@Marylander said in Sensible Rules for Recall Elections:

However, the simplest solution would be to simply hold another election where the governor and potential replacements are all just treated as candidates, as they would be in an ordinary election.

Agree, although I think it should also require any candidate that replaces the governor to beat the governor by a certain amount. The low threshold for ousting someone who has been elected doesn't make sense. California's system is severely broken, and was a huge expense that was completely unnecessary.

Although, in the end, Newsome and Democrats probably benefitted from it this time around.

@Jack-Waugh It sounds like you simply described a random voting system with the 32 bit hex thing. Not sure what you're after here. I don't think your vote can be sincere when the voter doesn't know how to do anything other than put a random number down.

Regardless, I'm saying no one is going to accept a voting method with randomness in it as you describe, even with your more reasonable options. It is a non-starter.

That said, I think several "reasonable" methods are hard to say what a sincere vote is, Approval being the most obvious one. But a ranked method it is pretty straightforward to determine what a sincere vote is.

@Marylander Codepens aren't running arbitrary JS on the actual site, they are running it in an iframe that is embedded into the site and can't communicate with the JS runtime within the site.

If they allowed people to, for instance, steal your login credentials (e.g.. read your document.cookie and then post it to a random URL), Codepen would have never even considered making them run embedded in forums. I can assure you they carefully considered the security implications and architected it in a way that prevents such things..

@Keith I agree that this forum should steer clear of advocating for anything that feels partisan, and this kind of does to me.

@Jack-Waugh For one, defeating two-party dominance doesn't happen just by creating a great system. You also have to sell that system to the public. I'd take Score in a heartbeat over our current system, but I don't think it is marketable due to its strong incentive to be strategic. Especially with its "dirty little secret" which is that to vote most effectively under Score, you simply ignore its costly feature, which is to vote with "in between" values. The smart voter under Score will typically give either a minimum or maximum value to each candidate. When people figure this out -- and it would become quickly apparent to everyone as soon as Score starts to gain momentum -- they aren't going to like it. "Why pay more for a dimmer switch when the light bulb really only works when it's all the way on or all the way off?"

So my goal is to offer a system that is as predictable as possible. And that means, make it so hard to gain an advantage by being strategic, that the vast majority people won't bother. I think any Condorcet system accomplishes this, and STAR does as well (although I think STAR may still incentivize strategic nomination, which is a problem).

I don't know what you mean by "what case shows...?" Are you looking for an example, a study, or for us to "make a case" for our particular system?

Regardless, for the most part, I am not really trying to make a case against Score, because I don't think Score has many people still arguing for it. Most of its fans have either joined the STAR camp or the Approval camp, or are possibly doing what I am doing and seeing if there might be something yet considered, that is more likely than either of those to gain widespread traction.

@Jack-Waugh said in Evaluating Single-winner Systems From 2021-10-18 Until the Next Major Discovery:

And yes, by "case," I meant an example starting with true voter sentiments, then proceeding through strategy.

I stand by the example I provided in the other thread. I think many voters on the left, with imperfect knowledge but behaving reasonably and realistically, would have been much more likely to lower their vote for Gore in 2000 due to Nader entering the race under both Score and STAR. Under Score, that would have significantly hurt Gore, under STAR, it wouldn't have. To the extent that Warren Smith's short article discusses money's influence (which I personally think is a stretch to say that better voting methods address that), I stand by that Score would be worse than STAR, since under Score a candidate like Nader would be more discouraged from running for reasons I noted.

My priorities are a good bit different than yours. Polarization is the main issue that I think is problematic under our current system, and I am genuinely scared that we are on a path toward another civil war in the US due to polarization caused by both the voting system and by social media so quickly emerging as a way people get their information about the world.

@Jack-Waugh said in Evaluating Single-winner Systems From 2021-10-18 Until the Next Major Discovery:

Marketability is important, but I think we have to predict performance first

Ok. As I said in another thread, systems that require or strongly incentivize strategy are very hard to predict due to the "hall of mirrors" effect, with each voter trying to guess what other voters are going to do. STAR and especially Condorcet methods address this. I don't think you can easily "predict performance" with Score. The system seems to be designed for you to vote in a way that is counter to good strategy, leaving it as an exercise in psychology to predict -- far more so than on better systems.

And STAR has more momentum than Score, the latter of which has been around for a long time and to my eyes, is dead in the water.

@Jack-Waugh It saddens me to see you taking that approach. Your argument boils down to this: “since perfection is impossible, we should just accept poor quality.”

It is most certainly possible to dramatically reduce the incentive to be strategic, compared to Score. By “being strategic” I mean, attempting to estimate how others will vote, and then, based on that information, adjusting your own vote to increase its power.

You have said you think that an advantage of Score is its simplicity. You also say that you expect voters under Score to be strategic in how they vote. That's not simple. Or maybe I should say, it is simple for the method (all it has to do is count!), but complicated for the voters.

So let’s be clear: you are advocating for a method that gives some people significantly more voting power than others.

@Jack-Waugh said in Evaluating Single-winner Systems From 2021-10-18 Until the Next Major Discovery:

And yes, by "case," I meant an example starting with true voter sentiments, then proceeding through strategy.

I stand by the example I provided in the other thread. I think many voters on the left, with imperfect knowledge but behaving reasonably and realistically, would have been much more likely to lower their vote for Gore in 2000 due to Nader entering the race under both Score and STAR. Under Score, that would have significantly hurt Gore, under STAR, it wouldn't have. To the extent that Warren Smith's short article discusses money's influence (which I personally think is a stretch to say that better voting methods address that), I stand by that Score would be worse than STAR, since under Score a candidate like Nader would be more discouraged from running for reasons I noted.

My priorities are a good bit different than yours. Polarization is the main issue that I think is problematic under our current system, and I am genuinely scared that we are on a path toward another civil war in the US due to polarization caused by both the voting system and by social media so quickly emerging as a way people get their information about the world.

@Jack-Waugh said in Evaluating Single-winner Systems From 2021-10-18 Until the Next Major Discovery:

Marketability is important, but I think we have to predict performance first

Ok. As I said in another thread, systems that require or strongly incentivize strategy are very hard to predict due to the "hall of mirrors" effect, with each voter trying to guess what other voters are going to do. STAR and especially Condorcet methods address this. I don't think you can easily "predict performance" with Score. The system seems to be designed for you to vote in a way that is counter to good strategy, leaving it as an exercise in psychology to predict -- far more so than on better systems.

And STAR has more momentum than Score, the latter of which has been around for a long time and to my eyes, is dead in the water.

@Jack-Waugh For one, defeating two-party dominance doesn't happen just by creating a great system. You also have to sell that system to the public. I'd take Score in a heartbeat over our current system, but I don't think it is marketable due to its strong incentive to be strategic. Especially with its "dirty little secret" which is that to vote most effectively under Score, you simply ignore its costly feature, which is to vote with "in between" values. The smart voter under Score will typically give either a minimum or maximum value to each candidate. When people figure this out -- and it would become quickly apparent to everyone as soon as Score starts to gain momentum -- they aren't going to like it. "Why pay more for a dimmer switch when the light bulb really only works when it's all the way on or all the way off?"

So my goal is to offer a system that is as predictable as possible. And that means, make it so hard to gain an advantage by being strategic, that the vast majority people won't bother. I think any Condorcet system accomplishes this, and STAR does as well (although I think STAR may still incentivize strategic nomination, which is a problem).

I don't know what you mean by "what case shows...?" Are you looking for an example, a study, or for us to "make a case" for our particular system?

Regardless, for the most part, I am not really trying to make a case against Score, because I don't think Score has many people still arguing for it. Most of its fans have either joined the STAR camp or the Approval camp, or are possibly doing what I am doing and seeing if there might be something yet considered, that is more likely than either of those to gain widespread traction.

@Jack-Waugh We can't know what strategy voters Score voters will use. Meanwhile STAR reduces (but doesn't entirely eliminate) the incentive to be strategic.

I assume you think that a strategic vote under Score will be based on the voter knowing who the front runners are. But unless you know 100% how others are going to vote, that's a bit tricky to know, isn't it? Especially if you are assuming that those other voters are using the same strategy, which means they need to know how you are going to vote. And those are obviously dependent on one another.

So the best you can get is a Nash equilibrium. It's possible that there will be multiple equilibria, which I would expect in the case of a Condorcet cycle.

Which basically means your question is unanswerable. Because Score (as you seem to acknowledge) demands strategy, it is intrinsically unpredictable. You don't just need to know what voters' preferences are, you need to know what their strategy is, and how much they know about others' preferences... and then add a bit of "hall of mirrors" style infinite recursion into the mix for good measure. (you can see my simulator of this recursive equilibrium seeking behavior at https://pianop.ly/voteSim/voteSim.html or a video -- of an earlier version that didn't yet have Score voting -- at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiS2A0QLeJU )

Many of us think that you should be able to vote without concern for who the front runners are. We don't want to worry that inaccurate polling could easily throw the election. We don't want a tight three way race to turn into a game of chicken. We don't want voting methods to work significantly differently in elections for which there is (or isn't) a lot of media attention.

You say in another thread that anything that deviates from "one person one vote" is anti-democratic, and I would argue that you are violating that principle if you are giving extra voting power to those who are better able to guess how others will vote.

In any case, I'll just say this. If you are trying to sell Score to the public, while acknowledging that voters are expected to vote dishonestly (or insincerely, or strategically, or whatever you want to call it).... good luck. I can pretty much guarantee you that a system that allows such fine-grained expressiveness, but then strongly incentivizes voters to use that expressiveness to say something that misrepresents how they really feel, is not going to fly. There are a lot of people (including myself) for whom that just feels dirty.

@Toby-Pereira said in STAR-like method ("reverse STAR"?):

It seems to me that you want to find the simplest Condorcet method, ...

More or less. I want a more marketable Condorcet method. I'm not even 100% set on Condorcet, I'd be mostly happy with STAR if it had momentum but I think it is failing to gain traction. Simplicity is part of it, but simplicity isn't all that simple. For instance Approval voting is simple to explain the mechanics, but a lot harder to explain why it is good (such as how it avoids vote splitting, or why it conforms to the concept of "one person one vote"), or to explain how to strategically vote with imperfect information, etc.

I think cardinal ballots (0 - 5) are an improvement over ranked ballots, based on my long experience designing "cognitively efficient" UIs. Even if you are only using them for ranking, I think it is a better UI, especially for paper ballots as opposed to voting on a computer screen. In that sense, I think STAR is on the right track. I just think it gives too much emphasis to cardinal data when the ordinal is enough 99% of the time.

I am actually looking for a method that I think I can explain well, using some graphics and animation. Something I think I could explain to a voting theory newb in 20 seconds. I don't think I could do that with, for instance, ranked pairs.

I've looked at your example ballot sets, and have given them some thought. I think I'll address them soon in a different thread, since I think the issues are more general than applying to just this method.

@Jack-Waugh said in STAR vs. Score:

But I'm pretty sure that's not the optimal strategy for Score. I think that many of them should vote Gore 5, and a few should vote Gore 4. They don't have to coordinate, to achieve that kind of a mix. If each individual dithers mentally between 5 and 4, the result can be random, so with everyone's random behavior, relative frequency follows probability.

So, even if they strongly prefer Nader to Gore, they should strategically say otherwise on their ballots, because they suspect only Bush and Gore will be front runners?

I don't see that as a positive. Score supposedly encourages voters to express their true preferences. If doing so is not good strategy, that is a failure, in my opinion. This is exactly why STAR does what it does.

What you are actually suggesting is that people vote in Score as if it is FPTP... attempt to guess who will be the front runners, and give your full vote power to your favorite of the two of them. Yuk.

Voting the way you suggest is strategic relies on voters knowing who is likely to be a front runner. This is unlikely to be true in many local elections, and even unlikely to be true in presidential elections once we have system in place that doesn't favor a two party system so strongly.

@Jack-Waugh said in STAR vs. Score:

STAR (like IRV) manufactures a fake "majority", which may pass muster in the courts, where Score would not.

Calling this a fake majority seems to miss the point of the final step of STAR. STAR isn't just to pass legal muster, it is because systems that expect voters to be strategic have all kinds of issues such as forcing a two party system.

Yes, especially if you are ready to move if they offer a suggestion.

I posted a test here:
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/16088/codepen-plugin-test

I wish it auto-ran, but that's better than nothing.

Possibly. It would be interesting to see if the plug in is actively supported.

I would go to the NodeBB forums. If you want me to do this, I can, but since you are the one who can respond and do what they say to do, it might be easier for you to do it.

We'd also like to have embeddable YouTube videos, which last I checked didn't work.

@Jack-Waugh said in STAR-like method ("reverse STAR"?):

This throws away all the information about how strongly voters strategically support a candidate who falls in order between two others

Yes I believe this information SHOULD be thrown away except to resolve a Condorcet cycle.

This is exactly why STAR throws away strength of preference (between the two front runners) as its final step.

This in itself is probably a topic in its own, since your complaint applies to all Condorcet systems. There is good reason they throw away this information.

Remember, most of us consider that, if only two candidates are running, the one that has the majority should win. (right?) This also ignores strength of preference. That's on purpose, and is consistent with the idea of "one person one vote."

Generalizing further, let's look at a particularly "pure" example of why we want to do this. Say you are voting for the temperature to set the thermostat to (such as in an open office). Should the person who likes it at 95 degrees have more "pull" than the (also warm-preferring) person who likes it at 74 degrees? I say no. Strength of preference shouldn't matter, all that matters is whether their preference is above or below the median. See my demonstration of this at: https://pianop.ly/voting/median.html

Anyway, I will bring this up as a different topic where, instead of discussing it relative to one Condorcet method, we discuss it relative to all Condorcet methods or methods that tend to favor the Condorcet winner (or more generally, select the candidate that is "first choice of the median voter").