[EM] Range voting fails IIA

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:20 PM 11/8/2006, David Cary wrote:

>--- Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
> > Election criteria are supposed to be objective. [...]

Mr. Cary, in this post, gives the best argument -- by far -- I have 
seen for considering that Approval Voting does not satisify the 
Majority Criterion.

In spite of my having said, a few minutes ago, that my argument 
appeared airtight.

What Mr. Cary's argument really points out, however, is that 
evaluation of election methods by election criteria can require the 
consideration of hidden information, posited for the purpose of 
consideration and given as initial conditions, and that this is 
accepted in the election methods community. Fair enough.

However, if we say that Approval does not satisfy the Majority 
Criterion, we should be aware that this statement will, in any actual 
struggle to implement Approval, be raised as an argument, and it will 
be raised in a context which does not consider the subtleties. It 
will be raised in a context where the criterion will appear to be one 
of the most basic necessities in elections. And thus Approval will 
face, unfairly I think, more difficulty in seeing the light of day.

Real election methods in the real world do not consider the mental 
state of the voter. They either do or do not allow the voter to take 
a certain action, i.e., to express a preference, in this case a 
"strict preference."

That expressing a "strict preference" under the method is undesirable 
to the voter for other reasons is not relevant in an objective 
consideration of the method.

So I still think that my argument, on the face of it, is correct.

Mr. Cary points out, however, that Wikipedia is defective in how it 
explains the Majority Criterion. I'm sure that he is correct. The 
same deficiency, however, would exist in the Election Methods 
wiki.... and the proper remedy would be to correct the wikis, if one 
really thinks they are wrong. Correcting a wiki, and having it stay 
corrected, requires the development, usually, of some kind of consensus.

Do we have the right to unilaterally determine exactly how the 
Criteria are to be used? I think I have pointed out how the literal 
language of the Criterion, in all formulations, can be interpreted to 
permit Approval to satisfy the Majority Criterion.

So, at the least, the whole matter of election criteria and how they 
are to be applied is far more complex than is commonly assumed.

>In an important sense, the involvement of voter mental preferences does
>not make the criteria any less objective.

Yes, if the assumptions are made explicit.

>   The criteria are not required
>to function as empirical criteria.  They can work quite well as
>theoretical criteria.

And, again, the public is not going to be terribly interested in 
theoretical criteria, but in what actually affects the outcome of elections.

I've run into this problem of differences between technical criteria 
and public perception and interest before. The terms "racism" and 
"racist" have technical, academic definitions that are quite 
different in application from the popular perception. The academic 
definition of "racism" is a belief in the reality of race as an 
objective entity. And thus certain people are technically "racist," 
including a lot of people who first encounter this definition and 
immediately respond, "but of course it is! It's obvious!"

But the popular usage carries connotations of hatred and racial 
chauvinism that is not necessary true of the technical "racist." The 
most that can be said is that technical racism is a precondition for 
the more virulent form, it is an error, a confusion of a subjective 
entity with an objective one.

Race is what people believe it to be. Some of my children will 
encounter racist attitudes, I can predict, because of how they look. 
Not all of this is negative in itself: my Asian daughter, people will 
expect to be smart.

Ahem.

>For IIA there is clearly an implication that some things, but not
>necessarily others, are held constant when an additional alternative is
>added.  The informal definitions fail to address exactly what is held
>constant.  It is certainly reasonable to specify that the mental
>preferences and any rules or restrictions on how those preferences are
>converted into votes are held constant. Call that IIA-P.  An alternative
>is to specify that the actual votes remain constant.  Call that IIA-V.
>
>It is pointless to argue that one is right and the other is wrong.

Yes. This is not so important with IIA, but the Majority Criterion is 
important politically.

I thank Mr. Cary for his thoughtful response, of which I only quoted a little.