<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p> <br>
</p>
<p>My response to this "perfect system" issue has nearly always
(apart from the generosity of Forest Simmons) beeen ignored, or
occasionally denigrated in various ways.</p>
<p>The paradox of social choice theory, as Scientific American
refers to, is that it disproves what it fails to define. The
result of democracy as dictatorship is Orwellian. Theorem Arrow
does not define democracy but what JS Mill (and Lani Guinier)
called maiorocracy or the tyranny of the majority. This is the
basic problem of the American debate. It is fixated on
single-member systems, which cannot be democratic, and cannot
achieve more than the barest sufficiency of democracy, let alone
"perfection." No matter how many times Joe Biden repeats that the
US is a democracy.</p>
<p>In scrambling for these single-seat dominations, Anglo-American
debate has become candidate-centred and not voter-centred, as it
should be. America is an undignified two-party divide, rather than
the proud union it intended to be. And this is a direct result of
the obvious method of a non-transferable vote for one winner. As
was predicted over a century ago (by HG Wells) this was bound to
gravitate to a two-sided system. <br>
</p>
<p>The same is true of the party list systems, their
non-transferable party proportional votes leading to first party
past the post systems, in forming coalitions, on the back of
relative majorities of as little as 20% odd or 30% odd of the
votes cast.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Richard Lung.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 06/11/2023 07:29, Rob Lanphier
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAK9hOY=mui509WBqDSRg9tNbUqWX1L4rKwRBDBqe0APpYksEjw@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hi folks,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I just wrote a letter to the editor(s) of Scientific
American, which I've included below. My letter was in a
response to the following article that was recently published
on their website:<br>
</div>
<div>
<div><a
href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-how-math-could-design-the-perfect-electoral-system/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-how-math-could-design-the-perfect-electoral-system/</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Y'all may have other thoughts on the article.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div>Rob<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded
message ---------<br>
From: <b class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Rob Lanphier</b>
<span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:roblan@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">roblan@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Sun, Nov 5, 2023 at 11:22 PM<br>
Subject: Regarding using math to create a "Perfect
Electoral System"<br>
To: Scientific American Editors <<a
href="mailto:editors@sciam.com" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">editors@sciam.com</a>><br>
</div>
<br>
<br>
<div dir="ltr">
<div>To whom it may concern:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I appreciate your article "Could Math Design the
Perfect Electoral System?", since I agree that math is
important for understanding electoral reform, and
there's a lot of good information and great diagrams in
your article:</div>
<div><a
href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-how-math-could-design-the-perfect-electoral-system/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-how-math-could-design-the-perfect-electoral-system/</a></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There's some things that the article gets wrong, but
the good news is that the article title and its relation
to <span>Betteridge</span><span>'s law. This law
states </span>"Any headline that ends in a question
mark can be answered by the word <i>'</i>no<i>'</i>."
The bad news: the URL slug
("see-how-math-could-design-the-perfect-electoral-system")
implies the answer is "yes". The answer is "no";
Kenneth Arrow and Allan Gibbard proved there is no
perfect electoral system (using math).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I appreciate that your article highlights the mayoral
election in Burlington, Vermont in 2009. That is an
important election for all voters considering FairVote's
favorite single-winner system ("instant-runoff voting"
or rather "ranked-choice voting, as they now call it).
When I volunteered with FairVote in the late 1990s, I
remember when they introduced the term "instant-runoff
voting". I thought the name was fine. After Burlington
2009, it would seem that FairVote has abandoned the
name. Regardless, anyone considering instant-runoff
needs to consider Burlington's experience.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Sadly, your article describes "cardinal methods" in a
confusing manner. It erroneously equates cardinal's
counterpart ("ordinal voting") with "ranked-choice
voting". Intuitively, all "ordinal methods" should be
called "ranked choice voting", but during this century,
the term has been popularized by FairVote and the city
of San Francisco to refer to a specific method formerly
referred to as "instant-runoff voting". These days,
when Americans speak of "RCV", they're generally
referring to the system known on English Wikipedia as
"IRV" (or "Instant-runoff voting"):</div>
<div><a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting</a><br>
</div>
<br>
<div>There have been many methods that use ranked ballots,
including the methods developed by Nicolas de Condorcet
and Jean-Charles de Borda in the 1780s and the 1790s.
I'm grateful that the Marquis de Condorcet's work is
featured so prominently in your article. Condorcet's
work was brilliant, and I'm sure he would have become
more prominent if he hadn't died in a French prison in
the 1790s. Many single-winner methods that strictly
comply with the "Condorcet winner criterion" are
probably as close to "perfect" as any system (from a
mathematical perspective).<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Most methods that pass the "Condorcet winner
criterion" typically use ranked ballots (and thus are
"ordinal"), but it's important to note that almost all
"ordinal" methods can use cardinal ballots.
Instant-runoff voting doesn't work very well with
cardinal ballots (because tied scores cannot be
allowed), but most other ordinal systems work perfectly
well with tied ratings or rankings. Even though passing
the Condorcet winner criterion is very important, there
are many methods that come very, very close in
reasonable simulations. I would strongly recommend that
you contact Dr. Ka-Ping Yee, who is famous in electoral
reform circles for "Yee diagrams":</div>
<div><a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/Yee_diagram"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/Yee_diagram</a></div>
<div>(a direct link to Yee's 2005 paper: <a
href="http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/</a>
)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Note that "approval voting" and "Condorcet" provide
pretty much the same results in Yee's 2005 paper.
"Instant-runoff voting" seems a little crazy in Yee's
simulations.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Though Arrow and Gibbard disproved "perfection", I
prefer to think of Arrow's and Gibbard's work as
defining the physics of election methods. To explain
what I mean, consider the physics of personal
transportation. It is impossible to design the PERFECT
vehicle (that is spacious, and comfortable, travels
faster than the speed of light, fits in anyone's garage
or personal handbag). Newton and Einstein more-or-less
proved it. However, those esteemed scientists' work
didn't cause us to stop working on improvements in
personal transportation. Buggy whips are now (more or
less) recognized as obsolete, as is Ford's "Model T".<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Now that Arrow and Gibbard have helped us understand
the physics of election methods, we can hopefully start
pursuing alternatives to the buggy whip (or rather,
alternatives to "choose-one" voting systems, often
referred to as "first past the post" systems). <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This gets me to the statement from your article that
gets under my skin the most::</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
<div>This is called cardinal voting, or range voting,
and although it’s no panacea and has its own
shortcomings, it circumvents the limitations imposed
by Arrow’s impossibility theorem, which only applies
to ranked choice voting. <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>People who study election methods refer to "cardinal
voting" as a <i>category</i> of voting methods, of
which "range voting" is just one (which is called "score
voting" on English Wikipedia):</div>
<div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_voting"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Score_voting</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The conflation of "ranked choice voting" with all
ordinal voting methods is also highly problematic
(though I don't entirely blame you for this). As I
stated earlier, there are many methods that can use
ranked ballots. While this article may have been
helpful for those of us that prefer ranking methods that
are not "instant-runoff voting" back when FairVote
switched to "ranked-choice voting" in the early 2010s.
Note that before the fiasco in Burlington in 2009,
FairVote pretty consistently preferred "instant runoff
voting":</div>
<div><a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/20091111061523/http://www.fairvote.org/"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://web.archive.org/web/20091111061523/http://www.fairvote.org/</a></div>
<br>
<div>I appreciate that you're trying to explain this
insanely complicated topic to your readers. When I edit
English Wikipedia (which I've done for over twenty
years), I would love to be able to cite Scientific
American on this topic. However, I'm not yet sure I'd
feel good about citing this article.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Rob Lanphier</div>
<div>Founder of election-methods mailing list and <a
href="http://electowiki.org" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">electowiki.org</a><br>
</div>
<div><a href="https://robla.net" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://robla.net</a></div>
<div><a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://electowiki.org/wiki/User:RobLa</a></div>
<div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RobLa"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RobLa</a><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>p.s. back in the late 1990s, I wrote an article for a
small tech journal called "The Perl Journal". It's out
of print, but I've reproduced my 1996 article about
election methods which I think holds up pretty well:</div>
<div><a href="https://robla.net/1996/TPJ" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://robla.net/1996/TPJ</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="moz-mime-attachment-header"></fieldset>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">----
Election-Methods mailing list - see <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electorama.com/em">https://electorama.com/em</a> for list info
</pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>