Best posts made by rob

If it was up to me, if you go to the main domain page, it would route you to the recent topics page, and on that page (and all the forum pages) there would be links to other parts of the forum as well as to such things as the archives page.

This would probably make it a lot more googlable as well as just making it easier on new visitors. The intro page is not inviting, and the page you get to when you click through to the forums is even less so.

Now that the forum has been running for a while and is stable (good job, @Jack-Waugh ) we should be putting some effort into design / user experience and making it more search engine friendly.

There's a whole ton of other things we could be doing (unlike reddit's EndFPTP and election method email list, we have a lot of capabilities neither of them have), but this design/ux stuff is pretty critical if we want more activity (and therefore have any impact whatsoever beyond amusing ourselves talking about stuff).

Maine used ranked choice voting in the last presidential election, the first state to do so:
https://www.themainewire.com/2020/09/maines-high-court-rules-rcv-must-be-used-in-presidential-election/

I'd love to see other states follow suit (whether with ranked choice, approval, or whatever) but I'm concerned that most states wouldn't do it because they are likely to conclude that it is against the interests of the majority of the voters of the state.

I don't know if I have this right, so I am curious if others see a flaw in my logic.

If there are really only two main candidates in the general election, it shouldn't matter if it is FPTP or not. But let's say there is a third candidate that is popular and had wide appeal, drawing voters from each major party candidate. In other words, a candidate that could actually win under a "good" voting system.

The last I remember this happening was Ross Perot. In June before the election, he was the front runner, with 37% favorability compared to 24% for both Bill Clinton or Bush Sr. So a whole lot of people liked Perot most, but ultimately were discouraged from voting for him because they didn't think he'd be a front runner. Instead they strategically voted for either Bush or Clinton.

Perot got 19% of the votes, but of zero electoral votes since those 19% were spread pretty evenly across the country. In some states he came did come in second place, one of them actually being Maine, where he barely edged out Bush.

Now, imagine a state like Maine having RCV in that election. In that case, Perot might well have won Maine's electoral votes, if people ranked their choices sincerely. He would have a lot of first choice votes, but also have a lot more second choice votes than other candidates (since he was seen as more of a centrist). In fact, Perot got more votes than Bush in Maine under FPTP, so I'd say it is extremely likely he would have won under RCV.

But what that would do is result in Maine give their electoral votes to Perot, while the front runners nationwide were Bush and Clinton. Since the majority of Maine voters preferred Clinton to Bush, having RCV would have very likely caused their electoral votes to be wasted, rather than casting them for Maine's preference between the front runners.

Am I missing something here? And if I am right, is there any better way to implement a better voting system in a single state, when the rest of the country is using the old one?

@toby-pereira said in Terms for Specific Voting Systems:

Does anyone call it choose-one outside of voting geekery?

I don't know if the general public has a well-known name for FPTP/plurality/choose-one ... even "first past the post" seems to be restricted to voting geekery. Honestly, I think most of the general public in the US just calls it "voting". Or maybe "regular voting" or "normal voting."

But I know that "choose one" seems to be instantly understood without explanation (especially in contrast with ranked choice, which most people have heard of). I consider it a descriptive term rather than a name per se, similar to "ranked choice".

If I say "first past the post" they have no idea what I am talking about, and it always feels awkward that I then have to say "it just means first to cross the finish line, as in horse racing, but don't bother trying to think about how that metaphor applies, because I haven't figured that out myself, but that is just what people call it."

It always seems a distracting side conversation that is avoided if you just say "choose-one voting, which is the common system where you just pick a single candidate and the one with the most votes wins." Nobody stops to asks for an explanation--- "choose one" does the trick of getting the point across.

@cfrank Note that one definition of "Act of Congress" is:

(idiomatic, US, chiefly colloquial) Authorization that is extremely difficult to get, especially in a timely fashion.
Does it take an act of Congress just to get a stop sign on a corner?

But yeah, PR is fine as long as it isn't party-list based, which really rubs me the wrong way. I like more general solutions. One thing I like about about single winner is you can learn about it and use it for voting for all kinds of things that aren't political.

Most of the stuff that talks about PR comes off to me as people are grasping at straws to use black-and-white logic to describe things that intrinsically lie on a spectrum. Like, you don't have "representation" unless "your party" has a member in there. To someone who considers themselves an independent, that simply doesn't compute.

@jack-waugh said in Deutschland:

This winter (2002-2003), how many of the people living in Germany shall freeze to death, compared to the number of a typical winter of the recent past?

Germans will be spending on how much on methane shipped from the US this winter? How much would they normally spend on that source?

Do German citizens agree with their government's policies in regard to the above two measures?

Are these questions concrete enough?

Are they disqualified on the grounds of who asks them?

Are they valid regardless of who asks them?

None of this has to do with voting theory and bringing them up as you did clearly drove away a newcomer to the forum. (who unsurprisingly said "if this the level of discourse in a voting theory forum, then I hope the rest is not like you") Do you not understand why it got that response?

I think it's perfectly fine to state a view on your favorite voting methods and the like. It's fine to state a "pro-democracy," anti-authoritarian point of view, and to be against toxic politics. Those are issues that are perfectly appropriate to bring up and state a position on.

What you are doing is something else. It's actually bringing in that toxicity. This isn't a "political rants" forum. I don't know where others stand on it, but if it was up to me we'd have moderators who'd remove that stuff before it drives even more people away.

@cfrank said in We should probably have a status update at some point:

The tabulation method cannot be centrally controlled as long as the votes are public. The only thing I want the council to possibly do is make an effort to verify, organize and present the results. We do definitely want a way to organize and separately analyze different groups of ballots.

I hear ya, I'd just hope that could all happen transparently in the forum threads. Any results I posted would link to something like this, where people can paste in ballots, analyze the code, fork the code, etc, so any forum user could check my work (and if they wantm retabulate them in different methods or filtering voters by origin, etc). https://codepen.io/karmatics/pen/ExKZVjM

I mean, I don't care if council members want to come in and verify them, but I honestly doubt they'd want to do it as anything other than regular forum participants. This stuff just seems to lend itself to forums

I could see this leading to something more official.... built in widgets and visualizers, pinned threads, permanent pages, etc, and in that case it makes some sense for the council to be able to approve things, but let's just see how this goes first.

Hopefully if the council does meet soon, they can concentrate on the issues such as entry point, categories/tags, etc... changes that @Jack-Waugh will need to make and I think he wants others to make the decisions before doing so.

@cfrank Well if I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that the state not be "winner take all."

The problem is that not being winner take all is also against the interests of the majority of the voters. If they were to distribute their electoral votes according to the ranking, it will dilute the state's influence.

Interestingly, Maine is one of two states that doesn't have winner take all currently, but distributes them according to congressional district. (I think I see a pattern.... Maine seems to be rather foolishly non-selfish )

But yeah there is the other perspective you mention that party platforms may consider the interests of the state when putting people on the ballot, and that may balance it out so it isn't really against their interests? I don't know.... it's a hard problem to analyze.

@spelunker For better or worse, we're not all like @Jack-Waugh. There's a variety here. I personally don't agree with bringing in political views (such as on Europeon countries buying methane, etc), since I think that is destructive to discussing voting theory and just generally appearing unbiased while avoiding unnecessary conflict. But Jack will be Jack.

If you are actually interested in voting theory and voting methods, feel free to browse the conversations, this is probably the best starting point (its been a bit slow the last few weeks but it picks up): https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/recent

Just curious, how did you find the forum?

@Marylander said in Sensible Rules for Recall Elections:

However, the simplest solution would be to simply hold another election where the governor and potential replacements are all just treated as candidates, as they would be in an ordinary election.

Agree, although I think it should also require any candidate that replaces the governor to beat the governor by a certain amount. The low threshold for ousting someone who has been elected doesn't make sense. California's system is severely broken, and was a huge expense that was completely unnecessary.

Although, in the end, Newsome and Democrats probably benefitted from it this time around.

@sass Yes that gets to the point quickly. I like.

This seems similar in spirit to the one I was proposing recently. The main difference is that mine used cardinal ballots (intended to be identical to STAR ballots, such as if the STAR people might want to offer a Condorcet version of STAR). But otherwise it was like yours in that it ran pairwise matchups first, and if there was a tie, fell back on the simplest way to resolve it.

So your single sentence could change one word and describe mine:

Among the candidates who tie for winning the most head-to-head matchups, elect the candidate with the best average score.

https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/130/star-like-method-reverse-star

That said, I think yours makes more sense for pitching it to Yang's crew, since they seem to like ranked ballots.

@marylander said in What are the strategic downsides of a state using a non-FPTP method for presidential elections?:

if the Perot electors would matter and they are not legally required to vote for the candidate to whom they were pledged .... they could choose between Clinton and Bush

Yes, that is better than nothing. But it does get weird in that it is letting the electors, rather than the electorate, determine the outcome.

I'm curious if it would be possible to actually enshrine it into law what happens in that scenario. It would be fairly simple if it was only one state, but if there were multiple states doing it, it isn't so straightforward.

What if it were an interstate compact, in the same spirit as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) ? Say a few states joined it, and agreed to have the election using a ranked method. They agree to combine all the votes [1] determine an ordered ranking, then pick the highest ranking candidate that is one of the two front runners nationwide. [2]

I would suggest that doing it this way would very likely be in the interest of the states in almost any way of looking at it, and might well give those states outsized influence. Which would in turn cause other states to want to join.

1. possibly weighted according to their electoral college votes, so a state like Wyoming and California could both join without Wyoming losing its advantage due to its high electoral votes to population ratio
2. This would need to be carefully worded. It's possible that, considering only the "non-compact" states, Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton would be front runners, but that it was close enough that Perot (the compact states' choice) could still win. In that case the electoral votes of the compact states should go to Perot.

@robla I've always considered that voting theory is a "meta-politics" discussion, and discussing plain-old politics in this context (including just declaring yourself to be on one one side or another) is pretty much the same as discussing it at family Thanksgiving dinner. In that, if you aren't 100% sure everyone agrees with your general position, no good can result from bringing it up and a lot of harm can. All it does is divide people who otherwise can be pursuing a common purpose (whether it being hanging out with family and enjoying good food, or helping navigate the world toward better voting systems)

I also don't look at whatever side I tend to vote with as my "team." It's not just that I have a mind of my own (and I really hate being pigeonholed), but if I want to join a "team," it is the anti-team team. I am in firm agreement with George Washington's Farewell Address sentiments, when he expresses his concerns about factionalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington's_Farewell_Address#Political_parties

It's worth reading the address itself, specifically this part, which is pretty freaking prescient:

the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. .... It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washington's_Farewell_Address

Maybe I am misinterpreting what you are asking here, but I just don't think this is the place to wear ones politics on their sleeves, and I have always gone out of my way to do the opposite.

On the other hand I have encouraged people to state their preferences as far as voting methods (you'll see mine in my signature), and I think that's useful. I am not shy about my agenda here, which to help reduce the divisiveness in government and the general public, by eliminating choose-one voting. My strategy is to promote Condorcet-compliant methods, while acknowledging that RCV-Hare is a big step in the right direction, even if it doesn't get us quite as far as Condorcet methods do. I also acknowledge that other methods such as STAR and Approval are much better than choose-one, and while I won't bash them, I am concerned that they don't seem likely to make a lot of inroads.

I think the solution to the "council is too busy" issue is that people on this forum, in a thread rather than a video chat meeting, fully discuss and hopefully come to a sort of consensus on forum organization and site design issues. This should make it a lot easier on council members who are too busy to schedule a meeting.

I started one here: https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/293/forum-change-requests-that-need-council-approval

Tagging @cfrank @Marylander @Andy-Dienes

BTW, @Jack-Waugh we do appreciate all you've done to get this forum/site running and keep it running, and understand if you want to step back a bit. The board is running great, almost no real technical issues and we've got a lot more embedding capabilities than Reddit or election methods email list. We should talk about ways we might lighten the load on you. For instance, I would be glad to do some simple mockups for tweaked/reworked site navigation, and help deploy it if approved.

@Jack-Waugh said in Evaluating Single-winner Systems From 2021-10-18 Until the Next Major Discovery:

And yes, by "case," I meant an example starting with true voter sentiments, then proceeding through strategy.

I stand by the example I provided in the other thread. I think many voters on the left, with imperfect knowledge but behaving reasonably and realistically, would have been much more likely to lower their vote for Gore in 2000 due to Nader entering the race under both Score and STAR. Under Score, that would have significantly hurt Gore, under STAR, it wouldn't have. To the extent that Warren Smith's short article discusses money's influence (which I personally think is a stretch to say that better voting methods address that), I stand by that Score would be worse than STAR, since under Score a candidate like Nader would be more discouraged from running for reasons I noted.

My priorities are a good bit different than yours. Polarization is the main issue that I think is problematic under our current system, and I am genuinely scared that we are on a path toward another civil war in the US due to polarization caused by both the voting system and by social media so quickly emerging as a way people get their information about the world.

@Jack-Waugh said in Evaluating Single-winner Systems From 2021-10-18 Until the Next Major Discovery:

Marketability is important, but I think we have to predict performance first

Ok. As I said in another thread, systems that require or strongly incentivize strategy are very hard to predict due to the "hall of mirrors" effect, with each voter trying to guess what other voters are going to do. STAR and especially Condorcet methods address this. I don't think you can easily "predict performance" with Score. The system seems to be designed for you to vote in a way that is counter to good strategy, leaving it as an exercise in psychology to predict -- far more so than on better systems.

And STAR has more momentum than Score, the latter of which has been around for a long time and to my eyes, is dead in the water.

Traditionally we use a pairwise matrix to show results of a Condorcet-type election. The best I've been able to get this to look is this (using shades of green and red to show wins and losses, and sorting the candidates by pairwise wins):

A problem with this is it isn't all that easy to look at and take in, even if you understand it conceptually. The big problem is that each candidate is listed twice (once along the top and once on the left), so see how two candidates did against each other pairwise you need to follow a lot of things with your eyes and try to connect them which is awkward and relies more on actual numbers than graphics (the shades of colors only goes so far):

Here's an alternative I am exploring, that is intended to communicate more graphically, in the same spirit as a bar or pie chart but still showing all the inter-candidate relationships. (has anyone seen anything like it?) Here it's shown with just 6 candidates, but it should be able to show a good bit more without looking too crowded.

Chris is the Condorcet winner here, since all of the lines coming out of Chris's corner are green. Dave is the Condorcet loser, with all red. Ellen beat everyone except Chris pairwise (she has one red line coming out of her corner). In other words, the more green you see around a candidate, the better they did.

Of course, between two candidates, the number of candidates that prefer the winner is shown in green, the loser in red. (meaning the green part of a connector line will be longer than the red part of the same line) Those that rate them equally are shown in gray. Here is a simple explanation where the actual numbers are shown for a pair of candidates:

While the numbers probably wouldn't be shown by default, that information could still be available by showing a matrix to those who really want to see it that way. Or, something like this that works better in plain text (note that this example shows a 3 way tie for pairwise wins, and shows that -- for instance,-- a beat b by 307 to 258 voters):

I have various other thoughts on how the graphical one can best communicate. For instance we want the winners nearer the top, and the figure can even be rotated a bit to be able to have them better visually sorted. (such as how Ellen is slightly higher than Bob due to the rotation of the figure). You might also notice that the longer a connector line is, the thinner I make it, so they look visually balanced. (so, for instance, the "amount of green" between Chris and Bob is about the same as the amount between Chris and Dave)

Anyway, this is just a graphical mockup right now (not done programmatically) but if I get interest I may put it into a Codepen that can do it on real results, using either SVG or canvas, and allowing you to save an image or what-have-you.

I am planning on holding a vote for favorite voting method, as I've been talking about doing forever.

I've narrowed them down to 8 choices. While we don't have a voting widget yet, this will just be done in a regular thread, where you can vote by just posting your vote. It's ok if you edit your vote after the fact (please just note that you've done it in your post).

We're assuming these are for single winner, political elections.

I don't want too many choices, especially when the differences are extremely subtle. Some of them are inclusive of several different varieties, you can assume you are voting the "best" variety. I am open to adding new options, if I've missed something major. We can always have votes for subcategories at some point in the future.

I will tabulate it and make my tabulations available in a Codepen, so anyone can fork it and add whatever they want and do their own tabulation. I will tabulate it in various methods. The ballot approach (cardinal ballots, 0-10, floating point ok) is intended to be high enough resolution that it can be tabulated under any method.

I hope to do this with some regularity. Anyone else can do this if they want, but I'd appreciate it if you let the first one play out before you do your own poll.

I'm hoping to post this both here as well as on reddit's EndFPTP subreddit, in the near future.

This thread is not the vote itself, this is simply a pre-vote discussion. Please feel free to weigh in.

These are the options I'm thinking of (edit: I lengthened the names, and replaced STRL with Cardinal-alt):

choose-one
Choose-one
plain old "first past the post," used in most single winner elections.

ranked-irv
Ranked choice IRV
Otherwise known as Hare. This is the method that is used in lots of US cities, Alaska and Maine.
This does not include the Bottom-two runoff variation (which is under ranked choice Condorcet).
assume they are ranked using up to ten ranks, no equal ranks other than for "unranked" which get the lowest rank

ranked-condorcet
Ranked-choice Condorcet
Otherwise known as ordinal ballot Condorcet.
this includes Bottom Two Runoff, Ranked Robin (Copeland//Borda), and "straight on Condorcet" (Condocet/plurality), MinMax, Ranked Pairs, Schulze
assume they are ranked using up to ten ranks, no equal ranks other than for "unranked" which get the lowest rank

cardinal-condorcet
Cardinal ballot Condorcet
Otherwise known as score ballot condorcet.
this includes Copeland//Score (which means elect candidate with most pairwise wins, if a tie, the one with the highest score wins), Smith//Score, and Smith//Normalized Score
assume 6 choices, 0-5
unrated is equal to ranking as a zero

star
STAR
assume 6 choices, 0-5
unrated is equal to ranking as a zero

approval
Approval voting

score
Score voting (a.k.a. "range")
assume 6 choices, 0-5
unrated is equal to ranking as a zero

cardinal-alt
Cardinal ballot: alternative
Includes "stellar" (STLR), which uses a "levelled runoff", and various other reweighted cardinal ballot methods that are not Condorcet compliant
assume 6 choices, 0-5
unrated is equal to ranking as a zero

cardinal-median
Cardinal ballot median
This uses a score ballot, and elects the candidate with highest (interpolated) median. Majority Judgement (while differing on some details) falls under this.
assume 6 choices, 0-5
unrated is equal to ranking as a zero

You'll be able to vote by simply copy/pasting the below, and filling in the values between the brackets. (this will happen in a different thread) Each rating should be between 0 and 10, add as many decimal places as you want. You can give any "approval threshold" you want, the default is 5. I recommend giving each option a rating. Ratings below your approval threshold will not be approved under approval tabulation.

choose-one[] ranked-irv [] ranked-condorcet [] ranked-borda [] cardinal-condorcet [] cardinal-median [] cardinal-alt [] star[] approval[] score[]
approval threshold: 5

Random notes:

All condorcet methods are lumped together, with the exception of whether they use cardinal or ordinal ("ranked") ballots. The assumption is that Condorcet methods are highly unlikely to differ in result based on cycle resolution method.

Ranked-robin, according to its Electowiki page, has a specific means of presenting results. For the purposes here, we'll ignore that, since I don't consider that part of the method per se. Majority Judgement has some details (such as using words rather than numbers on the ballot) that also are arguably not part of the method per se, and can be ignored for simplicity.

For median methods, since median is very likely to have a tie, assume an interpolated median or other similar means to avoid ties. http://www.weekscomputing.com/webhelp/hs520.htm

I will use various visualizations on the results. Expect the new "pairwise mesh" for condorcet methods:

and this version of the pairwise matrix:

as well as stuff like this:

....and so on. The amount of effort I'll go to is dependent on how many people vote.

Let me start with a couple of premises/assertions.

1. Infighting within the voting reform community stands in the way of wider adoption of alternative voting.

2. If FairVote accepted a Condorcet-compliant version of Ranked Choice as an option, they would make a lot faster progress in replacing “Choose-one” voting, because they would eliminate a large amount of resistance from the voting reform community, without bothering RCV advocates in the least.

Most people agree that if a candidate would beat every other candidate if they ran against them one-on-one, that candidate should be elected. Some people think this should outweigh everything else, while some don’t.

FairVote has a very odd, and seemingly contradictory, position on all of this. My own reaction to their position is: “is that SERIOUSLY the hill you want to die on?” It really makes no sense at all that they are so uncompromising on this issue that would make a trivially tiny difference in actual outcomes of elections (and therefore campaign strategies), but would make a huge difference in reducing the number of people out there arguing against IRV rather than more productively directing their energy against Choose-one.

First, let’s clarify a couple things. When I say “IRV”, I mean the current ranked-ballot system that FairVote advocates, which is also known as Hare. You can call it RCV-Hare. In many contexts, “Ranked Choice” or “RCV” simply refer to his method, but here we have to be careful because Ranked Choice can apply to various Condorcet methods with ranked ballots.

Another method, "Bottom Two runoff" is very similar to Hare in almost all ways. Being a ranked ballot system, it could easily be referred to as Ranked Choice (or even IRV, for that matter.... but here let's assume IRV specifically refers to the Hare version). Bottom Two just has a minor tweak making it Condorcet compliant. FairVote could offer it as an option, and I’d predict it would meet with near zero resistance from outside their organization.

FairVote, though, has refused to do this, and they have been entirely contradictory regarding their reasons. They say, over and over on their site, that IRV is good because it almost always elects the Condorcet candidate (339 out of 340 elections). They say, over and over on their site, that IRV is good because it reduces polarization.

But then, when asked why they aren’t ok with Bottom two runoff, they say “IRV rewards those w/ strong 1st choice support. Bottom-2 rewards those who avoid polarizing stances. We like IRV since it encourages real stances, not just campaigning to avoid the bottom”

Let’s break this down, and show just how contradictory they are.

“IRV rewards those w/ strong 1st choice support.”

Isn’t that precisely what Choose-one, the main system they are against, does? So they are basically saying, “Rewarding first choice is the cause of all problems, and our system fixes those problems. But it still rewards first choice, and that’s good.” What?

“Bottom-2 rewards those who avoid polarizing stances.”

Isn’t that just another way of saying that Bottom-two runoff doesn’t encourage polarization? And yet their site is chock full of arguments that polarization is a bad thing, and IRV reduces polarization. So, again.... what?

“We like IRV since it encourages real stances”

I’m not really sure what qualifies as a “real stance”. Do they mean an extreme stance? A polarized stance? A one-sided stance that appeals to some faction while angering the others? One that fails to find the nuance, fails to find a middle ground?

They really need to clarify this. I have a hard time seeing how they can clarify the meaning of "real stance," without just saying that polarization is a positive (despite all the places they say that polarization is a negative).

To me this sounds like the exact opposite of what they say is positive in just about every other page of their web site.

“not just campaigning to avoid the bottom”

“Just” campaigning to avoid the bottom? “Just”? Are they really suggesting that by changing the method to bottom-2, which would have only changed the outcome in 1 out of 440 elections, that it will change campaign strategy that much, so that candidates will now have a sole priority that is completely different from what it would be with the other method? That's pretty extreme..

The logic behind what they are saying is utterly ridiculous. FairVote is well aware that the one RCV election that didn’t elect the Condorcet winner (Burlington 2009) is the one that has produced by far the most criticism for RCV. While I am fully of the opinion that that election was a very close race, and it wasn’t THAT big an error in the grand scheme of things…. I can’t see any reasonable argument that it picked the “right” winner.

The most charitable interpretation of what the are saying is, we want to reduce the polarization and "favor first choice only" attributes of Choose-one, but EVER SO SLIGHTLY less than we could. Because .... uhhh.... just because.

Finally, the overall irony: FairVote says that RCV encourages compromise, nuance, and give-and-take. Accepting Bottom-Two runoff as a reasonable option would be a perfect way to practice what they preach.

Here are some articles where FairVote argues FOR Condorcet and/or AGAINST polarization:

https://www.fairvote.org/want_to_fix_our_polarized_politics_fix_how_we_vote

https://www.fairvote.org/polarization_key_facts

https://www.fairvote.org/report_finds_lack_of_competition_increased_polarization_in_congressional_elections

https://www.fairvote.org/polarization_under_rcv_in_cambridge

https://www.fairvote.org/every_rcv_election_in_the_bay_area_so_far_has_produced_condorcet_winners

Holy crap Begich is the Condorcet winner.

This is bad for FairVote....

https://www.karmatics.com/voting/alaskaspecial.txt

https://codepen.io/karmatics/pen/ExKZVjM

Here is my code for converting the bulky object from the 373 megabyte JSON into slightly more compact representation (861 bytes.... 0.00001% of the size!)

Hope you like for loops.... sorry not sorry!:

// console.log (ballotsAsString(JSON.parse(data), 69, {
// '215': 'a', // begich
// '217' : 'b', // palin
// '218' : 'c', // peltolta
// '214' : 'd' // write in
//});
                
function ballotsAsString(data, electionId, nameMap) {
  // array of ballots is called "Sessions"
  var ballots = data.Sessions;
  
  var counts = {}; // count of each ballot "signature"
  for(var i=0; i<ballots.length; i++) {
    var ballot = ballots[i];
    // descend through "Original", and "Cards"
    var original = ballot.Original;
    if(original) {
      var cards = original.Cards;
      if(cards) {
      	for(var j=0; j<cards.length; j++) {
           var card = cards[j];
           if(card) {
             for(var k=0; k<card.Contests.length; k++) {
               var contest = card.Contests[k];
               if(contest.Id == electionId) {
                 var stringArray = [], hash = {}, isOvervote = false;
                 var marks = contest.Marks;
               	 for(var m=0; m<marks.length; m++) {
                   var mark = marks[m];
                   var candidateIdStr = nameMap[mark.CandidateId];
                                      
                   // if it exists in hash, this is an overvote
                   if(hash[candidateIdStr]) {
                     isOvervote = true;
                     break;
                   } else {
                     hash[candidateIdStr] = true;
                     stringArray.push(candidateIdStr);
                   	 //stringArray.push(candidateIdStr + '[' + (10-m) + ']');
                   }
                 }
                 if(!isOvervote) { // reject ballot if overvote
                   //var s = stringArray.join(' ');
                   var s = stringArray.join('>');
                   if(counts[s]) {
                    counts[s]++; // already have ballots like it
                   } else {
                    counts[s] = 1; // first one like it
                   }
                 }
               }
             }
           }
        }
      }
    }
  }
  // convert to array so we can sort it by count
  var sortArray = [];
  for(var x in counts) {
    sortArray.push({r: x, n: counts[x]});
  }
  sortArray.sort((a, b)=>{return b.n-a.n});
  // build final array of strings
  var outStringArray = [];
  for(var y=0; y<sortArray.length; y++) {
    var item = sortArray[y];
    outStringArray.push(item.n + ': ' + item.r);
  }
  // combine into single string
  return outStringArray.join('\n');
}

which distills it down to....

a: Begich
b: Palin
c: Peltolta
d: Write-in
------------
21657: c>a
20522: b>a
19494: c
19134: b
17607: a>b
16174: c>a>b
9960: b>a>c
9957: a
7446: a>c>b
6576: a>b>c
5557: a>c
3162: c>d
2773: 
2695: b>c>a
2567: c>b>a
2402: c>d>a>b
2146: c>d>a
1987: c>a>d
1914: c>a>d>b
1193: b>a>d
1143: a>b>d
1002: c>b
836: b>a>d>c
743: a>c>d>b
559: b>c
522: a>c>d
512: a>b>d>c
502: d
497: c>d>b>a
477: b>d
418: a>d
389: d>c>a>b
343: a>d>c>b
315: b>d>a
306: c>a>b>d
298: b>d>a>c
287: a>d>b
278: b>a>c>d
257: c>d>b
256: d>a>c>b
240: d>c>a
222: d>c
220: d>a>b
219: d>a
204: a>d>b>c
184: a>b>c>d
179: d>a>b>c
156: a>d>c
147: d>a>c
138: a>c>b>d
131: d>b>a>c
125: b>d>c>a
116: d>b>a
103: d>b
98: d>c>b>a
88: b>c>a>d
82: c>b>a>d
78: c>b>d
70: c>b>d>a
67: b>c>d>a
47: d>b>c>a
33: b>c>d
31: b>d>c
23: d>b>c
20: d>c>b

I see this in the document, I wanted to clarify a couple things about my thoughts on this since it is mostly my initiative (and something I've been talking about doing since the forum was first proposed). (TLDR: most or all of these things don't need to be dealt with at the council meeting, as it should be an open process, where anyone can post a vote and anyone can run tabulations or create visualizations or analysis and post them)

Forum-wide election: most preferred single-winner voting system
Which systems should be nominated as candidates?
Which systems should be used to conduct the election?
Deliverable question: Is there a Condorcet winner?

One, I hoped this vote is not any sort of official thing, especially not the first one. There aren't plans to do anything with the results, other than display them. It will be done as a regular discussion thread where people just post their ballots within a message.... no separate database entries or anything like that. It's all public and open.

People should probably suggest candidates to be nominated in this thread: https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/237/proposed-options-for-voting-on-voting-methods/23 , rather than decide at council meeting. I proposed some and took some suggestions, but nothing is written in stone. Propose away. If anyone is particularly passionate about a method, even if it might seem to be fit under a more general category, I have no problem with putting it in there.

I was going to wait a while to post it unless anyone is in a hurry. I wanted to get at least a bit of work done in Codepens, but I do have an actual job as well. In the meantime, I encourage anyone to post your preliminary ballot in your signature, using my suggested voting methods and abbreviations if they work for you, or make up your own if you want. (no one is tabulating them so it doesn't matter) I've been enjoying watching as people adjust their signatures following discussions.

As for which methods are used to tabulate the results.... well, any that anyone wants to do. I planned to do some, using Codepens that are available to all (you can fork them if you want), but you can tabulate them using whatever you want and post your results and any visualizations or whatnot. I really don't want the tabulation method and process to be centrally controlled, especially not for the first time doing it. And if the results differ in different systems, no big deal. Maybe we can say "STAR won in Score, and Score won in STAR. Neat."

I had suggested we do it with cardinal ballots (see my signature), 0-10, with decimal places allowed so it is effectively infinite resolution. You can also put an approval threshold if you want, since that is the one method that cardinal ballots alone don't really handle.

Also, I wanted to allow people in other forums (EndFPTP and election methods mailing list) join in as well, just by posting their vote to a thread in their own forum (which I or someone else can start). If anyone wants to tabulate them independently (i.e. just votingtheory, just reddit, etc), they can, or they can all be done together. I hope this can bring some people from those forums into ours, but they don't have to join to vote.

As big on Condorcet as I am, the question of whether there will be a Condorcet winner is interesting, but not something to worry about ahead of time. We'll see the answer to that when we tabulate the ballots.

The idea of precinct summability is that full ballot data is a lot of information, but if you can distill it down to a small list of numbers, precincts can submit their data much more easily, even throughout the day. (right?)

Below is full ballot data for the notorious Burlington 2009 election. The only way it has been "summed" is by condensing identical ballots into a single line, preceded with a number to show how many identical ballots there are.

4.23k of data. (you can zip it down to 1.27k) No that's not 4.23 megs. 4.23 kilobytes. You can fit 340 times this much data on an old-school 1.44 meg floppy disk.

Why are we so worried about this again?

a - Bob Kiss
b - Andy Montroll
c - James Simpson
d - Dan Smith
e - Kurt Wright
f - Write-in

840:e
355:a,b
326:a
271:e,d
256:e,b
234:a,b,d
200:b,a
178:b
147:e,b,d
145:b,a,d
139:b,d
125:a,d
124:d
123:a,b,d,e,c
122:e,d,b
121:a,d,b
120:a,b,d,c,e
104:e,b,d,c,a
103:a,b,c,d,e
102:e,b,d,a,c
101:e,d,b,a,c
94:b,e
93:b,d,a
93:d,e
90:e,d,b,c,a
90:d,b
88:d,a,b
83:d,b,a
80:a,d,b,c,e
80:e,a
76:e,d,c,b,a
72:b,a,d,e,c
71:a,b,e,d,c
69:b,d,a,e,c
69:e,b,a,d,c
66:a,e
62:b,d,e
61:b,a,d,c,e
60:a,b,d,e
60:b,e,d,a,c
58:d,a,b,c,e
57:b,e,d
56:b,e,a,d,c
55:a,d,b,e,c
54:e,b,d,a
53:b,d,a,c,e
52:a,b,c
52:e,d,a,b,c
52:d,e,b,a,c
52:b,d,e,a,c
51:d,a
50:b,a,e,d,c
50:e,a,b,d,c
50:d,e,b
48:a,b,e
46:b,a,e
46:e,b,a
45:e,d,b,a
45:e,a,d,b,c
43:d,b,a,e,c
42:a,b,d,c
41:a,b,c,d
41:b,d,a,e
39:a,e,b,d,c
39:b,e,d,c,a
38:b,a,d,e
38:d,b,a,c,e
37:b,e,d,a
37:d,b,e
34:b,e,a
32:d,a,b,e,c
32:b,d,e,a
31:a,e,b
31:d,b,e,a,c
30:e,d,a
29:a,d,b,e
28:d,e,b,c,a
27:d,a,b,e
27:b,d,c,a,e
27:b,a,c,d,e
27:d,e,a,b,c
27:d,b,e,a
26:a,d,e,b,c
26:d,b,a,e
25:e,c
24:a,b,e,d
24:a,c,b,d,e
24:b,a,e,d
24:e,a,b
23:a,d,c,b,e
23:b,d,e,c,a
22:b,a,d,c
21:a,d,b,c
21:a,e,d,b,c
21:e,a,b,c,d
21:e,a,d
20:b,e,a,d
19:a,c
19:e,b,c,d,a
19:e,d,a,b
18:d,b,c,a,e
17:e,d,a,c,b
17:d,e,b,a
16:a,c,b
16:d,a,e,b,c
16:e,d,c
16:d,e,a
15:a,e,d,b
15:a,d,c
15:a,d,e,b
15:e,a,b,d
15:e,d,c,a,b
15:e,b,a,d
15:d,b,c,e,a
14:a,b,e,c,d
14:d,a,c,b,e
13:a,d,e
13:a,b,c,e,d
13:d,a,b,c
13:b,d,a,c
13:d,b,e,c,a
12:a,e,b,c,d
12:a,e,d
12:a,e,b,d
12:a,c,d,b,e
12:b,a,c
12:e,a,d,c,b
12:d,e,c,b,a
12:d,e,a,b
12:b,e,c,d,a
11:d,a,e
11:b,a,e,c,d
11:b,a,c,d
11:e,f
11:e,c,d,b,a
11:b,d,c,e,a
10:d,a,e,c,b
10:e,d,b,c
10:e,c,d,a,b
10:f
9:a,d,c,b
9:a,b,d,c,f
9:a,d,b,c,f
9:b,c,a,d,e
9:d,c,b,a,e
9:e,b,a,c,d
9:b,c,d
8:a,c,d
8:a,c,b,d
8:d,a,e,b
8:b,c,d,a,e
8:d,b,a,c
8:e,c,d
8:b,c,d,e,a
8:b,d,c
7:a,c,b,e,d
7:d,a,c
7:b,c,a
7:e,b,d,c
7:e,b,c,a,d
6:a,d,c,e,b
6:a,e,c,d,b
6:a,e,d,c,b
6:a,d,c,b,f
6:a,c,d,b
6:b,a,d,c,f
6:d,c
5:a,e,c,b,d
5:a,d,e,c,b
5:d,c,a,b,e
5:d,a,c,b
5:d,a,b,f,c
5:e,a,d,b
5:e,d,c,b
5:e,c,b,d,a
5:d,e,a,c,b
5:b,e,d,c
5:b,f
5:d,b,c
5:d,c,b
4:a,f,b,d,c
4:a,e,b,c
4:a,d,b,f,c
4:a,f
4:d,c,a,b
4:c,d,a,b,e
4:b,a,c,e,d
4:b,a,e,c
4:e,b,f
4:e,d,f
4:e,c,b,a,d
4:e,c,b,a
4:d,e,c
4:b,d,e,f
4:b,d,e,c
4:b,c
3:a,c,d,e,b
3:a,b,c,d,f
3:a,d,f,b,c
3:a,c,e,b,d
3:f,a
3:c,a
3:b,a,f
3:b,a,d,e,f
3:d,c,b,a,f
3:d,b,a,f,c
3:e,c,f
3:e,b,c
3:d,e,c,b
3:d,e,b,c
3:f,e
3:c,e
3:b,e,a,c,d
3:b,e,c
3:c
3:d,b,f
3:f,b
2:a,c,d,e
2:a,d,f
2:a,b,e,f
2:a,b,f
2:a,e,d,c
2:a,c,b,f,d
2:a,c,e
2:d,a,f,b,c
2:d,c,a
2:d,c,a,e,b
2:d,a,b,f,e
2:d,a,c,b,f
2:c,a,b,e,d
2:c,a,b
2:b,c,a,d
2:b,d,c,a
2:b,f,a,d,c
2:b,a,d,f,c
2:b,d,a,c,f
2:b,c,a,e
2:d,b,c,a
2:d,b,a,f,e
2:d,b,a,e,f
2:f,b,d,c,a
2:f,b,c,d,a
2:f,b,d,a,c
2:e,a,d,c
2:e,a,c,d,b
2:e,c,a,b,d
2:e,a,c
2:e,b,c,a
2:e,d,b,c,f
2:e,f,b,d,a
2:e,f,b,a
2:d,c,e
2:d,e,c,a,b
2:d,c,e,b,a
2:d,e,f
2:b,c,e
2:b,c,e,a,d
2:b,c,e,d,a
2:b,d,e,f,a
2:b,d,e,c,f
2:b,c,d,e
2:f,b,d
a,f,b
a,b,d,f
a,b,d,e,f
a,b,c,e
a,d,b,f,e
a,c,f
a,d,b,f
a,c,f,b,e
a,c,b,e,f
a,f,e,c,d
a,f,e,d,c
a,d,c,f,b
a,f,e
a,c,d,f
a,f,b,d
a,e,d,b,f
a,e,c,b
a,e,c,b,f
a,b,f,e,c
a,f,d,b,c
a,c,b,d,f
a,c,e,d,b
a,c,d,f,e
a,d,e,c
a,b,c,f,e
d,a,b,c,f
d,a,e,c,f
d,a,b,e,f
d,a,e,c
d,c,a,e
d,a,c,e
f,a,d,c,b
f,a,e,b
f,a,b
f,d,a,e,b
c,a,b,d
c,a,d,b
c,a,d,b,f
c,a,b,d,e
c,a,b,e,f
c,a,e,b,d
c,a,d,e
c,d,a
b,a,c,d,f
b,c,d,a,f
b,a,f,e,c
b,c,d,a
b,c,f,d,a
b,a,d,f,e
b,a,f,e
b,a,c,e
b,f,d,a,c
b,a,c,f,d
d,b,c,a,f
d,b,a,c,f
d,c,b,f,a
d,c,f,b,a
d,c,b,a
f,b,a,d,c
f,b,a,e
c,d,b,a,e
e,c,b
e,f,c
e,c,b,d
e,d,a,b,f
e,c,d,b,f
e,d,f,c
e,f,a
e,b,a,d,f
e,f,b,d,c
e,b,c,d
e,d,b,f,a
e,d,f,b
e,c,a,d,b
e,c,a
e,d,a=b
e,f,d,b,c
e,b,f,d,a
e,a,c,b
e,b,d,a,f
e,a,c,b,d
e,d,f,b,c
e,f,b
e,d,c,b,f
e,d,b,f,c
e,b,a,c
e,c,d,f,b
d,c,e,a,b
d,e,a,b,f
f,e,d,c,b
f,e,c,b,a
c,d,e
c,d,e,b,a
c,e,a,d,b
b,e,f,c,a
b,d,c,e,f
b,c,e,a
b,d,c,e
b,e,f
b,c,e,f,a
b,e,d,f
b,e,c,a,d
b,d,c=e,a
d,c,b,e,a
d,b,e,f,c
d,b,e,c
d,c,b,e
c,b,e,d,a
c,b,e,a,f
c,b,d,e,a
e=f,d,b,c,a
e=f,b,a,d
a=f,e,b,d,c
e=f,b
d,c,f
d,f
f,d
c,f
b,f,c
b,f,c,d
c,d,b
c,b,d