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

[Peter Zbornik]

Hello all,

Haven't got much news lately, been busy with school, so election methods
have taken summer holidays.
I'm sending a rant below about how to sell proportional elections, most of
which is old news I guess.

After trying to promote proportional elections, proportional ranking
elections and Condorcet single-winner to my party, the greatest hurdle was
to explain how the methods work.
Especially the top-down ranking multi-winner case.

Simplicity is THE most important factor when trying convince people without
a computer/maths degree, especially as I want to use proportional top-down
ranking methods for party lists and possible council elections.

Explaining beatpath methods is not easy, and it does not become easier when
you go to proportional ranking STV.
Ranked-pairs seems to be easier to explain and code than Schulze at a first
glance.
I don't know which method would be simpler to explain than Schulze-STV
(which also has some nice properties, which makes it easy to explain).
On the other hand, Schulze-STV handles incomplete ballots completely
differently (proportional completion) than standard Schulze methods
(winning-votes), which is rather annoying.
I am not sure how well the multiwinner extention CPO-STV handles large
number of votes, seats and candidates although Juho was kind enough to
program a web-app.

I will propose standard STV and proportional top-down rankong STV to my
party as an alternative multi-winner method as a safeguard.
I will promote, not that the current voting system will be replaced, but
that each organisation within the party (local, regional etc) can decide on
their own on what methods to use, from a set of officially approved methods.
I mean some people in our party advocate that the elections amount to random
sampling of seats from a set of candidates.

It would be great, if you could aggree on a method to promote.
Why not try to vote? :o)
Or why not promote both Schulze and Ranked pairs, but with one preferred of
these two options.
If you start voting in this forum, you might also want to consider
introducing a "blocking vote", meaning that the person is so strongly
dissatisfied with the vote, that he/she plans to leave the forum etc. if the
majority alternative will win. If a significant number of blocking votes is
cast (say one vote or 10% of the votes), then there will be re-elections
after a new round of discussion.

I guess what most organisations need, is what I wrote down, when hunting for
a good election method for the Czech green party.
1. a simple method - I think I wrote this before, this is the main criterion
2. proportional ranking multi-winner elections for party lists and
board/council elections.
3. draft text to use in statutes
4. an open-source freeware program

The points above are maybe not so cool mathematically, but they will most
certainly help promoting Condorcet methods.
The problem now is not the lack of methods but "voting packs" that
organisations can adopt with little work from their side.

Otherwise - about the voting methods:
I strongly consider a second  top-two runoff election between the Condorcet
winner and the candidate with the most first preference votes as a safeguard
against dark horses and against criticisms from the unconvinced.
Do you think it is a good idea?

For multiple-winner proportional ranking - STV elections will be one
alternative, as it is relatively simple to explain, haven't yet found an "as
simple as STV" condorcet multiwinner method. If you know one let me know.

I still haven't got to the point where I start writing down draft text into
the statutes and different "customizations".

I have text in statutes for STV (the american greens) and for Schulze
single-winner.
Writing down the Condorcet- proportional ranking STV (like Schulze STV) will
prove to be a challenge, which I am not sure I will be up to, some help
would be great here, but I will come back to you on this issue.

Best regards
Peter Zborník

On Sun, Aug 15, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km-elmet at broadpark.no> wrote:

> 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.
>
> ----
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