[EM] Remember Toby

[Juho Laatu]

On 8.6.2011, at 16.15, Jameson Quinn wrote:

> 
> 
> 2011/6/8 Juho Laatu <juho4880 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Here are some random observations about the SODA method.
> 
> There should be a full definition of the method somewhere.
> 
> I've posted a full definition. However, this definition included my additional step of recounting the top two without mutually-delegated votes. In further off-list conversation with Forest, I've realized that this addition, while it may be marginally helpful, does not fundamentally change the dynamics of the situation, and so is not worth the extra complexity. Here's the full definition without it:
> 
> 1. Before the election, candidates (including declared write-ins) submit full rankings of other candidates. Equality and truncation (equal-bottom) is allowed in these rankings. These rankings are made public.

I'm just wondering what the difference between a declared write-in and a regular candidate is. Maybe declared write-ins are candidates that have failed to meet some of the nomination criteria and that therefore will not get their own row in the ballot sheet or will not get a candidate number of their own (depends on what kind of ballots are in use, but the point is that voter must write their full name in the ballot). These declared write-ins must probably register themselves anyway as candidates in order to officially declare their preferences. Maybe votes to write-ins that have not officially declared their preferences are not allowed in the election at all. Or maybe votes to them are just always non-delegated approval votes.

> 
> 2. Voters submit approval ballots, with up to two write-ins. "Do not delegate" is a valid write-in.

Your definition seems to define also the used ballot format. That's ok although often the formal descriptions of methods don't cover this. Note that most countries of the world don't use the write-in option. Is this a recommendation that if they start using SODA they should support write-ins in general or that they should have a write-in slot to support the "do not delegate" feature?

> 
> 3. All approvals are counted for each candidate. Bullet votes for each candidate are also counted. These totals are made public.
> 
> 4. After a brief period (probably a couple of weeks) for analyzing and discussing these first-round results, all candidates, in a simultaneous and temporarily-secret ballot, decide how many rank levels (from their initial ranking in step 1) to delegate to. They may not delegate to candidates they ranked at the bottom (since this is strategically identical to delegating to nobody and withdrawing from the race). If A delegates to B, a number equal to A's bullet votes is added to B's approval total.

I note that

- candidates must delegate all or no votes, and all to the same level

- couple of weeks is a long time to wait for the results

- those couple of weeks probably include lost of negotiations, maybe to the level of agreeing how every candidate delegates (or at least a group that has power enough to agree what the outcome is)

- I guess "temporarily-secret" means that the final vote of each candidate will be published afterwards

- these rules assume one round of voting (i.e. not e.g. approvals that could be extended step by step)

- empty votes are not allowed (maybe not necessary to ban, and many candidates could effectively cast an empty vote anyway, e.g. by not approving anyone else but themselves)

> 
> 5. The candidate with the highest approval total after step 4 wins.

Depending on the environment the winner could be agreed already before the second round, or alternatively all candidates would just, one by one, cast the vote that they consider best, and the end result could be a surprise.

>  
> 
> 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.
> 
> Actually, the strategy in such a cycle is simple and stable. Say C has the fewest bullet votes. C has no hope of winning

C could still win, if for example candidate B would be happy to compromise and approve C.

> , so C delegates to A

Is there moral pressure and an agreed rule that the one with least bullet votes should at east approve one/some of the others?

> , so B delegates to C, so A delegates to B.

These are logical consequences after C's decision if B and A can be sure that the previous steps in this chain of decisions will be implemented with certainty.

C however does not like the idea of B winning. C could cancel his plan to delegate to A, and he could tell this to A. A could then cancel his plan to delegate to B (if he trusts C). A would win. A and C would be happier.

Actually any two of the candidates could make an agreement on the winner. They could also agree e.g. that X will be the president and Y will be the vice president.

> B wins - the minimax winner. No further changes (either adding or subtracting delegations) will be strategically advantageous, so this is a strong equilibrium.

I guess this depends on the utilities of the candidates (e.g. C>A>>>B) and on what kind of deals (on life after elections) are available.

> 
> Things are not necessarily quite so simple if there are more than 3 candidates. But in order for things to be strategically ambiguous (where some random "mixed strategy" is favored), I think (though I have no proof) that you need at least 5 candidates in the Smith set - which I regard as a negligible possibility, certainly under 1% in real-world conditions. 
> 
> 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.
> 
> Well, they could just vote [C,R]. If things are as you say, this should be a relatively safe option, because C is almost guaranteed to be a CW. (Formally: if there are negligible numbers of [R,L] voters, either directly or delegated, then a [C, R] vote is strategically the same as a C>R>L vote.)

[C,R] votes could give R majority support already at the first round. R would win (even if C is a sincere CW).

>  
> 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.
> 
> This would work too.
>  
> 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).
> 
> One phase.
>  
> 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).
> 
> No.

Ok, this option would probably not be in the interest of the voter that gave this vote.

>  
> 
> 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.
> 
> Say X's declared preference order is A>B. They can only be decisive if, without their vote, B leads by less than the votes they hold. Generally speaking, that's a 50/50 proposition that their trick is useless.

X could approach A and ask if he would be happy to nominate X in some nice job. A could collect the required votes from a number of similar deals.

> 
> And even then, their choices are:  
> -Support A, electing A (which is so "obvious" that it would hardly deserve a payback, except insofar as X had legitimately demonstrated that they had a constituency of supporters); 

X might have no political interest to approve A. Maybe X declared A>B only because he thought that he could bet a good job from A. X could refuse to approve anyone (or approve only C if he declared C>A>B in order to not look like a plotter if he approves only himself).

> -Support neither, electing B (certainly not a way to get a payback)

In the next elections X could declare B>A if A was "not friendly enough" in these elections. The C trick above could also be used as a camouflage.

> -Or support A and B, electing B. 

Maybe X doesn't care, if he didn't get the job. Maybe he approves up to B in order to prepare for the next elections (being a "friend of B"). Maybe B promised him a good job unlike A. There are many ways to play the game. And the claimed root problem here is that it is possible to play such games.

> 
> The latter case is the only likely one where anything untoward has happened - X has not strategically followed their declared preferences. I think that mercenary X's like that would be generally reviled, to the point where it would be in B's propaganda interests to pre-declare that they weren't willing to play ball with such extorsions.

People tend to be capable of playing with a mixture of political and purely personal interests. It is hard to find politicians that would be totally free of economic or power interests. And politicians are by definition good at explaining things and preparing for political opportunities. I don't mean that all of them would be all rotten, but there is certain element of player in every human being, and politicians need special skills in this area of playing social and administrational games (they are more successful and get further in politics if they have such skills). X thus need not directly "extort" A. Friendly discussions on future plans are enough.

> 
> Also, remember that an X supporter can easily vote [X, A] if B is sufficiently unpalatable. If there are enough such voters, it would be in X's interest to truncate B from their ranking, which would make a smoky-room deal all the more unlikely.

If B is a 100% player in the sense described above he is interested only in the delegable votes. Votes like [X, A] are not really harmful to him, but they are lost opportunities to him.

> 
> Essentially, the point is that if A didn't win this election, the room would have been slightly smoky, but the voters would know exactly whom to blame: X. X could not claim to have been acting from deep ideological reasons, unless the payback was some actual policy commitment beneficial to their supporters; and if that were the case, well, that's democracy at work. 

If X is a good player he will have a good explanation why he voted as he did. Maybe it was that C trick that I discussed above. Maybe he had a chance to win also himself.

> 
> On balance, I'd claim that the extra transparency from the pre-election rankings is a bigger step than the small possibility of smoky-room results.

I'd say that politics in general consists of smoky rooms. Especially in multi-party systems where no single party gets all power, parties are expected to do some horse trading, e.g. when forming a coalition government after the election. For these reasons playing the game already during the elections may be considered not too terrible. On the other hand if the intention of the election is to let the voters decide directly on this particular (single-winner) question, then all cabinet agreements and smoke should be considered unwanted. It thus depends on what kind of results we want the election to produce. I can imagine that some society could consider it useful to let the politicians find a deal in smoky rooms on who will be elected as a president if that elected president is considered to need support from some coalition of politicians/parties anyway while in office. But maybe direct election where the voters will decide who the winner is is the default case.

>  
> 
> 
> ----
> 
> I'll continue to argue that SODA is great, and that the fact that it's the most pareto-dominant over plurality is important.

Yes, this marketability in plurality environments is one important criterion in societies that have that kind of history and current practices.

> But it seems clear that there are a number of people on this list who prefer Condorcet methods in general, and I doubt that further argument is going to change that.

To me Condorcet methods are one very clean and clear local optimum. SODA looks very interesting, but at first sight more limited with respect to environments where it can be considered an ideal next step. On the other hand Condorcet methods are obviously not perfect next steps either since they are not commonly used in real full scale political elections although they have been available for long (well, computerized counting has made them feasible only quite recently). SODA also seems to be more "practical" while Condorcet principle is offers "theoretical" beauty.

> So, here's a proposal. The condorcet-supporters

I consider myself to be a Condorcet supporter, but certainly not exclusively. (Not much of an activist either although a supporter of various methods.)

> choose one simple method to propose (it seems that Minimax-WV and Condorcet/Implicit Approval are the strongest contenders right now, if you don't count systems which are designed to occasionally give spoiled elections)

If you ask me, I have been always a bit on the margins side since it simply seems to measure the utility of the candidates better than the other mentioned approaches. But again, if someone starts using any half decent Condorcet method, that's good enough. No problems with SODA either. And why not even Approval etc. as intermediate steps, although there might be next steps after people find their problems later.

> , and we put that method and SODA forward as proposals (while still endorsing a wide range of methods) in the (opt-in) statement that we craft.

Yes, SODA is fine as long as its various properties are taken into account properly, it is recommended for where it should be etc.

> 
> Remember, in order to sign such a statement, you would not have to agree that the two proposals were the best two systems (probably nobody believes this), just that they were both practical proposals and both improvements over plurality. I would happily do so; I hope others would join me; and I don't think we'll find any short list which would get a similar level of buy-in.
> 
> Sound good?

Sounds good. I see several options here still. Now it seems that your target would be about how to replace plurality, maybe targeting countries like the US (with write-ins), offering a "scientific" list of methods that is suitable for political discussions and campaigning, that need not be theoretically ideal and complete but that must be practical, covering sigle-winner methods only, and not too many of them.

Juho



> 
> Jameson Quinn
> 
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info

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