[EM] Public Proposal Verbiage

Tue May 31 10:07:40 PDT 2022

I agree with all your sentiments, and will convert to Consistent Majority
Candidate (or Champion).

I'm very satisfied with the method definition, but not so much with the
suggested tally procedure.

I have some ideas ... along the lines of on stage hand counts..n

El mar., 31 de may. de 2022 6:58 a. m., robert bristow-johnson <
rbj at audioimagination.com> escribió:

> The neologism that I am promoting is:
>
> "Consistent Majority Candidate".
>
> Better than "Beats-all winner" or "Pairwise Champion".
>
> *Powered by Cricket Wireless*
>
> ------ Original message------
> *From: *Colin Champion
> *Date: *Tue, May 31, 2022 2:49 AM
> *To: *election-methods at lists.electorama.com;
> *Cc: *
> *Subject:*Re: [EM] Public Proposal Verbiage
>
> I’m sorry to say that I don't like Dasgupta and Maskin’s terminology at
> all - I think it's a trick to persuade readers that they've already signed
> up for the Condorcet Principle when they signed up for the Majority
> Criterion. I agree that "Condorcet winner" sounds forbiddingly esoteric to
> the layman - I sometimes consider "outright winner" as a more down-to-earth
> term.
>    Forest's definition is concise and avoids reference fo matrices of
> defeat margins and similar machinery, but I'm not sure if that makes it any
> easier to understand since the conceptual level is quite high.
>    Colin
>
> On 31/05/2022 05:23, Forest Simmons wrote:
>
> 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 propose that when there
> is no such candidate, when possible they at least keep this less demanding
> but crucial property of a Majority top ranked candidate: such a candidate
> outranks any competitor on more ballots than not.
>
> Why not say, "on more than half of the ballots" instead of "more ballots
> than not"?
>
> Because voters are not required to rank all of the candidates. Indeed,
> some voters may simply "bullet vote" for their favorite, while leaving the
> other candidates unranked or "truncated."
>
> The dictionary definition of "majority" is flexible enough to include this
> usage of "more than not," so Dasgupta and Maskin's "True Majority Winner"
> terminology is perfectly acceptable to Webster, Cambridge, OED, etc.
>
> Their 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) True Majority
> Winner.
>
> It was not the purpose of their article to prescribe a course of action to
> cover that 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.
>
> We now pick up where they left off with a proposal for how to decide the
> winner in the case of no True Majority Winner (TMW).
>
> For ease of reference we repeat (my wording of) the Dasgupta/Maskin
> definition of True Majority Winner, namely a candidate that outranks every
> competitor on more ballots than not.
>
> Also, "bullet ballot" ... a ballot that truncates after its top choice.
>
> We also need the concept of a "ballot superset:" In the current context it
> is a ballot set augmented with a number of bullet ballots to gauge how far
> away a ballot set is from having a True Majority Winner.
>
> Our idea is to complete the quest for a True Majority Winner by augmenting
> the given ballot set with the bare minimum of bullet ballots to ensure the
> existence of a True Majority Winner for the augmented ballot set. In other
> words, we elect the candidate closest to being a TMW when there is no TMW.
>
> So here it is:
>
> If the submitted set of marked ballots does not have a True Majority
> Winner (i.e. a candidate that outranks each opponent on more ballots than
> not), then elect the True Majority Winner of the smallest ballot superset
> that does have a True Majority Winner.
>
> The above description completely and decisively defines the winner without
> recommending one procedure over another for tallying the submitted ballots.
>
> There are many possible counting procedures, (some more efficient than
> others) but any that require multiple passes through the ballot set (as do
> elimination methods like Instant Runoff) are inefficient, hence to be
> avoided.
>
> One efficient procedure is to immediately (at the precinct level)
> summarize each ballot in the form of a table with K rows and K columns,
> where K is the number of candidates.  The i_th entry in the j_th row of the
> table is a one or zero depending on whether or not candidate j outranks
> candidate i on the ballot being tabulated.
>
> Once a ballot is converted to this K by K tabular format it can be added
> in to the precinct total. In turn the precinct totals are added together at
> some central location to arrive at a grand total table T.
>
> Apparently the i_th entry in the j_th row of table T is the number of
> ballots on which candidate j outranks candidate i.
>
> Similarly, the i_th entry in the j_th column of table T is the number of
> ballots on which candidate i outranks candidate j.
>
> Therefore, when we subtract the corresponding elements of the j_th column
> from the j_th row we get a new table D in which the i_th entry of the j_th
> row is the difference between the number of ballots on which j out ranks i
> and the number of ballots on which i outranks j.
>
> If this difference is positive, then candidate  j outranks candidate i  on
> more ballots than not.
>
> Therefore, if the j_th row of D has all positive differences, then
> candidate j is the True Majority Candidate.
>
> If there is no such row j with all positive entries, find the row j that
> needs the least multiple of the "bullet row" added to it in order to wipe
> out all of its (row j's) negative entries.
>
> A bullet ballot row consists entirely of ones: [1, 1, ..., 1].
>
> This row j identifies the True Majority Winner of the ballot set that has
> been augmented with the minimum number of bullet ballots to achieve a TMW
> ... in ther words the candidate closest to being a TMW of the original
> ballot set.
>
> Don't worry about the details of this tally procedure  .. that's for
> trained election officials to learn. But do take note that a methodical
> method involving mostly copying and adding of table entries (derived from
> ranked ballots) with a subtraction of table columns from corresponding
> table rows is all there is before determining how many bullet ballot rows
> are need to wipe out all of the negatives from one row ... just methodical
> use of arithmetic ... for someone equipped with an adding machine to worry
> about.
>
> Questions?
>
> Suggestions for improved exposition?
>
> Gripes?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Forest
>
>
>
>
>
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