[EM] Voting Theory and Populism

[Greg Nisbet]

So yeah... let's assume you have some amount of political capital to get
this done. You cannot impose loads of reforms at once on people; it doesn't
work. If you had to choose only among the options that you think you could
get done, which would it be?

I support TRS. Minimal minimal effort and better for the people than
primaries!


Message: 5
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:09:16 -0400
From: Brian Olson <bql at bolson.org>
Subject: Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
To: Election Methods Mailing List <election-methods at electorama.com>
Cc: Greg Nisbet <gregory.nisbet at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <548D857D-F4B3-47D9-B244-E14F419E42D2 at bolson.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

On Oct 16, 2008, at 10:11 PM, Greg Nisbet wrote:

> Which system do you think would work best that is actually achievable?

That's like asking the oft asked question, 'which candidate is
electable?' and I HATE that question.
It's like suggesting that we prematurely compromise and compress our
election reform advocacy down to a single method to push for when I'd
much rather say that I support: 1. IRNR, 2. Condorcet, 3. IRV, 4.
Approval. And sometimes I want a side of PR-STV, redistricting and
elimination of bad voting machines.

 = Uhh, sorry? I'm not trying to say that IRNR, some unspecified version of
Condorcet, IRV, or approval will never happen. I'm just asking you to weigh
the likelihood of public acceptance in addition to the merit of the method
itself. I am not proposing we end the discussion of which voting method is
best, far from it. I merely want to know which would be the best investment.

=If you object to this question this strongly, please don't respond to it.

In my few years of election reform advocacy, nearly everyone I've
talked to agrees that 'rankings ballots' or 'ranked choice voting' is
a good idea. Probably 80-90% of people I talk to I've been able to
convince that IRV is severely suboptimal (but better than nothing) and
that Condorcet methods are better. Maybe I should try to write down
the elevator pitches/stump speechs/good lines/patter that seem to work
and put together a pamphlet for election reform advocates.

=Go right ahead. In my, uh, few days of talking about this, I've noticed
that some voting methods have definitely fallen out of favor (IRV, Borda,
vanilla Bucklin…) as serious propositions among knowledgeable people.

= I would love a reference of the greatest voting rants of all time.

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:44:43 +0100
From: "Raph Frank" <raphfrk at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
To: "Brian Olson" <bql at bolson.org>
Cc: Greg Nisbet <gregory.nisbet at gmail.com>,     Election Methods Mailing
       List <election-methods at electorama.com>
Message-ID:
       <e01ff3490810170644n66c44fadge2a11da79dcb3f07 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 2:09 PM, Brian Olson <bql at bolson.org> wrote:
> That's like asking the oft asked question, 'which candidate is electable?'
> and I HATE that question.
> It's like suggesting that we prematurely compromise and compress our
> election reform advocacy down to a single method to push for when I'd much
> rather say that I support: 1. IRNR, 2. Condorcet, 3. IRV, 4. Approval. And
> sometimes I want a side of PR-STV, redistricting and elimination of bad
> voting machines.

That is a good point, for a group that all accepts plurality is bad,
it is still in effect used for polling purposes.

I would probably go

1: Approval (slightly ahead of condorcet)
1: Condorcet
2: IRNR
3. IRV

= Where would Range fit in, just out of curiosity? Of the things that are
listed, I completely agree with this.

I don't think IRNR is sufficiently examined to really know where to
put it though.  It might have serious strategy issues.

= I'd be skeptical of any iterative method. IRV, STV, Raynaud, Nanson,
Baldwin etc. all have flaws with them. Any method that relies on rejecting
candidates and recursively applying itself will run into problems. IRNR is
light years ahead of other iterative methods though.

Anyway, you would rank PR-STV behind single winner election methods?

I would rate PR-STV as one of, if not the best voting system (and
certainly one of the best system that is actually in use).  It also
has the added advantage that it is also a redistricting reform (or at
least makes redistricting less important).

CPO-STV (or maybe Schulze-STV) are obvious improvements, but with big
costs in complexity.  I do think that vote management is a weakness of
PR-STV (I wonder if Schulze STV would stop parties bothering to try).
Also, the district sizes need to be reasonable (say 5+).  In Ireland,
there are 3.86 seats per constituency on average, which I think is to
low.

=Why have constituencies at all?

Also, if you could make one change, would you implement IRNR or
redistricting reform?  Unfortunately, with extreme gerrymandering, I
think most methods would still elect a member of one of the two
parties.

= Now you're getting it, you have to compromise with non-voting-theorists
here. I'd say go for the voting method. That will break 2 party domination
and if there isn't a majority party anymore, gerrymandering will crumble/be
exposed.

> In my few years of election reform advocacy, nearly everyone I've talked
to
> agrees that 'rankings ballots' or 'ranked choice voting' is a good idea.
> Probably 80-90% of people I talk to I've been able to convince that IRV is
> severely suboptimal (but better than nothing) and that Condorcet methods
are
> better. Maybe I should try to write down the elevator pitches/stump
> speechs/good lines/patter that seem to work and put together a pamphlet
for
> election reform advocates.

Can't hurt.

= second

>From Raph Frank,

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 3:11 AM, Greg Nisbet <gregory.nisbet at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Approval, although simple, takes effort to convince people of. They seem
to
> think it is unfair to the people who only voted for one person if someone
> else can vote for two. It is like your vote is counting twice, according
to
> them.


It might be better to describe it as lots of votes.  You vote Yes/No
(or approve/disapprove) to each candidate and the one with most Yeses
wins.  Voters who don't approve of a candidate are voting disapprove
for that candidate.

= We see it as logical, that's true. Would a random person see it that way?

Maybe rename approval to "direct voter appointment".  The voters
directly appoint the winner.

=that certainly seems like it would address some of the problems. The way
you are presenting it looks pretty logical.

E.g. the ballot would be

Do you want to appoint A. Adams as Governor? Yes ( _ ) No ( _ )

Do you want to appoint B. Brown as Governor? Yes ( _ ) No ( _ )

Do you want to appoint C. Collins as Governor? Yes ( _ ) No ( _ )

Do you want to appoint D. Davis as Governor? Yes ( _ ) No ( _ )

The one with the most Yes votes wins.

=you just might be able to convince people of this~

You could then point out that the No column isn't really needed, but
that just makes the explanation more complex *and* can lead to them
thinking the some people are casting more votes.

You could also add a rule that if any candidate gets a majority, then
all candidates without a majority are excluded.  The unexcluded
candidate with the most Yes votes wins.

=interesting idea, I'll look into it.

> I tried Schulze, once, it failed miserably. You have to explain what a
> Condorcet matrix is, what a beatpath is, and a lot of concepts that make
it
> sound foreign (a) and therefore bad (c).


Schulze should be considered a tie breaking rule.  The key point for
condorcet methods is that a candidate who is preferred by a majority
to every other candidate wins.

=Schulze is frequently decisive and arguably pretty good. I see no reason to
demote it.

You could note that there are sometimes tie breaking rules for
circular ties, but that is pointless unless they accept that a
condorcet winner should win in the first place.

=Is the CW criterion good is part of the massive CW vs Range topic.
Message: 5


Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:03:08 -0400
From: Brian Olson <bql at bolson.org>
Subject: Re: [EM] Populism and Voting Theory
To: Election Methods Mailing List <election-methods at electorama.com>
Message-ID: <D1A49F13-1EE4-4A05-B751-D56582B29B44 at bolson.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes

On Oct 17, 2008, at 9:44 AM, Raph Frank wrote:

> Anyway, you would rank PR-STV behind single winner election methods?

As a priority of things to do? Yeah kinda. It's substantially a
separate issue. There will be single winner elections (mayor,
governor, president, other one-off seats), and there will be multi-
member bodies and some of those should be converted to a PR system,
and for the time being getting better single winner elections could
apply to all those districted elections. So I think getting ranking/
ratings ballots on single winner votes is the single biggest change we
could make to the electoral system.

=Yeah this sounds about right. There are many applications of a better
single winner method. It probably should have a higher priority.

But hey, follow your passion. There are plenty of good things to do
and we should do them all and I think we're most effective when we're
working on what we personally care most about and in coalition with
the right allies even if they're focusing on different aspects of the
movement.

=The attitude of "let's do everything!" is indeed inspiring. I'm not trying
to crush it. I'm just saying that before this thread veers even more
off-topic we should at least discuss the single best change you can make
given a lazy, unmotivated, and ignorant public.

> CPO-STV (or maybe Schulze-STV) are obvious improvements, but with big
> costs in complexity.  I do think that vote management is a weakness of
> PR-STV (I wonder if Schulze STV would stop parties bothering to try).
> Also, the district sizes need to be reasonable (say 5+).  In Ireland,
> there are 3.86 seats per constituency on average, which I think is to
> low.

Oops, I may have written imprecisely. I meant "PR-STV" to mean the
general philosophy of having Proportional Representation governing
bodies, likely elected by a variation on STV.

=certainly true. Districts lead to issues.

> Also, if you could make one change, would you implement IRNR or
> redistricting reform?  Unfortunately, with extreme gerrymandering, I
> think most methods would still elect a member of one of the two
> parties.

I'm still going for changing single-winner election methods as the
biggest change, and likely biggest bang-per-buck we can get out of
changes to work on.

=Brian, your statement does sound reasonable. I provided a bit of
justification for this in an earlier response. If you get rid of FPTP,
two-party domination will at least be broken, making gerrymandering less of
an issue.
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