[EM] Open Message to Foley, Maskin, and Other Tweakers

Thu Nov 3 20:40:34 PDT 2022

Here is a simple tweak that will vastly improve any election method that is
not already Landau efficient:

Initialize the variable W with the name of the winner of the imperfect
method.

Elect W if no candidate covers W,

Otherwise ...

While W is covered let C be the candidate among those covering W with the
least pairwise opposition from W, i.e. the one minimizing the number of
ballots on which it is outranked by W.
Then update W with the name of candidate C. (End While)

Elect the candidate named by the final value of W.

Rationale: If C covers W, then geometrically C is between W and the
(generalized) median voter. The more closely C covers W from the voters,
the fewer voters will prefer W over C.

It doesn't matter how horrible your imperfect method is ... IRV, Borda,
Nanson, Coombs,, Copeland, Black, Random Favorite Candidate, Random
Truncated Candidate, etc or even non-horrible like MJ, MinMax, Ranked
Pairs, Schulze CSSD, River, etc.....

If it can elect a covered candidate, then this tweak is needed!

-Forest

On Wed, Nov 2, 2022, 10:30 PM Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Nov 2, 2022, 9:04 PM Ralph Suter <RLSuter at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks very much for the detailed comparison and clarification. I just
>> haven't had time to follow the election-methods list well enough to nearly
>> as knowledgeable about alternative methods as I would like to be.
>>
>> Given the shortcomings of the article, can the authors at least be
>> credited for pointing out that IRV is seriously flawed in that it can
>> result in a winner that is outranked by another candidate? (I prefer
>> calling it IRV, because "ranked choice voting" misleadingly implies that
>> there is only one form of ranked voting.).
>>
>
> Yes, I'm glad they made that important point.
>
>> IRV also has two other major flaws: (1) It can take a long time before
>> it's possible even to make an educated guess of the winner. In the Alaska
>> special election, it took more than two weeks.
>>
> It's because every round requires a complete pass through the ballots to
> execute the vote transfers. Their suggestion, Baldwin, has the exact same
> problem. DMC does not because bothered the pairwise matrix and the "total
> votes" implicit approval are precinct summable, with only one pass through
> the ballots.
>
> (2) It makes useful polling, either pre-election or exit polling, all but
>> impossible.
>>
>> Would DMC avoid both flaws? Also, do you think it's easily enough
>> explainable for it to gain the support needed to replace IRV?
>>
> IRV is highly entrenched, but STAR and Approval have made some progress,
> and they seem to be more open minded.
>
> STAR is instant top two score runoff. Once you have the candidate scores
> along with pairwise defeat scores ready for the instant runoff, why not pit
> the top score candidate against the champion of the 2nd and 3rd score
> candidates.  Better yet take this to its logical conclusion ... do
> SequentialvPairwise Elimination starting at the bottom of the score list
> and working up, so that the final matchup is between the top score
> candidate and the champion from below.
>
> I'm good at explaining methods, but I am not an organizer or influencer.
> I'm in my mid seventies so my energy, sight, and other faculties are not
> what they once were.
>
>> Finally, do you have any thoughts about the best way to conduct open
>> primaries? Alaska's top four primary followed by a ranked choice general
>> election seems clearly superior to California's top two.primary followed by
>> a majority winner general election.
>>
>> Would either or both top two or top four be improved by using approval
>> voting or some other method to choose the final two or four? Also, would
>> top five be even better than top four, or would top three be nearly as good
>> as top for?
>>
> Someone with more open primary experience could advise you better on this.
> However...
>
> If possible I would say "Top k approval" with k between one and four,
> determined by how close the other approval scores are to the leader's.
>
> If no challenger gets 70 percent of the leading approval, then it seems
> that a runoff would be a waste of time and money.
>
> On the other hand,  if four candidates were within five approval points of
> the leader, all four should be allowed in the runoff (it seems to me).
>
> In any case, the standard for runoff participation should be delineated
> clearly well in advance.
>
> IMHO
>
>> Thanks again for your really helpful feedback.
>>
> Thanks for caring about democracy enough to inform yourself and others!
>
>> -Ralph
>> On 11/2/2022 3:28 PM, Forest Simmons wrote:
>>
>> "Single most important"?
>>
>> Not anywhere close!
>>
>> The "tweak" proposed by Maskin and Foley is either Baldwin (if the total
>> votes are recalibrated between rounds as in IRV) or Benham applied to the
>> Borda order the same way DMC is Benham applied to the implicit approval
>> order ... without recalibration between rounds.
>>
>> Neither one is appreciably better than IRV. Baldwin retains IRV's
>> non-monotonicity and its procedural mess of vote transfers, while the
>> monotonic version more fully retains Borda's clone dependence and burial
>> incentive.
>>
>> A much better "tweak" is to interpret "total votes" as implicit approval,
>> the number of ballots on which a candidate is voted ahead of one or more
>> other candidates.
>>
>> This definition of total votes is especially apt when the ballots only
>> allow ranking of a few candidates, as is the case of all RCV ballots in the
>> USA wherever RCV has been publically adopted so far. Voters have to
>> consider carefully which candidates are worth ranking. That gives extra
>> value to implicit approval.
>>
>> After tallying the total votes (i.e. the ballot totals of votes of any
>> rank) of the candidates, in each round eliminate the candidate with the
>> fewest total votes, until among the remaining candidates there is an
>> undefeated candidate ... (total votes not recalibrated between rounds).
>>
>> This method is monotonic, clone free, and Condorcet efficient.
>>
>> It has a name: Implicit Approval DMC, Definite Majority Choice, the very
>> method proposed by a consensus of the EM list to Toby Nixon twelve years
>> ago after careful consideration of the merits of all of the competing
>> proposals (including BTR-IRV, another tweak better than Baldwin) ... not
>> just an off the cuff tweak.
>>
>> DMC is a streamlined procedure for determining the common winner of
>> Ranked Pairs, Schulze CSSD (Clone free Schwartz Sequential Dropping), and
>> Jobst's River, the three great methods that reduce to one common method in
>> the case where the strengths of the pairwise defeats are measured by the
>> total votes (implicit approvals) of the respective winners of those defeats.
>>
>> The Maskin-Foley proposal is anything but the proposal to end all
>> proposals.
>>
>> I'm afraid Maskin hasn't learned anything in the two decades since he was
>> busy publically proposing ("The Fairest Vote of All") clone dependent Borda
>> as a Condorcet completion method for clone dependent Copeland.
>>
>> Has he been too busy resting on his Nobel laurels to learn anything from
>> the well informed feedback engendered by his Scientific American article?
>>
>> Some of these academics from the big name universities assume that they
>> can come up with a method superior to any proposal from the rabble by
>> merely shooting from the hip in an op ed.
>>
>> -Forest
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 1, 2022, 7:53 PM Ralph Suter <RLSuter at aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Rob,
>>>
>>> For some reasons, my last several messages, including the following sent
>>> today, haven't been posted.
>>>
>>> The article mentioned below may be the single most important and
>>> potentially ifluential one regarding election methods that has been
>>> published for many years. It may finally get people to realize that instant
>>> runoff voting is a seriously flawed ranked choice method and should be
>>> replaced by a form of Condorcet voting.
>>>
>>> Will you please post it for me or copy and send it to the list?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ralph Suter
>>>
>>> -------- Forwarded Message --------
>>> Subject: "Total Vote Runoff" proposed as better way to determine
>>> ranked-choice winners
>>> Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2022 13:13:21 -0500
>>> From: Ralph Suter <RLSuter at aol.com> <RLSuter at aol.com>
>>> To: election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com
>>>
>>>
>>> In a Washington Post opinion article published today (11/2/2022),
>>> election law scholar Edward Foley and economist (and Nobel laureate) Erik
>>> Maskin propose a "tweak" to correct what they describe a flaw in how ranked
>>> choice winners are currently determined. They call the resulting election
>>> method a "total Vote Runoff".
>>>
>>> Would anyone like to comment? It appears they are essentially proposing
>>> replacing instant run-off voting with Condorcet voting.
>>>
>>> -Ralph Suter
>>>
>>> ---------------------------------
>>> Alaska’s ranked-choice voting is flawed. But there’s an easy fix.
>>> By Edward B. Foley
>>> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/edward-b-foley/> and Eric S.
>>> Maskin
>>> November 1, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
>>>
>>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/01/alaska-final-four-primary-begich-palin-peltola/
>>>
>>> Excerpt:
>>>
>>> Alaska’s special election in August for the House of Representatives was
>>> heralded as a triumph for ranked-choice voting, because MAGA favorite Sarah
>>> Palin, a personification of polarization, could not attract enough
>>> second-choice votes from moderate Republican Nick Begich’s supporters to
>>> win.
>>>
>>> That’s true. But the way Alaska uses ranked-choice voting also caused
>>> the defeat of Begich, whom most Alaska voters preferred to Democrat Mary
>>> Peltola, the candidate who ended up winning.
>>>
>>> This anomalous outcome, contrary to the principle that the majority’s
>>> preference should prevail, would be easily remedied by one small change.
>>>
>>> The key to ranked-choice voting is that a voter lists the candidates in
>>> order of preference, starting with their favorite, rather than naming just
>>> that favorite. The problem in Alaska — and other ranked-choice systems now
>>> in use, from Maine to San Francisco — is the rule for eliminating
>>> candidates when no one gets a majority of first-place votes. By tweaking
>>> this rule, Alaska’s system would become more palatable to Republicans and
>>> Democrats alike, and more likely to be adopted across the country.
>>>
>>> Begich was eliminated because he had the fewest first-place votes. That
>>> seems logical at first glance. But the flaw in this outcome — and why
>>> Republicans have reason to be resentful — is that a majority of voters
>>> would have favored Begich had the race come down to a head-to-head matchup
>>> against either Peltola (52 percent to 48 percent) or Palin (61 percent to
>>> 39 percent). He lost only because it was a three-way race.
>>>
>>> Here’s how to fix the flaw. If Alaska eliminated the candidate with the
>>> fewest *total* votes, rather than the fewest *first-place* votes, the
>>> ranked-choice system would be sure to elect a candidate such as Begich who
>>> defeats all rivals in one-on-one matchups.
>>>
>>> Call it a “Total Vote Runoff.” A candidate’s total votes in such a
>>> system would be determined by the number of other candidates he or she is
>>> ranked above. For example, when a candidate is ranked first on a ballot in
>>> an election involving three candidates, then this first-choice candidate is
>>> ranked above two other candidates and gets two votes from this ballot.
>>>
>>> When that same candidate is ranked second on another ballot, the
>>> candidate is favored over only one other candidate and would receive only
>>> one vote from that ballot.
>>>
>>> A candidate ranked last on a ballot, or not ranked at all, is not
>>> favored over anyone and gets no votes from that ballot.
>>>
>>> Calculating the number of votes that a candidate gets on each ballot —
>>> two, one or zero — and adding up the candidate’s votes from all the ballots
>>> yields the candidate’s total votes.
>>>
>>> Using this method, we can identify the number of ballots on which each
>>> of Alaska’s three candidates was ranked first or second and then calculate
>>> each candidate’s total votes (there were only three candidates in the House
>>> special election):
>>>
>>> Alaska House results using total vote runoff
>>>
>>> *First-place votes get counted twice because voters put their first
>>> choice ahead of two other candidates.*
>>> Column 1: Candidate
>>> Column 2: first-place votes
>>> Column 3: first-place votes, counted again
>>> Column 4: second-place votes
>>> Column 5: Overall Total
>>>
>>> Begich 53,810 53,810 81,253 188,873
>>> Peltola 75,799 75,799 19,024 170,622
>>> Palin 58,973 58,973 31,611 149,557
>>> Source: Alaska official results, Alaska cast vote records, MIT Election
>>> Data and Science Lab, Election Law at Ohio State, author calculations
>>> <https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22SSPG/RcvDetailedReport.pdf>
>>>
>>> Palin had the fewest total votes, so she would have been the first
>>> candidate eliminated in a “Total Vote Runoff” tweak to RCV.
>>>
>>> With Palin eliminated, the race would have been between Begich and
>>> Peltola. Because a majority preferred Begich to Peltola, he would have been
>>> elected. Total Vote Runoff captures the will of the majority more
>>> accurately than Alaska’s current elimination system does.
>>>
>>> Republicans should like Total Vote Runoff because its procedure would
>>> help ameliorate the “candidate quality
>>> <https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/mcconnell-says-republicans-may-not-win-senate-control-citing-candidate-rcna43777>”
>>> problem that plagues their party, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
>>> (R-Ky.) lamented. A candidate popular only with the party’s base would be
>>> eliminated early in a Total Vote Runoff, leaving a more broadly popular
>>> Republican to compete against a Democrat.
>>>
>>> Democrats, too, should welcome Total Runoff Voting to protect against
>>> losses caused by excessively progressive candidates who are unacceptable to
>>> a large portion of independent voters. Alaska-style ranked-choice voting
>>> might keep in contention a left-wing candidate whose first-place votes
>>> reflect enthusiastic but limited support, but Total Runoff Voting would
>>> promote Democratic candidates whose wide appeal makes them more competitive
>>> overall.
>>>
>>
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