4 ms·

I'm loving learning about these different voting methods. I do still stand by my point though. You're right, I was arguing that voters degenerate into bullet v

by idrios 4y ago

I'm loving learning about these different voting methods. I do still stand by my point though. You're right, I was arguing that voters degenerate into bullet voting over time 100% for the candidate they liked, 0% for the ones they don't. Your article [0] contends that it's not a good strategy to vote like this if you're trying to be strategic, because if candidates are A=974, B=974, F=231 and you liked F, you'd be foolish to vote 100% F, as if you like B better than A you should vote some for B. This looks too much like the current system we have, where people don't vote for the person they like best, they cast all their votes for the person they hate the least who could beat the person they hate the most. Basically: if you normalize votes, people are going to vote 100% for the lesser of 2 evils and we're back to square 1. If you don't normalize votes, you'll get one of the other voting strategies you've already linked to in your [1]. I expect it would essentially devolve into approval voting, as it's still voting for the lesser of 2 evils of the strongest candidates, then casting additional votes for anyone who seems viable. Perhaps it finds some other equilibrium. Either way, I think it takes too much strategy and voter headspace compared to ranked voting, where you can just vote for the candidates you want, in the order you want, and you didn't waste a vote if your top candidate loses because your #2 vote didn't lose any weight.

godelski 4y ago
I think you're trying too hard to look for errors in a system that isn't your preference and not looking hard enough at errors for the system that is your preference. All voting systems have errors and we must be clear about this. But this strategy and consequence exists in ordinal systems just as much as cardinal systems. There is nothing stopping a voter from bullet voting on a ranked ballot. They just rank one person and no one else. The consequences are quite similar actually but might be more obvious that you're throwing away your ballot in this case. But I assure you, you're effectively throwing away your ballot in the cardinal case too. I'm also not sure what is wrong with approval. Approval is awesome. I am also not sure why you keep using the phrase "lesser of 2 evils". If we have a 2 candidate election then there's no point in using any of these voting systems because plurality is a strictly better system (in a 2 candidate election). In fact, it is preferential that a multi-candidate system degenerates into a plurality system when there are only two candidates! The phrase "lesser of n equals" is not really about a voting system so much as it is related to another saying: "those that seek power do not deserve it" (or Plato's alternative: "Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it"). This has nothing to do with a voting system but has everything to do with a candidate selection process. There's an ethical conundrum though because you need strong authoritarian power to force thrust (the potential for) power upon people. But we're digressing, just like the normalization discussion is digressing (it was intended to introduce the concept of scaled sincerity, which we see people use in practice).
- idrios 4y ago
  Every one of your criticisms here is very valid. > I think you're trying too hard to look for errors in a system that isn't your preference and not looking hard enough at errors for the system that is your preference. This is true that I have that bias. I think there's currently momentum in the US for switching from single vote to ranked voting, and I worry that if we get into disputes over which alternative voting system is better, that momentum will be lost and we won't change at all. You're right I was far too quick to dismiss approval voting as a devolution from cardinal voting. > I am also not sure why you keep using the phrase "lesser of 2 evils". I don't know if you're from the US or not, but this is a common idiom about how our election process works in practice. The Simpsons [0], South Park [1] and dozens of others have pretty great parodies of it. In each of our presidential elections, even though there will be a plurality of presidents running, there are practically only 2 -- the ones backed by the major parties. And often, they happen to be the 2 worst -- where they're either shamelessly narcissistic enough to be unfazed by criticism, or are overly agreeable and quick to make impossible promises. Your quote by Plato is on point here. That's the phenomenon that I desperately don't want to have any more, that I want n-candidate elections to actually have n candidates. I (perhaps wrongly) attribute a lot of the polarization in the US to two-party elections. It's true that you can be a bullet voter on a ranked ballot, but there's no incentive to (that I can think of). In an n-candidate election, if there are 2 known popular candidates, and you absolutely despise one of them, then in a normalized cardinal system you'd be incentivized to bullet vote for the other popular candidate -- whether or not they're terrible. That's the scenario I'm talking about when I say lesser of 2 evils. Without normalization, you'd be incentivized to approval vote. And I don't have anything wrong with approval voting, I shouldn't have criticized it in my last comment. But I do still dislike cardinal voting, because of the fact that it gives people strategies for voting. I think some people will vote earnestly like A:1, B:3, C:6 and others will vote strategically like A:10, B:0, C:0, and so this will leave the earnest voters feeling like they had the election stolen from them by strategic voters when A wins. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7l9QmtiXHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7l9QmtiXHU [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pfsneLSSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pfsneLSSM
  - godelski 4y ago

by idrios 4y ago

godelski 4y ago

I think you're trying too hard to look for errors in a system that isn't your preference and not looking hard enough at errors for the system that is your preference. All voting systems have errors and we must be clear about this. But this strategy and consequence exists in ordinal systems just as much as cardinal systems. There is nothing stopping a voter from bullet voting on a ranked ballot. They just rank one person and no one else. The consequences are quite similar actually but might be more obvious that you're throwing away your ballot in this case. But I assure you, you're effectively throwing away your ballot in the cardinal case too. I'm also not sure what is wrong with approval. Approval is awesome. I am also not sure why you keep using the phrase "lesser of 2 evils". If we have a 2 candidate election then there's no point in using any of these voting systems because plurality is a strictly better system (in a 2 candidate election). In fact, it is preferential that a multi-candidate system degenerates into a plurality system when there are only two candidates! The phrase "lesser of n equals" is not really about a voting system so much as it is related to another saying: "those that seek power do not deserve it" (or Plato's alternative: "Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it"). This has nothing to do with a voting system but has everything to do with a candidate selection process. There's an ethical conundrum though because you need strong authoritarian power to force thrust (the potential for) power upon people. But we're digressing, just like the normalization discussion is digressing (it was intended to introduce the concept of scaled sincerity, which we see people use in practice).

idrios 4y ago
Every one of your criticisms here is very valid. > I think you're trying too hard to look for errors in a system that isn't your preference and not looking hard enough at errors for the system that is your preference. This is true that I have that bias. I think there's currently momentum in the US for switching from single vote to ranked voting, and I worry that if we get into disputes over which alternative voting system is better, that momentum will be lost and we won't change at all. You're right I was far too quick to dismiss approval voting as a devolution from cardinal voting. > I am also not sure why you keep using the phrase "lesser of 2 evils". I don't know if you're from the US or not, but this is a common idiom about how our election process works in practice. The Simpsons [0], South Park [1] and dozens of others have pretty great parodies of it. In each of our presidential elections, even though there will be a plurality of presidents running, there are practically only 2 -- the ones backed by the major parties. And often, they happen to be the 2 worst -- where they're either shamelessly narcissistic enough to be unfazed by criticism, or are overly agreeable and quick to make impossible promises. Your quote by Plato is on point here. That's the phenomenon that I desperately don't want to have any more, that I want n-candidate elections to actually have n candidates. I (perhaps wrongly) attribute a lot of the polarization in the US to two-party elections. It's true that you can be a bullet voter on a ranked ballot, but there's no incentive to (that I can think of). In an n-candidate election, if there are 2 known popular candidates, and you absolutely despise one of them, then in a normalized cardinal system you'd be incentivized to bullet vote for the other popular candidate -- whether or not they're terrible. That's the scenario I'm talking about when I say lesser of 2 evils. Without normalization, you'd be incentivized to approval vote. And I don't have anything wrong with approval voting, I shouldn't have criticized it in my last comment. But I do still dislike cardinal voting, because of the fact that it gives people strategies for voting. I think some people will vote earnestly like A:1, B:3, C:6 and others will vote strategically like A:10, B:0, C:0, and so this will leave the earnest voters feeling like they had the election stolen from them by strategic voters when A wins. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7l9QmtiXHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7l9QmtiXHU [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pfsneLSSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7pfsneLSSM
- godelski 4y ago