@andy-dienes I think in principle alternative dynamical rules could vary as much as different voting systems vary from each other already, and the benefits of utilizing adaptive procedures would need to be balanced against the detriments to complexity.

I defined one method before that uses past election data or predefined distributions to measure a formal construct of consensuality among the candidates, and then chooses the highest scoring candidate according to that metric. The distributions could be fixed, or could be updated to include or adapt to newer election data in any prescribed way that seems reasonable.

I think the specific kind of procedure would depend on the kind of information that is being utilized.

As an explicit example that I considered, for a score system I defined a candidate to be "(S,P)-consensual" if that candidate was scored at least an S by at least a P-fraction of the electorate. Then I defined the (S,P)-set of candidate C as the collection of all (S,P) such that C is (S,P)-consensual, and essentially measured the “size” of their (S,P)-sets.

The way of measuring the size used probability distributions for the fraction of the electorate that scored a random candidate at least any fixed score.

@dominikpeters Thanks for the information on this. Do you think that MES + completion is a good method for electing a committee of a fixed size or do you think a single method that works without an add-on would be better?

@rob, Score Sorted Margins is mentioned on the Approval Sorted Margins page on electowiki.org as a variant.

Forest Simmons invented ASM, and I just extended it to scores.

@rob If I finish this friggin' software, we may find out.

@jack-waugh said in Search Engines:

Currently, the arrangements for my death estate are nowhere near properly set up

No pun intended, but involving estates and such seems like overkill.

There are so many simpler ways to do things. If this forum had 100,000 users, it might be different. If you died and no one had access to your account and you hadn't given out a contact of your next of kin, you know what would happen? We'd just stop using the forum. It isn't the end of the world.

It could be as simple as getting new free email and godaddy accounts that you share the password with another person, and just sign an agreement with them that neither can change the password without agreement from the other (unless the other dies or doesn't respond for a long time).

The only reason a lawyer is needed is if anyone contests it.... but who is going to do that? Nobody cares that much about this forum.

Seriously, you are making things WAY to complicated. This sort of thing is done all the time.

@sarawolk said in "None of the Below":

If 'None of the Below' wasn't able to stop the count then it could only block one seat from being filled. I agree that's a simpler and more transparent implementation, but it seems like the intention is to be able to block multiple candidates if needed.

I think I mentioned in my post above that you could have "none of the below" (NOTB) standing effectively as multiple clone candidates. For example, it's a 5 seat election using score ballots. Whatever score someone gives to NOTB counts towards 5 clone candidates. So it's effectively a party vote for the NOTB party.

Or if it's ranked ballots, it would just take up 5 spaces in your rankings. So if your rank was 1. NOTB; 2. John Smith, it would actually be 1-5. NOTB; 6. John Smith.

@anniek said in Good simple semi-PR methods?:

A group I'm tangentially connected to has decided to switch from sequential proportional approval voting to cumulative voting (voters are given a number of points equal to the number of seats, and each voter can give any amount of their available points to one or more candidates). I'm concerned because I have heard that cumulative voting is susceptible to vote-splitting and bullet voting. Where can I learn more about these effects in cumulative voting?

The main problem with cumulative voting is what happens if they don't do bullet voting. Cumulative voting produces kind-of-proportional representation if voters are strategic and perfectly informed, because minority groups can coordinate to bullet-vote. However, too much honest voting by these groups can easily result in a bare majority sweeping all the seats; in other words, requires some very complicated coordination (especially in small elections).

I don't think there are any proportional methods simpler than SPAV except party-list representation, or possibly sequential Ebert (although I'd consider sequential Ebert about as simple as SPAV).

Have you asked what makes this group think of SPAV as "too complex?"

The governing coalition opted for open lists. Phragmén-MMP would be better because we generally like the idea of independent candidates.
Though open lists are still better than MMP with runoff.

I generally support the BRVE.

Something I question about it is what strategy should advocates use to try to get more people on board more or less, and to try to get it implemented.

Let's suppose for example that advocates say to members of the general public, "May we please have a statement of agreement from you for this entire slate of proposed laws?"

Then I for example am going to see that for a single-winner office, the BRVE calls for Score or Approval voting. I think that Score would be an adequate solution and Approval would be a vast improvement over status quo. However, I also think that STAR would be an adequate solution. If I endorse the BRVE, does that mean I am opposing STAR?

@lime I see, so this would be used in absence of a Condorcet winner like for a ranked pairs resolution?

I was trying to think about burial but I don’t think my method addresses it quite as I conceived. My reasoning was that, by replacing absolute score differences with their more robust percentiles, burial (and bullet voting) strategies will suffer from severely diminishing returns compared with less risky and more honest ballots. For example, burying a second-favorite below a turkey to support a first favorite probably won’t significantly improve the score percentile provided by that voter to the first favorite’s runoff with the second favorite, but will significantly improve the chances of the turkey winning. This makes dishonest burial more severely punished and risky, meaning that fewer rational voters will choose to do it. Also, the effects of the fraction that do will be significantly reduced, since they will not only be fewer in number, but the magnitude of their indicated score differences will be majorly reeled back upon being replaced by their percentiles relative to the more honest bulk.

At the same time, the method is not restricted to Condorcet compliance, since, for example, it is possible for a [1-sqrt(1/2)]~0.2928… fraction minority of voters to overrule a sqrt(1/2)~0.707… fraction majority as long as the whole minority has the top quantile of absolute score differences and all of them have the same sign. That is the smallest possible minority that can overrule a majority in this method. It’s in one sense a generalized, more flexible extension of some of the reasonable measures we already have in the legislative houses, where for example a supermajority (2/3) is required for certain decisions.

Alternatively, each absolute score difference percentile could be measured relative to the distribution of all absolute score differences across all differences. The data set would consist of N*K(K-1)/2 values where N is the number of voters and K is the number of candidates.

@casimir again this is just a criticism of the law and the judgment made about it: I still think even their reasoning (in bold) is pretty absurd. It means essentially that any system whatsoever that gets put into use is automatically constitutional, regardless of any negative or unexpected consequences, even those that directly contradict the letter of the law 😂 So what is the point of the law? It seems only to prevent the use of unconstitutionality to enact technical voting reform.

@SaraWolk Test 2 nesting replies

@SaraWolk said in Calling for the Next Council Meeting!:

I propose we meet next on Wednesday Feb 17th, at 7:30 Pacific.

Hi All, I'm confirming and reminding you all that we have our next forum meeting tomorrow at 7:30 PST.

Privacy policy. Ready for review. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QzZp2QAsP60Ti1WWPk29Q8dInGIM2l438rcJDZLd2Ug/edit?usp=sharing Terms of Service. Ready for review.: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AlnP1gvvc986n0iiYYkA0Tc9L33erbxDftM7sX5ypz4/edit?usp=sharing Code of Conduct. Ready for review.: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ExGrryHIFOjSfPiTtHYBRPw7GQY8lRsCfWiWsLEsImc/edit?usp=sharing

Please invite people who would make great moderators.
See you there!

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@tec said in Proxy:

This seems a lot like liquid democracy,

Schemes involving proxy power indeed resemble one another to at least that degree, that they involve proxy power. I would like readers to evaluate them separately, and not tar one with the drawbacks they see in another. And in particular, I live in the US, and am concerned about the effect on the world of US politics, and I would like other US residents to weigh in on my suggestions.

I propose that proxy would only be given in voting booths, with the same ballot secrecy as US people are accustomed to for voting on who can serve in office. And the opportunity would only come up every two years. Proxy could not be revoked except on those opportunities. This would limit the overhead costs of communication and certification of the expressed wills of the citizens. It would limit the risk of votes and proxies being coerced out of citizens.

Here is another variant of my proposal, which could reduce overhead. Instead of having to go to the polls once to allocate space in the legislative chamber to representatives and returning to the polls to give proxy to someone from among those seated, with this variation, only one visit to the polls per election season would be necessary. Voters would fill out two sections on the ballot. The top section would list the candidates and invite approval or disapproval of each for seating. In the bottom section, the voter would list candidates in order of that voter's decision about giving proxy. The highest candidate on the voter's list who is seated would receive that proxy.

@Jack-Waugh @Marylander
Sounds good to me.
Thanks for looking into it. I don't think it's time sensitive or anything, just thought I'd flag it here as a feature request.

Nice to have our categories all sorted out so clearly with a spot for these types of questions. 🙂

I haven't had much time to engage here on the forum since we launched, but I've been sending people over and it seems like there are conversations happening!

Looking forward to having more time to invest here soon.

When the forum was originally set up Jack just put it all in his own name as a stopgap, but that was never the permanent plan.

At the last meeting we discussed funds and bookkeeping and managing of that kind of thing and decided to do that through Equal Vote so we don't need a whole separate person/process for treasury and bookkeeping. They also voted to coalition unanimously (I abstained.)

The other reason mentioned was the "What if I get hit by a bus" issue, so we have been in the process of moving the forum into the fold of Equal Vote assets to ensure that passing of keys can be ensured, and adjudicated if needed, should anything happen to whoever has it in their name currently.

As part of that I've put in a bunch of hours over the last month on the back end and we now have the url on our the Equal Vote account and are paying for it from Equal Vote. Donations for the Forum can also be made to Equal Vote with earmarking for the Forum if desired. We also obtained a grant from Azure that can pay for the hosting, so the plan is to move the hosting there.

Again, Voting Theory Forum is still fully autonomous and this is a service that Equal Vote can offer and is happy to provide since we already manage this stuff for a number of other sites in our network.

I've just been looking through old threads and found this one.

@nevinbr said in Least-bad Single-winner Ranking Method?:

Objectively, the answer is Game Theory Voting. However, it is basically impossible to explain to, well, anyone.

This method was also discussed at greater length on the old CES Google Group here. But the point is that while it is optimal in the sense that you might want to optimise this one particular thing, you might not want to optimise that one particular thing, so it would be wrong to say that it's objectively the best method.

In fact, when you look at what it is trying to achieve, it becomes quite clear that it's really just a bit of game theory fun rather than a method seriously trying to optimise something that a human would want to optimise. And you can see that by an example that you gave in the CES thread.

To expand on that last point, consider the following election with 3 candidates and 100 voters:

49 ABC

48 CAB

3 BCA

This has a Condorcet cycle:

A beats B by 94

B beats C by 4

C beats A by 2

At first glance, we notice that A has the largest victory and the smallest defeat, as well as the highest Borda total. However, the GT method elects A just 4% of the time.

Can that really be optimal?

Let’s think about it.

Okay, B gets crushed by A and barely squeaks by C. We don’t want to get crushed because that is bad for our long-term average, so B probably should not win. And if B loses (or didn’t run at all) then C defeats A.

It seems that A’s victory over B is mostly ephemeral. As much as we would like to score that +94 to improve our long-term average, the only way it happens is if we pick A and the system we’re up against picks B. But since B shouldn’t win, we expect the other system won’t pick B either.

In particular, if we usually pick A and the other system usually picks C, then we are going to lose frequently. We would rather be that other system and pick C most often, which is exactly what GT does. The optimal distribution is:

A wins 4%

B wins 2%

C wins 94%

Moreover, in any 3-way Condorcet cycle, the probability of each candidate winning is always proportional to the margin of victory between the other two candidates. And this is provably optimal.

In the example ballots, it seems clear that A is the best winner. However, under this method, because B definitely isn't a good winner, other methods won't select B so the A>B pairwise win might as well be ignored. Better concentrate on A v C instead and since C wins that, C is the overall best pick.

So what this method does is not pick the candidate that is somehow judged to be best for society, but the candidate that has the best average margin of victory against a candidate picked by another method playing this same game. And this method would never lose on average against another method (though obviously might tie - e.g. against itself). I don't see how this optimality relates to real life at all and why it would be good for us to adopt it.

To make this clear, the ranked pairs method is a Condorcet method that a lot of people like. But I could devise a method that elects a candidate that pairwise beats the ranked pairs winner whenever one exists. Otherwise elect the ranked pairs winner. According the metric used here, this method is better than ranked pairs - when these two methods are viewed as the only choices at least. But is this method better tban ranked pairs by any reasonable measure? Of course not.

An interesting academic exercise, but nothing more. Certainly not objectively the best single-winner voting method.

@jack-waugh You can also draw parallels to referendums or judge elections where you can vote for or against each item, or abstain.

@brozai right there can be, but there isn't always. When there isn't a single Condorcet winner or Copeland winner, as often as not there are three that are tied.

And me. No CPU, No Photocell, that's what I wanted to post about.