[EM] Oops! Omitted Plurality, IRV, & Borda.

[MIKE OSSIPOFF]

Sorry--I forgot to include Plurality, IRV, & Borda on the ballot.
Here's exactly the same posting, but with the complete ballot:

Here's the ballot for the Voting Systems poll. The balloting period
begins tonight, the midnight that ends April 19th in California.
But I hope you check out everyone's latest campaign arguments first.

This a Voter's Choice election. For the final Approval count, you
give an Approval vote to the alternative chosen by the method
that you've designated, and also to everything that you've ranked
higher. If you didn't vote a ranking, then you also give a final
Approval vote to everything that you've rated higher.

If you don't want a designated method to place your Approval cutoff
point, then you can designate "Manual", and then your final Approval
votes will be given to those alternatives that you've marked on your
Approval ballot. If you don't designate anything, "Manual" is
the default designation.

If your designated method chooses more than one winner, then we
deal with that in the way that Richard & I agreed on. If the final
Approval count returns a tie, then we deal with that in the way
that I most recently described on EM. I've copied that and some
other information in this e-mail, below the ballot.

Ballot:

Which voting system do you designate for this Voter's Choice poll?

The ballot section that follows is for best public proposal.
Vote as if we were choosing which voting system to offer to the
public in a public initiative.

The 1st column is for rank number. The 2nd column is for Approval votes.
The 3rd column is for CR ratings. I suggest that we consider
the CR balloting to be an honor system in which we rate sincerely,
to the best of our knowledge. An easy way to do that is to ask
how big the merit differences are among the various alternatives in
your ranking. Your favorite is automatically 10 or 100. Rate the
others according to how good they are with respect to that. Or, as
I suggested, rate them according to how big you feel the merit differences
are among your ranked alternatives.

R    A    R
A    P    A
N    P    T
K    R    E

[  ] [ ]  [  ] Approval
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Ranked-Pairs(m)
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Path Voting (BeatpathWinner(m) )
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Cloneproof SSD (BeatpathWinner(wv) )
[  ] [ ]  [  ] ordinary SSD
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Ranked-Pairs(wv)
[  ] [ ]  [  ] PC
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Smith//PC
[  ] [ ]  [  ] SD
[  ] [ ]  [  ] CR
[  ] [ ]  [  ] ACC
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Plurality
[  ] [ ]  [  ] IRV
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Borda

Below is the pure-merit ballot section:

Suppose we were voting to determine which voting system to designate
as EM's officially-chosen best voting system. Even though this
isn't official, of course in a meaningful sense the method we choose
here can be called EM's favorite, for pure merit, among those who
voted.

R    A    R
A    P    A
N    P    T
K    R    E

[  ] [ ]  [  ] Approval
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Ranked-Pairs(m)
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Path Voting (BeatpathWinner(m) )
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Cloneproof SSD (BeatpathWinner(wv) )
[  ] [ ]  [  ] ordinary SSD
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Ranked Pairs(wv)
[  ] [ ]  [  ] PC
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Smith//PC
[  ] [ ]  [  ] SD
[  ] [ ]  [  ] CR
[  ] [ ]  [  ] ACC
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Plurality
[  ] [ ]  [  ] IRV
[  ] [ ]  [  ] Borda

Below is a copy of some things I posted earlier about this
poll:


So the nominations deadline is the midnight that ends April 19th,
California time. At that time the balloting period begins. The
balloting deadline is the midnight that ends May 3, California time.
That's a 2-week period for nominations & campaign discussion, and
a 2-week balloting period.

Now that I'm assured that pairwise count methods will be counted,
the Voting Systems poll will be exactly like the Poll Topics poll,
and any method can be designated. The default designation is "Manual".

I'd like the Voting Systems poll to have 3 minor differences, if no
one objects:

1. I should specify that if the method that you've designated returns
   a tie, then we use the procedure that Richard & I agreed on.

2. Random Ballot is used if the final Approval count returns more than
   one winner. I'd like to do Random Ballot in a more random way than
   the way that I specified (but didn't have to use) this time:

   Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a number, so that A is
   1, B is 2, and Z is 26.

   Add up the initial letters of all the last names on the ballots.
   Subtract from that sum the largest multiple of 26 that is less than
   that sum. Multiply the resulting number by 10, and subract from that
   product the largest multiple of 26 that is less than that product.
   Call the resulting number "K".

   For each ballot's last name's 2nd letter, add K to that
   2nd letter, and subtract from that sum the largest multiple of
   26 that is less than that sum.

   The ballot for which the resulting number is largest will be the
   tiebreaking ballot.

   If that ballot ranks 2 or more of the winners equally, then repeat
   the 2 paragraphs before this one, but for the 3rd letter of each
   ballot's last name instead of the 2nd letter. Use the same K.
   And in general, if the use of the nth letter of the last names doesn't
   return just one winner, because it equally ranks 2 or more of the
   winners, then use the (n+1)th letter of the last names.

   If it's necessary to repeatedly go to using the (n+1)th letter of
   the last names, and if some of the names don't have an (n+1)th
   letter at some point, then for those names, the 1st letter becomes
   the next letter.

3. I was saying that we're on an honor system to not make use of
   information about previously-posted ballots to do offensive
   order-reversal. Let's say that we're also on an honor system to
   vote sincerely in CR if we vote a CR ballot. That means if someone
   doesn't vote a CR ballot, we don't infer a strategic one from their
   Approval ballot, and we just don't count them as voting a CR
   ballot.

   In a public political election, people would soon begin voting
   strategically in CR, and there's nothing wrong with that. But
   here, the reason for CR is to find out how its winner differs from
   those of the other methods, and it's of more interest to get a
   sincere CR winner than a strategic one that merely duplicates the
   Approval result.  And if some are strategizing in CR (as I did
   in the poll-topics poll), that isn't fair to those who choose to
   not strategize in that method.


Let's say that when balloting ends, exactly 2 weeks after it begins,
we have an additional 48 hours in which people can truncate the
ballots that they've voted, but may not otherwise modify them.

That makes possible easier thwarting of offensive order-reversal.
This topic is taken seriously, and that's a good thing. But it
also suggests that we should take a precaution against offensive
order-reversal. After the voting deadline, during the subsequent 48
hours, if you think someone has offensively order-reversed, then,
in methods that thwart offensive order-reversal by defensive truncation,
you can drop the reverser's favorite(s) from your ranking, to prevent
him from gaining from the reversal, if he was going to. I'm sorry
that it isn't possible to provide that kind of defense for all the
rank methods, but it will help in certain of the rank-counts.

Mike Ossipoff







_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com