[EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 210, Issue 62

Fri Jan 28 13:39:54 PST 2022

Woops, it looks like some of the emails have been getting sent to my spam box. Sorry for missing these.

@robert and daniel
Given how niche most voting theory methods still are, I don't think my site is aiming to single-handedly boost some of these methods into legislature. The goal of my site is simply to spark the curiosity of people that might listen and enjoy the visual comparisons. In addition, I did try to include short "explanations" underneath each method that provides a very generally intelligible description of each method and the intuition behind it. I'll continue to provide these explanations. 

The animosity in the voting theory community towards IRV reminds me of how those in the cryptocurrency community hate Bitcoin. I think eventually though they realized that the fate of the entire community is kinda dependent on the success of Bitcoin and they, begrudgingly, came to gradually accept that. I feel this community is in a similar position. You might not like it, but FairVote's success with popularizing IRV might be the thing necessary to push these more niche debates into a wider audience. My own introduction to this field came from that one CGP Grey video that explained IRV. The discussions about the various ways to handle ties or alternative systems sparked an interest in me to dig deeper and keep finding alternatives. Eventually I got to take a course with professor Marek Kaminski that finally let me dive into the mathematical foundations of all these methods and now, here I am, working a website to bring these discussions to a wider audience. But it all started with IRV and watching those pretty animated bar graphs for me. 

All that being said, I totally agree there are major shortcomings of IRV and would definitely love to someday see a widespread adoption of a Condorcet method. I really respect what Robert's doing and I really hope the phobia politicians have of mathematics doesn't end up overcoming the arguments Robert makes. I'm looking forward to the possibility of these narratives being pushed forward and wish you the best of luck!
Regarding the complexity of ranked pairs and the number of candidates. Yes, actually. Since, I am building a toy, I would like to support the users who, like myself, like to break things. So if someone wants to see what would happen with ranked pairs if they added 50 candidates, I'd very much like them to be able to try it out.

Again, thanks so much for your feedback and discussions! 
-culi
Jan 22, 2022, 7:48 PM by election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com:

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> Today's Topics:
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>  1. Re: Coombs method and typical RCV hybrid (Daniel Carrera)
>  2. Re: Coombs method and typical RCV hybrid, River (Daniel Carrera)
>  3. Re: Coombs method and typical RCV hybrid (robert bristow-johnson)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2022 20:21:20 -0600
> From: Daniel Carrera <dcarrera at gmail.com>
> To: robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>
> Cc: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Coombs method and typical RCV hybrid
> Message-ID:
>  <CAEaabNh1CFXzTffD9QkECVYr2wnQF8asrOv+UA3WvJvnpjtrYQ at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> That's an excellent point. The theoretical complexity of RP is irrelevant
> in any real world election. In fact, in real world elections Hare is the
> one that has a problem because it is not summable.
>
> Culi, are you familiar with Burlington 2009? They tried Hare / IRV and it
> failed miserably. There were basically three candidates:
>
> 1) The plurality winner.
> 2) The obvious Condorcet winner that everyone could live with.
> 3) The dude that IRV picked.
>
> After IRV gave a nonsensical result, there was a strong pushback from the
> losers. Since the winner did not have a lot of backing (because...
> obviously... IRV chose wrong) the IRV system was rejected and Burlington
> went back to FPTP. But now Burlington is going to review the concept of RCV
> in an upcoming cycle (I forget when; ask Robert), but this time Robert is
> there to explain to the politicians that there is a better alternative. If
> he is successful, we have a real chance that Burlington might choose a
> Condorcet RCV in the near future.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 5:52 PM robert bristow-johnson <
> rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:
>
>> 1. I don't consider Ranked Pairs to be particularly expensive.  How many
>> candidates do you expect to have?  50?  I am expecting at most 5 or 6 in
>> most elections and I support sufficiently strong ballot access laws to keep
>> irrelevant candidates from wasting real estate on the ballot.
>>
>> 2. Culi, I have been involved in some activism to both educate and promote
>> evolving from Hare RCV (what used to be called "IRV" until FairVote
>> appropriated the more general term "RCV", which I consider to be both
>> dishonest and entitled) to one of any Condorcet-compliant methods.  Please
>> take a look at https://tinyurl.com/2tety9tj .
>>
>> 3. For a Condorcet method to make it into practice in a governmental
>> election, the algorithm needs to be expressed in words and needs to have
>> such a description self-contained (not to simply refer to "Tideman
>> Ranked-Pairs" or "Schulze using margins").  It needs to be fully spelled
>> out and a C program, by itself, is not good enough.  That said, simplicity
>> is key, because we are already dancing on the edge even with Hare RCV.  To
>> date, I have fiddled with Bottom-Two Runoff IRV and with a straight
>> description of Condorcet with a contingency of FPTP if there is no
>> Condorcet winner.
>>
>> If we're gonna do Ranked-Choice Voting, then let's do it right.
>> Burlington 2009 proves that Hare RCV (or Ware, take your pick) is not RCV
>> done right.
>>
>> robert
>>
>> > On 01/22/2022 4:03 PM culitif at tuta.io wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Yeah that's a good point. I just figured most Americans would be more
>> familiar with the term Ranked Choice Voting and I didn't wanna scare them
>> off thinking they were gonna have to learn something new. Anyways, I made
>> the change. Should be up already
>> >
>> > Best,
>> > Culi
>> >
>> >
>> > Jan 22, 2022, 12:50 PM by dcarrera at gmail.com:
>> > >
>> > > On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 2:40 PM <culitif at tuta.io> wrote:
>> > > > I would like to add Ranked Pairs and similarly complex Condorcet
>> methods at some point, but I might need to ask for help with the logic
>> behind those as they can be notoriously difficult to optimize.
>> > > >
>> > > > Thanks for your suggestion of the River method. I haven't actually
>> given it much of a look before. I'd suggest we make a poll to see which
>> methods people think would be most important to add to the site, but I have
>> a feeling we'd end up stuck arguing about how to conduct that poll before
>> ever actually doing the poll :P
>> > >
>> > > Ha ha. :-)
>> > >
>> > > Yeah, RP is notoriously expensive. It was my favorite method until I
>> discovered River. RP is very strong and I find it a million times more
>> intuitive than Schulze, which is its best known competitor. I suspect that
>> you'll get a lot of buy-in for River in this list. Yes, it is less widely
>> known but I think everyone in this list would love to fix that. It has
>> nearly the same intuition as RP but it is vastly cheaper (computationally),
>> and if I recall correctly, it meets all the criteria of RP and Schulze plus
>> one more... I forget which one... Maybeindependence of Pareto-dominated
>> alternatives.
>> > >
>> > > So... if you like RP but you find it slow... River is its faster,
>> better, but obscure cousin.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > > I appreciate you showing interest in the work so far though. It
>> makes me want to continue with the project. I just purchased the
>> domainvotevote.page (http://votevote.page)so hopefully it can have a
>> proper home soon!
>> > >
>> > > Yeah, it looks great. Kudos to you. One little detail that I like is
>> that you say "Coomb's RCV" , "Culi's RCV", etc. As you might know, some of
>> us are frustrated that the IRV folk have tried to appropriate the "ranked
>> choice" language, as if theirs was the only election method with ranked
>> ballots. Honestly, if any method was to appropriate the name RCV it should
>> be Copeland because it's the older method. Anway, by adding language like
>> "Coomb's RCV" it sends the message "yeah, this is also RCV, it's a
>> different (better) one". So it helps chisel away at the "RCV = IRV" idea.
>> > >
>> > > Would you consider replacing "Standard RCV" with something other than
>> "Standard"? Maybe "IRV RCV" or "Australia RCV" or whatever.
>> > >
>> > > Cheers,
>> > > --
>> > > Dr. Daniel Carrera
>> > > Postdoctoral Research Associate
>> > > Iowa State University
>> >
>> > ----
>> > 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
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Dr. Daniel Carrera
> Postdoctoral Research Associate
> Iowa State University
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2022 20:28:36 -0600
> From: Daniel Carrera <dcarrera at gmail.com>
> To: Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr>
> Cc: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Coombs method and typical RCV hybrid, River
> Message-ID:
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>
> On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 5:13 PM Kevin Venzke <stepjak at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
>> To me at least the principle of Schulze is intuitive. It's sort of a
>> de-cloning
>> of MinMax.
>>
>
> The term "de-cloning of MinMax" doesn't clarify it for me; I honestly don't
> understand what that would look like. Schulze might be intuitive if you are
> a computer scientist; I know that its algorithm is something similar to
> something that computer scientists learn. I am not a computer scientist;
> I'm a physicist. I find Schulze simply bewildering. I couldn't tell you
> right now how it works without thinking really hard about it, and I'm not
> confident I would get it right. I tried to explain it once to my wife (who
> is a microsystems engineer) and she looked like a deer on headlights. And
> that's someone who is used to me explaining voting methods.
>
>
>
>
>> One property unique to Schulze(WV), which perhaps I alone find
>> interesting, is
>> that it always elects from the CDTT, which is the Schwartz set defined
>> using
>> only the full majorities.
>>
>
> What is the CDTT?
>
> Cheers,
> -- 
> Dr. Daniel Carrera
> Postdoctoral Research Associate
> Iowa State University
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> ------------------------------
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> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2022 22:47:58 -0500 (EST)
> From: robert bristow-johnson <rbj at audioimagination.com>
> To: EM <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
> Subject: Re: [EM] Coombs method and typical RCV hybrid
> Message-ID: <424268357.15614.1642909678513 at privateemail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
>
>
>> On 01/22/2022 9:21 PM Daniel Carrera <dcarrera at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> That's an excellent point. The theoretical complexity of RP is irrelevant in any real world election. In fact, in real world elections Hare is the one that has a problem because it is not summable.
>>
>> Culi, are you familiar with Burlington 2009? They tried Hare / IRV and it failed miserably. There were basically three candidates:
>>
>> 1) The plurality?winner.
>> 2) The obvious Condorcet winner that everyone could live with.
>>
>
> that's overstating it ...
>
>> 3) The dude that IRV picked.
>>
>> After?IRV gave a nonsensical result, there was a strong pushback from the losers.
>>
>
> strong enough to repeal with a thin majority.
>
>> Since the winner did not have a lot of backing (because... obviously... IRV chose wrong) the IRV system was rejected and Burlington went back to FPTP. But now Burlington is going to review the concept of RCV in an upcoming cycle (I forget when; ask Robert), but this time Robert is there to explain to the politicians that there is a better alternative. If he is successful, we have a real chance that Burlington might choose a Condorcet RCV in the near?future.
>>
>
> Unfortunately, Daniel, the Progressive Party pushed the RCV measure through during covid times when we are not able to meet in person in our NPAs (Neighborhood Planning Associations) to really discuss it.  They put it (Hare) on the ballot and it passed 64% to 36% last March.  But in Vermont, any city charter change *must* be approved by the legislature and governor because a city charter has the status of Vermont law.  (Like Burlington in the past passed a charter change to prohibit people carrying firearms into establishments serving alcohol but Vermont, as liberal as it is, is also a hardcore 2nd-Amendment state. That charter change, while approved by the voters of Burlington, went nowhere in the Legislature.)
>
> Anyway, it's in the legislature now.  I am advocating with the House Government Operations Committee and, providentially, one member of that committee is a friend of mine in *my* legislative district that I have helped get elected.  And he read my paper (cited below) and "gets it".  This "getting it" is a kinda hard nut to crack because this sequential rounds STV thing is hard to get people to think past.
>
> I just say (repeatedly) "If a simple majority of voters agree and mark their ballots that Candidate A is a better choice than Candidate B, then Candidate B is not elected."  That is the simple ethic.  FPTP has a simple (but mistaken) ethic: "Vote for one candidate. The candidate with the most votes is elected."  Condorcet has a simple (and correct) ethic.  But Hare RCV has a *procedure* but no ethic *other* than the procedure.  But that is hard to get around because of all the promotion from FairVote.
>
> I think the narrative what is going on in Burlington is detailed well in https://tinyurl.com/2tety9tj in the Conclusion.  My hope is that the Gov. Ops. committee might decline the RCV charter change because there are some other RCV bills for statewide elections in consideration.  I also have the ear of the Secretary of State and the Director of Elections in the SOS office.  They are *very* interested in the property #5 in my paper, which is Precinct Summability.  We're watching Maine and we know that they are having an absolute clusterfuck with statewide RCV which prevents them from announcing a winner for a couple days.  Precinct Summability will allow results to be provisionally announced on the night of election, in addition to the process transparency feature that became *very* interesting to the Director of Elections.
>
> So I am hopeful.  If the Guv Ops declines the RCV charter change and says specifically because they don't want to undo the repeal of IRV in 2010 until we really understand what the fuck is going on, then maybe I can get the Progs in town to listen to me.  But they will not listen otherwise.
>
> --
>
> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
> .
> .
> .
>
>
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