[EM] Notes on a few Later-no-harm methods

[Forest Simmons]

El jue., 2 de jun. de 2022 11:33 a. m., Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
km_elmet at t-online.de> escribió:

> On 02.06.2022 19:10, Richard Lung wrote:
> >
> > On 02/06/2022 11:28, Richard Lung wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> Sometimes the keep value quotient, in binomial STV, does not help to
> >> decide an election. It may even make the contest less decisive. Never
> >> the less, the quotient is an extra source of rational information, to
> >> that provided by the quota, as to the decision or indecision of the
> >> public.
> >>
> >> The simple plurality method generally implies, representatively, that
> >> it should not be in a single-member system, but at least in a two
> >> member system, and often in a three or four member system.
> >>
> >> Likewise, I recommend a minimum of a 4 or 5 member system for binomial
> >> STV, for sufficiently representative elections, to produce decisive
> >> results.
> >>
> >> The draft Scottish constitution recommended a minimum of four member
> >> STV constituencies. The Irish constitutional convention recommended a
> >> minimum of five-member STV constituencies.
> >>
> >> The McAllister report on the Welsh Parliament cited an academic
> >> consensus on four to seven member constituencies for sufficient
> >> diversity of representation.
> >>
> >> Four Welsh reports have recommended the single transferable vote.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Thus, a lack of decisiveness, in single-member binomial STV, is not
> >> necessarily a problem of BSTV but it is a problem of single, double
> >> and even triple member constituencies. The insistence on a decisive
> >> election winner is a presumption of social choice theory.
>
> I'm not sure what you're referring to, but the Duggan-Schwartz theorem
> states that for deterministic ranked multi-winner methods, unless the
> method always returns the set of every voter's first preferences as the
> outcome, there will exist elections where strategic voting pays off.
>
> So a multi-winner method has to be very tie-prone if it's to be
> unmanipulable.
>
> >> The incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel is not an insistence on the
> >> “Impossibility” of deductive science. It took the theorem of Kenneth
> >> Arrow to assert that for logical democracy. (The assertion, that no
> >> election method is perfect, is not a scientific statement, and can be
> >> disregarded as such.)
>
> Gödel's incompleteness theorem is a good example. It may not be a
> practical problem that the mathematical system can't prove every fact
> about itself. (Usually one gets around this by just creating a more
> powerful system to prove things with.)
>
> But it shows that some property that would really simplify things is
> unattainable. Similarly with voting methods: it may not be a practical
> problem that strategy is possible, but the lack of an unmanipulable
> deterministic method means we have to pick our poison about which kind
> of strategy to allow (that hopefully does the least harm).
>
> Or sidestep the question by looking at the greater context (analogous to
> creating a more powerful system) and use something like sortition
> instead of elections.
>

I compare this to the absolute limitations of thermodynamics on heat engine
efficiency, but that doesn't mean that all internal combustion engines are
equally bad, or that nuclear fusion (hence solar power) cannot surpass
chemical combustion in efficiency.

>
> >> Thus, the impossibility theorem insistence on decisive results amounts
> >> to an imperative for an administrative decision, and not necessarily
> >> popular representation. But the United Statesis a republic, a thing of
> >> the people, not a thing of Administration, or a “rebureau.”
>
> What's a rebureau?
>
> -km
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20220602/7c1f344e/attachment.html>