[Election-Methods] "Later no harm" confusion

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 08:32 PM 9/3/2007, Warren Smith wrote:
>3. For voting methods whose ballots are NOT just rank-orderings,
>(e.g. approval and range voting) there is no such thing as "truncation."
>But it still is possible to cast a plurality-style range or approval vote.

Actually, I use the word "truncation" with Range Voting to refer to 
Approval-style votes, i.e., max or min votes for more than one 
candidate when the voter has, in fact, some preference between them. 
Hybrid systems like Range Plus Pairwise Analysis would encourage the 
expression of such preference, but they would remain distorted in the 
Range Vote itself; however, the Range ballot becomes analyzable as a 
ranked ballot and has, presumably, true preferences, not reversed preferences.

Why this would work is more complex a question than I care to answer 
here. But the "distortion" I referred to is effectively truncation, 
just as truncation in ranked ballots refers to equal-rating bottom. 
It's just that in Range and Approval, you can equal rate top just as easily.

Pure truncation at the top would be, as an example, absolute 
utilities, normalized to the full election set would give, for A, B, 
C, 100, 90, 0, but, instead, the voter normalizes to the 
frontrunners, B and C. So the votes become 100, 100, 0. A voter might 
vote -- many of us say we would vote that way, 100, 99, 0, tolerating 
the very small loss of voting power in favor of expressing rank 
correctly. With pairwise analysis, this would increase the likelihood 
that a runoff would be between the favorite and the preferred 
frontrunner, a happy result for the voter, who can then express 
exclusive preference for the favorite without harm.

Now, some Range supporters object that doing pairwise analysis could 
not fail to increase Regret, since the Range winner is -- supposedly 
-- the regret minimizer. However, there are two reasons to do this. 
First is an S.U. reason. When there is a pairwise winner who beats 
the Range winner, we have, necessarily, the weak preference of a 
plurality faction vs the strong preference of a weaker faction. As we 
know, the Range winner is not necessarily the true regret minimizer, 
because of normalization and strategic voting. I think that a symptom 
of the range winner not being the regret minimizer would be this 
discrepancy between the Range and ranked results. Not a proof, a 
symptom. And so testing the case becomes advisable.

How do we test it? I've before only suggested on way, but there is 
actually another that is even more to the point, and which brings 
with it another benefit. But, first, the first way. Hold an actual 
runoff between two candidates, the Range winner, and, probably, the 
pairwise winner who beats the Range winner, and if there is more than 
one of these -- very, very unlikely in real elections -- then the one 
with the highest Range total.

Why wouldn't this just reproduce the original ranked result? Well, 
it's a nuisance to go and vote. If, in fact, the preference is weak, 
the supporters of the pairwise winner have less motivation to vote; 
they get a decent outcome with no more effort. On the other hand, the 
supporters of the Range winner are, relatively, more motivated to 
vote. Further, it is easier to convince the supporters of the ranked 
winner to shift to the other side, whereas the reverse is more 
difficult. If the Range winner was truly the regret minimizer, he or 
she is very likely to prevail in the runoff... unless it is all very 
close, in which case it's a toss-up, as it was originally, really.

But the other method is one that I've generally rejected before even 
saying it, and I'm starting to think that was a mistake. This is to 
do exactly what is routinely done in direct democracies: ratify the 
election result, no election result is complete until it has been 
officially ratified by whoever is charged with that task, and in 
direct democracies, that is the assembly of citizens itself, 
normally. It's put up for a Yes/No vote on a motion to accept the 
result. This is quite enough! There is an obstacle to voting No on 
the ratification, which is that the election will then have failed, 
and the group will presumably then need to start over again. It tests 
preference strength, but it also tests the entire process, including 
issues of election fraud, everything. If the process is flawed *for 
whatever reason*, the electorate can simply reject it by majority 
vote. In fact it takes majority plus one to accept it.... and some 
organizations actually have supermajority rules for accepting certain 
offices....

In any case, both these methods make Range satisfy the Majority 
Criterion, and the second makes it satisfy the Condorcet Criterion, 
overall. Satisfying the Majority Criterion is politically very 
important. And, in fact, we can have the majority criterion and 
minimize regret *at the same time*. The trick, of course, is the second poll.


>Will range and approval voters, therefore, just plurality-vote?
>No.  We know that does not happen because it doesn't happen.

Well, there is some evidence in the other direction, and it's quite 
likely that Range and Approval would be different as settled, routine 
methods than in either non-election polls or actual elections when 
first implemented.

The contrary evidence is the history of Bucklin. But, of course, the 
significance of that history has been twisted by FairVote. From the 
FairVote information on it, "only" 13% of voters added a second rank.

But in a two-party system, that's huge! Why should a supporter of a 
major party add another candidate in second rank?

They further report that in a series of elections, a majority winner 
was never produced by the addition of votes from the lower ranks. 
Again, this is misleading. This presumes that the goal of an election 
method is to produce a majority winner, the IRV people fall for this. 
IRV does not produce "majority winners," except by a trick, it stops 
considering discarded, exhausted ballots in order to declare that a 
candidate "won by a majority." Which is nonsense, and if all ranks 
were exhausted on all ballots, IRV will end up, almost certainly -- 
though I haven't seen the actual rules, with a plurality winner in 
spite of it all.

The question, and the proper goal of election methods, is to choose 
the best candidate given the condition of the electorate. It's 
entirely possible that there is no majority winner at all. However, 
the real question is the response of the method to those few voters 
who *do* add second ratings or more. Counting these extra votes is 
not at all an onerous burden, certainly not compared to a real 
runoff! If most voters don't use the extra votes, if only 13% of 
voters add another rank, then counting those votes is 13% of the work 
involved in counting the whole election, and those votes will improve 
the results. These are independents and swing voters and third-party 
supporters. Far less than 13% would have turned Florida 2000.

So, the truth: there will be a lot of bullet voting. The *full* 
truth: it's not a problem.

As I wrote on BlueNC today, people instinctively realize that there 
is something harmful about bullet voting. It seems narrow and 
selfish. We know that it will, on average -- in Range -- increase the 
regret. *However*, the real question is "Does it increase regret 
enough to *forbid* voting 'sincerely'?" That is the paradox behind 
the FairVote argument. Range, even with lots of bullet voting, 
improves election results, as shown by the simulations, and it's not 
mysterious, though there is one interesting open question that I 
think is worth exploration. FairVote is hoodwinking people by making 
a reasonable-sounding argument that actually, followed in depth, 
would lead to a conclusion opposite to the one FairVote is trying to 
manufacture.

FairVote believes that Approval does not have a prayer, politically. 
Why? Well, they know that there are certain knee-jerk arguments 
against Approval, most notably the one-person one-vote myth. Ossipoff 
points out how often he's run into that, talking with people, 
encountering vehement opposition on the basis that allowing people to 
vote for more than one violates this basic rule.

FairVote has complete contempt, not only for experts on election 
methods, but for the people as well. They do not believe that people 
can be educated on this. I think differently, I think that people 
simply have not considered the matter sufficiently, and that there 
are ways around the block. The 1P1V error is an easy one to make. But 
it's also easy, if you can get a minute's attention from someone, to 
counter it.

I think the fact that Approval is already used in public elections in 
the U.S., broadly (though not commonly, i.e., few elections actually 
take place where this multiple voting is allowed), with Ballot 
Questions, once realized, will help to turn the tide. It's already an 
established democratic practice. I know of at least three separate 
lines of argument that easily and quickly show that Approval does not 
violate 1P1V, and then there is the additional argument that even if 
it did, it's fair, everyone has the same power.

>Here are some range voting and/or approval voting election data
>
>http://www.rangevoting.org/OrsayTable.html
>http://www.rangevoting.org/FrenchStudy.html
>paper #82 at http://math.temple.edu/~wds/homepage/works.html
>
>in all these real-world studies,
>plurality style voting was quite rare, well in the minority.

Warren, while the data there is quite interesting, these were polls, 
not elections. We don't know from them how voters will behave in 
actual elections, and I would expect some movement toward bullet 
voting. But it's beside the point. Many voters may bullet vote and it 
is just fine!

Consider this: in a two-party system, we expect that, by definition, 
most people are supporters of one or the other of the two major 
parties. These voters have little incentive to do more than 
bullet-vote, and it would be quite rare that if they add another 
vote, it would actually change the outcome. So why should they bother 
to add second rank votes? And why should we care that they do not?

Now, there are two groups of people for whom the situation is different:

Third party supporters, who may now express full support for their 
favorite and full or partial support for their preferred frontrunner.

Major party supporters who want to move their party toward the 
position of a third party, so they add vote strength to that party.

Allowing this freedom to the voters will, I'm certain, either have no 
effect on outcome, or will improve it.

The Bucklin history, we should really investigate; I have no access 
to the necessary documents. I highly suspect that Bucklin was dropped 
because it was working, not because of the supposedly poor use of 
second rank votes, which makes no sense. FairVote has presented, I'm 
sure, a distorted view of this history to advance their own cause.

FairVote has also cited the dropping of Approval Voting by the IEEE. 
That history definitely shows that it was dropped for political 
reasons. The board adopted Approval to head off a spoiler candidate, 
and then dropped it once the job was done. Why didn't they leave it 
in place? Well, supposedly few members were using the ability to vote 
for more than one. But, if so, it wasn't costing anything. No extra 
votes, no extra counting.

No, almost certainly, once the immediate purpose had been served, the 
board realized that they had, by allowing Approval, opened the door 
for dissident groups to start to build strength without spoiling 
elections. That's the last thing they wanted. So they dropped it.

My question is, what in the world is a board of a membership 
organization doing manipulating the election method that is the means 
for the members to exercise proper control over board composition, 
without the approval of the members? And even if they submitted a 
question to the members, the way in which that question was worded, 
and the information going out to the members about it, would very 
likely be biased. Was there a debate? If so, where is it, I'd really 
like to see it!