<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi Kristofer,</div><div><br></div><div>I have a detailed reply below. In short, I'm still pretty sure Michael Ossipoff is worth listening to every so often (even though many of his emails are thoughtless stream-of-consciousness that would get him banned in most places, and I haven't ruled that out if it becomes clear he's driving people away). Credible voter models show that approval voting and Condorcet consistency are practically compatible, even if they aren't strictly compatible. A system that "computers can count, even if people can't" is not viable in our lifetimes, because people are more complicated than computers.<br></div><div><br></div><div>More inline....<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">On Sun, Mar 17, 2024 at 4:28 AM Kristofer Munsterhjelm <<a href="mailto:km_elmet@t-online.de">km_elmet@t-online.de</a>> wrote:</div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On 2024-03-16 23:57, robert bristow-johnson wrote:<br>>> On 03/16/2024 5:52 PM EDT Michael Ossipoff <<a href="mailto:email9648742@gmail.com" target="_blank">email9648742@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>> …& don’t forget that Condorcet, too, has a very<br>
>> computationally-intensive & computationally-demanding count,<br>
> <br>
> We talked about this before, Michael, when I posted. Because of<br>
> Precinct Summability and the decentralization of the tabulation (that<br>
> does *not* exist with Hare IRV), there is *no* practical bottleneck<br>
> of computational burden (like there is with Hare IRV that first<br>
> requires the centralization of all individual ballot data).<br>
>> with the consequent loss of transparency, & difficulty of security-auditing for count-fraud.<br>
> <br>
> Nope, that's a falsehood. Condorcet is Precinct Summable and those<br>
> tallies add up and the original tallies come right outa the same machine<br>
> that the ballots go into, just like FPTP. There are no intermediate<br>
> steps that are opaque. It's not at all the same problem as with Hare RCV.<br>
<br>
I've got Mike plonked, so I don't see his posts,</blockquote><div><br></div><div>That's too bad. Michael is frequently annoying, but he's frequently correct. This mailing list was started in large part because of a mailing-list conversation I had with Michael in 1995, where he was being obnoxious on another list. I thought I'd be able to show that he was a crank. Turns out he taught me about center squeeze. You should consider unplonking him.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> but I would like to add this:<br>
<br>
- If a lack of summability is not a problem, then BTR-IRV isn't that <br>
much more complex than IRV. And at the cost of slightly more complexity <br>
than that, Benham can preserve IRV's strategy resistance and do away <br>
with most of its exit incentive.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Having volunteered as a poll worker for the first time in a city that uses RCV for some elections, it changed my perspective on election security. I appreciated how much process there was, but also how much of the process was shrugged off when it was a little inconvenient.</div><div><br></div><div>There weren't any RCV races in the March 5 election here, so I didn't have to perform any tech support for RCV, but having voted in many RCV races, I could see what a goat rodeo that can become for poll workers. My hunch is that the more complicated the election, the easier it would be to have steps of the process shrugged off as poll workers get frazzled as the day wears on.</div><div><br></div><div>I think "summability" is really just shorthand for "vaguely makes sense for someone who really really cares about the end result to keep track of the election in real time". Strict Condorcet methods are admittedly difficult on this count. Approval is drop-dead simple on this count.<br></div><div><br></div><div>I've become convinced (by simulations and gradual persuasion over the past decade or so) that approval is good enough.<br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
If computers do the counting, then relatively laborious steps aren't any <br>
problem, as long as the public understands why they're there. </blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think that's an easy thing for those of us who are good with computers to say. Computers are taking over the world, but there's a limit to how much people trust computers and the people who write the software for computers. Many people "trust" computers only as far as they can throw a datacenter. Granted, it's possible to wire up many computers in a small box that most healthy adults can throw and call that a "datacenter", but I'm talking about the brick-and-mortar datacenters often placed near power generation plants. Most people have given up the fight, and welcome our robot overlords, but our robot overlords don't really care if we understand elections, and may prefer to do away with elections and take control themselves. :-)</div><div><br></div><div>In seriousness, I'm guessing this mailing list skews heavily "math literate" in addition to skewing heavily "computer literate", and I think that those of us that are literate in those way have a hard time relating to people that aren't as literate in those areas:</div><div><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/math-hard-easy-teaching-instruction/2021/06/25/4fbec7ac-d46b-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/math-hard-easy-teaching-instruction/2021/06/25/4fbec7ac-d46b-11eb-ae54-515e2f63d37d_story.html</a></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">BTR-IRV's <br>
safeguarding step follows directly from your concept that "if more <br>
people prefer A to B than vice versa, then B must not be elected".<br>
<br>
- If, on the other hand, lack of summability *is* a problem, then that <br>
disqualifies IRV outright and we're done.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm supportive of BTR-IRV, but I'll concede that summability and reporting results in an easy-to-understand form (in real time) is a big problem. I think it's important for voters (on election night) to be able to see a television reporter say "Results from the precincts on the southwest side of town were just reported, and CandB took the lead over CandA. Let's turn it over to our analysts at the elections desk to explain what happened!" The pre-election polling and exit polling should provide a reasonably understandable explanation. I fear we're due for a lot of election fraud if most people don't understand what happened (and honestly, having lived in San Francisco since 2011 and seen how some close elections have turned out, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there's some consequential electoral fraud here).<br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
It would seem to me that the only reason one would accept IRV and reject <br>
Condorcet-IRV would be if there's a manual count and the initial O(n^2) <br>
Condorcet matrix calculation is considered too laborious. Or for <br>
marketing reasons.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Why not both? I think that both FairVote and the Center for Election Science spent years marketing against "nerds" that understand the importance of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_winner_criterion">Condorcet winner criterion</a>, so Condorcet advocates went through some tough times as those two organizations gained traction. Thankfully, both organizations have gotten more careful about their anti-Condorcet rhetoric, and both organizations have new leadership. <a href="http://equal.vote">equal.vote</a> is mildly pro Condorcet, but only mildly so, and maybe only because they know I'll call them out if they get too overt marketing against the Condorcet winner criterion. They endorse "<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/Ranked_Robin">Ranked Robin</a>", which ... I won't get into here.<br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
As for Approval, my position hasn't really changed: it is able to pass <br>
so many criteria by offloading the burden of voting onto the voter <br>
himself and by classifying a large swath of different ballots as all <br>
"honest" (in the rank-consistent sense). Not only strategic voters have <br>
to play the strategy game, but honest voters too[1]: just determining <br>
which honest vote to submit requires strategy! With ranking, on the <br>
other hand, it's easy: there's only one rank-consistent honest ballot, <br>
so if you don't want to play the game, just submit that ballot. No <br>
manual DSV needed.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>In the 1990s and 2000s (and perhaps even much of the 2010s), I would have wholeheartedly endorsed this position. I've been persuaded that Approval is fine. People understand "approval ratings" (or at least, they think they do). When we had a close RCV election here in San Francisco (<a href="https://electowiki.org/wiki/2018_San_Francisco_mayoral_special_election">the 2018 mayoral special election</a>), the pre-election polls were useless. That bothered me a lot. I preferred the winner, but it was really obvious that in a city where there were parties competitive with the Democratic Party (who seemingly preferred the winner of the 2018, since she was the "establishment" candidate), an RCV election that was close as our 2018 election would have been a complete fiasco. <br></div><div><br></div><div>We may want to make a point of figuring out a seemingly fair way of seeding an arbitrary number of candidates in pairwise bracket, since there are a lot of people that find those fun:</div><div><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/bracket-challenge/?contestid=32#brackets/fullbracket">https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/bracket-challenge/?contestid=32#brackets/fullbracket</a></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
(See also Forest's explanation of my point at <br>
<a href="http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2016-October/000717.html" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2016-October/000717.html</a>.)<br></blockquote><div> </div><div>I hear you, and I read what Forest wrote. Ultimately, I think it's important for most voters to vaguely know what the election is going to look like in order to be comfortable using the system. I don't think most folks here in the SF Bay Area really understand RCV. The topic frequently comes up on the nightly news, for example here:</div><div><a href="https://www.ktvu.com/news/lawsuit-filed-to-overturn-oakland-mayoral-election">https://www.ktvu.com/news/lawsuit-filed-to-overturn-oakland-mayoral-election</a></div><div> </div><div>My fear is that RCV makes fraud easier, because few people truly understand what's going on under the hood, and the founders of FairVote don't help educate; they obfuscate. I'm hopeful that FairVote will get over their nasty case of "founder's syndrome" soon, so that they will become better partners in electoral reform efforts.<br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
[1] Both honest voters in the rank-consistent sense and in the von <br>
Neumann-Morgenstern sense.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Could you explain what you mean by this? </div><div><br></div><div>Rob</div><div><br></div></div></div>