<br><br><span>---------- Forwarded message ----------</span><br><span>From: Kevin Venzke <<a href="mailto:stepjak@yahoo.fr" target="_blank">stepjak@yahoo.fr</a>></span><br><span>To: election-methods <<a href="mailto:election-methods@electorama.com" target="_blank">election-methods@electorama.com</a>></span><br>
<span>Cc: </span><br><span>Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:56:08 +0000 (GMT)</span><br><span>Subject: Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and Richard Fobes.</span><br><div><div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">
<div>Hi David,</div><div></div><div style="margin-left:40px"><br></div><div style="margin-left:40px"></div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt"><div dir="ltr" style="margin-left:80px"><font face="Arial"><hr size="1">
<b>De :</b> David L Wetzell <<a href="mailto:wetzelld@gmail.com" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">wetzelld@gmail.com</a>><br><b>À :</b> <a href="mailto:election-methods@lists.electorama.com" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">election-methods@lists.electorama.com</a> <br>
<b>Envoyé le :</b> Samedi 18 février 2012 16h58<br><b>Objet :</b> Re: [EM] (Kevin Venzke) and Richard Fobes.<br></font></div><div dir="ltr" style="margin-left:80px"> </div><div style="margin-left:80px"><div><blockquote style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt">That doesn't make much sense to me. The election method is a part of the system and it has an obvious effect on how</div><div dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt">
many candidates could run.</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: It depends on the size of the effect of the election method. There still are cost-benefit rationales that would keep the number of serious candidates down, depending of course on the size and importance of the election. Ceteris paribus, to have a party institution behind you will make a difference regardless of what election method gets used. <br>
<br></div></div></div>Well, in SODA's case, I think the size of the effect is probably massive. It reminds me of the open party list in Brazil.<br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: Aye, but that's multi-winner. Multi-winner vs single-winner is a major effect. We were talking amongst single-winner election rules. <br>
<br></div></div></div>KV:The similarity is that with SODA, you (and like-minded candidates) get a benefit even if you don't win. Under normal methods you have the inherent pressure<br>against running clones (that I think we both agree exists) with little possible benefit in nominating them.</div>
<div style="font-size:12pt"><br></div><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw: What is the benefit? You might get lucky? There'd be pressure in real life against clones running regardless and so the strength of the effect is still an empirical question. <br>
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<div dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt"> </div><blockquote dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt;margin-right:0px"><blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-right:0px"><div>and so what relative advantages there are of SODA over IRV will be less, which then makes the first-mover marketing problem more significant, especially if IRV can be souped up with the seemingly slight modification of the use of a limited form of approval voting in the first stage.</div>
<div><br></div><div>dlw</div><div> </div></blockquote></blockquote><div style="font-size:12pt">If I remember correctly your idea is to use approval to pick finalists. I don't think this is a good idea because it breaks</div>
<div style="font-size:12pt">clone independence, which is an IRV selling point.</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>But does it break it strongly? Let there be A, B, and C. Let BB be a B clone.</div><div>The field is split 30.1-40-29.9. Normally B wins. If BB enters then either B or BB gets eliminated in the first round but then their votes transfer to whoever remains and so the outcome wouldn't change. You'd need to have a crowded field so that an original finalist and their clone would both get eliminated. If either the original winner and clone(s) got eliminated, which would be harder, in all likelihood, or you might change the order of elimination in the 2nd round so that there'd be a different winner. <br>
<br></div></div></div>I don't think you get the concern. It's not clone-winner, it's clone-loser. Suppose the original winner was 3rd place on approval. Then clone one of the other two candidates to <br>shut out the original winner.</div>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>[sarcasm]That sounds realistic.[/sarcasm] You realize that the "approval votes" are just the number of (up to 3) rankings a candidate receives? How often do you think you can clone one of the other 2 and thereby shutout the winner? I'd love to see an example of that. If the winner is preferred to the top-2 ranked-vote getters then if they were cloned, it'd not be the eventual winner who'd lose out on approval votes. <br>
<br></div></div></div>I didn't know you could only have three rankings. I agree it is difficult to construct the scenario where it actually works.<br><br><div style="margin-left:80px"><div><div> </div><blockquote style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">They don't even need to know whether 3rd place was going to win, it should just be the standard nomination strategy. If you nominate three, you <br>
could even win the entire race just on approval. There's some risk to this strategy (voters may not agree to approve everyone their party wants), but if a party so much as tries<br>to use this strategy the method will look dumb. You should be really clear on what you're trying to do if you want to tell people to use a mechanic that looks manipulable.<br>
</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If you can give me a robust example of this, ie one that's not on a knife edge, I will abandon the idea. </div><div>JQ tried to do this a while back for a slightly different matter and it was very hard to do and he eventually agreed that it "worked", except for how it tended to reenforce the 2-party domination thing that he believes (along with others) is the bane of democracy. <br>
<br><br></div></div></div>Well, I don't understand how you see it aiding anything. If you place third or worse on first preferences you will almost certainly lose. It doesn't really matter if<br>every voter approved you.</div>
<div style="font-size:12pt"><br></div><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw: Well that is the point, you need to become enuf voters 1st preference, or get support for 2nd or 3rd from voters whose favorites are not popular. </div>
<div style="font-size:12pt">I have a hard time seeing how you see it as not aiding anything. <br>
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<div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="margin-left:40px"><br></div><div style="margin-left:80px"><div><div><br></div><div>For me, I think there are real world safeguards against clones in politics and so to be 100% clone independence is not important. <br>
<br></div></div></div>I kind of agree with that, but only for cloning winners.<br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm not worried about cloning non-winners. <br><br></div></div>In your method or in general?? I don't see how it can be denied that parties would nominate many candidates for a single seat if that was the best strategy for<br>
winning. We can find examples of parties using the electoral method in unexpected ways (Taiwan and Italy occur to me), and we also have the open party list<br>tactic of nominating more candidates than there are even seats to be won.<br>
<br>dlw: In my method especially, and because I trust there'd be ways to mitigate the problem if some parties did try to game the system in that manner.<br><br><div style="margin-left:80px"><blockquote style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">If your goal is to e.g. not elect Condorcet winners who place third,</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div>I don't think my goal is not to elect CW's who get 3rd amount of top-rankings among the three finalists. I think the goal is to reduce the distance between the de facto center and the true center, </div>
<div>while allowing that we don't know the true changing center and don't want to chase it too easily. <br><br></div></div></div>That's a pretty unusual goal that I still don't quite get. (Why do you pick the terms "de facto" and "true"? Wouldn't it be "anticipated" vs. "actual" or something? If the "true<br>
changing" center is the actual location of the median voter, how on earth does "de facto" contrast with this?)<br></div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: de facto is based on the positioning of parties and determines what issues are on the docket. True is what would be the case if every vote was taken seriously by the system as a whole, but this in real life is really dynamic and there could be some unintended consequences behind voting methods that successfully always nailed the true political center. Typically, it takes time to enact serious policy changes, hence the need for a 2-party dominated system to provide the leadership required for serious changes. </div>
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<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">I think you should use the Approval-IRV hybrid that eliminates the least approved candidate until there is a majority</div><div style="font-size:12pt">favorite. I call it AER... I think Woodall called it Approval AV.</div>
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<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw: IRV+ is easy to tabulate at the precinct level. One could get the 3 finalists on election night.</div></div></div></blockquote><div>The next day the votes can be sorted into 10 categories, once again at the precinct level, and the results used to find the winner. </div>
<div>This is more important than clone independence, cuz the true winner(for normal irv) would be more immune to the existence of clones than other finalists.</div><br></div></div>I wish I understood what you feel makes IRV good and how you are trying to improve it.</div>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>My arg has been that what is crucial is to change the mix of single-winner and multi-winner elections and that in our system the diffs in quality among single-winner rules is of 2nd order import. As such, it's best to go with a tweaked version of the first-mover alternative to FPTP that's been endorsed by the president of the USA and John McCain and many others, as shown in Rob Richie's NYTIME article. <br>
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<div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">I'm pretty sure that if those were nailed down, you could find something easier and<br>better. Using approval you are already discarding the LNHarm guarantee.</div>
</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>dlw: But not very much. The use of IRV for the last 3 keeps most of the LNH. </div><div> </div><blockquote style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">Why stick to something relatively difficult to tabulate?</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It's not hard to tabulate how many times a candidate gets ranked, so long as you catch the cases where voters rank the same candidate twice or what-not. That's easy to do. <br>
<br></div></div>By "difficult to tabulate" I was talking about IRV itself. But no matter:</div><div style="font-size:12pt"><br></div><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw: Maybe that's why I'm pushing IRV+???<br>
<br>KV:Ok, so you are married to IRV or variants because of its "first mover" status. Then my question switches to how the approval rule helps it. Do you have a <br>
scenario on-hand that shows your method doing something preferable to what IRV normally would do? I can't think of what the expected difference would <br>be, except when somehow the second-place (on first preferences) candidate isn't among the top three approved. Are you thinking of a Chirac/Jospin/Le Pen <br>
scenario (2002 French presidential election)? Though that would not even have happened under IRV.</div><div style="font-size:12pt"><br></div><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw: Speeding up the election and simplifying the use of IRV are enuf to justify the use of IRV+ over IRV, especially for bigger elections. It doesn't matter how often it'd get a different outcome. </div>
<div style="font-size:12pt">There'd be no recursion in the explanation of how it'd work and that'd be one less arg that opponents of electoral reform could use against it. </div><div style="font-size:12pt">Plus, almost all of the args used by advocates of Approval Voting against IRV would get watered down..., cuz the simple fact of the matter is that IRV works best with only 3 candidates. <br>
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<div><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt"><div style="font-size:12pt">I don't think you can ride IRV's coattails if you <br>won't keep the (demonstrable) properties of it. And picking finalists using raw approval... That is just a basic thing not to do, like plurality-at-large for multiple seats.<br>
</div></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It's not raw for a first stage of single-winner election. Plurality at-large for multiple seats is not unlike single-winner elections, but that's the point, it's a single-winner election rule. </div>
<div>thanks for the good comments.</div><br></div></div>By "raw" I mean "nothing is done to ensure one viewpoint doesn't take all the spots." Usually finalist selection isn't "single-winner" (read: single viewpoint) but <br>
are somewhat representative of all the voters, such as the last two candidates standing in IRV. </div><div style="font-size:12pt"><br></div><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw: Well, if there's only winner in the end, it doesn't matter if all viewpoints are expressed in the final round. There's usually no door-bell prize. </div>
<div style="font-size:12pt"><br></div><div style="font-size:12pt">dlw<br><br>Kevin<br></div></div></div></div>