[EM] Better Choices for Democracy

Wed Jun 25 12:57:44 PDT 2025

Plausible but I’m not convinced. I think Mamdani genuinely won over a lot
of center-left voters — at least speaking anecdotally from conversations
I’ve had with folks in that sphere in NYC — on the merits of his platform
rather than strategic considerations.

It seems to me that both:

(1) More voters preferred Mamdani to Lander head-to-head.

(2) More voters opposed Mamdani than Lander.

On Wed, Jun 25, 2025 at 3:52 PM Closed Limelike Curves via Election-Methods
<election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:

> Going by the returns from last night, it looks like there was probably a
> Center Squeeze in NYC, although it might not be visible on the ballots
> since presumably lots of people probably only ranked either Cuomo or
> Mamdani out of laziness.
>
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2025 at 8:24 PM robert bristow-johnson via
> Election-Methods <election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > On 06/24/2025 9:34 PM EDT Chris Benham via Election-Methods <
>> election-methods at lists.electorama.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Robert,
>> >
>> > > Why is it *ever* a good thing to elect the IRV winner when such
>> differs from the Condorcet winner?
>> >
>> > In the case where all the voters give their sincere full rankings, it
>> is
>> > possible that the Hare winner will have much higher Social Utility
>> while
>> > the CW has zero or next-to-zero real support:
>> >
>> > 49  A|>>C>B>D
>> > 48  B|>>C>A>D
>> > 03  D>>C>A|>>B
>> >
>> > (The | indicates approval cutoff and >> means extra strong preference,
>> > but neither Hare or the Condorcet criterion has any use for that
>> > information).
>>
>> Okay, Chris, I'm gonna do one issue at a time, and I'll start top-down.
>> And I will actually refuse to go down rabbit holes.
>>
>> So here, it appears that you're changing the semantics of the game, and I
>> won't go there.
>>
>> The whole point of choosing the ranked ballot over the scored ballot is
>> that there is no ">>".  Just ">" and "=".  Ranked ballot voting does not
>> provide for ">>".  Nor does it provide for "|" either, although I'll grant
>> that a natural place to put "|" is at the unranked level.  But it's not the
>> point of the ranked ballot.
>>
>> The only information we get from the ranked ballot and the only
>> information we *want* from the ranked ballot is A>B>C.  All this means is
>> that if the choice was between A and B, the vote is for A.  If between A
>> and C, the vote is for A.  But if the choice was between B and C, the vote
>> would be for B.  In any case, the vote counts as exactly one vote.  Degree
>> of preference does not matter.   And it should not, because people will
>> just be incentivized to exaggerate their degree of preference to make their
>> vote count more.  Borda conceded as much when he answered a point from
>> Condorcet: "My system is only intended for honest men."  The system,
>> whatever it is, should be resistant to attempts by dishonest voters to game
>> it.  It can't be done, perfectly.  But we shouldn't set up a utilitarian
>> ranking or rating system that will incentivize either strategic or tactical
>> voting (and I differentiate a little between the two, but they're both bad).
>>
>> So, I am not going down the utilitarian rabbit hole in this.  I'm just
>> for the strict equality of our votes to the degree possible.  It must not
>> matter how enthusiastic or passionate our support is for the candidate we
>> vote for.  Our votes should be counted equally anyway.
>>
>> Okay, I'll dabble in one more thing, and then I'm leaving this alone.
>>
>> >> We *know* when we don't elect the CW that IIA and favorite betrayal
>> are violated and people are harmed for voting sincerely.
>> >
>> > No Condorcet method meets Favorite Betrayal or IIA.
>>
>> I know that.  It wasn't my point.  I meant *only* what I said.  Just take
>> the sentence for precisely what was written.
>>
>> >  It is true that good Condorcet methods are somewhat less vulnerable to
>> Compromise than Hare,
>>
>> Yes, the incentive to compromise comes from spoiled elections.  There
>> were 4 spoiled RCV election in the United States that we know of because no
>> CW was elected.  Two of which *could* have been unspoiled (Burlington 2009
>> and Alaska 2022).  The other two are good examples of Impossibility a.la.
>> Arrow.  I have always been clear that changing from Hare to Condorcet only
>> fixes the first two.  And **any** Condorcet will fix it, not just the "good
>> Condorcet" methods.
>>
>> But as RCV is adopted more and more, this failure will occur more often
>> than once per decade, it will happen every year (if RCV is widespread and
>> IRV is the method).  Then there will be trouble.  We should make course
>> corrections now and not wait for that day.
>>
>> > but on the other hand all Condorcet methods (some more than others) are
>> vulnerable to Burial and Hare isn't.
>>
>> That's right.  But the vulnerability to burial requires the Condorcet
>> election to either be in a cycle or to push it into a cycle.  If we're not
>> in a cycle, nor even close to a cycle, burial will do nothing to help the
>> side doing it.  Burial cannot make a non-CW into a CW.  All burial can do
>> is toss it into a cycle and hope that your non-CW is elected with how the
>> Condorcet-consistent method elects in a cycle.
>>
>> >> MiniMax Opposition (that isn't really Condorcet consistent) also has
>> LNH.
>> >
>> > MinMax (Pairwise Opposition) is nether a Condorcet method or any
>> version of the single transferable vote and doesn't meet Later-no-Help. So
>> why mention it?
>>
>> Because you said something about "the only rule that doesn't allow lower
>> rankings to either harm or help higher-ranked candidates".  Hare isn't the
>> only rule that does LNH.  I don't like MinMax (Pairwise Opposition) because
>> it's not Condorcet.  I'm just saying that your "simple principle" is not
>> yet well-defined.
>>
>> But the Condorcet criterion *is* well-defined.  Not complete, but
>> well-defined.  And it's simple.  Very simple.  And hard to argue with.  At
>> least you haven't brought up the contrived bullshit about "core support"
>> that we read from the likes of Deb Otis and other IRV apologists.
>>
>> bestest,
>>
>> robert
>>
>> --
>>
>> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com
>>
>> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>>
>> .
>> .
>> .
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>>
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