<div>Hi Kristoffer,</div>
<div> </div>
<div>answers in the text of your email below.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>For the Czech Green party, we might get some STV elections (probably IRV-STV, maybe Meek-STV) for some of the party councils encoded in our statutes by the end of this year.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>For now, proportional party list elections, ranked proportional council elections and condorcet based elections seem to be out of the picture for now, as the interest is too low.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>For information: ranked proportional party lists are used by at least the Scottish greens, the English greens and the UK Liberals in at least some elections.</div>
<div>I can send some references to their statutes, in case anybody is interested.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>STV in green political parties seems to be exclusively used only in anglo-saxon countries, where it is used rather often.</div></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Best regards</div>
<div>Peter Zborník</div>
<div><br> </div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 8:00 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:km_elmet@lavabit.com">km_elmet@lavabit.com</a>></span> wrote:
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div class="im">Peter Zbornik wrote:
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Dear all,
<div> Please let me return to an older discussion (see emails below).</div>
<div>The issue of the hybrid ballot A>B=C>D.</div>
<div>Just an idea on this topic, which might be worth mentioning.</div>
<div>It could be a way to handle the problem of bullet voting.</div>
<div>Ant it could be a way to disband the dichotomy between different criterias of winning in condorcet elections (margins, winning votes, quotas losing votes).</div>
<div> 1] IRV-based elections:</div>
<div>Basically in IRV-based STV, when arriving at an equal sign in the ballot, the ballot could simply be split into the number of candidates with equal preferences and re-weighted accordingly (i.e. for instance A=B=C would give three ballots, A>B=C, B>A=C, C>A=B, each with weight 1/3 of the original weight).</div>
<div> </div></blockquote>
<div> </div></div>This sounds a lot like Woodall's concept of "symmetric completion". A method passes symmetric completion if truncated ballots are split into ballots with the latter (truncated) preferences filled out, for all possible ways those can be filled out, and with the same cumulative power. E.g. with candidates A,B,C,D and a method satisfying symmetric completion,
<div> </div>
<div>1: A>B</div>
<div> </div>
<div>is the same as</div>
<div> </div>
<div>0.5: A>B>C>D</div>
<div>0.5: A>B>D>C.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Unless I'm mistaken, you're generalizing symmetric completion to equal-rank.</div>
<div> </div></blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>Yes, I am generalizing symmetric completion to equal rank.</div>
<div>Unlike Woodal my proposal is computable for a large number of candidates in IRV based STV elections.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>If we wanted to perform symmetric completion according to Woodall and if we would have, say seventeen candidates, who were equal-ranked, then for each ballot, we would need to generate 17!=355.687.428.096.000 strictly-ranked ballots in order to exhaust all permutations, which is not computationally feasible.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Example an IRV-STV election: A=B=C would according to Woodall be broken down into 3!=6 ballots: ABC, ACB, BAC, BCA, CAB, CBC.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I propose that the ballot to be broken down into 3 ballots: A>B=C, B>A=C, C>A=B, which is nicely computable and the result is the same as Woodalls proposal for IRV-STV elections.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Maybe the reason why equally ranked ballots aren't used in STV elections might be that a computable solution hasn't explicitly been given.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The issue of a truncated ballot (incomplete ballot or partially blank ballot) is different from the treatment of equally ranked candidates.</div></div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div>Woodall writes about symmetric completion here: <a href="http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE3/P5.HTM" target="_blank">http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE3/P5.HTM</a> , where he also shows that STV does not obey that criterion, but that IRV does. In another Voting Matters article (<a href="http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE14/P1.HTM" target="_blank">http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE14/P1.HTM</a> ), he shows how STV can be made to obey symmetric completion, but says that doing so isn't a good idea.</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>It seems that this is a matter of taste. </div>
<div>The authors argue for their criterion based on one example.</div>
<div>I do not find the example convincing, since when adding a candidate with a large number of additional votes in an STV election, then we have a different electorate which should be differently proportionally represented.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>After reading the articles above, I've come to think that the issue boils down to how to handle blank votes.</div>
<div>The issue is not as clear-cut as I thought :o)</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>Weather one accepts the plurality criterion really depends on the preferred treatment of incomplete ballots, or partially blank ballots as I would rather call them.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>In order to guarantee to get all seats elected in an STV elections, it seems that four different treatments of partially blank votes are possible:
<div>1] the symmetrical completion, which is equivalent to requiring all voters to rank all candidates as Kevin pointed out.</div></div>
<div>2] dynamic (or shrinking) quotas based on the number of active votes.</div>
<div>3] the candidate X: "none of the above" and new election if "none of the above" is elected (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_of_the_above">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/None_of_the_above</a>)</div>
<div>4] some seats simply are not elected (using static quotas). A new election is held for the remaining seats.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Option three is used in the UK green party and possibly in other green parties.</div>
<div>Personally I think that the blank vote should be respected, as a protest vote (this is in a way a very Green political issue, I think) and always be included in the quota.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Personally I would probably prefer option 4. The seats, which were not filled due to the partially blank ballots (i.e. incomplete ballots) would be filled in a new election.</div>
<div>In the Czech green party, the blank vote is counted as a legitimate vote and counted into the quora needed to get elected (i.e. if one candidate gets 45% of the votes the second gets 10% and the rest of the votes are blank, then new elections are held) </div>
<div>The green party of California is using static quotas.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>The voters, who did not complete their ballots are simply over-run in the second election, but have the option "to protest".</div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<div>I guess I prefer the options in the following order 4>1>2>3</div>
<div> </div>
<div>What is your preference ordering and why, if different from above :o)</div></div>
<div> </div></div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div>In a more general sense, there are two possible ways to handle equal rank in a weighted positional system. I think the first has been called "whole" and the second "fractional" on the list - that is at least the names I use in Quadelect.</div>
<div>If the method is "whole" (or ER-, e.g. ER-Plurality), equal ranks give the same point value to every candidate that is equal ranked. With ER-Plurality you can simulate approval, for instance, by simply voting all approved candidates equal first, ahead of all not-approved candidates.</div>
<div>If the method is "fractional", equal ranks distribute the point score over all the candidates equally ranked. Equally ranking k candidates first in Plurality would give each 1/k of the ballot's weight, and if I'm not mistaken, this is equivalent to generalized symmetric completion. You can simulate cumulative voting with fractional Plurality. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div class="im">
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Condorcet-based elections:
<div>In Condorcet elections (including STV) then A=B would simply mean 0.5 wins for A>B and 0.5 wins for B>A.</div>
<div> </div></blockquote>
<div> </div></div>That's what Margins does. As a consequence, methods based on Margins can meet symmetric completion, but methods based on WV can't. However, Margins methods can't meet the Plurality criterion whereas WV can. </blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>To paraphrase Woodall, I think that Plurality is "a rather arbitary property that surely mustn't hold in any real election". </div>
<div>Indeed plurality voting has very little to do with proportional representation and is in some sense contrary to the idea of proportional representation.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>To state it differently: my hunch is that for incomplete ballots, dynamic IRV-STV quotas give a less proportional representation than IRV-STV with symmetrical completion.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Could this be tested in your simulator?</div>
<div>Say IRV-STV elections with three or four candidates and incomplete ballots (say some bullet-voting voters).</div>
<div>Method 1: static quotas and symmetrical completion</div>
<div>Method 2: dynamic quotas and no symmetrical completion</div>
<div>Method 3: static quotas and a new election if the option "none of the above" is elected</div>
<div>Method 4: IRV-STV with static quotas and no symmetrical complketion and new elections if all seats are not elected.</div>
<div>Method 5: IRV-STV with static quotas and no symmetrical complketion and no new elections if all seats are not elected.</div>
<div>The result could be maybe shed some light on this problem.</div>
<div>My hunch is that method 5 gives the most proportional representation.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I guess the scenario above could be repeated for any STV method (like Schulze-STV etc).</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I am not at this point able to specify the scenario closer. </div>
<div>Basically it depends on how "proportional representation" is measured.</div>
<div>I have not been following the discussion on this forum and don't remember if there was ever a continuous "proportionality measure" proposed, but I remember you worked extensively with the issue.</div>
<div>My appologies for my bad memory.</div>
<div>What measure do you recommend.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Maybe election 12 in <a href="http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE3/P5.HTM">http://www.votingmatters.org.uk/ISSUE3/P5.HTM</a> could be used as a starting point, as this example is what Woodall seems to base his argument for the plurality criterion on.</div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<div class="im">
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">Kevin Venzke wrote in his mail below (May 9th 2010):
<div> </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">35 A>B
<div>25 B</div>
<div>40 C</div>
<div>A will win. This is only acceptable when you assume that the B and C</div>
<div>voters meant to say that A is just as good as the other candidate that</div>
<div>they didn't rank. I don't think this is likely to be what voters expect.</div>
<div>It seems misleading to even allow truncation as an option if it's treated</div>
<div>like this.</div>
<div> </div></blockquote>End of quote
<div> Well I think think that as a voter I would indeed be pleased if A would win and not C.</div>
<div> </div></blockquote>
<div> </div></div>The example above shows how Margins can fail to meet Plurality. The Plurality criterion says that if some voter X has more first place votes than Y has *any* place votes, then Y shouldn't win. Yet that's what happens above:
<div>C has 40 first place votes. A has 35 any place votes, yet A wins. Margins elects A. Any other method that does, also fails Plurality.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div></blockquote></div><br>