[EM] Poll, preliminary ballots

[Closed Limelike Curves]

>
> Condorcet methods require explaining pairwise comparisons between every
> candidate and every other candidate.  That's a significant disadvantage
> for voter education.  And voter understanding.  And voter trust.


In contrast, I have never heard anyone claim that a pairwise losing

candidate doesn't deserve to be eliminated.

Isn't that describing pairwise-comparison?

I don't think pairwise-comparison methods are complicated. In fact, they're
mostly simple. The problem is that the people who keep explaining are
computer scientists who care more about explaining their fastest
algorithmic implementation than about properly communicating what's going
on.

Even *Schulze* isn't that complicated compared to IRV. Here's
<https://democracychronicles.org/schulze-questioning-a-popular-ranked-voting-system/>
a
lightly-edited description from @Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com> (I
rename "beatpaths" to "vote-chains" to let me use a common aphorism).
Imagine if Schulze described his method like this when he first proposed it:

> I'd like to propose a voting method I call the *weakest link* *method*. It's
> based on the idea of allowing candidates to count *indirect wins*. In
> other words, if a candidate Alice beats Bob, and Bob beats Charlie, then
> Alice is thought of as having "indirectly" beaten Charlie. Here's how I
> define this:

1. If X beats Y, then the strength of that victory is measured by the
> number of voters ranking X over Y.
> 2. Candidates are allowed to beat each other indirectly, too. We say X has
> an indirect win, or* votechain-win*, going to Y if either most people
> rank X over Y, or if X beats someone with a votechain to Y.
> 3. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So, the strength of a
> votechain is the strength of the weakest victory in that votechain.

4. If there is a stronger votechain from X to Y, than from Y to X, then X
> has a votechain-win over Y.
> 5. The winner is the candidate with a votechain-win over everyone else.
>


Sincerely,
>
Markus Schulze with better communication skills


It's... really not that complicated to understand. Now, let's take a look
at how it's explained on Wikipedia:
[image: image.png]
Two words in and we're already using LaTeX and at least three different
one-letter variable names. All hope of reaching the average person has been
lost. The problem isn't with the methods, it's with all of these methods
being written as though they were mathematical papers rather than being
intended for the public.

Tongue-in-cheek proposal: anyone on this mailing list who's gotten into
arguments about winning votes vs. margins, whether cardinal methods *really*
satisfy IIA because some people normalize their ballots, etc. is hereby
disqualified from talking to any normal person (on pain of causing more
damage to the public's understanding of voting methods).

On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 11:29 AM Richard, the VoteFair guy <
electionmethods at votefair.org> wrote:

> On 4/18/2024 12:32 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> >
> >  > The payoff is that RCIPE would not have failed in Burlington and
> Alaska!
> >>  That's huge.
> >
> > Any Condorcet method would have that huge payoff.  What "huge" benefit
> > does RCIPE have that a simpler Condorcet method doesn't have?
> >
> > Like Condorcet-Plurality or Condorcet-TTR?
> >
> > Or MinMax?
>
> Condorcet methods require explaining pairwise comparisons between every
> candidate and every other candidate.  That's a significant disadvantage
> for voter education.  And voter understanding.  And voter trust.
>
> In contrast, I have never heard anyone claim that a pairwise losing
> candidate doesn't deserve to be eliminated.
>
> Regarding the simplicity advantage, the RCIPE (Ranked Choice Including
> Pairwise Elimination) method only needs two simple sentences added to a
> well-written IRV law:
>
> "Pairwise losing candidates are eliminated when they occur.  A pairwise
> losing candidate is a candidate who would lose every one-on-one contest
> against every other remaining candidate."
>
> Robert, I know you strongly dislike the misrepresentations from the
> FairVote organization.  I too dislike those misrepresentations.  (I've
> been hearing them for the three decades since I got the VoteFair domain
> name.)
>
> Yet I do not share your opinion that those misrepresentations justify
> your low opinion of IRV as being worse than plurality (if I recall your
> poll ballot correctly).
>
> Specifically, unlike you/Robert, I see value in these aspects of IRV:
>
> * Uses ranked choice ballots (like Condorcet methods, unlike score,
> unlike Star, unlike Approval)
>
> * Eliminating one candidate at a time can work well if the eliminated
> candidate is really the least popular candidate during that counting round.
>
> * When a counting round does not include a pairwise losing candidate,
> eliminating the IRV-based fewest-transferred-votes candidate is a
> reasonable cycle-resolution method.  In particular it's cloneproof, but
> without the complexity of the Schulze method.
>
> So in my opinion, adding the elimination of pairwise losing candidates
> elevates the resulting method, RCIPE, to the top of my poll ballot.
>
> It offers both math advantages and
> easy-for-voters-to-understand-and-trust advantages.
>
> In contrast, most voters don't trust starting with the idea of creating
> a full pairwise counting matrix and then looking for a candidate who
> wins every one of their pairwise contests.  That's why Condorcet methods
> have been so easy for FairVote and other organizations to criticize and
> dismiss.  And why it's so difficult for us math-savvy experts to explain
> to non-math folks.
>
> As I indicated in my poll ballot, RCIPE is "simple, almost Condorcet,
> almost cloneproof."
>
> Richard Fobes
> The VoteFair guy
>
>
> On 4/18/2024 12:32 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>  > ... [see above]
> >
> > I'm not sure it's agreed or wisely assumed that this poll is about the
> > most preferable method for public, governmental election (where the
> > stakes are high and voter s have a partisan interest to maximize their
> > own political interests), but I'm sorta assuming that.
> >
> > Then when choosing a method to promote, the actual correctness and
> > fairness of the method is paramount.
> >
> > Then the *perception* of fairness of the method by the public and by
> > policy makers is important.  To satisfy that concern, the method needs
> > to be clear and understandable to the public and to policy makers.  This
> > is necessary to get legislation passed.
> >
> > Hare RCV may have a simpler procedure, the Single Transferable Vote, but
> > it doesn't have a simple *principle* of ethic that it's actually
> > faithful to.  Its ethic is its procedure, the STV, essentially saying
> > "This is the right thing to do since this is what we're doing and this
> > is always we had done it.". But that's no justification.  It's circular.
> >
> > Condorcet is based primarily on the principle of "One-Person-One-Vote",
> > that our votes must count equally.  No enfranchised voter deserves to
> > have their vote count less than some other enfranchised voter.
> >
> > But that means Majority Rule must apply (I don't mean the "majority
> > criterion").  This means that, at the end of the day, if more voters
> > prefer A to B, then B is not elected.  If B is elected, then the fewer
> > voters who preferred B had cast votes that were more effective than
> > those larger number of voters preferring A.
> >
> > IRV is not committed to that simple ethic, whereas Condorcet is
> > committed to it.  This is essentially the Condorcet criterion.
> >
> > So then the secondary concern would be public perception as well as that
> > of policy makers.  These secondary concerns are the only concerns that
> > differentiate Condorcet methods.  It's about how to justify to people
> > why the CW is the right choice to elect.  And what rationale there
> > exists for the rare event electing someone when the CW does not exist.
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
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