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<p>Ted,<br>
<br>
I haven't been thinking very much about this topic lately. But I
have one or two ideas. <br>
<br>
Abolish the party primaries and just have one big "primary".
Use STV to one-at -a-time eliminate candidates until the
remaining candidate with the fewest votes has a tally that is at
least X (say 15)%<br>
of the total of the unexhausted ballots (i.e. those that show some
preference among uneliminated candidates).<br>
<br>
In the "general election" this should limit the field to a
manageable number (no more than 6).<br>
<br>
("STAR" is an abomination.)<br>
<br>
At least as important in the current period is election integrity
and thinking of ways to use technology to implement direct
democracy or some hybrid of direct and representative democracy.<br>
<br>
Chris<br>
<br>
<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 18/09/2020 6:13 am, Ted Stern wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAHGFzORqiXdEp+WnEG3nP8FDzjdcRnjs3hFbokuOi4xMd4Z5UQ@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">I've implemented the primary idea I proposed last
month. It's available in my github repository as <b>winnow.py</b>.
The repo is located at
<div><b><br>
</b></div>
<div><a
href="https://github.com/dodecatheon/approval-sorted-margins/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://github.com/dodecatheon/approval-sorted-margins/</a><br>
<div><b><br>
</b></div>
<div>The code is designed to be used as a test bed for several
score-ballot-based methods.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The default method for advancing candidates is Preference
Approval Sorted Margins. It's basically Approval Sorted
Margins, but I interpret any non-zero score as approval, so
I'm calling the higher level of approval "Preference". As I
proposed before, any ballots approving (non-zero score) of
the currently advancing winner are removed completely, then
tallies are done on the remaining ballots until no more
candidates remain or 95% of the ballots are used up, or a
maximum number of candidates (default 7) has been reached.
In each candidate advance round, candidates with remaining
approval below the threshold (default 1%) are dropped.</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Approval, Score, STAR, Vote 3-2-1, and Score Sorted Margins
are supported, and just for the sake of completeness, I also
include Preference (like approval but using explicit
"preference" cutoff), and Top-rating.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It is designed to be used on a linux command line with
python 3.7+ that includes numpy. I recommend getting the
Anaconda (or mini-conda) package. There are a lot of
commandline options.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>From the standpoint of practicality, say in the event of a
100+ candidate jungle primary, this type of primary would be
relatively simple to implement for Approval, Score, Preference
or Top-Rating. Slightly more difficult would be STAR or Vote
3-2-1. Finally, any method that requires the pairwise array,
such as PASM or SSM, would be most complicated, and would
probably require some sort of candidate pruning below an
approval threshold (to get the number of candidates below 20
or so) to be at all feasible.</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 2:33 PM
Ted Stern <<a href="mailto:dodecatheon@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">dodecatheon@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Over the years a number of people on this list
(e.g. Rob Lanphier, myself and others) have proposed various
methods for using Approval in primary elections.<br>
<br>
There are arguments to be made for using other PR methods,
but it seems to me that SNTV is ideally suited to be a
primary method, since it resists pushover and doesn't tend
to overrepresent parties.<br>
<br>
Using Approval as a base method, single non-transferable
approval voting would look like
<div>
<ul>
<li>Advance Approval winner and Approval runner-up</li>
<li>Deweight to zero all ballots approving of AW.</li>
<li>Repeat until some threshold (e.g. 90%) of ballots
have been used up:</li>
<ul>
<li>Advance approval winner on the current remaining
ballots</li>
<li>Deweight ballots approving of latest winner to
zero</li>
</ul>
</ul>
The advantages here are </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Relative simplicity -- No complicated reweighting
algorithms, so each recount for the next approval
winner is faster than the previous, and can even be
done by hand.</li>
<li>Each winner (other than the first approval
runner-up) will tend to be from a different party or
faction of a party. There may be some overlap from
also advancing the overall Approval runner-up, but if
the total AW and ARU are from the same party, it gives
them an advantage under Approval to have a similar
candidate for comparison. </li>
<li>Most groups will be represented in the General
election.</li>
<li>Pushover strategy is disincentivized by complete
deweighting, so parties should not be threatened by
strategic promotion of their worst candidate. There is
some possibility that voters would do that regardless,
but the effect should be no worse than in current
top-two elections.</li>
<li>Modifications could include:</li>
<ul>
<li>Stop advancing candidates when the highest
approval on remaining ballots drops below a
threshold. For example, if the total deweight
threshold is 90%, if the latest winner has less than
5% approval on remaining ballots (half the
complement of 90%), break the loop.</li>
<li>Stop when a certain number of candidates have
advanced. For example, if using the 5% rule above,
it is possible that 10 to 15 candidates could
advance to the General, defeating the winnowing
purpose of a primary. It seems reasonable to stop at
5 or 6 candidates.</li>
<li>Use a different method other than simple Approval.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
</div>
<div>I would be perfectly satisfied to have SNTAV as a
primary method, but if one can handle a bit more
complexity (say in smaller groups), it would be reasonable
to use Approval Sorted Margins as the base method:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Use Ranked or Rated ballots with explicit Approval
Cutoff. If not explicitly specified, cutoff is at
zero-rating or last ranking.</li>
<li>Advance Approval Sorted Margins winner to general
election </li>
<li>Deweight to zero all ballots approving of AW.</li>
<li>Repeat until some threshold (e.g. 90%) of ballots
have been used up:</li>
<ul>
<li>Advance ASM winner on the current remaining
ballots</li>
<li>Deweight ballots approving of latest winner to
zero</li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>For public elections, I think the SNTAV approach I
outline above, with a 90% threshold, 5% minimum
remaining approval, and limited to 6 candidates (4
approval winners and 1 top approval runner-up) gives
enough room to enable more parties to develop.</div>
</div>
</div>
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