If it's incredibly close, vote honestly.

On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 12:02 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:

On 04/13/2024 10:57 AM EDT Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com wrote:

But that doesn't necessarily serve my political interests.  Again, this example demonstrates that:

3 candidates:

L => Left candidate
C => Center candidate
R => Right candidate

100 voters:

• 34 Left voters:
  --- 23 ballots: L:5 C:1 R:0
  ---  4 ballots: L:5 C:0 R:1
  ---  7 ballots: L:5 C:0 R:0

• 29 Center voters:
  --- 15 ballots: L:1 C:5 R:0
  ---  9 ballots: L:0 C:5 R:1
  ---  5 ballots: L:0 C:5 R:0

• 37 Right voters:
  --- 17 ballots: L:0 C:1 R:5
  ---  5 ballots: L:1 C:0 R:5
  --- 15 ballots: L:0 C:0 R:5

Score totals:

Left  = 34x5 + 15 +  5  = 190
Center = 29x5 + 23 + 17  = 185
Right  = 37x5 +  9 +  4  = 198

With Score or FPTP, Right wins.
With STAR or IRV, Left wins.
With Condorcet, Center wins.

What should the Center voters do to best realize their political interests?  What should the Right voters, who liked Center better than Left, do to best realize their political interests?

And, again, how do I know, in advance, whether my favorite candidate is a front runner or not?

Lastly, how is this STAR thing not tactical voting?  If I vote non-tactically, I might just be screwing myself as demonstrated above.

r b-j

On Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 12:02 PM robert bristow-johnson rbj@audioimagination.com wrote:

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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Wait, 45% of the ballots in this election violate the
strictly-single-peaked assumption. Center seems to be just as
polarizing/hated as Left and Right. Under these ballots, "center" isn't a
centrist candidate, he's some kind of third position. (Maybe you could get
this result if you had a fascist/populist running against extremely
polarized conservatives and liberals? You need some kind of circular
ideological spectrum for this election to happen with sincere ballots.)

So I have no intuition for who should win, because this isn't a
single-dimensional election. If the ballots are perfectly honest, your
"Right" candidate should win because he's the optimal-utility candidate.
The single-peaked preference assumption is violated too badly for Condorcet
to be a good guide here.

On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 8:43 AM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:

Should it make any difference?

---- “My system is only intended for honest men.” - Jean-Charles de Borda

In a political election with high stakes, why wouldn't voters mark their ballots in such a way to maximize their political interest?  The purpose of these election reforms to FPTP is to disincentivize tactical or strategic voting.  A method should not depend on voters voting honestly in the secrecy of the voting booth if they believe that insincere voting will further their political interests more than the sincere vote.  The method should expect voters to vote in such a way that these voters would expect to promote their own political interest.  That's why Borda Count is so vulnerable to Burial and Borda (and his critics, including Condorcet) knew it.

The ballots are derived from the Burlington 2009 Mayoral election which had a Condorcet winner that was not elected using IRV.  It was scaled from circa 8900 ballots to 100.  The preferences between the three most significant candidates are:

• 34 Left voters:
  --- 23 ballots: L>C>R
  ---  4 ballots: L>R>C
  ---  7 ballots: L only

  • 29 Center voters:
    --- 15 ballots: C>L>R
    ---  9 ballots: C>R>L
    ---  5 ballots: C only

  • 37 Right voters:
    --- 17 ballots: R>C>L
    ---  5 ballots: R>L>C
    --- 15 ballots: R only

The rationale to assigning scores from this preference data is based on sane voters that understand how STAR works.  These voters want their 1st-choice candidate to win and they want their 2nd-choice candidate (if they have one) to defeat their least-favorite candidate in the contingency that their 1st-choice candidate does not win.

So, given any partisan voter with a first-choice, A, and second-choice, B, where D is the candidate they do not want to win at all.  Their ranking is A>B>D.  So how would that voter naively best serve their political interests under STAR?

A gets 5 stars and D gets 0 stars, correct?  It's up to you to show why A and D would be scored any differently.  I think there's nothing to dispute here.

Then what does this voter do with B, their 2nd-choice candidate or, equivalently, their "lesser evil" candidate?  They don't want their 2nd-choice candidate to beat their 1st-choice, but if their 1st-choice is not going to win, that is that their 1st-choice does not make it into STAR's Automatic Runoff, then they want their 2nd-choice to beat the candidate they hate.

Now, in that case, all they need to do is score their 2nd-choice candidate incrementally higher than the score for the candidate they hate.  Scoring their 2nd-choice any higher does nothing to help that candidate beat their hated candidate in the final runoff.  Scoring their 2nd-choice any higher does nothing to help their 1st-choice beat their hated candidate in the final runoff.  But scoring their 2nd-choice higher does harm their 1st-choice get into the final runoff.  There is nothing naively to be gained by scoring their 2nd-choice any higher than 1 star more than their hated candidate.

Indeed, for the 15 Center voters in the example above that ranked C>L>R, if six or more of them score their 2nd-choice candidate lower (that is with 0 stars), they get their candidate elected.  This burial strategy serves their interests better than if they "honestly" score their 2nd-choice higher than than their hated candidate.  But if exactly four of them do that, they get their hated candidate elected and the burial strategy backfires.

But if some of the 17 Right voters that ranked R>C>L had bumped their score for C higher (enough for a 6 star increase in C's score), they could prevent L from winning.  This failure mode is exactly comparable to the 2009 IRV election in Burlington.  There is no similar parallel to the Center voters strategically burying their 2nd-choice candidate with IRV because of Later-No-Harm (but the R voters did harm their interests by ranking R highest, since R lost).

So, with IRV, Burial doesn't serve any voter's interest but Favorite-Betrayal does.  But with STAR, both Burial (for the Center voters) or Favorite-Betrayal (for the Right voters) can serve the political interest of these voters' interest by preventing the election of the Left candidate.

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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On 04/13/2024 3:55 PM EDT Closed Limelike Curves closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com wrote:

The Left voters are opposed to both Center and Right.

The Right voters are opposed to both Center and Left.

How is that surprising?  This is the classic scenario where IRV demonstrates the Center Squeeze effect.  Get the numbers from Table 2 in this paper and scale them down to 100 voters: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIhFQfEoxSdyRz5SqEjZotbVDx4xshwM/view

The Left candidate is Vermont Progressive Party.
The Right candidate is Republican.
The Center candidate is Democrat.  As Figure 1 shows, he's really the Center.  He gets far more 2nd-choice votes from either Left or Right voters than the candidates on the Left and Right get from voters on the opposite wing.

More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Burlington_mayoral_election

Nope.  Classic Center Squeeze.  It is not a cycle like the Minneapolis Ward 2 election in 2021 or the Oakland School Board District 4 election in 2022.  It's a straight Left - Center - Right distribution with a very few Left and Right crossover 2nd-choice votes.

That's assuming utility is the correct ethic for elections.  I would take issue with that.  Utilitarianism is the correct ethic for distribution of resources.  But valuing our votes equally is the only correct ethic for elections (which is what Condorcet is committed to).  People have died in the United States for the value of valuing our votes equally.

The "single-peaked preference assumption" is what sane voters, that understand how STAR works, would do with their preferences.  This is in my other response from a couple minutes ago.  It's up to you to demonstrate otherwise.

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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I need to make a correction:

That should be Figure 2, not Figure 1.

That should be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Burlington_mayoral_election

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r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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