[EM] Poll, preliminary ballots

Richard, the VoteFair guy electionmethods at votefair.org
Sat Apr 20 16:46:38 PDT 2024


On 4/20/2024 1:12 PM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
 >> Why impose any strategic burden on the voter?
 > True, we should just have km be dictator and save them the trouble of
 > voting. ;)

OK, I should have included the word "extra" as follows:

Why impose any EXTRA strategic burden on the voter?

Richard Fobes

On 4/20/2024 1:12 PM, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:
> /> 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 <mailto: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 <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
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