[EM] To Condorcetists:

[Juho Laatu]

On 13.5.2012, at 4.04, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

> Condorcetists:

I'm a "condorcetist" in the sense that I think that Condorcet methods are a pretty good local optimum for some election types.

>  
> You want to quibble forever about which rank-count is the best.

No interest to quibble. Unfortunately this problem exists. But it is not fatal. It could be seen also as a large set of available options.

>  
> You object that Approval doesn't let you help your 1st and 2nd choices against your last choice, while still helping your
> 1st choice against your 2nd choice.

Approval ballots contain less information than ranked or full rated ballots.

>  
> But the _big_ benefit starts when everyone can support their 1st and 2nd choices at all.

Benefits depend on where you start from.

>  
> Plurality very effectively puts a gag on everyone who would like something better than the corrupt sleazes
> that your tv offers as "the two choices".
>  
> "We have to hold our nose and vote for the lesser-evil [Democrat], so that we don't waste our vote."
>  
> Do you have any idea how things would be if everyone could actually support their favorites, and without
> having to try to guess on which one the other similar voters would be combining their support?

I guess we are speaking about the U.S. elections here. Do you recommend compromise seeking single-winner election methods like Approval or Condorcet to be used in electing representative bodies from single-winner districts? I note that that would lead to an interesting political system that has probably not been tested anywhere in the world yet.

>  
> Do you understand the difference between "liked" and "unliked"? And what would happen if everyone could support
> whom and what they actually like best?

Do you recommend "sincere Approval" where people sincerely approve those candidates that they "like", or "strategic Approval" where people are supposed to find the best strategy for them and vote that way? (The best strategy often includes approving the "lesser-evil" too.) My guess is that in public elections strategic approach to Approval would dominate.

>  
> Do you have any idea how far-reaching the resulting changes would be?
>  
> No, I'm not saying that the resulting country and world would be perfect in every way. I'm saying that it
> would be what people actually want--something that they can support without holding their nose. But don't
> underestimate  the magnitude of that change.
>  
> Though I consider Approval to be the best in some meaningful ways, I also would like more--as you would.
>  
> But, as I said, most of the benefit comes from everyone being able to support 1st choice and 2nd choice _at all_. Let's not
> be greedy and dwaddle around forever about what else we could ideally get.
>  
> Do you want improvement or not? Or would you rather debate forever?

If this is a reference to the minor change in the electoral system to change Plurality to Approval, then I agree that Approval has this benefit of being an easy change. I'm not sure that I'd recommend Approval in the U.S. for presidential elections or various representative bodies. But at least for pure single-winner (currently Plurality based) elections like maybe mayoral elections Approval could be a step forward. That leaves open the posibility of moving later forwad for example to Condorcet methods.

>  
> And, as for helping 1st choice over 2nd choice, while helping both over last choice, free of strategy need:
>  
> You're in deinal about Gibbard-Satterthwaite.
>  
> You're in denial about Condorcet's blatant and full-magnitude co-operation/defection problem.

I don't see any denial of Gibbard-Satterthwaite or other problems. My understanding is that many people like Condorcet methods because they think that their co-operation/defection problems are relatively small (although they exist at least in theory). To me the promise of Condorcet methods is in that in large real life electons their vulnerabilities would be small and difficult to use, and as a result people could vote sincerely (without strategic concerns and without strategic intent).

>  
> And you're in denial about millions of voters' need to litterally maximally help the Democrat beat the Republican.

I can see a potential problem of numerous voters voting D > all_others > R or R > all_others > D in the first Condorcet elections just to make sure that their worst competitors will not win. My hope is that they would soon learn that there is no need and no sense to do so. The promise of Condorcet is that sincere ranking is sufficient.

>  
> And that's not even counting the good chance of successful offensive burial strategy when there are more than 3 candidates.

In real life such strategies are not very easy to implement. I have asked multiple times people to write down some guidelines for strategies in real life Condorcet elections but I have not seen any yet. Theoretical proofs of the existence of some vulnerabilities are not sufiicient to demonstrate that this would happen also in large real life elections.

What kind of public voting recommendations should Demorats or their support goups give to their own voters if the polls show that they are slightly ahead of the Republicans at the moment, or slightly behind, and there are also other parties in the election (maybe one right wing, one left wing, two centrist parties and one in some unspecified direction)?

Should they say "let the best man win" or "let's use some strategy to take the victory although people don't like us"? Could a party lose support (the crucial 1%) if they adopt the latter message? I mean that sincerity may pay off also this way.

(I know that in Australia people vote in ranked elections as told by the parties, and in a way that does not necessarily reflect the sincere opinion of the individual voters. But without going to the details of the Australian system and its problems, here I assume that voters will make independent decisions on how to vote, maybe based on some guidance from the parties, candidates and media, but not all voting in a fixed way as told by the party. Maybe that is a fair assumption in the U.S. political environment.)

Juho



>  
> Mike Ossipoff
>  
>  
>  
>  
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