On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 16:33 Michael Garman <
michael.garman@rankthevote.us> wrote:

I hadn’t heard about that. But I can accept a policy that I disagree with
if it’s part of a platform that I otherwise like.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 13:55 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves@gmail.com> wrote:

As an example, I'd much prefer a situation where Biden had a Democratic

Marianne Williamson is a genuine Progressive, & (I hope) in on the ballot
in all states.

…& should also be, with whatever voting-system.

Right now, I'm not happy with any of the candidates in the race

What are you unhappy about, regarding Jill Stein, Marianne Williamson
(candidate for the Democrat-nomination), or the Greens’ platform, or
Williamson’s platform?

on a simple left-right scale I'm close to Biden, but I'm not exactly

But you’re enthusiastic about what Biden has been doing during recent
months?

Though I'm sure as hell not supporting any other candidate in the race...

You sure as hell aren’t supporting a Progressive !!!

) With STAR, every voter has at least two candidates they consider

On Tue, Apr 9, 2024 at 17:31 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

[quote]
Score is Approval with a  "I wish to weaken the effect of my vote for
the sake of being more sincere/expressive" box/button.
[/quote]

If that’s how you want to vote in Score, then suit yourself.

The right use of Score:

Use only min & max ratings. i.e. Use Score as Approval.

…with the difference that, when it’s uncertain whether or not a
candidate deserves approval, you can give hir partial approval, by an
intermediate point-rating.

Nice, sometimes convenient, because, otherwise, the only way to give
someone partial approval would be probabilistically.

But Score loses Approval’s absolute minimalness, & unique unarbitrariness.

Much better to let the voters deal with such things for themselves
with the absolutely minimal handtool, than to use some arbitrary &
(somewhat or greatly) complicated definition, rule & count. …with the
consequent expense & count-fraud vulnerability.

 So it is strategically equivalent to Approval while being more
 complicated and less fair.

More complicated, yes.

I strongly oppose a runoff for Approval, but some jurisdictions might
insist on one.

…likewise Score.

It’s true that it somewhat increases  Condorcet-efficiency &
Social-Utility (SU), but it brings great strategy-complication,
including the loss of FBC compliance.

But STAR is better than Hare because:

It retains some amount Score’s merit.

It’s much, much simpler than Hare, resulting in much better
count-fraud security.

It’s much less expensive to administer & implement than Hare.

It’s much simpler to describe its workings when proposing it.

 And Approval has a quite good reputation here because it meets
 Favorite Betrayal  (aka FBC) and compared with FPP the winner
 will strongly tend to have higher social utility and be much more
 likely  a sincere Condorcet winner. Also, and not unrelatedly,
 it has a bias toward centrists that some people think is wonderful.

 But some people seem to think that adding a Top-Two Runoff
 (automated in the case of STAR) to Score (to make STAR) is just
 a harmless little gimmick that just makes the method "a bit more
 accurate", brings it into compliance with Condorcet Loser
 and so must make it more "Condorcet efficient". ("Sky-high"
 according to CLC here).

 But actually it makes the method profoundly different and very
 bad. It seems to me that the inventors of STAR must have been
 motivated by three priorities:

 (1) the method isn't  Hare,

 (2) the method, in a purely technical and completely useless way,
 apparently meets Mono-raise (aka Monotonicity).

 (3) subject to being saleable to and understood by not-so-deep
 thinkers, the method be as bad as possible.

 From the "equal-vote" website: https://www.equal.vote/

 The "Equal Vote Criterion" is just  propaganda nonsense:
 https://electowiki.org/wiki/Equal_Vote_Criterion

 This is just dishonest blather. If anything meets this very vague
 and confused "criterion" IRV (aka Hare) certainly does.

 The classic scenario that motivated some people get negative about
 Hare (and also methods like Min-Max Margins):

 49 Bush
 24 Gore
 27 Nader>Gore

 Gore>Bush 51-49,   Bush>Nader 49-27, Nader>Gore 27-24.

 Hare eliminates Gore and elects Bush, so the Nader voters whose
 Gore> Bush preference was strong had incentive to use the Compromise
 strategy and vote Gore>Nader ("betraying" their sincere
 favourite).  If the method was Approval they could have approved
 both Nader and
 Gore, preventing the election of Bush without having to vote their
 sincere favorite below equal-top.

 But in this type of scenario STAR does no better than Hare. The
 Nader voters would have incentive to give Nader zero points.

 "Traditionally" Hare's  vulnerability to Push-over strategy has
 said to be a result of it's failure of Mono-raise.  But STAR is
 much more vulnerable
 to Push-over.

 Say you are sure that your favourite will make the final two. In
 that case then you have incentive to give every candidate that you
 are sure your
 favourite can beat 4 or 5 stars.  If 5 stars then you are relying
 on you favourite winning the runoff without your help, but if 4
 stars then you might
 fail to get one of the predicted sure-loser turkeys into the final.

 In a Hare Push-over strategy scenario, the strategists rely on
 their favourite winning the runoff against their own votes, i.e.
 with their votes supporting
 the turkey against their favourite. This makes it much more risky
 (more likely to backfire) and difficult to coordinate than is the
 case with STAR.

 The equal-vote site has a link to a quite ok video on the Favorite
 Betrayal Criterion.  I find that weird and misleading, because
 STAR badly fails FBC.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ

 From https://www.starvoting.org/

 I'm not sure exactly what "accurate" is supposed to mean, but I
 refute the suggestion that these claims are more true of STAR than
 they are of Hare.

 In the poll I will vote STAR below Hare and Approval and all the
 Condorcet methods.

 Chris

Where as Hare just seeks to replace the Single Non-Transferable Vote with
the Single Transferable Vote, keeping compliance
with Plurality, Dominant Candidate, Clone-Loser, Later-no-Harm and
Later-no-Help but losing Participation and Mono-Raise to gain
Dominant Coalition (and therefore Majority for Solid Coalitions) and
Dominant Mutual Third and Clone-Winner.

It has what Woodall referred to as a "maximal set of properties".  It's ok
not to like it if you are a fundamentalist about some criterion
compliance it doesn't have (like Condorcet or FBC) but not to suggest that
complete garbage like STAR is in some way preferable.

Chris Benham

On 11/04/2024 5:04 am, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

On Tue, Apr 9, 2024 at 17:31 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

[quote]
Score is Approval with a  "I wish to weaken the effect of my vote for the
sake of being more sincere/expressive" box/button.
[/quote]

If that’s how you want to vote in Score, then suit yourself.

The right use of Score:

Use only min & max ratings. i.e. Use Score as Approval.

…with the difference that, when it’s uncertain whether or not a candidate
deserves approval, you can give hir partial approval, by an intermediate
point-rating.

Nice, sometimes convenient, because, otherwise, the only way to give
someone partial approval would be probabilistically.

But Score loses Approval’s absolute minimalness, & unique unarbitrariness.

Much better to let the voters deal with such things for themselves with
the absolutely minimal handtool, than to use some arbitrary & (somewhat or
greatly) complicated definition, rule & count. …with the consequent expense
& count-fraud vulnerability.

So it is strategically equivalent to Approval while being more complicated

More complicated, yes.

I strongly oppose a runoff for Approval, but some jurisdictions might
insist on one.

…likewise Score.

It’s true that it somewhat increases  Condorcet-efficiency &
Social-Utility (SU), but it brings great strategy-complication, including
the loss of FBC compliance.

But STAR is better than Hare because:

It retains some amount Score’s merit.

It’s much, much simpler than Hare, resulting in much better count-fraud
security.

It’s much less expensive to administer & implement than Hare.

It’s much simpler to describe its workings when proposing it.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 18:04 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

I said “some”, not “all”.

e.g. If there are unacceptable candidates, then just give max to the
acceptables, & zero to the unacceptables.

IRV? Try to rank the acceptables in order of winnability. …trying & hoping
to match the ranking-order of the other preferrers of some of your
acceptables.

Questionable guesswork. An intractable strategic morass.

Yes,, & isn’t that true with any runoff? It occurred to me too, I don’t
like it. I much prefer Score to STAR.  … completely reject runoff with
Approval.  …unless a jurisdiction insists on it.

I much prefer Approval to Score,  for minimalness & unarbitrariness.

See above.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 18:04 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

 Michael wrote:

 No it doesn't.   Score meets Favorite Betrayal and Participation. 
 STAR trashes those just for Condorcet Loser.

I said “some”, not “all”.

e.g. If there are unacceptable candidates, then just give max to the
acceptables, & zero to the unacceptables.

IRV? Try to rank the acceptables in order of winnability. …trying &
hoping to match the ranking-order of the other preferrers of some of
your acceptables.

Questionable guesswork. An intractable strategic morass.

 I could even make up a new criterion just to encapsulate the
 horror of STAR.

 The Favourite Ultra-Betrayal Criterion:

 *Voters should never have any strategic incentive to vote their
 sincere favourite as low as possible*.

Yes,, & isn’t that true with any runoff? It occurred to me too, I
don’t like it. I much prefer Score to STAR.  … completely reject
runoff with Approval.  …unless a jurisdiction insists on it.

I much prefer Approval to Score,  for minimalness & unarbitrariness.

 Hare should be much easier to sell to anyone with any intelligence
 or common sense because STAR is obviously
 so silly and arbitrary.

See above.

 Where as Hare just seeks to replace the Single Non-Transferable
 Vote with the Single Transferable Vote, keeping compliance
 with Plurality, Dominant Candidate, Clone-Loser, Later-no-Harm and
 Later-no-Help but losing Participation and Mono-Raise to gain
 Dominant Coalition (and therefore Majority for Solid Coalitions)
 and Dominant Mutual Third and Clone-Winner.

 It has what Woodall referred to as a "maximal set of properties". 
 It's ok not to like it if you are a fundamentalist about some
 criterion
 compliance it doesn't have (like Condorcet or FBC) but not to
 suggest that complete garbage like STAR is in some way preferable.



 Chris Benham


 On 11/04/2024 5:04 am, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

Michael

On 11/04/2024 10:56 am, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 18:04 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

I said “some”, not “all”.

e.g. If there are unacceptable candidates, then just give max to the
acceptables, & zero to the unacceptables.

IRV? Try to rank the acceptables in order of winnability. …trying & hoping
to match the ranking-order of the other preferrers of some of your
acceptables.

Questionable guesswork. An intractable strategic morass.

Yes,, & isn’t that true with any runoff? It occurred to me too, I don’t
like it. I much prefer Score to STAR.  … completely reject runoff with
Approval.  …unless a jurisdiction insists on it.

I much prefer Approval to Score,  for minimalness & unarbitrariness.

See above.

You’re right—The runoff messes up STAR’s strategy with unacceptable
candidates too.

But IRV shares the problem. I most non-wv Condorcet have it too, if
there might be successful burial (& there might easily be undeterred
burial with most non wv Condorcet.)

So it isn’t a problem of only STAR.

…& the ranked-methods have their completely prohibitive count-fraud
vulnerability problem, due to their complex count.

So I ranked STAR over the ranked methods.

Different topic: In a different post, you said that Approval tend to
favor centrists. FairVote says that, but it isn’t true.

In this country, Centrist are candidates between the Democrat & the
Republican. But Approval favors the voter-median.

The Democrats & Republicans are a very, very  long way from the
voter-median, which is Progressive.

As I keep saying, Approval’s Myerson-Weber equilibrium is at the
voter-median. Approval will soon home-in on the CW.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 19:59 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

 It sounds like you are talking about a situation where there are
 no known clear front-runners

If we knew who the frontrunners are, VF1 (Vote-For-1, Plurality) would
work fine.

 and the supporters of the candidates you deem acceptable don't
 fully agree with you about which candidates are acceptable and
 which are not.

 Because if they do agree with you then they will all just vote the
 same set of acceptable candidates above all the others

If all progressives had that kind of information, which candidate to
combine on, then VF1 would work fine.

But yes, IRV & VF1 are alike in that way, sharing the same problem
(admittedly worse in VF1.).

But who wants that problem? …especially when paying the price of a
complex count & its consequences.

 and benefit from the method's compliance with
 Clone-Winner.  And if there are known front-runners and you insist
 on voting super-safe then  I suppose you can top-rank the same
 Compromise candidate you
 would in FPP.

Exactly ! Favorite-burial defensive-strategy, in both methods.

 Not a big burden to lose sleep over and nothing like the STAR
 nightmare.  Overall the strategic risk of voting sincerely in Hare
 is much lower.

Star’s runoff brings big strategy-problems, as do many other methods,
including IRV & margins Condorcet, etc.

But at least it doesn’t share ranked-methods’ prohibitive count-fraud
insecurity & vulnerability.

You know…the lesser of two evils. Well, I don’t choose evils, & I
don’t propose STAR. But I ranked it over the ranked-methods, in our
poll, in which I’ve just now voted.

I wouldn’t propose a ranked method unless a jurisdiction insisted on
one. I’d then offer RP(wv), or maybe MinMax(wv), if they wanted
something even simpler than RP.

 Michael

 On 11/04/2024 10:56 am, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

Michael
On 11/04/2024 3:25 pm, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

You’re right—The runoff messes up STAR’s strategy with unacceptable
candidates too.

But IRV shares the problem. I most non-wv Condorcet have it too, if there
might be successful burial (& there might easily be undeterred burial with
most non wv Condorcet.)

So it isn’t a problem of only STAR.

…& the ranked-methods have their completely prohibitive count-fraud
vulnerability problem, due to their complex count.

So I ranked STAR over the ranked methods.

Different topic: In a different post, you said that Approval tend to favor
centrists. FairVote says that, but it isn’t true.

In this country, Centrist are candidates between the Democrat & the
Republican. But Approval favors the voter-median.

The Democrats & Republicans are a very, very  long way from the
voter-median, which is Progressive.

As I keep saying, Approval’s Myerson-Weber equilibrium is at the
voter-median. Approval will soon home-in on the CW.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 19:59 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

If we knew who the frontrunners are, VF1 (Vote-For-1, Plurality) would
work fine.

and the supporters of the candidates you deem acceptable don't

If all progressives had that kind of information, which candidate to
combine on, then VF1 would work fine.

But yes, IRV & VF1 are alike in that way, sharing the same problem
(admittedly worse in VF1.).

But who wants that problem? …especially when paying the price of a complex
count & its consequences.

and benefit from the method's compliance with

Exactly ! Favorite-burial defensive-strategy, in both methods.

Star’s runoff brings big strategy-problems, as do many other methods,
including IRV & margins Condorcet, etc.

But at least it doesn’t share ranked-methods’ prohibitive count-fraud
insecurity & vulnerability.

You know…the lesser of two evils. Well, I don’t choose evils, & I don’t
propose STAR. But I ranked it over the ranked-methods, in our poll, in
which I’ve just now voted.

I wouldn’t propose a ranked method unless a jurisdiction insisted on one.
I’d then offer RP(wv), or maybe MinMax(wv), if they wanted something even
simpler than RP.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 23:29 Chris Benham cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au wrote:

:-D

But progressives can’t seem to let go of their awful lesser-evil.

…if they can count on eachother’s solidarity. I used to point that out,
when I was defending Hare. But some supporters of the more distant
candidates you like might transfer the other way if they get eliminated.

A mutual-majority are safe, but there isn’t always mutuality…& that’s when
sincerity is regretted.

Probably one progressive’s voters will transfer to another progressive.
But, when there are unacceptables, then “probably” isn’t good enough. One
should maximally protect the acceptables.  …often that requires
favorite-burial.

I’ve seen the sincerity-regret in the only IRV poll that I observed. It
illustrated  that their use of IRV was a mistake. You lose the CW because
you ranked sincerely. Not good.

They should have used RP(wv). (In case there might be a natural
circular-tie, RP is better than MinMax.)

I like Hare for Pizza toppings & movies. Not for public political
elections or polls.

IRV isn’t Hare. It’s FairVote Hare. Their dishonest promotion makes it
effectively a different method.

Yes, a lot of voters are making a big mistake. Lesser-evil
giveaway-suckers.

Yes, some regard evil as acceptable if it’s “lesser”.

There was a novel called I’ve been down so long, it looks like up to me.

Sad.

The pessimism of lesser-evil voters is astounding.

On 11/04/2024 3:25 pm, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

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