<div dir="auto">But I guess that Congress could enact a House so big that even the smallest state proportionally qualifies for a seat…but that doesn’t really help, because we still have to have a Senate in which each state has exactly 2 seats. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So, national PR would remain nonsense.</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Oct 15, 2023 at 12:41 Michael Ossipoff <<a href="mailto:email9648742@gmail.com">email9648742@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto">Richard—</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I must confess that it isn’t entirely clear what you’re talking about. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I didn’t say that the Constitution explicitly bans PR.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I said that it’s requirements would make nonsense of any attempt at PR in national government. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">As for your Condorcet vs Borda issue, perhaps you aren’t aware that CTE & Duncan ( like MinMax(wv) & CW,Approval) are Condorcet methods. They use Borda as part of their mechanism to disqualify the buriers’ candidate in order to deter burial strategy.</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Oct 15, 2023 at 09:06 Richard Lung <<a href="mailto:voting@ukscientists.com" target="_blank">voting@ukscientists.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p><br>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><span> </span>Clarity on
principles</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Dear EM list,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>If a thing needs doing, there is no point in
complaining about it being hard. This was a point made by
Winston Churchill.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The US Constitution could not ban an election
system, not invented till the next century.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>At least, those who introduced a quota-preferential
bill to Congress apparently didn’t think so. And what the cities
could do, surely the federal government also could.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>State-level suppression of local autonomy in
introducing proportional representation, notably Massachusetts
state banning other cities, in the state, than Cambridge from
using STV/PR, was not a constitutional decision, but only so far
as brute force could go, by way of arbitrary self-will without
principles.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Therefore, the way forward is a principled one. My
advice, such as it is, to any electoral reform proposal, as that
made by Forest, is that it needs to be clear on the principles
on which it operates, so that politicians can be clear to the
public, on the kind of election they are being offered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>The incorporation of the Borda method in a
recommendation involves the first recognition (by </span><span>Laplace</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Arial Rounded MT Bold"">) that
lesser preferences count less.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>This was in direct contradiction to the systematic
elimination count offered by Condorcet. The advantage of this
pioneering debate was that it offered a clear choice between
all-inclusive weighted preference count and exclusive unweighted
preference count. Only the former offers the </span><span>Laplace</span><span> requirement to count preference order of
importance.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>One problem I had was that weighted Condorcet
pairing, counting each margin of victory, was about as accurate
as Borda method, as one could tell by inspection, even of a very
narrow contest.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>I have now come to the conclusion that weighted
Condorcet pairing is effectively (on average) a weighted
preference order count, first required by </span><span>Laplace</span><span>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Each voters preference is not suitably weighted by
order of importance. Instead, the lack of weighted orders of
preference for each voter is made up for, firstly by the fact
that all the votes (at any order of choice) are equally or
indiscriminately treated in this manner, but, on average, a
collective order of preference emerges, in the margins of
victory for each candidate pairing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>However, what might be called Condorcet implicit
preference weighting has its limitations. It does not reflect
personal orders of preference for personal representation. And
it changes with who votes in the electorate.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Never the less, weighted Condorcet pairing, to some
extent vindicates (collectively) weighted order of preference.
But in doing so, it reinforces the case against unweighted
elimination counts. Hence weighted Condorcet pairing may be
approximately as accurate as the Borda count, both in principle
and in practise for the single member case.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>An advantage of a Binomial count, a rational count
for the exclusion, equally as well as the election, of
candidates, is that it can apply to single-member as well as
multi-member constituencies. (I.e. a binomial count offers the
consistency of a general theory of elections.) The necessary
practical consideration is that<span>
</span>all the preferences (including abstentions) are counted,
so it is known how much the voters wish to elect or exclude the
candidates. The consideration of principle is to introduce and
uphold the law of conservation of (preferential) information.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Regards,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Richard Lung.</span></p>
</div>
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