Election Methods List and lying vs justice (Re: [EM] Optional Later-no-harm AER

[Craig Carey]

My last message (on casual *guessing* of the weightings of the "A over B"
subtotal has not arrived. It entered into the moderating. I had a bit of
an apology/retract for M. Schulze.

This list seems to lack a desire for truthful ideas and it recovers within
days from contact with corrections by reverting back to its error. Typically
without bothering to compare its ideas with replacements.

---

So this preferential voting method would collect information on
the parties the candidates are grouped into.

The class of methods might be useful when party members that use it
are reconciled to sacrificing their own interests (provied that
such exist).

---

I assume that the word "Approval" means that some sort of fluidic
mixing of intentions. As worded, that is awful.

The basic plan below seems to be to start of with a rejected method
and not get it out of that state. A 


At 2003-12-22 18:11 +1030 Monday, Chris Benham wrote:
>
> An  idea for improving  Approval  Elimination Runoff   (an  Approval-
> STV hybrid) :
>
> 1: Voters rank the candidates and also place an Approval cutoff.
> Truncation allowed, and if equal preferences are allowed then the
> votes are split. Default placement of  the cutoff  can be either below
> first preference or below lowest  ranked not-in-last-place candidate.
>
> 2:  A candidate with a majority of first preferences is elected.

So the whole method must be rejected (or the definition of it altered)
because it can't get the obviously correct answer in all 0 winner
elections. There is no requirement that the number of winners equal
one. It is about STV and Approval which do have obvious extensions to
the cases of 2,3, and 4, and 0, winners.


> If no candidate has a majority, then eliminate the candidate with the
> fewest  approvals and  transfer preferences  IRV-style. Whenever  a

The CVD published everlastingly false information saying that the
RCV of San Francisco of 2003, was IRV. RCV has does not allow a full
list of preferences and my claim is weakened (possibly eliminated) by
assuming that that is part of the method instead a restriction imposed
on it.

>
> In his example, these were the sincere preferences:
>

A truthful person can't confirm that the next 5 non-blank lines
are sincere or not. Try it for yourself Mr Benham.

> 49: Bush>Gore>Nader
> 12: Gore>Bush>Nader
> 12: Gore>Nader>Bush
> 27: Nader>Gore>Bush
> 100 voters. Gore is the sincere CW.
...

So you have a definition of the "Insincere Cee-Double-U" ?. Presumably
there never was a definition. Probably the quickest agreeable solution
is to say that the words "sincere CW" have an identical meaning to
the words "Condorcet winner".

It seems to be impossible to get the Condorcet winner and
monotonicity.

Is the list ignorant of that despite the extreme simplicity of
showing it ?, or is it rejecting (with no argument at all) a principle
that government users will be strongly in favour of. Additionally
rejection if finding out the method designers don't know what they are
doing. The 4th in the whole document of Mr Benham says "improving".

Persons guiding government agencies use this trick:
  * The method has to be rejected if it is based over a respect of
     the Condorcet winner.
  * No designer who has a respect for the Condorcet winner has a good
     method.

An STV expert is not waiting around for arguments on rules to allow
partial disagreement with the Condorcet winner. Since the Condorcet
winner was wrong in the first place (it has no natural multiwinner
extension) then an unsound arbitrary modification of an obviously
wrong 'CW' won't undo the rejection of the ideas of Mr Benham and
others.

This whole mailing list, after being so frequented by Markus Schulze
and Bathycles Crap, is running like a government checkup of a Thunderbirds
No. 2 vehicle. The government officials want a clean aircraft.
Just before it gets to them it flies for 30 metres through a muddy
syrupy lake, and Ms Penelope Shulze had to say a plainly ambiguous
line that said "we will send Thunderbirds Two through the muddy syrup
of Cloudy Water (CW) lake. After breaking through the surface of the
goo lake and settling on the shore of the cleansiness checking remotely
controlled robots of electoral office officials of cities, it failed.
They had eyes and could spot surface attachments.

If it had not of been for Penelope Shulze (or the script writers)
the Thunderbirds Two vehicle might have flow above the syrup lake's
surface.

Ms Penelope should get her brain examined: after a decision to send
so many into much it would be suspected that she has wood for brains.
However it could have be a script writer.  What was that "we will
smoke them [Democrats] out" comment of GWBush.

----------------------------------------------------------------



At 2003-12-23 23:47 +0100 Tuesday, Kevin Venzke wrote:
>Thanks to everyone who responded to my last message.
>
>It's possible to define (a possibly limited version of) later-no-harm
>as: "Adding strict preferences among candidates otherwise ranked last,
>should not hurt the result of the election from the perspective of
>this ballot."
>
>(By this definition, however, Approval passes, since approving an
>additional candidate doesn't just involve adding strict preferences,
>but also deleting others.)
>
>I don't believe I've ever heard anyone suggest the obvious counterpart,
>"earlier-no-harm:" "Adding strict preferences among candidates otherwise
>ranked FIRST, (etc...)."
>
>For example, if voting "A=B=C>D>E" gets me one of those first choices,
>then voting "A>B>C>D>E" should not get D or E elected.
>

Clearly Mr Venkze has not ruled out the 2 winner case. If he has one
unstated restriction then it may take weeks or years before he finally
managed to get them all into the mailing list and nicely requoted
in each message.

Suppose the votes are this (2 winner case)

Election 1:
  10000 (D)
  1 (A=B=C>D>E), D should win and does

Election 2:
  10000 (D)
  1 (A>B>C>D>E) , both D and E lose says Mr Venkze

I assume that there is no need to get "A=B=C" precisely defined since
unknown disputes over definitions might be bounded by factors 6 or 1/6.


>"Earlier-no-help" could also be defined.  If "A=B=C>D>E" elects D,
>then "A>B>C>D>E" should not elect A.
>
>What do you think?

It looks like Mr Venkze won't accept one or both of these:

 * an axiom set from which a method is derived (a strange option given
    the theme of Mr Venkze's whole message), or

 * the principle that the number of winners be correct (i.e. he sometimes
    expects the number of winners be disagreeing with what was decided on
    before the public filled in the voting papers, providing a public 
    suitably exists).

--

I have never suspected that there is a good reason to use
   "Later No Harm"
instead of
   "Truncation Resistance".

"Permuting preferences before" and "permuting preferences after" are a
better wording of what is desired. I assume that if both are imposed
then the method degenerates into FPTP or something similar.

So there may need to be a redesign of the papers (and presumably
adding "=" won't produce insensitivity to permuting before). I would
prefer no redesign (while preferring methods better than the
second best AV n candidate 1 winner method) and instead allow elections
where voters could change their mind.


----------------------------------------------------------------


At 2003-12-21 14:36 -0800 Sunday, Rob Brown wrote:
>I figured I'd pop out of lurk mode to mention that I, like Diana, have 
>questioned whether some of the participants of this discussion are computer 
>rather than human.....Craig's mangled vitriol in particular reads like its 
>been round-tripped through the babelfish translator.
>
>In any case this ridiculous flamefest has provided me some amusement, but 
>not done a lot toward my taking this list seriously.  Maybe everybody could 
>agree that if Craig and Mike would just kindly drop off the list for a 
>month, everyone will just pretend this never happened when they come back?
>

I am dissatisfied with why this list lives in the wake amazingly
obvious mistakes. Some stupid tricks seem to advance it all
 * no comment; missing replies; no reasoning; nothing at an appropriate
    time. Only ideas so wrong that to say "withheld a response" would
    seem wrong
 * authoritarianism.  With Mr Ossipoff is has very low trustability, and
    here is an example of Mr Shulze:

Here is more comments on authoritarianism. (What is wrong with
authoritarianism is complex and all about correctness.) I quote:

------------------------
At 2003-December-23 14:56 +0100 Tuesday, Markus Schulze wrote:
...
>Another interesting question is: In so far as you considered neither
>independence of clones nor reversal symmetry to be important, why
>did you propose an election method that is more complicated than
>Schwartz//MinMax(VotesAgainst)?
------------------------

It is just like this:
"Independence of Clones" was found after the man put his arm down a
rat hole in a Berlin council tip yard, Newbies at the EM list can try
out the German trash tips. 

Here is a quick wording of a best rule preventing corruption:

   One Man One Vote rule (in a multiwinner form)

   For each positively weighted paper, the outcome of it can be
   obtained by a sum of positively weighted fragments, with the
   fragments being produced only by deletion and no reordering.
   The desirableness has to be maintained with shorter papers and
   it is measured using the paper's list, to convert winners into
   a base 2 Real number.

It is about right and if a little flawed then improved.

False propaganda is being sent into the mailing list by Mr Shulze
and it really seems to be dogged by a lack of argument. For an
expert in logic, Mr Shulze's use of

   "you considered neither [this] nor [that] [so] why ... ?

is misleading.

The full set of rules can be simple:
* Right number of winners (it looks like Mr Venkze rejected it)
* P2 (it looks like the whole EM list except me is too stupid to be
   able to cough up a speculation on it. Instead they should form
   an opinion on how it is necessary).
* Truncation Resistance and monotonicity and multiwinner monotonicity.
   Certainly politicians would be using a check like this, especially
   now that awful Alternative Vote is both a threat and performs
   quite badly under this type of test.
* Multiwinner One Man One Vote [as described above]
* Simple Approval style summing. [Mr Shulze has spent years of
  talking about Approval, but I guess he refuses to say that the
  proportionality aim is only the idea of Approval placed strictly
  behind other rules. He can talk about Approval for years so long
  as exulting in a desire to write and promote the idea, but it
  could be totally nothing for years if Mr Schulze gets serious on
  the idea that the idea is very important. The other principles
  might get rolled together under the name of EQUAL SUFFRAGE.

After reading Mr Schulze's messages, the whole mailing list is
running as if ghosts in the Hague and keen of leaving no reasoning
behind for intent to violate the human rights of the candidates
and hence their supporters.

Has anybody checked Mr Schulze's paw for rat bites ?.

There are a tiny number of right rules. About exactly 0% of the
time any any given 5yr interval I look, Mr Schulze is never
making an attempt to reject the simple rules on fairness.

A core idea is this:

 * Men have rights to complain about wrong shifting of votes
   causing harm

 * Then the method designer has to maximally deprive voters of a
   right to complain.

In USA, votes can be suddenly created electronically. The
multiwinner One Man One Vote rule does the same.

A political list identified simple rules since it is impossible
to undo that except that members would think lies and censor
that out. What exactly is the problem with solving the
algebra problems ?. Subscribers gets tiny little drooling
inquries (highly unconvincing when by Mr Forest Simmons).

It seems that members are running well in generating desires to
acquire everlastingly true ideas. The list is looking stupid and
evil today since I demonstrated that principles are simple.

In truth the maths is simple too. I identify the main problem as
the complexity of writing Ada 95 programs. It would be truly
suspect if people eventually produced a belief that they can't
do algebra since it seems that the algebra of 1 winner elections
is dead easy. Members can do better than secretly fantasize that
they flunks checkups on maths ability: instead they can positively
criticise mathematics and then promptly get suspected as being
incompetent or ignorant of their own topic or something similar.
We can't sort of 30 private e-mails and get it solved in 2
days like could happen at the single-transferable-vote mailing
list. It seems that 10 more years at Rob Lanphier's uncontrolled
mailing list may be arrive upon subscribers.














Craig Carey <research at ijs.co.nz>    Auckland, New Zealand
Ontario Ombudsman's Fairness checklist:
     http://www.ijs.co.nz/fairness-standards.htm
PDF: http://www.ombudsman.on.ca/pdf/fairness_stds.pdf