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

[Michael Ossipoff]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 22:20 Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> Some people want every advantage they can take, & couldn’t care less about
> honesty.
>
> People have a way of finding out how to abuse a system, especially one in
> which everything is at stake.
>
> Honesty in politics, right?  Where is that to be found? Republicans?
> Democrats? The media?
>
> But it will suddenly appear in the elections?
>
> We don’t have the worst conceivable voting system because of honesty. Was
> Clinton being honest when he said that he fired Lani Guinier because
> proportional-representation is antidemocratic?
>
> Or maybe the North Dakota legislators were being honest when they said
> that they banned rank-balloting & Approval to protect the people’s rights.
>
> Systems are routinely gamed for advantage. Plurality is being consistently
> gamed with the constant media-propaganda telling you that the Democrat &
> Republican are your 2 choices.
>
> …&, disregarding the fact that opponents will use whatever they can find—
> a main criticism of Condorcet is it’s vulnerability to offensive strategy.
> That argument would be effectively used against a vulnerable Condorcet
> proposal or implementation.
>
> I commend your trustingness about election-matters.
>
> There are already, & there have been for about 35 years, Condorcet
> versions that thwart & penalize offensive strategy. There are now beginning
> to be versions that automatically probabilistically deter it.
>
> Some of those methods are more briefly stated than Copeland’ s 2-stage
> Condorcet-completion rule.
>
> e.g. MinMax(wv) is a familiar, established proposal with the
> abovementioned strategy properties. It’s definition?:
>
> Elect the candidate whose greatest vote against hir in a defeat is the
> least.
>
> CW,Implicit-Approval’s completion rule is:
>
> Elect the candidate ranked on the most ballots.
>
> Vermont’s Condorcet completion rule is:
>
> Elect the candidate topping the most rankings.
>
> Usually top-cycles will have 3 candidates.  …all of whom beat everyone
> outside their Smith-set. So normally the Smith set will all beat the same
> number of candidates.
>
> So Copeland is widely-criticized for its indecisiveness.
>
> To publicly-propose Copeland is to ask for criticism & lead with your chin.
>
> …& even if there might somehow not be indecisiveness, the winner of the
> completion rule would be a random outcome with little relation to merit, &
> with no strategy-deterrence or thwarting.
>
> Merit? Beating more candidates sounds meritorious? So do the other
> completion rules I described.  …& they’re decisive & most have good
> strategy-properties.
>
> Voting systems usually aren’t as they initially seem. I realize that EVC
> isn’t going to propose a Condorcet method soon, but I hope that, when & if
> you do, it will be based on a long period of thorough examination &
> discussion.
>
> I’m not trying to make trouble. I’m trying to help. So I’ve made these
> suggestions, & I hope that EVC won’t be hasty about sticking with what
> initially seemed like the best Condorcet proposal.
>
> Might there be a reason for its criticism & unpopularity. Might the
> single-winner reform community be right?
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 15:16 Sass <sass at equal.vote> wrote:
>
>> I think you're overcomplicating it. The question to ask is about
>> incentives. In public elections, voters (and candidates) will follow the
>> incentives. For public elections under a Condorcet method, by far the
>> strongest incentive is to vote honestly.
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 2:06 PM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <
>> km_elmet at t-online.de> wrote:
>>
>>> On 2024-01-12 19:45, Sass 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.
>>>
>>> I think the problem is one of predicting how voters may alter their
>>> behavior when the circumstances change. Consider these possible
>>> descriptions:
>>>
>>> - Voters always vote in a way that there's a majority candidate. If so,
>>> FPTP is sufficient.
>>>
>>> - Voters always vote in a way that there's a number of no-hope fringe
>>> candidates as well as a mutual majority set containing clones of what
>>> would otherwise be a majority candidate. If so, IRV is sufficient.
>>>
>>> - Voters always vote in a way that there's a Condorcet winner, possibly
>>> with spurious cycles from noise. If so, any Condorcet method will
>>> suffice, and Condorcet cycles can be handled like ordinary ties, by a
>>> coin toss or whatnot.
>>>
>>> - Voters' honest distributions will always have a Condorcet winner but
>>> they may strategize, or be told to strategize by the candidates. If so,
>>> strategy resistance is more important.
>>>
>>> - Voters will vote for multiple viable candidates if the method doesn't
>>> have too strong incentives to exit, and politics may evolve to be
>>> multidimensional, in which case honest cycles would appear. Then just
>>> how the Condorcet method deals with cycles would be important, as would
>>> robust clone independence (i.e. clone independence that generalizes to
>>> JGA's incentives to exit and entry).
>>>
>>> - Voters have an absolute utility scale and would use it if they can,
>>> making distinctions beyond ranking. If so, we may need rated methods.
>>> (Or if a relative scale, something that normalizes rated ballots and
>>> treats
>>>
>>> etc.
>>>
>>> It's difficult to say ahead of time which of these are right. An
>>> argument to the extent that "we have n elections and none of these have
>>> shown behavior beyond the kth of these descriptions" has a flaw in that
>>> they are all under the context of the current method.
>>>
>>> But we at least know that the first two descriptions are false. It *is*
>>> possible to say "ah, those two instances of center squeeze are just
>>> flukes" and keep going for IRV, but that seems rather iffy.
>>>
>>> I suppose my position has been a combination of trying to get things
>>> right the first time (hence advanced/cloneproof Condorcet methods) and
>>> going by my own intuition (which finds the ambiguity of honest votes in
>>> a non-normalized rated system a real problem that burdens even honest
>>> voters with tactical decisions).
>>>
>>> But I can't prove that "minmax and be there" would fail.
>>>
>>> -km
>>>
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