[EM] Question to the Condorcetists

Thu Feb 29 16:02:37 PST 2024

Yes, I too feel that though Consistency-failure is an embarrassment, it’s
Participation-failure—where a particular voter should have stayed home—that
is the rights-violation.

Yes, maybe there’s some big subset of the voters, say 37%, such that, if
they’d stayed home the result of applying the method to the other 63%
(which would then have been the actual election-result) would have been the
same as the result of applying it to them separately…but, because they
voted, a different result happened.

That doesn’t sound as bad as Participation-failure.

1. That 37%’s hypothetical collective-choice by the method isn’t as
definite & stark as a person’s expressed-preference.

2. A *different outcome* from the hypothetical result of applying the
method to the 37% isn’t as concretely clearly wrong as outright
negative-response to someone’s expressed preference.

…& that’s a good thing, because checking for Consistency-failure is what
DOES sound computationally infeasible due to the many ways of dividing a
large electorate into 2 par.

Checking for Participation-failure would just be a matter of, for each
voter, doing the count without hir ballot & determining whether that
changes the winner to someone s/he ranked above the actual winner.

With 300,000,000 voters that isn’t infeasible with today’s computers is it?

I should have asked:

In Germany, is Consistency-failure unconstitutional? That might be a
problem for Condorcet. If only Participation-failure is unconstitutional,
then wouldn’t Kobe computationally-feasible to check for that?

When a Participation-failure is found, then elect the winner by
Implicit-Approval.

In wv, not ranking candidates you don’t like is good defensive-strategy
anyway. If it’s known that many people vote that way, wv’s already good
burial-deterrence is further enhanced.

On Thu, Feb 29, 2024 at 10:06 Closed Limelike Curves <
closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:

> That seems to exclude participation failures except in the case
> of near-ties; I think adding a batch of ballots, all of which rank A>B,
> shouldn't cause B to defeat A.
>
> I don't think we need perfect consistency, just participation. Consistency
> failures are paradoxical, but consistency is a very strong criterion and
> isn't needed for the weaker case of participation (which limits consistency
> to the ). It's also strong enough that it could lock you into Kemeny-Young
> (the unique order-consistent Condorcet method).
>
> Checking for participation naively definitely isn't feasible, so we'd need
> a more elegant approach.
>
> Alternatively, we could try finding a Condorcet system that violates
> participation "as little as possible," in the sense that any participation
> failures are forced by Condorcet-compliance. A judge might be willing to
> sign off on that, since it's a tradeoff between two similarly-important
> values (equal protection and majority rule).
>
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 10:30 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Maybe it might be good enough to just require that there must not be a
>> Participation-violation with respect to any one of the voters, had s/he
>> voted last?
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 22:17 Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Well I don’t know if the Consistency-check would be
>>> Computationally-feasible, because of course there are a lot of ways to
>>> divide a large electorate into 2 parts.
>>>
>>> That might be one more good reason to use Approval instead, for those
>>> single-winner elections.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 22:07 Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I call RP(wv) with that modification “Nonsense-Free RP(wv)”, & propose
>>>> it for Germany’s single-winner elections, including the single member
>>>> district elections in their Additional-Member proportional topping-up
>>>> Parliamentary elections.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 21:47 Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 21:07 Closed Limelike Curves <
>>>>> closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> . Some alternative criterion that gets us "99% of the way to
>>>>>>> Condorcet," so it behaves like Condorcet except in the rare cases where it
>>>>>>> conflicts with participation (or maybe just mono-add-top/remove-bottom).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> There might be better ways, but there’s always the lexicographical
>>>>> way. The criterion could require that Participation (& other
>>>>> non-opposite-response criteria) & Consistency be met.  …& that the voted
>>>>> CW, when there is one must be elected when that doesn’t conflict with the
>>>>> above requirements.
>>>>>
>>>>> A complying method could just repeat that wording, along with a
>>>>> specification about what to do if there’s no voted CW, & what to do if the
>>>>> ballot-configuration is such that additional of a new ballot could violate
>>>>> Participation, or if some division of the electorate into 2 parts could
>>>>> show a Consistency violation.
>>>>>
>>>>> Maybe apply Implicit-Approval to the ballots then. (Ranked = approved)
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 8:57 PM Closed Limelike Curves <
>>>>>> closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It’s surprising that participation-violation is unconstitutional in
>>>>>>>> Germany, because, here, even Hare’s greater nonmonotonicity is okay.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm actually not sure it is--the Supreme Court has never ruled on ,
>>>>>>> and courts also haven't ruled on the constitutionality of non-monotone
>>>>>>> voting rules. STV has been upheld as constitutional in the past, but the
>>>>>>> challenges were never brought over monotonicity failures. It's entirely
>>>>>>> possible a new challenge could overturn it; there's a strong argument that
>>>>>>> monotonicity failures violate due process and the equal protection clause.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The ideal case to bring to the Supreme Court would have been for
>>>>>>> Begich's campaign to sue after the 2022 Alaska election. A moderate
>>>>>>> Republican plaintiff is appealing to the mostly-Republican Supreme
>>>>>>> Court, without being too controversial. Being the Condorcet winner makes
>>>>>>> his case look even stronger.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On the other hand, if someone says the word "monotonicity" in front
>>>>>>> of a judge, their eyes will glaze over and they'll immediately stop
>>>>>>> caring about all this weird, complicated nerd math. The way to explain
>>>>>>> participation failures is to run a ton of ads explaining to Alaska
>>>>>>> Republicans that Begich lost because *he got* *too many votes. *
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> One suggestion: why not rename monotonicity to "helpfulness?"
>>>>>>> (Voting should help your candidate, not hurt them). We can call
>>>>>>> monotonicity failures "spitefulness" (because the system is going out of
>>>>>>> its way to do the opposite of what you ask it to).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 11:32 AM Michael Ossipoff <
>>>>>>> email9648742 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It’s surprising that participation-violation is unconstitutional in
>>>>>>>> Germany, because, here, even Hare’s greater nonmonotonicity is okay.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> It’s disingenuous to say that Hare is nonmonotonic & Condorcet
>>>>>>>> isn’t. Nonmonotonicity is just defined to give Condorcet, with it’s
>>>>>>>> participation-failure, a pass.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I’ve heard that Participation & the Condorcet Criterion are
>>>>>>>> mutually incompatible. I feel that participation-failure is an acceptable
>>>>>>>> price for the Condorcet Criterion. Always electing the voted CW brings
>>>>>>>> strategy improvement, & the unpredictable & rare participation-failure is
>>>>>>>> probably irrelevant to strategy.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But that incompatibility, along with the ones Arrow pointed-out,
>>>>>>>> shows that single-winner elections aren’t perfect.  …making a good argument
>>>>>>>> for PR…*monotonic* PR, which excludes STV & Largest-Remainder.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Maybe, as a PR country (like 2/3 of the world’s countries), Germany
>>>>>>>> feels no need to compromise participation.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> We’re told that list-PR “hasn’t been tried”. No, just in 2/3 of the
>>>>>>>> world’s countries for about a century.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> But, with that counterfactual “hasn’t been tried” excuse, we’re
>>>>>>>> stuck in the 18th century, & always will be, while most of the world has
>>>>>>>> moved on to democracy.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 10:36 Closed Limelike Curves <
>>>>>>>> closed.limelike.curves at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Can Condorcet be weakened to comply with participation? Condorcet
>>>>>>>>> methods have plenty of advantages, but systems failing participation are
>>>>>>>>> vulnerable to court challenges or being struck down as unconstitutional, as
>>>>>>>>> seen in Germany.
>>>>>>>>> ----
>>>>>>>>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>>>>>>>>> list info
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
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