[EM] Public Proposal Verbiage 2.0

[Forest Simmons]

I need some advice on modifying or replacing the following pargraph:

"If a method elects someone else when a consistent majority candidate is on
the ballot, a majority of the voters will regret not having pooled their
votes to get the CMC elected."

Perhaps we should just say that if a Consistent Majority Candidate exists
but is not elected, its supports have a valid complaint about the result
that nobody would have if the CMC candidate were elected ... namely that
some other candidate would have won in a head-head matchup with the winner.

It is tempting to add the proviso ..."assuming sincere votes" ... which is
the first step in logic that leads to the conclusion that when the ballot
CMC is not automatically elected, voters feel more pressure to vote
insincere rankings.

How far should we go? And what is the clearest wording?


El mié., 1 de jun. de 2022 9:41 p. m., Forest Simmons <
forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> escribió:

> Modified to incorporate suggested terminology and to suggest a tally
> procedure that is more transparent ... easier for the interested lay voter
> to understand.
>
> El lun., 30 de may. de 2022 9:23 p. m., Forest Simmons <
> forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> escribió:
>
>> Preface:
>>
>> In a March 2004 Scientific American article  entitled, "The Fairest Vote
>> of All," Partha Dasgupta and Eric Maskin (now a Nobel Laureate) argued
>> persuasively for their conception of a "True Majority Winner" of a single
>> winner election based on ranked choice ballots.
>>
>> Taking for granted the Majority Criterion that mandates electing the
>> candidate that outranks all of the other candidates on more than half of
>> the ballots (when there is such a candidate), they proposed that when there
>> is no such candidate, they at least satisfy the following less demanding
>> but crucial property of a Majority top ranked candidate: such a candidate
>> will never be outranked by any competitor on more ballots than not.
>>
>
> They call such a candidate a "True Majority Winner" but we prefer to use
> the more modest moniker "Consistent Majority Candidate" ... we say
> "consistent" because consistently in head-to-head matchups it gets the
> larger portion of the (transferred) votes after having (temporarily)
> eliminated all other candidates from consideration.
>
> The Scientific American article briefly alluded to the rare public
>> election possibility where a ballot set might yield neither a "more than
>> half "first place majority winner nor a (less demanding) Consistent
>> Majority Candidate (in our terminology).
>>
>> It was not the purpose of their article to prescribe a course of action
>> to cover that relatively rare case, since they were not making a proposal
>> for a specific election method to be adopted and written into law for some
>> specific democratic electorate.
>>
>> Their purpose was to expound and publicize to the broader scientific
>> community and other interested citizens a principle that has been respected
>> among social choice thinkers at least since the time of Ramón Llull of
>> twelfth century Spain:
>>
>
> If a method elects someone else when a consistent majority candidate is on
> the ballot, a majority of the voters will regret not having pooled their
> votes to get the CMC elected.
>
> Taking up where they left off ...
>
>>
>> If the submitted set of marked ballots does not have a Consistent
>> Majority Candidate (i.e. a candidate that outranks any given opponent on as
>> many ballots as not), then elect the candidate closest to being a CMC, i.e.
>> the candidate that would need the fewest additional first place votes in
>> order to become a Consistent Majority Candidate.
>>
>> The above description completely defines our proposed method winner
>> without recommending one procedure over another for tallying the submitted
>> ballots.
>>
>
> As is often the case in mathematics, the procedure that is simplest and
> most transparent conceptually is not the one that is most computationally
> efficient.
>
> In the present context conceptual simplicity and transparency trump
> comuptational efficiency, so that will be our guide in the following
> instructions for the secretary of state:
>
> For each head-to-head matchup contest designate a deputy secretary.
>
> Give a complete copy of the voted ranked choice ballots to each of your
> deputies in the presence of the official election observers in a meeting
> where the general public is welcome to view the proceedings from the
> theatre seats by use of opera glasses, binoculars, closed circuit TV, etc.
>
> Each deputy will sort her ballot copies into two stacks, according to
> which of her two assigned candidates outranks the other.
>
> A discard pile is used for the cards that do not express any preference
> between the two assigned candidates. This lack of preference could be from
> truncation of the ballot ranking (a form of abstention) or by explicit
> equality of rank. For example, the two assigned candidates could both be
> ranked as equal first place, if the voter so desired.
>
> The discard pile has no effect on any of the other matchup counts.
> Discarded from one matchup does not mean spoiled ballot or disqualified
> candidate!
>
> After the observers are satisfied that the sorting was carried out
> accurately, the deputy will add blank ballots to the smaller stack until
> both stacks are equally deep, i.e. have the same number of sheets of paper.
>
> The deputy will then write on each of the blank ballots the name of the
> candidate that needed the blank ballots to reach parity with its matchup
> candidate, and staple these placeholder ballots together.
>
> You (the main tally secretary) will supervise the delivery of each stapled
> bundle to the main table on center stage.
>
> Bundles with the same candidate names are gathered together and arranged
> in sorted columns with the largest bundle at the top of each candidate
> column and the smallest at the bottom.
>
> The number of ballots in each of the respective top bundles tells how far
> the respective candidate is from being a Consistent Majority Candidate,
> i.e. how many first place ballots it would take to convert it into a CMC.
>
> [If each placeholder ballot in that bundle had been an actual ballot, it
> would have added that number of points to the named candidate in each of
> its matchups ... enough to overcome even its worst matchup loss, since all
> of its other bundles were smaller.]
>
> If there is a candidate with no bundle of placeholder ballots, elect that
> candidate because it did not need any blank ballots to bring any of its
> matchup scores to parity.
>
> Otherwise, elect the candidate with the smallest parity bundle at the top
> of its column, i.e. the one least distant from being a Consistent Majority
> Candidate.
>
> In case of a tie in size of their top bundles, then among the tied
> candidates go by the size of the second bundle from the top of the column.
> If that doesn't break the tie, then go by the size of the third bundle from
> the top, etc.
>
> Beyond that refer to the Constitutional provisions for tie breaking
> (speaker of house, supreme court, Daddy Bush, Trump, etc.) ... or in the
> case of smaller deliberative assemblies, Robert's Rules of Order.
>
> More comments welcome!
>
> -Forest
>
>
>
>
>
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