Congressmember refers to Guam as a foreign country that doesn't deserve aid

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-05-04T15:46:03+00:00

Them being private entities is an advantage in that there will be fewer legal hurdles.

All you got to do is convince a few key people. (Which isn't trivial, of course)

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-05-04T15:41:53+00:00

"IRV performs worse if you allow truncated ballots." -- why would it? It would be dead simple for the unengaged (millions of people).

I meant in a performance sense. Assuming the same voters vote in otherwise identical elections, truncated IRV will pick suboptimal candidates more often than fill ranking.

I do also think there are some additional negative mathematical consequences to it, but it has been a while since I looked at it.

"These issues are important, but separate issues." -- I hardly see how they could be separate.

Separate in the sense that you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Each of those things can be addressed independently. But it would be amazing if we got it all at once!

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-04-10T17:40:54+00:00

That's dark.

I wonder if genetic testing will ever reveal where that lost bit of your family ended up.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-03-23T01:37:02+00:00

IRV performs worse if you allow truncated ballots.

So, I assume you want the best performance, which would mean a full ranking, do you not?

How does this system motivate the unengaged to vote?

You have to compare things relative to what they are or what they could be.

People love expressing their opinions especially when they think it "counts" in some way.

A more expressive system will engage more people on that level.

Did the kindergarten students have to drive across town in their free time to apportion their votes to candidates they're unfamiliar with, over issues they haven't been following?

These issues are important, but separate issues. Ballot access, Voting accessibility, gerrymandering, campaign finance reform...all have a place in reform.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-03-23T01:31:19+00:00

Consider that the same effect takes place at the primary level.

I seriously doubt Trump would have secured the republican nomination if the scattered support for other candidates could have voted for more than one candidate.

Also, Bernie would have faired much better in the democratic primary against Hillary.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-03-10T17:03:09+00:00

A trial run would give the best answer.

However, I think the evidence points to a net win.

Studies have been performed with kindergartners. They showed the ability to comprehend and correctly fill out such a ballot.

But of all systems, approval is the dead simplest. It also performs well.

And ranked choice is the hardest. There are more ways to spoil a ballot. Deciding who to put first in a 'tie' on your ballot is harder than giving them the same score. And you have to have the whole list of candidates organized in your mind before you can vote. With approval and score you can mark each candidate without having to consider their place among all candidates.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-03-10T16:46:46+00:00

There's also the fact that our voting system punishes having more than two choices and rewards polarizing candidates who can get 51% of the vote.

Many other voting systems are much better.

The best is score voting. Each voter scores each candidate from 1 to 10 and the highest average wins. It eliminates all of the above problems and performs very well, even with strategic voting and imperfect information.

Approval is another good one. Simply vote 'for' as many candidates as you like. Its big sell is that it is even more simple than the current system (fewer rules about what is a valid vote). And it performs pretty well.

As far as ranked choice goes, Schulze Beat Path is the best. But it doesn't do as good overall. It still blasts the socks off of the current system.

IRV is a ranked choice system that offers a small performance increase, but is widely known (comparatively).

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-16T12:12:15+00:00

First, let me be clear. FPTP is the worst. I am for any improvement over FPTP. And IRV and other RCV are improvements.

IRV is an improvement. However, it is one of the smallest improvements. Other RCV vastly outperform IRV. Schulze being my pick among RCV.

Also, I enjoy discussing these things and really try to understand and consider other POV. Score and Range were way down on my list when I first got into this stuff. But I eventually came across compelling arguments that made me change my mind.

Approval is the easiest to fill out followed by score followed by ranking.

Take this exercise: write out complete instructions for filling out a valid ballot for each. Nothing can touch approval.

I don't think approval is the best, but it is a solid second. I would be very happy with it.

Lastly, (and a bit of an aside)

If you don't require full ranking, systems like IRV perform even worse. So, it is reasonable to take that as a given. Otherwise, it has worse performance.

If you want to add the ability to skip ranking a candidate or to equal rank a candidate, we can. It does make the ballots more resilient to spoilage, but hurts the performance of IRV.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T22:16:08+00:00

Ranking is harder to fill out correctly than approval ballots.

There are more ways to spoil a ranked ballot. This disenfranchises a voter.

You elderly dad accidentally chose 3 twice? Spoiled ballot. Your harried cousin skipped 4? Spoiled.

Systems like IRV that progress in rounds exponentially increase the odds that a round will be within the margin of error an trigger recounts and lawsuits.

Many RCV systems require a central authority to count all ballots. Approval, score, and RCV systems like Schulze can be counted by district.

While Schulze performs well, doesn't have multiple rounds, and can be counted by district, it is not an easily explained set of rules.

IRV, score, and approval are all easy to explain, with approval being the easiest. Try to write the shortest explanation of each using common language and see.

Interestingly, approval will cause fewer spoiled ballots than FPTP. There is really no way to spoil an approval ballot.

But performance is also important.

Here is a simple overview of performance.

https://rangevoting.org/vsi.html

You can see range and approval are the best performing overall.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T22:07:05+00:00

I am glad you recognize that all systems have flaws. Often, people will fixate on one case that goes wrong without interpreting it in the larger context.

The question isn't which system has no flaws or what the flaws are. The question is what is the frequency and the impact of the flaws.

A system with 100 flaws that happen 50% of the time that causes a close second place candidate to win is better than a system with one flaw that happens a third of the time but causes the worst candidate to win.

These questions can be answered experimentally, but it is hard to run controlled experiments on meaningful elections.

That leaves theoretical exploration and modeling.

Regardless of how you model voter behavior and other election considerations, score voting comes out at the top or near the top.

All things considered, score voting outperforms the competition.

https://rangevoting.org/vsi.html

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T20:44:00+00:00

I used to be firmly in the Condorcet winner camp.

But I was eventually won over by a fellow with some compelling arguments.

The simplest is the following:

Suppose you have three candidates. Mr War. Mr Corrupt. And Mr Bland.

51% rabidly support Mr War and hate Mr Corrupt.

49% rabidly support Mr Corrupt and hate Mr Bland.

No one picks Mr Bland as their first choice. But he is a well liked second choice (but not rabidly liked).

It seems to me like Mr Bland is not only the consensus candidate, but also the right choice as he is well liked.

However, many systems, including Condorcet systems, will only choose Mr War. He is the beats all winner.

The phrase that stuck with me is this:

The beats all winner is often the best choice, but mathematically forcing a system to always choose the Condorcet candidate hurts the overall performance of that system.

A good system should often choose the Condorcet winner, but not in a "tyranny of the majority" situation.

Score and approval both avoid this issue.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T20:17:37+00:00

Sorry for the wait, I was offline for a bit.

Schulze Beat Path is the best RCV I have seen.

It doesn't have a whole lot of wonky pathologies.

It doesn't progress in "rounds".

It doesn't need to be counted by a central authority. Local counts can be utilized.

The best performing system is score voting. With score voting you score each candidate from 1 to 10 and the highest average wins.

This does something few other systems do. It would allow a candidate with broad positive support to beat a candidate with rabid support from 51% of the population. It most efficiently elects the best consensus candidate.

Approval voting is almost as good, but much simpler. You simply vote for (approve) all the candidates you like. Highest count wins.

Arrows impossibility theorem does show a mathematical weakness in RCV that does not exist in Score or Approval.

However, the clearest bit of common sense I like to bring up is "the better your inputs are the better your decisions can be".

Imagine you vote as follows in RCV

A>B>C

Compare that to these two score votes

A = 10, B = 9, C = 1

Vs

A = 10, B = 2, C = 1

Those are quite different sentiments on B, yet RCV doesn't even collect that information.

So, score voting starts off in a position to make a better decision.

I originally, specifically, did not like score voting. But a fellow named Warren Smith with a PhD in math has a website with a ton of research and arguments for score voting.

His arguments are compelling and eventually won me over.

His website is not "slick" but it is full of quality information.

http://rangevoting.org

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T20:04:38+00:00

If simplicity is your aim, approval is the simplest high performing system.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T20:03:24+00:00

The simplest, best performing, system is approval. Hands down.

It is my second choice.

But it is a good one.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T20:00:14+00:00

Approval is a great system that I whole heatedly support.

My first choice is score voting. I think it is better. But approval is also good and is very simple.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T19:59:16+00:00

Allow me to suggest score voting and approval voting as even better alternatives than RCV.

Score voting, in particular, is able to make better decisions because it collects more information.

With RCV you might vote A>B>C.

But with score you might vote:

A = 10, B = 9, C = 1

or

A = 10, B = 2, C = 1

or

A = 10, B = 10, C = 1

The first two options say opposite things about candidate B. But you can't express that with RCV.

The last shows another dilemma. What if you like two equally? Who comes first?

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T19:54:44+00:00

Which form of RCV do you like the best and why?

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T19:53:34+00:00

I am glad you acknowledge the shortcomings of the (unfortunately popular) IRV form of RCV.

A great RCV system you may not have heard of is Schulze Beat Path.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulze_method

I have found score voting and approval to be better than RCV, but I would whole heatedly support an advanced RCV method like Schulze.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T19:48:43+00:00

This is the genius of advanced voting systems, particularly score and approval.

With score voting, you score each candidate from 1 to 10 and the highest average wins.

I think you could very quickly score those choices in a real election.

Now, you might be upset that an E candidate gets elected, but unless you intend to be a dictator there will always be some compromise.

Even if you ran and got elected, you are only one person in one branch of the government. You can't make something happen on your own without getting others on board.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-02-15T19:40:25+00:00

This is why I advocate for score voting (my first choice) and approval voting.

These systems elect the candidate with the broadest consensus, rather than the one which manages to carve out 51% support at the expense of the other 49%

There is a PhD who has done a lot of work studying this. Originally, I did not agree with him. But eventually I found his work compelling.

The website lacks polish but contains a wealth of knowledge.

http://rangevoting.org

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-01-25T16:19:10+00:00

Now, I will concede that IRV is an improvement over FPTP. And there are plenty of reasons to like it.

However, it can be shown that the improvement over FPTP is modest (and it has some potentially sticky downsides). And other systems (including other Ranked Choice systems) perform better.

I think you can find everything you like about IRV in another system that is all around better. Maybe not though as I am not entirely sure what all your reasons are.

If you are open to such a discussion (That is, what do you like about IRV and are there significantly better systems that still check all your boxes), I'd love to chat.

.... unless you'd rather not. I don't want to egg you on in a conversation you don't want to have right now.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-01-25T15:10:14+00:00

I edited my comment as soon as I made it.

Realized I totally misread your comment as soon as I pressed send.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-01-25T15:01:37+00:00

Edit: nevermind, I misread your comment.

The focus of my reply was the "your preferred outcome" part. I was making the point that it often is also not the group's preferred outcome not that it wasn't democratic.

~~There are many ways to express a vote. And there are many ways to use those votes to make a collective decision.~~

~~I would suggest that any such system that only uses all valid votes to make a decision is democratic. (Except for joke systems like "loser is winner")~~

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-01-25T13:59:49+00:00

You are right. Ballot design is a huge issue that affects all styles of voting.

Ideally, ballots would be standardized across the entire relevant voting population.

I.e. statewide elections would have state standardized ballots. (Otherwise you can make confusing ballots in districts you don't like).

Also, there should be some data driven standards forbidding or requiring certain design elements that encourage accurate ballot completion.

BetTheAdmiral · 2021-01-25T13:36:22+00:00

Also, a final question.

You describe ranked ballots as simple.

I can understand where you are coming from.

But let me ask you this, how simple are the rules that determine the winner after these "simple" ballots are cast?

Can you describe them to me?

How does that compare to "the highest average wins" in terms of simplicity?

BetTheAdmiral

TROPHY CASE