[EM] The easiest method to 'tolerate'

Tue Jun 28 16:03:59 PDT 2016

Hi Steve,
Majority Judgment is a variety of "median rating" methods which I see as pretty similar. Woodall made one himself called Quota-Limited Trickle-Down and in fact if you google "woodall qltd" you can find a .pdf with a chart of some of the properties. The most noteworthy here are the failures of Later-no-harm and Mono-add-top. (Both are failures that IRV does not share.) For Later-no-harm: Suppose that candidate A is elected. It's possible that there is a bloc of voters who rated B above A, but A above zero, and that if these voters had lowered their A rating to zero, then candidate B would win instead, which is an outcome this bloc of voters would have preferred. They could criticize that the method should be smart enough to not use their A ratings to elect A when it would have been possible for them to elect B. If not a fairness issue, it's at least an issue of the method requiring voters to keep certain strategy in mind.
The Mono-add-top issue works like this: Suppose that C is elected. It's possible under median ratings methods that when some ballots rating a different candidate "D" first (i.e. D is the first preference) are removed from consideration, then a candidate D becomes the new winner. In other words, when C wins, the D-first voters can criticize that they were penalized for showing up to vote.
I should note that while IRV does not have these issues, probably *most* of our proposed methods do, so they aren't necessarily deal-breakers.
While median rating is more resistant to manipulation than Range, I still view the manipulation potential as bad. For example, if you "defensively" rate A as zero, in the Later-no-harm example above, out of a quite reasonable fear that you need to do this to help B win instead of A, this is the type of thing meant by manipulation. It is less likely to have an effect than in Range, but you will still have the incentive to do it.
My main distaste for median rating comes from my feeling that in most scenarios (i.e. availability of information on others' rating intentions) strategic-minded voters would only use the top and bottom ratings. This is because (as we see from the Later-no-harm example) median rating doesn't really offer guarantees about how your ratings will be used in relation to each other. The rating/grade values have no independent, practical meaning. If voters have this perception and respond with this behavior, then the method is just an overly complicated form of approval voting. In that case I'd rather just use approval, because it's clearer what's going on. (There are arguments about whether median rating voters would actually try to be so strategic, and about whether it would be bad if they did, but I will skip over that.)
Your definition for "one citizen one vote" is difficult for me because it seems focused on how the winner is found. For example you say preferences should be counted equally "as long as possible, until" something happens, which seems to assume that an election method algorithm is something that unfolds over time. Normally I view an election method as defined by its results, and there need not be a single set of steps which finds the result. I wonder what would be an example of a method that violates "one citizen one vote," and if there might be another way of describing what is problematic about it.
I find a lot of methods tolerable, and I've designed a lot of methods too (most of them tolerable). I care about certain properties more than others, but the ones I like aren't even all compatible with each other. In general I feel that election methods should produce an outcome that would be plausible if the voters had been able to gather and vote in person, just as a legislature.

Kevin

      De : steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>
 À : "election-methods at lists.electorama.com" <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>; "stepjak at yahoo.fr" <stepjak at yahoo.fr> 
 Envoyé le : Lundi 27 juin 2016 18h00
 Objet : [EM] The easiest method to 'tolerate'

To everyone: Thank you Kevin for responding to my questions about IRV being nonmonotonic. I think our dialogue would be assisted by me also understanding your views about the Majority Judgment method. You said:  ‘All proposed methods are unfair in some way, and people have different views on what is or isn't tolerable’.  Currently I do not yet see how Majority Judgment is in any way ‘unfair’. MJ seems to resist manipulation more than any one of the other proposed methods. Also, it seems fully to satisfy what I mean by the ‘one-citizen-one-vote’ principlefor electing a single-winner. In this context, this principle requires that each citizen’s vote (preferences or ‘grades’) be counted equally as long as technically possible until the single-winner is discovered, i.e. the candidate who has received the highest average intensity available of majority support. Do you agree or do you see a different method as easiest to ‘tolerate’? From: Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr>
Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2016 1:05 AM
To: steve bosworth; election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] Wiki says IRV is monotonic--not fully democratic?  Hi Steve, The first one on the list (mono-raise) is what people are referring to when they say IRV (or two-round) violates monotonicity. But certainly there are other ones from the list that it doesn't satisfy either. You used the terms "democratic" and "one citizen one vote" but I don't really know of definitions for these terms at this level. The reason mono-raise failures are criticized is that they involve situations where a candidate (or his supporters) could complain that they are penalized for getting better rankings. A perception of unfairness could undermine perceived legitimacy of the winner. All proposed methods are unfair in some way, and people have different views on what is or isn't tolerable. Kevin     ++++++++++++++++++++++++To everyone:Below, Steve is considering the following section of the following June 21, 2016 Wikipedia article:  ‘Monotonicity criterion’. He will refer to the author of that section as ‘Wiki’:Instant-runoff voting and the two-round system are not monotonic[editUsing an example that applies toinstant-runoff voting (IRV) and to thetwo-round system, it is shown that these voting systems violate the mono-raise criterion. Suppose apresident were being elected among three candidates, a left, a right, and a center candidate, and 100 votes cast. The number of votes for an absolute majority is therefore 51.Suppose the votes are cast as follows:
| Number of votes | 1st preference | 2nd preference |
| 28 | Right | Center |
| 5 | Right | Left |
| 30 | Left | Center |
| 5 | Left | Right |
| 16 | Center | Left |
| 16 | Center | Right |

According to the 1st preferences, Left finishes first with 35 votes, Right gets 33 votes, and Center 32 votes, thus all candidates lack an absolute majority of first preferences. In an actual runoff between the top two candidates, Left would win against Right with 30+5+16=51 votes. The same happens (in this example) under IRV, Center gets eliminated, and Left wins against Right with 51 to 49 votes.[STEVE’S Additions:S: Given these preferences, the Center candidate rather than the Right candidate should get eliminated because he receives fewer 1st preference votes. Still, the principle of one-citizen-one-vote requires that the preference of each of these supporter be counted until a majority winner is discovered. Since 16 of them preferred the Left candidate next and 16 preferred the Right candidate next, the Left candidate receive a total of 51 votes and the Right candidate 49. Given both that only one candidate can win in this election and the principle of one-citizen-one-vote, no citizen would be able to sustain an objection to this result.
| Author’s1st IRVCOUNT | Left | Center | Right |
| 1 | 35 | 32 | 33 |
| 2 | 51 |   | 49 |

Now Left gets 37 first preferences, Right only 31 first preferences, and Center still 32 first preferences, and there is again no candidate with an absolute majority of first preferences. But now Right gets eliminated, and Center remains in round 2 of IRV (or the actual runoff in the Two-round system). And Center beats its opponent Left with a remarkable majority of 60 to 40 votes. 1-[STEVE’S IRV exploration:
| Wiki’s changed preferences (2nd Set of Ballots) |
| Number of votes | 1st preference | 2nd preference |
| 28 | Right | Center |
| 3 | Right | Left |
| 2 | Left | Right |
| 30 | Left | Center |
| 5 | Left | Right |
| 16 | Center | Left |
| 16 | Center | Right |

| 2nd IRVCOUNT | Left | Center | Right |
| 1 | 37 | 32 | 31 |
| 2 | 40 | 60 | 0 |
| 3 |   | 60 |   |

S: These 28 make the Center candidate’s total of 60 (and the winner) while the 2 make the total of the Left candidate 40. While it is true that this change in preferences changes the win for the Left candidate to a defeat, they still helped the Left candidate both by increasing the number of first preferences he received and the average intensity of preference given to him.  At the same time, he could not expect to win because he had received only a total of 40 to the total of 60 votes received by the Center candidate.Consequently, currently I do not yet see this example as containing any anti-democratic element. As I see it, the principle of ‘one-citizen-one vote’ only requires that each citizen’s vote (preferences) be counted equally as long as technically possible until the single-winner is discovered, i.e. the candidate who has received the highest intensity possible of majority support.  Accordingly, before the 2 preferences were changed by Wiki, the Left candidate won with 51 votes with an average intensity of 9.76 on a scale of 10. After the change, the Center candidate won with 60 votes with an average intensity of 9.53. Intensity of support calculations:1st Set of Ballots35X10 +16X9=350+144=494494 divided by 51=9.762nd Set of Ballots32X10 +28X9=320+252=572572 divided by 60=9.53In contrast, the intensity of support for a forced win by the Center candidate from the 1st Set of Ballots would only be 9.36:32 X 1st preferences and 58 X 2nd preferences for the Center candidate:32X10+58X9=320+522=842842 divided by 90= 9.36S: Again, using IRV, the originally winning Left candidate was defeated after the author changed the two voters’ preferences. This happened even though the Left candidate was now given two 1st, rather than two 2nd, preferences. Wiki sees this as a violation of the ‘mono-raise criterion’: ‘giving higher preferences to a candidate should never harm him’. However, at least in some senses, these two higher preferences did help the Left candidate, i.e. they gave him two more 1st preferences. They also helped him by reducing the intensity of 2 preferences given to one of his competitors, i.e. by giving the Right candidate two 2nd rather than two 1st preferences. By themselves, these changes would make it more likely that the Left candidate would win. It is only because more other citizens gave their 1st preference to the Center candidate over the Right candidate that the Right candidate correctly had to be eliminated in the second count. In turn, this appropriately required candidate Right’s 2nd preferences to be transferred: 28 to the Center candidate and 3 to the Center candidate. Given these two change made by these two citizens, the particular preferences given by the other voters required that the Left candidate not be elected. Consequently, it was not the isolated giving of two higher preferences to the Left candidate that ‘harmed’ him. It was how these preferences had to be combined with the preferences of all the other citizens that required the Left candidate to be defeated. This follows from the principle of one-citizen-one-vote. Again, given both this principle and the fact that only one candidate can win in this election, no one would seem to be able to sustain an objection to this result.S: Nevertheless, Wiki claims that IRV is not monotonic (i.e. violates the mono-raise criterion).  Does Wiki have Woodall’s definition of amono-raise random criterion (see below) in mind [Douglas R. Woodall Discrete Applied Mathematics 77 (1997) 81-98]?In the light of the above discussion and the following definitions, I would very much appreciate it if anyone could explain why they might still want to criticize IRV for being nonmonotonic. Is IRV fully democratic in the sense defined above?Section 1.3 in Woodall’s article defines how a nonmotonic set of rules might ‘harm’ or ‘help’ candidate x:  ‘We shall say a candidate x is either helped orharmed by a change in the profile if the result, respectively, is to increase or decrease [the probability of electing x, i.e] PE(x). The following two properties are well known to hold for STV [which reduces to IRV in a single-winner raced].   
   - Later-no-help: Adding a later preference to a ballot should not help any candidate already listed.
   - Latter-no-harm: Adding a later preference to a ballot should not harm any candidate already listed.’
Next, Woodall goes on to define nine different ‘versions of monotonicity.  The basic theme is that a candidate x should not be harmed by a change in the profile that appears to give more support to candidate x.Monotonicity:1-(mono-raise) x is raised on some ballots without changing the orders of other candidates;2-(mono-raise delete)x is raised on some ballots and all the candidates now below x on those ballots are deleted from them;3-(mono-raise random)x is raised on some ballots and the positions now below x are filled (or left empty) in any way that results in a valid ballot;4-(mono-append) x is added to the end of some ballots that did not previously contain x;5-(mono-sub-plump) some ballots without x are replace by ballots with x placed top and with no second choice;6-(mono-sub-top) some ballots that do not have x placed top are replaced with ballots that do place x top (and are otherwise arbitrary);7-(mono-add-plump)further ballots are added that place x top and with no second choices;8-(mono-sub-top) further ballots are added that place x top (and are otherwise arbitrary);9-(mono-remove-bottom) some ballots are removed, all of which have x at bottom, below all other candidate.’I look forward to any of your replies.Steve 

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