[EM] Fw: Steve's reply: IRV et al v. EPR

Mon Jul 16 19:27:19 PDT 2018

From: abjennings at gmail.com <abjennings at gmail.com> on behalf of Andy Jennings <elections at jenningsstory.com>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2018 5:26 PM
To: steve bosworth
Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] IRV et al v. EPR

>From Steve to all,

Thank you Andy for responding so quickly.  I will respond immediately in line after each of your questions and points.

A:  I like the idea of a PR system based on majority judgment, but have some concerns with this method.  Are you proposing that the different elected legislators have different voting weights in the legislature?

S:  Yes.

A: If so, I've heard that idea before, and I think it's clever but probably unworkable in practice.  I doubt that it would integrate well with the parliamentary authorities (e.g. Robert's Rules of Order) that legislatures actually use to get things done.

S:  Given that, unlike all the other methods, EPR thoroughly guarantees the principle of one-person-one-vote, I would be very surprised if anyone could sustain the claim that it violates Robert’s Rules of Order.  Please explain the specific concerns you have in this regard.  Also, even if this principle were incompatible with these rules, I would say: so much the worse for these rules.  This would require these rules to be suitably modified.  What do you think?

A: If not, then I think it's a mistake to eliminate _all_ the voters who gave the winning grade to the elected candidate.  In your example, I dislike eliminating 17 voters in round 1, for example.

S:  Perhaps you have misunderstood the count at this point.  These 17 voters have not been eliminated.  Each of their evaluations of EXCELLENT have been add to elected candidate A, and given her an affirmed evaluation of 17.  At the same time, what has been eliminated from the rest of the count at this point is all the other evaluations that these 17 voters have given to any of the other candidates.  This is because the one vote of each of these 17 citizens has now been fully counted. To allow their other evaluations to help elect other winners would be to give each of them more than one vote in the council.

A: I think only one quota of voters should be eliminated.  You could eliminate 10 of the 17 by random selection and leave the other 7.  Or you could down-weight them all by a factor of 7/17 and deal with fractional ballots remaining.

S:  Correct my understanding if it is mistaken but I think you are only suggesting the elimination of 10 from being counted for other candidates but keeping them for A’s election?  In any case, the idea of randomly or fractionally eliminating or transferring votes violates EPR’s determination to make each citizen’s vote to add entirely to the voting power only of the winner she sees as most fit for the office.

A:  If it were me, I would fully eliminate any voters who gave a grade strictly above the critical grade….

S: Again, when you say, ‘eliminate any voters’, you mean keeping only 10 to elect A and using the remaining 7 to help other candidates to be elected.  Also, what  you mean by ‘the critical grade’ is the quota of 10 in this context.

A: …. and down-weight the ones who gave exactly the critical grade by some fraction so that the total amount of voting power "used up" was equal to one quota.  Then, yes, deal with fractional voters.

S: Again, arbitrary quotas and unnecessary fractions must not be used if you want no vote to be wasted, quantitatively or qualitatively, as defined in the 2nd paragraph of the article.

What do you think?

I look forward to your clarifications.

Steve

~ Andrew

________________________________
From: abjennings at gmail.com <abjennings at gmail.com> on behalf of Andy Jennings <elections at jenningsstory.com>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2018 5:26 PM
To: steve bosworth
Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
Subject: Re: [EM] IRV et al v. EPR

Steve,

I like the idea of a PR system based on majority judgment, but have some concerns with this method.  Are you proposing that the different elected legislators have different voting weights in the legislature?  If so, I've heard that idea before, and I think it's clever but probably unworkable in practice.  I doubt that it would integrate well with the parliamentary authorities (e.g. Robert's Rules of Order) that legislatures actually use to get things done.

If not, then I think it's a mistake to eliminate _all_ the voters who gave the winning grade to the elected candidate.  In your example, I dislike eliminating 17 voters in round 1, for example.  I think only one quota of voters should be eliminated.  You could eliminate 10 of the 17 by random selection and leave the other 7.  Or you could down-weight them all by a factor of 7/17 and deal with fractional ballots remaining.

If it were me, I would fully eliminate any voters who gave a grade strictly above the critical grade and down-weight the ones who gave exactly the critical grade by some fraction so that the total amount of voting power "used up" was equal to one quota.  Then, yes, deal with fractional voters.

~ Andrew

On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 2:55 PM, steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com<mailto:stevebosworth at hotmail.com>> wrote:

 The recent responses to Sennet’s attempt favorably to report some recent successes of RCV (i.e. IRV) prompt me to hope that readers will be willing to test the counter claims of a newly developed voting and counting method for electing multi-winners.  This method is fully described in the following published article:

http://www.jpolrisk.com/legislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-a-new-algorithm/<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpolrisk.com%2Flegislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-a-new-algorithm%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cee03f677ec0e420e95db08d5eb416838%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636673588511875956&sdata=VRDjUB%2FrblIqCnP8%2Bwsgt%2BqOE7Ha7yC6l0Y%2F5SfGsUw%3D&reserved=0>

[http://www.jpolrisk.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/rating.jpg]<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpolrisk.com%2Flegislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-a-new-algorithm%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cee03f677ec0e420e95db08d5eb416838%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636673588511875956&sdata=VRDjUB%2FrblIqCnP8%2Bwsgt%2BqOE7Ha7yC6l0Y%2F5SfGsUw%3D&reserved=0>

Legislatures Elected by Evaluative Proportional ...<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpolrisk.com%2Flegislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-a-new-algorithm%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cee03f677ec0e420e95db08d5eb416838%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636673588511875956&sdata=VRDjUB%2FrblIqCnP8%2Bwsgt%2BqOE7Ha7yC6l0Y%2F5SfGsUw%3D&reserved=0>
www.jpolrisk.com<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpolrisk.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cee03f677ec0e420e95db08d5eb416838%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636673588511875956&sdata=sRo1U%2BgMLvHftPnogUDDK6gjLifA13zrJZd8XzrKeWs%3D&reserved=0>
This article explains how a new voting method called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR) fully satisfies the demand that in the best representative democracy, no citizen’s vote would be involuntarily wasted, quantitatively or qualitatively. 2 EPR is intended for voters who are electing members of a legislative body, for example a ...

This method is called Evaluative Proportional Representation (EPR).  EPR builds upon the arguments for Majority Judgment (MJ)offered by Balinski and Laraki (2010, MIT). For example, when electing all the members of a city council, each EPR citizen is asked to evaluate (not rank) as many of the candidates in the city as she might wish, i.e. to grade each with regard to their fitness for the office: either EXCELLENT, VERY GOOD, GOOD, ACCEPTABLE, POOR, or REJECT.  The article explains the relatively simple step by step method by which all these evaluations are counted by hand (or by the algorithm provided).  As a result, each citizen’s one vote continues fully to count in the deliberations and decisions of the council.  It does this through the weighted vote earned by one of the elected members, i.e. the one winner whom she has helped to elect and judges to be the one most qualified for the office.

Unlike any known variety of plurality, ranking (Condorcet or IRV (RCV, STV, etc.), range, or approving voting methods, only EPR allows each citizen to guarantee that her one vote will continue to count in the council (or legislature).  Also, I'd like to offer Abd ul-Rahman Lomax some hope:  perhaps the extra appeal of this unique feature of EPR would prompt enough citizens in a state like California to adopt EPR by one of its referenda.

Again, only EPR allows no vote to be wasted as defined by the second paragraph of the article.

What do you think?

I look forward to your feedback.

________________________________

Today's Topics:

   1. Re: IRV / RCv advances (Abd ul-Rahman Lomax)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2018 14:08:24 -0400
From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com<mailto:abd at lomaxdesign.com>>
To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com<mailto:election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
Subject: Re: [EM] IRV / RCv advances
Message-ID: <69bc286e-c970-9f6c-e60a-21e7f900f81c at lomaxdesign.com<mailto:69bc286e-c970-9f6c-e60a-21e7f900f81c at lomaxdesign.com>>
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On 7/14/2018 10:08 AM, Richard Lung wrote:

> [...] Agree completely about score voting. I can't help but feel
> approval voting is essentially a rebranding of cumulative voting. In
> about 1867, John Stuart Mill knew it was only a trifling improvement
> on plurality counting but at least opened peoples minds to alternatives.
I'd question that simply counting all the votes would be a "trifling
improvement." It would have flipped the US presidential election in
2000, almost certainly, and is a no-cost improvement, simple to
implement and easy to understand. In a two-round system, it can provide
substantial flexibility, perhaps even allowing runoffs to have a third
candidate. Counting all the votes would be, again, an improvement over
IRV, allowing voters to equal-rank. But the IRV method, by discarding
votes, is intrinsically flawed, and Bucklin actually worked when used.
The arguments that it didn't work were based on the fact that it wasn't
magic pixie dust. The only system that fixes about everything is Asset,
which hardly gets any consideration at all. My suggestion has been for
EM reformers to suggest Asset for NGOS, since it's really simple, as
well, and creates a deliberative structure, which is far more flexible
-- and functionally democratic -- than pure amalgamation. To be
fail-safe, it could be used in a nomination process, to be actually
ratified for a final result.

Approval -- and most methods -- are plurality methods unless a true
majority of the votes is required for a result. In Australia, in some
places they accomplish that by making it illegal to not completely rank.
In other words, to make a result more "democratic," coerce the voters.
Ah, the things people do to preserve the way things are!
> Re 3.
> Weighted Condorcet pairing arguably offers a back-door that partly
> gets round the Laplace criticism of Condorcet pairing, that it does
> not establish the relative importance of higher and lower preferences,
> in the over-all election count.
> I see Condorcet pairing primarily as a research tool for
> cross-referencing the results of an at-large election with the results
> from sub-elections of one-to-one contests or less minimal partitions.
> Ideally, we would have an election system that does not have to watch
> its back for a Condorcet paradox.
A condorcet paradox is an indication of an incomplete process. Depending
on preference strength, which some Condorcet methods attempt to
estimate, it might be meaningless. But to truly analyse election returns
requires preference strength information. Borda, again, estimates it
with an assumption of full ranking, such that with many candidates, the
"rank distance" would approximate a measure of preference strength.

But the only ballot that actually allows the voters to directly express
preference strength is a score ballot. And then some advocates of other
systems point out Condoret failure, as if that matters when preference
strength is obviously low. It doesn't. And then it is pointed out that
voters may vote "strategically," as if that is dishonest or bad. In a
Score system, there is never any incentive to reverse preference. Voters
decide what preferences matter to them, and will vote accordingly, and a
good overall system will detect situations where is ambiguity, perhaps
due to inaccurate perception of probable results, and will then set up a
runoff.

Instead of working together to create a system that will actually
improve and foster full democracy, we don't, it seems, trust the people
and want them to conform to our own ideas. In other words, same old same
old. The problem with democracy is the damn people!

But democracy is still government by consent, and whenever that fails,
oppression is inevitable. It's only a question of how bad it gets. The
logic that captured me, so many decades ago, is that we need
representation by consent and choice, not by "winners" and "losers." And
that appears to be doable. But who cares enough to try it?

Some. Not yet enough, but it's possible any day. It might only take one
person to make a proposal and carry it through, in one place.

>
> Even an admittedly crude election like IRV (Alternative Vote),
> according to this group, has only come-up with the Burlington case.
> That may have been politically unfortunate. But, if about 150?
> elections have not suffered the paradox, that incidence is not
> statistically significant.

It is possible to show that about one-third of IRV results were not
optimal. This is done by comparing IRV results with top-two runoff
results. If a full-information ballot were used with IRV (it could be
done! Easily!) we would then know. However, actually collecting the data
to determine, definitively, if a voting system is actually working is
not a part of any reform proposal I have seen. The collecting of
information is confused with and considered less important than creating
a result, and I can easily see the counter-argument: what if this causes
the result of an election to be called into question? Won't this damage
our trust in government? I think I have actually seen that argument.

If our trust in government is based in ignorance, it's worse than a bit
of trouble. A simple, coarse-score ballot, with explicit approval
cutoff, would be cheap and easy, and how the actual result is determined
could be explicity declared on the ballot. Providing the additonal
information would be optional. One could vote the ballot, if one
chooses, as vote-for-one. It would all generate useful information, and
could guide future election method decisions.
> The real comparison is how many "Bush beats Gore minus Nader" contests
> are there?

In a two-party system. Duverger's law and party attempts to corner the
electorate create many of them. Look at any close election and at the
participation of minor parties in it. There may be hundreds of these a
year. As well, the existing system tends to suppress minor party
participation. New York has Fusion voting, a step in a direction of
improved democracy. It was proposed for Massachusetts and lost. Who
opposed it?

The "Democratic" party, of course! It lost. So why did people vote
against it? Well, perhaps they trusted their party. After all, isn't our
party the Good Guys? If it's bad for them, surely we don't want it! It
all makes sense until and unless one starts to look more closely, which
most people don't do. And realizing that, Dodgson proposed Asset, which
actually creates, very simply, representative government, with the good
stuff associated with that, while allowing low-level decisions, by
ordinary people who don't want their lives to be about politics, to be
useful and effective.

>
> And how many simple plurality elections make voters act as their own
> returning officers in an implicit ranked choice election, where the
> voter excludes his first preference for Nader, and counts it for
> second preference Gore?
My sense is that many would vote for a third party candidate if they did
not know it would be a wasted vote. It could be trivial to fix that
problem. But we obviously care about something else more. about what?

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