[EM] Suggested name for Range Voting: Free Voting

[raphfrk at netscape.net]

Anthony O'Neal <thasupasacfitinman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Tactical voting works against that.  If people tactical vote, then 
they
> > get
> >
> > no method to express their actual desired.
> >
> >
>
> I don't think you understand the method.  It was a very short 
description,
> but PAV is not vulnerable to tactical voting above what normal 
approval is.
>
> Think of it like this.  In a multi-winner election, you don't approve 
of
> candidates, you approve of outcomes.  In order to maintain 
proportionality,
> however, you have to reduce peoples approval of an outcome by the St. 
Lague
> or D'Hondt quota based on how many candidates are in the outcome that 
they
> approve of.

Hmm, are you sure about that ?

Assume that party A has 70% support and the party B has 30% support.

All voters are totally polarised and are only 2 seats

There are 3 candidates, A1, A2 and B1

Votes are:

70:  A1: 100, A2: 100, B2: 0
30:  A1: 0, A2: 0, B2: 100

Results:

A1, A2:
70:  100 + 100/3 => 133*70 = 9310
30: 0 => 30*0 = 0
Total:  9310

A1, B1:
70: 100 => 100*70 = 7000
30: 100 => 100*30 = 3000
Total:  10000

A2,B2
Same as A1,B1
Total: 10000

Result each party gets one seat (option 2 or 3 wins).

Now, party A decides to vote manage.  They split the constituency into 
2
halves.  Each of the candidates only campaigns in one of the halves.
Voters are told to only vote for the candidate who campaigns for their
half of the constituency.

Votes become

37:  A1: 100, A2: 0, B1: 0
33:  A1: 0, A2: 100, B1: 0
30:  A1: 0, A2: 0, B1: 100

Results:

A1,A2
37: 100 => 100*37 = 3700
33: 100 => 100*33 = 3300
30: 0 => 0*30 = 0
Total: 70000

A1, B1
37: 100 => 100*37 = 3700
33: 0 => 0*33 = 0
30: 100 => 100*30 = 3000
Total: 67000

A2,B2
37: 0 => 0*37 = 0
33: 100 => 100*33 = 3300
30: 100 => 100*30 = 3000
Total: 63000

Winner is option 1, A1,A2

Party A now wins 2 seats.  They have benefited from vote management.


>> In effect, your approval for an outcome is just the sum of your 
approval
>> for each of the individual candidates elected.  However, there is a
>> limit
>> to prevent any one vote from becoming to strong.
>
>If you reduce the strength of the vote for having multiple candidates
>approved of it becomes cumulative vote, which is very vulnerable to 
tactical
>voting.

Sorry, I meant limit the total voting power.  This occurs anyway under
the system where there are divisors.

> The approval of outcomes method is probably the only way to overcome 
this.
>
> The sequential  method is vulnerable to vote management and introduces
> tactical voting into it.

The non-sequential method also suffers from tactical voting as I showed 
above
(unless I made an error).

>It's also more vulnerable than a computer total
>simply because people can just lie about the votes their getting as 
they're
>hand-counting them.

Ok, we have a fundamental disagreement here.  In a hand count there 
might
be some small amount of fraud/error.  However, to really rig an 
election,
you need to get lots of counters involved.  Also, those counters are
observed.  This makes it easier for there to be a small error but harder
for their to be a massive error.

A computer has a single point of failure (the program) and cannot be
readily observed.  Also, the general public doesn't really understand
computers and those that do are often wary of using computers to do the
tally.

> For computer methods, the complexity doesn't matter.  It's just as 
easy to
> make a program that hurts candidates of one party in STV as it is in 
PAV and
> PRV.  And, actually, the only way to do STV elections without a 
randomness
> is to use a computer.  The only real alternative to using complex 
methods
> for proportionality is a party-list, which is undesirable because it
> completely takes away candidate independence

You cannot do meeks method or some of the more advanced STV-PR by
hand however, it is possible to do fraction STV-PR by hand (look up
Gregory method).