[EM] Hey guys, look at this...

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

On 2/19/23 16:36, Colin Champion wrote:
> "Politicians and the voting public would not accept anything more 
> complicated than X" is my own favourite line of argument - but I 
> substitute my own value for X(minimax). I know that my judgement is 
> coloured by my preferences. There's a surprising degree of dissent over 
> which methods are simpler than which, and where the boundary should be 
> drawn. People who deal directly with politicians and the voting public 
> can no doubt get closer to the truth than people whose interest is 
> predominantly theoretical, but I wish there was an authoritative and 
> objective source of information. If only some behavioural psychologist 
> was funded to investigate the question...
> 
> To be finicky, the issue isn't exactly one of simplicity but rather one 
> of psychological acceptability, which includes the notions of whether a 
> method "makes sense" to the average onlooker, and whether it is seen as 
> conferring legitimacy on its winner rather than being an unmotivated 
> piece of jiggery pokery.
> 
> Notwithstanding all this... you and Robert may well be right.

FWIW, I suspect the complexity people are willing to accept depends on 
their trust in the political process in general. For instance, some 
local New Zealand elections use Meek's method, which is complex however 
you put it.[1] And I wouldn't be prepared to explain the pretty messy 
greedy algorithm used to allocate party list top-up seats here (in 
Norway), but people seem to accept it.[2]

I don't think Robert could use minmax because the criterion he's using 
is "if more people prefer X to Y than vice versa, then Y is not 
elected". That seems to imply at least Condorcet loser. I'm not sure, 
though -- if you're particularly critical, you could even say it implies 
Smith, but I don't think Robert had that in mind.

-km

[1] I wonder what the legal language for *that* is... it's basically 
impossible to do by hand.
[2] IMHO, biproportional apportionment is *much* simpler. I suspect 
what's keeping it from being changed is mostl inertia.