[EM] "STAR voting..." paper by Wolk, Quinn & Ogren

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

There's a paper regarding STAR voting that was recently made "open access":
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-022-09389-3

I've only skimmed the paper, but it seems sensible at first glance.  Much
of what I got out of it is that most election-method criteria should be
viewed as spectra rather than cold black-and-white binary options.  It also
seems to do a pretty good job of pointing out many of the mathematical
problems with RCV/IRV that lead to unpredictable outcomes in close-ish
elections (which don't have to be that close to cause big problems).

I used to take a dogmatic black-and-white view of the Condorcet winner
criterion, and bought into the FUD from FairVote and others about approval
voting (including prolific members of this mailing list) about likely voter
behavior in approval elections.  Now that I've seen plenty of credible
simulations (from Yee et al) and spent some time explaining approval voting
to random activists in California (and elsewhere), and now that "approval
rating" has become solidly mainstream (thanks to FiveThirtyEight and
others), it's a lot easier for me to imagine how mainstream voters would
vote in big elections.  Since I have yet to see a credible simulation that
shows a difference between approval and Condorcet methods, I've been
pro-Approval.  I frequently give STAR advocates the benefit of the doubt,
since (intuitively) I'm reasonably sure that STAR would also be
indistinguishable from approval and Condorcet methods.

I'm not going to give the STAR folks a free pass, though, since they often
spread FUD about rating being much more intuitive than ranking, citing some
politically-naive pseudoscience.  Being anti-ranking is a very US-centric
view that ignores the electorate in many countries throughout the world
(and immigrants from those countries to the United States), who have likely
been taught about ranked ballots in civics classes in their youth, and may
have even voted in a few ranked-ballot elections and seen the results with
their own eyes.  STV is very good at proportionality when selecting
multiple seats.  Given the outsized influence that San Francisco has on
tech (and thus, American culture), and given San Francisco's use of ranked
ballots for nearly two decades, it is politically stupid for the STAR
voting crowd to position themselves as anti-ranking.  People move around in
the world (even people who typically vote for parties that would be
considered fringe-y "third parties" in the United States).  Olympic gold
medalists stand on "tier one" during the medal ceremony, not "tier five".
As aggravating as ranked ballots might be to STAR advocates, they need to
rejoin the worldwide political reality to not sound like idiots to many
people.

As far as I've read, this paper seems to avoid being the anti-ranking
screed that I've grown tired of from some STAR advocates, and takes a more
nuanced approach.  A huge problem with RCV/IRV (and for that matter, with
traditional Borda) is the disallowance of tied rankings.  Ranking isn't the
problem; trivial ballot spoilage is.  Summability is also a big problem,
though "summability" is probably more subjective than it sounds (see the
electowiki talk page discussion on the "Summability criterion" [1]).  The
paper seems to be more "pro-tie-ranking", which seems politically smarter.
When I vote in complicated elections with too many candidates, I like being
able to sort candidates into tiers ("yay", "okay, I guess", "nope"), and
I'm guessing I'm not unique in that regard.

Anyway, please give the paper a read, and let the list know what you
think!  I plan to give it a closer read when I get the chance, and I'd
certainly appreciate having some idea from all y'all about how much
attention the world should be giving this paper.

Rob
[1]:
https://electowiki.org/wiki/Talk:Summability_criterion#Why_isn't_IRV_considered_summable_for_electing_the_dog_catcher?
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