[EM] Poll, preliminary ballots

[Richard, the VoteFair guy]

Chris B., thanks for your questions!  Here are my answers:

On 4/17/2024 11:58 PM, Chris Benham wrote:
 > I have trouble understanding the motivation behind "RCIPE". ...

RCIPE -- Ranked Choice Including Pairwise Elimination -- is a compromise 
method.

It inherits lots of the cloneproofness of IRV because that's the backup 
elimination process when an elimination round does not have a pairwise 
losing candidate.

The elimination of pairwise losing candidates causes RCIPE to seldom 
fail the Condorcet criterion and other "majority" criteria.  It took 
some head scratching to discover a case in which RCIPE fails the 
Condorcet criterion.  (As I recall Kristofer gets credit for finding 
such a case.)

Chris B., all of your concerns seem to be about the "pass" or "fail" 
categorization of methods.

I regard HOW OFTEN failures occur to be much more important than a 
checkbox that says "yes" or "no" failures of this kind NEVER occur.

Visually this perspective is conveyed by measuring failure rates:

http://www.votefair.org/clone_iia_success_rates.png

About this graph: Under the simulation conditions of these measurements 
the RCIPE method has zero clone failures.  In real elections there can 
be a few clone failures compared to IRV.  Those few failures don't 
concern me.

It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED 
failure types.  Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored!

For example, clone failures and Local IIA failures are just two 
categories within the broad category of IIA failures.

This is why I presume the Schulze method fails the various unnamed IIA 
criteria in order to have zero clone failures.

Just because those increased kinds of failures don't have names doesn't 
mean they should be ignored!

 > I find this all very odd, and I'm not sure what you are "buying" in 
comparison with plain Hare (aka IRV).

The payoff is that RCIPE would not have failed in Burlington and Alaska! 
  That's huge.

Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by 
advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.

Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes." 
RCIPE counts them correctly.  That could become a huge deal in the 
upcoming Portland election for mayor -- where two or more marks in the 
same "choice" column will be ignored as if those marks were not on the 
ballot.  If the race is close, that counting error could cause the wrong 
candidate to win.  (This counting error is less likely to affect STV 
election results for Portland city council members because winning the 
second seat instead of the first seat is not a big deal.)

Clarification: I regard IRV as a steppingstone to RCIPE, so I have 
supported adopting IRV here in Oregon.  I dislike the misrepresentations 
that come from the FairVote organization, but I'm not using that 
organization's flaws as reasons to fully reject IRV.  (We have to crawl 
and walk before we can run.)

 > Why do you think that RP(wv) and Schulze are significantly different 
from each other?

Schulze is much more difficult to understand.  That's important in this 
poll which is supposed to be about what can be adopted for use in real, 
governmental elections.

 > And why do you think that MinMax(wv) is better than either?  Doesn't 
it fail Smith and Clone Independence?

See above about my lack of concern about the difference between "never" 
and "almost never."

 > Why do you think Woodall is better than Benham?
 > What is the (or your) definition of "Schwartz-Woodall"?
 > And what do you think is the positive point of it compared with plain 
Woodall?

I don't recall what I was thinking during every detail of my ranking 
process.

Broadly my thinking is:

* I'm a big fan of pairwise vote counting.

* I recognize that IRV's flaw is that the candidate with the fewest 
transferred votes is not always the least popular -- as demonstrated in 
Burlington and Alaska.

* I dislike Borda being any part of a method because it requires honest 
voting to yield fair results.  (Honestly, honesty doesn't happen in 
elections.)

* Approval voting requires tactical voting.  There's no way to avoid it. 
  I know that Approval fans disagree.  Yet I assure them that when I 
have to make a decision between approval and disapproval I have to do 
the equivalent of mentally flipping a coin.

* I strongly dislike score/rating ballots for single-winner methods 
because they are vulnerable to tactical voting.  Specifically, it's 
impossible to know whether a ballot is from a person with strong 
religious beliefs or a person who is acting like a "drama queen" (or 
whatever the modern name is for this concept).  This tactical 
vulnerability is important in single-winner elections.

* I do agree that score/rating ballots could be useful in multi-winner 
elections where strength of preference is worthy of being considered 
when there are interactions between who wins each seat.  But this poll 
isn't about multi-winner elections.  And governmental elections need to 
adopt single-winner methods first.  Only later will voters and 
legislators be ready to begin learning subtle concepts such as 
interactions between seat winners.

* STAR ballots are a dead-end ballot type.  (Always six columns, even 
when there are three or four candidates.  And always with the star icon, 
no thanks!)

Again, thank you Chris for your questions.

Richard Fobes
The VoteFair guy


On 4/17/2024 11:58 PM, Chris Benham wrote:
> Richard,
> 
> I have a few questions and comments on your ballot with accompanying 
> remarks.
> 
> I have trouble understanding the motivation behind "RCIPE".   It seems 
> to me that it must
> elect the Condorcet winner unless, initially or after one or more 
> eliminations, there is a bottom
> cycle (and thus no Condorcet Loser) in which case it is possible that 
> the Condorcet winner will
> have the fewest top-choice votes and be eliminated.
> 
> And that is why it fails Clone-Loser, because the candidates in the 
> bottom cycle cycle could be a
> set of clones and if they were replaced with a single candidate then 
> there would be a Condorcet
> loser who would be eliminated instead of possibly the Condorcet winner.
> 
> I find this all very odd, and I'm not sure what you are"buying" in 
> comparison with plain Hare (aka IRV).
> 
> Unlike RCIPE, it meets Clone Independence and Later-no-Help and 
> Later-no-Harm and already meets
> Condorcet Loser.  So you are trashing quite a bit just to get a bit more 
> "Condorcet efficiency".
> 
> Why do you think that RP(wv) and Schulze are significantly different 
> from each other?  There needs
> to be more than 3 candidates in the top cycle (aka Smith set) for them 
> to give different winners and
> I gather that even in that very rare circumstance they usually give the 
> same winner.
> 
> And why do you think that MinMax(wv) is better than either? Doesn't it 
> fail Smith and Clone Independence?
> 
> Why do you think Woodall is better than Benham?
> 
> What is the (or your) definition of "Schwartz-Woodall" ?    And what do 
> you think is the positive point of it
> compared with plain Woodall?
> 
> Chris B.
> 
>>
>>
>> *Richard, the VoteFair guy*electionmethods at votefair.org 
>> <mailto:election-methods%40lists.electorama.com?Subject=Re%3A%20%5BEM%5D%20Poll%2C%20preliminary%20ballots&In-Reply-To=%3Cbd743764-f4e7-4002-ad13-afe480551977%40votefair.org%3E>
>> /Wed Apr 17 17:30:03 PDT 2024/
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Poll ballot from Richard Fobes, the VoteFair guy
>>
>> Preliminary as of 2024-April-17
>>
>> Notation:
>> "..." indicates a rating gap
>> [??] indicates haven't yet seen its description so rank is approximate
>>
>>
>> 1. RCIPE -- [simple, almost Condorcet, almost cloneproof]
>> 2. MinMax(wv) -- [best of Condorcet methods]
>> 3. RP(wv) -- [doesn't look deep enough into pairwise preferences]
>> 4. Woodall --  [good, Smith plus IRV]
>> ...
>> 5. Schwartz-Woodall -- [Woodall but harder to explain]
>> 6. Baldwin -- [Borda version of IRV, requires honesty]
>> 7. Copeland//Borda (also called Ranked Robin) -- [simple, requires
>> honest voting]
>> 8. Black -- [Condorcet else Borda, good but tactical vulnerability]
>> 9. Benham -- [same weakness as IRV]
>> 10. Schulze -- [complex, increases other IIA failures to get zero clone
>> failures]
>> 11. Smith//Score -- [requires honesty]
>> ...
>> 12. Gross Loser Elimination -- [??]
>> 13. Max Strength Transitive Beatpath -- [??]
>> 14. Margins-Sorted Minimum Losing Votes (equal-rated whole) -- [??]
>> 15. Smith//DAC -- [complexity without significant advantage]
>> 16. Double Defeat, Hare -- [??]
>> ...
>> 17. IRV -- ["overvotes" ignored, lowest count not always least popular,
>> correct ballot type]
>> 18. Majority Judgement -- [clever, requires honesty, wrong ballot type]
>> 19. STAR -- [vulnerable to nomination and voting tactics, dead-end
>> ballot type]
>> ...
>> 20. Approval -- [great for friends, ok for primaries, tactical
>> vulnerabilities]
>> ...
>> 21. Margins-Sorted Approval -- [??]
>> 22. Smith//Approval (explicit) -- [complexity without significant advantage]
>> 23. Smith//Approval (implicit) -- [cannot rank most-disliked below disliked]
>> ...
>> 24. Plurality -- [we are here]
>> ...
>> 25. Approval with manual runoff -- [two choices in "runoff" is too few!!!]
>