[EM] Remember Toby

[Juho Laatu]

Here are some random observations about the SODA method.

There should be a full definition of the method somewhere.

If there are three candidates and their declared preferences are A>B>C, B>C>A and C>A>B, the method may introduce some additional problems. If most voters delegate, then we may easily have a cycle (easier than usual). It will not be easy to decide who will delegate votes to the others.

If we have a centrist candidate (C) and left wing (L) and right wing (R) candidates, then it is problematic for C to decide whether to declare C>L>R or C>R>L. Some of C's right wing oriented supporters might be lost if C decides to declare C>L>R. C could ask for help from a less known person C2 to take part in the election C2's declared preferences could be C2>C>R>L. Now the right wing oriented supporters of C will have a more sensible way to vote. Since C will not not rank C2, there is not much risk that C2 will be elected. One step further, maybe C could be allowed to give two preference orders, C>L>R and C>R>L. Then we are not far from allowing any preference order and full rankings.

The votes could be delegated in multiple ways. The nominated candidate could decide how many to approve (in one or several phases). The nominated candidate could delegate the vote to the next one in chain so that the next one in chain would get also the right to delegate (or not) the vote further (using the original preference order).

There is some smoke in the room in the sense that always when some nominated persons are given the right to decide the destiny of large number of votes (=delegated power), there is a possibility of trading the votes. One can imagine that some candidates would take part in the election only or mainly for this purpose - to get some votes and then decide how (how far in the chain) to sell them. (The price could typically be e.g. a nice seat in some office.)

That's enough for now,
Juho




On 5.6.2011, at 7.01, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> Message contents: 
> Section 1. When isn't SODA "more condorcet compliant than condorcet methods"
> Section 2. Smoke-filled rooms?
> Section 3. What are we looking for, anyway? (in this thread)
> 
> 
> Section 1. When isn't SODA "more condorcet compliant than condorcet methods"
> 
> 2011/6/4 <fsimmons at pcc.edu>
> For the benefit of those who are advocating ranked ballots in order to achieve Condorcet Compliance,
> 
> note well that Jameson has a good argument that SODA, a simple method that uses only a Plurality
> style ballot, is more Condorcet Compliant than most well known Condorcet methods.
> 
> I believe that is true in a practical sense. However, I should note that I'm not claiming that SODA achieves the impossible. As with other methods, (attempted) strategy could spoil its condorcet compliance. I'll explain how, and why I think that wouldn't happen.
> 
> First off: I'd like to note that I'm mostly worried about burial strategy here. Generally, favorite betrayal strategy is useful to break an honest Condorcet cycle to your advantage, while burial is useful to create a false cycle which gives you some advantage. Since I think that honest cycles will be rare, I'm more worried about the latter. Also, psychologically, most people have a much higher propensity for burial than for favorite betrayal. At any rate, in all the discussion that follows, I will assume that there is an honest pairwise champion (CW).
> 
> So, in SODA, burial/truncation is still possible in several ways:
> 1. A candidate could cause a cycle through burial, and thus avoid the (known, unique, strong, stable) Nash equilibrium for the honest pairwise champion. However, that can only work to their advantage if the other candidates actually believe that the false, strategic preference order, or if they manage to exploit a dishonest strategic mistake by another candidate. I believe that high-profile frontrunner candidates could not plausibly claim a false preference order, so this strategy would be ineffective.
> 2. Individual voters could use truncation (not burial, because it's approval). For instance, voters could prevent their votes from being delegated in order to engage in games of chicken to ensure that their preferred near-clone was elected. This is a fundamentally unnecessary risk, however. The near-clone with an honest lead does not need such tactics, and the near-clone who is behind will probably need a dangerously large number of voters to do such tactics. I don't see how this could be coordinated on an effective scale in real life without backfiring.
> 3. Individual voters could vote for "false flag" minor candidates whose honest preference ordering happened to be the strategic burial ordering that they sought. I find this totally implausible, though; this requires a level of cold-bloodedness and sophistication that only a tiny portion of people have.
> 
> So when is SODA voting more condorcet-compliant than Condorcet methods? When there is an honest pairwise champion; most voters bullet vote, allowing delgation; and no frontrunner candidates (those with a chance of winning) can plausibly claim a false preference order. I believe that these three conditions will hold most of the time.
> 
> 
> Section 2. Smoke-filled rooms?
> 
> Some people on this list have said that they don't like asset-inspired methods like SODA because of the "smoke-filled room" scenario. That is, what if you voted for someone who eventually, in some crooked deal, ended up giving your vote to your least-favorite candidate? Certainly, I'm sure some UK Lib Dem voters might feel that way about Cameron, so it's not a crazy idea. There are at least 4 reasons that I think this fear is unrealistic; I'll list them from weakest to strongest.
> 
> The weakest reason first: hopefully, your favorite candidate will be someone you can trust. Sure, Nick Clegg might have betrayed some part of his base; but in SODA voting, that part of his base who didn't trust him would have been free to choose a different, more-trustworthy candidate, without fear of FPTP making their votes irrelevant. I find some comfort in this argument, but this reason alone wouldn't convince me to trust SODA.
> 
> Second, there is the fact that candidate's preference orders must be announced in advance. Sure, that doesn't stop candidates from being deliberately unstrategic in order not to help a higher preference beat a lower preference, but that would be rare, and despite this, you can still absolutely guarantee that your vote will not actually provide the winning margin for that lower preference.
> 
> Third, the point of SODA is that candidates' post-election strategy is done with perfect knowledge of the number of delegable votes and preference orders of the other candidates. This perfectly transparent situation is the exact opposite of a smoke filled room. As I've already said, it means that if there is an honest pairwise champion, then there will be a known, unique, strong, stable, Nash equilibrium where that champion wins. That's the gold standard of game theory. With such clarity, I don't see how back-room deal-making has a chance.
> 
> But fourth, and most important of all: in SODA, the vote delegation is optional for the voter. If you don't want your vote to go to your least-favorite candidate, then don't bullet vote. If you only want to vote for one, you can make your vote non-delegable by voting for a blank or invalid write-in. End of story.
> 
> And delegation is not all downside. Remember, by voting a delegable bullet vote, you are not just giving your voting power to a candidate, you are in a real way letting them speak for you too. A leader/spokesperson with 20% of the vote would be much harder for the media, and the eventual winner, to ignore, than 20% of the voters who (in plurality) simply hold their nose and vote for one of the two main parties. Again, the point is that SODA gives you more voice and more transparency, not less.
> 
> Section 3. What are we looking for, anyway? (in this thread)
> 
> If this whole "remember Toby" thread is going to be productive, I think we need to define the question we're trying to answer here. It should be a question that could have a clear answer. Is it:
> 
> "What is the best system in practical terms?" This is an unanswerable question, without first agreeing on the definition of "best" --- something we're not about to resolve.
> "What systems are clearly better than plurality?" This is an improvement over the above, because the bar is so low that, even if our definitions of "better" aren't the same, we should be able to find a good degree of agreement. However, by the same token, we'll end up with a list of systems that's so broad that it makes a worse-than-useless target for activism. A normal voter's eyes will glaze over before we're done even defining the terms we need in order to start defining the systems.
> 
> (Note: If I were answering this second question, I would certainly include a number of Condorcet systems. I'm not going to spend time making arguments against those systems, even if I have such arguments, because I don't think that's helpful. And I ask others to do the same; as much as possible, this thread should focus on the positive.)
> 
> "What systems are better than plurality, for any reasonable definition of the word 'better'?" I think that this is the question we should be focusing on, because we can reasonably expect to agree on an acceptably-short list of answers.
> That's why I think that Forest's idea of pareto dominance is useful, not just for when we want to promote a proposal with ordinary voters, but also in this discussion right here. I can accept that our goals and values are not exactly the same. While we all share a basic desire to improve democracy, and would probably agree on the desirability of a number of criteria considered independently, we won't always agree when it comes to trading off one desirable trait against another. So if we are looking for a practical proposal that we can all get behind, it should be one that doesn't require any trade-offs, one that is strictly better than the current system in every way. I think that SODA is the answer. (Though I'm keeping an open mind, and would certainly happily support a number of other systems).
> 
> .....
> 
> Sorry for the long message; I hope I said enough to make it worth it.
> 
> JQ
> 
> ----
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