New method (I think?): Hare-squared
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You can have a race with 3 or more competitive candidates with FPTP. It happens all of the time
No, it doesn't. It happens sometimes, but given how many more FPTP elections than IRV that's not saying much.
But what good is using a ranked ballot if you ignore the content of the ranked ballot and elect a candidate that does not have majority support.?
Placebo effect is real and important. Even just feeling like you get to express your true opinion is important, even if the rest of the rankings were entirely thrown away. I would also prefer the ability to rank candidates on the ballot with choose-one too, even if it just elects the one with the most first-place votes.
Big fucking deal! FPTP can make a similar claim: *Selects a better candidate than choosing the candidate selected by sortition or selected by military support."
yeah, and if I lived in a country where the winner was chosen by military bureaucracy I would prefer FPTP a hell of a lot more.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Fatigue ain't just a mountain in Canada. And I'm incredibly fatigued of the same tired talking points about one specific, and ultimately pretty inconsequential, election.
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@andy-dienes said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
You can have a race with 3 or more competitive candidates with FPTP. It happens all of the time
No, it doesn't. It happens sometimes, but given how many more FPTP elections than IRV that's not saying much.
Sure it does. Nothing about FPTP that stops anyone from having an election with more than 2 candidates. The problem is electing the correct candidate. FPTP sometimes fails to do that. And so does Hare IRV.
But what good is using a ranked ballot if you ignore the content of the ranked ballot and elect a candidate that does not have majority support.?
Placebo effect is real and important.
So you're promoting dispensing placebos instead of medicine that actually has physiological effect?
Even just feeling like you get to express your true opinion is important, even if the rest of the rankings were entirely thrown away.
And when the election results are reported and you discover that you were robbed from having your candidate (or your second-choice candidate) elected because the method ignored the second-choice votes of 1/6th of the electorate, despite the promise that it does not, I don't think you'll be "just feeling like you get to express your true [vote]".
I would also prefer the ability to rank candidates on the ballot with choose-one too, even if it just elects the one with the most first-place votes.
This is so stupid and irresponsible. And disingenuous.
Big fucking deal! FPTP can make a similar claim: *Selects a better candidate than choosing the candidate selected by sortition or selected by military support."
yeah, and if I lived in a country where the winner was chosen by military bureaucracy I would prefer FPTP a hell of a lot more.
But FPTP ain't good enough, is it, Andy?
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
This is so stupid and irresponsible. And disingenuous.
But FPTP ain't good enough, is it, Andy?I feel like you are getting pretty abrasive and personal, so I am going to step away from this discussion.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
As far as I understand, this is expressed with the maxim "One person, one vote".
Yeah that is a very vague saying. I get the concept, but many people interpret it very literally, such as saying that ranking or approving doesn't qualify simply because they are doing more than checking a single box.
I've used the example of people voting for a number (say an office temperature or the amount of monthly dues) and choosing the median, which is as close to everyone having "equal voting power" as anything I can imagine.
I tend to think Condorcet systems most closely approach that in elections with human candidates and a single winner.
And that cannot be satisfied outside of Majority Rule: If a simple majority of voters agree that Candidate A is a better choice for office than Candidate B, then Candidate B is not elected.
I've never been big on the use of the word "majority" when there are more than two candidates. Especially if combined with the word "support", which seems so artificially binary. If I vote for someone over another person, that is no indication that I "like" them in any everyday sense of the word, only that I prefer them over someone else.
I agree that Condorcet is best (it seems to meet my idea of "game theoretically stable," which is important to me but not necessarily a priority for others), but I just don't like using the concept of "majority." And again, I refer back to the "voting for a number" thing.... my vote might pull the vote from 69.2 degrees to 69.3 degrees, when I preferred 72 degrees. That can be perfectly fair and equitable, but the word "majority" doesn't in any way apply.
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@rb-j Please dial back the aggression, it is unhelpful and against the spirit of this forum. I agree with many of your goals, but attacking people isn't the best approach. We are trying to make this a welcoming forum, such as to newcomers.
Thanks.
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@jack-waugh said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
I look forward to hearing their response. If they ask you how this thought experiment is to shed light on the characteristics of RCV IRV Hare, I look forward to seeing how you respond to that question from them, if they do pose it.
Cool. I haven't necessarily fully formulated it.
I will say, very briefly, this:
The general effect Hare-IRV has on an election, when compared to choose-one (*), can be described as the "Hare effect." As Hare-squared (and Hare-cubed, etc) show, this effect can be applied more than once. Doing so helps clarify what the effect actually is.
Each time it is applied, it moves the method along a spectrum toward some imagined "ideal" method that is immune to strategy, gives each voter equal pull, etc. (Hare-IRV might move it 80% toward that goal. Hare-squared might be more like 95%, Hare-cubed 99.5%, etc. These are just estimates, and I'm not sure it will ever be directly measurable)
If it can be shown that applying Hare multiple times will make it that much less likely to have Burlington-style "misses", or can otherwise remove instability, reduce strategic incentives, etc, it can be strongly argued that "the Hare effect" is a good thing, even if normal Hare-IRV simply doesn't apply the effect as much as we'd like. The problem is that the choose-one logic that Hare uses in determining who to eliminate is crude and encourages strategic voting. It pollutes the method, so to speak. Each time the Hare effect is applied, that pollution is diluted.
So to the IRV bashers, my message is: IRV is good (compared to choose-one), it just isn't as good as it could be. To the IRV but not Condorcet people, my message is, stop being p*ssies and just own what you are doing rather than shying away from taking it that one extra step (i.e. Condorcet).
And of course, other methods (bottom two runoff being a good example), might be a far more efficient way of doing this. It may not be as good as Hare-to-the-20th-power, but it is very likely good enough that any "choose-one pollution" is so diluted as to be insignificant.
That is a good part of the argument. I started to build out the method (starting with regular IRV, but then reusing the same code to allow applying the effect as many times as I want), and will continue as I have time. I'll wait until I have a better presentation to, for instance, take this to EndFPTP where there is a larger audience.
* if it helps, imagine a method that ranks the candidates, but simply elects the candidate that gets the most first choice votes. Since all methods we are comparing use identical ballots, it is an apples to apples comparison.
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@rob said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
Each time it is applied, it moves the method along a spectrum toward some imagined "ideal" method that is immune to strategy
I know I have linked it before, but I really think you would enjoy reading about Stable Voting. It kind of does exactly this and is a recursive method asking "if this candidate were not in the election who would have won?" and the result is a method which makes a very strong case for being the "best" (on theoretical grounds) deterministic Condorcet method.
Also, I just find the paper exceptionally well-written; it manages to go into a lot of detail while maintaining a conversational style. This paper by the same authors is also excellent and is on my favorites list.
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Yes. You are exactly correct, @rob.
Besides RCV, I am involved in a sorta complex multi-directional "discussion" in Vermont about the nation's most successful third party, about the effect of party crossover in primaries, and of the value of the "open primary" (not to be confused with what California, Washington, or Alaska are doing, where there is no party primary).
Someone is systemically taking undeserved advantage of someone else. And there is a lotta disingenuity tossed around. It's:
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the Center Squeeze of Hare RCV and who, in Vermont, benefits and who loses.
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"clone" party crashing another party's primary.
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single-member vs. two-member vs. mixed different-sized districts in a legislative body (how well constituents are served by each) and the political effect of switching one to another - who benefits and who loses (and remember, elections are a zero-sum game),
And I'm drawing maps for ward redistricting in Burlington and we're getting in crunch time. Big decisions being made soon about what map the voters will get to see on the ballot next town-meeting day. And some, not-entirely-transparent reasons for preventing voters from seeing more than one plan.
So I'm kinda grumpy. I'm sorry.
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@andy-dienes Thanks, I will read it when I get time. (I have been spending way too much time on this forum recently!)
I'm all into "game theoretical stability", and finding ways to visualize what a "perfect" method would be, even if it is impractical (and unnecessary) to have such methods in the real world. But I find them valuable as an exercise, and hopefully in terms of minimizing some of the ugly back and forth that can happen when discussing things like IRV.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
So I'm kinda grumpy. I'm sorry.
We all get grumpy sometimes.
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@rob said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
As far as I understand, this is expressed with the maxim "One person, one vote".
Yeah that is a very vague saying. I get the concept, but many people interpret it very literally, such as saying that ranking or approving doesn't qualify simply because they are doing more than checking a single box.
I understand that, and it's essentially where we RCV advocates disagree with detractors who insist on FPTP.
What they don't want to understand is the notion of the Single-Transferable Vote. It's one vote, but it gets shifted around in such a manner that best benefits the political interest of the enfranchised person who is voting. They get only one vote.
The difference between the Hare advocates and the Condorcet folks are that the former says that some of us cannot transfer our vote from our higher-ranked candidate, that was just eliminated, to the contingency candidate of our choosing as expressed on our ballots. The Condorcet advocates say we can. When you promote your product saying *"You can vote for the candidate you really want and need not choose between the lesser of evils. If your favorite candidate cannot win election, then your vote counts for your second choice." Howard Dean (whom I was fortunate enough to introduce to a big crowd in NH in 2004) made that claim ignorant of the fact that it's demonstrated false in the experience of his very own home town.
When you make that claim (which is Property 4 in this), you should mean it.
In order to allow voters to vote their hopes instead of their fears, the election should not punish (or disincentivize) voters from voting their hopes. It does that by actually preventing the spoiler effect (an oft advertized feature of RCV). And it does that by making sure that the majority candidate is elected and not blocked from election because of the spoiler.
I've used the example of people voting for a number (say an office temperature or the amount of monthly dues) and choosing the median, which is as close to everyone having "equal voting power" as anything I can imagine.
The median helps block the effect of exaggeration of one's preference in order to unfairly increase the effect of one's expression of their preference.
But so does One-person-one-vote. Unlike Score Voting or Borda RCV, it doesn't matter if I prefer A enthusiastically and you prefer B only tepidly, your vote for B should count just as much as my vote for A.
The median thing is a mathematical tool to prevent outliers from changing the measure of how the middle of the spectrum affects a composite measured property (like median income vs. mean) or in social choice.
I tend to think Condorcet systems most closely approach that in elections with human candidates and a single winner.
And that cannot be satisfied outside of Majority Rule: If a simple majority of voters agree that Candidate A is a better choice for office than Candidate B, then Candidate B is not elected.
I've never been big on the use of the word "majority" when there are more than two candidates. Especially if combined with the word "support", which seems so artificially binary.
Between two candidates there is an unambiguous notion of majority support if we agree that every voter's expression of support (that's what a vote is) is counted equally.
The fact that there always exists a simple majority between two candidates (unless they tie) is misconstrued by naive (or disingenuous) RCV advocates to claim that RCV is "guaranteed to elect the majority-supported candidate" because it boils the election down to two candidates in the final round, in which there is always a simple majority.
Of course that Hare final-round pair of candidates is not the only way to pair two candidates and examine which one is supported more than the other. Everyone, other than the Condorcet loser, is a "majority candidate".
If I vote for someone over another person, that is no indication that I "like" them in any everyday sense of the word, only that I prefer them over someone else.
That's correct. And that preference of yours counts just as much as my preference for the "someone else". Doesn't matter how much more I prefer my candidate vs. how much you prefer yours. Our votes should count equally.
I agree that Condorcet is best (it seems to meet my idea of "game theoretically stable," which is important to me but not necessarily a priority for others), but I just don't like using the concept of "majority."
Simple majority and Absolute majority have dictionary definitions that are reasonably concise.
And again, I refer back to the "voting for a number" thing.... my vote might pull the vote from 69.2 degrees to 69.3 degrees, when I preferred 72 degrees.
And a good and fair social choice system should not incentize you from expressing your preference in any manner other than sincere. Express your sincere preference and rely on the method to respect your preference, as a person holding equal rights and equal franchise, equally as much as any other person's preference.
That can be perfectly fair and equitable, but the word "majority" doesn't in any way apply.
That's right. And if we were voting for an alternative that is an ordered quantity, Score Voting using median score rather than plurality score, seems very fair and equitable to me. Maybe use this for a public vote on the city's budget cap or tax-base percentile. But not people or maps or discrete alternative plans that are not an ordered quantity. Then the only fair thing is valuing each voter's vote equally.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
The fact that there always exists a simple majority between two candidates (unless they tie)
not if voters truncate their rankings
And a good and fair social choice system should not incentize you from expressing your preference in any manner other than sincere
Agreed, and IRV is one of the very best methods at incentivizing sincere rankings. It has other flaws yes, but strategic manipulability is not really one of them.
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@andy-dienes said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
Agreed, and IRV is one of the very best methods at incentivizing sincere rankings
I mostly agree with this, but think there is some very subtle incentive to exaggerate your preferences if there are two clear front runners.
I do find it so weird, though, that IRV-but-not-Condorcet people (FairVote etc) claim that it is a good thing that "IRV rewards those w/ strong 1st choice support” (FairVote's words in response to Jack's tweet about BTR), but they don't seem to get that IF this is true, then it MUST incentivize the exaggeration I described above.
Really doesn't make sense. My goal is to find a way of demonstrating this that is so obvious to regular people that they stop making that dumb argument. I really think they have an opportunity to shift their position slightly without just declaring they were wrong about everything and go home, which obviously they aren't going to do.
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@andy-dienes said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
The fact that there always exists a simple majority between two candidates (unless they tie)
not if voters truncate their rankings
Which is why I advocate that ballot access law be strong enough so that there aren't more than 5 or 6 candidates who are on the ballot. But if there are, say, a dozen candidates one the ballot, there should be at least 5 or 6 ranking levels. And if there are more ranking levels, then precincts should algorithmically choose the 5 or 6 leading candidates in that precinct, and publish pairwise defeats for the pairings of the top 5 or 6. Precinct summability does not mean that the paper tape printout of summable tallies is 10 feet long. It has to be practical, feasible. 20 or 30 summable tallies is about that practical limit.
And a good and fair social choice system should not incentize you from expressing your preference in any manner other than sincere
Agreed, and IRV is one of the very best methods at incentivizing sincere rankings.
But it's not the best, is it? And it's not about the ranked ballots but are about the rules of the game, which can be fairly and safely examined. And courageously examined.
It has other flaws yes, but strategic manipulability is not really one of them.
The point is 1510 voters (out of 8976) found out that, merely by voting for their favorite candidate, they actually caused the election of their least-favorite candidate. Just like Nader voters that got W elected, that incentivizes these voters to vote for the major party candidate that is best situated to beat the candidate that they loathe.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
that incentivizes these voters to vote for the major party candidate that is best situated to beat the candidate that they loathe.
I had hoped that it would be obvious at this point that I am familiar with the phenomenon of Center Squeeze.
I am aware that it happens, but it is hard to predict and is a risky strategy for those who attempt it.
For many, many references to academic literature where this question is studied (and concludes that IRV is difficult to manipulate) please see my comment here
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@andy-dienes this is not just about Center-Squeeze. This is more general than that.
It's about "Vote your hopes, not your fears."
Center-Squeeze was just a way for RCV to violate that promise.
But FPTP also does. I just want you to admit that this promise we RCV advocates make, saying why RCV is better than FPTP, was actually violated by Hare RCV in no uncertain terms (because we have possession of the ranked-ballot data and know who the contingency choices were). At least with FPTP we have to speculate that the election was spoiled. Ain't no speculation with RCV and public records.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
The point is 1510 voters (out of 8976) found out that, merely by voting for their favorite candidate, they actually caused the election of their least-favorite candidate
An important question is whether they could have known. Because after the fact seeing that you could have done something different is a bit different than, at the time of voting, having a clear insincere strategy.
I know @Andy-Dienes would like to stop discussing Burlington, and I have mixed feelings on that. I do think making it out to be a complete disaster is overstating it. To me it was an example of "the Hare effect" being not applied strongly enough to best deal with that very close election, which was a 1/340 situation.
What I will continue to do (and am doing now) is testing various minor alterations of Hare (bottom-2 runoff, of course, but also others) against Burlington ballots.
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@rob said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
The point is 1510 voters (out of 8976) found out that, merely by voting for their favorite candidate, they actually caused the election of their least-favorite candidate
An important question is whether they could have known.
You collectively learn that with a history of usage and with spoiled elections. I don't wanna wait for another spoiled election to happen in order to start noticing.
Because after the fact seeing that you could have done something different is a bit different than, at the time of voting, having a clear insincere strategy.
But that's always the case with spoiled elections. It's after the election is spoiled that voters learn that maybe they shoulda voted their fears instead of their hopes. From the paper:
When an election is apparently spoiled, many of the voters who voted for the ostensible spoiler suffer voter regret for their choice when they learn of the outcome of the election and they realize that they aided the candidate they preferred least to win by “throwing away their vote” or “wasting their vote” on their favorite candidate rather than voting for the candidate best situated to beat their least-preferred candidate.
This leads to tactical voting in future elections, where the voting tactic is called “compromising”. This tactical voting is not a nefarious strategy to throw or game an election but is an undesired burden that minor party and independent voters carry, which pressures them to vote for the major party candidate that they dislike the least. They are voting their fears and not their hopes and this has the effect of advantaging the two major parties. This reflects “Duverger’s Law” which states that plurality rule (First-Past-The-Post or FPTP) elections, with the traditional mark-only-one ballots, promote a twoparty political system, and third party or independent candidates will not have a level playing field in such elections. Voters who want to vote for these third party or independent candidates are discouraged from doing so, out of fear of helping elect the major party candidate they dislike the most.
I know @Andy-Dienes would like to stop discussing Burlington, and I have mixed feelings on that. I do think making it out to be a complete disaster is overstating it. To me it was an example of "the Hare effect" being not applied strongly enough to best deal with that very close election, which was a 1/340 situation.
What I will continue to do (and am doing now) is testing various minor alterations of Hare (bottom-2 runoff, of course, but also others) against Burlington ballots.
Why bother? Why not just solve the problem with simple Condorcet? Or with BTR?
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
Why not just solve the problem with simple Condorcet? Or with BTR?
Those would be great. I don't think anyone (of us) is arguing that a Condorcet check doesn't improve a method. It does.
But it's not productive to rail against IRV. It's better than FPTP.
My approval set of election reforms is { LiterallyAnythingProportional, LiterallyAnythingConcorcet, Approval, STAR, IRV }
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@andy-dienes said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
Why not just solve the problem with simple Condorcet? Or with BTR?
Those would be great. I don't think anyone (of us) is arguing that a Condorcet check doesn't improve a method. It does.
But it's not productive to rail against IRV.
Yes, it is. The correct time to rail is right now, with the experience in Vermont and now with the newly experienced difficulties of Maine and NYC with administering RCV elections and getting timely results.
Now is the time to be learning object lessons while the objects remain visibly presented. We need to learn from failures, rather than ignoring or denying (or forgetting) the failures. That's not how you learn from failure.
It's better than FPTP.
So what? FPTP is better than Autocracy. Or sortition. Big fat hairy deeel.
My approval set of election reforms is { LiterallyAnythingProportional, LiterallyAnythingConcorcet, Approval, STAR, IRV }
I'm trying to get some reform done and not damage the cause by ignoring, denying, or forgetting failure of the reform we advocate.
