[EM] Did someone not hear what I said about Approval vs Condorcet?

Sun May 26 21:05:49 PDT 2024

It’s good to hear that you agree about Approval. Not a lot of people here
do.

RCV has people wanting rankings, & missing how much improvement comes with
even the absolute minimal way to express & have counted preference & merit
comparison among the candidate-set.

On Sun, May 26, 2024 at 15:47 Rob Lanphier <roblan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Michael,
>
> I pretty much agree with your positions vis a vis Condorcet and approval.
> I came around from mildly negative regarding approval in the 1990s and
> 2000s, to neutral in the early 2010s to very positive about it in the late
> 2010s and now.  You're right that the auditability of approval elections is
> a killer feature, and that auditing any strictly Condorcet-winner-criterion
> compliant system will be incredibly difficult.
>
> I think, though, that engaging in good faith on this mailing list is going
> to involve taking the time to make your responses shorter and to the
> point.  I frequently find it difficult-to-impossible to read your poorly
> formatted, long, and disjointed responses.  I feel a little bad for calling
> you out specifically on this, because you aren't the only one I could level
> that criticism toward, but I'm hoping everyone who is reading this isn't
> too smug about THEIR emails being crisp and to-the-point.  Writing a good
> postcard is often a lot more work than writing a long letter, and we all
> could probably do better.  Can we all work on making our missives to this
> mailing list a little clearer?
>
> Rob
>
>
> On Sat, May 25, 2024 at 10:29 PM Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Someone keeps repeating that the voters shouldn’t have to vote
>> strategically. He wants the method to do it all for us, after we merely
>> state our sincere-rankings.
>>
>> …
>>
>> That’s of course a common attitude:
>>
>> …
>>
>> …wanting a high-tech, computation-intensive,  computer-dependent system
>> to do it all for us, taking all the actual choosing responsibility off of
>> us.  …sheltering & isolating us from the choice.
>>
>> …
>>
>> I’ve already agreed that a completely legalistic system like a good
>> Condorcet method is probably the best thing for the inimical electorate in
>> our public-political elections.
>>
>> …
>>
>> ...all else being equal (as KM said).
>>
>> …
>>
>> I pointed out that all is NOT equal. As desirable as it would be for our
>> inimical public-political elections, the automatic machine that does it all
>> for us, to isolate & shelter us from the choosing, comes at too high a
>> price in our public-political elections.
>>
>> …
>>
>> Condorcet for public political elections has a number of problems, with
>> count-security as the main & most serious problem. I spoke of that before,
>> but it just didn’t seem to get across.  Hello?
>>
>> …
>>
>> Is it that we don’t believe that count-fraud is a genuine problem…or is
>> it just, so strongly do we want to believe what we believe, that we’ve
>> convinced ourselves that we didn’t hear?
>>
>> …
>>
>> Claims that Condorcet is transparent consisted of handwaving that
>> disregarded the fact that Condorcet requires many, many times more
>> computation than does Approval.   …& requires many, many times more
>> count totals be tallied, stored, & transmitted to central-counting.
>>
>> …
>>
>> …a humungously, prohibitively, bigger & more computation-intensive count.
>>
>> …
>>
>> I’ll ask this for the 3rd time:
>>
>> …
>>
>> How would like you to handount-audit a Condorcet count for a
>> many-candidate national presidential election?
>>
>> …
>>
>> As for the belief (if such a belief is what this is about) that
>> count-fraud isn’t a problem, I’ll repeat this;
>>
>> …
>>
>> Look up the issues of Harper’s Magazine that came out after each of G.W.
>> Bushes two elections (2000 & 2004).  Mountains of evidence for
>> widespread count-fraud. Check out the two Harpers articles.
>>
>> …
>>
>> One; thing they mentioned was that a supplier of voting-machines promised
>> to “deliver” the election to Dubya. One of the two Harper’s articles will
>> give you details about that.
>>
>> …
>>
>> It would be much better to trust the voters to use Approval well, than to
>> trust all of the count-personnel to not perpetrate  count-fraud in the
>> elaborate computation-intensive Condorcet count.
>>
>> …
>>
>> There might be a desire to have it all done for us by a computer, but
>> that comes at too high a price.
>>
>> …
>>
>> …& that’s not counting Approval’s other advantages, including
>> incomparably less expensive & easier explanation, definition, proposal,
>> enactment,  & administration…in addition to the much better
>> count-security that I spoke of above.
>>
>> …
>>
>> How bad, in your perception, is it for voters to have to make the choice
>> for themselves instead of just telling their preferences & having it done
>> for us?  The Appoval-opponent I spoke of keeps saying that he wouldn’t
>> know whether to approve a maybe but maybe-not needed 2nd-choice. A
>> dilemma: Risk someone worse than him winning, or risk helping him beat your
>> favorite? That critic complains that that’s unacceptable.
>>
>> …
>>
>> Yes, with any method other than the wv Condorcet methods, you don’t know
>> what your objectively optimal vote is.  Neither do any of the other
>> voters, so don’t worry about it !!
>>
>> …
>>
>> That critic seems to believe that it’s necessary to know your
>> objectively-optimal vote.
>>
>> …
>>
>> That’s a misbelief.
>>
>> …
>>
>> As I’ve said, probability & therefore expectation & its maximization
>> depend of what information you have  & are using.
>>
>> …
>>
>> No, you can’t know your objectively-optimal vote.
>>
>> …
>>
>> But you can vote to maximize your expectation, based on the information
>> that you have & are using.
>>
>> …
>>
>> I’ve discussed that at length in previous posts, & it probably isn’t
>> necessary to again post about ways of choosing how to vote in Approval.
>>
>> …
>>
>> But, just summarize:  It’s easy.  Whichever of the various ways you
>> prefer to use, for choosing whom to approve, it’s easy.   …& no, it
>> doesn’t require knowing your objectively-optimal vote.
>>
>> …
>>
>> Some of us have been so spoiled by what wv Condorcet can achieve, in
>> doing it all for us, with us only needing to express our sincere
>> preference-ordering, that we’ve come to believe that that’s necessary.  …having
>> it all done for us, to shelter & isolate us from the choice.
>>
>> …
>>
>> I’ve many times pointed out that Approval’s Myerson-Weber equilibrium is
>> the voter-median.
>>
>> …
>>
>> i.e. Approval soon homes in on where the Condorcet-Winner is.
>>
>> …
>>
>> Have we forgotten that?
>>
>> …
>>
>> It seems to me that, in every one of EM’s polls, including the recent
>> one, Approval chose the CW.
>>
>> …
>>
>> Have we forgotten that?
>>
>> …
>>
>> The simple, reliable handtool works just fine.
>>
>> …
>>
>> I should add that I like wv Condorcet (RP(wv) & MinMax(wv) ) for polls,
>> because of course they look at more information.
>>
>> …
>>
>> …& I’d like them for public-political elections too, were it not for the
>> abovestated  problems of the rank-methods.
>>
> ----
>
>
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
>> info
>>
>
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