Range Voting
Jan. 4th, 2007 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeThe folks advocating Range Voting contacted WSFS (actually, the WSFS webmaster, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
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Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 02:26 am (UTC)I spend hours every week working on getting the message out to Libertarians, Greens, and voting reformers in general. For instance, I just wrote this: http://reformthelp.org/issues/voting/range.php
I really wish I had time to go to Japan or where ever the next event is, but I don't. I was just hoping you'd get a sense of my passion for this issue, and investigate it, and realize it's to your own advantage to use it.
The Libertarian Reform Caucus, for example, has already come on board, and now uses Range Voting internally, for planks and rating essays and such. AND the advocate it for use in political elections.
So anyway, please understand why I take the perspective I do. I have limited resources.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 02:39 am (UTC)I don't see WSFS changing their rules without a significant number of their own regular attendees being convinced of the need for such a change. And that's not going to happen from an outside source. Either convince some of the regular Business Meeting attendees or join Worldcon and come push the changes in person. WSFS isn't run by remote elected representatives or some far-off cabal; it's more like a Town Meeting.
And I'm Chairman of the next such Town Meeting. I'll help you frame your proposal and point you to the people you really have to convince to have any hope of getting a fair hearing. But either you or someone you convince is going to have to do the actual legislative work.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 03:43 am (UTC)And just maybe doing a drive-by that, worse, says "what you're doing is wrong; trust us and all will be solved" is supercilious and patronizing. It is unlikely to give us a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Perhaps the two people who have built this system have something useful to offer...but evangelizing at us when they are not a part of our community is irritating as all get-out.
I'm really glad they've seen the light and all. But if they knock at the door, they probably won't be nearly as entertaining as the Mormons.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 05:15 am (UTC)And no, it's not more complex than IRV, it's much simpler. It's simpler to use, and VASTLY easier to total.
Voters in San Francisco decided to use a modified form of IRV, because it was marketed well to them, and because they were so desperate for reform that they latched on to what was out there. FairVote beat us to the punch, and told a LOT of lies. They still tell lies all the time. They say that IRV only elects majority winners, and prevents strategy incentives, and prevents spoilers. All lies, and we've pointed it out to them numerous times, but they still do it over and over again.
http://rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html
You might care to note that Oakland also recently voted to change from traditional runoffs to _instant_ runoff. This move was largely pushed by Greens and independents. Interestingly, IRV has led to two-party duopoly in EVERY country where it has been used on any scale: Ireland, Australia, Malta, Fiji. Yet 21-23 of the 27 countries that use traditional runoffs have broken free of two-party domination, and have healthy third parties that actually WIN. So Oakland's Greens were apparently suicidal. Well, they didn't mean to be, but they swallowed the IRV propaganda. I was living in San Francisco at the time, and tried to get the word out, but it was me against an army of progaganda and myth. We're like the round-earthers trying to get the message out, and no one wants to hear it. It's rather frustrating.
The voter satisfaction ratios of the various voting methods should more than suffice to prove to you that you will see ENORMOUS benefit by switching to Range Voting. Let me phrase it like this. Imagine if you picked the winner by just drawing a name out of a hat. Okay, sounds dumb right? Now imagine you go from that to IRV. Now you are getting more satisfaction with the winner. Now switch to Range Voting from IRV, and you get that same amount of satisfaction, all over again! Range Voting is about as big an improvement over IRV as IRV is over plurality.
Do you not like having an election method that picks the right winner?
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:17 am (UTC)I think we'd get better representation than the current system by adopting this method.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:56 am (UTC)http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXPf6D8HwIWncwYJKKb4CcQ
The plurality winner, under honesty, would be a tie between C1 and C5. Under strategy it would be C5. That's still better than electing a random winner. The VSR of random winner would be 0%, by definition.
Now set up sheet like this for yourself, and go in there punching in random values based on the rolls of dice or something. And see what the expected utility return is for plurality as compared to random selection (i.e. just averaging the utilities of all candidates).
Enjoy.
CLAY
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 04:03 pm (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:18 am (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 07:01 am (UTC)The Dáil uses proportional representation, I believe, probably STV (IRV is just STV applied to single-winner races).
If you like proportional representation, then you should love Range Voting, because Reweighted Range Voting is better than STV in every conceivable way.
http://RangeVoting.org/RRV.html
Also, with IRV, which leads to two-party domination, we'll never EVER get to proportional representation in this country, aside from a few local elections - nothing that will effect big time politics. But with Range Voting, we'll break out of two-party domination, and have an actual chance of getting proportional representation.
See, if you had just done a little research before hastily trying to prove me wrong, this dialog could have gone a lot better for you.
Thanks,
Clay
Re: Missing the point
From:Re: Missing the point
From:Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 07:48 am (UTC)Heck, IRV is more "fair" than first-past-the-post as far as I'm concerned, but I know it confuses a lot of people, particularly when the candidate that gets the most first-preference votes doesn't win the election. When that happens, you get people complaining about how "unfair" it is that the first-preference leader didn't win, even though a majority favored some other candidate.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 04:25 pm (UTC)That is not true. Don't you know anything about Irish or Australian politics, or do you just look at a list of the party affiliations of the prime ministers?
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 03:26 am (UTC)Meanwhile you get us to be yet another on your list of groups that use your spiffy system while you lobby groups and governments to adopt it. You're not unlike the consultants who come around trying to sell companies on nifty new systems for getting work done like sigma six. You won't actually care about any problems or expenses we incur in implementing your suggestion. And likely you'd dismiss them as well worth it, after all it won't be like you actually had to DO anything.
I'd be only slightly less skeptical if you were a tiny white dog trying to sell me on your latest business strategy using all the power buzzwords most popular with middle managers.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 05:36 am (UTC)Okay, imagine you are in a deli for lunch, and there are exactly three sandwiches you can get (assume all cost the same). Say you like sandwich B a lot more than sandwich A, and you like sandwich C as much over B as you like B over A. Got it? Now, imagine that the shop keeper was so bad with English, that every time you tried to tell him you wanted sandwich C, you got sandwich B. Not bad, but certainly less satisfactory. THIS is EXACTLY what you are doing by using IRV instead of Range Voting. So just like you'd want to get a better communication method with the deli guy, so you could get a LOT more additional satisfaction, you WANT Range Voting, because that's what it will do for you. It will pick more satisfying results, by a LOT. It is almost as big an improvement over IRV as IRV is over RANDOM SELECTION. Read that again. Process. Make sure you get it. You are missing out enormously by refusing to chose a superior selection method, just like you'd miss out horribly by refusing to choose a better sandwich selection method (like say, pointing to the menu, instead of speaking).
> I doubt it would add to the comprehensibleness of the system, the results, or acceptance of them.
Then I encourage you to study voting methods further, and read http://RangeVoting.org/vsr.html and http://RangeVoting.org/BayRegDum.html and http://RangeVoting.org/UniqBest.html
> It also would add considerably to the complexity of trying to tally the vote
NO! WRONG! Have you never seen how IRV works? You total all the votes, over and over again, in rounds, until there's either a majority, or at least a plurality winner (depending on whether voters are required to list every single candidate on their ballots). So you effectively have to total the entire election multiple times, depending on how long it takes to get to a "majority" winner (which may not actually be the Condorcet winner at all).
With Range Voting, you just do ONE tally. ONE, and you are done. You can do it on ordinary plurality voting machines. See: http://zohopolls.com/us/pres for instance. Try that poll with IRV! It would be NUTS.
> Meanwhile you get us to be yet another on your list of groups that use your spiffy system while you lobby groups and governments to adopt it.
Obviously you won't be on our list of endorsers if you don't have good experiences with the system, don't you think?
> You're not unlike the consultants who come around trying to sell companies on nifty new systems for getting work done like sigma six. You won't actually care about any problems or expenses we incur in implementing your suggestion.
You're being too cynical. Range Voting is simpler and cheaper to use than IRV, which is a benefit to you, not a detriment.
> And likely you'd dismiss them as well worth it, after all it won't be like you actually had to DO anything.
If you guys studied this issue enough to see the obvious superiority of Range Voting, I can promise you that we'd help you however we could. I mean, I don't have THAT much to give...I'm an aspiring musician in Seattle, certainly not wealthy. But we could try to help you with any questions or logistics issues.
> I'd be only slightly less skeptical if you were a tiny white dog trying to sell me on your latest business strategy using all the power buzzwords most popular with middle managers.
You can be as skeptical as you want. But being skeptical means making up your mind on the basis of the facts, not dogmatically disbelieving. Look at the social utility efficiencies of the various voting methods. You can even do your own crude simulations using a spreadsheet and some simple formulas -- I've done it for quick test results to satisfy my own curiosity. Our utility calculations are arguably the most rigorous that have been done by ANY election systems researchers EVER.
And the bottom line is this, you tell me ANY way in which you think IRV is better than Range Voting, and I'll prove you wrong. You name it. You want science, I'll give you science. I say the world is round.
CLAY
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:08 am (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 06:40 am (UTC)The computer simulations don't say that bumblebee's can't fly away. They say that range voting has the greatest social utility efficiency.
Clay
Re: Missing the point
From:Re: Missing the point
From:Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 04:45 pm (UTC)every time you tried to tell him you wanted sandwich C, you got sandwich B. ... THIS is EXACTLY what you are doing by using IRV instead of Range Voting.
Oh, for God's sake. "Every time"? This is actually a distorted version of a rare paradox that forms a tiny technical argument against IRV but is not therefore an argument for range voting. And the bad-with-English storekeeper analogy is so inane and a bad analogy that it's hardly worth commenting on.
Have you never seen how IRV works? You total all the votes, over and over again, in rounds,
Have you never seen how IRV works? We have a computer program that, once you get all the raw data in it, counts the entire Hugo ballot and spews out the whole result, first second third &c &c places, in the complete iterations, plus checking for a special rule we have for balancing winner preferences against No Award preferences - everything you could possibly want to know - in less than 20 seconds. I've used it personally. It's such a good program that Hugo voting results are usually published in the form of its immediate output. This is not in the slightest way more difficult than counting up range voting points.
You tell me ANY way in which you think IRV is better than Range Voting, and I'll prove you wrong.
Since you elsewhere define things like 1-5 star movie ratings as a form of range voting (which I think is wrong, because in those you're not trying to advocate a winner), then I can tell you this: I've voted both ways, and I personally find casting range votes much harder than casting IRV with a limited number of candidates. Much harder.
Now, you can talk about voters prefering range voting, though I want to see your proof that they do. Has Gallup done a survey, and how did they count it? And I'm only one voter (though the other Hugo voters who've responded here sound as if they'd say the same thing). But you said you'd dispute "ANY way" in which IRV claims to be superior. And one voter's preference for it is a claimed superiority.
So come on. Tell me that I'm mistaking my own personal preference.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 01:11 am (UTC)Really? Can it be adopted for Site Selection? Or would data entry be the bottleneck? When I ran Site Selection we used hand counting. It was un-contested but we did set the record for number of write-in ballots (28 candidates).
Counting IRV Ballots
From:Re: Counting IRV Ballots
From:Re: Counting IRV Ballots
From:Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-02-11 12:13 am (UTC)Yes, this was a poor choice of words. There could be elections where IRV chose a better winner than Range Voting would have. They are just extremely rare. So I should have said "most of the time".
But no, this analogy is not "inane and bad". You are using a system which is poor at giving voters what they want, just like using a bad communication system is bad at giving a consumer what he wants.
We have a computer program that, once you get all the raw data in it, counts the entire Hugo ballot and spews out the whole result...This is not in the slightest way more difficult than counting up range voting points.
I never said it was. My point is that if people want to call Range Voting "complicated", they should know that IRV is drastically more complicated.
Since you elsewhere define things like 1-5 star movie ratings as a form of range voting (which I think is wrong, because in those you're not trying to advocate a winner)
Yes you are - that's exactly what you're doing. The only point you could be making is that people will be more honest in those systems, instead of strategically doing things like exaggerating to a minimum or maximum. We calculated the utility efficiency that would be produced by a 100% strategic electorate, and they still kick the pants off the other common methods. Range Voting with 100% strategic voters perferms about as well (often better) than IRV using 100% honest voters.
I personally find casting range votes much harder than casting IRV with a limited number of candidates. Much harder.
Much harder? Could you be exaggerating just a touch? The local yokels I polled in Texas showed zero signs of having any problem going down a list and rating people. If you want to make it simple for yourself, just give the options you like a 10, and the others a 0. Your preferences will be better represented by this method than by IRV, statistically speaking...by a LOT.
If difficulty/work required to vote is more important to you than picking the right winner, why not completely get rid of the elections, and just use a random name out of a hat? That would save you far more time than the difference between using Range Voting and using IRV.
Now, you can talk about voters prefer[r]ing range voting, though I want to see your proof that they do.
I claim that they prefer it when the utility of the election result is combined with the utility of the voting process. For instance, say you told people they could cast up to 10 ballots, in our current political elections. As annoying and time-consuming as that would be, you'd better bet your life that a lot of people would do it - and that would show that, clearly, they care more about being satisfied with the election outcome than they do about how hard it is to completely cast 10 ballots.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 07:08 am (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 12:43 pm (UTC)Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 04:12 pm (UTC)There are costs associated with administering preference polls, running elections, etc. The cost of even looking at the range stuff is time and effort.
Years ago I was involved with neural network and expert systems systems development and implementation, and vaguely recall some of the math / logic behind them involved in decision-making. Neural net systems had to be "trained" with various cases of different conditions. The training took quite a while, but then when conditions were input to the neural net system, the system analyzed in the input and generated responses based on similarity to the cases it had been trained with.
The range stuff sort of reminds me of that--sort of. One thing I notice is that there appears to be -no- calibration involved, no normalization, and that tends to create garbage for both an analysis and results of analysis....
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-23 10:00 pm (UTC)I could see a "-2/+2" scale dealing with the calibration issue well. It wouldn't be too difficult to say "-2=hate, -1=dislike, 0=neutral, +1=like, +2=love" but that doesn't mean that I think it's worth replacing Hugo and site-selection voting scheme in the first place.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-02-10 11:20 pm (UTC)http://rangevoting.org/Why99.html
that doesn't mean that I think it's worth replacing Hugo and site-selection voting scheme in the first place.
Then you might as well just use a random name drawing out of a hat, since that's about the same difference in quality you're getting by using IRV instead of Range Voting.
Social Utility Efficiencies
Range (honest voters) 96.71% 94.66%
Range & Approval (strategic voters) 78.99% 77.01%
IRV (honest voters) 78.49% 76.32%
IRV (strategic exaggerating voters) 39.07% 39.21%
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 12:48 pm (UTC)And since Range Voting can be done in just one round, always, whereas IRV can take multiple rounds, IRV is "cheaper"/easier. Another great reason to dump the wreck that is IRV for Range Voting.
The range stuff sort of reminds me of that--sort of. One thing I notice is that there appears to be -no- calibration involved, no normalization, and that tends to create garbage for both an analysis and results of analysis..
Some have suggested that we automatically normalize the Range Voting ballots, but there's no hard evidence that actually produces greater social utility efficiency. On the contrary, I have a pretty well founded intuition that people's inherent tendency to convert their honest utilities to range ballots using a sort of logarithmic process (sort of like treating increasing utility with diminishing returns) actually increases social utility efficiency. We could test that by adding some new strategy generators to the utility calculation software, but I'm too lazy, and I want to rewrite the software in D before I further modify it.
Re: Missing the point
Date: 2007-01-24 05:55 pm (UTC)Clue 1: it takes time and effort to read through and try to follow the descriptions that the proponents of range voting give, and time to try to follow the analysis. That is time and effort that the person is giving up from doing things that might be more interesting and rewarding to them, than reading ideological ranting about how wonderful range voting is and everyone should go to it....
From thebroken/r/e/c/o/r/d/ladder:
And since Range Voting can be done in just one round, always, whereas IRV can take multiple rounds..
Clue #2: there is software in place if I am not mistaken, for tallying results of voting for Worldscon site selection and the Hugos. Changing the voting system would require writing -new- software, testing it, etc. etc. etc. The existing methods have "sunk costs." Changing to something else, would entail a lot of time and effort. Is it worthwhile as expenditure of volunteer time and labor, particularly, are there people trusted within the community competent to implement range voting who would actually go to the effort and time and personal expense to do so? Even were there any substantiative interest by the Business Meeting to make a change, unless there is the wherewithal to do so--someone competent and willing to go to the effort of developing and implementing etc. the software, it would be moot.
...I have a pretty well founded intuition that people's inherent tendency to convert their honest utilities to range ballots using a sort of logarithmic process (sort of like treating increasing utility with diminishing returns) actually increases social utility efficiency.
Why should I value you intuition? I have seen no evidence of what I consider considered reasonable competence and ability to do competent analysis, conclusion generation, recommendation generation, and presentation of results in a reasonable fashion. That is, what I am seeing presented by you, does not come off as something done by someone who has made an adequate investigation and analysis of what, who, how, and who has not bothered to tune the presentation to the audience and has failed to consider audience response and interaction with the audience and audience opinions, values, interests, etc.
You showed up with an agenda to push, and have with vast amounts of temerity and energy, proceeded to push it....
You keep referring to "social efficiency." Just what is "social efficiency and why should I or anyone else here care about it? It looks like some arbitrary definition of some value you have, it may not be seen as a viable or reasonable or desirable or rational metric by others.
Generation of Hugo and site selection results, does NOT get done by the entire convention. A small number of people are involved directly, the other thousands of people, don't get involved in handling any ballot than the individual one they submit. In terms of "efficiency" then it is immaterial to 99.99 percent of the Worldcon members what the specific software, etc., that gets used is, or methods, so long as the method used follows the will of the membership for type of voting, that the results are honest outcomes based on the submitted valid ethically-submitted ballots, and that the results get announced in a timely fashion. It doesn't particularly affect MY life if it takes Keven, John, Rick, or whoever five minutes, or hours, or days, to deal with ballots and the data crunching, I'm not someone who has done ballot counting and data entry and software running to generate the results! It does affect my life if I hear them complaining about it, but otherwise...
We could test that by adding some new strategy generators to the utility calculation software, but I'm too lazy, and I want to rewrite the software in D before I further modify it.
Who're these "we"?
You are apparently someone who enjoys writing software code... however, "all code has bugs." Who do you propose to e.g. do code reviews? What are the independent validation and verification requirements? Why should anyone believe that your code is accurate... where are the system spec, requirements, etc.?