[EM] Using weights to compensate multiple votes (It'smostlyaboutPR)

[Bart Ingles]

Try this:
http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/

Bart


Philippe Errembault wrote:
> 
> Thanks for the hint... Do you know where/how I can access those archives ?
> 
> Philippe
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Bart Ingles" <bartman at netgate.net>
> To: "EM List" <election-methods at electorama.com>
> Sent: Saturday, August 28, 2004 4:03 AM
> Subject: Re: [EM] Using weights to compensate multiple votes (It's mostlyaboutPR)
> 
> If you search the archives for "Proportional Approval" or "PAV" you may
> find something along these lines.  There have been several proposals
> with same name going back at least to 1998.  Also search on "d'Hondt".
> 
> Bart
> 
> Philippe Errembault wrote:
> >
> > I think there something I didn't realise before writing this...
> > I'm not in the frame of electing one! person and the point
> > is that it changes everything... Maybe I shouldn't have made
> > the analogy with approval system. PR systems are soooo
> > different from election for one person which are usualy
> > discussed here, that, maybe this group should be splitted
> > in two. the goals are absolutely not the same, nor the
> > consequences in the way of voting...
> >
> > In fact, I'm trying to find a solution for a problem we have
> > in belgium with a proportionnal representation system...
> > In our country we vote for a specific party, and for a few
> > year we can now vote for multiple candidates from the same
> > party. This has consequences since it appears that people
> > voting for multiple candidates have more power than others,
> > but as another consequences, they may eventually also raises
> > the power of the party chosen order.
> >
> > That's why I wondered how we could normalise the amount
> > of information contained in each vote.
> >
> > Now you are right with your point about FBC, especially
> > because when voting for one person the problem I'm trying
> > to solve does not exist. But it exists with with PR, and you
> > are right with the fact that to try to solve it, we will have to
> > make a compromise with FBC. Now, with my system of
> > using the total amount of votes received by the candidate in
> > the computation of standard deviation, the less your favorite
> > candidate has votes, the less he will impact the major candidate.
> > even more : voting for all candidates BUT one of the majors,
> > could even strengthen your vote, because you would then
> > have made an average vote above 0.5 and then your standard
> > deviation would begin t olower.
> >
> > Some people among us think that we just should divide the votes
> > by the number of candidates you favored (if you vote for N
> > candidates, each one will receive 1/N vote) but I think this is not
> > fair, since if you vote for each candidates but one in the list, your
> > vote will not express more than if you vote only for one candidate.
> > In fact you will favor the party order. By the way, this solution would
> > even be worse for the FBC.
> >
> > Now a friend of mine observed that with my standart deviation system,
> > you can have a division by zero, if you voted for no candidates or for all
> > candidates. those two cases should be removed because they do not
> > favor any candidate. they should only be counted as votes for the list.
> >
> > Philippe Errembault
> >
> > For those interrested I'll give here a bit more information about
> > the BELGIAN ELECTION SYSTEM :
> > In belgium, ballot papers contains lists from parties and for each
> > of them there is one chechbox called "la case de tête" (*) and
> > one checkboxes for each candidate.
> > (*) I don't know how to translate this... this is the checkbox, for
> > the whole list in the preference order favored by the party.
> > Someone helps ?
> >
> > Voters can vote by choosing one party, then, they may vote for
> > the whole list (by checking the "case de tête") and/or they may
> > vote for any combination of  candidate of this party.
> >
> > THEN, (I spare you the calculations) we compute how many seats
> > each party (p) will have (let's call it Np), and only then, we chose
> > who will be elected from each party, and that's the interresting point.
> >
> > First of all, at the time our parliament decided to allow multiple votes,
> > they also decided to halve the effect of the "case the tête" you will
> > understand later why.
> >
> > What happens, is that we give the votes from the halved "case de tête"
> > to the candidates from the top of the list, we see how many votes the
> > first one needs to be elected, and we give him what he needs, then for
> > the followers, until the pool is empty. Then we sort the candidates
> > according to the amount of votes they have.
> >
> > Now the point is that with the possibility to vote for multiple candidates,
> > we raised the average personnal votes a candidate will receive, _AND_
> > this will increase the number of candidates that will be helped by the "case
> > de tête" since, on the average, they will need less votes from the pool.
> > this is why they halved the effect of the "case de tête", but this seems not
> > to be sufficient, since for now, we have lists for which the "case de tête"
> > helped more candidates than the number that were effectively be elected
> > for this party (which means that all candidates were chosen in the party
> > favored order and none in the voters prefered order).
> >
> > Another point is that voters from a specfic community can agree on voting
> > for all candidates from this community, on one specific party. (this is what we
> > often traditionnaly call a "stem blok" - from dutch). Doing that when the
> > people not members from this community can't make the same kind of
> > arrangement,  will drastically improve the chances for those candidates,
> > in fact, more than the real number of members of this community,
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Warren Schudy" <wschudy at WPI.EDU>
> > To: "Philippe Errembault" <phil.errembault at skynet.be>
> > Cc: "election methods electorama" <election-methods-electorama.com at electorama.com>
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 2:44 AM
> > Subject: Re: [EM] Using weights to compensate multiple votes (Any feedback ? please !??)
> >
> > As I understand it, your scheme, unlike regular approval, fails the
> > Favorite Betrayal Criterion (FBC). Suppose there is a close race between
> > two major candidates, call them Bush and Kerry. Suppose a voter has a
> > favorite that is neither Bush nor Kerry. In regular approval, a rational
> > voter will vote for their favorite and the better of the big two. In your
> > scheme, the rational voter will abandon his/her favorite, voting for just
> > the major candidate, since that reduces the information in the vote,
> > increasing its weight.
> >
> > I also don't understand what problem you are trying to solve. Voting for
> > multiple candidates doesn't really give you more power in regular approval
> > voting - for any pairwise contest, you can only tip the balance by 1
> > vote either way, regardless of how you vote. Can you give an example of an
> > election where the wrong candidate was elected (in your view) because of
> > the extra power high-information ballots have?
> >
> > BTW, I just noticed that (regular) approval is equivilant to Condorcet
> > methods with the stipulation that all voters must consider all candidates
> > to be in one of two equivilant sets (aka dichotomous). This is very
> > similar to a statement in the book "Approval Voting", by Braham or
> > something.
> >
> > -wjs
> >
> > On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Philippe Errembault wrote:
> >
> > > I'd like to get feedback on this topic, please...
> > > It's about normalising the enthropy (amount of information)
> > > contained in of an "approval like" vote.
> >
> > >   Sorry about not reading ALL your mails. It could happen that the
> > > question I'm going to ask has already be processed...
> > >   ... But since english is not my mother tongue and since you write much
> > > ;-) and since there is only 24h in a day and since blah blah blah ;-)
> > > ...
> > >
> > >   I'd like to have your opinion about an idea concerning the impact of
> > > voting for multiple people :
> > >
> > >   In any approval-like system, where you can give your voice to more
> > > than one candidate, you have a problem since giving voices to multiple
> > > candidate raises the weight of vote. Especially if a group of voters
> > > give their voice to the same specific group of candidates, the will
> > > drasticly raise the chances of all their vote to match with other voters
> > > who didn't arrange with them.
> > >
> > >   So, why not evaluate the amount of information (let's call it [I])
> > > contained in a vote, and weight this vote by 1/[I] !?
> > >
> > >   first idea : let's give the value 1 to each approval to a candidate
> > > and 0 for others. the vote will then be a set of 1 and zero, for wich we
> > > can compute the average, variance and standart deviation. Let's use
> > > standard deviation for [I] and each vote by 1/[I].
> > >
> > >   this reduces impact of explicit arrangement, but not for implicit
> > > arrangements : let's call implicit arrangement, the fact that a well
> > > known has more chances than others to accumulate random votes, so people
> > > voting for them will have more chances to match other voters.
> > >
> >
> > /-----------------------------------------\
> > | Warren Schudy                           |
> > | WPI Class of 2005                       |
> > | Physics and computer science major      |
> > | AIM: WJSchudy  email: wschudy at wpi.edu   |
> > | http://users.wpi.edu/~wschudy/          |
> > \-----------------------------------------/
> >
> > ----
> > Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
> ----
> Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
> 
> ----
> Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info