Topics created by rob

@michaelossipoff Great. But I think readers are likely not to notice the activity in this thread, which started as a set of proposals about forum governance by a participant now banned. To try to get more attention, let's move the discussion of voting on voting systems to https://www.votingtheory.org/forum/topic/466/polling-ourselves . I posted my updated nominations there, for one of the categories. Thanks for reviving the topic of voting on voting systems.

here's another widget. Somethin aint right with it:

function randomizeCodeColors() { // Find all code elements that are children of a pre element const codeElements = document.querySelectorAll("pre code"); // Loop through each code element codeElements.forEach(code => { // Find all span elements within the code element const spanElements = code.querySelectorAll("span"); // Loop through each span element and set a random text color spanElements.forEach(span => { span.style.color = getRandomColor(); }); }); } function getRandomColor() { // Generate a random hexadecimal color code return "#" + Math.floor(Math.random()*16777215).toString(16); }

https://sharegpt.com/c/n63FotM

@culi The forum is not dead. It's not the most active forum, but it's definitely not dead.

@toby-pereira I totally agree with you here. And a point to supplement or maybe just reiterate your stance on “benevolent dictators,” there’s a definite survivorship bias there. The business dictators who fail don’t show up in the news, while the ones who succeed are often lauded as geniuses without due regard for the role of pure luck or factors totally unrelated to their supposed acumen. The same goes for stock market investors—many who come out on top end up believing they have a special intuition to “outsmart” the market, but when compared with randomly generated portfolios, their inclinations usually fare no better, and often do worse (due to their relative lack of diversity, they are not as robust against market volatility).

So basically, when uncertainty is involved, failure doesn’t always indicate a poor strategy, not any more than success indicates a good one. This reduces my confidence that business dictatorships actually tend to promote the success of a company.

@cfrank Here's what Parker Friedland says at https://www.reddit.com/r/EndFPTP/comments/x9oupk/comment/ins933t/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

This was a lot more than just a Condorcet failure.

Condorcet Failure:
Begich beats Peltola by 52.5% and Palin by 61.4%.

Favorite Betrayal Failure:
If 2913 Palin voters that preferred Begich to Peltola betrayed Palin by strategically ranking Begich 1st he would have won instead of Peltola.

Monotonicity Failure:
If Peltola were able to gain the support of 5825 Palin voters, she would have lost to Begich.

Participation Failure:
If 5825 Palin voters that preferred Begich to Peltola had forgotten to vote, Begich would have won.

Consistency Failure:
If 5828 Palin>Begich voters, 2915 Begich voters, and 2914 Peltola>Begich voters were removed from the election, Begich would have won and if you counted just those removed votes, Begich also would have won. I wonder if it's possible to get a similar result by subdividing actual counties or voting precincts.

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

@rob definitely man. It’s pretty ridiculous, I hope it can get fixed soon. It seems to be growing in public awareness, which is definitely a good thing.

@rob I think it would also be interesting to get votes on what forum users consider the most important aspects of a voting system.

It would also probably be useful to get some kind of informal map of different voting systems plotted on a spectrum of relative characteristics. I think a triangular spectrum of stable vs. simple vs. consensual could be a good place to start.

@rob Thanks Rob, the plain English is just what I needed. I will think about it

@rob said in project to make ballot data available:

those who do know how to code can tailor them so non-coders can just paste ballots in

OK. So that's basically collaboration where coders empower non-coders to participate in the research.

Spreadsheets don't have the ability to build on the work of others

Agreed. The don't compose at all. Every spreadsheet is an idiosyncratic work.

@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).

A pair of concepts that might have use when we think about cast ballots is "ballot token" and "ballot type". A ballot token then would be an individual ballot and a ballot type would be the equivalence class of all the ballots that say the same thing.

@jack-waugh Left is right, right is wrong.

I suspect that you understand what I mean by "reasonable." I don't consider the opinion of an absolutist to qualify as reasonable. (see any definition of "reasonable"... absolutist is pretty much the polar opposite)

But ok, I'll elaborate. First, a very basic example:

If I like the office temperature to be 65 degrees, and my co-worker likes it 75 degrees, 70 degrees is a "reasonable middle ground." Most likely, I'm going to like 70 significantly more than 75. Likewise, my co-worker will probably like 70 significantly more than 65. Reasonable people, who understand the concept of give and take, would see that as a compromise.

Unreasonable people would refuse to budge, possibly saying "even 1 degree above my preferred temperature is just as bad as 10 degrees above. So...my way or the highway."

I would expect almost everyone who is "pro-life" would consider banning abortions after viability (~24 weeks) to be a significant improvement over allowing abortions right up until birth. Likewise someone on the "pro-choice" side (who might argue that a woman's bodily autonomy outweighs every other consideration), would consider that banning abortions after viability to be an improvement over disallowing all abortions all the way back to conception. So, viability as the dividing line is an example of what I mean by "reasonable middle ground."

Those of us furthest from viewing such things in black and white, might even see a completely smooth spectrum between "perfectly ok to kill" and "horrible crime to kill" rather than just dwelling on semantics, such as what is considered "life" or "a human being."
spectrumfetus.png

Same goes for things like gun control. Outlawing things like AR-15s (and but allowing other guns) is a middle ground.

@rb-j Right. I think #1 and #3 can sort of be turned around and hopefully reframed as "Condorcet RCV is nothing more than a minor tweak, to get that extra 0.2%". It's not conceding, any more than Honda is conceding that the 2022 Civic is bad by making a few changes for the 2023 model.

As far as I'm concerned, they still can not only call bottom two runoff "RCV", they can call it "IRV." Just treat it as the same method, with a minor performance tweak.

The vast majority of those who would weigh in on Ranked Choice give exactly zero fucks as to the difference between Hare and Bottom Two. They both use identical ranked ballots, they both go through an elimination process to eliminate "irrelevant" candidates that could be spoilers, they both are center leaning, and they both remove most of the incentive to vote or nominate strategically compared to choose-one.

As for 4, sure, they can keep arguing that if they want, but I wonder why they bother since it is so few elections it makes a difference. And I'm not sure the concept of "base" is seen as a positive to many these days. It seems to be used more of a pejorative than anything on the news, e.g. "just playing to the base," etc. In other words, it represents polarized politics. It seems like most people who would be interested in ranked choice voting would see it as a negative, anyway.

For #2, a good counterargument is that if you make it Condorcet compliant, it means results can be delivered immediately due to it being precinct summable (via a pairwise matrix). With bottom two runoff, the only case where it is not precinct summable is when there is no Condorcet winner and then it has to actually go through the runoff process. That is far more rare than the case in Hare-IRV where no one has a majority of first choice. For most "regular people," that is what makes it seem complex, having to wait days while they do the runoff process.

@cfrank I'll make sure to include Bucklin.

@cfrank said:

The book "Economics and Computation" (edited by J. Rothe) suggest that it "may also be appropriate to not implement a specific tie-breaking rule, but to randomly choose one from several 'reasonable' tie-breaking rules

Ewwww. 🙂 Not a fan of random anything.

My current thinking on Condorcet is that, preferable to finding the Condorcet winner directly and then doing something else if there is none, is to have a singular mechanism that determines the winner (always, unless there is a "true tie" which becomes less and less likely with large numbers of voters), that just happens to be Condorcet compliant. BTR-IRV is a good example. My intuition is that it is less likely to provide an incentive to strategically try to create a cycle, if a cycle isn't really a major "thing".

Anyway, that's probably just semantics (as to whether it is a tie breaker) and straying a bit from voting on voting methods.