kevin_standlee: Logo created for 2005 Worldcon and sometimes used for World Science Fiction Society business (WSFS Logo)
[personal profile] kevin_standlee
The folks advocating Range Voting contacted WSFS (actually, the WSFS webmaster, [livejournal.com profile] 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.

Re: Supermajority vote?

Date: 2007-01-23 05:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sethb.livejournal.com
The fact that you can't figure out how to apply it to IRV doesn't mean that nobody can. There are truly horrible ways (that take more than 3 ballots per voter) that can easily be shown to work for IRV; I haven't tried to minimize the excess.

Re: Supermajority vote?

Date: 2007-01-23 05:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thebrokenladder.livejournal.com
A Princeton math Ph.D, who incidentally told Rivest how to use this method for plurality voting, says:

Interestingly, 3ballot turns out to work most naturally, securely, and simply, for approval voting and range voting. It still works – but less naturally, securely, and simply for plurality voting (the kind of voting currently most common throughout the USA and world) – and it essentially does not work at all for voting methods based on rank-order ballots such as instant runoff voting.

So, let's see you refute him please. Prove that it's possible. I'm pretty sure he's proven that it's not.

Re: Supermajority vote?

Date: 2007-01-23 03:21 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] merlinpole.livejournal.com
sethb has a Yale math/computer science Ph.D, he also holds a BA and MA in math from Harvard... BFD about the Princeton math Ph.D. One of my bosses in the Air Force was a Princeton Ph.D. in EE, who used to disappear at lunch hour to teach at Northrup University where he was the department head (and yes, he was also simultaneously an active duty lieutenant colonel in the USAF at LA Air Force Station).

Re: Supermajority vote?

Date: 2007-01-23 05:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thebrokenladder.livejournal.com
Yeah, there are a lot of smart people out there. If Seth has the credentials you say he does, he should be able to analyze our claims and find flaws in them if those flaws exist. If he can find any methodological errors in our utility efficiency calculations, for example, is is welcome to point them out, or even work on our OPEN SOURCE utility efficiency calculation program, which presents the results in terms of Bayesian regret I should add.

Maybe he could solve some of our unsolved puzzles http://www.rangevoting.org/PuzzlePage.html

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