[EM] Question to the Condorcetists

[Closed Limelike Curves]

Ahh, I see what you mean–we can check for participation failures by
checking the result with ballots[1:i] and comparing with ballots[1:(i+1)].
I misunderstood you as saying we could compare ballots and ballots[Not(i)].

Couldn't this new procedure still violate participation? What if adding
ballots[i] with A>B would cause B>A, but B also happens to win under
implicit approval voting?

On Thu, Feb 29, 2024 at 4:02 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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