[EM] Legacy IRV limitations

Sun Dec 17 04:32:55 PST 2023

But it should be emphasized that though arguably people should have an
Approval topcount, using equal ranking isn’t as important in STE as
approving more than 1 in Approval.

It might be felt advantageous & preferable to rank in preference-order
instead of using the equal-ranking—unless you’re really indifferent among 2
or more candidates.

…having a shot at electing the one you like better.

STE’s basis of Favoriteness, Mutuality, reciprocity & solidarity.

…electing the candidate favorite to the most people in the mutual-majority.

On Sun, Dec 17, 2023 at 04:09 Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> First, I suggest a better name for IRV/RCV:
>
> Better name, definition, & equal-ranking rule:
>
> Name:
>
> Successive Topcount Elimination (STE).
>
> Definition:
>
> Repeatedly eliminate the candidate who tops fewest ballots, till someone
> tops most of them.
>
> Equal Ranking Rule:
>
> Who say that the topcount can’t be by Approval instead of Vote-For-1 (VF1)?
>
> You have 2 favorites, so you have to give them each only half support?
> That’s an unnecessary & inappropriate carryover from VF1.
>
> On Sat, Dec 16, 2023 at 17:35 Richard, the VoteFair guy <
> electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:
>
>> On 12/16/2023 6:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>  > On 2023-12-16 13:44, C.Benham wrote:
>>  >> Why do at least several US Americans here think there is something
>>  >> problematic and/or weird about allowing both quite
>>  >> a large number of candidates on the ballot and voters to strictly rank
>>  >> exactly as many of them as they wish?
>>  >
>>  > I guess it's partly that some US locations do this de facto anyway
>> (e.g.
>>  > some places using IRV only lets the voters rank three candidates). And
>> I
>>  > *think* that's due to legacy hardware? Optical scan machines that can
>>  > only read bubbles, and mechanical ones that can only read a certain
>>  > number of holes.
>>
>> One reason for limiting ranking to just 3 "choice" levels is the issue
>> of "ballot real estate."  Specifically, more choice levels take up more
>> ballot space.  That's a big issue in U.S. elections where there are so
>> many election contests.
>>
>> Otherwise, when there are more than 3 candidates, the number of choice
>> columns interacts with the issue of "overvotes."
>>
>> It's the FairVote organization that promotes the myth that IRV cannot
>> handle "overvotes."
>>
>> Apparently FairVote does this to allow using old data from Australian
>> elections to certify new or revised IRV software.
>>
>> Australia previously, before machine counting of ballots became
>> available, counted their ranked-choice paper ballots manually, by
>> stacking ballots in piles.  (That's what I've read.)
>>
>> To speed up that manual counting, apparently Australia adopted the
>> shortcut of stacking ballots according to which candidate is highest
>> ranked after removing eliminated candidates.
>>
>> That shortcut means that during each counting round only a single stack
>> of ballots needs to be looked at, and sorted, based on which candidate
>> has become the newly highest-ranked candidate (after the latest
>> elimination).
>>
>> An important part of this shortcut is to reject/dismiss/ignore any
>> ballot when there is no longer just one highest-ranked candidate.
>> That's probably when the term "overvote" appeared.
>>
>> In turn, this is why FairVote promotes the myth that when there are only
>> three "choice" columns each choice column can have only one mark.
>>
>> If there are only three choice columns and a voter wants to indicate
>> that one particular candidate is worse than all other candidates, and
>> there are 5 or more candidates, all but the most-disliked candidate need
>> to be ranked at choice levels "first," "second," and "third."
>>
>> Now that election officials in the United States and Australia count
>> paper ballots using machines that read ballots, it's time to at least
>> question this legacy limitation of not allowing "overvotes."  And
>> hopefully we can soon abandon this legacy limitation.
>>
>> For clarification, in Australia a voter writes a number inside a box
>> located next to each candidate's name.  Software can recognize those
>> handwritten numbers as reliably as a person, yet much faster.  When
>> there is uncertainty a photographic image of the ballot can be displayed
>> on multiple computer screens for verification from several humans.
>>
>> This limitation of not ranking more than one candidate at the same
>> choice level is due to a lack of ballot data (including results) against
>> which new software can be verified.
>>
>> It's time to end this ridiculous limitation.
>>
>> Part of my frustration comes from the fact that Portland Oregon recently
>> adopted counting rules that are even worse than just ignoring ballots
>> with "overvotes."
>>
>> With "advice" from the FairVote-controlled "Ranked Choice Voting
>> Resource Center" the Portland election officials chose to skip over
>> overvotes instead of dismissing the remainder of the ballot.
>>
>> This means a voter who ranks candidates A and B as their "second choice"
>> and candidate C as their "third choice" will get their ballot counted as
>> support for candidate C even if candidates A and B have not been
>> eliminated.  Yet ranking candidate C higher than A and B is exactly the
>> opposite(!) of what the voter clearly intended!
>>
>> As a reminder there is a simple way to correctly count such "overvotes."
>>   Just pair up the ballot with equivalent similar ballots during that
>> counting round.  Specifically, if two ballots rank candidates A and B as
>> equally preferred, one of those ballots goes to support candidate A and
>> the other ballot goes to support candidate B (during this counting round).
>>
>> Now that we have machines and software to handle the correct counting of
>> "overvotes," this extra "effort" does not impose any significant delay,
>> or any significant increase in electricity to power the computer for a
>> few extra milliseconds.  It does require extra effort from the
>> programmer who writes the code, but that just involves extra effort from
>> one person for a few hours.  (And if they don't know how to write that
>> code they can copy from open-source software that correctly does this
>> counting.)
>>
>> To repeat, the only reason for the legacy of dismissing "overvotes" is
>> that we lack certified ballot data against which to certify upgraded
>> software.
>>
>> Allowing overvotes will make it possible to meaningfully rank more than
>> 6 candidates using only 5 or 6 choice columns.
>>
>> (A complication is whether an unranked candidate is ranked at the bottom
>> printed choice level, or lower than all ranked candidates.  And this
>> interacts with the complication of how to rank a candidate who is a
>> write-in candidate on someone else's ballot.)
>>
>> Limiting ranked choice ballots to 6 choice columns is reasonable, even
>> when the election contest has 10 or more candidates.  But doing so does
>> require correctly counting 2 or more candidates at the same "choice"
>> level.
>>
>> Richard Fobes
>> The VoteFair guy
>>
>>
>> On 12/16/2023 6:12 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>> > On 2023-12-16 13:44, C.Benham wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Why do at least several US Americans here think there is something
>> >> problematic and/or weird about allowing both quite
>> >> a large number of candidates on the ballot and voters to strictly rank
>> >> exactly as many of them as they wish?
>> >>
>> >
>> > I guess it's partly that some US locations do this de facto anyway
>> (e.g.
>> > some places using IRV only lets the voters rank three candidates). And
>> I
>> > *think* that's due to legacy hardware? Optical scan machines that can
>> > only read bubbles, and mechanical ones that can only read a certain
>> > number of holes.
>> >
>> > I'm not sure, though.
>> >
>> >> I prefer Smith//Condorcet, but accept that that is more complex to
>> >> explain and sell and probably the most approved candidate
>> >> will nearly always be in the voted Smith set.
>> >
>> > Do you mean Smith//Approval?
>> >
>> > -km
>> > ----
>> > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20231217/e9fc7ab0/attachment-0001.htm>