---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
Date: Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 12:52
Subject: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 236, Issue 18
To: robert bristow-johnson rbj@audioimagination.com

Who knows. I hope Progressives don’t. In public political elections with
Score, all-or-nothing rating is optimal, & I’d advise Progressives to rate
all-or-nothing.

The legitimate use for Score’s partial ratings would be only for when it’s
genuinely uncertain whether or not a candidate should get an approval.

That’s Score’s luxury-convenience.

But I don’t want it. In Approval, you can give a probabilistic partial
approval when it’s uncertain whether a candidate rates approval:

Flip a coin, to give hir 50% probability of approval. Or draw one of 3
numbers from a bag , for a 1/3 approval-probability.

Or number 10 paper squares of paper from 0 to 9, & twice draw one from the
bag (with replacement), to write a 2-digit number from 0 to 99.  …in order
to approve the candidate with any desired probability from 1% to 99%.

But don’t complicate & elaborate the method, don’t lose Approval’s absolute
minimalness & unique complete unarbitrariness, because you don’t want to do
something for yourself.

Don’t lose Approval’s uniquely easy proposal, implementation,
administration & security-auditing because you want Score to do partial
rating for you.

At EM, Robert recently made the same comment that he made here. I answered
it there.  …a long & thorough answer.

In the current poll, everyone participating, including me, is rating
sincerely in the Score ballotings because there’s no reason not to. Nothing
is at stake.

We have a rank-balloting, to be counted by RP(wv), to, strategy-free, show
the CW.

On Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 22:07 robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:

For me, personally, I'd probably minmax with range voting. But I don't
think score is any more complicated than approval voting, and Warren D.
Smith argues (IMO convincingly) that Score is more likely to stick in the
long run because it reduces the number of voters who bullet vote, which deals
with one common concern, and because it's more popular with third parties
because of the nursery effect. (STAR is even better for this, since it
makes bullet voting less attractive strategically and appeals to people who
like IRV'S runoff.)

On Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 12:54 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:

I’ve told my arguments for Approval as best proposal. Different
reform-advocates prefer different proposals.

I claim that any proposal to a city-council, state legislature, etc. should
offer several methods.

Approval because of its many unique advantages that I’ve stated:

RP(wv) & MinMax(wv), in case rank-balloting is insisted-on.

Score if you believe that it’s better or more winnable.

My proposal would only include Approval & those 2 wv methods.

…& likewise, if initiative is necessary, that variety of methods should be
offered to focus-groups, to guide the choice of method for the initiative.

Approval’s unique advantages:

1. Absolute minimalness.

2. Consequent unique unarbitrariness.

3. Uniquely brief definition & easy description, proposal, enactability,
   implementation, administration & security-audit.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of Approval’s easy implementation.

Unlike Score or any other proposal, Approval can y implementated with no
new balloting equipment & not even any modification of software for
balloting & count.

It’s easy to underestimate the importance of simple count & security-audit.

Score isn’t as simple. It needs a whole new kind of balloting,
very-questionably feasible without new balloting equipment.

It undeniably requires special new count-software.

Don’t underestimate count-fraud. It may well be what prevents any method
from working. How good the method is, is irrelevant when count-fraud is
successfully used.

With the above-listed problems for Score & ranked methods, the matter of
voters’ qualification to use Approval well is the least of our concerns.

“Many’s the slip twixt the cup & the lip.”

On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 16:34 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

Reply continued:

Anyone who votes other than all-or-nothing in a public political election
is using poor strategy.

Anyone who gives any support to an evil (even if lesser) is being a sucker.

As for Score’s partial-ratings, useful only when it’s genuinely uncertain
whether a candidate qualifies for approval: How hard is it to flip a coin,
to probabilistically give someone half an approval?

… or draw numbers from a bag, to approve someone with any probability you
want.

You want Score to do that for you, so that you won’t have to do it for
yourself?

Don’t complicate the method because you don’t want to do something for
yourself.

On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 16:34 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

I like Hare for “parlor-elections”, to choose a pizza-topping or movie, etc.

I like Score(0-5) (…& maybe Score(100, 99, 90, 50, 10, 1, 0) ), used
alongside RPwv, for some polls where it’s desired to measure likedness, in
addition to finding the CW.

In such a poll, with nothing at stake, & with RP(wv) to find the CW,
there’d be no reason to not rate sincerely (estimated-merit-proportional).

Those are the only uses for those 2 methods, I claim.

On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 16:34 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

Score's partial ratings provide more information if you release the full
ballots (w/ noise added to preserve privacy). There's a big difference
between a candidate receiving 1/5 on 100% of ballots vs. 5/5 on 20% of
ballots.

It also makes the method simpler for voters who want to be honest. In
studies, people find binary ratings harder than ratings out of 5, because
it's hard to pick when you're on the fence between 2 options.

And if voters want to do their part to elect the best candidate, instead of
playing strategic games, we should let them! We want honest voting to be as
easy as possible, because honest voting is a public good. Filling in a
bubble labeled 5/5 is no harder than filling one labeled 1/1. But in real
life I don't carry dice around very often.

On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 6:14 PM Michael Ossipoff email9648742@gmail.com
wrote:

But requiring voters to use any strategy at all is IMO just undesirable.  Incentivizing strategic or tactical voting is a burden, not a desirable quality of a voting system.  This is why I think any Cardinal system is flawed for competitive partisan voting in elections for public office.

I'm really with Limelike here.  Except I think filling in a Score bubble does require more thought than ranking even if the voter ends up bullet voting.

BTW, I posted at r/EndFPTP a derived scenario that shows how STAR fails to disincentivize tactical voting, even with the head-to-head runoff.  https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/

We don't wanna burden voters with any pressure to vote tactically, do we?  Why are people (equal.vote, CES) promoting methods that, whenever there are 3 or more candidates, inherently forces voters to make tactical consideration of how they're going to vote for their 2nd-favorite candidate?

RCV can screw up.  And because of Condorcet cycles, even Condorcet RCV will have those very few elections where it cannot prevent a spoiled election (and the bad things that come along with spoiled election) because of a cycle.  But, if we're gonna evaluate all of our votes equally, the ranked ballot asks exactly the right questions whereas the Score ballot requires more information from voters than should be demanded of them (or the Approval ballot requires too little information, but there is still tactical considerations required).  But with RCV, we know what to do with our 2nd-favorite candidate: rank them #2.

--

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 11:27 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

I said that, for polls, I like RP(wv), with Score(0-5) & maybe Score(100,
99, 90, 50, 10, 1, 0).

I said that the legitimate valid use for Score’s partial ratings is for
when it’s genuinely uncertain whether a candidate deserves approval.

I said, how hard is it to flip a coin, to probabilistically give a
candidate half an approval?

Don’t complicate the method because you want Score to do that for you,
because you don’t want to do it for yourself.

I just finished listing a lot of important unique Approval advantages that
Score loses.

I give them permission to approve the candidates they like or regard as the
better set,  or the ones who aren’t below-expectation.

In Score,  in a public political election under current conditions, if they
want to be suckers by rating estimated-merit-proportional instead of
Approval-style all-or-nothing, that’s their
(sucker) choice.

In polls, with RP(wv) to show the CW, & Score to measure likedness, no one
ha reason to not rate sincerely (estimated-merit-proportional).

As I said I rate sincerely in our current poll, & no doubt every
participating does.

We want honest voting to be as easy as possible, because honest voting is a

Don’t take dice to the polling-place to do probabilistic approving. That
would make other voters wait unnecessarily while you decide your vote. It
would delay & slow the voting process.

Instead, make out your ballot at home, before you leave for the
polling-place.

…& no, you needn’t go out & buy dice. Do you not have a coin? You don’t
even have a penny?

I’ll send you one.

…or (for probabilistic approvals other than.5) a paper bag & a piece of
paper from which to cut (or tear if you don’t have scissors), & a pencil or
pen with which to number 10 paper-squares. If you don’t have those things,
then I’ll send you those.

Yes, when it’s genuinely uncertain whether a candidate deserves approval,
it’s easier to let Score do the partial rating for you.

Don’t give up Approval’s important unique advantages because you don’t want
to do something for yourself.

On Sat, Mar 16, 2024 at 11:52 robert bristow-johnson <
rbj@audioimagination.com> wrote:

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a ranked-method do it all for you !!

I listed a lot of important unique Approval advantages that are lost by the
complicated automatic-machines that are called “ranked-methods”.

Compared to those important advantages, the matter of voters’ qualification
to use Approval well are the least of our concerns.

Even the best ranked-method won’t help if it doesn’t get enacted because it
doesn’t have Approval’s simplicity, absolute minimalness, unique
unarbitrariness, & completely cost-free implementation.

…or if its results are easily falsified by count-fraud that’s difficult to
detect due to an elaborate complex count.

I don't expect any ranked method to always run flawlessly.  I know about the possibility (and even history) of cycles.  And I understand, when there is a preference cycle, no matter what method is used (including FPTP), there is a spoiler.  Can't be avoided.  I just want to avoid spoiled elections when possible.  That means only Condorcet.

When we (in Burlington) had IRV in 2009, the only money spent was on voter education.  We used exactly the same AccuVote machines that only recorded the markings.  Then there was software, ChoicePlus Pro, from Voting Solution that was, I believe, public domain, that was used to open the files of marked ballots from the memory chip from each voting machine, combine into a single file, and then do the IRV procedure.

We have, just as RCV has returned to Burlington, upgraded to new Dominion machines and software, and they had an extra charge for RCV support.

Not mine.

RCV doesn't get enacted because Approval may appear simpler.  RCV doesn't get enacted because traditionalists don't want any change, Republicans believe it's skewed in favor of the Left (IRV doesn't lean Left or Right, but it does lean away from the Center), and then when there is a Condorcet failure.  Both Alaska and Burlington started up repeal efforts nearly immediately after the IRV Condorcet failure.  I believe RCV will be repealed in Alaska in November (they had nearly twice the necessary signatures to put the repeal question on the ballot) and IRV was repealed the following year in Burlington (although we brought it back in 2022).

I call this the diminished transparency in the tally process due to losing Precinct Summability.  I think this is one of FairVotes most egregious oversights, especially as the scope of IRV increases to statewide elections.  The lost of Precinct Summability isn't much of a problem in just the city of Burlington, although we do opaquely haul the Dominion voting machines (that are sealed) from the polling places to City Hall and, other than the counts of first-choice (which is useful) and counts of second and third-choice marks (which are useless), the voting data is opaquely hidden as we transport the machines and sealed ballot bags.  So, unless there is an outright majority winner (that we can determine from the first-choice vote counts), then we don't know who wins from the data posted at the polling places.  We have to wait until the authority at the monolithic central tabulation location comes out and announces who wins.  No outside party (like competing campaigns or news reporters) can double check the vote tallies.  That's opaque.

--

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

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