Range Voting

[kevin_standlee]

The folks advocating Range Voting contacted WSFS (actually, the WSFS webmaster, sfrose) lobbying WSFS to change its voting system from the Instant Runoff Voting system we currently use for site selection and the Hugo Awards. Sharon told them how our rules work and suggested that if they want to change them, they come to WSFS business meetings and propose and debate the changes there, like all other rule changes. The advocate's response, in my opinion, amounted to, "Our proposal is so obviously Right that we shouldn't have to do all that hard, expensive work. You should change your rules because we tell you to do so."

I often tell people who come to me with rules-change proposals, "If you think it's worthwhile, come and submit it yourself. I'll help you with all of the technicalities to the best of my ability, but you have to make your own case, lobby people yourself, and get the votes by convincing people." Most of the time, this discourages them -- democracy is hard work! But sometimes we get people who are willing to work and debate, and sometimes we even get workable changes and improvements.

WSFS rules are intentionally designed to be resistant to change; however, they can be changed if people work hard enough at it. But it's not enough to just lobby a Board of Directors or subvert the Chairman; you have to convince the members.

Comments

[kproche.livejournal.com]

Lord. We have enough trouble getting folks do our relativley simple preferential ballots!

And I poked around on their site for about 5 minutes before my eyes started to bleed and my brains began to leak out of my ears.

Clearly, RV is their claw hammer and all elections are basic HDG nails. Urgh.

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

I have enough trouble figuring out five nominees (in the catagories I am nominating) for the Hugos. How would this make the nominating and voting process, easier? I just don't think this is workable.

RV is easier

[(Anonymous)]

Consider that THOUSANDS of books, DVD's, etc. are scored using Range Voting on Amazon.com. Now try to score them using IRV...UGH.

CLAY

[nitroace.livejournal.com]

I get it, but I'm with kproche, my eyes are bleeding and my brain is numb. Looking at their other options (and I'll admit I only glanced over the whole thing), they seem to really hate preferential (they call it "ranked voting").

[(Anonymous)]

Ranked voting means IRV, Condorcet, Borda, etc. - any method that is ordinal, as opposed to method like Range Voting, which is _cardinal_.

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

I agree. That's why I started my respoinse to them with:

"Thank you for your opinion."

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

You are so much more level headed than I am. I would have said something along the lines of, "Go peddle your snake oil somewhere else," if I bothered to respond at all. This is why you make a good leader and I mostly make good entertainment. The only reason I keep being elected to high fannish office is that I'm the only one who volunteers.

[sfrose.livejournal.com]

LOL! I think it is just many year of practice of being the online liaison, webmaster, and other electronic presence for fannish organizations and even work related jobs. I find that it is easier to try to be polite than to start off treating idiots like scum. Sometimes the private postings to others aren't as tactful...

I still think the funniest is when people write to the webmaster address touting what a good webmaster they would be. The webpages need flash and scripting, and other bells and whistles that the current webmaster obviously isn't capable of doing. Just who do they think is reading the webmaster email?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

I do try to be discriminate in the use of my cut rate Dorothy Parker personality. But people who don't have an excuse of being, for example a newbie or youthful, and come out with marvelous ideas that you should get to work on right away drive me nuts. This is volunteer work after all.

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

I'm not asking you to do something selfless. You can adopt Range Voting for purely selfish reasons.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Let me break this down for you since you didn't understand what you replied to.

You: Procrustean evangelist who does not do work necessary to put on Worldcon or any other science fiction convention.

Us: The volunteers who actually put up our labor and money to put on science fiction conventions.

Now who's opinion of what needs to be our highest priority do you think will carry more weight? Particularly since you're unwilling to even work up a proposal, you just want us to study your tracts and then work at coming up with a way to implement Range Voting at Worldcon.

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

You: Procrustean evangelist who does not do work necessary to put on Worldcon or any other science fiction convention.

Us: The volunteers who actually put up our labor and money to put on science fiction conventions.

You: People who are supposedly rational enough to do something that is in your own best interest.

Am I wrong?

since you're unwilling to even work up a proposal, you just want us to study your tracts and then work at coming up with a way to implement Range Voting at Worldcon.

The point isn't what I want you to do. The point is, you should want you to do this. I would be happy to help you draft a proposal, if you would decide to push for this. I would offer any academic resources possible.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

If it be irrationality to reject making more work for myself then I am happy to be called irrational by the likes of you.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, it' not snake oil, it's a vastly better voting method. If you use IRV instead of Range Voting, you are shooting yourself in the foot, because YOU will be less happy with the result of the election, because IRV produces a substantially lower social utility efficiency than Range Voting.

See: http://rangevoting.org/IrvExec.html

Here is an example of how "dumb" IRV is:

Voting honestly in IRV can be worse for you than not voting at all
#voters their vote
7 B>G>N
6 G>B>N
5 N>G>B
3 N>G>B

In this 21-voter IRV election, B wins (by 15-to-8 after G is eliminated). But if the 3 voters in the last line had not voted, then G would have won (which those voters would have preferred). (Because N is eliminated then G beats B by 11-to-7.).

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

It's not an opinion. Social utility efficiency is something you can objectively calculate.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

Have you ever done any actual market research, including interviewing people and discussing that semantics make a huge difference, that while Person A might say, "we don't do any of that here," Person B who works ten feet away from Person A, is actually working on what Person A hasn't got a clue is being worked on in the company... it's not that what Person A is working on is any secret, it's that Person B is narrowly focused on Person B's specialty and doesn't notice anything outside that specialty or have a "systems approach." Most people don't. Or, after fifteen minutes of discussion, it comes out that Person C who said, "No, I don't work on any of that," is working on it, but doesn't think of what he or she is working on, as being of that ilk... that's the reason why e.g. the same equation gets called different names in different fields--it's the same math equation, but most people don't go cross-discipline research to notice that one can e.g. copy a solution to a problem in fluid mechanics from an electromagnetism text. Electrical engineers and programmers in particular tend to draw boxes or the code equivalent and jump down into them and never look outside the box... there was the day I was looking at a design and said to the EEs, "if these two boxes are supposed to be talking to one another there's a problem. One of them has four lines and the other five."

"Which do you want, four or five?" they asked me. "I don't care if it's four or five, I want the same number of lines on each [so that the I/O matches up]."

[(Anonymous)]

>Lord. We have enough trouble getting folks do our relativley simple preferential ballots!

Range Voting is arguably simpler than preferential ballot systems. You can, for instance, use a simplified range of -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, which can be roughly abstracted as hate, dislike, neutral, like, love.

Why did your brains start to leak out of your ears? Because our site looks like a college math text book? Well, sorry. The science of election methods is super complex, even if USING the election method is simple. It's like with your iPod. Just because it uses incredibly complex technology under the hood, doesn't mean my mom can't easily use hers when she goes jogging.

Let's not imply that a voting method is complex because the science it takes to prove it's the best is complex.

Clay

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

And I poked around on their site for about 5 minutes before my eyes started to bleed and my brains began to leak out of my ears.

I have a math degree (in fact, we're both in the same general field, aren't we?), and I'm mopping my brains off the floor too. ;)

Not to mention, this "social utility efficiency" catchphrase they keep bandying about in their comments here strikes me as so much Boardroom Bingo.

I even took a look at their example (http://www.rangevoting.org/RExample.html), and all I see is that a hypothetical candidate who was left off of three ballots and named last on two others ends up winning. I hardly think a system where a candidate wins whom more than half of the voters absolutely don't want is an effective system.

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

I have a math degree (in fact, we're both in the same general field, aren't we?), and I'm mopping my brains off the floor too. ;)

In what respect? You mean to say that the material is too complicated? Too boring? What exactly is your complaint?

Not to mention, this "social utility efficiency" catchphrase they keep bandying about in their comments here strikes me as so much Boardroom Bingo.

No, it's a measure of your expected value, in the "currency" of satisfaction, with each voting method. A higher social utility efficiency means YOU, Joe Voter, will tend to be happier with the results of elections using Range Voting. Compared to IRV, the effect is enormous. Going from IRV to Range Voting gives you almost as big an increase in your expected satisfaction, as going from random selection to IRV in the first place.

I even took a look at their example, and all I see is that a hypothetical candidate who was left off of three ballots and named last on two others ends up winning. I hardly think a system where a candidate wins whom more than half of the voters absolutely don't want is an effective system.

Leaving someone off the ballot means that you aren't affecting his average, and is generally only done by voters when they don't know enough about that candidate to make an informed decision. In this example, Amy and Bob were extremely disliked by 3 people, whereas Cal was only strongly disliked by two people, and got an almost perfect score from three others, and a very high score from the other. So the most people are the most happy with Cal. The X voters chose to trust the opinions of more informed voters about a candidate they knew little about; but that's their choice, they could have strategically chosen to give Cal a 0 if they wanted.

Contrary to your intuition, this actually is the most effective system, because the paradoxes that arise using other methods tend to be MUCH worse. Look at this IRV election for example (IRV is the method you currently use), where the four voting blocs sit on a left-to-right axis as follows:

Leftist Centrist Rightist
Dean Gore Bush
1
2
3
4

21 Bush > Gore > Dean
10 Gore > Bush > Dean
10 Gore > Dean > Bush
20 Dean > Gore > Bush

With IRV, Gore is eliminated, and Bush beats Dean 31-30. But wait! Gore is preferred to Bush 40-21 - a bigger percentage than any landslide election in our history. IRV picks the wrong winner in this scenario. As a result, the utility efficiency of IRV is significantly lower than that produced by Range Voting.

You can do simulations for yourself if you like, and see which methods tend to leave voters most satisfied. What you'll find is that Range Voting is a very large improvement over IRV, even if we can find special scenarios where Range Voting doesn't seem to pick the winner that you intuitively feel should win the election. On the whole Range Voting picks better winners. As a result, YOU will be happier with the results of elections if you use Range Voting. Choosing NOT to use it is just shooting yourself in the foot. It's like choosing to pick the winner at random instead of holding elections.

Look at this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXPf6D8HwIWncwYJKKb4CcQ

You can easily set up a spreadsheet like that, and plug in lots of random utility values, and calculate the utility efficiency of plurality, strategic plurality, honest/scaled Range Voting, IRV, strategic IRV (same general strategy as with plurality), etc. etc. You can see the results for yourself. There will be cases when Range Voting picks a worse winner than plurality, but more often than not, it will be vice versa. Range Voting will simply decimate the other methods. Again, I encourage you to test this for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Practice the scientific method.

Clay

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

Ugh...now I see why I have to use the pre element:

Leftist               Centrist                 Rightist
Dean                  Gore                                  Bush
                                                 1
                                         2
                        3
    4

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

Even with the corrected HTML, I'm not sure I understand this example; that 2nd place vote doesn't seem to be for anything, even "none of the above."

21 Bush > Gore > Dean
10 Gore > Bush > Dean
10 Gore > Dean > Bush
20 Dean > Gore > Bush

With IRV, Gore is eliminated, and Bush beats Dean 31-30. But wait! Gore is preferred to Bush 40-21 - a bigger percentage than any landslide election in our history. IRV picks the wrong winner in this scenario. As a result, the utility efficiency of IRV is significantly lower than that produced by Range Voting.

Actually, under our Constitution, if those were the results than both Gore and Dean would be eliminated after the first ballot, and Bush would be declared the winner 21-20-20:

"Votes shall first be tallied by the voter's first choices. If no majority is then obtained, the candidate who places last in the initial tallying shall be eliminated and the ballots listing it as first choice shall be redistributed on the basis of those ballots' second choices. This process shall be repeated until a majority-vote winner is obtained. If two or more candidates are tied for elimination during this process, the candidate that received fewer first-place votes shall be eliminated. If they are still tied, all the tied candidates shall be eliminated together."

Can I have another example?

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

Yes, I stupidly had Gore and Dean tie here. Change it to percentages as

34
17
15
34

And then you should get the point.

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

In what respect? You mean to say that the material is too complicated? Too boring? What exactly is your complaint?

Poorly presented, perhaps. Upon a second reading, it looks like a fairly simple system, but you're making it sound much more complex than it needs to be.

I still have a major problem with it: the points you award to a given candidate can be all over the map. A voter who votes "candidate A=9, B=5, C=1" has more weight given to his vote than a voter who opts for "A=3, B=2, C=1" when they've ranked the candidates in the exact same order. This may be a good way of rating a book or a movie for the purpose of telling someone how much you enjoyed it, but it's not good for choosing a convention site or giving out awards when you're comparing two or more candidates directly against each other.

This isn't Olympic figure skating, where every candidate starts out with a score of 6.0 and points are deducted for turning a triple Axel into a double.

Oh, and I also take issue with your example of bees. Simply screaming the loudest is no way to make a democratic decision.

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

Poorly presented, perhaps. Upon a second reading, it looks like a fairly simple system, but you're making it sound much more complex than it needs to be.

I presented it as "Score all the candidates and elect the one who has the highest average." How does that make it sound complicated?

It is important to differentiate between the complexity of the actual voting method, and the complexity of understanding why the voting method is good. In other words, explaining to people what monotonicity and independence of irrelevant alternatives are. Explaining social utility efficiency...that can be frustrating and difficult. But that has nothing to do with how complicated the voting method itself is. When people say that Range Voting would fail under strategic voting, I have to pull out social utility efficiency calculations to prove to them, "No, you're wrong, it wouldn't" and "stop expecting your intuition to have any place in such a deeply mathematical discussion".

A voter who votes "candidate A=9, B=5, C=1" has more weight given to his vote than a voter who opts for "A=3, B=2, C=1" when they've ranked the candidates in the exact same order.

This is a benefit of Range Voting. Say a third voter came in and scored A=0, B=6. B would be the logical winner, even though A is the first choice of two voters. That is, a switch from B to A would only affect voter 2 a tiny amount, and take voter 1 from being moderately happy to being very happy. But voter 3 would go from relative happiness to misery. I don't think that's a good situation. But if voters don't agree, they are free to maximize their scores. In fact, I suggest they do - because what meaning do any scores have if you do not first give your least and most favorite a minimum and maximum score respectively? Without a frame of reference, what do the numbers even mean?

So, in short, don't blame the voting system when voters do silly things. This reminds me of the 97,488 Floridians who voted for Nader in 2000, only to help secure the victory for Bush. Should we have taken Nader off the ballot, to protect them from their own silliness?

This may be a good way of rating a book or a movie for the purpose of telling someone how much you enjoyed it, but it's not good for choosing a convention site or giving out awards when you're comparing two or more candidates directly against each other.

On the contrary, it's the best of the common single-winner voting methods, based on extensive calculations of social utility efficiency (http://RangeVoting.org/vsr.html). That is, by using Range Voting, you will be greatly more satsified with election results than you would be with IRV. The effect is almost as large as the one caused by going from random selection, to IRV elections like you have now.

This isn't Olympic figure skating, where every candidate starts out with a score of 6.0 and points are deducted for turning a triple Axel into a double.

I don't recall ever saying that it was. It has been compared more to gymnastics scoring, but even then that's just to give people the concept in a simple recognizable scenario. Maybe "like rating books on Amazon" would be better for certain audiences.

[thebrokenladder.livejournal.com]

34% McCain > Gore > Edwards
17% Gore > McCain > Edwards
15% Gore > Edwards > McCain
34% Edwards > Gore > McCain

McCain wins with IRV, even though 66% of voters prefer Gore to both McCain and Edwards. IRV picks the wrong winner. Any election method can exhibit this kind of phenomenon, but with IRV, it's negative impact on social utility is significantly worse.