[Election-Methods] Clone-related problems (was Re: Clone related problems in Range/Approval)

[Juho]

Nice analysis of the multiple candidate related problems (and non- 
problems).

The possibility to "withdraw from all the rankings before the  
rankings are tallied" may have also some risks like Condorcet winner  
withdrawing instead of winning. Or maybe the other way, someone would  
not withdraw although after the election it may be obvious that he/ 
she should have withdrawn.

Juho


On Apr 19, 2008, at 18:49 , Steve Eppley wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I agree with Mr. Lomax that parties' main purpose is to coordinate
> campaigns, if he means coordinating the *votes* by assembling a
> coalition large enough either to win or to elect a "lesser evil"
> compromise that defeats a "greater evil."  Given traditional plurality
> rule or top two runoff or Instant Runoff or many other methods,  
> parties
> fail to coordinate a large enough coalition if they nominate more than
> one candidate per office. (Borda has the reverse problem.  It would
> cause nomination of a huge number of inferior clones.)
>
> However, I don't agree that parties would continue to nominate no more
> than one candidate if the voting method reduces spoiling so much that
> when spoiling occurs the winner is similar to the candidate who
> otherwise would have won.  This is what I believe the occasional
> spoiling would be like with a voting method that tends to elect  
> centrist
> compromises, since it would create a strong incentive for  
> candidates who
> want to win to take similar (centrist) positions on the issues.
> (Candidates would be concerned that if they take a minority  
> position on
> an issue, some candidate X could take a majority-preferred position on
> that issue and identical positions on the other issues, so that a
> majority would prefer X.)
>
> Mr. Lomax' concern that a huge increase in the cost of campaigning  
> would
> result if a party nominates more than one candidate is legitimate  
> but I
> think it's very speculative.  Here are some counterarguments.   
> First, by
> canceling or shortening the primary elections there would be an
> immediate savings of money. (Consider how much money Clinton, Obama  
> and
> Edwards spent--and continue to spend--after the Democrat contenders  
> were
> winnowed down to three.)
>
> Second, I believe there will be resonance in the voters' minds when
> multiple candidates advocate similar policies and make similar
> criticisms of other parties' candidates, even if the co-partisan
> candidates are limited by having to share a fixed amount of campaign
> money.  Imagine a debate pitting three against one, even if the one is
> granted time to repeat himself.
>
> Another counterargument is that nominating multiple candidates  
> makes it
> more expensive to attack them all (assuming they don't attack each  
> other
> fratricidally).  Even if the cost of campaigning does increase
> significantly, it will be offset by the cost of attacking them all.
>
> Parties could adopt rules to minimize fratricidal attacks.  The  
> parties
> control a significant amount of campaign money (donations to the party
> rather than to individual candidates).  They could spend it on
> coordinated ads.  Or they could award it to attacked candidates and  
> deny
> it to attacking candidates. (Perhaps the Democratic super-delegates
> could do something similar now to induce Clinton and Obama to be nicer
> to each other and campaign against McCain, by indicating they will  
> vote
> for the one who campaigns most against McCain between now and the
> convention.)
>
> I don't believe Mr. Lomax' example about how much money Clinton and
> Obama are spending against each other is strong.  Clinton and Obama  
> are
> not running against McCain yet, they are running primarily against  
> each
> other. (Sorry about the pun.)  Their short term goal is to be  
> nominated.
>
> Mr. Lomax's point about reduction of negative campaigning against
> similar candidates appears to undermine his argument about Clinton &
> Obama, who are similar to each other.
>
> If the voting method will tend to elect centrist compromise  
> candidates,
> it won't matter if non-centrist parties nominate only one candidate.
> Politicians who want to win will position themselves as centrist
> compromises.  Furthermore, if parties nominate only one candidate,  
> other
> candidates can run as independents and would choose to do so if they
> believed they would win or not worsen the outcome.  One example I've
> written about is the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, when McCain  
> could
> have won running as an independent against Gore and Bush if the voting
> method had been better.  Most Gore supporters preferred McCain over
> Bush, most Bush supporters preferred McCain over Gore, and I believe
> enough voters (about 15%) preferred McCain over both Gore and Bush to
> make him the sincere Condorcet winner.  Rod Kiwiet of Caltech told  
> me a
> few years ago he agreed McCain was the sincere Condorcet winner.
>
> {Going off on a tangent here}  When Rod agreed about McCain, it was
> right after he'd conducted a pairwise poll that showed Arnold
> Schwarzenegger was sincere Condorcet winner in the election that
> recalled California Governor Gray Davis.  A goal of the poll was to
> check whether the public's political pairwise preferences really are
> transitive (IF A>B AND B>C THEN A>C) which Rod said had been  
> assumed by
> political scientists but never checked.  {End of tangent}
>
> There's an old adage about not putting all one's eggs in one basket.
> Much less information about the public's election day preferences is
> available during nomination season than closer to election day.  By
> nominating only one candidate, the party can fail to nominate the one
> who can win.
>
> Finally, returning to the issue of the cost of campaigning and whether
> it could sharply limit the number of nominees, let me remind readers
> about some properties of the VPR family of voting methods:
>
>     Voting for a Published Ranking
>     Prior to election day, each candidate publishes a ranking
>     of the candidates.  On election day, each voter selects one
>     candidate. (What could be simpler?)  Each vote is replaced
>     by the ranking published by the voter's selected candidate.
>
> Assume for this discussion that the algorithm VPR uses to tally the
> rankings doesn't suffer from Borda's awful "inferior clones"  
> problem and
> that one of the following conditions is true:
>
>     1. The algorithm elects within the top cycle.
>
>     2. The votes are published, then each candidate may choose to
>     withdraw from all the rankings before the rankings are tallied.
>     (Candidates can withdraw to elect a compromise and defeat
>     a greater evil.)
>
> As I've written previously, I believe much less campaign money  
> would be
> needed for good compromise candidates to win given VPR.  Their main  
> goal
> would be persuading other candidates to rank them higher than those
> considered worse by these other candidates (or by these other
> candidates' "significant others": big donors & influential  
> supporters).
> It's theoretically possible a good compromise candidate could win even
> if no one voted for her (just as it's theoretically possible a  
> candidate
> can win given many other voting methods even if no one ranks or rates
> her topmost).  Surely it will be much less expensive to get no  
> votes (or
> a few) than to get enough voters to vote a candidate high enough to  
> win
> given a non-VPR method.
>
> VPR would also mitigate Mr. Lomax' concern that too many candidates on
> the ballot would confuse too many voters.  He expects voters could
> competently select favorites when many candidates are on the ballot.
> Given VPR, selecting favorites would be more than sufficient.
>
> Regards,
> Steve
> ---------------------------------------
> Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>> At 06:23 PM 4/13/2008, Juho wrote:
>>
>>> Let's assume that the set of candidates consists of groups of  
>>> clones.
>>> For example there can be multiple parties and each of these parties
>>> has multiple candidates. We further assume that typical voter
>>> preferences are such that they prefer all their own party candidates
>>> clearly over the other candidates (A1>A2>A3>>X>Y>...).
>>>
>>> The claim that I don't recall having seen before is that in Range  
>>> and
>>> Approval it makes sense to the parties not to nominate multiple
>>> candidates.
>>>
>>
>> It also makes sense for them not to nominate octopi or beer steins.
>>
>> Parties exist, as a major reason, to coordinate campaigns. If a party
>> has three candidates running against one from another major party, it
>> may have to spend, for positive campaigning, three times as much.
>> There will also be additional inefficiency in negative campaigning,
>> because, to some degree, they may attack each other. Look what is
>> happening now with Clinton and Obama.
>>
>> The claim that advanced election methods, starting with IRV, will
>> reduce negative campaigning is pure fluff, there is no evidence at
>> all that this is true, and some contrary evidence from San Francisco.
>> It may reduce negative campaigning between similar candidates, to  
>> be sure.
>>
>> Having a huge number of candidates on the ballot, with a
>> single-winner system, is really quite confusing to voters. Sure, as
>> happens at present, voters may be able to pick a favorite and a
>> most-disliked, but what's in between may be more or less junk data.
>> This is why some Range advocates think that blanks should be
>> discarded, but I consider that totally impractical at this time, and
>> dangerous to boot. Blanks should probably be minimum rating, though
>> there is some argument for them being midrating (exact) or possibly
>> some other middle rating, perhaps calculated from all the other  
>> votes.
>>
>> I don't see Range being used to replace primaries. Rather, I see
>> Range primaries and then a Range general election.
>>
>> And I prefer, as well, Range systems that allow favorite designation,
>> with a real runoff if pairwise comparison (including the favorite
>> designation) shows that there is a candidate who beats the Range
>> winner pairwise. And this would not have so much of a clone problem.
>> People could give, for example, all the Republican candidates a 100%
>> if they really want to make sure that the party wins, as best they
>> can, then pick one favorite. So if there is a Republican win, they
>> have not just abstained from determining which one won. There are
>> similar systems that would do condorcet analysis on the Range votes,
>> and if a voter rated one Republican at 100 and another at 99, the
>> difference would be trivial in terms of electoral power; such a vote
>> would mean that a Republican win -- either one -- was greatly valued,
>> yet there remained a minor preference....
>>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for  
> list info


	
	
		
___________________________________________________________ 
All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine 
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html