Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
haacked.com
Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
1–10 of 78 posts
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#2Approval Voting mostly solves the "strategic voting" part that almost forces you to choose the "most likely to win" candidate, or if you hate that one, the one closest to him, while eliminating the spoiler effect, and giving 3rd party candidates a much higher chance of winning than with current traditional voting systems.
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#3Also, there's this: http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15220
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#4Approval Voting mostly solves the "strategic voting" part that almost forces you to choose the "most likely to win" candidate, or if you hate that one, the one closest to him, while eliminating the spoiler effect, and giving 3rd party candidates a much higher chance of winning than with current traditional voting systems. http://www.electology.org/approval-voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
Plus it doesn't run into trouble with Arrow's theorem, since it's not a "rank-order voting system," unlike plurality, instant runoff, and various others.
Range voting has the same advantage. In computer simulations measuring how well the election result matches voter preferences, either range or approval is as much an improvement over plurality as plurality is over picking someone at random (or, if you like, monarchy). http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#5> Voting is a method that a group of people use to pick the “best choice” out of a set of candidates. It’s pretty obvious, right?
And like many other pieces of "common sense", this isn't correct.
Wikipedia says, "Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high office by voting." This is very different from "picking the best choice".
I realize that the American public has been indoctrinated for the past few decades that voting is the only way you make yourself heard, but this isn't true and never has been. I recently learned about Wellstone Action ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellstone_Action ); I encourage everyone to look into enrolling. (I haven't done so myself yet. I probably will at some point, though.)
> On one hand, this seems to be an endorsement of the two-party political system we have in the United States.
Actually, what it's an endorsement of is all of our other voting systems where the choice is between APPROVE and REJECT. You have to endorse the existence of political parties in the first place before you can endorse a two-party system, and Arrow's theorem goes nowhere near that.
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#6Approval Voting mostly solves the "strategic voting" part that almost forces you to choose the "most likely to win" candidate, or if you hate that one, the one closest to him, while eliminating the spoiler effect, and giving 3rd party candidates a much higher chance of winning than with current traditional voting systems. http://www.electology.org/approval-voting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
Score voting is actually slightly superior to Approval Voting (which is Score Voting with a range of 0 to 1). To my understanding, the Center for Election Science ("electology.org") is the preeminent organization championing Approval and Score Voting.
http://www.electology.org/score-voting
Eric Sanders of that same organization has written a few articles on the subject, including the following:
http://bigthink.com/action-in-action/why-the-republicans-los...
I've personally been trying to campaign for the adoption of score voting:
https://usa.brianstaskforce.com/task/362/score-voting-for-na...
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#7> Voting is a method that a group of people use to pick the “best choice” out of a set of candidates. It’s pretty obvious, right? And like many other pieces of "common sense", this isn't correct. Wikipedia says, "Voting is a method for a group such as a meeting or an electorate to make a decision or express an opinion—often following discussions, debates, or election campaigns. Democracies elect holders of high offic…
> I realize that the American public has been indoctrinated for the past few decades that voting is the only way you make yourself heard
This has never been true. Americans have always protested, signed petitions, and even joined special interest groups like the ACLU and the NRA. Americans have a very long tradition of things like that.
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#8> A voting system can only, at times, choose the most preferred of the options given. But it doesn't necessarily present us with the best candidates to choose from in the first place.
Reminds me of HHGTTG: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#9In this case, Hanselman is the clear winner with three votes, whereas the other two candidates each have two votes. This is how our elections are held today.
This is dependent on the exact election taking place. With the US presidential elections, my understanding is that a plurality of electoral college votes is not enough to win, you need an actual majority. In the event of a simple plurality win with no majority, the result is decided by the House of Representatives (which may itself be tied).
Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking
#10Learning about Arrow's theorem definitely changed the way I think about elections in the US. It also changed the way I think about election news coverage. I used to be an ardent "horse race news" hater. I still am, in terms of how utterly it dominates election news, but now I see some utility in it as well.
Arrow and these others have focused how I look at the game-theoretic underpinnings of elections and the importance of being up to speed on exactly how candidates and interested parties are crafting strategies around the complexities built into the game. When people conflate the "message" of the candidate with the strategy (which is always) I still get irritated. I have a tendency toward partisanship and that kind of thing clouds my judgment. But the day-in day-out workings of the campaigns and PACs are more interesting to me now, because they shed light on what's fundamentally "broken" (from my point of view) in the underlying system, as opposed to what I simply find distasteful or disappointing.
Math!