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Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

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Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#71

Post by finnw »

Pinckney wrote: post #20
gradstudent wrote: post #15

Preferential voting solves all these problems. You vote by ranking the candidates on order of preference. If your top candidate does not win the vote goes to next guy down the line until eventually it ends up for one of two candidates.

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

You mean IRV does not satisfy the Condorcet criterion. IRV is not the only preferential voting system. There are others, e.g. ranked pairs[1] which do.

Under ranked pairs, each pair of candidates is considered individually, largest majorities first.

In bradbeattie's example we have:

    C > B: 115 votes
    C > A:  85 votes
    B > A:  85 votes
So the group preference is C > B > A and C wins.

Ranked pairs fails the participation criterion[2], but it is still possible to vote tactically in a way that guarantees you will not harm your first-choice candidate by participating (since if your first choice is A you can rank A first and all the others joint second. Similarly if your goal is to prevent C from winning, you can rank C second and all others joint first.)

[1]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs [2]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_criterion

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#72

Post by gus_massa »

Empact wrote: post #46
gus_massa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't understand why having less information is better (theoreticaly). A ranked-choice ballot only encodes the orders the candidates against one another, whereas approval and score votes also encode the candidates' positions within the voter's range of subjective preferences. That is, if we have 3 candidates (A, B, C) and a few voters which each voters has a range from love to hate for each candidate, like so: Lo…

OK, this method recollect some information that the ranked choice voting ignores. But I still don't understand why the Arrow's theorem doesn't apply.

If in a hypothetic population everyone loves/hates each candidate equally spaced, then in that population it is possible to apply the Arrow's theorem and prove that for that population this method doesn't work. But the method should be useful for every population, even the pathological ones.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#73

Post by jivatmanx »

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…

Don't know if anyone is going to read this, but I was reading about ordinal vs. cardinal utility, which are interesting because they seem to correspond to Ranked Choice vs. Approval voting, with the various voting systems simply being a different algorithm of calculating the winner from these.

Anyway, apparently, with "Inter-temporal choice", or, different utility of the same thing measured in different time periods, Cardinal Utility needs to be used.

I wonder if the same applies to grouping utility of different people together in order to get an aggregate. If so, it's an argument for the use of Approval/Score voting as opposed to Ranked choice.

The quote is "Models of utility with several periods, in which people discount future values of utility, need to employ cardinalism in order to have well-behaved utility functions." an appears in the cardinal utility article.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#74

Post by maratd »

ontheotherhand wrote: post #70
diego wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and in addition it's also a system to ensure that elected officials and their parties have accountability. If you win an election and then "betray" your voters, you won't be reelected. If you can't be reelected, you could damage the chances of your party. In essence, democracy in its current form is not so much about choosing the right/best candidate. It's more about making sure the winner cannot become a despot…

"If you win an election and then "betray" your voters, you won't be reelected." That ain't accountability, that's a joke. If you pay me 5000$ to do a job, and I don't lift a finger, and your "punishment" is that we won't do that a second time, then I have free money and you're a fool. It doesn't hurt the party one bit either; that's the whole point of corporatism, you can swap out individuals while the "brand" rolls…

You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing entirely to come up with something better.

There hasn't been a single political system that hasn't been corrupted.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#75

Post by Pinckney »

finnw wrote: post #71
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...

You mean IRV does not satisfy the Condorcet criterion. IRV is not the only preferential voting system. There are others, e.g. ranked pairs[1] which do. Under ranked pairs, each pair of candidates is considered individually, largest majorities first. In bradbeattie's example we have: C > B: 115 votes C > A: 85 votes B > A: 85 votes So the group preference is C > B > A and C wins. Ranked pairs fails the participation c…

Thanks. After looking into this, wikipedia provides a long list of things that can be referred to as "preferential voting."

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

However, AFAIK, IRV is the system which most closely fits what gradstudent described.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#76

Post by bhauer »

jivatmanx wrote: post #12
bhauer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/ac…

I think that, over time, people would drift towards using only 0 and 10 and none of the middle scores, similar to how, over time a plurality voting system drifts towards only having two political parties (Duverger's Law). 0 And 10 are the "strategic votes" of score voting as 2-major-parties are the "strategic votes" of plurality voting. A possible counter-argument to this is that score voting doesn't have a reinforci…

An interesting point. Since you're speaking about strategy and honesty, I would defer to those who have done research, where I can only speak for myself. http://ScoreVoting.net/Honesty.html

I know I would not hesitate to vote my actual opinion and I suspect others would not either. I would be happy to give a score to each candidate, and it would not necessarily be binary. Just as I am happy today to vote for a third-party candidate though that is not a strategic move.

Again speaking just for myself, if nothing else, having the ability to score candidates would reduce my feeling of regret or disappointment with the outcome because it's less polarizing.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#77

Post by ontheotherhand »

maratd wrote: post #74
ontheotherhand wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you win an election and then "betray" your voters, you won't be reelected." That ain't accountability, that's a joke. If you pay me 5000$ to do a job, and I don't lift a finger, and your "punishment" is that we won't do that a second time, then I have free money and you're a fool. It doesn't hurt the party one bit either; that's the whole point of corporatism, you can swap out individuals while the "brand" rolls…

You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing entirely to come up with something better. There hasn't been a single political system that hasn't been corrupted.

"You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing entirely to come up with something better."

I have no problems with coming up with something better. More like 3 a day before breakfast; I'd just have problems making people actually go along with whatever I would come up with. But you know what? If people are so fucked that even I can't magically solve it, that doesn't mean I can't say they're fucked. It just means they're gonna pout and roll their eyes, none of which is news or unexpected.

"There hasn't been a single political system that hasn't been corrupted."

What's your point? That therefore criticism isn't allowed? That naive believe in cynical manipulation is not an issue?

Also, was I talking about a "system"? No, I was talking about specific circumstances, an actual situation, and individuals and their responsibilitie.

But of course, it's easier to just throw some mud into a completely different direction, not hitting anything, and then deluding oneself into having dealt with the issue just nicely, than to actually address any of it.

Re: Voting is a Sham Mathematically Speaking

#78

Post by maratd »

ontheotherhand wrote: post #77
maratd wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing entirely to come up with something better. There hasn't been a single political system that hasn't been corrupted.

"You know, it's pretty easy to poke holes in something. It's another thing entirely to come up with something better." I have no problems with coming up with something better. More like 3 a day before breakfast; I'd just have problems making people actually go along with whatever I would come up with. But you know what? If people are so fucked that even I can't magically solve it, that doesn't mean I can't say they'r…

> I have no problems with coming up with something better. More like 3 a day before breakfast; I'd just have problems making people actually go along with whatever I would come up with.

Perhaps because you don't actually share your "something better"?

Two posts in, lots of words, still no alternatives.

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