[EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 199, Issue 10

Sam Weir Sam at 5starstudios.com
Sun Feb 14 13:12:44 PST 2021


On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 4:02 PM <
election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>    1. Re: Rank Codes (Richard Lung)
>    2. Re: Rank Codes (Juho Laatu)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2021 09:40:25 +0000
> From: Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com>
> To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at t-online.de>, Forest Simmons
>         <fsimmons at pcc.edu>, EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Rank Codes
> Message-ID: <b3c4f076-e906-00fc-e96d-3525fa36430b at ukscientists.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
>
>
> In 2007, STV was introduced to Scottish local elections, on the same day
> as AMS for the Scottish Parliament, which had already been used in a
> previous election. Despite these disadvantages to STV, its spoilage was
> 2%, whereas for AMS something like twice that spoilage. There was an
> enquiry into the latter.
>
> Enid Lakeman, in How Democracies Vote, goes into this issue of STV
> spoilage, in considerable detail, to anyone concerned about it.
>
> I think it was Mr Woodall, who investigated Meek STV to ensure it was
> convergent. And this consideration applies to FAB STV. This is ensured
> by the fact that it is a statistical count. It uses four averages, FA,
> as the title says, and they all center the result to the most
> representative candidates. I would like to point out, tho, that Binomial
> STV is a different kind of count to the rest of the world of elections,
> uninomial elections. With FAB STV, the last preferences count as much
> against candidates, as first preferences count for them. This would
> induce different voting behavior in an informed electorate of this
> greater power to their vote.
>
> Richard Lung.
>
>
> On 13/02/2021 16:15, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> > On 13/02/2021 03.29, Forest Simmons wrote:
> >> It pains me to see all of the ranked ballot proposals that unnecessarily
> >> limit preferences to three or four alternatives because of ignorance of
> >> simple higher resolution ballots that can be easily marked and read (by
> >> hand or by machine) without ambiguity or confusion from poorly formed
> >> characters, stray marks, etc.
> > I have an impression that the problem is not real, but imagined: that
> > it's possible to do unlimited ranked ballots in practice without much
> > difficulty. Otherwise, the jurisdictions that currently use STV would
> > have encountered the problem and dealt with it already.
> >
> > So the problem is more one of perception: it seems obvious that unclear
> > ballots are going to be hard to read, regardless of whether they
> > actually will. And so, as a precautionary measure, the method gets
> > limited to a few ranks.
> >
> > (There may also be technology-specific limitations, e.g. the
> > jurisdiction in question uses mechanical voting machines that can't be
> > adapted to more than this many ranks.)
> >
> >> A method that allows only three or four candidates to be ranked cannot
> >> satisfy clone independence ... the only indispensable justification for
> >> scrapping First Past the Post Plurality. And (beyond that) it
> >> exacerbates the biggest IRV/STV/RCV defect, the high likelihood that
> >> one's choices will be completely exhausted before the final rounds
> >> unless you rank lesser evils at the expense of alternatives you like
> >> better, because of ranking limitations that highlight the effect of
> >> premature eliminations.
> >>
> >> It is alleged that because of ambiguous handwriting and lack of room for
> >> more than a few "bubbles," only a handful of distinct ranks can be
> allowed.
> >>
> >> But what if each bubble has a different value?:
> >>
> >> [8]? ?[4]? ?[2]? ?[1]
> >>
> >> The rank of a candidate is the sum of its darkened bubble values ... a
> >> number between zero and fifteen.
> > I think these would confuse quite a few voters.
> >
> > I'd probably just go with ordinary numbers and be fairly confident it's
> > going to work out. But if the problem is indeed one of perception, then
> > just saying "don't sweat it" isn't going to convince anyone who's sure
> > there will be problems.
> >
> > Perhaps a study on ballot rejection rates would help provide evidence
> > that it works well most of the time? I seem to recall reading on
> > Reddit's EndFPTP forum that ballot spoilage rates are about the same for
> > FPTP and STV.
> >
> >> Suppose that there are to be 26 candidates, then instead of indicating
> >> their relative ranks with mere numbers, you can order them with standard
> >> alpha numeric code words ... Alpha1, Bravo2, Charlie3, Delta4, Echo5,
> >> Foxtrot6, ... Victor22, Whiskey23, Xray24, Yankee25, Zulu26. So the
> >> military already solved the ambiguity/ "noisy channel" commuunication
> >> problem in the early days of Morse code.
> >>
> >> These 26 code words cannot be confused with each other no matter how
> >> illegible the hand writing.
> > Of the two suggestions, I think I prefer this one. You could make this a
> > minimal change by saying that a voter may use either ordinary numbers or
> > codewords, so that voters who want to be extra sure that their ballots
> > will be counted properly can use the codewords, while others may opt out
> > if they think it's not worth the hassle.
> >
> >> These suggestions are intended for absentee and other mail-in ballots
> >> ... electronic voting machines should allow in person voters to drag the
> >> names into a list in any order, and then print out paper copies for
> >> voter and precinct receipts.
> > I'd prefer voting machines to be "Expensive Pencils" where the voter can
> > input preferences and have a paper ballot printed out, and where that
> > paper ballot is what gets counted. A voting machine is opaque; a
> > printout is not.
> >
> > To mitigate chain voting, the machine could show the printout behind
> > glass and deposit it directly into either the trash or the ballot box
> > depending on the voter's choice. In addition, such a scheme would keep
> > fingerprints and DNA off the ballot paper.
> > ----
> > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2021 14:42:52 +0200
> From: Juho Laatu <juho.laatu at gmail.com>
> To: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Rank Codes
> Message-ID: <E4B715EB-6698-4730-9863-0AD50070F535 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;       charset=us-ascii
>
> I think I'm pretty much a pragmatist in your terms. In typical large
> elections it doesn't really matter if instead of voting A=B there would be
> a 50% chance that the vote will be read by computer as A>B, and 50% chance
> for A<B. In practical terms that is the same as voting A=B (comparable to
> flipping a coin). However from a pragmatic point of view it could be a
> problem if people would get irritated because of their inability to vote
> exactly A=B.
>
> There might be ways to go around this "irritation", like drawing an X at
> one of the "smaller boxes" separetad by the light lines that I mentioned.
> That X would be interpreted as an exact value (unlike other marks). But
> this sounds already too complicated to be worth it. If people want to use
> exact ties, it might be better to split the long boxes into 100 small
> narrow (2 mm) boxes that would then correspond to some exact
> rankings/ratings. With these ballots you might at some point run out of
> ability to rank A>B, and be forced to rank A=B. So (from pragmatic point of
> view) there will be tradeoffs, of one or another kind.
>
> My pragmatism gives also leeway in handling the various criteria (e.g.
> strategy related). Since I have learned that no method is strategy free, it
> doesn't make sense to me to meet some important criteria 100%, and then
> ignore some others that are not met 100%. I see all these criteria as
> pragmatic criteria in the sense that it is enough to eliminate each major
> risk in practice, but not necessarily 100% in theory. The best method might
> be one that intentionally does not meet any of the important criteria 100%.
> That could make it possible to meet as many important criteria as possible
> well enough, and thereby weaken the worst remaining vulnerability as much
> as possible.
>
> BR, Juho
>
>
> > On 14. Feb 2021, at 11.31, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <km_elmet at t-online.de>
> wrote:
> >
> > On 14/02/2021 10.20, Juho Laatu wrote:
> >> Just a thought.
> >>
> >> One simple technique that allows voters to use almost infinite number
> >> of different ranks would be to use one long box next to the name of
> >> each candidate. Voters would draw a mark in the box (or leave it
> >> unmarked). Marks towards the left side of the long box would be
> >> considered "good", and marks towards the right side of the box "less
> >> good". The ballots would be read by computers that would seek for a
> >> mark in each box, and assign a numeric preference value depending on
> >> the position of the mark in the box. There would be some additional
> >> perpendicular light lines across the boxes to help making the order
> >> of the candidates accurate.
> > I've been thinking about such an interface for an Expensive Pencil too;
> > it would make it very easy to gather rated information. It would be more
> > noisy than a deliberate ratings system because it's hard to get a
> > pixel-perfect line going, but if there are enough voters, then perhaps
> > there's some rated analog of the Condorcet Jury theorem that would imply
> > that the effect of that noise goes to zero as the number of voters
> > approaches infinity.
> >
> > However, there's one problem: the voters can't easily equal-rank under
> > such a scheme. Therefore, no method passes FBC unless it also passes
> > Strong FBC, which is an extremely hard criterion to pass. Pragmatists
> > may not care (e.g. Schulze has very low favorite-betrayal rates under
> > the impartial culture distribution anyway), but it's annoying if you'd
> > like your method to unambiguously pass.
> >
> > -km
>
>
>
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> End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 199, Issue 10
> *************************************************
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