[EM] 06/24/02 - The "true majority winner"
Donald E Davison
donald at mich.com
Tue Jun 25 11:46:06 PDT 2002
06/24/02 - The "true majority winner"
Dear Craig Carey, you wrote:
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 01:57:18 +1200
To: Donald Davison <donald at mich.com>
From: Craig Carey <research at ijs.co.nz>
Subject: The "true majority winner"
This message can be ignored and not read. It is on you[r] use
again, of the term "true majority winner".
___________________
Re: http://www.mail-archive.com/election-methods-list@eskimo.com/msg08093.html
From: Donald E Davison
Subject: [EM] 06/21/02 - `Majority' is not a valid word on the EM list:
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2002 02:53:22 -0700
"You[r] position saying that the "true majority winner" was a code term of
Approval was destroyed by some man who produced facts."
Donald here: No one produced any facts. One claimed to have searched the
internet and another claimed to have searched the EM archives, but those
two found what they were looking for, that is, nothing. I only needed to
look back one month and found a very good example from the infamous Mr
Hager that supported my position.
Craig: "I, like the rest browsed to your website and to the CVD website to
confirm it for
myself. I checked my e-mail records and found that "true majority winner"
was not used by EM Approvalists."
Donald: Check again, you are in error. Like I have wrote to you before:
`I do not fault anyone for not reading every post of the EM list, but if
you had happened to read my post of..' [EM] 5/20/02 - True Majority Winner
or Candidate: or Hager's EM post of April 22, 2002, you would have noticed
the term `true majority winner' being used by an EM Approvalists, the
infamous Mr Hager, the darling of the other Approvalist on the EM list.
(copies below)
Craig: "But you returned to make again the point:"
Donald: Yes, of course, nothing has changed, the sun still looks like it is
going around the earth, so it must be true. `Approval Voting still looks
like it has produced a majority winner, so it must be true.' How people
fool themselves.
Donald: > Supporters of Approval Voting will use the code-words
> `true majority candidate'. Which implies that the
> Approval Voting method ...
Craig: "The word "will" means 'in the future' ?."
Donald: Yes, you are correct, they will use the term again, in the future.
Craig: "Majority" is a word to avoid for the reason you give.
Donald: I suspect you have left out some words in this last sentence of
yours. I cannot believe that you are agreeing with me. I talked to you
before about your lack of proof-reading before you send out letters. I'm
going to take what you say at face value, starting with this current
letter.
LISTEN EVERYONE, CRAIG CAREY AGREES WITH ME ABOUT THE WORD MAJORITY!!!
Craig:
"E.g., it has been corrupted by the IRV-ists, who use terms
like "majority" to introduce the suspect idea that sequential
use of First Past the Post is best somehow. While I reject
that the use of stacked FPTP methods is ideal, the CVD has
no other options, usually. Paradoxically they advance use of
stacked FPTP methods mainly by rejecting that FPTP is good.
Though not that obvious, stacked FPTP methods are not good
methods. They maybe mislead vyer many."
Craig:
"I invite you to post up a correction: last time you lost
through having no references to which Approvalist was using
that 3 word term. To repeat the error suggests you are
not reading the messages."
Donald: Don't hold you breath, there will be no correction in the near
future. They and you are the ones that are not reading the messages, but
it is true that I do not read every message in my mail box.
Craig:
"It appears that "true majority winner" is a term used by
your website and the CVD's."
Craig:
"I just have "majority" never take account of preferences other
than the 1st, which avoids assuming that sequential use of
FPTP is a plausible way to solve election problems. It is not
OK to simply transfer 100% of votes from losers since, eg.,
there may need to be duality between 1 winner methods and
nc - 1 winner methods, so to get the seeming transfer for
losers to be 1, can make some seeming transfer value for
winners be too low [assuming that familiar stages of the count
could be absent]."
Donald: So, what else is new?
Craig Carey
Auckland
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Date: Mon, 20 May 2002 09:08:48 -0400
To: "[EM]" <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
From: Donald Davison <donald at mich.com>
Cc: hager2002 at hager2002.org [not a valid email address on 20 May 2002]
Subject: [EM] 05/20/02 - True Majority Winner or Candidate:
05/20/02 - True Majority Winner or Candidate:
Greetings list members,
Richard Moore and Michael Rouse are pretending that the term `True
Majority Winner or Candidate' has not appeared on this list. The poor boys
are in denial, they don't remember nor can find what they don't want to
remember nor find.
What makes them think that some of the rest of us will not remember nor
be able to find text bearing the term `True Majority Winner or Candidate'.
Anyone who has been on this list any length of time has seen the term many
times in text supporting Approval Voting and/or Condorcet. One does not
need to search the entire world of the internet nor the entire EM archives.
One only needs to have been on this list one month ago on 22 April to have
received a letter written by a one Paul Hager.
You Approval people do remember Paul Hager, do you not? He was your
darling politician, who was going to spearhead the drive for Approval
Voting. I remember some of you big spenders even donated fifty bucks to
the `Cause'. (Only fifty bucks? - Some big spenders)
As a politician, Hager was a fool to promote Approval Voting, he was
putting himself too far removed from his public. To be an effective
leader, a politician needs to know where the public is at on an issue, and
then the politician must place himself only one or two steps ahead of the
public, but no more. If so, then he would be viewed as a leader.
It was foolish for you `Big Spenders' to donate money to him, for his
efforts were doomed to failure, but in failure, maybe he learned something
about being a politician. On the other hand, I don't think you people have
learned anything in your loss of fifty bucks, he should have taken you for
more, but I digress.
Anyway, in Hager's post of 22 April, you will find he uses the term `true
majority winner or candidate' three times. Once in relation to Approval
Voting, once in relation to Condorcet, and once in relation to IRV. Hager
seems to regard True Majority Candidate/Winner as some sort of standard to
compare all methods.
I don't know if Hager is still on this list. If he has learned anything he
should have wised-up and dropped this list, dropped Approval Voting, and
dropped the losers that support Approval Voting or Condorcet.
Anyway, I'm sending Hager a courtesy copy of this post so I can ask him
what the hell he means by `true majority winner or candidate'. The people
on this list don't seem to know.
Dear Hager,
I see you use the term `true majority candidate or winner' as a
standard. We all feel that somewhere in the many votes and choices of any
election there should exist a true majority that should revel to us who
should be the winner. The question I would like to put to you, is: `How do
you know which candidate is the true majority candidate?'
I mean, suppose there is an single-seat election in which the voters make
a number of choices each, but no method is defined yet for the election.
How do we know which candidate is the `true majority candidate' so we can
compare our results when we do decide on which method to use?
This has always puzzled me, how do you know this before you work the math
of some method?
Please reply.
[06/24/02 note: The first attempt to send this letter to Hager failed, it
came back as Fatal Address, so, a second copy was sent to a different
address of Hager's, to: hager2002 at lsh107.siteprotect.com, but Hager has not
replied as of this date.]
Regards to all, Donald Davison,
PS, I include a copy of Hager's 4/22/02 letter below for Poor Richard and
Michael who are unable to remember nor find that which they don't want to
remember nor find.
------------ Original Hager Letter -----------
From: hager2002 at lsh107.siteprotect.com
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 18:43:12 -0500 (CDT)
To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
Subject: Re: [EM] The Allure of IRV...
On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Alex Small wrote:
> I was talking to a co-worker about France. I said this indicates a flaw of
> runoff methods.
>
> She doesn't know much about voting methods, so she started saying that
> the "successive elimination method" is much better because in France a
> whole bunch of liberals divided the vote and kept any liberals out of the
> finale, whereas "successive elimination" (her name for IRV) would have put
> a liberal in the finale. Basically, she'd heard somebody describe IRV once
> and she thinks it's great. (In all fairness, I also thought it was great
> when I first learned there were alternatives to plurality.)
>
[...]
>
> This is the problem with dissuading people against IRV: The idea of a
> guaranteed majority looks so great, never mind that the majority is very
> path-dependent (which leads to non-monotonicity, IIAC, etc.). It also
> looks so great that if our favorite is gone, well, at least we can weigh in
> on the remaining candidates. Face it, folks, IRV _LOOKS_ really good.
Funny, I first read about AV only after I'd heard about IRV -- which I
knew as preference voting. AV was immediately attractive to me because it
was much simpler. It was only in the past couple of years that I learned
that IRV has all sorts of nasty properties.
>
> I don't know how to break through that psychology for others. I myself
> broke through it because I enjoy math, so I was drawn to investigate
> election methods further. Also, I went to a talk by Saari, and although I
> don't agree with him on BC he at least illustrated issues I'd never thought
> of. Even though I don't share his conclusions, I'm glad Saari showed that
> the issue is much bigger than simply making sure you get a majority
> (however manufactured) in the end.
>
> But, not everybody will attend a talk by an expert who doesn't like IRV.
> Not everybody will bother to read up on it. They just hear that it worked
> in this one election, and if your first choice is gone, well, don't worry,
> you still have some say. How to dissuade them?
It's somewhat early to tell, but I had an initial battle with pro-IRV
people on the Bylaws Committee of the national Libertarian Party. I
basically ripped them to shreds -- very nicely of course -- and I think
they've all come around. Of course, that process took several back and
forth exchanges.
Regarding my challenge in the general election, I won't have time for back
and forth. However, I have a big advantage in that Indiana is virgin
territory -- the IRV folks haven't been around to muddy the waters.
If I'm challenged about (very rarely) IRV, my current approach is to
briefly explain that IRV, unlike AV, is a ranked voting system (most
people won't know what it is and I'm not going to attempt to explain it).
I then say something like:
"The advantage of AV over other systems is that it is very simple, very
good at finding the true majority candidate, and would cost essentially
nothing to implement. I know of no other system which has all three
attributes. Having said that, there are other voting systems that are
worth considering and the task force on voting reform that I will put
together when I'm elected will be charged with evaluating alternatives.
The best ranked system, incidentally, is not IRV -- it's called the
Condorcet method. In voting science, Condorcet is the standard by which
all other voting methods are measured. In fact, the term voting theorists
use for the majority winner is the "Condorcet winner" because Condorcet
will always find the true majority winner in an election. If Hoosier
voters would prefer to see their tax dollars go for replacing all of our
voting machines in order to have a ranked system, then I and, I'm sure,
the task force will ratify that desire. But I strongly suspect that the
recommendation would be for Condorcet, not IRV. A Condorcet ballot and an
IRV ballot are identical. The difference is in how the votes are tallied.
That difference is important because the expert view is that, although IRV
is better than the current plurality system, it has some nasty properties
that make it a questionable choice for voting reform. One of these is
that if you rank three candidates A, B, and C, it is possible that if you
swap your A and B choices, it could cause C to win. Another is that,
unlike Condorcet, IRV will often fail to find the true majority
candidate."
At that point I say that if people are interested I'll be happy to go into
more detail.
>
> Don't say "Hitler-Stalin-Washington." The example is so extreme that it
> will be ignored.
>
> Don't say "monotonicity" or "IIAC". Most people will fall asleep.
>
> I guess the only way to beat the IRV psychology is to reach them before the
> IRV people do. I got started on my Eastern European research by contacting
> Steven Brams. He admits that his knowledge of E. Europe is dated, so the
> info posted to the list is likely right. Well, time to get going faster on
> it...
AS I said, so far, I've had pretty good success converting people away
from IRV. Of course, I haven't encountered any IRV true believers yet.
It probably helps that I say that ultimately, all I want is a system that
works and that the voters of Indiana will accept.
>
> Alex
>
> P.S. This person is an engineer.
>
--
paul hager hager2002 at hager2002.org
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
-- Thomas Paine, THE AGE OF REASON
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Regards,
Donald Davison, host of New Democracy at http://www.mich.com/~donald
Candidate Election Methods
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
| Q U O T A T I O N |
| "Democracy is a beautiful thing, |
| except that part about letting just any old yokel vote." |
| - Age 10 - |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
APV Approval Voting
ATV Alternative Vote aka IRV Instant Runoff Voting aka IRVing
FPTP First Past The Post aka Plurality
NOTA None of the Above aka RON Re-Open Nominations
STV Single Transferable Vote aka Choice Voting aka Hare-Clark
aka Preference Voting aka Hare Preferential Voting
Please be advised that sending email to me allows me to quote from it
and/or forward the entire email to others.
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