[EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 187, Issue 18

[Forest Simmons]

 Schwarzenegger was Condorcet winner; VPR and Candidate
      Withdrawal to simplify voter strategy (was Re: Arrow's theorem
      and cardinal voting systems) (Steve Eppley)

Steve,

VPR has been mentioned from time to time in the context of what Warren
Smith has dubbed "asset voting," and I used to call "candidate proxy."  It
turns out that Charles Dodgson was way ahead of us on this.

Some version of VPR is what we need for these huge elections.  I think the
recall election in California that elected Schwarznegger has to be the
world record holder for the most number of candidates in a gubernatorial
race (I wasn't trying to imply anything about the election results with the
word "propelled.")

Best Regards,

Forest



>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2020 21:45:42 -0500
> From: Steve Eppley <seppley at alumni.caltech.edu>
> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
> Subject: [EM] Schwarzenegger was Condorcet winner; VPR and Candidate
>         Withdrawal to simplify voter strategy (was Re: Arrow's theorem and
>         cardinal voting systems)
> Message-ID: <1a5f7d61-5407-4b30-74f9-c6d2a9a2df35 at alumni.caltech.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> On 1/13/2020 6:32 PM, Forest Simmons wrote:
> -snip-
> > It's not just Approval that requires some hard thinking in conjunction
> with filling out the ballots. Ranking many candidates (think about the
> number of candidates in the election that propelled Schwarznegger into
> office) may be just as burdensome as trying to decide exactly which
> candidates to mark as approved. In Australia you can get around this
> difficulty by copying "candidate cards" or by voting the party line.
> -snip-
>
> During the week or so before Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of
> California (ousting Governor Gray Davis in a recall election), likely
> voters were surveyed by a team of grad students led by economics &
> political science professor Rod Kiwiet of Caltech.? The voters were asked
> the 6 pairwise preference questions regarding the 4 candidates judged by
> Kiwiet to be the top 4 (including Davis).? The survey result was that
> Schwarzenegger defeated the other 3 candidates pairwise.? A Condorcet
> winner.? So I don't agree that Schwarzenegger was "propelled into office by
> the (large) number of candidates" but perhaps I'm unaware of better
> evidence.
>
> Regarding Australia's solution for their tedious lengthy STV PR ballot, a
> similar way to make strategy simpler for voters is to use a voting method
> in the Vote for a Published Ranking (VPR) family of methods:?
>
> ???? Before election day, each candidate publishes a ranking of
> ???? all the candidates (presumably with him/herself on top).?
> ???? Any candidate who doesn't publish is disqualified.
> ???? (Alternatively, any candidate who doesn't publish is treated
> ???? as if s/he'd published the ranking that has him/herself on top
> ???? and all other candidates tied at the bottom.)
>
> ???? On election day, each voter votes by selecting one candidate.
>
> ???? Each vote is tallied as if it were the ranking published by the
> ???? voter's selected candidate (using society's favorite algorithm
> ???? for aggregating voters' rankings).
>
> Some potential advantages of VPR:
> (1) Good candidates wouldn't need as much money to win, since they can win
> by persuading some "popular" candidates to rank them over worse
> candidates.? It might require only a few phone calls.?
> (2) After the candidates publish their rankings, journalists & pundits
> would presumably scrutinize the rankings looking for unusual preferences, a
> possible sign of corruption.? Presumably many voters would learn about
> those oddities before election day, and reconsider who to vote for.
> (3) It's relatively simple for the voters.? My hunch is that
> strategically-optimal votes would typically be votes for one's favorite
> candidate, even when there are many candidates.
> (4) It solves problems related to "too many candidates" and "low
> information voters" -- in particular that the best candidates might be left
> unranked by a lot of voters.? It was this concern, expressed by Mike
> Alvarez of Caltech many years ago, which led me to propose VPR in an
> article published in 2007 in the Pasadena Weekly:?
> https://pasadenaweekly.com/roberts-rules-for-voting/? (In 2007, Rudy
> Giuliani was considered a frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential
> nomination, so his name appears in an example in the article.)
>
> Two variants of VPR:
> 1. NGOs could publish rankings too, and be eligible for selection by
> voters on election day.
> 2. Given adequate technology in the voting booth... The voter begins by
> selecting one candidate.? The voting machine then displays that candidate's
> published ranking, and the voter may rearrange it. (A big time saver, yet
> the voter has maximal control over his/her ranking.)
>
> Another way to simplify voter strategy is to allow candidates to withdraw
> from contention after election day, after the votes are published (in a
> summary format adequate to be tallied using the voting method).? A spoiler
> could choose to withdraw to help a compromise defeat a "greater evil."? The
> Candidate Withdrawal option would also make voting methods more compatible
> with the U.S. Electoral College, because candidates could withdraw to help
> a compromise candidate obtain a majority in the Electoral College.? A
> variant of Candidate Withdrawal is to allow candidates to withdraw from
> particular pairings while remaining in the other pairings (assuming a
> pairwise voting method).
>
> Subscribers to Election-Methods may already be familiar with VPR and
> Candidate Withdrawal since they were discussed here many years ago.? I've
> read few messages in the last 10-ish years, so I have no clue about what
> current subscribers are familiar with.
>
> --Steve
>
>
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