High Resolution Inferred Approval version of ASM
Chris, I like it especially the part about nive voters voting sincerely
being at no appreciable disadvantage while resistiing burial and complying
with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are required (as I
understand it) what do you think about the practicality of rating on a scle
of zero to 99, as compared with rankiing a long list of candidates? Is it
a big obstacle?
Forest,
With paper and pencil ballots and the voters only writing in their
numerical scores it probably isn't very practical for the Australian
Electoral Commission
hand vote-counters.
But if it isn't compulsory to mark each candidate and the default score
is zero, I'm sure the voters could quickly adapt.
In the US I gather that there is at least one reform proposal to use
these type of ballots. One of these, "Score Voting" aka "Range Voting",
proposes to just use Average Ratings with I gather the default score
being "no opinion" rather than zero and some tweak to prevent an unknown
candidate from winning.
So it struck me that if we can collect such a large amount of detailed
information from the voters then we could do a lot more with it, and if we
want something that meets the Condorcet criterion this is my suggestion.
Chris Benham
How score voting works:
- Eachvote https://rangevoting.org/MeaningOfVote.htmlconsists of a
numerical score within some range (say0 to 99
https://rangevoting.org/Why99.html) for each candidate. Simpler
is 0 to 9 ("single digit score voting").
On 21/06/2019 5:33 am, Forest Simmons wrote:
Chris, I like it especially the part about naive voters voting
sincerely being at no appreciable disadvantage while resisting burial
and complying with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are required (as
I understand it) what do you think about the practicality of rating on
a scale of zero to 99, as compared with ranking a long list of
candidates? Is it a big obstacle?
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com
Voters can't readily provide meaningful information as score voting. It's
highly-strategic and the comparison of cardinal values is not natural.
All valuation is ordinal. Prices are based from cost; but what people WILL
pay, given no option to pay less, is based on ordinal comparison.
Is X worth 2 Y?
For the $1,000 iPhone I could have a OnePlus 6t and a Chromebook. The
6t...I can get a cheaper smartphone, but I prefer the 6t to that phone plus
whatever else I buy.
I have a higher paying job, so each dollar is worth fewer hours, so the
ordinal value of a dollar to me is lower. $600 of my dollars is fewer
hours than $600 minimum wage dollars. I have access to my most-preferred
purchases and can buy way down into my less-preferred purchases.
Information about this is difficult to pin down by voter. Prices in the
stock market set by a constant, public auction among millions of buyers and
sellers. A single buyer can hardly price one stock against another, and
prices against what they think their gains will be relative to current
price.
When pricing candidates, you'll see a lot like Mohs hardness: 2 is 200, 3
is 500, 4 is 1,500; but we label things that are 250 or 450 as 2.5,
likewise between 500 and 1,500 is 3.5. Being between X and Y is always
immediately HALFWAY between X and Y, most intuitively.
The rated system sucks even before you factor in strategic concerns (which
only matter if actually using a score-driven method).
Approval is just low-resolution (1 bit) score voting.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 12:01 AM C.Benham cbenham@adam.com.au wrote:
Forest,
With paper and pencil ballots and the voters only writing in their
numerical scores it probably isn't very practical for the Australian
Electoral Commission
hand vote-counters.
But if it isn't compulsory to mark each candidate and the default score is
zero, I'm sure the voters could quickly adapt.
In the US I gather that there is at least one reform proposal to use these
type of ballots. One of these, "Score Voting" aka "Range Voting",
proposes to just use Average Ratings with I gather the default score being
"no opinion" rather than zero and some tweak to prevent an unknown
candidate from winning.
So it struck me that if we can collect such a large amount of detailed
information from the voters then we could do a lot more with it, and if we
want something that meets the Condorcet criterion this is my suggestion.
Chris Benham
How score voting works:
1. Each vote <https://rangevoting.org/MeaningOfVote.html> consists of
a numerical score within some range (say 0 to 99
<https://rangevoting.org/Why99.html>) for each candidate. Simpler is 0
to 9 ("single digit score voting").
On 21/06/2019 5:33 am, Forest Simmons wrote:
Chris, I like it especially the part about naive voters voting sincerely
being at no appreciable disadvantage while resisting burial and complying
with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are required (as I
understand it) what do you think about the practicality of rating on a
scale of zero to 99, as compared with ranking a long list of candidates?
Is it a big obstacle?
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John,
With the VIASME method I'm proposing the voters just have to give
candidates they rank higher more points than those they rank lower,
and score the candidates approximately accurately according to how they
rate them relative to each other.
I don't understand why you think that is a problem. What types of ballot
do you like?
Chris Benham
On 21/06/2019 9:53 pm, John wrote:
Voters can't readily provide meaningful information as score voting.
It's highly-strategic and the comparison of cardinal values is not
natural.
All valuation is ordinal. Prices are based from cost; but what people
WILL pay, given no option to pay less, is based on ordinal comparison.
Is X worth 2 Y?
For the $1,000 iPhone I could have a OnePlus 6t and a Chromebook. The
6t...I can get a cheaper smartphone, but I prefer the 6t to that phone
plus whatever else I buy.
I have a higher paying job, so each dollar is worth fewer hours, so
the ordinal value of a dollar to me is lower. $600 of my dollars is
fewer hours than $600 minimum wage dollars. I have access to my
most-preferred purchases and can buy way down into my less-preferred
purchases.
Information about this is difficult to pin down by voter. Prices in
the stock market set by a constant, public auction among millions of
buyers and sellers. A single buyer can hardly price one stock against
another, and prices against what they think their gains will be
relative to current price.
When pricing candidates, you'll see a lot like Mohs hardness: 2 is
200, 3 is 500, 4 is 1,500; but we label things that are 250 or 450 as
2.5, likewise between 500 and 1,500 is 3.5. Being between X and Y is
always immediately HALFWAY between X and Y, most intuitively.
The rated system sucks even before you factor in strategic concerns
(which only matter if actually using a score-driven method).
Approval is just low-resolution (1 bit) score voting.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 12:01 AM C.Benham <cbenham@adam.com.au
mailto:cbenham@adam.com.au> wrote:
Forest,
With paper and pencil ballots and the voters only writing in their
numerical scores it probably isn't very practical for the
Australian Electoral Commission
hand vote-counters.
But if it isn't compulsory to mark each candidate and the default
score is zero, I'm sure the voters could quickly adapt.
In the US I gather that there is at least one reform proposal to
use these type of ballots. One of these, "Score Voting" aka "Range
Voting",
proposes to just use Average Ratings with I gather the default
score being "no opinion" rather than zero and some tweak to
prevent an unknown
candidate from winning.
So it struck me that if we can collect such a large amount of
detailed information from the voters then we could do a lot more
with it, and if we
want something that meets the Condorcet criterion this is my
suggestion.
Chris Benham
https://rangevoting.org/
*How score voting works:*
1. Eachvote <https://rangevoting.org/MeaningOfVote.html>consists
of a numerical score within some range (say0 to 99
<https://rangevoting.org/Why99.html>) for each candidate.
Simpler is 0 to 9 ("single digit score voting").
On 21/06/2019 5:33 am, Forest Simmons wrote:
Chris, I like it especially the part about naive voters voting
sincerely being at no appreciable disadvantage while resisting
burial and complying with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are
required (as I understand it) what do you think about the
practicality of rating on a scale of zero to 99, as compared with
ranking a long list of candidates? Is it a big obstacle?
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Valuation can be ordinal, in that you can know that 3 is more than 2.
There are two questions before us: Which voting method collects more data?
Which tabulation method picks the best winner from that data?
Which voting method collects more data?
Cardinal voting collects higher resolution data than ordinal voting.
Consider this thought experiment. If I give you a rating of A:5 B:2 C:1 D:3
E:5 F:2 you should create an ordered list from that -- AEDFBC. If I gave
you AEDFBC you couldn't convert that back into its cardinal data.
Which tabulation picks a better winner from the data?
Both Score and Approval voting pick the person with the highest votes.
Summing ordinal data, on the other hand, is very complicated, as to avoid
loops. Methods like Condorcet or IRV have been proposed to eliminate those
but ultimately they're hacks for dealing with incomplete information.
Felix Sargent https://felixsargent.com
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 5:23 AM John john.r.moser@gmail.com wrote:
Voters can't readily provide meaningful information as score voting. It's
highly-strategic and the comparison of cardinal values is not natural.
All valuation is ordinal. Prices are based from cost; but what people
WILL pay, given no option to pay less, is based on ordinal comparison.
Is X worth 2 Y?
For the $1,000 iPhone I could have a OnePlus 6t and a Chromebook. The
6t...I can get a cheaper smartphone, but I prefer the 6t to that phone plus
whatever else I buy.
I have a higher paying job, so each dollar is worth fewer hours, so the
ordinal value of a dollar to me is lower. $600 of my dollars is fewer
hours than $600 minimum wage dollars. I have access to my most-preferred
purchases and can buy way down into my less-preferred purchases.
Information about this is difficult to pin down by voter. Prices in the
stock market set by a constant, public auction among millions of buyers and
sellers. A single buyer can hardly price one stock against another, and
prices against what they think their gains will be relative to current
price.
When pricing candidates, you'll see a lot like Mohs hardness: 2 is 200, 3
is 500, 4 is 1,500; but we label things that are 250 or 450 as 2.5,
likewise between 500 and 1,500 is 3.5. Being between X and Y is always
immediately HALFWAY between X and Y, most intuitively.
The rated system sucks even before you factor in strategic concerns (which
only matter if actually using a score-driven method).
Approval is just low-resolution (1 bit) score voting.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 12:01 AM C.Benham cbenham@adam.com.au wrote:
Forest,
With paper and pencil ballots and the voters only writing in their
numerical scores it probably isn't very practical for the Australian
Electoral Commission
hand vote-counters.
But if it isn't compulsory to mark each candidate and the default score
is zero, I'm sure the voters could quickly adapt.
In the US I gather that there is at least one reform proposal to use
these type of ballots. One of these, "Score Voting" aka "Range Voting",
proposes to just use Average Ratings with I gather the default score
being "no opinion" rather than zero and some tweak to prevent an unknown
candidate from winning.
So it struck me that if we can collect such a large amount of detailed
information from the voters then we could do a lot more with it, and if we
want something that meets the Condorcet criterion this is my suggestion.
Chris Benham
How score voting works:
1. Each vote <https://rangevoting.org/MeaningOfVote.html> consists of
a numerical score within some range (say 0 to 99
<https://rangevoting.org/Why99.html>) for each candidate. Simpler is
0 to 9 ("single digit score voting").
On 21/06/2019 5:33 am, Forest Simmons wrote:
Chris, I like it especially the part about naive voters voting sincerely
being at no appreciable disadvantage while resisting burial and complying
with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are required (as I
understand it) what do you think about the practicality of rating on a
scale of zero to 99, as compared with ranking a long list of candidates?
Is it a big obstacle?
http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient&utm_term=oa-4885-b Virus-free.
www.avg.com
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info
Cardinal voting collects higher-resolution data, but not necessarily
precise data.
Let's say you score candidates:
A: 1.0
B: 0.5
C: 0.25
D: 0.1
In reality, B is 90% as favored as A. C is 70% as favored as B. The real
numbers would be:
A: 1.0
B: 0.9
C: 0.63
D: etc.
How would this happen?
Cardinal: I approve of A 90% as much as B.
Natural and honest: I prefer A to win, and I am not just as happy with B
winning, or close to it. I feel maybe half as good about that? B is
between C and D and I don't like C, but I like D less.
Strategic: even voting 0.5 for B means possibly helping B beat A, but what
if C wins...
The strategic nightmare is inherent to score and approval systems. When
approvals aren't used to elect but only for data, people are not naturally
inclined to analyze a score representing their actual approval.
Why?
Because people decide by simulation. Simulation of ordinal preference is
easy: I like A over B. Even then, sometimes you can't seem to decide who
is better.
Working out precisely how much I approve of A versus B is harder. It takes
a lot of effort and the basic simulation approach responds heavily to how
good you feel about A losing to B, not about how much B satisfies you on a
scale of 0 to A.
Score and approval voting source a high-error, low-confidence sample. It's
like recording climate data by licking your finger and holding it in the
wind each day, then writing down what you think is the temperature.
Someone will say, "it's more data than warmer/colder trends!" While
ignoring that you are not Mercury in a graduated cylinder.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 3:10 PM Felix Sargent felix.sargent@gmail.com wrote:
Valuation can be ordinal, in that you can know that 3 is more than 2.
There are two questions before us: Which voting method collects more data?
Which tabulation method picks the best winner from that data?
Which voting method collects more data?
Cardinal voting collects higher resolution data than ordinal voting.
Consider this thought experiment. If I give you a rating of A:5 B:2 C:1 D:3
E:5 F:2 you should create an ordered list from that -- AEDFBC. If I gave
you AEDFBC you couldn't convert that back into its cardinal data.
Which tabulation picks a better winner from the data?
Both Score and Approval voting pick the person with the highest votes.
Summing ordinal data, on the other hand, is very complicated, as to avoid
loops. Methods like Condorcet or IRV have been proposed to eliminate those
but ultimately they're hacks for dealing with incomplete information.
Felix Sargent https://felixsargent.com
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 5:23 AM John john.r.moser@gmail.com wrote:
Voters can't readily provide meaningful information as score voting. It's
highly-strategic and the comparison of cardinal values is not natural.
All valuation is ordinal. Prices are based from cost; but what people
WILL pay, given no option to pay less, is based on ordinal comparison.
Is X worth 2 Y?
For the $1,000 iPhone I could have a OnePlus 6t and a Chromebook. The
6t...I can get a cheaper smartphone, but I prefer the 6t to that phone plus
whatever else I buy.
I have a higher paying job, so each dollar is worth fewer hours, so the
ordinal value of a dollar to me is lower. $600 of my dollars is fewer
hours than $600 minimum wage dollars. I have access to my
most-preferred purchases and can buy way down into my less-preferred
purchases.
Information about this is difficult to pin down by voter. Prices in the
stock market set by a constant, public auction among millions of buyers and
sellers. A single buyer can hardly price one stock against another, and
prices against what they think their gains will be relative to current
price.
When pricing candidates, you'll see a lot like Mohs hardness: 2 is 200, 3
is 500, 4 is 1,500; but we label things that are 250 or 450 as 2.5,
likewise between 500 and 1,500 is 3.5. Being between X and Y is always
immediately HALFWAY between X and Y, most intuitively.
The rated system sucks even before you factor in strategic concerns
(which only matter if actually using a score-driven method).
Approval is just low-resolution (1 bit) score voting.
On Fri, Jun 21, 2019, 12:01 AM C.Benham cbenham@adam.com.au wrote:
Forest,
With paper and pencil ballots and the voters only writing in their
numerical scores it probably isn't very practical for the Australian
Electoral Commission
hand vote-counters.
But if it isn't compulsory to mark each candidate and the default score
is zero, I'm sure the voters could quickly adapt.
In the US I gather that there is at least one reform proposal to use
these type of ballots. One of these, "Score Voting" aka "Range Voting",
proposes to just use Average Ratings with I gather the default score
being "no opinion" rather than zero and some tweak to prevent an unknown
candidate from winning.
So it struck me that if we can collect such a large amount of detailed
information from the voters then we could do a lot more with it, and if we
want something that meets the Condorcet criterion this is my suggestion.
Chris Benham
How score voting works:
1. Each vote <https://rangevoting.org/MeaningOfVote.html> consists
of a numerical score within some range (say 0 to 99
<https://rangevoting.org/Why99.html>) for each candidate. Simpler is
0 to 9 ("single digit score voting").
On 21/06/2019 5:33 am, Forest Simmons wrote:
Chris, I like it especially the part about naive voters voting sincerely
being at no appreciable disadvantage while resisting burial and complying
with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are required (as I
understand it) what do you think about the practicality of rating on a
scale of zero to 99, as compared with ranking a long list of candidates?
Is it a big obstacle?
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i am not a member of the RangeVoting list so i do not think my response will post there.
John Moser reiterates the complaint that I have always had with Score Voting (i think that term is a better semantic than "Range"), which, perhaps surprizingly, is also the end complaint i have with Approval Voting, even though Score Voting requires too much information from voters and
Approval Voting collects too little information from voters (as does FPTP).
Score voting requires more thought (and expertise, as if they are Olympic figure-skating judges) from voters for them to determine exactly how much they should score a particular candidate. But the real
problem for the voter is that the voter is a partisan. They know they wanna score their favorite candidate a "10". They may like their second favorite, but they do not want their second choice to beat their first choice. But they may hate any of the remaining candidates
and they sure-as-hell want either their first or second choice to beat any of the remaining candidates. So their tactical burden in the voting booth is "How much do I score my second choice?"
And Approval Voting has the same problem, but for the opposite reason that Approval
Voting is less "expressive" than Ranked-Choice. The voter has the same tactical decision to make regarding their second favorite candidate: "Do I approve my second choice or not?"
These tactical decisions would also be affected by how likely the voter believes (from
the pre-election polls) that the race will end up essentially between their first and second-choice candidates. If the voter thinks that will be the case, the partisan voter is motivated to score his/her favorite a "10" and the second favorite a "0" (or approve the favorite
and not approve the second choice).
This really essentially comes down to a fundamental principle of voting and elections in a democracy, which is: "One person - one vote." If I really really like Candidate A far better than Candidate B and you prefer Candidate B only slightly
more than your preference for Candidate A, then my vote for A>B should count no more (nor less) than your vote for B>A. Even if your feelings about the candidates is not as strong as mine, your franchise should be as strong as my franchise. But Score Voting explicitly rejects
that notion and in doing so, will lead to a burden of tactical voting for regular voters.
Only the ordinal ranked-ballot extracts from voters the "right amount" of information. If a voter ranks A>B>C, all that voter is saying is that if the election were held between A
and B, this voter is voting for A. If the election is between A and C, this voter is voting for A. And if the election ends up being between B and C, this voter votes for B. That's all that this ballot says. We should not read more into it and we should not expect more
information from the voter such as "How much more do you prefer A over C than your preference of A over B?" It shouldn't matter.
my $0.02 .
r b-j
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [EM] High Resolution Inferred Approval version of ASM
From: "John" john.r.moser@gmail.com
Date: Fri, June 21, 2019 2:14 pm
To: "Felix Sargent" felix.sargent@gmail.com
Cc: RangeVoting@yahoogroups.com
"Forest Simmons" fsimmons@pcc.edu
"EM" election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Cardinal voting collects higher-resolution data, but not necessarily
precise data.
Let's say you score candidates:
A: 1.0
B: 0.5
C: 0.25
D: 0.1
In reality, B is 90% as favored as A. C is 70% as favored as B. The real
numbers would be:
A: 1.0
B: 0.9
C: 0.63
D: etc.
How would this happen?
Cardinal: I approve of A 90% as much as B.
Natural and honest: I prefer A to win, and I am not just as happy with B
winning, or close to it. I feel maybe half as good about that? B is
between C and D and I don't like C, but I like D less.
Strategic: even voting 0.5 for B means possibly helping B beat A, but what
if C wins...
The strategic nightmare is inherent to score and approval systems. When
approvals aren't used to elect but only for data, people are not naturally
inclined to analyze a score representing their actual approval.
Why?
Because people decide by simulation. Simulation of ordinal preference is
easy: I like A over B. Even then, sometimes you can't seem to decide who
is better.
Working out precisely how much I approve of A versus B is harder. It takes
a lot of effort and the basic simulation approach responds heavily to how
good you feel about A losing to B, not about how much B satisfies you on a
scale of 0 to A.
Score and approval voting source a high-error, low-confidence sample. It's
like recording climate data by licking your finger and holding it in the
wind each day, then writing down what you think is the temperature.
Someone will say, "it's more data than warmer/colder trends!" While
ignoring that you are not Mercury in a graduated cylinder.
Points systems (Borda method is the archetype) are an assumed weighting
of preferences. Gregory method transfer value or Meek method keep values
are a real weighting of preferences.
Richard L.
On 20/06/2019 21:03, Forest Simmons wrote:
Chris, I like it especially the part about nive voters voting
sincerely being at no appreciable disadvantage while resistiing burial
and complying with the CD criterion.
From your experience in Australia where full rankings are required (as
I understand it) what do you think about the practicality of rating on
a scle of zero to 99, as compared with rankiing a long list of
candidates? Is it a big obstacle?
Election-Methods mailing list - seehttps://electorama.com/em for list info
I agree with all this.
It was said long ago, with regard to many votes per seats and cumulative
voting, as by Enid Lakeman: Multiple votes count against each other.
Single transferable voting is the way to go.
Richard L.
On 22/06/2019 00:29, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
i am not a member of the RangeVoting list so i do not think my
response will post there.
John Moser reiterates the complaint that I have always had with Score
Voting (i think that term is a better semantic than "Range"), which,
perhaps surprizingly, is also the end complaint i have with Approval
Voting, even though Score Voting requires too much information
from voters and Approval Voting collects too little information from
voters (as does FPTP).
Score voting requires more thought (and expertise, as if they are
Olympic figure-skating judges) from voters for them to determine
exactly how much they should score a particular candidate. But the
real problem for the voter is that the voter is a partisan. They know
they wanna score their favorite candidate a "10". They may like their
second favorite, but they do not want their second choice to beat
their first choice. But they may hate any of the remaining candidates
and they sure-as-hell want either their first or second choice to beat
any of the remaining candidates. So their tactical burden in the
voting booth is "How much do I score my second choice?"
And Approval Voting has the same problem, but for the opposite reason
that Approval Voting is less "expressive" than Ranked-Choice. The
voter has the same tactical decision to make regarding their second
favorite candidate: "Do I approve my second choice or not?"
These tactical decisions would also be affected by how likely the
voter believes (from the pre-election polls) that the race will end up
essentially between their first and second-choice candidates. If the
voter thinks that will be the case, the partisan voter is motivated to
score his/her favorite a "10" and the second favorite a "0" (or
approve the favorite and not approve the second choice).
This really essentially comes down to a fundamental principle of
voting and elections in a democracy, which is: "One person - one
vote." If I really really like Candidate A far better than Candidate
B and you prefer Candidate B only slightly more than your preference
for Candidate A, then my vote for A>B should count no more (nor less)
than your vote for B>A. Even if your feelings about the candidates is
not as strong as mine, your franchise should be as strong as my
franchise. But Score Voting explicitly rejects that notion and in
doing so, will lead to a burden of tactical voting for regular voters.
Only the ordinal ranked-ballot extracts from voters the "right amount"
of information. If a voter ranks A>B>C, all that voter is saying is
that if the election were held between A and B, this voter is voting
for A. If the election is between A and C, this voter is voting for
A. And if the election ends up being between B and C, this voter
votes for B. That's all that this ballot says. We should not
read more into it and we should not expect more information from the
voter such as "How much more do you prefer A over C than your
preference of A over B?" It shouldn't matter.
my $0.02 .
r b-j
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [EM] High Resolution Inferred Approval version of ASM
From: "John" john.r.moser@gmail.com
Date: Fri, June 21, 2019 2:14 pm
To: "Felix Sargent" felix.sargent@gmail.com
Cc: RangeVoting@yahoogroups.com
"Forest Simmons" fsimmons@pcc.edu
"EM" election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Cardinal voting collects higher-resolution data, but not necessarily
precise data.
Let's say you score candidates:
A: 1.0
B: 0.5
C: 0.25
D: 0.1
In reality, B is 90% as favored as A. C is 70% as favored as B. The real
numbers would be:
A: 1.0
B: 0.9
C: 0.63
D: etc.
How would this happen?
Cardinal: I approve of A 90% as much as B.
Natural and honest: I prefer A to win, and I am not just as happy with B
winning, or close to it. I feel maybe half as good about that? B is
between C and D and I don't like C, but I like D less.
Strategic: even voting 0.5 for B means possibly helping B beat A,
but what
if C wins...
The strategic nightmare is inherent to score and approval systems. When
approvals aren't used to elect but only for data, people are not
naturally
inclined to analyze a score representing their actual approval.
Why?
Because people decide by simulation. Simulation of ordinal preference is
easy: I like A over B. Even then, sometimes you can't seem to decide who
is better.
Working out precisely how much I approve of A versus B is harder. It
takes
a lot of effort and the basic simulation approach responds heavily
to how
good you feel about A losing to B, not about how much B satisfies
you on a
scale of 0 to A.
Score and approval voting source a high-error, low-confidence
sample. It's
like recording climate data by licking your finger and holding it in the
wind each day, then writing down what you think is the temperature.
Someone will say, "it's more data than warmer/colder trends!" While
ignoring that you are not Mercury in a graduated cylinder.
--
r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Election-Methods mailing list - seehttps://electorama.com/em for list info
Agreed. My favorite paper on this topic is Niemi, 1984:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1955800
Greg
On Sun, Jun 23, 2019, 10:26 AM Richard Lung voting@ukscientists.com wrote:
I agree with all this.
It was said long ago, with regard to many votes per seats and cumulative
voting, as by Enid Lakeman: Multiple votes count against each other. Single
transferable voting is the way to go.
Richard L.
On 22/06/2019 00:29, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
i am not a member of the RangeVoting list so i do not think my response
will post there.
John Moser reiterates the complaint that I have always had with Score
Voting (i think that term is a better semantic than "Range"), which,
perhaps surprizingly, is also the end complaint i have with Approval
Voting, even though Score Voting requires too much information from
voters and Approval Voting collects too little information from voters (as
does FPTP).
Score voting requires more thought (and expertise, as if they are Olympic
figure-skating judges) from voters for them to determine exactly how much
they should score a particular candidate. But the real problem for the
voter is that the voter is a partisan. They know they wanna score their
favorite candidate a "10". They may like their second favorite, but they
do not want their second choice to beat their first choice. But they may
hate any of the remaining candidates and they sure-as-hell want either
their first or second choice to beat any of the remaining candidates. So
their tactical burden in the voting booth is "How much do I score my second
choice?"
And Approval Voting has the same problem, but for the opposite reason that
Approval Voting is less "expressive" than Ranked-Choice. The voter has the
same tactical decision to make regarding their second favorite candidate:
"Do I approve my second choice or not?"
These tactical decisions would also be affected by how likely the voter
believes (from the pre-election polls) that the race will end up
essentially between their first and second-choice candidates. If the voter
thinks that will be the case, the partisan voter is motivated to score
his/her favorite a "10" and the second favorite a "0" (or approve the
favorite and not approve the second choice).
This really essentially comes down to a fundamental principle of voting
and elections in a democracy, which is: "One person - one vote." If I
really really like Candidate A far better than Candidate B and you prefer
Candidate B only slightly more than your preference for Candidate A, then
my vote for A>B should count no more (nor less) than your vote for B>A.
Even if your feelings about the candidates is not as strong as mine, your
franchise should be as strong as my franchise. But Score Voting explicitly
rejects that notion and in doing so, will lead to a burden of tactical
voting for regular voters.
Only the ordinal ranked-ballot extracts from voters the "right amount" of
information. If a voter ranks A>B>C, all that voter is saying is that if
the election were held between A and B, this voter is voting for A. If the
election is between A and C, this voter is voting for A. And if the
election ends up being between B and C, this voter votes for B. That's
all that this ballot says. We should not read more into it and we
should not expect more information from the voter such as "How much more do
you prefer A over C than your preference of A over B?" It shouldn't matter.
my $0.02 .
r b-j
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [EM] High Resolution Inferred Approval version of ASM
From: "John" john.r.moser@gmail.com john.r.moser@gmail.com
Date: Fri, June 21, 2019 2:14 pm
To: "Felix Sargent" felix.sargent@gmail.com felix.sargent@gmail.com
Cc: RangeVoting@yahoogroups.com
"Forest Simmons" fsimmons@pcc.edu fsimmons@pcc.edu
"EM" election-methods@lists.electorama.com
election-methods@lists.electorama.com
Cardinal voting collects higher-resolution data, but not necessarily
precise data.
Let's say you score candidates:
A: 1.0
B: 0.5
C: 0.25
D: 0.1
In reality, B is 90% as favored as A. C is 70% as favored as B. The real
numbers would be:
A: 1.0
B: 0.9
C: 0.63
D: etc.
How would this happen?
Cardinal: I approve of A 90% as much as B.
Natural and honest: I prefer A to win, and I am not just as happy with B
winning, or close to it. I feel maybe half as good about that? B is
between C and D and I don't like C, but I like D less.
Strategic: even voting 0.5 for B means possibly helping B beat A, but
what
if C wins...
The strategic nightmare is inherent to score and approval systems. When
approvals aren't used to elect but only for data, people are not
naturally
inclined to analyze a score representing their actual approval.
Why?
Because people decide by simulation. Simulation of ordinal preference is
easy: I like A over B. Even then, sometimes you can't seem to decide who
is better.
Working out precisely how much I approve of A versus B is harder. It
takes
a lot of effort and the basic simulation approach responds heavily to how
good you feel about A losing to B, not about how much B satisfies you on
a
scale of 0 to A.
Score and approval voting source a high-error, low-confidence sample.
It's
like recording climate data by licking your finger and holding it in the
wind each day, then writing down what you think is the temperature.
Someone will say, "it's more data than warmer/colder trends!" While
ignoring that you are not Mercury in a graduated cylinder.
--
r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
info