@tec said in Proxy:

This seems a lot like liquid democracy,

Schemes involving proxy power indeed resemble one another to at least that degree, that they involve proxy power. I would like readers to evaluate them separately, and not tar one with the drawbacks they see in another. And in particular, I live in the US, and am concerned about the effect on the world of US politics, and I would like other US residents to weigh in on my suggestions.

I propose that proxy would only be given in voting booths, with the same ballot secrecy as US people are accustomed to for voting on who can serve in office. And the opportunity would only come up every two years. Proxy could not be revoked except on those opportunities. This would limit the overhead costs of communication and certification of the expressed wills of the citizens. It would limit the risk of votes and proxies being coerced out of citizens.

Here is another variant of my proposal, which could reduce overhead. Instead of having to go to the polls once to allocate space in the legislative chamber to representatives and returning to the polls to give proxy to someone from among those seated, with this variation, only one visit to the polls per election season would be necessary. Voters would fill out two sections on the ballot. The top section would list the candidates and invite approval or disapproval of each for seating. In the bottom section, the voter would list candidates in order of that voter's decision about giving proxy. The highest candidate on the voter's list who is seated would receive that proxy.

@Jack-Waugh, Thanks for working through all these examples. I, too, had some questions about the GF vote, or the more general instructions regarding always voting for every alternative subjectively preferred over the focus. For a GF vote to be instrumental in impeding termination, the G vote total would have to be at least a strict majority (that is: F > half, because equal to half is not sufficient), and the F vote total would have to be the maximum vote count and exactly equal to the G vote total. Thus it is possible for a GF vote to hinder termination. However, in addition to G blocking termination, G is preferred by the voter over F, so G blocking theloop termination with F as the final winner is also indicating the possibility for G to be a later focus and possibly a better final outcome.

For testing purposes I wrote voter-agent code for voting to stop the loop. This strictly speaking is not part of SAVE, but it does indicate what I think voters might do. Each voter-agent has a property called indifference, which is a fraction between 0.0 and 1.0. At 0.0 the slightest difference matters, while at 1.0 the voter is totally indifferent to the alternatives. All voters start at 0.0 and increment their indifference value (1) every time the focus is a Condorcet winner (because if we cannot improve upon a Condorcet winner we will eventually accept it), and (2) whenever the focus subjectively improves after having first moved away (when the focus move away, such as when in a majority cycle, we also want to be more accepting, but only as we're coming back). These are the five basic reasons for an agent to vote for the focus:

Ideal - the focus is close to the voter's subjective ideal alternative. Cluster - the best and the worst of the most recent focus alternatives are really close together. Top-half - the spread between the best and the worst is moderately close (3x indifference) and the focus is in the top half of that spread. Limited-gain - the focus is close to the upper limit to any potential future gains. Peak - the focus is as good or better than a focus that was followed by a movement away from the agent's idea.
All of these conditions except Peak use the indifference value. The conditions are ordered from most difficult to satisfy to the easiest to satisfy.

The reason I bring this up is because I think voters might well vote for loop termination on the off-chance they can get a better result more quickly. Which implies a vote to terminate usually does not mean "I really want to terminate now" but instead is the kinder and gentler "it is okay to terminate now". Under those circumstances, the GF vote is perfectly reasonable, and supports the possibility of termination without foregoing the chance to influence the next focus choice.

Someone asked me how I thought the following factions would vote in this system and how it would respond:

20 = A:5, B:2, C:2, D:0 20 = A:2, B:5, C:2, D:0 20 = A:2, B:2, C:5, D:0 40 = A:0, B:0, C:0, D:5

I begin my analysis of the situation by asking how fear may play into the voters' considerations. The D-lovers are in a plurality, so the fears of the A-, B-, and C-lovers, I predict, center on D. So I'm going to have them vote their first line toward doing their best to eliminate D.

A-lovers:
1. K(D) P(A B C).
2. K(A) P(A).

B-lovers:
1. K(D) P(A B C).
2. K(B) P(B).

C-lovers:
1. K(D) P(A B C).
2. K(C) P(C).

D-lovers:
1. K(D) P(D).

Round the first:
A 60, B 60, C 60, D 40.
Eliminate D.

Second round:
A 20, B 20, C 20.

It's a tie. Usually ties are decided randomly with all voting systems, and if that is done in this case, A, B, or C should win. Let's say it is A.

Voter satisfaction or disappointment by linear and sum-of-squared-errors methods:

My questioner used a scale of 0-5, but I'm going to normalize it to 0-1.

Linear method:

For the linear method, I will treat satisfaction rather than disappointment.

A-lovers: 20 people completely satisfied, so sum is 20.

B-lovers: Their true score for A is 2/5, which is .4, and they number 20 people, so their total satisfaction is 8.

C-lovers: similarly, 8.

D-lovers: 0.

Total over all voters: 36.

Sum-of-squared-errors method:

I probably have less understanding of statistics than most people ought to have. My education is weak in that area. So, I could be off the deep end by thinking of this method of evaluating overall electoral outcomes. But because I have heard of least-squares curvefitting, and know that squared errors figure into variance, I have a general idea that errors are usually squared. And I have a notion that compassion and fairness maybe should consider that mild pain distributed among many is better than sharp pain visited on a few. And it occurs to me that from a voter's viewpoint, a disappointing outcome is kind of an error caused by poor reasoning or lack of morals on the part of the other voters with whose positions and values the voter disagrees. So that gives me a rationale to treat voter disappointment like a measure of error. So for these naive reasons, I think to use this method. Here I treat disappointment rather than satisfaction.

A-lovers: no disappointment, so error is zero and squared error is zero.

B- and C-lovers: Satisfaction of each individual was .4 so I calculate disappointment by subtracting from 1 and arrive at .6. Squared is .36. Multiply by 40 people, get 14.4.

D-lovers: total disappointment, 1 for each person. Square is 1. Total for 40 people is 40.

Sum of squared errors for election 40 + 14.4 = 54.4.

Now I will repeat the election but using fine-grained Score Voting. Coarse-grained is inappropriate for this small a count of voters.

Score does not provide a strategic incentive to invert rankings. But because of fear, the A-, B- and C-lovers will exaggerate their support for their compromise candidates. Each of them knows that overall support for their top candidate is only 20/100 = .2. My tentative model of exaggeration of support for compromise candidates says they should score their compromises at 1 - .2 = .8.

A-lovers: A 1, B .8, C .8, D 0.
B-lovers: A .8, B 1, C .8, D 0.
C-lovers: A .8, B .8, C 1, D 0.
D-lovers: A 0, B 0, C 0, D 1.

Multiply by numerosity of each faction:

A B C D 20 16 16 00 16 20 16 00 16 16 20 00 00 00 00 40

totals:

52 52 52 40

It is the same outcome as with my system, a tie among A, B, and C for the win.

@robertpdx said in Vote for 2 then Instant Runoff:

"Vote for 2" is a standard, well-accepted method for choosing two winners. And a runoff is the standard, well-accepted method for deciding between two candidates. So I propose to combine those two steps into a single election.

Right, well, that's an interesting point. If Vote for 2 then Instant Runoff can be sold to Joe Sixpack on account of its being based on well-accepted methods, but Approval cannot, because it is novel, then getting something better than FPtP/IRV in place may be better than nothing, in helping to replace the omnicidal regime with a people's regime.

@Keith said in S-TM:

If there was two candidates supported by the largest bloc of about 40% of the voters they would still fight with eachother.

Yes, but they would still both be supported by that 40% because they both don't want to do things that make them lose that block.
Positive the fact that they try to have the block bigger and bigger, but if the block is for example "Republican", it will remain "Republican" (as well as the 2 candidates who then end up in the automatic runoff).

Also, falling back to score is not something I would view as a problem

The problem is that if you end up in Score Voting then you might as well use Score Voting from the start, which is simpler (but has its downsides).

@Jack-Waugh I mean that partisan voters will rank their candidate first and the main opposition last. So one (or both?) of the top contenders is likely to be eliminated early.

@Marylander said in SACRW2: Score And Choose Random Winner from 2 complementing methods:

I think it is difficult to define a sincere vote as something completely isolated from its effects on the outcome, since I think that those effects are what give votes "meaning"

True, but with ranked methods, I think we can pretty easily define "sincere" to mean that you ranked them according to your actual preferences. Likewise under plurality, if I preferred Ralph Nader to Al Gore (in 2000), but voted for Gore because I thought Nader didn't have a chance, and preferred Gore to Bush... that's an insincere, strategic vote.

One shortcut to deciding what is a sincere vote is if you actually would vote the same way if you truly had no idea which of the candidates is more likely to win. If so, that is (in all cases I can think of) a sincere vote.

@brozai Bear in mind that this was one of the systems used to choose Allocated Score so getting the same result is not a surprise. Also, SSS performed equivalently from my recollection. Allocated Score was chosen because there was some intuition that it was better than SSS in terms of strategy.

@marylander Your criticisms are definitely fair and especially I hadn’t considered the midrange score devaluation problem, but I also agree that the calibration of the distributions is probably not an example that would reflect actual use. A winning candidate in this system probably needs to effectively pass thresholds of support of various kinds.

Also, any distribution or class of distributions could be selected as the prior, and more sophisticated methods could be implemented to update the distributions such as Bayesian statistics. It could be that a fixed distribution is chosen, I think the order statistics of uniform variables is not a terrible idea as the initial. But anyway it’s also all somewhat arbitrary, choosing a distribution is the same kind of problem as choosing cardinal score values. Furthermore with relevant updating the midrange support candidate will inform and reinforce the potential for compromise in future elections.

The irrelevant ballot problem can be fixed by simply ignoring or disallowing any ballots where the same score is given to all candidates, or more strictly any ballot that does not make use of both the minimal and maximal scores. I am not sure why right-skewed distributions would be problematic, in fact that is part of the functionality of the system.

As far as I can tell, the "score interval voting" described in the second post avoids 1. clone spoilers/teams 2. favorite betrayal 3. chicken dilemma (under strategy) and is the only method I know of which does (besides maybe MCA-P and MCA-AP?). For it to pass CD I assume that voters will fully support their favorite and fully betray their friend in the second round, then they can fully support both in the first round.

This doesn't formally satisfy the chicken dilemma criterion, as the formal definition requires that the defecting party does not win. However there is almost no incentive to defect and I think that in practice that would be sufficient to prevent the CD. The CD criterion requires a strong Nash equilibrium, but here we have a weak Nash equilibrium (see end of first post).

Why should this be important?
Spoilers reduce the number of candidates running. In the extreme you end up with two candidates. FB paired with an environment which makes it seem like there are only two viable candidates will also lead to two party domination. In a chicken dilemma voters individually have the incentive to defect which may lead to the majority to fraction and lose. When the chicken dilemma is not addressed, then it could devolve to a tactic where one fraction of the majority defects and the other fraction supports them to avoid the greater evil. Which again resembles the lesser of two evil problem.

Like plain score, interval voting is very well behaved regarding many criteria. I didn't check that thoroughly but think that the list below is 95% correct.

It passes:
clone independence, favorite betrayal, monotonicity, summability, LN-Help, cancellation, reversal symmetry, consistency, IIA (like score, assuming voters don't normalize)
It partly satisfies:
chicken dilemma (see above),
LN-Harm (for the first round only)
It fails:
CW, CL, Smith, majority, plurality

Note that the failed criteria are restrictions on who the winner should be, while most of the passed criteria are about strategic voting and strategic nomination. I would argue (which may be another post at some point) that the winner definitions shouldn't be viewed as strict criteria to pass 100%, but goals to approach. One could also define that the utility winner should always be elected, which could only be satisfied by some pure cardinal methods, but instead we look at VSE and see that Ranked Pairs performs well on this metric. So instead of the Condorcet criterion I would rather look at Condorcet efficiency.

@cfrank said in Ordinal Score Voting, Weighted Variation:

I do think that those things tend to be correlated in voting systems, and that tendency I am referring to as the “rigid/loose” spectrum of voting systems. Do you agree? Does that make sense?

I'm not seeing where rigid and loose come in. What makes a system rigid or loose? Are you saying that Cardinal vs Ordinal ballots is the difference? Otherwise I'm not sure how those terms apply.

Or are you speaking of things that aren't game theoretically stable (i.e. hall of mirrors) as being loose?

You also use the terms elastic and flexible, which I don't know what you are referring to. And you continue to use the term consensuality and distinguish it from utilitarian, but again, it is not clearly defined.

@sass said in S-2-1:

It's really weird reading a Score advocate claim that voting behavior should be based on hatred and fear. Score is all about consensus.

Agree completely. I mean I'm not a huge fan of Score but good voting systems should be about bringing people together toward something they can all be relatively happy with.

Instead, this sounds like someone is just raging against the machine rather than approaching it with a positive vision of a better future. Makes me feel like I'm in the wrong place.

Also, "Tongue Kiss" is super f****** gross. I'm genuinely repulsed and knowing that it's from the person who manages this site makes me want leave the entire forum.

Sorry Jack but this was my impression too. I'd recommend giving thought to how that sort of cranky-ranty-weird-angry-gross stuff comes off to people visiting here and considering participating. Rkjoyce did a lot of that on the old forum (example https://votingtheory.com/archive/posts?where={"topic_id"%3A342} ), but he wasn't the one actually running the forum.

@cfrank yes, well I guess the problem can exist at a lot of different levels.

Individuals can certainly vote strategically, and effectively so, under FPTP. Under approval, they almost have to. (unless they truly do think in simplistic black and white "like" and "dislike" terms)

I am also concerned about forming parties and eliminating candidates through primaries (etc), which FPTP strongly incentivizes. To be honest, that is the biggest problem because it causes so much polarization.

I am less clear on how organizations could game it through computation, although I don't doubt it is possible. They certainly do that with gerrymandering, with a lot of sophistication.

@bternarytau Pretty sure it was that the average was not theoretically motivated

@jack-waugh That would be identical to Borda.

@jack-waugh I could also see bringing all "viable" candidates to the run off. Viable would be based on total score relative to max to talk score

Red: 10% vote A:5, B:0, C:0, D:1
Yellow: 30% vote A:0, B:5, C:1, D:0
Blue: 30% vote A:0, B:1, C:5, D:0
Green: 30% vote A:0, B:0, C:0, D:5

With regular STLR you would take B and C into the run off and there would be no adjustment to scores

In a version of STLR were you take three into the run off because B,C and D are all "viable". You eliminate A and adjust scores to

Red: 10% vote B:0, C:0, D:5
Yellow: 30% vote B:5, C:1, D:0
Blue: 30% vote B:1, C:5, D:0
Green: 30% vote B:0, C:0, D:5

In this case then D wins.

So basically you want to include all viable candidates in the run off.