[EM] Holy grail: PAR with FBC?

Mon Nov 7 23:04:20 PST 2016

Oops! When I said "majority-protected", I meant "majority-favored".

MIchael Ossipoff

On Tue, Nov 8, 2016 at 1:58 AM, Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Well, it's a little complicated for offering to the public.
>
> I've asked about methods' acceptability. Alright, I'll be truthful: The
> conclusions below are (mostly, but not entirely) only from asking one
> person.
>
> Approval: Yes. Some people object to it at first, but the objections are
> all answerable. Don't let anyone tell you "It needs study."  It's been
> studied. What's needed is for practice to catch up with study. Approval's
> simple enough that a few minutes' conversation is sufficient "study".
>
> Score: Acceptable, but not as much as Approval. But when I explain that
> people seem to do better in Score than in Approval, because it softens
> their voting errors (overompromise & rivalry), then Score is fully
> acceptable.
>
> MDDTR: Yes. A simple & brief rule.
>
> IRV: Can be explained briefly (like all the proposable methods).
>
> (Repeatedly, eliminate from the rankings the candidate currently at the
> top of fewest rankings.)
>
> Popular with activists, organizations & progressive parties. Not as good
> as the methods that I propose, but not bad, if you don't expect much for
> voters not in a mutual majority.
>
> Bucklin: Too wordy. But maybe can be acceptably explained as stepwise
> Approval. Approval given one candidate at a time, according to rankings. Of
> course, as you know, Bucklin, during the Progressive Era, was used in at
> least 39 cities.
>
> Approval, Score & Bucklin have use-precedence, and that might make them
> the only methods that would be accepted for a 1st reform from Plurality.
>
> IRV too, of course, but I'm sure we all agree that we should try for
> better than that. Acceptable, but not among the best, or the ones that I
> propose.
>
> Well, let's look at that. IRV's problem is that the CWs, if smallest, can
> be immediately eliminated before you can help hir (unless you
> favorite-bury). But in Bucklin the CWs can lose if hir voters don't plump.
> And they might not, if it isn't reliably-known who the CWs is.
>
> But, in Bucklin, you can protect the CWs by top-rating hir, thereby giving
> hir an immediate vote (instead of waiting for hir turn way down in your
> ranking) before s/he gives away the election by giving it to the other wing.
>
> And, as I was saying: If your favorite is big enough to eliminate the CWs,
> then s/he's big enough to be well-known (unless there's a media blackout on
> non-Republocrats, like now).  So the CWs's voters will know well about your
> candidate. For that reason, if their and your candidates are close and
> similar enough that you like the CWs, & consider hir in your top-set or
> strong top-set, then most likely the CWs's voters won't transfer to the
> opposite wing when s/he gets eliminated.
>
> I've just been stating some mitigations of IRV's problem. And, aside from
> that problem, especially if you're majority-favored, IRV has a lot of good
> properties, and is strategy-free if you're sure that you're
> majority-favored.
>
> But I want things that IRV doesn't offer. Better guarantees for the voter
> who _isn't_ majority-protected, because not everyone is (I'm probably not).
>
> By the way, I define majority-protected as:
>
> A voter is majority-protected if a majority prefer at least part of hir
> strong top-set to everyone else.
>
> Majority protected is more than and better than just being in a
> mutual-majority. It means that you're in a mutual majority that doesn't
> reach beyond your strong top-set.
>
> Of course, by that definition, there's no such thing as the
> "majority-protected" distinction if you don't have a strong top-set.
>
> Anyway, PAR is complicated for a public proposal. I know that you only
> suggest it for a 2nd reform...a reform to replace one better method with
> another.
>
> ...probably after Approval, Score or Bucklin.
>
> But PAR is still complicated. But, in the future when Approval, Score or
> Bucklin has been in use, of course it isn't possible to say for sure that
> PAR would still be too complicated.
>
> One more thing: Shouldn't the default rating always be Bottom?
>
> Otherwise everyone will be Accepting a candidate that they don't even know
> about.
>
> Michael Ossipoff
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 7, 2016 at 9:27 AM, Jameson Quinn <jameson.quinn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Here's a new system. It's like PAR, but meets FBC, and deals with center
>> squeeze correctly in the few tricky cases where PAR doesn't. I'm
>> considering using the PAR name for this system, and renaming the current
>> PAR to something like "Old Par
>> <http://sr3.wine-searcher.net/images/labels/29/06/grand-old-parr-12-year-old-blended-scotch-whisky-scotland-10152906t.jpg>".
>> Meanwhile, the system below is temporarily called PARFBC
>> <http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/PARFBC_voting>.
>>
>>
>>    1. Voters can Prefer, Accept, or Reject each candidate. Default is
>>    Accept.
>>    2. Candidates with a majority of Reject, or with under 25% Prefer,
>>    are eliminated, unless that would eliminate all candidates.
>>    3. Tally "prefer" ratings for all non-eliminated candidates.
>>    4. Find the leader in this tally, and add in "accept" ratings on
>>    ballots that don't prefer the leader (if they haven't already been tallied).
>>    5. Repeat step 4 until the leader doesn't change. The winner is the
>>    final leader.
>>
>>
>> ...
>>
>> This is pretty much a holy grail system from my perspective. It meets FBC
>> (I think; I don't have a proof, but it seems to me it should). It deals
>> with a simple chicken dilemma without a slippery slope. It deals with
>> center squeeze with naive ballots. I think it even meets the voted majority
>> Condorcet criterion, in an election with 3 candidates and where all ballots
>> use the full range (and you can add irrelevant "also-rans" to such an
>> election without breaking any compliances).
>>
>> It has a sequential counting process like IRV, and so it fails
>> summability; but in most cases, step 4 will not change the outcome, so will
>> happen only once. (The main exception is if there's a voted Condorcet
>> cycle.)
>>
>> It even meets weakened versions of both Later No Help and Later No Harm;
>> weak enough so that they are compatible with the above passed criteria, but
>> strong enough so that I think most voters would be honest. Later No Help
>> holds if there's no possible Condorcet cycle; and Later No Harm holds if
>> the "later" candidate isn't on the edge of being eliminated.
>>
>> I think that the explanation is clear and intuitive enough to be
>> reasonably acceptable to most voters. It involves only simple adding to
>> tallies, not anything couched in terms of sets or multiplication or the
>> like.
>>
>> Does anybody have any reason why this system should not be considered a
>> leading contender for "next step after approval"?
>>
>> ----
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>> info
>>
>>
>
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