[EM] Hare (aka IRV) versus STAR

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2024 at 17:31 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

[quote]
Score is Approval with a  "I wish to weaken the effect of my vote for the
sake of being more sincere/expressive" box/button.
[/quote]

If that’s how you want to vote in Score, then suit yourself.

The right use of Score:

Use only min & max ratings. i.e. Use Score as Approval.

…with the difference that, when it’s uncertain whether or not a candidate
deserves approval, you can give hir partial approval, by an intermediate
point-rating.

Nice, sometimes convenient, because, otherwise, the only way to give
someone partial approval would be probabilistically.

But Score loses Approval’s absolute minimalness, & unique unarbitrariness.

Much better to let the voters deal with such things for themselves with the
absolutely minimal handtool, than to use some arbitrary & (somewhat or
greatly) complicated definition, rule & count. …with the consequent expense
& count-fraud vulnerability.

So it is strategically equivalent to Approval while being more complicated
> and less fair.
>
More complicated, yes.

I strongly oppose a runoff for Approval, but some jurisdictions might
insist on one.

…likewise Score.

It’s true that it somewhat increases  Condorcet-efficiency & Social-Utility
(SU), but it brings great strategy-complication, including the loss of FBC
compliance.

But STAR is better than Hare because:

It retains some amount Score’s merit.

It’s much, much simpler than Hare, resulting in much better count-fraud
security.

It’s much less expensive to administer & implement than Hare.

It’s much simpler to describe its workings when proposing it.


>
> And Approval has a quite good reputation here because it meets Favorite
> Betrayal  (aka FBC) and compared with FPP the winner
> will strongly tend to have higher social utility and  be much more likely
> a sincere Condorcet winner.  Also, and not unrelatedly,
> it has a bias toward centrists that some people think is wonderful.
>
> But some people seem to think that adding a Top-Two Runoff (automated in
> the case of STAR) to Score (to make STAR) is just
> a harmless little gimmick that just makes the method "a bit more
> accurate", brings it into compliance with Condorcet Loser
> and so must make it more "Condorcet efficient".   ("Sky-high" according to
> CLC here).
>
> But actually it makes the method profoundly different and very bad. It
> seems to me that the inventors of STAR must have been
> motivated by three priorities:
>
> (1) the method isn't  Hare,
>
> (2) the method, in a purely technical and completely useless way,
> apparently meets Mono-raise (aka Monotonicity).
>
> (3) subject to being saleable to and understood by  not-so-deep thinkers,
> the method be as bad as possible.
>
> From the "equal-vote" website:    https://www.equal.vote/
>
> Ranked Choice Voting, where voters rank candidates in order of preference
> has been lauded as a solution, but in elections where the third candidate
> is actually competitive, vote-splitting remains a serious issue
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU&t=169s> and RCV only offers
> a marginal improvement compared to a primary and  general election with
> Choose-One Plurality voting.
>
> Luckily, many voting methods are can effectively prevent vote-splitting.
> As it turns out, when voters can weigh in on each candidate individually,
> when all ballot data is counted, and when voters are able to show equal
> preference, vote-splitting can be eliminated. All voting methods which do
> this pass the Equal Vote Criterion
> <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Equal_Vote_Criterion>, including STAR Voting
> <https://www.starvoting.us/star>,...
>
>
> The "Equal Vote Criterion" is just  propaganda nonsense:
> https://electowiki.org/wiki/Equal_Vote_Criterion
>
> The Equal Vote Criterion or Equality Criterion
> <https://www.equal.vote/theequalvote> is a voting method criterion
> <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Voting_system_criterion> which requires that
> a voting method ensure that every voter may cast a vote which is as
> powerful as a vote cast by any other voter. Voting methods which pass the
> Equal Vote Criterion do not exhibit vote-splitting
> <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Vote-splitting> or the "Spoiler Effect,"
> ensuring that every vote can cast an equally weighted vote
> <https://electowiki.org/wiki/Equally_Weighted_Vote>.
>
> Choose-One Plurality Voting (First Past the Post) and Instant Runoff
> Voting (often referred to as Ranked Choice Voting) do not satisfy the Equal
> Vote Criterion.
>
>
> This is just dishonest blather. If anything meets this very vague and
> confused "criterion" IRV (aka Hare) certainly does.
>
> The classic scenario that motivated some people get negative about Hare
> (and also methods like Min-Max Margins):
>
> 49 Bush
> 24 Gore
> 27 Nader>Gore
>
> Gore>Bush 51-49,   Bush>Nader 49-27, Nader>Gore 27-24.
>
> Hare eliminates Gore and elects Bush, so the Nader voters whose Gore> Bush
> preference was strong had incentive to use the Compromise
> strategy and vote Gore>Nader ("betraying" their sincere favourite).  If
> the method was Approval they could have approved both Nader and
> Gore, preventing the election of Bush without having to vote their sincere
> favorite below equal-top.
>
> But in this type of scenario STAR does no better than Hare. The Nader
> voters would have incentive to give Nader zero points.
>
> "Traditionally" Hare's  vulnerability to Push-over strategy has said to be
> a result of it's failure of Mono-raise.  But STAR is much more vulnerable
> to Push-over.
>
> Say you are sure that your favourite will make the final two. In that case
> then you have incentive to give every candidate that you are sure your
> favourite can beat 4 or 5 stars.  If 5 stars then you are relying on you
> favourite winning the runoff without your help, but if 4 stars then you
> might
> fail to get one of the predicted sure-loser turkeys into the final.
>
> In a Hare Push-over strategy scenario, the strategists rely on their
> favourite winning the runoff against their own votes, i.e. with their votes
> supporting
> the turkey against their favourite. This makes it much more risky (more
> likely to backfire) and difficult to coordinate than is the case with STAR.
>
> The equal-vote site has a link to a quite ok video on the Favorite
> Betrayal Criterion.  I find that weird and misleading, because STAR badly
> fails FBC.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtKAScORevQ
>
> From https://www.starvoting.org/
>
> Why STAR Voting?
>
> Voting reform is the keystone. A single cause with the potential to
> empower us to be more effective on every other issue we care about.
>
>    -
>
>    Honesty is the best strategy. Strategic voting is not incentivized.
>    <https://www.starvoting.org/strategic_voting>
>    -
>
>    Even if your favorite can’t win, your vote helps prevent your worst
>    case scenario. <https://www.starvoting.org/how_to_vote>
>    -
>
>    Highly accurate, no matter how many candidates/parties are in the race.
>    <https://www.starvoting.org/accuracy>
>
>
> I'm not sure exactly what "accurate" is supposed to mean, but I refute the
> suggestion that these claims are more true of STAR than they are of Hare.
>
> In the poll I will vote STAR below Hare and Approval and all the Condorcet
> methods.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
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