Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

haacked.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 78 posts

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#31

Post by Steko »

mtgx wrote: post #2

Approval 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

Approval voting suffers the largest number of "Especially Intolerable Failures" in the comparison here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_runoff_vo...

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#32

Post by anigbrowl »

maratd wrote: post #25

This is off. Voting is not a system for selecting the best candidate. Voting, in whatever forms it exists, is a system to avoid violence and conflict. Each side feels it had a fair shot, regardless of outcome. The purpose of voting is to leave you with that feeling, to avoid unpleasant behavior from the losing party. The best person for the job almost never gets it. That's why we don't vote people in when hiring some…

Voting, in whatever forms it exists, is a system to avoid violence and conflict.

If only someone had explained this to your namesake :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Marat

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#33

Post by mmphosis »

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) Representation solves some of the problems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU&feature=relmf...

The problem with MMP is when the parties choose the ranking of their list of representatives. I think it would be even better if rather than use a party generated list, instead the representatives are determined by people's votes.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#34

Post by fleitz »

maratd wrote: post #25

This is off. Voting is not a system for selecting the best candidate. Voting, in whatever forms it exists, is a system to avoid violence and conflict. Each side feels it had a fair shot, regardless of outcome. The purpose of voting is to leave you with that feeling, to avoid unpleasant behavior from the losing party. The best person for the job almost never gets it. That's why we don't vote people in when hiring some…

Actually some workplaces do elect people, and they find equally baffling results that voting people in increases productivity and reduces conflict.

As for a more common example of voting with in a company, look at a board of directors.

But yes, in general voting is used to provide legitimacy and credibility.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#36

Post by gus_massa »

DennisP wrote: post #4
mtgx wrote: post #2

Approval 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…

I'm not sure about the definitions, but if the Arrow theorem doesn't apply to the Approval Voting sistem them I think that it must not be applicable to the "majority rules" criterion.

In this two system the idea is that you get very little information from the voters (best candidate / a set of candidates) and don't know all the information about the order of preference and the relative strength. So I don't understand why having less information is better (theoreticaly).

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#37

Post by gabemart »

I found this article quite frustrating.

>Condorcet formalized the idea that group preferences are also non-transitive. If people prefer Hanselman to me. And they prefer me to Guthrie. It does not necessarily mean they will prefer Hanselman to Guthrie. It could be that Guthrie would pull a surprise upset when faced head to head with Hanselman.

I found this by far the most interesting assertion, but the examples under "Historical Examples" don't demonstrate this phenomenon at all.

For instance, the author asserts that the Nader spoiler effect demonstrates nontransitive preference relationships. But from my reading, it wasn't the case that that group as a whole preferred (Gore over Nader) and (Nader over Bush) but (Bush over Gore). It was simply that due to the structure of the election, they happened to elect Bush. While this ties into the author's point about the "unfairness" of elections, it doesn't demonstrate nontransitive relationships in group preferences.

Could someone post an example of a group preference configuration in which the group prefers (A over B) and (B over C) but (C over A)?

I understand the concept of nontransitive relationships in general, but in the specific domain of fitness for office, I can't work out how this would come to be.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#38

Post by [deleted] »

bradbeattie wrote: post #24
Pinckney wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preferential voting does not satisfy the Condorcet criterion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting#Voting_sy...

To demonstrate this, consider the following. 80 people: A, C, B 50 people: B, C, A 35 people: C, B, A IRV eliminates C (as it has the fewest first-place votes) and elects B. But voters on the whole prefer C over B (115 to 50). This is the failure that Pinckney refers to.

[deleted]

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#39

Post by bradbeattie »

jivatmanx wrote: post #27
bradbeattie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say there are two head-line candidates: A and B. I hate A, am neutral towards B, and love the less popular of the three candidate C. So do I vote 0/0/1 or 0/1/1? Well, that depends on how popular the three are and is very much an example of strategic voting. When proposing an alternative, one should probably be up-front with its flaws.

That's not strategic voting according to the definition. In both cases you're still voting for C, the candidate you like the most. "In voting systems, tactical voting (or strategic voting or sophisticated voting or insincere voting) occurs, in elections with more than two candidates, when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome.[1]" If you mean…

My decision to vote either 0/0/1 or 0/1/1 is explicitly to prevent my desire for B over A from causing B to win when C might have a chance. Whenever you have to consider the ballots of other voters, you're dealing with tactical voting.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#40

Post by Empact »

Steko wrote: post #31
mtgx wrote: post #2

Approval 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

Approval voting suffers the largest number of "Especially Intolerable Failures" in the comparison here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_runoff_vo...

If you examine these supposed failures of Approval voting, you'll find that the bulk of them can be attributed to the divide between a "Majoritarian" or a "Consensus-driven" perspective. That is, many of the criteria suppose that the most-preferred candidate of the majority should win, but should that be the case? Imagine there are 3 candidates, one who is adored by the super-majority, a second who is very well-liked by that super-majority and a third who is hated. Meanwhile the minority hates the first and third candidates, but well-likes the second.

We can visualize this like so:

  #   Approval | Disapproval
  80 |-1--2----|--------------3-|
  20 |-2-------|-----------3--1-|
So while the first candidate is the favorite candidate of the super-majority, the second candidate has the unanimous approval of population. Which is preferable? I would say the second candidate.

So you see, the criteria themselves incorporate an ideological perspective - a majoritarian bias - rather than articulating some absolute objective truth.

Also I have to take issue with the basis for the "Especially Intolerable Failures" explanation - does it make sense to reject a system for being theoretically capable of producing a result, "regardless of the probability that these paradoxes may occur"? Given 2 systems, one which exhibits several flaws often, and another which rarely exhibits flaws but is theoretically capable of exhibiting a certain offensive flaw, does it make sense to reject the better-behaving system because of a theoretical result? I think not.

Post reply on HN