Hello Richard,

Thank you for the book about Binomial Single Transferable Vote. I do not
see the list of election methods sorted by importance or popularity in
there.

I am not clear what you are trying to say with the referenced book. Are you
suggesting that the Binomial Single Transferable Vote method should be on
the top of the list?

Regards,
-Bohdan

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 1:37 PM Richard Lung voting@ukscientists.com
wrote:

Hello Bohdan,

Binomial STV (or more completely FAB STV) supersede existing "uninomial" elections, which do not have an exclusion count consistent with the election count.
There is an objective way to list election methods according to their consistency with the scales of measurement. I discussed this in the eponymous chapter of my e-book, Scientific Method of Elections.
The original sketch of this appeared in French, and is reproduced in my e-booklet: Modele Scientifique du Proces Electoral.
Both these works are also free from Smashwords.

Regards,
Richard Lung.

On 14 Oct 2021, at 12:39 pm, Bohdan Andriyiv drabiv@gmail.com wrote:

Hello Richard,

Thank you for the book about Binomial Single Transferable Vote. I do not see the list of election methods sorted by importance or popularity in there.

I am not clear what you are trying to say with the referenced book. Are you suggesting that the Binomial Single Transferable Vote method should be on the top of the list?

Regards,
-Bohdan

On 10/13/2021 11:50 AM, Bohdan Andriyiv wrote:

Years ago we tried to enlighten the planet Earth by writing and signing
the "Declaration of Election-Method Reform Advocates", a copy of which
is at:

http://www.votefair.org/bansinglemarkballots/index.html

We do not agree on any ranking by importance, but most of us did agree
that we support the use of the following four categories:

• Approval voting

• most of the Condorcet methods

• Majority Judgment

• Range voting (now better known as Score voting)

If we were to update the list it would probably include STAR voting --
because it's based on Score voting, yet it's better than Score voting.

And I believe it would include the version of Minimax that uses winning
votes -- even though this variation does not always elect the Condorcet
winner.

And lately the Minimax variations can be thought of as growing in
popularity -- especially because one of the Minimax variations is the
default method at the very popular Condorcet Internet Voting Service.

Personally I believe that Instant Pairwise Elimination (IPE) would be
included because it comes very close to being a Condorcet method, but
that's a personal bias. (Disclaimer: I created this method.)

We did not approve instant-runoff voting (IRV).

The Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination (RCIPE) method (which I
also created, but did not name) improves IRV by eliminating "Condorcet
losers" (which has a different meaning from Condorcet used elsewhere)
might be approved as a stepping-stone to better methods (similar to why
some of us approved Approval voting). Again, this is a personal bias.

Everyone here has a favorite method, and those methods are most often
different for each person. So you are likely to get more responses
saying that such-and-such is the best method.

So we, as a group, cannot rate or rank the methods. The "declaration" is
about the best we can offer at this time.

In the declaration we agree that PR (proportional representation) is
worth adopting, but we do not agree on which kind of PR is best. Yet we
do agree that the most popular kind of PR -- Closed Party List -- is
inferior to Open Party List. But there are better methods than party lists.

Another point is that the best method depends on which election is being
reformed. That affects which choice is "best." For example, in the U.S.
any reform has to be compatible with the current political system. (For
example, dual-member districts could work, but an STV-like method using
more than two seats per district would not work as long as plurality
voting dominates US elections.)

I'm not claiming that everyone here will agree with what I'm saying
here. I'm providing you with at least part of what you are requesting,
and I'm making it easier for disagreements with my perspectives to arise
as criticisms of what I'm saying here.

If you want to be specific about which part of the planet Earth you most
want reform, we can offer specific suggestions for that case.

Thanks for asking!

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy

On 14.10.2021 19:22, Richard, the VoteFair guy wrote:

Minmax(wv) passes the Condorcet criterion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_Condorcet_method#Satisfied_and_failed_criteria
Are you referring to another method here?

-km

I'm quite sure he is referring to MinMaxPairwiseOpposition MMPO, which is
very closely related to MinMax(losing votes) but not the same.

As you know MMPO is an FBC compliant method that fails Plurality and
Condorcet.

While MinMax(lv) is a perfectly good Plurality (and Chicken Dilemma)
Criterion compliant Condorcet method.

El jue., 14 de oct. de 2021 1:45 p. m., Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_elmet@t-online.de> escribió:

In the Wikipedia article about the Minimax method, the section titled
"Satisfied and failed criteria" indicates that the "winning votes" and
"margins" versions are Condorcet compliant, but the "pairwise
opposition" version is not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_Condorcet_method#Satisfied_and_failed_criteria

Specifically it says:
"When the pairwise opposition variant is used, minimax also does not
satisfy the Condorcet criterion."

That seems to conflict with what Kristofer is saying here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_Condorcet_method#Satisfied_and_failed_criteria

On 10/14/2021 2:40 PM, Forest Simmons wrote:

So yes, MMPO -- assuming that acronym only refers to Minimax using
pairwise opposition -- is the method I was referring to.

My point was that although it does not fit the official category of
"most of the Condorcet methods" (according to Wikipedia), I would expect
that most of the people who signed the "Declaration of Election-Method
Reform Advocates" would regard that method as also worth considering for
adoption.

I mentioned the method because the first steps toward adopting better
methods in governmental elections require simplicity, and the pairwise
opposition version is easier to explain (and easier to calculate) for
non-math-savvy folks.

For clarification, I'm more of a fan of using pairwise vote counting
than I am insistent that the method must be Condorcet compliant. In
particular, I would advocate Minimax with pairwise opposition more
strongly than IRV-BTR (IRV with bottom two runoff) even though the
latter is Condorcet compliant.

Richard Fobes

On 10/14/2021 2:40 PM, Forest Simmons wrote:

Richard, thank you for the detailed list of (as I understood) the best
/ the most fair / the most supported by this forum election methods.
It is very helpful and works for me as a good starting point to
explore the election methods. Thanks to the others who made their
inputs as well.

But my question is different. I guess it worked as a trick question
for this community and I should have explained better the context
behind it.

I am asking what election methods are the most important/popular in
the current world? Not, which ones are the best, the fairest. BTW, by
"important" I mean - the methods that might be not so popular, but are
important in the current world for some other reason (for example,
used in small, but important elections).

Why am I interested in this? I am designing a universal voting
platform where anyone will be able to create and conduct any kind of
voting (serious or not).

As this community knows much much better than I do, the voting can be
organized in the multitude of different ways. Hence it is too
difficult (complex and time consuming) to design a system that
supports all of the methods right from the start. So I want to
prioritise the implementation of the methods that are the most popular
or important.

In other words my question is the following.

What types of election methods are most likely to be used to organize
different votings on the universal voting platform in the current
world?
Also, what methods, although not so popular, but important in the
current world, should be supported by this platform?

Thank you,
-Bohdan

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 8:22 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy
electionmethods@votefair.org wrote:

On 15.10.2021 14:24, Bohdan Andriyiv wrote:

Plurality (FPTP), clearly, by sheer numbers, although the method is
nothing to write home about.

Probably also, if you're willing to bend the criteria of what counts as
voting: Approval with no opinion (thumbs up/down on FB, YouTube, etc.),
and Range (star ratings used on e.g. Amazon). I say "bend" because these
are not elections - they do not designate a given winner, but rather
they provide feedback on a per item (video, product, etc) basis.

The most popular multiwinner election methods are (to my knowledge)
party list, single member district Plurality, SNTV, and STV. They can be
combined as in MMP. Perhaps you could also include cumulative voting and
bloc voting, but they're not as common.

The Schulze method seems to be favored among open-source organizations
and pro open-source parties such as the Pirate Parties. See e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Users. It is also used in a
few cities for referenda or as part of a liquid democracy/delegable
proxy system.

The Condorcet Internet Voting Service supports minmax, Schulze, MAM, and
Condorcet-IRV: https://civs1.civs.us/rp.html

Approval (with or without runoff) is also in current use in the US. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Current_use.

FairVote is pushing IRV pretty hard, and it's used in some US states
(see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_United_States
) but it's not a particularly good method IMHO.

Finally, there's the meta-method "whatever election method, then the
president leans on the electoral commission and stays in power
regardless". This method is unfortunately all too common; I would not
suggest implementing it.

I would not suggest implementing Plurality even though it's popular,
because it's just that bad. I'd probably say: Approval, Range, STAR, and
a Condorcet method (Schulze if you're going by popularity, though I'd
personally prefer Ranked Pairs for relative simplicity). This gives you
both the ranked standard (according to many people on this list at least
:), the cardinal standards (Approval and Range), and a compromise
between the two (STAR).

The only thing really missing is Majority Judgment; it's not used
anywhere but it has an interface unlike either Range or Condorcet, using
neither scores nor rankings but grades instead.

If you're going to implement proportional representation multiwinner
methods, then some form of STV. Probably also some kind of cardinal PR
method (although none are used for political elections at the moment) to
give the cardinal voters a multiwinner method too.

There's a similar argument to the "include IRV or not?" about what kind
of STV to use. Every form of STV used politically at the moment reduces
to IRV in the single-winner case, which means that its results get worse
the fewer winners you have. On the one hand, if you want to stick with
what's used in political elections, you should pick IRV-based STV. On
the other, if you want better outcomes, it would be better to pick a
Condorcet-based multiwinner method (e.g. Schulze STV, CPO-STV or CIVS's
PR method).

-km