[EM] STAR

Sun Aug 13 04:41:18 PDT 2023

I find Chris's position unintelligible. People who rely on evaluations 
can say what it is which makes a certain candidate a good choice of 
winner from a given election, namely - in the case of spatial models - 
his being closest to the centre of the distribution of voters (usually 
understood as the median). But people who reason from criteria never say 
what makes a criterion valid or invalid, or important rather than 
unimportant. So the criteria come across as postulates pulled from thin 
air - supposedly intuitive truths whose truth conditions cannot be 
identified.

CJC

On 12/08/2023 18:04, C.Benham wrote:
>
> Jameson Quinn used to participate in discussion here.  I am not a fan 
> of his or her ideas on voting methods.
>
> I am very sceptical about claims that some method is great despite 
> being crap on criterion compliances, based purely on computer simulations.
>
> I refuse to believe that having fewer criterion compliances is needed 
> for the sake of "greater utility".
>
> "Condorcet at all cost" and then "ticking off a list of criteria" 
> seems like a fine approach (or at least start) to me. But some 
> criteria are more desirable than others (and opinions can vary
> on which) and some are incompatible with each other and we can invent 
> or suggest new ones.
>
>> I do think failing clone independence is quite a black mark against 
>> STAR in any case. One way to fix it is to have the election method 
>> "clone" all the candidates anyway.
>
> How would it do that?
>
> Chris B.
>
> On 13/08/2023 12:17 am, Toby Pereira wrote:
>> I'm no advocate of STAR, but interestingly it did come out well in 
>> Jameson Quinn's VSE (Voter Satisfaction Efficiency - basically 
>> utility) simulations. 
>> https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/VSEbasic So while it might 
>> not exactly pass a lot of criteria, it seems that is does perform 
>> generally well overall, as long as you accept that utility is a 
>> useful measure. Obviously all simulations contain simplifications and 
>> assumptions and that has to be taken into account as well. But then 
>> there is the question of what exactly one is after in a voting method 
>> - whether it's Condorcet at all cost and then whatever you can get 
>> hold of after that, utility, ticking off a list of criteria, or 
>> something else.
>>
>> I do think failing clone independence is quite a black mark against 
>> STAR in any case. One way to fix it is to have the election method 
>> "clone" all the candidates anyway. Then run a two-winner sequential 
>> proportional election (take your pick of the methods) to find the two 
>> candidates for the run-off. The two candidates could just be a 
>> candidate and their clone, in which case that candidate automatically 
>> wins without a run-off.
>>
>> Toby
>>
>> On Saturday, 12 August 2023 at 03:45:25 BST, C.Benham 
>> <cbenham at adam.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I see from the "STAR Voting" advocates' website they propose using 
>> 0-5 scoring ballots.
>>
>> STAR Voting it seems to me is just awful. It fails almost every 
>> desirable criterion you can think of.
>>
>> It meets Condorcet Loser and Plurality and that's about it.  Their 
>> propaganda that it is somehow better
>> than IRV is very very dumb and/or dishonest.
>>
>> Forest wrote:
>>
>>> But Copeland suffers from two fatal defect that STAR does not have ... Copeland is neither Decisive nor Clone
>>> Independent.
>>
>> What gives you the idea that STAR is Clone Independent?   It 
>> obviously fails Clone-Loser.  Say the score winner pairwise loses to
>> the score runner-up. If we add a clone of the score-winner then the 
>> previous winner will be displaced out of the run-off.
>>
>> One of the silly things about it is that all the major factions will 
>> have incentive to field two candidates (in the hope of capturing
>> both run-off spots).
>>
>> Chris Benham
>>
>> https://www.starvoting.org/ <https://www.starvoting.org/>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2023 17:19:15 -0700
>>> From: Forest Simmons<forest.simmons21 at gmail.com>  <mailto:forest.simmons21 at gmail.com>
>>> To: EM<Election-methods at lists.electorama.com>  <mailto:Election-methods at lists.electorama.com>
>>> Subject: [EM] STAR
>>> Message-ID:
>>> 	<CANUDvfoOeBgZAgWiKPFG+UU0fcoDi771ZHHRTmkCEzVx-mLVyQ at mail.gmail.com>  <mailto:CANUDvfoOeBgZAgWiKPFG+UU0fcoDi771ZHHRTmkCEzVx-mLVyQ at mail.gmail.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>
>>> Score Then Automatic Runoff (STAR) elects the pairwise winner between the
>>> two candidates with the highest score totals.
>>>
>>> One of the biggest problems with this method is that there is an
>>> appreciable likelihood that the winner W will be a candidate that is
>>> pairwise dominated by some other candidate C, which means that C not only
>>> scores higher than W on more ballots than not, but if there even exists  a
>>> beatpath from W back to C, it will take at least three steps.
>>>
>>> Most other extant methods have this same defect, but almost all of them are
>>> hard to fix compared to STAR. This fact makes it easy for a tweaked version
>>> of STAR to become arguably superior to any of these other methods.
>>>
>>> 1. Initialize a set S of candidates with the STAR winner.
>>> 2. If any candidate pairwise dominates the newest member of S, from among
>>> such candidates add in to S the one with the highest score.
>>> 3. Repeat step 2 until the set S cannot be enlarged any further in this way.
>>> 4. Elect the last candidate to be added to the set.
>>>
>>> Usually step 2 will be invoked only one or two times if at all ... so this
>>> is not a big tweak.
>>>
>>> With this tweak STAR becomes arguably superior to any method currently in
>>> use.
>>>
>>> The only other method currently in use that always elects pairwise
>>> undominated candidates is Copeland.  But Copeland suffers from two fatal
>>> defect that STAR does not have ... Copeland is neither Decisive nor Clone
>>> Independent.
>>>
>>> Will STAR proponents take advantage of this opportunity? ... or will they
>>> pass it up?
>>>
>>> fws
>>
>
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