[EM] Classifying 3-cand scenarios. LNHarm methods again.

[robert bristow-johnson]

On Apr 18, 2010, at 6:39 PM, Kevin Venzke wrote:

> --- En date de : Dim 18.4.10, robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com 
> > a écrit :
>> now i disagree with Gierzynski's value system here, but i
>> agree with him about the consequences.  if the Liberals
>> in Burlington want to minimize the likelihood of electing
>> the Conservative candidate for mayor, they will now need to
>> seriously consider putting together a *single* coalition
>> candidate rather than run a candidate from each of the Prog
>> or Dem caucuses.  Gierzynski thinks this is good, i
>> think it's bad.
>
> It seems like you must mostly disagree with what you quoted.

i disagree with the essential point he is making, although i don't  
take great issue with some of his axioms taken loosely.

what i agree with (as i read it): in order to win elections and become  
politically effective or relevant, participants need to decide what is  
most important, seek out other participants that have common goals  
regarding what is most important, and collaborate or coalesce with  
these persons.  this is why Kucinich supporters (or Hillary  
supporters) needed to get behind Obama when it was getting clear where  
that train was going (sorry to be U.S. centric but it's what i know  
best).  it is why, in Vermont, when "Independent" Senator Bernie  
Sanders is running, the Democrats do *not* bother to endorse a  
candidate to oppose him.  that is a political strategy, but not  
necessarily a political value (such as "majority rule" or "transparent  
elections" or "inclusive voter participation" are political values).

so Gierzynski conflates a legitimate political strategy as a political  
value and i do not.  essentially, if done well (and IRV does not do it  
so good), a Preferential Voting system (ranked ballot) can allow for  
this coalition building to happen on Election Day.  what Gierzynski  
thinks is that the lines should be drawn well in advance of the  
election and to narrow this thing down to the "thems" and the "us"  
right away in the party caucuses and i think that the whole election  
season should be put to use in laying out political territory beneath  
the various, possibly overlapping, constituencies.  who says that it's  
the Dems and the Progs that have the most in common?  maybe some year  
the GOP will run an attractive, smart, and moderate candidate and the  
GOPs and Dems team up and blast the Progs outa the water.  or maybe  
(and this has happened in Burlington City Council) the GOP and Progs  
team up to stick it to the Dems.  it all depends on who the candidates  
are on some particular year and the changing political landscape.

Preferential Voting allows for contingency information to be taken  
from the voters and, with Condorcet, all contingencies can be  
considered on equal grounding (rather than IRV which somehow  
eliminates contingencies it sometimes erroneously thinks is less  
relevant).  every voter's weight is equal and all the voter expresses  
is "between Candidate A and Candidate B, i choose Candidate A" for  
every pair of candidates.  that results in the ballot ranking and  
there is no quantitative measure required from the voter for how much  
he/she prefers candidate A over B (or any other candidate).  it uses  
*only* the qualitative (or binary) information that A is preferred  
over B (which is identical to what FPP does with two candidates, and  
no one disagrees with how that kind of election should be decided: the  
candidate with the most votes is also the candidate with the majority  
support).  it doesn't make any dumb quantitative assumptions that  
Borda or Score make and only assumes that every voter's weight is equal.

then Condorcet considers every contingency just as if it were  
announced to the voters on Election Day that the election was only  
between A and B (or between A and C or between B and C) and picks out  
the consistent winner out of all possible contingencies.  if there is  
a CW, it can't possibly be worse for Warren's metric of "Bayesean  
Regret", no one can regret the rankings they made because it wouldn't  
help their political interests if they changed it from their sincere  
rankings.  if there is no CW, we have problems, but i think that  
either Schulze or Tideman have a meaningful resolution to that.

my metric of goodness for an election method is not minimizing  
Bayesean regret but is in minimizing mean voter disappointment in the  
election result.  that's why we don't give the office to the loser  
(the minority candidate) in a simple 2-candidate FPP race - more  
voters would be disappointed with that result than would be  
disappointed by awarding the office to the person with the greater  
number of votes.  and then the question is, with 3 or more candidates,  
how do we minimize disappointment among the electorate?  i think the  
answer is to consider what all the possible 2-candidate permutations  
are (the "contingencies") and to award the office to the only  
consistent majority winner (if such exists).  i think that is obvious,  
because the alternative is to possibly award the office to a candidate  
when there exists another candidate that the majority of the  
electorate agree is a better candidate.  to pick anyone other than the  
CW is do disappoint the majority of the electorate.


> What worries me is the possibility that every time we succeed in
> implementing an election method which can handle any number of
> candidates that we throw at it, we will mostly see scenarios with
> one or two strong candidates and a half-dozen losers that never
> coalesced into anything, so that we mostly will not be able to tell
> the difference in effect from just using FPP.


i dunno about France, but is that the case in Italy?  or Israel?  i  
thought there were a bunch of countries with a half dozen contending  
parties or more.  it looks to me that even the UK has three  
significant parties.

--

r b-j                  rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."