<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Seats/districts where that would even be a theoretical possibility would be rare. I did read a report in a newspaper some time in the 1980s that the conservative Liberal Party toyed with the idea of doing that in one seat, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would undermine the perceived integrity of the election process and so the legitimacy of the winner.</blockquote></blockquote><div>Damn. That certainly wouldn't happen in the current political climate here in the US. </div><div><br></div><div>That said, our Democratic party encourages this kind of strategy often. Usually, that's not by instructing their supporters to raid the opposing primary; instead they create "attack advertisements" that are intentionally awful. ("This far-right candidate wants to increase the debt by SLASHING INCOME TAXES FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS!")</div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 8:01 PM Chris Benham <<a href="mailto:cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au" target="_blank">cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au</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"><u></u>
<div>
<p>CLC,<br>
<br>
</p><blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="auto">Chris—here in the United States, pushover is
well-known and frequently used, in the context of partisan
primaries. We refer to it as "raiding". </div>
</blockquote>
<br>
That doesn't surprise me in the least. Your crazy party primary
system is a big open red-carpet invitation to pushover
strategists. I think Nikki Hayley was Trump's last opponent in
the Republican primaries to drop out. On YouTube I saw one of her
"supporters" interviewed.<br>
He openly stated that he was only participating in that contest to
try to "stop Trump", and no matter who was the Republican nominee
he was definitely intending to vote Democrat in the general
election.<br>
<br>
In October last year Rob Lamphier asked me about Push-over in
Australia:<br>
<br>
<p></p>
<pre style="white-space:pre-wrap;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial">><i> Is "pushover" strategy common in Australian elections, and commonly </i><i>named by that name?
</i>
No and no. I've only ever come across the term here, and from that Blake Cretney page.
Seats/districts where that would even be a theoretical possibility would be rare. I did read a report in a newspaper some time in the 1980s that the conservative Liberal Party toyed with the idea of doing that in one seat, but rejected
the idea on the grounds that it would undermine the perceived integrity of the election process and so the legitimacy of the winner. Bear in mind that we have "compulsory voting" which is popular, because it is widely accepted that voting is a civic duty.
In that district the highly predictable FPP order was Right > Centre-Right > Centre-Left, or if you want the parties' names Liberal > Australian Democrats > Labor.
It was also highly predictable that nearly all of the Labor voters would give their second preference to the Democrat and that a big majority of the Democrat voters would give their second preference vote to the Liberal. (Bear in mind that truncation isn't allowed).
In that circumstance the Liberals could have organised for some of their supporters to vote Labor to "rescue" that candidate from being eliminated, so that instead the Democrat will be eliminated and then the Liberal will win in the pairwise contest with Labor. BTW, the Democrat was the sitting member (and it may have been that party's only seat in the state parliament,Labor and Liberal are the two major parties). Of course the Democrat was the Condorcet winner, but no-one even had that concept.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="auto"><span>I suspect Australia doesn't have any
examples of turkey-raising because it only has two major
parties in its IRV seats, at which point the strategy is
pointless.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br>
That is far from the main reason, and isn't universal. It's
obviously much more difficult than in the US with a primaries system
or a Top-Two Runoff. In that situation once the strategists have
achieved their first objective, getting the "turkey" into the final
(or the general election) they can then vote "honestly" to help
defeat that candidate in the final decisive stage.<br>
<br>
But with Hare, the strategists have to stick with their insincere
vote supporting the turkey in the final and just hope that enough
other voters will overwhelm their votes and defeat the turkey. This
obviously makes the risk of backfire (i.e. the turkey winning) much
greater.<br>
The strategists have to be careful that there aren't too many of
them (while of course it won't work if there are too few).<br>
<br>
One mistake I think that voting reform enthusiasts in the US make is
that they over-estimate the effect of the electoral system/method on
the political culture as well as over-simplifying it.<br>
<br>
For example they want more viable political parties and seem to
assume that all two-party dominated systems are roughly equivalent.
But the one with Hare is much better. In the FPP landscape the major
parties can foist unpopular candidates and/or policies onto the
voters and say "You have to vote for us because otherwise you'll
just be wasting your vote and letting your Greater Evil other major
party win." But in the Hare landscape (especially with relatively
easy ballot access) their ability to do that is sharply curtailed.<br>
<br>
Because the voters can then just turn around and nominate and
support independent candidates that support the same "side of
politics" as their usual favourite major party, with a chance to
defeat the major party candidates without helping the "wrong" one to
win.<br>
<br>
So one possible effect of replacing FPP with Hare is just that the
two major parties will both improve their behaviour and sensitivity
to voters to stop that from happening, and the whole system will
serve voters much better but still remain "two-party dominated".<br>
<br>
The political culture of Australia assures that any attempts at
Pushover strategy would be kept very quiet, so I suppose I can't
guarantee that it's never been tried or succeeded. But I'd be be
surprised.<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Chris B.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 29/04/2024 10:05 am, Closed Limelike
Curves wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="auto">Chris—here in the United States, pushover is
well-known and frequently used, in the context of partisan
primaries. We refer to it as "raiding". </div>
<div dir="auto">Usually it's difficult to notice, and I suspect
the same is true in Australia. The only difference is here in
the United States we manage to notice it from time to time,
because what happens is candidates will run big advertisement
operations that aim to promote an extreme candidate in a primary
and give an easy win. I can't prove the same thing happens with
voters, but I'm not sure how you <i>would </i><span>prove
that.</span><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><span><br>
</span></div>
<div dir="auto"><span>I suspect Australia doesn't have any
examples of turkey-raising because it only has two major
parties in its IRV seats, at which point the strategy is
pointless.</span></div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">On Sun, Apr 28, 2024 at 4:14 PM Chris Benham <<a href="mailto:cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au" target="_blank">cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<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">
<div>
<p> </p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Michael—you're right that it means
favorite-burial (cutting the "head" off a ballot). <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400194481/type/journal_article" target="_blank">The term is
quite old, though (older than "favorite betrayal" or
"favorite burial" I believe)</a>.</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
I don't like either term. For me, "burial" refers to
something a voter does to a candidate in the hope that
will cause that candidate to lose to a candidate the voter
prefers, and not just to any insincere down-ranking. So
"favorite-burial" is an oxymoron that Mike O. likes to
use.<br>
<br>
"Favorite Betrayal" meaning to insincerely down-rank one's
favourite, is ok, but that could either be Compromise
strategy (insincerely up-ranking X to decrease the chance
that X will lose to a candidate you like less) or
Push-over (insincerely up-ranking X to increase the chance
that X will lose to say F that you like better, instead of
F losing to some Y that you like less).<br>
<br>
An attempt was made to standardise the terminology here
quite a while ago:<br>
<br>
<a href="http://condorcet.org/emr/defn.shtml" target="_blank">http://condorcet.org/emr/defn.shtml</a><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><b style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0)">burying</b><span style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial">
<span style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Insincerely
ranking an alternative lower in the hope of defeating
it.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><b style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0)">compromising</b><span style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial">
<span style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Insincerely
ranking an alternative higher in the hope of getting
it elected.</span></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite"><b style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0)">push-over</b><span style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline"></span><br style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial">
<span style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">The
strategy of ranking a weak alternative higher than
one's preferred alternative, which may be useful in a
method that violates<span style="font-family:serif"> </span></span><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090613041320/http://condorcet.org/emr/defn.shtml#monotonicity" style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" target="_blank">monotonicity</a></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<p style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><b style="font-family:serif">monotonicity</b><br>
The property of a method where an alternative can
never be made to succeed by being ranked lower on some
ballots. Doing this is using the "<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090613041320/http://condorcet.org/emr/defn.shtml#push-over" style="font-family:serif" target="_blank">push-over</a>" strategy.</p>
<p style="font-family:serif;font-size:medium;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
The genius of STAR Voting is that it apparently
technically doesn't "violate monotonicity", but it is
vastly more vulnerable to Push-over than IRV which does,
as I've explained previously.<br>
<br>
I find the question of whether there have been mistakes or
exaggerations or false claims made by the IRV promoters to
be completely irrelevant to, and a separate question from,
whether its adoption in the US should be supported.<br>
<br>
Of more concern to me are the details of the ballot rules
and restrictions. I think it is more democratic for it to
be relatively easy to get on the ballot so as to allow the
voters a wider choice of candidates. I understand that
typically voters are limited to 7 different "ranking
levels". Well say there are 9 candidates and my two
least-preferred candidates are the two front-runners and I
have a preference between them. If I vote sincerely my
vote is just as wasted as if I had voted sincerely in FPP.<br>
<br>
IRV then doesn't have Clone Independence. One of the main
points of ranked-ballot versus FPP is to reduce the
involuntarily wasted vote as much as possible. <br>
<br>
If such restrictive ballot rules are unavoidable, then I
lose my enthusiasm for IRV or Benham in favour of
something with a truncation incentive (and that is happy
with equal-ranking if that isn't a problem for the ballot
rules) such as Smith//Approval (implicit).<br>
<br>
Properly implemented Hare's Compromise incentive is
practically nothing by comparison with that of FPP, and
no-one in Australia notices it. I estimate it is also
quite a bit weaker than that of STAR. Pushover strategy
in Hare is relatively difficult and risky in Hare and as
far as I know it's never been tried in Australia. Whereas
STAR is a "festival of Push-over" farce/nightmare.<br>
<br>
And while (like STAR) it fails Condorcet, it has a solid
set of "representativeness" criterion compliances that
together can be thought of as weakened Condorcet and are
worth quite a lot.<br>
<br>
They are Dominant Coalition (a better stronger version of
Mutual Majority that so of course implies it) and Dominant
Mutual Third and Condorcet Loser. STAR only meets the
last of those, the weakest.<br>
<br>
Chris B.<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<div>On 29/04/2024 5:08 am, Closed Limelike Curves wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Michael—you're right that it means
favorite-burial (cutting the "head" off a ballot). <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400194481/type/journal_article" target="_blank">The term is
quite old, though (older than "favorite betrayal" or
"favorite burial" I believe)</a>.</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Apr 28, 2024
at 12:02 PM Michael Ossipoff <<a href="mailto:email9648742@gmail.com" target="_blank">email9648742@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="auto">Of course I’m just guessing, but my
guess is that “decapitation” is Closed’s new name
for favorite-burial.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Closed sometimes in invents new
names without define them. </div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">IRV indeed shares Plurality’s need
for favorite-burial defensive-strategy. I don’t
like that, & wouldn’t propose IRV. There are a
number of places where IRV is (the only electoral
reform) up for enactment this year, In spite of
that very unlikeable strategy-need, I wanted to
help campaign for its enactment, in the hope that
the voters who’ve enacted it didn’t do so because
they intend to bury their favorite, & so so
won’t do so.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">But, because IRV is being
fraudulently sold to them, with intentional lies,
we can’t count on how people will vote when they
find out about what they’ve enacted…when they find
out about the lie.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Therefore, regrettably, we shouldn’t
support “RCV”.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Apr
28, 2024 at 11:15 Chris Benham <<a href="mailto:cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au" target="_blank">cbenhamau@yahoo.com.au</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>
<p>Limelike,<br>
<br>
Can you please define and explain the
"decapitation" strategy? I haven't heard
of it.<br>
<br>
And can you elaborate a bit on this? :<br>
<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>IRV is a good example of this. It's <i>usually</i>
not susceptible to strategy (in the IAC
model), but I think of it as one of the
most strategy-afflicted methods on this
list. It's vulnerable to some
particularly-egregious strategies
(decapitation), ones that are complex or
difficult to explain (pushover), and
many strategies [that?] don't have a
simple defensive counterstrategy
available (like truncation).</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Chris B.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<div>On 29/04/2024 2:31 am, Closed Limelike
Curves wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Kris, thanks for the
results! They're definitely
interesting.</div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr">That said, I'm not sure
how useful a metric raw
probabilities provide; I don't think
they provide a very strong measure of
how <i>severely</i> each system is
affected by strategy. Missing are:
<div>1. How much do voters have to
distort their ballots? Is it just
truncation, compression (as with
tied-at-the-top), or full
decapitation?<br>
</div>
<div>2. How hard is it to think of the
strategy? Counterintuitive
strategies (e.g. randomized
strategies or pushover) require
large, organized parties to educate
their supporters about how to pull
it off. This could be good or bad
depending on if you like
institutionalized parties. Good:
sometimes people can't pull it off.
Bad: this creates an incentive for
strong parties and partisanship. See
the Alaska 2022 Senate race, where
Democrats pulled off a
favorite-betrayal in support of
Murkowski to avoid a center-squeeze.</div>
<div>3. Is a counterstrategy
available?</div>
<div>4. How feasible is the strategy
(does it involve many or few
voters)?</div>
<div>5. How bad would the effects of
the strategy be? Borda is bad not
just because it's often susceptible
to strategy, but because it gives
turkeys a solid chance of winning.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>IRV is a good example of this.
It's <i>usually</i> not susceptible
to strategy (in the IAC model), but
I think of it as one of the most
strategy-afflicted methods on this
list. It's vulnerable to some
particularly-egregious strategies
(decapitation), ones that are
complex or difficult to explain
(pushover), and many strategies
don't have a simple defensive
counterstrategy available (like
truncation).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>A low-probability but
occasionally high-impact strategy
might be the worst of both worlds;
voters get lulled into a false sense
of security by a few elections where
strategy doesn't matter, then
suddenly find a candidate they
dislike elected because they failed
to execute the appropriate defensive
strategy.</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
<pre style="font-family:monospace">----
Election-Methods mailing list - see <a href="https://electorama.com/em" style="font-family:monospace" target="_blank">https://electorama.com/em</a> for list info
</pre>
</blockquote>
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</blockquote>
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</blockquote>
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