[EM] Election-Methods Digest, Vol 234, Issue 13

Fri Jan 12 11:47:30 PST 2024

As you acknowledged, none of those were Condorcet elections. Today, RCV
voter education has been able to correctly say that burying a candidate's
chief opponent is never to that candidate's advantage. With Condorcet,
voter educators could no longer make that claim. Today, campaigns know that
it makes no sense to advocate burying under RCV. With Condorcet, it *may*
help, and will never backfire against, a candidate to bury their chief
opponent. Whether voter and campaign behavior will change in practice, as a
result, is not yet known.

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 1:45 PM Sass <sass at equal.vote> wrote:

> > as of now I don't think anyone has much evidence for what will happen in
> practice.
>
> I think we do. We have the full ballot data on 448 RCV elections in the US
> from this century. Only one did not have a Condorcet Winner. Even if you
> reduce the set to elections with three competitive candidates (defined as
> elections where the candidate with the third most first choices has at
> least half as many as the candidate with the most), it's still only 1 in
> 88, which could easily become 1 in 880 over time. If elections with no
> Condorcet Winner are that unlikely, then by far the strongest incentive for
> voters is to vote honestly as a rule. And we know from RCV that voters are
> inclined to vote honestly under new systems until the system backfires on
> them.
>
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 10:24 AM Greg Dennis <
> greg.dennis at voterchoicema.org> wrote:
>
>> I think "in practice" here should say "in theory." "In practice" is an
>> empirical claim, but due to the dearth of Condorcet elections at the
>> governmental level, there's virtually no data or experience at this point
>> to support an empirical claim, especially for the kind of public,
>> competitive, political elections that we're most interested in. Further,
>> a looming question is not so much whether voters in a Condorcet election
>> can know whether a reliable strategy exists, but whether they will attempt
>> a strategy (like burying) *regardless* of its reliability -- simply
>> because it *might* work. If too many voters do, that could in theory
>> lead to the election of the sincere Condorcet loser. I'm sympathetic to
>> theoretical arguments about why this result is unlikely, but as of now I
>> don't think anyone has much evidence for what will happen in practice.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 6:30 PM Sass <sass at equal.vote> wrote:
>>
>>> All Condorcet methods have strong strategy resistance in practice for
>>> public elections because public elections will almost always have a
>>> Condorcet Winner, and it will be difficult to predict when they won't. By
>>> far the most reliable strategy in practice for a public election with any
>>> Condorcet method is honesty.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jan 11, 2024 at 10:45 AM <
>>> election-methods-request at lists.electorama.com> wrote:
>>>
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>>>>
>>>> Today's Topics:
>>>>
>>>>    1. Re: Why no Condorcet proposals? (Michael Ossipoff)
>>>>    2. Re: Why no Condorcet proposals? (Andrew Myers)
>>>>    3. Autodeterrence introduction & definitions (Michael Ossipoff)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Message: 1
>>>> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 09:03:29 -0800
>>>> From: Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>>> To: "Bob Richard [lists]" <lists001 at robertjrichard.com>
>>>> Cc: election-methods at electorama.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [EM] Why no Condorcet proposals?
>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>         <
>>>> CAOKDY5Ama0gazacviJ+-8-3gsPfrr8yy3ijgB9ugeAbQPS9kXg at mail.gmail.com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>>
>>>> Nanson has precedent, but it doesn?t have the simplicity of some of the
>>>> other Condorcet-compliant methods.
>>>>
>>>> ?& how does Nanson do by freedom from need for defensive-strategy
>>>> (against
>>>> offensive-strategy)?
>>>>
>>>> Achieving the best strategy-free-ness is the goal of Condorcet.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jan 10, 2024 at 12:08 Bob Richard [lists] <
>>>> lists001 at robertjrichard.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > A Condorcet-compliant method, Nanson, was used in the small city of
>>>> > Marquette, Michigan in the 1920s. It would be very instructive to
>>>> learn why
>>>> > it was repealed. I have never seen anything more than a passing
>>>> mention of
>>>> > this episode, so this research would probably involve traveling to
>>>> > Marquette and rummaging around in newspaper archives, county election
>>>> > records and the public library. On the other hand, this part of
>>>> Michigan is
>>>> > a beautiful place to visit. Any takers?
>>>> >
>>>> > --Bob Richard
>>>> >
>>>> > ------ Original Message ------
>>>> > From "Michael Ossipoff" <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>>> > To "EM list" <election-methods at electorama.com>
>>>> > Date 1/10/2024 11:34:57 AM
>>>> > Subject [EM] Why no Condorcet proposals?
>>>> >
>>>> > That question was recently asked.
>>>> >
>>>> > Condorcet has many versions, & there?s no agreement on that matter.
>>>> >
>>>> > So Condorcet doesn?t have any enactment-projects, or even an
>>>> organization.
>>>> >
>>>> > Condorcet was computationally infeasible for more than a few
>>>> candidates,
>>>> > in the days when Hare began being adopted a century ago. Hence its
>>>> > particularly great unfamiliarity.
>>>> >
>>>> > Those things are regrettable, because only Condorcet can fully
>>>> reassure
>>>> > our thoroughly-conditioned lesser-evil voters that they needn?t
>>>> too-vote an
>>>> > evil.
>>>> >
>>>> > How about proposing Condorcet in your community, & demonstrating it in
>>>> > various nonpolitical votes.
>>>> >
>>>> > Sometimes a city, county or state governing-body will outright enact a
>>>> > voting-system reform. That?s happened for RCV.
>>>> >
>>>> > ?or maybe would order & schedule a referendum, as has likewise
>>>> happened
>>>> > for RCV.
>>>> >
>>>> > But, as a last-resort, one could advertise on bulletin-boards,
>>>> online, in
>>>> > the classifieds, etc., to convene a Condorcet enactment committee,
>>>> for the
>>>> > pursuit of an initiative.
>>>> >
>>>> > Suggest, to them, a few of the simpler & long-discussed versions,
>>>> such as:
>>>> >
>>>> > MinMax(wv)
>>>> > CW, Implicit-Approval (CW, IA).
>>>> >
>>>> > Neither needs mention of the Smith-set or cycles.
>>>> >
>>>> > Both thwart offensive-truncation, & deter burial if people use the
>>>> > defensive-strategy of refusing to rank anyone they don?t like & don?t
>>>> wish
>>>> > to beat the CW via burial.
>>>> >
>>>> > That committee could then conduct focus-groups, in person or online,
>>>> to
>>>> > find out which Condorcet version would have the best chance of
>>>> > initiative-enactment.
>>>> >
>>>> > Obviously Approval would be the best voting-system by which for that
>>>> > focus-group to vote among the proposals. Participants should be asked
>>>> to
>>>> > approve (only) the proposal(s) that they?d support in an initiative.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > ----
>>>> > Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for
>>>> list
>>>> > info
>>>> >
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>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Message: 2
>>>> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 12:12:40 -0500
>>>> From: Andrew Myers <acm22 at cornell.edu>
>>>> To: election-methods at lists.electorama.com
>>>> Subject: Re: [EM] Why no Condorcet proposals?
>>>> Message-ID: <f2adc5e2-f756-4757-aeeb-e752e34c6983 at cornell.edu>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 1/10/24 5:07 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>>> > On 2024-01-10 21:07, Bob Richard [lists] wrote:
>>>> >> A Condorcet-compliant method, Nanson, was used in the small city of
>>>> >> Marquette, Michigan in the 1920s. It would be very instructive to
>>>> >> learn why it was repealed. I have never seen anything more than a
>>>> >> passing mention of this episode, so this research would probably
>>>> >> involve traveling to Marquette and rummaging around in newspaper
>>>> >> archives, county election records and the public library. On the
>>>> >> other hand, this part of Michigan is a beautiful place to visit. Any
>>>> >> takers?
>>>> >
>>>> > In addition, regarding Condorcet methods in actual use, Schulze has
>>>> > been used by a bunch of organizations, and in referenda in a Spanish
>>>> > city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method#Usage
>>>> >
>>>> > My impression is that Schulze got its relatively popularity by first
>>>> > being adopted by technology-conscious organizations like Debian and
>>>> > Wikimedia, and then filtering down from there.
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > Nanson has also been used by the University of Adelaide and the
>>>> > University of Melbourne. University elections aren't the same thing
>>>> as
>>>> > public ones and the circumstances do differ, but perhaps figuring out
>>>> > why they were repealed there would give at least some idea?
>>>> >
>>>> > (Then again, perhaps not; see my confused surprise at the reasoning
>>>> > the UBC Alma Mater Society gave for abandoning Ranked Pairs.)
>>>> >
>>>> > -km
>>>>
>>>> The CIVS voting system is routinely used (and has been for years) by a
>>>> variety of organizations to decide leadership questions: especially
>>>> open-source organizations and universities. Randomly grabbing a few
>>>> recent ones:
>>>>
>>>> The Linux Foundation
>>>> OpenStack
>>>> Bytecode Alliance
>>>> Kubeflow
>>>> Lubuntu
>>>>
>>>> SUNY Fredonia
>>>> College of William and Mary
>>>>
>>>> Of course, it gets used for many other less consequential decisions,
>>>> with more than 35,000 polls run so far.
>>>>
>>>> The default rule CIVS uses is Minimax but it also supports Schulze and
>>>> other methods.
>>>>
>>>> -- Andrew
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Message: 3
>>>> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2024 13:45:16 -0500
>>>> From: Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>>> To: EM list <election-methods at electorama.com>
>>>> Subject: [EM] Autodeterrence introduction & definitions
>>>> Message-ID:
>>>>         <
>>>> CAOKDY5DooHE15BFdrdKWPWZ5Osfj5-_JcG6hEPjz3B2nKJuBaQ at mail.gmail.com>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>>
>>>> I recently posted some autodeterrence suggestions, but I didn?t
>>>> *introduce*
>>>> autodeterrence in that post, & I didn?t define my terms. So I?d like to
>>>> do
>>>> that now:
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> The only meaningful objection to Condorcet is that it?s subject to
>>>> offensive strategy, by ?buria? (offensive order-reversal) & by offensive
>>>> truncation.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> The wv Condorcet methods, such as MinMax(wv) & Schulze, thwart & deter
>>>> offensive-strategy as I?ve described. But, as I?ve mentioned, because I
>>>> regard the elections as dichotomous, I?d use wv Condorcet as Approval,
>>>> with
>>>> all-or-nothing voting, voting Unacceptables at bottom & Acceptables at
>>>> top?& maybe some or many lesser-evil voters would likewise vote
>>>> Lesser-Evil
>>>> at top.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> So maybe even wv Condorcet would retain some lesser-evil problem.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> That?s why autodeterrence is desirable. It probabilistically deters
>>>> offensive strategy by making it more likely to backfire than to succeed.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Of course the merit of an autodeterrent method is measured by this
>>>> ratio of
>>>> probabilities:
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> p(backfire)/p(succeed).
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Forest Simmons & I have proposed a number of autodeterrent methods.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Let me state some definitions that I neglected to state before. Some are
>>>> already well-known, but I should state them all for completelness:
>>>>
>>>> ,,,
>>>>
>>>> CW means Condorcet-winner, a candidate who pairwise-beats each of the
>>>> others. Voted CW is the CW according to the ballots. Sincere CW is the
>>>> CW
>>>> under sincere-voting.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> BF means Buriers? Favorite.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Bus means the candidate under whom the buriers bury CW,  & who
>>>> consequently
>>>> pairbeats CW.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> CW, BF & Bus are the ?principles? of the top-cycle.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> There of course can be more than one Bus, because the CW could be buried
>>>> under several candidates who all pairbeat hir.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> wv means winning-votes.  ?the number of voters who vote for the defeater
>>>> over the defeated in a pairwise-defeat.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> lv means losing-votes, the number of voters who vote for the defeated
>>>> over
>>>> the defeated in a pairwise-defeat.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Pairwise-support for X means the number of voters voting X over Y in a
>>>> pairwise defeat of one over the other.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> A candidaes? Top means the Topcount, the number of voters top-ranking
>>>> hir.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> A candidates?s IA stands for Implicit-Approval, which means the number
>>>> of
>>>> voters ranking hir.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> A candidate?s Mid stands for Midcount, which means IA minus Topcount.
>>>> Mid
>>>> is relevant because, though IA is relevant, Top is unaffected by
>>>> offensive-strategy, & therefore spoils the usefulness of IA as a clue.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> However Top is still a clue, because it suggests who is likely CW.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> The Clues are the quantities that are used as indicators of who is the
>>>> Bus.
>>>> They consist of Top, Mid, Borda, lv & wv..& maybe others.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> The ?Uses? are ways of using some of the clues to judge who is probably
>>>> the
>>>> Bus.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> So autodeterrent methods consist of, & can be denoted as:
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> Use(clue(s)).
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> I listed a number of autodeterrent proposals?some mine, some Forest?s.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> GWAGL was Forest?s idea, & so was the 1st autodetrent proposal. So was
>>>> Mid,
>>>> & the use of some of the other clues.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> I should add that Borda of any kind, including Borda(<=) isn?t so useful
>>>> as-is, because it includes a part of the score based on Topcount.  ?&,
>>>> as I
>>>> mentioned, Topcount is unaffected by offensive-strategy & therefore
>>>> dilutes
>>>> the relevance of a clue.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> ?&, contrary to what I suggested before, Borda, by itself, wouldn?t do.
>>>> Borda(=<)would result in lesser-evil voters top-ranking an evil.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> So, as a clue, not as a stand-alone method, better would be Borda minus
>>>> its
>>>> Topcount part.  ?or, better yet, just use Mid instead of Borda.  ?for
>>>> when
>>>> only the top-cycle is looked-at, where (as is most likely) the one or
>>>> more
>>>> cycles only consist of 3 candidates.
>>>>
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>> There?s no need to repeat my previous listing of autodeterrent
>>>> proposals,
>>>> because, other than what I?ve said in this post, I?m not making any
>>>> change
>>>> in those already-listed proposals.
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>>>>
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>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> End of Election-Methods Digest, Vol 234, Issue 13
>>>> *************************************************
>>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *Greg Dennis, Ph.D. :: Policy Director*
>> Voter Choice Massachusetts
>>
>> e :: greg.dennis at voterchoicema.org
>> p :: 617.835.9161
>> w :: voterchoicema.org <https://www.voterchoicema.org/>
>>
>> :: Follow us on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/yeson2rcv> and Twitter
>> <https://twitter.com/yeson2rcv> ::
>>
>

-- 
*Greg Dennis, Ph.D. :: Policy Director*
Voter Choice Massachusetts

e :: greg.dennis at voterchoicema.org
p :: 617.835.9161
w :: voterchoicema.org <https://www.voterchoicema.org/>

:: Follow us on Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/yeson2rcv> and Twitter
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