New method (I think?): Hare-squared
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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.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
Yes, it is. The correct time to rail is right now,
Obviously some of us disagree with this approach. Myself, strongly so. I think that approach by many people within the community has driven away a lot of people. Probably a lot are like "wait, you guys are proposing better ways to come to group decisions, and yet you are some of the most abrasive and argumentative people I've seen on the web? If you can't agree on anything, why should we trust you to help the rest of us? I mean, seriously, WTF? kthxbai."
The EndFPTP forum actually has a rule, don't bash alternatives to choose-one. I am considering proposing we do the same here.
I'm trying to get some reform done and not damage the cause by ignoring, denying, or forgetting failure of the reform we advocate.
There's other ways to "damage the cause." Did you maybe hire a marketing consultant, and they advised you that "abrasively strident" was the way to open people's minds and win them to your side? Cuz I'm saying you should fire them now, because they suck at their jobs.
It seems like you are purposefully trying to get people to dislike interacting with you, and to therefore reject your message. I don't mean this as a personal attack, just something I wish you were more aware of. I'm confident it's going to get you banned if you keep it up here. It's a small forum, so maybe it doesn't matter to you, but still. Seems like you have had similar issues at EndFPTP. I honestly don't get why you'd think anything positive would come from your approach.
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
So what? FPTP is better than Autocracy. Or sortition. Big fat hairy deeel.
yes, some things are better than others, and FPTP is not at the very bottom of the chain. To be honest I'm struggling to see why this seems to be so hard to understand.
Autocracy << [bad voting methods like Borda or Veto] < FPTP << [better voting methods like IRV or approval] < [possibly even better better methods like fancy Condorcet ones] << [proportional representation]
I am trying to say "look, IRV is ranked 3rd here which is better than FPTP, ranked 4th." You are replying "but actually FPTP is even better than those things ranked 5th." Which, like, yes it is? But so what?
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@rb-j said in New method (I think?): Hare-squared:
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.
Let's rail, but let's rail on valid grounds only, lest we attract a reputation for disingenuous propaganda. Before the first successful powered flight by humans extended with machines, all prior efforts had failed. Eventually craft work and/or engineering advanced sufficiently to overcome the problems and reach the goal. Just because NYC flubbed up with administering RCV IRV Hare, doesn't mean a method of administering it that works better couldn't be engineered. Rob is saying let the precincts publish over the Internet the counts of all the ballot types cast there. Then anyone with a computer and a little knowledge of how to use it could reproduce the tally, and it would not take days (maybe it would take me days, but lots of others would do it in two hours and that includes research and reverse engineering the format and writing scripts).
