[EM] 06/29/02 - The True Majority Ghost:
Donald E Davison
donald at mich.com
Sat Jun 29 06:44:30 PDT 2002
06/29/02 - The True Majority Ghost:
Alex, you wrote: "At the risk of misrepresenting Mr. Hager's intent, I
think I can elucidate from his post what he meant by "true majority
winner."
Donald: Go ahead, give it a shot, be a risk taker.
[Hager wrote:]
> 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
Alex: "Here's the first use of the term "true majority winner."
He says that Approval is good at finding it, but he does not say
that Approval _always_ finds it."
Donald: `I see, said the blind man.' But, of more importance, how can we
tell if Approval has found it? That is, while I am willing to believe a
`true majority candidate' is lurking somewhere in the votes and choices of
the ballots, when it is Approval's turn to tally these ballots, the
Approval supporters should want to know how many times per hundred their
method is able to reveal and elect this `true majority candidate', if only
for bragging rights.
Alex: "My doctor is good at curing diseases, but he doesn't always
succeed at curing diseases."
Donald: Maybe so, but you will always know if he has or has not cured your
disease. I fear we will never know when any election method has elected
the `true majority candidate', for I believe that each method has its own
`true majority candidate' and that sometimes the true majority candidates
will be the same for two or more methods and sometimes they will not be the
same.
It is like as if this list has taken a page from a Madison Avenue Ad
agency in which the policy would be that all methods are free to claim to
be the best and to claim to always elect the `true majority candidate'
without any method ever having to prove that they are the best, nor prove
that they have actually elected the true majority candidate at least once,
nor prove that there even is a true majority candidate - hype and more
hype.
Alex: "The post doesn't suggest that the Approval winner is by definition
the "true majority winner," but that the "true majority winner" and the
Approval winner often coincide."
Donald: Alright, but I still say that it would be nice if we had some way
to know when they did coincide."
[Hager wrote:]
> 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.
Alex: "Here Mr. Hager seems to explicitly state that he uses the term "true
majority winner" to denote the Condorcet winner."
Donald: True, but that is his opinion and not necessarily the revelation
of the real true majority winner, whoever that may be. This is because Mr
Hager regards Condorcet as `...The standard by which all other voting
methods are measured.' But, I say Condorcet cannot be the standard if
Condorcet is to be regarded as one of the methods to be considered for use
in a real election. That would be a conflict of interest, that is,
Condorcet would be biased towards Condorcet.
Alex: "We can, of course, debate whether the term "true majority winner" is
an accurate description of the CW, but Mr. Hager's intent seems clear. My
only objection is to the use of the word "always": Condorcet only
describes half of an election method: The half that finds a winner when
somebody wins all pairwise comparisons."
Donald: `Half a loaf is better than none.'
Alex: "The other half of any method in the Condorcet family is a procedure
for resolving cyclic ambiguities."
Donald: Condorcet is better without the second half. Cyclic ambiguities
aka circular ties, are not the fault of Condorcet, they are the fault of
the voting public. Usually this happens when the voters are so uninformed
about the lower choices that the voters make the mistake of voting in a
circle. This merely points up to us that the lower choices can be shit
choices at times. To the credit of Condorcet, this fact is revealed. The
other methods do not reveal this fact, outside of many people saying: `How
did that guy win?' Circle voting distorts the results even if it is not
revealed.
We would do well not to continue Condorcet after the first half if the
condition of a circular tie would arise. The fact that there is a circular
tie means that the lower choices are no good, so don't use the lower
choices. Only the first choices are good, so use Plurality or the next
method to use would be IRVing because IRVing uses less lower choices than
any other method. Besides, IRVing only uses lower choices to replace some
first choices, there is no net increase of choices being used at the same
time.
If the election still has three or more candidates after we have
eliminated the lowest one, we can go back and use the Condorcet method
again and maybe this time there will be no circular tie, if not, then we
have a winner, a Condorcet winner - I think. That is my solution to
circular ties, which I presented to this list years ago, but I'm
digressing.
Alex: "Perhaps he should have stated "Condorcet will always find the true
majority winner in an election, provided that there is one."
Donald: Perhaps he should have. Suppose there is a `true majority
candidate' in the ballots of an election, how do we know if Condorcet has
found him? The `Same Old Same Old' question keeps hanging around.
[Hager wrote:]
> unlike Condorcet, IRV will often fail to find the true majority
> candidate."
Alex: "I've excerpted this from a longer comment. The context is a
criticism of IRV. We can debate whether failing to elect the CW is a
serious flaw of an election-method, but the statement that IRV can fail to
elect the CW is true."
Donald: Why should any method be required to elect the so called
`Condorcet Wiener Winner'. Your bogus remark can be turned around. It can
also be said that it is true that Condorcet can fail to elect the IRVing
winner and fail to elect the Approval winner and fail to elect the Bucklin
winner, etc, etc.
Alex: "Perhaps the word "often" needs a little clarification, of course.
Does this resolve questions over interpreting Mr. Hager's post?"
Donald: I do not fault Mr Hager, he was merely repeating `Trash Talk' that
he picked up somewhere, there is alot of that going around.
Alex: "Clarifications from Mr. Hager or those who have corresponded with
him are obviously welcome." Alex Small
Donald: My guess would be that `Mr Hager has left the building', that is,
he is no longer a member of this list. He is getting on with his life.
More power to him.
In closing, I would like to say that unless we can find some way, other
than one of the election methods, of extracting the identity of the `true
majority candidate' that person will remain a `true majority ghost' and we
will never be able to use him as a standard and none shall ever mention him
again (unless of course, someone is able to reveal his identity).
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
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