[EM] RCV Challenge

Richard Lung voting at ukscientists.com
Fri Dec 24 11:29:55 PST 2021


Dear Forest Simmons and group,

The method does not have to be deterministic. Physics is no longer deterministic. Why has election method to be? (My method isn't.)
Also RCV has forgotten what Hoag and Hallett knew. H & H are a much better base of understanding than RCV.  -- Cambridge in particular rather than Massachusetts generally should be our starting point.
RCV are in fashion, I don't decry what they are achieving reform-wise. But research-wise, their movement leaves much to be desired.

Richard Lung.



On 24 Dec 2021, at 12:08 am, Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> wrote:

Despite our best efforts, I'm not sure that we've yet seen or heard the best possible deterministic, Ranked Choice Voting proposals.

In my next message I will submit the best public proposal that I can think of in that category (the category of Universal Domain ... i.e. based purely on Ranked Choice/Preference information ... equal rankings and truncations allowed). Of course, anybody can easily improve on any such method by coloring outside of the UD lines ... for example by use of explicit approval cutoffs, scores, grades, judgments, virtual candidates, and other devices for stratifying rank relations by relative importance/strength, as well as probabilities, random ballot drawings, etc.

But let's temporarily put aside all of these power tools and see what we can accomplish with screwdriver, pliers, etc.

The challenge is to make the method as simple as possible while complying with clone independence, monotonicity, and the other most basic criteria like Pareto, anonymity, neutrality, majority, etc.

Simplicity is in the eye of the beholder ... hard to pin down, but you know it when you see it.... definitely not just a bunch of ad hoc rules cobbled together to patch up an out moded second rate method from yesteryear. The fewer seams, the better.

Simplicity includes simplicity of data summary, simplicity of computation, simplicity of formulation/description, etc.

One antonym of simplicity is complexity ... complexity of the basic idea/heuristic, logical complexity, computational complexity, etc.

I look forward to seeing some of your favorite methods ... original or not.  And don't worry if they do not completely comply with the ideal criteria I outlined above ... a really good, intuitively appealing, simple idea can be forgiven a small transgression or two .... and could become the germ for an even better method.

I put simplicity ahead of familiarity because a simple idea can easily become familiar, so lack of familiarity is a temporary problem caused by a history of poor attention to civics education. 

This challenge is an opportunity for you to take one small step to help remedy that educational deficiency!

Thanks!

-Forest
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