[EM] Poll, preliminary ballots

[Closed Limelike Curves]

*> Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?*
True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
voting. ;)

On Sat, Apr 20, 2024 at 10:32 AM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:

> On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
>
>  > ... It is not garbage like STAR.
>  > ...
>  > ... STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
>  > vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
>
> Horrible, yes.  Garbage, no, because it's a clever way to improve
> single-winner score voting.  It's useful among friends when voting is
> not anonymous.  Or when "dishonest" exaggeration cannot be hidden.
>
>  > If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
>  > giving them names? ...
>
> Time and money.  Unlike two STAR promoters, the folks at FairVote, and
> academic professors, I'm not getting paid to promote or advance
> election-method reform.
>
>  >>   Approval voting requires tactical voting.  There's no way to avoid
> it.
>  > The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
>  > FPP.  ...
>
> Our goal is to rise way above plurality.  Accepting limitations of
> plurality is unnecessary.
>
> Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
>
>  >> Another difference from IRV is about what FairVote calls "overvotes."
>  >> RCIPE counts them correctly.  ...
>  > I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
>  > rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
>  > Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
>  > procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
>  > strategy.
>
> I and most voters want to be able to rank an evil candidate -- Gollum,
> Voldemoron, etc. -- below all other candidates.  Truncation means the
> evil candidate is as acceptable as other "bad" candidates.
>
> I've written code that correctly counts so-called "overvotes."  It's not
> a "complex procedure":
>
> https://github.com/cpsolver/VoteFair-ranking-cpp/blob/master/rcipe_stv.cpp
>
>  >> Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
>  >> advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
>  > I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
>  > don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
>  > lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
>  > somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
>  > "Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
>  > we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
>
> I'm bothered by the failures in Burlington and Alaska.  But those were
> not just Condorcet failures.  They also were IIA failures,
> center-squeeze failures, etc.
>
> I want fewer failures in real elections.  I don't care about convoluted
> scenarios that would never occur in a real election.
>
> Again, thank you for this useful discussion.  I appreciate that you
> really want to understand why I rank some methods better than others.
>
> Richard Fobes
> The VoteFair guy
>
>
>
> On 4/19/2024 1:15 AM, Chris Benham wrote:
> > Richard,
> >
> >> 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.
> > Given that voting methods are mostly simple and cut-and-dried and so
> > plenty of 100% guarantees that criterion failures NEVER occur are
> > available, I find the approach "Near enough is good enough! I am an
> > expert. I've done a computer simulation" to be suspicious and flaky.
> > That attitude can lead to people switching off their brains and
> > swallowing BS propaganda from say STAR advocates.
> >
> >> It's easy to overlook the many failures that do not fit within NAMED
> >> failure types.  Those unnamed kinds of failures are being ignored
> >
> > If there are "failure types" in need of names, what's stopping you from
> > giving them names?  Several of the voting methods criteria I uphold and
> > promote are ones I coined myself.
> >
> >> Avoiding any failures in REAL elections is what I'm "buying" by
> >> advocating RCIPE instead of IRV.
> > I'm still baffled as to why, if you don't like Condorcet failures, you
> > don't simply advocate a Condorcet method. How is the argument "Let's
> > lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that we can
> > somewhat more often elect the Condorcet winner" better than
> > "Let's lose strict compliance with several criteria met by IRV so that
> > we can ALWAYS elect the Condorcet winner"??
> >
> >> 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.
> > I think it is reasonable to treat ballots that (against the ballot
> > rules) equal-rank above bottom as though they truncated at that point.
> > Doing otherwise (as I think you advocate) without a quite complex
> > procedure I suggest makes the method a bit more vulnerable to Push-over
> > strategy.
> >
> >> 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.
> > IRV (properly implemented, with unrestricted strict ranking from the
> > top) doesn't have any "flaws". It simply fails some criteria that some
> > people like so that it can meet other criteria that some people like. As
> > Woodall put it, it has a "maximal set of properties".
> > It is not garbage like STAR.
> >
> >>   Approval voting requires tactical voting.  There's no way to avoid it.
> > The strategic burden on the voter is certainly no greater than with
> > FPP.  With FPP the best strategy is to vote for your favourite among the
> > candidates you think have a realistic chance of winning. With Approval
> > you just do the same thing and then also approve every candidate you
> > like as much or better. An alternative is the simple "surprise"
> > strategy: approve any given candidate X if you would be pleasantly
> > surprised if X won or unpleasantly surprised if X lost.
> >
> > It's a huge "bang-for-buck" improvement on FPP.  But I'm not a big fan
> > either.
> >
> >> * 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!)
> >
> > I find this objection to be  superficial and just about style.  A lot of
> > ok methods can be happily used with 6-slot ratings ballots, such as say
> > ABCDEF grading ballots. STAR is a horrible method that is very highly
> > vulnerable to both Compromise and Pushover.
> >
> > I welcome any comments you may have have about my poll favourite,
> > Approval Sorted Margins.  Or anything else related to my most recent
> ballot.
> >
> > Chris
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20240420/a7cb816a/attachment.htm>