[EM] it's been pretty quiet around here...

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> 
> On Aug 14, 2010, at 5:37 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>
>> Since FV thinks IRV is so nice, it's to their benefit to link 
>> preferential voting, the concept, to IRV, the method, so that others 
>> thing "oh, either IRV or Plurality". Since IRV appears better than 
>> Plurality (at least until the summability issues are encountered), 
>> this makes it relatively easy to slip in IRV, and the theory then 
>> goes, to go from IRV to STV, which is much better.
>>
>> It doesn't appear that we can change FV's minds from IRV to something 
>> better (like Condorcet). When you dig really far down, the issue boils 
>> down to "weak centrist! Condorcet winner! weak centrist! Condorcet 
>> winner!" and there you go -- and then they sprinkle LNHarm and 
>> *perhaps* burial resistance on top.
> 
> my experience with Rob Ritchie is that IRV is the only method with an 
> ice cube's chance in hell of being adopted in a governmental election.  
> the claim is that IRV can be directly related to the traditional delayed 
> runoff and that it is no different, except for no delay (which has the 
> measurable difference in that many more voters participate in the 
> instant runoffs than in the delayed runoff).  but, for that to be true, 
> it should have no more than 2 rounds with the top two of the first round 
> going into the second and final round.  of course, that doesn't fix the 
> problems demonstrated in the 2009 Burlington mayoral election (because 
> the "true majority" winner would not have made it to the runoff in 
> either case).

IRV is an emulation of an exhaustive runoff, not of top-two. The 
emulation of top-two, the Contingent vote, is worse - but I see your 
point, since IRV is at its surface similar enough to top-two runoff to 
seem a reasonable way of automating the latter. One might show that IRV 
denies the people the ability to change their votes between the rounds, 
but the problem is really that IRV, as a voting method, doesn't give 
good outcomes.

If we discuss voting in a mechanical manner, as something that has to be 
done a certain way, then IRV will have an advantage because its 
mechanics are similar to that of ordinary runoff, which is trusted. I 
don't think that is the right approach, but I can see how it would 
appear as such to the voters.

If that is what makes non-IRV methods unlikely to succeed, then it'd 
seem we have three ways of making the Condorcet method in question pass. 
The first would be to let organizations use it, like Schulze is being 
used by technical ones right now, so that the method itself (however 
complex) becomes trusted. The second would be to make the mechanics 
similar to something that *is*, as in the focus on championships, 
tournaments, round robins...
In an indirect manner, you might also say that Ranked Pairs is similar 
to majority rule since it goes down affirming majorities until the 
winner is clear. It's simple to explain because of that, but is it 
similar enough? I don't know.
The third would be to somehow manage to inform the people that looking 
at the outcomes is the right way of considering voting methods. It is 
intuitive, so it could work as long as the method isn't *too* opaque, 
but it would have to be pulled off right.

Markus has a good point about Condorcet supporters splitting their own 
vote by not being sure which method one should support.

>> Cardinal ratings technically pass both because it can pass IIA since 
>> it doesn't care about universal domain. However, I think that CR 
>> (Range, Score, etc) will be hard to get passed, since it doesn't even 
>> pass Majority. Even if Warren is right and social utility comparisons 
>> are better than majority rule, most people associate democratic 
>> fairness with that if some candidate is preferred by a majority, he 
>> should win. There are also the tactical issues: CR reduces to Approval 
>> (as Youtube raters found out)
> 
> and Approval can reduce to Plurality bringing along the same strategy 
> problems of Plurality.

How so? If you vote Plurality-style, it never harms you to vote for 
those you prefer to the one you'd vote for in Plurality. You might get a 
Plurality outcome, but you might also get more (which is better than 
what Plurality has to offer).

>> and pretty soon voters who want their vote to count must haul around 
>> concepts like "maybe frontrunner, plus" (LeGrand's Approval strategy 
>> A), something which really should be inside the method rather than 
>> outside.
>>
>> Thus we can't follow FV; and while we could advocate cardinal ratings, 
>> I don't think that would be very successful (and in any event, should 
>> be DSV instead). That leaves Condorcet, and so I think there should be 
>> an organization or group or at least some sort of coherent support for 
>> Condorcet.
> 
> well, there used to be a condorcet.org or condercet.com (neither have an 
> active web page, although the .com has a dumb page put up by the 
> registrar, just like my audioimagination.com does).

Yes, that's a good idea. Condorcet.org is owned by Blake Cretney, while 
condorcet.com seems to have been snarfed up by NAmedia (namedia.com), 
which is in the business of domain parking.

If we were to call it something else, or focus it on a particular 
method, another domain might be better, but it could still link to the 
Condorcet site for detailed information.

>> What should such a group do? First, it should state that the concept 
>> of ranked voting is different from what method may be used as its 
>> back-end. Second, it should have a clear and easily understandable 
>> name for Condorcet, or for the Condorcet method it settles upon. The 
>> former could be done more simply: "round robin voting", "maximum 
>> majority voting", "championship" or "tournament" voting (but beware of 
>> equating it with an elimination tournament), etc.
> 
> Warren has used the term "beats-all winner" for the Condorcet winner.

I agree with the others - I think a better term would have to be found.

> as much as i like the Schulze method, since it is so much more difficult 
> to explain and for a lay person to comprehend, there will always be some 
> suspicion around it in the minds of people who want to "Keep Voting 
> Simple" (the signs from the IRV opponents in Burlington).  they won't 
> like any Condorcet, because most fundamentally do not like the ranked 
> ballot, but since Ranked Pairs (which is simpler to understand) and 
> Schulze pick the same winner if there is a CW (the most common case, i 
> believe) and if the Smith Set is no larger than 3 (which, i believe will 
> take up the other 1% of cases), then i cannot imagine how it could be 
> more efficacious to promote Schulze Beatpath over Tideman Ranked Pairs.  
> but, also for simplicity, maybe the best method to sell is simple 
> Condorcet and then, if no CW exists, pick the plurality (of first 
> choices) winner.  i'm not saying it's best, just that it's simple to 
> understand and that the likelihood that no CW exists will be small (or 
> is, at least, believed to be small).

Condorcet,Plurality is not a very good method. If simplicity is the
be-all end-all, I would pick something like the "offense least reversal"
method. I don't know if it has a proper name, but basically just sum up
the number of voters who stand on the winning side of the matchup and
the candidate with the highest score wins. This is Condorcet because a 
CW would get a score equal to the turnout, something that cannot be 
beaten by any other candidate.

Another option is plain old Copeland, which would be well known from
sports. Two points for a victory, one for a tie, none for a defeat. The
advantage of Copeland would be that it sidesteps the WV/margins issue,
and it's also Smith. The disadvantage is that it ties a lot, but since 
it does, championships or tournaments that use it probably has a 
tiebreaker and so one could use that tiebreaker as well. It's also 
relatively coarse-grained (since it only considers direction of wins) 
and so may not distinguish weak from strong centrists.

Neither of these methods are cloneproof, but neither is Plurality.

> the other method, BTR-IRV (which i had never thought of before before 
> Jameson mentioned it and Kristofer first explained to me last May), is a 
> Condorcet-compliant IRV method.  i wonder how well or poorly it would 
> work if no CW exists.  i am intrigued by this method since it could 
> still be sold to the IRV crowd (as an IRV method) and not suffer the 
> manifold consequences that occur when IRV elects someone else than the 
> CW.  

You might also be able to pass Borda-runoff (Nanson or Baldwin) - it's
like IRV but with Borda counts, and because the CW always has an
above-average Borda count, that method passes Condorcet. It's not
monotone (but IRV isn't either). Nanson has actually been used in
governmental elections (Marquette, Michigan in the 1920s) and has also
been used by Australian universities.

> does "BTR" stand for "bottom two runoff"?  and who first suggested 
> this method?  is it published anywhere?  Jameson first mentioned it 
> here, AFAIK.  the advantage of this method is that is really is no more 
> complicated to explain than IRV, and it *does* resolve directly to a 
> winner whether a CW exists or not.  i am curious in how, say with a 
> Smith Set of 3, this method would differ from RP or Schulze.

Anthony O'Neal first suggested BTR-IRV, and yes, BTR stands for "bottom
two runoff" (but also a reference to/pun on "better"). BTR-IRV is
probably the simplest single modification you can do to IRV to get
Condorcet, but it's not that good a Condorcet method. It's not summable,
for instance. I thought that Nanson/Baldwin weren't either, but
apparently it's possible to derive Borda scores from a Condorcet matrix.

With three candidates, the "modified IRV" Condorcet methods differ from
RP and Schulze mainly in that they don't elect the one whose worst
defeat is the least. With a Smith set of three but more candidates in 
total, the methods may differ further, since BTR-IRV doesn't pass Smith.