[EM] Cheering for simplicity

[Dave Ketchum]

As I said last time, I approve of EM getting into other topics but, for 
myself (and I assume many others), public elections are the big deal.

Certainly other topics could include non humans, etc.

If I really wanted to broaden the field, I might get into ways for the 
people being represented to control who got to be officials, and 
when officials got replaced, WITHOUT doing elections.

Dave Ketchum

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 17:11:11 -0700 (PDT) Forest Simmons wrote:

> I notice that all of the application that you mention, whether public or
> private, seem to assume human candidates and human voters.
> 
> Candidate Proxy is sufficient for most such cases, but part of Candidate
> Proxy is the Completion Method, which could be a relatively sophisticated
> method.
> 
> Some of us have interests in which the candidates are sports teams or
> alternative courses of action for a robot, for example, and the voters are
> the team members or the sports casters or (in the robot case) various
> sensors.
> 
> Suppose that you are to pick a team of college bowl players from a school
> based on their performance on a sample test.
> 
> The test questions are the voters. You want a certain kind of
> "proportional" representation, not necessarily high scoring players that
> answered the same questions correctly.
> 
> Here you want to maximize the probability that for a random question at
> least one of the players would know the correct answer.
> 
> Here the design criteria are different than for a political election with
> proportional representation.
> 
> In the application at hand, if you had one scholar who could answer 90% of
> the questions, and another who could answer only the remaining 10% of the
> questions, that would be better than having two scholars who could both
> answer only the same 90 percent of the questions.
> 
> For political proportional representation it would be better to have two
> candidates both approved by the same 90 percent of the voters, than to
> have one approved by 90 percent, and the other approved only by the
> remaining 10 percent.
> 
> This is why some of us are interested in more than just the simplest
> methods.
> 
> Forest
> 
> On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Dave Ketchum wrote:
> 
> 
>>Makes sense for this reflector to serve a variety of interests, but
>>identifying interests could simplify understanding for many.  In what
>>follows I will concentrate on US public elections:
>>       Intellectual reasons - some choose to be here, and some even seem to
>>make a buck at it - they confuse the rest of us if they present theory as
>>if holding more general interest than it has.
>>       Public elections:
>>            Executive - for a single winner.  These will continue to exist,
>>but we need to get past Plurality, which most of us recognize as not
>>deserving to live.
>>                 I see this as IMPORTANT, and that Condorcet seems to
>>provide a reasonable combination of power and simplicity.
>>            PR - for multiple winners for a district.  Many districts are
>>designed for a single representative, and may stay that way, using same
>>rules as for executive elections.  Some argue for Proportional
>>Representation, and debate does not seem yet to produce agreement as to a
>>winning method.
>>            Non-partisan city elections - New York City, biggest US city
>>and bigger than most US states, talks of joining this crowd.  NOT clear
>>that they have considered the problems/possibilities, or that EM has
>>thought of trying to help.  Of interest, likely 4 Dem candidates and 1
>>Rep, based on voter registration and experience with partisan elections -
>>seems like Plurality might give Reps more wins than they deserve.
>>            US primary elections - another one I hear little of.  I see
>>this as a place for Condorcet if topic is single winner.  Note that,
>>unlike partisan elections for which we are used to two leading parties,
>>candidates may have any possible relation to each other.
>>            US presidential elections - a world unto itself.  That each
>>state has a quota of members of the Electoral College seems cast in stone,
>>but for a state to fill its quota via PR seems worth some thought.
>>       Private elections - big deal I notice is that the computers that
>>make sense for all public elections may not be appropriate here.
>>       What do other countries do - their successes and failures are worth
>>noting.
>>       Marrying single seat and PR methods?  Tempting but:
>>            ONLY if single seat stays Condorcet.
>>            PR method must be suitable for that task.
>>
>>Is Condorcet simple?  I claim YES, especially for the voter:
>>       1.  Assign first rank to the candidate you most desire to have win
>>(you do not need to consider what chance this candidate may have of
>>actually winning).
>>       2.  Are there more that you like as well - give them the same rank.
>>       3.  Do you want some control of what happens if those you have
>>ranked all lose - if so, return to step 1 for the next rank.  Note that
>>you only rank so far as you choose - you have ranked one or more as better
>>than the remainder, and the remainder as equally below them.
>>       This is somewhat like a tournament, with you voting what you see as
>>the results of a round.  In counting for each pair of candidates, the
>>number of voters who rank the first above the second is compared with the
>>number ranking the second above the first.
>>            If one candidate wins over each other candidate, that one wins.
>>            If two or more candidates tie against each other, but win
>>against every other candidate, the tie must get resolved by some means
>>such as tossing coins.
>>            Else there will be candidates that win over one or more, and
>>lose against others.  This is close to a tie, and the counts get compared
>>to decide on the winner.
>>            Note for candidates you rank as equal - for each pair, if you
>>and another voter rank that pair equal, it counts as one win for each
>>candidate in the pair.
>>
>>I read 'Most Condorcet-methods are "brute force" computationally.'  Maybe
>>so, but it is not a black mark, for the computation is trivial - certainly
>>doable while the next voter is voting, and, for combining results from
>>multiple precincts for many candidates, less effort than with IRV - for
>>IRV must consider all the voting patterns while Condorcet can work with a
>>matrix of totals.  Of course, do a California recall with 135 candidates
>>and the time could be significant - but IRV has the challenge of all the
>>patterns that could occur with that many candidates.
>>
>>I read 'but I have heard of the "traveling salesman" problem' - truly a
>>champion at eating computer time - but Condorcet and even IRV are not in
>>that league.
>>
>>I read "will always include a Condorcet-winner if one exists" - NOT
>>sufficient - for public election we should be unwilling to settle for less
>>than picking a winner (unless we have a true tie, or choose to call as a
>>tie something close to that).

-- 
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  Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
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