Kevin,

Why?   All the IRV non-winners were "destined to lose", and the easiest
way to identify them is to complete the IRV count. That seems easier
than looking for Condorcet Losers.

Really?  As a modification of IRV how much does it "achieve" in
comparison with what it loses?  Rescuing the occasional Condorcet winner
to make the method a lot more complicated and trash a lot of IRV's
popular criterion compliances??

I can't see how looking for Condorcet losers is any way easier than
looking for Condorcet winners.  So why don't we just do that (before
each elimination, among the remaining candidates) instead?

That method (Benham) is a Condorcet method and quite a bit simpler to
operate than RCIPE.    So the argument for RCIPE versus Benham is ...what??

Can anyone show us a single example in which RCIPE appears to give a
better result (or in some way behave better than) Benham?

Chris B.

On 04/24/2024 11:10 AM EDT Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

Finding the Condorcet winner is easier than finding the Condorcet loser.

<applause>  But Chris, BTR-IRV is even simpler than Benham.  What advantage does Benham have that BTR-IRV does not have?

I'm still trying to figure out why RCIPE or Benham or any of these "Condorcet-IRV hybrid methods" are preferable to just straight-ahead Condorcet with a simple completion method (say Plurality or Top-Two Runoff).

I do see why MinMax or Ranked-Pairs or Schulze might be preferable over straight-ahead Condorcet.  I can also see why BTR-IRV might be useful, because it is the simplest modification to existing Hare IRV that makes it Condorcet-consistent.

But there are a lotta goofy methods that are complicated flying around out there, and to be honest, I don't get it.  The priorities for me are:

1. Fairness (valuing our votes equally - majority rule for single-winner)
2. Simplicity and meaningfulness on the ballot
3. Simplicity and meaningfulness in the legislative language to implement
4. Disincentivize tactical voting (compromizing) for the individual voter
5. As much process transparency as we can possibly get
6. Disincentivize strategic voting (burial, etc.) for the campaigns.

For me, those are the things we want to promote, at least for public elections for government office.

Approval is good for 2, 3, and 5.  Not so good for 4.  Nor for 1.

Score is also bad for 4.

STAR is just weird.

IRV is demonstrably flawed.  Not good for either 1, 4, and 5.

Let's just always elect the Condorcet winner for the 99% of the time that such a CW exists.  And when the CW does not exist, let's make rules that the public and policy makers can understand the basis of those rules, and elect the candidate that can be best justified to the public.

--

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

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

.
.
.

On 2024-04-24 17:37, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

Clone independence and strategy resistance. Burial is harder to make
work under Benham (and Woodall) than BTR-IRV.

I'll soon be posting some strategy figures for the poll methods that my
simulator implements. I once did a test with BTR-IRV, but for some
reason I forgot to save my code. From what I recall, its strategy
resistance under impartial culture is similar to that of Minmax. The
other Condorcet-IRV hybrids are much more resistant.

-km

On 4/24/2024 8:10 AM, Chris Benham wrote:

For a typical voter they don't want to look at a long list of pairwise
counts to verify that a candidate has won every one of those pairwise
contests.

After eliminating the less popular candidates, and reaching the 3 or 4
most popular candidates, a voter can more easily focus on the few
remaining pairwise counts.

Consider the infamous Burlington and Alaska cases.  A voter doesn't want
to see the full pairwise matrix to verify the official winner won every
one of those pairwise contests.

Voters prefer to have fewer numbers to concentrate on when they are
looking for the winner.

The earlier rounds of elimination reduce that burden for them.

That's a key advantage of the RCIPE method.  It's also part of why IRV
is easier to "sell" to voters than any Condorcet method.

It's easier to understand.  For voters.  As explained above.

That's more important than analyzing fabricated scenarios.

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy

On 4/24/2024 8:10 AM, Chris Benham wrote:

Robert,

Your question is  answered here:

https://electowiki.org/wiki/Bottom-Two-Runoff_IRV

I've never liked this BTR method.  It always struck me as an arbitrary
dinky method that has no point other than trying to smuggle Condorcet
past people who like the idea of eliminating weak candidates.  For
example I never understood how it was supposed to be better that just
repeatedly eliminate the pairwise loser between two of the remaining
candidates selected at random. But I may have been a bit too harsh.

Benham interferes with Hare less than BTR and so keeps its Dominat
Mutual Third Burial Resistance and Clone Independence.

On this page I found something I violently disagree with:

https://electowiki.org/wiki/Benham%27s_method

As I explained in a recent post I am not in favour of allowing
above-bottom equal ranking in Hare and Benham and similar, but if they
were allowed the "give each equally-highest ranked candidate one vote"
solution is a complete disaster. It opens up outrageous easy
Pushover incentives for a start.

The other possibility they mention, giving each of the candidates ranked
(among remaining candidates) equal-top each a fraction of a vote
(summing to 1), is far far less bad but in my opinion not adequate. As I
explained in my recent April  post:

I think that if we allow above-bottom equal-ranking in IRV or Benham,
then if among remaining candidates some ballots rank more than one
candidate equal-top then we make a provisional order of the candidates
by counting those ballots as equal fractions summing to 1.
(A=B counts as half a vote to each of A and B, A=B=C counts as a third
of a vote to each of A and B and C, and so on.  Now it would be fine for
this to be the final order for deciding which candidate to next
eliminate were it not for the fact that it makes Push-over strategising
easier.)  Then we count the equal top (among remaining candidates)
ballots again, this time they give a whole vote to whichever of the ones
they equal rank to the one that was highest in the provisional order.
(So an A=B ballot gives a whole vote to whichever of A and B was higher
in the provisional order, and of course nothing to B.)

This is fully in the spirit of the Single Transferable Vote but I think
you will agree that it is complex. I don't think allowing above-bottom
equal-ranking in those methods is so important, nor do I think there
would be any significant demand for that from voters, so I don't
advocate allowing it for those methods.

Chris B

On 25/04/2024 1:07 am, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

looking for the winner.

If you're giving an example with more than 3-4 candidates, you've messed up
regardless of the method. Otherwise, a pairwise matrix is easier to display
all at once, but only involves 3 to 6 comparisons (vs 3-4 for IRV). The
Burlington and 2022 Alaska Wikipedia pages include examples of
well-laid-out, easy-to-follow pairwise matrices.
On Wed, Apr 24, 2024 at 9:20 PM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods@votefair.org> wrote:

Can someone point me to the description of how to participate in this poll
and what the nominees are?  Or just re-post the instructions clearly with
an obvious subject line, so people can find it?  There are dozens of
messages in a bunch of different threads and I don't see clear instructions
anywhere.

On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 3:49 PM Closed Limelike Curves wrote:

On 2024-04-26 16:34, fdpk69p6uq@snkmail.com wrote:

Here's a list of the methods:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005767.html

and a description of most of them:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005802.html

Those not described there are:
Margins-Sorted Approval:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005650.html
Double Defeat, Hare:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005708.html
Margins-Sorted Minimum Losing Votes: I couldn't find a direct
description, closest one I found is
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005785.html
Gross Loser Elimination: This is Raynaud(gross loser). See
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Raynaud
Max Strength Transitive Beatpath:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005716.html

The poll text is here:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2024-April/005934.html

The poll asks for a ranked ballot (truncation and equal-rank are
allowed), and an Approval ballot.

-km

I find that last sentence to be vague and nonsensical. The linked-to
electowiki description is much better:

No, the person who wrote this is confusing it with DSC.

46 A
44 B>C
10 C

DSC elects A but DAC elects C.   The " descending acquiescing
coalitions"  are AC 56 (disqualifying B), BC 54 (disqualifying A)
leaving C as the winner.  The largest "solid coalition" is A 46,
disqualifying B and C leaving A as the winner.

DSC meets Later-no-Harm but fails Later-no-Help (thereby giving it a
silly random-fill incentive) while with DAC it is the other way round. 
So DAC has a quite strong incentive to truncate and (in this version
that allows above-bottom equal-ranking) to equal rank at the top.

Both LNHs are incompatible with Condorcet, so the "Smith//..." kills
that.  But Smith//DAC is a Condorcet method that has very strong
resistance to Burial, at the expense of a strong truncation incentive.

"Disqualify" is a much better choice of word than "eliminate", which
usually means "drop from the ballots and carry on as if though the
candidate had never been on them". How I put it in a November 2023 post
here:

I'm sorry I didn't get on to this earlier. Also I think when we set up the poll and nominated the methods, there should have been more clarity about balloting rules. For example I quite like IRV and Benham (and I suppose Woodall) with unlimited strict ranking from the top. But with restricted ranking as is apparently typical if not universal in the US (and/or equal above-bottom ranking allowed without a complicated procedure I like that is definitely not worth the trouble) then I like those methods far less.

It might have been better to have separate polls for the different ballot types and restrictions, and another poll on what ballot types and rules we like. I find limiting the absolute number of candidates a voter can vote above bottom to be abhorrent, but limited-slot rating ballots (or ballots with a restricted number of "ranking levels" but no limit to the number of candidates the voter can put at each level) are fine or not-too-bad for a lot of methods.

Chris Benham

On 27/04/2024 1:20 am, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

OK, here is my ballot:

1. STAR
2. Smith//Score
3. Condorcet methods (Baldwin, Benham, Black, Copeland//Borda, Gross
   Loser Elimination, MinMax(wv), RP(wv), Schulze, Schwartz-Woodall,
   Smith//Approval (explicit & implicit), Smith//DAC, Woodall)
4. Approval with manual runoff
5. Approval
6. ---- Approval cutoff ----
7. RCIPE
8. Double Defeat, Hare
9. Majority Judgement
10. IRV
11. Plurality

(If I made a mistake in the Condorcet line, let me know.)

On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 11:51 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote: