[EM] Hare (aka IRV) versus STAR

Fri Apr 12 11:25:11 PDT 2024

Also worth noting STAR is good because it makes strategy require
more-than-zero thinking. Anyone with a pulse can figure out the best
strategy for score within 5 seconds, but the strategy for STAR isn't
immediately obvious, so people fall back on giving their honest
preferences. (For example, in Alaska Republicans failed to work out their
best strategic vote was Begich > Palin >Peltola.)

The biggest issue with score is that the drop-dead obviousness of the
strategy (despite being a good thing) turns most people off the idea.
People who hear about IRV and then later learn about score think that score
sounds just a little bit *too* simple. There must be something wrong with
it. Example here, where someone says they'd vote Score < IRV < STAR
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFqV2OtJOOg>... somehow?

Also, the name is cool
<https://bternarytau.github.io/2022/04/01/why-i-like-star-voting-branding>.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 1:55 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:

> Chris: by "more accurate" I meant higher Condorcet-efficiency (although
> personally I prefer Score or utilitarian winners to Condorcet winners).
>
> You're completely correct that STAR's criterion compliance is abysmal. All
> of these would be huge problems if STAR were a traditional method and would
> lead me to scrap it. But STAR's not supposed to be a traditional method;
> the goal is just to add more choice to score. The reason STAR is better
> than Hare in practice is because:
> 1. Cloning every candidate turns STAR into score.
> 2. The optimal strategy for STAR is to always nominate candidates in pairs
> (to make sure both runoff slots are locked-up).
>
> As an example, I'd much prefer a situation where Biden had a Democratic
> opponent listed separately on the ballot that I could rate higher. Right
> now, I'm not happy with any of the candidates in the race; on a simple
> left-right scale I'm close to Biden, but I'm not exactly enthusiastic about
> an 82-year old president. (Though I'm sure as hell not supporting any other
> candidate in the race...) With STAR, every voter has at least two
> candidates they consider tolerable.
>
> I think of STAR as just reversing the primary-then-general order: we have
> a general election to choose the best party (the score round), and then a
> "primary" where we pick the best nominee by a simple majority.
>
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2024 at 12:36 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
> 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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