Posts made by Toby Pereira

@clay A couple of points on the actual idea (I may address some of the points from the ensuing discussion between you two later):

When I said about keeping people in a bubble, you quickly corrected me. I just had another look, and I think it was this bit that made me think of a bubble:

A controlled environment that protects jurors from external influence and manipulation

I presume then that this doesn't refer to their environment the whole time, but just when they're involved in the process - e.g. interrogating the candidates.

In any case, I think that while being able to directly interrogate candidates, rather than just getting stuff from a potentially biased media, is a good thing, I do also think it would be bad to stop them getting information from other sources, even if some or all of those sources may be biased. Some candidates will simply be better at presenting themselves, and being a slick speaker does not necessarily translate into being a good representative.

The manifesto does actually talk about expert testimony, but I can't see this being given more detail in terms of how that would work.

On sampling - random sampling obviously makes the most sense on the surface, but given the discussion that has taken place, I might address that in a separate post.

As for the idea as a whole, it's clear that informed representative sample of voters should make a better decision than the population as a whole.

However, you might consider this to be to be a slightly "philosophical" or "meta" point, but does educating and making competent the sample change its nature and stop it from being representative? The manifesto made it clear that selecting people based on competence would create a biased sample. But what are competent people other than people who were once incompetent and educated out of it?

Finally for this post, while this might give a better result within the landscape of a given election, it changes the landscape itself, which could lead to unintended consequences. The vast majority of people would never vote in an election, and they might view that negatively, with further consequences from that. Perhaps you would argue that it doesn't matter if they disengage from politics because we only need to jury to be engaged, but I think there's something a bit degenerate about a wider public that takes no interest in what their elected representatives are doing.

I have previously discussed advantages of lottery-based methods (variations on random ballot, essentially), but at least in these methods everyone gets to vote, even if most of those votes don't do anything. (This is specifically on the subject of disengagement.)

There are some interesting discussion points here, and I might post again later, but it probably won't be a for a few days because I'll need some time to get through the volume of stuff!

But before that, it has been brought to my attention (and I somehow ended up as a moderator on here) @clay that the tone in some of your posts may have overstepped the mark. I understand that this is just how you post, having posted on the same forums as you over the years, but it would be just as easy to make the same points without this abruptness, which can be perceived as hostility, regardless of how wrong-headed you think the other poster's arguments are.

@cfrank said in election by jury (www.electionbyjury.com/manifesto):

@clay I read through most of your manifesto

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I did also read through most of it, even if I did miss one or two things!

@clay said in Merits and Demerits of Compulsory Voting:

@toby-pereira no if you want to understand it it's best for you to read the manifesto.

In any case, if they're not in a bubble, they will still be exposed to biased media.

so are normal voters.

you have not stated a better system.

On reading the manifesto, I would still need to think this is something I might agree with to read it all, because I'm not going to read everyone's manifesto on everything. While I got the bubble bit wrong, I think I largely have a basic understanding of it in any case, especially after you corrected me.

Yes, normal voters are exposed to biased media too, but this suggests that the difference between jurors and normal voters might not be so great.

It has to be better than the default current system where everyone gets to vote. It's not about suggesting another alternative. There may be some ways in which the jury system would produce better results, and I can see that, but for this to get traction, it would have to be considerably better and seen to be so, in order to offset the view that this would eliminate most people's democratic rights.

In your piece about the only voting reform worth funding that was posted on this forum the other day, you pointed out that it's not about the best method. "It’s a function of which method gets adopted, times how much better off people are when it does."

So I think approval voting, but allowing everyone to vote seems a better option overall.

@clay I kind of read through it, but might have missed some. But to be honest, it is best to summarise stuff that's that long if you want it discussed on a forum.

In any case, if they're not in a bubble, they will still be exposed to biased media. And the candidates alone in a combative setting likely won't provide the best-rounded view of the candidates. I also don't think the way court systems operate is necessarily the best way to find the objective truth.

I'm not convinced this is the best system.

@clay

The jury model recognizes that competence isn't merely an inherent quality but can be dramatically enhanced through proper process and information environment. The election by jury approach transforms ordinary citizens into competent decision-makers by providing:

Protected time for learning and consideration, free from work and daily responsibilities

Access to comprehensive, balanced information about candidates and issues from multiple perspectives

Expert testimony and direct questioning of candidates

Structured deliberation with diverse peers that enhances critical thinking

A controlled environment that protects jurors from external influence and manipulation

This might sound good in theory, but in practice, how long are you going to keep these jurors in a bubble for, free from biased media etc.?

And who decides what counts as balanced information about the candidates?

@clay Some interesting stuff there. It's been said that score suffers worse with one-sided strategy than other methods. That is - if the supporters of one candidate strategise more than the supporters of another, then the result will be more skewed (favour the strategisers) under score than some other methods. Would you agree with that, and do you see it as a problem?

I think the argument is that it gives a more representative parliament and helps fight against voter apathy.

But I'm not sure I buy this. If people are only voting because they have to, the extra votes will come more from people who don't feel they have anything invested in any of the candidates winning, so the extra votes are more likely to be "noise".

Also, voter apathy is a thing. It's a worry that people don't feel engaged with the political system, and aren't moved to vote for any of the candidates. By forcing people to vote, you're simply hiding that. Knowing that only x % of people vote in an election should be a alarm bell to try and engage these potential voters. But if you force people to vote, you don't know how many of them are just voting under duress.

@jan This sounds like it could get complicated. However, it doesn't need to be. If everyone is bringing 10 games each, I don't think there needs to be a vote on that at all. People just bring the games that they want to. Essentially everyone gets 10 nominations into the pool that you vote on.

It might be the case that one person's favourite game is owned by someone else, but they can easily ask to borrow it for their own 10.

As for what to play, if you are playing a lot of games, I would prefer some sort of proportional system rather than a simple single-winner type vote each time. E.g. If 3 out of 5 players generally prefer one type of game and 2 prefer another type, it makes sense for there to be a 3:2 split rather than the 3 choosing every time.

You could simply take it in turns to choose. Alternatively I would recommend a lottery method, so that you would get proportional representation over the long haul without having to keep track of what has already happened. I think simple random ballot, where you randomly pick who chooses each game, would be inferior to taking turns. Some people would get to choose more, just by luck.

But one alternative, which has a balance between randomness and consensus is COWPEA Lottery. Each person approves as many games as they want. Then you pick a ballot at random and if that ballot lists more than one game, you just pick other ballots at random as a tie-break. So if the next ballot approves all or none of the remaining games in contention, you ignore it. Otherwise you eliminate games not approved. Continue until one game is left. If there is still a tie after all ballots have been picked, just pick at random among the remaining games.

@cfrank Yes, but "choose-any" was selected on the basis of being clear (it rolls off the tongue less well than "approval" I'd say), so it really needs to do that job perfectly before we get on to how well it rolls off the tongue.

Edit - I'd say "choose any number" is a little bit less clunky than "choose however many", but neither are great in that respect.

@wolftune There is this thread from 2024. I think it might have passed me by at the time. I see your point about it being clearer about what it does, but on the other hand, it's not something I've really thought about, so I don't think I will suddenly change my language immediately based on this. It's quite a big thing to do, and I think I would need to see that there is a larger consensus in the general voting community that this is the best name, rather than just individuals deciding one at a time.

Edit - Thinking about it, "Choose-any" comes across as ambiguous to me. It could come across as "choose any one".

I think it's fine to have it here, but being a US-specific thing, I probably don't have much to say on it!

@sarawolk said in RCV found unconstitutional in Maine.:

@toby-pereira
In RCV a vote is the voters top choice in the first round and each round following. The first round finds the Plurality winner and if that candidate has a majority of active votes the election is called right then and there, but if that winner has a plurality of votes but not a majority of active votes, the system may reject that and go on to find a separate winner by reallocating or exhausting those votes. That's why it's not a Plurality method.

In STAR Voting the first round never determines a winner because votes haven't been awarded to candidates yet. That always happens only once in STAR Voting and the candidate with the most votes always wins.

Right, so you're saying that because the IRV counting process could end after any round, it is necessary to call each round a vote.

However, IRV does not need to use the counting process where it stops in the round when a candidate first has a majority. It could just continue until there are two candidates left and just call that final round "the vote". It would never affect the (first place) result, but would just require a bit of extra counting.

But regardless, as I say, I'm not sure a voting method's own definition of what a vote is would hold any weight against what a court says a vote is.

And even if we allow that, by calling just the final run-off in STAR the vote, the method is also excluding most of the candidates from the voting process, which I think might be considered unconstitutional.

Obviously it's not me you would be arguing against, but these are just things that I can imagine might come up.

@sarawolk said in RCV found unconstitutional in Maine.:

The Supreme Court of Maine has once again ruled on the constitutionality of Ranked Choice Voting, again finding it to be unconstitutional.

In 2017 they had ruled that RCV was not compatible with Maine's requirement for a Plurality winner (the candidate with the most votes wins). In RCV, ballots are initially counted as votes for first-choice candidates, but those same votes can later be transferred or discarded, meaning the final winner may not be the candidate who received the most votes as originally cast.

...

It's worth noting that STAR Voting and Approval Voting both comply with the Maine Constitution's plurality winner rule. STAR Voting only finds the Plurality winner once, in the Automatic Runoff round. It clearly defines the vote as the runoff vote and defines scores as ballot data - not votes. Votes are never reassigned, transferred, or exhausted. Your vote goes to the finalist you prefer or counts as equal support for both, essentially like an abstain between those two. The candidate with the most votes wins.

This seems slightly tenuous. I don't think we can go by how STAR defines itself by saying that only the runoff is "the vote". Otherwise IRV / RCV could just redefine itself to declare that only the final runoff is "the vote".

The point is that it's surely about how this supreme court defines a vote, not how an individual voting method does.

Just bumping this thread because of a discussion on the EM mailing list about participation.

While it is claimed that this method passes participation, the discussions very much led to the conclusion that it does not, unless defined in a very weak way.

There are situations where someone's expected utility can be reduced by voting.

It might be that given we don't know from the ballot what the utilities are, there is a possible way to come up with utilities so that participation would not be violated. But that's just the same as saying that we can't prove from the ballot information alone that participation has not been violated. Very weak.

The discussion is from here onwards.

In terms of consolidation we have the electowiki, which is a good place to put stuff.

But you can search the forum quite easily. Click on the magnifying glass at the top and you can search for terms. I can normally find what I'm looking for fairly quickly. I would say this is better than for other discussion groups like Reddit or Facebook.

Just to clarify what's happening here:

A maximal lottery result can be something like:

A: 50%
B: 30%
C : 20%

where these are the probabilities of the candidates A, B and C being elected. So is non-uniqueness simply that sometimes there might be another probability distribution that is also optimal? E.g.

A: 55%
B: 35%
C : 10%

(Or maybe some sort of continuum of optimal results.)

You said that where preferences are strict and the number of voters is odd, there will be a unique solution. Is this simply because an even number of voters can lead to a head-to-head tie between two candidates, or is there something else more complex going on with an even number of voters? It seems intuitive to me that it's just because ties can happen.

In the case of ties, this isn't a problem unique to Maximal Lotteries. You can get ties in any voting method, e.g. FPTP and have to deal with that somehow. With a big election, ties will be rare. Obviously it's less likely with FPTP because it requires a tie at the top, whereas with Maximal Lotteries, there can be a tie between any pair of candidates potentially affecting the result.

It can be argued that in the case of more than one optimal lottery, it doesn't matter which one you choose because they are all optimal for the voters. Some will work out better for some candidates (a higher probability of election), but elections are about what voters want. They're not really about the candidates.

In the same way that a lottery generates the winning candidate, you can simply have a random mechanism to determine which lottery to use. I don't see this as a major problem in the general scheme of things.

@cfrank I've had a short look at it. The main conclusion seems to be that you can approximate maximal lotteries with balls in urns!

@cfrank I'll try and have a look in the next few days.

@cfrank I think lottery methods in general are interesting and worth looking into. Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems interesting that this would satisfy participation but not monotonicity, which is the opposite of most Condorcet methods. So while some might criticise it for failing monotonicity (seen as easy to get in a Condorcet method), the prize is arguably better, since elections are really about voters rather than candidates.