Re: [EM] The Equal Vote Coalition and robla
Hi Robert,
Due to a delivery glitch, I didn't get some of the replies to my EM emails
right away, including this one. However, that's not the only reason for
the delay. I've been thinking about how to reply for a while. I've even
been having ChatGPT help me out. More inline....
On Thu Apr 3 12:58:59 PDT 2025, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On 04/03/2025 2:36 AM EDT Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com> wrote:
I joined the board of the Equal Vote Coalition in January 2025:
[...]
I have mixed feelings about Equal Vote Coalition. I am jealous of the
name and the domain name. I think that name belongs strictly to Condorcet
advocacy.
That's nice. You should have registered it :-P
You continued...
I still consider EVC to be STAR advocates. I don't consider STAR (or any
cardinal method) to be "equal votes".
Admittedly, EVC is pretty heavily biased toward STAR advocates. I realize
you're not interested in working with anyone who prefers cardinal methods
to ordinal methods, but some of us are ready to compromise. During the
vetting process when I was being brought on board, it was clear EVC wanted
me because I might help provide more depth in Condorcet advocacy, and I
suspect they'd accept others with even more depth of knowledge and
Condorcet activist chops than me. When I was in my "job interview" for the
board, I made no secret to them or others about the fact that Condorcet
methods were my first love, and I still trot out my article from The Perl
Journal to show that I've really liked Condorcet methods for a while:
https://robla.net/1996/TPJ
I still consider the Condorcet winner criterion very important. But, as
I've pointed out many times on this list and elsewhere, I've found the
simulations published by folks like Ka-Ping Yee persuasive demonstrations
that approval voting elections and Condorcet elections are very likely to
result in the same candidate winning. Approval voting is the only pure
cardinal system that I can get behind (so, for example, I still find pure
score/range voting a very poor choice for high-stakes public elections).
Approval's strategy (and most cardinal method strategy) is more complicated
than most cardinal advocates would have you believe, but it's not THAT
bad. At least, approval isn't that bad.
Having voted in many San Francisco elections (home of the name "Ranked
Choice Voting" to refer to IRV), I was surprised at how awful I've found
the actual task of voting here. I expected to have nerdy fun with it, but
voting in the RCV elections has become a chore that I kinda dread. I
wouldn't dislike RCV as much if I didn't have to worry about accidentally
spoiling my ballot by assigning two candidates the same rank. I'm
assuming/hoping BTR-IRV doesn't suffer from that same problem, but don't
assume that folks who live in an RCV/IRV jurisdiction love it. I've found
many folks here who find it annoying, but I haven't (yet) gotten most of
them annoyed enough to make that the focal point of their activism.
I'm not pushing STAR here in SF, but I'm not going to badmouth it the way
you do, Robert. I do badmouth RCV/IRV sometimes, and I've probably
alienated a person or two. The reason why I'm at peace with STAR, though:
it's not a pure cardinal system. That final pairwise comparison makes it
difficult to come up with plausible scenarios where STAR and Condorcet
disagree. I know you disagree, but I'm guessing you haven't tried as hard
as I have to come up with plausible scenarios where STAR really fails. The
funny thing is that most of the times that STAR and Condorcet disagree,
it's because of a Condorcet cycle (which anecdotal evidence suggests could
happen as frequently as IRV<->Condorcet disagreements, though I'm only
vaguely aware of two or three cycles in real-world elections).
The more I think about STAR vs strictly CWC-compliant systems, and the more
I try to get ChatGPT and other LLMs to make the best case they can for you,
I can't get a convincing case that the distinction is a reason to divide
into warring factions over. Then when I ask ChatGPT to "find Robert
Bristow-Johnson's best case against STAR", I remain unconvinced by what
I've read from you (e.g. your post and comments here):
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/
You seem to be pushing voter behavior that's too uniform. As /u/arendpeter
https://reddit.com/u/arendpeter pointed out in their findings, with the
online polls they've posted, folks were a lot more generous with 3 and 4
star ratings than you indicate they will be:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/kvbsc4j/
As I speculate on my own behavior under STAR, I think of how I would have
voted here in SF in the 2024 mayoral race, and I'm pretty sure I would have
been more generous with my stars, even as a very partisan voter. I would
have given a couple mayoral candidates 5 stars (because I knew they
wouldn't win, but so I could say "I voted for you", since meeting any of
them F2F isn't out of the question for me), I would have given my favorite
viable candidate either 5 stars or 4 stars, I would have given my next
favorite 3 stars. I doubt I would have given any of the others any stars.
This maps pretty closely to my RCV/IRV ballot.
As it turns out, my vote in 2024 didn't seem to matter much (in most
elections). I think my bottom ranked candidate for mayor won, and he's
turning out to be a much better mayor than I feared he would be. Maybe San
Francisco needs a political outsider after all.
I also consider STAR or Score to have absolutely zero chance of ever
being adopted for governmental elections. And while Score is simple in
concept, STAR, being a hybrid, is a little bit contrived.
Saying "absolutely zero chance" seems like ragey hyperbole. And
honestly, given how hard you’re tilting at the BTR-IRV and Condorcet-TTR
windmills, it seems ironic. I think STAR is a clever compromise which
seems like it will produce reasonable outcomes, and I've found it seems to
attract more enthusiasm than Condorcet RCV. In fact, I've never seen
activists as excited about any strict Condorcet system as I have about
STAR. I'm assuming you've heard of Arrow's theorem and Gibbard's theorem;
so I'm sure you're aware we're not going to arrive at perfection. Neither
STAR nor Condorcet systems are as easy to explain as approval is in my
experience.
We really should concentrate on reforming RCV to be Condorcet consistent.
That's what EVC should be doing. Personally, I don't understand how or
where EVC is getting their money to operate and support as many employees
as they do.
I'm not about to tell EVC to drop advocacy for STAR and approval, and It's
not like EVC is rolling in money. Sass isn't at EVC anymore, and in
general, you may be overestimating the number of people that get a paycheck
from them. The reason they have such a high profile is that Sara and crew
are hard workers, and they managed to recruit a lot of volunteers that also
do amazing work for them. Folks are willing to get behind the legal entity
and associated leadership, and they recruit volunteers and they've taken
the risks necessary to get significant local news coverage. They haven't
had a lot of success at the ballot box yet, but it seems easier to take
potshots at them than it is to actually do the work they've done.
About "Ranked Robin" that's seems to me to be a Sass invention and I don't
understand why they tepidly promote that instead of just Condorcet RCV in
general.
I don't either, to be honest. I think part of the problem is that we keep
having fights to the death over naming. "Ranked Robin" is a clever name,
but it's over 200 years too late to rename the Condorcet winner criterion,
and wastes political capital with the academic community. They'll have an
easier time revising their website than the academic world will have
revising all of the papers that have been written over the years about
Condorcet. You're right to point out that "Ranked Robin" may get mixed up
with Sass's specific method outlined on electowiki rather than the wider
universe of pairwise-comparison methods (like Tideman's "Ranked Pairs").
I'm not saying EVC should completely abandon the name "Ranked Robin" and
it's not clear that EVC needs to even deprecate the name, but rather,
should establish it as a complementary name for describing Condorcet
methods (and maybe, just let Sass have the name for their specific
Condorcet variant).
It would seem that some folks believe that "Condorcet" is a bad brand,
which it isn't. Condorcet was a good guy, and though some folks think that
systems that are strictly CWC-complaint are too complicated, many of those
same people underestimate the complexity of the alternative they promote.
We can have honorable disagreements about which election method criterion
we believe is the most important, but thanks to Arrow's and Gibbard's
theorems (not to mention non-mathematical considerations), we're going to
have to compromise on SOMETHING.
And I am completely in disagreement with Sara Wolk about conceding the
label "Ranked-Choice Voting" to only the Hare method. Borda, Bucklin, and
Condorcet are also RCV. We must not allow FairVote to appropriate the term
"RCV" to mean only IRV.
Living in SF, I've learned to assume that anyone who I know doesn't
understand voting systems is referring to IRV when they say RCV. In fact,
almost everywhere on the Internet, that holds true too. Maybe that won't
hold true a decade from now, but I'm not about to fight that battle right
now. I think it's totally reasonable from a search-engine optimization
perspective for someone building a website to use "RCV" to mean "IRV".
Note that SF is the home of the term "ranked-choice voting" to mean
"Australia-style preferential voting". Also note that many people, when
pressed, think we're using Borda, but I'm pretty sure that Burlington
voters (and activists) aren't any smarter than SF voters and activists.
Most folks with the organization feel that STAR voting is superior to
Condorcet methods.
For no good reason. I guess it's their child, as ugly as it is.
STAR is fine. I find it VERY difficult to come up with differences between
STAR and Condorcet that are likely to actually show up in the real world.
I feel like score/range voting requires too much work from voters to
figure out the best strategy (which, as near as I can tell, is either vote
the maximum score or the minimum; hence transforming it into approval
voting in practice).
I had shown before that with the assumption that if a voter's preference
is A>B>C, they're gonna mark their STAR ballot A:5, B:1, C:0 because that
will best accomplish their political goal in nearly all circumstances.
Your 5-1-0 strategy assumes only three candidates. I don't like
score/range, because sophisticated voters will vote either the full score
(max) or nothing (min). Yes, I suppose there may be sophisticated
strategies that can be used with STAR, but ONLY with incredibly good
polling, and in particular, only if one knows the number of viable
candidates. As I've seen here in SF, that changes over the course of the
election season.
They want A elected and for that to happen, A has to get into the
Automatic Runoff. If A gets into the Runoff, then A is already ranked
higher than anyone else and their vote in the final runoff is for A. But
if A can't get into the final runoff, then it's a choice between B and C
and then scoring B just 1 level above C is sufficient for their entire vote
to be for B. Scoring B any higher only makes it more difficult to get
their favorite, A, into the final runoff, so ostensibly there is no
reason to score B higher than 1.
...except if there's a candidate "D", and the voter has opinions on all
four candidates. Your model doesn't scale above 3 candidates. Almost all
alternative voting systems assume there will not only be viable third
parties, but viable fourth parties, and viable fifth parties.
But I also shown that with that scoring regime, STAR would make the same
mistake that Hare IRV makes regarding the Center Squeeze...
STAR doesn't make "the same mistake". One has to have a comically
simplified voter model in order to contrive scenarios where STAR uniformly
performs identically to IRV. Condorcet methods and the STAR method are
good at selecting compromise candidates because both make it exceptionally
likely that the compromise candidate makes it to the "final round", where a
critical pairwise comparison is performed. Even BTR-IRV needs to pick a
"final round" by staging a series of eliminations (like a lineal
championship in boxing) where there's a chain of matches until a
championship round (the "final round") occurs. We've spoken for years
about making Condorcet more understandable by figuring out how to seed
tournament brackets, which lead to a "final round". STAR makes it
reasonably easy to understand HOW the candidates were selected for the
final round, and I'm pretty sure it's effective. STAR's not my favorite if
I could wave a wand, but maybe I'd just make myself dictator for life if I
had access to a magic wand. :-)
One thing I think we agree on: Hare IRV doesn't eliminate the spoiler
effect; it multiplies it. Every round of an IRV election has the spoiler
effect. One huge problem with IRV is how the second/third/fourth/etc
preferences are ignored until the first preference is eliminated. Those
unlucky enough to rank a spoiler victim too high will have their subsequent
rankings ignored. STAR may not use a perfect mechanism to select the
final-round pair of candidates, but it's defensible. The Equal Vote folks
were able to convince enough eager volunteers that the mechanism was good
enough to get it on the ballot, and 30% of voters in Eugene thought it was
good enough. 30% is not nothing.
You would have to convince [voters] that they need to harm the likelihood
for A to get into the final runoff...
Are you really trying to trot out "later-no-harm"? How is Condorcet-TTR or
BTR-IRV better than STAR in passing later-no-harm?
I hope you're successful in palling up to Vermont legislators. I truly
don't want to rain on your parade. Just stop it with the bad-faith raining
on the STAR parade, okay? You don't KNOW how voters will behave if we
start having high-stakes elections with the system. Your 5-1-0 strategy
assumes there will only be three viable candidates, and doesn't take into
account the incumbent vs non-incumbent dynamic (which causes Greens and
Republicans and Vermont Progressives and everyone else to join forces and
badmouth a Democratic-party incumbent).
Even the three-way race between Kiss, Wright, and Montroll in 2009 also had
Smith and Simpson in it. I'm just going to assume that even Simpson had
folks knocking on doors, and I'll bet he was door-knocking himself. All of
Kiss's challengers were saying "the incumbent is awful", but I'm guessing
they all emphasized different reasons why he was awful. When one layers
the "anti-incumbency" effect on the left-center-right political model, we
can see at least one more dimension to voters' choices. If one adds
"quality of campaign", that turns it into a 3D model. If one adds "money"
as a dimension...well, now we're in 4D space, and that breaks my brain.
I'm guessing it breaks your brain as well, Robert, even if you won't admit
it.
Look, we should be allies, but it's kinda tough with your online demeanor
and clear overconfidence that STAR is unacceptable. You haven't proven to
me that STAR is unacceptable, and I haven't found many people who take your
side who engage frequently online. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
Rob
p.s. I fear that a lot of people who THINK they understand RCV/IRV, but
when pressed to explain it, describe Borda.
p.p.s. I'm annoyed that Marcus Ogren calls it "Ranked Robin" rather than
"Condorcet" in this Medium post, but it seems really interesting and
relevant to this conversation:
https://voting-in-the-abstract.medium.com/voter-satisfaction-efficiency-many-many-results-ad66ffa87c9e
p.p.p.s. Some of you may have noticed I've turned on "Reply-all munging"
for the mailing list. I'm pretty sure the increased use of DKIM is the
reason why I've missed out on many messages from this list. Munging helps
with DKIM compliance and thus should make delivery more robust, but it also
means simple replies are more likely to go to the mailing list rather than
just the sender, even if you mean to just send a private reply to the
sender. Be careful out there!
There are so many things to respond to, Rob. I'll start with the easiest.
On 04/18/2025 10:32 PM EDT Rob Lanphier roblan@gmail.com wrote:
...
Even the three-way race between Kiss, Wright, and Montroll in 2009 also had Smith and Simpson in it. I'm just going to assume that even Simpson had folks knocking on doors, and I'll bet he was door-knocking himself.
I didn't even know who Simpson was or that they were on the ballot until election day. Combined Write-In got more 1st-choice votes than Simpson did. It appeared to everyone to be a 4-candidate race with Wright, Kiss, Montroll, and Smith. They had lawn signs and appeared at debate events. I considered Smith to be a credible candidate, but he was much lower in votes than the other three. Smith got batch eliminated along with Simpson and Combined Write-In. Montroll was eliminated in the following semifinal round.
All of Kiss's challengers were saying "the incumbent is awful",
I wasn't saying that. Kiss was my second-choice ranking. And my vote got transferred to Kiss in the final round.
but I'm guessing they all emphasized different reasons why he was awful.
There was a fiscal thing that all of the Kiss opponents were running against. Turned out to be quite a mess. Has to do with Burlington owning utilities like the electric company. Kiss got us started on Burlington Telecom and that became a $50 million liability for the city. I'm still pissed off about how that went.
When one layers the "anti-incumbency" effect on the left-center-right political model, we can see at least one more dimension to voters' choices. If one adds "quality of campaign", that turns it into a 3D model. If one adds "money" as a dimension...well, now we're in 4D space, and that breaks my brain. I'm guessing it breaks your brain as well, Robert, even if you won't admit it.
I really can only visualize the 2D thing, like the Nolan chart or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Spatial_model . Left vs. Right and Libertarianism vs. either Communitarian (more left) or Authoritarianism (more right).
Lotsa dimensions.
--
r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
.
.
.
On 2025-04-19 04:32, Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods wrote:
The more I think about STAR vs strictly CWC-compliant systems, and the
more I try to get ChatGPT and other LLMs to make the best case they can
for you, I can't get a convincing case that the distinction is a reason
to divide into warring factions over.
As a Condorcetist, here's my take on this:
Approval is the best bang for the buck method due to its simplicity.
STAR is slightly more complex but mitigates some of Approval's problems,
at least unless people start cloning candidates left and right.
The more important simplicity is, the better Approval and STAR are
compared to proper Condorcet. The more important risk-aversion and
theoretical guarantees are, the better the latter is compared to the former.
Not being an American, I don't know the threshold after which people get
confused because the method is too complex. But I can imagine a society
where anything more than summing values is seen as too weird; in such a
society, it makes complete sense to support Approval because you're not
going to get Condorcet no matter what. And I can imagine a society
that's comfortable with Meek STV; in such a society, you can go right to
Ranked Pairs, no problem. These are extremes, but the "is it too
complex?" position seems to be the most clear division between Condorcet
and Approval.
The obvious risk for Approval is the Burr dilemma. Like center squeeze
in IRV, it doesn't have to happen often. If it leads to clearly unfair
results (like Burlington), then people could easily go for a repeal.
STAR is a good compromise in the sense that it's unlikely that you'll
get a Burr dilemma, at least without cloning. But it's vulnerable to
cloning and is very much a pragmatist method, not passing many criteria
and still having the formal "what should I rate my second favorite" problem.
Proper Condorcet methods mitigate or solve these problems. In addition,
a rank-order ballot is unambiguous for honest voters. However, the
methods are more complex.
I would probably say: as long as the activists don't step on each
other's toes, do whatever. I personally think that Approval is still a
little too risky, but STAR and approval plus runoff (St. Louis style)
should be safe enough. Even if their practical performance might be
reduced due to clones, it shouldn't outright blow up in people's faces.
p.p.p.s. Some of you may have noticed I've turned on "Reply-all munging"
for the mailing list. I'm pretty sure the increased use of DKIM is the
reason why I've missed out on many messages from this list. Munging
helps with DKIM compliance and thus should make delivery more robust,
but it also means simple replies are more likely to go to the mailing
list rather than just the sender, even if you mean to just send a
private reply to the sender. Be careful out there!
It does mess a bit with my mail reader. If you have the time, could you
check if it's possible to use ARC?
https://proton.me/blog/what-is-authenticated-received-chain-arc
It should make munging unnecessary.
-km
On 4/18/25 19:32, Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods wrote:
Having voted in many San Francisco elections (home of the name "Ranked
Choice Voting" to refer to IRV), I was surprised at how awful I've found
the actual task of voting here. I expected to have nerdy fun with it,
but voting in the RCV elections has become a chore that I kinda dread.
I wouldn't dislike RCV as much if I didn't have to worry about
accidentally spoiling my ballot by assigning two candidates the same
rank. ...
Fortunately there are two things we can do to eventually eliminate this
frustration, which I too experienced in November in Portland's mayoral
election. (It was not an issue in the STV city-council election.)
Before listing my two suggested actions, here are some important
clarifications:
-
I have come to realize the source of this limitation is the "RCTab"
software at the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center (RCVRC). If their
RCTab software had allowed the option to correctly count so-called
"overvotes," I and other local election-method advocates would have
requested that option for Portland's new election system. -
Currently the RCTab software only offers two ways to handle two
candidates at the same rank: skip that column of ovals (and resume
counting at the next column that has just one mark), or dismiss all the
remaining marks on that ballot when the counting reaches this marking
pattern. -
When "equal ranks" are allowed, and correctly counted, ballot marking
will become much easier. -
The promoters of STAR voting claim that ranked choice ballots are
difficult to use. Yet this difficulty occurs mostly because U.S.
implementations of IRV do not yet count such "overvote" marks correctly.
(The other significant disadvantage can be overcome by eliminating
pairwise losing candidates when they occur.) -
When software developers write IRV code to correctly count overvotes,
usually they use decimal numbers, such as giving one ballot half
strength for one equal-ranked candidate and half strength for the
voter's other equal-ranked candidate. This shortcut yields the correct
result, in the sense that the correct candidate gets elected. However
this decimal-number shortcut is not acceptable for governmental elections. -
Here's how to correctly count overvotes in governmental elections,
without departing from the principle of one voter supporting only one
candidate in each round of voting. First, imagine IRV is being used in
a huge convention hall filled with all the voters and all the
candidates. Each voter lines up behind their first-choice candidate.
The candidate with the shortest line is eliminated. The voters in that
shortest line then move to stand in line behind their second choice.
(All other voters stay where they are.) Now imagine there were two
voters in that shortest line who have an equal preference for candidates
B and D as their second choice. These two voters agree that one of them
will stand in line behind candidate B, and the other voter will stand in
line behind candidate D. This "pairing" approach easily extends to five
candidates being marked in the same "rank" column. (More than five
"equal ranks" can be calculated, but not as easily, and not as fast.) -
Mathew Ruberg is the person in charge of the RCTab software at RCVRC.
I've sent to him a detailed description for how to correctly count
overvotes. He says my request has been added to an informal list of
requests, but it can't progress to their official list of requests. He
says that RCVRC needs to receive requests from election officials before
they will begin to research this request. Then, depending on the
research results, they might add this request to their official to-do list. -
I suggested to Portland's election officials that they contact Mathew
Ruberg with this request. I don't think they did so (because I didn't
get any reply from anyone). That's understandable. The election
officials were overwhelmed with lots of other tasks after their first
ranked-choice-voting election. -
Oregon's recent Measure 117, which would have adopted ranked choice
voting for some Oregon elections, dealt with this issue by not
mentioning how "overvotes" should be counted. (I'm the person who
requested in verbal testimony on an earlier bill that "voters must be
allowed to rank two or more candidates at the same preference level.")
If this measure had passed, this flexibility would have allowed election
officials, or the Secretary of State, to choose how overvotes are
counted, without needing to change any election rules. -
The promoters of STAR voting claim that ranked choice voting cannot
correctly count overvotes, and that IRV cannot correctly count
overvotes. Regardless of whether "ranked choice voting" means IRV or
any method that uses ranked choice ballots, this criticism is intended
to block all uses of ranked choice ballots, regardless of how they are
counted, even if the counting method is a Condorcet method. This is a
serious misrepresentation about "ranked choice voting" (regardless of
which definition is implied).
With these clarifications in mind, here are the two action items I suggest:
- If anyone knows how to contact election officials in San Francisco, or
anywhere else where the IRV version of ranked choice voting is used,
please ask them to contact Mathew Ruberg to express interest in refining
the RCTab software to correctly count overvotes so that this option can
be adopted sometime after it becomes available. Here's the webpage that
encodes the email address for Mathew Ruberg:
https://www.rcvresources.org/mathew-ruberg
- Rob, or anyone else who interacts with the Equal Vote Coalition,
please inform them that IRV counting rules can correctly count so-called
overvotes. Based on past actions it's likely some of them are still
under the influence of STAR advocates who have falsely claimed that IRV
does not allow a voter to assign two candidates at the same rank. It's
crazy that an organization named "Equal Vote" does not seem to realize
that ranked choice voting, including pairwise-counted ranked choice
voting, does not have all the disadvantages claimed by STAR voting
promoters.
Yes, IRV doesn't always elect the correct candidate. However,
continuing to take the same counting shortcut that Australian election
officials adopted more than 100 years ago is giving a bad reputation to
all ranked choice voting methods, including Condorcet methods.
Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy
On 4/18/25 19:32, Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods wrote:
Hi Robert,
Due to a delivery glitch, I didn't get some of the replies to my EM
emails right away, including this one. However, that's not the only
reason for the delay. I've been thinking about how to reply for a
while. I've even been having ChatGPT help me out. More inline....
On Thu Apr 3 12:58:59 PDT 2025, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
On 04/03/2025 2:36 AM EDT Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com <http://
gmail.com>> wrote:
I joined the board of the Equal Vote Coalition in January 2025:
[...]
I have mixed feelings about Equal Vote Coalition. I am jealous of
the name and the domain name. I think that name belongs strictly to
Condorcet advocacy.
That's nice. You should have registered it :-P
You continued...
I still consider EVC to be STAR advocates. I don't consider STAR
(or any cardinal method) to be "equal votes".
Admittedly, EVC is pretty heavily biased toward STAR advocates. I
realize you're not interested in working with anyone who prefers
cardinal methods to ordinal methods, but some of us are ready to
compromise. During the vetting process when I was being brought on
board, it was clear EVC wanted me because I might help provide more
depth in Condorcet advocacy, and I suspect they'd accept others with
even more depth of knowledge and Condorcet activist chops than me. When
I was in my "job interview" for the board, I made no secret to them or
others about the fact that Condorcet methods were my first love, and I
still trot out my article from The Perl Journal to show that I've really
liked Condorcet methods for a while:
https://robla.net/1996/TPJ https://robla.net/1996/TPJ
I still consider the Condorcet winner criterion very important. But, as
I've pointed out many times on this list and elsewhere, I've found the
simulations published by folks like Ka-Ping Yee persuasive
demonstrations that approval voting elections and Condorcet elections
are very likely to result in the same candidate winning. Approval
voting is the only pure cardinal system that I can get behind (so, for
example, I still find pure score/range voting a very poor choice for
high-stakes public elections). Approval's strategy (and most cardinal
method strategy) is more complicated than most cardinal advocates would
have you believe, but it's not THAT bad. At least, approval isn't that bad.
Having voted in many San Francisco elections (home of the name "Ranked
Choice Voting" to refer to IRV), I was surprised at how awful I've found
the actual task of voting here. I expected to have nerdy fun with it,
but voting in the RCV elections has become a chore that I kinda dread.
I wouldn't dislike RCV as much if I didn't have to worry about
accidentally spoiling my ballot by assigning two candidates the same
rank. I'm assuming/hoping BTR-IRV doesn't suffer from that same
problem, but don't assume that folks who live in an RCV/IRV jurisdiction
love it. I've found many folks here who find it annoying, but I haven't
(yet) gotten most of them annoyed enough to make that the focal point of
their activism.
I'm not pushing STAR here in SF, but I'm not going to badmouth it the
way you do, Robert. I do badmouth RCV/IRV sometimes, and I've probably
alienated a person or two. The reason why I'm at peace with
STAR, though: it's not a pure cardinal system. That final pairwise
comparison makes it difficult to come up with plausible scenarios where
STAR and Condorcet disagree. I know you disagree, but I'm guessing you
haven't tried as hard as I have to come up with plausible scenarios
where STAR really fails. The funny thing is that most of the times that
STAR and Condorcet disagree, it's because of a Condorcet cycle (which
anecdotal evidence suggests could happen as frequently as IRV<-
Condorcet disagreements, though I'm only vaguely aware of two or three
cycles in real-world elections).
The more I think about STAR vs strictly CWC-compliant systems, and the
more I try to get ChatGPT and other LLMs to make the best case they can
for you, I can't get a convincing case that the distinction is a reason
to divide into warring factions over. Then when I ask ChatGPT to "find
Robert Bristow-Johnson's best case against STAR", I remain unconvinced
by what I've read from you (e.g. your post and comments here):
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/
heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/ <https://www.reddit.com/r/
EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/>
You seem to be pushing voter behavior that's too uniform. As /u/
arendpeter https://reddit.com/u/arendpeter pointed out in their
findings, with the online polls they've posted, folks were a lot more
generous with 3 and 4 star ratings than you indicate they will be:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/
heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/kvbsc4j/ <https://
www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/1bbq6hu/
heres_a_good_hypothetical_for_how_star_fails/kvbsc4j/>
As I speculate on my own behavior under STAR, I think of how I would
have voted here in SF in the 2024 mayoral race, and I'm pretty sure I
would have been more generous with my stars, even as a very partisan
voter. I would have given a couple mayoral candidates 5 stars (because
I knew they wouldn't win, but so I could say "I voted for you", since
meeting any of them F2F isn't out of the question for me), I would have
given my favorite viable candidate either 5 stars or 4 stars, I would
have given my next favorite 3 stars. I doubt I would have given any of
the others any stars. This maps pretty closely to my RCV/IRV ballot.
As it turns out, my vote in 2024 didn't seem to matter much (in most
elections). I think my bottom ranked candidate for mayor won, and he's
turning out to be a much better mayor than I feared he would be. Maybe
San Francisco needs a political outsider after all.
I also consider STAR or Score to have absolutely *zero* chance of
ever being adopted for governmental elections. And while Score is
simple in concept, STAR, being a hybrid, is a little bit contrived.
Saying "absolutely zero chance" seems like ragey hyperbole. And
honestly, given how hard you’re tilting at the BTR-IRV and Condorcet-TTR
windmills, it seems ironic. I think STAR is a clever compromise which
seems like it will produce reasonable outcomes, and I've found it seems
to attract more enthusiasm than Condorcet RCV. In fact, I've never seen
activists as excited about any strict Condorcet system as I have about
STAR. I'm assuming you've heard of Arrow's theorem and Gibbard's
theorem; so I'm sure you're aware we're not going to arrive at
perfection. Neither STAR nor Condorcet systems are as easy to explain
as approval is in my experience.
We really should concentrate on reforming RCV to be Condorcet
consistent. That's what EVC should be doing. Personally, I don't
understand how or where EVC is getting their money to operate and
support as many employees as they do.
I'm not about to tell EVC to drop advocacy for STAR and approval, and
It's not like EVC is rolling in money. Sass isn't at EVC anymore, and
in general, you may be overestimating the number of people that get a
paycheck from them. The reason they have such a high profile is that
Sara and crew are hard workers, and they managed to recruit a lot of
volunteers that also do amazing work for them. Folks are willing to get
behind the legal entity and associated leadership, and they recruit
volunteers and they've taken the risks necessary to get significant
local news coverage. They haven't had a lot of success at the ballot
box yet, but it seems easier to take potshots at them than it is to
actually do the work they've done.
About "Ranked Robin" that's seems to me to be a Sass invention and I
don't understand why they tepidly promote that instead of just
Condorcet RCV in general.
I don't either, to be honest. I think part of the problem is that we
keep having fights to the death over naming. "Ranked Robin" is a clever
name, but it's over 200 years too late to rename the Condorcet winner
criterion, and wastes political capital with the academic community.
They'll have an easier time revising their website than the academic
world will have revising all of the papers that have been written over
the years about Condorcet. You're right to point out that "Ranked
Robin" may get mixed up with Sass's specific method outlined on
electowiki rather than the wider universe of pairwise-comparison methods
(like Tideman's "Ranked Pairs"). I'm not saying EVC should completely
abandon the name "Ranked Robin" and it's not clear that EVC needs to
even deprecate the name, but rather, should establish it as a
complementary name for describing Condorcet methods (and maybe, just let
Sass have the name for their specific Condorcet variant).
It would seem that some folks believe that "Condorcet" is a bad brand,
which it isn't. Condorcet was a good guy, and though some folks think
that systems that are strictly CWC-complaint are too complicated, many
of those same people underestimate the complexity of the alternative
they promote. We can have honorable disagreements about which election
method criterion we believe is the most important, but thanks to Arrow's
and Gibbard's theorems (not to mention non-mathematical considerations),
we're going to have to compromise on SOMETHING.
And I am completely in disagreement with Sara Wolk about conceding
the label "Ranked-Choice Voting" to only the Hare method. Borda,
Bucklin, and Condorcet are also RCV. We must not allow FairVote to
appropriate the term "RCV" to mean *only* IRV.
Living in SF, I've learned to assume that anyone who I know doesn't
understand voting systems is referring to IRV when they say RCV. In
fact, almost everywhere on the Internet, that holds true too. Maybe
that won't hold true a decade from now, but I'm not about to fight that
battle right now. I think it's totally reasonable from a search-engine
optimization perspective for someone building a website to use "RCV" to
mean "IRV". Note that SF is the home of the term "ranked-choice voting"
to mean "Australia-style preferential voting". Also note that many
people, when pressed, think we're using Borda, but I'm pretty sure that
Burlington voters (and activists) aren't any smarter than SF voters and
activists.
Most folks with the organization feel that STAR voting is superior
to Condorcet methods.
For no good reason. I guess it's their child, as ugly as it is.
STAR is fine. I find it VERY difficult to come up with differences
between STAR and Condorcet that are likely to actually show up in the
real world.
I feel like score/range voting requires too much work from voters
to figure out the best strategy (which, as near as I can tell, is either
vote the maximum score or the minimum; hence transforming it into
approval voting in practice).
I had shown before that *with* the assumption that if a voter's
preference is A>B>C, they're gonna mark their STAR ballot A:5, B:1,
C:0 because that will best accomplish their political goal in nearly
all circumstances.
Your 5-1-0 strategy assumes only three candidates. I don't like score/
range, because sophisticated voters will vote either the full score
(max) or nothing (min). Yes, I suppose there may be sophisticated
strategies that can be used with STAR, but ONLY with incredibly good
polling, and in particular, only if one knows the number of viable
candidates. As I've seen here in SF, that changes over the course of
the election season.
They want A elected and for that to happen, A has to get into the
Automatic Runoff. If A gets into the Runoff, then A is already
ranked higher than anyone else and their vote in the final runoff is
for A. But if A can't get into the final runoff, then it's a choice
between B and C and then scoring B just 1 level above C is
sufficient for their entire vote to be for B. Scoring B any higher
only makes it more difficult to get their favorite, A, into the
final runoff, so *ostensibly* there is no reason to score B higher
than 1.
...except if there's a candidate "D", and the voter has opinions on all
four candidates. Your model doesn't scale above 3 candidates. Almost
all alternative voting systems assume there will not only be viable
third parties, but viable fourth parties, and viable fifth parties.
But I also shown that with that scoring regime, STAR would make the
same mistake that Hare IRV makes regarding the Center Squeeze...
STAR doesn't make "the same mistake". One has to have a comically
simplified voter model in order to contrive scenarios where STAR
uniformly performs identically to IRV. Condorcet methods and the STAR
method are good at selecting compromise candidates because both make it
exceptionally likely that the compromise candidate makes it to the
"final round", where a critical pairwise comparison is performed. Even
BTR-IRV needs to pick a "final round" by staging a series of
eliminations (like a lineal championship in boxing) where there's a
chain of matches until a championship round (the "final round") occurs.
We've spoken for years about making Condorcet more understandable by
figuring out how to seed tournament brackets, which lead to a "final
round". STAR makes it reasonably easy to understand HOW the candidates
were selected for the final round, and I'm pretty sure it's effective.
STAR's not my favorite if I could wave a wand, but maybe I'd just make
myself dictator for life if I had access to a magic wand. :-)
One thing I think we agree on: Hare IRV doesn't eliminate the spoiler
effect; it multiplies it. Every round of an IRV election has the
spoiler effect. One huge problem with IRV is how the second/third/
fourth/etc preferences are ignored until the first preference is
eliminated. Those unlucky enough to rank a spoiler victim too high will
have their subsequent rankings ignored. STAR may not use a perfect
mechanism to select the final-round pair of candidates, but it's
defensible. The Equal Vote folks were able to convince enough eager
volunteers that the mechanism was good enough to get it on the ballot,
and 30% of voters in Eugene thought it was good enough. 30% is not nothing.
You would have to convince [voters] that they need to harm the
likelihood for A to get into the final runoff...
Are you really trying to trot out "later-no-harm"? How is Condorcet-TTR
or BTR-IRV better than STAR in passing later-no-harm?
I hope you're successful in palling up to Vermont legislators. I truly
don't want to rain on your parade. Just stop it with the bad-faith
raining on the STAR parade, okay? You don't KNOW how voters will behave
if we start having high-stakes elections with the system. Your 5-1-0
strategy assumes there will only be three viable candidates, and doesn't
take into account the incumbent vs non-incumbent dynamic (which causes
Greens and Republicans and Vermont Progressives and everyone else to
join forces and badmouth a Democratic-party incumbent).
Even the three-way race between Kiss, Wright, and Montroll in 2009 also
had Smith and Simpson in it. I'm just going to assume that even Simpson
had folks knocking on doors, and I'll bet he was door-knocking himself.
All of Kiss's challengers were saying "the incumbent is awful", but I'm
guessing they all emphasized different reasons why he was awful. When
one layers the "anti-incumbency" effect on the left-center-right
political model, we can see at least one more dimension to voters'
choices. If one adds "quality of campaign", that turns it into a 3D
model. If one adds "money" as a dimension...well, now we're in 4D
space, and that breaks my brain. I'm guessing it breaks your brain as
well, Robert, even if you won't admit it.
Look, we should be allies, but it's kinda tough with your online
demeanor and clear overconfidence that STAR is unacceptable. You
haven't proven to me that STAR is unacceptable, and I haven't found many
people who take your side who engage frequently online. Please, correct
me if I'm wrong.
Rob
p.s. I fear that a lot of people who THINK they understand RCV/IRV, but
when pressed to explain it, describe Borda.
p.p.s. I'm annoyed that Marcus Ogren calls it "Ranked Robin" rather than
"Condorcet" in this Medium post, but it seems really interesting and
relevant to this conversation:
https://voting-in-the-abstract.medium.com/voter-satisfaction-efficiency-
many-many-results-ad66ffa87c9e <https://voting-in-the-
abstract.medium.com/voter-satisfaction-efficiency-many-many-results-
ad66ffa87c9e>
p.p.p.s. Some of you may have noticed I've turned on "Reply-all munging"
for the mailing list. I'm pretty sure the increased use of DKIM is the
reason why I've missed out on many messages from this list. Munging
helps with DKIM compliance and thus should make delivery more robust,
but it also means simple replies are more likely to go to the mailing
list rather than just the sender, even if you mean to just send a
private reply to the sender. Be careful out there!
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
On 2025-04-22 02:33, Richard via Election-Methods wrote:
- When software developers write IRV code to correctly count overvotes,
usually they use decimal numbers, such as giving one ballot half
strength for one equal-ranked candidate and half strength for the
voter's other equal-ranked candidate. This shortcut yields the correct
result, in the sense that the correct candidate gets elected. However
this decimal-number shortcut is not acceptable for governmental elections.
What makes this a shortcut and why is it not acceptable? I imagine that
what that is must be specific to the US, since some local governmental
elections in NZ use Meek STV which can produce keep values with no
closed form. However, I don't know what it is.
If it's a matter of numerical precision, then for overvotes (but not
Meek) one can use exact fractional arithmetic.
- Here's how to correctly count overvotes in governmental elections,
without departing from the principle of one voter supporting only one
candidate in each round of voting. First, imagine IRV is being used in
a huge convention hall filled with all the voters and all the
candidates. Each voter lines up behind their first-choice candidate.
The candidate with the shortest line is eliminated. The voters in that
shortest line then move to stand in line behind their second choice.
(All other voters stay where they are.) Now imagine there were two
voters in that shortest line who have an equal preference for candidates
B and D as their second choice. These two voters agree that one of them
will stand in line behind candidate B, and the other voter will stand in
line behind candidate D. This "pairing" approach easily extends to five
candidates being marked in the same "rank" column. (More than five
"equal ranks" can be calculated, but not as easily, and not as fast.)
What would happen if there were three such voters, all voting B=D? To be
fair, it would seem you would have to place one and a half voter in B's
line and the other in D's. But your constraints say you can't divide the
voters into fractions.
-km
On 4/24/25 02:20, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
What would happen if there were three such voters, all voting B=D? To be
fair, it would seem you would have to place one and a half voter in B's
line and the other in D's. But your constraints say you can't divide the
voters into fractions.
If the conference-hall simulation matched actual election counting
rules, the third voter would not vote in that round.
If a fourth voter also has the B=D equal preference, then that's two
pairs of voters cooperating.
If decimal numbers were used, the counts would be rounded down to the
nearest integer. This correctly simulates the pairing approach.
Specifically, with three voters having the B=D preference, the count of
three would be divided by the number of candidates involved, which is 2
(B and D), that yields 1.5 and that's rounded down to 1, which is the
number of votes going to candidate B and the number of votes going to
candidate D.
The difference between what I'm suggesting and what you're suggesting is
when division occurs. I'm suggesting it happens once, after counting
the ballots that share the same pattern. You're suggesting that a
ballot can be split into 0.5 votes for candidate B and 0.5 votes for
candidate D without waiting to see if there are an odd number of voters
with that ranking pattern. This means your approach does division at
each ballot, instead of just once at the end of a counting round.
(BTW, if the election was actually happening in a large convention hall,
the unpaired voter could choose to stand in line behind either B or D.
They would not be required to stand aside, even though that's what the
algorithm essentially does.)
On 2025-04-22 02:33, Richard via Election-Methods wrote:
- When software developers write IRV code to correctly count
overvotes, usually they use decimal numbers, such as giving one
ballot ....
What makes this a shortcut and why is it not acceptable?
Using your example of three voters having the B=D preference, it's a
shortcut if division is done at each ballot instead of first counting
the total number of B=D voters and then doing the division.
It's not acceptable because voters don't trust decimal numbers for
single-winner elections. Even if the results are reported as
rounded-down integers.
I imagine that
what that is must be specific to the US, since some local governmental
elections in NZ use Meek STV which can produce keep values with no
closed form. However, I don't know what it is.
Here in Portland the city-council elections use STV with decimal
numbers. Clarification: Here it's called "proportional ranked choice
voting" rather than STV. Voters don't mind these decimal numbers in
these multi-winner elections. Partially because they are already
confused by the general STV approach.
Plus, the surplus votes expressed in decimal numbers in the recent
election were quite small.
Also, a popular video explaining "proportional ranked choice voting" --
using actual doughnut preferences of news reporters at the big local
newspaper -- had very small decimal numbers. Voters recognize these
small numbers won't make much difference in STV counting.
If it's a matter of numerical precision, then for overvotes (but not
Meek) one can use exact fractional arithmetic.
We could. But that complicates the code. Which the Republican party
would use as an excuse to villify.
The Republican party strongly opposes RCV of any kind. Recently they
banned Approval voting in North Dakota, where Approval voting already
was being used in the city of Fargo.
Using 0.33333333 as a ballot weight would be mathematically close
enough, but some voters would be taught not to trust the lack of full
accuracy.
For context, the Republican party teaches Republican voters to distrust
anything other than "one person one vote." "One person one ballot" is
villified.
As a further US context, there are still lots of voters who believe
cheating was involved in the 2008 presidential election. (Even though
there is no evidence of any cheating beyond cases such as a few people
who marked the ballot sent to a recently deceased family member.) The
slogan "stop the steal" expresses that distrust. Of course it's really
a racial slogan because lots of voters cannot believe a black man could
have won without any cheating.
The broader perspective is that single-winner elections attract more
suspicion compared to multi-winner elections.
Thanks for your questions!
Richard Fobes
On 4/24/25 02:20, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 2025-04-22 02:33, Richard via Election-Methods wrote:
- When software developers write IRV code to correctly count
overvotes, usually they use decimal numbers, such as giving one ballot
half strength for one equal-ranked candidate and half strength for the
voter's other equal-ranked candidate. This shortcut yields the
correct result, in the sense that the correct candidate gets elected.
However this decimal-number shortcut is not acceptable for
governmental elections.
What makes this a shortcut and why is it not acceptable? I imagine that
what that is must be specific to the US, since some local governmental
elections in NZ use Meek STV which can produce keep values with no
closed form. However, I don't know what it is.
If it's a matter of numerical precision, then for overvotes (but not
Meek) one can use exact fractional arithmetic.
- Here's how to correctly count overvotes in governmental elections,
without departing from the principle of one voter supporting only one
candidate in each round of voting. First, imagine IRV is being used
in a huge convention hall filled with all the voters and all the
candidates. Each voter lines up behind their first-choice candidate.
The candidate with the shortest line is eliminated. The voters in
that shortest line then move to stand in line behind their second
choice. (All other voters stay where they are.) Now imagine there
were two voters in that shortest line who have an equal preference for
candidates B and D as their second choice. These two voters agree
that one of them will stand in line behind candidate B, and the other
voter will stand in line behind candidate D. This "pairing" approach
easily extends to five candidates being marked in the same "rank"
column. (More than five "equal ranks" can be calculated, but not as
easily, and not as fast.)
What would happen if there were three such voters, all voting B=D? To be
fair, it would seem you would have to place one and a half voter in B's
line and the other in D's. But your constraints say you can't divide the
voters into fractions.
-km
On 2025-04-24 18:41, Richard wrote:
On 4/24/25 02:20, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
What would happen if there were three such voters, all voting B=D? To be
fair, it would seem you would have to place one and a half voter in B's
line and the other in D's. But your constraints say you can't divide the
voters into fractions.
If the conference-hall simulation matched actual election counting
rules, the third voter would not vote in that round.
If a fourth voter also has the B=D equal preference, then that's two
pairs of voters cooperating.
If decimal numbers were used, the counts would be rounded down to the
nearest integer. This correctly simulates the pairing approach.
Specifically, with three voters having the B=D preference, the count of
three would be divided by the number of candidates involved, which is 2
(B and D), that yields 1.5 and that's rounded down to 1, which is the
number of votes going to candidate B and the number of votes going to
candidate D.
This seems problematic, though. In your original post, you said "Here's
how to correctly count overvotes in governmental elections, without
departing from the principle of one voter supporting only one candidate
in each round of voting."
My (implied) point is that the conference-hall method, and its
simulation, leaves something to be desired because additional voters
with an equal preference may be deprived of a say in the outcome. And if
it does leave something to be desired, it cannot unconditionally be
called "the correct" way to count. If "the principle of one voter
supporting only one candidate" is meant to be a constraint, it might be
(given the constraint), but then it remains to be shown that this
condition has value in itself.
As an example of uneven voting power, say there's a near tie election
with the following first preference counts so far:
A: 1700
B: 1500
C: 1300
D: 1202
E: 1200
and suppose that three ballots that rank A=E are counted next, then two
ballots ranking A=B=E, and finally three ballots ranking A=B=C=E.
By the conference-hall method, the three A=E ballots count for 1 point
for each:
A: 1701
B: 1500
C: 1300
D: 1202
E: 1201
and the two A=B=E ballots count for zero (rounding down), as do the
three A=B=C=E ballots. Hence, as far as I understand, E is eliminated.
By fully fractional counting, instead the three A=E ballots in total
count as 1 + 1/2 for each candidate. To mitigate roundoff problems, I'll
keep a table of how many of each fraction has been counted:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
A: 1701 1 0 0 0
B: 1500 0 0 0 0
C: 1300 0 0 0 0
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 0 0 0
The two A=B=E ballots count, in total, as 2/3 for each:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
A: 1701 1 2 0 0
B: 1500 0 2 0 0
C: 1300 0 0 0 0
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 0 0
and the three A=B=C=E ballots count as 3/4 for each:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
A: 1701 1 2 3 0
B: 1500 0 2 3 0
C: 1300 0 0 3 0
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 3 0
Then D is eliminated instead of E because 1201 + 1/2 + 2/3 + 3/4 > 1202.
The difference between what I'm suggesting and what you're suggesting is
when division occurs. I'm suggesting it happens once, after counting
the ballots that share the same pattern. You're suggesting that a
ballot can be split into 0.5 votes for candidate B and 0.5 votes for
candidate D without waiting to see if there are an odd number of voters
with that ranking pattern. This means your approach does division at
each ballot, instead of just once at the end of a counting round.
If by "division" you mean the splitting of ballots into fractions,
that's correct. But if you mean the mathematical operation of division,
then not necessarily. Consider the tabular form above, and let's look at
D and E here:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 3 0
Until this point, we haven't done any division, we've just been counting
fractions. Now we can do a division at the very end and find out that
1201 + 1/2 + 2/3 + 3/4 > 1202.
This way of counting lends itself to easy reduction while the ballots
are counted, because once a candidate's count of halves (/2 fractions)
equals 2, then you can set it back to zero and increment the
wholes/units place. Same with thirds (once you get three, just increment
a unit and set the thirds' count to zero).
This "increment the units" strategy has a similar effect as your
approach: two A=B voters contribute one point to each, in this case
because each adds a 1/2 fraction to both candidates, and then once you
get 2/2, you can increment the unit. In addition, you can keep a proper
count without having to keep track of how many e.g. B=C ballots you've
seen before when you encounter another one. Instead of thinking "I last
gave a point to C when I saw a B=C ballot, next one must be to B", you
can just add one /2 point to each, every time, and then resolve into
full votes once enough fractions accumulate.
The difference is that this tabular method keeps the residual fractions
until the end of the process so ties can be broken if necessary.
If the full vote values are too far apart, then you don't need to do a
division at all. E.g. if the result had been:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
D: 1250 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 3 0
then since every fractions column contributes less than a full vote
(otherwise, that full vote would have been drawn into the units place),
the value for E can't be greater than its unit count plus the number of
fractions columns, here 1201 + 4. Since 1205 < 1250, there's no need to
check the division: E would be the loser anyway.
This might be more complex, but it doesn't seem like the conference-hall
method is unambiguously "the correct way" to do things.
-km
On 5/19/25 12:21, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
My (implied) point is that the conference-hall method, and its
simulation, leaves something to be desired because additional voters
with an equal preference may be deprived of a say in the outcome. And if
it does leave something to be desired, it cannot unconditionally be
called "the correct" way to count. ...
The counting method you describe (copied below) is also correct.
Mathematically anyway. It's more difficult for a typical voter to
understand, especially because it involves fractions. Yet it's correct.
And it yields the same result as the conference-hall method I explained.
The counting methods that are NOT correct are the only two options
currently offered in the RCTab software at the Ranked Choice Voting
Resource Center (RCVRC)!
One of those options is to skip over an "overvote", which is two or more
candidates marked at the same preference level. This is the option that
was chosen for Portland (OR). The other option is to dismiss ALL the
remaining marks on the ballot when a so-called "overvote" is reached.
As I've said before, I'm hoping the RCVRC adds the third option of
correctly counting so-called "overvotes." Either your method (using
fractions) or the conference-hall method (using pairings) would be the
correct way to do the counting.
In the distant future, the rounding down of fractions, or dismissing
unpaired ballots, could be omitted, but voters aren't yet willing to
accept that. Worse, critics of ranked choice voting would use the
details to claim the counts are not completely correct.
As a reminder of why this issue matters, correct counting of "overvotes"
will prevent the complications that arose in the recent Portland mayoral
election using IRV. Lots of us wanted to rank one or two frontrunners
under lots of the other candidates, yet we were limited to marking only
six ovals in six columns, with no more than one oval per column. As a
reminder there were about 20 candidates.
Also, when this counting issue is corrected, the promoters of STAR
voting will have only one remaining valid criticism of IRV. (And that
weakness can be overcome by eliminating pairwise-losing candidates when
they occur.)
The conference-hall explanation is intended for typical voters. It
helps them understand that an "overvote" is not a violation of "one
person one vote."
As your example shows, if there is a change in elimination order among
some less-popular candidates, that would not be likely to affect who wins.
In the meantime, governmental elections typically yield different vote
counts each time the ballots are counted during an audit. So counting
correctly in a way that ignores twenty or so ballots during one of the
counting rounds is a tiny unfairness compared to the current unfairness
of the two methods supported by the RCTab software at the RCVRC, either
of which can involve dismissing hundreds or thousands of ballots.
I continue to hope that Rob ("robla") can convey this insight to the
folks at the Equal Vote Coalition so they recognize it's easy to
overcome the two significant weaknesses of IRV.
To avoid any misunderstanding, I dislike IRV. Yet its two significant
weaknesses are easy to overcome without leaping to the complexity of
Condorcet methods, and without abandoning the already-familiar idea of
eliminating the least-popular candidate during each counting round.
Richard Fobes
On 5/19/25 12:21, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 2025-04-24 18:41, Richard wrote:
On 4/24/25 02:20, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
What would happen if there were three such voters, all voting B=D? To be
fair, it would seem you would have to place one and a half voter in B's
line and the other in D's. But your constraints say you can't divide the
voters into fractions.
If the conference-hall simulation matched actual election counting
rules, the third voter would not vote in that round.
If a fourth voter also has the B=D equal preference, then that's two
pairs of voters cooperating.
If decimal numbers were used, the counts would be rounded down to the
nearest integer. This correctly simulates the pairing approach.
Specifically, with three voters having the B=D preference, the count
of three would be divided by the number of candidates involved, which
is 2 (B and D), that yields 1.5 and that's rounded down to 1, which is
the number of votes going to candidate B and the number of votes going
to candidate D.
This seems problematic, though. In your original post, you said "Here's
how to correctly count overvotes in governmental elections, without
departing from the principle of one voter supporting only one candidate
in each round of voting."
My (implied) point is that the conference-hall method, and its
simulation, leaves something to be desired because additional voters
with an equal preference may be deprived of a say in the outcome. And if
it does leave something to be desired, it cannot unconditionally be
called "the correct" way to count. If "the principle of one voter
supporting only one candidate" is meant to be a constraint, it might be
(given the constraint), but then it remains to be shown that this
condition has value in itself.
As an example of uneven voting power, say there's a near tie election
with the following first preference counts so far:
A: 1700
B: 1500
C: 1300
D: 1202
E: 1200
and suppose that three ballots that rank A=E are counted next, then two
ballots ranking A=B=E, and finally three ballots ranking A=B=C=E.
By the conference-hall method, the three A=E ballots count for 1 point
for each:
A: 1701
B: 1500
C: 1300
D: 1202
E: 1201
and the two A=B=E ballots count for zero (rounding down), as do the
three A=B=C=E ballots. Hence, as far as I understand, E is eliminated.
By fully fractional counting, instead the three A=E ballots in total
count as 1 + 1/2 for each candidate. To mitigate roundoff problems, I'll
keep a table of how many of each fraction has been counted:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
A: 1701 1 0 0 0
B: 1500 0 0 0 0
C: 1300 0 0 0 0
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 0 0 0
The two A=B=E ballots count, in total, as 2/3 for each:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
A: 1701 1 2 0 0
B: 1500 0 2 0 0
C: 1300 0 0 0 0
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 0 0
and the three A=B=C=E ballots count as 3/4 for each:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
A: 1701 1 2 3 0
B: 1500 0 2 3 0
C: 1300 0 0 3 0
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 3 0
Then D is eliminated instead of E because 1201 + 1/2 + 2/3 + 3/4 > 1202.
The difference between what I'm suggesting and what you're suggesting
is when division occurs. I'm suggesting it happens once, after
counting the ballots that share the same pattern. You're suggesting
that a ballot can be split into 0.5 votes for candidate B and 0.5
votes for candidate D without waiting to see if there are an odd
number of voters with that ranking pattern. This means your approach
does division at each ballot, instead of just once at the end of a
counting round.
If by "division" you mean the splitting of ballots into fractions,
that's correct. But if you mean the mathematical operation of division,
then not necessarily. Consider the tabular form above, and let's look at
D and E here:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
D: 1202 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 3 0
Until this point, we haven't done any division, we've just been counting
fractions. Now we can do a division at the very end and find out that
1201 + 1/2 + 2/3 + 3/4 > 1202.
This way of counting lends itself to easy reduction while the ballots
are counted, because once a candidate's count of halves (/2 fractions)
equals 2, then you can set it back to zero and increment the wholes/
units place. Same with thirds (once you get three, just increment a unit
and set the thirds' count to zero).
This "increment the units" strategy has a similar effect as your
approach: two A=B voters contribute one point to each, in this case
because each adds a 1/2 fraction to both candidates, and then once you
get 2/2, you can increment the unit. In addition, you can keep a proper
count without having to keep track of how many e.g. B=C ballots you've
seen before when you encounter another one. Instead of thinking "I last
gave a point to C when I saw a B=C ballot, next one must be to B", you
can just add one /2 point to each, every time, and then resolve into
full votes once enough fractions accumulate.
The difference is that this tabular method keeps the residual fractions
until the end of the process so ties can be broken if necessary.
If the full vote values are too far apart, then you don't need to do a
division at all. E.g. if the result had been:
wholes /2 /3 /4 /5
D: 1250 0 0 0 0
E: 1201 1 2 3 0
then since every fractions column contributes less than a full vote
(otherwise, that full vote would have been drawn into the units place),
the value for E can't be greater than its unit count plus the number of
fractions columns, here 1201 + 4. Since 1205 < 1250, there's no need to
check the division: E would be the loser anyway.
This might be more complex, but it doesn't seem like the conference-hall
method is unambiguously "the correct way" to do things.
-km