[EM] About non-monotonicity and non-responding to previous posts...

[robert bristow-johnson]

On Nov 5, 2009, at 1:35 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
...
>> simplicity and sufficient transparency is important to have public  
>> confidence.  otherwise i would probably just jump on the Schulze  
>> bandwagon.
>
> Ranked Pairs might be good here. If you can get the one you're  
> explaining it to, to understand the pairwise way of thinking, then  
> it "easily" follows that if you're going to build a ranking for  
> society itself piece by piece, the stronger defeats should be  
> considered before the weaker ones, and there you have Ranked Pairs.
>
> On the other hand, more organizations use Schulze than Ranked  
> Pairs, so it comes down to which inspires greater confidence:  
> simplicity or a record of use.
>
>> i don't think a sequence of elimination rounds would be okay, but  
>> the method of picking the biggest loser for each round needs to be  
>> debated.  i am not sure what would be best.
>
> Are you referring to IRV here?

no.  i mean if there is a Condorcet cycle, as an alternative to  
Schulze or Ranked Pairs or whatever, you could start with the Smith  
Set and, with some meaningful metric, eliminate a candidate deemed to  
be the biggest loser, then rerun the superficial Condorcet tally  
(just see if there is a Condorcet winner among the candidates left)  
and repeat until a Condorcet winner is apparent from the candidates  
left over.

>>> Do Condorcet winners appear often enough in reality that it is  
>>> not a problem?
>> since no government yet uses Condorcet, i don't think any of us  
>> know the answer.
>
> You're right. If I were to guess, I'd say that in most situations,  
> unless the electorate is small or uncertain, there will be a CW;  
> however, once the method has been adopted, parties will try to  
> coordinate strategies to induce a cycle,

really?  Terry B (also a Burlington resident) told me that, and i  
find that to be an untested hypothesis.  since the parties do not  
know who will benefit from a cycle (who can tell the future?), i  
really have my doubts about that.

> because that's the only way they can game the system.

that's right.  i see Condorcet as the least gameable (and the most  
compliant to the fundamental concept of democracy) than any of the  
others.  *which* Condorcet (which boils down to which methods shall  
we use to resolve a cycle or tie) is a secondary issue, in my  
opinion.  *any* Condorcet (with a reasonably meaningful method to  
resolve a cycle, i.e. let's not draw lots nor give it to a candidate  
outside of the Smith set) is better than IRV or Borda.  and certainly  
better than FPTP.  my rejection of Range voting is because the ballot  
requires more information from the voter than the simple ranked  
ballot of Condorcet, IRV or Borda.  asking the voter to rate their  
candidate on a scale is asking too much and they would have to be  
thinking about what would happen if they rate *anyone* other than  
their primary pick with anything other than zero.  the voter should  
feel free to pick their first pick, back it up with a second pick and  
not worry that their second pick somehow hurts their first.  or that  
their first pick somehow hurts the interest of their second pick  
against some third candidate that they like even less.  i think that  
Range voters will give the guy they like a "10" and everyone else a  
"0" in an effort to not harm the guy they like.  then no more  
information is gathered from the voter than you get with FPTP.  the  
ranked order ballot, where the voter only needs to ask themselves  
"who do i prefer more, candidate A or candidate B?" extracts exactly  
the right amount of information from the voter (i think that ties  
should be allowed and we shall assume of course that any candidate  
not ranked is tied for last place).

in Burlington Vermont, Repubs who voted for their candidate as their  
first pick actually helped elect (with IRV) the candidate they liked  
the least and that would not have happened if it was Condorcet.  they  
are mistaken in their belief that their candidate (the FPTP winner)  
should have won, but i can understand their voter regret in that  
their vote for their guy actually caused the election of the  
candidate they liked the least.

> There's certainly precedence for this,

not with Condorcet there is.  it's never been used in a government  
election.

> in how the various parties in STV New York tried to employ vote  
> management to get more than their fair share of the local council.
>
>> but for there to be a paradox, you would need a situation where  
>> there is no predictable voter alignment along a single dimensioned  
>> political spectrum.  you would need to have (in 2000) a lot of  
>> Nader voters who choose Bush over Gore as their second choice, and  
>> Bush voters that sincerely choose Nader over Gore, something i  
>> really do not expect.
>
> Perhaps the existence of Condorcet would permit variety to the  
> point that the political spectrum becomes multidimensional?

that would be fine.  and, if in a multidimensional political  
spectrum, we had a few elections that had a Condorcet cycle that was  
resolved with a simple and meaningful method (like Ranked Pairs), i  
would be quite happy with that.

> For instance, there might be left-right and unitary-federalist.

actually the Libertarians here in New England look at it as left vs.  
right on one dimension and libertarian vs. authoritarian on another.   
some of us on the left might see "communitarian" as the opposite of  
libertarian, but i *do* understand the concept of "fascist  
liberals".  i have bumped into a few of those myself a few times.

> With the right distributions, these can lead to cycles.

"can".  but this is so hypothetical.  do we know that it really  
*will* (with any frequency) in a real political reality?

> Whether or not that diversification will actually happen is a  
> question to which I don't know the answer.

true.  in 2005 when i voted for IRV in Burlington, i was thinking to  
myself, "well, it isn't Condorcet, but i doubt it will ever elect a  
non-Codorcet winner because all the Condorcet winner needs is to make  
it to the final round and he/she will also win IRV."  and that  
confidence was supported in 2006 in Burlington, but 2009 was a big  
wake-up for me.  what we really know that will actually happen  
(because it has) is that sometimes IRV will elect someone where a  
majority (not just a mere plurality) of voters have expressed on  
their ballots that they prefer some other specific candidate.  that  
*can't* be good.

>
>> while having *something* meaningful in law to deal with a  
>> Condorcet cycle, i really think that the lack of "the perfect  
>> solution" to the paradox problem (that likely will never happen in  
>> a real election with real candidates) should not be used as a  
>> block to adopting Condorcet in general.  what to do with a cycle  
>> can be adjusted at a later time.
>
> That might be a problem, because we discuss many different  
> Condorcet variants on the EM list.

i know that.  and what i am saying, as a value statement, is that we  
(in the U.S.) need to concentrate on getting *some* kind of universal  
health care adopted and not let details differentiating various  
universal health care policies cause the whole reform to be tabled  
because we can't decide *which* universal health care system we want  
yet.  i am *far* less concerned about how Schulze or Ranked Pairs or  
Kemeney or some elimination round system will be "gamed" than i am of  
IRV or FPTP simply electing the wrong candidate and causing a large  
blowback by a *majority* of dissatisfied voters.  elections should be  
designed to *minimize* the overall metric of dissatisfaction  
(otherwise, let's just give it to the least popular candidate, why  
not?) and IRV and FPTP do not do that.


> Unlike FairVote et al, we don't have a strong voice saying "Hey  
> public, if you think Plurality sucks, implement [method here]".

but if FairVote won't keep all of their eggs in the IRV basket, then  
we need someone to do the same for Condorcet.

--

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."