@Ted-Stern Are you referring to this?

Consider this 5 winner example with clones for each candidate
Red: 61% vote A:5, B:3, C:0
Blue: 39% vote A:0, B:3, C:5
RRV Gives ['A1', 'C1', 'A2', 'B1', 'B2']
MES Gives ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'C1', 'B1']
SSS Gives ['A1', 'B1', 'B2', 'B3', 'B4']
Allocated score Gives ['A1', 'B1', 'A2', 'B2', 'A3']
STV Gives ['A1', 'A2', 'A3', 'C1', 'C2']

The code I ran (which I can share) was taken from the electowiki page written by the inventor Piotr Skowron and I confirmed with him personally that the result was correct. I suspect you have a bug.

My first impression is that it is too difficult to understand and explain.

The score for each candidate is the sum over that candidate's scores relative to the other candidates.

The score of A relative to B is the count of voters who prefer A over B minus the count of voters who prefer B over A.

Here is a variation for ranking ballots that permit equal-ranking (and so would be an RCV-c system):

From each ballot, derive an "implied set of ranks". If the ballot ranks every candidate, the implied set of ranks equals the explicit set of ranks. Otherwise, add a rank at the bottom and fill it with the remaining candidates. For each possible count of implied ranks, other than unity (which is an abstention and can just be thrown out), form a mapping via a logistic function, from each rank to a score. The sharpness of the logistic function is characterized by the mapping [6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0] => [100, 99, 90, 50, 10, 1, 0]. Use the mappings and rankings to derive a score for each candidate from each voter. Proceed as before.

Some may say, why a logistic mapping and not a linear mapping? I ask them, why a linear mapping? I think fineness near the top will provide needed support to lesser-evil candidates in case true favorites don't win. Of course, any mapping from ranking to rating is imperfect and presumptuous, but I'm suggesting this as one of the least bad from the viewpoint of defeating two-party dominance (2PD) and as a sop to RCV advocates. They don't seem to appreciate the benefits of collecting actual scores from voters. And my example to try to show the importance of that is to compare the meaning and intent of Score votes Gore 0, Bush 1, Nader 100 vs. Gore 0, Bush 99, Nader 100. These would affect the pairwise scores of the candidates very differently in Score, but in RCV with whatever tallying, would collapse to the same vote Nader > Bush > Gore.

@rob said in MARS: mixed absolute and relative score:

Behaviour tends to converge on strategic, but it can take time.

Experience with choose-one voting supports your point.

@casimir Ah. Then if that holds up in court, I think the power relations would not be damaged by putting more candidates in the final. The subset of voters who are unwilling to research obscure candidates would benefit from receiving a major hint about what other voters have judged. Candidates receiving majority approval in the primary would seem worth their attending to.

@multi_system_fan said in New voting method? What is 'minmax-TD'?:

I understand this problem, altough I doubt simplicity of voting methods or rationality in general will prevent this.

It won't prevent it, but it would help in terms of adoption when there is already resistance coming from people who think they'd lose power if such a system is enacted.

But yeah, from what I know of the political system of The Netherlands, all of this should be a lot easier there. I envy you.

@casimir said in Strategy Done For The Voter:

3: A > B > C
3: B > C > A
3: C > A > B

What evaluation does each faction put on its middle candidate, honestly?

@andy-dienes in this example there are more scores than there are candidates. The same problems remains though when there are only three scores for three candidates, and I can see why this is a significant issue. With the method I described, no matter what the majority does with strict rankings, the middle candidate will win, even if the ballots are

A>B>C [99%]
C>B>A [1%]

Which is absurd. And without strict rankings, the majority can guarantee their top candidate’s victory by bullet voting anyway. I don’t like it but it is what it is. I think you’ve convinced me.

@marcus-ogren Good point. The idea behind the Critical Score is to boost candidates with isolated support. It's possible that it goes too far, as you've highlighted. I just found that to sort of achieve the effect I was looking for, I would need a really big exponent for the Power Score.

I wonder how it all washes out in more realistic scenarios, but it's valid to consider someone putting themselves on the ballot and literally not telling anyone just to then score themselves 5 stars. Perhaps there's some kind of balancing that can be built in, but I suspect, on the general advice of James Quinn, that that would likely cause new problems.

@jack-waugh OK, there are obviously various competing Condorcet methods, and on the EM mailing list there's discussion and debate going back years, but a good starting point is ranked pairs, which has good criterion compliance (such as being cloneproof) and is relatively simple to explain. It's also far more likely to pick a unique winner than Copeland.

After that, the rest is just tie-breaking, so if you're not using Copeland any more, it's not such a worry.

With the Borda count, although it's normal to give points to positions in a linear manner, it is equivalent to just summing the margins of the head-to-head wins so it looks equivalent to this Dasgupta/Maskin score. It's rare you'll reach that stage if you use ranked pairs. You'll almost never have to use your scores. So at this point, it's a case of just picking your favourite Condorcet method.

@jack-waugh said in Condorcet Score:

@cfrank, Ouch!

OK, then, how about this one?

Collect Score-style ballots. If there is a Condorcet winner, elect her. Otherwise, elect the straight Score winner.

I think Smith//Score is better than Condorcet//Score. Condorcet//Score could elect the Condorcet loser.

Or what I was discussing here, which I think is just Landau//Score. But maybe that's getting a bit complex.

@psp_andrew-s

2CV now ensures, unlike any other proposed system, that the winner will, under all circumstances, be one who received at least 51% of 1st or 2nd choice votes.

A voters 2nd choice may be as good as their favorite or almost as bad as their last choice. There's no way to know, so ensuring a majority of 1st and 2nd choice votes is meaningless. Also, in any election where you can support multiple candidates there could be multiple majority supported options. The key is to find the one with the most support by looking at strength of support and/or number of voters who prefer them, ideally both.

I think we've already gone in circles about your other responses in previous conversations so I won't repeat that again here.

@sarawolk yes more or less a thought experiment, trying to address some dissonance between the possibility of a Condorcet winner having low support and a support (approval) winner being different from the Condorcet winner even when one exists.

In this case, I mean that a candidate is either supported or not supported by a voter according to the support cutoff of their ballot. I’m using the word “support” rather than “approval,” because I don’t think approval is an appropriate word philosophically (or mathematically). The positive emotional connotation of “approve” is all that bothers me. “Support” seems more emotionally neutral and has a mathematical meaning that aligns well with what is happening in the system, for example, “the support of a distribution.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_(mathematics)

The quantity of support of a candidate is simply the number of voters who formally support that candidate on their ballot.

Here is another attempt at a modification. In sequence, if there is a Condorcet loser, they are eliminated. If there is no Condorcet loser, a candidate with the least quantity of support is eliminated, with ties broken by rank runoff if possible. Repeat until one candidate remains.

@jack-waugh said in Super-STAR: Dynamically rescaled score runnoff:

@lime said in Super-STAR: Dynamically rescaled score runnoff:

@kaptain5 The ideal would be to find a somewhat-objective normalization with a mechanism like quadratic voting or VCG. Each voter has to "pay for" their rating points by giving something up (like votes they could cast in another election).

No, because that's exactly the problem with choose-one plurality. I have as a voter the right to support and oppose so many candidates via my vote as I support and oppose in my political stance or judgment. Choose-one plurality single-winner voting says I have to pay a "cost", which is the entirety of my precious vote, as soon as I support one candidate. Support and opposition must be free of cost, because I am a citizen and deserve a full vote, the same as any other citizen.

I think the thread you linked is based on a misunderstanding. The quadratic voting penalty is applied across different races, not in the same one. So, for example, you can either cast 10 votes for President, or you could cast 5 for President, 5 for Governor, 5 in some ballot initiative, and 5 in Congress. (Adds to 100.)

The squared-cost penalty is chosen so you'll honestly reveal your relative preferences across different issues, under an impartial culture model. I assume you could do better than an impartial culture model, but the point is more that you should be able to trade influence across decisions to have a bigger impact on the issues where your preferences are stronger.

Plurality has a spli- vote problem, which is why we need a Progressive Primary. But, lacking that, the Green Party & their nominee are the obvious natural combining point for Progressive votes

…& any forum that includes voting strategy doesn’t need to avoid voting-strategy specifics.

@jack-waugh said in Quantile-Normalized Score:

Which voters are going to have their votes diluted by such a procedure?

In reply to this, you might be interested to note that, based at least on my own observations of the symmetrized version, it is the bullet-voters and min-maxers who will have the advantages of their tactical behavior reduced in favor of a broader consensus, in a fashion very similar to what would be expected in a Condorcet method. However, the method is not Condorcet compliant, I found a counter-example.

@jack-waugh I'm not sure I'm convinced by those specific scores being allowed but not others. Also, there is also Smith//Score, which I would consider to be superior. It elects the score winner of the Smith set. Under Condorcet//Score, the winner could be a candidate outside the top cycle.