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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Re: Supermajority vote?
Date: 2007-01-23 04:47 am (UTC)The computer simulations model real human behavior. 720 parameterized models were used, in which voters ranged from 100% strategic to 100% honest, and from 100% ignorant to 100% informed. Somewhere within that Range must be the same percentage of real people who vote strategically vs. honestly. Somewhere within that Range must be a level of ignorance that is approximately equal to the real amount of ignorance in society. Range Voting bested the other methods in ALL of the models.
Let's take a sample scenario. 3 voters, with the following utility values for candidates A, B, and C.
A, B, C
V1 -4, 1, 2
V2 -3, 3, 4
V3 -2, 5, -6
AVE: -3, 3, 0
Now in a real-life scenario, we KNOW what these voters would choose using plurality voting. V1 and V2 would choose candidate C, and V3 would choose candidate B. Candidate C would win. This would produce a utility score of 0, which when rescaled to a random-winner=0, ideal-winner=1 scale, would produce 0 / (3-0) = 0%. That's the social utility from this one simulation. Now do MILLIONS of them, and you start getting meaningful numbers. Calculating the values under honesty is a piece of cake. It's devising realistic strategies that gets complicated. That's why lots of strategies have been tried, in the effort to use strategies that model what humans would really do. In a plurality election, the best strategy is to vote for the person you like more among the two perceived front-runners. You can model that effect in digital elections pretty easily. In general, the same strategy applies to IRV as well, which is why IRV degrades to being as bad as plurality the more strategic voters get.
Now, if you aren't happy with the strategies we've employed, and think that the ENORMOUS disparity between Range Voting and IRV can be overcome by simply correcting some of our methodological errors, then please be my guest and cite our errors, and even get the credit you deserve for improving our simulation. But until you find methodological flaws, your objection amounts to nothing but incredulity. "I don't believe your simulations could model reality very well, therefore your results are wrong." Well PROVE it. Engage in science, not superstition.
And read this: http://rangevoting.org/WhyNoHumans.html
> Figuring out how to express my opinions through voting is hard enough without adding additional unnecessary complexity. Especially since (correct me if I'm wrong here Kev) we use paper ballots. It will be impossible to tally by hand if we use Range Voting.
Range Voting is orders of magnitude easier to count, since you just sum up the votes in a single round, where precinct totals can be sent up. It is also consistent, meaning that if two precincts both elect A the winner, A will still be the winner when you merge their ballots. No the case with IRV. With IRV, A can win in two states, yet when you sum the ballots together, A can lose. Sounds nuts, huh? Yeah, IRV _is_ nuts.
And with Range Voting, you can use ordinary dumb plurality voting machines, instead of having to get special multi-round IRV machines, or (ugh) do IRV's multiple rounds by HAND.
See: http://rangevoting.org/Complexity.html
Get this nonsense that Range Voting is complicated out of your head. It's way simpler than IRV.
>My second point is that if it actually works then we'll shortly have evidence of it working for other groups. Then we can decide based upon real world evidence rather than theoretical simulations.
The theoretical simulations prove it VASTLY better than any real world simulations, since you can't read people's minds, but you CAN read the minds of digital voters. There will NEVER be a real world test of voting systems that can compare to the quality of computer simulations, at least for calculating social utility efficiency. As for judging the easy of implementing them, and having real world voters use them, that does require real world tests. Millions of people score things online all the time. That's a great science experiment that proves our point. Not to mention my exit polling in Texas. http://RangeVoting.org/Beaumont.html
Re: Supermajority vote?
Date: 2007-01-23 05:11 am (UTC)Re: Supermajority vote?
Date: 2007-01-23 05:46 am (UTC)Also, understand that utilities in these simulations were based both on randomness, AND on random positions on ISSUES. That is, take a plane (two-dimensional issue space) and put some dots on it to represent candidates, as well as lots of dots to represent voters of various stripes (one axis can be stance on abortion, and perhaps another can be position on taxes...the possibilities are endless, and you can use as many dimensions as you want). Now assign the utilities based on ideological difference (or "distance" in the graphical sense). What we find is that the results from using extremely realistic distributions of ideology, even based on real results of large-scale politics quizzes (with tens of thousands of participants) don't vary much from just picking random utilities. Hence your point has been fairly soundly refuted. But just to be on the safe side, these utility calculations were done with both random utilities, and utilities based on positions on various issues.
So your comment doesn't really make any sense upon closer inspection.
But I welcome any more articulate criticism you may have.