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

[Tim Hull]

That's the answer to what would likely happen if Range voting were
implemented anywhere of significance - cards like those used in Australia
would appear telling voters how to vote.  Granted, it would probably happen
under any preferential system, but in range it is almost guaranteed that
bullet voting would be encouraged "except" by minor party candidates, which
MAY recommend voting for major party candidates as well.

Though I like the basic idea of range, I will say I have reconsidered
somewhat when it comes to contentious elections.  In this case, I do see it
degenerating into Approval really fast.  While Approval is a decent system
(better than FPTP for sure), third parties would still have significant
trouble breaking through (major parties will always bullet vote, and a large
number of third-party supporters will vote for the major party as well). We
may see "shifts" between one party being major and another being major from
election to election as voting results start to demonstrate shifts in
support and voters vote accordingly, but it seems like each election will
continue to be a basically two-party competition in and of itself.

In my mind, that leaves IRV and Condorcet as serious voting reform
proposals.  While IRV isn't the best thing in the world (it can screw up
when a new party becomes "major" in an election), it could help third
parties with a solid coalition with a major party (i.e. nearly all Democrats
vote Green #2, and all Greens vote Democrat #2).  It does suffer from the
"center squeeze", though.  Condorcet, on the other hand, does not suffer
from the center squeeze.  However, it suffers from the opposite problem -
the so-called "Pro Wrestler" or "Loony" syndrome in an election with a
couple polarized candidates and a weak centrist or joke candidate.  In my
student government elections, I picture this being a candidate walking
around campus in a clown suit and winning based on becoming everybody's #2.
Also, Condorcet's later-no-harm failure may mean people give a less sincere
ranking than in IRV, though this failure is far less so than in range.

However, PR still seems like the primary thing to shoot for - single winner
elections really aren't any good in achieving better representation.  For
that reason, I can see the logic of those pushing IRV with the intent of
moving in a PR direction.  I will say that, given honest voters and an
absence of "Loony" type candidates, Condorcet produces better results and
seems better.  However, it is more complex - and is yet another system to
discuss. I really think that STV should be the real goal, with IRV used in
single-winner elections (when necessary) for consistency - party lists are
rotten by comparison, and no other system has been tested and proven for
multiwinner to the extent of STV.

Thus, I plan on moving in an IRV+STV direction as far as my reforms (with
multiwinner STV used for 70% of the seats on my student government i.e. all
of the multi-seat districts).

Tim
On 4/25/07, Howard Swerdfeger <electorama.com at howard.swerdfeger.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ___________________________________________________________
> >> The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email
> >> address from your Internet provider.
> http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
> >> ----
> >> election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list
> info
> >
> > ----
> > election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list
> info
> ----
> election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20070425/cf03716d/attachment-0003.htm>