[Election-Methods] Challenge: Elect the compromise

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 03:55 AM 8/24/2007, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
>[I wrote:]
>
> > There are, I believe, ways to improve the performance of Range, and,
> > as it happens, the one I've been proposing also makes Range MC
> > compliant in the overall method, including a possible runoff.
> > Obviously, Range *cannot* be MC compliant directly, for it can pass
> > over the favorite of a majority, when this is only by a relatively
> > small preference strength, to elect a stronger preference of a
> > minority.
>
>Range *is* a majoritarian method since a majority can elect whomever 
>it wants by bullet voting.

That does not contradict what I wrote. Being a "majoritarian" method 
does not make the method Majority Criterion compliant. Absolutely, I 
have argued that Approval satisfies the majority criterion as 
written. If the majority prefers a candidate over all others, and 
strictly indicates that, it must prevail in Approval. However, I only 
got a little support from others in this contention. The idea of this 
unexpressed preference is very strong, even though nobody that I've 
seen writes a definition of the Majority Criterion that explicitly 
makes it clear that unexpressed preferences are not moot.

But Range is a little different. There, too, I have argued that we 
must take votes as written, that the concept of "sincere" Range vote 
is problematic. If I prefer Bush to Adolf Hitler, and somehow Hitler 
ends up on the ballot (why should that matter? -- after all, I'm free 
to write in anyone!), must I rate Bush nonzero to vote "sincerely", 
assuming I do, in fact, prefer Bush to Hitler by a proportional 
amount (considering the other candidates) to cause me to notch up my 
vote? Many writers gloss over the problem.

The argument that was made by those opposed to what I was saying was 
that the majority could not freely express its preference without 
incurring some loss. Yet, generally, it is considered that Plurality 
satisfies the Majority Criterion, even though it is true with that 
method, as well, that expressing a strict preference for your 
favorite can mean your vote is wasted.

What is clear is that all of these methods do guarantee a majority 
that knows it is a majority can prevail, regardless of preference 
strength, if they choose to do so. Thus the original problem is, in a 
single-step method, almost certainly insoluble, unless votes are bids 
and thus presumably connected to real preference strength.

If the majority knows that it is the majority, and it doesn't mind 
giving up the extra public funding from the minority with a strong 
preference (and thus reduced taxes for themselves), then it can 
choose to let its preference go. However, this is a trick: what has 
happened is that the preference of the majority has been shifted by 
expected consequences of the election. Anything could cause that 
shift. *It is no longer the preference of a majority.*

However, most of us are concerned about the zero-knowledge, or, as 
well, the only-approximate-knowledge case. I never claimed that Range 
satisfied the Majority Criterion, because the method so clearly 
invites intermediate ratings, and if a majority does not know it is a 
majority, it may hedge its bets, and thus the majority favorite can lose.

Note that in a single step method, this violation of MC is 
*essential*. MC is actually a poor criterion to judge elections by, 
*but* it is related to a very important principle of democracy: majority rule.

Majority rule in aggregative systems is oppressive, which is why few 
seriously propose pure aggregative, direct democracy. However, in the 
context of full deliberative context, it is crucial, for, in fact, 
the alternative to majority rule is not supermajority rule or 
consensus, it is minority rule, where the status quo favors the 
minority. Majority rule is the foundation of deliberative democracy.

And, of course, a wise majority knows that to use its power 
thoughtlessly could be very dangerous. Majority rule *approximates* 
social utility maximization, but fails badly under some 
circumstances. And if the majority makes decisions by a slim margin, 
based on small preference, contrary to the strong preference of a 
minority, it harms society overall, and, as they say, what goes 
around comes around.

The Republicans in the last Congress were somewhat restrained in 
using their majority power as a blunt instrument. The majority has 
rule-interpretation power (the House and Senate are, in fact, 
democracies of their members, though the systems can be somewhat 
defective, they retain most standard deliberative procedures), and so 
it can essentially do what it wants, by interpreting the rules as 
they want to interpret them. But it would set a precedent and could 
easily come back to bite them, and the wiser Republicans knew this.

> > Given that I don't "believe" in measurable utility, am I an "other"?
>
>Yes, and I ask you to understand the given example in the second way.

However, I'm quite happy *using* a kind of "measurable" utility, 
which is in simulations, where we know the quantified utilities as 
initial assumptions. Assuming such utilities as was done in the 
example provided, and then trying to draw overall conclusions from 
such, is hazardous, because a method may be vulnerable or display 
some bizarre results when encountering a particular pattern, but if 
that pattern is impossibly rare, it is moot.

But if reasonable preference distributions are generated randomly, 
and then used to determine voting patterns assuming various 
strategies, the utility is known *as an assumption* and then we can 
study how voters would vote and how methods would respond. And all of 
this would obviously be a fruitful field for research, but in theory 
with simulations and in the field, studying actual voting patterns as 
compared with, for example, range poll results and even possibly such 
results. Note that it would be possible to study, for example, a 
Clarke tax with some subset of voters who voluntarily participate. 
I'll leave the details of how this could be done to others, but it 
would be one way to get, in real elections, sincere votes.