[EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?

[Howard Swerdfeger]

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> At 06:41 PM 4/24/2007, Juho wrote:
  >>> If you vote Approval style, you fail to express your true
>>> appreciation of the candidates, and this can backfire.
>> Yes, but typically/statistically Approval strategy improves the outcome.
> 
> No. Check out Warren's simulations. Sincere voting (which means 
> expressing weak preferences as weak votes) produces the best 
> outcomes. Approval style produces acceptable outcomes, relative to 
> some other methods.

You are making assumptions about what is "best".

On a side note: I still have not found the definition of the Individual 
Utility Function used in the simulations talked about at 'rangevoting.org'.
I am willing to accept there Society Utility function as the Sum of 
Individual Utilities. Did they use U(v, c) = 1/R? Or did they use 
something else? how does the choice of the Utility function affect the 
simulation results.


>>> I say that we are not going to really know until we see real
>>> elections using Range. The alleged devolution to Approval is not a
>>> serious harm. It would only mean that some ballot space and a
>>> counting effort had been wasted.
>> Yes, Range could be roughly as good as Approval (with some wasted
>> effort, and ability to cast weak votes). The biggest hiccups might
>> come in the form of people realizing that their vote was weak
>> although they didn't understand that when they voted, or if some
>> candidate won as a result of efficient use of strategic voting.
> 
> That actually doesn't happen easily under Range (the latter). 
> Basically, the most "efficient" strategy for winning is to get as 
> many of your supporters as possible to bullet-vote for you. However, 
> this can backfire, if you offend those who might otherwise like you 
> but consider your recommendation that you vote against your favorite 
> to be quite offensive. I know it would offend me!

Then how do you explain Voting cards!
http://www.australianpolitics.com/images/qld/2001-htv-cook.jpg
They are the an emergence of candidates telling voters how to vote.

> 
> Can you imagine how it would look of a candidate steps in front of 
> the cameras and says: "Don't vote sincerely, it might cause me to 
> lose. Vote only for me!"
> 
> Political suicide, that's what it would be, if the election were 
> Range. Instead, candidates, as now, will simply try to convince 
> voters that they are the best, and it is possible, but not certain, 
> that they will refrain, a little more, from trying to tear down their 
> opponents, for fear of alienating their supporters and thus losing those votes.
> 
>>>> Rating the least preferred candidate at 0 reduces the probability of
>>>> that candidate getting elected (and doesn't carry any risks with it).
>>> But from the conditions of the problem, there was no risk of that.
>>> No, I don't buy it. (By the way, none of us involved with Range
>>> would recommend giving the "least preferred candidate" any other
>>> vote than the minimum. I assumed that PW was being given a 1
>>> because voters somewhat liked him, there were *worse* candidates
>>> involved.
>> There were no worse candidates involved. The voter liked PW somewhat.
>> But since PW was the least liked candidate and the voter wanted to
>> avoid electing him, giving him 0 was a perfect solution. (I thus used
>> sincere utility based ratings instead of normalized ones.)
> 
> And this is correct voting! Basically, the supposed "sincere" votes 
> from which the method devolved into Approval were ignorant votes. I'd 
> really suggest that ballot instructions be explicit, suggesting that 
> you vote the max for your favorite, the min for your least preferred, 
> and whatever you want for the rest.... Range votes are *relative* 
> votes. If there were a dozen candidates, and all were quite well 
> qualified, we still need to pick one and we will want to pick the 
> best. To get good information from the voters, we need them to 
> normalize their votes. Otherwise, the necessary resolution is lost. 
> If on some absolute scale, all the candidates are 10s, on what basis 
> would we choose between them?
> 
> No, Range is about *relative* utility. But I prefer to think of voter 
> satisfaction. It is about rating candidates as to how satisfied you 
> will be if they are elected, with max rating meaning maximally 
> satisfied, and min rating meaning maximally dissatisfied. Relatively 
> speaking. You might actually be satisfied in an absolute sense with 
> any of them, or with none of them.
> 
>>> But this contradicts the assumed initial sincere vote! If you want
>>> this, why would you vote A=9, B=8 in the first place? By voting
>>> this way, you are saying that B winning is almost as satisfactory
>>> to you as A winning!
>> The voter voted originally sincerely since voters were given the
>> impression that they should write one's sincere preferences on the
>> ballot.
> 
> The ballot instructions were, "Write your sincere preferences on the ballot"?
> 
> When you vote a ranked ballot, and some systems require full ranking, 
> you are putting one candidate at the top and one at the bottom. Some 
> allow you to put more than one in each of these positions, or in 
> intermediate positions. The method essentially normalizes your vote, 
> making it equivalent to a range of 0% to 100% in Range. But ranked 
> methods don't consider preferences strength, though some impute it, 
> in a way, by considering "defeat strength."
> 
>>  Candidate B winning would be quite satisfactory to this
>> voter. The voter however wants to make A the winner if he can choose
>> between A and B. If A and B were the only candidates, voting A=max,
>> B=min would be also risk free.
>>
>>> I think that people can and will understand that democracy is often
>>> about making compromises. It is *not* about crushing the opposition!
>> I agree, but competitiveness exists despite of this, and that may
>> lead to voting with maximum power etc.
> 
> Range limits "maximum power" to one vote per voter. And we recommend 
> and generally assume that all voters, with rare exceptions, will vote 
> with maximum power. That is, they will rank one max and one min and 
> they will array the others as they choose. This is maximum power. It 
> won't "lead" to this condition, this *is* Range.
> 
> 
>>> "Vote -1 to vote against a candidate, vote +1 to vote for the
>>> candidate, and vote zero or leave a candidate unrated to have an
>>> intermediate effect. The candidate with the greatest sum of votes
>>> will win."
>> Note that negative votes carry some risks.
> 
> The issue here is where the default vote is for abstentions. The 
> standard in original Range proposals was that it was zero, 
> effectively. Average vote disregards abstentions, which is its own 
> problem and requires a "quorum rule" to avoid obvious bad outcomes. 
> Using negative votes is a means of making the default be other than 
> zero, that's all. The range I suggested makes the default be midrange.
> 
> 
>>  Let's say there are three
>> major parties with one candidate each, and many totally unknown
>> candidates. All major parties are afraid of each others and will give
>> lots of negative votes to both competing party candidates. The sum of
>> all major party candidates may go below 0.
> 
> This situation is a setup for a bad outcome. Be careful not to blame 
> the voting method for the total disarray and disunity of the 
> electorate! Given the setup, it is not clear that there is *any* good outcome!
> 
>>  Some unknown candidate is
>> mentioned only in very few ballots (let's say his/her family members
>> supporting and one neighbour opposing). His score will however be
>> positive and he will be elected, not the well known candidates whose
>> score was negative.
> 
> That's correct. But something was totally neglected in this analysis. 
> That candidate is only going to have a couple of votes above zero. 
> But the conditions were that there were *many* candidates. Surely 
> there is at least one of them who is well-enough known and 
> well-enough liked that the candidate gets more than a couple of votes!
> 
> Really, if it is true that there are more people in a society opposed 
> to a candidate than favor him or her, do you think the candidate 
> should be elected! There is a simple solution to the problem given, 
> which is a ratification step or runoff. (Not a top-two runoff, but a 
> runoff between, say, the votes analyzed as sum and the votes analyzed 
> as raw, abstentions zero.)
> 
> The problem, if it is a problem -- I'm not sure it is -- could be 
> addressed by setting the default lower:
> 
> -1: Disliked
> 0: Acceptable
> 1: Good
> 2: Preferred.
> 
> Or, alternatively, the simpler Range 3 implementation with blank 
> votes defined as -1/2 vote. Or perhaps even some smaller negative 
> value, like -1/10. Something to reflect the value that the winner, 
> preferably, should be well enough known that the candidate is rated 
> by most voters.
> 
> This is a question regarding how to treat blank votes. It's an 
> unresolved issue among Range advocates.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>>> [I suggested that there be a runoff between the Range winner and a
>>> Condorcet winner, if they differ]
>>>> Let's assume that a Condorcet winner exists. In this case this method
>>>> could be said to be a method where the voters are given a second
>>>> chance to think again if the Range winner could be seen as a "good
>>>> compromise" even though the majority could easily vote as in the
>>>> first round and elect the Condorcet winner.
>>> Yes. That is, the original ballot analysis showed that this C.
>>> winner was rated higher than the Range winner on a majority of
>>> ballots.
>>>
>>>>  I'm not sure this method
>>>> would be a very practical method in real life large elections but in
>>>> principle the idea of "recommending" the Range winner to the voters
>>>> is a positive idea. Some strategies where people would try to
>>>> influence who the Range winner will be could take place (i.e. the
>>>> Range winner of the second round would not be the sincere range
>>>> winner).
>>> I think Juho means that the Range winner of the *first* round would
>>> not be the sincere Range winner. If there is a second round, it is
>>> not held as a Range election. It is a straight which-of-these-two-
>>> shall-be-elected vote. Voters will know, this time, if the first
>>> election was sincere, which candidate will be most broadly
>>> acceptable. Which is more important to them, for their preference
>>> to win or for the most broadly acceptable candidate to win?
>>> Majority rule.
>>>
>>> I'd suggest that if their preference was weak, the majority might
>>> prefer the Range winner, on reflection. But if their preference was
>>> strong, they might insist upon it.
>> If the first round votes were sincere the Condorcet winner will be
>> preferred over the Range winner by majority (since the definition of
>> Condorcet winner says so). The Range winner would however be better
>> if measured as sum of satisfaction of the voters (if that is what the
>> voters marked in the ballots). The opinions could however change
>> before the second round as a result of publishing the fact that there
>> was a Range winner that was different from the Condorcet winner, and
>> the range winner could be supported by a majority at the second round
>> (depends on the level of competitiveness etc.).
>>
>> Juho
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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