[EM] Covering Embarrassment

[robert bristow-johnson]

> On 09/11/2022 6:12 PM EDT Forest Simmons <forest.simmons21 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Have you every had one of those dreams where you are out in public and suddenly notice that you are unclothed?
> 
of course.

> Well, nearly all election methods, Condorcet or not, that are either now in use, or have been seriously proposed, suffer from the opposite problem: they have no guarantee against electing covered candidates.
> 

Well, now I need a definition of a what or who is "covered".

> How (outside of a nudist colony) could that be a problem?
> 
> Well, suppose candidate A wins an RCV election of some kind, and the ballots clearly show that candidate B outranks candidate A on a majority of the ballots, but B is not head-head defeated by any candidate that A defeats.
> 

okay, so A pairwise defeats a bunch of candidates that B also does, but B defeats A.  Could there be Candidate C that defeats them both, head to head? 

> In other words, A wins, but A is covered (by B for example). Wouldn't that embarrass A?
> 

well, obviously minority-elected candidates win and are not embarrassed for winning an election.  Like both W and the evil T****.  They can deny the problem (like this is too complicated) or they can make up and excuse (Montroll or Begich didn't get enough base support)

> The B supporters would be more indignant, vociferous, and sarcastic than even Trump, (unless B were like a spineless Gore, who capitulated without a peep).
> 
> Why hasn't anybody addressed this elephant-in-the-room potential embarrassment?
> 

????

> Answer: for the simple reason that up until very recently, the only known monotonic RCV method immune to this embarrassment was Copeland, a clone dependent method lacking a lot in decisiveness.
> 
> The first RCV method to decisively crack this barrier (earlier this year) was Decloned KY Chain Climbing ... nice theoretically, but too esoteric for public proposal.
> 
> More recently, and more practically, Kristofer and I have introduced (without fanfare) a class of short beatpath methods that always elect uncovered candidates monotonically and clone-free from RCV ballot sets.
> 
> Within that class, methods differ by different gauges of defeat strength, in the same way that different versions of Ranked Pairs differ among themselves.
> 
> My purpose in this post is not to propound any particular uncovered method, but to give a general recipe for retro-fitting all currently used RCV methods ... in order to confer upon them Covering Embarrassment Immunity.
> 
> Here is the Afterburner procedure for installing that retro-fit:
> 
> Initialize X as the (before retro-fit) method winner.
> 
> Then ...
> While X is covered, replace it with the alternative (from among those that cover it) with the one defeating it with the greatest defeat strength. EndWhile
> 
> Elect the the final value of X, (i.e.the last candidate pointed at by the variable X).
> 
> [Now you can see our main purpose for initiating our recent Defeat Strength thread.]
> 
> Notice how naturally this "Afterburner" procedure confers Covering Embarrassment protection onto Ranked Pairs!
> 
> It can do the same thing for IRV, Coombs, Borda, Bucklin, Kemeny Young, DAC, DSC, etc, as well as for non-RCV methods that may admit inference of ordinal preferences ... such as MJ, STAR, Approval Sorted Margins, DMC, SPE, etc.
> 
> One of my favorites is Afterburner Fitted Usual Judgment (AFUJ), because UJ by itself has only one serious technical defect ... potential covering embarrassment.
> 
> In particular, the recent IRV embarrassments in Burlington and Alaska would have harmlessly, and unceremoniously bounced off this shield.
> 
> Also, note that an afterburner shield protects against Burlington embarrassments, but an upfront CW check does not guarantee protection against covering embarrassment. Afterburner protection is stronger than a mere CW or Smith check up front ... even IRV restricted to Smith is not immune to Covering Embarrassment.
> 
> So why would anybody resist zero-cost covering embarrassment protection?
> 
> Remember back in the 1970's ... the resistance against retro-fitting older cars with seat belts?
> 
> "People will be trapped inside crashed cars!"
> 
> Doubtless we wil see the same reactionary attitudes about retro-fitting current methods with "Covering Immunity Seatbelts."
> 
> Will a democracy ever arise on this planet progressive enough to make use of it?
> 
> I'm optimistic about that possibility, but not optimistic enough to think it will happen absent some kind of major revolution that saves our planet from utter destruction.
> 

This being "covered" thing isn't a problem if the Condorcet winner is elected, if a CW exists, is it?  Does it manifest when there is a CW?

How many elections do we expect to lack a Condorcet winner?  So far, FairVote has looked at, they used to say, 440 U.S. RCV elections, all had a CW, and only one failed to elect the CW.  Now there are two anomalous elections, Alaska 2022 and Bulington 2009.  So far 100% having CW and 99.6% electing the CW using Hare RCV.

Must we use Copeland if there are easier ways to get the CW elected?

--

r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

.
.
.