[EM] Lomax: IRV, Bucklin, TTR

[Michael Ossipoff]

Lomax said:

An error in here. But first a simple comment.

[endquote]

What was the error? Was it when I said that Bucklin, like IRV,
requires separate counts, each with communication between central
headquarters and the precincts?

At 02:20 PM 1/11/2013, Michael Ossipoff wrote:

>For rank-balloting, the ideal would be a voting machine that would
>print out a paper ballot, for the voter to examine, and then deposit
>in a ballot-box in the usual way.

Lomax then proposed a system for automated ballot-reading and
automated counting. He thinks that could be secure. It depends on
confidence in the software. But isn't the lack of that confidence the
whole problem? We should just agree to disagree about that.


>Robert said:
>
>and as far as election method, i am convinced that inherent simplicity
>is important .
>
>[endquote]
>
>Yes, and that's why Approval and Score are the only proposals
>deserving of consideration for official public elections.

If Approval is deserving of consideration -- and it certainly is --
Bucklin becomes a fix for an obvious Bucklin problem,

[endquote]


Wait...How could Bucklin fix its own problem?


Lomax said:

the one that
almost everyone thinks of as a defect in Approval.

[endquote]

What Approval problem does Bucklin fix? ER-Bucklin, with the delay,
meets MMC. That's Bucklin's improvement on Approval. But ER-Bucklin's
failure of CD would tend to reduce the benefit of its MMC compliance.
So the importance of that improvement is questionable. As I've said,
the chicken dilemma is the nearest thing to a "problem" that Approval
has, and so no method significantly improves on Approval unless it
automatically avoids the chicken dilemma. No method more complicated
than Approval can be justified if it doesn't achieve that.

Bucklin's other advantage over Approval is that there's precedent for
its use in the U.S. But that was the FBC-failing no-equal-ranking
Bucklin, and so that advantage is very questionable. Well Lomax may
have said that ER-Bucklin _has_ been used in the U.S.  If so, then it
does have the advantage of precedent.

Bucklin can't be ruled out as a possibility, if its use-precedent can
get it enacted, where methods without that precedent couldn't get
enacted.

But that's really its only possible justification over Approval.

But what are we talking about?--State initiatives? Dream on. They
aren't being done, because of their great expense and difficulty.
That's why I point out that the only way we'll really get a better
voting system is to elect to govt a political party that offers such
reform. Where non-Republocrat parties offer a new voting system, it's
IRV. Get used to it: IRV will be the next voting system.

A population-segment that has just won in Plurality is likely to have
the mutual majority that IRV favors. IRV's compliance with MMC and
LNHa are powerfully favorable to a faction having a mutual majority.
So actually it makes a lot of sense for parties to make IRV their
platform proposal for voting-system reform. As I've said elsewhere, I
believe that the progressives (people who want policies more humane,
egalitarian, ethical and honest than the Republocrats) are a mutual
majority. They don't know it yet. But when they do (as they would
after electing a Green government), IRV would be very much to their
(our) benefit. As I've said elsewhere, if a Green government were
elected, and it enacted IRV (as the national voting system, via a
Constitutional amendment), there would be no objection from me.

IRV will be the next voting system, and that's very much ok.


Lomax said:

Bucklin (-ER) is
still Approval, for the most part.

[endquote]

Correct.

>Robert continued:
>
>   and i will concede that First-Pass-the-Pole is the
>simplest to vote and simplest to count and determine the winner.
>
>[endquote]
>
>...And Approval is 2nd best, and Score is next best.

That's true for low-resolution score. Approval is *almost* as simple
to count as Approval [He meant Plurality] , particularly if most
people bullet-vote, which
could be likely. In fact, Approval could sometimes be cheaper to
count, because no ballots would be rejected for overvoting.

[endquote]

True.



>Robert continued:
>
>  and i
>think that precinct summability is the simplest way to be transparent in
>that regard.
>
>[endquote]
>
>No. There is nothing non-transparent about IRV's count.

Arrgh. This is quibbling over expression. Counts from precincts
depend on the previous counts. Precincts cannot merely count and
forward data from the ballots -- unless they forward the complete
rankings as they are (it could be done, but, then, it could be a
*lot* of data.)

[endquote]

Because iRV fails FBC, I don't consider it adequate _for our current
electorate_. I and others have looked for ways to criticize IRV. We've
tried to say that it has an insecure count. We were wrong about that.

Look, with N candidates, an IRV count is nothing other than N
Plurality counts (with the added task, in each round, of finding the
eliminated candidate, on each ballot, and crossing hir off).

So, if a Plurality count can be done securely, then so can IRV.



>IRV and Bucklin suffer from the disadvantage of being multistage
>methods in which there are a number of counts at each precinct, whose
>results must be relayed to central count headquarters--and a number of
>counts at headquarters that must be broadcast. In IRV and Bucklin that
>amounts to broadcast information about whether or not there is a
>majority yet. In IRV, there is the additional information about who
>is eliminated at that stage.

Bucklin can be counted and forwarded at all ranks, without waiting
for response. I've considered it a courtesy to voters to Count All
the Votes, even if they don't matter. (Don't we report all the votes
from Plurality, not just the votes for the winner?) There is no harm
in reporting the full Bucklin sums. It can give information about who
might be popular enough to win the next election.

[endquote]

Lomax seems to be saying that Bucklin's precinct count information can
be sent in to Central in just one batch, without IRV's back and forth
communication. That would speed the count, and that's an advantage.

Lomax said:

IRV cannot be counted that way. The totals from each round of
counting depend on who was eliminated in the previous rounds.

[endquote]

Quite. That slows the count a bit. Not really important.



>It's a disadvantage because it slows down the count. But that isn't
>entirely bad, because it divides the count labor into smaller parts,
>giving counters a rest while they wait for the central count at each
>stage. But there is no loss of transparency.

Lomax said:

"Transparency" may not be the best term here. There are errors made
in transmitting and receiving the data

[endquote]

Nonsense. That's a fallacious argument that I and others have used against IRV.

Each precincinct securely stores and locally broadcasts its count
results for each round. The entire count is videotaped and televised
by various parties, with their own equipment, thoughout the count, at
each counting station.

The precinct count-results are Internet-posted, and telephoned in to
Central. Where is the transmission error that you worry about?

Central posts all the precinct count results, so that each precinct
can verify them by comparison to their own records.

Lomax says:

IRV presents many opportunities for close ties with a major impact on
the next round. These are then sensitive to small errors.

[endquote]

In any one particular count, the probability of a tie is vanishingly
small. With N counts, the probability of a tie can safely be
approximated as N times its probability in one count.
Ten or twenty times about-zero is still about-zero.

People tend to go overboard when looking for problems with IRV.


>But the fact remains that, even now, IRV would be a tremendous
>improvement over Plurality and our usual Top-Two Runoff (TTR).

Lomax says:

Sorry, Mike...

[endquote]

No need to apologize. Don't be so hard on yourself.

Lomax says
:
, you haven't been paying attention.


[endquote]

...to what??

I'm well aware that you think that TTR is better than IRV.

I've told some of IRV's criterion-compliances. I'll mention some of them again:

Mutual Majority (MMC), Later-No-Harm (LNHa), Clone-Independence,. Later-No-Help.

...and of course CD, a consequence of LNHa.

Which of those critreria does TTR meet. What are TTR's criterion-compliances?

As I've said, when there is a mutual majority, MMC and LNHa are a
powerful combination. For that mutual majority voter-population,
that's a big advantage, and, for them, the FBC-failure doesn't matter.

Lomax talks about some elaborate 2-balloting combinations, among which
the choice would be arbitrary. We discussed 2-balloting runoff methods
on EM some time ago. All of the proposed ones either didn't bring
improvement, or brought a prohibitive problem.

I acknowledge that Lomax likes runoff methods. I agree to disagree about that.

>IRV's compliance with Mutual Majority and Later-No-Harm are a powerful
>combination.

Lomax replies:

LNH sucks

[endquote]

Could you be a little more specific? :-)

Lomax says:

, in a word. It *prevents* the compromise that is necessary
for voting systems to really work.

[endquote]

Typically some criteria are incompatible with other criteria.

Lomax's above objection is vague.

IRV will work excellently for a group that is a mutual majority.

And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with government by a cohesive majority?

I emphasize that I do NOT advocate IRV for our current electorate,
because its FBC-failure would be taken advantage of by media
misrepresentation, just as now with Plurality. The electorate  that we
have now believes the media, and those beliefs make the electorate
very vulnerable to FBC-failure.

Mike Ossipoff