[EM] Comprehensive, Simple, and Informative Indicative

[Bob Richard]

The most basic problem in this situation has nothing to do with choosing 
among approval voting, score voting, the alternative vote, the Condorcet 
criterion, or anything else. It's to determine what options should (and 
shouldn't) be on the ballot.

Parliament's most conspicuous failure in this regard (in which they are 
joined by the entire press corps, as far as I know) is to treat a second 
referendum as it if were an alternative on a list of alternatives. The 
question whether to put a decision of Parliament to a confirmatory vote 
of the people is entirely separate from what decision Parliament should 
make. The questions are politically interrelated, in the sense that MPs 
on the losing end of a debate in Parliament are far more likely to call 
for a referendum than MPs who won that debate. (In fact, that's kind of 
what referenda are, at least in the United States.) But this 
relationship is no reason to include a such a confirmatory vote as an 
option in the current "indicative" voting process.

But that's only the beginning. There's also the question of whether to 
include "unicorns" on the ballot. "Unicorn" is the term used by U.K. 
politicians and commentators to denigrate proposals that they claim 
cannot possibly be implemented, for example because the European Union 
would never go along with them. Just asking this question makes it clear 
that it's really a matter of deciding who gets to decide which proposals 
are "unicorns" and which ones aren't. Good luck finding any agreement on 
that.

And, finally, there's the problem of clones and near clones. How many 
combinations of customs union and/or single market and/or regulatory 
"alignment" and/or technological alternatives to border checkpoints are 
need to insure that the ideal (and purely hypothetical) ballot includes 
the option that "should" win -- whatever "should" means in the context 
of voting and elections.

When people are voting on candidates to fill an office, the problem of 
nominations is very different and much more manageable. A set of 
qualifications can be agreed on in advance of any nominations being 
made. Votes for candidates who are not actually running can be 
disregarded. And so on. But when you're trying to formalize a process 
for choosing among more than two policy options, what the options are is 
often a crucial part of what the debate is about.

As far as I know, social choice theory and the study of voting methods 
have very little to say about this problem, except in one setting. 
That's the more normal kind of parliamentary procedure where everything 
is laid out as motions, amendments, substitute motions and so on. The 
well-understood limitations of that process -- the importance of the 
order in which amendments are dealt with, the role of strategic voting, 
and so on -- are exactly why we'd like to be able to vote all at once on 
a list of options in the first place.

--Bob Richard

On 4/1/2019 3:57 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
> you're right Toby.  MP's can be expected to take on the burden that 
> Olympic figure-skating judges do and consider deeply and convert their 
> subjective impressions into numerical ratings.
>
> But They're Partisans!!  They do not want their second-choice 
> preference to defeat their first-choice preference.  That will also 
> affect how they adjust their Scores for each option that is neither 
> their favorite option nor their most-hated option.
>
> so i do not extend sympathy to MP's for being "burdened" with a 
> tactical decision in their vote (as i do to regular citizen voters), 
> but the issue still remains.  what keeps MP's from voting 
> strategically, rather than sincerely, and a perverse Score outcome 
> results?
>
> bestest,
>
> r b-j
>
> (And i just cannot resist saying that pro-Brexit Brits are almost as 
> silly and harmful as Trumpers are in the U.S.   Whatta goddamn shame.)
>
>
> ---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
> Subject: Re: [EM] Comprehensive, Simple, and Informative Indicative
> From: "Toby Pereira" <tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk>
> Date: Mon, April 1, 2019 3:40 pm
> To: "rbj at audioimagination.com" <rbj at audioimagination.com>
> "EM list" <election-methods at electorama.com>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> > In this case though, some sort of approval/rating is needed because 
> parliament have the option of rejecting everything, or accepting more 
> than one proposal, which can then be further debated. It would be no 
> good to find the Condorcet winner and simply implement that without 
> knowing what the MPs actually think of it.
> > These "indicative votes" are not the same as a single one-off 
> election for a candidate to a post. They are non-binding votes to see 
> if there is any way of the UK leaving the EU that a majority of 
> parliament can get behind.
> > Toby
> >
> > On Mon, 1 Apr 2019 at 23:13, robert 
> bristow-johnson<rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote: ----
> > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for 
> list info
> >
> >
>
>
> --
>
> r b-j                         rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list info
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