[EM] Hare (aka IRV) versus STAR

Wed Apr 10 22:55:31 PDT 2024

You’re right—The runoff messes up STAR’s strategy with unacceptable
candidates too.

But IRV shares the problem. I most non-wv Condorcet have it too, if there
might be successful burial (& there might easily be undeterred burial with
most non wv Condorcet.)

So it isn’t a problem of only STAR.

…& the ranked-methods have their completely prohibitive count-fraud
vulnerability problem, due to their complex count.

So I ranked STAR over the ranked methods.

Different topic: In a different post, you said that Approval tend to favor
centrists. FairVote says that, but it isn’t true.

In this country, Centrist are candidates between the Democrat & the
Republican. But Approval favors the voter-median.

The Democrats & Republicans are a very, very  long way from the
voter-median, which is Progressive.

As I keep saying, Approval’s Myerson-Weber equilibrium is at the
voter-median. Approval will soon home-in on the CW.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 19:59 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au> wrote:

> IRV? Try to rank the acceptables in order of winnability. …trying & hoping
> to match the ranking-order of the other preferrers of some of your
> acceptables.
>
>
> It sounds like you are talking about a situation where there are no known
> clear front-runners
>

If we knew who the frontrunners are, VF1 (Vote-For-1, Plurality) would work
fine.

>
and the supporters of the candidates you deem acceptable don't
> fully agree with you about which candidates are acceptable and which are
> not.
>
> Because if they do agree with you then they will all just vote the same
> set of acceptable candidates above all the others
>

If all progressives had that kind of information, which candidate to
combine on, then VF1 would work fine.

But yes, IRV & VF1 are alike in that way, sharing the same problem
(admittedly worse in VF1.).

But who wants that problem? …especially when paying the price of a complex
count & its consequences.

and benefit from the method's compliance with
> Clone-Winner.  And if there are known front-runners and you insist on
> voting super-safe then  I suppose you can top-rank the same Compromise
> candidate you
> would in FPP.
>

Exactly ! Favorite-burial defensive-strategy, in both methods.

>
>
> Not a big burden to lose sleep over and nothing like the STAR nightmare.
> Overall the strategic risk of voting sincerely in Hare is much lower.
>
> Star’s runoff brings big strategy-problems, as do many other methods,
including IRV & margins Condorcet, etc.

But at least it doesn’t share ranked-methods’ prohibitive count-fraud
insecurity & vulnerability.

You know…the lesser of two evils. Well, I don’t choose evils, & I don’t
propose STAR. But I ranked it over the ranked-methods, in our poll, in
which I’ve just now voted.

I wouldn’t propose a ranked method unless a jurisdiction insisted on one.
I’d then offer RP(wv), or maybe MinMax(wv), if they wanted something even
simpler than RP.

>
>
> Michael
>
> On 11/04/2024 10:56 am, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 18:04 Chris Benham <cbenhamau at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Michael wrote:
>>
>> But STAR is better than Hare because:
>>
>> It retains some amount Score’s merit.
>>
>>
>> No it doesn't.   Score meets Favorite Betrayal and Participation.  STAR
>> trashes those just for Condorcet Loser.
>>
>
> I said “some”, not “all”.
>
> e.g. If there are unacceptable candidates, then just give max to the
> acceptables, & zero to the unacceptables.
>
> IRV? Try to rank the acceptables in order of winnability. …trying & hoping
> to match the ranking-order of the other preferrers of some of your
> acceptables.
>
> Questionable guesswork. An intractable strategic morass.
>
>
>
>>
>> I could even make up a new criterion just to encapsulate the horror of
>> STAR.
>>
>> The Favourite Ultra-Betrayal Criterion:
>>
>> *Voters should never have any strategic incentive to vote their sincere
>> favourite as low as possible*.
>>
>
> Yes,, & isn’t that true with *any* runoff? It occurred to me too, I don’t
> like it. I much prefer Score to STAR.  … completely reject runoff with
> Approval.  …unless a jurisdiction insists on it.
>
> I much prefer Approval to Score,  for minimalness & unarbitrariness.
>
>>
>> Hare should be much easier to sell to anyone with any intelligence or
>> common sense because STAR is obviously
>> so silly and arbitrary.
>>
>
> See above.
>
>>
>>
>> Where as Hare just seeks to replace the Single Non-Transferable Vote with
>> the Single Transferable Vote, keeping compliance
>> with Plurality, Dominant Candidate, Clone-Loser, Later-no-Harm and
>> Later-no-Help but losing Participation and Mono-Raise to gain
>> Dominant Coalition (and therefore Majority for Solid Coalitions) and
>> Dominant Mutual Third and Clone-Winner.
>>
>> It has what Woodall referred to as a "maximal set of properties".  It's
>> ok not to like it if you are a fundamentalist about some criterion
>> compliance it doesn't have (like Condorcet or FBC) but not to suggest
>> that complete garbage like STAR is in some way preferable.
>>
>>
>>
>> Chris Benham
>>
>>
>> On 11/04/2024 5:04 am, Michael Ossipoff wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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