@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.

@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).

@SaraWolk Nevertheless, you have not as yet provided an example, starting with voter desire, and leading to different outcomes between STAR and Score.

@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.

For any thought you may have in mind and want to communicate, there must be a clear way to express it in plain English. I find it frustrating that your response is to leave out some of the ideas you tried to articulate. I guess it is better to be somewhat "incorrect" than to be bullied into silence by a pedant. Maybe I am underestimating the ability of readers to see the intent behind writing that looks to me not to be availing itself of the precision that our glorious language offers. OK, here's a pretty credible-looking reference that says you are right and I am wrong on "forums".

@Keith-Edmonds Thanks! Unfortunately it doesn't send me any form of notification, will respond.

@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.

@rob I am now formatting the dates that are associated to the posts. Topics used to show all the details, including creation date. I no longer show any details for them, just the title of the topic. I believe there were no other contexts in which dates showed up, just those two. Of course, post headers themselves show up in three contexts: posts for a topic, a single post, and search results.

@Marylander said in Approval vs. IRV: [IRV] will strike out everyone but the top two, then pick the most preferred candidate between the two. The current system does that just fine.

@Psephomancy and @BTernaryTau, if you are willing to be available in case anything happens to me, to try to help the forum council maintain technical control of the workings underlying the forum, please send your public keys for SSH in the format used on typical Linux-based systems. If you are used to using PUTTY (an SSH tool for Microsoft Windows), I think it uses a different format for the keys, and I don't know how to convert them.

@Jack-Waugh My apologies. I did not notice that your question about a voter favoring both front runners was directed to @Rob. I mistakenly thought it was directed to me based on a strategy WDS proposed in his paper for IRV simulations. The WDS strategy assumes the two front runners are significantly distinct and any voter tempted to vote strategically would have strong preferences. If I recall correctly, the WDS strategy for IRV (Strategic Hare STV) was to give the maximal rank to the better of the two front runners and the worst rank to the lesser front runner, then use a moving average to fill out the ballot by giving the highest remaining rank to the next most likely alternative that was better than average and the lowest remaining rank to the next most likely alternative that was worse than average. That strategy is certainly codable for a simulation, but it also seemed like a direct lead-in to your question about a why voter that liked both front-runners would vote strategically, and framed the question in the real world. Hence my response. Hopefully, it is at least an interesting scenario.

@Psephomancy, can you find me a version of Waterfox Classic that will allow me to open whatever port I want to for testing? The latest version that automagically downloaded to me says "This address is restricted "This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Waterfox has canceled the request for your protection."

@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.

I'm not sure why we can't have proxy representation; it seems to me to give the people more power than merely filling seats does. But anyway, assuming proxy is off the table, what is the most important criterion for choosing among proportional voting systems?

@Jack-Waugh As I said before, I agree that advocating Score voting to social movements is on topic. Indeed, I recall at CES that Sara Wolk discussed projects by Equal Vote to help various political organizations set up Star Voting elections. I will also grant that it might be easier to influence a social movement as a member than as an outsider. However, I don't think that the Advocacy category should be used to recruit people for movements only tangentially related to electoral reform, or that have much broader scopes. Voting reform won't stay at the center of the discussion, because the broad scope of reasons to support or oppose that social movement will necessarily enter the conversation. It might technically stay on topic, but it will be off-focus.

@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.

Kristofer set up a browseable archive: https://munsterhjelm.no/km/yahoo_lists_archive/ The forums I've archived have at least one message with at least one of the terms "center squeeze", "Condorcet", "d'Hondt", "favorite betrayal", "monotonicity", "Range voting", "Ranked Pairs", Sainte Lague", "Schulze method" or "Score voting". The browseable parts have the /web/ foldername: https://munsterhjelm.no/km/yahoo_lists_archive/sd-2/web/2005-April/by-date.html https://munsterhjelm.no/km/yahoo_lists_archive/sd-2/web/2005-April/msg00013.html

@Ted-Stern said in Preference Approval Sorted Margins: I would have thought that anyone interested in ranked methods would know the basics of Condorcet. I have no interest in Ranked methods. Sorry

@rob, the admin page that lists the plugins says it is activated. However, when I did the "npm install" (prior), I received several warnings. I posted those. I don't know whether any of those are keeping it from working. Maybe I should take the latest NodeBB.

Great. I updated it as suggested. If Connor and David approve it as well we can call it done and check the Code of Conduct off the list.