[EM] Fw: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 213, Issue 44

Tue May 3 13:50:17 PDT 2022

From: steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 3, 2022 1:30 PM
To: Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com>
Subject: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 213, Issue 44

Re: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 213, Issue 44

Richard,

Sorry, with you initially starting out with President Macron, I mistakenly responded to your argument for FAB STV as if you were proposing it as a single-winner method. However, your most recent post copied below now makes it clear that you instead see it as a superior multi-winner method. Thank you.

In this light, I would like to ask you to compare FAB STV with the multi-winner method my co-authors and I call evaluative proportional representation (EPR – https://www.jpolrisk.com/legislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/). We see EPR as an improved version of ordinary STV that follows MJ by inviting citizens to rank candidates more informatively instead by grading them – grading their suitability for office as either Excellent, Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor, or Reject. We have also updated the above 2020 article in a Paper that I would be happy to email to any EM reader upon request (stevebosworth at hotmail.com<mailto:stevebosworth at hotmail.com>).

I see EPR as also fully satisfying your desire to include the judgments of the whole electorate in the count to the fullest extent possible to avoid *any … minimally democratic ... binary choice* as you put it.

With regard to FAB STV, I am happy to assume that it provides this benefit much more than plurality and ordinary STV does. At the same time, please tell me how the results of an FAB STV election at-large of a seven-member city council would compare with the following results that an EPR election guarantees: every citizens’ ballot equally adds to the voting power (weighted vote) in the council of the elected candidate each sees as likely to represent their hopes and concerns most accurately. This winner will have received either this citizen’s highest grade, remaining highest grade, or proxy vote. Consequently, every citizen’s vote cast is equally represented in the council quantitatively. Exactly how EPR offers these democratic benefits is described in the above mentioned available Paper.

You (Richard) freely warn readers that most of them may not be able fully to understand the complex steps by which an FAB STV election would be counted. In contrast, my co-authors and I believe that anyone who can count, add, and subtract whole numbers will be able to understand exactly how an EPR election is counted.

I look forward to our dialogues.

Steve

________________________________

From: Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com>

Sent: Monday, May 2, 2022 11:16 AM

To: steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>

Subject: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 213, Issue 44

Steve,

Single winner elections are the least democratic; they give too much power to one person. A problem of peace is how to get politicians away from the fixation with the monarchic principle. Lord Hailsham, in The Dilemma of Democracy, said Britain is an "elective dictatorship". This serves as a definition of a tyranny, in the classic Greek sense.

FAB STV is a system designed for a democratic minimum representation of a 4 or 5 member district. I was asked for a hand count version, which is much simpler, and I just call Binomial STV. It involves an election count divided by an exclusion count of all candidates keep values. This does away with haphazardly eliminating candidates, when the surplus transfers run out.

All the preference information is counted, including abstentions. This measures one whole dimension of choice, which, as far as I know, is unique in election methods.

Regards,

Richard Lung.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

________________________________

From: Richard Lung <voting at ukscientists.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 1, 2022 4:45 AM
To: steve bosworth <stevebosworth at hotmail.com>

Cc: election-methods at lists.electorama.com <election-methods at lists.electorama.com>

Subject: Re: [EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 213, Issue 44

Richard,

I agree with your desire to have as many citizens as possible in addition to a majority to help determine the single winner – to include the judgments of the whole electorate in the count to the fullest extent possible to avoid *any … minimally democratic ... binary choice*.Also, I am happy to assume that FAB STV provides this benefit much more than plurality and ordinary STV does.

At the same time, do you agree that MJ also does this to some extent in that the median grade received by each candidate is equally determined by all the grades given to all the candidates by all the citizens? Also, am I correct in assuming that you agree that MJ’s counting method for determining the median-grade winner is much easier for people to understand than all the calculations needed to determine the FAB STV winner? My summary of this MJ count is as follows:

The MJ winner is the one who receives an absolute majority of all the grades equal to, or higher than, the highest median grade given to any candidate. This median grade can be found as follows:

1. Place all the grades given to each candidate, high to low, left to right in a row, with the name of each candidate on the left of each row.

2. The median grade for each candidate is in the middle of each row. Specifically, the middle grade for an odd number of voters, or the grade on the right in the middle for an even number of voters.

3. If more than one candidate has the same highest median grade, the MJ winner is discovered by removing, one by one, any grades equal in value to the current highest median grade from each tied candidate’s total until only one of the tied candidates has the highest remaining median grade.

Balinski sees the six grades Excellent to Reject as easy to use. They are intellectual creations which can be *given very careful definitions* and that become more meaningful and precise with the passage of time and use. They have *no meaning other than what is ascribed to them by their users* (pp. 166-169). Such intellectual *creations must always remain a work in progress* (pp.168-70).

However, where we currently seem to disagree is over the validity of your claim that * Ranked choice ... uses a more powerful scale of measurement* when compared with MJ. Presumably, regardless of the voting method an election uses (plurality, IRV (simply ranking the candidates), approval, range, or MJ), each citizen when voting is trying to express their judgments about the degree one or more of the candidates is suitable for the office according to their own perspective. FAB STV is a variety of IRV and so your claim is that rankings provide a more “powerful measure” of these judgments than does MJ’s grades – that rankings are more meaningfully and informatively expressive than the grades MJ citizens use on their ballots. If so, please explain because I see the opposite as true. For example, when we see the 1st preference candidate on someone’s ballot, we do not know whether this voter judged this candidate to be Excellent, Very Good, Good, or Acceptable or least bad. In contrast, some preferences can be inferred from a ballot that lists grades for candidates, e.g. each Excellent candidate is preferred over each Very Good candidate, etc. This is why I see grades as more meaningfully informative about the subjective judgments citizens have made about the candidates than the preferences they would be required to indicate under FAB STV.

If the above reasoning is sound, MJ may be no better than FAB STV in that both use all the votes cast to elect the single winner. However, MJ would still be democratically superior because more citizens would understand exactly how all the votes are counted by MJ, plus MJ also allows every citizen more meaningfully to express themselves.

What do you think?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1st

Macron says he will represent all France, not just those who voted for him. They say that in the British single member system, too. Only those who actually represent one can represent one. Patronage is not democracy. Single majorities are minimally democratic, leaving out half the voters.

And binary choice, as in the x-vote, is a minimal choice. Approve/disapprove is not much more choice. And more categories of choice not much better still. Ranked choice or number order choice uses a more powerful scale of measurement, the ordinal scale vote, instead of the categorical scale. This makes possible more precise measurement. For instance, more precise averages than the median. (My system of FAB STV uses four rational averages.) "Science is measurement."

Regards,

Richard

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20220503/fc9a9834/attachment-0001.html>