> RCIPE counts them correctly. ...
> I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
> rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that
point.
> Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
> procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to
Push-over
> strategy.
I and most voters want to be able to rank an evil candidate -- Gollum,
Voldemoron, etc. -- below all other candidates. Truncation means the
evil candidate is as acceptable as other "bad" candidates.
I've written code that correctly counts so-called "overvotes." It's
not
a "complex procedure":
https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp <https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp>
>> Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
>> advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
> I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet
failures, you
> don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
> lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can
> somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
> "Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV
so that
> we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
I'm bothered by the failures in Burlington and Alaska. But those were
not just Condorcet failures. They also were IIA failures,
center-squeeze failures, etc.
I want fewer failures in real elections. I don't care about convoluted
scenarios that would never occur in a real election.
Again, thank you for this useful discussion. I appreciate that you
really want to understand why I rank some methods better than others.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
Richard,
I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than a
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER occur.
Given that voting methods are mostly simple and cut-and-dried and so
plenty of 100% guarantees that criterion failures NEVER occur are
available, I find the approach "Near enough is good enough! I am an
expert. I've done a computer simulation" to be suspicious and flaky.
That attitude can lead to people switching off their brains and
swallowing BS propaganda from say STAR advocates.
It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED
failure types. Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping
you from
giving them names? Several of the voting methods criteria I
uphold and
promote are ones I coined myself.
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet
failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so
that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls
"overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. That could become a huge deal in the
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks
in the
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not
on the
ballot.
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that
point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to
Push-over
strategy.
I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as
demonstrated in
Burlington and Alaska.
IRV (properly implemented, with unrestricted strict ranking from the
top) doesn't have any "flaws". It simply fails some criteria that
some
people like so that it can meet other criteria that some people
like. As
Woodall put it, it has a "maximal set of properties".
It is not garbage like STAR.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to
avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
FPP. With FPP the best strategy is to vote for your favourite
among the
candidates you think have a realistic chance of winning. With
Approval
you just do the same thing and then also approve every candidate you
like as much or better. An alternative is the simple "surprise"
strategy: approve any given candidate X if you would be pleasantly
surprised if X won or unpleasantly surprised if X lost.
It's a huge "bang-for-buck" improvement on FPP. But I'm not a
big fan
either.
- STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type. (Always six columns,
even
when there are three or four candidates. And always with the
star icon,
no thanks!)
I find this objection to be superficial and just about style. A
lot of
ok methods can be happily used with 6-slot ratings ballots, such
as say
ABCDEF grading ballots. STAR is a horrible method that is very
highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
I welcome any comments you may have have about my poll favourite,
Approval Sorted Margins. Or anything else related to my most
recent ballot.
Chris
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em
<https://electorama.com/em> for list info
In that case, since every system needs to have some strategic burden, is
the goal to minimize the total amount of effort spent on strategy? To
minimize the probability that strategic voting by a coalition could affect
the result? To minimize the effects of strategy on the results?
Say a system makes it easy for any voter to work out the optimal strategy,
without needing a PhD in game theory, or relying on party-recommendations
(like in Australia). Is that good (makes strategy more democratic, reduces
the amount of effort spent on strategizing) or bad (makes strategic voting
easier)?
On Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 4:48 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods@votefair.org> wrote:
On 4/20/2024 1:12 PM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
voting. ;)
OK, I should have included the word "extra" as follows:
Why impose any EXTRA strategic burden on the voter?
Richard Fobes
On 4/20/2024 1:12 PM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
/> Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?/
True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
voting. ;)
On Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM Richard, the VoteFair guy
<electionmethods@votefair.org mailto:electionmethods@votefair.org>
wrote:
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
... It is not garbage like STAR.
...
... STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
Horrible, yes. Garbage, no, because it's a clever way to improve
single-winner score voting. It's useful among friends when voting is
not anonymous. Or when "dishonest" exaggeration cannot be hidden.
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping
you from
giving them names? ...
Time and money. Unlike two STAR promoters, the folks at FairVote,
and
academic professors, I'm not getting paid to promote or advance
election-method reform.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to
avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than
with
FPP. ...
Our goal is to rise way above plurality. Accepting limitations of
plurality is unnecessary.
Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls
"overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. ...
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the
ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that
point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to
Push-over
strategy.
I and most voters want to be able to rank an evil candidate --
Gollum,
Voldemoron, etc. -- below all other candidates. Truncation means the
evil candidate is as acceptable as other "bad" candidates.
I've written code that correctly counts so-called "overvotes." It's
not
a "complex procedure":
https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp
<
https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet
failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument
"Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV
so that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
I'm bothered by the failures in Burlington and Alaska. But those
were
not just Condorcet failures. They also were IIA failures,
center-squeeze failures, etc.
I want fewer failures in real elections. I don't care about
convoluted
scenarios that would never occur in a real election.
Again, thank you for this useful discussion. I appreciate that you
really want to understand why I rank some methods better than others.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
Richard,
I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than
a
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER
occur.
Given that voting methods are mostly simple and cut-and-dried and
so
plenty of 100% guarantees that criterion failures NEVER occur are
available, I find the approach "Near enough is good enough! I am
an
expert. I've done a computer simulation" to be suspicious and
flaky.
That attitude can lead to people switching off their brains and
swallowing BS propaganda from say STAR advocates.
It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within
NAMED
failure types. Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored
If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping
you from
giving them names? Several of the voting methods criteria I
uphold and
promote are ones I coined myself.
Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet
failures, you
don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument
"Let's
lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
we can
somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
"Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so
that
we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls
"overvotes."
RCIPE counts them correctly. That could become a huge deal in
the
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks
in the
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not
on the
ballot.
I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that
point.
Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to
Push-over
strategy.
I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as
demonstrated in
Burlington and Alaska.
IRV (properly implemented, with unrestricted strict ranking from
the
top) doesn't have any "flaws". It simply fails some criteria that
some
people like so that it can meet other criteria that some people
like. As
Woodall put it, it has a "maximal set of properties".
It is not garbage like STAR.
Approval voting requires tactical voting. There's no way to
avoid it.
The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than
with
FPP. With FPP the best strategy is to vote for your favourite
among the
candidates you think have a realistic chance of winning. With
Approval
you just do the same thing and then also approve every candidate
you
like as much or better. An alternative is the simple "surprise"
strategy: approve any given candidate X if you would be pleasantly
surprised if X won or unpleasantly surprised if X lost.
It's a huge "bang-for-buck" improvement on FPP. But I'm not a
big fan
either.
- STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type. (Always six columns,
even
when there are three or four candidates. And always with the
star icon,
no thanks!)
I find this objection to be superficial and just about style. A
lot of
ok methods can be happily used with 6-slot ratings ballots, such
as say
ABCDEF grading ballots. STAR is a horrible method that is very
highly
vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
I welcome any comments you may have have about my poll favourite,
Approval Sorted Margins. Or anything else related to my most
recent ballot.
Chris
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Regarding "strategic burden," the goal should be for the (single-winner)
election method to yield a result that best represents the voters,
without any voters or organizations being able to use ballot-marking
tactics that shift the winner to a different candidate.
Whether or not it's easy or hard to figure out the best tactic is not
significant. That's because it only takes one expert to figure out the
best tactic and that tactic can be widely promoted.
As a simple example, apparently a few election strategists told some
Republicans to give money to Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary
election to block Clinton from reaching that general election.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/21/2024 10:00 AM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
In that case, since every system needs to have some strategic burden, is
the goal to minimize the total amount of effort spent on strategy? To
minimize the probability that strategic voting by a coalition could
affect the result? To minimize the effects of strategy on the results?
Say a system makes it easy for any voter to work out the optimal
strategy, without needing a PhD in game theory, or relying on
party-recommendations (like in Australia). Is that good (makes strategy
more democratic, reduces the amount of effort spent on strategizing) or
bad (makes strategic voting easier)?
On 2024-04-21 20:40, Richard, the VoteFair guy wrote:
Regarding "strategic burden," the goal should be for the (single-winner)
election method to yield a result that best represents the voters,
without any voters or organizations being able to use ballot-marking
tactics that shift the winner to a different candidate.
Just to add to this, I'd say that we should probably ask, of a good
method, that it is manipulable less often than Plurality.
-km
Regarding "strategic burden," the goal should be for the (single-winner)
election method to yield a result that best represents the voters,
without any voters or organizations being able to use ballot-marking
tactics that shift the winner to a different candidate.
By "shift the winner to a different candidate", do you mean with or without
counterstrategy? e.g. lots of Condorcet methods meet Minimal Defense, but
are vulnerable to burial, so it's often necessary to truncate your ballot.
If voters often apply this truncation strategy to make sure sincere
Condorcet winners are protected from burial, is that bad? Is it less bad
than other kinds of strategy? Is what matters just how often a system is
vulnerable to strategy, or how much this affects the quality of winners?
Does "the strategic burden is minimal" involve just how often strategy is
used, or also the simplicity or sincerity of the strategy?
Whether or not it's easy or hard to figure out the best tactic is not
significant. That's because it only takes one expert to figure out the
best tactic and that tactic can be widely promoted.
In that case, would it be better to make the strategy very simple to work
out, so we don't have to rely on trusting party elites or experts' voting
recommendations (which could give political parties a lot of power)?
On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 11:41 AM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods@votefair.org> wrote:
Regarding "strategic burden," the goal should be for the (single-winner)
election method to yield a result that best represents the voters,
without any voters or organizations being able to use ballot-marking
tactics that shift the winner to a different candidate.
Whether or not it's easy or hard to figure out the best tactic is not
significant. That's because it only takes one expert to figure out the
best tactic and that tactic can be widely promoted.
As a simple example, apparently a few election strategists told some
Republicans to give money to Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary
election to block Clinton from reaching that general election.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/21/2024 10:00 AM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
In that case, since every system needs to have some strategic burden, is
the goal to minimize the total amount of effort spent on strategy? To
minimize the probability that strategic voting by a coalition could
affect the result? To minimize the effects of strategy on the results?
Say a system makes it easy for any voter to work out the optimal
strategy, without needing a PhD in game theory, or relying on
party-recommendations (like in Australia). Is that good (makes strategy
more democratic, reduces the amount of effort spent on strategizing) or
bad (makes strategic voting easier)?
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