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<div>Chris</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you for the response. I'll pull out a couple of quotes from your post.</div><div><br></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>There is some balance to be struck between guaranteeing the fairest <br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>result if all the voters are sincere and on the other hand reducing <br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>strategy incentives<br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>so as to make it more likely that they are, so as to avoid a "garbage <br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>in, garbage out" scenario. For that reason some of the methods that <br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>fail Condorcet<br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>have some justification, because Condorcet is incompatible with <br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>Later-no-Help (and so has some Burial incentive) and FBC.</div></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">So what would you consider to be the fairest result if all voters are sincere? You seem to hint at Condorcet without explicitly saying it (by justifying other methods because of strategic considerations).</div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">I think Condorcet makes intuitive sense, but actually I think becomes less reasonable the more you look into it. For example these: <span><a href="https://rangevoting.org/FishburnAntiC.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="">https://rangevoting.org/FishburnAntiC.html</a> </span><a href="https://rangevoting.org/TobyCondParadox.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://rangevoting.org/TobyCondParadox.html</a> That's not to say I think it's completely unreasonable, but I do have doubts about it even regardless of strategic considerations. I don't automatically consider the Condorcet winner to be the "best" winner.<span><div><br></div><div>>Lastly I like to avoid logical absurdity, such as failures of <br></div></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">>Mono-add-plump and Irrelevant Ballot Independence and Clone Independence.<br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br></div></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Is participation failure not also a logical absurdity? It is effectively saying that someone's vote could count for negative. I know it's very hard to actual achieve in a voting method but it is one reason why I like score voting.</div><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br></div><div dir="ltr" style="color: rgb(38, 40, 42); font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><br></div><br></div><div><br></div>
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On Saturday, 29 June 2019, 13:10:56 BST, C.Benham <cbenham@adam.com.au> wrote:
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<div><div dir="ltr">Toby,<br></div><div dir="ltr">I want to as much as possible give every voter equal positive (from the <br></div><div dir="ltr">individual voters' perspectives, as far as we can tell from the preferences<br></div><div dir="ltr">they express on their ballots) weight in determining the result. We can <br></div><div dir="ltr">tend towards "maximising utility" by not encouraging voters to express very<br></div><div dir="ltr">weak (possibly light-minded) preferences or even arbitrary <br></div><div dir="ltr">not-really-existent preferences that the voting method is unable to <br></div><div dir="ltr">distinguish from strong<br></div><div dir="ltr">real preferences.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">So I'm allergic to any sort of random-fill incentive or a rule common in <br></div><div dir="ltr">Australia that ballots that don't strictly rank all the candidates have <br></div><div dir="ltr">no effect on<br></div><div dir="ltr">the result. And I'm not a huge fan of Later-no-Harm. Nonetheless IRV <br></div><div dir="ltr">avoids having any random-fill incentive because it also meets <br></div><div dir="ltr">Later-no-Help and<br></div><div dir="ltr">so is invulnerable to Burial strategy and that is one of the reasons why <br></div><div dir="ltr">I rate it as an ok method.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">I generally want to reduce insincere strategy incentives, and I want to <br></div><div dir="ltr">minimise the advantage strategic voters have over sincere voters and the <br></div><div dir="ltr">advantage<br></div><div dir="ltr">that well-informed strategic voters have over less-well informed <br></div><div dir="ltr">strategic voters. And I prefer that there be no zero-information (about <br></div><div dir="ltr">how other voters<br></div><div dir="ltr">will likely vote) strategy incentive but if there is it should be <br></div><div dir="ltr">intuitive and commonsensical.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">There is some balance to be struck between guaranteeing the fairest <br></div><div dir="ltr">result if all the voters are sincere and on the other hand reducing <br></div><div dir="ltr">strategy incentives<br></div><div dir="ltr">so as to make it more likely that they are, so as to avoid a "garbage <br></div><div dir="ltr">in, garbage out" scenario. For that reason some of the methods that <br></div><div dir="ltr">fail Condorcet<br></div><div dir="ltr">have some justification, because Condorcet is incompatible with <br></div><div dir="ltr">Later-no-Help (and so has some Burial incentive) and FBC.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Regarding ballot rules, I prefer if the voters are able to express a <br></div><div dir="ltr">full strict ranking of the candidates if they wish to. It is also nice <br></div><div dir="ltr">if they can express<br></div><div dir="ltr">above-bottom equal preference and maybe also an explicit approval <br></div><div dir="ltr">cutoff or some ratings from which one can be inferred. Some limit on the <br></div><div dir="ltr">number<br></div><div dir="ltr">of candidates a voter is allowed to vote above bottom (as with plurality <br></div><div dir="ltr">and some implementations of IRV I've heard of) is unacceptable.<br></div><div dir="ltr">Approval ballots are also too restrictive. Three-slot ratings ballots <br></div><div dir="ltr">are much better but still too restrictive. Four-slot ratings ballots are <br></div><div dir="ltr">much better again<br></div><div dir="ltr">and might be (at least most of the time) good enough.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Lastly I like to avoid logical absurdity, such as failures of <br></div><div dir="ltr">Mono-add-plump and Irrelevant Ballot Independence and Clone Independence.<br></div><div dir="ltr">BTW, the "strategy incentives" I referred to earlier refer not just to <br></div><div dir="ltr">voting but also to nomination of candidates.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">> Obviously a voting method also needs to be simple enough to understand <br></div><div dir="ltr">> (in terms of voting and understanding how the winner is calculated)..<br></div><div dir="ltr">If you mean that the voters need to understand how the winner is <br></div><div dir="ltr">calculated, that view is not universal in the world.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">> ... ,and it might be that different types of election suit different <br></div><div dir="ltr">> methods.<br></div><div dir="ltr">Yes. If the voters trust the people running the election they might put <br></div><div dir="ltr">up with a complicated voting algorithm they don't understand. If little <br></div><div dir="ltr">is at<br></div><div dir="ltr">stake then limiting strategy incentives becomes less important and the <br></div><div dir="ltr">voters might be content with something relatively simple to save time.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Chris Benham<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Toby Pereira tdp201b at yahoo.co.uk<br></div><div dir="ltr">Thu Jun 27 07:31:17 PDT 2019<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">> With all the discussion of different single-winner methods and the <br></div><div dir="ltr">> criteria they pass and fail, I'm interested to know what you think the <br></div><div dir="ltr">> "ideal" method should hope to achieve. For example, some people might <br></div><div dir="ltr">> want to maximise utility summed across the voters. Others might want <br></div><div dir="ltr">> to find the candidate that is closest to the "median voter". For <br></div><div dir="ltr">> others it might be more about obeying some sort of majority criterion <br></div><div dir="ltr">> (e.g. Condorcet). Etc.<br></div><div dir="ltr">> Personally, the measure that makes most sense to me is to maximise <br></div><div dir="ltr">> utility. But this doesn't automatically mean score voting (where a <br></div><div dir="ltr">> score could simply be seen as a utility rating of a candidate), at <br></div><div dir="ltr">> least in part because strategies that voters adopt might reduce its <br></div><div dir="ltr">> effectiveness. Obviously a voting method also needs to be simple <br></div><div dir="ltr">> enough to understand (in terms of voting and understanding how the <br></div><div dir="ltr">> winner is calculated), and it might be that different types of <br></div><div dir="ltr">> election suit different methods.<br></div><div dir="ltr">> Toby<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">---<br></div><div dir="ltr">This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><a href="https://www.avg.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.avg.com</a><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div></div>
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