STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not

[Kathy Dopp]

People keep asking me how to achieve a proportional representation system so....

talking out loud...

A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made
by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to
transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more
voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the
same 1st choice candidate.

If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice
candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method
would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to
manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix
where n is the number of candidates running for office.

In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional
representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and
count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters'
2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already
transferred votes.

However, just like with Fairytale Vote's STV system whether or not
this system actually results in proportional representation still
depends on how much vote-splitting results when more or fewer
candidates run for office in proportion to the total number of
candidates running for office, as compared to the proportion of voters
whose interests they represent. I.e. too many candidates running who
represent your interests, or too few and proportional representation
is not achieved using either the Fairytale Vote's STV method or my
(maybe someone else thought of it before) new improved monotonic,
fairer STV method sans any elimination rounds.

Therefore, a better alternative proportional representation system is
the "party list" system where as many candidates on each party list
take office in proportion to the number of voters who vote for that
party, but this new version of STV I figured out this a.m. (maybe
someone else has thought of it before) would work fine as well as long
as the voters were restricted to ranking only a 1st and 2nd choice
candidate.

Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in
a reasonable fashion and give all voters' votes equal treatment,
unlike with the current version of IRV/STV being pushed by Fairytale
Vote which does neither and also in addition does not provide
proportional representation due to vote-splitting when the number of
candidates running who represent my interests is too great, or due to
not enough candidates running in proportion to the voters who share my
interests.

That's why fundamentally the IRV/STV system is a lousy one for
achieving proportional representation even if it were modified to
treat all voters equally and be easily manually checked for accuracy.

The party list system works much better for achieving proportional
representation as long as there is a party representing your
interests. It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that
each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to
pass excess votes down to.

--

Kathy Dopp

Town of Colonie, NY 12304
phone [phone]
cell 518-505-0220

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf
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[Raph Frank]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Kathy Dopp <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional
> representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and
> count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters'
> 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already
> transferred votes.

That is technically 2 rounds.

This would increase the number of voters who end up wasting their
vote. Voting for a no-hope candidate first choice would be "throwing
your vote away".

PR-STV maintains proportionality no matter what order candidates are
eliminated (assuming you don't eliminate candidates who have achieved
the quota).

I don't think this could be used to create a monotonic method though.

> Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in
> a reasonable fashion

The certainly isn't a required condition for it to be a PR method.

> The party list system works much better for achieving proportional
> representation as long as there is a party representing your
> interests.  It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that
> each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to
> pass excess votes down to.

If each candidate was allowed to submit a list and candidates were
allowed to be listed on more than 1 list, then you could have precinct
summability while having (a weak form of) PR-STV.

Each voter would vote for 1 candidate's list, rather than providing a
full ranking and PR-STV could be used to combine all the votes.
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[James Gilmour]

Kathy Dopp > Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 4:45 PM
>
> talking out loud...

You were indeed "talking out loud".

>From you posts over several years it would APPEAR that you have no real appreciation of the purpose of a proportional representation
voting system. If you have such an appreciation, it is not apparent from your posts.

Nor do you show any appreciation of the existence of two fundamentally different approaches to "proportional representation". These
give very different answers to the question: "Proportional representation of what?"


> A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made
> by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to
> transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more
> voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the
> same 1st choice candidate.

If the rankings were limited in this artificial way, the proportionality obtained would be poor, and very poor in some
circumstances.


> If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice
> candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method
> would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to
> manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix
> where n is the number of candidates running for office.

As has been explained many times, it is not possible to devise a voting system that simultaneously meets all the "desirable
criteria". Voting systems that comply with 'monotonicity' fail 'later no harm'. As has also been explained, monotonicity is of no
importance whatsoever in public elections because it cannot be exploited either by the candidates or by the voters. In contrast,
failure to comply with 'later no harm' opens the way for undesirable strategic and tactical voting. Also, compliance with 'later no
harm' does seem to be important to real voters.


> In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional
> representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and
> count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters'
> 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already
> transferred votes.

If you cannot eliminate candidates and transfer their votes in accordance with the voters' instructions, you cannot obtain
proportional representation (or only very poor PR).


> However, just like with Fairytale Vote's STV system whether or not
> this system actually results in proportional representation still
> depends on how much vote-splitting results when more or fewer
> candidates run for office in proportion to the total number of
> candidates running for office, as compared to the proportion of voters
> whose interests they represent. I.e. too many candidates running who
> represent your interests, or too few and proportional representation
> is not achieved using either the Fairytale Vote's STV method or my
> (maybe someone else thought of it before) new improved monotonic,
> fairer STV method sans any elimination rounds.

The whole purpose of the 'transferable vote' is obtain proportional representation from among a diversity of views. There should
be, and need be, no artificial restriction on the diversity represented by the candidates who offer themselves for election.


> Therefore, a better alternative proportional representation system is
> the "party list" system where as many candidates on each party list
> take office in proportion to the number of voters who vote for that
> party,

The purposes of party-list PR voting systems and STV-PR are fundamentally different. The objective of ALL party-list PR voting
systems is to obtain PR of the registered political parties. In contrast, the objective of STV-PR is to obtain PR of whatever the
voters want, as expressed by their responses to the candidates who have offered themselves for election.

IF the voters in an STV-PR election vote for the candidates strictly by party, then party PR will result. But with this very
important difference - the voters will have determined which of each party's candidates are elected. In a closed-list party-list
PR voting system, the voters have no say at all - that gives more power to the party machines. In a typical open-list party-list
PR voting system, the voters have some say, but such voting systems do not give proportionality WITHIN the various parties - and
that can sometimes be as important as PR among the parties. There are a few open-list party-list PR voting systems that approach
STV-PR in the flexibility they give the voters, but they are so complicated you may as well go all the way and give the voters the
full freedom of STV-PR.


> but this new version of STV I figured out this a.m. (maybe
> someone else has thought of it before) would work fine as well as long
> as the voters were restricted to ranking only a 1st and 2nd choice
> candidate.

As explained, above, this will not give PR, or at best, only very poor PR.


> Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in
> a reasonable fashion

It is well-known that you attach great importance to this, but it is not a feature or requirement of public elections in many
countries. NO public elections in the UK are ever counted at precinct level. All the ballots are taken to the relevant counting
centre before the ballot boxes are opened. And it has been like that for many, many decades. And it is not a source of any problem
or concern.


> and give all voters' votes equal treatment,
> unlike with the current version of IRV/STV being pushed by Fairytale
> Vote which does neither and also in addition does not provide
> proportional representation due to vote-splitting when the number of
> candidates running who represent my interests is too great, or due to
> not enough candidates running in proportion to the voters who share my
> interests.

STV-PR does, in fact, treat all voters and all voters' votes equally. The purpose of the vote being transferable subject only to
limit of the number of candidates or any lower limit imposed by the individual voter, is to obtain PR. Of course, if any political
party or interest group underestimates its likely support among the voters, and so nominates too few candidates, it has only itself
to blame. If you do not nominate the candidates, you cannot win the seats.


> That's why fundamentally the IRV/STV system is a lousy one for
> achieving proportional representation even if it were modified to
> treat all voters equally and be easily manually checked for accuracy.

STV-PR does give PR, of whatever the voters want.


> The party list system works much better for achieving proportional
> representation as long as there is a party representing your
> interests. It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that
> each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to
> pass excess votes down to.

Here you again fail to recognise the essential difference between the party list approach and STV-PR. The two groups of voting
systems have fundamentally different objectives. They also have different political effects. All party-list systems will, or will
tend to, strengthen the position of the party machines, whereas STV-PR will shift the balance of power away from the party machines
and give it to the voters, to whom it belongs.


If all you want politically is PR of registered political parties, a party-list PR voting system will give you that. But if you
have a different, better vision of politics and the police system, you will want to empower the voters, and that's what STV-PR could
do.

James Gilmour



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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

James Gilmour wrote:
> Kathy Dopp > Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 4:45 PM
>> A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made
>> by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to
>> transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more
>> voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the
>> same 1st choice candidate.
>
> If the rankings were limited in this artificial way, the
> proportionality obtained would be poor, and very poor in some
> circumstances.

I agree with what you're saying there. However...

>> If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice
>> candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method
>> would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to
>> manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix
>> where n is the number of candidates running for office.
>
> As has been explained many times, it is not possible to devise a
> voting system that simultaneously meets all the "desirable
> criteria". Voting systems that comply with 'monotonicity' fail 'later
> no harm'. As has also been explained, monotonicity is of no
> importance whatsoever in public elections because it cannot be
> exploited either by the candidates or by the voters. In contrast,
> failure to comply with 'later no harm' opens the way for undesirable
> strategic and tactical voting. Also, compliance with 'later no
> harm' does seem to be important to real voters.

Untrue. DAC and DSC meet monotonicity and either LNHelp or LNHarm. The
thing which you can't have is both LNHelp and LNHarm, as well as
monotonicity[1].

As for monotonicity itself: IMHO, it's not a strategy issue, but rather
an issue of the method being in conflict with itself. Rather like, say,
Condorcet Loser for Condorcet methods: the method claims some property
is desirable, but also some times elects those that would lose when
ranked according to that property. In the case of monotonicity, the
method elects X due to support of X, but further support of X causes X
not to be elected, and so the inconsistency is that the support both
helps and harms.

Finally, the Schulze method (as used by Wikimedia, Debian, and others)
fails later-no-harm, something it must do since it's a Condorcet method.
This fact doesn't seem to have upset the voters much.

>> In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional
>> representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and
>> count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters'
>> 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already
>> transferred votes.
>
> If you cannot eliminate candidates and transfer their votes in
> accordance with the voters' instructions, you cannot obtain
> proportional representation (or only very poor PR).

In my previous post, I gave an example of a method that doesn't use
elimination. Schulze STV (but probably not CPO-STV) is another.
Technically, my "Setwise Highest Average" method doesn't use elimination
either, but you could argue that its use of Sainte-Laguë on the
coalitions serves the same effect.

Of course, if your point of view is that the voters' ballots are like
the punchcards to the program - explicit instructions to the method
itself about which candidates should be eliminated and in what order,
then the above fails. By that reasoning, only the voters' intended
method fits (be it STV, Bucklin with winner elimination, CPO-STV, whatever).

-

[1] Actually, I'm not even sure about this. Woodall's impossibility
theorems listed in Voting Matters #6 say only that mutual majority (he
calls it Majority), LNHelp and LNHarm implies nonmonotonicity. Perhaps a
method can have both LNHs as well as monotonicity if it gives up on
mutual majority. Plurality would be such a method (technically
speaking), though it is a really bad one.
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[Kathy Dopp]

Rather than reply individually to the three response to my former
post, I'll just make some observations:

1. It seems like the pro-IRV/STV group has begun to dominate this list,

2. the assumption that "Later-no-harm" is a desirable feature of a
voting method is very odd. I would claim that the opposite is true, in
agreement with Abd ul Lomax. Later-no-harm is a feature that prevents
a voting method from finding majority-favored compromise candidates
and ensures that IRV/STV tends to find candidates supported by either
extreme leftist or rightist groups

3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless
there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run
who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like
STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely
assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more
precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the
number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple
mathematical fact.

4. STV does not solve the spoiler problem and the vote-splitting problem

5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV
support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it
solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that
actually solve more problems than they create.

Oh, and for those of you who do not like IRV/STV and want to show your
friends why, I've put up a new web page with links to some great new
educational youtube videos showing how IRV/STV really works (doesn't
find majority winners, eliminates the majority-favorite candidate, is
nonmonotonic, etc.)

Learn About Instant Runoff Voting Methods
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/index.php?/categories/2-Instant-Runoff-Voting

Thassal.

Cheers,

Kathy Dopp
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[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Kathy Dopp <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rather than reply individually to the three response to my former
> post, I'll just make some observations:
>
> 1. It seems like the pro-IRV/STV group has begun to dominate this list,

I am pro-PR-STV but against IRV.

As with all election methods, it is a trade-off. The benefits of
PR-STV outweigh the disadvantages. It gives max control to the voters
while giving reasonable PR. The more seats elected the better. With
small constituencies, it isn't so great.

I guess my thoughts would be that PR is better than a single seat
method, and PR-STV is better than a party list system.

> 2. the assumption that "Later-no-harm" is a desirable feature of a
> voting method is very odd. I would claim that the opposite is true, in
> agreement with Abd ul Lomax. Later-no-harm is a feature that prevents
> a voting method from finding majority-favored compromise candidates
> and ensures that IRV/STV tends to find candidates supported by either
> extreme leftist or rightist groups

I agree with this too. The biggest weakness of PR-STV is that is
collapses to IRV in the single seat case.

I think that it might be worth looking at the elimination ordering to
help with this.

For example, you could have an approval vote held at the same time and
eliminate the least approved remaining candidate, if no candidate is
elected. This would collapse to (roughly) approval followed by
(instant) top-2 runoff in the single seat case.

The key point would be to use a different method for determining who
is eliminated than is used to determine who is elected. The preserves
the proportionality of the method while allowing it perform better in
the single seat case.

The problem is that PR-STV is already reasonably complex and most
proposed changes make it even more complex.

There are methods like CPO-STV and Schulze-STV which are similar to
PR-STV. Both of these methods are condorect compliant in the single
seat case (and so presumably break later-no-harm). However, that are
so complex, that they would require a computer to perform the tally.

> 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless
> there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run
> who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like
> STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely
> assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more
> precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the
> number of voters in each separate group.  This is just simple
> mathematical fact.

Generally it does achieve reasonable proportional representation.
Parties might get less than proportional in one constituency and more
than proportionality in another, due to randomness.

However, the smaller the constituencies the bigger the "seat bonus"
given to larger parties.

Again, the more seats per constituency, the better, as that gives
better proportionality and makes it easier for smaller parties to get
seats.

> 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV
> support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it
> solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that
> actually solve more problems than they create.

I think the issue is that you look at PR-STV and IRV and refuse to see
any difference.

Many people (including many on this list) feel that IRV is a bad method.

However, PR-STV has some advantages over other PR methods. That is
why people refuse to dismiss it out of hand.
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[Kathy Dopp]

Ralph,

I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the
relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the
number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all
other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves
proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or
insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters.

STV has all the same flaws of IRV and is hence unsuitable for use in
any elections. Its flaws far outweigh its benefits, esp given the
existence of methods that achieve proportional representation more
reliably and without causing all the other problems that STV causes.

Kathy

>
>> 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless
>> there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run
>> who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like
>> STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely
>> assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more
>> precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the
>> number of voters in each separate group.  This is just simple
>> mathematical fact.
>
> Generally it does achieve reasonable proportional representation.
> Parties might get less than proportional in one constituency and more
> than proportionality in another, due to randomness.
>
> However, the smaller the constituencies the bigger the "seat bonus"
> given to larger parties.
>
> Again, the more seats per constituency, the better, as that gives
> better proportionality and makes it easier for smaller parties to get
> seats.
>

--

Kathy Dopp

Town of Colonie, NY 12304
phone [phone]
cell 518-505-0220

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf
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[Juho]

I agree with Raph Frank in that most EM activists probably have
different opinions on IRV (for single winner elections) and STV (for
multi-winner elections). Technically many of their properties are
still the same but the final impact and nature of these elections
(single winner vs. PR multi-winner) are quite different, and therefore
one may not expect that people that promote IRV would promote STV and
the other way around.

I agree that traditional closed and open lists allow more candidates
to run than STV. They offer also a very simple and summable counting
process. (I believe you wanted to see such properties.) But also STV
offers full PR (with some small rounding errors that include some
(unwanted) IRV style decisions on which candidates will get a seat),
and it may well be the method of choice if one wants to maximize the
ability of the voters to express their opinions (that may deviate from
the existing party structure) and to provide proportionality also
within the parties.

You mentioned also the possibility that candidates would determine
their own preference (/vote inheritance) order. That would keep the
ballots simple and summable (also in the more complex case where
voters give two candidate names, and candidate given inheritance order
could be used after that).

In addition to these options I'd like to mention the tree based method
that lies somewhere between candidate given preference lists and open
list based methods. Votes are still simple (just name one candidate).
Tree structure allows also multiple voter opinions to be taken into
account (not just party affiliation) and offers at that level also
party internal proportionality. (One could have e.g. green
conservatives as well as conservative greens in the tree structure.)
Trees differ from the candidate given preference lists in that only
groupings are named (not full list of individual candidates) (derived
from the tree structure) and in that the end part of the inheritance
order is the same for all members of each grouping.

One more argument in favour of trees is that in such structures the
priorities of the candidates will be very clear to the voters and
therefore the voters as well as elected representatives will know very
well what the representatives are expected to promote. In some sense
that gives the voters more power to determine the resulting political
balance (e.g. if all parties have a pro-xyz grouping available). STV
gives more freedom to the voters in expressing different vote
inheritance orders and more fine grained proportionality within the
parties/groupings. I'd say there are different needs and different
traditions (including the ones related to the number of candidates,
summability, need to protect against fraud etc.) and therefore
different methods may be the best for different needs.

(PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to
achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so want.)

Juho



On Oct 31, 2009, at 6:17 PM, Kathy Dopp wrote:

> Ralph,
>
> I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the
> relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the
> number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all
> other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves
> proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or
> insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters.
>
> STV has all the same flaws of IRV and is hence unsuitable for use in
> any elections. Its flaws far outweigh its benefits, esp given the
> existence of methods that achieve proportional representation more
> reliably and without causing all the other problems that STV causes.
>
> Kathy
>
>>
>>> 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless
>>> there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates
>>> run
>>> who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like
>>> STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely
>>> assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more
>>> precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to
>>> the
>>> number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple
>>> mathematical fact.
>>
>> Generally it does achieve reasonable proportional representation.
>> Parties might get less than proportional in one constituency and more
>> than proportionality in another, due to randomness.
>>
>> However, the smaller the constituencies the bigger the "seat bonus"
>> given to larger parties.
>>
>> Again, the more seats per constituency, the better, as that gives
>> better proportionality and makes it easier for smaller parties to get
>> seats.
>>
>
> --
>
> Kathy Dopp
>
> Town of Colonie, NY 12304
> phone [phone]
> cell 518-505-0220
>
> http://utahcountvotes.org
> http://electionmathematics.org
> http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/
>
> Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits
> http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf
>
> Voters Have Reason to Worry
> http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf
>
> Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling
> http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for
> list info

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[Jonathan Lundell]

On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Juho wrote:

> (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to
> achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so
> want.)

How would this decision be made? Majority rule?
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[Juho]

Yes, majority rule is the default mechanism (sometimes complemented
with super-majority requirements in key decisions like this).

Are there alternatives to this? In principle also ratings could be
used somewhere to make the decision (if they would just work in
practice), and other methods that are able to elect some consensus
alternative even when there is a majority favouring some other
alternative (tricky). In practice, majority rules.

In addition to this people in good positions in the existing system
typically fight against (or don't eagerly promote) any change that
might change their status to something worse. Election methods are in
the very core of this process from the point of view of parties and
representatives. That is why improvements, even clear and sensible
ones, are seldom effectively promoted and reach majority support.

I tend to trust in open discussions and especially clear formulation
of the alternative options for the future (e.g. by the EM people if
not others). Also activism and movements outside the official
political structure may impact the process. In principle the jointly
agreed political structure should be enough to make things happen, but
sometimes they need some "help to proceed". (Also media, the
scientific process and books and opinions of respected citizens may be
considered to be parts of the established process.)

Juho



On Oct 31, 2009, at 7:26 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Juho wrote:
>
>> (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people the right to
>> achieve the political balance using two-party systems if they so
>> want.)
>
> How would this decision be made? Majority rule?

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[Kevin Venzke]

Hello,

--- En date de : Sam 31.10.09, Jonathan Lundell <***@pobox.com> a écrit :
> De: Jonathan Lundell <***@pobox.com>
> Objet: Re: [EM] STV - the transferrable part is OK (fair), the sequential round elimination is not
> À: "Juho" <***@yahoo.co.uk>
> Cc: ***@gmail.com, "Election Methods" <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
> Date: Samedi 31 Octobre 2009, 12h26
> On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Juho
> wrote:
>
> > (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people
> the right to achieve the political balance using two-party
> systems if they so want.)
>
> How would this decision be made? Majority rule?

It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I
don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect
a body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority
rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's
just different people voting in the end.

Kevin Venzke



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[Jonathan Lundell]

On Oct 31, 2009, at 11:08 AM, Kevin Venzke wrote:

>>> (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people
>> the right to achieve the political balance using two-party
>> systems if they so want.)
>>
>> How would this decision be made? Majority rule?
>
> It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I
> don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect
> a body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority
> rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's
> just different people voting in the end.

I don't have a counter-suggestion, but there does seem to be a
practical problem here.

PR-STV was used in quite a few US cities in the first half of the 20C.
Mostly, it got repealed when the local majority party realized that
they could benefit from majority-take-all voting, and could avoid
sharing power by repealing PR.

One can imagine establishing a "culture of PR" where even members of
the majority support the idea that others should be represented; this
seems to be the case in various places outside the US, and for
whatever reason in Cambridge MA. But this has certainly not been the
rule in the US.


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[James Gilmour]

> >>> (PR makes sense in general but I wouldn't deny people
> >> the right to achieve the political balance using two-party systems if
> >> they so want.)
> >>
> >> How would this decision be made? Majority rule?
> >
> > It's not hard to imagine a referendum with that kind of effect. I
> > don't see how you can get away from majority rule; even if we elect a
> > body using PR-STV to vote on the party system, that's still majority
> > rule (or a super-majority rule with a possibility of no outcome), it's
> > just different people voting in the end.

If you genuinely have a two party system, you have no problem. The "problems" arise when significant numbers of voters do not vote
for either of the two largest parties, but the politicians of the two largest parties want the political system to function as if
there were only two parties and a guaranteed single-party majority after every election.

If you believe in representative democracy and believe that the "representative assemblies" in such a democracy (city councils,
state legislatures) should be fairly representative of those who vote, then you must be prepared to accept the representation the
voters say they want. If the voters fall into two main categories, so be it. But if the voters are divided among three, four or
five significant groups, so be it, too - that's what the voters say they want.

One of the advantages of STV-PR is that it is party-neutral and it allows the voters to have a direct influence on party behaviour.
For example, for the first 40 years of STV-PR in Malta the voters elected members of 3, 4 or 5 parties to their parliament. But for
the past 40 years of STV-PR all the members of the Maltese parliament have elected from only two parties. That change was brought
about by the voters because more than two parties still contest the elections. So the representation in the parliament could be
different IF the voters wanted that.


> PR-STV was used in quite a few US cities in the first half of the 20C.
> Mostly, it got repealed when the local majority party realized that
> they could benefit from majority-take-all voting, and could avoid
> sharing power by repealing PR.

Big party politics, big business and big media combined in some VERY dirty campaigns to dump fair representation of ordinary voters!


> One can imagine establishing a "culture of PR" where even members of
> the majority support the idea that others should be represented; this
> seems to be the case in various places outside the US, and for
> whatever reason in Cambridge MA. But this has certainly not been the
> rule in the US.

It may come as shock to many in the USA, but most countries in Europe elect their national, regional and local assemblies by some
system of proportional representation. Rarely are the voters divided into only two blocks, so single-party majorities are rare. In
Europe, it is the UK that is the exception, where despite having a genuine multi-party system political system we cling to the
discredited FPTP voting system with single-member districts that artificially (and wrongly) manufactures single-party majority
government against the voters' wishes. Sometimes our governments have obscenely large majorities despite having only minority
support among these who voted - currently a majority of 66 seats (out of 646) with only 35% of the votes. But that's party
politics!

James Gilmour







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[Raph Frank]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Kathy Dopp <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the
> relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the
> number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all
> other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves
> proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or
> insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters.

Vote splitting is not a major issue with PR-STV. (it is also less of
an issue with IRV than it is with plurality). There can be some
tactics required due to the fact that voters don't always vote based
on party.

If a party has 20%+ of the support in a 4 seater, it will get 1 seat.
(Assuming that the voters rank all the party's candidates as the top
ranks).

As for insufficient candidates, well if a party doesn't run enough
candidates, then it is their own fault.

It can be a problem where an incumbent doesn't want a 2nd candidate
from the party running, in case the 2nd candidate ends up winning a
seat.
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[Kathy Dopp]

I agree that the Droop quota or some similar quota should try to be
satisfied. STV doesn't always satisfy it due to exhausted ballots.
Vote-splitting does mean less proportional representation using STV if
more candidates run relative to some groups' constituency share
compared to other groups. That and all STV's other extreme flaws is
why any of the other better proportional systems are more proportional
and also better in a host of other ways.



On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Raph Frank <***@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Kathy Dopp <***@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I believe that you misunderstood what I was saying below. It is the
>> relative *number* of candidates who run for office relative to the
>> number of the voters they represent compared to the same ratio for all
>> other candidates that determines whether or not STV achieves
>> proportional representation. I.e. STV is subject to vote splitting or
>> insufficient candidates running to represent any group of voters.
>
> Vote splitting is not a major issue with PR-STV.   (it is also less of
> an issue with IRV than it is with plurality).  There can be some
> tactics required due to the fact that voters don't always vote based
> on party.
>
> If a party has 20%+ of the support in a 4 seater, it will get 1 seat.
> (Assuming that the voters rank all the party's candidates as the top
> ranks).
>
> As for insufficient candidates, well if a party doesn't run enough
> candidates, then it is their own fault.
>
> It can be a problem where an incumbent doesn't want a 2nd candidate
> from the party running, in case the 2nd candidate ends up winning a
> seat.
>



--

Kathy Dopp

Town of Colonie, NY 12304
phone [phone]
cell 518-505-0220

http://utahcountvotes.org
http://electionmathematics.org
http://kathydopp.com/serendipity/

Realities Mar Instant Runoff Voting - 18 Flaws and 4 Benefits
http://electionmathematics.org/ucvAnalysis/US/RCV-IRV/InstantRunoffVotingFlaws.pdf

Voters Have Reason to Worry
http://utahcountvotes.org/UT/UtahCountVotes-ThadHall-Response.pdf

Checking election outcome accuracy --- Post-election audit sampling
http://electionmathematics.org/em-audits/US/PEAuditSamplingMethods.pdf
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[James Gilmour]

Kathy Dopp > Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 1:20 PM
> Vote-splitting does mean less proportional
> representation using STV if more candidates run relative to
> some groups' constituency share compared to other groups.

Must be some misunderstanding here. Because the surplus votes of elected candidates and the votes of eliminated candidates are
transferable, the votes will progressively concentrate onto the appropriate number of candidates to represent each group
proportionately.


> That and all STV's other extreme flaws is why any of the
> other better proportional systems are more proportional and
> also better in a host of other ways.

Proportionality is dependent solely on district magnitude. For the same district magnitude, STV-PR is as proportional as any other
PR voting system - no more, but no less.

"Extreme flaws" and "better" both require definition and exposition.

For many voters, the ability to rank all the candidates freely on any basis whatsoever makes STV-PR "better" than any other PR
voting system. One reason why these voters consider that "better" is the effects it can have on the relationships between the
elected members and the local voters, between the elected members and their parties, and between the elected assembly and the
executive, especially where the executive is based within the assembly (as in "parliamentary" system). These "political" effects
(beyond simple PR) are important considerations, especially from the voters' perspective.

James Gilmour



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[robert bristow-johnson]

On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:

> 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV
> support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it
> solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that
> actually solve more problems than they create.

so, Kathy, i am curious as to which of these better alternatives you
promote?

--

r b-j ***@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."




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[robert bristow-johnson]

thanx,

r b-j

On Oct 31, 2009, at 12:18 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

>
> On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
>
>> 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV
>> support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it
>> solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that
>> actually solve more problems than they create.
>
> so, Kathy, i am curious as to which of these better alternatives
> you promote?
>
> --
>
> r b-j ***@audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
>
>
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for
> list info
>




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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:57 PM 11/3/2009, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

>thanx,

The question is quoted below. It's a loaded question. Kathy Dopp is
an election security expert, and doesn't necessarily "promote" any
voting system, but she'd like the system to be precinct summable, for
sure. She is also aware of the other issues caused by
non-monotonicity, and the peculiar and nauseating LNH satisfaction
(see the original paper in which Later No Harm was defined, what's
his name?) of STV, and I assume she'd be likely to support Approval,
Range, Bucklin, or possibly a Condorcet-compliant method, which can
be matrix-summed, and it's likely that most elections wouldn't
require even that.

>r b-j
>
>On Oct 31, 2009, at 12:18 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
>>
>>On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
>>
>>>5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV
>>>support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it
>>>solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that
>>>actually solve more problems than they create.
>>
>>so, Kathy, i am curious as to which of these better alternatives
>>you promote?

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[Stéphane Rouillon]

Miss Dopp was promoting FPTP in the past, saying IRV is non-monotonic,
until I showed that FPTP vote-splitting behaviour is non-monotonic too.

> - more voters prefer B to C
> - a fraction of those voters will vote for A because they even prefer
> A to other candidates
> - thus C can get elected because of vote-splitting between A and B
>
> Even if more voters prefer B to C, the result is that C wins over B.
> This is clearly non-monotonic.
> This is a typical vote-splitting case using FPTP.

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[robert bristow-johnson]

being pretty much completely converted to the condorcet faith, i have
no problem with non-monotonicity that happens to non-condorcet
winners. i still do not understand any realistic scenario where non-
monotonicity affects the condorcet winner.

you guys all probably know that in Burlington Vermont, we have an
active and substantial third party (the Progs) and IRV for the
mayoral election. in 2006 it came in handy and the IRV winner was
also the Condorcet winner. but in 2009, the Condorcet winner and IRV
winner and FPTP winner were three different people. the IRV winner
was the Prog, the Condorcet winner was the Dem (as you would expect
because Condorcet does favor centrism), and the FPTP winner was the
Republican (and there was another serious independent candidate).
since we know that if the Condorcet winner makes to the IRV final
round, then that candidate will also win the IRV in the final round,
it turns out that those on the right that voted for their favorite
candidate as their first choice, they actually ended up contributing
to electing their least favorite candidate. if they had forsaken
their fav and given their first choice to their second choice
(excluding the Independent), they could have changed who the mayor
is. but with Condorcet, they wouldn't have needed to make that
choice. they could have voted for their candidate (who would lose
either Condorcet or IRV) and not have that first-pick vote hurt their
2nd-pick and help their last-pick candidate. the Repubs started a
huge fuss and some Dems have joined in, and IRV will again be on the
ballot next town meeting day (March). IRV might very well get
repealed in Burlington in 2010.

i've offered this in the past, but if anyone wants a 6 page quick
read about my spin of what happened in Burlington, i can send it to
you. it's written not for experts but for Burlington residents, many
who never knew there were alternatives to FPTP besides IRV. i have
also locked horns with Rob Ritchie several times. the last time, i
was too tired responding again to his non-responses to the points i
have made. i agree with the goals of fairvote.org, but i think they
decided to put all of their chips into the IRV column (as the only
realistic hope to replace FPTP and/or delayed runoffs) and i think
committing to a flawed system so early was a mistake of theirs. but
IRV is still better than FPTP, just not as good as Condorcet.

--

r b-j ***@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."




On Nov 4, 2009, at 10:21 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

> The question is quoted below. It's a loaded question. Kathy Dopp is
> an election security expert, and doesn't necessarily "promote" any
> voting system, but she'd like the system to be precinct summable,
> for sure. She is also aware of the other issues caused by non-
> monotonicity, and the peculiar and nauseating LNH satisfaction (see
> the original paper in which Later No Harm was defined, what's his
> name?) of STV, and I assume she'd be likely to support Approval,
> Range, Bucklin, or possibly a Condorcet-compliant method, which can
> be matrix-summed, and it's likely that most elections wouldn't
> require even that.
>
>>
>> On Oct 31, 2009, at 12:18 PM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Oct 31, 2009, at 10:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
>>>
>>>> 5. It always amazes me how irrationally the supporters of IRV/STV
>>>> support a nonmonotonic system that creates more problems than it
>>>> solves when there are clearly better alternatives available that
>>>> actually solve more problems than they create.
>>>
>>> so, Kathy, i am curious as to which of these better alternatives
>>> you promote?


On Nov 4, 2009, at 11:20 PM, Stéphane Rouillon wrote:

> Miss Dopp was promoting FPTP in the past, saying IRV is non-monotonic,
> until I showed that FPTP vote-splitting behaviour is non-monotonic
> too.
>
>> - more voters prefer B to C
>> - a fraction of those voters will vote for A because they even
>> prefer A to other candidates
>> - thus C can get elected because of vote-splitting between A and B
>>
>> Even if more voters prefer B to C, the result is that C wins over
>> B. This is clearly non-monotonic.
>> This is a typical vote-splitting case using FPTP.
>


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[Brian Olson]

My writeup on the 2009-03 IRV foulup in Burlington VT is here:
http://bolson.org/~bolson/2009/20090303_burlington_vt_mayor.html

On Nov 5, 2009, at 3:12 AM, robert bristow-johnson wrote:

> i've offered this in the past, but if anyone wants a 6 page quick
> read about my spin of what happened in Burlington, i can send it to
> you.
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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> being pretty much completely converted to the condorcet faith, i have no
> problem with non-monotonicity that happens to non-condorcet winners. i
> still do not understand any realistic scenario where non-monotonicity
> affects the condorcet winner.

What is your opinion regarding methods, such as Nanson, Baldwin, and
Raynaud, that are nonmonotonic when there is no Condorcet winner? Do
Condorcet winners appear often enough in reality that it is not a problem?
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[robert bristow-johnson]

this is the 3rd or 4th time i forgot to hit "Reply All". can the
list admin *please* fix this so that the EM list is what is in the
Reply-To: header? i almost never remember to hit Reply All.

On Nov 5, 2009, at 9:30 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>> being pretty much completely converted to the condorcet faith, i
>> have no problem with non-monotonicity that happens to non-
>> condorcet winners. i still do not understand any realistic
>> scenario where non-monotonicity affects the condorcet winner.
>
> What is your opinion regarding methods, such as Nanson, Baldwin,
> and Raynaud, that are nonmonotonic when there is no Condorcet winner?

i dunno any of those methods (references would be nice, but i can
google for them). the only methods i know about are Ranked pairs,
Schulze (but i haven't dug into the actual method to search out all
beatpaths and rank them), Kemeny-Young. i see that Nanson is on the
list at Wikipedia, but not Baldwin nor Raynaud (at least by those
names).

simplicity and sufficient transparency is important to have public
confidence. otherwise i would probably just jump on the Schulze
bandwagon.

i don't think a sequence of elimination rounds would be okay, but the
method of picking the biggest loser for each round needs to be
debated. i am not sure what would be best.

> Do Condorcet winners appear often enough in reality that it is not
> a problem?

since no government yet uses Condorcet, i don't think any of us know
the answer.

but for there to be a paradox, you would need a situation where there
is no predictable voter alignment along a single dimensioned
political spectrum. you would need to have (in 2000) a lot of Nader
voters who choose Bush over Gore as their second choice, and Bush
voters that sincerely choose Nader over Gore, something i really do
not expect.

while having *something* meaningful in law to deal with a Condorcet
cycle, i really think that the lack of "the perfect solution" to the
paradox problem (that likely will never happen in a real election
with real candidates) should not be used as a block to adopting
Condorcet in general. what to do with a cycle can be adjusted at a
later time.

and what we *do* know, is that it is not impossible, not even highly
unlikely for IRV to elect a non-Condorcet winner, even when such
exists. there we have a method that chooses a winner when a
*majority* of us voters have explicitly marked our ballots that we
prefer some other *specific* candidate. the reason i am such a
Condorcet advocate is because the alternative, picking a winner who
the electorate rejected in favor of someone else, simply is counter
to any principle of democracy.

--

r b-j ***@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."




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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

robert bristow-johnson wrote:
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 9:30 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>
>> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>>> being pretty much completely converted to the condorcet faith, i have
>>> no problem with non-monotonicity that happens to non-condorcet
>>> winners. i still do not understand any realistic scenario where
>>> non-monotonicity affects the condorcet winner.
>>
>> What is your opinion regarding methods, such as Nanson, Baldwin, and
>> Raynaud, that are nonmonotonic when there is no Condorcet winner?
>
> i dunno any of those methods (references would be nice, but i can google
> for them). the only methods i know about are Ranked pairs, Schulze (but
> i haven't dug into the actual method to search out all beatpaths and
> rank them), Kemeny-Young. i see that Nanson is on the list at
> Wikipedia, but not Baldwin nor Raynaud (at least by those names).

Baldwin is described on the same page as Nanson. In short, Baldwin is
Borda IRV whereas Nanson is below-average Borda runoff (all candidates
with below average Borda score are eliminated). These, while not nearly
as good as Schulze and Ranked Pairs, might be more palatable to a public
that has been sold IRV.

Though, if minimal change to IRV is the objective, bottom two runoff
works: instead of eliminating the Plurality loser, do a "runoff"
(pairwise contest) between the two candidates with least Plurality
votes, then eliminate the loser - thus the Condorcet winner is never
eliminated. Or even simpler: keep eliminating until there's a CW among
the remaining candidates, then that candidate wins.

None of these are summable and they're not monotone either, so I would
definitely prefer Ranked Pairs or Schulze.

Raynaud goes like this: repeatedly eliminate the loser of the strongest
pairwise defeat until only one candidate remains. This is summable, but
not monotone.

> simplicity and sufficient transparency is important to have public
> confidence. otherwise i would probably just jump on the Schulze bandwagon.

Ranked Pairs might be good here. If you can get the one you're
explaining it to, to understand the pairwise way of thinking, then it
"easily" follows that if you're going to build a ranking for society
itself piece by piece, the stronger defeats should be considered before
the weaker ones, and there you have Ranked Pairs.

On the other hand, more organizations use Schulze than Ranked Pairs, so
it comes down to which inspires greater confidence: simplicity or a
record of use.

> i don't think a sequence of elimination rounds would be okay, but the
> method of picking the biggest loser for each round needs to be debated.
> i am not sure what would be best.

Are you referring to IRV here?

>> Do Condorcet winners appear often enough in reality that it is not a
>> problem?
>
> since no government yet uses Condorcet, i don't think any of us know the
> answer.

You're right. If I were to guess, I'd say that in most situations,
unless the electorate is small or uncertain, there will be a CW;
however, once the method has been adopted, parties will try to
coordinate strategies to induce a cycle, because that's the only way
they can game the system. There's certainly precedence for this, in how
the various parties in STV New York tried to employ vote management to
get more than their fair share of the local council.

> but for there to be a paradox, you would need a situation where there is
> no predictable voter alignment along a single dimensioned political
> spectrum. you would need to have (in 2000) a lot of Nader voters who
> choose Bush over Gore as their second choice, and Bush voters that
> sincerely choose Nader over Gore, something i really do not expect.

Perhaps the existence of Condorcet would permit variety to the point
that the political spectrum becomes multidimensional? For instance,
there might be left-right and unitary-federalist. With the right
distributions, these can lead to cycles. Whether or not that
diversification will actually happen is a question to which I don't know
the answer.

> while having *something* meaningful in law to deal with a Condorcet
> cycle, i really think that the lack of "the perfect solution" to the
> paradox problem (that likely will never happen in a real election with
> real candidates) should not be used as a block to adopting Condorcet in
> general. what to do with a cycle can be adjusted at a later time.

That might be a problem, because we discuss many different Condorcet
variants on the EM list. Unlike FairVote et al, we don't have a strong
voice saying "Hey public, if you think Plurality sucks, implement
[method here]".
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[robert bristow-johnson]

On Nov 5, 2009, at 1:35 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
...
>> simplicity and sufficient transparency is important to have public
>> confidence. otherwise i would probably just jump on the Schulze
>> bandwagon.
>
> Ranked Pairs might be good here. If you can get the one you're
> explaining it to, to understand the pairwise way of thinking, then
> it "easily" follows that if you're going to build a ranking for
> society itself piece by piece, the stronger defeats should be
> considered before the weaker ones, and there you have Ranked Pairs.
>
> On the other hand, more organizations use Schulze than Ranked
> Pairs, so it comes down to which inspires greater confidence:
> simplicity or a record of use.
>
>> i don't think a sequence of elimination rounds would be okay, but
>> the method of picking the biggest loser for each round needs to be
>> debated. i am not sure what would be best.
>
> Are you referring to IRV here?

no. i mean if there is a Condorcet cycle, as an alternative to
Schulze or Ranked Pairs or whatever, you could start with the Smith
Set and, with some meaningful metric, eliminate a candidate deemed to
be the biggest loser, then rerun the superficial Condorcet tally
(just see if there is a Condorcet winner among the candidates left)
and repeat until a Condorcet winner is apparent from the candidates
left over.

>>> Do Condorcet winners appear often enough in reality that it is
>>> not a problem?
>> since no government yet uses Condorcet, i don't think any of us
>> know the answer.
>
> You're right. If I were to guess, I'd say that in most situations,
> unless the electorate is small or uncertain, there will be a CW;
> however, once the method has been adopted, parties will try to
> coordinate strategies to induce a cycle,

really? Terry B (also a Burlington resident) told me that, and i
find that to be an untested hypothesis. since the parties do not
know who will benefit from a cycle (who can tell the future?), i
really have my doubts about that.

> because that's the only way they can game the system.

that's right. i see Condorcet as the least gameable (and the most
compliant to the fundamental concept of democracy) than any of the
others. *which* Condorcet (which boils down to which methods shall
we use to resolve a cycle or tie) is a secondary issue, in my
opinion. *any* Condorcet (with a reasonably meaningful method to
resolve a cycle, i.e. let's not draw lots nor give it to a candidate
outside of the Smith set) is better than IRV or Borda. and certainly
better than FPTP. my rejection of Range voting is because the ballot
requires more information from the voter than the simple ranked
ballot of Condorcet, IRV or Borda. asking the voter to rate their
candidate on a scale is asking too much and they would have to be
thinking about what would happen if they rate *anyone* other than
their primary pick with anything other than zero. the voter should
feel free to pick their first pick, back it up with a second pick and
not worry that their second pick somehow hurts their first. or that
their first pick somehow hurts the interest of their second pick
against some third candidate that they like even less. i think that
Range voters will give the guy they like a "10" and everyone else a
"0" in an effort to not harm the guy they like. then no more
information is gathered from the voter than you get with FPTP. the
ranked order ballot, where the voter only needs to ask themselves
"who do i prefer more, candidate A or candidate B?" extracts exactly
the right amount of information from the voter (i think that ties
should be allowed and we shall assume of course that any candidate
not ranked is tied for last place).

in Burlington Vermont, Repubs who voted for their candidate as their
first pick actually helped elect (with IRV) the candidate they liked
the least and that would not have happened if it was Condorcet. they
are mistaken in their belief that their candidate (the FPTP winner)
should have won, but i can understand their voter regret in that
their vote for their guy actually caused the election of the
candidate they liked the least.

> There's certainly precedence for this,

not with Condorcet there is. it's never been used in a government
election.

> in how the various parties in STV New York tried to employ vote
> management to get more than their fair share of the local council.
>
>> but for there to be a paradox, you would need a situation where
>> there is no predictable voter alignment along a single dimensioned
>> political spectrum. you would need to have (in 2000) a lot of
>> Nader voters who choose Bush over Gore as their second choice, and
>> Bush voters that sincerely choose Nader over Gore, something i
>> really do not expect.
>
> Perhaps the existence of Condorcet would permit variety to the
> point that the political spectrum becomes multidimensional?

that would be fine. and, if in a multidimensional political
spectrum, we had a few elections that had a Condorcet cycle that was
resolved with a simple and meaningful method (like Ranked Pairs), i
would be quite happy with that.

> For instance, there might be left-right and unitary-federalist.

actually the Libertarians here in New England look at it as left vs.
right on one dimension and libertarian vs. authoritarian on another.
some of us on the left might see "communitarian" as the opposite of
libertarian, but i *do* understand the concept of "fascist
liberals". i have bumped into a few of those myself a few times.

> With the right distributions, these can lead to cycles.

"can". but this is so hypothetical. do we know that it really
*will* (with any frequency) in a real political reality?

> Whether or not that diversification will actually happen is a
> question to which I don't know the answer.

true. in 2005 when i voted for IRV in Burlington, i was thinking to
myself, "well, it isn't Condorcet, but i doubt it will ever elect a
non-Codorcet winner because all the Condorcet winner needs is to make
it to the final round and he/she will also win IRV." and that
confidence was supported in 2006 in Burlington, but 2009 was a big
wake-up for me. what we really know that will actually happen
(because it has) is that sometimes IRV will elect someone where a
majority (not just a mere plurality) of voters have expressed on
their ballots that they prefer some other specific candidate. that
*can't* be good.

>
>> while having *something* meaningful in law to deal with a
>> Condorcet cycle, i really think that the lack of "the perfect
>> solution" to the paradox problem (that likely will never happen in
>> a real election with real candidates) should not be used as a
>> block to adopting Condorcet in general. what to do with a cycle
>> can be adjusted at a later time.
>
> That might be a problem, because we discuss many different
> Condorcet variants on the EM list.

i know that. and what i am saying, as a value statement, is that we
(in the U.S.) need to concentrate on getting *some* kind of universal
health care adopted and not let details differentiating various
universal health care policies cause the whole reform to be tabled
because we can't decide *which* universal health care system we want
yet. i am *far* less concerned about how Schulze or Ranked Pairs or
Kemeney or some elimination round system will be "gamed" than i am of
IRV or FPTP simply electing the wrong candidate and causing a large
blowback by a *majority* of dissatisfied voters. elections should be
designed to *minimize* the overall metric of dissatisfaction
(otherwise, let's just give it to the least popular candidate, why
not?) and IRV and FPTP do not do that.


> Unlike FairVote et al, we don't have a strong voice saying "Hey
> public, if you think Plurality sucks, implement [method here]".

but if FairVote won't keep all of their eggs in the IRV basket, then
we need someone to do the same for Condorcet.

--

r b-j ***@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."




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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
> On Nov 5, 2009, at 1:35 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>
>> robert bristow-johnson wrote:

>>> i don't think a sequence of elimination rounds would be okay, but the
>>> method of picking the biggest loser for each round needs to be
>>> debated. i am not sure what would be best.
>>
>> Are you referring to IRV here?
>
> no. i mean if there is a Condorcet cycle, as an alternative to Schulze
> or Ranked Pairs or whatever, you could start with the Smith Set and,
> with some meaningful metric, eliminate a candidate deemed to be the
> biggest loser, then rerun the superficial Condorcet tally (just see if
> there is a Condorcet winner among the candidates left) and repeat until
> a Condorcet winner is apparent from the candidates left over.

I've been browsing old posts of this list, and I've encountered the idea
or method of "sprucing up", which may be of interest in this respect:

http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-December/014372.html

The relevant post for determining cycles is here:

http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-December/014373.html

and basically says that, in public elections, and in every election if
the base method passes certain criteria, the question of how to resolve
cycles can be reduced to drawing the borders of three regions of a
triangle. The complexity of the question has thus been reduced quite a
bit, even if it is now very abstract.

On another note, Condorcet cycles don't have to be resolved through
elimination. Also, there may be subsets of the Smith or Schwartz set,
such as the uncovered (Landau, Fishburn) set, that have just one
candidate even when the former sets have multiple, that can be used to
resolve the cycles. Picking uncovered candidates confers protection
against certain forms of strategy, as well.

All of this is theoretical, since the methods are too clumsy for public
proposal, but one has to start somewhere :-)

>> You're right. If I were to guess, I'd say that in most situations,
>> unless the electorate is small or uncertain, there will be a CW;
>> however, once the method has been adopted, parties will try to
>> coordinate strategies to induce a cycle,
>
> really? Terry B (also a Burlington resident) told me that, and i find
> that to be an untested hypothesis. since the parties do not know who
> will benefit from a cycle (who can tell the future?), i really have my
> doubts about that.

They'll try, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll succeed. If the
method resists the initial strategy, they would eventually give up. In
the case of STV, vote management did work (but it was very risky), and
so the parties continued, adding noise to the system. I do think the
"good" methods (River, MAM/Ranked Pairs, Schulze, etc) will manage to
resist the initial attempts at coordinated strategy, but it does
emphasize that you need some resistance to strategy in order to survive
the metaphorical birth of fire.

Some strategies could be maintained longer than others. Those that
involve manipulation of the candidate set would be easier for a party
than those that involve electoral strategy, for instance; so a method
should be cloneproof (which the three I mentioned are), and should be
independent of as many alternatives as possible (the three are all
independent of candidates not in the Smith set, and River is also
independent of Pareto-dominated alternatives).

The voters themselves might also strategize. Such strategy would be less
coordinated, but this is where the critics of Condorcet focus their
efforts: if a large share of the electorate "bury" candidates (vote A >
... > B instead of A > B > ... because B "is a threat"), then you can
get bad outcomes. The question here is whether the public will actually
do that.

> in Burlington Vermont, Repubs who voted for their candidate as their
> first pick actually helped elect (with IRV) the candidate they liked the
> least and that would not have happened if it was Condorcet. they are
> mistaken in their belief that their candidate (the FPTP winner) should
> have won, but i can understand their voter regret in that their vote for
> their guy actually caused the election of the candidate they liked the
> least.

Yes, it brings to mind a few pictures I saw on the web.

http://www.braindoll.net/vote/#Which%20version%20is%20best%20%28or:%20Grudgeless%20Match%20between%20the%20Tomorrow%20Twins%29.3.1

FPTP's football field is nearly vertical, IRV's is better but still has
a hill in it (minor parties are safe as long as they're minor, but when
they start getting large, they'll interfere with the runoff process).
Condorcet's is flat :-)

>> There's certainly precedence for this,
>
> not with Condorcet there is. it's never been used in a government
> election.

I meant more broadly. The parties will *try*, but will they succeed?
Depends on the method.

>> Unlike FairVote et al, we don't have a strong voice saying "Hey
>> public, if you think Plurality sucks, implement [method here]".
>
> but if FairVote won't keep all of their eggs in the IRV basket, then we
> need someone to do the same for Condorcet.

FairVote doesn't? I thought their problem was that they had "committed"
to IRV as the electoral method from heaven, and thus they have to stick
with it rather than, for instance, say "Oh, oops, we were wrong, turns
out that system is actually better".
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[robert bristow-johnson]

On Nov 8, 2009, at 6:33 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>> On Nov 5, 2009, at 1:35 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>>
...
>>> Unlike FairVote et al, we don't have a strong voice saying "Hey
>>> public, if you think Plurality sucks, implement [method here]".
>> but if FairVote won't keep all of their eggs in the IRV basket,
>> then we need someone to do the same for Condorcet.
>
> FairVote doesn't? I thought their problem was that they had
> "committed" to IRV as the electoral method from heaven, and thus
> they have to stick with it rather than, for instance, say "Oh,
> oops, we were wrong, turns out that system is actually better".

when i'm typing away and composing sentences in my head, sometimes i
make the mistake of the "Wicked Bible". usually the spurious
omission or spurious inclusion of the word "not" has the tendency to
change the meaning of a sentence to something not intended. FairVote
*does* put all of their eggs in the IRV basket. and i have many
times taken issue with them about it. i've sorta tired of repeatedly
refuting Rob Ritchie recently.

--

r b-j ***@audioimagination.com

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."




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[Dave Ketchum]

Trying some fresh thinking for Condorcet, and what anyone should be
able to see in the X*X array. I am ignoring labels such as Schulze
and Ranked Pairs - this is human-doable and minimal effort -
especially with normally having a CW and most cycles having the
minimal three members.

1. Look at any pair of candidates. Loser is not the CW (there can
be a tie in any comparison here - NOT likely in a normal election, but
we have to be prepared with responses for such).
2. If there are other possible CWs, repeat step 1 with latest winner
and one of them.
3. If there are other candidates latest winner has not been compared
with, compare it with each of them.
4. If winner wins each of these, it is CW.
5. Winner and each who beat it in step 4 are cycle members. Also,
any candidate beating any of these is also a cycle member.

IF there is a CW, it should win - anything else is a complication,
even if some math makes claims for the something else.
Otherwise a simple cycle resolution should apply. Simply
canceling the smallest margin has been thought of - that value means
minimum difference in vote counts between actual and what is assumed.
Note that each cycle member would be CW if remaining cycle
members were ignored.

As to voting:
Equal ranks permitted.
Write-ins permitted, and such a candidate wins with the same
vote counts as if nominated.

As to clones, strategy, primaries, and runoffs - all seem best
ignored, though only a nuisance if some are determined to involve such.

Dave Ketchum

On Nov 8, 2009, at 6:33 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>> On Nov 5, 2009, at 1:35 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>> robert bristow-johnson wrote:
>
>>>> i don't think a sequence of elimination rounds would be okay, but
>>>> the method of picking the biggest loser for each round needs to
>>>> be debated. i am not sure what would be best.
>>>
>>> Are you referring to IRV here?
>> no. i mean if there is a Condorcet cycle, as an alternative to
>> Schulze or Ranked Pairs or whatever, you could start with the Smith
>> Set and, with some meaningful metric, eliminate a candidate deemed
>> to be the biggest loser, then rerun the superficial Condorcet tally
>> (just see if there is a Condorcet winner among the candidates left)
>> and repeat until a Condorcet winner is apparent from the candidates
>> left over.
>
> I've been browsing old posts of this list, and I've encountered the
> idea or method of "sprucing up", which may be of interest in this
> respect:
>
> http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-December/014372.html
>
> The relevant post for determining cycles is here:
>
> http://lists.electorama.com/htdig.cgi/election-methods-electorama.com/2004-December/014373.html
>
> and basically says that, in public elections, and in every election
> if the base method passes certain criteria, the question of how to
> resolve cycles can be reduced to drawing the borders of three
> regions of a triangle. The complexity of the question has thus been
> reduced quite a bit, even if it is now very abstract.
>
> On another note, Condorcet cycles don't have to be resolved through
> elimination. Also, there may be subsets of the Smith or Schwartz
> set, such as the uncovered (Landau, Fishburn) set, that have just
> one candidate even when the former sets have multiple, that can be
> used to resolve the cycles. Picking uncovered candidates confers
> protection against certain forms of strategy, as well.
>
> All of this is theoretical, since the methods are too clumsy for
> public proposal, but one has to start somewhere :-)
>
>>> You're right. If I were to guess, I'd say that in most situations,
>>> unless the electorate is small or uncertain, there will be a CW;
>>> however, once the method has been adopted, parties will try to
>>> coordinate strategies to induce a cycle,
>> really? Terry B (also a Burlington resident) told me that, and i
>> find that to be an untested hypothesis. since the parties do not
>> know who will benefit from a cycle (who can tell the future?), i
>> really have my doubts about that.
>
> They'll try, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll succeed. If
> the method resists the initial strategy, they would eventually give
> up. In the case of STV, vote management did work (but it was very
> risky), and so the parties continued, adding noise to the system. I
> do think the "good" methods (River, MAM/Ranked Pairs, Schulze, etc)
> will manage to resist the initial attempts at coordinated strategy,
> but it does emphasize that you need some resistance to strategy in
> order to survive the metaphorical birth of fire.
>
> Some strategies could be maintained longer than others. Those that
> involve manipulation of the candidate set would be easier for a
> party than those that involve electoral strategy, for instance; so a
> method should be cloneproof (which the three I mentioned are), and
> should be independent of as many alternatives as possible (the three
> are all independent of candidates not in the Smith set, and River is
> also independent of Pareto-dominated alternatives).
>
> The voters themselves might also strategize. Such strategy would be
> less coordinated, but this is where the critics of Condorcet focus
> their efforts: if a large share of the electorate "bury" candidates
> (vote A > ... > B instead of A > B > ... because B "is a threat"),
> then you can get bad outcomes. The question here is whether the
> public will actually do that.
>
>> in Burlington Vermont, Repubs who voted for their candidate as
>> their first pick actually helped elect (with IRV) the candidate
>> they liked the least and that would not have happened if it was
>> Condorcet. they are mistaken in their belief that their candidate
>> (the FPTP winner) should have won, but i can understand their voter
>> regret in that their vote for their guy actually caused the
>> election of the candidate they liked the least.
>
> Yes, it brings to mind a few pictures I saw on the web.
>
> http://www.braindoll.net/vote/#Which%20version%20is%20best%20%28or:
> %20Grudgeless%20Match%20between%20the%20Tomorrow%20Twins%29.3.1
>
> FPTP's football field is nearly vertical, IRV's is better but still
> has a hill in it (minor parties are safe as long as they're minor,
> but when they start getting large, they'll interfere with the runoff
> process). Condorcet's is flat :-)
>
>>> There's certainly precedence for this,
>> not with Condorcet there is. it's never been used in a government
>> election.
>
> I meant more broadly. The parties will *try*, but will they succeed?
> Depends on the method.
>
>>> Unlike FairVote et al, we don't have a strong voice saying "Hey
>>> public, if you think Plurality sucks, implement [method here]".
>> but if FairVote won't keep all of their eggs in the IRV basket,
>> then we need someone to do the same for Condorcet.
>
> FairVote doesn't? I thought their problem was that they had
> "committed" to IRV as the electoral method from heaven, and thus
> they have to stick with it rather than, for instance, say "Oh, oops,
> we were wrong, turns out that system is actually better".


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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Dave Ketchum wrote:
> Trying some fresh thinking for Condorcet, and what anyone should be able
> to see in the X*X array. I am ignoring labels such as Schulze and
> Ranked Pairs - this is human-doable and minimal effort - especially with
> normally having a CW and most cycles having the minimal three members.
>
> 1. Look at any pair of candidates. Loser is not the CW (there can be
> a tie in any comparison here - NOT likely in a normal election, but we
> have to be prepared with responses for such).
> 2. If there are other possible CWs, repeat step 1 with latest winner
> and one of them.
> 3. If there are other candidates latest winner has not been compared
> with, compare it with each of them.
> 4. If winner wins each of these, it is CW.
> 5. Winner and each who beat it in step 4 are cycle members. Also, any
> candidate beating any of these is also a cycle member.
>
> IF there is a CW, it should win - anything else is a complication, even
> if some math makes claims for the something else.
> Otherwise a simple cycle resolution should apply. Simply canceling
> the smallest margin has been thought of - that value means minimum
> difference in vote counts between actual and what is assumed.
> Note that each cycle member would be CW if remaining cycle members
> were ignored.
>
> As to voting:
> Equal ranks permitted.
> Write-ins permitted, and such a candidate wins with the same vote
> counts as if nominated.
>
> As to clones, strategy, primaries, and runoffs - all seem best ignored,
> though only a nuisance if some are determined to involve such.

Okay, so let's see which *simple* cycle breaker provides as much as
possible. To do that, we'll need to find out what simplicity means, and
how to define "as much as possible".

That could be interesting in itself.

Ranked Pairs (or River) seems nice, but even it may be too complex.
Sports usually employ Copeland (but modified); perhaps that could be
used - but Copeland is indecisive. One can add Smith compliance by
checking for a CW among the first n ranked in the output, then n-1, then
n-2 and so on, but that might also be too complex.

Of course, if simplicity is paramount (i.e. we want very simple) we
could just go with "break it by whoever beats the Plurality winner by
the greatest amount" or plain old minmax (candidate with least worst
defeat wins) or LR (greatest sum of victories wins).
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[Dave Ketchum]

What I wrote last time is about as simple as you get. Canceling the
smallest margin cancels a three-member cycle, leaving the strongest
member as CW. Could take more canceling for more complex, and thus
rarer, cycles.

Dave Ketchum

On Nov 10, 2009, at 7:54 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Dave Ketchum wrote:
>> Trying some fresh thinking for Condorcet, and what anyone should be
>> able to see in the X*X array. I am ignoring labels such as Schulze
>> and Ranked Pairs - this is human-doable and minimal effort -
>> especially with normally having a CW and most cycles having the
>> minimal three members.
>> 1. Look at any pair of candidates. Loser is not the CW (there
>> can be a tie in any comparison here - NOT likely in a normal
>> election, but we have to be prepared with responses for such).
>> 2. If there are other possible CWs, repeat step 1 with latest
>> winner and one of them.
>> 3. If there are other candidates latest winner has not been
>> compared with, compare it with each of them.
>> 4. If winner wins each of these, it is CW.
>> 5. Winner and each who beat it in step 4 are cycle members. Also,
>> any candidate beating any of these is also a cycle member.
>> IF there is a CW, it should win - anything else is a complication,
>> even if some math makes claims for the something else.
>> Otherwise a simple cycle resolution should apply. Simply
>> canceling the smallest margin has been thought of - that value
>> means minimum difference in vote counts between actual and what is
>> assumed.
>> Note that each cycle member would be CW if remaining cycle
>> members were ignored.
>> As to voting:
>> Equal ranks permitted.
>> Write-ins permitted, and such a candidate wins with the same
>> vote counts as if nominated.
>> As to clones, strategy, primaries, and runoffs - all seem best
>> ignored, though only a nuisance if some are determined to involve
>> such.
>
> Okay, so let's see which *simple* cycle breaker provides as much as
> possible. To do that, we'll need to find out what simplicity means,
> and how to define "as much as possible".
>
> That could be interesting in itself.
>
> Ranked Pairs (or River) seems nice, but even it may be too complex.
> Sports usually employ Copeland (but modified); perhaps that could be
> used - but Copeland is indecisive. One can add Smith compliance by
> checking for a CW among the first n ranked in the output, then n-1,
> then n-2 and so on, but that might also be too complex.
>
> Of course, if simplicity is paramount (i.e. we want very simple) we
> could just go with "break it by whoever beats the Plurality winner
> by the greatest amount" or plain old minmax (candidate with least
> worst defeat wins) or LR (greatest sum of victories wins).



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[Jonathan Lundell]

On Oct 31, 2009, at 7:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:

> 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless
> there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates run
> who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like
> STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely
> assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more
> precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the
> number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple
> mathematical fact.

STV satisfies the Droop Proportionality Criterion. Any competing
proposal for a proportional system must accomplish at least that, it
seems to me, to be taken seriously.
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[Juho]

I wouldn't be as strict as saying that Droop proportionality is an
absolute requirement. I'd be happy to classify all methods that
approximate the principle of x% of votes means x% of seats as
"acceptable PR".

Note that even if some method strictly follows e.g. Droop
proportionality there may be other factors that distort the picture.
It is for example typical that the size of electoral districts causes
bigger deviation from proportionality than the method that is used
within each district. In the extreme case single member districts may
give disproportional power to few (e.g. two) parties (even if the
actual method would be proportional (like plurality in a way is for
single member districts :-)). Also e.g. 10 districts of 10 seats each
typically means considerable bias in proportionality in favour of the
large parties.

If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that
fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best
in small districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it
typically leaves some space to distortion in proportionality as caused
by the district structure. List based methods have also similar
problems but in them it is easier to have the whole country as one
district (=> better proportionality but weaker local representation
(and as a result weaker "regional proportionality")), or they can be
easily extended to count the "political proportionality" at national
level but still allocate the seats in the districts (and thereby
maintain also "regional proportionality" and more local representation).

My point thus is that proportionality should be observed at the
"national level", taking into account also factors like districts and
number of available candidates and parties, cutoffs, restrictions in
nomination etc.

Juho



On Nov 1, 2009, at 9:03 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> On Oct 31, 2009, at 7:29 AM, Kathy Dopp wrote:
>
>> 3. STV does *not* achieve proportional representation at all unless
>> there is no vote splitting and just the right number of candidates
>> run
>> who support each group's interests. I.e. the success of methods like
>> STV to achieve proportional representation rest in the unlikely
>> assumption that just the right proportion of candidates run (or more
>> precisely an equal proportion of candidates run) in proportion to the
>> number of voters in each separate group. This is just simple
>> mathematical fact.
>
> STV satisfies the Droop Proportionality Criterion. Any competing
> proposal for a proportional system must accomplish at least that, it
> seems to me, to be taken seriously.----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for
> list info

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[Raph Frank]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level that fixes
> the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in small
> districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it typically leaves
> some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district
> structure.

While I would agree there is a compromise between distict size and
complexity for the voter, I don't agree that PR-STV is at its best
with a small districts.

Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable proportionality.

> List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is
> easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality
> but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional
> proportionality"))

I think they also suffer from the same trade-off, between giving
voters max choice and preventing them being overloaded with options.

Under a tree system, you still need to list all the candidates in the
country. However, granted the voter just needs to pick one candidate
to vote for.

> or they can be easily extended to count the "political
> proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in the
> districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and more
> local representation).

I think this is reasonable. I made a suggestion about how to allow
that while retaining the spirit of PR-STV locally.

http://www.mail-archive.com/election-***@lists.electorama.com/msg04272.html

This gives allows candidate level elections locally while allowing any
wasted votes to be distributed to parties nationally.
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[Juho]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 1:53 PM, Raph Frank wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 6:51 AM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level
>> that fixes
>> the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at its best in
>> small
>> districts with small number of candidates and seats, so it
>> typically leaves
>> some space to distortion in proportionality as caused by the district
>> structure.
>
> While I would agree there is a compromise between distict size and
> complexity for the voter, I don't agree that PR-STV is at its best
> with a small districts.
>
> Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable
> proportionality.

I guess there is some practical limit to how may candidates the voters
are willing to evaluate and rank. Districts of 7+ already offer
reasonable proportionality (approximate quite well the x% of votes => x
% of seats principle). Also the number of candidates should be small
enough in this case so that the voters need not rank too many
candidates (e.g. 10 candidates from each party).

The targets may be different in different places though. Finland has
found its smallest districts of size 6 to be unacceptable (people have
moved away from those regions and therefore the sizes have gone down)
and plans a reform (largest district = 34 seats). Small parties can
not currently get any seats in those small districts (they may however
try by joining in larger alliances). The new proposal aims at (close
to) full proportionality counted at country level.

Also the number of districts has an impact here. If there are e.g. 10
districts of size 7 there could be a party with 10% support and no
seats although from a nation wide perspective 10% of the votes would
justify 7 seats.

>
>> List based methods have also similar problems but in them it is
>> easier to have the whole country as one district (=> better
>> proportionality
>> but weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional
>> proportionality"))
>
> I think they also suffer from the same trade-off, between giving
> voters max choice and preventing them being overloaded with options.
>
> Under a tree system, you still need to list all the candidates in the
> country. However, granted the voter just needs to pick one candidate
> to vote for.

Yes, districts with independent elections set similar limitations in
all systems. In list based systems it is just somewhat easier to
extend them e.g. so that proportionality will be counted at country
level. Candidate lists could still be regional if one so wants (the
summed up votes would determine proportions at the country level, and
seats could then be propagated back down (as in the Finnish proposal)).

>
>> or they can be easily extended to count the "political
>> proportionality" at national level but still allocate the seats in
>> the
>> districts (and thereby maintain also "regional proportionality" and
>> more
>> local representation).
>
> I think this is reasonable. I made a suggestion about how to allow
> that while retaining the spirit of PR-STV locally.
>
> http://www.mail-archive.com/election-***@lists.electorama.com/msg04272.html
>
> This gives allows candidate level elections locally while allowing any
> wasted votes to be distributed to parties nationally.

Yes, this is one way to extend STV to offer better proportionality at
the country level. This method seems to combine some list type
features with STV voting.

(Btw, did you consider the possibility of parties running their most
popular candidates (that will be elected in any case) outside the
party list. Is that a valid strategy in this method?)

Juho



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[Raph Frank]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 1:53 PM, Raph Frank wrote:
>> Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable
>> proportionality.
>
> I guess there is some practical limit to how may candidates the voters are
> willing to evaluate and rank. Districts of 7+ already offer reasonable
> proportionality (approximate quite well the x% of votes => x% of seats
> principle). Also the number of candidates should be small enough in this
> case so that the voters need not rank too many candidates (e.g. 10
> candidates from each party).

Well, even with a larger number of seats, a voter would waste very
little of their vote, even if they only voted for 2-3 candidates.

Assuming you only ranked 3 candidates and they all get elected with
double the quota, only 12.5% of your vote would be exhausted.

In practice it is rare that candidates get much more than 10% above
the quota (except the candidates who are elected on the first count).

A reasonable rule would be to keep ranking until you hit a candidate
who has a reasonable chance of being elected, but isn't so popular
that he will gain much more than a quota in the first round.

> Also the number of districts has an impact here. If there are e.g. 10
> districts of size 7 there could be a party with 10% support and no seats
> although from a nation wide perspective 10% of the votes would justify 7
> seats.

True, however that assumes that the party has very constituent support.

If it varies a little from region to region, then maybe they would win
a few seats at least.

The could also decide to focus their resources from the whole country
on the 7 regions that they are most likely to win a seat in. (though
that might get a backlash due to using "outsiders").

> Yes, districts with independent elections set similar limitations in all
> systems. In list based systems it is just somewhat easier to extend them
> e.g. so that proportionality will be counted at country level. Candidate
> lists could still be regional if one so wants (the summed up votes would
> determine proportions at the country level, and seats could then be
> propagated back down (as in the Finnish proposal)).

You could also pretend that there is just 1 national constituency and
voters just happened to only vote for local candidates.

Also, you could list local candidates on the ballot, but give a
write-in slot. The write in could allow voters to vote for a
candidate from other regions.

This reduces the complexity of the ballot for locals, but also allows
voters to vote for a write in candidate if they wish.

> Yes, this is one way to extend STV to offer better proportionality at the
> country level. This method seems to combine some list type features with STV
> voting.
>
> (Btw, did you consider the possibility of parties running their most popular
> candidates (that will be elected in any case) outside the party list. Is
> that a valid strategy in this method?)

It depends on what you mean here.

It doesn't suffer from the same problem as MMP, where you can gain
extra votes by using a decoy list. Only votes which would otherwise
be exhausted are transferred to the national level.

A voter who votes for an independent doesn't also get to cast a party
vote, so you can't have your supporters support a fake independent
locally while still voting for the party with their party vote.

However, the method would still have the standard issues with vote
management. This is pretty much inherent to PR-STV. If party
supporters vote for the weaker party candidates instead of a very
popular candidate, then when the popular candidate is elected, fewer
of the party supporters' votes are used up.
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[Juho]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:30 PM, Raph Frank wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:38 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 1:53 PM, Raph Frank wrote:
>>> Districts with 7+ seats seem reasonable, and give reasonable
>>> proportionality.
>>
>> I guess there is some practical limit to how may candidates the
>> voters are
>> willing to evaluate and rank. Districts of 7+ already offer
>> reasonable
>> proportionality (approximate quite well the x% of votes => x% of
>> seats
>> principle). Also the number of candidates should be small enough in
>> this
>> case so that the voters need not rank too many candidates (e.g. 10
>> candidates from each party).
>
> Well, even with a larger number of seats, a voter would waste very
> little of their vote, even if they only voted for 2-3 candidates.
>
> Assuming you only ranked 3 candidates and they all get elected with
> double the quota, only 12.5% of your vote would be exhausted.

Number of candidates is maybe the actual problem and the number of
seats mainly influences the number of candidates. If the number of
candidates is large then it may be necessary to rank numerous
candidates to be sure that at least one of them will be elected (and
the vote is not wasted).

There is also the risk that voters will vote for the strongest
candidates and not their (possibly weaker) favourites because of this
problem.

I'm thinking e.g. the Finnish elections where currently there can be
some 150+ candidates to rank. It might be necessary to rank quite many
candidates if I don't want to support the incumbents.

>
> In practice it is rare that candidates get much more than 10% above
> the quota (except the candidates who are elected on the first count).
>
> A reasonable rule would be to keep ranking until you hit a candidate
> who has a reasonable chance of being elected, but isn't so popular
> that he will gain much more than a quota in the first round.

Yes. But maybe I should rank until I'm quite sure that at least one of
the ranked candidates will be elected. In elections where there are
numerous candidates (ref. Finland) it is also important to rank those
good candidates that may not be elected this time but whom I want to
promote so that they will be elected in the next elections (i.e. the
next time potential winners will be picked by the voters in these
elections and not by the party officials (that may offer just a
limited set) just before the next elections).

>
>> Also the number of districts has an impact here. If there are e.g. 10
>> districts of size 7 there could be a party with 10% support and no
>> seats
>> although from a nation wide perspective 10% of the votes would
>> justify 7
>> seats.
>
> True, however that assumes that the party has very constituent
> support.

Yes, districts tend to favour local groupings over evenly spread ones.

>
> If it varies a little from region to region, then maybe they would win
> a few seats at least.
>
> The could also decide to focus their resources from the whole country
> on the 7 regions that they are most likely to win a seat in. (though
> that might get a backlash due to using "outsiders").
>
>> Yes, districts with independent elections set similar limitations
>> in all
>> systems. In list based systems it is just somewhat easier to extend
>> them
>> e.g. so that proportionality will be counted at country level.
>> Candidate
>> lists could still be regional if one so wants (the summed up votes
>> would
>> determine proportions at the country level, and seats could then be
>> propagated back down (as in the Finnish proposal)).
>
> You could also pretend that there is just 1 national constituency and
> voters just happened to only vote for local candidates.

Yes. Usually the number of seats in each district is based on
population. It would be an interesting trial if the number of seats in
each district would be based on the number of valid votes in that
district. That might improve the turnout :-).

>
> Also, you could list local candidates on the ballot, but give a
> write-in slot. The write in could allow voters to vote for a
> candidate from other regions.

One could also allow anyone to vote any candidate from any region but
still allocate a fixed number of seats to each district. The voter
could then vote for her favourite (and thereby guarantee that she will
be elected) even if that favourite would be from another district.

Juho


>
> This reduces the complexity of the ballot for locals, but also allows
> voters to vote for a write in candidate if they wish.
>
>> Yes, this is one way to extend STV to offer better proportionality
>> at the
>> country level. This method seems to combine some list type features
>> with STV
>> voting.
>>
>> (Btw, did you consider the possibility of parties running their
>> most popular
>> candidates (that will be elected in any case) outside the party
>> list. Is
>> that a valid strategy in this method?)
>
> It depends on what you mean here.
>
> It doesn't suffer from the same problem as MMP, where you can gain
> extra votes by using a decoy list. Only votes which would otherwise
> be exhausted are transferred to the national level.
>
> A voter who votes for an independent doesn't also get to cast a party
> vote, so you can't have your supporters support a fake independent
> locally while still voting for the party with their party vote.
>
> However, the method would still have the standard issues with vote
> management. This is pretty much inherent to PR-STV. If party
> supporters vote for the weaker party candidates instead of a very
> popular candidate, then when the popular candidate is elected, fewer
> of the party supporters' votes are used up.

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[Jonathan Lundell]

On Nov 1, 2009, at 10:51 PM, Juho wrote:

> I wouldn't be as strict as saying that Droop proportionality is an
> absolute requirement. I'd be happy to classify all methods that
> approximate the principle of x% of votes means x% of seats as
> "acceptable PR".

I'd like to see a definition of what that really means.

To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all
(of course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and
Republican seats is surprisingly close to representing state party
registration.

Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it
isn't, we can have that discussion).

The important thing about DPC is that it guarantees proportional
representation to solid coalitions. The PR isn't dependent on
strategic nomination or voting, on segregated or gerrymandered
districts, or on fortunate accident.

If we didn't have DPC methods, then we'd certainly be justified in
finding alternative "acceptable" methods. But since we do, it seems to
me that alternative methods have a high bar to meet.

(I'd class party lists as at least potentially meeting the DPC, within
whatever nomination and threshold constraints they have.)

>
> Note that even if some method strictly follows e.g. Droop
> proportionality there may be other factors that distort the picture.
> It is for example typical that the size of electoral districts
> causes bigger deviation from proportionality than the method that is
> used within each district. In the extreme case single member
> districts may give disproportional power to few (e.g. two) parties
> (even if the actual method would be proportional (like plurality in
> a way is for single member districts :-)). Also e.g. 10 districts of
> 10 seats each typically means considerable bias in proportionality
> in favour of the large parties.
>
> If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level
> that fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at
> its best in small districts with small number of candidates and
> seats, so it typically leaves some space to distortion in
> proportionality as caused by the district structure. List based
> methods have also similar problems but in them it is easier to have
> the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality but
> weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional
> proportionality")), or they can be easily extended to count the
> "political proportionality" at national level but still allocate the
> seats in the districts (and thereby maintain also "regional
> proportionality" and more local representation).

Certainly if we had national PR in the US (or even statewide PR in the
larger states), we'd have a degree of locality--STV within multi-seat
"superdistricts", say, or some variation of MMP.

>
> My point thus is that proportionality should be observed at the
> "national level", taking into account also factors like districts
> and number of available candidates and parties, cutoffs,
> restrictions in nomination etc.


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[Juho]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:

> On Nov 1, 2009, at 10:51 PM, Juho wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't be as strict as saying that Droop proportionality is an
>> absolute requirement. I'd be happy to classify all methods that
>> approximate the principle of x% of votes means x% of seats as
>> "acceptable PR".
>
> I'd like to see a definition of what that really means.

I don't have any exact formulation, but the idea is that one can
deviate from the basic principle only because of rounding errors,
moderate distortion caused by districting, maybe some generally
accepted thresholds to party size etc. Not very exact but the meaning
is exact, implement full proportionality except where there are valid
(practical) reasons to (slightly) deviate from it.

>
> To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all
> (of course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and
> Republican seats is surprisingly close to representing state party
> registration.

Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but
of course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus
proportional in some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above
since deviation from full proportionality (that would allow also
smaller groups to survive) is much larger than what would be necessary.

>
> Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it
> isn't, we can have that discussion).

I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of democracy
that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to have PR then
such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good at all.

>
> The important thing about DPC is that it guarantees proportional
> representation to solid coalitions. The PR isn't dependent on
> strategic nomination or voting, on segregated or gerrymandered
> districts, or on fortunate accident.
>
> If we didn't have DPC methods, then we'd certainly be justified in
> finding alternative "acceptable" methods. But since we do, it seems
> to me that alternative methods have a high bar to meet.
>
> (I'd class party lists as at least potentially meeting the DPC,
> within whatever nomination and threshold constraints they have.)

I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict
since I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well.
For example basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR
although that method slightly favours large parties (when allocating
the fractional seats). As already noted districting typically causes
larger deviation from PR than the algorithm that is used within each
district. There are many ways to implementing PR "well enough". Maybe
in most cases there are no major strategy and fairness related
problems although DPC was not met fully. _Approximation_ of DPC is
however a requirement if one wants "reasonable PR".

>
>>
>> Note that even if some method strictly follows e.g. Droop
>> proportionality there may be other factors that distort the
>> picture. It is for example typical that the size of electoral
>> districts causes bigger deviation from proportionality than the
>> method that is used within each district. In the extreme case
>> single member districts may give disproportional power to few (e.g.
>> two) parties (even if the actual method would be proportional (like
>> plurality in a way is for single member districts :-)). Also e.g.
>> 10 districts of 10 seats each typically means considerable bias in
>> proportionality in favour of the large parties.
>>
>> If the votes (and proportionality) are counted at national level
>> that fixes the (district fragmentation related) problem. STV is at
>> its best in small districts with small number of candidates and
>> seats, so it typically leaves some space to distortion in
>> proportionality as caused by the district structure. List based
>> methods have also similar problems but in them it is easier to have
>> the whole country as one district (=> better proportionality but
>> weaker local representation (and as a result weaker "regional
>> proportionality")), or they can be easily extended to count the
>> "political proportionality" at national level but still allocate
>> the seats in the districts (and thereby maintain also "regional
>> proportionality" and more local representation).
>
> Certainly if we had national PR in the US (or even statewide PR in
> the larger states), we'd have a degree of locality--STV within multi-
> seat "superdistricts", say, or some variation of MMP.

Yes, I think STV s a quite natural step for countries that have a two-
party history. MMP could be popular since it can offer some form of
"single local representative". That sounds safer to voters and
politicians that are used to the very local representatives (=one of
the good points of FPTP) of the single-seat district style of FPTP.

Also other paths are possible in politics although in these questions
I expect many important players to have an interest not to propose any
radical changes. If one wants some particular solution to win (even a
method that is not close to the existing one) a good approach might be
to start from the not so hot environments (like schools, churches,
clubs, student associations, towns etc.) and then expand if people
find the new forms of democracy useful. Good Internet and media
services are important to demonstrate the benefits and make the
movement popular. This way it is possible that the incumbent
politicians can not stop the train even if they would like to do that.

(Also single-seat districts + full proportionality is possible (and
could be liked in single-seat countries) but that would mean that the
most liked candidate would not win in all districts. There is thus a
balance between full regional proportionality, full political
proportionality and full fairness in selecting the individuals, and at
least one of these criteria must yield to give space to the others.)

Juho



>
>>
>> My point thus is that proportionality should be observed at the
>> "national level", taking into account also factors like districts
>> and number of available candidates and parties, cutoffs,
>> restrictions in nomination etc.
>
>

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[Raph Frank]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>> To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of
>> course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican
>> seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration.
>
> Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but of
> course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus proportional in
> some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above since deviation from
> full proportionality (that would allow also smaller groups to survive) is
> much larger than what would be necessary.

That is a surprising election result.

Did they intentionally gerrymander it to work that way?

Normally, with impartial districting, the result isn't actually proportional.

Normally, the larger party will get more seats than it is entitled to.

If you have 60% of the votes, and your supporters are spread randomly,
then it is pretty sure than you will have, say 55-65% of the votes in
every district.

This amplification like effect leads to more stable governments (which
is argued to be a good thing for parliamentary systems).

> I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict since
> I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For example
> basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although that
> method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional
> seats).

d'Hondt is the same as Droop (assuming that all parties vote as a single block).

If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are
guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop.

> Yes, I think STV s a quite natural step for countries that have a two-party
> history. MMP could be popular since it can offer some form of "single local
> representative". That sounds safer to voters and politicians that are used
> to the very local representatives (=one of the good points of FPTP) of the
> single-seat district style of FPTP.

Ironically, PR-STV creates an even stronger local link. It is one of
the main complaints about PR-STV here in Ireland (at least by
politicians). The effect is that politicians have a local rather than
a national perspective.
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[James Gilmour]

Raph Frank > Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 9:41 PM
> >> To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts, all (of
> >> course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and Republican
> >> seats is surprisingly close to representing state party registration.
> >
> > Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional, but
> > of course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus
> > proportional in some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above
> > since deviation from full proportionality (that would allow also
> > smaller groups to survive) is much larger than what would be
> > necessary.
>
> That is a surprising election result.
> Did they intentionally gerrymander it to work that way?
> Normally, with impartial districting, the result isn't actually proportional.
> Normally, the larger party will get more seats than it is entitled to.

As I have written several times previously, the results of FPTP elections in the USA are the ones that are anomalous because the US
results are much more proportional and there are fewer "minority members" than for FPTP elections in most other countries that use
FPTP (e.g. UK, Canada). Successful incumbent gerrymandering in the US is probably the main factor in producing these anomalous
results. The holding primary elections may also be a contributing factor.


> If you have 60% of the votes, and your supporters are spread
> randomly, then it is pretty sure than you will have, say
> 55-65% of the votes in every district.

Not necessarily so. In many countries there are clear urban-rural differences in support for different political parties. In many
cities there are similar clear differences between poorer inner city areas and more prosperous suburbs. In these circumstances (e.g.
UK), FPTP produces "electoral deserts" where one party or another appears to have no support at all because it wins no seats. But
the votes tell a different story. These distortions of representation have dangerous political effects on government policy as the
.government party has little or no representation from one area or the other.


> This amplification like effect leads to more stable
> governments (which is argued to be a good thing for
> parliamentary systems).

Such governments are "stable" only in that they have a large overall majority as a result of the defective FPTP voting system.
There is no real stability because at the next election the distortion may go the other way. Then you have reversal of policy and
no stability at all. Look at the political history of the UK from 1945 for a prime example of such instability with severely
detrimental effects on the country in almost every branch of policy: economic, social, educational, health, etc, etc.

James Gilmour


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[Juho]

On Nov 2, 2009, at 11:40 PM, Raph Frank wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>>> To harp on California again: we have 53 Congressional districts,
>>> all (of
>>> course) single-seat FPTP. The distribution of Democratic and
>>> Republican
>>> seats is surprisingly close to representing state party
>>> registration.
>>
>> Yes, FPTP in single-seat districts is statistically proportional,
>> but of
>> course it very strongly favours large parties. This is thus
>> proportional in
>> some sense but doesn't fit well in my definition above since
>> deviation from
>> full proportionality (that would allow also smaller groups to
>> survive) is
>> much larger than what would be necessary.
>
> That is a surprising election result.
>
> Did they intentionally gerrymander it to work that way?
>
> Normally, with impartial districting, the result isn't actually
> proportional.
>
> Normally, the larger party will get more seats than it is entitled to.
>
> If you have 60% of the votes, and your supporters are spread randomly,
> then it is pretty sure than you will have, say 55-65% of the votes in
> every district.
>
> This amplification like effect leads to more stable governments (which
> is argued to be a good thing for parliamentary systems).

Two-party systems can in general be claimed to produce more stable
(single party) governments than multi-party systems. Also multi-party
governments can be very stable since typically politicians love the
power when they manage to get it in their hands :-).

Two-party systems also tend to set the border line between the parties
at some median set of opinions. Individual district opinions may
deviate from this median opinion set. That means that one party wins
most of the time. Also in this situation voters are likely to get fed
up with the ruling party and therefore the other party may win
occasionally. Maybe this means proportionality in time (on party rules
>50% of the time). And that could mean also that the number of
districts that each party wins may on average follow quite closely the
party registration numbers (but not necessarily steadily).

>
>> I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that
>> strict since
>> I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For
>> example
>> basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although
>> that
>> method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional
>> seats).
>
> d'Hondt is the same as Droop (assuming that all parties vote as a
> single block).

Droop guarantees the first seat already with somewhat less than votes/
seats number of votes but d'Hondt does not => ??

>
> If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are
> guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop.
>
>> Yes, I think STV s a quite natural step for countries that have a
>> two-party
>> history. MMP could be popular since it can offer some form of
>> "single local
>> representative". That sounds safer to voters and politicians that
>> are used
>> to the very local representatives (=one of the good points of FPTP)
>> of the
>> single-seat district style of FPTP.
>
> Ironically, PR-STV creates an even stronger local link. It is one of
> the main complaints about PR-STV here in Ireland (at least by
> politicians). The effect is that politicians have a local rather than
> a national perspective.

Yes, locality may be also too strong. Maybe one medicine could be to
increase the size of the districts, or maybe to allow votes to any
candidate of any district (as discussed above).

Juho


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[Raph Frank]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Droop guarantees the first seat already with somewhat less than votes/seats
> number of votes but d'Hondt does not => ??

Sorry meant a 4 seater.

In a four seater, a party with 20%+ of the vote is guaranteed a seat
no matter how the other votes go, d'Hondt and Droop.

A party with 79% of the vote and 3 seats will have a divider of 4 and
will thus be unable to take the last seat, as the 20%+ party will have
a divider of 1 and 79/4 is less than 20.

Also, in d'Hondt splitting a party into 2 sub-parties can never result
in an increase in the number of seats. Thus, no matter how that 79% is
split between other parties, the 20%+ party is guaranteed to at least
retain its seat.
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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Raph Frank wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:56 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>> I agree that DPC is a nice criterion. In practice I'm not that strict since
>> I believe also methods that are close to DPC work quite well. For example
>> basic d'Hondt with party lists may be close enough to PR although that
>> method slightly favours large parties (when allocating the fractional
>> seats).
>
> d'Hondt is the same as Droop (assuming that all parties vote as a single block).
>
> If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are
> guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop.

How about Sainte-Lague/Webster's? Since it's a divisor method, it would
(seldomly) violate quota, and so a ballot-based version of it couldn't
meet the DPC. Yet, I would say that such a version would (absent other
flaws) be proportional - I just don't know how to actually construct it.

If the limitations of apportionment methods are true for party-neutral
multiwinner methods as well, then it's impossible to have both
population pair monotonicity (what we usually call "monotonicity") and
to always obey quota. Although I haven't checked this in detail, it does
seem like the limitations would hold, because: otherwise, assume some
party-neutral multiwinner method X passes both - then you could just
have everybody vote party list style in X, and so use X as an
apportionment method, but that would cause a contradiction.

So if that reasoning is correct, then in order to have a monotone
multiwinner method (I don't know of any), we must accept that it some
times fails the DPC. Of course, if the DPC is the only acceptable
criterion of proportionality, then no "proportional" multiwinner method
can be monotone.
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[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km-***@broadpark.no> wrote:
> Raph Frank wrote:
>> If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are
>> guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop.

There is a typo there, I meant 4 seats and 20%+ (I replied in a different post).

> How about Sainte-Lague/Webster's? Since it's a divisor method, it would
> (seldomly) violate quota, and so a ballot-based version of it couldn't meet
> the DPC. Yet, I would say that such a version would (absent other flaws) be
> proportional - I just don't know how to actually construct it.

That might be possible by reducing the quota. However, doing that
could result in to many candidates winning a seat.

If there are 4 seats, then a party is entitled to get 1 seat if they
get between 0.5 and 1.5 "seat's worth of votes".

In a 2 party situation, where 1 party gets 12.5%+ of the vote, the
smaller party will still get 1 seat, even though it is only much lower
than the Droop quota.

This is why most jurisdictions don't use the standard version.

Instead of dividing by

1,3,5,7,9,...

they divide by
1.4,3,5,7,9,...

The effect is that it is harder for parties to get their first seat.
Parties with 2 or more seats are no affected.

PR-STV is inherently made up of single candidate parties, so this
defect is much worse.

St. Lague divisors can also be specified as
0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, ....

This gives a better comparison to d'Hondt.

Using d'Hondt for the first seat and St. Lague for the rest gives
1, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, ....

This is a little more severe of a penalty that the standard
modification. However, it would reduce the "tiny party" exploit.

Applying that to PR-STV could be something like

-> candidates must designate what party they are members of

Initially, the Droop quota is used as Quota_single, but it might take
a bit of tweaking to find one that gives the right number of seats, in
any given election (like Webster's method).

When a party has some members elected, the quota is reduced for all
other members of the party (but max 1 candidate may be elected at a
time).

No elected party members

Quota = Quota_single

At least one party member elected

Quota = Quota_single*(0.5 - (Quotas held by elected members - seats held))

Surpluses are only transferable if the candidate exceeds Quota_single

Thus if a party had won 2 seats, and both had achieved the full quota,
then the next party member would only need 0.5 quotas to get elected,
as the party would have 2.5 quotas at that point (and that would be
rounded upwards to 3).

It might even be possible to adjust this in order to remove the
requirement that candidates declare which party they are members of.

It is a lot of complexity in order to remove the large party bias.

Some of the other methods like CPO-STV and Schulze might achieve the same thing.

Also, if the districts are only 5 or so seats in size, then it doesn't
really help that much at all, as only large parties will get more than
1 seat anyway, though it could help medium parties get a 2nd seat.

> If the limitations of apportionment methods are true for party-neutral
> multiwinner methods as well, then it's impossible to have both population
> pair monotonicity (what we usually call "monotonicity") and to always obey
> quota.

Well, PR-STV doesn't meet the monotonicity criterion.

I am not sure if an alternative elimination ording could help there,
but probably not.
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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Raph Frank wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
> <km-***@broadpark.no> wrote:
>> Raph Frank wrote:
>>> If there are 5 seats and you have 20%+ of the votes, you are
>>> guaranteed to get 1 seat under both d'Hondt and Droop.
>
> There is a typo there, I meant 4 seats and 20%+ (I replied in a different post).
>
>> How about Sainte-Lague/Webster's? Since it's a divisor method, it would
>> (seldomly) violate quota, and so a ballot-based version of it couldn't meet
>> the DPC. Yet, I would say that such a version would (absent other flaws) be
>> proportional - I just don't know how to actually construct it.
>
> That might be possible by reducing the quota. However, doing that
> could result in to many candidates winning a seat.

Webster's method adjusts the divisor until it gives the right result.
Perhaps something similar could be done with the quota? Adjust towards
Hare until there are too many seats, then back off a bit. However, the
quota doesn't use rounding, so the analogy to the divisor fails at that
point.

>
> If there are 4 seats, then a party is entitled to get 1 seat if they
> get between 0.5 and 1.5 "seat's worth of votes".
>
> In a 2 party situation, where 1 party gets 12.5%+ of the vote, the
> smaller party will still get 1 seat, even though it is only much lower
> than the Droop quota.
>
> This is why most jurisdictions don't use the standard version.
>
> Instead of dividing by
>
> 1,3,5,7,9,...
>
> they divide by
> 1.4,3,5,7,9,...

To my knowledge, this was actually a compromise between the largest
party and the smaller parties, at least here in Norway: the largest
party wanted Sainte-Laguë with the divisor at 1.5 whereas the smaller
parties wanted Hare (because it did not discriminate against them). The
former system was D'Hondt - and the compromise worked out to
Sainte-Laguë with the first divisor at 1.4 (in exchange for the parties'
cooperation regarding some other laws).

> The effect is that it is harder for parties to get their first seat.
> Parties with 2 or more seats are no affected.

Is that true? Consider a maximally unfair variant, something like
2.999, 3, 5, 7, 9...

Now the larger parties can get many seats before the intermediate and
small parties get in the running. This naturally decreases the number of
free seats that may be allocated to the small parties.

> Applying that to PR-STV could be something like
>
> -> candidates must designate what party they are members of
>
> Initially, the Droop quota is used as Quota_single, but it might take
> a bit of tweaking to find one that gives the right number of seats, in
> any given election (like Webster's method).
>
> When a party has some members elected, the quota is reduced for all
> other members of the party (but max 1 candidate may be elected at a
> time).

[snip]

STV has an advantage in that it doesn't need to care about parties. I'd
prefer to preserve that in any competing method. My "Setwise Highest
Average" method treats solid coalitions as parties (roughly speaking,
perhaps better is to consider them parts of a party with a tree
structure) - this might be a way to do what you propose, but without
explicit party information. On the other hand, Setwise Highest Average,
is severely nonmonotonic, and it's not house-monotone either.

> Also, if the districts are only 5 or so seats in size, then it doesn't
> really help that much at all, as only large parties will get more than
> 1 seat anyway, though it could help medium parties get a 2nd seat.

Yes. If complexity is not a problem, Schulze's MMP proposal could be
used to fix that. Norway has something like "party list MMP": a certain
number of seats are top-up and allocated to maximize proportionality
after the district seats are allocated, with proportionality presumably
being defined according to a national Modified Sainte-Laguë count.

>> If the limitations of apportionment methods are true for party-neutral
>> multiwinner methods as well, then it's impossible to have both population
>> pair monotonicity (what we usually call "monotonicity") and to always obey
>> quota.
>
> Well, PR-STV doesn't meet the monotonicity criterion.
>
> I am not sure if an alternative elimination ording could help there,
> but probably not.

If my reasoning is correct, then no tinkering with the elimination
ordering would solve the problem completely, because the resulting
method would in any case still always obey quota, and we can't have both
quota and population-pair monotonicity.
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[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<km-***@broadpark.no> wrote:
>> The effect is that it is harder for parties to get their first seat.
>> Parties with 2 or more seats are no affected.
>
> Is that true? Consider a maximally unfair variant, something like
> 2.999, 3, 5, 7, 9...
>
> Now the larger parties can get many seats before the intermediate and small
> parties get in the running. This naturally decreases the number of free
> seats that may be allocated to the small parties.

A party which was going to get 2 seats would still get 2 seats.

In fact, it makes it easier for them.

It is like as if the smaller parties don't get any seats, and thus
there are more available for the parties which can get 2+ seats.

The parties which lose out would be the ones who would have originally
obtained only 1 seat.

> STV has an advantage in that it doesn't need to care about parties. I'd
> prefer to preserve that in any competing method.

Well, I was just thinking out loud. I agree that this is one of the
main benefits of PR-STV.

>> Also, if the districts are only 5 or so seats in size, then it doesn't
>> really help that much at all, as only large parties will get more than
>> 1 seat anyway, though it could help medium parties get a 2nd seat.
>
> Yes. If complexity is not a problem, Schulze's MMP proposal could be used to
> fix that. Norway has something like "party list MMP": a certain number of
> seats are top-up and allocated to maximize proportionality after the
> district seats are allocated, with proportionality presumably being defined
> according to a national Modified Sainte-Laguë count.

Yeah, that is probably an easier method. However, I like my earlier
proposal better.

I don't agree with the principle of deciding party support based on
first preference votes.
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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Juho wrote:
> On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>> Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if it
>> isn't, we can have that discussion).
>
> I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of democracy
> that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to have PR then
> such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good at all.

If the people truly want a two-party rule, then using STV (or some other
party neutral PR method) can't hurt - they'll have that two-party rule
if they want, and can at any moment escape from it if they change their
minds. See Malta.

In addition, if the method is any good "between the hard limits"
specified by the DPC or analogous proportionality criterion, then there
will be competition between the candidates inside of the party. STV is
IRV between the hard limits, so one may doubt how good it is at this,
but in reality, it does at least provide some measure of that; my
clustering methods are much more Condorcet and so presumably would
provide greater such competition. My proportionality simulator shows it
to be much better than STV, but I've discovered that said simulator also
has a significant small-party bias, so I'm taking the results with some
salt until I can get proper correlation going.
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[Juho]

If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to
change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two.
That would solve the spoiler problem :-). From this point of view e.g.
the US system is not really intended to be a two-party system but just
a system (target state unspecified) that has some problems with third
parties. On the other hand the option of third parties could be left
in the rules intentionally. The voters are given a chance to change
one of the two parties to some third party if they want that so much
that despite of the associated spoiler problems they will eventually
give the third party enough votes to beat one of the leading parties.
Actually two-party systems need not be based on two parties only
nation wide. In principle each district could have its own two parties
that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts.
There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of
parties nation wide.

Juho


On Nov 3, 2009, at 9:22 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Juho wrote:
>> On Nov 2, 2009, at 4:50 PM, Jonathan Lundell wrote:
>>> Is this acceptable PR? I hope your answer is "of course not" (if
>>> it isn't, we can have that discussion).
>> I note that a two-party system can be seen as one style of
>> democracy that may be chosen intentionally. But if the target is to
>> have PR then such single-seat FPTP systems are of course not good
>> at all.
>
> If the people truly want a two-party rule, then using STV (or some
> other party neutral PR method) can't hurt - they'll have that two-
> party rule if they want, and can at any moment escape from it if
> they change their minds. See Malta.
>
> In addition, if the method is any good "between the hard limits"
> specified by the DPC or analogous proportionality criterion, then
> there will be competition between the candidates inside of the
> party. STV is IRV between the hard limits, so one may doubt how good
> it is at this, but in reality, it does at least provide some measure
> of that; my clustering methods are much more Condorcet and so
> presumably would provide greater such competition. My
> proportionality simulator shows it to be much better than STV, but
> I've discovered that said simulator also has a significant small-
> party bias, so I'm taking the results with some salt until I can get
> proper correlation going.

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[Raph Frank]

On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change
> that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That would
> solve the spoiler problem :-).

What about a 2 stage process. Ask voters to vote "What party is your
favourite party?".

Only the top-2 parties are then allowed to run candidates for the main election.

You could use Asset voting to decide on the 2 parties if they don't
manage to more than 1/3 of the vote each.

Each "party" might end up being a coalition of parties.

> In principle each district could have its own two
> parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other districts.
> There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties
> nation wide.

This is seen in Canada with the Quebec party.
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[Juho]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 3:47 PM, Raph Frank wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Juho <***@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to
>> change
>> that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two.
>> That would
>> solve the spoiler problem :-).
>
> What about a 2 stage process. Ask voters to vote "What party is your
> favourite party?".
>
> Only the top-2 parties are then allowed to run candidates for the
> main election.

Yes, that works in the sense that it would make it easier to change
the leading parties. Looks like a special version of Top Two Runoff.

>
> You could use Asset voting to decide on the 2 parties if they don't
> manage to more than 1/3 of the vote each.
>
> Each "party" might end up being a coalition of parties.

The two parties of a two-party system can be seen to be coalitions of
"left" and "right" wing people. I think organizations have a general
tendency to become centrally coordinated (that is in the interest of
the leaders and people working for the organization) and therefore
time might unify the parties of the coalition and collect them under
one umbrella.

Juho


>
>> In principle each district could have its own two
>> parties that are independent of what the two parties are in other
>> districts.
>> There is however some tendency to end up with two or small number
>> of parties
>> nation wide.
>
> This is seen in Canada with the Quebec party.
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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Juho wrote:
> If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change
> that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That
> would solve the spoiler problem :-).
Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters, that's not
very democratic, is it?

I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the
question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter
(e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long
time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the filter on the
decision process itself.

> From this point of view e.g. the US system is not really intended to
> be a two-party system but just a system (target state unspecified)
> that has some problems with third parties.

That's most likely the case. AFAIK, the founding fathers just copied
Britain's election methods (first past the post, etc.), and by the time
parts of the US noticed this wasn't really optimal, those who benefitted
from said methods' unfairness had acquired enough power to block the
adoption of better methods (e.g. the red scare campaign leading to STV's
repeal in New York).

There are some exceptions. To my knowledge, some state governors are
elected by runoff rather than just "winner takes it all". FPTP runoff
may fail (such as with Le Pen in France, or more relevant - the "better
a lizard than a wizard" second round in Louisiana), but at least it
can't elect the Condorcet loser, which plain old FPTP has no problem doing.

> On the other hand the option of third parties could be left in the rules
> intentionally. The voters are given a chance to change one of the two
> parties to some third party if they want that so much that despite of
> the associated spoiler problems they will eventually give the third
> party enough votes to beat one of the leading parties. Actually
> two-party systems need not be based on two parties only nation wide. In
> principle each district could have its own two parties that are
> independent of what the two parties are in other districts. There is
> however some tendency to end up with two or small number of parties
> nation wide.

As another reply mentioned, this has happened in Canada. With very local
exceptions, it hasn't happened in the US - at least not recently. I
think a key difference is that the large US parties can gerrymander,
whereas that is not the case in Canada (since Elections Canada does the
redistricting there). When parties can pick their constituents before
the constituents can pick their representatives, competition suffers
because third parties can't get off the ground.
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[James Gilmour]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 3:27 PM
> > Juho wrote:
> > If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change
> > that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That
> > would solve the spoiler problem :-).
> Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters,
> that's not very democratic, is it?
>
> I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the
> question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter
> (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long
> time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the
> filter on the decision process itself.

Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the
voters showed that was not what they wanted?

James Gilmour

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[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

James Gilmour wrote:
> Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 3:27 PM
>>> Juho wrote:
>>> If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to change
>>> that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only two. That
>>> would solve the spoiler problem :-).
>> Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters,
>> that's not very democratic, is it?
>>
>> I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the
>> question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass filter
>> (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over a long
>> time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the
>> filter on the decision process itself.
>
> Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would
> you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the
> voters showed that was not what they wanted?

That is my question, too. The only way I see that there might be a
conflict is with long term versus short term, hence the
filtering/supermajority idea; but then I considered, since more parties
provide a greater variety of opinions, then if short-term populism is a
problem, it'd be better to put the supermajority/consensus requirements
into the decision process rather than on the question of how many
parties one should have.
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[James Gilmour]

Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:34 PM
> > James Gilmour wrote:
> > Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy" would
> > you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the voters
> > showed that was not what they wanted?
>
> That is my question, too.

Maybe what the "two-party" advocates really want is guaranteed single-party majority government. If that IS what they want, there
is a VERY simple and effective electoral solution. If no party wins an absolute majority of the votes and seats, give 55% of the
seats to the party that wins the largest number of votes and divide the remaining seats among the other parties in proportion to the
their shares of the votes.

It has been done and it works. Importantly, it's honest. It sets out clearly what is considered to be the over-riding electoral
criterion and it fulfils it. In the UK we suffer from a lot of nonsense about the desirability of single-party majority government
and even worse nonsense about the importance of FPTP in securing that. In fact, in two of the most critical elections since 1945,
when the government of the day (one Labour, one Conservative) was seeking a renewed mandate for the continuation of its policies,
FPTP elected the wrong government. In both cases the outgoing government won the referendum on its policies (votes) and lost the
election (seats).

James Gilmour

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[Juho]

I commented in another mail that any system where people can change
the system itself can be said to be a democracy. Even a two party
system that bans third parties may still fall within this definition.
Also multi-party systems have the same problem although in a milder
form. The representatives of the voters may well make decisions that
the voters do not approve, and they may not make decisions that the
voters want. That is possible as long as the representatives do not
get so arrogant in doing this that the voters would use their power to
focus on this particular question in the (few) coming elections an
force the system to change. Direct democracy is more direct than the
two above mentioned forms of indirect representative democracy.

(I'll once more advocate tree voting a bit. One key idea behind it is
that it would be possible that members and voters of all leading
parties would form a pro-x interest group within their own party. Once
all these subgroups within each party would grow and together reach
>50% of all the seats then that change (x) would happen. This change
would take place in a very peaceful way, allowing the voters to stay
within their "own" parties without the need to abandon them or vote
against them or disagree with them, just slowly changing the opinion
balance within these parties.)

Juho


On Nov 3, 2009, at 7:45 PM, James Gilmour wrote:

> Kristofer Munsterhjelm > Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 4:34 PM
>>> James Gilmour wrote:
>>> Why in any country that would merit the description "democracy"
>>> would
>>> you want to impose a "two-party system" when the votes of the voters
>>> showed that was not what they wanted?
>>
>> That is my question, too.
>
> Maybe what the "two-party" advocates really want is guaranteed
> single-party majority government. If that IS what they want, there
> is a VERY simple and effective electoral solution. If no party wins
> an absolute majority of the votes and seats, give 55% of the
> seats to the party that wins the largest number of votes and divide
> the remaining seats among the other parties in proportion to the
> their shares of the votes.
>
> It has been done and it works. Importantly, it's honest. It sets
> out clearly what is considered to be the over-riding electoral
> criterion and it fulfils it. In the UK we suffer from a lot of
> nonsense about the desirability of single-party majority government
> and even worse nonsense about the importance of FPTP in securing
> that. In fact, in two of the most critical elections since 1945,
> when the government of the day (one Labour, one Conservative) was
> seeking a renewed mandate for the continuation of its policies,
> FPTP elected the wrong government. In both cases the outgoing
> government won the referendum on its policies (votes) and lost the
> election (seats).
>
> James Gilmour
>
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[Juho]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 5:27 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:

> Juho wrote:
>> If one really wants a two-party system and doesn't want voters to
>> change that fact then one could ban third parties and accept only
>> two. That would solve the spoiler problem :-).
> Who is this "one"? Since that one is at odds with the voters, that's
> not very democratic, is it?

I was thinking about the voters or their representatives who want to
have a two-party system. Those groups can be considered to be the key
decision makers in a democratic system.

>
> I guess that one "democratic" way of doing it would be to have the
> question itself posed to the voters, but with a suitable low-pass
> filter (e.g. supermajority required to change it, or a majority over
> a long time); though then I think it'd be better just to have the
> filter on the decision process itself.

This is a good definition of democracy. I tend to think that if the
voters have the opportunity to change any old rule if they really so
want, then that society can be called democratic. (Also the two-party
status (=one current practice of decision making) can be a topic to be
changed.)

>
>> From this point of view e.g. the US system is not really intended to
>> be a two-party system but just a system (target state unspecified)
>> that has some problems with third parties.
>
> That's most likely the case. AFAIK, the founding fathers just copied
> Britain's election methods (first past the post, etc.), and by the
> time parts of the US noticed this wasn't really optimal, those who
> benefitted from said methods' unfairness had acquired enough power
> to block the adoption of better methods (e.g. the red scare campaign
> leading to STV's repeal in New York).

One old proverb says that people tend to get the kind of government
that they deserve. If people want change in a democratic system they
should 1) understand and 2) act/decide.

>
> There are some exceptions. To my knowledge, some state governors are
> elected by runoff rather than just "winner takes it all". FPTP
> runoff may fail (such as with Le Pen in France, or more relevant -
> the "better a lizard than a wizard" second round in Louisiana), but
> at least it can't elect the Condorcet loser, which plain old FPTP
> has no problem doing.

The Le Pen case was maybe not a full failure. Although it was shocking
to many that a candidate that large majority of the voters definitely
didn't want to elect got to the second round he was not elected anyway.

(Btw, I think it is ok to elect the Condorcet loser in some extreme
situations. If for example the target is to elect a candidate that
would be stable in the sense that there is no major interest to
replace her soon after the election with some other candidate then
Condorcet loser can be a better candidate than any of a badly looped
Smith set. Group opinions are not linear and therefore the fact that
one of the candidates seems to be "last" can not be automatically
taken as a conclusion that some other candidate should win.)

Juho


>
>> On the other hand the option of third parties could be left in the
>> rules
>> intentionally. The voters are given a chance to change one of the
>> two parties to some third party if they want that so much that
>> despite of the associated spoiler problems they will eventually
>> give the third party enough votes to beat one of the leading
>> parties. Actually two-party systems need not be based on two
>> parties only nation wide. In principle each district could have its
>> own two parties that are independent of what the two parties are in
>> other districts. There is however some tendency to end up with two
>> or small number of parties nation wide.
>
> As another reply mentioned, this has happened in Canada. With very
> local exceptions, it hasn't happened in the US - at least not
> recently. I think a key difference is that the large US parties can
> gerrymander, whereas that is not the case in Canada (since Elections
> Canada does the redistricting there). When parties can pick their
> constituents before the constituents can pick their representatives,
> competition suffers because third parties can't get off the ground.

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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

The basic idea of PR methods is to create an assembly that represents
the voters. While voters don't neatly fall into categories, we can
measure the performance of the systems as if they did. In the end,
the only category that matters is who the voter trusts most to represent them.

So if there is an assembly with N seats, and V voters, and there are
V/N voters who prefer, out of all possibilities, a candidate, we can
define a Proportionality Criterion. That candidate must be elected if
the voters express this preference on the ballot.

Asset Voting satisfies this, so does Candidate Proxy. Both are simple
methods; Candidate Proxy (which has been used to refer to a method
where candidates state a preference order, before the election, and
this order is used with the counting system to apply to the voter's
ballot, it essentially substitutes for the voter's ballot. Asset
Voting is more flexible and could theoretically allow for a candidate
to be chosen who wasn't on the ballot and received no votes in the
election at all.

"Win" must be interpreted as "has the right to unconditionally
declare a person elected, which could be the candidate himself or
herself, or anyone else eligible for the office."

And then more detailed criteria could be defined, like the
Distributed Proportionality Criterion. If there is a set of M
candidates who received together a sum of V/N votes as
most-preferred, those candidates, by cooperating, could
unconditionally elect a winner. This, to my mind, satisfies the
intention of proportional representation even where no candidates, by
themselves, gain a quota.

To try to simulate this with a single-ballot method can get tricky,
but it could be done.

However, I'll suggest this simple method:

Bucklin ballot. For simplicity, I'm not going to allow multiple votes
in each rank, but it would be improved if multiple votes are allowed,
it simply complicates the counting and calculations.

First rank choices are counted. If any candidate gains a quota (for a
single-ballot method, it must be a Droop quota, not the Hare quota
that makes more sense with pure Asset Voting), that candidate is
elected. This is done for all candidates who are direclty elected
with a quota in the first round. The ballots with that candidate in
first preference position are segregated. By the condition, the total
vote count, T(C1), is at or over the quota. If only one seat were
elected with these votes, it would be disproportionate, the voters
would be underrepresented. So there must still be effective votes
left to be exercised of T(C1) - Q. So each ballot is devalued by the
ratio of (T(C1 - Q)) / T(C1). These ballots are then counted
separately to examine the next rank listed, and those votes are
multiplied by the devaluation factor and added in to the totals, and
this is repeated as needed until no more ranks are available. At each
point, the number of remaining votes to be distributed are V minus Q
times the number of candidates elected thus far. It may be easier to
understand than to describe!

If a ballot has a candidate in first position who is not elected,
when all candidates which can be elected as described are elected,
the ballot is opened to the next rank, and those votes are added in
(from all ballots except those that are completely exhausted -- which
is unlikely, for it to happen an candidate would have to be elected
by an exact quota of votes.)

While your second rank choice may "harm" your first rank choice, it
never actually reduces the chance of that candidate being elected
unless the candidate wasn't going to gain a quorum of votes. The
possibility that your ballot might elect your lower-ranked choice is
balanced by the fact that your favored candidate might be elected by
a lower-ranked choice of another. And because there are no
eliminations, except of elected candidates, the "harm" would only
occur at the very end of the process, and with one seat at stake,
and, yes, Virginia, if you want to be represented by the best
possible representative, you must be willing to make compromises.
Hopefully, they are not large ones.

If voters voted in blocks, and each block wanted their favorite to be
elected, and the block was Q in size or larger, all preferring the
same candidate, the candidate would be elected provided they vote
their sincere preference. As well, if a block places two candidates
at the top of their preference lists, and votes the preference, and
is 2 * Q in size, both candidates would be elected. If two blocks
exist, one voting A>B>all others, and one voting B>A>all others, and
the two blocks together are 2 * Q in size, then both A and B will be elected.

Has this method been described by anyone? If forget how Proportional
Approval Voting is run, but I'd guess it would look like this, with
just one Approval stage, i.e., as if all ballots in the Bucklin
system I described were collapsed at once.

I described a method that depended on ballot patterns, it's possible
to consider opening up the second rank simultaneously with all
ballots, in which case individual ballot data is no longer needed.
And I don't have time at the moment to review the details, so aspects
of this may be incorrect or incomplete.

If write-ins are allowed, or there are a very large number of
candidates and a lot of seats to be elected, there might be votes
that end up unused. Lewis Carroll suggested a solution, and it's
Asset Voting. Candidates get the leftover votes to recast at their
discretion. So a bunch of candidates with vote counts, as devalued,
at the end, less than a quota, could cooperate to name a seat. Asset
Voting was invented and published in 1884 as a tweak on STV, and STV
would be far more effective and far less dependent upon party
affiliations, had this tweak been noticed and adopted.

If no votes are wasted, and Asset makes wasted votes unlikely, with a
particular known individual being responsible for wasting *your*
vote, you can vote accordingly in the future, and if voters aren't
artificially constrained to listed candidates affiliated with
empowered parties, then parties must necessarily become less
important. They would still serve other functions, I'm sure. However,
this situation sets up a conflict of interest between political
parties and those vested within them, and the voters themselves, so I
wouldn't hold my breathe for political parties to rush to support
something like this. It is pure voter benefit, so it will probably
have to be the voters themselves to make it happen, which will
require direct voter organization for that purpose.

That is probably true for any truly major reform of the system. The
people who have accumulated power under the present system are not
likely to rush to support reforms that make their accumulated power
less relevant. They wouldn't lose their natural influence, but who
will stop to think like that? In fact, a party leader who did push
for and successfully implement an Asset system would probably thereby
be creating independent support, and would maintain effective power
or influence even without needing to please a party elite or needing
to satisfy wealthy donors.

But I'm not holding my breath.

I'm simply applying the organizational principles wherever and
whenever I have a chance. Others can imitate if they choose.

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[Michael Allan]

If I understand you Abd, we're currently developing the tools for
voters to do essentially what you describe. And we've made some
progress recently:

Drafting media: http://t.zelea.com/wiki/Toronto:Pollwiki
Voting engine: http://t.zelea.com:8080/v/w/
Bird's eye view: http://t.zelea.com/wiki/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/p/de

More info: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht

It's all still rough work, and in flux, but the code is running live.
So we can probably start doing this today, in small ways. (More
below.)

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> If write-ins are allowed, or there are a very large number of candidates
> and a lot of seats to be elected, there might be votes that end up unused.
> Lewis Carroll suggested a solution, and it's Asset Voting...
>
> If no votes are wasted, and Asset makes wasted votes unlikely, with a
> particular known individual being responsible for wasting *your* vote, you
> can vote accordingly in the future, and if voters aren't artificially
> constrained to listed candidates affiliated with empowered parties, then
> parties must necessarily become less important. They would still serve
> other functions, I'm sure. However, this situation sets up a conflict of
> interest between political parties and those vested within them, and the
> voters themselves, so I wouldn't hold my breathe for political parties to
> rush to support something like this. It is pure voter benefit, so it will
> probably have to be the voters themselves to make it happen, which will
> require direct voter organization for that purpose.
>
> That is probably true for any truly major reform of the system. The people
> who have accumulated power under the present system are not likely to rush
> to support reforms that make their accumulated power less relevant. They
> wouldn't lose their natural influence, but who will stop to think like
> that? In fact, a party leader who did push for and successfully implement
> an Asset system would probably thereby be creating independent support, and
> would maintain effective power or influence even without needing to please
> a party elite or needing to satisfy wealthy donors.

Even if party leaders could grant a substansive democracy, that might
not be the best way to acheive it - receiving it as a gift from on
high. Wouldn't it be better to build it ourselves from the ground up?

It's not uninteresting work, either. But we could use some help from
voting experts and mathematicians. Does it look theoretically sound,
what we're doing?

--
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
Skype michael_c_allan
http://zelea.com/

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[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 06:20 AM 11/2/2009, Michael Allan wrote:
>If I understand you Abd, we're currently developing the tools for
>voters to do essentially what you describe. And we've made some
>progress recently:
>
> Drafting media: http://t.zelea.com/wiki/Toronto:Pollwiki
> Voting engine: http://t.zelea.com:8080/v/w/
> Bird's eye view: http://t.zelea.com/wiki/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/p/de
>
> More info: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht
>
>It's all still rough work, and in flux, but the code is running live.
>So we can probably start doing this today, in small ways. (More
>below.)

Okay, comments. First of all, great. And bells and whistles are nice.
But it's also important to make the system bulletproof, protecting it
from hazards and even hazards that come from an insider, a sysop, not
to mention hackers.

You appear to have set up a delegable proxy system. Great. And for
general polling purposes, that could be fine. However, I do have some
strong recommendations.

1. Delegable proxy is very safe if it's an advisory system, and the
interpretation is up to those who want to be advised. So:

2. There may be a totally anonymous layer corresponding to secret
ballot. You would still want to have some kind of registration
confirmation, I suspect. This would mean an engine for privately
voting. If that's done, on this layer, everyone privately votes.
These votes are considered in a distinct way. Can they be amalgamated
secretly through delegable proxy? I suggest not, because then
responsibility is lost, as is traceability. If I secretly vote for A,
I can see the secret vote total for A go up 1 vote. However, if A
votes for B privately, B's vote does not go up.

In Town Meeting democracy, everyone votes publicly on issues and in
some elections (basically appointments). In Asset Voting systems, we
assume a secret ballot layer, but from then on, in amalgamation,
there is only public voting by those who elect to participate.

I have generally suggested that proxies be accepted to be valid; and
that direct communication between proxy and client be set up. This,
in fact, makes the system bulletproof, impossible to successfully
corrupt through attacking the central mechanisms.

So, procedure. A nominates B as proxy. A's email address is
automatically provided to B. B accepts, and B's email address is
automatically provided to A. I'd recommend phone numbers as well. A
should be able to expect to discuss matters directly with B and get
personal response, or at least as much response as satisfies B. The
theory is that this will cause traffic to be self-regulated, so that
every connection in a DP network represents some level of mutual
trust, at least a provisional trust. This procedure applies to the
public system, the proxies are openly listed, and votes are openly shown.

Private voting may be done on any issue, but those votes are
segregated and so identified. They are one-person direct votes, and
they can't be anonymously amalgamated with the public votes because
that could then be double-voting. In a DP system, in vote analysis,
if a client votes directly, one is subtracted from the vote total
attributed to the proxy.

Ideally, this is what is done: everyone names a proxy, unless they
are willing to vote publicly, in which case they may name themselves
if they wish. But it's actually silly, since once you are a public
voter, you might as well have the backup of someone to *generally
represent* you where you don't have time. But, indeed, if you don't
trust anyone sufficiently, you can do all the work yourself!

In an Asset system, everyone votes in the secret ballot system, if
they want. From there up it is all public voting, and the secret
votes cannot be cast directly, until the next open election. To cast
a vote on an issue, you must be an "elector," i.e., a public voter.
The "election" could be every day or even continuous, but it's
probably best if it has a specific period involved, or vote
calculations could get hairy.

What this means is that you can actually talk to the opposition;
that's impossible with public elections --- which can be pretty frustrating!

On the other hand, if there are security issues, people should be
able to amalgamate their votes to a single person, because one person
representing many can be protected. People who cast their secret vote
for a candidate will know that the candidate didn't make a quota, if
there is one, and hasn't accepted becoming a public voter. So they
can change their vote, perhaps after talking with the one they chose.

Part of the whole "plot" is to get people talking with each other,
not merely shoving electrons around on a web site. Actually meeting
and talking about issues. And a proxy, then, becomes someone who can
influence real votes in the real world, and more than votes, campaign
contributions, or other exercises of individual power.

>Even if party leaders could grant a substansive democracy, that might
>not be the best way to acheive it - receiving it as a gift from on
>high. Wouldn't it be better to build it ourselves from the ground up?

Safer, perhaps. However, it is always possible that someone with
power will see the ultimate benefit, and will act to implement it.
It's not normal behavior; people who have attained influence or power
through the existing system will generally fear that a shift toward
wide distribution of power will cause loss of intelligent direction.
I.e., their direction. There is a truth to this; simply shifting to
raw direct ad-hoc ochlocracy can indeed make things worse. Vide
Wikipedia, which works very well in certain ways, but which breaks
down badly in the presence of serious controversy, since oligarchies
naturally formed, per the Iron Law of Oligarchy, see the Wikipedia article!

Wikipedia is an organization which *requires* consensus if it is to
fulfill its core policy of neutrality, for the only way to be
reliably certain that text is neutral is that it enjoys very high
consensus, the higher the consensus, the greater the certainty, but
because Wikipedians were generally not aware of extant
full-consensus-seeking techniques, there was a practical settling for
what's called "rough consensus," which has no specific defined
meaning, plus actual decisions of any permanency are made by
administrators with the tools to delete (actually, hide from public
view, normal administrators can't remove changes from the database)
or edit-protect, or block editors, and there is a schizophrenic
double-value: decisions are supposed to reflect the cogency of the
arguments presented in a discussion, not the "vote," but decisions
are also supposed to represent "rough consensus." It drives people
literally crazy, because there is little consistency and
predictability. Wikipedia got stuck in this, and it's almost
impossible to change. Unless Wikipedia editors organize directly to
seek and find consensus off-wiki. If they do it on-wiki, historically
there have been attempts, the on-wiki structures are crushed, it's
happened more than once. Even without abuse. ("Wasting time" is
considered a reason to delete or freeze projects. Get back to the
content salt mines, slaves!)

And right now, because a group of editors formed a mailing list to
support each other and discuss issues of interest, the Arbitration
Committee seems poised to ban and block the members of the list,
based on allegations that boil down to this being a "cabal." The list
came to light because someone posted the list archive. The arbitrator
who has drafted the proposed remedy has openly stated his goal as
being to prevent people from communicating off-wiki about Wikipedia
content.... but it's impossible to stop it, in fact, and off-wiki
coordination is actually the norm in some circles. Such as the
Arbitration Committee itself, or other groups that are known. But
those groups are composed of "insiders," not outsiders. Only insiders
are allowed to communicate privately, it would seem....

To defang the oligarchy and maintain its rightful position as servant
of the public, it's essentialy that the oligarchy not have control
over the communication mechanisms that allow the community to form
consensus. As named proxies, they still have their power and
influence, but not, ultimately, control. Real-world power is vested
in the traditional real-world organizations, as continuously advised
by an Asset or delegable proxy network. To goal is for the advice,
which is visible to anyone who cares, to be as trustworthy as
possible, so the actual office-holders get the best advice from the
entire electorate, which includes experts on relevant topics, and
that advice is filtered through the network so it is not just a mass
of undigested opinion, which is way too noisy. And the voters who
empower the office-holders in a democracy get good advice as to whom
to vote for. Ultimately coming from people who know those
office-holders personally, but, again, moderated through intelligent filters.

The important thing about delegable proxy is not voting, as such, it
is communication, filtered communication.

>It's not uninteresting work, either. But we could use some help from
>voting experts and mathematicians. Does it look theoretically sound,
>what we're doing?

I couldn't tell enough details from the pages you pointed to.

But this is the basic principle for bulletproof delegable proxy:
public proxy table. If it's considered necessary to have a secret
ballot layer, let that be considered separately, it's an optional
analysis. I.e., there are public participants and private participants.

And direct communication established when a proxy/client relationship
is established. For some reason, Clint Eastwood became the model for
the mass proxy. You can designate Clint Eastwood, but will Clint
accept? It means you'd get contact information for Clint. Clint, if
for some reason Clint wants the burden, could accept and use an
address that is essentially opened by an agent. If the agent provides
good service, why complain? But would the agent provide good service?
It's expensive. If all this is used for is advice, why spend that
money? So, what would happen is that Clint would have direct clients,
and would advise people who want to designate Clint to name one of
them instead. Same ultimate "voting power." But a filtering link
inserted. Don't like the person Clint suggests? Well, that might say
something about Clint. You can name someone else. With public proxy
tables, you might be able to find someone you are compatible with who
is linked to Clint. Or not, in which case you might realize that
everyone whom you might trust and who will trust you doesn't trust
Clint. That, too, would tell you something.

If you want Clint's advice, you can still sign up for a mailing list
Clint controls.....

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[Michael Allan]

(Thanks for comments.)

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> Okay, comments. First of all, great. And bells and whistles are nice. But
> it's also important to make the system bulletproof, protecting it from
> hazards and even hazards that come from an insider, a sysop, not to mention
> hackers.

Right, otherwise it won't work. So everything's made public. Votes
are public and identities of voters are public. The register in which
those identities is authenticated is also public.

Where poll results are reported, the results are based entirely on a
snapshot of the votes, and the snapshot is made public. Anyone may
access it, and do a full recount (same as with paper ballots, but
voters are ID'd on each ballot).

> You appear to have set up a delegable proxy system. Great. And for general
> polling purposes, that could be fine. However, I do have some strong
> recommendations.
>
> 1. Delegable proxy is very safe if it's an advisory system, and the
> interpretation is up to those who want to be advised. So:

Yes, of course. So people may decide what the norms (laws, plans and
policies) and power structure of society *ought* to be. The *actual*
norms and power structure are not so interesting, because people
already know about those. (Presumeably the latter will soon fall into
alignment with the former, or people will revise their expections of
democracy.)

> 2. There may be a totally anonymous layer corresponding to secret ballot.
> You would still want to have some kind of registration confirmation, I
> suspect. This would mean an engine for privately voting. If that's done, on
> this layer, everyone privately votes. These votes are considered in a
> distinct way. Can they be amalgamated secretly through delegable proxy? I
> suggest not, because then responsibility is lost, as is traceability. If I
> secretly vote for A, I can see the secret vote total for A go up 1 vote.
> However, if A votes for B privately, B's vote does not go up.

It's too difficult to add a private voting facility, up front. So we
keep the requirement in mind (allowing for it in designs) but we don't
attempt to implement it. The verification and authentication
challenges are too steep. We'll bolt it on later, after the basic
(public) system is proven.

> In an Asset system, everyone votes in the secret ballot system, if they
> want. From there up it is all public voting, and the secret votes cannot be
> cast directly, until the next open election. To cast a vote on an issue,
> you must be an "elector," i.e., a public voter. The "election" could be
> every day or even continuous, but it's probably best if it has a specific
> period involved, or vote calculations could get hairy.

(I'm not sure about Asset, but fully public polls can run indefinitely
with DP. The calculations aren't a problem.)

> What this means is that you can actually talk to the opposition; that's
> impossible with public elections --- which can be pretty frustrating!
> . . .
> Part of the whole "plot" is to get people talking with each other, not
> merely shoving electrons around on a web site. Actually meeting and talking
> about issues...

Yes, talking is crucial to the theory of it. (We both know this.)
But the technology - how voting, drafting and discussion are
interconnected at the micro-scale, and how this practice ties in with
theory - is something we're only discovering. It's become the main
focus of our efforts in the last couple of weeks.

>> Even if party leaders could grant a substansive democracy, that might
>> not be the best way to acheive it - receiving it as a gift from on
>> high. Wouldn't it be better to build it ourselves from the ground up?
>
> Safer, perhaps. However, it is always possible that someone with power will
> see the ultimate benefit, and will act to implement it. It's not normal
> behavior; people who have attained influence or power through the existing
> system will generally fear that a shift toward wide distribution of power
> will cause loss of intelligent direction. I.e., their direction. There is a
> truth to this; simply shifting to raw direct ad-hoc ochlocracy can indeed
> make things worse. Vide Wikipedia, which works very well in certain ways,
> but which breaks down badly in the presence of serious controversy, since
> oligarchies naturally formed, per the Iron Law of Oligarchy, see the
> Wikipedia article!

Any change is risky. Our macro theory does not require touching any
of the existing institutions. So there's no structural change in
those. There's just additions bolted on externally. (Like the party
system bolted itself on, 150 years ago.)

But structural change can (and did) lead to functional changes. So
yes, there is still risk.

> [your Wikipedia example]
> . . .
> The important thing about delegable proxy is not voting, as such, it is
> communication, filtered communication.

Our voting engine (DP) connects with drafting media in a manner that
frees people to speak their minds. Nobody has to be filtered out.

http://t.zelea.com/wiki/P/grfin

So, for example, anyone may add a new position (alternative proposal)
of their own. Nobody is ever filtered out or suppressed in any way.
We use the same drafting medium as Wikipedia, but we use it
differently.

>> ... Does it look theoretically sound, what we're doing?
>
> I couldn't tell enough details from the pages you pointed to.

The home page has links: http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht

> But this is the basic principle for bulletproof delegable proxy: public
> proxy table. If it's considered necessary to have a secret ballot layer,
> let that be considered separately, it's an optional analysis. I.e., there
> are public participants and private participants.

I don't know if we use proxy tables (not sure what those are). Here's
the current proxy stucture for an ongoing poll. I just voted for you:

http://t.zelea.com:8080/v/w/Pollspace/?u=Abd-LomaxdesignCom&p=m

(Pardon the slowness. The server is ancient and the code is still
unoptimized.)

> And direct communication established when a proxy/client relationship is
> established. For some reason, Clint Eastwood became the model for the mass
> proxy. You can designate Clint Eastwood, but will Clint accept? It means
> you'd get contact information for Clint. Clint, if for some reason Clint
> wants the burden, could accept and use an address that is essentially
> opened by an agent. If the agent provides good service, why complain? But
> would the agent provide good service? It's expensive. If all this is used
> for is advice, why spend that money? So, what would happen is that Clint
> would have direct clients, and would advise people who want to designate
> Clint to name one of them instead. Same ultimate "voting power." But a
> filtering link inserted. Don't like the person Clint suggests? Well, that
> might say something about Clint. You can name someone else. With public
> proxy tables, you might be able to find someone you are compatible with who
> is linked to Clint. Or not, in which case you might realize that everyone
> whom you might trust and who will trust you doesn't trust Clint. That, too,
> would tell you something.
>
> If you want Clint's advice, you can still sign up for a mailing list Clint
> controls.....

(I think that by "proxy table", you just mean "proxy structure".)

We can vote for Clint if you want. He couldn't refuse to accept the
votes, but he could choose to ignore them. Clint can't refuse a
nomination, in the sense of suppressing it. It's a matter of free
speech.

--
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
Skype michael_c_allan
http://zelea.com/

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[Anthony O'Neal]

Kathy Dopp wrote:
> Condorcet is only a single seat method.
>
Yes but it can be expanded to be proportional mutli-seat and to be
winner-take-all multi-seat. I was really talking about the IRV
properties of STV, since STV is essentially IRV with surplus vote
transfer added on top.
> There are lots of alternative proportional multi-seat methods such as
> the ones mentioned by Ab dul and others on this list in response to my
> original email such as the tree method, list method and others
> mentioned by Abd ul - all of them better by far than STV.
>
STV isn't as bad as you are exaggerating it too be and it's the only one
that has any chance of ever passing, besides party lists.
> Again, STV does not achieve proportional representation unless the
> number of candidates running who represent each interest group is also
> proportional to the number of members of each interest group. Other
> methods achieve proportionality more reliably and also lack the severe
> flaws that STV/IRV exhibit.
>
I am not sure where you are getting this bizarre property. STV can
sometimes distort proportionality if you are using the Hare quota and
you run more candidates than you have seats. But this can be largely
avoided in the Droop quota.
> I prefer Condorcet for single seat districts any day over STV. Any
> voting method on the planet is better than IRV/STV short of
> dictatorship (OK I exagerate this point)
>
Just a tiny bit.
> Cheers,
>
> Kathy
>
> On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Anthony O'Neal <***@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I was thinking of a simialar system before - but not for the same reasons
>> you are. It was after the BC-STV debacle, and I named it "simplified STV".
>> My thoughts were that an STV system without the complications of the second
>> part, and only the part that made it proportional, would be easier to sell
>> and less easy to attack by infusing confusion in the population. I know,
>> however, that such a compromise would actually make the system less than
>> ideal, and my primary hope in proposing such a simplified system is that we
>> could go back and change it later on.
>>
>> My usual thought about IRV is that it basically takes the largest group, and
>> has that group decide amongst itself whom their candidate will be.
>> Condorcet, on the other hand, takes the largest group, and has that
>> electorate at whole decide who their favorite candidate out of said group
>> will be. That isn't necessarily an advantage for Condorcet - often people
>> who are voting for more "moderate" candidates are simply doing so out of
>> spite, and so their opinion is of less usefulness. I don't think a moral
>> argument can really be made for one or the other, but Condorcet is harder to
>> sell and susceptible to more obvious strategy problems.
>>
>> Kathy Dopp wrote:
>>
>>> People keep asking me how to achieve a proportional representation system
>>> so....
>>>
>>> talking out loud...
>>>
>>> A fair proportional multiseat STV representation system could be made
>>> by eliminating STV's elimination rounds but using the rank choices to
>>> transfer partial votes to a 2nd choice candidate in cases where more
>>> voters than needed for the threshold for each candidate voted for the
>>> same 1st choice candidate.
>>>
>>> If the rank choices were limited to a 1st choice and a 2nd choice
>>> candidate only, unlike Fairytale Vote's IRV/STV method this method
>>> would would be monotonic and precinct-summable (and so be OK to
>>> manually audit and countable in the precincts) using an n x n matrix
>>> where n is the number of candidates running for office.
>>>
>>> In other words, for a multi-seat election where we want proportional
>>> representation, limit voters' choices to a 1st and 2nd choice and
>>> count all voters' 1st choices and transfer excess votes to the voters'
>>> 2nd choices and you're done - no rounds and no transfers of already
>>> transferred votes.
>>>
>>> However, just like with Fairytale Vote's STV system whether or not
>>> this system actually results in proportional representation still
>>> depends on how much vote-splitting results when more or fewer
>>> candidates run for office in proportion to the total number of
>>> candidates running for office, as compared to the proportion of voters
>>> whose interests they represent. I.e. too many candidates running who
>>> represent your interests, or too few and proportional representation
>>> is not achieved using either the Fairytale Vote's STV method or my
>>> (maybe someone else thought of it before) new improved monotonic,
>>> fairer STV method sans any elimination rounds.
>>>
>>> Therefore, a better alternative proportional representation system is
>>> the "party list" system where as many candidates on each party list
>>> take office in proportion to the number of voters who vote for that
>>> party, but this new version of STV I figured out this a.m. (maybe
>>> someone else has thought of it before) would work fine as well as long
>>> as the voters were restricted to ranking only a 1st and 2nd choice
>>> candidate.
>>>
>>> Any method of proportional representation must be precinct-summable in
>>> a reasonable fashion and give all voters' votes equal treatment,
>>> unlike with the current version of IRV/STV being pushed by Fairytale
>>> Vote which does neither and also in addition does not provide
>>> proportional representation due to vote-splitting when the number of
>>> candidates running who represent my interests is too great, or due to
>>> not enough candidates running in proportion to the voters who share my
>>> interests.
>>>
>>> That's why fundamentally the IRV/STV system is a lousy one for
>>> achieving proportional representation even if it were modified to
>>> treat all voters equally and be easily manually checked for accuracy.
>>>
>>> The party list system works much better for achieving proportional
>>> representation as long as there is a party representing your
>>> interests. It doesn't have to be a "party", but could just be that
>>> each candidate chooses his own list of candidates below him/her to
>>> pass excess votes down to.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>

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[Terry Bouricius]

Stephane,

In what way are you calling FPTP vote-splitting non-monotonic? It is
normally considered monotonic in that a voter raising the rank of a
candidate to number 1 can never hurt that candidate. Are you using the
broader non-standard definition of monotonicity that some particular
election method advocates have started using...where raising the rank of a
candidate to number 1 may hurt that VOTER'S interests (rather than that
first ranked CANDIDATE) by causing the election of that voter's least
favorite candidate. I have feel that is an overly broad expansion of the
concept of monotonicity, that some have seized on so they could claim
there are examples of non-monotonicity where there really aren't.

While I am one of those who thinks monotonicity is of relatively small
practical importance compared to certain other criterion, I think our
terminology definitions need to be standardized to allow us to understand
each other...and I would say IRV is a non-monotonic system and FPTP is
monotonic. Can you show that this is wrong?

Terry Bouricius

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stéphane Rouillon" <***@sympatico.ca>
To: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <***@lomaxdesign.com>
Cc: <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 11:20 PM
Subject: [EM] About non-monotonicity and non-responding to previous
posts...


Miss Dopp was promoting FPTP in the past, saying IRV is non-monotonic,
until I showed that FPTP vote-splitting behaviour is non-monotonic too.

> - more voters prefer B to C
> - a fraction of those voters will vote for A because they even prefer
> A to other candidates
> - thus C can get elected because of vote-splitting between A and B
>
> Even if more voters prefer B to C, the result is that C wins over B.
> This is clearly non-monotonic.
> This is a typical vote-splitting case using FPTP.

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[Bob Richard]

Terry and all,

I, too,am interested in Stephane's explanation. Meanwhile, I thought he
was referring to a different way of broadening the notion of
monotonicity. I understood him to be saying that, because of strategic
voting, the relationship between true preferences and outcome is
non-monotonic even when the relationship between votes cast and outcome
is monotonic. In any case, this is how I understand David Austen-Smith
and Jeffrey Banks, "Monotonicity in Electoral Systems", American
Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (June 1991): 531-537. As I
understand it, this important paper argues that, when monotonicity is
defined relative to true preferences, and when the legislative process
is considered in combination with the voting rule, monotonicity becomes
a non-issue.

--Bob Richard

Terry Bouricius wrote:
> Stephane,
>
> In what way are you calling FPTP vote-splitting non-monotonic? It is
> normally considered monotonic in that a voter raising the rank of a
> candidate to number 1 can never hurt that candidate. Are you using the
> broader non-standard definition of monotonicity that some particular
> election method advocates have started using...where raising the rank of a
> candidate to number 1 may hurt that VOTER'S interests (rather than that
> first ranked CANDIDATE) by causing the election of that voter's least
> favorite candidate. I have feel that is an overly broad expansion of the
> concept of monotonicity, that some have seized on so they could claim
> there are examples of non-monotonicity where there really aren't.
>
> While I am one of those who thinks monotonicity is of relatively small
> practical importance compared to certain other criterion, I think our
> terminology definitions need to be standardized to allow us to understand
> each other...and I would say IRV is a non-monotonic system and FPTP is
> monotonic. Can you show that this is wrong?
>
> Terry Bouricius
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stéphane Rouillon" <***@sympatico.ca>
> To: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <***@lomaxdesign.com>
> Cc: <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 11:20 PM
> Subject: [EM] About non-monotonicity and non-responding to previous
> posts...
>
>
> Miss Dopp was promoting FPTP in the past, saying IRV is non-monotonic,
> until I showed that FPTP vote-splitting behaviour is non-monotonic too.
>
>
>> - more voters prefer B to C
>> - a fraction of those voters will vote for A because they even prefer
>> A to other candidates
>> - thus C can get elected because of vote-splitting between A and B
>>
>> Even if more voters prefer B to C, the result is that C wins over B.
>> This is clearly non-monotonic.
>> This is a typical vote-splitting case using FPTP.
>>
>
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> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>
>

--
Bob Richard
Executive Vice President
Californians for Electoral Reform
P.O. Box 235
Kentfield, CA 94914-0235
415-256-9393
http://www.cfer.org

[Stéphane Rouillon]

It depends how you define monotonicity (Mono-add-top; mono-add-plump;
mono-later-no-harm; ...).

I consider that the spoiler effect is a special case of non-monotonicity.
With FPTP, you can easily let your third choice win by voting for your
first choice
while you could have got your second choice elected by voting for him.
If you only want to consider monotonicity in regard to your first
choice, you argue that FPTP is monotonic, which is right using that
definition.

"with an IRV system a voter who votes for his first choice (instead of
no voting) could harm the candidate’s chance of winning..."
This statement is false.
"with an IRV system a voter who votes for his first choice (instead of
another of its preferred candidate) could harm the candidate’s chance of
winning..."
This is the statement that is right.
Without the details in parenthesis, the statement is vague.

This is my understanding:

#1) If one considers voting for a preference instead of another => IRV
can behave non-monotonically but most of the time is monotonic;
#2) If one considers voting for a preference instead of not voting =>
IRV can behave non-monotonically but most of the time is monotonic;
#3) If one considers voting for a first choice instead of not voting and
the outcome without voting is not the elector first choice
=> IRV can behave non-monotonically but most of the time is monotonic;
#4) If one considers voting for a first choice instead of not voting and
the outcome without voting is the elector first choice
=> IRV cannot behave non-monotonically.

Thus, using IRV, a voter can harm the result of an election by going to
vote for his first choice, but if he does go vote for his first choice
instead of
staying home it cannot hurt the election of his first choice, he can
only hurt the election of another more preferred candidate that could
(rarely) lose to a least preferred candidate.

The terminology often used to summarized could be interpreted as
describing the last case (#4) which is the only monotonic behaviour of IRV.

Stéphane Rouillon, ing., Ph.D.

Bob Richard a écrit :
> Terry and all,
>
> I, too,am interested in Stephane's explanation. Meanwhile, I thought
> he was referring to a different way of broadening the notion of
> monotonicity. I understood him to be saying that, because of strategic
> voting, the relationship between true preferences and outcome is
> non-monotonic even when the relationship between votes cast and
> outcome is monotonic. In any case, this is how I understand David
> Austen-Smith and Jeffrey Banks, "Monotonicity in Electoral Systems",
> American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (June 1991):
> 531-537. As I understand it, this important paper argues that, when
> monotonicity is defined relative to true preferences, and when the
> legislative process is considered in combination with the voting rule,
> monotonicity becomes a non-issue.
>
> --Bob Richard
>
> Terry Bouricius wrote:
>> Stephane,
>>
>> In what way are you calling FPTP vote-splitting non-monotonic? It is
>> normally considered monotonic in that a voter raising the rank of a
>> candidate to number 1 can never hurt that candidate. Are you using the
>> broader non-standard definition of monotonicity that some particular
>> election method advocates have started using...where raising the rank of a
>> candidate to number 1 may hurt that VOTER'S interests (rather than that
>> first ranked CANDIDATE) by causing the election of that voter's least
>> favorite candidate. I have feel that is an overly broad expansion of the
>> concept of monotonicity, that some have seized on so they could claim
>> there are examples of non-monotonicity where there really aren't.
>>
>> While I am one of those who thinks monotonicity is of relatively small
>> practical importance compared to certain other criterion, I think our
>> terminology definitions need to be standardized to allow us to understand
>> each other...and I would say IRV is a non-monotonic system and FPTP is
>> monotonic. Can you show that this is wrong?
>>
>> Terry Bouricius
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Stéphane Rouillon" <***@sympatico.ca>
>> To: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <***@lomaxdesign.com>
>> Cc: <election-***@lists.electorama.com>
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 04, 2009 11:20 PM
>> Subject: [EM] About non-monotonicity and non-responding to previous
>> posts...
>>
>>
>> Miss Dopp was promoting FPTP in the past, saying IRV is non-monotonic,
>> until I showed that FPTP vote-splitting behaviour is non-monotonic too.
>>
>>
>>> - more voters prefer B to C
>>> - a fraction of those voters will vote for A because they even prefer
>>> A to other candidates
>>> - thus C can get elected because of vote-splitting between A and B
>>>
>>> Even if more voters prefer B to C, the result is that C wins over B.
>>> This is clearly non-monotonic.
>>> This is a typical vote-splitting case using FPTP.
>>>
>>
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>> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>>
>> ----
>> Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
>>
>>
>
> --
> Bob Richard
> Executive Vice President
> Californians for Electoral Reform
> P.O. Box 235
> Kentfield, CA 94914-0235
> 415-256-9393
> http://www.cfer.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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>
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