[EM] [Election-Methods] Re: final attempt for a strategy-free range voting variant, and another proportionally democratic method

[Raph Frank]

I had a similar though previously.

It was based on a legislature rather than individual voters.

I called it 'consumable votes'.
Here is one example, though there was a fair few versions.

http://listas.apesol.org/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2006-March/017903.html

I had though about using Clarke taxes too, but not
sure if I actually posted that.

The theory was that each legislator would be given a
fixed number of votes (either once at the start of their
term or a set amount per week/month).

If they cast a vote, it was lost.  This was designed to
act as an incentive for not voting on bills that they
didn't care about.  Also, they would have been
allowed to vote more than once from their account.

It also required a supermajority to pass bills to prevent
chain reversals of decisions (i.e. once the other side
had spent all their votes getting the decision made in
the first place).

Jobst Heitzig heitzig-j at web.de wrote:
> The main advantage is that while Clarke taxes do not sum up to zero, the
> above JRV0VC-adjustments do, so no "voting money" needs to be destroyed
> or generated, and hence no "inflation" or "deflation" can happen which
> would have influences on the strategic implications.

Right this is important.

 My thoughts were to have accounts decay and each voter
would be given a fixed income. This also handles the effect of new
citizens becoming adults and also elections if it is for a legislature.
However, that creates deflation (or at least encourages 'spending now').

Another option is to use Clarke taxes directly and just pick one
voter to receive the money.

There was a paper about using Clarke taxes for landing slots
at airports.  Their analysis was that randomly picking one
airline and excluding them from consideration for the slot and
then giving them the tax (if any) from the others was more
efficient than having all airlines.

They assumed that the tax was a cost for the airlines and
on average the cost of the tax was greater than the cost
of losing out on a landing slot every so often.

> We need to study these things:
>
> a) What group strategies might exist, in particular how strategic
> behaviour of one voter influences the outcome of a second voter. In this
> context, the method might be improved further by increasing the number
> of removed ballots if that reduces group strategies.

I think it still falls into the issue that it is rare that
Clarke taxes are ever paid.

Fundamentally, the concept that each voter is
independent is not valid.  Voters won't just treat
each other as black boxes.

> b) Can "voting money" really be considered a form of money, and can we
> expect it to be linear in individual utilities? My hope is that this is
> so because the virtual money is only used to "buy" immediate voting
> power and pay with potential later voting power. I think it would not be
> necessary that utilities be comparable between different persons. Just
> the utilities some fixed person assigns to options in the decision at
> hand need be comparable to utilities the same person assigns to options
> in a later decision.

It has the advantage that everyone has equal access to it.
This would eliminate the complaint that people with higher
wealth would end up controlling the process.

It might even be constitutional despite the ban on poll taxes.

Depending on your view of utility, it could be considered
just as valid as any other distribution.

However, there could be complaints since people can lose
their voting power.  In fact, since in nearly all cases, there would
be no change to vote totals and then suddenly, a large
chunk of people would lose some of their votes and thus
power, there could be major complaints (or riots).  Also,
they would have little expectation of increasing their totals again
as it would be a while before another change to the totals.

I think in practice, it would just be treated like a range voting
election and thus changing account totals is like reweighting
people's votes.

Finally, with a national election, it is unlikely that the results
would be accurate to a single vote, so even if it was balanced,
a recount would probably change things.

> c) How would the "exchange rate" of this virtual money be established?

I don't think it should be transferable, or otherwise, you
might as well just use normal money.

If you do want it to be exchangable, then just let the
market decide.

One possible option here is that you use budget dollars.
For example, each citizen's account would have a share
of the national budget.  They could spend the money on
getting laws passed/electing officers or funding projects.

Every year, their account would be restored by their
share of the tax take.

This possibly works better for a legislature.

However, there would be rules that only public projects can
be funded.

> Phase I:
> --------
>
> Perform a JRV0VC election to find the "compromise option" for phase II.
> The question on the ballot reads "How much value does it have for you if
> option ... was the compromise option for phase II?".
> Designate the winner of this phase by W.

So, people could end up spending some of their
cash in order to influence who the compromise
option is ?

> Summary of properties:
> ----------------------
>
> a) Monotonic, neutral, anonymous in the long run, clone-proof.
>
> b) The method is "proportionally democratic" in the sense that when p
> percent of the electorate mark some favourite X and say "no" to the
> compromise W, then X will have at least p percent winning probability.
> This is true regardless of the voting accounts since they are used only
> in phase I.

Right

>
> c) Phase I is strategy-free and thus is likely to choose that compromise
> option which will make the final result of phase II have the largest
> total utility.

Subject to (most of) the issues associated with Clarke taxes.

Non payment is at least resolved and also complaints that it
favours the rich.

However, the decision might not match what an open
auction would yield.

> d) In phase II, it is optimal to mark the true favourite.

Right, the only time it matters is when the ballot
is effectively the dictator.

> f) If every voter i prefers the compromise option W to a lottery in
> which i's favourite is elected with 20% probability and the Random
> Ballot lottery is applied with 80% probability, and all voters know that
> this is the case, then it is likely that all voters will say "yes" in
> phase II and W will be the sure winner.

Right, one issue her is the odds of the compromise
being selected.  If 5% dissent, then there is a ~15%
odds that the compromise will not be selected/

>
> g) If more than one such option W as in f) exists, then the one will be
> chosen in phase I which maximizes total utility. This means the method
> will elect the utilitarian winner amoung the unanimously acceptable
> compromise options, if such options exist.

Assuming that everyone compromises.