[EM] Third Parties and Kristofer

[steve bosworth]

Subject: [EM]Third Parties.
To: Kristofer Munsterhjelm and others. (km-elmet at munsterhjelm.no)
FROM: Stephen Bosworth (stevebosworth at hotmail.com<mailto:stevebosworth at hotmail.com>)
I want fully to understand the relevant new ideas you offered in your 7/30/2024 4:06 PM post. These ideas were especially prompted for me by your words and phrases extracted and copied immediately below the next paragraph.
Currently, the intuitions or possibilities your words suggest to me, once fully understood, might require either a rejection or a confirmation of the proportional voting method published in 2020 by my co-authors and myself [https://www.jpolrisk.com/legislatures-elected-by-evaluative-proportional-representation-epr-an-algorithm-v3/].
That article offers a full account of evaluative-proportional representation (EPR), including the algorithm for counting such an election. Additionaly and in the last section of this post, I’ve added a complementary and much shorter introduction to EPR . It explains, for example, how electing a seven-member city council using EPR ensures that every voter is most likely to see one of the elected candidates as representing them accurately. Every party, voter, minority, and majority of voters would be proportionally represented in the council exactly.
Of course, I look forward to receiving as much feedback as possible from you and from other EM contributors. In particular, I want to understand why your “VSE-like proportionality measure” either falsifies or supports my above paragraph’s last two sentences?
________________________________
Below: Key phrases extracted from: Kristofer’s Post Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2024 1:02 PM
Subject: Election-Methods Digest, Vol 240, Issue 25 (Third Parties)
1. Re: Third parties (Kristofer Munsterhjelm)
2. A VSE-like proportionality measure, or the start of one (Kristofer Munsterhjelm)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
…. because otherwise you could have a candidate who has an
opinion none of the voters happen to have….
…. perfect proportionality.
…. it would jumble together voters not ranking/rating
candidates in order, and disproportionality of the method itself….
…. the "zero opinion" problem is still real…

Empirically speaking, maybe one could get around this by smoothing the
voter opinion distribution. But perhaps there's a better theoretically
founded way to do it…. - maybe I should look more into them.

…. augment this measure to include….descriptive representation.

In any case, this could be useful to evaluate PR methods'
proportionality, and to check how much proportionality we lose by having
small districts instead of one large district with something like STV.
Ranking a thousand candidates may be impractical for real voters, but
not for computer simulated ones :-)

….proportional (not at all) as electing one….full of candidates at x=0.9. This
seems wrong. It can be dealt with by
dividing voter space into a number of regions and then counting over
each "bin", … a kernel density-like solution? [Is this another way of refering to “ideological districts” or constituencies?]
I don't know it if there is.
…. because there's always some support and it's always decreasing away
from where the voter opinions are concentrated….
….any straightforward proportionality measure, can also
be criticized as quantifying the wrong thing: as Steve Eppley said in
2008, (paraphrased) "why should I be interested if they have the same
opinions as me, if they don't legislate the way I would?". In a similar
way, it doesn't take into account coalition effects or kingmaker
problems with low threshold PR methods, either.
-km
____________________________________________________________________
Steve’s following brief explanation and illustration of how evaluative-proportion representation (EPR) works assumes that you, the reader, are voting on the following sample ballot. This ballot is followed by more explanation:




EPR Sample Paper Ballot


City Number 30


Directions: Please grade at least one candidate’s suitability for office by putting an X in either the Excellent, Very Good, Good, or Acceptable box next to each of the candidates you want to grade. You may give the same grade to more than one candidate. You may use Poor or Reject to grade candidates you do not find fit for office. Any candidates who you do not explicitly grade will be automatically counted as if you marked them as ‘Reject/unknown’. You are assured that your one vote of Acceptable or better for a candidate will increase the voting power in the legislative body of the winner you helped to elect directly or indirectly.


Identity Code of the candidate
Candidate
Note: Give only one grade for one or more candidates
by placing an X in the relevant box.




EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
ACCEPTABLE
POOR
REJECT


A
Stephen Collins
X







B
Candice Crosby

X






C
Robin Levy
X







D
Martin Newman


X





E
June Glover



X




F
Frank Field




















If none of the candidates you graded as at least Acceptable is elected, your ballot becomes a proxy vote. This proxy vote will be added to the running total of votes received by the winning candidate publicly judged most suitable for office by the candidate to whom you gave your highest grade. However, if you do not want this to happen, circle NO at the end of this sentence:

YES --- N0


More explanation:
The first round counts all voters’ completed ballots. Each ballot provisionally adds one to the total number of votes received by one or other of the candidates. As a result, each candidate will have received a different total number of votes but composed of different numbers of each grade.
If, for example, you awarded the same highest grade to more than one candidate, that grade is exclusively added to the running total of the candidate who will have the larger total as a result. This is justified by the democratic assumption that a candidate who gets more votes is probably better.
The target number of candidates are elected by their having received one of the seven largest totals of votes of at least Acceptable. When finalized, each of these winner’s totals quantifies their voting power in the legislative assembly – their “weighted vote.” Thus, each citizen’s ballot (vote) equally adds to the weighted vote of the elected candidate they are most likely to favor.
Next, in order to ensure that every citizen’s vote continues to count equally and effectively as one in the legislative body, all the ballots (votes) currently held by candidates not elected are now transferred to the running total of one or other of the winners. This is automatically possible for each such ballot that also contains a remaining “highest-available grade” for one of the winners.
The “highest-available grade” on such a ballot is determined at any given point in the count by the rules that govern the count. For example, if a voter’s ballot awarded an “Excellent” to a candidate who could not be elected because they had not received a large enough number of votes from all voters, this ballot would automatically be transferred to the running total of the winner who this ballot awarded its remaining “highest-available grade” – Very Good, Good, or Acceptable.
However, if this ballot does not award any winner in this way, it automatically becomes a “proxy vote.” If the relevant voter has given their permission at the bottom of their ballot bu circling “NO”, their proxy vote is transferred to the weighted vote of the already elected candidate publicly judged most suitable for office by the candidate on their ballot who received this voter’s highest grade.
Consequently, unlike all available alternative voting systems, EPR ensures that every citizen’s vote (ballot) equally adds to the voting power in the legislative assembly of the elected candidate who finally received each voter’s “highest-available grade.” In each case, this grade is either the ballot's highest grade, remaining highest grade, or proxy vote. Thus, EPR guarantees that every ballot will equally increase the weighted vote of one of the elected members by one – the member they are most likely to see as accurately representing their concerns and hopes. Therefore, 100% of the voters have every appropriate reason to be satisfied with the results of an EPR election.
Your above vote:
Again, the first rounds of EPR’s count determine to which candidate’s running total your highest grade (vote) is provisionally given. For the count of your vote already indicated in the ballot, your Excellent must be provisionally added either to the running total of Collins or Levy. It must go to the one who has received the largest number of Excellents from all the ballots cast.
For this illustration, we are assuming that Levy received more such votes (grades) than any other such candidate, including Collins. Therefore, your current “highest-available grade” of “Excellent” is exclusively but provisionally added to Levy’s running total of votes, not to Collins’s. Again, this is justified by the democratic assumption that the candidate who has more votes is probably better.
Therefore, say your Excellent goes to Levy, and for brevity of explanation also assume that this election aims to elect all seven members of a city council. Levy will be elected if she has separately received one of the seven largest numbers of “highest-available grades” from all voters.
Each candidate’s total is composed of different numbers of Excellent, Very Good, Good, and Acceptable received separately from a number of all the ballots cast. One such grade from every citizen’s ballot is added to the total of one of the candidates. When each voter’s ballot has been provisionally added to one of the candidates running total of votes in this way, the seven elected candidates are identified. Each has received one of the seven largest totals. Levy would be elected if her total is one of these seven.
However, if Levy’s final total is not one of these winning seven, your ballot’s “highest-available grade” of Excellent is instead transferred to Collins, but only if Collins would have one of the seven largest totals as a result. If not, your ballot would be transferred to Cosby, but again, only if Cosby would receive one of the largest seven totals as a result. Given this condition, your vote might instead have to be transferred to Newman or Glover.
However, if none of these candidates could receive one of the largest seven totals with the help of your vote (ballot), your ballot automatically becomes your proxy vote as described above. This is to say that if you had not circled the “NO” at the bottom of your above ballot paper, you have given permission for your proxy vote to be finally added to the weighted vote of the winner that is publicly judged to be most fit for office by Levy.
In this way, you and every other citizen is assured that they will be equally represented in the assembly as accurately as possible.
What do you think?
End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 240, Issue 25
*************************************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/attachments/20240819/52d1a73e/attachment.htm>