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Asset voting gives no guarantees whatsoever without extensive set of assumptions unless one candidate gets single majority. Most of these systems can be made b

Asset voting gives no guarantees whatsoever without extensive set of assumptions unless one candidate gets single majority. Most of these systems can be made better with multi-member districts. At this point D'Hondt-method is tried an true. The US could use Jefferson method (invented Thomas Jefferson) because "Murica" but it gives the same result :) I agree with you, that the most important thing is to implement some change, not strive to fix everything at once. Once voting methods change, politics change and other changes can become easier.

dane-pgp 4y ago
> Asset voting gives no guarantees whatsoever I'm not sure what guarantees you require a voting system to provide. Do you not agree it is better than plurality voting? I suppose you could say that it's not "guaranteed" to solve the spoiler problem, because if you vote for a candidate who claims to have very similar policies to another candidate you like, they might turn around and betray you and re-assign your vote to another candidate you are completely opposed to. However, the fact that candidates might talk one way but act another way seems to be an issue that's common to all voting systems, and therefore out of scope. > At this point D'Hondt-method is tried an true. Any electoral change that requires an explanation of the form "First we calculate the quotient with the following formula..." is doomed to failure in a world of misinformation and vested interests trying to undermine confidence in elections. You're right, though, that in the US it would be wise to advocate for Jefferson's method, and brand it that way.
- singhblom 4y ago
  You could require candidates to publicly disclose their ranking of the other candidates before the election. If they have to lock in their preference a few days before voting day that in itself would be informative for voters.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    I think candidates might be reluctant to do this, since it could be seen as an admission that the candidate thinks they might not win (although personally I would view a candidate as being arrogant and complacent if they couldn't imagine losing). You're probably right, though, that candidates should be forced to do this, and maybe they should be able to choose whether or not to disclose their preference in advance to potential voters. If they opt to keep it secret and they win, then their preference never has to be revealed, and if they are eliminated then only their highest remaining preference is revealed. Admittedly I haven't proved that there aren't times when a candidate may need to tactically reorder their preferences based on the actual distribution of votes, but I can't think of a situation where they wouldn't want to re-assign their votes to the candidate whose values are most similar to theirs / their voters.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I like this and would like to see someone work out its implications. Otherwise, asset voting just seems like a way that campaign funders could stuff 13 straw candidates on the ballot with positions tangled enough to dilute the support of 2-3 threatening candidates (threatening to a particular policy, for example), then after the vote the straw candidates all fall and throw their votes to Mussolini, Jr..
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      That's an interesting theoretical attack that I hadn't considered, thank you for sharing it. I think a possible rule to defend against it would be to mandate that any political party needs to have received at least 5% of the popular vote in that local region in the previous local elections in order to be eligible to stand candidates for the national congress/parliament. If a candidate wants to stand without the backing of any political party, they would need to receive at least 20% of the (first round) votes in their district in order to win (without needing to stand in the local elections first). Forcing candidates to publish their vote assignments at registration time might be the way to go, though, as it would help to expose these straw candidates, and also mean that the candidates wouldn't have to be present when the voting result is announced. To avoid embarrassment, candidates could place a "null" option in their lists, meaning "If I am eliminated, then discard all the votes I received (including the votes assigned to me from earlier-eliminated candidates) and let the remaining candidates win or lose based on the remaining votes".
- Nokinside 4y ago
  > I'm not sure what guarantees you require a voting system to provide. Just as´ examples of desirable properties are Unanimity, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. If you know enough to suggest asset voting, I suspected you know enough about social choose theory or electoral systems to have at least some of them in mind. Asset voting is just plurality voting that reverts into weighted electors. It allows any kind of surprises that voters did not want. >Any electoral change that requires an explanation of the form The simplest explanation for is 1. Each party gets representatives relative to the number of votes they received. 2. Party representatives are picked in the order they received votes (open list). small print: how it is done mathematically was explained by Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Washington in 1792. Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt found simpler method in 1878. The methods are equivalent.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    > Just as´ examples of desirable properties are Unanimity, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. I'm aware of many desirable properties, such as the ones listed here[0], but "Unanimity" is not mentioned on that page. I struggle to even imagine what such a criterion would be. "If every voter votes for a given candidate, then that candidate should win"? That sounds like an obviously desirable property, but of course Asset Voting has that property, so I'm still not sure what the objection is. The other property you mention (IIA) is one I'm not actually convinced is desirable. It makes the analysis of voting systems easier if you can assume it as an axiom, but I think it only applies to spherical voters in a vacuum. People change their preferences due to minor "unrelated" pieces of information all the time, so it doesn't seem odd to me that a voter might see party C on a list and update their view of the world, such that they decide they were wrong to support party A over party B, for example. Anyway, you said "Asset voting gives no guarantees whatsoever", which I guess must be hyperbole, because Asset Voting is guaranteed to provide the desirable property of the Majority Criterion (MC), since a candidate with a majority of the (first round) vote cannot be beaten no matter the distribution of votes for other candidates. The best I can do at steelmanning your complaint is that some of these desirable properties are difficult to reason about in relation to Asset Voting, because its result-generating process takes as part of its input the decisions made by the candidates themselves, which these formalized properties don't consider. However, that seems like a failure of the properties themselves rather than the voting method, unless you can think of a way that Asset Voting fails in practice due to their inapplicability. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#Criteria_for_single-winner_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_system...

dane-pgp 4y ago

> Asset voting gives no guarantees whatsoever I'm not sure what guarantees you require a voting system to provide. Do you not agree it is better than plurality voting? I suppose you could say that it's not "guaranteed" to solve the spoiler problem, because if you vote for a candidate who claims to have very similar policies to another candidate you like, they might turn around and betray you and re-assign your vote to another candidate you are completely opposed to. However, the fact that candidates might talk one way but act another way seems to be an issue that's common to all voting systems, and therefore out of scope. > At this point D'Hondt-method is tried an true. Any electoral change that requires an explanation of the form "First we calculate the quotient with the following formula..." is doomed to failure in a world of misinformation and vested interests trying to undermine confidence in elections. You're right, though, that in the US it would be wise to advocate for Jefferson's method, and brand it that way.

singhblom 4y ago
You could require candidates to publicly disclose their ranking of the other candidates before the election. If they have to lock in their preference a few days before voting day that in itself would be informative for voters.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  I think candidates might be reluctant to do this, since it could be seen as an admission that the candidate thinks they might not win (although personally I would view a candidate as being arrogant and complacent if they couldn't imagine losing). You're probably right, though, that candidates should be forced to do this, and maybe they should be able to choose whether or not to disclose their preference in advance to potential voters. If they opt to keep it secret and they win, then their preference never has to be revealed, and if they are eliminated then only their highest remaining preference is revealed. Admittedly I haven't proved that there aren't times when a candidate may need to tactically reorder their preferences based on the actual distribution of votes, but I can't think of a situation where they wouldn't want to re-assign their votes to the candidate whose values are most similar to theirs / their voters.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I like this and would like to see someone work out its implications. Otherwise, asset voting just seems like a way that campaign funders could stuff 13 straw candidates on the ballot with positions tangled enough to dilute the support of 2-3 threatening candidates (threatening to a particular policy, for example), then after the vote the straw candidates all fall and throw their votes to Mussolini, Jr..
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    That's an interesting theoretical attack that I hadn't considered, thank you for sharing it. I think a possible rule to defend against it would be to mandate that any political party needs to have received at least 5% of the popular vote in that local region in the previous local elections in order to be eligible to stand candidates for the national congress/parliament. If a candidate wants to stand without the backing of any political party, they would need to receive at least 20% of the (first round) votes in their district in order to win (without needing to stand in the local elections first). Forcing candidates to publish their vote assignments at registration time might be the way to go, though, as it would help to expose these straw candidates, and also mean that the candidates wouldn't have to be present when the voting result is announced. To avoid embarrassment, candidates could place a "null" option in their lists, meaning "If I am eliminated, then discard all the votes I received (including the votes assigned to me from earlier-eliminated candidates) and let the remaining candidates win or lose based on the remaining votes".
Nokinside 4y ago
> I'm not sure what guarantees you require a voting system to provide. Just as´ examples of desirable properties are Unanimity, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. If you know enough to suggest asset voting, I suspected you know enough about social choose theory or electoral systems to have at least some of them in mind. Asset voting is just plurality voting that reverts into weighted electors. It allows any kind of surprises that voters did not want. >Any electoral change that requires an explanation of the form The simplest explanation for is 1. Each party gets representatives relative to the number of votes they received. 2. Party representatives are picked in the order they received votes (open list). small print: how it is done mathematically was explained by Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to George Washington in 1792. Belgian mathematician Victor D'Hondt found simpler method in 1878. The methods are equivalent.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  > Just as´ examples of desirable properties are Unanimity, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives. I'm aware of many desirable properties, such as the ones listed here[0], but "Unanimity" is not mentioned on that page. I struggle to even imagine what such a criterion would be. "If every voter votes for a given candidate, then that candidate should win"? That sounds like an obviously desirable property, but of course Asset Voting has that property, so I'm still not sure what the objection is. The other property you mention (IIA) is one I'm not actually convinced is desirable. It makes the analysis of voting systems easier if you can assume it as an axiom, but I think it only applies to spherical voters in a vacuum. People change their preferences due to minor "unrelated" pieces of information all the time, so it doesn't seem odd to me that a voter might see party C on a list and update their view of the world, such that they decide they were wrong to support party A over party B, for example. Anyway, you said "Asset voting gives no guarantees whatsoever", which I guess must be hyperbole, because Asset Voting is guaranteed to provide the desirable property of the Majority Criterion (MC), since a candidate with a majority of the (first round) vote cannot be beaten no matter the distribution of votes for other candidates. The best I can do at steelmanning your complaint is that some of these desirable properties are difficult to reason about in relation to Asset Voting, because its result-generating process takes as part of its input the decisions made by the candidates themselves, which these formalized properties don't consider. However, that seems like a failure of the properties themselves rather than the voting method, unless you can think of a way that Asset Voting fails in practice due to their inapplicability. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_systems#Criteria_for_single-winner_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_electoral_system...