JQ
Jameson Quinn
Sat, Oct 29, 2016 3:16 PM
I've been thinking about strategic rules of thumb in majority score.
Basically, the rule I've come up with is:
-Support (top-rate) candidates who are best or comparable to the best; say,
above 0.9 on an honest normalized score ballot.
-Reject (bottom-grade) candidates if they're "worse than the average
serious candidate". One way to make this precise might be: if you'd prefer
a random lottery where first a number n is picked uniformly among {2,3,5},
then a random lottery is performed among the top n candidates by honest
plurality. Obviously, for an actual rule of thumb, the imprecise wording is
better, but I'm just including the precision to help clarify what I mean.
-Assist candidates if they are the best or comparable to the best among
serious candidates you are relatively sure will not be eliminated by
majority rejection. So, first discount any candidates you think have over
1/3 chance of scoring under 50 or of having over 50% rejection; then
re-normalize your honest score ballot for the rest; then assist any
candidates who are above 0.9 and whom you're not already supporting.
-Accept the rest.
So, basically, simplified further, this rule suggests assisting anyone who
you'd otherwise accept, if you think that the candidates you support will
all be eliminated. When you put it like that, it looks like a job for a DSV
method.
So, here's the voting system that results; essentially, majority score
declared strategy voting (MS DSV):
- Voters rate candidates support, accept, or reject. Default is accept.
- Eliminate any candidates with over 50% reject, or with support at or
below 25%, unless this would eliminate all candidates.
- For all ballots which support no non-eliminated candidates, change
"accept" to "support".
- Winner is remaining candidate with most support.
This is a system that has aspects of Bucklin (majority threshold for
eliminations) and of IRV (eliminate and then retally votes that lost their
top-voted candidates).
Is this the best of both worlds between Bucklin and IRV? Not exactly.
- Note that this system, unlike majority score, is not easily summable.
- Unlike IRV, this is not later-no-harm, although I suspect you could
handcraft a "later-no-harm unless..." weakened criterion it would pass.
(Moving X from reject to accept on a ballot which supports Y cannot cause Y
to lose unless Y was majority-rejected???)
However, this does have some good properties.
- FBC
- Majority, mutual majority (note that MSV does not have MM, IRV does)
- Voted majority Condorcet winner? (Neither MSV nor IRV have this
property! I am not 100% sure this system has this property, but I'm pretty
sure it does at least for 3-candidate elections, and I suspect that it
extends to n candidates.)
- Voted majority Condercet loser??? (same qualifications, but I'm less
sure)
- Voted Condorcet loser (without qualifying by "majority"!) for
3-candidate elections in which all voters use full ballot range (ie, at
least one candidate each in top and bottom)
- Handles CD as well as MSV
- Handles center squeeze better than either MSV or IRV; this is pretty
well encapsulated by the VMCW property above.
So, I'm not (yet) proposing this as a replacement for MSV. It's simpler and
better from a voter-facing (ballot) perspective, but more complicated from
an explanation and counting perspective. In particular, I think the lack of
summability is a problem.
But still, it's a top-shelf system from a theoretical angle, IMO. It
doesn't have SODA's "strong delegated equilibrium for a delegatable weakly
semi-honest majority Condorcet winner" property, which helps with the
chicken dilemma; but really all that property is saying is that SODA
removes the possibility for CD offensive strategy by forcing the CD threat
candidate (what we've conventionally called candidate C) to declare a
strict preference between the subfactions (conventionally, A and B), and if
lazy voters will then delegate to C then offensive strategy won't work.
Aside from that, which is, now that I put it that way, somewhat of a cheap
trick, I think MSDSV is the best system I know of for dealing with both
center squeeze and CD well.
....
Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner election
system, more or less in descending order of importance:
- FBC
- Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet guarantee
that's compatible with FBC)
- Relatively simple to explain
- Minimal strategic burden
- Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
to O(N²).)
- Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
mess up the center squeeze properties.
- Some arguable track record
SODA does well on 1,2,4, 5, and 6, and horribly on 3 and 7. MSV does well
on 1,2,4, and 5, is OK on 3 and 4, and bad on 6. Approval does well on
1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5. MSDSV does well on 1,2,4,5,
and 6, and is bad on 3 and 7. Various Condorcet-like methods (MAM, ICT,
sorted approval methods) are good on 2, 4, and 6, but none as good as the
aforementioned on 1, and all fail 3 and 7. MJ and other Bucklin methods
are, as far as I can tell, dominated by MSV on all but 7. And other methods
just don't compete. So, MSDSV is on the pareto frontier of the above
criteria, which makes it a top-shelf method.
I've been thinking about strategic rules of thumb in majority score.
Basically, the rule I've come up with is:
-Support (top-rate) candidates who are best or comparable to the best; say,
above 0.9 on an honest normalized score ballot.
-Reject (bottom-grade) candidates if they're "worse than the average
serious candidate". One way to make this precise might be: if you'd prefer
a random lottery where first a number n is picked uniformly among {2,3,5},
then a random lottery is performed among the top n candidates by honest
plurality. Obviously, for an actual rule of thumb, the imprecise wording is
better, but I'm just including the precision to help clarify what I mean.
-Assist candidates if they are the best or comparable to the best among
serious candidates you are relatively sure will not be eliminated by
majority rejection. So, first discount any candidates you think have over
1/3 chance of scoring under 50 or of having over 50% rejection; then
re-normalize your honest score ballot for the rest; then assist any
candidates who are above 0.9 and whom you're not already supporting.
-Accept the rest.
So, basically, simplified further, this rule suggests assisting anyone who
you'd otherwise accept, if you think that the candidates you support will
all be eliminated. When you put it like that, it looks like a job for a DSV
method.
So, here's the voting system that results; essentially, majority score
declared strategy voting (MS DSV):
- Voters rate candidates support, accept, or reject. Default is accept.
- Eliminate any candidates with over 50% reject, or with support at or
below 25%, unless this would eliminate all candidates.
- For all ballots which support no non-eliminated candidates, change
"accept" to "support".
- Winner is remaining candidate with most support.
This is a system that has aspects of Bucklin (majority threshold for
eliminations) and of IRV (eliminate and then retally votes that lost their
top-voted candidates).
Is this the best of both worlds between Bucklin and IRV? Not exactly.
- Note that this system, unlike majority score, is not easily summable.
- Unlike IRV, this is not later-no-harm, although I suspect you could
handcraft a "later-no-harm unless..." weakened criterion it would pass.
(Moving X from reject to accept on a ballot which supports Y cannot cause Y
to lose unless Y was majority-rejected???)
However, this does have some good properties.
- FBC
- Majority, mutual majority (note that MSV does not have MM, IRV does)
- Voted majority Condorcet winner? (Neither MSV nor IRV have this
property! I am not 100% sure this system has this property, but I'm pretty
sure it does at least for 3-candidate elections, and I suspect that it
extends to n candidates.)
- Voted majority Condercet loser??? (same qualifications, but I'm less
sure)
- Voted Condorcet loser (without qualifying by "majority"!) for
3-candidate elections in which all voters use full ballot range (ie, at
least one candidate each in top and bottom)
- Handles CD as well as MSV
- Handles center squeeze better than either MSV or IRV; this is pretty
well encapsulated by the VMCW property above.
So, I'm not (yet) proposing this as a replacement for MSV. It's simpler and
better from a voter-facing (ballot) perspective, but more complicated from
an explanation and counting perspective. In particular, I think the lack of
summability is a problem.
But still, it's a top-shelf system from a theoretical angle, IMO. It
doesn't have SODA's "strong delegated equilibrium for a delegatable weakly
semi-honest majority Condorcet winner" property, which helps with the
chicken dilemma; but really all that property is saying is that SODA
removes the possibility for CD offensive strategy by forcing the CD threat
candidate (what we've conventionally called candidate C) to declare a
strict preference between the subfactions (conventionally, A and B), and if
lazy voters will then delegate to C then offensive strategy won't work.
Aside from that, which is, now that I put it that way, somewhat of a cheap
trick, I think MSDSV is the best system I know of for dealing with both
center squeeze and CD well.
....
Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner election
system, more or less in descending order of importance:
1. FBC
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet guarantee
that's compatible with FBC)
3. Relatively simple to explain
4. Minimal strategic burden
5. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
to O(N²).)
6. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
mess up the center squeeze properties.
7. Some arguable track record
SODA does well on 1,2,4, 5, and 6, and horribly on 3 and 7. MSV does well
on 1,2,4, and 5, is OK on 3 and 4, and bad on 6. Approval does well on
1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5. MSDSV does well on 1,2,4,5,
and 6, and is bad on 3 and 7. Various Condorcet-like methods (MAM, ICT,
sorted approval methods) are good on 2, 4, and 6, but none as good as the
aforementioned on 1, and all fail 3 and 7. MJ and other Bucklin methods
are, as far as I can tell, dominated by MSV on all but 7. And other methods
just don't compete. So, MSDSV is on the pareto frontier of the above
criteria, which makes it a top-shelf method.
MO
Michael Ossipoff
Sun, Oct 30, 2016 9:18 PM
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
1. FBC
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
1.
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
CWs, under different and better conditions.
1.
2. Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've tried
explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else over
hir."
{...some same other candidate)
1.
2. Minimal strategic burden
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set, then
that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it wasn't clear
who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
to O(N²).)
2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
mess up the center squeeze properties.
1.
2. Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
1.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
Jameson--
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
> election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
>
> 1. FBC
>
>
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>
> 1.
> 2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
> guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
>
> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
CWs, under different and better conditions.
>
> 1.
> 2. Relatively simple to explain
>
>
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've tried
explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else over
hir."
{...some same other candidate)
>
> 1.
> 2. Minimal strategic burden
>
>
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set, then
that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it _wasn't_ clear
who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>
> 1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
> might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
> to O(N²).)
> 2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
> mess up the center squeeze properties.
>
>
MMPO meets Weak CD.
>
> 1.
> 2. Some arguable track record
>
>
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
> 1.
>
> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
>
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
C
C.Benham
Tue, Nov 1, 2016 6:06 AM
On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different
method proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
Mike,
A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
criterion) and said that your
favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
So what happened to it? You even seemed ready to tolerate the
non-FBC CD methods Benham and IRV.
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
Score or Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
Jameson--
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn
<jameson.quinn@gmail.com mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com> wrote:
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political
single-winner election system, more or less in descending order of
importance:
1. FBC
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
1.
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates
votiing. Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters,
and, with honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear
who's the CWs. But now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that.
Brams pointed out that Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's
the CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such
as MMPO), are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will
be a CWs, under different and better conditions.
1.
2. Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which
only Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate
enough to be acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
tried explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
over hir."
{...some same other candidate)
1.
2. Minimal strategic burden
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but,
for most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing
difficult about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's
optimal for most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter
terribly anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it
will likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to
the CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it wasn't
clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a
matter of approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe,
under those conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe
(as now) the estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be
estimated by the candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D.
....but it might not remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as
winnable candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins
anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice,
though I might accept some special pleading for the use of
prior polling to reduce to O(N²).)
2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in
practice mess up the center squeeze properties.
MMPO meets Weak CD.
1.
2. Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different
method proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
Score or Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
1.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different
> method proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
Mike,
A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
criterion) and said that your
favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
So what happened to it? You even seemed ready to tolerate the
non-FBC CD methods Benham and IRV.
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
> Score or Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
> Jameson--
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn
> <jameson.quinn@gmail.com <mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political
> single-winner election system, more or less in descending order of
> importance:
>
> 1. FBC
>
>
> Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>
> 1.
>
>
> 2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
> guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
>
> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates
> votiing. Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters,
> and, with honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear
> who's the CWs. But now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that.
> Brams pointed out that Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
>
> But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's
> the CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such
> as MMPO), are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
>
> Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will
> be a CWs, under different and better conditions.
>
> 1.
>
>
> 2. Relatively simple to explain
>
>
> Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which
> only Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate
> enough to be acceptable..
>
> You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
> tried explaining them.
>
> MMPO?:
>
> "The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
> over hir."
>
> {...some same other candidate)
>
> 1.
>
>
> 2. Minimal strategic burden
>
>
> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but,
> for most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing
> difficult about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's
> optimal for most people.
>
> And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
> then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter
> terribly anyway, which candidate wins.
>
> In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it
> will likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
> tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to
> the CWs.
>
> And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it _wasn't_
> clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a
> matter of approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe,
> under those conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe
> (as now) the estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be
> estimated by the candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D.
> ....but it might not remain 1D under different and better conditions).
>
> ..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as
> winnable candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins
> anyway.
>
> People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>
>
> 1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice,
> though I might accept some special pleading for the use of
> prior polling to reduce to O(N²).)
> 2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in
> practice mess up the center squeeze properties.
>
>
> MMPO meets Weak CD.
>
> 1.
>
>
> 2. Some arguable track record
>
>
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different
> method proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
> committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
> "focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
>
>
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
> Score or Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
>
> 1.
>
>
>
>
> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
>
>
>
> No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
> strategic burden, as I discussed above.
>
> Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
> methods are illusory.
>
> And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
> precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
> computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
>
>
>
>
>
JQ
Jameson Quinn
Tue, Nov 1, 2016 11:13 AM
First: I'm curious what others think of MSDSV. It doesn't have unheard-of
properties, but it does seem to me that the combination of IRV and Bucklin
ideas is new; and that if others think about methods in this space there
might be something nice and easy to explain.
....
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
I'm sorry, but it seems to me that this is a particularly egregious example
of the typical mind fallacy. I believe the above is true for you, Mike, but
even though I think I share most of your terminal values I'm quite sure
it's not true for me, and I doubt it's true for most voters (in some cases,
because of different values; in other cases, because of different views of
what course of action will best pursue those values).
First: I'm curious what others think of MSDSV. It doesn't have unheard-of
properties, but it does seem to me that the combination of IRV and Bucklin
ideas is new; and that if others think about methods in this space there
might be something nice and easy to explain.
....
> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
> most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
> about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
> most people.
>
I'm sorry, but it seems to me that this is a particularly egregious example
of the typical mind fallacy. I believe the above is true for you, Mike, but
even though I think I share most of your terminal values I'm quite sure
it's not true for me, and I doubt it's true for most voters (in some cases,
because of different values; in other cases, because of different views of
what course of action will best pursue those values).
MO
Michael Ossipoff
Tue, Nov 1, 2016 3:05 PM
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
I'm sorry, but it seems to me that this is a particularly egregious
example of the typical mind fallacy.
The what? What's that?
You continued:
I believe the above is true for you, Mike, but even though I think I share
most of your terminal values I'm quite sure it's not true for me, and I
doubt it's true for most voters (in some cases, because of different values
Values based on what people say they want? Compare that to what the parties
offer in their
You mean that you're questioning my implication that the progressive
candidates are best for most people.
Look at their platforms. Many people are ideologically Pavlov-trained, in
regards to political words, but I'm just talking about which parties offer
the material end-results that people say they want,and offer genuine fixes
to the things that people complain about.
Anyway, as I said, talk to a Democrat-voter, and you'll find someone who
wants better, but is resigned to the Democrats as supposedly the best that
they can get--a "lesser-evil". ...nearly always someone who doesn't like
the Democrat.
You'll find that the end-result material changes that the progressive
parties advocate address exactly the things that everyone complains about.
...and offer things that people are known to want. Dumping the Republocrats
and replacing them with progressive parties & candidates would bring what
most people say they want. The Republocrats embody everything that's the
opposite of what most people say they want.
So sure, in an honest election, by Approval, I'd advise most people to
approve all of the progressive candidates.
Many might just approve some of them, and that's fine too. Some of those
parties use language that puts many people off. Some of them propose
1-party governance-modes that many people disagree with. Fine, then approve
the ones that are acceptable to you. There are all kinds of progressive
parties.
; in other cases, because of different views of what course of action will
best pursue those values).
That's why there's a wide variety of progressive parties.
But if you think that the Reublocrats are, for some reason, going to start
pursuing your values, in spite of their consistent record to represent the
opposite, then I invite you to read some party platforms, because maybe
there are parties that really offer what you'd prefer.
As for the top-set voting in Approval, I don't think that's what you're
disagreeing with. You disagree on what parties & candidates qualify for
top-set or bottom-set. But can you listen to Hillary and not say
"bottom-set"?
Michael Ossipoff
>
>
>
> ....
>
>
>>
I'd said:
> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
>> most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
>> about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
>> most people.
>>
>
You wrote:
> I'm sorry, but it seems to me that this is a particularly egregious
> example of the typical mind fallacy.
>
The what? What's that?
You continued:
> I believe the above is true for you, Mike, but even though I think I share
> most of your terminal values I'm quite sure it's not true for me, and I
> doubt it's true for most voters (in some cases, because of different values
>
Values based on what people say they want? Compare that to what the parties
offer in their
You mean that you're questioning my implication that the progressive
candidates are best for most people.
Look at their platforms. Many people are ideologically Pavlov-trained, in
regards to political words, but I'm just talking about which parties offer
the material end-results that people say they want,and offer genuine fixes
to the things that people complain about.
Anyway, as I said, talk to a Democrat-voter, and you'll find someone who
wants better, but is resigned to the Democrats as supposedly the best that
they can get--a "lesser-evil". ...nearly always someone who doesn't like
the Democrat.
You'll find that the end-result material changes that the progressive
parties advocate address exactly the things that everyone complains about.
...and offer things that people are known to want. Dumping the Republocrats
and replacing them with progressive parties & candidates would bring what
most people say they want. The Republocrats embody everything that's the
opposite of what most people say they want.
So sure, in an honest election, by Approval, I'd advise most people to
approve all of the progressive candidates.
Many might just approve some of them, and that's fine too. Some of those
parties use language that puts many people off. Some of them propose
1-party governance-modes that many people disagree with. Fine, then approve
the ones that are acceptable to you. There are all kinds of progressive
parties.
> ; in other cases, because of different views of what course of action will
> best pursue those values).
>
That's why there's a wide variety of progressive parties.
But if you think that the Reublocrats are, for some reason, going to start
pursuing your values, in spite of their consistent record to represent the
opposite, then I invite you to read some party platforms, because maybe
there are parties that really offer what you'd prefer.
As for the top-set voting in Approval, I don't think that's what you're
disagreeing with. You disagree on what parties & candidates qualify for
top-set or bottom-set. But can you listen to Hillary and not say
"bottom-set"?
Michael Ossipoff
MO
Michael Ossipoff
Tue, Nov 1, 2016 4:56 PM
On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
Mike,
A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
criterion) and said that your
favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
...as a later improvement.
But I recognized that a first reform for people used to Plurality would
have to be something simple, & precedented.
I only suggested 3-Slot ICT as a later refinement.
I still value CD. But I've often said that the Chicken-Dilemma is a
nuisance, rather than a problem, & that CD is a valuable luxury. ...& that
Approval is very acceptable.
I still like 3-Slot ICT, but it has a few drawbacks:
-
It isn't as briefly & simply defined as MMPO.
-
when you demote B to middle, you're leaving hir with no protection from
burial, or even from innocent truncation.
Besides, activists & organizations want rankings. Some overcompromisers &
rivals likely would do better with rankings.
Regardless of merit, rankings might be psychologically desirable.
Answered above.
You wrote:
You even seemed ready to tolerate the non-FBC CD methods Benham and IRV.
(endquote)
I recognized even then that they had problems for current conditions.
Yes, I used to like them for the Green scenario. I was saying that it's OK
to ignore voters who aren't in a mutual-majority. I no longer feel that way.
IRV & it's derivatives create a confrontational situation & mood when they
make you choose between ranking Compromise over Favorite, or withholding
help from Compromise & letting hir lose.
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
random?
(endquote)
All along, I've been saying that I'd disclose those criticisms, & answer
them. My answers would be the ones that I've posted.
What response do you think you will get?
I don't know. It would only be .mentioned as a possibility. At that future
time when new methods are being considered, as a refinement, people should
be offered a choice of the best combination of valuable strategic
properties, vs a more conservative effort to avoid "could look bad".
Maybe people won't like or want MMPO. Fine. Then I'll recommend that they
keep Approval, Score or Bucklin.
(You wrote):
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Have I ever seemed worried about that?
"Could look bad" isn't important compared to practical strategy properties.
We discussed the matter of whether anyone is seriously wronged in the bad
example.
Michael Ossipoff
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet guarantee
that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates
votiing. Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and,
with honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs.
But now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out
that Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's
the CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as
MMPO), are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be
a CWs, under different and better conditions.
Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which
only Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to
be acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
{...some same other candidate)
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but,
for most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing
difficult about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's
optimal for most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it
will likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it wasn't
clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I might
accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce to
O(N²).)
Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice mess
up the center squeeze properties.
Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
(Replying farther down)
On Oct 31, 2016 11:06 PM, "C.Benham" <cbenham@adam.com.au> wrote:
>
> On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
>>
>> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>>
>> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>>
>> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>>
>> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> Mike,
>
> A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
criterion) and said that your
> favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
...as a later improvement.
But I recognized that a first reform for people used to Plurality would
have to be something simple, & precedented.
I only suggested 3-Slot ICT as a later refinement.
I still value CD. But I've often said that the Chicken-Dilemma is a
nuisance, rather than a problem, & that CD is a valuable luxury. ...& that
Approval is very acceptable.
I still like 3-Slot ICT, but it has a few drawbacks:
* It isn't as briefly & simply defined as MMPO.
* when you demote B to middle, you're leaving hir with no protection from
burial, or even from innocent truncation.
Besides, activists & organizations want rankings. Some overcompromisers &
rivals likely would do better with rankings.
Regardless of merit, rankings might be psychologically desirable.
>
> So what happened to it?
Answered above.
You wrote:
You even seemed ready to tolerate the non-FBC CD methods Benham and IRV.
(endquote)
I recognized even then that they had problems for current conditions.
Yes, I used to like them for the Green scenario. I was saying that it's OK
to ignore voters who aren't in a mutual-majority. I no longer feel that way.
IRV & it's derivatives create a confrontational situation & mood when they
make you choose between ranking Compromise over Favorite, or withholding
help from Compromise & letting hir lose.
>
>
>> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
>>
>> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
> Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
>
> (a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
> on only two ballots?
>
> x: A
> 1: C=A
> 1: C=B
> x: B
>
> x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
>
> (b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
> happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
random?
(endquote)
All along, I've been saying that I'd disclose those criticisms, & answer
them. My answers would be the ones that I've posted.
>
> What response do you think you will get?
I don't know. It would only be .mentioned as a possibility. At that future
time when new methods are being considered, as a refinement, people should
be offered a choice of the best combination of valuable strategic
properties, vs a more conservative effort to avoid "could look bad".
Maybe people won't like or want MMPO. Fine. Then I'll recommend that they
keep Approval, Score or Bucklin.
(You wrote):
> I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
> tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Have I ever seemed worried about that?
"Could look bad" isn't important compared to practical strategy properties.
We discussed the matter of whether anyone is seriously wronged in the bad
example.
Michael Ossipoff
>
> Chris Benham
>
>
>
>
>> Jameson--
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn@gmail.com>
wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
>>> FBC
>>
>>
>> Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet guarantee
that's compatible with FBC)
>>
>> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates
votiing. Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and,
with honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs.
But now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out
that Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
>>
>> But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's
the CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as
MMPO), are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
>>
>> Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be
a CWs, under different and better conditions.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Relatively simple to explain
>>
>>
>> Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which
only Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to
be acceptable..
>>
>> You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
tried explaining them.
>>
>> MMPO?:
>>
>> "The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
over hir."
>>
>> {...some same other candidate)
>>>
>>>
>>> Minimal strategic burden
>>
>>
>> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but,
for most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing
difficult about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's
optimal for most people.
>>
>> And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
>>
>> In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it
will likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
>>
>> And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it _wasn't_
clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
>>
>> ..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
>>
>> People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I might
accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce to
O(N²).)
>>> Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice mess
up the center squeeze properties.
>>
>>
>> MMPO meets Weak CD.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Some arguable track record
>>
>>
>> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
>>
>> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>>
>> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>>
>> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>>
>> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>>
>>
>> I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
>>
>>
>> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
>>
>> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
>>
>>
>>
>> No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
>>
>> Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
>>
>> And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
>>
>> Michael Ossipoff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
MO
Michael Ossipoff
Tue, Nov 1, 2016 5:49 PM
Yes of course 3-Slot ICT should be offered as a backup proposal, in case
people don't want MMPO.
3-Slot ICT gives an easier chicken dilemma solution than that of Approval,
meets Weak & Strong CD, if you're willing to leave the distrusted faction's
candidate without protection from pairwise-count's offensive strategies, &
from innocent truncation. Those things might well not happen.
Michael Ossipoff
On Oct 31, 2016 11:06 PM, "C.Benham" cbenham@adam.com.au wrote:
On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
Mike,
A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
criterion) and said that your
favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
So what happened to it? You even seemed ready to tolerate the non-FBC
CD methods Benham and IRV.
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
Jameson--
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.quinn@gmail.com
wrote:
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
1. FBC
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
1.
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
CWs, under different and better conditions.
1.
2. Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
tried explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
over hir."
{...some same other candidate)
1.
2. Minimal strategic burden
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it wasn't
clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
to O(N²).)
2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
mess up the center squeeze properties.
1.
2. Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
1.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Yes of course 3-Slot ICT should be offered as a backup proposal, in case
people don't want MMPO.
3-Slot ICT gives an easier chicken dilemma solution than that of Approval,
meets Weak & Strong CD, if you're willing to leave the distrusted faction's
candidate without protection from pairwise-count's offensive strategies, &
from innocent truncation. Those things might well not happen.
Michael Ossipoff
On Oct 31, 2016 11:06 PM, "C.Benham" <cbenham@adam.com.au> wrote:
> On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
> proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> Mike,
>
> A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
> criterion) and said that your
> favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
>
> So what happened to it? You even seemed ready to tolerate the non-FBC
> CD methods Benham and IRV.
>
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
> Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
> Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
> Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
>
> (a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
> million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
> on only two ballots?
>
> x: A
> 1: C=A
> 1: C=B
> x: B
>
> x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
>
> (b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
> interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
> that
> happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
> random?
>
> What response do you think you will get?
>
> I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
> believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
> tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
>
> Chris Benham
>
>
>
>
> Jameson--
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
>> election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
>>
>> 1. FBC
>>
>>
> Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
>> guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
>>
>> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
> Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
> honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
> now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
> Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
>
> But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
> CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
> are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
>
> Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
> CWs, under different and better conditions.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Relatively simple to explain
>>
>>
> Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
> Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
> acceptable..
>
> You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
> tried explaining them.
>
> MMPO?:
>
> "The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
> over hir."
>
> {...some same other candidate)
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Minimal strategic burden
>>
>>
> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
> most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
> about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
> most people.
>
> And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
> then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
> anyway, which candidate wins.
>
> In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
> likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
> tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
> CWs.
>
> And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it _wasn't_
> clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
> approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
> conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
> estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
> candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
> remain 1D under different and better conditions).
>
> ..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
> candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
>
> People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>
>
>
>>
>> 1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
>> might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
>> to O(N²).)
>> 2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
>> mess up the center squeeze properties.
>>
>>
> MMPO meets Weak CD.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Some arguable track record
>>
>>
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
> proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
> committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
> "focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
>
>
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
> Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
>
>
>> 1.
>>
>> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
>>
>
>
> No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
> strategic burden, as I discussed above.
>
> Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
> methods are illusory.
>
> And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
> precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
> computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>
MO
Michael Ossipoff
Tue, Nov 1, 2016 5:55 PM
About FBC and IRV, Benham & Woodall:
I now feel, as an Approvalist, that FBC is a basic requirement, because
fully effective Approval voting should always be allowed.
Top-set voting should always be available.
Michael Ossipoff
On Oct 31, 2016 11:06 PM, "C.Benham" cbenham@adam.com.au wrote:
On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
Mike,
A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
criterion) and said that your
favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
So what happened to it? You even seemed ready to tolerate the non-FBC
CD methods Benham and IRV.
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
Jameson--
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn jameson.quinn@gmail.com
wrote:
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
1. FBC
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
1.
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
CWs, under different and better conditions.
1.
2. Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
tried explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
over hir."
{...some same other candidate)
1.
2. Minimal strategic burden
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it wasn't
clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
to O(N²).)
2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
mess up the center squeeze properties.
1.
2. Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
1.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
About FBC and IRV, Benham & Woodall:
I now feel, as an Approvalist, that FBC is a basic requirement, because
fully effective Approval voting should always be allowed.
Top-set voting should always be available.
Michael Ossipoff
On Oct 31, 2016 11:06 PM, "C.Benham" <cbenham@adam.com.au> wrote:
> On 10/31/2016 7:48 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
> proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> Mike,
>
> A short time ago you were in favour of CD methods (and even crafted the
> criterion) and said that your
> favourite method is ICT (aka 3-slot TTR, Top Ratings).
>
> So what happened to it? You even seemed ready to tolerate the non-FBC
> CD methods Benham and IRV.
>
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
> Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
> Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
> Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
>
> (a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
> million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
> on only two ballots?
>
> x: A
> 1: C=A
> 1: C=B
> x: B
>
> x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
>
> (b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
> interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
> that
> happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
> random?
>
> What response do you think you will get?
>
> I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
> believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
> tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
>
> Chris Benham
>
>
>
>
> Jameson--
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
>> election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
>>
>> 1. FBC
>>
>>
> Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
>> guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
>>
>> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
> Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
> honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
> now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
> Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
>
> But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
> CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
> are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
>
> Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
> CWs, under different and better conditions.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Relatively simple to explain
>>
>>
> Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
> Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
> acceptable..
>
> You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
> tried explaining them.
>
> MMPO?:
>
> "The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
> over hir."
>
> {...some same other candidate)
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Minimal strategic burden
>>
>>
> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
> most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
> about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
> most people.
>
> And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
> then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
> anyway, which candidate wins.
>
> In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
> likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
> tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
> CWs.
>
> And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it _wasn't_
> clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
> approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
> conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
> estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
> candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
> remain 1D under different and better conditions).
>
> ..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
> candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
>
> People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>
>
>
>>
>> 1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
>> might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
>> to O(N²).)
>> 2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
>> mess up the center squeeze properties.
>>
>>
> MMPO meets Weak CD.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Some arguable track record
>>
>>
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
> proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
> committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
> "focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
>
>
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
> Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
>
>
>> 1.
>>
>> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
>>
>
>
> No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
> strategic burden, as I discussed above.
>
> Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
> methods are illusory.
>
> And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
> precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
> computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>
MO
Michael Ossipoff
Wed, Nov 2, 2016 10:14 PM
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
You replied:
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(enduote)
- When I asked who is wronged, you said that the A voters are wronged,
because, rightfully, it should be an A&B tie, and the A voters should have
a 50% probability of their favorite winning.
My answer to that was & is that the A voters have indicated that they don't
consider B any better than C. They're indifferent between C and the other
candidate whom they'd like to have a 50% probability of winning. Wronged?
Sure. Significantly-wronged? No. It certainly can't be called an outrage.
2, You make it sound as if what happened in that example is entirely the
fault of the voting-system, and maybe the two A=C and B=C voters..
But it was done by the all A voters and B voters. In a method known to look
only at pairwise opposition, those voters ensured that A & B will have as
much pairwise opposition as anyone can have, because they refused to rank
eachother's candidate over C.
Refusal to co-operate with a rival can be a mistake in any method. It's
hardly surprising if it's a mistake in MMPO too.
So don't let the A voters & B voters convince, you when they whine about
that result. ...the result of their refusal to co-operate with eachother.
Think of it as the chicken-dilemma defection-blunder magnified.
Ridiculous result? Sure. ...caused by ridiculous voting.
...in an implausible example.
That being said, I admit that the bad-example shows that MMPO has a
wrong-looking-result-vulnerability.
They go with methods that have deluxe properties. What else is new.
The problem is that, of course, MMPO gets its unqualled
properties-combination by looking only at pairwise opposition.
For one thing, that means that it disregards how much positive support a
candidate has. So it was possible to write a bad-example in which someone
wins with practically no positive support...without that example's result
seriously wronging anyone.
Also, because it's pairwise opposition, a candidate with two factions
each ranking a different candidate over C, the method ignores the fact that
C has two candidates ranked over hir by a large number of voters, whereas
A & B each have only one candidate ranked over them (by just one more
voter).
MMPO doesn't count how many candidates are ranked over C, or the total
number of voters who rank C lower. Thereby we get the wrong-looking result
where C has both of the other candidates ranked over hir by a lot of
people, but still beats A & B, each of which have just one candidate ranked
over hir--by one more voter..
These are obvious inevitable results of looking only at pairwise opposition.
But, even with those wrong-result vulnerabilities, the resulting
bad-example doesn't significantly wrong anyone.
Even though no serious wrong is done by those wrong-looking results, what
can be done to avoid them?
- Rank some in-between compromise candidates over the worst one, ok? Is
that too much to ask?
In that way, you rank eachother's candidate over the worst one, giving hir
more people ranking those candidates over hir, to give hir more pairwise
opposition than the candidates you like better.
Set your rivalry aside and do that.
- Don't allow write-ins. Or, if you do allow write-ins, make sure that you
rank compromises, not just your favorite, so that you're all voting
eachother over whatever unknown write-in comes along, so that hir
individual pairwise oppositions won't be less than those of the candidates
you like more..
All the rank methods have strategy problems, to go with the deluxe
properties that they bring. The more deluxe properties, the more kinds of
wrong-looking results are possible. You get what you pay for.
So you deal with those special vulnerabilities, as the price of the deluxe
properties.
Michael Ossipoff
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
Jameson--
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
1. FBC
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
1.
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
CWs, under different and better conditions.
1.
2. Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
tried explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
over hir."
{...some same other candidate)
1.
2. Minimal strategic burden
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it wasn't
clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
to O(N²).)
2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
mess up the center squeeze properties.
1.
2. Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
proposal choices:
-
Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
-
Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
"focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
1.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
Chris--
I'd said:
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
> Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
You replied:
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval, Score,
Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(enduote)
1. When I asked who is wronged, you said that the A voters are wronged,
because, rightfully, it should be an A&B tie, and the A voters should have
a 50% probability of their favorite winning.
My answer to that was & is that the A voters have indicated that they don't
consider B any better than C. They're indifferent between C and the other
candidate whom they'd like to have a 50% probability of winning. Wronged?
Sure. Significantly-wronged? No. It certainly can't be called an outrage.
2, You make it sound as if what happened in that example is entirely the
fault of the voting-system, and maybe the two A=C and B=C voters..
But it was done by the all A voters and B voters. In a method known to look
only at pairwise opposition, those voters ensured that A & B will have as
much pairwise opposition as anyone can have, because they refused to rank
eachother's candidate over C.
Refusal to co-operate with a rival can be a mistake in any method. It's
hardly surprising if it's a mistake in MMPO too.
So don't let the A voters & B voters convince, you when they whine about
that result. ...the result of their refusal to co-operate with eachother.
Think of it as the chicken-dilemma defection-blunder magnified.
Ridiculous result? Sure. ...caused by ridiculous voting.
...in an implausible example.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That being said, I admit that the bad-example shows that MMPO has a
wrong-looking-result-vulnerability.
They go with methods that have deluxe properties. What else is new.
The problem is that, of course, MMPO gets its unqualled
properties-combination by looking only at pairwise opposition.
For one thing, that means that it disregards how much positive support a
candidate has. So it was possible to write a bad-example in which someone
wins with practically no positive support...without that example's result
seriously wronging anyone.
Also, because it's _pairwise_ opposition, a candidate with two factions
each ranking a different candidate over C, the method ignores the fact that
C has _two_ candidates ranked over hir by a large number of voters, whereas
A & B each have only one candidate ranked over them (by just one more
voter).
MMPO doesn't count how many candidates are ranked over C, or the total
number of voters who rank C lower. Thereby we get the wrong-looking result
where C has both of the other candidates ranked over hir by a lot of
people, but still beats A & B, each of which have just one candidate ranked
over hir--by one more voter..
These are obvious inevitable results of looking only at pairwise opposition.
But, even with those wrong-result vulnerabilities, the resulting
bad-example doesn't significantly wrong anyone.
Even though no serious wrong is done by those wrong-looking results, what
can be done to avoid them?
* Rank some in-between compromise candidates over the worst one, ok? Is
that too much to ask?
In that way, you rank eachother's candidate over the worst one, giving hir
more people ranking those candidates over hir, to give hir more pairwise
opposition than the candidates you like better.
Set your rivalry aside and do that.
* Don't allow write-ins. Or, if you do allow write-ins, make sure that you
rank compromises, not just your favorite, so that you're all voting
eachother over whatever unknown write-in comes along, so that hir
individual pairwise oppositions won't be less than those of the candidates
you like more..
All the rank methods have strategy problems, to go with the deluxe
properties that they bring. The more deluxe properties, the more kinds of
wrong-looking results are possible. You get what you pay for.
So you deal with those special vulnerabilities, as the price of the deluxe
properties.
Michael Ossipoff
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance of
that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't even
believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
Jameson--
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political single-winner
>> election system, more or less in descending order of importance:
>>
>> 1. FBC
>>
>>
> Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened Condorcet
>> guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
>>
>> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates votiing.
> Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most voters, and, with
> honest elections & honest, open media, it will be clear who's the CWs. But
> now, Approval's best strategy doesn't require that. Brams pointed out that
> Approval's results can be better than the CWs.
>
> But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious who's the
> CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like strategy (such as MMPO),
> are the methods that make it easiest to protect the CWs.
>
> Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there will be a
> CWs, under different and better conditions.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Relatively simple to explain
>>
>>
> Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in which only
> Approval & Score were accepted as being plain & un-elaborate enough to be
> acceptable..
>
> You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain. I've
> tried explaining them.
>
> MMPO?:
>
> "The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone else
> over hir."
>
> {...some same other candidate)
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Minimal strategic burden
>>
>>
> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden, but, for
> most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's nothing difficult
> about it: Approve (only) the progressive candidates. That's optimal for
> most people.
>
> And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a bottom-set,
> then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it doesn't matter terribly
> anyway, which candidate wins.
>
> In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media, it will
> likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the absence of
> tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just approve down to the
> CWs.
>
> And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it _wasn't_
> clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would just be a matter of
> approving down to the expected winning merit-level. Maybe, under those
> conditions, that would be the candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the
> estimated mean merit of what voters want (which can be estimated by the
> candidates' merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
> remain 1D under different and better conditions).
>
> ..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as winnable
> candidates, it won't make as much difference which one wins anyway.
>
> People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>
>
>
>>
>> 1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice, though I
>> might accept some special pleading for the use of prior polling to reduce
>> to O(N²).)
>> 2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in practice
>> mess up the center squeeze properties.
>>
>>
> MMPO meets Weak CD.
>
>
>>
>> 1.
>> 2. Some arguable track record
>>
>>
> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different method
> proposal choices:
>
> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>
> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>
> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>
> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>
>
> I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to initiative-proposal
> committees, and that the public should be polled, or consulted in
> "focus-groups", regarding which of those 3 methods they'd accept
>
>
> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval, Score or
> Bucklin with it.
>
> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
>
>
>> 1.
>>
>> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4 and 5.
>>
>
>
> No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a high
> strategic burden, as I discussed above.
>
> Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more complicated
> methods are illusory.
>
> And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity. Approval is
> precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and least
> computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>
C
C.Benham
Thu, Nov 3, 2016 4:57 AM
On 11/3/2016 8:44 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(enduote)
- When I asked who is wronged, you said that the A voters are
wronged, because, rightfully, it should be an A&B tie, and the A
voters should have a 50% probability of their favorite winning.
All the voters except 2 are seriously "wronged" because their exclusive
favourite (A or B) should be elected with 50% probability (instead of 0%),
(And after randomly choosing one of A and B, only one of the two who
voted C equal-top will not have one of their equal-favourites elected.)
Wronged? Sure. Significantly-wronged? No. It certainly can't be called
an outrage.
That's right. Having your favourite top-voted on half of the millions of
ballots lose to a candidate that is voted above bottom on only two ballots
certainly can't be called an outrage.
Ridiculous result? Sure. ...caused by ridiculous voting.
...in an implausible example.
The voting isn't ridiculous. The idea that the A and B voters should
have bothered to "cooperate" against such a minor candidate is ridiculous.
The example's "implausibility" is forgiven by its extreme simplicity. I
think of a voting method algorithm as a quasi-intelligent device. It is more
understandable and maybe forgiveable if the device is "confused" by a
relatively complicated example (say with lots of candidates in the Smith set
and/or cycles within cycles), but anything that gets it so wrong in such
a simple example is unforgivably "stupid" and should be binned.
That being said, I admit that the bad-example shows that MMPO has a
wrong-looking-result-vulnerability.
They go with methods that have deluxe properties.
I don't think I agree with that premise, or that MMPO has "deluxe
properties" (presumably you mean 'deluxe strategy properties').
I don't like random-fill incentive and consider Later-no-Harm to be a
mixed blessing, and I'm not very impressed by "Winning Votes
strategy".
I like that it meets FBC.
Chris Benham
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
Score or Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
You replied:
Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval,
Score, Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or
Benham:
(a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
on only two ballots?
x: A
1: C=A
1: C=B
x: B
x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
(enduote)
- When I asked who is wronged, you said that the A voters are
wronged, because, rightfully, it should be an A&B tie, and the A
voters should have a 50% probability of their favorite winning.
My answer to that was & is that the A voters have indicated that they
don't consider B any better than C. They're indifferent between C and
the other candidate whom they'd like to have a 50% probability of
winning. Wronged? Sure. Significantly-wronged? No. It certainly can't
be called an outrage.
2, You make it sound as if what happened in that example is entirely
the fault of the voting-system, and maybe the two A=C and B=C voters..
But it was done by the all A voters and B voters. In a method known to
look only at pairwise opposition, those voters ensured that A & B will
have as much pairwise opposition as anyone can have, because they
refused to rank eachother's candidate over C.
Refusal to co-operate with a rival can be a mistake in any method.
It's hardly surprising if it's a mistake in MMPO too.
So don't let the A voters & B voters convince, you when they whine
about that result. ...the result of their refusal to co-operate with
eachother.
Think of it as the chicken-dilemma defection-blunder magnified.
Ridiculous result? Sure. ...caused by ridiculous voting.
...in an implausible example.
That being said, I admit that the bad-example shows that MMPO has a
wrong-looking-result-vulnerability.
They go with methods that have deluxe properties. What else is new.
The problem is that, of course, MMPO gets its unqualled
properties-combination by looking only at pairwise opposition.
For one thing, that means that it disregards how much positive support
a candidate has. So it was possible to write a bad-example in which
someone wins with practically no positive support...without that
example's result seriously wronging anyone.
Also, because it's pairwise opposition, a candidate with two
factions each ranking a different candidate over C, the method ignores
the fact that C has two candidates ranked over hir by a large number
of voters, whereas A & B each have only one candidate ranked over them
(by just one more voter).
MMPO doesn't count how many candidates are ranked over C, or the total
number of voters who rank C lower. Thereby we get the wrong-looking
result where C has both of the other candidates ranked over hir by a
lot of people, but still beats A & B, each of which have just one
candidate ranked over hir--by one more voter..
These are obvious inevitable results of looking only at pairwise
opposition.
But, even with those wrong-result vulnerabilities, the resulting
bad-example doesn't significantly wrong anyone.
Even though no serious wrong is done by those wrong-looking results,
what can be done to avoid them?
- Rank some in-between compromise candidates over the worst one, ok?
Is that too much to ask?
In that way, you rank eachother's candidate over the worst one, giving
hir more people ranking those candidates over hir, to give hir more
pairwise opposition than the candidates you like better.
Set your rivalry aside and do that.
- Don't allow write-ins. Or, if you do allow write-ins, make sure
that you rank compromises, not just your favorite, so that you're all
voting eachother over whatever unknown write-in comes along, so that
hir individual pairwise oppositions won't be less than those of the
candidates you like more..
All the rank methods have strategy problems, to go with the deluxe
properties that they bring. The more deluxe properties, the more kinds
of wrong-looking results are possible. You get what you pay for.
So you deal with those special vulnerabilities, as the price of the
deluxe properties.
Michael Ossipoff
(b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance
of that
happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
random?
What response do you think you will get?
I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't
even believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
Chris Benham
Jameson--
On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn
<jameson.quinn@gmail.com <mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com>> wrote:
....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political
single-winner election system, more or less in descending
order of importance:
1. FBC
Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
1.
2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened
Condorcet guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates
votiing. Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most
voters, and, with honest elections & honest, open media, it will
be clear who's the CWs. But now, Approval's best strategy doesn't
require that. Brams pointed out that Approval's results can be
better than the CWs.
But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious
who's the CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like
strategy (such as MMPO), are the methods that make it easiest to
protect the CWs.
Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there
will be a CWs, under different and better conditions.
1.
2. Relatively simple to explain
Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in
which only Approval & Score were accepted as being plain &
un-elaborate enough to be acceptable..
You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain.
I've tried explaining them.
MMPO?:
"The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone
else over hir."
{...some same other candidate)
1.
2. Minimal strategic burden
We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden,
but, for most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's
nothing difficult about it: Approve (only) the progressive
candidates. That's optimal for most people.
And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a
bottom-set, then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it
doesn't matter terribly anyway, which candidate wins.
In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media,
it will likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the
absence of tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just
approve down to the CWs.
And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it
_wasn't_ clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would
just be a matter of approving down to the expected winning
merit-level. Maybe, under those conditions, that would be the
candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the estimated mean merit of
what voters want (which can be estimated by the candidates'
merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
remain 1D under different and better conditions).
..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as
winnable candidates, it won't make as much difference which one
wins anyway.
People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice,
though I might accept some special pleading for the use
of prior polling to reduce to O(N²).)
2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in
practice mess up the center squeeze properties.
MMPO meets Weak CD.
1.
2. Some arguable track record
Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different
method proposal choices:
1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to
initiative-proposal committees, and that the public should be
polled, or consulted in "focus-groups", regarding which of those
3 methods they'd accept
For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
Score or Bucklin with it.
I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
1.
Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4
and 5.
No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a
high strategic burden, as I discussed above.
Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more
complicated methods are illusory.
And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity.
Approval is precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and
least computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
Michael Ossipoff
----
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On 11/3/2016 8:44 AM, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
> x: A
> 1: C=A
> 1: C=B
> x: B
>
> x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
>
> (enduote)
>
> 1. When I asked who is wronged, you said that the A voters are
> wronged, because, rightfully, it should be an A&B tie, and the A
> voters should have a 50% probability of their favorite winning.
All the voters except 2 are seriously "wronged" because their exclusive
favourite (A or B) should be elected with 50% probability (instead of 0%),
(And after randomly choosing one of A and B, only one of the two who
voted C equal-top will not have one of their equal-favourites elected.)
> Wronged? Sure. Significantly-wronged? No. It certainly can't be called
> an outrage.
That's right. Having your favourite top-voted on half of the millions of
ballots lose to a candidate that is voted above bottom on only two ballots
certainly can't be called an outrage.
> Ridiculous result? Sure. ...caused by ridiculous voting.
>
> ...in an implausible example.
The voting isn't ridiculous. The idea that the A and B voters should
have bothered to "cooperate" against such a minor candidate is ridiculous.
The example's "implausibility" is forgiven by its extreme simplicity. I
think of a voting method algorithm as a quasi-intelligent device. It is more
understandable and maybe forgiveable if the device is "confused" by a
relatively complicated example (say with lots of candidates in the Smith set
and/or cycles within cycles), but anything that gets it so wrong in such
a simple example is unforgivably "stupid" and should be binned.
> That being said, I admit that the bad-example shows that MMPO has a
> wrong-looking-result-vulnerability.
>
> They go with methods that have deluxe properties.
I don't think I agree with that premise, or that MMPO has "deluxe
properties" (presumably you mean 'deluxe strategy properties').
I don't like random-fill incentive and consider Later-no-Harm to be a
mixed blessing, and I'm not very impressed by "Winning Votes
strategy".
I like that it meets FBC.
Chris Benham
>
> Chris--
>
> I'd said:
>
>>
>> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
>> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
>> Score or Bucklin with it.
>>
>> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>
>
> You replied:
>
> Say you ask people who are used to and/or like any of Approval,
> Score, Bucklin, or plurality (aka FPP) or Top-Two Runoff or IRV or
> Benham:
>
> (a) Would you accept a method that in a 3-candidate election with 20
> million voters can elect a candidate that is voted above equal-bottom
> on only two ballots?
>
> x: A
> 1: C=A
> 1: C=B
> x: B
>
> x = any number greater than 1. MMPO elects C.
>
> (enduote)
>
> 1. When I asked who is wronged, you said that the A voters are
> wronged, because, rightfully, it should be an A&B tie, and the A
> voters should have a 50% probability of their favorite winning.
>
> My answer to that was & is that the A voters have indicated that they
> don't consider B any better than C. They're indifferent between C and
> the other candidate whom they'd like to have a 50% probability of
> winning. Wronged? Sure. Significantly-wronged? No. It certainly can't
> be called an outrage.
>
> 2, You make it sound as if what happened in that example is entirely
> the fault of the voting-system, and maybe the two A=C and B=C voters..
>
> But it was done by the all A voters and B voters. In a method known to
> look only at pairwise opposition, those voters ensured that A & B will
> have as much pairwise opposition as anyone can have, because they
> refused to rank eachother's candidate over C.
>
> Refusal to co-operate with a rival can be a mistake in any method.
> It's hardly surprising if it's a mistake in MMPO too.
>
> So don't let the A voters & B voters convince, you when they whine
> about that result. ...the result of their refusal to co-operate with
> eachother.
>
> Think of it as the chicken-dilemma defection-blunder magnified.
>
> Ridiculous result? Sure. ...caused by ridiculous voting.
>
> ...in an implausible example.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> That being said, I admit that the bad-example shows that MMPO has a
> wrong-looking-result-vulnerability.
>
> They go with methods that have deluxe properties. What else is new.
>
> The problem is that, of course, MMPO gets its unqualled
> properties-combination by looking only at pairwise opposition.
>
> For one thing, that means that it disregards how much positive support
> a candidate has. So it was possible to write a bad-example in which
> someone wins with practically no positive support...without that
> example's result seriously wronging anyone.
>
> Also, because it's _pairwise_ opposition, a candidate with two
> factions each ranking a different candidate over C, the method ignores
> the fact that C has _two_ candidates ranked over hir by a large number
> of voters, whereas A & B each have only one candidate ranked over them
> (by just one more voter).
>
> MMPO doesn't count how many candidates are ranked over C, or the total
> number of voters who rank C lower. Thereby we get the wrong-looking
> result where C has both of the other candidates ranked over hir by a
> lot of people, but still beats A & B, each of which have just one
> candidate ranked over hir--by one more voter..
>
> These are obvious inevitable results of looking only at pairwise
> opposition.
>
> But, even with those wrong-result vulnerabilities, the resulting
> bad-example doesn't significantly wrong anyone.
>
> Even though no serious wrong is done by those wrong-looking results,
> what can be done to avoid them?
>
> * Rank some in-between compromise candidates over the worst one, ok?
> Is that too much to ask?
>
> In that way, you rank eachother's candidate over the worst one, giving
> hir more people ranking those candidates over hir, to give hir more
> pairwise opposition than the candidates you like better.
>
> Set your rivalry aside and do that.
>
> * Don't allow write-ins. Or, if you do allow write-ins, make sure
> that you rank compromises, not just your favorite, so that you're all
> voting eachother over whatever unknown write-in comes along, so that
> hir individual pairwise oppositions won't be less than those of the
> candidates you like more..
>
> All the rank methods have strategy problems, to go with the deluxe
> properties that they bring. The more deluxe properties, the more kinds
> of wrong-looking results are possible. You get what you pay for.
>
> So you deal with those special vulnerabilities, as the price of the
> deluxe properties.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
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>
> (b) Do you think it is fair and sensible that a voter who is only
> interested in getting their favourite elected can increase the chance
> of that
> happening by fully ranking (below top) all the other candidates at
> random?
>
>
>
> What response do you think you will get?
>
> I don't live in the US, but I would think that most people wouldn't
> even believe that question (a) is serious, and that anyone who tries to
> tell them that that example only "looks bad" would blow their credibility.
>
> Chris Benham
>
>
>
>
>> Jameson--
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 11:16 AM, Jameson Quinn
>> <jameson.quinn@gmail.com <mailto:jameson.quinn@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> ....Here's my "ideal characteristics" for a political
>> single-winner election system, more or less in descending
>> order of importance:
>>
>> 1. FBC
>>
>>
>> Yes, I consider FBC to be #!.
>>
>> 1.
>>
>>
>> 2. Handles center squeeze (ie, some form of weakened
>> Condorcet guarantee that's compatible with FBC)
>>
>> But maybe the goal of electing the CWs unnecessarily complicates
>> votiing. Maybe someday, there won't be a bottom set, for most
>> voters, and, with honest elections & honest, open media, it will
>> be clear who's the CWs. But now, Approval's best strategy doesn't
>> require that. Brams pointed out that Approval's results can be
>> better than the CWs.
>>
>> But, when it's desirable to elect the CWs, and it isn't obvious
>> who's the CWs, then the wv methods, and methods with wv-like
>> strategy (such as MMPO), are the methods that make it easiest to
>> protect the CWs.
>>
>> Also, it should be noted that you can't be sure how often there
>> will be a CWs, under different and better conditions.
>>
>> 1.
>>
>>
>> 2. Relatively simple to explain
>>
>>
>> Approval & Score are easy to explain. I've had conversations in
>> which only Approval & Score were accepted as being plain &
>> un-elaborate enough to be acceptable..
>>
>> You know that SARA & XA are complicated and not easy to explain.
>> I've tried explaining them.
>>
>> MMPO?:
>>
>> "The winner is the candidate who has fewest people voting someone
>> else over hir."
>>
>> {...some same other candidate)
>>
>> 1.
>>
>>
>> 2. Minimal strategic burden
>>
>>
>> We often hear it said that Approval has a large strategic burden,
>> but, for most people, with our current candidate-lineup, there's
>> nothing difficult about it: Approve (only) the progressive
>> candidates. That's optimal for most people.
>>
>> And if the time comes when, for most people, there isn't a
>> bottom-set, then that will be a happy circumstance, in which it
>> doesn't matter terribly anyway, which candidate wins.
>>
>> In such conditions, with honest elections and honest, open media,
>> it will likely be pretty obvious who's the CWs, and, in the
>> absence of tep-set/bottom-set, the best strategy will be to just
>> approve down to the CWs.
>>
>> And, if there were no bottom-set, and if it happened that it
>> _wasn't_ clear who the CWs was, and it was 0-info, then it would
>> just be a matter of approving down to the expected winning
>> merit-level. Maybe, under those conditions, that would be the
>> candidate-mean. Or maybe (as now) the estimated mean merit of
>> what voters want (which can be estimated by the candidates'
>> merit-midrange, if the election is 1D. ....but it might not
>> remain 1D under different and better conditions).
>>
>> ..but I repeat that, with only your former top-set remaining as
>> winnable candidates, it won't make as much difference which one
>> wins anyway.
>>
>> People often consider Approval voting more difficult than it is.
>>
>>
>> 1. Summable (ideally O(N), no worse than O(N²) in practice,
>> though I might accept some special pleading for the use
>> of prior polling to reduce to O(N²).)
>> 2. Handles CD, or at least, CD offensive strategies don't in
>> practice mess up the center squeeze properties.
>>
>>
>> MMPO meets Weak CD.
>>
>> 1.
>>
>>
>> 2. Some arguable track record
>>
>>
>> Of course at EM we discuss two completely separate and different
>> method proposal choices:
>>
>> 1. Proposals to electorates who have only had Plurality.
>>
>> 2. Later proposals to replace one better voting system with another.
>>
>> If we're talking about #1, then there are only a few to choose from:
>>
>> Approval, Score, and Bucklin.
>>
>>
>> I suggest that all 3 of those should be offered to
>> initiative-proposal committees, and that the public should be
>> polled, or consulted in "focus-groups", regarding which of those
>> 3 methods they'd accept
>>
>>
>> For #2, it really takes something with a lot of valuable &
>> otherwise-unobtainable properties, to justify replacing Approval,
>> Score or Bucklin with it.
>>
>> I suggest that only Plain MMPO qualifies.
>>
>>
>>
>> 1.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Approval does well on 1,3,4, and 6, is OK on 2, and bad on 4
>> and 5.
>>
>>
>>
>> No. Contrary to what we so often hear, Approval doesn't have a
>> high strategic burden, as I discussed above.
>>
>> Other than MMPO's CD, improvements over Approval by more
>> complicated methods are illusory.
>>
>> And your standard #5 was summability and count-complexity.
>> Approval is precinct-summable, and its count is the easiest and
>> least computation-intensive, among voting-systems.
>>
>> Michael Ossipoff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for
> list info
>
>
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> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com>
> Version: 2016.0.7859 / Virus Database: 4664/13333 - Release Date: 11/02/16
>
