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i presume there is their favorite choice that they score 100 and there is their hated choice that they score 0.
so how much should the Brit voter score their second choice?� and their third choice?

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: [EM] Comprehensive, simplest, and most informative Indicative Voting

From: "William WAUGH" dgfdwbvm23@snkmail.com

Date: Sun, March 31, 2019 6:57 pm

To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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She should score them according to the value she places on each outcome.

On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 12:09 AM robert bristow-johnson
rbj-at-audioimagination.com |electorama| qdtc3yujo374wut@sneakemail.com
wrote:

That's including first and last choice, I assume. It's not going to be as informative if everybody automatically uses 100 and 0.
Kevin

Le lundi 1 avril 2019 à 00:58:09 UTC−5, William WAUGH <dgfdwbvm23@snkmail.com> a écrit :  

She should score them according to the value she places on each outcome.
On Mon, Apr 1, 2019 at 12:09 AM robert bristow-johnson rbj-at-audioimagination.com |electorama| qdtc3yujo374wut@sneakemail.com wrote:

i presume there is their favorite choice that they score 100 and there is their hated choice that they score 0.

so how much should the Brit voter score their second choice?  and their third choice?

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [EM] Comprehensive, simplest, and most informative Indicative Voting
From: "William WAUGH" dgfdwbvm23@snkmail.com
Date: Sun, March 31, 2019 6:57 pm
To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com

--

r b-j                         rbj@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
 

Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info

I don't write much on election methods of late, because I came to see
voting methods as a problem of interest, all right, but not actually the
core problem, and I saw little interest in the voting systems community
in the fundamental, underlying structural issues that then lead to
endless regress on voting systems I will here, lay that out.

First of all, parliamentary procedure evolved to consider one question,
and only one question, at a time, a question that can be answered Yes or
No, and for an option to win, rules varied, but the best rules (my
opinion) required a true majority of an assembly. Moving away from an
absolute majority was a move down a slippery slope that might be
justified in this or that condition, and the development of fascism is
always "reasonable." After all, trains run on time, etc. Under Robert's
Rules, truly important issues require a two-thirds majority, or
sometimes an absolute majority of all eligible voters.

What was called the "nuclear option" in the Senate was always possible,
but avoided because it was important to decide, first, by
supermajority that the body was ready to vote on the main issue.
Increasingly, over time, that was chipped way, going to 60% from
two-thirds for cloture. The stated reason is always efficiency, as with
every fascist move. Can't have a vocal minority gumming up the works,
can we? Then the nuclear option was based on the rule that an absolute
majority can do anything with an organization. The right of the minority
against an absolute majority is to leave, and, of course, if fascism is
prevalent, that is prohibited.

(I have been using "fascism" lately quite as Mussolini used it, where
the will of the collective, as represented by the "leader(s)" is to be
enforced, and individual freedom (he called it "individualism")  is to
be suppressed, for collective welfare. This has always been a strain in
human organization, in dialectic with freedom. The future is in
synthesis, where it is understood that diversity is crucial to human
survivability and collective wisdom, so restrictions on freedom of
thought and expression are to be minimized to what is immediately and
emergently necessary. So can the FDA ban books and burn them if they
contain "quackery"? The fascist answer is, "Of course, and it must!" Yet
there are other possibilities, such as creating and requiring informed
consent, warning and notice, as has been done with cigarettes and
cigarette advertising. But in a fascist environment, which modern social
media readily become (even though it paradoxically seems to be maximally
free), synthetic compromises are drowned in the noise. Each side of a
debate is demonized by the other.)

So, for elections, as a way to broaden choice, it was allowed to have
more than one option that could receive votes, and the rule was vote for
one. But there was another rule, often forgotten, that to win an
election, the winning candidate was required to receive a majority of
the votes, not merely a plurality. If not, then the election was to be
repeated. The whole thing, including nominations. Further, every marked
ballot (if it was marked with any mark) was considered to be a vote,
counted in the basis for majority. Restricted runoffs were instituted to
attempt to find that majority, but they have well-known flaws, most
notably center squeeze. This could all be fixed, but it does not
actually address a core issue, the submission of questions to an
electorate that is largely ignorant, on the one hand, or easily
manipulated by media and mob mentality. (Classic arguments against
democracy.)

The old majority-required-to-prevail rule still applies in assemblies
that meet face-to-face, because it can be quickly done. It could also be
quickly done in modern times with internet voting. But there is a killer
solution that also addresses the more fundamental problem of an ignorant
electorate, and "ignorant" here is not a moral failure. Presenting
complex issues to an electorate that does not have time to truly
investigate and consider them is a formula for failure, though it can
work well enough that we have not immediately recognized and addressed
the problem. The killer solution is to create a truly representative
assembly, chosen as fully trusted (or as fully as possible) to make all
those decisions, including officer elections. Asset Voting, in a word or
two.

As democracy matures, it will come to value consensus as distinct from
the win-lose thinking of majority rule. But majority rule is necessary
because the alternative is minority rule, not consensus. That is, the
majority has the right of decision, but will, to foster the strength of
the organization, protect the minority. I have seen organizations where
the majority goes out of its way to ensure that the minority is fully
heard, and minority reports are issued if the minority desires it. Such
organizations have been phenomenally successful.

And it can all fall apart of they drop the protections of the minority
in the name of efficiency. Fascism.

What may be appropriate for the Brexit issue would be polling,
especially given that there was a vote. The ideal polling method is
obviously Score. Problems with Score are caused by its use for decisions.

The actual decision would be made by the best representative body, which
can deliberate and debate and amend and all that. If that body is not
truly representative *that's the problem," and it is going to be a worse
problem if Britain exits the EU, because Parliament will be less
restrained. So, from this thinking, the public can be polled, as an
advisory poll, used to inform Parliament, which, representing the
people, will decide, not being bound by the advice, but informed by it.
Sanely, Parliament will respect the opinions of the people, but those
change and can be quite labile. If it decides to cancel Brexit or modify
it, it will address the concerns, it will seek to unify British society.

Or it will seek personal, individual political advantage and gain, and
if enough members do that, Britain sails off to Hell in a handbasket.

Now, if Score is to be used, what form?

There are those who want to see min/max scoring either required or used.
This is all designed to create definitive decisions more efficiently.
Reality is that voters have views of different strength, and the most
informed voters might rationally have stronger opinions. Perhaps. Not
always!

Human choice is not as finely graded as to be clearly expressable on a
scale of 0-100 or 0-99. I would suggest using 0-9, anything more
complicates the ballot without benefit, other than attempting to force
choice, and forced choice when the voter has no strong preference
creates noise in the system. I used to suggest having a + checkbox that
would allow a voter to express a distinction within a score, but this is
really a fish bicycle in a poll. I can think of many refinements, such
as two parts to the question. First part: how important is this to you?
Second part, within the choices, mark favorite, rejected, or in between.

Asking voters to rank candidates where there is no significant
preference between them is, again, asking them to create noise. In the
criticism of Score by that Borda advocate, he posited the scenario where
a majority of voters preferred A, giving A a 10 (say), but also gave B a
9, but enough voters gave B a 10 and B a 0, to cause B to win, and this
was somehow considered offensive. The idea is that the B voters were
"insincere" and merely wanted B to win, so they downvoted A. However,
this shows how fascist concepts ("first choice of a majority must win")
can easily slip in. The choice of B, given the votes, will satisfy every
voter, it is a true consensus choice (and this is especially visible if
there was another candidate, C, truly disliked by a majority.)

But all those considerations fall away if the poll does not decide, but
merely informs the actual decision-makers, who would make that decision
by standard deliberative process: a two-thirds vote to decide when the
Yes/No question is ready for a vote, and then a vote on the question,
and if a majority does not vote Yes, the question fails and no decision
is (yet) made.

This respects the rights of the minority. A mature assembly, seeking
genuine public unity, may go even further than that, being willing to be
patient with the "idiots on the other side."

(Another way to state this under standard rules is "first choice of a
two-thirds majority wins." They can amend the question to be that choice
(that takes mere majority), they can then vote Previous Question, and
then only a majority is required. So the loss of the supermajority
requirement for cloture in the U.S. Senate is a major blow to
deliberative democracy, not a mere detail. The political environment has
become shamelessly fascist.)

(It is an error to equate fascism with left/right or racism or other
specific traits of specific fascist regimes. In three different versions
of Mussolini's paper on fascism, he equated fascism in the twentieth
century with the rise of therigh**t, in another version, he omitted
the statement, and in another official translation he equated it with
the rise of the left. The common factor in all three versions was "the
century of the collective." Hence the symbol of fascism, the strength
created by binding sticks -- individuals -- into a unity, the binding
being the power of leaders and collective will.)

On 4/1/2019 7:34 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:

I agree. There is no reason to require or even suggest all to use the
full scale. Using less than full scale then can allow absolute
preference strength to be expressed. Indeed, the votes can then be
analyzed in different ways. If the poll is used for "information" as
distinct from decision, it can be analyzed six ways till Sunday.
Individual voting patterns matter! So one can sum the votes (basic,
standard score), average the votes (excluding abstentions), etc. I also
used to suggest renormalization, that all ballots would be normalized to
use the full range.

One could even include a "none of the above" option, I want something
else. Artificially restricting options to a small list is, again,
fascist, but there is a limit to how far one can practically go to
accommodate diversity.

The ballot should be designed for ease of understanding and use. I would
suggest that every option on the ballot have a faction supporting it,
which would, within itself, a voluntary association of members of
Parliament, establish information and arguments to be placed in a voter
information pamphlet.

It would be possible to create this poll as a shining example of how a
democracy can create process which unifies the public and the
government, rather than divides and separates, without oppressing
minority opinion.

No more original content below.

Since the brexit debate is very competitive, we might use rankings instead of ratings (or alternatively derive rankings from the ratings). A good approach would be to generate a set of proposals at the same level, e.g. very short complete proposals that would cover both the withdrawal agreement and the final agreement. MPs would rank those proposals, and the resulting pairwise comparison table would be published. That would be sufficient to see which proposals might be good widely supported compromises.

�
It seems to me that you are ignoring the inherent pressure to vote tactically.� If the voter scores their second choice too high (any higher than zero), they will be helping to defeat their first choice with their second choice.� If they score their second choice too low
(any lower than 99), they are helping their least favorite candidate possibly defeat their contingency choice.
only with Ranked-Choice Voting (but heaven forbid it be Instant Runoff Voting) is the voter not faced with this tactical decision the moment they enter the voting
booth.
�

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------

Subject: Re: [EM] Comprehensive, simplest, and most informative Indicative Voting

From: "William WAUGH" dgfdwbvm23@snkmail.com

Date: Sun, March 31, 2019 10:57 pm

To: election-methods@lists.electorama.com

From: "William WAUGH" dgfdwbvm23@snkmail.com

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



"Imagination is more important than knowledge."